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FTR #214 Trouble on Oiled Waters, Part II

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Fol­low­ing a 1998 dis­cus­sion of petro­le­um indus­try pow­er pol­i­tics, this pro­gram ana­lyzes the pho­ny “oil short­age” of the late 1970s against the back­ground of the alleged­ly real “oil short­age” of the year 2000. Begin­ning with the soar­ing price of gaso­line in the late win­ter and ear­ly spring of 2000, the pro­gram focus­es on excerpts from the book The Secret War Against the Jews by John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons (St. Mar­t­in’s Press, copy­right 1994).

The authors draw on an exhaus­tive bib­li­og­ra­phy, as well as vet­er­an Amer­i­can and British intel­li­gence offi­cers, to doc­u­ment col­lu­sion among George Bush’s CIA, the petro­le­um indus­try and Sau­di Ara­bia. Togeth­er, these ele­ments fab­ri­cat­ed an alleged Sovi­et petro­le­um short­fall, as well as a pho­ny “decline” in Sau­di oil pro­duc­tion. Career oil indus­try pro­fes­sion­al George Bush gave Jim­my Carter a CIA report that false­ly main­tained that the world would expe­ri­ence an oil short­age and that the Sovi­ets might invade the Mid­dle East in order to secure petro­le­um.

The goal of the report was to influ­ence Jim­my Carter to increase oil pro­duc­tion and to man­date weapons sales to Sau­di Ara­bia in order to “defend against the Sovi­et men­ace”. Carter and Ener­gy Sec­re­tary James Schlesinger instead respond­ed with a pro­gram of con­ser­va­tion. This enraged the petro­le­um inter­ests, which then respond­ed with the pho­ny “gas short­age” of 1979. This gas short­age helped to pro­pel Jim­my Carter from office. (Schlesinger had resigned his post ear­li­er in Carter’s admin­is­tra­tion.)

For­mer CIA direc­tor Bush became Vice-Pres­i­dent under Rea­gan and (accord­ing to Lof­tus and Aarons) was the actu­al “pow­er behind the throne.” Even­tu­al­ly, it became evi­dent that the CIA report was false and that the Mid­dle East was swim­ming in oil. Nonethe­less, the CIA/Saudi/petroleum indus­try fraud was suc­cess­ful in con­ning con­sumers into accept­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly high­er gaso­line prices, desta­bi­liz­ing the Carter admin­is­tra­tion and per­suad­ing Con­gress and the Pres­i­dent to autho­rize a Sau­di mil­i­tary buildup.

That Sau­di build-up tipped the mil­i­tary bal­ance of pow­er in favor of the Arabs. Most impor­tant­ly, the pho­ny oil short­age set the stage for an unprece­dent­ed mil­i­tary build-up dur­ing the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tions. That mil­i­tary build-up tripled the U.S. nation­al debt in eight years.

The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at the Repub­li­can attempt to blame Al Gore for the increase in the price of gaso­line. George Bush’s son, George W. Bush is run­ning for Pres­i­dent on the Repub­li­can tick­et. Like his father, he is a career petro­le­um-indus­try pro­fes­sion­al.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: dis­cus­sion of George W’s con­nec­tions to Sau­di busi­ness inter­ests; media crit­i­cism of the pho­ny CIA oil report; analy­sis of the drop in refin­ery pro­duc­tion in 1979 and its influ­ence on the “gas short­age;” a vet­er­an intel­li­gence offi­cer’s blunt state­ment that the “gas short­age” of 1979 was as pho­ny as the George Bush-led CIA’s fab­ri­ca­tions about Sovi­et petro­le­um short­fall; spec­u­la­tion that the oil short­age of 2000 is being delib­er­ate­ly arranged in order to put George W. Bush in the White House. (Record­ed on 3/19/2000.)

Discussion

One comment for “FTR #214 Trouble on Oiled Waters, Part II”

  1. http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=85296&pageid=37&pagename=Page+One
    PUMP: The Movie that Can Kick the Oil Addic­tion
    Edwin Black Sep­tem­ber 15th 2014

    ISIS has tre­bled its forces with­in recent months and in large mea­sure finances its expan­sion with $10 mil­lion to $20 mil­lion per week in illic­it oil sales from as many as 70 cap­tured oil wells.

    Iran now has mul­ti­plied its cen­trifuges to almost 20,000, enabling it to con­vert its 5 per­cent and 20 per­cent enriched ura­ni­um to 90 per­cent weapons grade HEU with­in a 7‑week break­out peri­od. With sanc­tions lift­ed, Tehran’s month­ly oil rev­enues have soared to almost 3 mil­lion bar­rels per day, gen­er­at­ing bil­lions of dol­lars per month.

    Tiny Qatar, with only about 280,000 cit­i­zens, pro­vides Hamas with some $400 mil­lion annu­al­ly. Qatar exports more than 600,000 bar­rels of oil per day help­ing to estab­lish an esti­mat­ed $200 bil­lion petrodol­lar reserve.

    Oil is dri­ving it all —and more.

    Amer­i­can petro­le­um use accounts for about one-quar­ter of glob­al con­sump­tion, depend­ing upon whose num­bers you’re refin­ing. Kick­ing our oil addic­tion is an old mantra that is preached dai­ly from the side­lines by an army of expert ener­gy ana­lysts and secu­ri­ty insid­ers.

    A slick, kinet­ic new Hol­ly­wood movie, PUMP, is break­ing out of the wood­en oil doc­u­men­tary mold to help pow­er a con­cert­ed nation­al effort to get off of oil.

    PUMP’s point is eas­i­ly dis­tilled: if sim­ple fuel choice were imple­ment­ed, it would quick­ly dilute the pow­er of petro­le­um and those who sell it. PUMP com­bines flashy cin­e­matog­ra­phy and rock music with irrefutable tes­ti­mo­ny by the likes of for­mer Shell pres­i­dent John Hofmeis­ter, Tes­la founder Elon Musk, ana­lyst Annie Korin, and Auto Chan­nel edi­tor Marc Rauch. I also appear in the film with the inside his­tor­i­cal sto­ry of cor­po­rate crimes com­mit­ted by Gen­er­al Motors and Stan­dard Oil to crip­ple the elec­tric mass tran­sit sys­tem which pro­lif­er­at­ed in the first years of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, and replace it with oil con­sum­ing bus­es — in oth­er words, how we got here.

    As I wrote in my book Inter­nal Com­bus­tion and sub­se­quent works, we nev­er need­ed to be addict­ed to oil. Nev­er. The elec­tric car was invent­ed in about 1835. Until the run-up to WW I, most of the motor vehi­cles in Amer­i­ca were elec­tric-pow­ered, until Edison’s plans were sub­vert­ed by the car indus­try and the man­u­fac­tur­ers switched to gas-burn­ing inter­nal com­bus­tion vehi­cles.

    The much-vaunt­ed hydro­gen fuel cell that uses water as a feed­stock is based on tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped back in 1838. Some years ago, I drove an ordi­nary show­room Hydro­gen-pow­ered Chevro­let Equinox all over South­ern Cal­i­for­nia on a sin­gle tank of hydro­gen. That hydro­gen fuel was zapped from sim­ple water, filled at a pub­lic Shell sta­tion on San­ta Mon­i­ca Boule­vard that main­tained a hydro­gen pump on the side. Hydro­gen sup­plies are abun­dant in the US — it’s the ingre­di­ent need­ed for unlead­ed gas.

    More than 17 mil­lion com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG) vehi­cles oper­ate world­wide. A petro­le­um car can be con­vert­ed to nat­ur­al gas in a day. But in Amer­i­ca, less than 120,000 oper­ate —in large mea­sure because Hon­da, America’s major NGV car man­u­fac­tur­er, stub­born­ly refus­es to mass mar­ket its own vehi­cle beyond a few thou­sand per year.

    Methanol, ethanol, a bas­ket of oth­er alco­hol and alter­na­tive fuels — all can pow­er an auto­mo­bile with vir­tu­al­ly equal abil­i­ty. This is the so-called “Open Fuel Stan­dard” that goes hand-in-hand with the flex-fuel designed vehi­cles that more than 17 mil­lion Amer­i­cans dri­ve – yet many don’t know it. A minor adjust­ment in the soft­ware and the fuel sys­tem would allow fuel democ­ra­cy — any alt fuel from any­one will­ing to pro­vide it.

    That is the mes­sage in PUMP: Fuel democ­ra­cy to pro­tect Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. Unlock the car engines the way we want to unlock our cell phones.

    Until we have a moment of truth with our­selves, Amer­i­ca is des­tined to not only be addict­ed to oil, but addict­ed to all the ter­ri­ble trap­pings that come with oil.

    PUMP opens Sep­tem­ber 19 at many the­ater screens across Amer­i­ca, includ­ing the AMC 25 in Times Square. You can locate a PUMP screen­ing any­where in Amer­i­ca. Pre­pare to get angry. Get­ting off of oil is eas­i­er than we think — if we mobi­lize nation­al will. There has nev­er been a bet­ter or more crit­i­cal time to ener­gize this than now.

    Edwin Black is the award-win­ning author of the inter­na­tion­al best­seller IBM and the Holo­caust and the award-win­ning Inter­nal Com­bus­tion: How Cor­po­ra­tions and Gov­ern­ments Addict­ed the World to Oil and Derailed the Alter­na­tives.

    See trail­er to film here...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTytxMdlazM

    Posted by Vanfield | October 3, 2014, 12:45 pm

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