Peak Oil Was So Last Year

Literally-

according to a study by the Energy Watch Group (EWG) in Berlin, Germany. It reported this week that world oil production peaked in 2006 – far earlier than expected.

Energy Watch Group is a Germany-based group of independent scientists and energy experts who this month released a report that includes nearly 100 pages of exhaustive technical analysis of every oil producing field in the world and every known and proven reserve.

the EWG study relies more on actual oil production data which, it says, are more reliable than estimates of reserves still in the ground. The group says official industry estimates put global reserves at about 1.255 gigabarrels – equivalent to 42 years’ supply at current consumption rates. But it thinks the figure is only about two thirds of that.

British energy economist David Fleming: “Anticipated supply shortages could lead easily to disturbing scenes of mass unrest as witnessed in Burma this month. For government, industry and the wider public, just muddling through is not an option any more as this situation could spin out of control and turn into a complete meltdown of society.”

Mr Schindler comes to a similar conclusion. “The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This change will be triggered by declining fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost all aspects of our daily life.”

Jeremy Leggett, one of Britain’s leading environmentalists and the author of Half Gone, a book about “peak oil” – defined as the moment when maximum production is reached, said that both the UK government and the energy industry were in “institutionalised denial” and that action should have been taken sooner.

“When I was an adviser to government, I proposed that we set up a taskforce to look at how fast the UK could mobilise alternative energy technologies in extremis, come the peak,” he said. “Other industry advisers supported that. But the government prefers to sleep on without even doing a contingency study. For those of us who know that premature peak oil is a clear and present danger, it is impossible to understand such complacency.”

The smart money is moving into Thunderdome fight training schools, presided over by robot Dick Cheney in a chain-mail cocktail dress, mmmm.

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October 28, 2007 | | Tags: , , , , , , | No Comments »

Correlli Barnett Lays The Smackdown On Britannia

So, at an 80th birthday celebratory seminar the historian lays out some home truths on our not so ‘Great’ Britain, bring the noise-

“Politicians, civil servants and military chiefs remained mental prisoners of Britain’s past as a world and imperial power,”

Discussing why the elite retain such nostalgic delusions, he said: “In my belief the elite remained prisoners of their indoctrination at public school and Oxbridge. There they had been programmed to be house prefects to the world. But given Britain’s postwar problems, these Victorian or Edwardian reflexes were simply obsolete mental kit overdue for scrapping.”

He argued in his address: “Such exaggeration has remained the besetting sin of British total strategy right up to the present day and also remained a sure recipe for a discordance between military commitments and financial resources. At the present time, the British army and its air support are just too small to fight simultaneous large-scale guerrilla wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan,” Mr Barnett added.

“In other words, a case of true overstretch. It is why our commitment in Iraq is being gradually cut back – simply to enable us to concentrate our limited strength on Afghanistan.”

He castigated the prime minister who took Britain to war over Suez in 1956, Anthony Eden. “He could no more imagine Britain giving up her inheritance as a great power because she was hard-up than, for a similar reason, having to exchange his Savile Row suits for ready-made reach-me-downs… In Eden’s view, ‘our world-wide commitments are inescapable.’ Gordon Brown and David Cameron would probably say the same today. Tony Blair certainly did.”

Of course the assembled elite hrumph and ignore him and the BBC report sides with the military expansionist delusions as post-Hutton normal. I remember two things said about change or revolution in Britain- John le Carré said it would be necessary to abolish the public school system (here ‘public schools’ actually mean expensive private elite schools full of chinless idiots), Billy Bragg said it would be necessary to close all the pubs for a while, beer being our opium of the masses. I second both. Mark Steel wrote a fantastic piece about watching a cricket game hosted at a private school which had its own zoo, you heard me-

Every time someone repeats how there’s no point in referring to antiquated tribal notions of class, they should be forced to visit the Whitgift private school in Croydon, where I went last week to see Surrey play Kent at cricket. To start with, how likely is it that a comprehensive school would have the facilities to put on a professional sports match? So kids in an inner city school would say: “I got in bear trouble man, for disturbing Roger Federer you get me. I tripped him during his semi-final against Rafael Nadal up against the wall of the science block init.”

So I knew this school had a few bob, but what I didn’t realise until I walked round the grounds was it had its own zoo. Which is worth repeating. It had its own fucking zoo. There are peacocks, flamingoes, some sort of rare Central American duck, and two wallabies. Presumably at some stage the school governors complained “It occurs to us that our aim of ultimate excellence in all fields cannot be pursued in the absence of a wallaby.” Read the rest of this entry »

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October 27, 2007 | | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »

John Pilger: Burma

Two versions- Anti-war or Grauniad-

When did Brown or Blair ever use their platforms at the CBI and in the City of London to name and shame those British companies that make money on the back of the Burmese people? When did a British prime minister call for the EU to plug the loopholes of arms supply to Burma. The reason ought to be obvious. The British government is itself one of the world’s leading arms suppliers. Next week, the dictator of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, whose tyranny gorges itself on British arms, will receive a state visit. On Thursday the Brown government approved Washington’s latest fabricated prelude to a criminal attack on Iran – as if the horrors of Iraq and Afghanistan were not enough for the “liberal” lionhearts in Downing Street and Whitehall.

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Saturday Idiot Fever

So…if the insurgents in Iraq are fighting massive battles with the few ‘Al Qaeda’ where does that leave the invaders? Because the lie about fighting terrorism is hard to maintain when the same forces fighting you are fighting terrorist groups, maybe it would be more accurate to say the Iraq resistance is fighting terrorists, whether they be US, mercenary, UK or AQ. After all the Whitehouse is attempting to prove it really is a fantastically huge liar this time with the Q changed to N.

Something about this smells-

A man has been killed trying to cross the M25 close to the Dartford Tunnel. Police officers were already at the scene when the person ran across the carriageway and was hit by a van at about 0500 BST on Saturday

And there is not a single utterance from this verminous cretin’s mouth that is worthy of even a nanosecond of attention. He gets paid hundreds of pounds an hour to lie for British state death squads (nothing like murdering a man then sliming his reputation afterwards to avoid justice) and I get fuck all for pointing the shit out, ho hum. Although a US state operative has grown a pair even as Gitmo and the Pentagon use organised crime methods of extortion to prosper in their War of Terror-

…lawyers investigating the case of a Sudanese hospital administrator, Adel Hamad, who has been held for five years, came across a “stunning” sworn statement from a member of the military panel. The officer they interviewed was so frightened of retaliation from the military that they would not allow their name to be used in the statement, nor to reveal whether the person was a man or woman.

Meanwhile in genocide news we hear the familiar refrain of just doing my job, now with added art dealer cachet-

“I’m just a photographer; I don’t know anything,” he said he told the newly arrived prisoners as he removed their blindfolds and adjusted the angles of their heads. But he knew, as they did not, that every one of them would be killed. He became the chief of six photographers at Tuol Sleng, where at least 14,000 people were tortured to death or sent to killing fields. Only a half dozen inmates were known to have survived…some of his portraits, carefully posed and lighted, have found their way into art galleries in the United States.

And the fascist BJP are beginning to be exposed-

India’s largest opposition party has dismissed claims that its government in the state of Gujarat encouraged the killing of nearly 2,500 Muslims in March 2002. An undercover reporter from Tehelka spent six months filming Hindu activists and BJP members, using a hidden camera. Arvind Pandya, a Gujarat government counsel, was recorded saying that Mr Modi’s “blood was boiling” when he first heard of the blaze and that the minister said he “would have burst bombs” in a Muslim area of the city of Ahmedabad. Haresh Bhatt, from a hardline Hindu group affiliated to the BJP, was filmed saying: “He had given us three days to do whatever we could. He said he would not give us time after that, he said this openly.”

In some way this also says something about how bullies don’t interfere with each others activities, a shared distaste for the world’s victims and the lizard brain belief of the natural right of the strong to molest the weak.

And in danger of falling further into tabloid territory- 1. What are a 6 & 7 year old doing being left to play unsupervised to get killed on a motorway. 2. the stupidity and sentimental pornography causing further danger by placing commemorations on the motorway suggests we are not dealing with the sharpest tools in the box. That’s mean and uncharitable, so let’s learn from the mistake and move on.

To abortion (absolutely no danger of controversy there…) the (sometimes too smug) Bad Science does root out some questions about the christian scientists figures for premature survival rates-

Prof Wyatt replied: “The denominator was all babies born alive in the labour ward in the hospital at UCL [University College London].” This, as later became clear, turned out not to be true. Then he was asked to send the reference for the claim. He did so. It was merely an abstract for an academic conference

What happened to that ‘Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness’ commandment thingy? Hmmm. And circling back to the Q to N war pimps, this is about how the neocon/AIPAC/Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week (talk about projection) loons love the MEK who are not terrorists when they attack the the targets the pimps want them too. However I think it is way too generous to continue using the term ‘islamophobe’ or ‘conservative’ for the likes of Pipes & Horowitz- they are racists, they are bigots, they are bloodthirsty warmongering criminals. So in the words of Mother Teresa of Calcutta- Go Fuck Yourself You Fucking Fuck. Foul mouth on that woman.

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Ce'st Magnifique!

American and European rights groups filed a legal complaint in France accusing former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of responsibility for torture in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay. The complaint was filed with the Paris prosecutor’s office as Rumsfeld arrived in France for a visit,

Fuck Yeah!

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Friday! Fergie: Glamorous

What? Ok the whole song/video is a risible hymn to consumerism and the American Dream Nightmare (and one line claiming money isn’t important while everything else yells it is does not convince) it sort of follows on from the last post. As a cultural artifact it tells you something about a decadent empire whose luxuries are reliant on the subjugation & slaughter of millions yet still pumps out fantastical fantasies of corporate wealth. Fantasises that are eulogised in pop, the performers are encouraged to see this wealth as a paradise (at least they do something to earn it rather than inherit or steal it) but the drug ravaged zombies you see in celebrity mags tell another story. Like the small mention of money not being important there is some allusion to knowing this is all ephemeral nonsense but you have to dig through layers of pornographically fetishised opulence for that meaning. Although the visual storyline of the video is less capitalist-tastic when rotated on music channels what you mostly see is executive jets and shiny things, so if this is a sneaky refutation of decadent consumer values its context is robbing it of that. It’s sort of like the pop video incarnation of Bratz dolls and yes, I have had to watch the Bratz movie, sigh.

But…if you spend any time with children (and particularly tweeny nieces) this kind of stuff- the Disney Channelfication of existence- seeps into your mind and out of all the crap I have to admit I enjoy this slice of idiotic pop. Its redeeming features are a lush production, hilarious rap interludes and a catchiness I like rather than find annoying. So to summarise- shame on me it’s rubbish, but I don’t care let’s dance and be silly. Who said this blog wasn’t G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S!

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hU8k_c2YlG4]

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October 26, 2007 | | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

Instant Asshole: Just Add Money

hirstskull

People huh? I mean if you match common sense to wealth it looks like many people are shit over the limit with a twenty in their hand-

His younger brother, Jefri, whom the Sultan introduced to polo, has for decades been one the world’s most notorious playboys…He once owned a 50-metre yacht called Tits, replete with tenders named Nipple 1 and Nipple 2.

…the 61-year-old Sultan spent £7.3m and £6.59m on two house supervisors, and £5.86m on each one of his five public relations officials, named Janet, Prall, Shelly, Vicky, and Yoya. He also spent £1.26m on a badminton coach and £1.25m on masseuses and acupuncturists, as well as £48,859 on the guards for his exotic bird cages.

But won’t someone think of the supermodels? London fashion week has to ensure their good health yet violent eating disorder enabling emetics are even now being considered for the marketplace-

Tony Blair has signed a deal to write his memoirs of life in Downing Street,…Mr Blair has strong ties with Random House: its UK wing is headed by Gail Rebuck, who is married to Mr Blair’s close ally and former pollster Lord Gould. Both the publisher and Mr Blair’s spokesman refused to disclose his fee. But publishing experts suggested the deal was worth as much as £5m. The single volume memoir will be published under the Hutchinson imprint in the UK.

Oddly though he was the only Prime Minister (Gordon Brown and two former PM’s – Baroness Thatcher & Sir John Major- Sir? Baroness? Give me fucking strength, can’t wait for Grand Poobah Wizard Duke Oberlieutenant Blair) missing from the unveiling of a Lloyd George statue-

Harold Pinter, along with the campaigning journalist John Pilger and former UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq Denis Halliday, had crticised the decision to honour Lloyd George – the Welshman who served as Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922 – because he had ordered British troops to bomb Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran and Iraq during the First World War.

Lloyd George’s record of selling honours to boost party funds, which led to the introduction of the 1925 Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act, may also have made some people at the unveiling in Parliament Square feel uncomfortable. That legislation led to the abortive “cash for honours” investigation of Tony Blair and his aides.

Oh, still it’s not like they took bribes from arms dealers…oh-

A Labour peer has admitted taking money to introduce an arms company lobbyist to the government minister in charge of weapons purchases.

But it’s not like the representatives of the people are a wealthy elite whose privileged financial position insulates them from the real life concerns of us people (yeah, no points for guessing what’s coming next, not an entirely subtle comedic conceit is it?)-

The total payments of £87,622,957 in 2006-07 were in addition to the £60,675 annual salary received by MPs, bringing the average cost to the taxpayer of a member of the House of Commons to almost £200,000. Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, who was paid £157,076. He and his wife, Yvette Cooper, the Housing minister, claimed between them more than £307,000, including a combined £32,000 for the London home they share. They have been accused of breaking the spirit of the rules by using allowances to buy property in the capital.

And of course that’s just what we pay them, not their total income including directorships, consulting etc. y’know- bribes. Thing is, even crooks aren’t bothering anymore, it’s more profitable to use the capitalist system as it now operates than buck it with old school mafia shit-

The Mafia, memorably described as “bigger than U.S. Steel” by mob financier Meyer Lansky, is more of an illicit mom-and-pop operation in the new millennium…Things are so bad that mob scion John A. “Junior” Gotti chose to quit the mob while serving five years in prison rather than return to his spot atop the Gambino family.

Still it’s not like a vicious system of capital based filters is stopping people from attaining their potential-

If you are wondering which university is the cheapest in the United Kingdom, you now have your answer. It is Bradford University in Yorkshire, where students pay an average of only £40.51 a week for rent, according to a cost-of-living index survey published exclusively in The Independent today. The most expensive is the Royal Academy of Music in London, on Marylebone Road, a stone’s throw from Madame Tussaud’s, where accommodation costs a staggering £147.07 weekly.

Well over three times the weekly rent, should keep those northern types out of the lovely rich peoples places in the south, after all if you educate clever people they’ll stop worshiping, aspiring and realise rich people aren’t like us, they are way, way bigger assholes and then pull down the whole sorry corrupt mess. Or…they’ll just watch Pop/X/Big/Dancing/Factor/Idol and find paying to vote on who gets to be exploited by corporations the most satisfies their atrophying desire for self determination. One of the two…

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