Kaddafi, Big Oil, Lockerbie, Syria, CIA, Heroin routes and the Vampire Wars....

Kaddafi, Big Oil, Lockerbie, Syria, CIA, Heroin routes and the Vampire Wars....

About July 2010, I started hearing that Gaddafi was exerting heavy pressure on U.S. and British oil companies to cough up special fees and kick backs to cover the costs of Libya’s reimbursement to the families of Pan Am 103… Payment of damages for the Lockerbie bombing had been one of the chief conditions for ending U.N. sanctions on Libya that ran from 1992 until 2003. And of course the United Nations forced Gaddafi to hand over two Libyan men for a special trial at The Hague, though everybody credible was fully conscious of Libya’s innocence in the Lockerbie affair… (Only CIA, its cronies, disinformation agents and ignorant politicians trying to score publicity points say otherwise….)

Knowing Gaddafi so well …, he’d done it… He’d bided his time until he could extort compensation from U.S. oil companies… He’s a crafty bastard, extremely shrewd, criminal and canny. That’s exactly how he operates… And now he was taking his revenge… As expected, the U.S., UK, France, Italy were hopping mad about it… Gaddafi wasn’t playing the game the way the Oil Bloodsuckers wanted… The Vampire of our age—the Oil Industry—roams the earth, sucking the life out of every nation to feed its thirst for profits… Only when they got to Libya, Kaddafi took on the role of a modern-day Robin Hood, who insisted on replenishing his Regime for the costs they’d suffered under U.N. sanctions.

Backing up a year earlier, in August 2009 the lone Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people, Abdelbasset Megrahi, won a compassionate release from Scottish prison. Ostensibly, the British government and Scottish Courts granted Megrahi’s request to die at home with dignity from advance stage cancer—in exchange for dropping a legal appeal packed with embarrassments for the European Courts… The decision to free Megrahi followed shocking revelations of corruption at the special Court of The Hague that handled the Lockerbie Trial…. Prosecution witnesses confessed to receiving payments of $4 million each from the United States, in exchange for testimony against Megrahi, a mind-blowing allegation of judicial corruption….[ Remember that when judging STL's intelligence creeps manning that fake "Tribunal"... ]

The Lockerbie conviction was full of holes to begin with… Anybody who knows anything about terrorism in the 1980s knows the CIA got mixed up in heroin trafficking out of the Bekaa Valley during the hostage crisis in Lebanon… The Lockerbie conspiracy had been a false flag operation to kill off a joint CIA and Defense Intelligence investigation into kick backs from Syria and Islamic Jihad, in exchange for protecting the heroin transit network…

According to Dr. Richard Fuisz, who’d been stationed in Lebanon and Syria at the time, the CIA had established a protected drug route from Lebanon to Europe and on to the United States. His statements support other sources that “Operation Corea” allowed Syrian drug dealers led by Monzer al-Kassar (also linked to CIA and to Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal) to ship heroin to the U.S. ON Pan Am flights, in exchange for intelligence on the hostages’ whereabouts in Lebanon and other juicy matters in the area…. The CIA made sure that suitcases carrying heroin were not searched at customs… Nicknamed the “Godfather of Terror,” Al Kassar/CIA is now serving a prison sentence for conspiring with Colombian drug cartels to assassinate opponents….

Building up to Lockerbie, the Defense Intelligence team in Beirut, led by Maj. Charles Dennis McKee and Matthew Gannon, suspected that CIA infiltration of the heroin network might be prolonging the hostage crisis. If so, the consequence was severe. AP Reporter Terry Anderson got chained in a basement for 7 years, while 96 other high profile western hostages suffered beatings, mock executions and overall trauma. McKee’s team raised the alarms in Washington that a CIA double agent profiting from the narco-dollars might be warning the hostage takers whenever their dragnet closed in. Washington sent a fact-finding team to Lebanon to gather evidence…

On the day it was blown out of the sky, Pan Am 103 was carrying that team of CIA and FBI investigators, the CIA’s Deputy Chief assigned to Beirut, and three Defense Intelligence officers, including McKee and Gannon, on their way to Washington to deliver a report on the CIA’s role in heroin trafficking, and the impact on terrorist financing and the hostage crisis… In short, everyone with direct knowledge of CIA/Syrian kickbacks from heroin trafficking died on Pan Am 103…. A suitcase packed with $500,000 worth of heroin was found in the wreckage. It belonged to investigators, as proof of the corruption…

The punch line was that the U.S. State Department issued an internal travel advisory, warning that government officials should get off that specific flight on that specific day, because Pan Am 103 was expected to get bombed. That’s right, folks! The U.S. had prior knowledge of the attack…

Unforgivably, nobody told Charles McKee or Matthew Gannon. But other military officials and diplomats got pulled off the flight—making room for a group of students from Syracuse University traveling stand by for the Christmas holidays…

It was a monstrous act! But condemning Megrahi to cover up the CIA’s role in heroin trafficking and Syrian complicity has struck many Lockerbie aficionados as grossly unjust… Add the corruption of purchased testimony– $4 million a pop— and Megrahi’s life sentence struck a nerve of obscenity…

It struck Kaddafi as grievously offensive, as well—The United Nations had forced Libya to fork over $2.7 billion in damages to the Lockerbie families, a rate of $10 million for every death. Once it became clear the U.S. paid two key witnesses $4 million each to commit perjury, spook gossip throughout the summer was rife that Kaddafi had taken bold action to demand compensation from U.S. (and probably British) oil corporations operating in Libya… More than likely, Libya’s demands for kick backs and compensation extended to other European oil conglomerates as well—particularly France and Italy—who are now spearheading attacks on Libya.

I knew last summer there would be trouble. Payback would be a b*tch on both sides. You don’t lock an innocent man in prison for 10 years on bogus charges of terrorism, and expect forgiveness. The United States and Britain had behaved with remarkable selfishness. You’ve got to admit that Kaddafi’s attempt to balance the scales of justice demonstrated a flair of righteous greed and some “nationalism”….

Alas, Kaddafi was playing with fire, no matter how justified his complaint. You don’t strike a tyrant without expecting a tyrant to strike back….

And that’s exactly what’s happening today...

http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/03/petroleum-and-empire-in-north-africa/

Who are we kidding? The United States, Britain, Israel and NATO don't care about bombing civilians to contain rebellion.... Their militaries bomb civilians every day without mercy. They have destroyed most of the community infrastructure of Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan before turning their sights on Libya.... That's what really is going on here?

The Arab Spring is being gripped by a devastating frost that might be cold enough as to kill all buds thanks to Saudi Arabia and its 10 million barrels of oil....
A world challenged by Peak oil cannot afford to start a fight with the only country that controls the only relative energy safety valve. The Saudis has destroyed Copenhagen, will make sure that no alternative fuel is produced by maintaining the market price below the switch price and will prevent the democratization of the Arab world at any cost since a democratic Arab world spells the end of the Saudi monarchy. It is as simple as that...

"Operation Libya" and the Battle for Oil: Redrawing the Map of Africa"

What we have in motion is that the MATRIX is glitching with EURASIA/China.....

http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1300825453.html

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=3885052

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23605

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/apr2002/lock-a24.shtml





Were these passengers on PanAm 103 killed by the CIA? The US ambassador to Lebanon, John McCarthy, and the South African Foreign Minister Pik Botha had their travel plans altered at the last minute in order to avoid PA103.... Charles D. McKee and Matthew Gannon changed their plans at the last minute to fly on PA103....

Germany gives Russian-led South Stream major boost....

Germany gives Russian-led South Stream major boost...

By STEFAN NICOLA


http://www.energy-pedia.com/article.aspx?articleid=139306

BERLIN, March 23 2011 -- The Russian-led South Stream pipeline project has been given a significant boost when it was joined by Wintershall, the oil and gas arm of German chemicals giant BASF.

Officials from Wintershall and Russian energy giant Gazprom Tuesday signed a preliminary agreement that foresees the Germans buying a 15 percent stake in South Stream for an estimated $2.8 billion.

The pipeline was jump-started by the Kremlin to bypass traditional transit countries Ukraine and would move more than 60 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year under the Black Sea to customers in Western Europe.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was present at the signing ceremony in Moscow, said Wintershall's commitment lent South Stream further stability. He also lauded German Chancellor Angela Merkel for personally backing the deal.

Alexander Rahr, a senior energy and Russia expert with the German Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank, said Wintershall's entry is good news for South Stream's economic feasibility.

"Every Russian Europe-bound pipeline needs a big German partner and BASF/Wintershall is a significant player," he told United Press International in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Having secured corporate and, according to Putin, political backing from Europe's largest economy, South Stream's standing in Brussels could very well improve over the coming months.

Analysts have accused Russia of launching South Stream to torpedo Nabucco, a project backed by the European Union and the United States that would transport up to 31 billion cubic meters of Caspian and Middle Eastern gas per year to Europe, bypassing Russia to diversify Europe's energy import structure.

The South Stream consortium members deny trying to undermine Nabucco, arguing their pipeline makes economic sense. Experts have questioned whether there is room for both projects as they vie for similar sources and customers, yet a possible demise of nuclear power in Japan and at least parts of Europe could boost the gas demand significantly.

"There's no question that Japan will need more liquefied natural gas, so that means the possibility that Nabucco and South Stream can coexist has slightly improved," Rahr told UPI.

Tuesday's agreement, if finalized, would further deepen the relationship between state-controlled energy giant Gazprom and Wintershall, a firm eager to move into the Russian upstream business.

The companies earlier this month signed a memorandum of understanding that hands the Germans a stake in the development of fields in western Siberia for giving Gazprom access to Wintershall's oil and gas projects in the North Sea.

"So this is about more than just pipelines," Rahr said.

Wintershall is also involved in the Gazprom-led Nord Stream pipeline, currently being built to move gas under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. Nord Stream also bypasses traditional transit countries Ukraine and Poland.

The deal with Wintershall comes as Russia is trying to convince Turkey to have the South Stream pipeline cross its territorial waters in the Black Sea. So far, Ankara has refused, saying it needed more documentation on economics, routes and environmental impact.

If Turkey holds on to its "No," Russia does have alternatives.

It could liquefy the gas -- either at the Black Sea coast or directly at the source field -- transport it in LNG carriers to Bulgaria, re-gasify it there and pump into a slightly shorter South Stream pipeline that would then cross the Balkans into Western Europe.

"Either way, South Stream will be built," Rahr said, suggesting that the good news from Germany for now silence the skirmishes with Ankara....

Compressed gas on the Caspian table...
Robert M Cutler

MONTREAL - Recent progress towards agreement on the possibilities for constructing a Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCGP), in the context of the European Union's Southern Corridor Program, has drawn attention away from moves towards the elaboration of smaller-scale projects for the trans-Caspian transit of compressed natural gas from (CNG) from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan.

Italian firm Eni began talking up such projects in late 2009, several months before a very public disagreement between its chief, Paolo Scaroni, and the head of Russian gas company Gazprom, Alexei Miller, over the possibilities for cooperation between Russia' South Stream and the European Nabucco pipeline projects. Both seek to transit natural gas from the Black Sea's eastern shore to its westerns shore, where it could enter directly into the distribution networks of the European Union's member states.

After that disagreement, arrangements were made for EDF of France to enter the South Stream project by purchasing 10-20% from out of the 50% of the project owned by Eni. This transfer of shares was to have been consummated by the end of last year, but it remains still up in the air. Gazprom's Miller now exudes confidence that it will take place before the end of 2011, while the Wintershall subsidiary of Germany's BASF has denied that it was considering joining South Stream despite being in unspecified talks with Gazprom. Most recently, and contradictorily, Russian president Vladimir Putin has suggested replacing the Kremlin's long-touted South Stream project either in whole or in part with a CNG link. (See South Stream may disappear, Asia Times Online, March 18, 2011.)

When Scaroni was in Azerbaijan last year, he discussed with government officials Baku's plans to produce 1-2 billion cubic meters per year (bcm/y) of CNG for export to Bulgaria via the terminal in Kulevi, Georgia, owned by the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR). This project was raised at the Batumi energy conference almost a year ago, along with the AGRI (Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania Interconnector) project for LNG.

That occasion provided an opportunity to discuss also Eni's plans to export 2-3 bcm/y from Turkmenistan's offshore associated gas production, much of which would come from Eni's own Burun field in the Nebit Dag area, which it acquired at the end of 2007 when it took over Burren Energy. In the longer run, Eni hopes to expand the CNG project to include at least some of the Petronas offshore production of 8-10 bcm/y by the middle of the decade. (See Iraq opens door to Nabucco, Asia Times Online, January 6, 2011.)

CNG tankers are more expensive than tankers for liquefied natural gas (LNG) but they do not require the expensive gasification and de-gasification infrastructure that LNG does. Exploratory studies of the possible application of CNG technology to the trans-Caspian transport of Turkmenistan's gas to Azerbaijan, carried out in the final years of the decade just ended, evaluated it as being 1.6 times as expensive as an undersea pipeline and two-thirds as expensive as LNG, but only for volumes close to 30 bcm/y.

These cost figures are disputed and may not apply to smaller-scale projects. In particular, construction costs for the vessels themselves are likely to be elevated above normal levels due to the need to transport materials to either Baku or the port city of Turkmenbashi for the actual fabrication of the ships. Pipelines consequently emerge once more as the most economic and commercial solution.

At least in the beginning, none of that Turkmenstani offshore production would be dedicated for either South Stream or Nabucco; rather, it would be added to quantities already transited through the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP, also BTE for Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum) into Turkey, which also handles Azerbaijan's production from its own offshore Shah Deniz deposit. It is likely that another line will have to be built to double the SCP's current capacity of 8 bcm/y in view of the agreements between Azerbaijan and Turkey over volumes that the former will export to the latter, not to mention the increasing estimates of Azerbaijan's offshore natural gas reserves and production later in the decade and out to mid-century.

With Turkmenistan consistently stating that it can feed 10 bcm/y into Nabucco in the medium term from the Dauletabad field, which could actually supply 30-40 bcm/y in the longer term in view of the near-disappearance of the country's energy trade with Russia, which used to be its major buyer, it is clear that all the smaller projects enumerated in this article are simply not enough to satisfy demand for transportation of Ashgabat's gas.

The Kremlin basically admitted this month through Putin that South Stream is essentially a zombie project. Also it is increasingly clear that even Nabucco's supply and sales contracts expected between now and the end of the year will be insufficient to capture the gas that Turkmenistan has on offer in the long term. Consequently, the only rational strategy is to ignore dilatory advice about Russian gas (arriving through nonexistent pipelines from western Siberia) jump-starting the EU's Southern Corridor.

What is necessary is to put finally into effect the EU summit-level political decision to make organizational design plans for establishing the Caspian Development Corporation (CDC). The whole of Russia's diplomatic offensive against the EU's Third Energy Program is directed, among other things, against the CDC, which could rapidly facilitate the follow-through of Nabucco's consummation by implementing of the White Stream natural gas pipeline project under the Black Sea from Georgia to Romania.

This is the only plan on tap that is capable of transiting the full volumes that Ashgabat wishes to send to Europe. The Turkmenistani leadership is waiting for the EU's practical, not merely diplomatic, commitment to this project. It will then take the necessary political decision to realize it, but not before such concrete measures are demonstrated that will guarantee Ashgabat against the political risk of disappointing Moscow....

Full Dominance spectrum , Military-Industrial complex and money printing...

For now, here is the quotation of the day, Ed Bugos at the Dollar Vigilante website :

"If the world were on a gold standard, governments could not afford the wars they are involved in today, and there’d be no question of the West withdrawing from the Middle East, because we would not be able to afford it! If, instead of printing the money, the government said that it will increase taxes for everyone by $20,000 this year to fund their ongoing intervention in the Middle East in the name of Global & Full Dominance spectrum of DOD..., there would be a lot less "Gotta Support The Troops" going around! Without the ability to print money, there’d be no military industrial complex...."

The latest from that Arch Weasel, George Soros:

Unreported Soros Event Aims to Remake Entire Global Economy

Who better to run the planet than CIA's George...?

The Middle East Is Lost As Gold, Silver, Oil Rocket Higher

- Ed Bugos, from The Dollar Vigilante Blog

In fact, as recapitulated below:

"OK. That was an interesting twist at the end.... Where does the excess money printing end up? In the hands of terrorists, despots and dictators in the oil producing nations, and in the hands of the Military-Industrial Complex on our side of the pond! Now, you could write a book on military-industrial malinvestment!

"As to the crisis that produced Reagan, the Bushes and Thatcher, I suspect the next one will somehow be a blend of the 30s and the 70s, but I do not know which parts will figure into the final blend. Unfortunately, it will not be pretty, and it will be the direct result of money-printing!

"What I do know is that nobody will be calling, "The bottom is in! Buy real estate/stocks/whatever now!" The bottom will appear endless, and gold will be the ONLY bright light at that point...."

(Credit: The poster used above and the US dollar chart below came from this interesting article.)

(Disclaimer: The above comments are not directed at any particular military venture, some of which are needed in my view, but rather at the type of world that is created by printing money rather than paying our bills....)

Regarding the present intervention in Libya, the application of the above lesson runs something like this: (1) Money-printing (inflationary monetary policy) made oil expensive, enriching (and arming) such despotic leaders as KSA, Bahrain, and Qaddafi. (2) We "solve" the problem with MORE money-printing, to pay for military interventions to protect the Libyan people from the ruthless leader whose ascendancy we funded in the first place! (3) The devastating consequences? We'll "solve" that with money-printing yet again! I hope you can see where this is going.... The cycle continues literally until the currency reaches the point of inflationary collapse. Then, hopefully at least for a while, we learn to live within our means again!


Why Central Banks of the West Hate Gold....

By: Dan Norcini via Jim Sinclair's Mine Set

Dear CIGAs, [Comrades In Golden Arms]

I wanted to post some brief comments to let some of the newer readers understand why many of us believe that there is a war being waged upon gold by the Central Banks of the West.

Let me start this off by quoting from none other than former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan more than 40 years ago:

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.

What the former Fed Chairman was then saying was that absent a gold standard or some device for restraining the unlimited creation of fiat money, there was nothing to impede monetary officials from engaging in such activity to the extent that it would ultimately set in motion a process of inflation, which is really just another name for the erosion of the purchasing power of a nation’s currency by debasing it. Inflation was and is in essence, the transfer of wealth from one class to another.

Today we have the Fed engaging in the very process that Greenspan warned against back then. We also have the BOJ and the ECB effectively doing the same thing to an extent.

Unlike Silver, Gold is the main metal that most analysts and commentators look to when attempting to decipher whether or not inflation is a serious problem. That means the reference point of gold has become a target for Central Banks which want the world to believe that they can create unlimited amounts of funny money with absolutely ZERO impact on inflation levels. In other words, that they can conjure up wealth and produce prosperity with the electronic equivalent of a printing press and produce no serious inflationary impact by so doing.

A rising gold debunks their hubristic assertions to the contrary for it stands as a silent witness testifying against them. This is the reason the yellow metal is despised by so many Central Banks. It mocks their policies and displays their folly for all the world to see. Central Bankers, being the demigods that they are, will tolerate no rivals to their claims of economic omniscience. You see they have actually come to believe that it is their own wisdom and foresight which enables them to see through the fog that hinders and impedes our economic progress and that they are in a unique position to provide the rest of us with lasting prosperity. They attempt to do this by basically providing or withdrawing liquidity as they in their wisdom judge best and by the setting or manipulation of interest rates.

Those of us who believe that it is free market capitalism and the industry and efforts of mankind that produce wealth and prosperity would beg to differ but that is another story altogether. I would add that it is my opinion that the world would be better off without this plague of locusts that actually devour a nation’s wealth but the fact is that they are here.

While they are here gold will attempt to move in such a manner that it either blesses or curses their policies. Now we all would love to have our policies approved by the vote of the market but what about those times in which the market frowns on our course of action and refuses to smile upon it? Why this is but a simple matter – attack the messenger! If one can somehow manage to keep the price of gold under wrap so that it does not move sharply higher then one can attempt to make the claim that inflation is not a serious problem. The comments usually go something like this:

"Well Jerry, we are looking at the gold price and from what we can see, that while it is definitely higher, it is not soaring out of control. The market may be pricing in some gradual inflation but the action in the gold price is telling us that any fears of inflation getting out of control are definitely unwarranted. Besides, we all agree that some inflation is a good thing because the alternative is deflation and no one wants to see that".

Imagine Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke testifying before Congress saying that the current rise in prices of many goods is only "temporary" and "relatively modest" if the gold price were soaring beyond $1650 and higher! Do you think anyone would take anything that the Chairman said seriously? Copper can soar higher and most will not notice it. Even if it does, it is generally explained as a positive because we are told it is a sign of strong economic growth ahead. Crude oil and energy prices can rocket higher and that can be attributed to geopolitical unrest among oil producing nations. Food can rise sharply and everyone notices that but such things are often explained away by citing weather conditions, supply constraints, etc. but a rising gold price? How does one explain that away?

The only reason that gold has a sustained price rise is because of a lack of confidence in the monetary system. It does not rise sharply because of such things as jewelry demand or industrial demand – it rises when fear, distrust, doubt, suspicion and uncertainty over Central Bank policy reigns. It rises when REAL interest rates are negative and investors understand the insidious process of currency debauchment practiced by these monetary authorities is underway. It thus cries aloud and issues a warning to those who can hear it and what it shouts displeases many Central Bankers because they are among those who while they despise its message, are all too keenly able to hear that message.

Thus the messenger, the prophet, the oracle, must be silenced or at the very least, his message blunted, toned down, marginalized, trivialized by whatever means possible. The mechanism employed to do just this is a subject for another time and place. Suffice it to say for now, without the efforts by the monetary officials of the West to discredit gold, it would be trading considerably higher. Even at that however, the ancient metal of kings refuses to go quietly and docilely into the night. It will yet have the final say. [As will silver. - c]

Nuclear Energy, Oil, Alternatives, Markets, Speculation, Wars and Leadership...

Nuclear Energy, Oil, Alternatives, Markets, Speculation, Wars and Leadership...?

Another dictator is clueless... No wonder King Abdullah Al-Saud is reestablishing contacts with Bashar Assad. Crypto-Zionist Dictators have to stand together....with Kaddafi and Bahrain's thugs....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/sanctions-in-72-hours-how-the-us-pulled-off-a-major-freeze-of-libyan-assets/2011/03/11/ABBckxJB_story.html

Washington and Tel Aviv preside over a violent roll-back of the Arab Revolution from Benghazi to Bahrain....

UN "No-fly Zone" appears to have been a diplomatic strawman to give Qaddafi cover to hit Benghazi hard as UN coalition bickers over details....

What a warped view of the world... Dissent, freedom of expression and diversity are viewed as destructive punishable activities in their book.... Do we really need to hold the believers in such views in anything besides derision? Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Morocco etc. are quickly becoming the last refuge of authoritarian dictators in the world....

“If kindness and comfort are, as I suspect, the results of an energy surplus, then, as the supply contracts, we could be expected to start fighting once again like cats in a sack.”

Such issues as crude oil prices, "peak oil," and nuclear power alternatives are, or should be, in the forefront of our considerations....

http://geoplotical.blogspot.com/2011/03/libya-is-diversion-bahrain-4-choke.html

A renewed emphasis on energy issues is in full swing/discussions..., globally....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/7970619/Obama-could-kill-fossil-fuels-overnight-with-a-nuclear-dash-for-thorium.html

The mechanisms that control oil spot prices.

http://www.theoildrum.com/

http://europe.theoildrum.com/

Hedge funds are factoring in the many variables that effect the eventual supply/demand balance...most of which are perceptions of future supply/demand rather than actual measurements of supply (inventories) / demand (purchases, orders, etc). Some of these variables are:

Actual supply vs. actual demand

Perception of supply vs. perception of demand

Economic strength (demand) from emerging economies (China, India, etc) who are the recent marginal buyers.....

http://www.fujitaresearch.com/reports/tidalpower.html

Value of USD vs. other currencies (as USD devalues, oil prices go up)

US Fed monetary policies (printing money out of thin air (QE1, QE2; lowering interest rates; guaranteeing and backstopping credits, etc) easing raises oil price; tightening lowers it

US Fiscal policy: deficit spending raises oil price as it increases demand in short run

Technical trading factors: see technical analysis

http://www.williamjohncox.com/

Political risks (wars, threats of wars,

So, in sum, speculation is merely an attempt to predict present/future supply/demand balance given the many variables which effect supply and demand.

Major factor effecting current price run-up are 1. QE2 (the Fed is keystroking hundreds of billions of dollars on their keyboards and directing this free money to primary dealers (banks) who are purchasing hard/tangible assets like oil in anticipation of declining value of USD due to Fed increasing supply of USD without any work/product/value backing the USDs....

most oil prices are set by the members of the OPEC nations in term of set prices, often monthly [ to different markets - e.g. Orient, USA, etc]. The hedge funds gamble on trying to forerun the prices as set by OPEC {& Russia mostly to Europe]. If they guess right they make lots of money, if they guess wrong they loose a lot of money,

WTI reflects the idiotic pipeline situation to Cushing, Brent prices are the spot prices for reference quality oil, neither has anything to do with the monthly price setting power of Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran et al [the countries which have control of their oil, as opposed to having the USA/UK/etc corporations setting prices.]

Both WTI [in N America and Brent [in rest of world] reflect the spot prices, that is prices for extra oil over the contracts by OPEC, Russia, et al, and that produced by capitalist corporations. I do read the oildrum daily for a number of years, and notwithstanding Japan's nuclear accidents, there is no other choice to compensate for decline in oil and gas in the mid to long term.
Energy in and energy out [ a standard measurement of productivity in energy supplies] indicates that there is no panacea in wind and solar, for both are very intermittent [problem of storage]. Bio based production is at best even, if not negative procedure in Energy Balance.

Perhaps the major powers should devote more research into THORIUM liquid salt nuclear plants, and less in maintaining the useless A-bombs [the USA spends 14 billion dollars per year on this useless armament].
Theoretically there is no possibility of melt down in Thorium/liquid salt nuclear plants, theoretically they are cheaper to build and have less radioactive byproducts in need of disposal, and do not have to be changing fuel regularly. No need for reprocessing fuel rods/balls.

Chapter 4 of Matt Taibbi's Griftopia.

Taibbi's chapter is one of THE MOST accessible I've seen on how this all should work versus how we're letting it work. He briefly touches on it in his weekly mailbag, its the last question he answers this week:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mailbag-charlie-sheen-9-11-truthers-oil-prices-20110314

Just an FYI - he writes like a sailor talks, so if you don't like foul language, you've been warned...

Some explanation, partially derived from Mr. Taibbi's reporting. Basically what happened is that in the 1980s the big Wall Street financial companies bought into a bunch of different firms that held seats on the commodities exchanges. Then they began to lobby for changes in how speculation could occur. The Commodity Exchange Act from the 1930s was intended to, and did, prevent speculators from making hash of commodity prices, most of which are day to day necessities by placing limits on the positions they could take. Basically the speculators, which are necessary for the proper function of a commodities exchange, were limited in what they could do. There sole purpose is supposed to be that the people that grow or produce the raw material that is the commodity or turn it into an actual, tangible physical product(both groups known as physical hedgers) would always be able to find either a buyer of the raw material or a seller of it. So the speculator was created.

This individual will buy the raw material even if no one from the convert it into something to be consumed sector is buying. And then this speculator will sell the raw material to the manufacturer on days when there are no raw material producers selling. Basically the speculator was (is) supposed to be limited to acting like a type of escrow account for raw materials so the sale of commodities doesn't seize up. This also allows both the producers of the raw materials, as well as the consumers of them who turn them into finished products (whether its corn into breakfast cereal or petroleum into gasoline)to lock in fairly stable prices, i.e. hedging against future risk, which in turn result in fairly stable prices for the rest of us who are just consumers. the whole point of the exchange is to hedge against risk of locusts, drought, whatever could interrupt the production chain somewhere.

So what happens is that in the 90s the commodities trading companies (now owned by big financial firms) began asking the government for a relaxation on the limits to the speculative positions they could take that are set by the law from the 1930s (which were created as this was the last time they blew up the commodities market...) Basically they argued that just like the farmers and petroleum companies they were taking big risks too, so they should be able to reap big rewards. Instead of being the grist that keeps the mill wheel rolling, they argued that they needed to be viewed as important as the mill, the miller, and the material being ground. They didn't want to be considered as speculators anymore, they wanted to by physical hedgers. Once the government agreed to this in the early 90s, the limits placed on the positions the speculators could take was essentially eliminated.

This was all done by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission through letters to 17 different companies. And was largely done in secret. Once this occurred, over the next almost 20 years, more and more of the trading on the commodities exchanges becomes purely speculative. Its no longer intended to match up buyers/consumers of raw materials to be converted to finished products with the sellers/producers of the raw materials, now its intended to function like a major profit making market. And its self feeding. The more money that is invested into the commodities markets, the more expensive the commodities get. Everything winds up being a long position because the money is chasing the commodity which is now chasing the money. So leading up to the petroleum price insanity of 2008, just like now, nothing in reality, other than pouring speculative money into the commodities market, can explain the rise in oil prices.

Production wasn't down, the Chinese weren't actually consuming so much more that supplies were tight, in fact supplies weren't tight at all. And they aren't now. Even information that could lead to a fear based spike really shouldn't have mattered then, just as it shouldn't today. We get virtually no oil from Libya, the Suez Canal is still open for business, and the Saudis have made it clear they'll pump more to make up the difference. Demand isn't up in the US, its not spiking in China. So what's driving up the price? Speculation in the commodities markets - basically commodities as speculative bubble....

Here's another good source on what happened in 2008...

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/09/10/15761/oil-price-speculation-masters-back-on-the-attack/

Nuclear risks....

A Thorium plant is unlikely to be built even though the theoretical fission cycle is promising. Oakridge National Laboratories already did significant research into these in the late '60s. Similarly the Atomic Energy Commission had research on BWR's (boiling water reactors) in the 1950's. The problems seen now were discussed then. These were only built for one reason, lower construction cost. The issue that won't be discussed is summed up in 6 words, 'free market and less government regulation'. What is happening at Fukushima is one shining example of why regulation and accurate scientific knowledge are necessary today. The problems at Fukushima are the result of an earthquake and tidal wave, not an accident. The risks of any such combination in most of the US is pretty close to zero.

What should be getting asked is just what is the USN doing. It's been almost 5 full days, don't they have a ship in place as a platform for airlifting in de-mineralized/borated water for use in cooling these plants? Emergency diesel generators and associated cables and switch gear for replacing those damaged by flooding? Air compressors and piping? Surely the list of materials shouldn't be that difficult to create nor airlifting said equipment from, if necessary, us utility companies, to somewhere nearby where it can be sent in. If it no one in naval reactors (or whatever they call it now) has taken initiative to make some of this happen more than a few heads should roll. I can't imagine that Rickover would have waited 5 hours much less 5 days get things done....?

http://crisisboom.com/2011/03/16/geologist-predicts-major-n-america-earthquake-imminent/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EkLvQUNWtQ


....

The oil companies funded the entire anti-nuclear movement in the 1970s, which successfully shut down any new nuclear power construction in the United States for the past 40 years. Look at the Rockefeller (Standard Oil) funding of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) as just one example, and the role of Royal Dutch Shell's Futures Group in the same.

Prior to the mid-1970s, most oil contracts were 20 year state-to-multinational fixed price contracts. By the mid-1970s, the spot market had opened the speculative factor on oil prices, and suddenly, the whole speculative racket was off and running, between insurance prices, sales and resales, often a dozen times between the time an oil supertanker left the port and arrived at the final refinery destination. Later, hedge funds and other strictly speculative outfits got into the act--big-time--and tacked another speculative price spike on top of what OPEC and the oil companies themselves were charging as add-on profits.

As far as I can tell, peak oil is a propaganda tool, used by those speculating on oil futures, to artificially keep prices outrageously high, by playing the scare card. Between vast untapped sources of oil, yet to even be discovered, and the prospect of a big expansion of nuclear power--even despite the tragic events in Japan--there ought to be a serious cut in oil prices.

It has been raised that there should be strict regulations on the commodities futures markets. Simple rule: If you can't use it, you can't buy futures. Why should Goldman Sachs jack up prices of jet fuel, when they could not take delivery on the commodity they are "buying?" Yes, Southwest Airlines needs to hedge on future jet fuel price spikes, because they need the fuel at guaranteed prices to stay in business. So, put those kinds of sensible restrictions on who is allowed to trade on the futures markets. Otherwise, there is no reason on God's good earth why we cannot return to the pre-1970s system of long-term contracting for deliveries at stable prices, adjustable for overall inflation. Japan's last 25 year contract on Saudi crude oil expired just a few years ago.

And then, go nuclear in a really big way. There are many different designs of new generation nuclear power plants that are safe, and some models are not vulnerable to weapons grade proliferation. Pebble bed reactors were developed by the Germans and are now going commercial--in South Africa. India has been working on thorium reactors for decades, and have now commercially viable models set to put into production. Part of the problem has been the anti-science hysteria funded by the oil companies and their allied banks, and fueled by counterculture anti-science Luddism of the greenies. None of the so-called alternative energy sources like wind or solar produce enough energy or energy flux density (heat levels) to be commercially viable. They are, in fact, net losers. But nuclear is the clear wave of the future, until we do the last remaining scientific and technological work to perfect commercial fusion. Probably 15 years into the future, but we could have gone commercial a decade ago if research funding had not been cut back drastically.

With adequate nuclear energy, we can also solve the problems of water shortages, through high tech, high energy desalination. Let Saudi Arabia replace DuPont as the petrochemical giant, and let us have a serious plan to get beyond fossil fuel dependency over the next two or three generations. We are human beings. We can plan for the future, and use science to the benefit of mankind....

Here's another good source on what happened in 2008
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/09/10/15761/oil-price-speculation-masters-back-on-the-attack/

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/why-oil-has-peaked

The Union of Concerned Scientists has a good rundown in this transcript of a teleconference on what the concerns are (hat tip to the Balloon Juice folks):

http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_risk/safety/nuclear-crisis-japan-telepress-transcript-03-15-11.html

And off to the right on the links there's one for nuclear power safety....

Japan is a good example of how to handle oil. For many years, Japan has always had all of the oil it ever needed, all without the ecological degradation caused by its extraction. In WWII, Japan tried to conquer the resource sources and failed. Since then, it has just been a consumer and purchased at market prices and has done well. Regardless of whether you own the resources, or conquer them, or whether you buy them, ultimately you get them at the prevailing world market price. Perhaps, we should stop the warring and let our traders do all of the work for us and let our engineers compete to discover the best extraction process so we will make the most money providing technology and know-how on the extraction end of the equation. Germany is a great example of a country that has failed at warring and won on providing services and technology. China may already have learned the lesson that trade and services are more successful and profitable than warring....

There are a number of issues conflated here.

There is the question of the workings of the market itself, then there is the question of supply and demand for oil. The issue with the workings of the market is corruption. That comes from Three sources: Sovereign corruption - which is market manipulation by China, Saudi Arabia and others for their own purposes. Then there is organized crime. Then there are the Hedge Funds.

Regulators, and most probably others, do not seem interested in stemming corruption otherwise there would be a world wide ban on naked short selling, among other things, by now.

As for the Hedge funds, In 2008(?) during the last price spike, I watched an Australian billionaire take a call from New York and then announce to all within earshot that he was now "in the Oil business". The trick for these guys is to know when to quit while ahead.

Contrary to popular opinion, a little speculation is necessary in commodity markets to provide liquidity. The trouble comes when "Synthetic" investment products backed by notional commodities are created. For example the volume of Gold backed "investment" securities is Two Hundred Times the worlds physical store of the metal. This has lead one group of economists to advise its clients that if they wish to invest in Gold , then it must be physical metal, stored personally. All those holdings "stored in our secure vaults in Jersey" are vapor should there ever be a run on gold.

As for oil supply, Wikileaks reports that U.S. Diplomats believe Saudi reserves are nothing like what they suggest. However that is not the main problem. Others have pointed out that we will never run out of oil. What we will run out of is easily extractable and therefore cheap oil.

As for oil demand, I said in another forum around year 2000, that if America, as the worlds biggest oil consumer, didn't curb its appetite for cheap oil voluntarily by Government intervention, then the market would do it for you, with much more concomitant pain.

However there is an even bigger issue to do with oil - that is to do with productivity. When an Indian or Chinese peasant buys a motorized pump or replaces a horse and cart with a truck, he doubles, or quadruples his productivity. He can and will be motivated to pay much more for oil than some American guy who wants to drive his Hummer to McDonald's.

To put it simply Oil in America has been too cheap for too long and the inevitable market distortions this created will be corrected in due course by the free market, if it is allowed to.

To put it another way, why isn't America producing a wide range of the worlds most fuel efficient vehicles? American primacy is a given in many other fields of Endeavor, why not this one?

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7668#more

http://www.oilcrisis.com/hubbert/science1949/

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf

....

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/14/fukushima-more-technical-info/

The Oil Depletion Analysis Centre: http://www.odac-info.org/
and The Association for Study of Peak Oil.
http://www.peakoil.net/

The global heating problems are well-known to non-deniers. The "acid ocean" problems will become unavoidably knowable over the next couple of decades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

This is a complicated issue to say the least. So many variables and factors.

As the US floated two world wars for our allies on our oil, it is logical that we have significantly less now of the more easily obtained hydrocarbons. This is not to say that similar or other forms, more difficult of access and recovery, are not under our soil or sea space.

1. Economic security is a fundamental element of national security.

2. Supposedly the "lessons learned" from the 1920s-30s led to reforms such as various legislation to regulate markets to protect them from fraud, manipulation ,etc. Glass- Steagall for banking, other legislation for commodities trading, and the like.

3. But "deregulation" took away reforms including regulations in the public interest. Lessons unlearned. Why? Disaster follows severely undermining our economy and thus our national security

Pogo theory obtains, the enemy is (some of) us.

4. It does not take much imagination to consider that various techniques of economic warfare can be used more easily in unregulated markets. There is much more to contend with out there than the so-called "sovereign funds" issue.

For example, can hedge funds act as instruments of economic warfare? Can sovereign funds engage in "soft" economic warfare?

The following is a very interesting article; gasoline-alternative produced by bio-engineered bacteria. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110317102603.htm. The authors claim producing about 1.5-2% by volume of gasoline from these bacteria, but it is not clear how long this took. Interestingly, the researchers are Japanese. If successful, this provides a carbon neutral way to manufacture fuel that can be used by our current infrastructure. Technology doesn't get much greener than this....

[Those naive enough to believe there is no such thing as economic warfare need not apply....]

....

http://geoplotical.blogspot.com/2011/03/libya-is-diversion-bahrain-4-choke.html

...

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/business-news/2011/03/18/oil-price-soars-on-fears-of-libya-air-strikes-86908-22997965/

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/1061

"Get the corporate boardroom out of the newsroom."

http://rt.com/news/ge-equipment-fukushima-responsibility/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/5050407/US-backing-for-world-currency-stuns-markets.html#

....



Marc Faber talks about how a nuclear meltdown will hurt the yen.... More quantitative easing to come from Ben Shalom Bernanke...., QE3, QE4.....

"If a meltdown occurs, all bets are off." -- Marc Faber

Talk about gouging people in times of need.....

"The potassium iodide bubble is growing. The list price of a 14-tablet pack: $5.99. Asking price $300-$400!" -- Jim Sinclair

Click here to view the listings…

.....

The oil companies couldn't be happier with the coverage of this sad event in Japan....

Science Insider noted yesterday:

The Daiichi complex in Fukushima, Japan ... had a total of 1760 metric tons of fresh and used nuclear fuel on site last year, according to a presentation by its owners, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco). The most damaged Daiichi reactor, number 3, contains about 90 tons of fuel, and the storage pool above reactor 4, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC's) Gregory Jaczko reported yesterday had lost its cooling water, contains 135 tons of spent fuel. The amount of fuel lost in the core melt at Three Mile Island in 1979 was about 30 tons; the Chernobyl reactors had about 180 tons when the accident occurred in 1986.

And see this.

That means that Fukushima-Daiichi has nearly 10 times more nuclear fuel than Chernobyl.

It also means that a single spent fuel pool - at reactor 4, which has lost all of its water and thus faces a release of its radioactive materials- has 75% as much nuclear fuel as at all of Chernobyl.

However, the real numbers are even worse.

Specifically, Tepco very recently transferred many more radioactive spent fuel rods into the storage pools. According to Associated Press, there were - at the time of the earthquake and tsunami - 3,400 tons of fuel in seven spent fuel pools plus 877 tons of active fuel in the cores of the reactors.

That totals 4,277 tons of nuclear fuel at Fukushima-Daiichi....

Which means that there is almost 24 times more nuclear fuel at Fukushima-Daiichi than Chernobyl.

Yesterday, a top physicist says:

What [the Japanese] are doing is basically using squirt guns against a raging forest fire.

He says the Japanese should instead use the Chernobyl style approach of entombing the reactors in boric acid, sand and concrete.

Today, nuclear expert Robert Alvarez - a senior U.S. Department of Energy official during the Clinton administration - pointed out to Kyodo News that dumping seawater on the reactors might actually further damage them:

When combined with the high heat at the reactor site, the seawater currently being poured on the facilities could destroy their cooling pumps or even corrode the containment vessels holding the plant's nuclear fuel, increasing the difficulty of containing the radioactive material....

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23764

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/17/serious_danger_of_a_full_core

....

This is the price we ALL pay for our lopsided support of Israel Uber Alles....

In England, when I studied history, it was considered a given that the 1664 plague, followed by the great fire of 1665, led directly to a 400 year economic and Imperial boom. Not coincidentally, the new government brought in exiled European bankers, and the insurance, banking and finance business were allowed to thrive as never before in Europe. Catholic skittishness about such religious and cultural abstractions as "equity" "usury" and "social contracts" were tossed in the ash heap of history, albeit gingerly at first, with their more profitable Calvinist substitute doctrines gradually holding sway.

So at least some of TPTW, with whom I went to school and at whose castles and great houses I was a guest, were taught, as a given, that a destruction of the lower economic orders, combined with the destruction of their crappy infrastructure, especially in a capitol city, leads to huge opportunities for renewal and growth. This is hardly cynical. It is a simple fact.

Trouble is, a society dominated by educated psychopaths, with lackeys of a similar bent, as our society arguably is, will tend to induce such events, as warranted. See, e.g. Berlin, 1945, which was entirely rigged in advance, as the Germans were all too willing to hand it to Patton intact, but the US and UK demurred. Or more recently, New Orleans, which has become a milkier and wealthier type of city."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces

...Russia does about-turn
on key pipeline projects

Russia in the past month has abandoned a series of energy transit projects, some long in the planning, signaling the end of an era but leaving questions over the future of Turkey's relationships with its northern neighbor in the great power game. - Vladimir Socor

This is all so predictable that one has to wonder if this was the plan all along....

The plot thickens, and it could explain France's interest....

http://www.desertec.org/en/news/

The EU has presented a strategy paper on the developments in North Africa. This includes the proposal of establishing an EU-South Mediterranean Energy Community. That could give the DESERTEC project a big boost. According to the EU's 2050 decarbonization scenario of reducing the emissions by more than 80 percent, "there is clear potential for building a partnership between the EU and Southern Mediterranean countries for the production and management of renewables, in particular solar and wind energy, and in having a joined-up approach ensuring energy security".......

Despite of current disturbances in North Africa, both, the DESERTEC Foundation and the Dii GmbH, express confidence that the concept will be implemented in EU-MENA. Current plannings, especially in Morocco, but also in further countries are not directly put at risk by the disturbances. A project like DESERTEC with its socio-economic benefits not only offers an approach to energy security but also creates perspectives for the region.......

Solar-thermal power plants: Win-win situation for North Africa and Europe

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE), the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) and Ernst&Young published results of their joint study on the local manufacturing potential for CSP projects in the MENA region. According to their forecast, economies in this region will benefit greatly from the extension of concentrating solar-thermal power's (CSP) capacities and up to 80,000 jobs will be created, some of which are highly-qualified. Apart from that, there will be growth opportunities for European industry as well. An action plan developed within this study, shows a way how solar-thermal power plants, that might be funded by the Worldbank's Clean Technology Fund (CTF), can be implemented.....

I kept wondering why France took the lead on the Libya initiative, but I think we have the answer, and it has nothing to do with Sarkozy's election bid. That can always be bought, if need be, no need to start a war for something that can be done much more easily.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-28/desertec-gains-medgrid-as-solar-partner-ft-deutschland-says.html

Desertec, a solar power project designed to supply some of Europe’s electricity needs from North Africa, will cooperate with France’s Medgrid group, Financial Times Deutschland reported today, citing Desertec’s Chief Executive Officer Paul van Son and Medgrid’s head Georges de Montravel....

China to maintain nuclear power goal
China's need for a greatly expanded energy base allied to its domestic commitment to rein in pollution means it is unlikely to pull back on plans to build more nuclear power plants, whatever the outcome of recently instituted reviews and a suspension of approvals for new projects. - Olivia Chung (Mar 29, '11)

Global hegemonism and unbridled aggression , a new kind of War of the 21st Century....

Global hegemonism and unbridled aggression , a new kind of War of the 21st Century....

The claim that America would launch more wars to help the economy is outrageous, right?

Certainly.....??? Think again....

http://geoplotical.blogspot.com/2011/03/libya-is-diversion-bahrain-4-choke.html

But leading economist Marc Faber has repeatedly said that the American government will start new wars in response to the economic crisis:

• "The next thing the government will do to distract the attention of the people on bad economic conditions is they’ll start a war somewhere."
  

• “If the global economy doesn’t recover, usually people go to war.”

Is Faber crazy?

Maybe. Gerald Celente agrees....

Back to Westphalia
The Westphalian principle that nation states could run their internal affairs as they pleased helped to reduce war for 300 years. That principle is now increasingly abandoned, not just in Libya but through the International Monetary Fund and other non-democratic international organizations. The consequences are hugely hazardous, while putting at risk the immense benefits the ancient treaty brought. - Martin Hutchinson (Mar 29, '11)

As Antiwar's Justin Raimondo writes:

As Gerald Celente, one of the few economic forecasters who predicted the ‘08 crash, put it the other day, "Governments seem to be emboldened by their failures." What the late Gen. William E. Odom trenchantly described as "the worst strategic disaster in American military history" – the invasion of Iraq – is being followed up by a far larger military operation, one that will burden us for many years to come. This certainly seems like evidence in support of the Celente thesis, and the man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash, the fall of the Soviet Union, the dot-com bust, the gold bull market, the 2001 recession, the real estate bubble, the “Panic of ‘08,” and now is talking about the inevitable popping of the "bailout bubble," has more bad news:

"Given the pattern of governments to parlay egregious failures into mega-failures, the classic trend they follow, when all else fails, is to take their nation to war."

As the economic crisis escalates and the debt-based central banking system shows it can no longer re-inflate the bubble by creating assets out of thin air, an economic and political rationale for war is easy to come by; for if the Keynesian doctrine that government spending is the only way to lift us out of an economic depression is true, then surely military expenditures are the quickest way to inject "life" into a failing system. This doesn’t work, economically, since the crisis is only masked by the wartime atmosphere of emergency and "temporary" privation. Politically, however, it is a lifesaver for our ruling elite, which is at pains to deflect blame away from itself and on to some "foreign" target.

It’s the oldest trick in the book, and it’s being played out right before our eyes, as the U.S. prepares to send even more troops to the Afghan front and is threatening Iran with draconian economic sanctions, a step or two away from outright war.

A looming economic depression and the horrific prospect of another major war – the worst-case scenario seems to be unfolding, like a recurring nightmare ...

Forecaster Celente has identified several bubbles, the latest being the "bailout bubble," slated to pop at any time, yet there may be another bubble to follow what Celente calls "the mother of all bubbles," one that will implode with a resounding crash heard ’round the world – the bubble of empire.

Our current foreign policy of global hegemonism and unbridled aggression is simply not sustainable, not when we are on the verge of becoming what we used to call a Third World country, one that is bankrupt and faces the prospect of a radical lowering of living standards. Unless, of course, the "crisis" atmosphere can be sustained almost indefinitely.

George W. Bush had 9/11 to fall back on, but that song is getting older every time they play it. Our new president needs to come up with an equivalent, one that will divert our attention away from Goldman Sachs and toward some overseas enemy who is somehow to be held responsible for our present predicament.

It is said that FDR’s New Deal didn’t get us out of the Great Depression, but World War II did. The truth is that, in wartime, when people are expected to sacrifice for the duration of the "emergency," economic problems are anesthetized out of existence by liberal doses of nationalist chest-beating and moral righteousness. Shortages and plunging living standards were masked by a wartime rationing system and greatly lowered expectations. And just as World War II inured us to the economic ravages wrought by our thieving elites, so World War III will provide plenty of cover for a virtual takeover of all industry by the government and the demonization of all political opposition as "terrorist".

An impossible science-fictional scenario? Or a reasonable projection of present trends? Celente, whose record of predictions is impressive, to say the least, sees war with Iran as the equivalent of World War III, with economic, social, and political consequences that will send what is left of our empire into a tailspin. This is the popping of the "hyperpower" bubble, the conceit that we – the last superpower left standing – will somehow defy history and common sense and avoid the fate of all empires: decline and fall.

I certainly hope Faber and Calente are wrong. But they are both very smart guys who have been right on many of their forecasts for decades. Even when their predictions have been viewed as extremely controversial at the time, many of them have turned out to be right.

Yesterday, former Goldman Sachs technical analyst Charles Nenner - who has made some big accurate calls, and counts major hedge funds, banks, brokerage houses, and high net worth individuals as clients. - told Fox News that there will be “a major war starting at the end of 2012 to 2013”, which will drive the Dow to 5,000.

Therefore, says Nenner:

I told my clients and pension funds and big firms and hedge funds to almost go out of the market, almost totally out of the market.

As influential Americans are lobbying for war in order to save the American economy - what is often called "military Keynesianism". But as many economists have shown, war is - contrary to commonly-accepted myth - actually bad for the economy.

Of course, someone other than the U.S. might start a war.

Given today's global instability in EURASIA and beyond..... it is impossible to predict where a spark might land which leads to a wider conflagration.

....

The rule of the human jungle, the rule by chaos, jaw bone diplomacy, “take what you want” colonial conquest philosophy has evolved into criminal “sophisticated financial instruments” and their predatory profit making applications is not for the better condition of humanity and fair trade but for the profit of a few criminal blood suckers.

Like Vampires, they are never satisfied and need more than the last record profit (oil spike), humanity is just the means for more profit and power. If you can’t pay, they want you dead that applies world wide as they steal everything that you do have.

These people are insane and they lead us with corrupt proxy government insanity as they try to drive humanity back into the dark ages with class and economic warfare. Look how far they have advanced (our decline) in the last 10 years.

Chaos is bankster profit, war is bankster profit, and the banksters are always on the supply and control side of the chaos equation. They bet and supply both sides against the middle and make profit in the billions for the death of millions. In the end they control the currency and the economy of the winner.

Now, apply the US self-destruction policy on a world wide basis. It makes no difference if you are an American Main Street Free Market Capitalist, Communist or a Socialist, the criminal banksters and their totalitarian world structure will own and control you in the end and destroy your national sovereignty and government.

Will the criminal Traitors hang or succeed? So far they have been successful but they still might hang for their crimes, time will tell....

What USA is smoking is oil.... Neither of the Koreas is of strategic importance to the US. They aren't the center of gravity for the world's largest remaining hydrocarbon reserves. Iran is. If the US goes to war with it, Russia, China, and India's strategic interests are all threatened. So the WWIII equivalency is close enough. Fortunately, probably ...a civil war right here in USA is looking just as likely.....

[Why does the US or NATO have a "right" to bomb Libya? It is obvious that this question will never be answered, or even noticed by the people who should be made to answer questions, but it still must be asked by someone other us.... Do Russia and China also possess this "right" to do violence upon other nations? What would happen if either Russia or China, or both of them, should exercise their own right to intervene and put a damper on the moronic Euro/American call for a "no-fly zone"? At some point, someone will get between the leaders of the American bully nation and their next intended victim and stop them from shoving anyone else around.

Can this really be called part of the fake "war on terror"?]

China, The Next Superpower...? or is it being thwarted...?--

Supremacy: As Beijing resumes double-digit increases in military spending, a leading think tank projects China will achieve military parity in less than a generation. We'd better practice our bows.

Back in 1907, President Teddy Roosevelt sent what became known as the Great White Fleet on a worldwide excursion that lasted almost 14 months. Four U.S. naval squadrons, consisting of four battleships each and their escorts, demonstrated America's arrival as a great power that would soon pass Britain as ruler of the waves.

Read more ....

Comment: The Great Britain analogy from 100 years ago is a good one .... and so fitting to where we find ourselves today....

China's Military Space Surge -- SpaceRef

NORTH KOREA may have already developed nuclear warheads that are small enough to be mounted on missiles and aircraft, a senior US intelligence official said on Thursday.

'The North may now have several plutonium-based nuclear warheads that it can deliver by ballistic missiles and aircraft as well as by conventional means,' Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Read more ....

Update: North Korean Nukes Might Fit on Missiles, Aircraft: U.S. -- Global Security Newswire

Cyberwar is coming, spy chief warns, but offers no help: Military, intelligence agencies gear up for China, Iran

Colonel Gaddafi is funding his fightback against rebel forces from a stockpile of 'tens of billions' in cash squirreled away in Tripoli banks, U.S. intelligence agents have revealed.

The vast sum has allowed the dictator to continue fighting despite an international freeze on much of his beleaguered government's assets.

Read more ....

The second X-37B, also called the Orbital Test Vehicle, launched several hundred miles above Earth Saturday (March 5) on an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla. It will stay into orbit for up to 270 days, according to Air Force officials.

Read more ....

Update: Don't Look Up: The Secret Space Plane Is Flying Again -- Time Magazine

Comment: They must like the results .... hence they are now laying the groundwork for future missions.

military leaders, and these guys aren't helping.)

Read more ....

Although the NATO Ziocon secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said that “time is of the essence,” the tepid response reflected the utter disinformation within the military alliance about what is being done....in this gigantic chess game for Eurasia, Energy, choke points and startegic trading routes and the dire economic conditions always in the back-grounder......

Read more ....

"The Global Economic Crisis: Central Banking at the Centre of Power"

"The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1365444/Robert-Maxwell-daughter-Ghislaine-embroiled-Prince-Andrew-scandal.html

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article1525215.ece

http://www.countercurrents.org/campbell110311.htm

http://www.newscentralasia.net/moreNews.php?nID=699#

http://en.m4.cn/archives/4108.html

http://news.kievukraine.info/2011/03/ukraine-why-orange-revolution-ran-out.html

http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/nbr_transcripts_110310/