UQ Wire: What, Me Worry?

Feb. 28 2003, 1200 PST (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 have prompted 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?category=International+Perspective&content_idx=20368.

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 currently 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.

[© Copyright, 2002, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All rights reserved. May be copied, distributed or posted on the Internet for non-profit purposes only.]

Michael C. Ruppert
Publisher/Editor
From The Wilderness
http://www.fromthewilderness.com

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