http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HE09Ad01.html

Excerpt: In the space of 12 months, Russia and China have managed to move the pieces on the geopolitical chess board of Eurasia away from what had been an overwhelming US strategic advantage, to the opposite, where the US is increasingly isolated. It's potentially the greatest strategic defeat for the US power projection of the post-World War II period. This is also the strategic background to the re-emergence of the so-called realist faction in US policy.

Friedman on the Post-Post Cold War:

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/opinion/10friedman.html

Bad news for economists:

http://www.economics.rpi.edu/www/workingpapers/rpi0512.pdf

Abstract: In this paper we use results from the Hotelling model of non-renewable resources to examine the hypothesis that technology may increase petroleum reserves. We present empirical evidence from two well-documented mega-oilfields: the Forties in the North Sea and the Yates in West Texas. Patterns of depletion in these two fields suggest that when a resource is finite, technological improvements do increase supply temporarily. But in these two fields, the effect of new technology was to increase the rate of depletion without altering the fields' ultimate recovery - in line with Hotelling's predictions. Our results imply that temporary low prices may be misleading indicators of future resource scarcity and call into question the future ability of current mega-oilfields to meet a sharp increase in oil demand.

The Popular Mechanics Poster on Alternative Fuels (really good):

http://media.popularmechanics.com/documents/Fuel_of_the_Future-e852.pdf

In Pakistan, power outages are lasting 22 hours a day in some areas:

Load shedding hurting economy, National Assembly opposition walks out twice

But the crisis seems worst in Bangladesh. There were protests by farmers over fuel and fertilizer shortages earlier in the year, and now the unrest has spread to the cities:

Power hungry people lay siege to REB office in Khulna

Violent protest rally over power outage in city: 100 hurt, 100 vehicles damaged

People marched on a power plant in Dhaka, demanding an end to power outages:

But when the police tried to intercept the protesters, some turned violent, setting fires and destroying vehicles.

(Photos by AP)

These countries generate most of their electricity via natural gas (except India, which is increasingly dependent on coal). The tighter natural gas market means power generation cannot keep up with growth.