Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
– NYT: Obama Warns Against ‘Loose Talk of War’ With Iran
– Heinberg: $5 Gas, Iranian Poker, and the Peak of ‘Peak Oil’ Denial
– Glenn Grenwald: Iran, Threats and the UN Charter
– 2600 years of history in one object
– Chomsky: What Are Iran’s Intentions?
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Iranian confrontation
-Gasoline and election 2012
-A New EIA Report on East Coast Refining
Whenever North Americans fill up their vehicles with gasoline these days they should reflect on their ongoing contribution to the dysfunctional status of petro states and the Islamic Republic of Iran in particular.
– James Gustave Speth: America the Possible: A Manifesto
– Top 5 Stratfor Revelations
– Michael T. Klare: America’s Maritime Power
– Global mining boom is leading to landgrab, says report
– Do Environmentalists Have an Interest in Who Controls Oil Resources?
– Deforestataion, agroecology and Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement
Brent oil briefly touched $128/barrel on Thursday as pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme continued, the latest development being demands from Israel on the US to be more explicit in its threat of military action. The sharply rising prices are already impacting the weakened economies of Europe and the US making some wonder whether sanctions intended to hurt Iran could be backfiring…
The movements of 2011 like Occupy and Arab Spring gave new life to the whole tradition of nonviolent action and revolution. It may be the nature of such nonviolent movements that they come as a surprise, because at their very root seems to be a sudden change in the hidden sphere of the human heart and mind that then becomes contagious. It’s as though below the visible landscape of politics, whose permanence and strength we characteristically overestimate, there’s this other landscape we rather pallidly call the world of opinion.
Strong as empires seem, every empire that’s ever existed has collapsed, except the one currently owned by the United States–and the odds on that one’s survival aren’t looking good just at the moment. Behind the rhythm of rise and fall that shapes the lives of empires lies a familiar relationship between the pressures toward limitless growth and the inevitable limits of a finite world.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Iranian confrontation
-Gasoline prices
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
The challenge of making sense of empires in general, and thus of the impending decline and fall of America’s empire, is made a good deal more challenging than it has to be by the haze of doubletalk and of simplistic us-vs.-them analyses. One way to clarify the way that empires work is to pay attention to who benefits from them–a matter that turns out to be considerably more complex than a casual glance might suggest.
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
How can fossil fuels and uranium be kept in the ground and agrofuels off the land in ways that do not inflict suffering upon millions? Mainstream policy responses to these issues are largely framed in terms of “energy security”.
