He is clearly undermining an established democracy so that he can be "President for Life", yet that is "OK" as long as he opposes the US.

So, for you, Dictators of the Right, Bad,
Dictators of the Left, Good.

The idea is that American farmland is now so depleted the only reason crops grow at all is synthetic fertilizers.  The result is food that is not as nutritious as it was in the past.  From Discover:

In 1997 a British study compared the mineral content of fruits and vegetables grown in the 1930s with the mineral content of produce grown in the 1980s. It found that several nutrients had dropped dramatically, including calcium (down nearly 30 percent), iron (down 32 percent), and magnesium (down 21 percent).

I also wonder if hygiene may be an issue.  Our food is so clean.  My dentist was astonished when I came home from two years in the Philippines.  My tooth enamel was as worn down as that of the typical 60-year-old American - and I was only 16.  He said it was likely because food in developing nations has so much grit in it compared to American food.

caffeine is an upper not a downer

sugar intake boosts serotonin levels also.

after the dust settles, peoples diets . . . snip . . .  will make people healthier

 Better check exactly what is in that dust. A study by the University of Arizona indicates that depleted uranium has significant health implications:

Depleted uranium - what is left over when the highly radioactive isotopes of uranium are removed - is widely used by the military. Anti-tank weapons, tank armor and ammunition rounds are just some of the applications. "The health effects of uranium really haven't been studied since the Manhattan Project (the development of the atomic bomb in the early 1940s). But now there is more interest in the health effects of depleted uranium. People are asking questions now," Stearns said.

Her research may shed light on the possible connection between exposure to depleted uranium and Gulf War Syndrome, or to increased cancers and birth defects in the Middle East and Balkans.

 The increased cancers are noted three to five years after exposure. Going to become increasingly difficult to have troops rotate into Iraq if this finding holds up. Certainly not going to earn a lot of points with the "liberated" citizens of Iraq.

 http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20060307010324data_trunc_sys.shtml

our current story is really about the interesection of two worlds - the economic one, where the modern fitness metric is growth, and the thermodynamic one, where the age old necessity of energy invested to energy received will become increasingly more important. Economics, in my opinion, only works when all players have at least an opportunity to be better off next year as this. This has only been available when there has been a next step on humans climb on the ladder of energy density. Will there be another step? An incremental step down? A step off a cliff??

peak oil is past. now we are at peak total oils, and eventually peak liquid fuels, -once we pass total net energy left over to non-energy producing society is when the fitness barometer will start to change to those who can most readily produce human necessities - the transition period - 5-10 years - will still be dominated by the economic-world leverage success stories, as the capitalist system will allow them to trade dollars,euros,gold etc in for land, water, goods, etc. after that period is over, all the money in the world wont teach someone how to protect plants from slugs, skin a deer, start a fire, etc.

ECONOMIC ERA > 1600-2004 - icon example Donald Trump
TRANSITION PERIOD> 2005-2010 -icon example Stuart Staniford
THERMODYNAMIC ERA => 2011- icon example - MacGyver

As I have pointed out once before, even though your graph seems to indicate a plateau, only 2 months in the past 13 showed lower production than the corresponding month in the previous years. Those were the 2 months directly following the hurricane.

So, what is the capacity erosion going to be? That's a hard call, but it currently isn't enough to offset increases in production that have been achieved over the past year. And we are about to see a lot more new production come online. Some of the lost gulf production will be coming online. We will probably see some Nigerian production come back online. And some of these new projects will come online.

RR

At the turn of the century, both the UK and Germany wanted to shift their navies from coal to oil. Neither had domestic reserves sufficient to power the transition.

Germany managed to cut an oil deal with the Ottoman Empire whose dictator was named Sultan Hamid ("S.H.") The so-called "Baghdad to Berlian" oil railway was what the deal was called.

BP, then know as the Anglo Persian oil company, tried to get an oil deal in the early part of 1914. Ottoman Empire turned them down.

Lo and behold, a terrorist attack (the assasination of the Archduke Ferd.) takes place right on what would have been the northernmost link of the Baghdad to Berlin oil railway.

As a result of some treaties Britain had signed in the months following the Ottoman empire turning down them down, this gave Britain an excuse to invade what is now Iraq.

After the war the oil fields in what is now Iraq got divied up among companies from the victorious natioins: US, UK, Dutch and some others. These companies became known as the "Seven Sisters."

Sound kind of familiar?  

There were also currency/monetary issues (like the modern war in Iraq) but that's for another post.

Best,

Matt

P.S.

As far as diplomatic accidents and new technology, I have little doubt those were factors. But if all the world's oil was in pennsylvania and texas, I doubt anybody would have jockeying/fighting to control the oil in the Mideast during those years.

It's like saying the current war in Iraq was the result of bad intelligence, poor planning and an overconfidence in "shock and awe" type technologies. You could argue those have played a role but without the oil in the Middle EAst (what Dick Cheney called the "prize" in 1999) we wouldn't be there or even be interested in the first place.

Best,

Matt

He struck me as that rarity of rarities, a neocon who lives in the reality-based community.  ;)

After some thought, I think I would like to be permanently on record that I think a first use of nuclear weapons against Iran in present circumstances would be the largest war crime since the second world war.  If, hypothetically, the US were to do that, I would hope that our leaders would at some point be tried for that crime.  It is a line that absolutely should not be crossed.

It would probably not be the largest war crime if you count bodies.

The realy scary thing is that a use of nuclear wepaons by USA would break the taboo forbidding actual use of nuclear weapons. The cold war between Pakistan and India depends on this taboo as do the stand off between India and China. And if nuclear weapons goes back to simply be big bombs they would make all future wars far more deadly and it would become much more important for threathened countries to get them and be willing to use them.

The only way I see for such a genie to be put back into the bottle is for the world to economically ruin any country including USA who starts using nuclear wepaons. A trade embargo and nullification off all US trade agreements, business deals and foreign assets would do it, it would give a serious world depression but it would be worth it.

In regard to the Hersh article, I do believe that his sources exist. However, the article is clearly spun for maximum anti-Bush impact. For one thing there is what appears to be deliberate (because Hersh is a VERY careful writer and extremely bright) confusion of contingency planning with actual war plans. Contingency planning for an attack on Iran has been around for at least fifty years--and not only in the United States. Russia, Britain, Israel, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. air force have all had contingency plans for attacking Iran for many decades, and periodically these plans are updated. All this updating and discussion of scenarios is routine and not an indication of imminent attack.

In regard to using nukes, there is no need at all to use nuclear weapons. An attack on Iran using conventional weapons can take down its electrical production and distribution network and also the infrastructure that would be needed to repair this network. Without electricity, you cannot enrich uranium. Now this plan is only one of several; there are other ways to take out Iran's capacity to develop nuclear weapons, including more than one way to get at facilities buried deep underground. But the notion that Bush is planning to nuke Iran is, to put it mildly, highly speculative. Indeed, Hersh provides no verifiable evidence at all in his article.

The Hersh story is about what the administration wishes it could do.  The response shows their recognition that they cannot do what they wish they could.

Best,

Matt

Bush cannot be re-elected, but Congress is facing the voters very soon, as such things are judged in DC.  And Bush has a lot to lose if the GOP loses control of the House, the Senate, or both.  All the Dems need is one, and they can start the kind of investigations that dogged Reagan and Clinton.  Wiretapping, Plamegate, and so many more.  Plus, Bush's agenda will be blocked at every turn.  If he cares about his agenda and his place in history, he cares about the next election.