Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Oil prices edged up on Thursday as Norwegian employers said they would lock out striking workers next week, threatening to shut off almost all oil and gas output from the world’s number three crude exporter.
The biggest news in the world at the moment however is also the most suppressed, and it is actually quite frightening. It’s suppressed because it completely obliterates all the ludicrous reasons we’ve been fed about why we’re in Iraq and Afghanistan, and because once it becomes self-evident the global stock markets will panic and crash.
Norwegian oil workers are going on strike from today, cutting output from the world’s third- largest oil exporter, after two unions failed to reach a pension accord with employers.
After several failed efforts to unseat Venezuela’s popular President Hugo Chavez, the fuel sector of corporate America is getting nervous. Venezuela is growing in prosperity, relying on its own mineral resources and technological patents to build new wealth. Chavez is exactly the kind of indigenous national leader whom American power can’t tolerate.
It is an unfortunate truth about human history that social systems, no matter how unjust, tend to reproduce themselves and that change emerges only from crises.
Much of Nigeria has come to a near-standstill after millions of workers walked out over rising fuel prices.
Hundreds of troops will be deployed to defend vital supermarket depots in the event of fresh fuel protests in the autumn.
A succession of ministers of mining and hydrocarbons in Bolivia have attempted to lead the process of reforming the laws governing the industry, since the country’s president was forced to step down late last year by protests over natural gas policy.
The only certain beneficiaries of this coming economic chaos will be the big five oil corporations and their corrupt partners: the Nigerian generals, Saudi princes, Russian kleptocrats, and their ilk. Crude oil truly will become black gold.
Spiralling oil prices would force an economic crisis in Australia within 15 years if authorities failed to act now, the Australian Greens said today.
DETROIT- PAUL WEERTZ lives less than 10 minutes from downtown, but the view from his window is anything but urban. On a warm day this fall, the air was ripe with the smell of fresh-cut hay and manure. In the alley behind his house, bales of hay teetered and listed where garbage cans once stood. Chickens scratched in the yard, near a garage that had been turned into a barn. Mr. Weertz drives a Ford — not a sleek sedan but a rebuilt 1960 tractor.
A newly established group of NGOs to promote civic control over Kazakhstan’s burgeoning oil industry aimed at more transparency of the revenues the Kazakh government receives and how they are spent — information closed even to members of parliament.
