Deep Blade Journal

Season is getting later…

But lots of Sweet 100s left

Can anyone id this shrub? It’s my favorite…

Last year the shrub in the second picture above was much farther along is its annual color change on approximately October 1. The comment has been heard around here that it just hasn’t seemed like cold weather is coming yet. Okay, it’s supposed to go down to about 37 F (3 C) tonight. But then we’re supposed to get upper 60s and low 70s during the day and 40s at night for the next week.

Aside from yesterday’s very strong 90 km/hr winds (more impressive in metric), the weather has been downright civilized. It better stay that way seeing how heating oil is pushing up towards $3.00 per US gallon. The Bangor Daily News headline this morning was “Maine braces for fuel shortfall”.

40th anniversary of Cold War low-point today

One of Mel Gibson’s better performances, but Oscar-winner Linda Hunt stole the show

If an American has any information about the history of Indonesia’s obscene American-supported anti-communist massacres that began on September 30, 1965, it probably came from the 1982 Peter Weir film, The Year of Living Dangerously. This is a decent movie, but very much more of the history of US intervention in this region needs to be revealed.

On that date, right-wing, US-supported anti-communist forces within the Indonesian military jelled in response to killings alledged to have been committed at the hands of Indonesia’s then-president, Sukarno. The actual events of September 30 are not entirely clear. But the purges and terror against popular communist sectors of Indonesian society that followed gathered quickly into one of the worst genocides of the twentieth century with on the order of one million dead.

Thursday on KPFA’s Flashpoints program, Dennis Bernstein interviewed Sylvia Tiwon, UC Berkeley Professor about what happened in 1965. The grisly stories of “rivers of blood” are horrifying. And the approving support for the atrocities by the western media of the day… my God, makes me feel like O’Reilly, Hannity, and Limbaugh are pussy cats.

If you try to plow through this very dense piece recommended by Flashpoints, you will discover that the politics of the Stalinist Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) were complex and rife with sectarian struggle. Opportunity was ripe in 1965 for the CIA to take advantage of this discord and undermine its number one enemy–a highly popular anti-market model of development that threatened to flourish. The operation to end this threat was seen throughout the West as wildly successful. No one in America knew about or said boo if they did about one million deaths.

A perhaps more readable summary of the history may be found in this 1998 piece on Indonesia by Noam Chomsky, who over the years has written extensively on the subject. Here is an excerpt:

After the second world war, Indonesia had a prominent place in US efforts to construct an international political and economic order. Planning was careful and sophisticated; each region was assigned its proper role. The “main function” of Southeast Asia was to provide resources and raw materials to the industrial societies. Indonesia was the richest prize. In 1948 the influential planner George Kennan described “the problem of Indonesia” as “the most crucial issue of the moment in our struggle with the Kremlin” - that is, the struggle against independent nationalism, whatever the Kremlin role might be (in this case, very slight).

Kennan warned that a “communist” Indonesia would be an “infection” that “would sweep westward” through all of South Asia. The term “communism” is routinely used to cover any form of independent nationalism, and it is understood that “infections” spread not by conquest but by example.

“The problem of Indonesia” persisted. In 1958 US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles informed the National Security Council that Indonesia was one of three major world crises, along with Algeria and the Middle East. He emphasized that there was no Soviet role in any of these cases, with the “vociferous” agreement of President Eisenhower. The main problem in Indonesia was the Communist party (PKI), which was winning “widespread support not as a revolutionary party but as an organization defending the interests of the poor within the existing system,” developing a “mass base among the peasantry” through its “vigor in defending the interests of the…poor [Harold Crouch, Army and Politics in Indonesia, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1978]“.

The US embassy in Jakarta reported that it might not be possible to overcome the PKI “by ordinary democratic means”, so that “elimination” by police and military might be undertaken. The Joint Chiefs of Staff urged that “action must be taken, including overt measures as required, to ensure either the success of the dissidents or the suppression of the pro-communist elements of the Sukarno government.”

The “dissidents” were the leaders of a rebellion in the outer islands, the site of most of Indonesia’s oil and US investments. US support for the secessionist movement was “by far the largest, and to this day the least known, of the Eisenhower administration’s covert militarized interventions,” two leading Southeast Asia specialists conclude in a revealing study [Audrey and George Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy, New Press, New York, 1995]. When the rebellion collapsed, after bringing down the last residue of parliamentary institutions, the US turned to other means to “eliminate” the country’s major political force.

That goal was achieved when Suharto took power in 1965, with Washington’s strong support and assistance. Army-led massacres wiped out the PKI and devastated its mass base in “one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century,” comparable to the atrocities of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, the CIA reported, judging “the Indonesian coup” to be “certainly one of the most significant events of the 20th century” [CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, "Intelligence report column, Indonesia, 1965, the coup that backfired", Washington, 1968]. Perhaps half a million or more were killed within a few months.

Suharto’s tyranny–which created killing fields and mass graves exceeding those of Saddam Hussein by an order of magnitude–lasted for over 30 years. In that period, with Washington’s approval, Suharto slaughtered with impunity in East Timor and elsewhere, only stopped and removed from power after the Asian market crisis and popular uprisings of 1998.

Below are links to a selection of energy posts from Deep Blade Journal. Also included are some useful links to internet sources on peak oil and the politics of world energy resources recommended by Eric Olson during the Thursday program at the University of Maine, PEAK OIL: ARE ENERGY CRISES, MORE WARS, AND BREAKDOWN OF CAPITALISM COMING SOON?

At the top of this link list I want to put Daily Kos and European Tribune diarist Jerome a Paris, who I do recommend again in the list below. Jerome a Paris offers almost daily reports and analysis. TODAY PLEASE SEE HIS HURRICANE DAMAGE ASSESSMENT.

Selected Deep Blade Journal posts on energy and peak oil:

June 01, 2005: Headline: “Permanent shortage of oil may loom”
This headline was over an AP release that graced page A6 of Tuesday’s Bangor Daily News.

May 25, 2005: Protest crushed in Azerbaijan
Caspian oil pipeline unveiling…According to a piece at Ocnus.Net, US troops are already on the ground in Azerbaijan. And there are more to come, it’s just a matter of when…

May 17, 2005: 500 killed by Uzbek regime
President Bush: “All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.” (January 20, 2005)

April 27, 2005: Bush uses deceit in energy message
President wrongly implies his legislation means the US will be able to forgo foreign oil; nuke proposals come on strong

April 26, 2005: The good news front on Saudi oil
Bush has a sitdown with Crown Prince Abdullah

April 23, 2005: $380 oil?
The fallacy here is that because the factor by which oil consumption tracks economic growth and the %-mix of primary energy sources in various sectors has changed over the years, “oil is not as indispensable.”

April 19, 2005: Rumsfeld made hushed trip to Azerbaijan
It is about oil

March 17, 2005: Internal war for Iraq’s oil
New Greg Palast story based in part on USAID Iraq contract language that Deep Blade Journal first cited 16 months ago.

March 12, 2005: OPEC minister repeats oil limit warning
Algerian minister echoes sentiment he expressed last August

February 24, 2005: Oil price trajectory
Hyperbolic price swings with huge upward bias portend threats to our future security….NOTE: This extensive item contains many references back to Deep Blade posts during 2004.

February 24, 2005: Worker rights in Iraq
A little known policy of the US occupation affirmed Saddam-era prohibitions on trade union organizing

Selected 2004 posts
Here is a list of Deep Blade Journal posts on oil, peak oil, and the failure of energy issues to make it into the presidential campaign from Fall 2004:

Campaigns fail on energy

Oil price rocket

World oil peak now?

Bush has post-oil-peak plan

Another day, another oil dollar

Veep debate lacked energy

Over pulling sour crude

BBC: “Something very odd has happened”

Finance ministers deeply rattled by oil situation: Oil dominates agenda at G7 meeting in Washington, DC; communiqué includes recommendation to conserve fuel

Posts in original blog, November 22, 2003 to May 1, 2004. Only some of the links within these posts will still work. Below are descriptions of a few of the many topics found there.

1 May 2004: Secure and Plentiful?
Discussion and sources on Saudi oil reserves

6 March 2004: Oil depletion a myth?
Peak oil skeptics

26 February 2004: New York Times highlights depletion of Saudi oil
Story on important event with Saudi Aramco officials and Matthew Simmons at CSIS.

1 February 2004: Bush insider issues wake-up calls on oil/gas depletion
Original Deep Blade post on Matthew Simmons

30 January 2004: Iraq casus belli, John Kerry, and the energy future
Senator John F. Kerry in his victory speech after the New Hampshire primary: “Stand with us - and we will give America the security of energy independence, because our sons and daughters should never have to fight and die for Mideast oil.”

22 November 2003: Nuclear automobile is in President Bush’s energy vision
The president’s so-called Freedom CAR program to build hydrogen-fueled cars receives its full appropriation in the Energy Bill. But this begs the question - Where does the president think the hydrogen for these vehicles will come from ??? … The answer to this question becomes crystal clear in the current version of the Energy Bill. The bill directs the Department of Energy (DOE) to build a new nuclear reactor in Idaho in order to develop an experimental hydrogen production process along with some other supposed environmental benefits. (Indeed, the Energy Bill finally passed this summer, loaded with special fossil energy subsidies, big utility benefits, AND that now $1.5 billion reactor.)

Here are a other excellent peak oil and energy analysis sites:

Association for the Study of Peak Oil&Gas (ASPO)
The essential peak oil site…Euopean scientists crying in the wilderness. The “2004 Scenario” graph comes from this site. The Newsletter (available here) is required monthly reading.

Matt Savinar: lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
This is a very self-assured peak oil site with a great deal of very good documentation. The notion that “technology” will not save us from the downward spiral of peak oil is elucidated here like nowhere else.

Oil Depletion Analysis Centre

BLOG: The Oil Drum
Vigorous ongoing discussion of oil resource models, industry politics, and everything else affecting world energy supplies — frequented by industry insiders

KOS Diarist: Jerome a Paris
Absolutely my FAVORITE energy analyst on the internet. Jerome is an insider. He knows a great deal about energy economics and industry practices and is very willing to share. This is first-rate analysis delivered on a daily basis by Kos and also European Tribune. Especially see Jerome’s series from last spring on Control of Oil.

See also Deep Blade Journal’s HYDROCARBON link set well down on the left-side column.

Finally, this is just a very abbreviated selection of reports and major newspaper stories on oil that have appeared recently or in the last couple of years:

March 2004: PUBLIC CITIZEN report (pdf)
Mergers, Manipulation and Mirages: How Oil Companies Keep Gasoline Prices High, and Why the Energy Bill Doesn’t Help
Report on oil company monopoly practices

September 1, 2005: New Study Finds Oil Company Profiteering Behind Gasoline Price Spikes
Consumerwatchdog.org from California finds more monopoly practices.

Economist oil series

August 12, 2005: Oil Rises to Record $67.10
Nothing really special here, except that alarming stories similar to this are now in regular news on nearly a daily basis.

August 21, 2005: New York Times Magazine: The Breaking Point
Worry

August 20, 2005: New York Times: Editorial, The Oil Effect
“Just when it was starting to seem as if consumers were really shaking off high energy prices, Wal-Mart announced this week that its profits stumbled in the second quarter, rising at their slowest rate in four years. Forced to choose between their closets and their gasoline tanks, Americans unsurprisingly chose their tanks.”

July 15, 2005: BBC: How much oil do we really have?
“Oil market data is generally a black art like using a set of chicken bones,” says Paul Horsnell of Barclays Capital. “If Columbus had thought he’d hit India when in fact he was in the Caribbean, that’s about the level of oil market data.”

July 31, 2005: It’s Not the End Of the Oil Age
Technology and Higher Prices Drive a Supply Buildup; By Daniel Yergin, Washington Post
Don’t worry… “We’re not running out of oil. Not yet.”

June 21, 2005: Oil & Liquids Capacity to Outstrip Demand Until At Least 2010: New CERA Report
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., “Despite current fears that oil will soon `run out’, global oil production capacity is actually set to increase dramatically over the rest of this decade, according to a new report by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). As a result, supply could exceed demand by as much as 6 to 7.5 million barrels per day (mbd) later in the decade, a marked contrast to the razor-sharp balance between strong demand growth and tight supply that is currently reflected in high oil prices hovering around $60 a barrel.”

August 2, 2005: Oil Depletion? It’s All In The Assumptions
In Brief: Ron Cooke, author of ‘Oil, Jihad and Destiny’ examines Daniel Yergin’s Cambridge Energy Research Associates(CERA) report ‘Worldwide Liquids Capacity Outlook To 2010— Tight Supply Or Excess Of Riches’ He shows that it is based on numerous assumptions that can not neccessarily be counted on in reality and contrasts CERA’s view with a number of more skeptical opinions from within the industry….Good News: In good news for the SUV set, Daniel Yergin’s Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), is predicting we will soon be awash in light, sweet crude - ideal for making gasoline.

I’ll end for now with these, as the last few of links illustrate the range of debate on world oil — about which truly reliable data is sorely lacking…

Sadly, the most-read Deep Blade post of all time has been Domination by detention from last July. But I just have not followed up on this properly–especially given the recent news.

Fortunately Body & Soul has. Jeanne’s post strikes just the sour note I have been feeling myself about all this. It seems so damn impossible that my country can be doing this, despite the fact that I have protested US torture policies and torture training schools for over twenty-five years. Will any amount of exposure and protest do any good? The Body & Soul post also draws the same line around the usefulness of the military JAG Corps in stopping this stuff that I did in Domination by detention–the JAGS have complained but after all seem to accept that the premises of the terror war include US presidential power to rip up the rules.

Curious how the media florish over the Lynndie England conviction came down right on top of the story about the letter Captain Ian Fishback wrote to Senator John McCain. The letter describes ongoing, unimaginable American atrocities against Iraqis.

Tashkent can’t stand human rights critique

The always-valuable Rodger Payne notes a new development in US relations with the internal terror state of Uzbekistan:

Washington confirmed on Tuesday it would leave an Uzbek airbase. Tashkent asked it to quit after the United States criticized Uzbekistan’s human rights record.

Evidently worked out by this disengagement is the hushed battle between the US Department of State and the Pentagon over the proper response to the May slaughter by US-trained Uzbek security forces of perhaps 500 unarmed protesters in the city of Andijan.

And it’s remarkably straightforward on the extent of hurricane damage to national fuel supplies

This doesn’t sound like President Bush:

Two other points I want to make is, one, we can all pitch in by using — by being better conservers of energy. I mean, people just need to recognize that the storms have caused disruption and that if they’re able to maybe not drive when they — on a trip that’s not essential, that would helpful. The federal government can help, and I’ve directed the federal agencies nationwide — and here’s some ways we can help. We can curtail nonessential travel. If it makes sense for the citizen out there to curtail nonessential travel, it darn sure makes sense for federal employees. We can encourage employees to carpool or use mass transit. And we can shift peak electricity use to off-peak hours. There’s ways for the federal government to lead when it comes to conservation. [emphasis added]

So ongoing concern into the future about hurricane-affected fuel supplies has brought the president to the podium to plead for conservation. This is serious. Of course, Mr. Bush did not let pass this opportunity to hawk nukes:

It is clear that when you’re dependent upon natural gas and/or hydrocarbons to fuel your economy and that supply gets disrupted, we need alternative sources of energy. And that’s why I believe so strongly in nuclear power. And so we’ve got a chance, once again, to assess where we are as a country when it comes to energy and do something about it. And I look forward to working with Congress to do just that.

I will surprise some people here by saying that my own thinking about nuclear electric generating plants has changed. I am not reflexively against building new ones, as the president has a point about hydrocarbon supply into the future. Even the most strident anti-nuclear activist should be able to see the level of distruption to the lives of everyone–environmentalists included–that would occur if deep, long-term fuel shortages set in. Now, I do not trust the people the Bush Administration has lined up to build new nukes for one second. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is deeply compromised by the extraneous goal of ensuring profit-grubbing nuke builders like Entergy, Exelon, and General Electric get rich.

For more Deep Blade commentary on Bush nuclear policy please see this post.

Drilled

Brassica oleracea var. botrytis

We had only two cauliflower plants this year. We ate one miniature one last night. Though small, it was very spicy. This plant is of fuller size, but it’s been drilled by a slug or something.

Peacecast: New Deep Blade feature

This post marks the very first installment of what I hope will become a regular feature. So I would like to announce that Deep Blade Journal will now include podcasts at a new domain address: http://peacecast.us

The first program included is Thursday’s edition of the Fall 2005 Socialist and Marxist Lecture Series from the University of Maine in Orono, Maine:

THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT: HISTORY, STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS (70 min; 16.1MB; 32kbps mp3); Speaker: Isaac Curtis, History, Ph.D. student, University of Pittsburgh and UMaine graduate and MPAC student activist. University of Maine philosophy professor Doug Allen introduces the speaker.

This program is very valuable, especially for students, and we’re delighted Isaac was able to return to Orono to give it.

Late summer

Can anyone id this?

Last broccoli spears

Update 9/23/2005: It’s nearly a whole week since I took these. This tells you just how busy this semester is turning out to be. Three classes and two major projects going…

Today on Rt 2 in Bangor…

Chained formed by over 100 people

Big message is that Bush’s wars are a failure of Real Security

The flags each represent one dead US soldier in Iraq — the line goes almost as far as the eye can see in both this and the other direction. We could add perhaps 50 more for each one of these in order to represent civilians now dead in the countries the US has invaded. The flags normally reside in front of an Orono residence. Last year I posted pictures — unfortunately the death count has increased.

Is there any doubt that the wars President Bush has started over the last four years in response to 911 are an absolute failure of Real Security for both the citizens of the United States and those of the entire world? Bush is utterly incapable of accepting or even remotely understanding the non-war options post-911 that we in the peace movement have offered at every turn. And this is tragic, as the failure of security during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina illustrates.

Bush offers no solutions except bombing, attacking, invading, conquering, occupying, looting, and controlling with a meddling hand the faux democracies he promotes for propaganda purposes — along with the prodigious death that accompanies all of these things — in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, and elsewhere.

When real dangers from natural disasters to energy crises come to haunt us, Bush provides nothing — except perhaps cronyism, contracting theft, and tax give-aways. And terrorism is hardly curtailed. What is next, I do not know, but it seems anti-US anger is at an all-time high worldwide. This is so unnecessary.

Yet, many Americans are still steeped in the false right of the American president to define the terms of international relations so that America can kill at the time and place of its choosing, for time immemorial, chalking it all up to permanent absolution granted us after the 911 attacks.

I was struck today when Bob Schieffer of CBS News (hardly the worst of the TV pundits) on his Face the Nation program said in his weekly commentary:

SCHIEFFER: In the midst of the disaster along the coast, let us pause now to remember what happened four years ago today when we were blindsided by a heartless enemy. We were attacked that day by terrorists willing to take the lives of innocent people to advance their cause, but that day we also saw what sets us apart from such an enemy. We saw Americans who were willing to risk and, in many cases, give their lives to save the innocent.

But have we not with our military might done heartlessly exactly what Bob Schieffer decries of the 911 terrorists? Isn’t it the right to kill innocents — collaterally or whatever — precisely the right claimed by America and its war machine? And while President Bush cannot explain the “cause” advanced by prosecuting these wars, even to grieving Gold Star mothers, it sure seems like control of energy reserves and domination of the political crossroads of the world in the Middle East are in fact the bases of this cause.

We will never honor the dead of 911 and the service men and women called to sacrifice and unfortunately betrayal in Bush’s wars — or the tens of thousands of innocent civilians worldwide America has bombed out, killed, detained, and tortured in the last four years in the name of 911 — until we take a good hard look in the mirror, declare that all this must stop, and that our guard & military must come home to protect us from the real threats we face.

The sooner the political environment changes enough to contain and stop the Bush Administration, the better. It is sad when the administration’s strongest critics in recent weeks turn out to be Chuck Hagel and Susan Collins. Come on Democrats! Wake up and get tough with this monster!!