Into The Gloom  

Neanderthal talk show host Alan Jones (very loosely equivalent to Rush Limbaugh in the northern mirror-world I suppose) has a "2 minutes of hate" style spot (limited to thirty seconds fortunately) on the morning TV news show here. While I can't actually handle watching him any more, apparently this morning he was having one of his rare lucid moments and devoted his high speed rant to denouncing attempts to reduce fuel taxes and said high prices are neccessary to push people onto public transport as we won't be able to deplete a finite resource at the present rate forever.

An NRMA spokesman was on later in the morning when I was watching still pushing the fuel summit idea, and made a point of noting that margins for petrol refiners have tripled in recent months. I foresee the phrases "price gouging" and "windfall taxes" becoming more commonly used in future.

Peter Costello has announced that a planned increase in the fuel excise won't be proceeding after last nights US$4 per barrel jump in oil prices (I'm glad our tax policy is adjusted on a daily basis to cope with the effects of the weather in the Gulf of Mexico - I'm sure it adds to the "certainty" Liberal politicians are so keen to provide).

"The main driver today is Tropical Storm Rita. We really can't afford to lose more production," said Phil Flynn, analyst at Alaron Trading Corporation in Chicago.

Long-range forecasts showed the system moving into the Gulf of Mexico late in the week as a hurricane, then possibly approaching Mexico or Texas. But forecasters warned those across the US southern coast, which is still recovering from the impact of Hurricane Katrina, that long-term predictions are subject to large errors.

If Rita strikes Texas, the biggest oil refiner in the country, it could spell serious disruption to the industry. Texas has 26 petroleum refineries, most of which are located along the coast, with the capacity to pump 4.6 million barrels a day. That's more than a quarter of the US total refining capacity, according to the US Department of Energy.

Chevron Corp and Shell Oil began evacuating workers from offshore oil and gas platforms and drilling rigs in the Gulf on Monday. A total of five rigs were evacuated on Monday, up from two last week, according to MMS.

Natural gas futures also soared Monday, rising $US1.519 to settle at a new high of $US12.663 per million British thermal units.

There are reports from Montana that representatives from SASOL have visited to discuss setting up a coal to liquids plant. TreeHugger had some comments on this recently which I don't think I've linked to previously.

Jerome at DKos has a post on an IEA report on the need to begin conservation and efficiency efforts before we pass over the peak, which includes the following colourful quote:

Oil is like a girlfriend. You know that she will leave you at some point in the future. To avoid a heartbreak, you should leave her behind!

No sooner had I'd opened my big mouth and said that its unfair for Jamais at WorldChanging to characterise the peak oil world as apocaphiliacs, the two most influential daily news sites (Energy Bulletin and The Oil Drum) have gone and posted David "Malthus Was An Optimist" Delaney's latest article on "What to do in a failing civilisation". I know this sort of speculation does have a morbid thrill to it (and almost makes Kunstler look like an optimist), but I'm not sure endlessly dwelling on the Dieoff meme is good for anyone's state of mind. Warning people of possible disaster in the future should be balanced with at least a little hint that there are things that can (or must) be done to avoid this fate, otherwise you might as well just sell up and go and find a nice beach to sit on while you wait for the world to end.

More gloom can be found at Ran Prieur (which includes the great word "collapsist") and Culture Change if you'd like to do some wallowing.

The news from Iraq is continuiung to be horrible, though I haven't been tracking it closely. The TV news this morning showed a mob stoning and petol bombing a British armoured vehicle in Basra, and this report in the Herald would seem to indicate that some unpleasant stuff is going on (no surprise really). The story is a bit murky but, if true, it does seem a little unusual that British troops in Arab dress are shooting at Iraqi police. I imagine your more suspicious type of person could draw the conclusion that civil war is being actively encouraged.

British troops battered down the main doors of Basra's criminal police headquarters and freed two British soldiers detained while on an intelligence mission. The operation, in which the troops reportedly rammed the doors of the building with a vehicle, followed a shooting and riots in which two British armoured vehicles were torched as their crews fled for safety.

An Iraqi defence ministry source indicated that 150 prisoners had fled the police headquarters after the British rammed down the door. "A large force of British troops surrounded the police building, smashed down the main entrance with a vehicle, and freed the two Britons along with 150 prisoners," the source said.

Britain denied the reports that its troops stormed the prison saying the pair were released after negotiations. "We've heard nothing to suggest we stormed the prison," a defence ministry spokesman in London said. "We understand there were negotiations."

An Iraqi interior ministry official earlier said British tanks smashed into a prison in Basra to free two undercover British soldiers seized yesterday by Iraqi forces. The official said British troops using half a dozen "tanks" stormed the jail, allowing dozens of Iraqi prisoners to escape during the raid.

Police in the southern Iraqi city said the men, who were wearing Arab dress, were detained after they opened fire on Iraqi police. An Iraqi interior ministry official said British forces had phoned the ministry in Baghdad to say the two detained soldiers were involved in "an intelligence mission".

Both Past Peak and Middle Earth Journal have posts on the truly staggering amount of corruption going on within the US administered reconstruction and arms purchasing bureaucracies within Iraq. I'm not sure its fair to call Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld incompetent when they've taken the art of corruption to heights (or depths) probably never before seen on the planet.

Doug Casey also has an interesting article on post-peak collapse up at Casey research, which, amongst other things, takes a look at the book "The 4th Turning". I've seen this referred to by a number of objectionable writers lately, who basically say that the new "hero" generation are going to win the coming war against "Islamofascism" (and anyone else who happens to have their hands on a decent amount of oil) - though the members of this generation may not really understand what they are in for.

One of the more startling items I've come across this week was a post on an energy discussion group which included Chapter 6 ("War Propaganda") of Hitler's "Mein Kampf", which the poster thought might be enlightening in view of the "30 year war" Dick Cheney says we are in, and the fairly incessant stream of propaganda we're being bathed in as a result of this.

I've never read anything by the 20th century's number one right-wing nutjob before, but the section quoted was actually quite informative (albeit tediously long winded) so I'll quote a few bits below which don't contain any anti-semitic nonsense (which regular readers may regard as sinking to a new low - so I'll note that I'm including this for an insight into how some people think, which you may wish to extrapolate into a post-peak world where the energy short masses could be getting a bit angry - Jay Hanson has done this before of course, but I suspect lots of people who are new to peak oil haven't had the dubious pleasure of digesting all of Jay's work).

Hitler seemed to greatly admire the British propaganda effort in World War I (all those stories about Huns bayoneting babies and the like which should be familiar to anyone who has read any World War I history) and partly blamed Germany's defeat on their much less effective campaign to whip the masses into a foaming lather. You can see where Karl Rove's playbook comes from (and I suspect Orwell learned a bit from it as well).

The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. The fact that our bright boys do not understand this merely shows how mentally lazy and conceited they are.

Once we understand how necessary it is for propaganda to be adjusted to the broad mass, the following rule results:

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out.

Thus we see that propaganda must follow a simple line and correspondingly the basic tactics must be psychologically sound. For instance, it was absolutely wrong to make the enemy ridiculous, as the Austrian and German comic papers did. It was absolutely wrong because actual contact with an enemy soldier was bound to arouse an entirely different conviction, and the results were devastating; for now the German soldier, under the direct impression of the enemy's resistance, felt himself swindled by his propaganda service. His desire to fight, or even to stand firm, was not strengthened, but the opposite occurred. His courage flagged.

By contrast, the war propaganda of the English and Americans was psychologically sound. By representing the Germans to their own people as barbarians and Huns, they prepared the individual soldier for the terrors of war, and thus helped to preserve him from disappointments. After this, the most terrible weapon that was used against him seemed only to confirm what his propagandists had told him; it likewise reinforced his faith in the truth of his government's assertions, while on the other hand it increased his rage and hatred against the vile enemy. For the cruel effects of the weapon, whose use by the enemy he now came to know, gradually came to confirm for him the 'Hunnish' brutality of the barbarous enemy, which he had heard all about; and it never dawned on him for a moment that his own weapons possibly, if not probably, might be even more terrible in their effects.

...

"Numerically, the first group is by far the largest. It consists of the great mass of the people and consequently represents the simplest-minded part of the nation. It cannot be listed in terms of professions, but at most in general degrees of intelligence. To it belong all those who have neither been born nor trained to think
independently, and who partly from incapacity and partly from incompetence believe everything that is set before them in black and white. They are not able or willing themselves to examine what is set before them, and as a result their whole attitude toward all the problems of the day can be reduced almost exclusively to the outside influence of others.

The second group is much smaller in number. It is partly composed of elements which previously belonged to the first group, but after long and bitter disappointments shifted to the opposite and no longer believe anything that comes before their eyes in print. They hate every newspaper; either they don't read it at all, or without
exception fly into a rage over the contents, since in their opinion they consist only of lies and falsehoods. These people are very hard to handle, since they are suspicious even in the face of the truth. Consequently, they are lost for all positive, political work.

The third group, finally, is by far the smallest; it consists of the minds with real mental subtlety, whom natural gifts and education have taught to think independently, who try to form their own judgment on all things, and who subject everything they read to a thorough examination and further development of their own. They will not look at a newspaper without always collaborating in their minds, and the writer has no easy time of it. Journalists love such readers with the greatest reserve.

For the members of this third group, it must be admitted, the nonsense that newspaper scribblers can put down is not very dangerous or even very important. Most of them in the course of their lives have learned to regard every journalist as a rascal on principle, who tells the truth only once in a blue moon. Unfortunately, however, the importance of these splendid people lies only in their intelligence and not in their number - a misfortune at a time when wisdom is nothing and the majority is everything! Today, when the ballot of the masses decides, the chief weight lies with the most numerous group, and this is the first: the mob of the simple or credulous."

This week's conspiracy theory (assuming the stuff above doesn't count) is from Jeff Rense - prophesying a "Harvest Moon" attack on Iran. While there is no shortage of paranoia and the paranoid in there (RenseWorld often seems to intersect with the genuine, original tinfoil hat organisation), the war drums are still beating in the background, and the neocons must be in something of a frenzy trying to prevent the Iranian Oil Bourse starting up early next year.

On a more reality based note, Jeff Vail has a quote from Wayne Madsen up, continuing his theme on US efforts to foment revolution in Iran, particularly amongst the Ahwaz in Khuzestan.