Gareth Porter on Military Spending

The Obama-Gates Scam on Military Spending
Numbers Racketeers

Also from Counterpunch:
John Clark, The Cost of Oil: a Year After Deepwater Horizon
Russell D. Hoffman, Why Naoto Kan Should Resign

Energy Bulletin:
One year later: Assessing the lasting impact of the Gulf spill
Carl Safina, Yale Environment 360

The Fukushima disaster and other irreproducible experiments
JoulesBurn, The Oil Drum

Japan, oil and the fragility of globalization
Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee

Unsung bedrock of prosperity (phosphorus)
Samuel Schläfli, ETH Zurich

The Oil Drum staff evaluates claims made by Matt Simmons on the Deepwater Spill

A Critical Examination of Matt Simmons’ Claims on the Deepwater Spill

Dave Lindorff, BP's Don't Ask Don't Tell Policy

Items of Interest, 19 July 2010

John Robb,JOURNAL: Global Guerrillas and Resilient Communities in Afghanistan

Catholic Light:
I still think people should avoid TFP
From Petrus: the Medjugorje 'seers' will have to report their ten secrets

Energy Bulletin:
Lloyd's Sustainable Energy Security White Paper - Some hits; some misses (original)

Gail Tverberg, The Oil Drum

Lloyd's hired Chatham House to prepare a white paper on the risks of peak oil called Sustainable Energy Security: Strategic risks and opportunities for business. It seems to me that this new report gets quite a few things right, but it misleads in the direction of thinking things are better than they really are, when it comes to timing and alternatives

Fizzling dreams of "back-to-the-land" (original)

Blujay, these new old traditions

And then *POP* just like that, my back-to-the-land bubble bursts. I rub the sleep from my eyes and blink: Ah yes, here I am. Back in Brooklyn, in school full time, pursuing a masters degree, racking up the loans.

Modernizing Henry George (original)

Herman Daly, The Daly News

Economists have traditionally considered nature to be infinite relative to the economy, and therefore not scarce, and therefore properly priced at zero. But the biosphere is now scarce, and becoming more so every day as a result of growth of its large and dependent subsystem, the macro-economy.

Counterpunch:
Patrick Cockburn, Leaving Iraq: The Ruin They'll Leave Behind
Dave Lindorff, Cracking the Sea Floor: Fools' Errand in the Gulf

Items of Interest, 14 July 2010

Rod Dreher, Coming: BP's methane volcano? and io9, Methane bubble "doomsday" story debunked
Rod Dreher, Monsanto's genetically-modified Eucharist
CHT, Obama the Liar on Free Trade

Mark Richardson on the link between liberalism and multiculturalism: Identity lite.

John Robb, JOURNAL: A Mechanism for Economic and Political Concentration

Steve Sailer, How to get into college

Energy Bulletin:
The 50-year farm bill (original)

Wes Jackson, Solutions

We need new strategies for agriculture that emphasize efficient nutrient use in order to lower production costs and minimize negative environmental effects. The trouble is, the best soils on the best landscapes are already being farmed. Much of the future expansion of agriculture will be onto marginal lands where the risk of irreversible degradation under annual grain production is high. As these areas become degraded, expensive chemical, energy, and equipment inputs will become less effective and much less affordable.

Fireflies In July (original)
Gene Logsdon, OrganicToBe.org

Most of us have only a little knowledge of the awesome events going on in nature right around us all the time. That’s why we must ceaselessly travel in search of distraction far and wide. There are wonders at work right under our noses but we don’t notice. It is even more lamentable now that we have abandoned the real world for the electronic world.

Counterpunch:
Ellen Brown, How Brokers Became Bookies
Mark Weisbrot, Exacerbating the Crisis in the Eurozone
Jonathan Cook, Remote-Controlled Killing
Dean Baker, Reckless Drilling: BP's Carnage
Deepak Tripathi, The Dwindling of Afghanistan's Coalition of the Willing

Items of Interest, 2 July 2010

Life After RC: Questions about Apostolic Schools and Thoughts on the Legion's future
Dawn Eden, The Holy Ghost in the Machine: Amidst the Legion Crisis, a Sign of Providence

NLM: Review of "Heaven and Earth in Little Space: The Re-Enchantment of Liturgy"

Daniel Larison, Stuck In The Past

CHT: Obama Regime pushes for Three Mass Amnesties

Mark Sisson, How to Improve Your Sleep Posture

Defense Review: Latest-Variant Smith & Wesson (S&W) M&P Tactical AR (AR-15) Rifle/Carbine/SBRs for Special Operations Forces (SOF) Displayed at SOFIC 2010: Ambidextrous Controls!

Asia Times:
'Surge' smoke follows Petraeus to Afpak
As General David Petraeus, the mainstream US media's new armored Messiah, takes command in Afghanistan, the myth of his "successful surge" in Iraq could not but linger. Anyone who buys the Pentagon's spin and believes the same conquest will happen in the Pashtun south and southeast of Afghanistan must have smoked Hindu Kush's finest. - Pepe Escobar

Counter-insurgency down for the count
The United States' Afghanistan strategy isn't working, which raises several key questions. Why does President Barack Obama fire a failing general but cling to his failing war policy? And if nothing much is working, why does it still go on non-stop? It's because Afghanistan has become an ill-oiled war machine generating ever-more incentives for almost everyone involved - except ordinary Afghans. - Ann Jones

Counterpunch:
Vijay Prashad, A Disaster Foretold: BP, Obama and the Gulf
Ralph Nader, Tyranny of the Merchant Class
John Stanton, General Petraeus' Magic Bag

!!!

How the ultimate BP Gulf disaster could kill millions (via the Hawaiian Libertarian)

How big of a deposit of methane gas is down there?

Deepwater Horizon: the best-case and most-likely scenarios

Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute

What would make the difference between the worst and best cases? That difference would flow not just from a single factor, but from a confluence of many through three main tributaries: luck, competence, and courage.

Dave Lindorff, The Oil Industry's Go-To Judge Comes Through

Items of Interest, 21 June 2010

Fabius Maximus, How Obama failed in the Gulf of Mexico. Many of the most common indictments of him are wrong, and overlook his biggest errors.

Energy Bulletin:
Deepwater Horizon: the worst-case scenario

Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute

Already Deepwater Horizon is the not only the worst oil spill, but the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. Multiplying the scale of this existing catastrophe multiple times sends us into truly uncharted territory. ... The consequences for the oil industry as a whole would also be dire. More regulations, soaring insurance rates, and drilling moratoria would lead to oil price spikes and shortages.

Counterpunch:
Ralph Nader, Festering Corruption
Ronnie Cummins, Generation Monsanto
Thomas H. Naylor, Vermont and Israel: Silence of the Liberals
Joshua Brollier/Kathy Kelly, Is Pakistan Unraveling?

Rod Dreher, Pssst ... drill, baby, drill

mdavid writes:

Three of the projects were approved with waivers exempting them from detailed studies of their environmental impact -- the same waiver the MMS granted to BP for the ill-fated well that's been fouling the Gulf with crude for two months.

"Environmental impact"? This is a joke. What is needed is engineering analysis. This spill occurred due to an engineering mistake - the last thing we need is a bunch of environmental "experts" who don't have a clue about anything weighing in and putting valuable resources into political bribes and favors these environmental regulations are all about. Yes, the regulations that effect engineering are absolutely needed. The rest is all bunk - I know, I've been involved with drilling for over a decade and know all about how this game is played. It's a shakedown by the environmental lobby who offer zip to help. Of course, the public is ignorant and believes the media, which also knows zip.

Obama said he was ``closing the loophole that has allowed some oil companies to bypass some critical environmental reviews.'

He has no choice. Want to wreck the economy more than he already has? Stop deepwater drilling and find out. Oil is one of the few things America still makes, and we still don't make enough oil and have to import today...and we are in massive debt due to progressive government spending. Somebody needs to make the money for all the new taxes. Obama is screwed - he has to drill. It's sort of fun to watch big talkers like Obama squirm when reality bites.

"Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do" -- Wendell Berry.

I remember reading Berry's classic story of him using a backhoe...and elsewhere how he "needs" a car to "be of service" to other people...etc, etc, etc. Bottom line: everyone is yapping about how terrible the gulf spill is. Sure, it's bad. But they also opin how it's all the other guy's fault. That's what Berry is all about in this quote - it's the pols, never the user. Well, if you fly, or drive, go ahead and look in the mirror. We are the cause. There is simply no way to avoid environmental "impact" when living on the earth and consuming. Oil actually has one of the lowest footprints of any energy source. The only real way to make a lower "impact" is to use less. Something all these self-described environmentalists don't seem to want to do (see: Gore).

Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/roddreher/2010/06/pssst-drill-baby-drill_comments.html#ixzz0rLI6YY3j

Items of Interest, 10 June 2010

Rod Dreher, The moral failure of BP & the feds
Michael Shedlock, BP's PR Campaign on Google; Obama Threatens to Kick Ass; Spill Takes Toll on Obama; Ideas Pour In

Counterpunch:
Jennifer Loewenstein, Obama, the ADC and the Gaza Flotilla
Robert Bryce, Winners and Losers in the Gulf
John Ross, The World Cup as Maximum Weapon of Social Control

JHK on the American Way of Life

Which Horizon?:

So far, also, the US has done nothing in the way of holding a serious national political discussion about the the most important part of the story: our pathological dependency on cars. I don't know if this will ever happen, even right up to the moment when the lines form at the filling stations. For years, anyway, the few public figures such as Boone Pickens who give the appearance of concern about our oil problem, end up down the rabbit hole of denial when they get behind schemes to run the whole US car-and-truck fleet on something besides gasoline.

This unfortunate techno-narcissism shows that almost nobody wants to think about living with fewer cars driving fewer miles. We're going to be dragged there kicking and screaming, but that's our destination, like it or not. All the effort now going into developing alt-fuels and "green" cars is just a form of "bargaining" on the Kubler-Ross transect of grief.

Traveling around the US, it's easy to understand our failure to come to grips with reality. The nation is fully outfitted for extreme car dependency. You go to places like Atlanta and Minneapolis and you understand how deep we're into this. We spent all our collective national treasure -- and quite a bit beyond that in the form of debt -- building the roadway systems and the suburban furnishings for that mode of existence. We incorporated it into our national identity as the American Way of Life. Now, we don't know what else to do except defend it at all costs, especially by waving the talismanic magic wand of techno-innovation.

The obvious remedy for the oil-and-car problem would be to live in walkable towns and neighborhoods served by the kind of public transit that people are not ashamed to ride in. But it may be too late for that. We're going to be a much poorer society from now on. We squandered the financial resources for that transition on too many other things. We're stuck with our investments in houses and their commercial accessories, built where they were built, and no Jolly Green Giant is going to pick them up and move them closer together in an artful way that adds up to real towns. A reorganization of American life will occur, but now it will be on much less deliberate terms, a much messier and more destructive operation, a default to the smaller scale by extreme necessity, with a lot of losses along the way. The Deepwater Horizon incident only hastens the process.

Items of Interest, 26 May 2010

An Interview with Peter North (original)
Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture

Pete North's new book "Local Money: how to make it happen in your community" will be formally launched at the 2010 Transition Network conference and will be available to order here at the end of this week. The latest book in the Transition Books series, "Local Money" is a comprehensive overview of local currencies, and how to plan and implement such a scheme.

Sustainable Medicine: An Issue Brief on Medical School Reform (original)
Dan Bednarz, Health after Oil

This issue brief calls for changes in medical school culture, primarily curriculum, research and clinical practice, as a conscious response to the simultaneously ongoing fiscal/economic crisis and what E.O. Wilson has termed the Bottleneck of ecological dilemmas, shown most prominently but not exclusively as the worldwide peak in crude oil production. Together these forces will reconfigure modern society, particularly health care.


Irony In Garden Farming (original)
Gene Logsdon, OrganicToBe.org

It says in the books that hens have to eat commercial mash to lay a profitable number of eggs. All the farming tradition they know about or been taught says you have to feed mash. Momma fed mash so don’t you dare insult her memory. Ditto for papal infallibility.

Deepwater Horizon: This is what the end of the Oil Age looks like by Richard Heinberg

Mark Weisbrot, The Eurozone's Self-Inflicted Crisis

Another Wake-Up Call for the World’s Biggest Oil Junkie

Chris Nelder, Getreallist

The explosion and destruction of the Horizon deepwater rig and the subsequent oil spill disaster are only the latest in a series of wake-up calls you’ve received. Are you listening now? Your first warning came in 1956, with the publication of M. King Hubbert’s model of US oil production, which correctly predicted its peak in 1970. When Hubbert updated his model on camera in 1976, he also nailed the peak of worldwide conventional oil production in 2005.

(original)