kerkko.fi

The current spike in petrol prices is not primarily a result of anything to do with the freedom fighters in the Arab world. Nor is it a result of OPEC’s production levels. Rather, the spikes are primarily a result of the speculative market on oil. This speculative market is driven by the practices of the biggest banks, who have special exemptions to treat commodities like a casino, who have zero incentive to appropriately hedge their bets, who do not provide the liquidity they were designed to provide, and who generally provide nothing of value to society except to push prices of things higher and higher so that very rich people will continue to invest with them.

For decades, the Arab world has settled for corrupt, ignorant, treacherous despots as their leaders. For a generation, and in some cases two, Arabs lived in constant fear of expressing dissent, a fear so crippling it deemed them useless, incompetent and ultimately irrelevant . But the region has now been revived by its youth who have shown in Tunisia, Egypt, and now Libya that they know no fear, that they would rather die standing than live on their knees.

Still, the West fails to understand that they can not continue to do business with dictators and still say it is "friends of the people." The EU buys 79% of Libya's oil. US companies have practically taken over parts of Libya in recent years as the "free world" began to flirt with Gaddafi in the most scandalous of relationships. How can Europe put pressure on the Libyan government to immediately stop the butchering of innocent civilians when 10% of Europe's oil originates in Libya?

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2011/02/21/what-next-mad-dog-libya

The US has agreed to sell high-end fighter jets, helicopters, radar and missiles to Saudi Arabia. The deal is one of the biggest single US arms deals ever. Mouin Rabbani, independent writer and analyst, sees the deal as a way of "solidifying the strategic alliance between the US and Saudi Arabia" with the "underlying message" that "Iran will not be able to attack Saudi Arabia without eliciting an American response."

But Rabbani does not see the arms deal itself fulfilling Saudi defense needs. "I think with all due respect that the people who try to understand the arms purchase on the basis of Saudi military needs fundamentally misunderstand" the situation, he said. "Any military objective is entirely secondary. What this is really about is to buy regime security. Military acquisitions are an important way of recycling petrodollars."

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/saudi-arabia/101022/why-saudi-arabia-stockpiling-us-weapons

A leaked German study has analyzed how "peak oil" might change the global economy. The study is a product of the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Centre, a German military think tank. The team of authors, led by Lt Col Thomas Will, uses sometimes-dramatic language to depict the consequences of an irreversible depletion of raw materials. It warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the "total collapse of the markets," and of serious political and economic crises.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdpxhs_the-daily-show-an-energy-independen_news

Chemical engineers at the University of Michigan hope to make fuel in minutes. They are applying heat and pressure on microalgae, exploring a method to create affordable biofuel that could replace fossil fuels. They also hope to use the byproducts of bio-oil production as feedstock for more biofuel.

"The vision is that nothing would leave the refinery except oil. Everything would get reused," chemical engineering professor Phillip Savage said in a statement. "That is one of the things that makes this project novel. It’s an integrated process. We are combining hydrothermal, catalytic and biological approaches."

"We make an algae soup," Savage said. "We heat it to about 300 degrees and keep the water at high enough pressure to keep it liquid as opposed to steam. We cook it for 30 minutes to an hour and we get a crude bio-oil. We are trying to do what nature does when it creates oil, but we do not want to wait millions of years."

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/04/university-of-michigan-bio-oil/

Since he stepped down as British prime minister, the West's Mideast envoy Tony Blair pocketed more than $30 million in oil revenues from secret dealings with a South Korean oil consortium, UI Energy Corporation. Despite his best efforts to keep his connection to UI secret, word is spreading like wildfire.

Blair has tried to prevent disclosures of his relationship with the South Korean oil firm. His relationship with UI Energy may precede his departure as prime minister. It is also quite conceivable that his dedication to keeping this matter confidential was meant to protect other international political figures.

Other prominent politicians on UI Energy's payroll include former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke, Congressman Stephen Solarz, former defense secretary Frank Carlucci, and US Mideast Commander General John Abizaid. These are only some of those who acknowledge association with UI Energy.

http://www.counterpunch.org/stahl03252010.html