July 30, 2006

Blood and Oil,...

 

BLOOD IN BEIRUT: $75.05 A BARREL


The failure to stop the bloodletting in the Middle East,

Exxon's record second-quarter profits and Iran's nuclear

cat-and-mouse game have something in common -- it's the oil.

By Greg Palast

I can't tell you how it started -- this is a war that's been fought since the Levites clashed with the Philistines -- but I can tell you why the current mayhem has not been stopped. It's the oil.

I'm not an expert on Palestine nor Lebanon and I'd rather not pretend to be one. If you want to know what's going on, read Robert Fisk. He lives there. He speaks Arabic. Stay away from pundits whose only connection to the Middle East is the local falafel stand.

So why am I writing now? The answer is that, while I don't speak Arabic or Hebrew, I am completely fluent in the language of petroleum.

What? You don't need a degree in geology to know there's no oil in Israel, Palestine or Lebanon. (A few weeks ago, I was joking around with Afif Safieh, the Palestinian Authority's Ambassador to the US, asking him why he was fighting to have a piece of the only place in the Middle East without oil. Well, there's no joking now.)

Let's begin with the facts we can agree on: the berserkers are winning. Crazies discredited only a month ago are now in charge, guys with guns bigger than brains and souls smaller still. Here's a list:

-- Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's approval rating in June was down to a Bush-level of 35%. But today, Olmert's poll numbers among Israeli voters have more than doubled to 78% as he does his bloody John Wayne "cleanin' out the varmints" routine. But let's not forget: Olmert can't pee-pee without George Bush's approval. Bush can stop Olmert tomorrow. He hasn't.

-- Hezbollah, a political party rejected overwhelmingly by Lebanese voters sickened by their support of Syrian occupation, holds a mere 14 seats out of 128 in the nation's parliament. Hezbollah was facing demands by both Lebanon's non-Shia majority and the United Nations to lay down arms. Now, few Lebanese would suggest taking away their rockets. But let's not forget: Without Iran, Hezbollah is just a fundamentalist street gang. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can stop Hezbollah's rockets tomorrow. He hasn't.

-- Hamas, just days before it kidnapped and killed Israeli soldiers, was facing certain political defeat at the hands of the Palestinian majority ready to accept the existence of Israel as proposed in a manifesto for peace talks penned by influential Palestinian prisoners. Now the Hamas rocket brigade is back in charge. But let's not forget: Hamas is broke and a joke without the loot and authority of Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah can stop these guys tomorrow. He hasn't.

Why not? Why haven't what we laughably call "leaders" of the USA, Iran and Saudi Arabia called back their delinquent spawn, cut off their allowances and grounded them for six months?

Maybe because mayhem and murder in the Middle East are very, very profitable to the sponsors of these characters with bombs and rockets. America, Iran and Saudi Arabia share one thing in common: they are run by oil regimes. The higher the price of crude, the higher the profits and the happier the presidents and princelings of these petroleum republics.

This Thursday, Exxon is expected to report the highest second-quarter earnings of any corporation since the days of the Pharaoh, $9.9 billion in pure profit collected in just three months -- courtesy of an oil shortage caused by pipelines on fire in Iraq, warlord attacks in Nigeria, the lingering effects of the sabotage of Venezuela's oil system by a 2002 strike... the list could go on.

Exxon's brobdingnagian profits simply reflect the cold axiom that oil companies and oil states don't make their loot by finding oil but by finding trouble. Finding oil increases supply. Increased supply means decreased price. Whereas finding trouble -- wars, coup d'etats, hurricanes, whatever can disrupt supply -- raises the price of oil.

A couple of examples from today's Bloomberg newswire are:

"Crude oil traded above $75 a barrel in New York as fighting between Israeli and Iranian-backed Hezbollah forces in Lebanon entered its 14th day... Oil prices rose last month on concern for supplies from Iran, the world's fourth largest producer, may be disrupted in its dispute with the United Nations over its uranium enrichment ... [And, said a trader,] 'I still think $85 is likely this summer. I'm really surprised we haven't seen any hurricanes.'''

In Tehran, President Ahmadinejad may or may not have a plan to make a nuclear bomb, but he sure as heck knows that hinting at it raises the price of the one thing he certainly does have -- oil. Every time he barks, 'Mad Mahmoud' knows that he's pumping up the price of crude. Just a $10 a barrel "blow-up-in-the-Mideast" premium brings his regime nearly a quarter of a billion dollars each week (including the little kick to the value of Iran's natural gas). Not a bad pay-off for making a bit of trouble.

Saudi Arabia's rake-in from The Troubles? Assuming just a $10 a barrel boost for Middle Eastern mayhem and you can calculate that the blood in the sand puts an extra $658 million a week in Abdullah's hand.

And in Houston, you can hear the cash registers jing-a-ling as explosions in Kirkuk, Beirut and the Niger River Delta sound like the sleigh-bells on Santa's sled. At $75.05 a barrel, they don't call it "sweet" crude for nothing. That's up 27% from a year ago. The big difference between then and now: the rockets' red glare.

Exxon's second-quarter profits may bust records, but next quarter's should put it to shame, as the "Lebanon premium" and Iraq's insurgency have puffed up prices, up by an average of 11% in the last three months.

So there's not much incentive for the guys who supply the weaponry to tell their wards to put away their murderous toys. This war's just too darn profitable.

We are trained to think of Middle Eastern conflicts as just modern flare-ups of ancient tribal animosities. But to uncover why the flames won't die, the usual rule applies: follow the money.

Am I saying that Tehran, Riyadh and Houston oil chieftains conspired to ignite a war to boost their petroleum profits? I can't imagine it. But I do wonder if Bush would let Olmert have an extra week of bombings, or if the potentates of the Persian Gulf would allow Hamas and Hezbollah to continue their deadly fireworks if it caused the price of crude to crash. You know and I know that if this war took a bite out of Exxon or the House of Saud, a ceasefire would be imposed quicker than you can say, "Let's drill in the Arctic."

Eventually, there will be another ceasefire. But Exxon shareholders need not worry. Global warming has heated the seas sufficiently to make certain that they can look forward to a hellacious -- and profitable -- season of hurricanes.

*****

Greg Palast is the author of the just-released New York Times bestseller, ARMED MADHOUSE: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War. Go to www.GregPalast.com. 

 
 
 
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July 28, 2006

Dictating Your Choice,...

 
 
House Passes Broad Mandatory Filtering Bill
 
 
The House of Representatives has passed a bill that would force schools and libraries to block chat and social networking sites as a condition of receiving federal E-rate funding. This bill goes far beyond the already broad mandate that requires schools and libraries to filter out obscenity and "harmful-to-minors" content and would block access to many legal and valuable web sites and Internet tools.  Because chat and social networking are woven into the fabric of Internet communication, a huge range of sites may be declared off limits in libraries and schools. The bill appoints the Federal Communications Commission as the arbiter of what can and cannot be accessed in libraries around the country, meaning that for the first time, the federal government would be getting the business of evaluating and screening wholly lawful Internet content.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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July 23, 2006

WHY WAR?

 

 

CLICK TO VIEW

 

 

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

 

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July 20, 2006

The Haunting Ghost of Ken Lay

 

KEN LAY'S ALIVE!

By Greg Palast
 
 


Don't check the casket.  I know he's back. When I saw those lights flickering out at La Guardia Airport yesterday and heard the eerie shrieks and moans in the dark, broiling subway tunnels, I just knew it:  Ken Lay's alive!  We can see his spirit in every flickering lightbulb from Kansas to Queens as we head into America's annual Blackout season.
 
It wasn't always so.  For decades, America had nearly the best, most reliable electricity system on the planet and, though we grumbled, electricity bills were among the planet's lowest.  It was all thanks to Franklin Roosevelt and the Public Utility Holding Company Act which allowed for tough regulation of the power monopolies.  They were told what they could charge, the maximum profit they could take and -- what I think about when the lights dim -- exactly how much they had to invest to keep the juice flowing.
 
But then, in 1992, a Texas oil man, George H.W. Bush, ordered to evacuate the White House by two-thirds of the US electorate, gave his Houston crony, Ken Lay, a billion-dollar good-bye kiss:  Bush's signature authorizing deregulation of electricity.
 
But Lay's operation didn't pick up the really big bucks until after December 21, 1994, when the Enron chief wrote to the incoming governor of Texas, George W. Bush, asking the Governor-elect to grant him a special wish for Christmas:
 
"The Public Utility Commission appointment is an extremely critical one.  We believe Pat Wood is best qualified…. Linda joins me in wishing you and Laura and the whole family a joyous holiday. - Sincerely, Ken."
 
And Georgie-Boy granted Kenny-Boy's wish, appointing Wood and thereby giving Texans an electricity regulator who stumped for Ken Lay's right to earn unlimited profits without any obligation to keep the lights on.  Thus, by 1995, electricity deregulation had a foothold in the Lone Star state that would spread nationwide like Dutch Elm Disease.
 
But, unsatisfied with excessive profits, Lay and his team went for unconscionable profits, flickering the lights in California in the winter of 2000.  "Let poor Aunt Millie … use candles," said one of Lay's minions as he deliberately schemed to engineer black-outs.  When the public reacted with anger, Bill Clinton, by a December 2000 executive order, ended Enron's right to trade power.  Lay's response was, that month, through a lobbyist, to tell President-elect Bush to promote Lay's puppet regulator, Wood, to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.  Kenny-Boy wished it, and again, Georgie-Boy granted it.
 
Lay's hand-picked federal regulator Wood then kept the game going until, on August 14, 2003, the entire northeast, from Ohio to New York, went dark.  Wood had to take the blame and resigned.  Bush replaced him with Joe Kelliher, a regulator nominated by -- no points for guessing -- Ken Lay.
 
In the old, pre-Ken days of regulation, my fellow economists used to complain about something called the Averch-Johnson Effect.  The A-J Effect was the result of regulations which gave companies incentives to gold plate the electricity system, making it way TOO reliable.  Too much cash was spent on keeping the lights on.
 
Well, gone are the days of the A-J effect.  The gold-plating is gone -- but not the gold.  Under regulation, power sellers were limited by law to a profit of about 9%, what the law called a just and reasonable return.  Now, the profits can be -- and are -- unreasonable, unjust and just out of sight.
 
For example, one company, Entergy, owns a nuclear plant in New York called, Indian Point. They get to charge for nuclear power as if it were produced by oil -- that is, they charge New York City residents at a price effectively set by OPEC, prices boosted by the war in Iraq. Not surprisingly, Entergy today reported a record rake-in of profits from their nuclear business.  No 9% limit for these good old boys.  On top of that, the power company is relieved of all obligations to keep the lights on in New York City.
 
… And in New Orleans.  The same company supplies all of the electricity in the City that Care Forgot. Under deregulation, they hadn't gold-plated the system; they hadn't even water-proofed it.  Last year, when the levees burst and the city flooded, Entergy simply turned off the lights and declared their New Orleans subsidiary bankrupt.  Leaving New Orleans in the dark was a profitable decision.  The company reported a 23% leap in earnings for the third quarter of 2005, the period including Hurricane Katrina, a profit boost they attributed to "the weather."  Hey, are these guys droll, or what?
 
This year, Entergy's profits have stayed up in the clouds, no doubt helped by the cash the company saved by not bothering to restore electricity to a large number of their customers in New Orleans --who remain in the dark even today.
 
By now, you've got to ask:  after the profiteering from Katrina, after the California power scandal of 2000, after the Great Black-out of 2003, even after the hand-cuffing of Ken Lay, why are we still under a deregulation regime that Ken Lay seems to rule from the grave?  Why is it that we're still at the mercy of power vampires? 
 
The answer, in part, is that the bloodsucking is a bi-partisan feast.  Entergy, the New Orleans nuclear company, is well defended in the US Senate by their former lawyer, Hillary Rodham, who now protects them under her new alias, Senator Clinton.
 
Ken Lay's gone, but the ghost of Ken Lay -- the marauding ghoul called deregulation -- stays to haunt us.
 


**********
For more on Ken Lay, Entergy, New Orleans and the politics of power, read Greg Palast's just-released New York Times bestseller, "ARMED MADHOUSE:  Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War."  (Penguin Dutton 2006.)
 
Palast is also co-author of a treatise on the power industry, "Regulation and Democracy" with Jerrold Oppenheim and Theo MacGregor (United Nations ILO 2000/Pluto UK 2002).
 
Go to www.GregPalast.com.
 
 
 
Posted by ChoiceAmericaNetwork at 22:55:34 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

July 19, 2006

Warrantless Surveillance - Wrong for America

 
CDT Condemns
 
Warrantless Surveillance
 
"Compromise"
 
A purported compromise between the White House and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) would legalize the administration's shadowy warrantless domestic surveillance programs and give the White House broad new powers, while offering no protection for innocent Americans. CDT will speak out against the proposed law when Policy Director Jim Dempsey testifies Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee. The proposed Specter measure gives the administration blanket authority to conduct whatever warrantless surveillance programs it wishes, with no judicial oversight. July 18, 2006
 
CDT Testimony: Warrantless Surveillance [PDF], July 18, 2006: http://www.cdt.org/security/20060718fisa.pdf
 
 
 
Posted by ChoiceAmericaNetwork at 03:19:32 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

July 06, 2006

Truth Be Told

 
SGT. KEVIN BENDERMAN
AMERICA'S NEW GENERATION OF LEADERSHIP
 
 
Bridging the Gap
 
That Keeps Us Divided
 
By Sgt. Kevin Benderman
 
 
When I was a young man, we were told to live in fear of the Communists.  Now that I am a grown man, we are told to fear the terrorists.  What will we be told to fear when I am an old man?
 
I am beginning to detect a pattern for how fear is used to strip away our freedoms.  I think we need to be on watch for all of these elements here in our very own country.  Alarmists create the climate of fear whereby those in power are able to control your reactions to their manipulated stimulus.  Absolute power does indeed corrupt absolutely. 
 
I have reached a decision to no longer pay attention to all of the fearmongering from all of the chicken littles who have pervaded our government.  I am going to put fear aside and look at the 21st century challenges we face much more rationally. 
 
If our nation is confronted with an unavoidable situation then we should deal with it in a calm and rational manner in order to affect a well thought out and reasoned resolution. 
 
In matters of national security, America does have every right to protect itself, but we should never endeavor to commit our military to defend against an imagined or blown out of proportion threat. 
 
If anyone in government abuses the commitment of the young men and women who have dedicated their lives to the defense of our way of life, that person should be held accountable for their actions, and if found guilty of any wrong-doing prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. 
 
Americans are going to have to commit themselves to being pro-active participants in our form of government.  We all have the responsibility of ensuring that our government operates only within the guidelines and laws established by our Constitution.  This is what Lincoln meant when he said that, "Government of the people, by the people and for the people should not perish from the earth." 
 
We cannot expect our government to do everything for us as we sit back and reap the rewards of others' labors.  Each one of us has to actively contribute to our country by effectively participating in our government process. 
 
We also need to remove the imaginary barriers that now exist between average Americans, erected by those who benefit from the divisions between the common people.  America has not performed to her potential, and unless we bridge the gap that keeps us divided, America will not reach her potential.  Americans, let's unite ourselves in our commonality so that we may better ourselves and our future generations instead of letting those who would benefit from the rift created by emphasizing our slight differences continue to tear us down. 
 
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream that we all would sit down at the table of true brotherhood.  I believe it is far past the time to make this dream a reality.  Americans, there is a place for us all - won't you have a seat at the table?
 
    www.BendermanDefense.org    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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July 02, 2006

Peace,...

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Posted by ChoiceAmericaNetwork at 21:56:51 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |