Cheney plans to nuke Iran

Some variation of an attack on Iran was in the pipe, whether the administration had gotten into this embarrassment with Karl Rove and the Downing Street Minutes or not.

The only questions have been 1) how would they justify it, and 2) how would they do it with our troops tied up in Iraq, and the draft likely to cause an uncontrollable backlash.

This seems to imply the answers to both:

1) terrorist attack on US

2) use nukes on Iran, leaving fewer people left to fight there.

The American people would balk at using nuclear weapons unless the attack on the US was itself was nuclear. Neither Iran nor any other country has a motive to use nukes on the US, knowing that it would result in overwhelming retaliation and the destruction of their government and most of their people.

The last line of the excerpt from the American Conservative magazine is the only one that gives me hope, and has come up on other issues too: the military is uncomfortable with what they are being asked to do. This is how we know about Abu Ghraib. A soldier passed along those photos to Seymour Hersh because he thought what was transpiring was wrong, and when the torture policy and detainment policies were being written, Navy JAG officers were so alarmed, they contacted human rights lawyers in DC.

Eventually, we will come to a moment like the one that occurred in the Soviet Union when the hardliners attempted a coup against Gorbachev--the military refused to fire on or act against their own people. It would be better if our elected leaders corrected this problem, but if they do not, our last line of defense is the conscience of those in our military.

You should forward this to your congressman and senators and ask them to investigate and if they approve of allowing a terrorist attack in the US as a pretext for nuking and invading Iran.

http://firstgov.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

KEY EXCERPTS:

The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option.

As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States.

Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing--that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack--but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.

FULL TEXT:

http://www.amconmag.com/2005a/2005_08_01/article3.html





nuclear weapons iraq war wmd terrorism oil nuclear program president george w bush airstrike attack dick cheney republican GOP conservative corruption occupation halliburton colonialism white mans burden professor smartass iraq peak oil propaganda corporation fascism political opinion agent provocateur george w bush war on terror public opinion opinion public relations foreign policy al qaeda false flag cointelpro northwoods terrorist worst president ever failure war criminal idiot retard closet gay nazi smartass comments resistance censored news rebel

Shakespeare's Henry V on WAR

This starts a bit slowly but by the end, the King of England is threatening the French with raping their daughters, smashing their grandfathers heads, and skewering babies on pikes, and only being able to hold back all these atrocities if they surrender before the battle begins.

This is war.

We've gotten a bit better at restraining the rape and do most of the grandfather and baby killing with artillery and aerial bombardment, but otherwise nothing has changed.

Henry V, at the gates of Harfleur:

The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.
What is it then to me, if impious war,
Array'd in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats
Enlink'd to waste and desolation?
What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villany.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?

--Henry V, Act III Scene III

Why Bush fears the last Abu Ghraib photos...

The Pentagon handed the last of the Abu Ghraib photos to the ACLU, but the Bush administration filed a motion to block their release at the last minute this Friday.

They have good reason to be afraid of their release.

These are the photos and videos that include rape, children, who were subject to the same abuse as adults.

Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, was shown these photos at the Pentagon by military officials disgusted with what the Bush administration is doing. One was of a boy being raped, and Hersh has said he will be haunted by his screams for the rest of his life. This story from the New York Times describes the scope of the problem, if not the graphic details:

http://www.occupationwatch.org/analysis/archives/2005/06/arrested_develo.html

A British news show had these drawings done to illustrate an Iraqi reporter documented of an attack on an 12 year old girl: If that made you mad, think about the effect of the actual photos.



Here's the German news article that describes the incident and has links to the international organizations looking into this.
http://www.swr.de/report/archiv/sendungen/040705/07/frames.html

This is the description of the event in the drawing:

One person who has seen the children's wing with his own eyes is the journalist Suhaib Badr-Addin Al-Baz. Our correspondent met him last week in Baghdad. The Iraqi TV reporter tells how he himself was arrested arbitrarily by the Americans while shooting a film and spent 74 days in Abu Ghraib.

"I saw a camp for children there. Boys, under the age of puberty. There were certainly hundreds of children in this camp. Some have been released, others are certainly still there."

From his single cell in the adults' section, Suhaib heard a perhaps 12-year-old girl crying. Suhaib learned that her brother was being held on the second floor of the prison. Suhaib says he saw her there himself once or twice.

In the night, they had been in her cell. The girl had shouted to the other prisoners and called out her brother's name.

"She was beaten. I heard her call out: They have undressed me. They have poured water over me."

Daily, says Suhaib, one had heard her cries and her whimpering. Some of the prisoners had therefore wept...

The last paragraph of the article is chilling:

We have, of course, confronted those responsible with our researches. [sic] The British Ministry of Defence let it be known: Children and juveniles are not being held in custody by British troops. We are still waiting for a reply from the Pentagon in America..

More artwork I wish I did

See more at Pinkobuttons.com

unsolicited advice for future democratic and other candidates

If your opponent has raised more money than you:

"Big business is showering money on my opponent and wants to get rid of me because I'm looking out for you. Don't let the biggest whore win this election."

If your opponent goes for personal attacks, directly or through surrogates:

"my opponent is a coward. He is afraid to talk about real issues, so he sends his fat, boneless gossip weasel out to root around in my past to make you think I'm a bad person. But who I've slept with, what I've smoked or drank, or who I've done business with isn't going to get your kids into the doctor when they're sick or into college when they finish high school. I want to make those things affordable for your family. My opponent wants to make them less affordable so his friends can profit. I want to talk about that, and he doesn't. I'm running to be your president (or senator, congressman, or dog-catcher). I guess he's running for editor of the national enquirer."

Israel & Saudi Arabia AGREE: Iraq War creating not just attracting terrorists

Normally, about the only thing you could get Israel & Saudi to agree on is the weather.

But this analysis debunks the Bush argument that at least the Iraq War is attracting terrorists to Iraq instead of the US, as if there is a finite number, and we can kill enough to resolve the problem.

This study was done by examining interrogations of captured foreign fighters in Iraq, and background investigations of suicide bombers in Iraq.

The history of past insurgencies including our own failed war in Vietnam show that this is asinine. Every time to you kill someone, you inspire a brother, or cousin, or neighbor to take up arms. And if the war itself is obviously unjust it can attract sympathizers from outside even to the point of taking up arms, as the Israelis and Saudis are noting.

We had something similar happen with a terrorist here in the US about 150 years ago. John Brown was a well-known anti-slavery activist who raided slave-holding farms to liberate their slaves. When he tried to seize weapons from the Harper's Ferry armory, he was caught and hung. Rather than quell the anti-slavery movement, it galvanized it (the original lyrics of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" were about Brown's death). Within a few years, the Civil War followed because Lincoln said he would not allow slavery to spread into anymore new states.

The same thing happened to the French in Algeria. A French director made an extremely realistic movie, The Battle of Algiers, about the insurgency against the French. At the very end, the French capture the leader of the rebels hiding in a hole in a wall, and say "at last, we have broken the back of the rebellion." As the screen fades to black, the words that crawl up the screen say the rebellion continued, and a few years later, the French were forced to leave.

Just because people aren't white (or as white as us), don't speak English, and put up with a dictator for decades, doesn't mean they are stupid or less human than us.

KEY EXCERPTS:

The Boston Globe

Study cites seeds of terror in Iraq
War radicalized most, probes find

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | July 17, 2005


However, interrogations of nearly 300 Saudis captured while trying to sneak into Iraq and case studies of more than three dozen others who blew themselves up in suicide attacks show that most were heeding the calls from clerics and activists to drive infidels out of Arab land, according to a study by Saudi investigator Nawaf Obaid, a US-trained analyst who was commissioned by the Saudi government and given access to Saudi officials and intelligence.

A separate Israeli analysis of 154 foreign fighters compiled by a leading terrorism researcher found that despite the presence of some senior Al Qaeda operatives who are organizing the volunteers, ''the vast majority of [non-Iraqi] Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq."

****

Obaid said in an interview from London that his Saudi study found that ''the largest group is young kids who saw the images [of the war] on TV and are reading the stuff on the Internet. Or they see the name of a cousin on the list or a guy who belongs to their tribe, and they feel a responsibility to go."

Other fighters, who are coming to Iraq from across the Middle East and North Africa, are older, in their late 20s or 30s, and have families, according to the two investigations. ''The vast majority of them had nothing to do with Al Qaeda before Sept. 11th and have nothing to do with Al Qaeda today," said Reuven Paz, author of the Israeli study. ''I am not sure the American public is really aware of the enormous influence of the war in Iraq, not just on Islamists but the entire Arab world."

FULL TEXT:

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/07/17/study_cites_seeds_of_terror_in_iraq/

Not my artwork (but I wish it was)

If we're teaching Iraqis democracy, what do polls say they want?

GRAPHICS: What do Iraqis want? An important Q if teaching democracy


The Coalition Provisional Authority did a poll of Iraqis on a number of questions and one was whether they view us as liberators or occupiers.

The results were pretty grim:










LINK TO POLL DATA

A Gallup poll done around the same time was only slightly more supportive of us staying.

The only poll that has shown anywhere near majority support for us being there was from a right wing think tank, that has a vested interest in making this Neocon adventure look good.

The argument that we are fighting terrorists there instead of here assumes there's a set number of people who are mad at us, and we can eventually kill enough of them to make the problem go away.

The problem is, at the base of all of it, is a resentment of our involvement in propping up their dictators, who don't share the oil wealth with their own people. All this gets channeled into religion because they have no effective political outlets in most countries over there. So by intervening militarily, we are making more not less people resent and want to attack us.

Polls of reaction in other Arab countries to our invasion of Iraq confirm this. A Zogby poll in 2003 found that 90% disapproved of our invasion
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030317-025106-382...

Zogby's most recent poll of Arab countries shows MORE disapprove with 98% of Egyptians (our allies) disapproving.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7080-2004Jul2...

If you want to teach people democracy, you can't do it with a gun in their face.

Gorbachev accidentally showed us an easier way to do it. He told the dictators of Eastern Europe the Soviets couldn't afford to help them oppress their people anymore. Within a few years, those dictators were out of jobs, and those countries were more or less democracies.

And I don't think a single Russian soldier was killed.

Musharraf, Mubarak, the Saudis, various kings and generals, would all wither away and die without our money and help of our intelligence services. The results might be messy, but the people over there wouldn't blame us for it--they'd thank us.

Print this out, and send it to your congressman and senators and tell them to stop treating us and the Iraqis like fucking idiots.

They are there to steal the oil. Stop it. Don't use our tax dollars and soldiers lives to enrich a very, very few. Or we'll start wondering about how seriously they take democracy here.

The Client: starring George W. Bush & Jeff Gannon

If you haven't heard of Jeff Gannon, he's the male prostitute the White House had pose as a reporter to lob softball questions at Bush and his press secretary.

He also checked into the White House 39 times when there were no press briefings, and at least 14 times when he didn't check out, most likely, to hide the fact that he slept over (the secret service isn't normally slack about keeping track of people.

For more information on Gannon, check outthe Gannon Links on the right hand side of Americablog.org.

For more information on Bush's inclinations, try this: http://mysite.verizon.net/myk15/bushhugsmanho.html

Russia, China, & others ask US to leave Central Asia

This is pretty serious. Russia, China, and the former Soviet Republics around the Caspian Sea oil region have asked us to withdraw our troops that most Americans don't know are there.

This is a major piece of the neo-conservative plan to dominate the oil producing regions of the world, and these countries are right above Iraq and Iran too, so this will put a crimp in their plans to invade Iran.

These countries don't necessarily have a beef with us, but the Bush people are creating one, and increasing the likelihood of having a wider conflict with Russia and China.

As we saw in the Korean War, it's a bad idea to fight China anywhere their troops can walk to.

With the end of the Cold War, the next fight will only be about whose corporations control the world's shrinking oil supply, and those corporations aint going to share the profits with us, or even give us a break on gas prices.

Since we are all on roughly the same page on economic systems, this should be a period of unparalleled peace in world history. Instead, Bush and his cronies are herding mankind toward the slaughter.

If this continues, people who go to protests should do more than hold signs and instead engage in civil disobedience and literally stop the things you want stopped. Block the driveways and train tracks, the entrance to induction centers and the businesses that are bleeding our country dry. They did this peacefully in Bolivia recently, and the corrupt politicians literally fled.

The other piece we need is for the military to stop following the orders of a corrupt regime. This happened in Russia during the hard-liner coup against Gorbachev. If you know someone in the military, urge them not to refuse to invade another country, and if deployed at home, refuse to fire on or threaten your fellow citizens. If they start voicing this now instead of waiting till asked to do so, it could help prevent the worst that the Bushies have in mind.

FULL TEXT:

BBC NEWS
US urged to give bases deadline

An alliance of former Soviet states and China has urged the US-led coalition in Afghanistan to set a timetable for withdrawing troops from member states.

The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation said it continued to support the anti-terror coalition in Afghanistan, which had stabilised the situation.

But in a joint statement the group said the active military phase of the Afghan operation was nearing completion.

Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan host US bases used to back troops in Afghanistan.

About 18,000 coalition forces are in Afghanistan tracking al-Qaeda and Taleban militants.


SHANGHAI CO-OPERATION ORGANISATION
China
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Russia
Tajikistan
Uzbekistan
At talks in Kazakhstan, the Shanghai group called on the coalition to agree a deadline for ending the temporary use of bases and air space in nearby countries.

Correspondents say the statement appears to reflect increasing concerns that the US is encouraging the overthrow of Central Asia's authoritarian governments.

The statement comes after Kyrgyzstan's leader was ousted in March, and follows Western criticism of the Uzbek authorities for their violent suppression of dissent in eastern Uzbekistan.

Europe's security body, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), said between 300-500 people died when troops fired on a rally in the city of Andijan. Tashkent says 173 died.

Published: 2005/07/05 12:34:30 GMT

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/4652175.stm

shanghai co-operation organisation bbc news
Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Uzbekistan bases china
iraq war wmd terrorism oil russia president george w bush real reasons republican GOP conservative corruption occupation halliburton colonialism white mans burden professor smartass lies peak oil democracy political opinion george w bush war on terror muslim public opinion opinion public relations foreign policy al qaeda false flag cointelpro northwoods terrorist karen hughes worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news rebel

Russia, China, & others ask US to leave Central Asia

This is pretty serious. Russia, China, and the former Soviet Republics around the Caspian Sea oil region have asked us to withdraw our troops that most Americans don't know are there.

This is a major piece of the neo-conservative plan to dominate the oil producing regions of the world, and these countries are right above Iraq and Iran too, so this will put a crimp in their plans to invade Iran.

These countries don't necessarily have a beef with us, but the Bush people are creating one, and increasing the likelihood of having a wider conflict with Russia and China.

As we saw in the Korean War, it's a bad idea to fight China anywhere their troops can walk to.

With the end of the Cold War, the next fight will only be about whose corporations control the world's shrinking oil supply, and those corporations aint going to share the profits with us, or even give us a break on gas prices.

Since we are all on roughly the same page on economic systems, this should be a period of unparalleled peace in world history. Instead, Bush and his cronies are herding mankind toward the slaughter.

If this continues, people who go to protests should do more than hold signs and instead engage in civil disobedience and literally stop the things you want stopped. Block the driveways and train tracks, the entrance to induction centers and the businesses that are bleeding our country dry. They did this peacefully in Bolivia recently, and the corrupt politicians literally fled.

The other piece we need is for the military to stop following the orders of a corrupt regime. This happened in Russia during the hard-liner coup against Gorbachev. If you know someone in the military, urge them not to refuse to invade another country, and if deployed at home, refuse to fire on or threaten your fellow citizens. If they start voicing this now instead of waiting till asked to do so, it could help prevent the worst that the Bushies have in mind.

FULL TEXT:

BBC NEWS
US urged to give bases deadline

An alliance of former Soviet states and China has urged the US-led coalition in Afghanistan to set a timetable for withdrawing troops from member states.

The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation said it continued to support the anti-terror coalition in Afghanistan, which had stabilised the situation.

But in a joint statement the group said the active military phase of the Afghan operation was nearing completion.

Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan host US bases used to back troops in Afghanistan.

About 18,000 coalition forces are in Afghanistan tracking al-Qaeda and Taleban militants.


SHANGHAI CO-OPERATION ORGANISATION
China
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Russia
Tajikistan
Uzbekistan
At talks in Kazakhstan, the Shanghai group called on the coalition to agree a deadline for ending the temporary use of bases and air space in nearby countries.

Correspondents say the statement appears to reflect increasing concerns that the US is encouraging the overthrow of Central Asia's authoritarian governments.

The statement comes after Kyrgyzstan's leader was ousted in March, and follows Western criticism of the Uzbek authorities for their violent suppression of dissent in eastern Uzbekistan.

Europe's security body, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), said between 300-500 people died when troops fired on a rally in the city of Andijan. Tashkent says 173 died.

Published: 2005/07/05 12:34:30 GMT

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/4652175.stm

shanghai co-operation organisation bbc news
Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Uzbekistan bases china
iraq war wmd terrorism oil russia president george w bush real reasons republican GOP conservative corruption occupation halliburton colonialism white mans burden professor smartass lies peak oil democracy political opinion george w bush war on terror muslim public opinion opinion public relations foreign policy al qaeda false flag cointelpro northwoods terrorist karen hughes worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news rebel

Bush as Oz chimp

Other people's art

Damn! I wish I made these. But I didn't.

See links underneath each to get more of the same.

http://seedsofdoubt.com/

http://airfarceone.net/

the reality driving our foreign policy, wars, and the coming draft: OIL depletion

The article below is an excellent summary and collection of links on the biggest story of our lives that few people know about.

Back in 1956, an oil company geologist made a simple prediction: that once discovery of oil declined, production would decline a few decades later--you can't pump what isn't there. He said the United States production would begin to decline in the mid 70s, and was right. He predicted the world peak would be in the first decade of the 21st century, oddly right around the time we decided we need to invade the second biggest oil producing country, right next to the biggest.

The last parts of the world that will be drained are the Caspian Sea Basin right about the Iran and Iraq, but even that pales compared to the Persian Gulf countries themselves.

Our politicians aren't talking about this because they have already decided what they are going to do about it--militarily occupy and control those countries that will have oil the longest.

If the American people knew about this, they might reasonably ask their government to skip the wars and get right to replacing oil, which we will have to do eventually anyway, and which will probably cost less than what we will spend in Iraq and later Iran.

Unfortunately, as we are seeing now, even this flawed policy is only for the benefits of the oil companies, not the American people.

Even when it comes to replacement technologies, the government is focusing on coal & nuclear, energy sources that can be monopolized the way oil is now.

In the short term, the real alternative is small scale wind & solar generation on individual houses and businesses, connected like an energy internet, so you put energy in as well as take it out, and you could even end up coming out ahead on the deal at the end of the month.

Our cars could be modified to run on biofuels, which we could produce with about 6% of our farm land. But again, if someone tried to drive the price up too high, it's easy to see how to control the price: someone else will grow more corn and make more fuel and sell it for less.

I'm not sure if we can get our government to do this, given the stranglehold that big business has on Washington, but if you own a house or a farm, you should start googling around and see if photovoltaics, solar thermal, or a windmill will work on your site.

http://www.lapostcarbon.org/
Los Angeles Post Carbon
LAPostCarbon.org


Reposted with permission from www.energybulletin.net/primer.php

Peak oil primer and links


What is Peak Oil?

Peak Oil is the simplest label for the problem of energy resource depletion, or more specifically, the peak in global oil production. Oil is a finite, non-renewable resource, one that has powered phenomenal economic and population growth over the last century and a half. The rate of oil 'production,' meaning extraction & refining (currently about 83 million barrels/day), has grown in most years over the last century, but once we go through the halfway point of all reserves, production becomes ever more likely to decline, hence 'peak'. Peak Oil means not 'running out of oil', but 'running out of cheap oil'. For societies leveraged on ever increasing amounts of cheap oil, the consequences may be dire. Without significant successful cultural reform, economic and social decline seems inevitable.

Why does oil peak? Why doesn't it suddenly run out?

For obvious reasons, people have extracted the easy-to-reach, cheap oil first. The oil pumped first was on land, near the surface, under pressure and light and 'sweet' and easy to refine into gasoline. The remaining oil, sometimes off shore, far from markets, in smaller fields, or of lesser quality, will take ever more money and energy to extract and refine. The rate of extraction will drop. Furthermore, all oil fields eventually reach a point where they become economically, and energetically no longer viable. If it takes the energy of a barrel of oil to extract a barrel of oil, then further extraction is pointless.

M. King Hubbert - the first to predict an oil peak
In the 1950s a US geologist working for Shell, M. King Hubbert, noticed that oil discoveries graphed over time, tended to follow a bell shape curve. He posited that the rate of oil production would follow a similar curve, now known as the Hubbert Curve. In 1956 Hubbert predicted that production from the US lower 48 states would peak in 1970. Shell ordered Hubbert not to make his studies public, but the notoriously stubborn Hubbert went ahead and did it anyway. As it turned out, most people inside and outside the industry dismissed Hubbert's predictions. In 1970 US oil producers had never produced as much, and Hubbert's predictions were a fading memory. But Hubbert was right, US continental oil production did peak in 1970/71, although it was not widely recognized for several years and only with the benefit of hindsight.

No oil producing region neatly fits bell shaped curve exactly because production is dependent on various geological, economic and political factors, but the Hubbert Curve remains a powerful predictive tool.

So when will oil peak globally?

For about 30 years the world has been finding less oil than it has been consuming. Discovery of new oil fields peaked in the 1960s. Around 50 oil producing countries have already peaked and now produce less and less oil each year, including the USA and the North Sea. Hubbert's methods, and variations of them, and other methods entirely, have been used to make various projections about the global oil peak, with results ranging from 'already peaked', to the very optimistic 2035. Many of the official figures used to model oil peak such as OPEC figures, oil company data, and the USGS discovery projections can be shown to be very unreliable. Several notable scientists have attempted independent studies, most notably Colin Campbell and the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO).



ASPO's latest 2004 model suggests a peak of 'conventional' oil in 2005, and all oil and gas liquids in 2008. Others such as Kenneth Deffeyes and A. M. Samsam Bakhtiari have made similar or even earlier predictions, although precise predictions are difficult as much secrecy shrouds important oil and gas data.

Globally, natural gas is also expected by some to peak within decades, although its affects are more localized due to the added expense of transporting liquefied natural gas (LNG). Both British and North American natural gas may have peaked already.


What does this mean?

Our industrial societies and our financial systems were built on the assumption of constant growth, growth based on ever more readily available cheap fossil fuels. Oil in particular is the most convenient and multi-purposed of these fossil fuels. Oil currently accounts for about 40% of the world's commercial energy, and about 90% of transportation energy. Oil is so important that the peak will have vast implications across the realms of geopolitics, lifestyle, agriculture and economic stability.

Read the rest at:
www.energybulletin.net/primer.php