The Good, the Bad and the Takfiri …


 

Oscar Wilde famously observed that, “Life imitates art”. Fast forward a hundred years from Wilde’s Belle Époque; art is dead and life imitates Netflix. Everything the West thinks it knows about the Arab world it learned from “Lawrence of Arabia”. Ironically, everything the Arabs think they know about both the West and the Arab world itself has also been learned from “Lawrence of Arabia”!

The Near East in all its voluptuous backwardness is distilled into a three-hour, technicolor smorgasbord: the man-love, the billowing drapery, the cynical- yet eagerly credulous American media, the fluttering banners, the stirring and improbable dashes across the desert; the blowing up of motor vehicles, the casual barbarism, masochism, escapism, sadism, voyeurism; overblown romantic posturing and charisma; the megalomania/religious indoctrination and the cult of personality … Iraq.

The character Lawrence lives the school-boy’s dream; a ‘Tintin’ leading the vengeful Mu’min horde from the back of a camel. “No prisoners,” warbles Lawrence; when he isn’t cooking up a revolution as a hobby, he’s back in England having conversations with rabbits.

The power of pop lies in its ability to reduce everything to a flat surface, a tape loop and a beat. There are no independent actors, agents, subjects or objects; only processes which grind toward conclusions like clockwork. Participants receive their fifteen milliseconds of fame: in exchange they surrender whatever identities that they might possess to take on roles that fashion dictates, becoming robots driven by the ‘artificial intelligence’ of process. To escape the boxes that the process demands, robots build more boxes; to become free, we enslave ourselves. In the pop-culture miasma, we have the choice to be Wile E. Coyote or nothing at all. Individuality evaporates; we march our camels in lock step over the edge of the precipice, we have no choice, it’s in the script, it’s what the camel is programmed to do; to hang in the air for a few seconds before vanishing.

 

WARNING: pornography; “Lawrence of Arabia Two” by ISIS Inc. (Jihadology.net). Every member of the US Congress should be required to watch this video, then take a test afterward. Question Number One: what happened to the money? Where in the name of Allah is the $25 billion dollars spent by the US since 2003 to train and equip the Iraqi Army? Where is the accountability?

The Iraqi military is so inept it defies criticism: the soldiers are little more than targets; no wonder they run away. The entire US enterprise in Iraq is a gigantic control fraud, as it has been from the beginning of the US ‘conquest’ in 2003.

Iraqi government is the latest in the long line of klepto-proxies installed by Washington in countries overseas; their purpose is to service the fraud and to keep the oil flowing. The government is inept to the degree that US policy makers insist on restructuring as a condition of military aid. Washington’s insistence pushes the Iraqi government closer to Iran. Washington finds itself stranded, with no good choices but to deal with militants or incompetents.

This is not a movie, folks!

Debtonomics 101: In order to gain petroleum fuel, a customer somewhere has to pay for it. This takes money which in our world is credit/debt. People point to central banks but they cannot create ‘new money’, that is, they cannot make unsecured loans. Central banks are collateral constrained. Only private-sector finance can make unsecured loans … as they do so they become insolvent.

If the central bank makes unsecured loans or takes the defective assets of the private sector as collateral, it becomes insolvent like a private sector bank. The outcome is no lender of last resort = bank runs. This is occurring in Argentina and Venezuela right now … also Japan.

What determines oil drillers’ costs is geology, what matters is drillers’ costs relative to all the other costs within the economy. Every new barrel costs the drillers more energy and materials — money — to extract every day.

What we do with oil after we have it in hand is non-remunerative: we drive big metal boxes in circles on flat petroleum surfaces between gas stations. Consumers cannot meet the cost of fuel or the cars, roads, military machines, credit or other car-related junk by driving cars. To meet drillers’ increasing real costs the customers must borrow … more every day. Just the same as drilling, credit has exponential costs because the only way to retire and service the ballooning debt is to borrow more:

 

 photo 5d8c68a9-786c-4f0e-9c21-e5f76f1fd683_zps06b26769.png

 

… a lot more … something on the order of 7- or 8 hundred trillion dollars! Cars are expensive we just don’t have a handle on how costly they really have turned out to be.

The economy is a closed system, in bookkeeping terms costs on the expense-side of the ledger must equal returns on the other: (Expenses) – (Returns) = zero. (Expense of fuel + Expense of credit) – (Returns on fuel) = 0 …

(E1 + E2) – (R) = 0

Fuel use is supposed to pay for everything but it cannot even meet its own expenses; ‘use’ is non-remunerative circling. We have to borrow a large portion of our returns in addition to what we borrow to meet total credit- and fuel costs. Without loans and ‘fake returns’, the bookkeeping equation turns sharply negative and the economy is submerged by its costs. This is why we are broke! Our economy continually cannibalizes itself: in order to keep pace with galloping costs the robotic process ‘sells’ into existence more petroleum demand which adds still more costs at the same time.

Loans are finance system losses, finance cannot retain its own losses and remain in business. These must be allocated elsewhere; Iraq has found itself as a sink for finance system losses that it did not agree to take on. At the same time, Iraq is stuck with its fuel industry costs arising from depletion and more difficult extraction regime. The Iraq government cannot effectively pass these costs/losses onto others: the country is insolvent. What is underway in Iraq right now is a ‘run’ against the country’s assets, (Michael Schwartz via Tom Engelhardt):

The oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein was racked with insurgency, and when vicious repression failed, it delivered a portion of the vast oil revenues to the people in the form of government jobs, social services, and subsidized industries and agriculture. The oppressive United States occupation was racked with insurgency precisely because it tried to harness the country’s vast oil revenues to its imperial designs in the Middle East. The oppressive Maliki regime is now racked with insurgency, because the prime minister refused to share those same vast oil revenues with his Sunni constituents.

 

Someone has to pay for both fuel waste and credit — to take on finance system losses — and do so by borrowing. Cutting through the tangle of proxies and their various puppet-masters leaves the petroleum customers in the West and their imitators as ultimate financiers. Imitators have to include Iraqis themselves: unable to bear costs themselves or pass them to others by peaceful means, they resort to warfare.

If you drive a car you are funding ISIS.

Along with Ukraine and Argentina, Iraq is one more fiercely ugly place-of-the-moment where fantasy and reality collide. The West and the United States in particular are caught in a trap of their own making. The West requires resources from the Middle East and elsewhere to produce business expansion. The West’s fuel payments provide funding for messianic non-state actors that threaten the West itself. Put another way: if you drive a car you must buy fuel, when you buy fuel you are funding ISIS and growing constellation of similar groups.

Because the West’s fuel payments must be borrowed; the cost of borrowing threatens the West ‘through the back door’. More costly credit makes it increasingly difficult to destroy the militants: failing to destroy makes them more ‘efficient’. Our waste + borrowing + warfare cycle has created a Frankenstein monster that nobody can easily get rid of or control.

It’s important to view what is underway in the world right now in both developed and developing countries through a petroleum prism. Economic distress in the OECD and elsewhere is a consequence of petroleum consumption. Political and social distress is a product of declining economic fortunes. The rise of militancy in developing countries is a consequence of both consumption and meddling proxy politics, particularly as played by major consuming countries.

The only reason events in Iraq matter at all is because of the West’s petroleum dependence. We need gas because our economy ‘grows’ by monetizing automobile waste; once burned the fuel is gone forever, new supplies are always required.

Americans tie themselves into knots blaming religion, regional backwardness, vendettas, the color of the president, everything besides our wasteful, non-negotiable lifestyle. Religion is indeed to blame; the religion of ‘modernity’ that pretends there are no limits to our God-like greed.

The proliferation of militants indicates our non-negotiable lifestyle is untenable; that we need to do something else. We don’t need to become militants ourselves but instead, honest regarding our wasteful resource dependency. The next step is stringent resource conservation and husbandry. The US needs to cut its petroleum consumption at once, by half if not more: doing so would defund aggressive petro-states such as Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia; it would also cut colossus China’s waste down to size as they depend almost entirely on dollar credit. Doing so would also undermine proxies such as ISIS that depends on willingness of the West to buy fuel from any source regardless of how corrupt or violent.

The alternative to conservation is catastrophe: ‘conservation by other means™’.

What is taking place in Iraq is a reaction against American-style colonialism and pseudo-democracy. Maliki’s outreach to Shi’ite militias speaks for itself: there is no state, Maliki is not a part of any state, he seeks to create his own version of ISIS, to challenge for that group’s administrative- and political space as if he is another crazy Englishman on a camel. He cannot possibly succeed: any government in Baghdad will be seen as the arm of Washington, even ISIS itself.

Washington is roundly hated by citizens in a country that the US has effectively ‘bombed into the stone age’ … then lavished with artillery. What America proposes as the ‘solution’ to the America-created ‘militant problem’ is more bombing and artillery. Americans see Iraq as a giant gas pump, with Iraqis as little more than cockroaches to be stepped on and swept aside. Heaving into view is the American establishment, looking to exercise this prejudice further; it needs the gas, there are automobile interests to protect along with real estate, finance, construction … the economy itself.

Prejudice will not advance any interests besides those of militants in Iraq and elsewhere who see themselves as cogs in a destructive process with nothing to lose.

Since 2008 industrial modernity has presented the human race with an array of choices of increasing difficulty: to drive a car or ‘do something else’: drive or gain a college education, drive a car or obtain medical care. We choose the car and shove its costs onto increasingly unaffordable education and medical care. With time and petroleum depletion, the choices become more difficult: to drive a car or have a job, drive a car or live in a house, to live in a nice town. We chose to drive and add layers of denial. Choices are becoming fierce and existential: drive a car or have something to eat, drive a car or have some fresh water … drive a car and allow countries like Greece, Syria, Yemen to descend into warfare and collapse … China, Japan … France. In the background, the Four Horsemen are making themselves ready to ride … If you drive a car you should watch ‘movie number two’ one more time. It’s the cost of your car and it is coming to a driveway near you.

29 thoughts on “The Good, the Bad and the Takfiri …

  1. Reverse Engineer

    Hey! You stole my tagline. LOL.

    Question is, how long can you keep Oil flowing out of a failed state? Can the military protect the oil fields, pipelines and tanker ports while the rest of the country is in flames, and for how long?

    Second question is, assume Amerikans immediately cut Gas consumption by half through mandatory carpooling and expanded bus service, utilizing the fleet of schoolbuses every community has these days to ship the kidz back and forth to skule. What happens to all those Starbucks Barrista jobz keeping the economy floating?

    I suggest everyone get a cool Electric Scooter! Did you see my new Bio Pic on my Water Bearer’s article? 🙂

    http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2014/06/29/aeon-of-the-waterbearers/

    I can make it to the Cafe and back on a single charge, no problemo! Helping to keep the Barristas employed while using less gas! You can charge it off two 60 Watt PV panels too! Actually, if you disassemble the batteries, you can charge it off a single 5 watt panel producing 12V, though it will take a few days to do that.

    Of course, in winter it won’t work, the batteries won’t function well below freezing.

    RE

    1. steve from virginia Post author

      RE, what keeps the economy going is not baristas but Wall Street loans. We borrow to waste, why not borrow to not waste? Better still, no borrowing and no waste? Soon enough there will be no loans or waste regardless of what we want. Conservation by other means ™ isn’t an option or choice, it’s a physical reality.

      Everyone understands warfare is wasteful and unproductive, we simply choose to believe that our other industrial activity is different. Industry is basically warfare vs. nature. Industries also don’t ‘create’ jobs, they reduce them: industries are ‘reductive’ rather than ‘productive’. Industries substitute machines using fossil fuels for human workers; folks wonder why firms won’t hire more workers = non-sequitur.

      There are a million things that need to be done, they aren’t remunerative b/c of finance system prejudices and the credit demands of tycoons. This is why gamblers and entertainers are ‘worth’ more than artists, jazz musicians, philosophers or firefighters.

      I know there are hardy people who bike in winter conditions, in Chicago for instance. Otherwise, the e-bike is a good idea.

      1. Reverse Engineer

        Barrista Jobz keep the personal economy of the Barista going. Until some other sort of work becomes available, or some other means of distributing out functional money to J6P is implemented, if we don’t want to instantly achieve Spanish UE numbers, it’s a good idea to keep these jobz around.

        I would not have any trouble with biking in winter here if my legs still functioned well enough to do that. Neither the cold nor snow is that much of a bother to me. You just dress for the weather, and don’t ride so fast. Sadly of course, pedaling either in summer or winter is not among my abilities anymore. My legs don’t put out the horsepower necessary, though I am still fine on the downhills. LOL.

        The electrics simply don’t work well at low temps, so from about November to around March the Electric Wheelz go into hiberation. I am looking at getting another one of these and adapting it to run on propane camping cannisters with a 1.5 HP chainsaw motor. The other option might be to insulate the battery compartment and heat it with chemical handwarmers or microwaveable Gel Packs. The trip to work on the Electric Wheelz is about 30 minutes, probably 45 if there is snow on the path. I believe the battery compartment would stay warm enough for this trip length. I’ll probably also need a second battery assembly in winter with this system.

        In either case, I won’t be using it for regular transportation until either the Gas for my SUV is unavailable or too ridiculously expensive. I personally could tolerate up to maybe $20/gallon, though of course the whole economy would have crashed long before that price is achieved.

        RE

  2. Ken Barrows

    The “All Sectors; Credit Market Instruments; Liability, Level” chart is always good for a chuckle. I’d love to ask HRH Dr. Paul Krugman how he sees the chart looking in fifty years (or maybe five).

    Of course, the chart used to be called “Total Credit Market Debt Owed,” but that was much too clear.

    1. steve from virginia Post author

      Ken, I think all that debt is a lot scarier than Islamic militants. Going forward, adding more loans offers diminished returns; negative GDP in 1st quarter was very expensive.

      1. Mister Roboto

        {/plugs fingers in ears} That GDP was because of winter, because of winter, do you hear me? IT WAS BECAUSE OF WI-I-I-INTER!!!!!!!!

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  4. Jb

    A fine post, Steve.

    Of course in the broadest sense, all forms of widely available modern transportation require the combustion of fossil fuels directly or indirectly at different rates and efficiencies. So we should stop traveling beyond the next village (mini-mall or highway exit), take up non-remunerative occupations in order to feed ourselves, and default on the debt.

    You and Mr. Moyers are drawing similar analogies: http://billmoyers.com/2014/06/27/learning-from-lawrence-of-arabia/

    “It may be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster.” T.E. Lawrence

    1. steve from virginia Post author

      Lawrence of Arabia has become the new Titanic …

      “Arrggh, Keptin; she’s spraung a leek douhn billew and the divil there is naught that-ee kin doo … ”

      You are right of course, we will all have to spend the greater parts of our lives closer to one spot; working and playing. In our lifetimes, distance has shifted from being a liability to an asset and back again.

    1. Ken Barrows

      HN,

      The figures in that link seem to come out of thin air. The wells to barrels graph doesn’t really get at the profitability of the venture. I read it quickly, but did the article even discuss the cost of each of these wells?

      1. steve from virginia Post author

        You can make a career trying to figure out nominal per-well cost and profitability. In a way it doesn’t matter b/c the only difference between a ‘profitable’ well and the unspeakable kind is with the profitable well the customer borrows. With the unprofitable well the driller borrows. In other words, if selling the fuel does not meet expenses the driller borrows to make up any $$ shortfall. W/ more expensive wells the driller has to borrow more which starves the customers of funds. The $1.5 trillion that oil companies borrowed to tread water comes out of the customers’ pockets ultimately … either in the form of more expensive- or unavailable credit.

        When the driller sells the fuel and makes a profit it means the customer borrows and the proceeds flow from the customer to the driller who is borrowing against his customer’s account.

        The real question is how long can drillers borrow from their own lenders and financiers? Some have been borrowing for 5 years or more and lenders are getting itchy. This is why the majors are selling out: their customers are going broke. If you look @ Brent and WTI the price has not budged even though an ultra-violent, rabidly anti-American, anti-Saudi, anti-Iranian military force has just gobbled a third of the territory of one of the world’s top oil producers … blowing away half that country’s army in the process. Not too far away, another major oil producer is engaged in what looks to be the opening act of World War III. A decade ago there would be a panic and the price would rocket upward. Today?

        The panic is there but the price goes nowhere. The aggregate ability of customers to borrow just isn’t there.

      2. Jb

        Steve: “The real question is how long can drillers borrow from their own lenders and financiers?”

        Right, and I’m not sure we’ll know where the middle class ‘threshold of pain’ is (or was) until after the fact. At $3.675 /g some are drowning, but enough of us must be treading water. Meanwhile, the pressure on the financial side due to depletion and interest continues to grow. Something has to give.

        Steve: “Not too far away, another major oil producer is engaged in what looks to be the opening act of World War III.”

        I’m wondering if you mean China or Russia? 🙂

        C. Martenson talking about the apparent US strategy: create a mess in the key oil production / transit countries; divide and conquer. Interesting.

      3. Jb

        Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Steve. Following the link I posted then, we get this little jewel:

        “When fuel shortages arrive, the public, utilities and other interests (grocery stores) will be left to fend for themselves while the military allocates available petroleum to itself. The entire mess will be offered as a ‘black swan’ that ‘nobody could possibly have predicted’. – Steve L.

        And here’s an interesting comment from Jeffrey Brown this AM via peakoilbarrel.com:

        “Your conclusions are so dangerous that our reaction is to believe that something better must happen. I frankly don’t know, but I’ve not been hearing the kind of story your data presents from industry officials, so either they don’t know what you present or they don’t believe it.”

        http://peakoilbarrel.com/eia-world-crude-condensate-production-update/comment-page-1/#comment-44412

        I suppose it’s a ‘black swan’ as long as everyone in-the-know keeps their mouths shut.

    1. steve from virginia Post author

      Pointy end of the Triangle of Doom …

      This is what world bankruptcy looks like.

      1. ellenanderson

        This will be long because I was sent this text rather than a link to the article. It shows how these gas pipelines are actually being financed – the lobbyists for KM are getting the politicians to fund them by taxing the public.

        Montague Reporter
        June 26, 2014
        Vol.12#35 * Page A1

        Paper Trail Reveals Gas Industry
        Lawyer Guided States’ Strategy
        On Tariff To Fund Pipelines

        By MIKE JACKSON

        NEW ENGLAND – Documents obtained by the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) under the Freedom of Information Act paint a picture of private industry interests shaping the New England States Committee on Electricity (NESCOE)’s strategy for bringing new natural gas pipelines to the region.

        Though NESCOE apparently operates under the mandate of the executive branches of the six New England states, its executive director Heather Hunt stated in April that it would not cooperate with the CLF’s FOIA requests, as it is “not subject” to public records law. The CLF says the state of Massachusetts has also not provided any requested documents.

        On Tuesday, the CLF released a set of 44 emails and attached documents provided to them by the states of Maine and New Hampshire. These provide the public with a look inside what has at times been an opaque technical and policy discussion.

        NESCOE has driven the states’ positions on natural gas. One set of emails shows Hunt, a former Vice President of Regulatory Policy at Southern Connecticut Gas, providing talking points in support of increased gas pipeline and hydroelectric transmission capacity to the respective heads of the state utilities departments, including Massachusetts DPU head Ann Berwick.

        A Private Call For A Public Mechanism

        Another shows the genesis of NESCOE’s proposal to clear up winter market bottlenecks in gas delivery to the region’s electricity producers by placing a tax, or tariff, on electricity, and guaranteeing the proceeds to one or more pipeline companies, which have previously been unable to elicit firm commitments on the free market.

        On September 13, 2013, Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) chairman Tom Welch received an eight-page white paper written by Anthony Buxton of the law firm Preti Flaherty, a longtime registered lobbyist and industry lawyer who represents Maine’s Industrial Energy Consumer Group.

        This paper argued that “[a] mechanism is needed to aggregate customer demand, so that an aggregating entity can contract for pipeline capacity [and] resell it to customers…”

        Buxton’s paper specifically pointed to Kinder Morgan’s suggestion of a “pipeline roughly following Route 2 through Northern Massachusetts to Dracut,” along with a proposed expansion of Spectra’s Algonquin line. “Both projects,” the paper explained, “are highly useful; the challenge for New England is to cause them to be built.”

        “Generally I like it,” Welch replied. In a paper trail fully visible in the released documents, Welch then edited the paper lightly, and removed Buxton’s name from the top.

        On September 17, he sent it, along with an outline of a plan to create a regional network service tariff through ISO-NE, the region’s electrical grid operator, to Patrick Woodcock, director of the Governor’s Energy Office of that state, adding, “I admit I’m basing this on a piece Tony B. put together.”

        Welch also ran this draft by Buxton, asking, “Would you mind if I used [it] in my efforts to make the case to my NE colleagues?”

        “Emulation is the highest form of flattery,” Buxton replied to Welch. “Of course, the IECG and I are thrilled. In fact, we may ask to emulate your version.”

        On September 19, Welch forwarded the materials to Daniel Esty and Katie Dykes, then Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner for Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection – without acknowledging Buxton’s authorship. He then apparently presented them at a September 25 meeting of New England state officials in Boston.

        By November 19, with the goal of subsidizing added pipeline capacity a foregone conclusion, Hunt was circulating a document within NESCOE asking the states to vet the “related implementation and authority questions” for nine different configurations of a mechanism to do so, including Welch’s suggested model of a tariff through the ISO.

        In December, Welch started reaching out to pipeline companies for their input in shaping the tariff proposal. He set up conference calls between public officials and Spectra Energy on January 2, 2014, Kinder Morgan on January 30, and Portland Natural Gas Transmission Company (PNGTS) on January 31.

        According to an email sent to New Hampshire Public Utilities Commissioner Robert Scott, Welch “lead [sic] a discussion for the states” with representatives of Kinder Morgan. “The primary question” for the company, according to the document, “was whether a stream of revenues from a FERC-approved ISO electric tariff would provide sufficient security to move forward and build/contract for new pipeline capacity.”

        By that time, the company’s land agents were knocking on doors from Pittsfield to Dracut, scouting out a pipeline route that would cross both the Connecticut and Millers rivers at Montague.

        In March, a public document filed in Maine showed that Anthony Buxton of Preti Flaherty was working directly as counsel for Kinder Morgan’s subsidiary Tennessee Gas Pipeline.

        Is NESCOE a Public Body?

        On December 6, the region’s six state governors signed a letter “commit[ting] to continue to work together… through NESCOE” (emphasis added) over a laundry list of shared energy goals that included “development of new natural gas pipeline infrastructure.”

        Consumers who have objected to the idea of a private entity proposing an electricity tariff to fund private development might be surprised to learn that exactly such a mechanism funds the organization.

        NESCOE was founded in 2006 as a limited liability corporation of the nonprofit New England Governor’s Conference. The next year, the NEGC, the ISO-NE and the New England Power Pool applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to allow the ISO to add a tariff to fund the organization.

        NESCOE became a 501(c)4 nonprofit organization in 2010 under new executive director Hunt, who has built the organization since then to its current complement of six staffers, whose salaries and benefits exceeded $930,000 last year.

        The governors have appointed Berwick, Welch, Scott, and Dykes, as well as Vermont Department of Public Service commissioner Chris Recchia and Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission chair Margaret Curran, to oversee the organization as its “managers.”

        Tasked with relieving an apparent bottleneck of energy delivery that has caused brief wintertime spikes in the price power plants pay for natural gas, NESCOE finds itself in the public spotlight for the first time.

        Behind Closed Doors

        Critics of NESCOE’s favored proposals – simultaneous investments in gas pipeline infrastructure and hydroelectric transmission – say the emails released Tuesday vindicate their complaints that its lack of transparency hides a too-cozy relationship with private-sector interests.

        “The documents show a hostility toward working out the details in a public forum,” said CLF attorney Christophe Courchesne, “and a distressing level of close communication between state officials, pipeline companies, and the gas and electric utilities that stand to benefit the most.
        “What the plan suggests is billions of dollars of infrastructure investment throughout the region – that’s a debate that needs to happen in public, with a wider variety of stakeholders.”

        “The very foundations of the plan,” he continued, “are based on an incomplete and cursory analysis of the problems, and a complete lack of attention to lower-cost alternatives which would be better for electricity customers and the environment.”

        One email released this week shows Hunt telling public officials that one of the scenarios for the region’s future energy use analyzed by consultants Black & Veatch, the “Clean Energy Future,” need not be released publicly. “The Clean Energy Future is as you might expect costly,” Hunt explained. “There is the potential for various interests to use/misuse the results.”

        Another, dating to last August, shows NESCOE counsel Ben D’Antonio recommending that the states’ strategy in pursuing both gas pipelines and hydro transmission be kept “behind closed doors,” since the perception that either deal is within reach could reduce their bargaining position for the other.

        “The court of public opinion,” he pointed out, “can be fickle and recalcitrant.”

        “True,” agreed Welch.

        More To Come?

        The CLF says the documents – available for download at http://www.clf.org – represent “a mere fraction” of those it filed for, and that it may pursue “legal action to force compliance” with their requests.

        Katy Eiseman, director of Massachusetts Pipeline Awareness Network, a coalition of five regional groups of opponents to Kinder Morgan’s proposed pipeline, says her organization called on Wednesday for a legislative hearing on the process.

        A call to the phone number provided on NESCOE’s website was answered by a recorded message saying that its voicemail box was full.

      2. steve from virginia Post author

        Very similar tactics at all levels of government. A favorite is the use of public funds to build sports palaces for billionaire owners. Mouthpieces for the owners advertise the ‘economic growth’ that accompanies these projects, never the overall costs (all require ongoing subsidies, of course):

        http://onlyagame.wbur.org/2014/05/31/atlanta-braves-cobb-county-turner-field

        http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35299-2004Nov8.html

        http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/how-the-nfl-fleeces-taxpayers/309448/

        It’s not just America and not just sports (gas pipelines):

        http://crudeoilpeak.info/australian-governments-want-to-pay-810m-subsidy-for-unviable-road-tunnel-in-sydney-as-next-oil-price-spike-looms-part-1

        Matt Mushalik calls for an oil price spike; I don’t know. Even when a highly aggressive, effective and anti-Western militant commander overruns a large area of the world’s seventh largest oil producer … the price of oil goes sideways. Some other dynamic is at work besides (fear of) constrained supply: everyone is broke.

        Another use for pipelines is to supply LNG terminal(s).

        http://www.downeastlng.com/project.php

        I can see the pipeline system is advertized as delivering gas to electric generators. Needless the say, the US is over-supplied with electrical capacity. Meanwhile, In the event of a gas shortage, some user gets his gas supply cut: one of three user groups — gas for household space heating, gas for commercial/industrial use and gas for electric generation. Usually but not always first-cut is commercial users, then, generators. However, if the gas is being exported (LNG) then the export contract would be honored at the expense of the rest.

        If electrical generation is going to be cut first there is no point to the added pipeline capacity or the added generation capacity. There is a likelihood that capacity would be unavailable when it is most needed.

        What matters in New England is lack of local gas distribution. Local utilities don’t appear to be planning to install tens of thousands of new household gas connections and the needed gas mains, meters and domestic piping.

    1. steve from virginia Post author

      The entire (economic) system is fundamentally deceptive b/c we don’t want to hear the truth about what we do during the day. We start with the happy ending and work backward. More on this, later …

    1. steve from virginia Post author

      These analysts never do the math, or produce data … they wave their hands and offer broad generalizations. High-level business consultants should know better. What is interesting, if the country had started with the solar-wind-car sharing-transit-restructuring program 40 years ago — after the first oil shock in 1973 — a lot of what McKinsey is saying might be workable now. Unfortunately, everyone is behind the curve due to decades of wishful thinking … w/ capital exhaustion there will be very little to work with after the lending structure begins to fall apart.

      Notice how half the article has to do with electric cars. “Everything is going to change,” they say … “Everything will remain the same only more so.”

      McKinsey & Co. can’t tell the truth and remain in business … so, they lie.

  5. Jb

    From Michael Klare this morning:

    “In a fossil-fuel world, control over oil and gas reserves is an essential component of national power. “Oil fuels more than automobiles and airplanes,” Robert Ebel of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told a State Department audience in 2002. “Oil fuels military power, national treasuries, and international politics.”

    http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175865/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_fighting_for_oil

    Steve, maybe you can take this thought further in your upcoming piece. Destabilization robs the oligarchs of revenue and pries them open to influence, it destroys the capacity of their infrastructure, and keeps local population consumption to a minimum.

    Has anyone read Klare’s book ‘The Race for What’s Left?’

    I realized my bias this morning – perhaps you weren’t referring to China or Russia at all. You could just have easily been referring to the US.

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