Monkeyfister

A major fuel crisis will send petrol and diesel prices soaring this weekend.

Industrial action has led to the closure of the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland, which produces 10 per cent of the country's fuel.

Knock-on effects will mean the shutdown of a pipeline that brings a third of Britain's North Sea oil ashore.

The crisis is being deepened by clear signs that motorists are panic-buying, despite pleas for calm from Gordon Brown.

There have also been allegations of profiteering by garages.

As a result, the average price of unleaded looks certain to break through the £5 a gallon mark (£1.10 a litre)[US$10.00 per gallon].

It is already averaging £1.09 a litre and rises of as much as 10p are being forecast.

Experts are also warning that if a large proportion of the UK's 33million motorists panic and fill up their tanks simultaneously, the whole oil company storage system could be drained.

In Scotland, some garages were rationing customers yesterday as queues stretched out on to roads.

Some filling stations had to shut as their supplies ran out in the face of rocketing demand.

The 48-hour strike by 1,200 workers at the giant Grangemouth oil refinery - part of a bitter pensions dispute - is not due to begin until tomorrow.

But operators Ineos closed the plant last night and warned that it could take up to three weeks for full production to resume.

Oil refinery bosses said the shutdown "will impact on the whole of the UK" and ministers admitted they could not guarantee forecourt supplies.

Labels: Oil Producers, Oil Production, Peak Oil, Refinery Strike

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Midwest has enjoyed nearly 20 years without a major drought but forecasters worry the corn belt's luck could dry up this year, further squeezing tight global supplies amid soaring food prices.

With its last major drought in 1988, the Midwest has reached its average span of 18.6 years between droughts.

Considering that statistic and current weather conditions, Iowa State University extension climatologist Elwynn Taylor said the corn belt has a one in three chance of drought this year.

"We do have to be prepared," Taylor said. "A 33 percent chance is high, that's a risk."

The Midwest's chances of drought are exacerbated by La Nina, an unusual cooling of Pacific Ocean surface temperatures that can trigger widespread changes in global weather patterns. If La Nina has not dissipated by July, Taylor saw a 70 percent chance for U.S. corn yields below the 30-year trend of 150.6 bushels per acre.

Labels: Control The Food- Control The People, Drought, Food Not Fuel, Food Prices, Food Security

Bolivian President Evo Morales' 10 commandments to save the planet, life and humanity:


1-Acabar con el sistema capitalista

1-Stopping the capitalist system


2-Renunciar a las guerras

2-Renouncing wars


3-Un mundo sin imperialismo ni colonialismo

3-A world without imperialism or colonialism


4-Derecho al agua

4-Right to water


5-Desarrollo de energías limpias

5-Development of clean energies


6-Respeto a la madre tierra

6-Respect for Mother Earth


7-Servicios básicos como derechos humanos

7-Basic services as human rights


8-Combatir las desigualdades

8-Fighting inequalities


9-Promover la diversidad de culturas y economías

9-Promoting diversity of cultures and economies


10-Vivir bien, no vivir mejor a costa del otro

10-Living well, not living better at the expense of others

Labels: Evo Morales, Life, Permaculture, Way Forward

On top of record-breaking rice prices and corn through the roof on ethanol demand, wheat is now rusting in the fields across Africa.

Officials fear near total crop losses, and the fungus, known as Ug99, is spreading.

Wheat prices have been soaring this week on top of already high prices, and futures contracts spiked, too, on panic buying.

Experts fear the cost of bread could soon follow the path of rice, the price of which has triggered riots in some countries and prompted countries to cut off exports.

David Kotok, chairman and chief investment officer of Cumberland Advisors, said the deadly fungus, Puccinia graminis, is now spreading through some areas of the globe where "crop losses are expected to reach 100 percent.”

Losses in Africa are already at 70 percent of the crop, Kotok said.

"The economic losses expected from this fungus are now in the many billions and growing. Worse, there is an intensifying fear of exacerbated food shortages in poor and emerging countries of the world,” Kotok told investors in a research note.

"The ramifications are serious. Food rioting continues to expand around the world. We saw the most recent in Johannesburg.

"So far this unrest has been directed at rising prices. Actual shortages are still to come.”

Last month, scientists met in the Middle East to determine measures to track the progress of "Ug99,” which was first discovered in 1999 in Uganda.

The fungus has spread from its initial outbreak site in Africa to Asia, including Iran and Pakistan. Spores of the fungus spread with the winds, according science journal reports.

According to the Food and Agriculture Office (FAO) of the United Nations, approximately a quarter of the world’s global wheat harvest is currently threatened by the fungus.

Meanwhile, global wheat stocks are at lows not seen in half a century, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Scientists fear that the spores could spread on the wind and reach the U.S. and Canada or Europe.

"It will take five to eight years to genetically engineer a resistance,” said Kotok. "In the interim, U.S. agriculture faces higher risk.”

Labels: Collapse, Famine, Food Blight, Food Prices, Food Security, Global Famine, Overshoot

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court affirmed Wednesday that police have the power to conduct searches and seize evidence, even when done during an arrest that turns out to have violated state law.

The unanimous decision comes in a case from Portsmouth, Va., where city detectives seized crack cocaine from a motorist after arresting him for a traffic ticket offense.

David Lee Moore was pulled over for driving on a suspended license. The violation is a minor crime in Virginia and calls for police to issue a court summons and let the driver go.

Instead, city detectives arrested Moore and prosecutors say that drugs taken from him in a subsequent search can be used against him as evidence.

"We reaffirm against a novel challenge what we have signaled for half a century," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.

Scalia said that when officers have probable cause to believe a person has committed a crime in their presence, the Fourth Amendment permits them to make an arrest and to search the suspect in order to safeguard evidence and ensure their own safety.

Moore was convicted on a drug charge and sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Labels: American Fascism, Police State

If the Dems can’t win in November when people are on the verge of boiling their own shoes for dinner, fuck ‘em. --via Sadly No!

Labels: Democratic Party, Democratic Presidential Candidates 2008, Democratic Primaries

During this afternoon’s White House press briefing, reporter Helen Thomas noted that Bush “has admitted that he did sign off on torture” saying it damages “the credibility of this country.” But press secretary Dana Perino denied that the United States has ever tortured detainees and referred to testimony from CIA Director Michael Hayden as evidence. [..]

In fact, during a February 5 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Hayden said outright that “waterboarding has been used” on three detainees in U.S. custody. But Hayden has refused to label waterboarding “torture,” calling it a “legal term” which seems to fit nicely with the Bush administration’s self-serving narrowed legal definition.

But waterboarding is torture and illegal under both U.S. and international law – with experts, government officials and those who have been subject to the harsh treatment all agreeing.

Seeming to acknowledge her colleagues’ absence on this story, an exasperated Thomas said out loud after her exchange with Perino: “Where is everybody? For God’s sakes.”

Labels: Bush Crimes, Bush Knew, Dana Perino, Extraordinary Rendition, Helen Thomas, Torture

Paul Polak, founder of the nonprofit International Development Enterprises, has spent 25 years working to eradicate poverty in Bangladesh, India, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and other countries in the developing world.

His perhaps-surprising conclusion: Government subsidies for the rural poor often make things worse.

Instead, Polak teaches families and farmers — many of whom live on a dollar a day and own perhaps an acre of land — how to increase crop yields with simple technologies, such as cheap, foot-operated water pumps and inexpensive drip hoses for irrigation.

And Polak argues that his approach can make a difference in impoverished communities in the U.S., as well as in developing economies.

Last year Polak's organization received a $13.4 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support its ongoing work. His new book is Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail.
Books

Labels: Organic Gardening, Permaculture, Subsistence, Sustainable Agriculture

"...that what you have imagined to be 'civilization' is now falling apart”."

When climate change and peak oil thinkers run out of other things to worry about, there’s always the endless, inevitable debates about whether we are facing a “fast crash” or a “slow grind.” And I admit, I’m worried about my fellow environmentalists - because I think they are about to lose their favorite distraction. When no one was looking, we got an answer. Fast crash wins. And we’re in it now.

Wait a minute, you argue - that’s not right. If we were in a fast crash we’d be well on our way to living in a Kunstler novel. But we’ve still got cars, we’ve got food, things are slowing down, but at worst this looks like a slow grind - but the crazy lady at the blog is saying fast crash?!?!?

---

In early 2008, the world’s food and energy train came off the rails. What was startling was that it didn’t happen either gradually or in a linear way - instead, things simply fell apart at an astounding rate, faster than anyone could have predicted without being accused of lunacy.

It started with biofuels and growing meat consumption rates. They drove the price of staple grains up at astounding rates. In 2007, overall inflation for food was at 18%, which created a new class of hungry, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. In 2008, the month to month inflation was higher than 2007’s annual inflation. At that rate, the price of food overall was set to double every other year. Rice, the staple of almost half the world’s population rose 147%, while wheat grew 25% in just one day. Price rises were inequitable (as was everything else) so while rice prices rose 30% in rich world nations like the US, Haitian rice prices rose 300%.

Haiti was an early canary in the hunger coal mine. Desperately poor, by early 2008, tens of thousands of impoverished Haitians were priced entirely out of the market for rice and other staples, and were reduced to eating “cookies” made of nutrient rich mud, vegetable shortening and salt to quiet their hunger pangs. Women stood on the street, offering their children to any reasonably well fed passerby, saying “Please, pick, take one and feed them.” Thousands of Haitians marched on Port Au Prince, yelling, “We’re hungry.” And indeed, the Haitian government was complicit, allowing food relief to rot on the wharves. But Haiti was just the start.

After riots over long bread lines threatened to destabilize Egypt, the Egyptian government set the army to baking bread for the hungry. Forty nations either stopped exporting grains or raised tariffs to make costs prohibitive. Food prices rose precipitiously as importing nations began to struggle to meet rising hunger. The UN warned that 33 nations were in danger of destabilizing, and the list included major powers including Pakistan, Mexico, North Korea India, Egypt and South Africa. Many of these hold nuclear weapons.

The crisis didn’t stop among the already-poor, however. An article in The Economist reported that the crisis extended well into the middle class - Joanna Sheeran, director of the World Food Project explained, “For the middle classes,…it means cutting out medical care. For those on $2 a day, it means cutting out meat and taking the children out of school. For those on $1 a day, it means cutting out meat and vegetables and eating only cereals. And for those on 50 cents a day, it means total disaster.”

Up to 100 million people who had managed to raise their incomes above $2 a day found themselves inexorably drawn back to the world poverty level, while millions of those who called themselves “middle class” began, slowly, to realize that they were no such thing. Reports noted that many of the supposed middle class in rich world nations were actually the working poor who had overextended their credit to keep up appearances. And the appearances - and credit access - were fraying

In 2007, a major American newspaper reported the growing problem of seasonal malnutrition affecting poor children in the Northern US - the rising price of heating oil meant that lower class families were struggling to put on the table. Hungry, low weight children were unable to maintain their body temperature in chilly houses, and a vicious circle of illness, hunger and desperation ensued. Malnutrition bellies began to be regularly seen by pediatricians treating the urban poor in cold climates.

Shortages were a chronic problem in the poor world, but by early spring of 2008, they began to arrive in the rich world - despite Japan’s deep pockets, a shortage of butter and wheat reminded the rich world of its dependence on food import. Many of the supply problems were due to climate change and energy issues, as Australian dairy farmers struggled with high grain prices and the extended drought that destroyed their pastures.

Following up on anecdotal reports of limits at bulk warehouse stores, in late April of 2008 rationing went official. Many Costco stores were limiting purchases of flour, rice, cooking oil and other staples to avoid shortages - and the stores tracked purchases electronically to prevent customers from visiting other Costco stores. This was the first example of food rationing, but probably not the last - at least one financial analyst was predicting corn shortages in the fall of 2008.

The energy train and the food train were inextricably linked, and indeed directly (as the costs of diesel rose rapidly) and indirectly (rising energy costs created the biofuels boom) drove the food crisis. They were linked in other, complex ways as well - the housing collapse that threatened to plunge Europe and the US into a major depression was in part due to the high costs of commuting from suburban infrastructure. Exurban housing collapsed hardest, while housing closer to cities remained desirable - for a while.

While the food crisis in the poor world made headlines, the energy crisis there went almost unnoticed. More and more poorer nations simply could not afford to import oil and other fossil fuels, and began to slowly but steadily lose the benefits of fossil fuels. Nations suffered shortages of gas, electricity and coal. Tajikistan, experiencing a record cold winter found itself with inadequate supplies of heating oil and a humanitarian crisis. South African coal supplies were so short that electricity generation dropped back to intermittency.

Labels: Collapse, Food Security, Peak Energy, Peak Everything, Peak Oil

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) --– In an unusual step, the U.S. Navy has elected not to renew its recruitment ad contract with Interpublic Group of Cos.' Campbell-Ewald, Warren, Mich., and is seeking bids for a new agency.
The Navy 'Accelerate your life' ad campaign won Best of Show late last fall in the D Show, a regional creative contest.

A Navy spokeswoman said the move reflects the increasingly challenging military-recruiting environment and the need to reach a younger generation in ways that go beyond what is spelled out in the current ad contract. She said the scope of the marketing duties are being expanded to include newer digital-media and social-networking programs, necessitating a new bid.

Spending outpaced original contract
There were also some indications that spending on the Navy's ad contract was outpacing what was originally forecast, forcing a new bid to set a higher maximum. The Navy said it is meeting its recruitment goals.

Campbell-Ewald said it will defend the business. The agency has handled the Navy since 2000 and in October 2005 snagged a one-year contract renewable annually for up to five years. The Navy ads are themed "Accelerate your life," and the won Best of Show late last fall in the D Show, a regional creative contest. That contract had two years left to run.

Annual recruitment spending by the Navy in measured media is about $30 million a year, but a big chunk of all military-services spending goes toward unmeasured media. When the Navy contract was awarded in 2005, there had been talk it could be worth up to $92 million a year, or up to $468 million over the five years.

Surprise move
It is rare for government-ad contracts for the renewal option not to be exercised. The Navy said it would again offer a one-year contract, renewable for up to five years, but offered no monetary details.

The government sector has been the fastest-growing part of Campbell-Ewald's business in the past five years and has helped the agency offset budget cuts from client General Motors Corp. Besides the Navy, the agency also handles the U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Mint.

Labels: US Navy

Labels: Bush Crimes, Bush Knew, Torture, Water, Waterboarding