Terror-Free Oil Initiative - First Step to Energy Independence

The Ultimate Counterterrorism Weapon

2008-11-12T19:31:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Farah

In the day-to-day discussions and actions to combat terrorism, particularly radical Islamist terrorism, we generally agree that it will be a long struggle that could last generations. I agree.

But it is useful to step back and realize there is a powerful weapon that we CAN use to great effect. Both presidential candidates agreed on it, and it is long overdue: that is to decrease our consumption of oil so that our money does not flow to those who want to destroy us.

The effects have already been dramatic, as this IHT article describes. Two regimes that pose direct threats to U.S, Latin American and Middle Eastern stability – Iran and Venezuela – are teetering on the edge of severe financial meltdowns because oil prices have dropped.

A third country that is increasingly willing to deal with rogue regimes – Russia – is also hard hit, although not to the degree of Iran and Venezuela. Saudi Arabia’s ability to fund the propagation of Wahhabi extremism and intolerance will also be curtailed if the prices stay down.

Why? Because these regimes conservatively built their budgets, including the expansionary weapons purchases, on oil averaging $80 to $90 a barrel. When it falls below that, particularly to where it has been recently, they are forced to choose between their expansionist and militarist dreams, and feeding their own people.

Both Obama and McCain focused on the fact that we spend billions of dollars buying oil from regimes that hate us and have a radically different view of what the world should look like than most of its neighbors. Both viewed the issue of energy independence as a matter of national security. While differing on the margins over where to drill and the priority given nuclear energy, the campaigns, representing candidates supported by about 96% of the voting population, were in agreement.

The choices are stark. Iran wants a Shiite theocracy, which puts it at odds not only with the West, but with the Sunni regimes. It cannot finance its nuclear program, its massive expansion into Latin America or terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Quds Force, without oil money. It has nothing else.

Venezuela wants a 21st century view of socialism and one party rule. Without oil money, Chávez cannot join Iran in pushing and financing the broad anti-democratic agenda he has established.

Bankrupting the enemy by cutting diminishing it export revenues is not a long-term proposition. It is happening now, with no formal policy in place to do this. And, unless policies are rapidly enacted to keep consumption low, the prices will inevitably rise again.

If the Obama administration can move quickly on this front, he will take a dramatic anti-terrorism action with no military or diplomatic actions needed.

There is a down side, at least in Venezuela. As oil revenues shrink, the Chávez government can replenish its coffers from the drug trade. It can survive, but it won’t because we are legally importing his products.

Source: Family Security Matters

Defeating Terror With a Sound Energy Policy

2008-11-08T10:43:00.000-08:00

By Mehul Kamdar

It has yet to be determined whether it is political correctness run amok or whether it is sheer laziness that has left the world and its free nations in particular, reluctant to admit that the main source of funding for international terror these days comes from the vast energy reserves held by the nations of the Middle East. With the bulk of the world's oil under the control of the Arab nations and Iran, the West in particular and with India and China following, is stuck in a bind, unwilling to break free from the stranglehold that the worst sponsors of international terror have over them in their control over the world's crude oil. It is true that a change from the oil based transportation and power generation structure of these countries would require fundamental change in several directions if it is to succeed - it would not be inexpensive and neither would it be easy. But, if this is successfully pulled off, it would mean cutting off the oxygen of support to nations that the West in particular is unable to do anything about even while these nations openly permit organizations operating from their territory to carry out terror attacks on their main client states.

It is often farcical to see the USA in particular chafe and fume about Iran, a nation that it has done much to try to isolate (without much success, it must be stressed) while American presidents and the current, outgoing incumbent in particular, go with begging bowls to the ruling monarch of the nation that was home to most of the attackers responsible for the worst terrorist atrocity on its soil on 9/11 whenever oil prices are artificially raised or lowered by the Saudis in conjunction with their other Gulf, African and Venezuelan allies when they feel like gouging the rest of the world in order to build a palace or two or finance one or another mosque in other parts of the world to recruit and train more suicide attackers. Let there be no soft talk here - after the 9/11 attacks, when the USA captured Afghanistan driving the Taliban into ungoverned parts of Pakistan celebratory videos were found of Osama bin Laden waxing eloquent on the attack on the twin towers. A lame Saudi cleric Sheikh Atiyatullah who is clearly seen on the tape was taken back into Saudi Arabia afterwards and "forgiven" for his role in the attacks. The Saudis have never allowed him to be questioned or interrogated by the USA leaving Washington looking as helpless as a beheaded chicken in the bargain while the Saudi monarchy underlined its association with those who were responsible through its protection of Atiyatullah.

In order to deny the biggest sponsors of Islamist terror their chief source of funds with which they finance their jihad against the rest of the world, therefore, there is no option that the West and its partners in India and China have other than to eliminate the use of Middle Eastern oil and starve the Middle East of its main source of income. While some technologies to reduce oil consumption like nuclear technology and wind and solar energy exist and are being worked on, the fact is that none of this work is funded to any major extent in a race to rid the world of the use of oil as a fuel. Some technologies like Solar Thermal Energy are currently available at an advanced stage and ready to be deployed in nations with exposure to sunlight, including to power starved states of the USA like California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia and Florida. The use of insulated concrete form construction methods and the more advanced Thermasave (trademark of www.thermasave.us) methods would effortlessly help reduce the use of energy to a considerable extent depending on the extent to which they are deployed in new construction around the world. These methods could be further enhanced by integrating solar photovoltaic collectors and solar powered water heaters into all new constructions, reducing the need for oil to heat homes even in the colder parts of Europe and the USA and Canada and China.

There remains work to be done in the development of battery technology for transportation, but this could be achieved if the West put its mind to it. Greater technical achievements have been made in the past under even more dire circumstances - the development of Radio as a the tool that won World War -1 and of Radar that won World War -2 are developments that come immediately to mind. And the parallel is entirely apt as the world faces as great a danger from Middle Eastern terror as it did under Imperial Germany and under the Nazis. The danger that the world faces from Middle eastern terror is vastly greater than it did from the Nazis because it was not dependent on the Nazis to supply it with a vital component for its daily existence and could, therefore, fight the Nazis on a one to one basis. Defeating the current threat to the West's existence would require weaning itself off its addiction to Middle Eastern oil and starving the Gulf nations of their main source of income.

And the Middle east has not, exactly, remained unaware of this possibility. In recent months, as increasing awareness around the world pushes its nations to look for alternatives to oil, new bands of "experts" have come up offering to turn the Saudi deserts into a source of solar power to be sent into Europe via a new grid that would connect that nation across borders into European nations' power grids. Giving up national sovereignty as far as oil is concerned to surrender it immediately in order to buy electricity from the very nations that have used their income from oil to finance terror would be a terrible mistake, the equivalent of putting the Medellin and Cali cartels to oversee the Drug Enforcement Administration and Interpol simultaneously. Southern Europe, like the Southern United States have enough land to generate a substantial amount of power and manage their energy needs by using more nuclear and wind and wave power in addition to solar power. The sooner this happens, the better it would be for the world outside the borders of the murderous regimes that are clustered in the Middle East.

Source: Islam Watch

Iraq War vet’s service attacked in Ohio campaign

2008-10-28T20:40:00.000-07:00

By Joel Mowbray

When Josh Mandel got a call from the Marines last year asking him to return voluntarily to Iraq, he had much more to contemplate than when he first enlisted in 2000. He had just been elected to the Ohio state legislature. Family considerations were also important to him. He ultimately decided to serve a second tour in Iraq “because I didn’t join the Marine Corps to say no when my country called,” Mr. Mandel explains.

Of all the factors he weighed, Mr. Mandel says political concerns were not among them. Now he has been forced to deal with the politics of that decision. The opponent in his tough re-election fight, trial attorney Bob Belovich, is attacking Mr. Mandel’s service, arguing that he abandoned voters. Mr. Belovich’s wife, Barbara, acknowledged in an interview for this column that she has told voters that Mr. Mandel “went AWOL” (a military term for desertion) by fighting in Iraq.

Even Mr. Mandel’s motives for serving in Iraq are being questioned. Mrs. Belovich claimed in an interview with this columnist that Mandel “put his personal ambitions ahead of his constituents.” Asked why anyone would enter a war zone out of “personal ambition,” Barbara Belovich replied curtly, “Certainly he wasn’t serving our needs.”

That’s not how one prominent local Democrat sees it. “I have great respect for what Josh did. To say that he didn’t serve his constituents by risking his life in Iraq is absurd,” says Broadview Heights mayor Sam Alai.

Considered a rising star by the Ohio GOP, Mr. Mandel wasn’t on anyone’s radar two years ago. In 2006, he was a long-shot candidate to win his Cleveland-area district, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by well over two-to-one. Democrats didn’t take him seriously, so they spent little money to retain the open seat. But after knocking on almost 20,000 doors, Mr. Mandel scored a stunning victory.

Mr. Mandel faces a much tougher race this time around. Ohio Democrats targeted him from the beginning, because at just 31 years old, he is seen as a top up-and-comer. Progressive Majority, a moveon.org-affiliated political action committee that focuses on local races, has made defeating Mr. Mandel a top priority. Then there’s the Obama effect. ACORN activists have blanketed the area, and every liberal group from moveon.org to the Obama campaign is working to maximize Democratic turnout.

The Belovich campaign has not been bashful in going after Mr. Mandel’s military service. At a major Democratic Party event in Cleveland this March, while Mr. Mandel was still in Iraq, Mrs. Belovich told Mr. Alai, “Josh Mandel isn’t serving our country, he’s serving George Bush.” Though in a phone interview Mr. Belovich denied hearing his wife’s comments, Mr. Alai says that’s impossible: “We were so close, I could have reached out and smacked him in the face. She said it, he heard it, and he said nothing. It was clear he didn’t disagree.”

At a Progressive Majority event in Cleveland this July, Mr. and Mrs. Belovich laid out their campaign blueprint for defeating Mandel. “[Mandel] feels that his obligation to George Bush is stronger than his, you know, his obligation to the people in the 17th District,” Barbara Belovich said. (An audio recording made by someone who overheard the discussion was recently posted online, and neither Bob nor Barbara Belovich deny making those remarks.)

As heard in the recording, Bob Belovich then added that Mandel won in 2006 in part because of his “blue sign” and “Jewish name.” Asked recently by this columnist what he meant by the comment, Belovich stated that many people think Mr. Mandel is a Democrat, including some who think so because Mr. Mandel is Jewish. Belovich, who is Catholic, then spent five minutes discussing the implications of Mr. Mandel being Jewish. (The district’s Catholic population is three to four times bigger than its Jewish one.)

“To some Jewish voters, they would be attracted to him because he’s Jewish. To other Jewish voters, they wouldn’t support him because of his stance on the issues.” Questioned as to whether he was speaking of Jews generally or Jewish Democrats specifically, Mr. Belovich responded that he was referencing Jewish voters overall. This apparently rules out the possibility of Jews supporting Mr. Mandel because of his policy positions or legislative achievements.

Asked if he thinks he’ll receive Jewish votes for being Jewish himself, Mr. Mandel answered, “Maybe my opponent has met people who blindly support me because I’m Jewish, but I certainly haven’t.” As for the attacks on his decision to return to Iraq, Mr. Mandel says, “If they want to take shots at me, I can defend myself. But what they’re saying comes awfully close to degrading the sacrifices of our young men and women over there now.”

Attacks on Mr. Mandel’s military service could easily backfire. But given that the lines are still being repeated so close to the election suggests that they’ve resonated with at least some voters in a district where the war remains deeply unpopular.

The obvious implication is that by serving in Iraq, Mr. Mandel was a do-nothing legislator. Yet he was one of the two people who lead the successful fight to force Ohio’s multi-billion dollar pension funds to divest from companies doing energy-related business in Iran and Sudan. Pension fund managers agreed to start divesting when legislation co-sponsored by Mr. Mandel and Rep. Shannon Jones was poised for passage.

Knowing the enormity of the challenge facing him, Mr. Mandel is making one last push for the homestretch. He vows to avoid negative campaigning. And he is optimistic that voters will reject his opponent’s tactics. “I really believe that no matter how someone feels about the war, just about everyone truly supports the troops,” says Mr. Mandel.

For Josh Mandel to win re-election in his heavily Democratic district, he needs to be right.

Source: TownHall

Divesting From the Islamic Republic

2008-10-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

By Jamie Glazov

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Joel Anderson, a California State Assemblyman who represents San Diego’s East County.

FP: Joel Anderson, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Anderson: It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me, Jamie.

FP: You are focusing on Iran and pursuing Iran divestment bills and resolutions. Tell us some of the things you are up to. What inspires you to pursue these courses of action?

Anderson: In the State Assembly, I sit on the Public Employment committee, which has oversight of California's public pension systems. CalPERS and CalSTRS -- the public employees and schoolteachers -- are the two largest public pensions in the nation. So, when I learned they were investing tens of billions of dollars in Iran, a terrorist regime, I was shocked and disappointed. I knew we had to do something to stop this practice.

FP: Ok, so what did you do?

Anderson: I introduced Assembly Bill 221 to divest CalPERS and CalSTRS from the Islamic Republic of Iran and prevent them from putting any more of our tax dollars at risk in a nation whose rogue leader craves nuclear technology and wants to start another Holocaust. We worked hard and formed a broad coalition to push this measure through a number of committees, the floor of each house, and ultimately secured the Governor's signature to make AB 221 law. I knew this was the type of bill everyone should share credit and we encouraged legislators to sign on as co-authors.

Ultimately, people fundamentally understand money is the mother's milk of terrorism.

FP: Have you encountered any obstacles from the Democrats in the CA Assembly and the CA Senate? How about pro-Islamic republic lobbyists?

Anderson: Well, ours was a bipartisan effort from the start. I actually wrote AB 221 based on a piece of legislation that a Democrat had authored to stop our money from going to Sudan. And before that, Democrat Maxine Waters -- prior to her election to Congress -- led the charge to divest from racial apartheid in South Africa. With very few exceptions, Democrats and Republicans joined together early on for many different reasons, because everyone agrees that divesting from Iran is simply the right thing to do. The most outspoken groups against my bill were outside radical groups tied to the Islamic Regime and California’s State Teachers’ Retirement System, who fought me in every committee hearing.

FP: Did you have the support of the Iranian opposition organizations and individuals in the US? Who are they?

Anderson: Our coalition really was an amazing group. We built a broad coalition from all walks of life: labor unions, ethnic organizations, holocaust survivors, state employees, students, you name it. The Iranian groups were fantastic. Roozbeh Farahanipour of Marze Por-Gohar, with the Iranians for a Secular Republic, testified before each legislative committee that heard the bill, and told his tragic, personal story of oppression by Iran's government. The Iranian American Chamber of Commerce, Committee for Religious Minority Rights in Iran, Iran of Tomorrow Movement, and Iranians for a Secular Republic also lent their strong support.

FP: Tell us a bit about Iran’s human rights abuses and your efforts and plans to try to stop them.

Anderson: The Islamic Republic of Iran’s lack of human rights includes public hangings, the stoning of innocent women, producing IEDS that kill civilians and promoting the ethnic genocide of a country. This is where California can have a powerful impact. By pulling back our hard-earned dollars from the companies that prop up this odious regime, we can send a clear message that supporting the Islamic Republic of Iran is the wrong place to invest our retirement nest eggs. Our citizens want nothing to do with their blood money.

FP: What is the Assembly Concurrent Resolution (ACR) 79? How did it do?

Anderson: ACR 79 was a follow-up to AB 221. I wanted to carry forward the spirit and intent of AB 221 by pushing for University of California -- a $42 billion pension -- to join CalPERS and CalSTRS in divesting from Iran. It gathered overwhelmingly bipartisan votes, as AB 221 did before, but the clock ran out before its final vote in the Senate.

FP: Tell us about Iran Divestment on California Port.

Anderson: Other governmental entities are starting to realize the danger of risking their investment dollars in a place like the Islamic Republic of Iran. We've already seen the City of Los Angeles take steps toward shoring up their retirement system, and now, other public employees at the county level are looking at that, too. As an example, the San Diego Port Authority has been in touch with me because they are concerned about the message we're sending by putting public dollars in a place like Iran. It is important to know we have a real opportunity to bring the Islamic Republic of Iran back to the world community without ever firing a shot. We can do it through divestment.

FP: Joel Anderson, thank you for joining us.

Anderson: Thank you Jamie.

Source: FrontPageMagazine.com

OPEC's Heavy Hand

2008-10-10T16:41:00.000-07:00

By Walid Phares

Who manufactured the financial meltdown? It wasn’t only Wall Street: OPEC’s heavy hand is felt but unseen by the media and our politicians.

In bypassing a narrow economic analysis of the ongoing crisis, we can detect clearly the connection between the dizzying ups in petrol pricing and the slowing of American buying capacity. Though we have to conclude that while it is due largely to both Wall Street’s corruption and politicians’ abuse of the system handed the tools of doom to the middle class, Main Street’s rapid disenfranchisement was manufactured overseas, thousands of miles away, at the hands of many of the members of OPEC, the oil-producing Cartel.

Indeed, as economic commentators tell us (including a strong accusation leveled by real estate tycoon Donald Trump on Fox News against OPEC), the oil powers are behind the instability that crumbled the will of millions of middle class Americans over the past three years.

If we go back in time, we can see that oil pricing by OPEC’s hard core shows clearly that US leadership wasn’t able to convince the top producers from the Gulf to give American oil consumers a chance. Most producing regimes replied that demand -- mostly from China and India -- was putting pressure on production. Pressed by Washington to produce more, the “regimes” alleged it would affect the selling price and thus minimize their profits, but promised they would try to “be understanding” of US needs in energy.

This attitude gave the producers discretion over price, while Jihadi propagandists roamed the media accusing Washington of putting unbearable pressure “on the region” to follow American injunctions in setting petrol’s prices. Was there a direct connection between the oil regimes and the Jihadi propagandist machine? We have no answer to that now, but clearly an oil strategy was in the works with a calculated impact on the US economy. This charge is still in its early stages, it will be challenged ferociously, but it will stand as long as convincing answers are not provided.

What adds to the inquiry into the OPEC destabilization factor are the many indicators that strategic political motives have appeared to be behind the pricing maneuvers. Over a period of half a decade, many voices heard on the region’s airwaves have intimated that the US economy will be made to pay for what America’s leadership is doing. Commentators, some funded by oil producers on several outlets including on al Jazeera, underlined that as long as average citizens in the United States (and eventually in the West) don’t feel financial pain, the war on terror and spreading of Democracy won’t be stopped.

Sheikh Yussuf al Qardawi, Muslim Brotherhood ideologue and mentor of the Qatari-funded channel, spoke openly of Silah al Naft, i.e, “the weapon of oil.” Indeed, it was called a weapon - as in a warfare situation -- and most likely it was used as such. Of course, the producing “regimes” will deny the existence of a real strategy to bring the US to its knees by striking at its pumps. They will dismiss statements made by emirs and commentators in this regard. The “field Jihadists”, however, won’t deny the existence of such a battlefield.

For years now, Salafist web sites and al Qaeda spokespersons have loudly called for an “oil Jihad against infidel America and its lackeys.” Online material is still circulating. But more revealing are the official speeches by Osama Bin Laden and his deputy on the “absolute necessity to use that weapon.”

Ayman Zawahiri called expressly and repetitively on the public to sell their US dollars and buy gold instead (Be’u al dullar washtaru al zahab). These were stunning statements ignored by most analysts at the time but that are making sense today. He predicted a collapse in the infidels’ economy, starting from American markets. Was he a part of the lobbying effort in the OPEC game? Most likely not, but he seems to have been privy to the game, having insiders in the Wahhabi radical circles in the Peninsula: in the end there are too many political signs to dismiss and the analysis of price warfare is too evident to ignore.

OPEC’s manipulation of the markets did hit Americans hard in their pockets. Hundreds of millions of John and Jane Does were intimidated, terrorized really, into abandoning their lifelong dreams of owning properties because of the aggressive stance of petro-regimes towards the US and its campaign to spread democracy in the Greater Middle East. In historical terms, America was punished for daring to change the status quo in the Arab and Muslim world to the advantage of the weakest and the suppressed: Shia and Kurds in Iraq, Syrian reformers, Lebanese civil society, Africans in Darfur, Iranian women and students, artists and liberals across the Arabian Peninsula. In return, the U.S was submitted to economic destabilization, steady, gradual and by small doses.

Let’s not underestimate the power of the Jihadi-oil lobby in America: it has decades of influence and it has long arms into the system, and it has powerful political allies. It knows when Americans are messing up their own system, and it knows very well how to push them over the cliff, into the abyss of economic calamity.

A counterpoint to this thesis would vigorously argue that the alleged OPEC destabilization over the US economy is illogical, as many countries in the Gulf are experiencing a recession as a result of Wall Street’s crunch. In other words, they wouldn’t do it to themselves. Yet the ideological forces manning the oil weapon aren’t particularly concerned about economic stability. Their driving factor is Jihadism. We’ve heard their ideologues stating that even if they were to incur losses among their own societies in order to defeat the infidel powers, then let it be.

Ten percent losses in local companies and markets are a price that radicals would absorb if the final prize is an earth-shattering change in US policy in the region and a triumphant return to pre-9/11 status. I find the rationale of this policy very Jihadist: if a world economic crisis is needed to remove the US democratization efforts from the region and to end its post 9/11 campaigns, the end justifies the means. In addition, how intriguing to see that Saudi Arabia and other producers are among the very few who didn’t have to pump much cash into their markets yet (Per news Agencies, today).

What some oil regimes -- or the ideological forces within -- want to accomplish from this alleged interference in US economics is to provoke a “regime change” in Washington, D.C., so that regimes in their region are not challenged anymore. But another issue is also coming to the surface: pressures against America’s financial structures seem to have escalated in parallel to increasing US talk and commitment to achieving energy independence. Since last April, the American debate finally reached a dramatic conclusion: “We’re sending 700 Billion Dollars a year to regimes that dislike us;” agree most national leaders; “and furthermore some of that money is ending up in the hands or accounts of Terrorists” affirm some among them.

This revolutionary conclusion is a direct affront to the multi-decades-long dominance of petro-dollars in US politics. What America is readying itself to do is to achieve its most dramatic war of independence since 1776: ending the dependence on Middle East Oil. Therefore, let’s not be surprised that these gigantic interests would strike at the heart of this economic revolution, as I coined it in my latest book, The Confrontation.

Back to the ongoing crisis on these shores, we nevertheless must admit that the original sins are domestic first: financial drunkenness and economic recklessness. Without these plagues, outside forces wouldn’t have been able to shake up America’s stability. But assuming that most capitalist societies travel through rough patches, it is vital to realize that America’s economy is under attack by forces aiming to maintain US dependency on foreign energy, as a means to obstruct the rise of democracy.

Seven years after 9/11, Americans are paying the price of liberty from their own economic flesh.

Source: Human Events

The Soaring Price of Oil and Terrorism

2008-04-23T21:45:00.000-07:00

By Victor Comras

A few days ago, when oil was just $115.00 per barrel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that the price of oil was still “unrealistically low,” and that “Oil … needs to discover its real value." And, within a few days the market seemed to comply driving the price up to $120.00 per barrel! The effects of this spiraling oil price on the US and world economy has been staggering, and the impact will continue to be intensified as the price of oil works its way through the international economic system. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups could never had imagined that events they set off at the turn of the millennium could ever have caused such oil dislocation and demand around the world.

Against this background it is with great trepidation that I put my pen to addressing the link between the price of oil and terrorism. The factors involved in the pricing of oil are both extremely obscure and enormously complex, and few people can truly claim to understand them. I certainly am not one of them. But, broken down into its most basic components it apparently involves a mixture of the following factors: OPEC Oligarchy practices, intensified international competition for secure access to essential commodities, increased reliance on middlemen for oil lifting, profit-motive purchasing policies and upstream practices of major oil companies, the falling dollar, and intense speculative upward bidding of oil futures on the world’s merchantile exchanges. Taken together these factors have driven up the spot price of oil and pumped tens (dare I say hundreds) of billions of dollars into the coffers of countries known to either encourage or tolerate state and/or private funding for terrorism. One may well conclude, as I am beginning to believe, that mercantile speculation, greed, and corporate profit taking are as responsible as OPEC, if not more so, for the windfall profits that help fund terrorism.

Iran's Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari had a different answer. Speaking before the representatives of some 60 exporting and consumer countries at the bi-annual International Energy Forum, he blamed the spike in oil prices on “war and sanctions,” alluding to the measures the US had adopted toward both Iran and Iraq. But, this simplistic explanation doesn’t match reality. In fact, today’s oil prices don’t seem to have any direct relationship to the actual oil market conditions, demand and consumption. The fact is that oil output has generally kept pace with actual consumption rates, and bookings for oil transport ships and tankers are actually declining showing a slackening in demand. Speculation based on future worst case assumptions seems to be pressing the price of the oil, not past events. This includes anything from a projected heavy hurricane season to recent attacks on Nigeria’s Shell oil pipelines. But, the supply effect of such events in the past have been shown to be quite minimal and of short duration. Any reason to push oil prices higher seems to suffice for the oil traders.

Another explanation for today’s high oil prices is the declining value of the dollar. So why isn’t it that Europe is getting a bargain when it comes to buying oil? The fact is that the price of oil in Europe has also hit the roof, causing European leaders to consider extraordinary measures, such as drawing on their emergency oil reserves. The EU commission has just decided to launch its own “ public consultation” on whether changes should be made to the management of emergency oil stocks held by EU members in the face of these skyrocketing prices.

Today’s oil prices are considerably higher than anyone could have predicted a year or so ago. Look at what the International Energy Agency projected in their annual World Energy Outlook for 2007. They predicted that oil prices would now be the range of $45 to $56 per barrel, and would only reach $95.00 per barrel sometimes in 2030. Boy, are we ahead of that curve!. Remember, that in 2000, OPEC oil was selling for under $28.00 a barrel and oil consumption somewhere around 76 million barrels per day. Current estimates put oil consumption at around 84 million barrels, about the same as current production levels.

So, in actual fact, it is the oil speculators that appear to be responsible, more than any other group, for the high prices of oil, and the revenue boasts that may help support terrorism. Perhaps its time for governments to get a handle on such speculation by intervening in the oil market, as necessary to stabilize the price of oil. Just a thought!

Ron Paul Wants $8,000,000.00 To Market Wild American Shrimp

2007-08-29T09:24:00.000-07:00

It's in a subscribers only link at the Wall Street Journal. The Congressman wants $8,000,000.00 to pay for marketing of wild American shrimp and $2.3 million to fund research into shrimp-fishing.

These are but two of the Congressman's 65 earmarks sought thus far this year to the tune of $400,000,000.00.

Originally posted at www.theodoresworld.net

Bankrupt Terror!

2007-07-15T14:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the generous donations of our supporters, we now have an advertising budget to promote BANKRUPT TERROR! campaign. Below is a proposed design for a poster. If you have any suggestions, please email infoatBankruptTerror.org

We Support Our Troops

2007-07-15T13:58:00.000-07:00

In earlier comments we erroneously accused some of the posters of wwww.OmahaGasPrices.com web site of not supporting our troops. We admit that we were wrong and we apologize. There are instances when they do in fact support the troops.

Letter to Shell: Stop Doing Business with Terrorist Regime of Iran!

2007-06-23T17:47:00.000-07:00

John Hofmeister
President
Shell Oil Co.
P.O. Box 2463
Houston, TX 77252
(713) 241-6161

Dear Mr. Hofmeister,

It has come to our attention that Shell recently signed a $10 billion contract with the terrorist government of Iran.

We don't need to remind you that the Iranian regime is oppressing 70 million people and has been one of the primary sponsors of terrorism for almost thirty years. The terrorist government of Iran controls some of the most notorious Islamic terrorist groups, and the Iranian president has threatened to wipe Israel, our only reliable ally in the Middle East, off the map. Not to mention that Iran is racing towards obtaining nuclear weapons.

When you were in Omaha on February 16, 2007 you stated that "Once it [oil] gets into the global trading market, it's just oil. Whether it's sourced from Venezuela or Mexico or Canada, it's really hard to track it. It can be tracked, and it's very hard, and most people don't track it." We agree, it is hard to track oil after it gets mixed. But you know what is easy? You can be 100% sure that an oil pipeline does not contain any oil from Iran if you do not import Iranian oil.

The terrorist government of Iran is complicit in some of the deaths of British and Dutch troops in Iraq. More than 150 of them were killed (http://icasualties.org/oif/DeathsByYear.aspx) since 2003, and
Shell's blatant disregard for the loss of life of their countrymen is abhorrent.

Maybe the Brits and the Dutch are okay with the fact that Shell provides financing to the terrorist regime, but the Americans are not.

Being an American, how can you sleep at night knowing that your company gives money to the terrorists who murder American troops?

We implore you to do the right thing and sever all ties with the terrorist Iranian regime.

We do not wish to put your company out of business, but we urge you to consider the consequences of Chavez' UN speech: over 2,000 7-Eleven stations dropped Citgo. Can you imagine the uproar when American people realize that Shell is partly responsible for 3,500+ dead Americans? Maybe Shell could withstand the pressure from the American government; but we highly doubt that it would be able to withstand the pressure from the American people.

The undersigned,

Thank you letter to Cenex & Sinclair for not importing Middle Eastern oil

2007-06-20T17:28:00.000-07:00

John D. Johnson
President & CEO
CHS, Inc. (Cenex)
P.O. Box 64089
St. Paul, MN 55164-0089
(651) 355-6000

Companies
that do not import
Middle Eastern oil

Peter M. Johnson
President
Sinclair Oil Corporation
550 E South Temple
Salt Lake City, UT 84102
(801) 524-2700

Dear Mr. John D. Johnson and Mr. Peter M. Johnson,

We would like to thank your companies for not importing Middle Eastern oil. We understand that oil may get mixed in the pipelines and that oil bought on the commodities exchange could be from anywhere, but the fact that you are not importing oil from the Middle East is commendable.

Oil revenues are the main source of terrorism financing;
by purchasing Middle Eastern oil we are financing our own demise.

Almost none of us knew that Cenex and Sinclair do not import Middle Eastern oil. Now we do, and it directly affects our purchasing patterns. There are millions of Americans that are unaware of this fact. And if they knew, most of them would have made Cenex and Sinclair their brands of choice. We hope that you include this in your advertising campaigns.

We would like to thank you again for choosing not to finance terrorism.

The undersigned,

The voices of reason within Islam are getting silenced, is anyone out there, listening?

2007-06-19T19:41:00.000-07:00

Seyyed Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi, a voice of Moderate Shiah Islam, will be silenced forever unless the United States helps…

Renegade Ayatollah, some call him. Most of the Iranian human rights activists, including me, know him through his late illustrious father and through his bold actions in Iran in 2005. His is the first voice of Moderate Islam echoing aloud from Iran. Tragically, the government of Iran, seemingly, will soon succeed in shutting him down if we don’t move fast…

The Ayatollah and 17 other members of his family were sentenced to death in a private court session in Zafaranieh Tehran on June 10th, 2006. Although very ill and suffering from Parkinson disease, he defended himself in the Iranian court where he did not even have access to a lawyer.

In April 2007, as an activist spokesperson passionately fighting for the rights of 19 political prisoners, I publicly criticized on Fox TV the lack of effort of international committees on his behalf.

I now publicly apologize for my uninformed criticism. Most people, including me, assume the UN and Amnesty International don’t do much because we don’t see many positive results from our petitions. In response to my criticism, I have belatedly learned through personal communication with sources inside these organizations that both have in fact actively petitioned Iran for leniency not only for the Ayatollah but other political prisoners as well. Unfortunately, they do not have the power to enforce the international laws to which Iran is signatory but chooses to ignore. UN officials in Geneva assure me that they are well aware of the mental and physical torture political prisoners are enduring daily and that Mr. Olson, the UN rapporteur, has make repeated appeals but there is not much that either of the international agencies can do to save Ayatollah Boroujerdi or anyone else in Iran.

UN and Amnesty International officers point out the sad-but-true reality that their hands are tied. They can only remind but cannot force the Iranian regime to abide by their international contract prohibiting torture of dissidents. Amnesty has not been able to visit Iran since 1979 and UN visitations have been denied since 2003.

I asked UN officers what can be done to save this and other voices who will loose their lives in the next few months. They answer that the only way seems to be the media and politicians who can sway Iran by denying resources it needs.

I naively thought that since America is searching for an influential Moderate Muslim to stand up to the terrorist Iranian regime, the suicidal willingness of this man to speak out against this medieval theocracy in an effort to avoid military conflict and save the lives of American soldiers would get the immediate attention of someone in the media. Unfortunately I was in for a rude awakening. Fighting for media attention has proven about as difficult as fighting the Iranian regime. I was genuinely shocked when my scheduled appearance on national TV to publicize this voice of reason was pre-empted by Paris Hilton’s family visit to her private cell which is a cut above the 10th century dungeons of Iran’s Evin or the Raji-Shahr prison.

Tears came to my eyes remembering the 19 political prisoners relying on me for help; even as I hoped Americans would want to help. It made me sad to remember that even though Amnesty and UN have done everything they can, Khaled Hardani, who has not been permitted to see his family for six months, will lose his life on July 3, 2007 and I will have to be the one to deliver the message to his family or they will hear it over the Iranian media and it will be as though he never existed.

It made me sad; wondering where was the media two nights ago when prison guards inside Raji -Shahr prison beat Mr. Nasser Khirolahi unconscious and left him lying on the ground to bleed to death? Another of his fellow inmates called me 2:30 AM to let me know that the guards beat him on his spine, damaging disks and leaving his right arm paralyzed.

I am sad to say one of the men I represent has not seen a dentist in many years. Finally, the tooth infection overcame a strong man and brought him to his knees by the pain he felt in his face.

It made me sad that none of these individuals are celebrities and their lives seem to be expandable.
For the past 28 years, Iran has struggled under a cult of religious Mullah zealots exploiting and ruining the resources of this vast country to support Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. Recent evidence reveals that road bombs made in Iran and bearing fake US marks are being used by Al Quaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Those of us who dig deeper in the sand see a master plan by certain individuals in the government of Iran to silence key members of the opposition even, or especially, if they are the son of Grand Ayatollah Broujerdi. Eye witnesses say he was able to rally more than 200,000 people around his house last year to hear him inform the regime that he can no longer bear to witness the atrocities of killing people in the name of Islam. He shouted that he did not believe Khomeini’s broadcast when he returned to Iran because he was not a real Ayatollah. In a rare audio sent to my attention by connections to Ayatollah Broujerdi, he denounces Iran as a religious dictatorship instead of an Islamic Republic outlines Khomeini’s deception and lies and calls for replacing the fake Islam taking over Iranian’s hearts and minds with real Islam. Broujerdi charged that the title velayat-e faqih assumed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is not valid. In a handwritten letter to Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq he appeals for support in criticism of the regime.

The Ayatollah then takes another brave step and clashes with Khomeini, explaining who Khomeini really is and how he was made an instant Ayatollah. This is the reason he was sentenced to death in a private court session in Zafaranieh, Tehran along with 17 other family members.

May God Bless America and may Americans want to know more about this man before he is silenced for good because he can save American lives.

For more information on Khomeini I have submitted my own research from my book.

The following are excerpts from the book "Living in Hell" by Ghazal Omid, Pages 235-236: Who Was The Real Khomeini?

….The Story of Two Logos….

The Sikh Khanda Logo (ht tp://www.sikhs.org /khanda.htm) Vs. Islamic Re... Logo

...When he died his last testament was published. He talked for the first time about his Hindi brother and directed that some money be given to him. Apparently, Khomeini had forgotten to tell people who he really was. In fact, his last name was "Hendi", not Khomeini.
Khomeini was born Ruhollah Khomeini Hendi on May 17, 1900. Although his father was from India, Khomeini himself was born in the town of Khomain located 323 Kilometers south of Tehran. In 1930, he changed his name to Ruhollah Mousavi Al-Khomeini. It was years after his death before radio Iran announced his last testimonies referring to his brother, Sheikh Hendi.
Perhaps it is ironic but many who have paid attention to the flag and the logo of the Islamic Republic of Iran noticed that it is remarkably similar to the Sikh religion logo. The government of Iran has explained that the logo is indeed the name of Allah in Arabic. Nevertheless, the logo similarities, the Hindi brother, his whereabouts for all those years and why Khomeini never divulged anything about his background leave a nagging question in the minds of the cynical.

When I was discussing the research about Khomeini with a friend, he asked me if I had any prejudices about Indians? I answered, "Of course not." For all I care Khomeini could have come from Mars. He was a despicable ogre, whatever planet he came from. What I do have issues with, is that he didn't share with the people. He led them to believe he was an Iranian. People died for him and deserved to know the truth. In my view, certain character and financial records of a politician who is paid by people's tax money should be public record. The public who pays has the right to know who the individual eagerly occupying the seat is. In the beginning, people didn't know what they got themselves into before lofting him onto the revolutionary platform.
While living in Iran, I met a woman doctor in the post office while mum was sending some gifts to Manoocheher in Canada. The doctor said that when she was studying in India, Khomeini was a poor young man, dressed as a mendicant, singing poetry for money in the street. I had a hard time believing her until after Khomeini died and his poetry was suddenly published. We never knew he was an accomplished poet. Perhaps his softer side did not exactly fit the ruthless image he wanted to project. There is no record of Khomeini's whereabouts until he miraculously showed up in Qom in his early twenties and studied religion.
In the view of Khomeini and his followers who, sadly, are still in power, people's lives didn't mean anything. He also didn't see any reason to end the war. If he had not been forced by everyone around him to agree to a truce, he was willing to subject Iran to the disaster of the Iraqi chemical weapons.
For forty days, there was mandatory national mourning. All business, schools and television was suspended. The nation was paralyzed. His burial ceremony was more of a circus de soleil. His burial chamber is located in Behesht Zahra. Eighty kilograms of pure 24 karat gold was used to cover the dome built over his grave. I have heard from people who have visited his grave that the mosque built for him is covered with a one-of-a-kind, hand-made, silk Persian carpet and free food is always provided to the visitors or, as the regime calls them, pilgrims. I have never seen a need or had any desire to waste my time visiting his grave. I know he is in trouble in his after life. I had my own opinions about his life, regardless of how the regime tries to portray him. In his testimony, he named as his successor his son, Ahmad Khomeini, who died mysteriously (rumored to have been killed by Rafasanjani agents) about a month after his father's death and was buried next to him. Khamenei, in order to be eligible to replace Khomeini, promoted himself, with the help of Rafsanjani and Majless, from Hojat-al Islam to Ayatollah and announced himself as the new leader or Vali Faghih.

With the threats of terrorism, an increased awareness for security has blanketed our nation. Thus if you're contemplating on researching security systems, then maybe you might want to check out 123 CCTV which also offers CCTV cameras.

Is TFO fuel Terror-Free?

2007-02-20T20:16:00.000-08:00

You buy milk at a local supermarket using a credit card issued by Bank X (BX)	An drug dealer buys drugs online using a credit card issued by Bank Y (BY)
BX & BY use the same processor, Bank Z (BZ)
Your payment is deposited to an account in BZ	Drug dealer's payment is deposited to an account in BZ
BZ makes a milk payment to a supermarket using a combination of funds from BX and BY	BZ makes a drug payment to an online retailer using a combination of funds from BX and BY
Some of your milk money may get mixed with drug money; does that make you a drug dealer?

Oil Company X (OCX) does not import Middle Eastern Oil (MEO)	Oil Company Y (OCY) does import MEO
Terror-Free Oil (TFO) buys fuel from OCX	Other Gas Station (OGS) buys fuel from OCY
OCX & OCY use pipeline Z to deliver their fuel
TFO pays OCX through BX	OGS pays OCY through BY
TFO payment is deposited to an account in BZ	OGS payment is deposited to an account in BZ
BZ makes a payment to OCX using a combination of funds from BX and BY	BZ makes a payment to OCY using a combination of funds from BX and BY
Some of non-MEO may get mixed with MEO; does that make TFO fuel not Terror-Free?

Terror-Free Oil: Saudi Arabia is NOT Our Friend!

2007-02-15T21:20:00.000-08:00

Why TFO

2007-02-11T19:21:00.000-08:00

I live close to work, so it takes me a bit to get to the point where I need to refuel my car. Yesterday my tank was about 1/2 empty, so I went to the Terror-Free Oil gas station. Part the reason I went there was curiosity about the business. Part of it was patriotism and a desire to *not* help the enemy. And another part of the decision to go to TFO instead of one of the other gas stations in the area was simply economic. The prices at TFO were $2.17 and $2.19. Next door it was $2.17 and $2.23. And up the street at the BP station, it was a whopping $2.29, $2.39, and -this is astonishing- $2.49.

Big signs above each pump at TFO explain the concept of terror-free oil. But basically, the experience is pretty much like anywhere else. Clean surroundings, pay-at-the-pump option, , etc.

Inside is smaller than some stations, but it has everything you could want...snacks, drinks, sundries, etc. And more is coming. Right now the ice cream freezer chest is still empy, and so is a drinks cooler. But they have plenty of cold beverages, and who needs ice cream when is 7 degrees outside?

The decor has a definite patriotic them. Nothing with bells and whistles or cheesy schmaltz. Just various messages around that make it clear the owner is proud to be here. Fliers about volunteering opportunities and more information about the whole terror-free oil concept are easy to find, but they don't get in the way of grabbing what you need and getting on your way. The lady behind the counter was friendly, efficient and helpful --not overly so like some bubbly cheerleader types, but simply the kind of person who would give you a smile and eventually get to know your name.

Will I go there again? Probably. And here's why: 1) the prices are the lowest around, 2) I like the concept of TFO, and 3) like the theme song from "Cheers", sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name. They don't know me at TFO yet, but over time I'll be a "regular" and they will know who I am. And I like that.

Be safe.

Melissa Arnold
Omaha, NE

Terror-Free Oil Refuses Financial Offer from Corporation Connected to Radical Saudi Financier

2007-02-04T10:32:00.000-08:00

Opening Day

2007-02-01T17:43:00.000-08:00

I said I would be there on opening day. And I was. Today was the actual opening, what people in business call a "soft opening", with the Grand Opening not happening until February 12.

As I drove past at 7:30 in the morning, cars were already lined up and the media was there. I needed to be at work for a meeting at 7:45, so I didn't have time to stop. But I figured I'd just pop in to the newly-opened Terror Free Oil gas station on the way home.

I was late getting off work, so I didn't get there until 7:30 p.m. Business was brisk at the Quik-Trip station next door. It was pretty busy at the Phillips 66 a block away, too. But there was only one car at Terror-Free Oil. Lights were on inside and a person was at the counter, but there were no lights out at the gas pump. When I tried the door, the kindly looking woman at the counter mouthed "We're closed." I had missed my chance to check it out. So had the folks who pulled up just as I was getting in my car. They rolled down their window and asked me if it was closed, apparently as surprised as I was.

It had never occured to me that they would be closed so early. Judging by the volume of business at the nearby competitors, Terror Free Oil could easily have made money if they'd stayed open a bit longer. I hope they change their hours as they get going.

I did read the notices on the door. (Nothing stated the hours of the station, by the way.) One mentioned that there are some services that might not be actually available until the Grand Opening. There were no details about what that meant, so I'll have to wait and see. It also said that 3% of cash purchases and 1% of purchases made by card or check would go to the War on Terror. That sounds good, but I'm not sure what it really means, so I'll have to find that out later too.

I like the idea of not using oil from countries that want to harm us. I like being able to help thwart the efforts of the Bad Guys simply by changing from a "regular" gas station to spending my money at Terror Free Oil.

I just need to catch the place when they're open.

Melissa Arnold
Omaha, NE

Consumer Perspective

2007-01-26T17:22:00.000-08:00

Omaha, Nebraska, is in the forefront in the War on Terror and making news across the country in the process. A new gas station concept is launching here with the company Terror-Free Oil, a part of the Terror-Free Oil Initiative.

A news report from Channel 5 out of Cleveland, Ohio, says, "Area drivers will soon be able to fill up with gasoline made from 'terror-free oil'. KETV in Omaha reports that a gas station is about to open near 129th and Q streets named Terror Free Oil, and the idea is to offer consumers petroleum products from countries that do not sponsor terror."

The complete Channel 5 report can be found at: http://www.newsnet5.com/money/10815377/detail.html

KETV's coverage is here:
http://www.ketv.com/automotive/10786780/detail.html

Additional coverage across the country, including CNN and MSNBC can be found here:
http://www.terrorfreeoil.org/news/

I drive past the new Terror-Free Oil station every day on my way to and from work. And I believe in the principles that govern this business. But all the news and buzz is nothing but empty yammering without a true test in the marketplace with the consumers weighing in on whether or not it's a good place to put our gas dollars. That's why I'll be there the first day they open and will give you and honest first-person account of what it's truly like, all from the consumer's perspective.

And just to set the record straight right from the beginning, I am not a paid blogger. I am doing this as a volunteer. I hope this gas station idea of theirs works out because I'm really tired of the terrorists always seeming to have the upper hand. I want to feel like in my own small way, I'm doing something to help stop them. But I'm also a skeptical consumer who's tired of the marketing hype about every product imaginable that surrounds every one of us every darn day of the year. If there are problems with the gas station, I'll be here to give you the honest low-down. I'll tell you the good stuff too. But no hype. Just the truth.

See you soon.

M. Arnold
Omaha, NE

Water Fuel Car

2006-10-08T22:07:00.000-07:00

Ethanol dazzles Wall Street, White House

2006-06-03T16:02:00.000-07:00

By LIBBY QUAID, AP Food and Farm Writer

COON RAPIDS, Iowa - A tractor trailer rig rumbles into the Tall Corn Ethanol plant. Corn pours from openings in its belly to bins underground, where conveyor belts and buckets haul it to gleaming steel silos rising 13 stories above the Iowa plains.

The 40-acre distillery turns corn into alcohol in quantities that would make a moonshiner drool. Instead of white lightnin', the brew is converted to ethanol, a fuel that makes money for farmers and is seen as a possible solution to today's high oil and gas prices.

Like the other modern-day stills dotting the Midwestern landscape, the Coon Rapids plant reached capacity soon after opening — within 12 days, to be precise.

Ethanol production in the United States is growing so quickly that for the first time, farmers expect to sell as much corn this year to ethanol plants as they do overseas.

"It's the most stunning development in agricultural markets today — I can't think of anything else quite like this," says Keith Collins, the U.S. Agriculture Department's chief economist.

The amount of corn used for ethanol, estimated at 2.15 billion bushels this year, would amount to about 20 percent of the nation's entire crop, according to department projections.

Even as ethanol devours corn and pushes prices higher, the president and Congress are calling for even greater ethanol use. Wall Street cannot seem to get enough of ethanol-related investments. Automakers are speeding ethanol-capable vehicles onto the road.

Yet the ethanol industry is not without its critics, who question whether tax incentives provided by Congress are really needed.

The enthusiasm for ethanol makes farmer Lynn Phillips want to grow more corn. Phillips helped raise the money for the farmer-owned Tall Corn plant, which opened in 2002 as a way to make more money by processing every kernel of locally grown corn.

"We saw train cars after train cars of raw material being shipped away and value being added somewhere else," said Phillips. Now, the corn "is still going out on train cars — it's just going out in the form of ethanol and distillers' grain."

Corn can cost more to grow because it needs heavy applications of fertilizer. Right now, Phillips plants corn on about half his 2,000 acres and soybeans on the rest.

Inside the ethanol plant, corn is ground and mixed with water to make mash. It is heated and mixed with enzymes to convert starch into sugar and fermented with yeast to make alcohol — just like making moonshine. Hanging in the air around the 500,000-gallon fermenting tanks is the smell of sweet, white wine.

The mixture is kept just below 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeast seem happier below that temperature, general manager Owen Shunkwiler hollers over the hum. Shunkwiler works for South Dakota-based Broin Companies, which invested in Tall Corn and is responsible for its operations.

After fermentation, the mixture is boiled to remove water, then dehydrated to boost the alcohol content. Before leaving the plant, a denaturant, or poison, is added to make the alcohol unfit for drinking. Then the ethanol is ready for shipping to fuel storage terminals that will blend it with gasoline as it goes into trucks for distribution to gas stations.

Also yielded in the process is livestock feed. Corn kernels minus the starch are left over — think South Beach for cows. Every 56-pound bushel makes about 17.4 pounds of grain feed, according to the Agriculture Department.

Tall Corn produces 150,000 gallons of ethanol each day, enough to power an estimated 272 cars for an entire year if they ran on ethanol alone.

But automobiles do not run on pure ethanol. Instead, ethanol is combined with unleaded gasoline to boost its octane rating and reduce emissions.

The most common blends are 10 percent ethanol, approved for any make or model sold in the U.S., or 85 percent ethanol, known as E-85 and used in specially made flexible fuel vehicles. About 5 million vehicles in the U.S. can run on E-85; more are in production.

In Iowa in April, regular unleaded gasoline was selling for $2.71, E-10 for $2.65 and E-85 for $2.33.

With demand comes expansion. In Iowa alone, three new ethanol plants opened last month. The industry likely will outpace a mandate from Congress to pump out 7.5 billion gallons a year by 2012, according to Collins.

Meanwhile, lawmakers envision vastly more ethanol in the nation's automobiles. Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., are pushing to require 60 billion gallons of ethanol and soy-based biodiesel by 2030.

An expansion that big would require sources for ethanol besides corn. Ethanol is made from sugar cane in Brazil, which meets about half its fuel demand with ethanol. Sorghum, another feed grain, accounts for about 3 percent of U.S. ethanol, according to the Agriculture Department.

Research is under way on other potential sources, such wood fibers and residue from crop harvesting.

The big question is whether oil and gas will remain expensive.

"When the price of anything gets high enough, then all kinds of substitutes come out of the closet," Collins said. "That's what's going on now. As long as the price of oil stays high, where ethanol is profitable, this industry is going to keep growing."

On the Net:
Renewable Fuels Association: http://www.ethanolrfa.org
Iowa Renewable Fuels Association: http://www.iowarfa.org/
Broin Companies: http://www.broin.com
Agriculture Department: http://www.usda.gov

Terror-Free Oil

2006-05-05T13:59:00.000-07:00

By Joe Kaufman
Front Page Magazine
May 5, 2006
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=22335

"We as American citizens can actually boycott Mid East oil.
And the way you do that is you go to a gas station whose company doesn't import the oil."
- Bob Bevelacqua, former U.S. Army Green Beret
August 23, 2005, Fox News Channel

In December of 2001, an e-mail was widely distributed across the internet calling for a boycott of all gas stations that purchase crude oil from the Middle East*. While the e-mail consisted of much emotionally charged language - understandably so, given the proximity to 9/11 - and while some of the information provided was faulty, the point that was being made was a valid one and should be revisited.

The e-mail began: "Nothing is more frustrating to me than the feeling that every time I fill-up the tank, I am sending my money to people who are trying to kill me, my family, and my friends. It turns out that some oil companies import a lot of middle eastern oil and others do not import any. I thought it might be interesting for Americans to know which oil companies are the best to buy their gas from."

The piece then proceeded to list major gasoline companies that import Middle Eastern oil and those that do not or "do not import much." Included on the list of importers were Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Marathon. As stated in the e-mail, for the period of September 1, 2000 through August 31, 2001, the companies ranged from importing just under 118,000,000 barrels to just under 206,000,000.

Included on the list of non-importers were Citgo, Sunoco, Conoco, Sinclair and Phillips (which merged with Conoco in 2002). BP Amoco made the bottom of the list (as a "not much") with just over 62,000,000 barrels. [In later versions of the e-mail, further companies would be listed.]

According to the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA), in its 'Crude Oil Imports From Persian Gulf** 2001' report, Middle Eastern oil was indeed purchased by all of the companies listed in the e-mail as importers. However, many of the "non-importers" were listed as importers, as well. In fact, the only two that did not make the official government list for 2001 were Sunoco and Sinclair. And Chevron, which was listed on the e-mail as "not much," made the top three!

But that was then. With the advent of the War on Terrorism, surely the gasoline companies, especially American-based ones, would begin to recognize and work to rectify this all too important matter. Surely something would be done to curb the amount of Mid East oil these companies import. That's only common sense, but that never happened.

Nearly five years after the tragedy of September 11 th, little has changed. The companies that were importing Middle Eastern oil still are, and the companies that weren't still are not. This is according to the latest information
available from the EIA. And it should be noted that, of the companies that are, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Marathon and Shell get crude straight from Saudi Arabia - the same Saudi Arabia that produced 15 of the 19 hijackers - the same Saudi Arabia which gives millions to Hamas - the same Saudi Arabia that actively spreads its radical jihadist/Wahhabist ideology throughout the world, including the United States.

Besides Saudi Arabia, a number of other Middle Eastern nations, where oil is imported from, have dubious track records. Information derived from the U.S. State Department's '22 nd annual Report to the Congress on Voting Practices at the United Nations,'
underscores the antipathy towards the United States these nations harbor. The following are facts found within the report:

    • Algeria (where Citgo and Shell get crude oil from), in 2004, out of 79 possible U.N. votes, voted against the United States 63 times.

    • Iraq (BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Marathon and Shell) voted against the U.S. 51 times [and that was even after liberation].

    • Kuwait (ExxonMobil and Marathon) voted against the U.S. 63 times.

    • Libya (Shell) voted against the U.S. 65 times.

    • Oman (BP and ConocoPhillips) voted against the U.S. 64 times.

    • Tunisia (Shell) voted against the U.S. 63 times.

On average these countries voted against the United States, in the year 2004, nearly 78 percent of the time. In the case of Saudi Arabia, it was 81 percent against.

The countries that have been discussed here are more in line ideologically with Iran, which shouts "Death to America," than they are with the United States. In fact, five of the countries mentioned, along with Iran, make up the majority of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which sets the price of crude for the rest of the world, which tells us how much more money we have to spend on gas any given day.

In October of 1973, our dependence on Mid East oil brought us an embargo from the Arab world. The Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), which, at the time, consisted of the Arab members of OPEC plus Bahrain, Egypt and Syria, called for an oil embargo against the West to coincide with the war they were preparing for Israel. This had
a devastating effect on the economy, as America was held hostage to the whim of our "friends." Why wait for a repeat performance, embargo or otherwise?

Of course, this money, at least in part, goes to fund our terrorist enemies, as well, both locally and abroad. It is this never-ending cycle - gasoline for money, money for terrorism - that could ultimately lead to our undoing, if nothing is done to stop it. And this problem is multiplied every second of the day, as we sink more and more of our hard earned dollars into our gas tanks. The question we all have to ask ourselves, when we go to the pumps, is are we willing to fund our own demise? And if we're not, then we have to ask ourselves are we willing to work towards a solution to the problem.

Terror-Free Oil Initiative

The American Center for Democracy (ACD) has developed a new program called the Terror-Free Oil Initiative (TFOI). The
purpose of the program is twofold:
    1. to cut off the flow of money that goes to terrorists and
    2. to decrease America 's dependency on foreign oil.
As stated on the ACD website, "This project is dedicated to encouraging Americans to buy only gasoline that originated from countries that do not export or finance terrorism."

While gasoline companies won't shift their loyalties from Mid East oil overnight, Americans have to start somewhere.
Americans must, once and for all, take a stand and support companies like Sunoco and Sinclair that don't get their
crude from 'the crude.'

So which gas station will you fill up at?

Notes:

* Middle East, as used in this article, includes Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

** Persian Gulf, as used in this article, includes Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

Joe Kaufman is the Chairman of Americans Against Hate and the host of The Politics of Terrorism
radio show.

Alternative fuels ensure a strong future

2006-05-02T13:45:00.000-07:00

By Hon. R. James Woolsey & Gal Luft
Centre Daily
May 2, 2006
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/opinion/14476861.htm

President Bush's call for America to end its "oil addiction" sparked a debate about whether the goal is attainable -- or even desirable. Some say that policies to promote energy independence would hinder prosperity. They claim that attempts to meet this goal after the 1970s oil shocks were expensive failures. These assertions are wrong.

Between 1979 and 1985, when oil demand reduction was a high priority, the typical U.S. car's fuel efficiency nearly doubled. Electricity generated from oil dropped from 17 percent of the nation's power output to 2 percent. The share of homes using heating oil went from 31 percent to 10 percent. Total oil consumption in the United States decreased by 15 percent, and oil imports fell by 42 percent.

Away from petroleum

The impact on the nation's economy was positive. Energy expenditures' share of the Gross Domestic Product fell by 50 percent while real per-capita share of the Gross Domestic Product grew by 10 percent.

Today a majority of the world's capacity to export oil is in the hands of autocracies and dictatorships that can use that wealth to destabilize the international system. Thus, the future of our economic and national security is more than ever coupled to our energy policy. The democracies' ability to prevail in the long war in which we are engaged will be compromised so long as such states control this part of the world's economy.

To ensure stability we must commit ourselves to diversifying our fuel supply and shifting the transportation sector from the conventional petroleum, which comprises 97 percent of our transportation energy, to a robust system based on next-generation fuels and vehicles.

The United States is no longer rich in readily recoverable oil, but it has a wealth of other energy sources from which transportation fuel can be safely, affordably and cleanly generated.

Among them: vast rich farmland, hundreds of years' worth of coal reserves and billions of tons a year of agricultural, industrial and municipal waste.

Each of these can generate alcohol fuels -- such as bio-diesel, ethanol and methanol -- at a price cheaper than current gasoline.

Large-scale deployment of flexible fuel vehicles running on alcohol, gasoline or any mixture of the two will allow Americans to choose secure domestic fuel over problematic foreign oil. Since the additional per-vehicle cost associated with flexible fuel vehicles is currently under $200, fuel flexibility should become a standard feature in every car -- like seat belts or air bags.

Plug-in hybrid vehicles, unlike standard hybrids, can draw charge not only from the engine and captured braking energy, but also from America's electrical grid. They can make efficient use of such clean electricity sources as solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric and nuclear power.

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles can reach economy levels of 100 miles or more per gallon.

• If a plug-in is also a flex-fuel car using 85 percent alcohol and 15 percent gasoline, fuel economy could reach the equivalency of 500 miles per gallon for a gasoline-powered vehicle.

• If a diesel engine burns clean fuel derived from waste, it would be using no conventional petroleum at all.

By 2025, if all cars on the road are either diesels burning fuel from renewables or flexible fuel hybrids, and half of the hybrids are plug-ins, U.S. oil imports would drop by more than 12 million barrels per day -- or more than what we import today.

These technologies exist. There is no need to wait for technological breakthroughs, invest billions in research and development or embark on massive infrastructure changes.

What is needed is congressional action to build on the president's call by enacting the necessary incentives for producers to make, and consumers to buy, cars that offer fuel choices while encouraging the development of a mass market for alternative fuels, along with the modest necessary changes in the distribution system. Such policies would make the U.S. economy more resilient and put it on a trajectory toward oil security.

R. James Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is co-chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger, which advocates an aggressive stance in the war against terror. Gal Luft is a member of the committee.

The War on Terror: The Energy Front

2006-05-02T08:16:00.000-07:00

By James Woolsey
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 2, 2006

The following speech was given as part of Restoration Weekend 2006, at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, Feb. 23-26, 2006 -- The Editors.

I'm honored to be invited but, to tell you the truth, since I was a Washington lawyer for 22 years and then I was with the CIA during the Clinton administration, I'm pretty well honored to be invited into any polite company for any purposes whatsoever.

I was not the originator of the phrase "World War IV." As far as I know, that was my friend Elliot Cohen in Wall Street Journal op-ed immediately after 9/11. I have mixed feelings about it. Sometimes I use that phrase and sometimes "the long war," which a lot of people are now starting to use.

The main point is that we should regard this war we're in as a long one. If you call it the World War IV, the analogy in a sense is to the Cold War, which I call World War III.

But the main idea is that this is a long contest of decades, not years, and it's one that's going to require us to do some very innovative and different things, just as the Cold War required us to do some things very differently than we had done in either World War I or World War II.

Just to give you a quick idea of how different things are, let me list seven more or less pieces of conventional wisdom about the Cold War, at least from today's perspective, and how different it was from this long war we're in now.

In the Cold War, the overarching struggle with our principle enemy, the Soviet Union, was a struggle with a large and very rigid bureaucratic empire. Today, our struggle is far more confusing. Instead of a single empire, we have at least three different types of groups with relationships to governments. In the case of Iran, we have the fanatic Ahmadinejad regime with its nuclear weapons program and its ties to the world's most professional terrorist organization, Hezbollah.

Al-Qaeda, quite a bit different from being an empire, has twice had relationships with states: Sudan for a time and then Afghanistan, in which one had more or less a terrorist-sponsored state, as distinct from a state-sponsored terrorism. Both al-Qaeda and the Islamists had a lot more resources available to them than either Sudan or Afghanistan at that time.

Wahhabis call themselves Salafists, which suggests allegiance to the very old forms of Islam. Salafism is the state religion of sorts of Saudi Arabia, but the Salafist relationship with some parts of the Saudi state is tense from time to time. They buy off the staet with phenomenal amounts of money, which they then use to run madrassas in Pakistan and the rest, teaching hatred of all things Western and all things non-Wahhabi.

So in contrast to dealing with a Soviet Union, what are we deterring? What are we holding at risk? How does one deter an Ahmadinejad whose objective is to bring the Mahdi back as soon as possible and, in his view, hopefully then the end of the world? How do we deter an al-Qaeda terrorist who is willing to die with a suitcase nuclear weapon in his hand? By threatening what? By holding what at risk?

There's a second major difference from the Cold War. During the Cold War, some people, in particular Daniel Pipes' father, understood that, by the '50s or '60s and certainly by the '70s, Soviet Communist ideology was dead. There was not fire in the minds of young men as there was in the streets of Petrograd in 1917. Soviet Communists were not getting ideological converts. It was a rigid bureaucratic movement that stood as a justification for thuggery.

Today, however, the ideology of our enemies is vibrant, strong, and religiously rooted. It presents a very difficult problem for us, because the Islamist-Salafist ideology, in the Middle East particularly and some other parts of the Muslim world, it is attracting some of the more talented and able young men and occasionally young women of those societies. There is, in the Salafist world, fire in the minds of men.

In the Cold War, we didn’t believe there was any real likelihood of attack on the United States by our enemy. In this new long war we're in, of course, we've already been invaded. Not occupied, but attacked in New York and Washington. The chief of strategy, Mr. Hassan Abbasi, for Ahmadinejad in Iran, says that he has already had "spied out" 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and the West and that he is ready to attack them.

During the Cold War, we felt that any hot wars that took place would generally have very short periods of combat. For example, Panama, Grenada, Korea were a few years at most. Vietnam, yes, was an exception. But in this long war we’re in, we may have hot wars, as in Iraq.

In the Cold War, we did not have to worry about screening the clerics who applied to be prison ministers for their ideological beliefs. Yet today, a fair number of Muslim prison clerics, are Wahhabis who teach the underlying ideology of hatred which is the same as that taught and adhered to by al-Qaeda.

We didn’t feel in the Cold War that we needed to deal with terrorism much differently than we did other crimes. Law enforcement would do the job. Terrorists should be prosecuted and imprisoned and that would deter further terrorism. But terrorism of the sort that we see coming from these Salafist movements just simply are not amenable to that type of treatment. To deal with it as a law enforcement problem is effectively not to deal with it at all. Arrest, prosecution, imprisonment mean very little to someone who is not only willing, but eager to die.

During the Cold War, the older among us remember the duck-and-cover drills that we went through in school, to get under the desk to protect yourself from flying glass in the event of a nuclear detonation. Once those were over, we more or less lived our lives during the Cold War secure in the idea that any need to deal with actuqal violence would take place in the world overseas and we wouldn’t have to have any security concerns particularly impinging on our daily lives.

Today, of course, the world in which we are living is one in which we come in contact every day with limitations of one kind or another. Some are major, most are minor, such as removing your shoes at the airport. Limitations that affected our liberties and our behavior during the Cold War were very rare.

Finally, we didn't understand this well during the Cold War, but during its aftermath, we’ve come to understand how much better and more effective our economy was than the Soviet economy. There were those who over-estimated the Soviet economy during the Cold War, but almost everyone now understands what an inefficient and ineffective way of producing wealth it was.

The war we’re in now is a war in which, if you take the 22 Arab states plus Iran, their population approximately equals that of the United States and Canada together: 340 million, give or take 10 million. That area, those 23 states, other than gas and oil, export to the world less than Finland, a country of 5 million people. But the oil and gas earns a very great deal. Saudi Arabia alone earns $160 billion a year from its oil sales. We borrow approximately a billion dollars every working day, $250 billion a year, just for our oil imports. The rest of our imports that we have to borrow to finance because we don’t save enough and don’t export enough. The rest of what we have to borrow, including oil in toto, totals about $2 billion every calendar day; about $740 billion a year.

As we pull into the gasoline pump, we need to look in the mirror and realize who is financing not only our side but also the other side in this war. Then we begin to see what the role of the relative wealth capabilities of the different societies are. We had no real Achilles heel with respect to our economy in the Cold War. We have a huge one right in the hands of our enemy in this current war we are in and it is a three-letter word: oil.

I think the most important thing about the war we are in is the variety of the responses that we have to change our views about and come to terms with. Everything from how we manage our ports to how we manage intercepts of communications between terrorists and abroad and someone who knows them in the United States. All of these are important and difficult policy matters.

There are two aspects of this war that I think go often undiscussed, although the President mentioned the second one, oil, in his State of the Union address. The first is ideology. Americans are people who don’t like to talk about ideology all that much. Americans think someone is crazy if they have views such as, “Hey, let’s all get together and kill billions of people so we can get the Mahdi to return and then that will be close to the end of the world.” Or, "Hey, let’s establish a worldwide caliphate in which a union of mosque and state governs the entire world." Or, "Going back a bit in time, how about a thousand year Reich or how about world Communism?"

Any of those totalitarian views of the future strike us as so strange that they’re crazy and who can deal with crazy people? Yeah, we may have to fight them some day but we don’t get into ideology that much. We’ve got a very special problem in this war, though. We’ve only fought one enemy in modern times whose totalitarianism had an important religious component, and that was the Japanese empire during World War II, with its distortion of Shintoism. But these enemies that I’ve described in this long war we’re in now have roots that are I think far deeper and far more involved in the history of Islam than the Japanese distortions about Shintoism.

Certainly as a result of the Cold War, we are not used to dealing with religiously motivated fanatical totalitarian enemies. We tend to think that everybody’s religion is his or her own business. We don’t challenge one another much about our religious beliefs. And we’re accustomed, in this open and democrat society, to a pretty wide range of religions. “Oh, you’re a Zoroastrian! Well, have a beer!” Our way is not the way of even examining, much less being critical, of something someone calls his or her religion.

That has to change. These enemies and their totalitarianism are rooted in a distorted version of a minority view of their religions. Take Shi’ite Islam. Our image of shi’a, much of it dating from the late 1970s with Khomeini’s takeover in Iran, was formed in part by the festival of Ashoura, where people lash themselves. Given what has happened in Iran since 1979, we think of Shi’ite Islam as a theocratically inclined religious group.

In fact, the history of Shi’ite Islam, other than a brief period in the 10th century in Egypt, has generally been one of separation of mosque and state. Khomeini introduced a craziness and a totalitarian and theocratic feature into Shi’ism that is not part normally of its mainstream beliefs. But you see what has occurred with Muqtada al-Sadr and some of the behavior in Iraq, as well as in Iran with Ahmadinejad, and their views, the views of the minority group and the group that is not representative as I think for example Ayatollah Sistani is in Iraq. The group in Iran and some groups in Southern Iraq that are fanatically theocratic totalitarians are not generally representative of the history of Shi’ite Islam. But they are no less dangerous for that because, at least in Iran, they have a nuclear weapons program. They have ties, as I said, to Hezbollah and we have to pay attention to the religious roots and the implications of that for what they are doing.

One implication of religiously rooted totalitarianism is that they are unafraid—and sometimes eage—to die and that opens up tactics and strategies for them, as Mr. Abbasi has said, in terms of the possibility of destroying sites in the West that make things very difficult for us.

It also means that they’re patient. I think one of the reasons we have not seen attacks in the United States since 9/11 is that, with a totalitarian religiously rooted enemy, they really don’t care that much whether or not an attack occurs in 2003, 2004, 2005, or 2006. I think they would very much like for an attack to be more devastating than 9/11. But whether it occurs in their lifetime or not I think is probably not a high priority.

So if we look at, not only the Shi’ite side of the ledger, with theocratic totalitarians such as Ahmadinejad, but also on the Sunni side and the situation that we face with both the jihadis such as al-Qaeda, and the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, we see a similar problem. We see a religious view rooted in only a corner of the religion, only a minority view of what it should mean to be a Muslim, but one that is nonetheless there. There are millions of good and decent Muslims in the world. If you want to have an interesting speaker, sometime invite Sheik Kabanni from Detroit, the head of the Sufis in the United States, an absolutely wonderful man. His followers are far from what you would see in some of the organizations like the Counsel of American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America. Those organizations leaning toward the Wahhabi view of things tend to ostracize Sheik Kabanni and his Sufis and keep them on the sidelines, because they’re far too moderate from the point of view of those who lean in a Wahhabi direction.

But the underlying views of the Sunni Salafists or Islamists are at least as much a problem for us as those of Ahmadinejad and those on the Shi’ite side of the ledger.

The underlying views of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabis and the jihadis such as al-Qaeda are essentially the same. They are explicitly genocidal with respect to Shi’ite Muslims, Jews, and homosexuals. They are fanatically hostile to pretty much everybody else: Sufi Muslims, Christians, women, democracy, music, across the board. The Saudis, out of their $160 billion oil income annually, take 3 or 4 billion and give it to the Wahhabi sect in Saudi Arabia. By the way, that’s about 3 or 4 times what the KGB had available to it for active measures in the West during the height of their funding capability during the Cold War.

When those $3-4 billion go to the Wahhabis and the Wahhabis use them to help put prison chaplains into American prisons or to teach hatred in the madrassas of Pakistan, they are spreading essentially the same underlying ideology that is held by al-Qaeda. The substantive views are not different. What they disagree about is who should be in charge. They hate each other with the same kind of hatred that the Stalinists and Trotskyites hated one another during the 1930s. But the Stalinists and Trotskyites agreed, underneath it all, that we should have a dictatorship of the proletariat and the vanguard should rule and exterminate the bourgeoisie and so forth and so on.

So when you see those dollars you spend at the fuel tank heading over to fund the other side in the war, it might give you pause and give you some thoughts about what we should do about it. Let me mention two things. One with respect to ideology, the other with respect to oil.

With respect to ideology, I am of the view that we are going to need to treat the Wahhabi or the theocratic Shi’ite form of Islam somewhat the way we treated Communism during the Cold War. Congress in the late 40s tried to make it illegal to be a Communist. Supreme Court struck the Smith Act down. So the U.S. government turned in another way. They turned to making Communists’ lives as miserable as they possibly could by having everybody register every time they turned around, by infiltrating their organizations with FBI agents. Communism was still present in the United States as the Cold War went on but it was hobbled as an active combative force affecting our ability to wage the Cold War. David knows far more about this than I. We were doing some effective things in putting limitations on what American Communists could do.

I think we have to look at both the Wahhabis and the Shi’ite theocratic totalitarians somewhat the same way. We cannot make it illegal for an American imam in a mosque to be a Wahhabi. But if that set of views is what is being taught and what is being disseminated, I think we have a similar kind of problem to what we had in the Cold War with Communism and should be treated similarly.

The other side of this is the economic power in the hands of our adversaries and that is, as I said, entirely derived from oil. There are a couple of problems about oil. It is obviously a useful way to carry energy. For over a century, it has been a useful way to provide the feedstock for creating gasoline and diesel fuel for powering automobiles. It’s going to be around for a long time.

But there are some ways that we can move a lot more expeditiously than many people believe to make it a good deal harder for oil exporting states, whether it’s Russia or the states of the Middle East, to get political power out of their position as oil and gas suppliers. To make it harder for them to shove the rest of us around. Because once the curves of oil consumption and use that I’m about to describe begin to turn, the people in these oil-exporting nations who control and govern their countries’ behavior will begin to see the handwriting on the wall.

Now, what am I talking about? Am I talking about a hydrogen highway to the future? No, no and no. Hydrogen has a bunch of problems. It is an interesting R&D project and hydrogen fuel cells are an extremely useful way to create stationary power. Power from hydrogen fuel cells for a number of different applications, other than automobiles, makes some real current economic sense.

But those vehicles you see out there advertising a hydrogen future cost each about a million dollars to make and that’s because the fuel cells themselves are something like a thousand times more expensive than they can be in any economic structure and even if we get on top of that. I have some confidence in the next 20 years or so that that might work out. If you’re talking about hydrogen, you’re looking at needing to completely restructure the energy infrastructure of the country. You’ve got to have hydrogen pumps at filling stations. You’ve got to make the hydrogen there. So you’ve got to get natural gas, let’s say, into every filling station. Hydrogen’s extremely explosive. You’ve got to find a way to store it without blowing things up.

You’re talking about massive changes in our energy infrastructure.

We have spent a good deal of money on hydrogen and some of it has been well spent. But my view is that what we need to concentrate on are ways to replace petroleum-based fuels that one can use to quickly, within the existing infrastructure and as inexpensively as possible. The reason we don’t want to go for really high-cost solutions is that the Saudis are capable of doing the same thing they did in 1985, when they turned on the spigot and dropped the bottom out of the oil market. It went down to $5-7 a barrel. The good news is that it bankrupted the Soviet Union. That may have been one of the reasons that they did it. Part of the bad news is it bankrupted the Synfuels Corporation and, indirectly, my home state of Oklahoma which was not good.

But the Saudis had enough control over the spigot to be able to do that. And I think in spite of the notions of peak oil and the rest, OPEC and particularly the Saudis will have some of that type of capability for some years to come.

So we want fuels that are alternatives and today, for all practical purposes, there are none. The difference between petroleum for transportation use and almost any other kind of energy or other issue is that you’ve got alternatives. If natural gas goes through the roof, as it has, people are going to work really hard on clean coal and on nuclear and on wind turbines and so forth. But, for transportation fuel, there’s nothing else to move to unless we make some changes in the way our infrastructure operates.

Should you think that the oil infrastructure is not vulnerable, like me, you’ll be pleased at the Saudi repulse yesterday of the attacks on oil fields and oil transshipment facilities in Saudi Arabia by the al-Qaeda terrorists. But that’s not the last time they’ll try.

Bob Bayer’s book, Sleeping with the Devil, opens with a scenario in which hijackers fly a hijacked aircraft into the sulfur clearing towers up near Rastanura in northeastern Saudi Arabia. Take them out of operation, thereby taking about six million barrels a day of Saudi crude off line for a year or more and send oil prices to well over $200 a barrel.

So the vulnerability of the oil infrastructure, as well as this business of our funding the other side in the war, is yet another reason I think that one needs to concentrate on these suggestions about utilizing inexpensive feedstocks, using the existing infrastructure and moving as quickly as we can.

Now, what might one do? The President has, over the course of the last week or two, been mentioning two alternatives time and again and I think he’s right on those. The only thing I would say is that I think he is focused entirely on research and development and these are fields in which the Wright Brothers have already flown. What we really need is not so much invention, but some type of encouragement one way or another to have things move into the market quickly.

One possibility is cellulosic ethanol. The word “cellulosic” is important because it means making ethanol not from corn, which has to be cultivated and fertilized and is expensive to grow and so forth. But rather, as the President mentioned, from things such as switch grass, which is a variety of prairie grass. Or, for that matter, kudzu or corn cobs or any other waste agricultural products.

What’s new is that people have now succeeded in inventing genetically modified microorganisms that can take the place of the enzymes that break cellulose down in cow’s stomachs every day and turn it into sugar that the cows live on. It’s doing that with genetically modified biocatalysts and fermenting the different types of sugar there with genetically modified yeast.

That is now being done commercially by a company called Iogen in Canada with Shell Oil backing it. It does not need to be invented. It needs help to be moved promptly into the marketplace into E85—85% ethanol. But it does not need to be invented.

The same is true of the other way to use inexpensive fuels that the President’s been talking about, which is plug-in hybrids. A plug-in hybrid is a hybrid electric vehicle which, of course, goes back and forth between electric power and gasoline, while the battery’s being charged by the deceleration and by the use of the gasoline motor. My Prius gets about 50 miles to the gallon: a little worse on the road, a little better in town. It likes start/stop driving.

Hybrid gasoline electrics are fine, but what is really interesting is if you can increase the capacity of the battery by about a factor of 6, and today that’s about a $6-7,000 cost, but it ought to be less as time goes on and batteries get cheaper. But if you increase the capacity of the battery, let’s say, in a Prius by a factor of 6, plug it in overnight, top it up fully and then drive for 20-25 miles as an electric car on your overnight power before the hybrid back-and-forth feature cuts in, you turn that 50-mile-a-gallon Prius into about a 125-mile gallon of petroleum-based fuel Prius.

By the way, in most of the country, the average cost of off-peak nighttime electric power is 2-4 cents a kilowatt hour which is the rough equivalent of 25-50 cent a gallon gasoline. So if you have two cars, one kind of stays around the neighborhood and drives less than 25 miles a day, while the other maybe goes on long commutes. The one that goes on long commutes will be getting about a 125 miles per gallon of petroleum as it goes. The one that goes around the neighborhood and around town may go to the gasoline station once every six months or so because it’s running on off-peak overnight power the rest of the time.

Again, the Wright Brothers have already flown. This has been invented. It’s being assembled in kits to modify cars in California beginning next month. People will lose some of their warranties and different car companies are wringing their hands and there’s much Sturm und Drang. But it is not something that needs to be invented. If you have 125-mile-per-gallon, because it’s a plug-in hybrid car and it is running on 85 percent ethanol and only 15 percent gasoline, you have something in the ballpark of a 500-mile-per-gallon car with existing technology.

You want to get the Wahhabi’s attention, that’s the way to do it.

Thank you.

James Woolsey is a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

America needs terror-free oil

2003-01-06T13:38:00.000-08:00

By Deroy Murdock
Human Events
January 6, 2003
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_200301/ai_n9186871

"Why are we importing oil from countries that are exporting lethal terrorism by groups who hate our freedoms and despise our way of life?" Sen. Conrad Burns asks. At a December 6 energy summit in Moscow, the Montana Republican bluntly discussed the dangers of U.S. dependence on "rogue oil."

Saddam Hussein has "stockpiled $6.6 billion in black market oil money to fund his evil regime," Bums complains. Filling American gas tanks unwittingly helps Saudi-government charities pay $5,300 each to families of Palestinian homicide bombers.

How can America begin to halt this flow of blood money to those who kill us and our friends?

Step one: Increase domestic petroleum production. Step two: Help develop overseas oil resources outside the Middle East. Ample resources exist in places that are not engaged in anti-American jihad. Abutting Russia and Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea boasts proven reserves of 33 billion barrels of oil.

Russian oil deposits may be even more generous. Roughly 49 billion barrels rest below that country's vast land mass. With minimal outside investment, Russia already pumps 6.9 million barrels daily (almost matching Saudi Arabia's typical production of 7.4 million barrels-- per-day). Jeffrey E. Garten of Yale's School of Management believes Russia could lift its output to at least 10.35 million barrels.

The Gulf of Guinea also could help satisfy U.S. oil demand. The largely offshore oil fields between the Ivory Coast and Angola yield low-sulfur petroleum. This is perfect for developing gasoline at U.S. refineries and is easily transportable across the open Atlantic. By 2006, Sub-Saharan Africa could supply 8 million barrels daily, up from 4 million today.

Step three: Alberta, Canada's oil sands could offer a nearby, friendly and long-term petroleum resource. By liberating a fraction of the 300 billion barrels of oil that adhere to these sands, Syncrude last year produced 223,000 barrels daily. It hopes to generate 360,000 barrels by 2005. Through two new developments called Voyageur and Firebag, Suncor plans to deliver 550,000 barrels-per-day by 2012.

As America wages the War on Terror, we immediately should adopt a strategy to slash or end our dependence on rogue oil. We should follow the advice Winston Churchill offered as World War II loomed: "Safety and certainty in oil lie in variety and variety alone."

New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a senior fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Fairfax, Va. This article is excerpted from a column in the November 2002 issue of Chief Executive magazine.

Senator Sees Over-Dependence on Mideast Oil

2002-09-12T17:21:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States should wean itself from Middle East oil imports by buying more from Russia or risk further security threats, a Republican senator who backs strikes against Iraq said on Thursday.

The United States, the world's biggest consumer of oil, imports about half of its nearly 20 million barrels per day (bpd) requirement.

Montana Sen. Conrad Burns said the United States should find new sources of "terror-free oil" given growing social unrest in the world's No. 1 oil producer, Saudi Arabia.

"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia continues to abuse its vast reserves to intimidate other countries from hiking production," Burns told reporters after speaking at the National Press Club. "We need to counter by shielding our economy from the whims of one single country."

Burns said the United States should import more oil from Russia and the Caspian Sea to avoid entanglements in the Middle East. South America and Canada could also supply more oil and gas.

Burns, who supports a U.S. military strike on Iraq, said he believed the American public had not rallied behind President Bush's appeal for action.

"The people I talk to know (Saddam Hussein) is a very evil man but they have not made up their mind if he is a danger to them, personally," he said.

American oil companies have sharply scaled back their purchases of Iraqi oil in recent months. After buying about 1 million bpd earlier this year, importers cut their Iraq purchases to about 167,000 bpd in June, according to U.S. government data.

Cut Reliance On Mideast Oil

2002-09-12T15:39:00.000-07:00

SENATOR BURNS: Thank you Mr. Aubothon, members of the National Press Club, Ambassadors, Congressman Weldon and fellow Americans:

One year ago today, America awoke to a nightmare of death and destruction unseen in our Nation's history. Today, while the architects of that evil have been vanquished or are on the run, America remains confronted by a dependency on rogue oil.

We have seen this threat in the payoffs to suicide bombers from Saddam Hussein, a man who has violated the terms of a cease-fire from a war he lost almost 10 years ago.

We have seen this threat in countries that would wield a natural resource as a weapon, to cause harm to our economy.

We have seen the radicals amid the mainstream, celebrating in the streets the day our great Nation was attacked.

We should see the danger that lies in buying up to a quarter of our imported oil from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. But we do not.

We should see the dangers of paying billions of dollars to a man committed to amassing weapons of mass destruction. But we do not.

We should see and understand that every time America buys a barrel of rogue oil we are in part funding unseen radicals. But we do not.

And we should see that our national security is at risk, our foreign policy is shackled, and our diplomatic credibility in the Middle East undermined, so long as we buy from regimes that deny democracy and freedom.

America should not allow these regimes to maintain such a strong influence over our economy. But we do.

We allow Syria to smuggle over 100,000 barrels of oil per day from Saddam Hussein.

We allow ourselves to believe that the world cannot diminish its dependence on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, convinced this country holds the copyright on a commodity. But make no mistake - it does not.

Our unique place in the world demands we demonstrate our leadership.

How can we stop inadvertently financing global terrorism?

Can we use our domestic resources more wisely?

Can we diversify our energy sources to increase national security?

Yes, we can.

What has America done?

America has shut down exploration on millions of acres of American land rich in oil and gas. And Congress has banished development in a frozen corner of Alaska that holds the equivalent of 55 years worth of Iraqi imports.

What has America done?

Last year we sent $4 billion to Saddam Hussein in oil money. Some of our allies call it Oil-for-Food. But I say we call it what it is: Oil-for-Terror.

Our Nation has come to a crossroads. We are confronted by Action and Inaction. Will we stay the course or remake our destiny?

So today I ask a this question, one that should dictate American energy policy for the 21st century: Why are we importing oil from countries that are exporting lethal terrorism by groups who hate our freedoms and despise our way of life?

The United States has indeed changed. We have felt the embrace of our friends in our time of need. And we have felt anger when a jihad was declared on our soil, our institutions, our economy, and our very daily bread - freedom itself.

We have seen religion perverted by extremists whose designs for the world end only in annihilation. Islam was also a victim of September 11. Fanatics, spewing evil and hatred, hijacked a religion of peace. Good nations saw the bad within. Allies of America in the Middle East have uncovered some of these fanatics and brought them to justice.

There is no one birthplace for terrorism, but there are places where extreme ideologies flourish. In Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabi clerics have a strangle-hold on freedom.

The institutions of Church and State are one entity.

Women live as third-class citizens.

Textbooks teach hatred and disdain for the United States.

Young men genuflect to jihad as they are indoctrinated into a bastardized religion of terror.

The result is the absence of democracy. The result is that 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers were from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

But this is a place where America does big business.

It is time we seek out new partnerships.

It is time we find new sources of production.

It is time we turn America's imagination, technology, and ingenuity loose.

America, it is time we turn off the spigots of terrorist oil.

This requires bold leadership to redefine the National priority.

We can redefine this National priority two ways: new overseas production and new domestic production.

These are ambitious goals, but not impossible. Consider the contributions of my home State of Montana. Fuel cell research is underway at our universities. This will yield new ways to power our homes and cars. New technologies can turn Montana's abundant agricultural crops into alternative fuels.

With the power of people and ideas there is the power to change. Montana possesses the Nation's largest supply of clean coal. We possess vast reserves of petroleum and natural gas.

It is critical we know where our reserves are located. If Montana has so much potential, think about our potential as a Nation.

The Bush Administration has granted more federal research for transportation fuel cells. The auto industry has started to turn out hybrid cars and cars powered by fuel cells.

America has taken great strides towards conservation in the last 25 years. America's consumption of oil has remained steady since 1973, at roughly 19 million barrels per day. But during that same time GDP doubled. Regrettably, our Nation has allowed our foreign oil imports to double as well.

Imagine what new technology will accomplish in the future. No doubt, these new technologies will one day take us beyond fossil fuels, but that day is not tomorrow. We must continue to push ahead with more research dollars for science and technology. In the meantime, America must tap new sources of imports if we are to wean this Nation off rogue oil.

America is blessed with a wealth of natural resources. But we have declared much of those resources off limits. In the land of plenitude, we have turned excess into scarcity.

For example: There is a moratorium on new offshore oil and gas development along the entire east coast of the United States, while America purchases Canadian gas pulled from wells off the coast Nova Scotia.

That makes no sense.

America must find ways to meet energy production and demand in responsible ways - not to limit it for limitation's sake.

Present policies tell us to ban domestic exploration, allowing domestic production to further decline.

Present policies tell us to maintain the status quo in the Middle East.

And some might question why we should pursue new ventures with old enemies.

Indeed, this axis of inaction is our greatest enemy. It is inaction itself we must resolve to defeat today. We cannot simply sit back and send billions to Saddam Hussein and billions more to countries that preach hatred at their pulpits.

America must act now to harness its true energy potential. Our economic growth did not spawn from inaction. Technology made the 21st century the American century and energy fueled that progress, from steamboats, to railroads to rockets in space.

Yet the decline in domestic energy production and the consequences from buying it from jihad cartels may be the undoing of those titanic achievements and imperil America's security.

I ask the question again: Can we diversify our energy sources to increase national security?

There is good news for Americans who believe we can dismantle the myth that America is forever dependent on Middle East oil. In the Caspian Sea, a body of water surrounded by former Soviet Republics, oil reserves of up to 33 billion barrels have been found, a supply greater than our own reserves and double that of the North Sea. And estimates say another 233 billion barrels of reserves could be lurking undiscovered somewhere in that sea. Such a massive amount of oil would constitute 20%-25% of the world's proven reserves.

Russia boasts even higher reserves.

Yet, America buys virtually no oil from Russia and the Caspian states. Russia and the Caspian states present the biggest opportunity in oil exploration and production for America, and it is a challenge to which America must commit.

To those who say it cannot be done, I point to the strong friendship between President Bush and President Putin. This friendship and trust affords America an historic opportunity share new technologies and modern management with our Russian ally.

In May, President Bush and President Putin launched the US-Russia energy dialogue. That discussion concluded that the future for Russian energy development depends upon lasting financial reforms. Russia knows corporate governance is its best hope at luring the capitol needed to build a lasting middle class.

Already, Russia has taken great steps in that direction under President Putin. Land reform, tax reform, and economic reforms have all been hallmarks of his administration.

As a result, American private investment is flowing increasingly into Russia. American investment in Russia, according to the US-Russia Business Council, is staying put. Are we stepping out of the twilight of the robber baron period of the 1990's?

In the months ahead, I believe American companies will welcome more, lasting reforms in Russia and in the Caspian states.

Capitalism is not a hat we wear to do business, Capitalism travels on paper:

Investment in the civic infrastructure of these nations is as important as any amount of money invested in transportation infrastructure.

Russia and Caspian states must fight organized crime and put an end to endemic corruption.

Russia must finalize banking reforms while improving investment laws and regulations.

Judges must not be subjected to pressure by the executive branch.

And transparent and impartial courts backed by the national government must enforce laws and contracts.

The steady, unabating stream of American capitol needed in these nations will never come until all financial commitments are secured by the Rule of Law.

Some of Caspian states have established oil funds managed by Western private investments companies. Russian might consider similar steps.

These lasting reforms will be engine of change that gives these nations a strong middle class.

America welcomes these changes and America welcomes Russian and Caspian oil.

America welcomes the construction of Caspian pipelines, which can unleash millions of barrels of landlocked oil.

America welcomes the idea of a second pipeline in the region.

It is not just a pipeline bringing oil to the West. For America it is a bridge to diversification. For the Caspian states, it is a bridge to modernity.

The bridge of reform in Russia could pave the way for expanded gas and oil production in Eastern Siberia, the Russian Far East, and offshore areas.

The bridge of reform could lead to the modernization of Russia's port and transportation infrastructures.

I believe these lasting reforms will be achieved. I believe these countries are committed to their future. Next month, U.S. and Russian officials will meet at the Houston energy summit. I look forward to hearing the proposals of reform from the Russian side.

We can indeed do more, and inaction should never be our pose.

But in all our actions, America should be guided the words spoken by Winston Churchill on the eve of World War II. Churchill said, "On no one quality, on no one process, on no one country, on no one route and on no one field must we be dependent. Safety and certainty in oil lie in variety and variety alone."

It is my hope that in the months and years ahead, we will act to diminish our dependency on rouge oil and terminate our Nation's financial connections to nations that sponsor terrorism.

We will act to seek variety by extending our partnerships with Russia and the Caspian States.

We will act to seek variety by expanding partnerships with allies such as Mexico and nations throughout South America.

We will act to seek variety by seeking out new opportunities in West Africa and Middle Eastern nations committed to democracy.

And most importantly, we will achieve variety by tapping the resources our great Nation was blessed with.

Great opportunities lie ahead and so do great dangers. No matter the dangers, America must not lose sight of the prospect of a new, democratic regime in Baghdad and the hope for a new producer of terror-free oil.

The future for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is unclear. GDP in that country has been in decline for two decades. A culture in decline breeds unrest, and we have seen that unrest breeds terrorism. My hope is that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will soon decide to become democratic, to separate Church from State.

But when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia continues to abuse its vast reserves to intimidate other countries from hiking production, America must take pause.

We need to counter by shielding our economy from the whims of one single country.

We need to inject a new psyche into the market that says we no longer need to kowtow to fanatics and anti-American regimes.

A great Nation assumes the challenges that accompany a great cause. America has never shied from the leadership of challenge. In the arsenal of the American spirit is the American ability to overcome great barriers. We must act now to fasten that spirit to our backs and move ahead.

This new psyche can empower America. This new psyche can embolden our allies to action.

Action and inaction, challenge and ease have always been the two paths of mankind. Fellow citizens, we will choose the paths of action and challenge with boldness and determination, convinced by the rightness of our convictions and hopeful of the changes to come. In all that must be done, I know that America is ready and able to conquer this challenge.

Thank you and may God Bless America.

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