- © Copyright, 2003, From The Wilderness Publications,
www.fromthewilderness.com. All rights reserved. May be copied, distributed
or posted on the Internet for non-profit purposes only.
-
- (FTW) - So many emails. So many people worried and confused.
So many people acting as if it doesn't make sense.
Yes, there's good reason to be confused. Israeli Foreign Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's nephew refuses to be drafted while his uncle all but threatens
to attack Belgium for its OK to prosecute Ariel Sharon for war crimes when
he leaves office. NATO is, or will soon be, dead. France, Germany and Russia
are sponsoring a Security Council resolution to prevent what France has
called "an illegitimate war". Turkey, with 85% of its people
opposing the invasion, is extorting the U.S. blind as budget deficit projections
leave orbit. Ari Fleischer is hysterically laughed out of the White House
Press room by reporters after insisting with a straight face that George
W. Bush would never bribe another country for a vote. Americans are renaming
French fries as Liberty fries while the larger powers Germany and Russia
- who make France's stance credible - stand back and let France take both
the heat - et la gloire!
Aside from the tense laughter over words we have real threats. In Colombia,
FARC guerillas shoot down a CIA contract plane; kill one occupant and hold
three others hostage while President Bush uses statutory authority to send
150 more Green Berets to follow the 70 he just sent. North Korea is having
the time of its life cutting business deals with China and Seoul while
using its possibly one nuclear weapon to make the U.S. divert bombers and
elements of the 1st Air Cavalry away from the Gulf. In the Philippines
Abu Sayyaf rebels prompt the U.S. to commit 1,700 more troops to take an
active role in the fighting. And the U.S. is now sending 10,000 troops
to the Dominican Republic for a training exercise that looks much more
like preparation for intervention in either Venezuela or Colombia.
The Lilliputians know how to deal with Gulliver and Gulliver is having
a real hard time.
What of Bush himself? The Washington Post tells us that U.S. embassies
around the globe are inundating Washington with cables saying that the
world both hates and mistrusts this "dry drunk", megalomaniac
who would be laughable except for the fact that he represents a power structure
as demented as he is. As if to go Tony Blair - who recently plagiarized
a graduate research paper to compile his sensitive intelligence dossier
on Iraq - "one better", George W. recently cited figures to support
his tax cut from a report that doesn't exist. He was caught in that lie
by NewsDay's James Toedtman. And retired Air Force Chief of Staff Tony
McPeak is publicly saying on a Portland, Oregon TV station that Bush should
admit he's made a mistake and that, as far as Iraq is concerned, "I
regard the nuclear threat as zero. I regard the connection between Saddam
and al-Qaida as less than zero."
As The Sydney Herald tells us that 114 countries are urging the United
States to back down from the invasion, Capitol Hill Blue is reporting that
senior Bush advisors are quietly trying to find a way out of war with Iraq
now that they have realized that it is a no-win situation.
"What's happening? We don't get it!"
You would if you had been listening to what we have been saying for eighteen
months. Peak Oil is here. The world is starting to run out. There is no
more oil to find and what's left can't be put into your gas tank or our
power generating stations quickly. Global production capacity is stretched
like a rubber band about to break and the slightest hiccup in world oil
production will crash the global economy like a Styrofoam cup under an
elephant's foot at a Rave party. Don't believe me? Well then perhaps recent
warnings by Goldman Sachs and James Baker might. Those warnings, and an
incredibly precise economic analysis by Marshall Auerback, were recently
published by The Prudent Bear at
-
- http://www.prudentbear.com/archive_comm_article.asp?
-
-
- To make it simple, the problem is this: In spite of microscopic
fig leaves stating that OPEC will ramp up production to meet oil needs,
the fact is that OPEC just can't do it. Goldman Sachs knows it. James Baker
knows it. Bush knows it. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, having survived U.S.
coup attempts, now holds a "whip hand" as Venezuelan production
still lags behind. Saudi Arabia is unstable. Nigeria, the world's sixth
largest producer - just had an oil strike. Its production is down and every
other producing facility is on overtime. In the latest issue of FTW we
poke yet another hole in the grand illusion about an Iraqi windfall. It
may take two to five years and as much as $50 billion in new investment
to increase Iraqi production from two to five million barrels a day as
the rest of the world's reserves dry up.
The planet is current consuming a billion barrels of oil every 12 days.
Peak Oil is here now. What difference does it make if Saudi Arabia and
OPEC might be able to add five million barrels a day? It's who gets it
that matters.
Worse, countries like India and Pakistan have announced a version of panic
buying to build up their reserves before the war. This places a further
strain on production capacity. With the invasion, if the Iraqi supply is
interrupted for just a month then the markets will see the light and there
will be a capitulation sell-off on Wall Street that might take the Dow
down to 4000. Ten million could be unemployed inside of six months. U.S.
reserves are at 27 year lows and the administration is prepared to open
up our Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) which can sustain the US for
about 75 days. Tap into the SPR and what do you think prices will do? And
if prices double or triple what do you think will happen to your job? Your
checkbook?
Gas prices have not yet begun to rise. This is what FTW has been saying
since October of 2001. There may soon come a day when we will all look
back on $2 gas the way I look back on the 28 cent premium gas I bought
in 1969.
Now think for a moment what happens if the U.S. backs down, as I think
it should. 36% of all the proven recoverable reserves in the world are
in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Not all oil reserves are recoverable. Only lunatics
believe that wells, pipelines and refineries are already in place and paid
for in the smaller fields that have not been developed. A perceived American
power vacuum would unleash a polite, at first, but ultimately frantic,
scramble for Saudi and Iraqi oil in the full knowledge that whoever loses
out will be the first civilization to collapse; the first of many.
Yes, it all makes perfect sense.
-
-
|