1999. North Sea Oil and Gas production peaks. US department of energy predicts virtual halving of output by 2010. UK now increasingly reliant on imports.

May 2001 - four months before 9-11. A report into the future energy needs of america was handed to vice president dick cheney. Despite repeated Freedom of Info requests, this report has never been published. Why?

9-12. All Bin Laden’s family flown from the US back to Saudi. Why? D’ya think keepin hold of the Prime Suspect’s next of kin might have bin a good idea? Huh?

2002. Bush and his mass media chums succeed in linking al qaida with saddam, and thus 9-11.

September 2002 - February 2003. London. Dodgy dossier. 45 minute claim. hysteria about Iraq’s WMD programme.  claims that saddam is trying to get uranium from Niger. All are proved false.

8th July 2005—one day after London bombings. Robin Cook’s last article in the Guardian before he died describes al qaida as a “database” of names of militants recruited by CIA/MI6 to fight the russians in afghanistan in 1980s.

April 2006. Washington Post (the paper that brought us the watergate scandal) claims that Pentagon is deliberately exagerrating the role of al zarqawi’a Al Qaida in Iraq to mask the depth of genuine resistance to the occupation. Iraqi oil production still below pre-war levels....attacks on oil infrastructure increasing.

Here’s Iran! Hell, if they aren’t building up their WMD, just like Saddam!

Feb 1999. Oil $10 a barrel. April 2006. $70 plus a barrel.

Which region of the world has the most remaining oil and gas?

Go figure.

It’s really heartening to read so many responses to my potted history of the war on terror...oops, energy crisis.

Nice to read the brainthink of the legions of thoughtful people out there who can see further than Tesco in Inverness.

As your Sky TV-befuddled mind scrambles in wordless anger for a riposte, let’s see if you can redeem yourself by solving the following poser: Can you follow the thread that links oil, gold and food?

The winner will be able to feed his or her family, fill their car with fuel AND pay their electricity bills right up until 2015. Which, I can assure you, will be extremely good going indeed.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that bills have risen quite sharply of late? You haven’t? Never mind! I’ll spoonfeed you some more (chicken) McNuggets very shortly.

Oh now THERE’S quite a clue, let me tell you!

Good luck!

I’m afraid that your cryptic clues are too sophisticated for me and you will have to explain in more straightforward terms.

In the meantime, here’s a rant.  The world is not run by governments.  It is run by big business.  And what do most politicians do after they have reached the end of their political careers?  They join the boards of the world’s largest companies and help them run the world.  Some don’t even bother waiting until they’re out of office.  And does anyone in big business care about global warming, famine, disease or the energy crisis?  I personally don’t think so.  For most of them it is all about filling their own pockets with as much money as possible without much thought for anyone else’s quality of life, present or future.

keyhole, I think that the lack of response is probably not due to us all being slaves to Tesco and SkyTV but rather that there was nothing really to dispute in your original posting.  We read it all in ‘Dude, Where’s My Country?’by Michael Moore and other more cerebral publications from Noam Chomsky.  Unfortunately, we either have to take the White House and Number 10 by storm or we must wait until the next elections (and hope that the Republicans don’t manage to fix the next US election like they did the last one(s) ).

well, well.. a day after the Inner Party pitbull (John Reid) says we may have to “modify our freedoms” to deal with terrorism, up pops a massive plot to perpetrate mass murder on an “unimaginable” scale. Sounds like the hype surrounding the non-existent Ricin plot of a couple years back. And let’s not forget the recent Forest Gate raid and poor de menezes as well.
I can scarcely imagine the deaths of 300+ Lebanese children. Where was Blair when Israel was destroying Lebanon? Sunning himself in barbados!!
Are these the values that Big Brother himself said we should defend?
Meanwhile, oil approaches $80 per barrel…
War or Terror equals War for Energy.
Maybe the education secretary Alan Johnson will soon introduce Muslim Hate Week in our schools.
What worries me is that people forget. Winston Smith could just remember a time before war and Big Brother, but those younger than him could not and were convinced by the official version of events. We must try to preserve an accurate timeline post 9/11.
What history will our kids be learning in the future?
Will the textbooks say that Iraq was involved in 9/11?
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
For those interested in the lies which surround 7/7 checkout julyseventh.co.uk

War is Peace, keyhole…

More interesting info on the “War on Terror”. This week one of the accused in the ludicrous Liquid Bomb Plot (mixing unstable chemicals in an airliner’s toilet!!??) Omar Khyam stopped giving evidence because he said the Pakistani security services, the ISI, were intimidating his relatives. Crucially, Mr Khyam also said the ISI were RESPONSIBLE for training Islamic terrorists in Central Asia. This fact is well-documented elsewhere, most notably by the late lamented Robin Cook MP, in his last article for the Guardian just after 7/7.
A few months ago Afghan president Hamid Karzai blamed Pakistan for the upsurge in Taliban violence.
Question: Why is Pakistan the 3rd biggest recipient of US arms? An answer, I think, can be found by a quick glimpse at who their neighbour to the west is — Iran: the big regional prize for Us foreign policy neocons.
While we’re at it, why is Saudi Arabia — where 15 of the 19 9-11 hijackers hailed from — at No 1 in the US arms sales charts?
Who exactly are we fighting here?

As peak oil and climate change combine and reinforce each other, so the screw of repression tightens. Witness the Inner Party pitbull (aka the home secretary) this week announcing a crackdown on internet propaganda. Added to all the other instruments of totalitarian government — a long list of recent legislation — this latest attempt to quell dissent shows just how desperate our political and business elites have become.

They are trying very hard to manage the slo-mo train wreck of an oil-based civilisation which is in the process of being denied a cheap source of energy. Instead of a radical transformation of global capitalism — whose current form will break down anyway due to the energy crisis and climate change — the elites are trying to stay on top by pushing everyone else down. Plus ca change, you might say.

Once upon a time war was, indeed, capitalism with the gloves off. Now we are moving into different times, where the elites who manage global capitalism know the game is up, are fighting their expansionist resource wars anyway, but also realise that fear-driven domestic repression is required to do two things: stop people organising as they explore the roots of the War on Terror; and prepare us for the privations that lie ahead. Key staging posts on this path were 9-11 and 7/7.
Our current model of infinite economic growth depends upon cheap energy to give us all the benefits of the industrial FOSSIL-FUEL BASED process. This paradigm is killing the planet but is also in its terminal phase.
Regimes in trouble always need an enemy within — they are very useful distractions.

10/11/06
Just two days after the Republicans take a whipping in the mid-terms, their loyal ally across the pond issues a little reminder to any back-sliders out there: MI5 are “tracking” dozens of terrorist plots - so be afraid. The spooks have also now opened offices in Glasgow and other UK cities for the first time. Watch out for “terrorist plots” in a town near you.
Then there’s poor old Dhiran Barot, sentenced to 40 years in prison without a trace of ACTUAL EVIDENCE to prove his guilt. Oh, there was a laptop “found” in Pakistan during the two years he has so far spent in custody. The Pakistani intelligence service — which afghan president Hamid Karzai blames for the current upsurge in taliban violence — have come up trumps again! Bravo for this “trusted ally” in the War on Terror!
Meanwhile, Norman Baker MP continues his brave investigation into the “suicide” of Doctor David Kelly. Remember him? The dodgy dossier, 45 minutes, et al?
Pay attention class! There is a dictatorship being created here, piece by piece. You really MUST keep your eye on the ball......

Notes on the New World Order

IRAN a “major threat” says Der Furher today. Both Bliar and his neocon controller are worried about that country’s nuclear ambitions.

Yesterday the BBC reported that six Gulf states —  Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — are to pursue a joint nuclear programme.

Iran has signed the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and, relative to the other six, is much closer to being a democracy. And none of the Gulf six have signed the NPT.

Is it just me, or does the above look a wee bit hypocritical?

fiddler99 - 04 September 2006 10:56 AM

War is Peace, keyhole...

I think war is war and peace is peace.