20 Signs That A ‘Horrific’ Global Food Crisis Is Coming
Zero Hedge writes via The Economic Collapse Blog:
In case you haven’t noticed, the world is on the verge of a horrific global food crisis. At some point, this crisis will affect you and your family. It may not be today, and it may not be tomorrow, but it is going to happen.
Crazy weather and horrifying natural disasters have played havoc with agricultural production in many areas of the globe over the past couple of years. Meanwhile, the price of oil has begun to skyrocket. The entire global economy is predicated on the ability to use massive amounts of inexpensive oil to cheaply produce food and other goods and transport them over vast distances. Without cheap oil the whole game changes.
Topsoil is being depleted at a staggering rate and key aquifers all over the world are being drained at an alarming pace. Global food prices are already at an all-time high and…
BP Asks To Resume Gulf Coast Drilling
Some (who don’t speak Chinese) say that the Chinese word for “crisis” also means “opportunity”. Well, no one creates cris-portunities like BP does. Via the Boston Globe:
BP has asked US regulators for permission to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, two company officials said yesterday.
The petition comes less than 15 months after a rig BP leased there exploded, causing a huge oil spill and killing 11 workers.
[One] other official said, “We’re making progress but it’s not a yes yet.’’ Both people spoke on the condition of anonymity because talks on a possible agreement were continuing.
Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was halted last summer after the accident involving BP’s Macondo well, which spilled 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean. The ban was lifted in October.
Royal Dutch Shell won approval on Wednesday to drill off the coast of Louisiana on the condition that rigorous new safety standards were…
OPEC Could Reap $1 Trillion This Year
OPEC Member Countries
Olga Belogolova writes in the National Journal:
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is set to make a record-breaking $1 trillion in export revenues this year if crude oil prices remain above $100 a barrel, an the International Energy Agency official told the Financial Times.
“It would be the first time in the history of OPEC that oil revenues have reached a trillion dollars,” Chief IAEA Economist Fatih Birol told the Financial Times. “It’s mainly because of higher prices and higher production.”
The possibility of a record-breaking year comes as continued unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, engagement in Libya, and signs of an economic recovery renew debate among policymakers over how to deal with rising global oil prices and their ties to national security.
President Obama will weigh in on the issue [on 30 March] when he speaks about his new four-part “Plan for America’s Energy Security” at…
Gulf Spill Company Hands Out “Safety” Bonuses to Executives
Al Jazeera reports:
Transocean Ltd., the owner of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded off the Gulf of Mexico last year, has given its top executives bonuses for achieving the “best year in safety performance in our company’s history”, despite the blast that killed 11 people and spilled 200 million gallons of oil into the ocean…
How The BP Cleanup Effort Poisoned People In The Gulf Coast
“We’re all lab rats and we didn’t even know it.” Almost a year after the BP oil spill, Al Jazeera reports on the awful array of health problems being faced by Gulf Coast residents exposed to deadly chemicals (largely because of the cleanup effort). Perhaps most frighteningly, a generation of small children will be developing with ultra-high levels of toxic chemicals in their blood and their bodies, the effects of which remain to be seen:
BP’s oil disaster last summer gushed at least 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, causing the largest accidental marine oil spill in history – and the largest environmental disaster in US history. Compounding the problem, BP has admitted to using at least 1.9 million gallons toxic dispersants, including one chemical that has been banned in the UK.
Al Jazeera has talked with scores of sick people across the Gulf Coast who attribute their illnesses to…
Saudi Police Open Fire At Protest – What Next?
Source: Norman Einstein (CC)
Did shit just hit the fan? Those keeping up with the Middle East protests and oil prices are well aware of the powder keg that is Saudi Arabia.
Yahoo News reports:
CAIRO – Saudi police opened fire Thursday to disperse a protest in the mainly Shiite east, leaving at least one man injured, as the government struggled to prevent a wave of unrest sweeping the Arab world from reaching the kingdom.
For full article, see Yahoo News.
“Oil will go up ‘ballistically’ if unrest shifts to Saudi Arabia, says Marc Faber”. Business Intelligence Middle East reports:
Brent crude futures could hit US$200 a barrel if political unrest spreads into Saudi Arabia, Societe Generale said on Monday.
Under what the bank called Geopolitical Scenario 3, “unrest spreads to Saudi Arabia and threatens Saudi crude exports and any remaining spare capacity. Brent price range of US$150-US$200 a barrel,” it said in a research note.
“In this most…
Senior HSBC Economist Warns Soaring Food Prices Could Trigger Unrest In UK
Sky News reports:
A senior economist at the worldwide bank HSBC has warned of civil unrest in Britain if food prices continue to soar.
Speaking on Jeff Randall Live, senior global economist Karen Ward cautioned that the UK could experience the kind of food riots seen in other countries.
“Even in the developed world I think we have very, very low wage growth, so people aren’t getting more in their pay packet to compensate them for food and energy, and I think we could see social unrest certainly in parts of the developed world and the UK as well.”…
Gaddafi Has Ordered Security Services to Start Sabotaging Oil Pipelines
Former CIA field officer Robert Baer writes in TIME:
There’s been virtually no reliable information coming out of Tripoli, but a source close to the Gaddafi regime I did manage to get hold of told me the already terrible situation in Libya will get much worse. Among other things, Gaddafi has ordered security services to start sabotaging oil facilities. They will start by blowing up several oil pipelines, cutting off flow to Mediterranean ports. The sabotage, according to the insider, is meant to serve as a message to Libya’s rebellious tribes: It’s either me or chaos.
Two weeks ago this same man had told me the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt would never touch Libya. Gaddafi, he said, had a tight lock on all of the major tribes, the same ones that have kept him in power for the past 41 years. The man of course turned out to be wrong, and…
Chevron Fined $8 Billion For Polluting Amazon
It’s taken decades but finally the Amazonian Indians whose environment was despoiled by Texaco have won their lengthy court battle with successor corporation Chevron. Mind you, it’s an Ecuadorian court and no doubt the plaintiffs will have a tough time enforcing the judgment in the United States and actually collecting the money. Look forward to years more litigation while the people of the Amazon suffer for the oil giant’s wreckess conduct. BBC News reports on the judgment:
A court in Ecuador has fined US oil giant Chevron a reported $8bn (£5bn) for polluting a large part of the country’s Amazon region.
The oil firm Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, was accused of dumping billions of gallons of toxic materials into unlined pits and Amazon rivers.
Campaigners say crops were damaged and farm animals killed, and that local cancer rates increased.
Condemning the ruling as fraudulent, Chevron said it would appeal.
The lawsuit was brought…
The Relationship Between Oil, Earth and Humanity
Oil has been the topic of discussion in American news since the 1920s, but have circumstances really changed? With the Deep Horizon spill in 2010 causing unprecedented pollution, the leak in the Alaskan pipeline and the new energy deal between China and Scotland, we are witnessing an increasing struggle for fossil fuel resources and a constant search for new energy sources. An excerpt from disinformation’s The Little Earth Book by James Bruges gives us a retrospective look of how the oil situation of today was seen 6 years ago.
The Future of Oil: Who’s Fooling Whom? – and Why?
Draw a line five miles long to represent the millions of years during which solar energy has been captured and laid down in the earth’s crust in the form of coal, gas and oil. Then put a blip in it. That blip represents the time we have taken to extract and use this embodied energy. We are…
The Gulf Of Mexico’s Blue Plate Special
Michael Edward writes about the ongoing ecological disaster that has befallen the population of the Gulf of Mexico, at blueplague.org:
There’s a new proprietary recipe being force-fed to all of us here on the Gulf of Mexico that is now becoming available worldwide. Although this recipe has been closely guarded for 8 months, we were able to break it down after examining the plentiful supply us “Gulf Coasters” have available here. The ingredients are abundantly available while both the recipe and the brewing process are not as secret as everyone had thought.
THE GULF BLUE PLATE (BP) SPECIAL
Fill a large bowl with saline ocean water, add a generous proportion of thick crude oil, then pour in a cup of liquid Correct-it (available from Nalco under the brand name Corexit) making sure you don’t spill any on yourself, stir gently, and then let it sit for a day or two. As the newly…
Deathbed Globalist ‘Spills Gut’ On Plan to Destroy America
Kurt Nimmo writes on Infowars:
Pastor Lindsey Williams provides details on the ongoing plan by the global elite to destroy America, consolidate financial power, usher in world government, and reduce humanity to a slave class.
Lindsey Williams told Alex Jones his source — described only as a CEO in the Big Three Oil industry who traveled in Bilderberger circles – is suffering from terminal cancer and “spilled his guts” to him on particular details of the globalist agenda now unfolding.
Scientists Find Damage to Coral — Essential to Marine Life — Near BP’s Oil-Spill Well
The Associated Press reports via CommonDreams:
For the first time, federal scientists have found damage to deep sea coral and other marine life on the ocean floor several miles from the blown-out BP well — a strong indication that damage from the spill could be significantly greater than officials had previously acknowledged.
Tests are needed to verify that the coral died from oil that spewed into the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, but the chief scientist who led the government-funded expedition said Friday he was convinced it was related.
“What we have at this point is the smoking gun,” said Charles Fisher, a biologist with Penn State University who led the expedition aboard the Ronald Brown, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel. “There is an abundance of circumstantial data that suggests that what happened is related to the recent oil spill,” Fisher said.
For the government, the findings…
Oil Profits Soar Even In Crippled Economy
Site editor’s note: This post from DJ Pangburn originally appeared on death + taxes.
What a joy it is to see some businesses doing well as the corpse of capitalism slowly re-animates…
Very few industries bloom in harsh economic times, but the oil and energy industries are doing just fine. Did anyone expect anything less?
Exxon-Mobil reported a 55% surge in third quarter earnings compared to last year. The U.S. oil giant posted $7.4 billion in earnings, which translates to $1.44 per share. It’s annual revenue rose $13 billion to $95.3 billion, much of the credit going to the demand coming out of China attempting to feed its unstoppable economic engines.
In a statement, ExxonMobil chairman Rex Tillerson commented on Exxon-Mobil’s profits:
“Despite continuing economic uncertainty, we had strong quarterly results and continued to advance our robust investment opportunities.”
Royal Dutch Shell’s quarterly earnings also rose significantly, even as the company divests itself of some of their…
BP is Sorry … for Drilling Into Another Dimension & Releasing Cthulhu on ‘South Park’ (Video)
Here’s some clips from last night’s episode of South Park (Watch entire show here).
Unsatisfied with just destroying the ecology of the Gulf Coast with a mere oil spill, BP ventures into another realm and eventually releases one of the Great Old Ones. 3,000 years of Darkness can’t be that bad, right?
Tea Party Climate Change Deniers Funded by BP and Other Major Polluters
The Guardian reports:
BP and several other big European companies are funding the midterm election campaigns of Tea Party favourites who deny the existence of global warming or oppose Barack Obama’s energy agenda, the Guardian has learned.
An analysis of campaign finance by Climate Action Network Europe (Cane) found nearly 80% of campaign donations from a number of major European firms were directed towards senators who blocked action on climate change. These included incumbents who have been embraced by the Tea Party such as Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, and the notorious climate change denier James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma.
The report, released tomorrow, used information on the Open Secrets.org database to track what it called a co-ordinated attempt by some of Europe’s biggest polluters to influence the US midterms. It said: “The European companies are funding almost exclusively Senate candidates who have been outspoken in their opposition to comprehensive climate policy…
Finally, Some Goddamn Truth Expressed on U.S. TV News
Don’t freak with the BS topic of yesterday in this clip, wait until around 2:45 minutes in where Dylan Ratigan (the only mainstream journalist as far as I’m concerned has been calling out these Wall Street crooks for some time) goes on a well-deserved rant on MSNBC’s Morning Joe regarding the unsaid truth about America’s “War on Terror” — he directly calls out the “extraordinary failure of our politicians and our media” to explain the money route behind these operations.
Thank you, Mr. Ratigan.
How the BP Gulf Coast Oil Spill Mirrors the 2008 Financial Crisis
Interesting article from Neil King Jr. and Keith Johnson in the Wall Street Journal:
Congress was still convulsed over the Exxon-Valdez oil spill on Dec. 6, 1989, when Shell Oil flashed an announcement that would revolutionize American energy policy: The Anglo-Dutch giant had hit oil — a lot of oil — nearly 3,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
The bulletin on the Auger Field discovery marked the start of a rush into the Gulf’s deep waters. At the time it looked as if the Gulf might be a magic-bullet solution to America’s energy and national-security needs.
It made nearly everyone giddy. Politicians in both parties offered incentives to boost offshore production. Regulators — especially under President Bill Clinton — eased rules to support the boom. And oil companies, deploying ever more complex drilling technology, barreled ahead, leaving four administrations scrambling to keep pace.
While environmentalists fought fiercely to prevent offshore…
Mike Maloney Illuminates the Bankers
From GoldSilver.com. Great presentation, definitely worth watching:
Mike Maloney was recently invited to speak at the 8th International Banking Forum in Sochi, Russia. The theme was…
