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The Oil Drum: Europe | Olduvai revisited 2008: Feb 29, 5:02pm 2 reviews economics, energy, globalization, geo-politics
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/3565; Olduvai revisited 2008 in The Oil Drum by Luis de Sousa and on You Tube by Nate Hagens and Chris Vernon
Richard Duncan's Olduvai Theory is re-assessed with the latest available data and modern fossil fuel depletion models. On the second half it is analyzed how can alternative energy sources fill the gap left by those finite resources. Olduvai 2008 post Olduvai 2008 movie Forecast for Conventional Fossil Fuels per Capita. Sources: UN for Population model, Jean Laherr\u00e8re [pdf!] for Natural Gas, Energy Watch Group for Coal and The Oil Drum - Khebab for Oil. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2656287165913612688&hl=en My reading of what is going on today around the world integrates a set of factors that will be determining the future of humanity: - Environmental Chaos: Climate Change, loss of bio-diversity, poisoning of land, water and air, - Resource Collapse: Oil. Water. Topsoil. Fisheries. Seeds. Arable land. Minerals. Copper. Food. - Societal Atomization - Economic Globalization: Financialization, Outsourcing, Institutional lag The Oil Drum (TOD) is all about Peak Oil and the collapse of our energy resources...

Asia Times Online :: Central Asian News and current affairs, Russia, Afghanis…: Dec 21, 2007 12:02pm 2 reviews economics, energy-industry, energy, geo-politics
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/IL22Ag01.html; Russia, Iran tighten the energy noose in Asia Times by M K Bhadrakumar career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
... how Moscow proceeds with the reconfiguration of Russo-Iranian relations could well form the centerpiece of the geopolitics of energy security in Eurasia during 2008. The dynamics on this front will doubtless play out on a vast theater stretching well beyond the Eurasian space, all the way to China and Japan in the east and to the very heart of Europe in the west where the Rhine River flows. Russia, Iran tighten the energy noose The general context of the world energy game: - the demand for energy is bound to increase fast in the next decades due to the rapid economic growth of the BRIC countries. - the worldwide offer of energy is stalling since a few years at its present plateau of some 86 million barrels per day. According to Peak Oil theory that plateau is bound to be left behind soon by decreasing output levels. This general context indicates that the prices of fossil fuels are bound to continually increase over the next decades until other sources of energy can successfully reduce the demand for fossil fuels by significant quantities. In the meantime we'll assist at a feverish dance on two fronts: - geopolitics: countries will position themselves so as to control the supply of the available fossil fuels to their own shores or to avoid the supply of their competitors. All means will be used including resorting to military force. - science and technology: huge budgets will be made available to scientists in order to devise new methods to generate energy and free us from our fossil fuel bind. Bhadrakumar gives here a masterly description of the geo-politics of fossil fuels.

China Matters: In the Shadow of Lal Masjid: Nov 9, 2007 9:26am 1 review china, us, globalization, geo-politics
http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2007/11/in-shadow-of-lal-masjid.html; The China Factor in Pakistani Politics in China Matters by China Hand
So it's difficult for us to appreciate that the things we care about "like the global war on terror" may not be the most important factors in Pakistani affairs. Pakistan's alliance with China, which supports Islamabad's confrontation with India and underpins its hopes for economic growth in its populous heartland, is probably a lot more important to Islamabad than the dangerous, destabilizing, and thankless task of pursuing Islamic extremists on its remote and impoverished frontiers at Washington's behest. The China Factor in Pakistani Politics If you are interested in understanding what is going on in Pakistan don't listen to the mainstream media. Better check out what this guy is saying he is making sense out of the US incapacity at walking its own talk...

Israel's cost to the Arabs, by Ghada Karmi: Sep 18, 2007 1:11pm 4 reviews modernity, geo-politics
http://mondediplo.com/2007/09/06saudi; Israel's cost to the Arabs via 3QD, in Le Monde Diplomatique by Ghada Karmi
In July two Arab League envoys visited Jerusalem to press the Arab case, and plans led by the United States are afoot for an Arab-Israeli peace conference in September. Though Israel may still not respond, this is a giant step for the Arabs, reversing decades of hostility. The West viewed the plan as no more than a proper Arab response to Israel's existence, revealing a profound ignorance of what the plan means for Arabs. Westerners regard Israel as a natural part of the Middle Eastern landscape and dismiss what Arabs feel about it. Yet an understanding of Israel's impact on the Arab world has always been crucial to the search for a resolution to the conflict, and helps explain why none has yet been found. The damage done to the Arabs by Israel's creation is an untold story in the West. To understand it, you have to set aside the Israeli narrative and the idea of Arabs as fanatical, backward warmongers irrationally bent on destroying a modern, democratic and peaceable state. Israel's cost to the Arabs The only way to understand what's going on in the Middle-East passes through our rejection of the presentation that has been upheld since decades and that largely focused on the understanding by the West of Israel's prism. Then in order to understand the Middle-East we have to accept the existence of those who were living there. We have to understand what Israel brought upon the Middle-Easterners since its inception and only then will we succeed in devising a workable compromise.

Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs - Cracks in credit: Aug 24, 2007 9:13am 1 review economics, geo-politics
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/IH25Dj01.html; 'Cracks' in credit by Chan Akya in Asia Times.
The collapse of market confidence has hit the North American and European financial systems hard. Banks fear the simple activity of lending to one another in the overnight market, necessitating that central banks cut rates for emergency funding (known as the discount window) and the Fed being pushed to cut rates next month, which now appears a dead certainty. However, neither rate cuts nor central-bank intervention will work without the crucial ingredient of the US getting more support from the rest of the world. ... This is where the principle of caveat venditor that I described above will come into operation. In essence, US legislators have already started blaming lenders for the problems being faced by borrowers. The country's most famous bond manager, Bill Gross at PIMCO, has gone to the extraordinary length of suggesting direct government assistance for affected mortgage borrowers. Thus lenders will be asked to pony up for further restructuring payments in one way or the other - either by accepting lower interest rates or by facing the dreaded haircuts that I wrote about previously. They wouldn't be given the option to sell down risk, though, as the financial system has frozen up. Government officials including US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson have reportedly made dozens of calls to Asian central banks this week demanding support for their markets, to be provided through emergency issues of loans for banks in Europe and North America. A lack of cooperation would inevitably increase the chances for more nasty outcomes - including trade sanctions of the sort that the US is now mulling on China ostensibly for quality-control reasons but more likely for the ones stated above. This is eerily similar to the treatment meted out to Colombia in the 1990s, albeit for entirely different matters. Once again, the United States rides to the rescue of its citizens at the expense of all else. There is always another choice open for Asian policymakers. That would be to examine the system as it stands now and decide that ultimately the United States can simply never repay its debts. This would mean calling the greatest bluff in history, that of US financial strength, and letting the system collapse under its own weight. Doing this would cause significant short-term pain to the global economy, but eventually the removal of excessive US consumption cannot but be a good thing for the rest of the world. 'Cracks' in credit On Rescuing Housing: "Get with it, Mr. President" This kind of view is not isolated. But will it come to pass? What is sure is that the US is plagued by an intractable debt problem that is not going to vanish as per miracle. And this US internal problem happens at a time of increasing anxiety around the world related to the control of oil and gas shipping routes. To grow economically tomorrow nations will need much cash to pay for energy but they will also need to control the flow of that energy to their own shores. The least we can say is that its indebtedness puts the US in a very weak position to compete for energy in the future.... The most important question of the day is to see if Chan Akya's conclusion about "calling the greatest bluff in history, that of US financial strength" will be viewed by Eastern countries as maximizing their strategic interests. The recent call by Chinese officials of State Research and Development Commission to start selling US bonds is perhaps a sign of a coming calling the US bluff... But if this materializes the ride will be bumpy and painful. Mostly for the US citizen.

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs: Aug 21, 2007 10:22am 1 review asia, globalization, geo-politics
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IH22Ak03.html; Rising powers have the US in their sights
in AsiaTimes by Dilip Hiro the author of Secrets and Lies: Operation Iraqi Freedom and, most recently, Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World's Vanishing Oil Resources, both published by Nation Books.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States stood tall - militarily invincible, economically unrivaled, diplomatically uncontestable. and the dominating force on information channels worldwide. The next century was to be the true "American century", with the rest of the world molding itself in the image of the sole superpower.
Yet with not even a decade of this century behind us, we are already witnessing the rise of a multipolar world in which new powers are challenging different aspects of US supremacy - Russia and China in the forefront, with regional powers Venezuela and Iran forming the second rank. These emergent powers are primed to erode US hegemony, not confront it, singly or jointly.
When viewed globally and in the great stretch of history, the notion of US exceptionalism that drove the neo-conservatives to proclaim the Project for the New American Century in the late 20th century - adopted so wholeheartedly by the Bush administration in this one - is nothing new. Other superpowers have been there before, and they too have witnessed the loss of their prime position to rising powers.
No superpower in modern times has maintained its supremacy for more than several generations. And however exceptional its leaders may have thought themselves, the United States, already clearly past its zenith, has no chance of becoming an exception to this age-old pattern of history.
Rising powers have the US in their sights
An excellent article on the presently transitioning geo-politics. To measure the importance of this geo-politic transitioning it has to be placed in the larger context of the peak resources (oil, Phosphorous) + the myriad of side-effects of modernity (- an economically globalized world in a largely non-globalized political context. - a societal atomization. - an uncontrolled growth of the human population. - a stark loss of diversification in term of living species. - an accelerating climate change. - the poisoning of land and water). When integrated in such a larger context the present transitioning of geo-politics indicates an increasing risk of conflicts erupting in the not so distant future. It is what emerges out of the interactions between geo-politics + peak resources + side-effects of modernity that shall decide sooner or later the fate of humanity.

The Oil Drum | Mexico: A Nation-State Dissolves?: Jul 12, 2007 9:39am 1 review mexico, economy, globalization, change, geo-politics
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2752; Mexico: A Nation-State Dissolves? in The Oil Drum by Jeff Vail.
In my annual new years predictions, I said that the most significant, and surprising, development of 2007 would be the collapse of both Mexico's economy and its very existence as a viable Nation-State. While there hasn't been a spectacular, single event confirming my prediction, there has been a steady erosion on all fronts with five months left in the year, I'm not yet willing to push back my prediction of Mexico's "collapse" to 2008. The decline of the Mexican Nation-State is a bellwether for the massively complex network of geopolitical influences sometimes termed above ground factors. It provides some insight into how symptoms of oil scarcity already being felt in poorer parts of the world will increasingly spill over into our own back yard. Mexico: A Nation-State Dissolves? The New Map: Terrorism and the Decline of the Nation-State in a Post-Cartesian World A 24 pages PDF by Jeff Vail
Mexico's Oil Production is already Collapsing I'm back from abroad and discover this prediction about Mexico from Jeff Vail. Hum... Societal change is undeniably accelerating around the world. I just come back from Belgium where the collapse of the federal state appears also to nearing fast. We are assisting at the early stages of a global geo-political re-balancing and this takes the form of societal changes at the level of the nation-states... I guess the next big step in this process shall be the US stumbling into a muddle-through recession that will consecrate the EU and China as central pillars of the new world order...

Asia Times Online :: Central Asian News and current affairs, Russia, Afghanis…: Nov 10, 2006 12:04pm 1 review politics, geo-politics
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HK11Ag01.html; Russia and China create their own orbit in Asia Times by M K Bhadrakumar (career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001). ) Putin recently said, "Our relations with China today are better than at any other point in our history ... Our relations are not dictated by opportunism but by the political balance in the world and global development trends, and these trends are such, in my view, that they will make it imperative to maintain a high level and quality of relations for a long time to come. We have common political interests and we also have common economic interests." The Sino-Russian alliance is becoming a vital component of the policies of the two great powers, based on substantive strategic, diplomatic and economic considerations. Russian diplomatic and economic policy that has been traditionally anchored in the West is unmistakably turning east, though the primary direction still remains European. It is as much a challenge to European diplomacy as to Russian diplomacy whether Russia's Asian alliance incrementally supplants or merely complements Russia's European alignment. Russia and China create their own orbit China: Plan to diversify reserves China to become No.2 trade power in 2007 Sino-Russian energy ties to surge significantly China, Russia discuss lunar project China, Russia to stage military programs next year
US arrogance has succeeded in bringing together former foes... It's like the US has been shooting in its own foot. On one side Russia with an advanced military technology base and huge energy reserves and on the other side China that is growing fast into an economic power house in need of much energy. The US arrogance that motivated the creation of such a bloc will soon be seen as one of the greatest foreign policy blunders in human memory.

Asia Times Online :: Central Asian News - THE EMERGING RUSSIAN GIANT, Part 2 Was…: Oct 25, 2006 6:08pm 1 review politics, future, energy, geo-politics
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HJ26Ag01.html; THE EMERGING RUSSIAN GIANT in Asia Times by F William Engdahl author of the book A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press Ltd. He has completed a soon-to-be published book on genetically modified organisms titled Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Political Agenda Behind GMO. Ironically, the aggressive Washington foreign policy of the era of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld since 2001 has done more to nurture the one strategic combination in Eurasia most dreaded by Washington political realists such as Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski, namely a strategic military and economic cooperation on a deep, long-term basis between two former Cold War foes, China and President Vladimir Putin's Russia. Today, with little fanfare, the US is building up its influence and military presence in the Middle East despite a general draw-down in its military commitments and expenditures. It is putting huge resources into the periphery countries of the Russian heartland of Eurasia. Why? Oil is a large part of the answer - but oil seen in geopolitical terms. The ultimate game, where the stakes are the highest, is to render permanently impotent the Eurasian land power, Russia, to control its access to the seas and to China - just as Halford Mackinder, "the father of geopolitics", argued. The push for a US nuclear primacy over Russia is the factor in world politics today that has the most potential for bringing the world into a World War III, a nuclear conflagration by miscalculation. The SCO, founded several years ago by Russia and China to bring together select Eurasian countries for common dialogue. Its stated goal initially was to facilitate "cooperation in political affairs, economy and trade, scientific-technical, cultural, and educational spheres as well as in energy". Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad was invited as an honored observer last June, and Iran is being encouraged by Russia and China to join the SCO. Today the SCO remains on the surface a rather amorphous discussion forum. Given a bit more provocation from Washington and NATO, that could change rapidly into the core of a broader Eurasian military and energy alliance to counter-weigh US nuclear primacy. The nightmare of Halford Mackinder would be fulfilled, ironically, largely because of the unilateral and aggressive foreign policy of an overconfident United States. URL: THE EMERGING RUSSIAN GIANT, Part 1. Moscow plays its cards strategically URL: THE EMERGING RUSSIAN GIANT, Part 2. Washington's nightmare
This is an excellent article about geo-political positioning by the powers to be. I suggest, that if you want to understand what awaits us tomorrow, you should read those two articles. It is not as if tomorrow were open to all kinds of possibilities. One central question will confront all powers it is energy... meaning oil in the present technological configuration.

Asia Times Online :: China News - A symphony of civilizations: Aug 12, 2006 10:42am 3 reviews asia, europe, china, geo-politics, worldviews
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HH12Ad02.html; A symphony of civilizations Much truth here about geo-politics or international relations. I had (and this reinforced with time) the same feeling as Jean Monet about the Chinese: "I found myself face to face with men who seemed far more subtle and intelligent than Westerners". Yes, Europe appears indeed very primitive when compared with China. Yea, "because of their past internal diplomatic arrangements, Europe and China see almost instinctively the nuances between these extremes and the advantages of maintaining equilibrium among various poles of power. History has trained the two old worlds to deal better with complexity, uncertainty and the art of concessions". I guess the same could be said of India, Persia and Arabia... And furthermore, as David Gosset states: "The US, which never had to manage internally a multilateral subsystem, is just not well equipped to accept and live within a genuine global multilateral system." Yes you generally are dumb simply because you did not go through experience. And again yes, "In the US, many would have first to recognize that reality is complex and uncertain and that compromise is not necessarily a betrayal of ideals, or negotiation a waste of time." David Gosset is director of Academia Sinica Europaea at the China Europe International Business School, Shanghai, and founding director of the Euro-China Forum. """ On December 1, 2005, Premier Wen Jiabao gave an interview to the French newspaper Le Figaro. As an introduction, he made a reference to the scholar Gu Hongming (1857-1928): "It seems that only the French people could understand China and the Chinese civilization because the French share an extraordinary quality with the Chinese, namely subtlety." And Wen added: "So when I meet French friends, I do not feel there is estrangement between us." We have also this reference to subtlety to describe the Chinese mind, but this time in Jean Monnet's words; remembering his stay in Shanghai in 1934 and 1935, the father of the European community writes: "When I reached Shanghai ... I found myself face to face with men who seemed far more subtle and intelligent than Westerners" (Jean Monnet, Memoirs, Collins, English translation 1978, p 110). """ URL: A symphony of civilizations

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