60 Years is Enough: Thousands Protest the IMF and World Bank

Source: Democracy Now!
An Interview with Njoki Njehu by Amy Goodman

As thousands of demonstrators converge on Washington DC to protest the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, we speak with activist Njoki Njehu about destructive free trade agreements and structural adjustment programs as well as elections in South Africa and water privatization.

Thousands of protesters converged on Washington DC last week to mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Though IMF and World Bank policies deeply affect the world's most impoverished nations, the IMF has always had a European president and the World Bank president has always been an American.

Demonstrators took to the streets to protest destructive free trade agreements, structural adjustment programs and more.

Njoki Njoroge Njehu, 50 Years is Enough Network.

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U.S. Betrays International Community

Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
by Mary Pneuman
April 30, 2004

EAST JERUSALEM, Israel -- Stumbling over a rubble roadblock, waiting in the sun at a log-jammed checkpoint or climbing through a break in the great wall willl give you a taste of everyday Palestinian life under Israeli occupation.

So does finding that your trip to the West Bank city of Bethlehem has been scrubbed because of a closure or seeing your Palestinian guides, including a young Palestinian seminarian with a U.S. passport, removed from your bus and forced to walk the long way around the checkpoint near Hebron. We who live by schedules soon learn that making plans is almost impossible in occupied Palestine. It has become a gated community whose locks are on the outside.

Unlike those who live in gated communities in the United States, the residents of these gated communities are untenably restricted in their ability to reach their homes, fields, jobs, schools, hospitals, churches, mosques and family burial plots. Nowhere is this fact more apparent than in the West Bank town of Qalqilya, a town of more than 40,000 that is now sealed off by a nine-meter wall, guard towers, razor wire and only two gates.

Qalqilya used to be one of the richest towns in Palestine; it was a trading center for surrounding Palestinian and Jewish towns and a market for the abundant produce of its fertile valley. Dead stumps are a testimony to the thousands of olive and almond trees that have been uprooted or cut down. Now, 75 percent of the people in Qalqilya are dependent on humanitarian aid for their basic survival. There are no schools or a hospital within the town and water is brought in for sale by Israeli tankers. No one can enter and no one leaves who has not decided to accept "voluntary expulsion." Families who had hoped to link generations by passing on an inheritance to their children and grandchildren can no longer do so. As one aging Palestinian put it, "You no longer know where you might be buried."

I write this from Israel/Palestine where I am participating, along with 600 people from 30 countries in the Sabeel Conference. Sabeel (Arabic for "the way") is an ecumenical grass-roots movement that, since its founding 10 years ago, has promoted an awareness of the presence and identity of Palestinian Christians in the search for non-violent solutions to the violent conflict among Israelis and Palestinians, Arabs and Jews.

While I was here, President Bush publicly turned away from longstanding U.S. policy and broke faith with United Nations resolutions by recognizing the permanence of West Bank Israeli settlements and denying the right of return to the Palestinian people.

What conferees found so outrageous was that the U.S. president would endorse Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw 6,000 Israeli settlers from Gaza in exchange for a free hand in the West Bank and Jerusalem, where 450,000 Israeli settlers already reside in large settlement blocks being built to accommodate up to 1 million.

Once upon a time, Bush promoted a peace plan based on the road map; now he offers a road map to protracted struggle. Palestinians tell us that they used to look to the United States for moral leadership based on democratic principles and the rule of law. Sad to say, this is no longer true. The United States appears to have abandoned them and can no longer be trusted as a partner in the peace process.

Surely, an end to the occupation, removal of the settlements and recognition of human rights are the only ways to achieve a just and lasting peace in the Holy Land. The United States would do well to champion this cause rather than turn our backs on the international community and the Palestinian people.

Mary Pneuman is chairwoman of the Justice and Peace in Israel/Palestine Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, Washington.

Outsource CEOs, not Workers

Source: CommonDreams.org
by Holly Sklar
April 30, 2004

American companies are busily outsourcing workers when they should be insourcing CEOs from other countries. U.S. CEOs are way too expensive.

U.S. CEOs make 23 times as much as CEOs in mainland China, 10 times as much as CEOs in India and 9 times as much as CEOs in Taiwan, according to the latest Towers Perrin worldwide survey.

European and Japanese CEOs run many of the world's leading companies for a lot less pay than Americans. U.S. CEOs make five times as much as CEOs in Japan, four times as much as CEOs in Spain, three times as much as CEOs in the United Kingdom, France, Italy and the Netherlands, and twice as much as CEOs in Germany and Switzerland.

U.S. CEOs have put American factory workers, computer programmers and engineers in a race to the bottom with workers around the world while keeping themselves in a rigged race to the top.

"Supersize me" remains our CEO pay mantra. CEOs on Business Week's Executive Pay Scoreboard of 365 major U.S. companies hauled in an average $8.1 million in 2003 -- up 9 percent from 2002 -- including salary, bonus and long-term compensation such as restricted stock and exercised stock options. That's more than $22,000 every day of the year.

The average CEO made $6.7 million more in 2003 than in 1980, when they made $1.4 million, adjusted for inflation. The average full-time production and nonsupervisory worker made $31,928 in 2003 and $31,769 in 1980, adjusted for inflation -- a gain of $159. CEOs often spend more than that on dinner.

CEO pay skyrocketed 480 percent during 1980-2003, adjusted for inflation, while domestic corporate profits rose 145 percent, worker productivity rose 61 percent and worker pay stalled. If CEO and worker pay had increased at the pace of worker productivity, CEOs would have made $2.3 million in 2003 and workers $51,148.

CEOs made 44 times as much as workers in 1980, and 254 times as much in 2003. British CEOs make just 28 times as much as workers. You'd think the Brits were the ones who rebelled against royalty, not us.

American CEOs are paid like kings when they are hired, fired, retire and expire. Cendant CEO Henry Silverman provides an obscene example. On top of his $54.4 million in 2003 pay, he has more than $287 million in stock options not yet cashed in. In retirement, he'll get a lavish pension and perks such as use of company cars and aircraft. When he dies, his heirs will collect his company-provided $100 million life insurance policy.

Why are workers and shareholders earning less so descendants of CEOs can live like aristocrats for generations to come?

Colgate-Palmolive's Reuben Mark was the highest paid CEO in 2003 with compensation totaling $141.1 million. He was also on Business Week's list of CEOs who gave shareholders the least for their pay; shareholder return for 2001-2003 was a negative 19 percent.

The poster child for mad cash disease is Disney CEO Michael Eisner. His compensation averaged $121.2 million a year over the last six years, reports Forbes, while Disney shareholders had an annualized total return (including dividends) of negative 5 percent. Eisner's average yearly pay was 3,796 times as much as the average worker's and 300 times as much as the U.S. president's.

Overpaying CEOs is bad business. Compensation experts Joseph Blasi and Douglas Kruse analyzed executive pay at more than 1,500 top U.S. companies from 1992 to 2002. Corporations with significantly higher than average shares of employee stock options going to the CEO and the next four top executives had lower average total shareholder returns for the decade.

"Too many boards of directors think that only the top executives make a difference in the company's value, and the rest of the employees are just static factors of production like machinery," Blasi and Kruse observe in a new report. "But a growing body of evidence shows that regular employees can really make a difference." Research shows that "broad-based stock option plans, employee ownership plans, and profit sharing plans are associated with future improvements in total shareholder return."

You'll know compensation policies have changed for the better if CEO pay goes down while worker pay goes up.

Holly Sklar is coauthor of "Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All Of Us". She can be reached at hsklar@aol.com.

Coming Together to Prevent the Demise of Humanity

Source: CommonDreams.org
by Martha White
Published on Friday, April 30, 2004

Humanity is in the most precarious position ever experienced in the history of the human species. During the hundreds of thousands of years of the primarily feminine based childhood stage, humans went from being nomads, to farming and domesticating animals, to creating towns and cities. The transformative stage of childhood, adolescence, ushered in the Renaissance, during which, for much of humanity, "reason" and science became the dominant paradigm. The rate of change had increased dramatically by that time, as the Renaissance lasted only about 1400 years. Human beings were determined to become independent.

The industrial revolution ushered humanity into its young adulthood, bringing with it all the violent, adolescent, masculine energy we have experienced as a species since it's inception. Desirous of being independent of nature and one another, humanity came to depend upon machines and came to value money, power, and things more than other human beings or life itself. This devaluing of humanity and life was and continues to be expressed through war, environmental degradation, poverty, disease, hatred, racism, addictions, and more. Henry Ford put words to this world-view when he asked: "Why do I have to have a whole person when all I want is a pair of hands?" Human beings had come and continue to be seen as simply a tool to be exploited by the system.

We have stayed overlong in our adolescence. Evidence of this is everywhere. Global warming threatens every form of life on the planet. Environmental degradation threatens to destroy all life on earth. We are drowning in our own filth, breathing dirty air, and seem hell-bent on total destruction. Violence has become the order of the day. Dominance and hate have replaced any sort of agape. The human psyche is psychologically split from itself and from any sort of connection to the earth. Relationships of all sorts are often based upon self-benefiting reciprocity (I won't call you on your stuff if you don't call me on mine), in order to keep an economic machine going that is systematically destroying everything in its path. An emphasis on sex keeps us from facing the fact that we despise the human body. Institutionalized religion has ravaged true spirituality. Fundamentalism has become the order of the day and we are looking at the potential for worldwide totalitarianism that promises to kill off anything that smacks of creative, compassionate community. Our brutal narcissism and lust for power has become a lethal weapon and our world has become an insane asylum, thanks in large part to the behavior of the small group of individuals who control the United States of America. The vicious attitudes and the violent responses taken toward the lamentations expressed by so many threaten to drown us in an ocean of despair. This has only taken us about 250 years.

Today, we have been pushed into the river of death and rebirth. This is the most important, meaningful, and dangerous stage of life. In the two previous stages, childhood and young adulthood, life itself provides most of the impetus for growth and change. In the stage of mid-life, however, life comes to us and says: "I've brought you this far, and I am now going to go sit in my rocking chair and rest. I will do my best to keep your body alive, however, from now on; your life is entirely up to you. I've grown you up. Now you have to decide whether you will become an adult with the potential of becoming a wise elder. It is up to you whether you make meaning of your life or not."

Every individual human being gets thrown into this river at some point, usually sometime between the ages of 40 and 55. Most people, faced with the agonizing pain, loss, and humiliation associated with the process, try to go backward into a stage in which they knew what the rules were and how things were done in order to have some safety again. The problem is that they are forever dead. They will never grow, learn, or evolve again in their lives. Carl Jung said it best: "Whoever carries over into the afternoon (of life) the law of the morning, must pay for doing so with damage to his soul."

The only choice for continued evolution is to risk everything - and move ahead into the dark territory. This, most people are not willing to do. And I see this being played out across the land. Few individuals ever do the hard, inner work necessary to take the journey to the other side, and there is no guarantee that one will actually survive the trip. This is precisely where we are as a species. We will either take this journey individually and together or we will become extinct. At issue here is the lack of cultural appreciation for those taking the journey to wisdom. We all have to die to our previous ways of being in order to be reborn into renewed life on the other side of the river of death and rebirth. In order to continue to survive, we must evolve.

The stunningly simple truth is that the paradigm that controls our current system will seek to marginalize, disempower, and kill off anyone who has done or is doing this work for it sees them as a threat, not realizing that by hanging on to what it considers to be it's life and by silencing the voices calling for conscious evolution, it signs it's own warrant of death, and millions of human beings are complicitous due to a hostage mentality. The Stockholm Syndrome is controlling us as we give up our basic human rights, our freedom, and our hope for a brighter future due to the fact that we snarl and fight over crumbs from our captor's table, giving away in every moment the very things that would set us free: compassionate, collaborative community, creativity, imagination, and love.

Though the need to remove George Bush and his handlers from the White House is critical, it will in no way solve our fundamental difficulty which is based upon our continuing to hold on to belief systems that not only no longer serve us, but that will kill us if we don't mature and become wise. We have to completely revision our world and our participation with one another and with all life. We must create a completely different kind of world community. Human beings have the capacity to grow in consciousness and are enormously creative and imaginative. We can do this. There is no other alternative.

There are thousands upon thousands of organizations devoted to all sorts of progressive ideas, environmental and sustainability issues, human rights concerns, human creativity, spirituality, and human freedom. These choruses give power away every single day by competing with one another for members and for operating capital. The tragedy is that the vast majority of these organizations are so focused upon their individual missions that they ignore the fact that most of them have, at their core, similar visions. It is imperative that, as they retain their individual missions, they come together in interdependence, with a common vision, in order to create a massive symphonic choir determined to create an entirely new paradigm for what it means to be a human being living a life on this planet.

The clock continues to tick faster and faster. We are now down to weeks and days of change, and we have run out of options. If we do not wake up very soon, we will find that world soul will not be able to handle any more abuse and grief, and we will become extinct. Will a critical mass of human beings have the intelligence, courage, and grace to grow up? Time will surely tell.

Martha White (marthawhite1@comcast.net) is director of The Big Enough House project at Legacy Properties in Brentwood, Tennessee, a former consultant to Fortune 500companies in the areas of creativity, learning, and as a futurist, a strategic scenario game designer, and an ordained interfaith minister.

Pentagon's No. 2 Flubs Iraq Casualties

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Asked how many American troops have died in Iraq, the Pentagon's No. 2 civilian estimated Thursday the total was about 500 -- more than 200 soldiers short.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was asked about the toll at a hearing of a House Appropriations subcommittee. "It's approximately 500, of which -- I can get the exact numbers -- approximately 350 are combat deaths," he responded

"He misspoke," spokesman Charley Cooper said later. "That's all."

American deaths Thursday were at 722 -- 521 of them from combat -- since the start of military operations in Iraq last year, according to the Department of Defense.

Wolfowitz, an architect of the military campaign in Iraq, was responding to questions from Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, on the costs of the war.

Since President Bush declared an end to major combat last May 1, 582 U.S. soldiers have died -- 410 as a result of hostile action.

April has been the deadliest month so far, with more than 100 killed and some 900 wounded amid a sharp rise in violence.

Kaptur asked Wolfowitz the question after he told the committee that U.S. authorities were working to train and equip Iraqi forces so they can one day take over their own security.

Get the Facts...(Holding Politicians Accountable)

Source: FactCheck.org

Click on any of the lies below for the facts.

(1) Bush's Gas Attack: Does Good Policy Make Bad Politics? - Kerry once voiced support for a 50-cent increase in the gasoline tax. Bush calls that "wacky," but Bush's chief economist praised the idea.

(2) Bush Says Kerry Will Raise Taxes $900 Billion; Kerry Says That's False - Attack ad revives question of whether Kerry's numbers add up.

(3) Bush Ad Is "Troubling" Indeed - The President's ad recycles bogus claims, then tells only part of the story about Kerry's position on tax breaks for couples and children.
(4) More Bush Distortions of Kerry Defense Record - Latest barrage of ads repeats misleading claims that Kerry "repeatedly opposed" mainstream weapons.

(5) Taxing Social Security & Gasoline: Bush Attack Lacks Context - Kerry supported an increased tax on Social Security benefits, but he also supported a repeal and Bush didn't.

(6) Bush's Misleading Attack Video - Internet attack ad says Kerry got most “special interest money” of any senator. He didn't. And Bush got lots more.

Bring Them Home Now (Statement of Purpose)

Source: BringThemHomeNow.org

BRING THEM HOME NOW! is a campaign of military families, veterans, active duty personnel, reservists and others opposed to the ongoing war in Iraq and galvanized to action by George W. Bush's inane and reckless challenge to armed Iraqis resisting occupation to "Bring 'em on."

Our mission is to mobilize military families, veterans, and GIs themselves to demand: an end to the occupation of Iraq and other misguided military adventures; and an immediate return of all US troops to their home duty stations.

The truth is coming out. The American public was deceived by the Bush administration about the motivation for and intent of the invasion of Iraq. It is equally apparent that the administration is stubbornly and incompetently adhering to a destructive course. Many Americans do not want our troops there. Many military families do not want our troops there. Many troops themselves do not want to be there. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis do not want US troops there.

Our troops are embroiled in a regional quagmire largely of our own government's making. These military actions are not perceived as liberations, but as occupations, and our troops are now subject to daily attacks. Meanwhile, without a clear mission, they are living in conditions of relentless austerity and hardship. At home, their families are forced to endure extended separations and ongoing uncertainty.

As military veterans and families, we understand that hardship is sometimes part of the job. But there has to be an honest and compelling reason to impose these hardships and risks on our troops, our families, and our communities. The reasons given for the occupation of Iraq do not rise to this standard.

Without just cause for war, we say bring the troops home now!

Not one more troop killed in action. Not one more troop wounded in action. Not one more troop psychologically damaged by the act of terrifying, humiliating, injuring or killing innocent people. Not one more troop spending one more day inhaling depleted uranium. Not one more troop separated from spouse and children. This is the only way to truly support these troops, and the families who are just as much part of the military as they are.

Bush says "Bring 'em on." We say "BRING THEM HOME NOW!"

Commentary: Looking for the exit (re: Iraq War & General William Odom's Comments)

Source: United Press International
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
UPI Editor at Large
Published 4/29/2004 12:38 PM

WASHINGTON, April 29 (UPI) -- If it wasn't a quagmire, it was certainly quagmiry. And the first prominent retired general to break ranks with President Bush's Iraq war policy was a Republican who once headed the National Security Agency and also served as a deputy National Security Adviser. Gen. William E. Odom, a fluent Russian speaker who teaches at Georgetown and Yale, told the Wall Street Journal's John Harwood staying the course in Iraq is untenable.

It was hard to disagree with Odom's description of Mr. Bush's vision of reordering the Middle East by building a democracy in Iraq as a pipedream. His prescription: Remove U.S. forces "from that shattered country as rapidly as possible." Odom says bluntly, "we have failed," and "the issue is how high a price we're going to pay - less, by getting out sooner, or more, by getting out later."

At best, Iraq will emerge from the current geopolitical earthquake as "a highly illiberal democracy, inspired by Islamic culture, extremely hostile to the West and probably quite willing to fund terrorist organizations," Odom explained. If that wasn't enough to erode support for the war, Odom added, "The ability of Islamist militants to use Iraq as a beachhead for attacks against American interests elsewhere may increase."

Odom, who heads the pro-Republican Hudson Institute, also sees the sum total of what the U.S. occupation of Iraq has achieved is "the radicalization of Saudi Arabia and probably Egypt, too. And the longer we stay in Iraq, the more isolated America will become."

The retired four-star's proposed solution is for the United Nations and the European allies to take charge of political and security arrangements. This formal request from the United States, says Odom, should be accompanied by a unilateral declaration that U.S. forces are leaving even if no one else agrees to come in.


The Journal's John Hardwood in his Capital Journal column asks which sounds more credible - Gen. Odom's gloomy forecast or Mr. Bush's prediction of success? He does not tell us which way he's leaning. But a company-size bevy of retired U.S. generals and admirals were in constant touch this week with a volunteer drafter putting the final touches to a "tough condemnation" of the Bush administration's Middle Eastern policy.

The Council of Foreign Relations organized a conference call-in for its members with Gen. Odom. A score of former U.S. ambassadors who had served in the Middle East were also discussing how to join their voices to Britain's 52 former ambassadors, high commissioners and governors who wrote to Tony Blair to accuse him of scuttling peace efforts between Israel and Palestinians. The British diplomats also took Mr. Blair to task for policies "doomed to failure" in Iraq.

One of the British co-signers was Paul Bergne, who until recently was the prime minister's personal envoy to Afghanistan.

It was the first time in living memory that such a large group of former envoys to the Middle East had acted as a group to denounce the government's foreign policy, They said they spoke for many serving diplomats as well.

The retired American ambassadors were as one in warning President Bush that discarding the Road Map to peace in the Middle East and substituting a plan that leaves Palestinians with no hope for a viable state is tantamount to declaring war on moderation - and jeopardizing U.S. interests all over the Middle East.

Total alignment on Prime Minister Sharon's anti-Palestinian strategy has turned even moderate Muslims against the United States. Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak said hatred of the United States had never reached such depths.

When Mr. Bush suddenly dropped longstanding U.S. opposition to Jewish settlements on the West Bank, rooted as they were in U.N. resolutions, Israeli settlers could not believe their luck. Sharon conceded Gaza, where 7,500 Jewish settlers had no future among 1.3 million Palestinians, but in return obtained U.S. blessings for permanent Israeli habitation in large swaths of what was to be a Palestinian state. Even illegal hilltop settlements concluded they were now safe from removal and immediately began erecting permanent structures to replace mobile homes. A tiny, isolated community atop a hill near Nablus, where 14 families live in 20 homes on wheels, had already laid the foundations for permanent structures.

No sooner had the White House's red light flashed green than the once surreptitious, crawling annexation of the West Bank resumed in the open. Jewish West Bank settlers were jubilant, while Palestinians were adrift in the Slough of Despond. With the Right of Return for Palestinians also off the table, and no viable state of their own on the West Bank, extremist organizations will have no problem recruiting more jihadis (holy warriors) and merging terrorist operations with the underground resistance in Iraq,

Arab opinion has been inflamed to the point where Palestine and Iraq are now two fronts in the war against what Charles de Gaulle used to call "the Anglo-Saxons." Osama bin Laden is probably thinking he's some kind of strategic genius.

In Iraq, quite apart from Fallujah and Najaf, the U.S. occupation, according to the latest Gallup polls, has turned most of the population against America. In Baghdad, only 13 percent now believe the invasion and regime change it accomplished was morally justifiable. Only one-third of Iraqis believe the occupation is doing more good than harm, and a majority favor an immediate U.S. troop withdrawal while conceding this could put them in greater danger. Odom presumably has his finger on the same pulse.

Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International

Eyewitness: On the ground in Falluja

Source: BBC News

As US military commanders in Iraq say they are planning to pull back from Falluja, BBC News Online spoke to two Iraqi residents of Falluja to get a picture of life in the besieged city. The BBC is currently unable to get its own reporters inside Falluja.

Fadel al-Badrani, a Reuters reporter in Falluja, says it is calmer in the city today compared to the two previous days.

"Every now and again, there is shelling. There was heavy shelling and exchange of fire about an hour ago in the industrial zone.

"I've just heard that a family was killed in a civilian car, by US forces.

The family was allowed into the city in a lull in the fighting. When the fighting resumed they were caught up in it. I'm told that they were hit by American fire from a plane."

Mr Badrani describes the situation for the city's residents as a "severe humanitarian crisis", due to the lack of water and electricity supplies, and shortages of foods and medicines.

"No aid is getting into Falluja right now. There are many families that cannot leave their houses because of the American snipers, especially in east, west and south.

"For the last seven days, at least, all the international aid that has come into the city has been piling up at the Jordanian hospital to the east of Falluja."

Running out of food

Sabah Alani is a retired doctor. He spoke to BBC News Online from his home in the north east of Falluja, not far from the industrial zone where there has been heavy fighting over the last few days.

"When the shelling happens, our house shakes, and most of our windows are shattered. Opposite us is a US sniper position.

"We don't go out of the house at all, of course. We've run out of food. We are living off tea and bread."

["I don't support [the insurgents], but the way the Americans have dealt with and are dealing with this city makes me hate every American here, more and more." "We don't go out of the house at all, of course. We've run out of food. We are living off tea and bread." - Sabah Alani, Falluja resident]

He also describes a severe humanitarian crisis, especially in the area he is in.

"One day recently, I heard, 23 trucks of water and food made it to Falluja. They didn't get to the areas it's most needed - and are 23 trucks of water and food enough for the 150,000 people that are left in the city?"

Driven to hate

Mr Alani says that siege of the city and the shelling is just increasing support for the insurgents in the city.

"It's not a matter of whether I or anyone else in the city supports the 'resistance' to the Americans.

"I don't support them, but the way the Americans have dealt with and are dealing with this city makes me hate every American here, more and more."

"We are being driven to hate them - me and everyone else here."

Talking Back to Chomsky

Source: znet web
By Cynthia Peters

Our social change movements have benefited enormously from the work of Noam Chomsky. The incredible energy he brings to his speaking and writing means that millions have been exposed to his analysis of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. But he has one favorite rhetorical device that always makes me nervous. He'll suggest that something is obvious. Maybe he doesn't realize how much this puts people on the defensive. One can't help but wonder, "But what if it's not obvious to me?"
If Chomsky considers something to be obvious, and yet I puzzle over it, does that mean I'm stupid? Take, for example, the question he gets asked at the end of every talk. He says he gets letters about it every day. When I worked at South End Press in the 1980s, we used to ask him to include something about it at the end of his lengthy denunciations of U.S. imperial policy in Central America and the Middle East. If you go to these books, you'll find, after 600 pages of analysis, a short paragraph about what I am talking about.

It's the question of what individuals can do.

And Chomsky thinks it's obvious. In an interview with David Barsamian in the May 2004 issue of the Progressive, he says, "The fact is, we can do just about anything. There is no difficulty, wherever you are, in finding groups that are working hard on things that concern you."

On the one hand, he is right of course. There is no alternative to joining groups, which I take to mean organizing. And on my more hopeful days, I think that indeed the problem is that too many people just don't understand this obvious fact. They think that teaching kids to share and depriving their sons of toy guns is political work. They think that volunteering at the shelter and practicing "random acts of kindness" is going to bring about social change. They think that wearing hemp and riding their bikes to the food co-op can help build a better world.

If lots and lots of people think this, and we can reach them and convince them that social change is not going to come about via random and individual gestures -- if that's the piece that's holding them back from real organizing -- then we're in luck. Our mission is straightforward. We just have to be like Chomsky and go around telling people to get busy, the path is clear, the array of organizations to join or create is obvious.

But it strikes me that that is not what is holding people back. It strikes me that it is not at all obvious what we should do, and that by implying that it is, we risk making people feel stupid, when in fact they are quite right to ask the question, "What should I do?"

I have been politically aware and active for 25 years and yet I still wonder about exactly what I should do. Here are some of the problems that make doing social change work less than obvious.

The Proportion Problem

This is the problem that comes from having to operate in a world where the injustices feel like they are not measurable on any conceivable scale. This is the problem that leads you to think, "The horror of U.S. imperial policies is so overwhelming, there's nothing I could possibly do to make a difference in them." If you understand how the U.S. military corporate machine works, you start to think of it as an enormous beast, capable of mass annihilation just by breathing in and out. Its sharp claws wreak havoc in the course of its basic self-maintenance. A mindless action, such as a swish of the tail, unleashes horrendous human loss and environmental destruction.

The beast is terrible and mighty, and as a citizen of this beast you wonder what you should do. You look around to find out what other citizens are doing about it. You've heard Chomsky speak, after all, so you know you should go join an organization.

But you are so small compared to the enormity of the beast. There isn't even a scale that could measure both you and the beast. "Joining an organization" seems like magical thinking, and you gave that up when you were six.

You think to yourself, not irrationally, "There is no action that I can take -- not even a series of actions, not even a lifetime of actions -- that could be any match for the task at hand." That is the proportion problem.

The Strategy Problem

But maybe you decide to be an activist anyway. The beast is man-made, after all. If we created this thing, we ought to be able to take it apart. Maybe you are wrong, not about how small you are in relation to the beast (because there's no changing that), but in your assessment of how much power you have or might have, especially if you join with others.

So you start looking around. Citizens have been studying how the beast works, and they notice when it stretches out its claws, it hurts people, kills them, displaces them, leaves them unable even to subsist. You see that various groups are working desperately to mobilize a small handful of people to get the resources together to trim one toenail of our multi-clawed beast. This would ease the pain and suffering of the people who come into contact with the claw.

It barely seems reasonable to engage in this activity given the potential ferocity of the limb to which the nails are attached, but you are human and you see people will benefit at least a little by less sharp claws, so you are moved to join the effort.

But, wait, people are fighting about which toenail it would be best to trim and since they can't agree, they have split up and are now competing for toenail trimming resources. You hadn't been sure in the first place about whether toenail trimming would be all that effective, especially as the tail swishes, and the exhalations continue unabated, but now you see that you probably won't even accomplish the toenail trimming since there is so much disagreement about which toe to tackle.

Meanwhile, others are trying to devise tail-swishing containment devices. Still others are attempting to develop antidotes to the lethal exhalations. Some others have discovered that the circulation of the beast's blood automatically causes people to be robbed and demeaned. They are urging people to tame the beast in such a way that its systems can ultimately be dismantled and replaced, but they don't say how or with what.

So even if you overcome the proportion problem, and convince yourself that it is possible to defeat the beast, you enter into a world of social change activists all working in a disorganized fashion on different body parts of the beast. People don't even speak to each other, except when they happen to bump into each other standing in line at the funder's office waiting to get their modicum of toenail-clipping resources. You know there is an axe somewhere that would make quick work of the toenail -- maybe even the whole toe! -- but that would require planning and training in the use of axes. Oh well. That is the strategy problem.

The Vision Problem

But you see that it is possible to overcome the strategy problem. You have studied social movements and have seen that people have developed long-term plans and won gains over years of hard work. You are aware of others who want to think and act more strategically. It dawns on you, however, that in order to be strategic, you have to know what you are trying to accomplish in the end. As you begin to discuss this question with people, you discover that one of the reasons people aren't strategizing about how to wield the axe is that they're afraid that if they use it, the beast might fall down.

"Lo and behold, isn't that the point?" you ask. Apparently not. At least not for all those people who, whether they realize it or not, live by special arrangement in the protection of this beast. They favor duller claws -- perhaps even a fully de-clawed beast -- because direct gouging is distasteful and all the screaming that it induces is disruptive. These folks depend on the beast for certain privileges.

They want its breathing and circulation and the power of its limbs to remain intact, but they want the more bloody consequences of its actions to be moderated. You realize with horror that some of your most important allies in the de-clawing work, the ones who fund your project and occasionally give you 0.3 seconds on primetime are not allies at all when it comes to your vision of a better world.

Besides you don't have a vision of a better world anyway. You are well aware that "another world is possible." You've heard the slogans just like every other anti-beast activist. But there are almost no venues for exploring what this other world might look like, and it's hard to imagine spending the time on it anyway. The claws are still slashing, the tail is swishing, and the heart of the beast keeps pulsing relentlessly on.

You might as well get back to the toenail trimming, which at least has visible results, minimizes real pain, and makes you feel like you're doing something worthwhile. You'll have to ignore the true functioning of the beast and perhaps you'll begin to buy into the rationalizations that the beast is the only game in town. You don't want to make this tradeoff, but isn't it easier than confronting the fact that your supposed allies are actually beast beneficiaries? If you confront these allies, might you not simply alienate them, jeopardize your access to resources, marginalize yourself even more, and put at risk whatever toenail trimming might proceed if you just kept your mouth shut?

Let's say you are very stubborn. You make a strategic decision to relate to the beast-rationalizers as need requires, but you will also pursue a vision of a better world with other more like-minded anti-beast activists. You have to. Years of experience have taught you that without a vision, you can't have a strategy, and without a strategy, you won't really get anywhere.

Little did you realize, however, that this is the most risky journey of all -- one that could launch angry disagreements and estrangement among activists who have the most in common. You've seen how upset people get when they can't agree which toe to put in the crosshairs, and here you are asking people to come up with a shared vision for replacing the beast's circulatory and respiratory systems.

You are sorely tempted to step back from it all. Isn't it enough that you overcame the proportion problem and did the obvious thing -- found a group that was "working hard on things that concern you"?

No, you discover. It's not enough. If you're really serious about taking on the beast, you have to do much more. So you are faced with some crucial decisions (none of them with obvious answers) about how and where to use your energy, about which battles matter the most, about building alliances across enormous divides, about how to engage in strategy and vision even as you take baby steps to counter the worst effects of the claws.

In a Boston Globe book review (April 25, 2004), George Scialabba called Chomsky "America's most useful citizen." I don't disagree. He has laid bare the workings of the beast and explained its functioning -- critical components of any social change activist's toolbox. But I wish he would stop implying that how an individual responds to this beast is so obvious. If we think it's so obvious, we won't prepare ourselves for the problems, especially the three biggest ones explained above. We will not be effective. And we won't begin to build the kind of movements that will be a match for the beast unless we take these problems seriously and address them.

For more information on vision and strategy, explore the znet web site for starters, especially www.parecon.org.

Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey...

Source: grrlpants2001
April 28, 2004

Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey stood on the Senate Floor today and called Dick Cheney a "Chickenhawk". Please write or call and thank him for FINALLY STANDING UP to these neocon thugs. I'm proud to be a Democrat today!

http://lautenberg.senate.gov/webform.html

Medals of Honor (re: John Kerry)

Source: The New York Times
by Wesley Clarke
April 28, 2004

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.

When John Kerry released his military records to the public last week, Americans learned a lot about Mr. Kerry's exceptional service in Vietnam. They also learned a lot about the Republican attack machine.

The evaluations were uniformly glowing. One commander wrote that Mr. Kerry ranked among "the top few" in three categories: initiative, cooperation and personal behavior. Another commander wrote, "In a combat environment often requiring independent, decisive action, Lt. j.g. Kerry was unsurpassed." The citation for Mr. Kerry's Bronze Star praises his "calmness, professionalism and great personal courage under fire."

In the United States military, there's no ideology — there are no labels, Republican or Democrat — when superiors evaluate a man or woman's service to country. Mr. Kerry's commander for a brief time, Grant Hibbard, now a Republican, gave Mr. Kerry top marks 36 years ago.

Now the standards are those of politics, not the military. Despite his positive evaluations, Mr. Hibbard recently questioned whether Mr. Kerry deserved one of his three Purple Hearts.

In the heat of a political campaign, attacks come from all directions. That's why John Kerry's military records are so compelling; they measure the man before his critics or his supporters saw him through a political lens. These military records show that John Kerry served his country with valor, and that those who served with him and above him held him in high regard. That's honor enough for any veteran.

Yet the Republican attack machine follows a pattern we've seen before, whether the target is Senator John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 or Senator Max Cleland in Georgia in 2002. The latest manifestation of these tactics is the controversy over Mr. Kerry's medals.

John Kerry was awarded three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star for his service in Vietnam. In April 1971, as part of a protest against the war, he threw some ribbons over the fence of the United States Capitol.

Republicans have tried to use this event to question his patriotism and his truthfulness, claiming he has been inconsistent in saying whether he threw away his medals or ribbons. This is no more than a political smear. After risking his life in Vietnam to save others, John Kerry earned the right to speak out against a war he believed was wrong. Make no mistake: it is that bravery these Republicans are now attacking.

Although President Bush has not engaged personally in such accusations, he has done nothing to stop others from making them. I believe those who didn't serve, or didn't show up for service, should have the decency to respect those who did serve — often under the most dangerous conditions, with bravery and, yes, with undeniable patriotism.


Wesley K. Clark, a former Democratic presidential candidate, was commander of NATO forces from 1997 to 2000.

Los Angeles March For Women's Lives - Westwood California

Source: grrlpants2001
April 23, 2004

Today caligrrl and I went down to the Federal Building in Westwood to protest this horrible administration's attempt to squish all women like bugs under their Sasquatch feet. I was a little disappointed with the size of the crowd especially for Los Angeles. Why can't we muster up more than a sidewalk full of people when so much is at stake? Why were people honking and giving us the thumbs up but were not prepared to park and join us?

We're so lazy and carefree in America and we take so much for granted. And the wicked right uses that to their advantage. It's like they've put a Grand Canyon's worth of Roofies in our country's collective cocktail and we're snoozin' into oblivion. We took some good pix and they should be up really quickly. Peace out.

Click here to view the Photo Gallery of images from this protest.

Army sergeant charged in wife's death

Source: Associated Press
April 23, 2004

[Photo: Army Sgt. James Kevin Pitts, shown in an undated family photo with his wife, Tara, has been charged with second-degree murder.]

TACOMA, Washington (AP) -- An Army sergeant who recently returned from a year in Iraq was charged Thursday with second-degree murder, accused of drowning his wife in a bathtub.

Sgt. James Pitts, 31, of Sheffield Lake, Ohio, pleaded not guilty a day after turning himself in to military authorities at Fort Lewis. Bail was set at $250,000.

A medical examiner said an autopsy on Tara Pitts, 28, showed she had a neck injury consistent with her husband's account of holding her head underwater, Pierce County prosecutor Dawn Farina said. She was found dead Wednesday in her Lakewood apartment.

Tara Pitts earlier this month had obtained a temporary restraining order against her husband.

James Pitts' brother and father said he returned from Iraq a changed man.

"Obviously it [Iraq] did something to him," brother Joshua Pitts told The Associated Press on Thursday from his Sheffield Lake home.

James Pitts, a sergeant first class who operated heavy equipment for the 555th Combat Engineer Group, apparently had an affair while deployed, and his wife reported it to the military and turned over letters from the other woman, his brother said.

"This has devastated me," Pitts' father, also named James, told KIRO-TV of Seattle. "My son called and said, 'I just killed my wife.' ... He's not my son anymore. I feel my son is still in Iraq. You can thank George W. Bush for this."

An after-hours call to the office of Kristin Hanna Slone, the public defender representing Pitts, was not immediately returned Thursday.

Fort Lewis civilian spokesman Jeff Young said Army personnel sent to combat receive help dealing with the stress of deployment.

The Army beefed up its postwar counseling programs after three soldiers from commando units at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, were accused of killing their wives in the summer of 2002 after returning from fighting in Afghanistan.

According to court papers, Pitts said he and his wife were in the bathroom of their apartment while their 9-year-old son, Joe, was at school. When his wife was turned away from him, he forced her head under water and held her there until she stopped fighting, according to the papers.

Then, "I didn't want Joe to see her that way so I dragged her to the bedroom and put her back in the bed," the prosecutor quoted Pitts as saying.

Michigan Preparing To Let Doctors Refuse to treat gays ("and anyone on moral, ethical or religious grounds" - state legislation passed by Republican majority)

Source: 365gay.com
April 21, 2004

(Lansing, Michigan) Doctors or other health care providers could not be disciplined or sued if they refuse to treat gay patients under legislation passed Wednesday by the Michigan House.

The bill allows health care workers to refuse service to anyone on moral, ethical or religious grounds.

The Republican dominated House passed the measure as dozens of Catholics looked on from the gallery. The Michigan Catholic Conference, which pushed for the bills, hosted a legislative day for Catholics on Wednesday at the state Capitol.

The bills now go the Senate, which also is controlled by Republicans.

The Conscientious Objector Policy Act would allow health care providers to assert their objection within 24 hours of when they receive notice of a patient or procedure with which they don't agree. However, it would prohibit emergency treatment to be refused.

Three other three bills that could affect LGBT health care were also passed by the House Wednesday which would exempt a health insurer or health facility from providing or covering a health care procedure that violated ethical, moral or religious principles reflected in their bylaws or mission statement.

Opponents of the bills said they're worried they would allow providers to refuse service for any reason. For example, they said an emergency medical technicians could refuse to answer a call from the residence of gay couple because they don't approve of homosexuality.

Rep. Chris Kolb (D-Ann Arbor) the first openly gay legislator in Michigan, pointed out that while the legislation prohibits racial discrimination by health care providers, it doesn't ban discrimination based on a person's sexual orientation.

"Are you telling me that a health care provider can deny me medical treatment because of my sexual orientation? I hope not," he said.

"I think it's a terrible slippery slope upon which we embark," said Rep. Jack Minore (D-Flint) before voting against the bill.

Paul A. Long, vice president for public policy for the Michigan Catholic Conference, said the bills promote the constitutional right to religious freedom.

"Individual and institutional health care providers can and should maintain their mission and their services without compromising faith-based teaching," he said in a written statement.

A Firm in Position to Profit [Carlyle Group invests in Nuclear Terror]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle
By David Lazarus
Mar 24, 2004

The war in Iraq is a year old, and the military-industrial complex is making out like a bandit.

That at least was what protesters were telling me the other day outside the Bechtel headquarters in downtown San Francisco, where people were chanting, the names of slain soldiers were read aloud and signs said "Shut Down the War Profiteers."

"We're lining Bechtel's pockets at the expense of a number of people's lives," said Paul LaFarge, a New York artist who was in town for the demonstration.

But why Bechtel? The engineering giant, with about $3 billion in Iraq- reconstruction contracts, has been accused of no wrongdoing (unlike, say, Halliburton, which the Pentagon says received millions of dollars in kickbacks from Mideast subcontractors and overcharged for services provided to U.S. troops).

"They're all part and parcel of the same thing," explained Amy Trachtenberg, a San Francisco artist, as she paused from reciting the names of the dead just feet from where somber-faced Bechtel workers were slipping past a police barricade and into their office building.

Yet Bechtel wasn't the only object of protesters' ire. Michael Daloisio, a San Francisco teacher, lamented that U.S. schools are struggling for cash while a variety of companies are "making billions off this illegal war."

Aside from Bechtel, he cited Halliburton, Lockheed-Martin, ChevronTexaco and the Carlyle Group.

Well now.

Since the subject has come up, here's a little something about Carlyle that most people don't know. I can say that with confidence because even a Carlyle representative said he didn't know until I pointed it out to him.

The Washington investment firm, run by a who's who of Republican heavyweights, including former Secretary of State James Baker and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, has put money into about 300 different companies and properties.

Those investments include United Defense Industries, a maker of combat vehicles, naval guns and missile launchers; and Sippican, a maker of submarine systems and countermeasures to protect warships.

They also include a New Jersey pharmaceutical firm called MedPointe, which just so happens to be one of only three companies licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to manufacture over-the-counter potassium iodide pills.

That's significant because potassium iodide can help protect against thyroid cancer in the event of exposure to large amounts of radiation -- from a small, easily transported nuclear weapon, say, or a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant.

And that's significant because, in June 2002, President Bush signed into law the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act. It requires state and local officials to "provide adequate protection" by distributing potassium iodide to all public facilities within a few miles of a nuclear power plant.

And that, in turn, is significant because if you're one of just a handful of authorized makers of potassium iodide, you're in a position to profit handsomely if the worst-case scenario should actually come to pass.

The Carlyle Group and another investment firm, the Cypress Group, spent more than $400 million to acquire a controlling stake in MedPointe in May 2001. Carlyle alone owns about 42 percent of the firm.

Chris Ullman, a Carlyle spokesman, said he had no idea that MedPointe produces a potassium iodide pill called Thyro-Block. But when I explained what Thyro-Block can be used for, he said this was something to feel good about.

"Carlyle is proud to own companies that make products that keep America safe," Ullman said, adding that MedPointe allows Carlyle "to participate in the specialty pharmaceutical space."

The other two FDA-approved makers of potassium iodide are a small Florida outfit called Anbex that, prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, sold its pill, Iosat, primarily to doomsday-fearing survivalists; and a Swedish outfit called Recip that brought its lower-dosage pill, ThyroSafe, to the U.S. market in 2002.

John Hawkins, a MedPointe spokesman, said the company has no current contracts to supply Thyro-Block to any federal agency. He also said that sales of the drug totaled less than $500,000 in 2003 (MedPointe expects sales of all products, led by its allergy and respiratory medicines, to reach $400 million this year).

But Hawkins acknowledged that MedPointe has bid for government contracts in the past. He also declined to elaborate on the company's intentions for Thyro-Block.

"Our plans for all of our commercial products are confidential," he said.

Asked whether production of Thyro-Block might be increased due to continuing terrorism fears or whether government officials have spoken with MedPointe about ensuring an adequate national supply of potassium iodide, Hawkins remained vague.

"For competitive reasons, our production plans for the product and communications with customers are confidential," he said.

This much at least is clear: If a "nuclear incident," as the bioterror law quaintly puts it, should occur, MedPointe and the Carlyle Group would be uniquely positioned to benefit from catastrophe. That's not danger-mongering. That's a fact.

(For what it's worth, the New York Times reported Friday that government officials have quietly revived a cold-war program for rapidly analyzing fallout from a nuclear attack on U.S. soil. The program is intended to determine the perpetrator of an attack and help coordinate a military response. )

Bechtel might make a convenient target for protesters seeking a high- profile recipient of Iraq-reconstruction dollars. "It's all about capitalism," one masked protester, a self-styled anarchist, told me outside the company's headquarters.

But to find a company truly poised to profit from the unthinkable, he might want to make his way next time to the Transamerica Pyramid. That's where Carlyle's San Francisco office is located.

David Lazarus' column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He also can be seen regularly on KTVU's "Mornings on 2." Send tips or feedback to dlazarus@sfchronicle.com.

With the June 30 Handover Approaching, Neocons Try To Sabotage UN Role in Iraq

Source: Democracy Now!
by Ian Williams UN Reporter
April 23, 2004

------------------------------------------------------------------------
UN reporter Ian Williams exposes how the neocons are trying to turn an Iraq scandal over the oil-for-food program into a reason why the UN should stay out of Iraq. Tariq Ali examines the growiing anti-occupation resistance in Iraq.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today in Basra, Iraq some 800 supporters of Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr held a demonstration in which they alleged that the British were responsible for the multiple suicide bombings in Basra earlier this week. In those bombings, 68 people were killed including 20 young children whose school bus was blown up as they traveled to school. The protesters carried signs saying that the people and the police are united under a religious imperative. Meanwhile, as fighting in the Iraqi city of Fallujah has intensified in recent days, it also appears that US forces are gearing up for a major offensive in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf, which is a stronghold of Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army.

The Associated Press today quotes senior military officers saying the order to attack Najaf will be made "at the very highest levels of the U.S. government," an indication that President Bush may have the final word on whether soldiers there begin an offensive.

Meanwhile, there are rumors that Bush himself made the decision that Fallujah would have to be massively punished for the desecration of the bodies of the US mercenaries killed there, and that Gen. John Abizaid strongly agreed. The Marines have now reportedly given the people of Fallujah just "days" to negotiate a final settlement, with an implied "or else."

As the killings continue in Iraq, a controversy is brewing at the United Nations over allegations of corruption within the so-called oil-for-food program. The former head of that program, Benon Sevan, has been accused of taking payment in the form of an oil allotment from Saddam Hussein's government. Sevan denies the allegation. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said yesterday that if U.N. staff are found to be guilty "we will deal with them very severely."

These allegations come as the deadline approaches for what the Bush administration calls the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30th. This week, senior State Department and Defense officials told the Senate and House Armed Services Committees that the new Iraqi interim government scheduled to take control on July 1 will have only 'limited sovereignty' and no authority over United States and other military forces already there.

Tariq Ali , author of several books including Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq and Clash of Fundamentalisms.
Ian Williams, UN correspondent for The Nation and author of the forthcoming book Deserter: George Bush, Soldier of Fortune.

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, or call 1 (800) 881-2359.

Book Review: How The Emperor Got His Clothes. Rupert Murdoch: The Untold Story Of The World's Greatest Media Wizard

Source: Columbia Journalism Review (CJR)
Reviewed by Diana B. Henriques, Financial writer for The New York Times
April 23, 2004

When journalists ponder the global significance of Rupert Murdoch, the temptation, especially in America, has always been to focus on his “content.” We cluck over the tabloid excesses of the New York Post, shout back at Bill O’Reilly, deplore the entire reality-TV genre, up to and including American Idol, and fret about what The Simpsons and Temptation Island will do to the children.

Those so inclined will find much fresh fuel for outrage in Rupert Murdoch: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Media Wizard, by Neil Chenoweth. Yes, Chenoweth informs us, Murdoch really does churn out all that stuff just to make money. And no, it doesn’t seem to bother him at all that snobs like us think he is pandering to the most churlish and vicious aspects of human nature. He does not live in a Masterpiece Theatre world, thank you very much.

But stoking our snobbish outrage is not Chenoweth’s purpose. Forget content, he says. The fundamental Murdochian significance lies in his grip on distribution, in all the ways he has found to dump his immensely popular trash into the world culture. His dump trucks — the cable networks, the printing presses, the television studios, the movie back lots, and lately, the satellites — are the real story, folks. And a lively, hair-raising, sometimes maddeningly jumbled story it is, as told by Chenoweth, a senior writer with the Australian Financial Review, that nation’s daily business newspaper.

To be honest, this is not an easy book to love. It was originally published in London last year under the far more accurate title Virtual Murdoch: Reality Wars on the Information Highway. Updated and reissued here, it is cluttered and occasionally flabby, with a herky-jerky structure that suggests it was assembled in a food processor rather than on a word processor. Just keeping all the minor characters straight is much more work than most readers want to do, and we cover a lot of ground more than once.

Moreover, its occasional melodramatic references to Murdoch’s vast cosmic power seem naïve and quaint these days — a throwback to the pre-Enron era when ceos were still widely admired and were not yet routinely keeping criminal lawyers on retainer. Rupert Murdoch “is probably the most influential and powerful media figure in the world,” Chenoweth writes in his introduction. “His empire triggers effects directly and indirectly across the globe far beyond the size of his company. He wields this power unfettered by other shareholders or bankers or independent directors or even by national governments.” And yet, by the end of the book, Murdoch has been thwarted at least temporarily in his dearest ambition, the purchase of the DirecTV television satellite service from General Motors, done in by a bunch of cable television operators and by the dithering GM board. They just don’t make superheroes like they used to.

But if some books have the flaws of their virtues, this one has the virtues of its flaws. With its breathless tap-dance through Murdoch’s daily life — sailing off the Great Barrier Reef one day, courting the owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers on another, receiving the “Humanitarian of the Year” award on a third, entertaining the family at his new loft in SoHo somewhere along the way — the book delivers an adrenaline kick roughly equivalent to the thrill of rifling through Murdoch’s PalmPilot and opening his mail. It’s all here, every murky deal, every sworn enemy, every shocking lawsuit, every clever acquisition, every cynical rationalization, every accounting trick, every family crisis. Conspiracy theorists, beware: Chenoweth could be addictive.

Consider the aftermath of one of Murdoch’s failed attempts to secure an American satellite system. One strategy, teaming up in the deal with a consortium of cable operators, was shot down in 1998 by the Justice Department, which apparently feared letting the cable companies control a technology that could put them out of business. The fallback plan, a renewed partnership with EchoStar, a smaller satellite company he had already jilted once, was appallingly expensive. “Murdoch left no doubt who he blamed for this disastrous outcome: It was the fault of the Clinton administration,” Chenoweth writes. And how did Murdoch retaliate for this corporate setback? The author strongly suggests that it was more than coincidence that this was the moment when “the New York Post broke the unofficial media bar on writing about the president’s family, with a front-page story about Chelsea Clinton’s distraught visit to a university clinic after a failed romance.”

This is hardball. Nor is it the only instance cited by Chenoweth in which Murdoch’s business warfare seems to have distorted the judgment and ethics of his journalistic enterprises. When Murdoch was trying to persuade the Chinese government to support his plan for a satellite television system there, we are told, the Murdoch-owned publishing house of HarperCollins shamefully reneged on publishing a memoir by Christopher Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong. Buying the book in the first place had required “no shortage of courage” on the part of Eddie Bell, the chairman of the publishing house’s London unit, Chenoweth tells us, because “it was common knowledge that Murdoch detested Patten,” who was extremely unpopular with the Chinese leadership. The top editors at HarperCollins hung tough for a while, but finally caved in to their boss’s displeasure and dropped the book. The resulting furor made headlines around the world — but was barely mentioned in Murdoch’s newspapers, which include the august Times of London.

“The Times media editor, Raymond Snoddy, said later that the lack of coverage was an ‘unacceptable error,’ but his attempts to interview Patten, Bell, and Murdoch had failed,” the author continues. The paper’s editor said he considered the episode a minor story but conceded “he might have ‘underplayed it.’”

The exploits of Murdoch’s journalists are nothing, however, compared to those of his accountants. Murdoch’s flagship, the News Corp, exists “in three parallel universes,” Chenoweth explains. One is the universe described in the annual reports to shareholders, based on Australian accounting practices. The second is the one described in the company’s financial reports to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States, using stricter accounting rules. And the third is presumably described in the tax returns the company files privately in Australia. Through artful tax planning that has only once been successfully challenged — in Israel in 1998, where News Corp agreed to pay a small penalty and modify the way it calculated its taxable income there — the company has been able to avoid paying taxes on fully two-thirds of its S.E.C.-reported profits. But according to Chenoweth, that’s just routine compared to the sorcery that once enlivened Murdoch’s financial statements.

“It began in 1987, in the company’s Australian profit reports,” he writes. “The profit after-tax on News Corp’s operating earnings . . . came in at $364.364 million. It was a cute little entry.” The odds of the same number’s occurring on both sides of the decimal point were about one in 250. “But it happened in the next year. On the same profit line, this time the result was $464.464 million. The 1989 result was $496.496 million. In 1990 the figure was $282.282 million.” In 1991, there were three of these “magic numbers” in the same financial statement — against odds of more than 100 million to one, we are told. “The magic numbers appeared to have become an obsession with the News Corp bean counters. They did it again in a more restrained style in 1992 (profit before abnormal items $530.530 million); thereafter News Corp abruptly began reporting profits only in millions of dollars, dropping the decimal places.”

The game worked only in Australian dollars, but it is impressive nevertheless. As Chenoweth notes, “These results suggest a unique accounting culture at News Corp. The uneasy question that this cheap party trick raises is: If this accounting team is so confident that they can make the minor numbers in a profit report say anything they want, then what does this say about the big numbers the company was reporting? Why should the number technicians stop there?”

Good question — and an especially provocative one in today’s scandal-obsessed environment. These accounting antics, too, seem a relic from an earlier, more carefree age. Today’s regulatory puritans may find Murdoch’s “magic numbers” far less amusing.

You’d have to go back to the Wild West to find a social setting that would suit the characters we meet in Chenoweth’s account of the adventures of NDS (News Digital Systems), the Israel-based encryption company that acts as locksmith to the Murdoch pay-television empire. The unit was run for years by a man who was a fugitive from a United States securities fraud case; it has been plagued by accusations of illegal wiretapping and industrial espionage that were aired in a blistering court case in London but got surprisingly little publicity here. On this, Chenoweth has more questions than answers, but his questions are insightful and important. Not the least of them is “what part of News Corp.’s management culture allowed it to employ a fugitive?”

Despite the serious and sometimes shocking issues he tackles, Chenoweth, at times, is weepingly funny, especially in his educational asides. “Many Americans are confused by English tabloid newspapers, which is the thing that the New York Post most resembles,” he tells us helpfully in an early chapter. “In particular they don’t understand the tabloid maneuver known as the reverse ferret.” Now what, you may be wondering, is the “reverse ferret”? In my personal favorite passage in the entire book, Chenoweth explains:

“Kelvin McKenzie, probably the world’s greatest tabloid editor (certainly the most obnoxious), used to stalk the newsroom [of Murdoch’s British paper, The Sun] urging his reporters generally to annoy the powers that be, to ‘put a ferret up their trousers.’ He would do this until the moment it became clear that in the course of making up stories, inventing quotes, invading people’s privacy, and stepping on toes, The Sun had committed some truly hideous solecism — like running the wrong lottery numbers — when he would rush back to the newsroom shouting, ‘reverse ferret!’ This is the survival moment, when a tabloid changes course in a blink without any reduction in speed, volume, or moral outrage.”

The author attributes this description of McKenzie’s antics to Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie, who included it in their book, Stick It up Your Punter. Indeed, his footnotes reveal the debt he owes to the media’s long fascination with all things Murdochian. And a look at his bibliography raises the question whether the world really needs another book about yet another media mogul, especially the well-thumbed Murdoch. William Shawcross brought out a revised edition of his more sedate Murdoch: The Making of a Media Empire in 1997. There are six other Murdoch biographies on Chenoweth’s list, and several fresher ones are on bookstore shelves right now. So don’t believe Chenoweth’s American subtitle — much of the story has indeed been told before. Did it need to be told again?

I think the answer is yes. The breakneck changes of the recent past, beginning roughly with the hatching of the Internet bubble and ending in the uncertain terrain of the post-9/11 world, justify this fresh look. Like those high-speed films that show the evolution of Western art in fifty seconds, Chenoweth provides a sort of fast-forward account of the revolution that has swept through Mr. Murdoch’s neighborhood in those years. His subtle analysis, once you sift it from the dizzying details of the Murdoch appointment book, will prompt even the least media-savvy among us to start wondering and worrying about the possible outcome of the games the media moguls have been playing in the past decade.

Murdoch has not yet given up on his dream of acquiring the dominant satellite television system in North America and linking it to systems he already controls in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. His odds of success were recently improved when federal regulators rejected EchoStar’s rival deal with General Motors, opening the door to fresh bids. Will cable television become the Betamax of the future? If so, will it be because of Murdoch’s orbiting hardware or because the telephone companies will have found a way to deliver television and movies over the Internet? When we have 500 television choices, will the victory belong to the consumer? Or to whoever offers the best electronic version of TV Guide? Well, guess who has a muscular stake in the troubled company that owns TV Guide these days? That’s right. Unfortunately, News Corp’s opaque complexity and restless hyperactivity defy easy analysis, and unpacking Chenoweth’s story is not something to tackle after the cocktail hour. But he repays his readers’ efforts by delivering an essential primer that captures, in one spot and in unsettling detail, the utter ubiquity of Rupert Murdoch.

Woman Loses Her Job Over Coffins Photo

Source: Seattle Times
By Hal Bernton, Seattle Times staff reporter
April 22, 2004



A military contractor has fired Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose photograph of flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers was published in Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times.

Silicio was let go yesterday for violating U.S. government and company regulations, said William Silva, president of Maytag Aircraft, the contractor that employed Silicio at Kuwait International Airport.

"I feel like I was hit in the chest with a steel bar and got my wind knocked out. I have to admit I liked my job, and I liked what I did," Silicio said.

Her photograph, taken earlier this month, shows more than 20 flag-draped coffins in a cargo plane about to depart from Kuwait. Since 1991, the Pentagon has banned the media from taking pictures of caskets being returned to the United States.

That policy has been a lightning rod for debate, and Silicio's photograph was quickly posted on numerous Internet sites and became the subject of many Web conversations. Times Executive Editor Michael R. Fancher yesterday appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" news show with U.S. Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., who supported the Pentagon policy prohibiting such pictures.

As a result of the broader coverage, The Times received numerous e-mails and phone calls from across the country — most of which supported the newspaper's decision.

Pentagon officials yesterday said the government's policy defers to the sensitivities of bereaved families. "We've made sure that all of the installations who are involved with the transfer of remains were aware that we do not allow any media coverage of any of the stops until (the casket) reaches its final destination," said Cynthia Colin, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Maytag also fired David Landry, a co-worker who recently wed Silicio.

Silicio said she never sought to put herself in the public spotlight. Instead, she said, she hoped the publication of the photo would help families of fallen soldiers understand the care and devotion that civilians and military crews dedicate to the task of returning the soldiers home.

"It wasn't my intent to lose my job or become famous or anything," Silicio said.

The Times received Silicio's photograph from a stateside friend, Amy Katz, who had previously worked with Silicio for a different contractor in Kosovo. Silicio then gave The Times permission to publish it, without compensation. It was paired with an article about her work in Kuwait.

Silicio, 50, is from Edmonds and previously worked as an events decorator in the Seattle area and as a truck driver in Kosovo. Before the war started, she went to work for Maytag, which contracts with the Air Mobility Command to provide air-terminal and ground-handling services in Kuwait.

In Kuwait, Silicio pulled 12-hour night shifts alongside military workers to help in the huge effort to resupply U.S. troops. These workers also helped transport the remains of soldiers back to the United States.

Her job put her in contact with soldiers who sometimes accompanied the coffins to the airport. Having lost one of her own sons to a brain tumor, Silicio said, she tried to offer support to those grieving over a lost comrade.

"It kind of helps me to know what these mothers are going through, and I try to watch over their children as they head home," she said in an earlier interview.

Since Sunday, Silicio has hunkered down in Kuwait as her employer and the military decided her fate.

Maytag's Silva said the decision to terminate Silicio's and Landry's employment was made by the company. But he said the U.S. military had identified "very specific concerns" about their actions. Silva declined to detail those concerns.

"They were good workers, and we were sorry to lose them," Silva said. "They did a good job out in Kuwait and it was an important job that they did."

Landry, in an e-mail to The Times, said he was proud of his wife, and that they would soon return home to the States.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com

Peak Oil: Debate or Vendetta?

Source: From The Wilderness
by Suzan Mazur
April 22, 2004

I sometimes think peak oil has already hit Manhattan as subways become increasingly unpredictable (although surveillance cameras are state-of-the-art) and escalator shut-downs present stair master survival challenges, a kind of perverse underground amusement. Unfortunately, surfacing on Fifth Avenue does not end the scenario, for where once there was excellence and exquisite fashion, now there are bargain stores catering to New Yorkers who are poor, and yes – even starving.

So I was particularly fascinated by the opportunity to listen-in to the telephone conference call that JP Morgan held for its clients on April 7 and 8, "Peak Oil: Fact or Fiction", which From The Wilderness was given exclusive permission to monitor. Maybe there would be answers as to whether or not Manhattan is a harbinger of what's to come for the rest of the nation, and whether its fleeting opulence (not counting all the questionably-financed real estate extravaganzas rising up) is energy-related.

The main speakers faced-off on separate days. First Dr. Colin Campbell, Founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, succinctly gave his position saying that peak oil is "such a geological matter.” Campbell says we're now at the halfway mark and that "by 2010 volatility comes to an end and then terminal decline" sets in.

The pronouncement is chilling. What's more, Campbell says that "over the next few years everybody will become aware of this, and in some ways the perception of this growing situation is as serious as the event itself.” Campbell's a retired geologist with decades of experience in the oil industry in both exploration and executive positions. He compares peak oil to old age – saying that a man knows when it has set-in.

Campbell was followed the next day by Michael Lynch, a computer oil and gas modeler for the past 25 years, President/Director of Global Petroleum Strategic Energy and Economic Research. Lynch came out slugging, informing conference callers that Campbell has refused to appear with him since 1997, saying "you'll understand why very shortly.” He seems to view Campbell as old school and too tired to be optimistic about the future. Perhaps a bit like Cheney and Rumsfeld having their last hurrahs before retiring into the bed & breakfast business on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Lynch believes the Hubbert model that Campbell 's theory relies on – discoveries and production follow a bell curve – is not only "incorrectly modeled", but is "much closer to being junk science.” He says further, that while Campbell and his colleague, Jean Laherrère, have now "stopped saying that" . . . they've "never admitted they were wrong.”

Lynch takes the position that URR – Ultimately Recoverable Resources – is not a static amount and therefore cannot follow such creaming curves. "It grows over time," he says, "as a result of economic changes, development in an area, but also because of technology, and in some cases, better scientific knowledge."

Campbell says today's oil supply is finite, and that it all came into being during two periods of global warming 90 million and 150 million years ago when "excessive" algal blooms formed on the seas and lakes, became heavier and heavier, and sank to the bottom of the rifts where they were "preserved" and pressure-cooked. The resulting oil and gas then began leaching its way back up to the surface through the sandstone (in the pore spaces between the grains of sand) and rock.

Campbell is adamant about the peak oil issue not being an economic or political one, but simply a case where we've now so depleted our "endowment" that peak oil will occur by 2010, and that soon after there will be a rapid fall-off in oil resources, which will profoundly affect world civilization.

So the conference began with a bit of posturing and name calling – with Campbell announcing "no common ground" with the "flat Earth economists" (Lynch et al.), who he says believe there's an infinite supply of oil (no one believes this, including Saudi Aramco).

Lynch called Campbell, Laherrère (and investment banker Matt Simmons) Malthusian pessimists, and obliquely referred to Simmons's upcoming book on peak oil as "content free.”

Fortunately, JP Morgan's clients pressed speakers for details, which made the conference truly worth listening to. Campbell advised that peak discovery of oil was in 1964 and that it's been falling for 30 years. He also said that by 1981 the world was using more than it produced – 1 barrel is now found for every 6 consumed – and that there's little spare capacity anywhere in the world.

As further proof of peak oil, Campbell adds that the major oil companies are getting out of the business – shedding staff, divesting marketing sectors, outsourcing jobs, cutting back on exploration and drilling fewer wells – the seven sisters are now four. He notes the majors are also buying back company shares (i.e., BP), and argues that "the value of their past is more important than their future.” He quotes the late Robert Anderson of Arco: "This is a sunset industry and the sun is fairly low in the sky."

However, Campbell does spare the more "nimble" independent oil companies, who he says will press on producing what's left, subcontracting to state companies however they can, through initiative, enterprise and bribes. And that oil in the ground will become increasingly valuable.

Lynch argues the oil majors are alive and well, thinking about returns and making their money upstream, just not investing in things like refineries, etc. downstream. He says lack of spare capacity and any pullback from the oil business is not because there's not enough oil out there. It's due to economics and politics.

Campbell counters that the picture is far worse than anyone's thought because he's "pretty sure" we may have to remove over 200 billion barrels of oil from world estimates as a result of Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, and Kuwait misrepresenting their oil numbers. Says Campbell, "If you're limited to public information and you're watching reserves grow, you can believe it can go on forever."

John J. Hoey, who served as President of Atlantic Refining Company, as well as Hondo Oil (Robert Anderson was CEO), and is currently founder and director of Tethys Oil in Stockholm, says the "Peak Oil debate is just that -- a debate.” Hoey believes the adverse remarks about lack of disclosure and transparency of sovereign entities like Saudi Arabia, Russia, etc. appear self serving and disparaging, that the oil producing countries are not public companies and have no duty or obligation to disclose any more than they deem appropriate. He advises: "Try to get some technical information from a major oil company on a specific 'tight' well being drilled or completed in a highly sensitive geological area."

Moreover, Hoey says he's listened to all the peak oil arguments (including the JP Morgan call-in) and "gravitates" towards Lynch rather than Campbell or Harvard Business School alumni and friend, Matt Simmons. He also lived in Saudi Arabia during the 70s and worked closely with Aramco and Petromin; Hoey says he has the "highest respect for the professionalism, integrity and future of their petroleum industry.”

Nevertheless, Campbell presents a litany of pessimism on future oil as he deconstructs reserve reporting: He says Iran and Iraq may also have been manipulating their numbers , though he's "less sure.” That UK gas and oil will be "virtually exhausted" by 2020, as acknowledged by the UK government (BBC reports Wood Mackenzie oil consultants described UK North Sea exploration as "the industry's biggest waste of money over the past five years”). That North American oil and gas is hopelessly depleted – it took 40 years for the US to go from peak discovery to peak decline – and that " Canada is way into decline.” Norway has the Ecofis "exceptional chalk reservoir," which has been kept going through technology, but that doesn't change the overall pattern of decline. Germany has "no hope" and is long past peak. Argentina 's production is down. Colombia has peaked. Egypt , with a teeming population, has hit its peak and has no money for exploration – "where will it get its oil from?" Indonesia has "no reason to remain in OPEC.”

The only upbeat pronouncements from Campbell were that Iran will have a "rapid rise" in oil production until 2015 (and then fall), even though a Power Bridge Associates caller told Lynch he's been studying reserves in southwest Iran's Khuzestan field and that Iran has about 200 billion barrels of oil and needs capital to develop. He says Iraq holds "north of 300 billion.”

Campbell believes Russia will see a second peak in 2010 – the first was under Soviet rule and influenced by OPEC price cutting in the 1980s which made Soviet oil uncompetitive. The increase in OPEC production stemmed from revisions in reserve estimates which allowed OPEC to exceed reserve-connected quotas. Heavy oils of Canada and Venezuela he believes will grow, but so will the costs of getting oil out. Canadian oil sands may be a good investment with an expected price of about $20 a barrel, but right now the project is stuck, and is consuming Alberta 's natural gas meant for the MacKenzie pipeline and North America's gas needs. Polar oil has "uncertain possibilities.” "Deep water booms and goes quickly." Kashagan field in the Kazakhstan sector of the Caspian will produce 10-15 billion barrels, Campbell says, "but not what was hoped for.”

Moreover, Campbell's bleak scenario includes not only a challenge to home heating and the gas tank. He reminds that the growing of agricultural products (crop nutrients and farm machinery) and their transportation are heavily dependent on petroleum – meaning global food shortages.

Lynch's principal role seemed to be one of resuscitating the audience after Campbell 's address. He backed up the Saudi Aramco claim that its definition of "oil initially in place" (according to Society of Petroleum Engineers, World Petroleum Congress and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists) is the "volume or the amount of oil that's presently in the subsurface.” Lynch also disclosed during the talk that he has worked off and on for the Saudis and does work in the short sell market, saying "I'm sure there'll be questions about that." Curiously, there were none.

Campbell explained the origin of the oil numbers system saying it all began with SEC reporting practices. For financial reasons, US oil company owners were allowed to report both proved producing reserves and proved undeveloped wells. The SEC model then became an international standard. He said "companies found it convenient to be very conservative about what they reported; they effectively reported as much as they needed to give a satisfactory financial result, which meant the build-up of stock of under-reported reserves.”

The Saudi "oil initially in place" numbers, which Lynch refers to, were presented at a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) meeting in Washington February 24 by Aramco's Manager of Reserves Management, Dr. Nansen Saleri, and Mahmoud Abdul Baqi, VP of Exploration. They both said that in the last 20 years Saudi Arabia's oil in the subsurface has grown by 100 billion barrels and it currently has "in the ground" 700 billion barrels.

Aramco also claims a 52% success rate with 64 exploratory wells drilled in the past 10 years and says that for the fourth year in a row the company reduced its water cut levels with the total company aggregate water cut for 2003 less than 27% (Russia's is 80%); water cuts pose a problem because while water flushes out some oil, it tends to further seal-in a lot of what remains. Aramco cites reserves at 261 billion barrels – reserves defined as "oil that can be recovered commercially with current technology.” Aramco says they expect to produce 12 million barrels of oil a day though 2025.

Lynch also obliquely referenced Matt Simmons's CSIS presentation, calling him an investment banker who "sort of said I read some technical articles and they describe engineering problems in the field. He made a whole bunch of mistakes which the Saudis corrected. . . . And he admitted he wasn't an engineer." Simmons referred to Aramco's sophisticated "MRC (maximum reservoir contact) wells" with multiple branches and high resolution digital imaging – as "bottle brush" wells.

Lynch did not question the A ramco claim that by 2025 Saudi Arabia expects to have 900 billion barrels of oil in the ground; Saudi Aramco's position is that only 14% of their "tank" has been tapped and that the main field Ghawar (actually many fields in one) is only 48% tapped. Lynch did say Saudi Arabia was virtually unexplored when it comes to oil, backing up Aramco statements regarding plans to push forward to the promising Saudi-Iraqi border (Campbell says you won't find much there) as well as into the previously inaccessible Rub'al-Khali – making use of "intelligent wells" and remote control digital imaging with a 10-million and soon 100-million cell resolution.

OPEC advises its figures also refer to member countries' remaining reserves and not total discovered, but says it does not ask member countries to verify reported numbers unless there is a major discrepancy. OPEC says its figures are in line with USGS and BP numbers, however this means that they are based on projected demand, which leaves things a bit fuzzy. Matt Simmons has called the very concept of proven reserves "still an art form.”

OPEC's current Director of Research, Dr. Adnan Shihab-Eldin, a Berkeley-trained nuclear physicist – perhaps the most dynamic personality to emerge at OPEC since Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani – is guiding the organization towards greater transparency in reporting its oil numbers by participating in JODI (Joint Oil Data Initiative) with APPEC (Asian and Pacific Petroleum Exporting Countries), IEA and UNSD. Shihab-Eldin previously served as a director of the International Atomic Energy A gency and as Director, Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research – where I first met him in the late 1970s when KISR was developing solar energy projects.

Shihab-Eldin, now OPEC's number two man, said the following regarding world oil supply:

"In the current scenario of heightened political uncertainty in the Middle East, it is widely recognized that there is a premium on current crude prices, related to these events, of as high as $4-$5/b, rather than any basic lack of supply… Our projections, derived from the OPEC World Energy Model, show world oil demand growing from 76 million barrels per day in 2000 to 89 million barrels per day by 2010, and by over 106 million barrels per day by 2020. Two-thirds of the increase in demand over that 20-year period will come from China and developing countries. This highlights the relevance of such projects as the new multi-billion dollar pipeline which will stretch from Eastern Siberia in Russia to Northeast China – with construction due to start in 2003. . . . Non-OPEC production is expected to increase throughout the entire period, with the expected decline in North Sea output more than compensated by increases in developing countries, the CIS and the Caspian region [which he says will add an additional 4 million barrels a day to world supply by 2015 and believes that new discoveries will get a boost from newer technologies]." – Conference on Oil and Gas Transportation in the CIS and Caspian Region, Vienna, Austria, Oct. 2002

Neither Campbell nor Lynch referred to the JODI figures, but there is little doubt that the time has come for the numbers to be counted. Even Lynch admits that OPEC's reserves numbers in the past were often referred to as "political reserves.” Lynch says: "I was in Kuwait in 1987 and we were laughing about the reserves numbers. Everyone knew those numbers were not reliable.”

And Lynch still believes "There are no good reserve numbers anywhere in the world – especially in the past 30 years." But he says he's referring to "proved reserves" not the ultimate amount available. And that proved reserves numbers are not really very important in long-term modeling.

He characterizes Colin Campbell's and Jean Laherrère's modeling as "curve fitting" – not geological research – "like people who look at stock market cycles and try to come up with waves.” Lynch acknowledges that field size is determined by geology but says "the process of discovery is an economic one."

Lynch also accuses Laherrère of mixing up political and economic events with geological ones in terms of the pause in oil exploration in the Middle East after 1980, when Lynch says there was a world oil glut, and the Saudis and Kuwaitis stopped exploring because they have 100 years of oil left. And then the wars happened, Iran/Iraq and the Gulf War. What's more, Lynch says the creaming curves Campbell produces are not reliable estimates because field sizes are not stable – citing field growth according to the IHS database in Norway (where horizontal drilling is producing results which could never be realized otherwise, he says), in Britain and Canada .

Lynch says that Jean Laherrère told the Abu Dhabis their oil was scarce and he just wasn't believed and that OPEC doesn't even want to deal with this "nonsense" but people keep asking them about it. Says Lynch, "If you look at all their [Campbell, Laherrère] curves, what you find is they're not doing serious statistical analysis. They're just drawing curves and then eyeballing them. Just looking at them and saying, does this appear to follow a pattern?"

Lynch looks at slides regarding British North Sea production. He says we were told the big fields have been discovered and the small fields don't matter and new technology won't increase recovery. But he says Campbell was wrong about his 1991 predictions of 500,000 barrels a day, citing current production at 2 million b/p/d and that this suggests "you don't know that the estimate of total resources in the UK is reliable, that it is stable.”

Lynch also claims Campbell is himself raising estimates of URR as well as extending the peak out – that Campbell first predicted peak oil for 1989. He says in 2002 Campbell updated a table from his 1997 book increasing the amount of URR by over 100 bb in 5 years, attributing it to countries discovering more oil "than they ever would have in 1997.”

Lynch concludes that the danger in the Middle East is more political when it comes to the supply of oil, and not its running out. A Barron's 4/5/2004 editorial suggests the real scare is that "OPEC producers will stop pricing their oil in dollars and switch to a basket of currencies for both the pricing and settlement of crude-oil transactions.” And Crown Prince Abdullah's historic visit to Moscow and talks with Vladimir Putin are further proof of politics as oil's ace card.

Says Lynch, "If you believe resources are scarce and companies should run up their debt levels, buy up reserves, sign a long-term contract for engineers, do everything they can – nobody's doing that. They're trying to hunker down against another price collapse because that's much more likely than prices staying up at $35."

A caller from Arc Asset Management wanted to know why investments in US public oil companies weren't being realized in the past 2-3 years, although there had been substantial increases in exploration and development spending. The caller questioned why there was a lack of production response, was it because the decline rates have been getting much steeper? (The 1997 oil hype in Azerbaijan, which took me to Baku, came to mind; after the smoke screen came down there were dry holes, investors threatening to jump off the roof and the gobbling up of Amoco by BP plus the resignation of the US Energy Secretary.)

Lynch responded by saying give Capex time, you haven't seen the results yet, and that "it's partly delay because what you're seeing is companies putting money into big projects like deep water West Africa that take longer to come online than a shallow Gulf of Mexico field." He said the Chad pipeline took 2-3 years, and mentioned costs on such projects could go up as much as 30%-40%.

John Hoey of Tethys Oil agrees. "It would be folly," he says, "to solely rely on the old school theories of recoverable reserves, tertiary recovery methods and technologies, old maps and geological interpretations." Hoey says the technology is moving too fast; they are now drilling faster, smarter, deeper and more effectively, revisiting areas that were abandoned, looking for different plays -- all helped by the economics of $30/bbl oil. He argues, "The worldwide deepwater drilling market expenditures have been estimated at $40 billion between 2003 and 2007 versus a fraction of this amount 10 years earlier, and were virtually nonexistent 10 years prior to that."

Lynch's talk was followed by a presentation by Dr. William Fisher, Director of Geoscience at the University of Texas and an advisor to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. He held up a slide with some Shell figures (odd, considering Shell's in the hot seat for overstating its reserves by 20%), which looked at the range of conventional vs. unconventional oil in terms of a price scenario – ultimate at 3 trillion barrels and unconventional at another trillion barrels – and said cost probably will come down due to technology.

Fisher says he concurs with USGS "folks in Denver " who project peakings "at either a high demand of 3% a year out to 2025, and at 1% or less, it extends substantially.” Fisher says future trajectory will be demand-defined, not constrained by physical shortage.

Fisher also says, fuel reserve growth "has been the biggest dynamic over the past 25 years.” He notes that the USGS "roughly equates reserve growth potential with new field discovery – it's about 650bb of each.” Fisher says he feels it's necessary to address this because some "early peakers" think reserve growth is a myth or assume it's accounted for in "proved reserve base" numbers.

Fisher sees "multi-component seismic coming along" to deal with complex high density rock, carbonate rocks, and expects there will be a lot more computer imaging. He says 3D seismic works best in sandstone.

Surprisingly there is some common ground with Colin Campbell. Fisher suggests the oil age is pretty much over – though not because the world is running out of oil – but because oil will have outlived its usefulness (what will replace it is less clear). Fisher and Campbell both think coal-bed methane will be important. Fisher believes we're at the "threshold of the methane economy.” And he says worldwide stranded pockets of gas will lead to cost-effective LNG (at a stable price of $4.50 to $5 a barrel).

Over the next 30-50 years, he believes natural gas will be the source for any development of the hydrogen fuel cell. Yet nowhere did he acknowledge well-documented recent supply shortages or obstacles to overseas importation. He says further that some of the downward curves on crude oil demand "out here about 20 or 25 years are factoring in a substantial introduction of the hydrogen fuel cell in the transportation mode." (Now we're talking volatility!)

So as the peak oil caravan moves back to CSIS April 27, we await more answers. It will be the second US appearance by the Saudis on the issue – this time Saudi Arabia 's oil minister Ali Naimi speaks – plus Secretary Abraham and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The event will be a significant ratcheting up of the debate with the world's press in attendance – and standing room only.