ENERGY GEOPOLITICS 2006

By Richard Heinberg

Commentary by Henry Adams on Richard Heinberg article
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4573/


May 25, 2006 -- (Richard) Heinberg reaches the following
conclusions as we have reached Peak Oil:

-- (1) Russia under Putin is committed to using energy for
geostrategic advantage.

-- (2) China "appears to be successfully competing with the U.S.
for future oil supplies not only in Asia but in Africa, South
America, and Canada as well."

-- (3) Japan is rethinking its strategic alliance with the United
States.

-- (4) The oil will begin to flow from Kazakhstan through BP's
U.S.-backed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline next month represents a
geopolitical success for the U.S.

-- (5) India's ties to the U.S., based on trade and security, seem
increasingly fragile.

-- (6) Europe is increasingly dependent on natural gas supplies
from Russia, which is building an undersea gas pipeline directly to
Germany under the Baltic Sea.

-- (7) On Iran, Heinberg has an interesting take: "Iranian
president Ahmadinejad is thumbing his nose at the U.S., and desires
to lead an anti-American uprising of Muslim nations in the region.
The American neocons evidently want to bomb Iran's nuclear research
facilities, but Iran holds strong deterrent cards in its emerging
ties with Russia, China, and India. The old-guard foreign policy
establishment in Washington views this U.S.-Iran confrontation
(quite rightly) as another strategic disaster in the making.
Powerful behind-the-scenes forces in Washington are working quickly
but methodically to topple the Bush administration before it can
act, or at least to hobble its ability to act if it survives. If
they do not succeed and an attack ensues, conflict is likely to
spread throughout the region. The consequences are potentially
cataclysmic."

-- (8) There is "widespread speculation that at least some rebel
groups are being covertly trained and supplied by nations interested
in Nigeria's oil and gas -- including the U.S., China, Britain,
Pakistan, and India," and the U.S. "has undertaken a quiet military
buildup in West Africa."

-- (9) "South America is slipping out of Washington's control and
may even become united in hostility to its northern neighbor."

-- (10) U.S. power elites have concluded that neoconservative
policies have "achieved colossal failure on all counts,"
and "Washington prosecutors, backed by the establishment's old-guard
foreign policy 'realists' inside and outside of government" are
preparing their downfall, but while "[t]his may all be well and good
in itself," "the neocons' efforts have meanwhile squandered immense
amounts of fiscal, political, and diplomatic capital. . . .
America's power elites bet the farm on the neocons and lost."

-- (11) The danger still exists that "the neocons may be unwilling
to surrender without a fight, and the casualties of that fight could
conceivably number in the millions."

-- (12) "In short, we are witnessing nothing less than the
beginning of the disintegration of the American empire abroad, and
of long-standing national economic and political structures at
home," though "[i]t is important to avoid overstatement: the U.S. is
still an immensely powerful nation militarily and economically."

-- (13) "This is the end of an era. And the transition toward
whatever stable geopolitical arrangements are yet to come is likely
to take some time and to be extremely dangerous and messy." ...

Heinberg: " Liberal pundits have sometimes mocked Bush's campaign
promise to be "a uniter rather than a divider," claiming that the
president's policies are effectively uniting the rest of the world
against the US. There is more than a little truth to this."


ENERGY GEOPOLITICS 2006
By Richard Heinberg

http://www.energybulletin.net/16393.html

-------------


American's Free-trade system is crumbling fast by Jay Ruskin


Barry Lynn, wrote in Tuesday's Financial Times of London:

May 30, 2006 "[T]he grand trade liberalization project is, at best,
on life support . . . America's free-trade system, constructed with
such care in the decades after the war, is crumbling fast. The
proximate cause is America's looming bankruptcy. . . . [T]he
greatest obstacle to understanding the failings of post-cold-war
globalization is the U.S.'s own utopian ideology. . . . [A]fter the
fall of the Berlin Wall, in that moment of self-congratulatory
euphoria, much of the U.S.'s ruling elite came to believe . . . in
the ability of an all-determining market mechanism to deliver
universal prosperity and peace, in perpetuity. . . . It is . . . the
first time a power that strove so relentlessly to sit in the
driver's seat of a world system then chose to close its eyes to the
road."[1] ...

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4567/

SAVE GLOBALIZATION FROM RADICAL GLOBAL UTOPIANS
By Barry Lynn

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/01726816-ef79-11da-b435-0000779e2340.html

--------

AWOL Bush Administration planted fake news stories on American TV


May 29, 2006: Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens
of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by
the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off
as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in
the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products.

Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are
seeking information about stations across the country after a report
produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of
the use of such items.

The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy,
found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations
were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News
Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article621189.ece

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. MY
NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this
article nor is MY NEWSLETTER endorsed or sponsored by the
originator.)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewsViewsnolose

or the best of N&V at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newsviewsnolose2

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmptyDemocratCaucusWA/

and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmptyCaucusDemocratsUSA