Public Intelligence Blog

We Asked For Water, They Gave Us Gasoline

Situation All Fracked Up

ROBERT HUNZIKER

Counterpunch, Weekend Edition 6-8 Jan 2012

According to worldwide energy industry participants, all of the low hanging fruit is gone. Finding new energy sources will henceforth be difficult and expensive… and very dangerous to your health. The unquenchable thirst for energy is unique to modern man, a little over 100 years old, and energy is unquestionably the heartbeat of modern civilization. We cannot exist without it, but where and how to find it is fast becoming the biggest challenge to the health of planet earth. Case in point: Fracking is the fastest growing segment of the energy industry, massively so in North America, but it may be the death knell of society well before global warming has the opportunity to really strut its stuff.

According to Texas Governor Rick Perry, when confronted on the campaign trail about fracking problems: “We have been using hydraulic fracturing in my home state for years and this is a fear tactic that the left is using and the environmental community is using that absolutely, excuse the pun, does not hold water.”

Governor Perry’s bias and ill-founded statement is herein refuted by 12 personal testimonials in Texas included in the appendix to this article. Further, it is well understood by professionals who seriously follow the trails and tribulations of fracking that almost all cases where fracking has poisoned ground water are quickly settled, payoffs to the victims, by energy lawyers who arrange for the legal documents to be sealed.  The implication herein is we do not know the whole story by a long shot, but knowing the whole story may be the only way to survive as a species. Why we don’t know all the facts should be one of the most important political questions of 2012.

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Phi Beta Iota:  Fracking poisons clean water.  Tar sands are flushed with clean water.  There is plenty of energy in the USA, the KEYSTONE/Tar Sands and fracking are scams–lies to the public–intended to feed refineries in the US for the EXPORT of processed fuels.  The public desperately needs a government capable of combining intelligence with integrity.  Fracking also causes earthquakes, as recently occurred in Ohio.  Anyone who does not know all this is NOT qualified to run for President, Senator, or Representative.  In our humble opinion.

Russia, Iran Proceed With Bilateral Trade, Drop Dollar; Russian Warships Park In Syria; Iran Accelerates Nuclear Enrichment

For anyone wondering how the abandonment of the dollar reserve status would look like we have a Hollow Men reference: not with a bang, but a whimper… Or in this case a whole series of bilateral agreements that quietly seeks to remove the US currency as an intermediate. Such as these: “World's Second (China) And Third Largest (Japan) Economies To Bypass Dollar, Engage In Direct Currency Trade“, “China, Russia Drop Dollar In Bilateral Trade“, “China And Iran To Bypass Dollar, Plan Oil Barter System“, “India and Japan sign new $15bn currency swap agreement“, and now this: “Iran, Russia Replace Dollar With Rial, Ruble in Trade, Fars Says.” And ironically, the proposal to dump the greenback did not come from Iran. Per Bloomberg: “Iran and Russia replaced the U.S. dollar with their national currencies in bilateral trade, Iran’s state-run Fars news agency reported, citing Seyed Reza Sajjadi, the Iranian ambassador in Moscow. The proposal to switch to the ruble and the rial was raised by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at a meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in Astana, Kazakhstan, of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the ambassador said.” Is Iran gradually becoming the poster child of an energy rich country that just says no to the dollar: “Iran has replaced the dollar in its oil trade with India, China and Japan, Fars reported.” Next thing you know China, Russia and Japan will engage in bilateral trade agreements with the Eurozone in exchange for purchasing European or EFSF (which at last check are now forced to give 30% guaranatees) bonds, and bypassing dollars completely. But yes, aside from everyone else, virtually everyone (footnote 1) is still using the dollar as currency of global exchange.

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Central America: World’s Most Dangerous Place Fights Back

Larry Luxner

Washington Diplomat, January 2, 2012

EXTRACT:

Earlier this year, Gen. Douglas Fraser, chief of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, declared that “the northern triangle of Central America — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — has become probably the deadliest zone in the world outside of active war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

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Phi Beta Iota:  A very well developed overview.  The US Government, “in our name,” has abused Central and South America–and disgraced us all in Haiti–by failing to apply intelligence with integrity.  The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) has been created to push Canada and the USA away.  Obama learned nothing from Hugo Chavez handing him Open Veins of Latin America (see also Savage Capitalism).  We do not have a government that represents We the People–we have a government that exists solely to enrich elected members of the two-party tyranny in passing, while transferring public wealth to the private 1%.  This corrupt bi-opoly has “lost” South America and failed to create a Western Hemisphere that is at peace and prosperous.  Now it turns its attention to Asia.  This is criminal insanity.