Month: April 2006

Neil Young is streaming his new album, “Living with War”, in it’s entirety, for free.

Listen here.

Via Anthony Gregory and Daniel McAdams on the LewRockwell.com Blog.

This may be old news, but I had not seen it, and it is something we need to be reminded of everyday: According to an article by Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz in the LA Times, the final bill for the war in Iraq “will be much higher than previously reckoned—between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, depending primarily on how much longer our troops stay.” Every member of Congress who continues to vote for funding for this horrible war needs to be voted out of office.

In a result I did not anticipate, I have been receiving answers all day to the question posed below. No pics of sexy, politically active Nepalis, however.

King Gyanendra? The rebels? I’m totally adrift on this whole Nepal thing. Guidance, please! Where are the neocons, the neolibertarians, and the liberal internationalists on this one? How am I supposed to tell the good guys from the bad guys if I don’t know which side has the hottest “protest babes“? It’s all so confusing.

Fortunately, Leon Hadar is leading the way on this matter, making the sort of baseless but bold associations (Nepalese Maoists –> Hugo Chavez –> Iran) we need in order to act decisively.

There has been some discussion over the past few years on the matter of the future of oil production and whether we’re already past the peak.

It always sounded like a bunch of propaganda to me, and by my reading of the new article “Peak Oil Panic” by Ronald Bailey in Reason my guess was about right.

The problem is not a lack of oil, but government intervention in the market which poses the threat – of course:

“The good news is that the peak oil doomsters are probably wrong that world oil production is about to decline forever. Most analysts believe that world petroleum supplies will meet projected demand at reasonable prices for at least another generation. The bad news is that much of the world’s oil reserves are in the custody of unstable and sometimes hostile regimes. But the oil producing nations would be the ultimate losers if they provoked an “oil crisis,” since that would spur industrialized countries to cut back on imports and develop alternative energy technologies…

“The problem is that the vast majority of the world’s remaining oil reserves are not possessed by private enterprises. Seventy-seven percent of known reserves belong to government-owned companies. That means oil will be produced with all the efficiency associated with central planning. Michael Economides estimates, for example, that it will take $4 billion in investment to keep Venezuela’s oil production at current levels. Yet that country’s Castro-wannabe president, Hugo Chavez, is investing just half that.”

The Republicans – supposed champions of open markets – have decided that markets don’t work, and that only empire can provide Americans with the energy they need. Bailey describes a Heritage Foundation panel discussion called “The Coming Energy Wars: A 21st Century Time Bomb?”

“Ilan Berman, vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council, regretted that ‘energy is not viewed through a national security prism. We should be competing to lock up supplies and diversifying and exploring new technologies.’ Berman argued that as resources become scarcer there is no way to avoid a zero-sum game. ‘We have to approach this through the lens of the haves and have-nots,’ he declared.”

It ought to be amazing what socialists the so-called “conservatives” in this country are.

By leading the states of the world into an unnecessary war over resources when capitalism can do the job just fine, the politicians can only end up jeopardizing what they pretend to secure.

I’m sure this one will generate a lot of mail, so post it at Stress.

“The Al-Qaeda leadership is on the run and under a lot of pressure. We are continuing to take the fight to the enemy abroad, and making it difficult for them to plan and plot against America,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said in Twentynine Palms, California.

Was this before or after the Jews were driven into the sea? McClellan sounds like Comical Ali during the US invasion of Iraq. This ridiculous kind of language, so obviously crafted to excite patriotic jingoists in the interior, is more befitting a bin Laden tape than the official voice of the most powerful political leader on earth. I guess I just expect smoother lies from an entity that has been lying for 230 years. Look at Tony Blair, now that is slick. Keep up with the times — Americans are more sophisticated than you think…I think.

Anyway, I thought we were done with this stammering, flinching, watery-eyed yahoo. I miss Ari.