By Alan Caruba
Finding, extracting, transporting, and refining crude oil is a very expensive business. It is also a very risky one. There are no guarantees that one will find oil and, finding it, there are no guarantees that the investment and all the assets involved will not be stolen by the governments that invite oil companies to tap their natural resources.
If you want to know why gasoline and everything made from oil is going to cost more in the years ahead, I give you, ladies and gentlemen, Hugo Chavez, dictator of Venezuela, and a number of other nations who have engaged in extortion.
On June 26, Hugo Chavez told the Big Oil companies that had invested in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt that they were going to have to sell their assets at a ridiculously low price to Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state oil company. They were instructed to hand over majority control as part of Chavez’s nationalization program.
In power since 1999, this disciple of Fidel Castro fired 75% of the managers of the state company after they staged a strike in 2003. Only the increased investment by foreign-owed companies kept Venezuela’s oil industry from total implosion. This year he showed his appreciation by forcing out British Petroleum, Chevron, Total, and Norway’s Statoil. ConocoPhilips and Exxon Mobil Corporation have since concluded they too could not continue their operations in Venezuela.
The popular myth about Big Oil is that it wields such great power that nation states cannot resist them. The reality is that, faced with dictators like Chavez, often the only alternative is to leave or cut the best deal they can. The other reality is that Venezuela’s oil production has declined 25% since Chavez, a committed Communist, crushed the strike. With the major oil companies departing, how much greater a decline lies ahead? That is just one reason gasoline will cost more.
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Posted by Walt in Economics categories at 10:13 PM EDT
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By Alan Caruba
I have lost track of when I first noticed that Greens were engaged in a war on chemicals, but it has been a long time. Almost any chemical, whether used in agriculture or for industrial purposes, and even chlorine which is vital to the purification of the water we drink continues to be under attack.
In the simpleminded view of the Greens, all chemicals are “toxic” and, therefore bad. Toxicity depends on the amount of any chemical to which one is exposed and we routinely use all kinds of chemicals to keep our homes and workplaces clean and safe. Chemicals are the building blocks of virtually everything we take for granted and enhance our lives in countless ways.
Recently I received a news release from the SafeLawns Foundation announcing it would “hold its launch rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on April 4.” A parade of “high profile doctors, scientists, activists and politicians” were to help kick off a campaign designed to “cause a quantum change in lawn care behavior.”
Among the activist speakers was a member of the Rachel Carson Council. It was Carson’s book, “Silent Spring”, that led eventually to the banning of DDT and the subsequent deaths from malaria for tens of millions of Africans unable to secure protection against the mosquitoes that spread the disease. Another speaker just happened to work for a company that sells so-called “organic” fertilizer. It was organically grown spinach that sickened many people earlier this year.
Among the things SafeLawns wants to do is ask universities and industries “to eliminate the use of lawn chemicals on their campus or headquarters lawns.” If you like weeds and dead grass, you’re going to love this.
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Posted by Walt in Environment Issues categories at 9:47 PM EDT
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by Nancy Salvato
If there is one thing for certain in this world, it is when Jack Nicholson plays the male protagonist in a film, his performance will be outstanding. As McMurphy, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, his impression on me is as compelling today –as it was over 30 years ago when I first watched him bring to consciousness the minds of assorted inmates staying on Nurse Ratched’s ward of the mental institution. The message I took away while watching McMurphy undermine Nurse Ratched’s authority over her unit -until she has him lobotomized, stands the test of time. Power hungry people will resort to any means necessary to maintain control. Although Nurse Ratched’s actions were extreme, her display taught me just how vulnerable people are if they are labeled mentally unstable or forfeit the responsibility of making decisions on their own behalf. Those placed in their charge are not necessarily looking out for them.
Inherent in writing and exposing one’s own ideas about terrorism (or the war against radical Islamism), the border threat, or political correctness, is the likelihood of being branded a right wing nut. Being labeled as such isn’t personally offensive (I’ve begun to grow my Alligator Skin) but there is the danger that being branded as such could chip away at my credibility, which is the whole idea behind such mudslinging. This is why it’s so important to be able to back up an argument with facts. This is extremely difficult in the face of a movement doing everything it can to shut down ideas which run counter to their own.
For example, let’s look at the Fairness Doctrine. In an editorial titled the Unfairness Doctrine, the editors of the National Review Online point out that even though Fairness Doctrine was not passed into law this time around, other forms of legislation could equally serve to stifle free speech. The liberal think tank "Center for American Progress," founded and run by former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta, has proposed there be new national and local limits on the number of radio stations one company can own, a de facto quota system to ensure that more women and minorities own radio stations, and that the government should require commercial owners who fail to abide by enforceable public interest obligations to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.
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Posted by Walt in Censorship, Freedom of Speech categories at 11:34 PM EDT
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by Sher Zieve
On 6 June 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered one of the most arguably powerful prayer speeches in history given by an American president. Over Radio, Roosevelt’s speech was given as allied forces comprised of Americans, Brits and Canadians battled valiantly on the beaches of Normandy. This was D-Day in World War II. If the same speech were given today, in an ACLU and terrorist-accepting (if not terrorist-friendly) society, current presidents—most specifically Republican presidents—would be vilified. As a matter of fact, President George W. Bush has already been soundly denounced by the media and those who would placate the opponents of humankind for one word he used to describe a campaign against these enemies of humanity.
Note: The word used by President Bush was crusade and the terrorist and Western ‘mainstream’ media, alike, excoriated Bush for using it—just days after the brutal Islamist 9/11 attacks on the United States of America.
In his D-Day speech, President Roosevelt said: "And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade." Please bear in mind that the 1930’s and 1940’s liberal media was almost as appeasing and placating to the enemies of the USA as are our own current leftist channels of manipulated news. But, despite the media’s disagreement with President Roosevelt’s waging WW II he was—after all—a Democrat. And, just as today, with a few exceptions Democrats were largely given a pass by their media brothers and sisters—no matter what they did. Just five days after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush told the American people: "This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while." The Western media dutifully and with great politically-correct aplomb attacked President Bush for his use of the "C" word.
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Posted by Walt in Politics, Terrorism categories at 9:47 PM EDT
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By Alan Caruba
Since we obviously cannot safeguard our border with Mexico, why not just annex Mexico? Let’s declare Mexico a protectorate of the United States and set about governing it in a benevolent, but self-interested way. In time, we could incorporate it as several new States.
The current illegal flow of Mexicans and Central Americans to the United States constitutes the largest diaspora in modern history. An estimated 10% of Mexico’s population of more than 107 million people is now living in the United States. About 15% of Mexico’s labor force is working in the United States and one in every seven Mexican workers migrates to the United States.
The immediate benefits of annexation are obvious. Mexico’s oil industry is its largest provider of revenue, but is very poorly managed. Its vast revenues are not benefiting the Mexican people who clearly feel compelled to emigrate to the United States. The Mexican government relies on oil income because its national tax evasion rate is more than 40%.
Given America’s growing need for oil, annexing Mexico and denationalizing its oil industry would permit the investment necessary to upgrade it while providing less reliance on foreign sources in the turbulent Middle East or Venezuela.
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Posted by Walt in Immigration categories at 9:02 PM EDT
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By Alan Caruba
When did the global warming hoax die? Historians are likely to pinpoint 2007. It will take another decade to insure it cannot be revived, but the avalanche of scientific studies and the cumulative impact of scientists who have publicly joined those who debunked the lies on which it has been based will be noted as the tipping point.
It took some forty years to unmask the Piltdown Man hoax that began in 1912 alleging that the skull of an ancient ancestor of man had been found in England. Any number of British anthropologists unwittingly contributed to the hoax by confirming the authenticity of the skull until it was found that the jaw of an orangutan had been cunningly attached. The unmasking of “global warming” has taken less than half that time.
The hoax has mainly been a creation of the United Nations Environmental Program and took off in earnest with the 1992 Earth Summit. It culminated in 1997 with the Kyoto Climate Control Protocol, an agreement to reduce the generation of carbon dioxide, a
“greenhouse” gas (CO2) said to be the cause of an accelerated warming of the earth. By 2005, 140 nations had ratified the pact, agreeing to reduce CO2 emissions. Notably exempt from the pact were nations such as China and India. Few, if any, nations have ever met the limits that require reductions in CO2 production, attributed to the use of so-called “fossil fuels” such as oil, natural gas, and coal.
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Posted by Walt in Environment Issues, Science categories at 7:46 PM EDT
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