Steve Bull's Blog, page 1198
February 7, 2018
9/11 Was the Excuse for an Already Planned Invasion of Iraq
9/11 was the neoconservatives’ “New Pearl Harbor,” the excuse the neoconservatives said they needed to launch Washington’s invasions of the Middle East. As General Wesley Clark told us, the plan was seven countries in five years. The plan had nothing to do with “weapons of mass destruction,” Osama bin Laden, “bringing democracy to dictatorships,” “liberating women,” “Assad’s use of chemical weapons,” “Iranian nukes,” or any of the blatant lies concocted by the neoconservatives and fed to an obedient presstitute media and accepted by a gullible public.
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill Reminds Us That the Invasion of Iraq Was on the Menu 8 Months Prior to 9/11, the Alleged Excuse for the Invasion. From a review of Suskind’s book:
The book, “The Price of Loyalty”, written by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, is an alarming insider account of the way the Bush White House is run, based on a series of interviews with former administration officials, most notably [former Treasury Secretary Paul] O’Neill, who got the axe a little over a year ago because of his opposition to Bush’s policy on tax-cuts. In the book, O’Neill raises some harsh criticisms of the Bush administration. Among his most powerful charges is a claim that the Bush administration was planning to invade Iraq within days of taking office.
Appearing in an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday night to promote Suskind’s book, O’Neill sharply criticized the Bush administration:
“O’Neill says that the president did not make decisions in a methodical way: there was no free-flow of ideas or open debate. At cabinet meetings, he says the president was ‘like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection,’ forcing top officials to act ‘on little more than hunches about what the president might think.’
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Decolonisation and Degrowth
Why do degrowth scholars use the word “decolonise” to discuss the process of changing the growth imaginary? Isn’t decolonisation about undoing the historical colonisation of land, languages and minds? How do these two uses of the word relate?
This blog post is the result from a discussion held between some participants at a Degrowth Summer School in August 2017. While some parts of this blog post are written to confront degrowth theory, we took the time to write up the discussions around the word “decolonise” because we think of degrowth as a project worth supporting and a community who is open to reflection. We recognise degrowth is an important academic and activist movement, which correctly diagnoses economic growth as a root cause of social and ecological crisis. We would like to see degrowth concepts spread. However, we have a problem with the use of the term decolonisation within degrowth literature.
Among the many ways to explain the degrowth key concepts, one common phrase is the ‘decolonisation of the social imaginary from economic growth’, first proposed by French economist and degrowth philosopher Serge Latouche. Here, the idea of decolonisation is co-opted to convey an idea of degrowth-based liberation.
In this blog post we want to question, whether decolonisation is the right and appropriate word to use. Placing decolonisation into a degrowth definition denies what decolonisation means. It turns it into degrowth jargon. This also doesn’t help alliances between degrowth and decolonisation movements, which we believe are necessary for degrowth to address growth as a global phenomena.
Exploring Decolonisation from Post-Colonial Studies
Let’s start by asking what colonisation and decolonisation mean to us. There are no (and shouldn’t be) universally accepted definitions. It’s not our place here to suggest what decolonisation is and isn’t. But examining a few examples shows that decolonisation doesn’t fit with what the degrowth usage suggests.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why the New EIA Forecast Is Unrealistic
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy has just released its Annual Energy Outlook (AEO) 2018, with forecasts for American oil, gas and other forms of energy production through mid-century. As usual, energy journalists and policy makers will probably take the document as gospel.
That’s despite the fact that past AEO reports have regularly delivered forecasts that were seriously flawed, as the EIA itself has acknowledged. Further, there are analysts inside and outside the oil and gas industry who crunch the same data the EIA does, but arrive at very different conclusions.
The last few EIA reports have displayed stunning optimism regarding future U.S. shale gas and tight oil production, helping stoke the notion of U.S. “energy dominance.” No one doubts that fracking has unleashed a gusher of North American oil and gas on world markets in the past decade. But where we go from here is both crucial and controversial.
The most comprehensive critiques of past AEO forecasts have come from earth scientist David Hughes, a Fellow of Post Carbon Institute (note: I, too, am a Post Carbon Institute Fellow). Since 2013, Hughes and PCI have produced annual studies questioning EIA forecasts, based on an analysis of comprehensive play-level well production data. Their latest report, a critical look at AEO2017, is just out.
“Shale Reality Check: Drilling Into the U.S. Government’s Rosy Projections for Shale Gas & Tight Oil Production Through 2050” explores four big questions crucial to the realization of the EIA’s forecasts:
1. How much of the industry’s recent per-well drilling productivity improvement is a result of better technology, and how much is due to high-grading the best-quality parts of individual plays? Over the past few years, industry has shown the ability to extract increased amounts of oil and/or gas from each well.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Trump’s Nuclear Doctrine Resumes Cold War
While elected officials of our increasingly dysfunctional democracy debated “memogate,” the world became more dangerous as Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review was officially released on Friday, February 2. Ignoring scientific studies of the past decade and growing global sentiment by the world’s non-nuclear states to abolish nuclear weapons, with this announcement the new arms race begins and the Cold War resumes.
Scientific studies have demonstrated the potential catastrophic global environmental effects following a limited regional nuclear war, using just 100 12-kiloton Hiroshima-size weapons (of the 16,300 in the arsenals of the nine nuclear nations, which is approximately one-half of just one percent) that would potentially kill two billion people.
This new Doctrine proposes the development of two new generations of nuclear weapons including “low-yield nukes,” Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBM) and the long-term development of Submarine Launched Cruise Missiles (SLCM). These “low-yield nukes” are 20 kt—same as the larger Nagasaki size bombs that killed more than 70,000 people. Seemingly ignoring the fact that nuclear weapons are nuclear weapons regardless of size with the same horrific initial devastation and radioactive fallout, these weapons are proposed to demonstrate America’s resolve in deterring nuclear attack.
In fact this circular argument of smaller nuclear weapons being a greater deterrence actually increases the likelihood of their use. This further promotes the mythology of deterrence which actually drives all nine nuclear states to follow suit. Coupled with the Trump Doctrine’s new non-nuclear circumstances under which nuclear attack would be launched, such as certain cyberattacks, the risk of nuclear war is dramatically increased, bringing the imminent threat of nuclear war to the center of US military policy and foreign policy. This fact was also acknowledged in the recent Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ movement of their nuclear Doomsday clock to two minutes till midnight, the closest since World War II.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
A Warning Knell From the Housing Market–Inciting a Riot
Global residential real estate prices continue to rise but momentum is slowing
Prices in Russia continue to fall but Australian house prices look set to follow
After a decade of QE, real estate will be more sensitive to interest rate increases
As anyone who owns a house will tell you, all property markets are, ‘local.’ Location is key. Nonetheless, when looking for indicators of a change in sentiment with regard to asset prices in general, residential real estate lends support to equity bull markets. Whilst it usually follows the performance of the stock market, this time it may be a harbinger of austerity to come.
The most expensive real estate is to be found in areas of limited supply; as Mark Twain once quipped, when asked what asset one should invest in, he replied, ‘Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.’ Mega cities are a good example of this phenomenon. They are a sign of progress. As Ian Stewart of Deloittes put it in this week’s Monday Briefing – How distance survived the communication revolution:-
In 2014, for the first time, more of the world’s population, some 54%, lived in urban than rural areas. The UN forecasts this will rise to 66% by 2050. Businesses remain wedded to city locations. More of the UK’s top companies are headquartered in London than a generation ago. The lead that so-called mega cities, those with populations in excess of 10 million, such as Tokyo and Delhi, have over the rest of the country has increased.
Proximity matters, and for good reasons. Cities offer business a valuable shared pool of resources, particularly labour and infrastructure. Bringing large numbers of people and businesses together increase the chances of matching the right person with the right job.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Turkey Detains Nearly 600 for Opposing Syria Invasion
Erdogan Spokesman: Opposing War Means Glorifying Terrorism
As Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria continues, so too does their policy of arresting anyone seen as even sort of opposed to the attack. The Turkish Interior Ministry now says 449 people have been detained for criticizing the war on social media, and 124 more detained for taking part in actual protests.
Riot police detain a demonstrator during a protest against Turkey’s military operation in Syria’s Afrin region, in Istanbul, TurkeyTurkey’s Erdogan government doesn’t have a lot of patience for dissent, or for Kurds. Unsurprisingly, dissent about a war against Kurds is being cracked down on intensely. Erdogan’s spokesman warned that statements criticizing the war amount to statements “glorifying terrorism,” and that the government is just enforcing the law as written.
With Turkey’s largely state-run media praising the war, public support for it is still relatively strong. Opposition is mostly in the ethnic Kurdish region, which Turkey is more than willing to crack down on at any rate, and political opponents.
When other NGOs issue statements against the war, as did a medical union in the country, President Erdogan has condemned them as traitors, and arrested 11 of their senior members for a statement calling for “peace immediately.”
With the war continuing and casualties rising, war exhaustion is inevitable. For now,however, expressing opposition to the conflict is a very dangerous crime indeed in Turkey.
February 6, 2018
This Vigilante Scientist Trekked Over 10,000 Kilometres to Reveal B.C.’s Leaking Gas Wells
If you’d met John Werring four years ago, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you what an abandoned gas well looked like.
“We had no idea whether they were even accessible,” said the registered professional biologist.
That was before the summer of 2014, when he headed up to Fort St. John, B.C., on a reconnaissance mission. At that time, much was known about leaking gas wells in the United States, but there was very little data on Canada.
All Werring had to work with was a map of abandoned wells provided by B.C.’s Oil and Gas Commission. Armed with a gas monitor and a metal detector, he headed into what the gas industry calls the “Montney formation,” one of the largest shale gas resources in the world. Shale gas is primarily accessed via hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking.
“Most of these places, there’s nobody in the field,” Werring said. “You won’t see anybody for miles and miles. Just well after well after well.”
In some areas, Werring — a senior science and policy advisor with the David Suzuki Foundation — could detect gas leaking from the wells just with his nose. His curiosity was officially piqued.
‘Out of sight, out of mind’
Fast forward three summers and Werring has now logged more than 10,000 kilometres on B.C.’s oil and gas roads in the hunt for leaking wells. In the process, he has revealed that B.C. is vastly underreporting its “fugitive emissions” — emissions vented or leaked during the natural gas extraction process.
“The whole city of Fort St. John is surrounded by wells,” Werring said. “The further away we got from the centre of Fort St. John the worse the conditions were in the field in terms of well maintenance. Out of sight, out of mind. No company was immune.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Before climate change: Falling rocks set fire to 10% of land, trigger mini ice age for 1000 years
Another day, another apocalypse. Life in a perfect climate 
Poor sods. After 90,000 dismal cold years things were finally just warming up when a bunch of comet fragments from a a 62 mile-wide comet, crashed into our atmosphere. It was around 13,000 years ago, and the fireballs started the ultimate black Saturday blaze which converted 10 million square kilometers of wilderness into unauthorized carbon emissions*. Somehow, all those reckless greenhouse gas additions didn’t seem to stop the airborne dust triggering a return to a mini ice age for a thousand years. It also punched a hole in the ozone layer meaning everyone probably had to wear more yak-fat sunscreen or get more skin cancer (I suspect data is bit lean on that).
Glaciers started growing again, some ocean currents changed and thus the Younger Dryas unfolded according to a couple of new papers.
In a fairly dramatic shift of landscaping styles, mother nature razed whole pine forests and replaced them with poplars.
Gaia is full of surprises: in the end, falling lumps of ice set fire to 10% of land on Earth, and making 10,800BC the worst carbon footprint since the last 62 mile wide rock hit Earth. Primitive tribes blamed each other and tried to stabilize the climate by banning cooking fires.
Thirteen thousand years later, and homo snowflakus is worried about seas rising by 1mm a year, and the ABC is worried about an alarming surge in large fires.
Anyhow, it’s an interesting theory. Published in Science Daily.
On a ho-hum day some 12,800 years ago, the Earth had emerged from another ice age. Things were warming up, and the glaciers had retreated.
Out of nowhere, the sky was lit with fireballs. This was followed by shock waves.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
What if we could REALLY convince the public that climate change is a threat?
Maybe one day some really gigantic-awful-horrible-monstrous-humungous climate related disaster will hit us. And that, at that moment, people will stop playing the boiling frog and will be forced to admit that climate change is real and we have to do something about that.
Unfortunately, plenty of gigantic-horrible-etc. disasters have already hit us, but the public doesn’t seem to have taken notice. But never mind, we might be hit by the really big one. And, if it happens, do you think people will come to the scientists and tell them “we are so sorry, now we understand you were right all along”?
I have the impression that it will be rather something like what you see in the clip, below. It will be something like what the woman says, “God is going to destroy this Earth and there is nothing you silly scientists can do about that with all your scientific blah-blah.”
And I have this terrible feeling that she may be right.
Peasant Communities Survived On This Simple and Nutritious Food For Centuries
Peasant food, while simple and frugal, has been around for centuries – in every culture around the world. Using fresh roots, herbs, and foods available to them, households would whip up a soup the family could feast on for days. Soups such as pot-au-feu, minestrone, cawl, and Acquacotta would give the family sustenance during hard times. But why is this simple meal so nutritious?
The Health Benefits of Soup
During the winter months, one of the things we neglect is taking in an adequate amount of fluids. This is understandable, as cold doesn’t make you feel thirsty the way hot weather does. Nevertheless, the fluid dynamics and balance requirements are the same, and sometimes more: we expend more energy in the winter trying to stay warm. Guess what? We still need about a gallon of water per person, per day.
That being said, let’s discuss some facts of digestion. Shunting is the term where, when you’re digesting, all of the blood in your periphery (arms, legs, and such) shunts inward to your thoracic cavity…where you’re actively digesting your food. The term “food coma,” is a humorous description of lack of mental alertness while your body digests the meal.
Then again, we make it hard on ourselves. The best time to eat a large, sit-down meal is for dinner when you’re able to be home and to digest your food and then turn in for the night. During the day? You’re running around and active…then you turn into a “stone” after that huge meal of chimichangas or gigantic beef brisket sandwich and fries. Then you don’t understand why you feel as if you’ve been hit head-on by a train.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
