http://www.librarything.com/groups/iseedeadpeoplesbooks
Ever wander what kind of books the (in)famous authors and artists read? check the link for an Idea.
From Tupac Shakur (a mere 68 books, http://www.librarything.com/catalog/2pac including Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member - his first entry to The Prince)
from Tupac (where people ask hime to stop the violence in coments) TO miss MarieAntoinette yes, she could read! Marie Antoinette. 736 titles - all in French that I saw, including Pigmalion, : scene lyrique, by Rousseau and Voltaire's Théâtre complet de Mr. de Voltaire. Le tout revu et corrigé par l'auteur même.
IT EVEN TELLS you where your collection overlaps their's, for instance Marie and I share FOUR BOOKS! The Sorrows of Young Werther, Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels and in her chic spelling: Homère - L'Iliade.
But I still have my head and my Houellebecq.
SO READ A BOOK
NOW!
Jul 22, 2008
Deranged Deer pulverizes pet Pug (OHIO NEWS!)
Break out the CROSSBOWS, BAMBI IS ATTACKING!
the so sad video:
http://www.wkyc.com/video/default.aspx?maven_playerId=articleplayer&maven_referralPlaylistId=playlist&maven_referralObject=799652515
http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/news_article.aspx?storyid=93469&catid=45
Deer problems in Mentor escalate to attack on family dog
21July08
MENTOR -- It was just after breakfast Saturday morning when Allyson Weagraff and her two daughters heard their pug puppy yelping in the backyard.
"Unfortunately, it was at like 8 o clock, so the girls were awake and they heard my wife screaming," Chad Weagraff said. "She witnessed the whole thing."
What they saw was a doe stomping on the little dog.
"She was on a leash," Chad said.
A frantic Allyson began throwing canned goods at the animal, but it was too late. When her husband got to their Mentor home a few minutes later, the puppy was dead.
"I ran in the backyard cause I didn't think what she could be saying was true," Chad said.
The couple hopes an identical pug will comfort their two girls. Meanwhile, they can't help but think the outcome could have been even worse.
"Of course we were upset about the dog but then though, at least, thankfully, it wasn't the kids playing back here," Chad said.
Ohio wildlife officials say this was an unfortunate but isolated situation. It was probably an overprotective doe worried about her fawn. A more common problem is a deer vs. car.
"In the urban, suburban areas, you do see an increase in deer vehicle accidents," Scott Peters, a wildlife biologist, said.
Anyone who lives along busy state Route 306 in Mentor knows deer are a problem. In fact, residents asked the city to put up signs warning residents to be careful.
Frank Dolence has witnessed multiple accidents from his front porch.
"This poor lady, deer comes charging in, ran into her minivan, broke outside door," Dolence said. "It was terrible. She was shaking like a leaf."
There's no hunting in Mentor, leaving drivers and at least one heartbroken family looking for a way to thin the herd.
© 2008 WKYC-TV
the so sad video:
http://www.wkyc.com/video/default.aspx?maven_playerId=articleplayer&maven_referralPlaylistId=playlist&maven_referralObject=799652515
http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/news_article.aspx?storyid=93469&catid=45
Deer problems in Mentor escalate to attack on family dog
21July08
MENTOR -- It was just after breakfast Saturday morning when Allyson Weagraff and her two daughters heard their pug puppy yelping in the backyard.
"Unfortunately, it was at like 8 o clock, so the girls were awake and they heard my wife screaming," Chad Weagraff said. "She witnessed the whole thing."
What they saw was a doe stomping on the little dog.
"She was on a leash," Chad said.
A frantic Allyson began throwing canned goods at the animal, but it was too late. When her husband got to their Mentor home a few minutes later, the puppy was dead.
"I ran in the backyard cause I didn't think what she could be saying was true," Chad said.
The couple hopes an identical pug will comfort their two girls. Meanwhile, they can't help but think the outcome could have been even worse.
"Of course we were upset about the dog but then though, at least, thankfully, it wasn't the kids playing back here," Chad said.
Ohio wildlife officials say this was an unfortunate but isolated situation. It was probably an overprotective doe worried about her fawn. A more common problem is a deer vs. car.
"In the urban, suburban areas, you do see an increase in deer vehicle accidents," Scott Peters, a wildlife biologist, said.
Anyone who lives along busy state Route 306 in Mentor knows deer are a problem. In fact, residents asked the city to put up signs warning residents to be careful.
Frank Dolence has witnessed multiple accidents from his front porch.
"This poor lady, deer comes charging in, ran into her minivan, broke outside door," Dolence said. "It was terrible. She was shaking like a leaf."
There's no hunting in Mentor, leaving drivers and at least one heartbroken family looking for a way to thin the herd.
© 2008 WKYC-TV
Jul 21, 2008
Jul 20, 2008
While Akron has a group to Save our Sewers (SOS) what does San Francisco do?
ED NORTON, SEWER WORKER, from the HONEYMOONERS.now:
Democracy in Action!
SF: to honor theirs (or honor GW?): Name thier plant after the president!
Will Akron honor its plant with such a name? Perhaps the Dick Cheney Cesspool & Purification Luxury Park? what was that sound? ah, the truth being flushed away . . . (off course some god-fearing Akronites want to maintain control of the plant, the Private Sector is inept and will criminally raise prices, look at gasoline, maybe AKRON should nationalize its gas stations, electric, and everything else? clearly the free market is not as efficient as City Hall, right?)
from the SAN CHRON:
George W. Bush Sewage Plant plan is on ballot
Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, July 18, 2008
(07-17) 14:57 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco voters will be asked to decide whether to name a city sewage plant in honor of President Bush, after a satiric measure qualified for the November ballot Thursday.
Backers of the measure, who for several months circulated a petition to place the measure on the ballot, turned in more than 12,000 signatures on July 7, said organizer Brian McConnell. The Department of Elections on Thursday informed those supporters, the self-proclaimed Presidential Memorial Commission, that they had enough valid signatures - a minimum of 7,168 registered San Francisco voters - to qualify for the November ballot.
McConnell, who came up with the idea over beers with friends, often donned an Uncle Sam outfit to drum up support for the petition. The all-volunteer group of signature gatherers often carried around an American flag and blasted patriotic music from a boom box to attract attention. He said the campaign to pass the measure will be an equally grassroots effort.
The measure, if passed, would rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. McConnell said the intent is to remember the Bush administration and what the group sees as the president's mistakes, including the war in Iraq.
Some people aren't laughing, including the San Francisco Republican Party, which sees the measure as an embarrassment, even to this famously liberal city. Chairman Howard Epstein has vowed to fight the measure with all means available to him.
A White House spokeswoman, when asked about the measure several weeks ago, refused to comment.
E-mail Marisa Lagos at mlagos@sfchronicle.com.
+++++++++++++++
Like we say in the sewer, "time and tide wait for no man". ED NORTON in the HONEYMOONERS.
..
Jul 17, 2008
name that tune......
as much fun:
stop the car I am getting out . . . you are no longer here . . .
+++++
sing along?
with Peter Schilling, a bit of Major Tom??
Gründlich durchgecheckt steht Sie da
und wartet auf den Start , Alles klar.
Expirimenten streiten sich um ein paar Daten.
Die Crew hat dann nach ein paar Fragen
,doch der Countdown läuft.
Effektivität bestimt das Hendeln
Mann verläßt sich blind auf den andern
Jeder weiß genau was von ihm abhängt
,jeder is im Streß , Doch Majer Tom
macht einen Scherz
Dan hebt er ab und !
Völlig losgelöst von der Erde
schwebt das raumschiff völlig schwerelos
Die Erdanziehungkraft ist überwunden
Alles lauft perfekt schon seit Stunden
Wissenschaftliche Experimente , doch was nützen die an Ende denkt sich Major Tom
Im Kontrollzentrum da wird man panisch
Der Kurs der Kapsel der stimt ja gar nicht
Hallo Major Tom können Sie hören,
Woll'n Sie das Projekt den so zerstören ,doch er kannn nichts hörn
er schwebt weiter
Völlig losgelöst von der Erde schwebt das raumschiff völlig schwerelos
Die Erde schimmert blau
Sein letzter Funk komt : Grüßt mir meine Frau
Und er verstummt
Unten trauern noch die Egoisten,
Major Tom denkt sich wenn die wüßten
das kennt ihr noch nicht , ich komme bald
Mir wird kalt
Vóllig losgelöst von der Erde schwebt das raumschiff völlig schwerelos
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Pet Shop Boys
Maybe I didnt treat you quite as good as I should
Maybe I didnt love you quite as often as I could
Little things I shouldve said and done, I never took the time
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
Maybe I didnt hold you all those lonely, lonely times
And I guess I never told you, Im so happy that youre mine
If I made you feel second best, Im so sorry, I was blind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
Tell me, tell me that your sweet love hasnt died
Give me one more chance to keep you satisfied
Satisfied
Little things I shouldve said and done, I never took the time
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
Tell me, tell me that your sweet love hasnt died
Give me one more chance to keep you satisfied
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
Maybe I didnt treat you quite as good as I should
Maybe I didnt love you quite as often as I could
Maybe I didnt hold you all those lonely, lonely times
And I guess I never told you, Im so happy that youre mine
=
=
=
Jul 15, 2008
Middle Earth in Akron? paging Frodo Baggins
There was a large toadstool/mushroom in the back, I could see it from the kitchen sink. It was perfect in shape, an object for elves and hobbits- time to smile.
Then Tuesday night I saw it under seige, victim of a DRAGON spirited squirrel raid! such violence, the little porker ran off with a big piece! Leaving Frodo standing hungry no doubt, enjoy, Think TOLKIEN.....
homeless are the nymphs...... but the dreams can live on, right?
I thought I had elves and trolls and hobbits and awaited Bilbo and Frodo, so were the DRAGONS actually squirrels?
a Middle Earth menu like this was anticipated!
Yavanna, a soup popular among elves, with bacon, peppers, onions and mushrooms . . . Middle Earth's idea of herb focaccia and a tomato, mozzarella and mushroom salad. . .
Mushrooms
A favorite food of Hobbits. In the Shire, Farmer Maggot was noted for the fine mushrooms he grew at Bamfurlong, his farm in the Marish on the west bank of the Brandywine River. As a child, a yearning for mushrooms led Frodo Baggins to Farmer Maggot's fields to steal from his crop. Maggot caught young Frodo and threatened to set his dogs on him if he ever trespassed on his land again. When Frodo and his companions found themselves in Farmer Maggot's fields as they made their way to Crickhollow on September 25, 3018, Maggot remembered Frodo but did not make good on his threat. Instead, the Hobbits were treated to a meal including a dish of mushrooms and bacon, and Mrs. Maggot prepared a basket of mushrooms for Maggot to give to Frodo when they parted.
Sources:
The Fellowship of the Ring: "A Short Cut to Mushrooms," p. 100-107; "A Conspiracy Unmasked," p. 112
[ from http://www.tuckborough.net/food.html ]
hum, time to read......
Then Tuesday night I saw it under seige, victim of a DRAGON spirited squirrel raid! such violence, the little porker ran off with a big piece! Leaving Frodo standing hungry no doubt, enjoy, Think TOLKIEN.....
homeless are the nymphs...... but the dreams can live on, right?
I thought I had elves and trolls and hobbits and awaited Bilbo and Frodo, so were the DRAGONS actually squirrels?
a Middle Earth menu like this was anticipated!
Yavanna, a soup popular among elves, with bacon, peppers, onions and mushrooms . . . Middle Earth's idea of herb focaccia and a tomato, mozzarella and mushroom salad. . .
Mushrooms
A favorite food of Hobbits. In the Shire, Farmer Maggot was noted for the fine mushrooms he grew at Bamfurlong, his farm in the Marish on the west bank of the Brandywine River. As a child, a yearning for mushrooms led Frodo Baggins to Farmer Maggot's fields to steal from his crop. Maggot caught young Frodo and threatened to set his dogs on him if he ever trespassed on his land again. When Frodo and his companions found themselves in Farmer Maggot's fields as they made their way to Crickhollow on September 25, 3018, Maggot remembered Frodo but did not make good on his threat. Instead, the Hobbits were treated to a meal including a dish of mushrooms and bacon, and Mrs. Maggot prepared a basket of mushrooms for Maggot to give to Frodo when they parted.
Sources:
The Fellowship of the Ring: "A Short Cut to Mushrooms," p. 100-107; "A Conspiracy Unmasked," p. 112
[ from http://www.tuckborough.net/food.html ]
hum, time to read......
Jul 11, 2008
Akronites (union members, special interests) take a stand SAVE OUR SEWERS
+
+
+
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
the was an article in the Plain Dealer about cities that fund college education for their high school grads; said property values went up, a good thing, and schools had better attendance. But then, just north of the famed Out House Belt, sewer workers have united and are spear heading:
SOS: Save Our Sewers (forget the property values, education, wave the ED NORTON BANNER!)
laugh:
Akron receives sewer petition
Grass-roots group seeks amendment to charter regarding leasing, selling
By Carl Chancellor Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Friday, Jul 11, 2008
Akron voters are one step closer to having a say in deciding whether the city's sewers will be sold or leased.
Petitions bearing 5,293 signatures were presented Thursday morning to the clerk of Akron City Council by members of Citizens to Save Our Sewers and Water.
The group — a grass-roots coalition of union workers and concerned citizens — is seeking to amend the city's charter to require that any action to sell, lease or transfer a public utility be approved by a majority of the voters.
''People we approached overwhelmingly supported letting the public decide to sell or lease the sewer system,'' said Willie Smith, with Save Our Sewers. Smith said the response to the petition drive was overwhelmingly favorable.
''It was very easy to collect signatures. People want to have a direct voice. This issue is too important to leave it up to the mayor and council alone,'' Smith said. He said SOS hopes the amendment will be placed on the November ballot.
SOS was formed on the heels of Mayor Don Plusquellic's announcement in February that he wanted to sell the sewer system as a way to pay for scholarships for Akron's public high school graduates to the University of Akron or trade schools.
The mayor later said that instead of selling the sewer system, the city would arrange a long-term lease in which Akron would maintain ownership and a private company would operate the system.
Jack Sombati, SOS campaign coordinator and an official for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the union that represents Akron's sewer and water department workers, called the mayor's desire to raise scholarship money for Akron students honorable. However, he said selling off the city's sewers isn't the way to do it.
''Selling or leasing Akron's sewers to a private company will raise consumer rates — rates could double or triple,'' Sombati said, suggesting that such a deal would eliminate jobs and compromise service.
He said a private corporation would be accountable to its ''global shareholders and not local citizens.''
Sombati said he was confident that SOS had collected enough signatures to get the amendment on the ballot.
''The signatures we've collected are more than sufficient. What we need is 2,339 signatures, which is 10 percent of the electorate,'' Sombati said.
According to law, petitioners must collect signatures equal to 10 percent of the number of Akron voters in the mayoral-council elections last November.
The petitions will go to the Summit County Board of Elections, which has 10 days to validate the signatures.
Plusquellic issued a statement Thursday defending his proposal.
''Voters need to know that the initiative petition filed [Thursday] is part of a scheme to try and kill our effort to provide scholarships for children of hardworking parents who are struggling to make a better life for their children,'' he said.
Carl Chancellor can be reached at 330-996-3725 or cchancellor@thebeaconjournal.com.
Akron voters are one step closer to having a say in deciding whether the city's sewers will be sold or leased.
Petitions bearing 5,293 signatures were presented Thursday morning to the clerk of Akron City Council by members of Citizens to Save Our Sewers and Water.
The group — a grass-roots coalition of union workers and concerned citizens — is seeking to amend the city's charter to require that any action to sell, lease or transfer a public utility be approved by a majority of the voters.
''People we approached overwhelmingly supported letting the public decide to sell or lease the sewer system,'' said Willie Smith, with Save Our Sewers. Smith said the response to the petition drive was overwhelmingly favorable.
''It was very easy to collect signatures. People want to have a direct voice. This issue is too important to leave it up to the mayor and council alone,'' Smith said. He said SOS hopes the amendment will be placed on the November ballot.
SOS was formed on the heels of Mayor Don Plusquellic's announcement in February that he wanted to sell the sewer system as a way to pay for scholarships for Akron's public high school graduates to the University of Akron or trade schools.
The mayor later said that instead of selling the sewer system, the city would arrange a long-term lease in which Akron would maintain ownership and a private company would operate the system.
Jack Sombati, SOS campaign coordinator and an official for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the union that represents Akron's sewer and water department workers, called the mayor's desire to raise scholarship money for Akron students honorable. However, he said selling off the city's sewers isn't the way to do it.
''Selling or leasing Akron's sewers to a private company will raise consumer rates — rates could double or triple,'' Sombati said, suggesting that such a deal would eliminate jobs and compromise service.
He said a private corporation would be accountable to its ''global shareholders and not local citizens.''
Sombati said he was confident that SOS had collected enough signatures to get the amendment on the ballot.
''The signatures we've collected are more than sufficient. What we need is 2,339 signatures, which is 10 percent of the electorate,'' Sombati said.
According to law, petitioners must collect signatures equal to 10 percent of the number of Akron voters in the mayoral-council elections last November.
The petitions will go to the Summit County Board of Elections, which has 10 days to validate the signatures.
Plusquellic issued a statement Thursday defending his proposal.
''Voters need to know that the initiative petition filed [Thursday] is part of a scheme to try and kill our effort to provide scholarships for children of hardworking parents who are struggling to make a better life for their children,'' he said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carl Chancellor can be reached at 330-996-3725 or cchancellor@thebeaconjournal.com.
Jul 9, 2008
ever feel the need to fold?
ever feel the need to fold? this was in the Wall Street Journal today, about former GAP employees' folding fetish obsessions!
NBC NIGHTLY NEWS JULY 8th, 2008 Broadcast: NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY
transcript below . . . click to play 'liberated' video . . .
NBC NIGHTLY NEWS
July 8, 2008
THE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY
NBC NIGHTLY NEWS
July 8, 2008
THE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/ could be a fluid link tho....
NBC News
July 8, 2008 Tuesday
NBC Nightly News
Newspaper business beginning to cut jobs
BRIAN WILLIAMS
MIKE TAIBBI
BRIAN WILLIAMS, anchor:
The Internet age has ushered in lots of challenges for traditional media of all types, including the television industry, but nowhere has the rise of the Internet hit as hard as in the newsrooms and boardrooms of this nation's newspapers. Just today, the Chicago Tribune cut 80 jobs in its newsroom alone. NBC's Mike Taibbi has more on hard times for an American institution.
MIKE TAIBBI reporting:
It's long been an American ritual, part of how we start our day.
Unidentified Man #1: It's the first thing I grab in the morning.
TAIBBI: And millions of us still cherish our daily paper.
Unidentified Woman: There's something about holding it in your hand and actually reading the words.
TAIBBI: But the days are long gone when Orson Welles of "Citizen Kane" could crow that losing a million a year to publish his paper meant nothing.
(Clip from "Citizen Kane" courtesy Warner Home Video)
TAIBBI: Now the San Francisco Chronicle is losing a million a week and recent headlines suggest an industry in freefall. Nearly 2,000 more newsroom jobs to be lost. The Boston Herald the latest paper to dump its printing operation and printing staff. And Chicago's Tribune company putting Tribune Tower on the block, along with Wrigley Field and the Chicago Cubs. It's in that context that the new publisher of the four Palm Beach Post papers...
Mr. DOUG FRANKLIN (The Palm Beach Post Publisher): Last week was a tough week for everybody, a lot of sadness.
TAIBBI: ...announced 300 jobs will be cut.
Mr. BILL ROSE (The Palm Beach Post Managing Editor): It was like a bomb going off in the newsroom.
TAIBBI: It's why the paper's Web site now rules the day, not the print version.
Mr. TIM BURKE (The Palm Beach Post Vice President of Digital Media): Roughly 32 of our 41 reporters would now be classified as online news reporters.
TAIBBI: What does that make you think about your future?
Ms. ROCHELLE GILKEN (The Palm Beach Post Crime Reporter): It makes me think that my future isn't at a newspaper.
TAIBBI: No newspaper in print because people Rochelle Gilken's age and the digital age...
Unidentified Man #2: So I get these Google alerts, and I probably get like 20 a morning.
TAIBBI: ...are almost militant about how little newspapers mean to them.
Mr. DOUG MISKIE (San Francisco Resident): If I'm reading something in the newspaper, I feel like it's yesterday's news.
Mr. MORT ZUCKERMAN (New York Daily News Owner): People who had two jobs are now getting one job. People...
TAIBBI: One publisher bucking the trend, Mort Zuckerman of the New York Daily News, whose deep pockets and urban readership convinced him to gamble 150 million bucks on new full color presses to try to win back advertisers and readers for a while.
Mr. ZUCKERMAN: I don't know how long we'll be profitable. I mean, who knows what's going to happen in 10 years.
TAIBBI: All the trends now paint a grim picture for the ink and paper news business, the ticking of the clock impossible to ignore. Mike Taibbi, NBC News, New York.
WILLIAMS: When we come back here tonight, what does work when it comes to good health?
hum, sounds bad, but . . .
Jul 8, 2008
Beerboarding, a new word!
URBAN WORD OF THE DAY:
beerboarding
A controversial process of extracting otherwise-secret information from a friend or co-worker by getting them drunk and thereby loosening their control on their tongue.
The guys at work took me out drinking last night. After quite a few beers and a lot of questions I finally let slip that I was going to be a father. What can I say? Beerboarding should be against the law.
beerboarding
A controversial process of extracting otherwise-secret information from a friend or co-worker by getting them drunk and thereby loosening their control on their tongue.
The guys at work took me out drinking last night. After quite a few beers and a lot of questions I finally let slip that I was going to be a father. What can I say? Beerboarding should be against the law.
Jul 7, 2008
Filling up the tank?
http://mondediplo.com/2008/07/02usgas
Le Monde Diplomatique
July 2008
Energy self-sufficiency not military escorts for oilThe US gas garrison
The Carter Doctrine, established 28 years ago, put the US military in service of assuring the nation’s regular supplies of imported oil. This has near-bankrupted the US and corrupted the military, yet left the US insecure in energy sources and globally loathed. The time has come to demote petroleum and stand down the troops.
By Michael T. Klare
American policymakers have long viewed the protection of overseas oil supplies as an essential matter of “national security”, requiring the threat of – and sometimes the use of – military force. This is now an unquestioned part of US foreign policy.
On this basis, the first Bush administration fought a war against Iraq in 1990-1991 and the second Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003. With global oil prices soaring and oil reserves expected to dwindle in the years ahead, military force is sure to be seen by whatever new administration enters Washington in January 2009 as the ultimate guarantor of US well-being in the oil heartlands of the planet. But with the costs of militarised oil operations, in both blood and dollars, rising precipitously, isn’t it time to challenge such “wisdom”? Isn’t it time to ask whether the US military has anything reasonable to do with American energy security, and whether a reliance on military force, when it comes to energy policy, is practical, affordable or justifiable?
The association between “energy security” (as it’s now termed) and “national security” was established long ago. President Franklin D Roosevelt first forged this association way back in 1945, when he pledged to protect the Saudi Arabian royal family in return for privileged US access to Saudi oil. The relationship was given formal expression in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter told Congress that maintaining the uninterrupted flow of Persian Gulf oil was a “vital interest” of the US, and attempts by hostile nations to cut that flow would be countered “by any means necessary, including military force”.
To implement this “doctrine”, Carter ordered the creation of a Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, specifically earmarked for combat operations in the Persian Gulf area. President Ronald Reagan later turned that force into a full-scale regional combat organisation, the US Central Command, or Centcom. Every president since Reagan has added to Centcom’s responsibilities, endowing it with additional bases, fleets, air squadrons and other assets. As the country has, more recently, come to rely on oil from the Caspian Sea basin and Africa, US military capabilities are being beefed up in those areas as well.
Global protection service
As a result, the US military has come to serve as a global oil protection service, guarding pipelines, refineries and loading facilities in the Middle East and elsewhere. According to one estimate, provided by the conservative National Defence Council Foundation, the “protection” of Persian Gulf oil alone costs the US Treasury $138bn per year – up from $49bn just before the invasion of Iraq.
For Democrats and Republicans alike, spending such sums to protect foreign oil supplies is now accepted as common wisdom, not worthy of serious discussion or debate. A typical example of this attitude can be found in an Independent Task Force Report on the “National Security Consequences of US Oil Dependency” released by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in October 2006.
Chaired by former secretary of defence, James R Schlesinger, and former CIA director, John Deutch, the CFR report concluded that the US military must continue to serve as a global oil protection service for the foreseeable future. “At least for the next two decades, the Persian Gulf will be vital to US interests in reliable oil supplies,” it noted. Accordingly, “the United States should expect and support a strong military posture that permits suitably rapid deployment to the region, if necessary”. Similarly, the report adds: “US naval protection of the sea-lanes that transport oil is of paramount importance.”
The Pentagon as Insecurity Inc
These views, widely shared, then and now, by senior figures in both major parties, dominate – or, more accurately, blanket – US strategic thinking. And yet the actual utility of military force as a means for ensuring energy security has yet to be demonstrated.
Keep in mind that, despite the deployment of up to 160,000 US troops in Iraq and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, Iraq is a country in chaos and the department of defence (DoD) has been notoriously unable to prevent the recurring sabotage of oil pipelines and refineries by various insurgent groups and militias, not to mention the systematic looting of government supplies by senior oil officials supposedly loyal to the US-backed central government and often guarded (at great personal risk) by US soldiers. Five years after the US invasion, Iraq is only producing about 2.5m barrels of oil per day – about the same amount as in the worst days of Saddam Hussein back in 2001. Moreover, the New York Times reports that “at least one-third, and possibly much more, of the fuel from Iraq’s largest refinery is [being] diverted to the black market, according to American military officials” (1). Is this really conducive to US energy security?
The same disappointing results have been noted in other countries where US-backed militaries have attempted to protect vulnerable oil facilities. In Nigeria, for example, increased efforts by US-equipped government forces to crush rebels in the oil-rich Niger Delta region have merely inflamed the insurgency, while actually lowering national oil output. Meanwhile, the Nigerian military, like the Iraqi government (and assorted militias), has been accused of pilfering billions of dollars’ worth of crude oil and selling it on the black market.
In reality, the use of military force to protect foreign oil supplies is likely to create anything but security. It can, in fact, trigger violent “blowback” against the US. For example, the decision by President Bush senior to maintain an enormous, permanent US military presence in Saudi Arabia following Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait is now widely viewed as a major source of virulent anti-Americanism in the kingdom, and became a prime recruiting tool for Osama bin Laden in the months leading up to the 9/11 terror attacks.
“For over seven years,” Bin Laden proclaimed in 1998, “the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorising its neighbours, and turning its bases in the peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight neighbouring Muslim peoples”. To repel this assault on the Muslim world, he thundered, it was “an individual duty for every Muslim” to “kill the Americans” and drive their armies “out of all the lands of Islam”.
Blowback in Iraq
As if to confirm the veracity of Bin Laden’s analysis of US intentions, the then secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, flew to Saudi Arabia on 30 April 2003 to announce that the US bases there would no longer be needed due to the successful invasion of Iraq, then barely one month old. “It is now a safer region because of the change of regime in Iraq,” Rumsfeld declared. “The aircraft and those involved will now be able to leave.”
Even as he was speaking in Riyadh, however, a dangerous new case of blowback had erupted in Iraq: upon their entry into Baghdad, US forces seized and guarded the oil ministry headquarters while allowing schools, hospitals, and museums to be looted with impunity. Most Iraqis have since come to regard this decision, which insured that the rest of the city would be looted, as the ultimate expression of the Bush administration’s main motive for invading their country. They have viewed repeated White House claims of a commitment to human rights and democracy there as mere fig leaves that barely covered the urge to plunder Iraq’s oil. Nothing American officials have done since has succeeded in erasing this powerful impression, which continues to drive calls for a US withdrawal.
And these are but a few examples of the losses to US national security produced by a thoroughly militarised approach to energy security. Yet the premises of such a global policy continue to go unquestioned, even as US policymakers persist in relying on military force as their ultimate response to threats to the safe production and transportation of oil. In a kind of energy Catch-22, the continual militarising of energy policy only multiplies the threats that call such militarisation into being.
If anything, this spiral of militarised insecurity is worsening. Take the expanded US military presence in Africa – one of the few areas in the world expected to experience an increase in oil output in the years ahead.
Time to rethink
This year the Pentagon will activate the US Africa Command (Africom), its first new overseas combat command since Reagan created Centcom a quarter of a century ago. Although department of defence officials are loath to publicly acknowledge any direct relationship between Africom’s formation and a growing US reliance on that continent’s oil, they are less inhibited in private briefings. At a 19 February meeting at the National Defence University, Africom deputy commander Vice-Admiral Robert Moeller indicated that “oil disruption” in Nigeria and West Africa would constitute one of the primary challenges facing the new organisation.
Africom and similar extensions of the Carter Doctrine into new oil-producing regions are only likely to provoke fresh blowback, while bundling tens of billions of extra dollars every year into an already-bloated Pentagon budget. Sooner or later, if US policy doesn’t change, this price will be certain to include the loss of American lives, as more and more soldiers are exposed to hostile fire or explosives while protecting vulnerable oil installations in areas torn by ethnic, religious, and sectarian strife.
Why pay such a price? Given the all-but-unavoidable evidence of just how ineffective military force has been when it comes to protecting oil supplies, isn’t it time to rethink Washington’s reigning assumptions regarding the relationship between energy security and national security? After all, other than George Bush and Dick Cheney, who would claim that, more than five years after the invasion of Iraq, either the US or its supply of oil is actually safer?
Creating real energy security
The reality of the US’s increasing reliance on foreign oil only strengthens the conviction in Washington that military force and energy security are inseparable twins. With nearly two-thirds of the country’s daily oil intake imported – and that percentage still going up – it’s hard not to notice that significant amounts of our oil now come from conflict-prone areas of the Middle East, central Asia and Africa. So long as this is the case, US policymakers will instinctively look to the military to ensure the safe delivery of crude oil. It evidently matters little that the use of military force, especially in the Middle East, has surely made the energy situation less stable and less dependable, while fuelling anti-Americanism.
This is, of course, not the definition of “energy security” but its opposite. A viable long-term approach to actual energy security would not favour one particular source of energy above all others, or regularly expose American soldiers to a heightened risk of harm and American taxpayers to a heightened risk of bankruptcy. Rather, a US energy policy that made sense would embrace a holistic approach to energy procurement, weighing the relative merits of all potential sources of energy.
It would naturally favour the development of domestic, renewable sources of energy that do not degrade the environment or imperil other national interests. At the same time, it would favour a thorough-going programme of energy conservation of a sort notably absent these last two decades – one that would help cut reliance on foreign energy sources in the near future and slow the atmospheric build-up of climate-altering greenhouse gases.
Petroleum would continue to play a significant role in any such approach. Oil retains considerable appeal as a source of transportation energy (especially for aircraft) and as a feedstock for many chemical products. But given the right investment and research policies – and the will to apply something other than force to energy supply issues – oil’s historic role as the world’s paramount fuel could relatively quickly draw to a close. It would be especially important that American policymakers do not prolong this role artificially by, as has been the case for decades, subsidising major US oil firms or, more recently, spending $138bn a year on the protection of foreign oil deliveries. These funds would instead be redirected to the promotion of energy efficiency and especially the development of domestic sources of energy.
Some policymakers who agree on the need to develop alternatives to imported energy insist that such an approach should begin with oil extraction in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and other protected wilderness areas. Even while acknowledging that such drilling would not substantially reduce US reliance on foreign oil, they nevertheless insist that it’s essential to make every conceivable effort to substitute domestic oil supplies for imports in the nation’s total energy supply. But this argument ignores the fact that oil’s day is drawing to a close, and that any effort to prolong its duration only complicates the inevitable transition to a post-petroleum economy.
A more fruitful approach
A far more fruitful approach, better designed to promote US self-sufficiency and technological vigour in the intensely competitive world of the mid-21st century, would emphasise the use of domestic ingenuity and entrepreneurial skills to maximise the potential of renewable energy sources, including solar, wind, geothermal and wave power. The same skills should also be applied to developing methods for producing ethanol from non-food plant matter (cellulosic ethanol), for using coal without releasing carbon into the atmosphere (via carbon capture and storage, or CCS), for miniaturising hydrogen fuel cells, and for massively increasing the energy efficiency of vehicles, buildings, and industrial processes.
All of these energy systems show great promise, and so should be accorded the increased support and investment they will need to move from the marginal role they now play to a dominant role in US energy generation. At this point, it is not possible to determine precisely which of them (or which combination among them) will be best positioned to transition from small to large-scale commercial development. As a result, all of them should be initially given enough support to test their capacity to make this move.
In applying this general rule, however, priority clearly should be given to new forms of transport fuel. It is here that oil has long been king, and here that oil’s decline will be most harshly felt. It is thanks to this that calls for military intervention to secure additional supplies of crude are only likely to grow. So emphasis should be given to the rapid development of biofuels, coal-to-liquid fuels (with the carbon extracted via CCS), hydrogen, or battery power, and other innovative means of fuelling vehicles. At the same time, it’s obvious that putting some of our military budget into funding a massive increase in public transit would be the height of national sanity.
An approach of this sort would enhance national security on multiple levels. It would increase the reliable supply of fuels, promote economic growth at home (rather than sending a flood of dollars into the coffers of unreliable petro-regimes abroad), and diminish the risk of recurring US involvement in foreign oil wars. No other approach – certainly not the present traditional, unquestioned, unchallenged reliance on military force – can make this claim. It’s well past time to stop garrisoning the global gas station.
see also http://goddamnbigoil.blogspot.com/
+++++++++++++++++++++
Le Monde Diplomatique
July 2008
Energy self-sufficiency not military escorts for oilThe US gas garrison
The Carter Doctrine, established 28 years ago, put the US military in service of assuring the nation’s regular supplies of imported oil. This has near-bankrupted the US and corrupted the military, yet left the US insecure in energy sources and globally loathed. The time has come to demote petroleum and stand down the troops.
By Michael T. Klare
Michael T Klare is professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire
College and author of several books on energy politics including Blood and Oil,
Henry Holt, New York, 2005 and most recently Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet:
The New Geopolitics of Energy, Henry Holt, 2008
American policymakers have long viewed the protection of overseas oil supplies as an essential matter of “national security”, requiring the threat of – and sometimes the use of – military force. This is now an unquestioned part of US foreign policy.
On this basis, the first Bush administration fought a war against Iraq in 1990-1991 and the second Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003. With global oil prices soaring and oil reserves expected to dwindle in the years ahead, military force is sure to be seen by whatever new administration enters Washington in January 2009 as the ultimate guarantor of US well-being in the oil heartlands of the planet. But with the costs of militarised oil operations, in both blood and dollars, rising precipitously, isn’t it time to challenge such “wisdom”? Isn’t it time to ask whether the US military has anything reasonable to do with American energy security, and whether a reliance on military force, when it comes to energy policy, is practical, affordable or justifiable?
The association between “energy security” (as it’s now termed) and “national security” was established long ago. President Franklin D Roosevelt first forged this association way back in 1945, when he pledged to protect the Saudi Arabian royal family in return for privileged US access to Saudi oil. The relationship was given formal expression in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter told Congress that maintaining the uninterrupted flow of Persian Gulf oil was a “vital interest” of the US, and attempts by hostile nations to cut that flow would be countered “by any means necessary, including military force”.
To implement this “doctrine”, Carter ordered the creation of a Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, specifically earmarked for combat operations in the Persian Gulf area. President Ronald Reagan later turned that force into a full-scale regional combat organisation, the US Central Command, or Centcom. Every president since Reagan has added to Centcom’s responsibilities, endowing it with additional bases, fleets, air squadrons and other assets. As the country has, more recently, come to rely on oil from the Caspian Sea basin and Africa, US military capabilities are being beefed up in those areas as well.
Global protection service
As a result, the US military has come to serve as a global oil protection service, guarding pipelines, refineries and loading facilities in the Middle East and elsewhere. According to one estimate, provided by the conservative National Defence Council Foundation, the “protection” of Persian Gulf oil alone costs the US Treasury $138bn per year – up from $49bn just before the invasion of Iraq.
For Democrats and Republicans alike, spending such sums to protect foreign oil supplies is now accepted as common wisdom, not worthy of serious discussion or debate. A typical example of this attitude can be found in an Independent Task Force Report on the “National Security Consequences of US Oil Dependency” released by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in October 2006.
Chaired by former secretary of defence, James R Schlesinger, and former CIA director, John Deutch, the CFR report concluded that the US military must continue to serve as a global oil protection service for the foreseeable future. “At least for the next two decades, the Persian Gulf will be vital to US interests in reliable oil supplies,” it noted. Accordingly, “the United States should expect and support a strong military posture that permits suitably rapid deployment to the region, if necessary”. Similarly, the report adds: “US naval protection of the sea-lanes that transport oil is of paramount importance.”
The Pentagon as Insecurity Inc
These views, widely shared, then and now, by senior figures in both major parties, dominate – or, more accurately, blanket – US strategic thinking. And yet the actual utility of military force as a means for ensuring energy security has yet to be demonstrated.
Keep in mind that, despite the deployment of up to 160,000 US troops in Iraq and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, Iraq is a country in chaos and the department of defence (DoD) has been notoriously unable to prevent the recurring sabotage of oil pipelines and refineries by various insurgent groups and militias, not to mention the systematic looting of government supplies by senior oil officials supposedly loyal to the US-backed central government and often guarded (at great personal risk) by US soldiers. Five years after the US invasion, Iraq is only producing about 2.5m barrels of oil per day – about the same amount as in the worst days of Saddam Hussein back in 2001. Moreover, the New York Times reports that “at least one-third, and possibly much more, of the fuel from Iraq’s largest refinery is [being] diverted to the black market, according to American military officials” (1). Is this really conducive to US energy security?
The same disappointing results have been noted in other countries where US-backed militaries have attempted to protect vulnerable oil facilities. In Nigeria, for example, increased efforts by US-equipped government forces to crush rebels in the oil-rich Niger Delta region have merely inflamed the insurgency, while actually lowering national oil output. Meanwhile, the Nigerian military, like the Iraqi government (and assorted militias), has been accused of pilfering billions of dollars’ worth of crude oil and selling it on the black market.
In reality, the use of military force to protect foreign oil supplies is likely to create anything but security. It can, in fact, trigger violent “blowback” against the US. For example, the decision by President Bush senior to maintain an enormous, permanent US military presence in Saudi Arabia following Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait is now widely viewed as a major source of virulent anti-Americanism in the kingdom, and became a prime recruiting tool for Osama bin Laden in the months leading up to the 9/11 terror attacks.
“For over seven years,” Bin Laden proclaimed in 1998, “the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorising its neighbours, and turning its bases in the peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight neighbouring Muslim peoples”. To repel this assault on the Muslim world, he thundered, it was “an individual duty for every Muslim” to “kill the Americans” and drive their armies “out of all the lands of Islam”.
Blowback in Iraq
As if to confirm the veracity of Bin Laden’s analysis of US intentions, the then secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, flew to Saudi Arabia on 30 April 2003 to announce that the US bases there would no longer be needed due to the successful invasion of Iraq, then barely one month old. “It is now a safer region because of the change of regime in Iraq,” Rumsfeld declared. “The aircraft and those involved will now be able to leave.”
Even as he was speaking in Riyadh, however, a dangerous new case of blowback had erupted in Iraq: upon their entry into Baghdad, US forces seized and guarded the oil ministry headquarters while allowing schools, hospitals, and museums to be looted with impunity. Most Iraqis have since come to regard this decision, which insured that the rest of the city would be looted, as the ultimate expression of the Bush administration’s main motive for invading their country. They have viewed repeated White House claims of a commitment to human rights and democracy there as mere fig leaves that barely covered the urge to plunder Iraq’s oil. Nothing American officials have done since has succeeded in erasing this powerful impression, which continues to drive calls for a US withdrawal.
And these are but a few examples of the losses to US national security produced by a thoroughly militarised approach to energy security. Yet the premises of such a global policy continue to go unquestioned, even as US policymakers persist in relying on military force as their ultimate response to threats to the safe production and transportation of oil. In a kind of energy Catch-22, the continual militarising of energy policy only multiplies the threats that call such militarisation into being.
If anything, this spiral of militarised insecurity is worsening. Take the expanded US military presence in Africa – one of the few areas in the world expected to experience an increase in oil output in the years ahead.
Time to rethink
This year the Pentagon will activate the US Africa Command (Africom), its first new overseas combat command since Reagan created Centcom a quarter of a century ago. Although department of defence officials are loath to publicly acknowledge any direct relationship between Africom’s formation and a growing US reliance on that continent’s oil, they are less inhibited in private briefings. At a 19 February meeting at the National Defence University, Africom deputy commander Vice-Admiral Robert Moeller indicated that “oil disruption” in Nigeria and West Africa would constitute one of the primary challenges facing the new organisation.
Africom and similar extensions of the Carter Doctrine into new oil-producing regions are only likely to provoke fresh blowback, while bundling tens of billions of extra dollars every year into an already-bloated Pentagon budget. Sooner or later, if US policy doesn’t change, this price will be certain to include the loss of American lives, as more and more soldiers are exposed to hostile fire or explosives while protecting vulnerable oil installations in areas torn by ethnic, religious, and sectarian strife.
Why pay such a price? Given the all-but-unavoidable evidence of just how ineffective military force has been when it comes to protecting oil supplies, isn’t it time to rethink Washington’s reigning assumptions regarding the relationship between energy security and national security? After all, other than George Bush and Dick Cheney, who would claim that, more than five years after the invasion of Iraq, either the US or its supply of oil is actually safer?
Creating real energy security
The reality of the US’s increasing reliance on foreign oil only strengthens the conviction in Washington that military force and energy security are inseparable twins. With nearly two-thirds of the country’s daily oil intake imported – and that percentage still going up – it’s hard not to notice that significant amounts of our oil now come from conflict-prone areas of the Middle East, central Asia and Africa. So long as this is the case, US policymakers will instinctively look to the military to ensure the safe delivery of crude oil. It evidently matters little that the use of military force, especially in the Middle East, has surely made the energy situation less stable and less dependable, while fuelling anti-Americanism.
This is, of course, not the definition of “energy security” but its opposite. A viable long-term approach to actual energy security would not favour one particular source of energy above all others, or regularly expose American soldiers to a heightened risk of harm and American taxpayers to a heightened risk of bankruptcy. Rather, a US energy policy that made sense would embrace a holistic approach to energy procurement, weighing the relative merits of all potential sources of energy.
It would naturally favour the development of domestic, renewable sources of energy that do not degrade the environment or imperil other national interests. At the same time, it would favour a thorough-going programme of energy conservation of a sort notably absent these last two decades – one that would help cut reliance on foreign energy sources in the near future and slow the atmospheric build-up of climate-altering greenhouse gases.
Petroleum would continue to play a significant role in any such approach. Oil retains considerable appeal as a source of transportation energy (especially for aircraft) and as a feedstock for many chemical products. But given the right investment and research policies – and the will to apply something other than force to energy supply issues – oil’s historic role as the world’s paramount fuel could relatively quickly draw to a close. It would be especially important that American policymakers do not prolong this role artificially by, as has been the case for decades, subsidising major US oil firms or, more recently, spending $138bn a year on the protection of foreign oil deliveries. These funds would instead be redirected to the promotion of energy efficiency and especially the development of domestic sources of energy.
Some policymakers who agree on the need to develop alternatives to imported energy insist that such an approach should begin with oil extraction in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and other protected wilderness areas. Even while acknowledging that such drilling would not substantially reduce US reliance on foreign oil, they nevertheless insist that it’s essential to make every conceivable effort to substitute domestic oil supplies for imports in the nation’s total energy supply. But this argument ignores the fact that oil’s day is drawing to a close, and that any effort to prolong its duration only complicates the inevitable transition to a post-petroleum economy.
A more fruitful approach
A far more fruitful approach, better designed to promote US self-sufficiency and technological vigour in the intensely competitive world of the mid-21st century, would emphasise the use of domestic ingenuity and entrepreneurial skills to maximise the potential of renewable energy sources, including solar, wind, geothermal and wave power. The same skills should also be applied to developing methods for producing ethanol from non-food plant matter (cellulosic ethanol), for using coal without releasing carbon into the atmosphere (via carbon capture and storage, or CCS), for miniaturising hydrogen fuel cells, and for massively increasing the energy efficiency of vehicles, buildings, and industrial processes.
All of these energy systems show great promise, and so should be accorded the increased support and investment they will need to move from the marginal role they now play to a dominant role in US energy generation. At this point, it is not possible to determine precisely which of them (or which combination among them) will be best positioned to transition from small to large-scale commercial development. As a result, all of them should be initially given enough support to test their capacity to make this move.
In applying this general rule, however, priority clearly should be given to new forms of transport fuel. It is here that oil has long been king, and here that oil’s decline will be most harshly felt. It is thanks to this that calls for military intervention to secure additional supplies of crude are only likely to grow. So emphasis should be given to the rapid development of biofuels, coal-to-liquid fuels (with the carbon extracted via CCS), hydrogen, or battery power, and other innovative means of fuelling vehicles. At the same time, it’s obvious that putting some of our military budget into funding a massive increase in public transit would be the height of national sanity.
An approach of this sort would enhance national security on multiple levels. It would increase the reliable supply of fuels, promote economic growth at home (rather than sending a flood of dollars into the coffers of unreliable petro-regimes abroad), and diminish the risk of recurring US involvement in foreign oil wars. No other approach – certainly not the present traditional, unquestioned, unchallenged reliance on military force – can make this claim. It’s well past time to stop garrisoning the global gas station.
see also http://goddamnbigoil.blogspot.com/
+++++++++++++++++++++
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