Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
The American public is understandably happy to see the bottom fall out of the oil futures market. But temporary circumstances are only sending them another false signal that everything is perfectly okay on the oil scene. And it only reinforces the foolish belief that when prices go up it is solely because corporate finaglers tweak them up on purpose. In fact, these days it's the other way around: often prices go down because corporate finaglers are tweaking the markets, dumping positions, playing shorts rather than acting like real oil users bidding on real contracts for delivery for real purposes like making gasoline. When oil goes up, as it certainly will again, it is primarily because of geology -- what's left in the ground -- and secondarily because of geopolitics -- where it's left in the ground (and what's happening there).
The supernaturally warm winter temperatures have also played a part, keeping inventories high while the home furnaces idle. (Last week it was 70 degrees in Albany, NY.) There is surely some demand destruction in the background. Third World nations are increasingly dropping out of the bidding (meaning their generators quit making electricity and their trucks stop running). And a contracting US economy may also play a part. But even these circumstances may not overcome the supply problems in the real oil world. Here's what's going on:
As a baseline, it helps to understand that the four largest super-giant oil fields of the world are now in decline. They have been responsible for producing 14 percent of the world's oil supply. They are now old and tired (thirty years is old in the oil world) and they are in depletion. These are The Cantarell field of Mexico, the Burgan field of Kuwait, the Daqing field of China, and the granddaddy of them all, the Ghawar field of Saudi Arabia.ncy.
This is an extremely important article at a very dangerous moment in our nation's history. In a political scene that was even slightly sane, this piece would be dominating the national discourse. It should be printed in the New York Times and Washington Post, it should be the topic of every political yap show on television, people should be talking about it between downs and during commercials while they watch the NFL playoffs.
This article speaks truth – the stone-hard truth – to power. Or as Dylan said, "Every one of those words rang true, and glowed like burning coal." Here we have a prominent, American-based Iranian dissident peeling away the pernicious myths and lies that encrust the American understanding of the situation in Iran. This deliberately manufactured crud is so thick that it is almost impossible to have any kind of genuine debate about what is happening before our eyes: the slow, methodical, step-by-step, relentless, implacable march of the Bush Administration toward war with Iran. They want that war, they are planning for that war – and they will have that war, sooner rather than later, if they are not stopped somehow.
In a recent letter to the New York Times, writer Rachelle Marshall eloquently expresses the reality that Guantanamo exists and is organized to destroy the human beings incarcerated there:
To the Editor:
Re “Military Taking a Tougher Line With Detainees” (front page, Dec. 16):
A desire to inflict suffering is the only plausible motive behind the new security tightening at Guantánamo Bay. The detainees are now confined to tiny cells most of the day and denied contact with each other. There is no danger that they will escape — no prisoner has ever done so. The detainees no longer have useful information to impart, assuming they ever did.
The Guantánamo task force commander, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., is convinced that “they’re all terrorists; they’re all enemy combatants,” but their guilt has never been determined in court, and more than 200 detainees once labeled dangerous “enemy combatants” have been released to their home countries and are now free.
One official reason for the new policy is to prevent inmates from committing suicide, but it is prolonged isolation and punishment, without hope of release, that make suicide an option. Capital punishment is often condemned as barbaric. Destroying human beings from within while keeping their bodies alive is infinitely crueler.
Rachelle Marshall
Stanford, Calif., Dec. 16, 2006
Of course, the leadership of the American Psychological Association understands this too. That's why they take refuge in abstract principles, such as opposition to "torture," while fighting tooth, claw, and nail to avoid any discussion of the real world in which psychologist-interrogators operate. The mere mention of the real world in which these psychologist-interrogators ply their craft drives the APA leadership into apoplexy, as in this retort from the 2006 APA President Koocher in his February 2006 President's Column, titled "Speaking Against Torture", but which should rather be titled "Protecting the Torturers":
"A number of opportunistic commentators masquerading as scholars have continued to report on alleged abuses by mental health professionals."
President George W. Bush’s paradoxical “new strategy” in Iraq is doomed by its own contradictions as much as by Iraqi and regional paradoxes and would in no time prove that the U.S. president’s go-it-alone approach will only extend the failure of the 2003 military invasion in developing into a permanent occupation, amid wide spread world and American calls for withdrawal and political solution.
“The new strategy I outline tonight will change America's course in Iraq,” Bush said in a speech on January 10; on scrutiny however the “change” he promised boils down essentially to upholding the same course but trying to change the tactics; on deeper scrutiny even the “new” tactics are unmasked as the same old ones.
His speech was more a noisy acknowledgement of failure in Iraq than a robust declaration of a new strategy for success: Four years on, he was still unable to declare that “we could accomplish our mission with fewer American troops” in Iraq; “the opposite happened. The violence … overwhelmed the political gains;” “Their strategy worked,” he announced, referring to “Al Qaeda terrorists and Sunni insurgents;” there are now “death squads” and “a vicious cycle of sectarian violence.” “The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people -- and it is unacceptable to me,” he concluded, and took the responsibility for the “mistakes (that) have been made.”
However Bush stopped short of honestly admitting his failure, though the “message came through loud and clear;” according to him the “failure” is not yet the reality of the day in Iraq, but only a possible threat that “would be a disaster for the United States” and should be averted. Hence his “new strategy” to avert the imminent “disaster;” and this was his first paradox because he could not correctly diagnose the U.S. predicament in Iraq and consequently he could not prescribe the right course.
As time goes along, I find that there’s more than one interpretation of the Bushites’ latest Iraq gambit that seems worth considering. But this piece addresses one of the most plausible of those interpretations.
Tell me please: why is it that, in America, a course of action that is regarded as folly in virtually every other comparable endeavor is seen as virtue and wisdom in war?
In poker, do we call a man a “defeatist” who, when he sees he’s got a losing hand, folds rather than increasing his bet? No, we recognize that every good poker player knows better than to “throw good money after bad.”
In games of strategy like Chess and Go, what do we call a player who ignores the signs that a part of the board is already escaping his capacity to control and instead continues to invest his moves in that lost territory? Soon enough, what we call him is the “loser” in the game.
In business, what do we call an executive who continues to bank his fortunes on a losing strategy rather than “cut his losses”? We call him a bad businessman.
But in America, when we get embroiled in some ill-conceived, ill-executed, losing war –like Vietnam a generation ago, and like Iraq today– it’s supposed some sign of weakness, rather than wisdom, to read the handwriting on the wall and act accordingly. Why is that?
Writings
printed in the New York Times and Washington Post, it should be the topic of every political yap show on television, people should be talking about it between downs and during commercials while they watch the NFL playoffs.
In a recent 
President George W. Bush’s paradoxical “new strategy” in Iraq is doomed by its own contradictions as much as by Iraqi and regional paradoxes and would in no time prove that the U.S. president’s go-it-alone approach will only extend the failure of the 2003 military invasion in developing into a permanent occupation, amid wide spread world and American calls for withdrawal and political solution.
