Ruppert on the end of oil

The solution side

Call to Action blog a virtual seminar for change
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I AM NOT A POLITICIAN THE FIRE IS NO LONGER ON IT'S WAY - IT
HAS BEGUN

An Important Announcement by Michael C. Ruppert

Copyright 2005, From The Wilderness Publications,
www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. May be
reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for
non-profit purposes only.
 
Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart
people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really
mean it ~ Mark Twain (special thanks to Bill Tamblyn for
finding this quote.)

March 10, 2005, PST 0900 (FTW) -- I am not a politician. I
will never be a politician.

With this article both I and the FTW family will never again
think in terms of whom we might offend or what bridges we need
to build, burn or fireproof.  As Don Henley wrote in a song of
profound spiritual gratitude, "Sometimes you get your best
light from a burning bridge."  I'm going to burn a few with
this essay.

Peak Oil is no longer on the way.  It is here.  Forget for a
moment whether or not global oil production has actually begun
(see below) its hopelessly irreversible decline. We will not
know that for certain until sometime after it happens.  The
political fact, however, is that global inertia in response to
Peak has driven our species, all of it, past the point of no
return.  There is no changing course for us.  We have
committed to a path of bloody destruction that can no longer
be postponed or evaded.  Energy investment banker Matthew
Simmons - long a smoke alarm for Peak Oil - has said
repeatedly, "The problem is that the world has no Plan B."
 Simmons is right.

Seeing clearly that there is no Plan B, it is now also too
late to come up with a Plan C or Plan D.  What I had hoped to
accomplish with Crossing the Rubicon is now a missed
opportunity.  Yet the map so many of us drew in Rubicon
remains astonishingly accurate and unaltered.  It may prove to
be an indispensable survival tool in and of itself very
shortly.

Politicians come in varieties. They are in business. They are
sometimes activists.  Many pose as journalists.  Some are
economists and academics.  They work in think tanks and manage
the editorial decisions of major press outlets.  Many average
citizens behave and think like politicians because they accept
as their primary mantras: "Don't rock the boat," and "Don't
offend anyone."  Politicians are more deadly than any weapon.
They see their primary mission as building consensus to
improve outward appearances.

For a politician the questions are always: "How can I
superficially address an immediate problem without going to
its root causes? What is the least amount of work I have to do
to make this go away while I'm on duty?  How can I deal with
this problem without burning bridges?"  Lately, economists,
business and religious leaders, and everyday people have been
behaving more like politicians than politicians themselves.
Much like the incestuous, sealed-off, fetid Bush
administration, the politicians are going to other politicians
to make policy - when they dare even to do that.  Refusing to
make policy is also a policy.

In fact, most people have become politicians and it may well
be that political correctness (including the fear of speaking
out) - to whatever degree it is observed - will be the sword
on which we now (not tomorrow) impale ourselves.

Bridges are burning all around us; bridges to responses that
might have mitigated the already brutal (and just beginning)
ravages of Peak Oil; bridges to reduce the likelihood of war
and famine; bridges to avoid our selectively chosen suicide;
bridges to change at least a part of energy infrastructure and
consumption; bridges to becoming something better than we are
or have been; bridges to nonviolence.  Those bridges are
effectively gone.

Stan Goff was right when he warned activists that "the gun,"
in all its forms, would be brought out before this was over.
It was inevitable.  False flag terror attacks, a fake war on
terrorism, routine political murders, stolen elections, and
Republican traffic in pedophilia remain causes for outrage and
defiance, but they can no longer be useful avenues to justice:
the legal system is broken.  It's broken for reasons far
greater than what used to be called corruption. And it cannot
be fixed when a world war and unprecedented economic and
ecological collapse are smashing down every wall between
humanity and the unthinkable.

Politicians are creatures of economics. Their success has
always been measured first and only by what economic benefits
they returned to constituents or themselves.  The victim has
been the future.  We have all told the politicians what we
really want them to do for us while speaking platitudes from
the other side of our mouths. As I have said for so many
years, we are all prisoners of the way money works. Until we
change that, any solution is only temporal and illusory.  No
electoral change is possible now that elections all over the
world have sworn their allegiance to privately owned software
programs and obvious manipulation.


FOR THOSE WHO CAN READ THE MAP

As the evidence grows stronger that we are at Peak now (or
very close to it), there is a distinct correlation between oil
price hikes and military budget increases, weapons deployment,
warfare and covert operations around the world.  Economists
don't consider such things so they don't report on them. Their
orthodoxy scorns any integrated view of world developments
outside their own discipline.

For long-time readers of FTW I need do little more than
discuss a few recent developments to put this in perspective.
For the rest I will provide you with some of a great many
available dots you can connect if you care to.  Most people
find themselves unable to tolerate the sight of the pattern
which the connected dots reveal.  After this, FTW will no
longer try to detail the dots of Peak Oil. What we have
published over the last seven years is proof enough.  We had
it right.  I refuse to go over it again. Those who get it now,
get it.  Those who do not may possibly be beyond saving,
because their own choices have deprived them of critical
months of preparation for the crisis - especially since most
of this "preparation" is psychological in nature.  It is very
hard and very painful to get one's mind to accept this
reality.

Nature does not grant time outs.

THE CIA

I recently had a conversation with someone who spent 17 years
in the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Thinking of the purge
and power shift that has - over the course of the last nine
months - decimated the Central Intelligence Agency (long my
Bete Noir) and shifted much of its power to the Pentagon, I
asked the following question.

"Look, the agency does many things in many roles from raw
intelligence gathering, to economic warfare, to satellite
recon, to paramilitary operations requiring cover and
deniability, to drug smuggling.  But since its inception it
was always focused in large part on medium and long-term
intelligence gathering and covert operations through the
costly, patient, expensive means of placing NOCs (non-official
covers) or assets in missions where it might take five, ten or
fifteen years to bear fruit. These programs were always
centered on "what if" contingencies which inherently implied
that multiple outcomes were possible; that there were
alternative futures to be influenced and shaped.

"Battlefield intelligence is a different critter. It
presupposes that there is nothing more important than the
battle that has been joined at this moment. If the battle is
not won, there are no future choices. Hence nothing matters
other than the war that is being fought today. No Yaltas or
Potsdams; no future deep cover moles will be needed.

"Every country in the world is betting everything it has on
this one hand knowing that after 2007 or 2008 the game ends.
The map of the future after that is unknowable and, to large
extent, irrelevant. That's why Rumsfeld has won the battle to
control American intelligence operations and why the new
National Intelligence Director John Negroponte is getting the
job.

"Is that right?"

Without the slightest hesitation the former CIA employee
answered, "Yes."

It is the ultimate testimony to the madness of Donald
Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney that there are no
more tomorrows left to fix anything.  Since 9/11, and
especially since a second presidential election was stolen
four months ago, the setting for a real Armageddon has been
locked in place.  It may well have been for years before that.

GASOLINE PRICES

A recent USA TODAY story, giving us the new word "Petronoia,"
warned that gasoline prices could jump by 25 cents per gallon
within the next few days. That increase, it said, would take
$90 million per day out of a consumer economy that relies on
profligate spending to sustain already bursting bubbles. How
are we getting the money to sustain these bubbles? We are,
according to Bill Fleckenstein of MSN, using our houses as
ATMs just to keep up, even as the housing bubble has already
begun to burst.1 Our paychecks certainly aren't increasing.

OIL PRICES

Oil has topped $54 a barrel. It's gone up more than 25% in
less than three months and fifty per cent over the last year;
400% since 1999. This amid strong signs that global oil
production may have already peaked, as declines around the
world are not being offset by new production.  New fields may
come online but the respite will be very short-lived.  There
may be a few "mega" projects (about a six-day supply for the
planet in each) which may produce momentary price declines but
the trend is irreversible. Official bodies like the
International Energy Administration (IEA) are openly wishing
that demand growth might slow in 2005, when actual figures
already prove this wish utterly fanciful. China's oil demand
is expected to grow by 33% this year.  Industrialized and
developing nations are expanding their economies as fast as
possible to generate cash and liquidity as a means of securing
more oil.

The vicious cycle is in full swing.  And yet, according to
economist Andrew McKillop:

"We then move on to actual declines in production. For the
majority of non-OPEC producers - (in fact nearly all except
Russia and some Central Asian producers) rates of decline are
stubbornly high, despite vaunted technology improvements.

One of the biggest problems facing the IEA [a UN sponsored
agency], the EIA [a US government agency] and a host of
analysts and 'experts' who claim that 'high prices cut
demand', either directly or through damping oil economic
growth, is that this does not happen in the real world. Since
early 1999 oil prices have risen about 400%.  Oil demand
growth in 2004 at nearly 4% was the highest in 25 years.  In
each year since 1999 world oil demand growth has been higher
than the previous year - as prices rise."2

McKillop's analysis, which essentially says that rising oil
prices are either good or of no consequence, falls way short
for two reasons. Energy investment banker Matt Simmons a year
ago in Berlin stated that he saw the actual point at which
price would curb demand at around $180 per barrel. The
consumers are bearing most of the costs of these increases.
Is this the consumers' choice, or is it simply the point
beyond which "the American way of life" will become
impossible, regardless of how many incremental cuts people
accept.

Go ahead; try to choose to use less oil of your own volition.
What reductions are available to you are minimal because the
world in which you must make your house payments, feed your
family, drive to work and pay your bills is leaving you little
choice but to consume more and get less for your money.  Only
at around $180 a barrel will the consumer no longer be able to
subsidize the corporate and economic superstructure on his/her
shoulders. This is essentially what Simmons was saying.

The poor will be the first to suffer and they will suffer the
most.  They will be the first to die.

Secondly, McKillop assumes a "trickle down" benefit to
consumers from high prices.  International capital flows and
your own checkbook should be enough to dispel this belief.
Need I say more?  Didn't we hear enough about trickle-down
from Ronald Reagan?

PRODUCTION

Oil industry guru Jan Lundberg - who seems to be getting a lot
less air time than he used to - recently wrote the following
brilliant assessment for (ironically of all places) Electric
Vehicle (EV) Magazine. Lundberg got it right.

"The end of abundant, affordable oil is in sight, and the
implications are colossal.  About now in our hydrocarbon phase
of human history, we have pulled out of the Earth
approximately half of the available petroleum (crude oil and
natural gas). The other half still in the ground is harder to
extract and may not - as assumed - fuel the global economy or
even provide a transition to another phase."

This means that the next tough oil shortage, even if it is not
acknowledged as a post-peak oil extraction phenomenon of
diminishing supply, will cripple the globalized economy.
Understanding of both the economics and social dynamics of
collapse is rare, and even when it is present there is an
absence of taking into account the "market factor" in ushering
in collapse.

Despite the need to be prepared for imminent, final energy
shortage - which could happen now or in several years at the
latest - people persist in focusing too much on the likely
date of the passing of the peak. It is already clear that the
oil industry and OPEC numbers on oil reserves are suspect.

The scenario I foresee is that market-based panic will, within
a few days, drive prices up skyward.  And as supplies can no
longer slake daily world demand of over 80 million barrels a
day, the market will become paralyzed at prices too high for
the wheels of commerce and even daily living in "advanced"
societies.  There may be an event that appears to trigger this
final energy crash, but the overall cause will be the huge
consumption on a finite planet.

The trucks will no longer pull into Wal-Mart.  Or Safeway or
other food stores.  The freighters bringing packaged
techno-toys and whatnot from China will have no fuel.  There
will be fuel in many places, but hoarding and uncertainty will
trigger outages, violence and chaos.  For only a short time
will the police and military be able to maintain order, if at
all.  The damage that several days' oil shortage and outage
will do will soon wreak permanent damage that starts with
companies and consumers not paying their bills and not going
to work.

After an almost instant depression seizes the modern
industrialized world, and nation-states break down, the
frantic attempts of people to feed themselves, stay warm and
obtain fresh water (pumped presently via petroleum to a great
extent), there will be no rescue.  Die-off begins. The least
petroleum-dependent communities will survive best. These
"backward" nations will be emulated by the scrounging
survivors of the U.S. and the rest of the "developed" world,
as far as local food production will be tried - in a
paved-over, toxic landscape by people who have lost touch with
the land...

The prospects of mitigating peak oil or avoiding collapse are
almost nil.  U.S. petroleum demand in 2004 grew at its
strongest rate in five years.  In December the daily
consumption of refined oil was 21 million barrels in the U.S,
a quarter of world use. The U.S. leads the industrialized
world in population growth, part of a domestic policy to
assure more car and oil sales.

The Earth cannot, as of the world oil peak in extraction, give
up ever greater quantities of black gold. Most of the world
exporting companies are now reducing extraction rates due to
fewer discoveries and depleted fields. Oil production in 18
producer countries has passed its peak and is declining faster
than previously thought: at about 1.14 million barrels a day.

"International Energy Agency figures put the total spare
capacity of all 11 countries in OPEC at just 330,000 bpd (down
from 6 million bpd in 2002). Conventional Saudi spare capacity
is zero... An IEA report from August 2004 indicates Saudi
Arabia needs up to 800,000 bpd of newly discovered oil each
year just to offset declining fields and maintain its current
production level." [Al-jazeera] - This can't happen, so watch
for the ensuing energy crisis.

The world needs to produce another 2,723,530.2 barrels per day
by the end of 2005 just in order to stand still.

Petroleum is the Great Leveler, in the sense of "leveling" or
flattening oil civilization.  But petroleum will also be the
Great Leveler in terms of equalizing everyone: People will go
through a final, grasping petroleum grab with whatever funds
and connections they have, before the attempt fails for good.
Then all people will have no choice but to work together or
perish. Until then, we have skewed values: for example, when a
kindly old lady drives to a shop and has her charitable
concerns, the use of oil makes her a killer of the planet and
she is not pursuing a sustainable form of transportation.
Meanwhile, a mean old man who scowls at little children who
walks to the shop might be a much more valuable citizen in a
practical fashion that matters to the world.3

THE MOST EVIL STATEMENT I HAVE EVER HEARD

Detroit News columnist Thomas Bray recently described an
interview with two "experts"; authors who come from the
corporate/industrial/Neocon camp. The aberration of his
thinking is symptomatic of the guilt we all share and the
consequences we all seem to be begging for.

"We will never stop craving more," say Huber and Mills, "nor
should we ever wish to. Energy is what brings light out of
dark, civilization out of disorder, prosperity out of
poverty."4

What was the title of the book that Bray was so jazzed about?
The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of
Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy.

Contrast all of the above with the following February 28
quotation from China's Xinhuanet news agency:

"Global demand may average 84 million barrels a day in 2005,
while daily production in January was only 83.6 million
barrels, according to the International Energy Agency. Oil
prices have risen 11 per cent in the past three weeks in New
York on growing concern that OPEC and other exporters will
fail to keep up with demand this year."5

That all of these factors are forming a perfect storm is now
clear.

Marshall Auerback, a brilliant economist
(<http://www.prudentbear.com>www.prudentbear.com) who dares to
see the world whole, notes:

"At the time of the 1929 stock market crash, total US credit
was 176 percent of Gross Domestic Product. In 1933 with GDP
imploding and the real value of debt rising even faster, total
credit rose to 287 percent of what was left of GDP. In 2000 at
the top of the late bull market, total credit was 269 of GDP.
An extraordinary statistic to be sure but dwarfed by today's
figure, in which total credit stands at a whopping 304 percent
of GDP, according to a recent study by fund manager Trey Reik
of Clapboard Hill Partners.

The title of Auerback's essay was, "Last Orders for the US
Dollar."6

Auerback opened his treatise with a recent quote from former
Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker that should have sent
politicians (all of us) feverishly to work on a survival plan.

"Below the favorable surface [of the economy], there are as
dangerous and intractable circumstances as I can
remember..nothing in our experience is comparable. But no one
is willing to understand this and do anything about it. We are
consuming about six per cent more than we are producing.  What
holds the world together is a massive flow of capital from
abroad -- it's what feeds our consumption binge. The United
States economy is growing on the savings of the poor. A big
adjustment will inevitably become necessary, long before the
social security surpluses disappear and the deficit explodes.
We are skating on increasingly thin ice."7

SOME DOTS

ENERGY

The world's network of crude oil pipelines also is now
operating at virtually 100% capacity. For almost all of 2004,
the world's tanker system operated at full capacity too. This
sparked an unprecedented rise in tanker rates, which added up
to $5 to $6 per barrel to the wellhead price of oil in some
key long-haul export routes. - Matthew Simmons.  Why are no
more tankers being built?  Because soon there won't be enough
oil to ship to cover what it would cost to build them.

Also from Simmons: [In the oil industry] A lack of qualified
manpower is looming high on the list of capacity problems. In
addition, the many layoffs and downsizing events that our
industry has endured. As a consequence, we now have an aging
workforce at a time when the technical intensity of the
industry is increasing each year. - Why? Because the industry
knows it is going to collapse and no replacements are being
trained to fill short-term, dead-end careers.

Officials of Mexico's state-owned oil company PEMEX have
announced that Mexico's largest oil field, Cantarell, will
enter permanent decline this year. - Bloomberg, March 1, 2005.

ExxonMobil is selling its 19 percent stake in China's
Petroleum and Chemical Corporation - Forbes, March 2, 2005.
This is a likely move to cut losses in the event of war.

Ukraine and Georgia have agreed to reverse the flow of oil in
a strategic pipeline from the Black Sea thus effectively
reducing Russia's control over some Caspian basin exports. -
BusinessWeek, Feb. 28, 2005. A Ukrainian alliance with NATO
would deprive the Russian Navy of access to its Black Sea
ports.

In a move to bypass US-led efforts to reduce her influence in
the world's oil supply chain and access to markets, Russia
approved the rush construction of three new oil terminals on
the Gulf of Finland to supply Europe. - Moscow News, March 1,
2005. (Three days after the above pipeline decision. Surely
these power blocks had been making contingency plans for these
events for years).

Saudi Arabia may have already peaked in production as a result
of over-producing its fields. Overproduction by water (and
gas) injection destroys a reservoir's geologic structure. It
is an undisputed certainty that if Saudi Arabia has peaked,
the world has peaked. - Al Jazeera, February 20, 2005.

Oil has been rising steadily in terms of dollars, but now it
has begun to increase in price relative to the Euro - James
Turk, GATA.

Petro Canada has decided to invest $3 billion in the
development of Alberta's tar sands in spite of high costs,
enormous environmental destruction and dwindling supplies of
natural gas needed to make steam to wash the sands. - The
Globe and Mail, March 2, 2005.

Royal Dutch Shell, which has downgraded its reserves four
times in the last two years (as a result of fraudulent
bookkeeping), has announced it may experience a 5% production
decline this year. - Forbes, March 2, 2005. The truth comes
out.

Iran and Mexico have signed an MOU for mutual assistance in
developing oil and gas projects. - Tehran Times, Feb. 20,
2005. MILITARY AND POLITICAL

Spain's foreign minister has voiced concerns held in Britain
and elsewhere in Europe that the era of the nation-state is
coming to an end as regional powers replace national identity.
- The Sun, March 2, 2005. Energy-starved Britain will
ultimately be forced to join the EU.

After Canada recently refused to participate in the US
Strategic Missile Shield, the US government accused Canada of
relinquishing sovereignty over its airspace and prompted a
statement from US Ambassador Paul Cellucci that the US would
shoot down missiles over Canada whether Canada gave permission
or not. - CP, Feb. 24, 2005. [Two years ago I clipped a story
from the National Post stating that Canada should not be
surprised when US troops occupied the country to protect the
US. From Canada!!]

US forces in Iraq have apparently attempted to murder an
Italian journalist who was freed after negotiations with her
captors. They succeeded in killing an Italian Secret Service
agent and US stories of the account are falling under
widespread criticism and rebuttal. Anti-American sentiment in
Italy is bubbling over. - Multiple sources.

China is experiencing massive shortages of coal to power its
electrical generation. - Multiple sources.

China is already buying and hoarding 60% of the world's
commodities: (Oil, Cement, Aluminum, Copper, Zinc, Manganese,
Steel, Coal, Gold, Silver, etc.).  It has bought so much
cement that it has caused a slowdown in US construction.  Last
year it bought 90% of the world's steel output and shipped it
to China - Multiple sources. Why?  Because soon there won't be
enough fuel for the globalized transport of such heavy things,
nor, presumably, for their industrial exploitation. The world
may also be at war shortly, further endangering international
trade and transport.

China has announced a 12.6% increase in its defense budget for
next year, pushing it into an overt arms race with the US. -
Reuters, March 4, 2005. This has put the enduring China-Taiwan
flash point back on the front burner as China has warned
Taiwan against secession and the US, Japan and Taiwan have
countered with equally risky rhetoric against China. Taiwan is
crucial because of its location the South China Sea and
proximity to smaller but accessible oil deposits in the
Spratly Islands. Even more, should China incorporate Taiwan
into its borders, its claims to territorial waters as far as
the continental shelf would effectively deny Japan any future
exploration off its western coast. - Multiple sources. Japan,
which has no energy resources, is in deep trouble.

Chinese energy shortages have resulted in what may be
selective blackouts of Japanese auto and other firms
manufacturing in China. - Asia Times, December 9, 2004.

As frictions intensify between Japan and China [Knight-Ridder,
Feb. 15, 2005], Japan - America's strongest ally in the
Pacific - has been forced to sign an oil agreement with Iran
[New York Times, Feb. 16, 2005]. This agreement came as a slap
in the face to the US which had opposed it.

Japan has announced a $1.1 billion emergency plan to build
liquefied natural gas terminals. - Bloomberg, February 14,
2005. Twelve days later it was announced that Japanese
destroyers had driven away Chinese exploration vessels in
international waters that were too close to a possible natural
gas field (claimed by Japan) in the East China Sea. - The
Herald Sun, January 26, 2005.

China has begun placing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles on
some of its submarines for the first time. - The Washington
Times, December 3, 2004.

Last November a Chinese nuclear submarine intruded deep into
Japanese territorial waters and was escorted (chased) by
Japanese Navy ships back into international waters. - The Asia
Times, Jan. 16, 2005

China and India have agreed to hold first-ever joint naval
exercises in the Indian Ocean. - San Francisco Chronicle, Nov.
13, 2004.

China is beginning a push to control the strategic Straights
of Malacca through which 80% of its imported oil passes. This
strategic waterway - only 1.5 miles wide at its narrowest
point - lies between the countries of Indonesia, Malaysia and
Singapore. - Asia Times, March 2, 2005. Yes, and 40% of the
world's piracy occurs there.

Indonesia has sent warships in an escalating dispute with
Malaysia to an island off its west coast. The subject of the
dispute: Malaysian oil exploration. -
<http://www.news.com.au>www.news.com.au, March 6, 2005.

The following day Indonesia dispatched F16 fighters to the
Malaysian border, escalating the oil conflict. - The Standard,
Match 7, 2005.

A number of stories have reported that Japan is secretly
considering the abandonment of its pacifist constitution and -
if it so chose - could have nuclear weapons in months, if not
weeks. - Multiple sources.

Britain's parliament is in revolt over a proposed "terrifying"
house arrest plan which would enable the government to order
residents locked up in their own homes without trial. - The
Independent, March 2, 2005.

Venezuela intends to purchase advanced MiG 29s from Russia,
capable of downing F16s [and having no software systems that
can be compromised by US technology]. - Reuters, Feb. 12,
2005.

Venezuela (the world's fifth largest oil exporter) has purged
its state-owned oil company PdVSA of pro-American managers and
is implementing a 17% tax increase on the revenues of foreign
oil companies doing business there. - Multiple sources.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has traveled to New Delhi,
India where he chose to make a public statement that he would
cut off Venezuelan oil supplies to the US in the event of any
intervention or a US-directed attempt on his life. The Indian
government has thus tacitly endorsed the threat. Meanwhile,
the US ambassador to Venezuela has imponderably replied that
if that happened the US would just go somewhere else to get
its oil. [Where? Iran? Canada (which is signing contracts with
China)? West Africa? There is no elasticity anywhere.] -
Multiple sources.

Venezuela has sold its (already in decline) San Cristobal oil
field to India. - Times of India, March 6, 2005

President Bush has given Syria a non-negotiable deadline of
May 1 to withdraw its forces from Lebanon. One million
Lebanese (almost a quarter of the population) have marched in
the streets in protest. - Multiple sources.

ECONOMICS

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress the
record U.S. budget deficit is "unsustainable'' and that
spending cuts are needed before costs balloon for Social
Security and other benefit programs. - Bloomberg, March 2,
2005.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has stated that high oil
prices are threatening the global economy and that those
prices will be one of the most important items on the agenda
of the coming G-8 summit. - The Daily Star, March 1, 2005.

The Bank of International Settlements has made it official:
the dollar dump is underway. Since 2001 the number of dollars
held by Asian central banks has fallen by 13% and the rate of
sell-off is increasing. - Reuters, March 6, 2005.

OPEC has announced that oil prices could reach $80 per barrel
within two years. - Agence France Presse, March 3, 2005.

A research foundation in Dubai has affirmed that western banks
have rigged and suppressed gold prices. - Gold Anti-Trust
Action Committee, http://www.lemetropolecafe.com/.
 
THE NEW WORLD ORDER

The New World Order is not a monolith; no single group of rich
folks sits together in one room debating our planetary future.
It is, quite literally, a new order in which world power
aggregates along geographic/geologic lines, forcing regions to
become players against each other and running roughshod over
the nationalist sentiments of their subject populations. The
regions are Europe (including Britain), Asia, South America
and North America. Woe to those nations who are stuck in
between. In spite of Sino-Japanese tension, Japan, China and
South Korea have urged the creation of a Free Trade agreement
to cover the Western Pacific. Geography and money will prove
to be the ultimate trump cards because geography is governing
economic decision-making. There may be a war between China and
Japan but ultimately Japan (like the UK vis-a-vis Europe) will
find itself swallowed into regional hegemony, either as a
winner or as a loser.

Take a look at Orwell's 1984 again. It is a wonder how he saw
so much. Yet behind all of this realignment, enormous streams
of wealth or capital are being expended and - most importantly
- transferred behind the scenes. The people controlling that
money are not seeing their control dissipate as the
nation-states vanish. Money makes its own rules.

Profits were made during the cold war by continuing the
controlled escalation of tensions between the superpowers
while secretly preventing those tensions from reaching
critically dangerous levels. The major players included Armand
Hammer, the Rothschilds, the Bushes, Averill Harriman, inter
alia.

These people always find ways to eke profits from a system
that is in meltdown. They make money on the way up. They make
money on the way down. Their appalling justification, their
pact with the devil that makes this all possible, is that "As
long as we're making money then everything must be OK." This
is what the real PTB (Powers That Be) believe. This is the
final distilled definition of "the bottom line".

The problem lies in the definition of "The Powers That Be."
 Most people still think in terms of nation states.  I always
think in terms of money, even to the point of looking at money
(the way it functions now) as the PTB without attachment to a
human or national identity.

Not too long ago I had a dialogue with Catherine Austin Fitts
after which an epiphany struck.  As the human race blows
itself into extinction, or destroys the climate, or starves
itself to death, the last corporate merger and acquisition
will take place.  And at the same moment as mankind dies, the
CFO of "GlobalCorp" will be shouting, "Hooray! We did it!"

Those who win in a rigged game get stupid.  We have all played
this game (to one degree or another). And compared to the
rational, far-sighted humanitarians that Jefferson and Whitman
hoped for and expected, we are all frightfully stupid.

In spite of all the warning signs that demand energy use must
be curbed immediately, the only commercial effect of Peak Oil
has been to increase consumption as much as possible - so as
to get as much "money" as possible, as quickly as possible.
This before the instant, possibly only months away, when money
- because of a lack of energy - becomes valueless. Solutions
that should enable a reduction in oil consumption are only
functioning as an insane rationale for using more. The pity of
this utterly unnecessary disaster is matched only by the
arrogance that created it.

With unmistakable desperation, China, the US, Russia, Europe
and the Middle East are fiercely jockeying for a measly 40
billion barrels of Caspian heavy-sour oil instead of the 350
billion we were promised by the major oil companies a decade
ago. Caspian oil has some of the highest sulfur content on the
planet. It is expensive and environmentally destructive to
refine. The mountains of sulfur around the Caspian are now so
large as to be visible from space.  Do you not see the
desperation here?

The only way to curb demand is to pull the plug on global
economies, starting first with the already partially
cannibalized US economy. Our manufacturing has been stolen or
given away for "spare parts." So have our savings, our
Constitution, our resources, our credit, our credibility, our
confidence, our manufacturing base, our jobs; and soon our
houses, our personal bank accounts and ultimately our hope.
The United States is being liquidated after a fait accompli
merger and acquisition.

The bottom line turns out to be the suicide of the human race
as mergers and acquisitions lead to the final moment of
malignant capitalism: "the last corporation standing."

GlobalCorp becomes Global corpse.

Hurray, we did it!

To look on the brighter side of this, my brother in arms Matt
Savinar helped me to see the good in Peak Oil. He wrote, "When
people ask me what is 'positive' about Peak Oil, I tell them
(only half-jokingly) that: "well, if there is no collapse,
we're all going to be chipped, tagged, drugged with FOX news
being beamed into our brains while living in slums patrolled
by robotic soldiers with strangely familiar Austrian accents."

The fire has begun.


FOR THE RECORD - FTW REORGANIZATION PENDING

I wake up now on a daily basis knowing that at any moment the
story might break signaling that the collapse has been
triggered. It is my mandate to scan the horizon for signs of
this, to help discern where the blows will fall, how hard, how
quickly and where they will have the most impact. Effective
immediately (and taking into account stories FTW has already
committed to publish), it is imperative that FTW transform
itself into an informational / intelligence lifeboat for those
who are listening.

I will not be writing for FTW for a period of approximately
two months while I complete a corporate reorganization that is
necessary to adapt to the world as it is, not as we might wish
it or pray for it to be.

FTW now has tens of thousands of daily readers who understand
what is happening and who are urging me to stop trying to
convince the rest of the world. They want us instead, try to
and help those who are already convinced. We cannot save
everyone. We can only help those who are asking for it. That
is our constituency - our contract. The doors will always be
open for latecomers.

What you will see in two months or less is a new FTW; focused,
precise, and more useful on a day to day basis. If I lose
support from progressives or activists for this, so be it.
If FTW falls from grace with some for failing to be
politically correct, then all I can say is "Good luck to you."

We must all do what we must do and do it now! My conscience is
clear that I have done all that is possible to warn. When a
tsunami is coming there is a point at which one must stop
trying to warn the indifferent and just get out of the way and
help others who are also trying to get out of the way. For
those who now see this, FTW hopes to become at least a partial
bridge to your safety. In order to do that, other bridges must
be abandoned.

END NOTES

1. Fleckenstein, Bill; Prerequisite to current events: Bubble
101; MSN, Feb. 28, 2005.

2. McKillop, Andrew; Fundamentals in the oil-pricing game;
http://www.vheadline.com; March 2, 2005.

3. Lundberg, Jan; The Global Nutcracker Called Peak Oil; EV
World, Feb. 20 2005.

4. Detroit News editorial by Thomas Bray, February 27, 2005
quoting authors (and Neocon / Bush allies) Peter W. Huber and
Mark P. Mills.

5. Crude oil prices may rise as output trails demand;
Xinhuanet, February 28, 2005; www.chinaview.cn.

6. Auerback, Marshall; Last Orders for the US Dollar;
www.prudentbear.com, March 1, 2005.

7. Ibid.



Ra Energy Fdn.
Raleigh Myers
Worksheet bio
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Blog
http://raenergy.blogspot.com/

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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - - Margaret Mead


Let us experiment with laws and customs, with money systems and governments, until we chart the one true course - until we find the majesty of our proper orbit as the planets above have found theirs& And then at last we shall move all together in the harmony of our sphere under the great impulse of a single creation - one unity, one system, one design.
                                                                                                                          Roger Bacon