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Chavez threatens to cut off oil to US if it 'crosses the line'
http://independent-bangladesh.com/news/feb/19/19022006bs.htm#A19
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
AFP, CARACAS
Feb 18: Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez warned late Friday he was taking potential steps to cut off oil shipments to the United States, in the event Washington "crosses the line."
"The US government must know that if it crosses the line it won't be getting Venezuelan oil," the leftist leader said, repeating similar threats he has made in his long, simmering dispute with the United States.
Chavez, who did not clarify how Washington might incur such a sanction, apparently was reacting to Thursday's call by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for an international "united front" against Venezuela.
"I have to say that I've begun taking steps on the matter, but I won't tell you what they are," Chavez told a meeting of pensioners in Caracas. "They think I can't take these steps, because we won't know where to place our oil. Aha! That's where they are wrong," Chavez said.
"Many countries ask us for more oil and... we've had to answer that we can't give them any more because, among other things, (of)... the million and a half barrels of our production that goes to the United States." Rice called Chavez a "challenge to democracy" on Thursday and said Venezuela's close ties with Cuba were "a particular danger in the region."
She told the US Congress she had recently spoken of the Venezuelan problem on the telephone with the foreign ministers of Austria, Spain and Brazil. "The international community has just got to be much more active in supporting and defending the Venezuelan people," Rice said.
Chavez has called Rice's remarks a "threat," and accused US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of launching a plan against Venezuela aimed at keeping him from being reelected in coming December elections.
"The plan has been launched. They are trying to get Spain, France, Germany and all of Europe against us," Chavez said. He called upon Venezuelans to embrace "resistance to imperialism", his shorthand for the US government.
Chavez also accused Spanish former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, who recently harshly criticized Chavez's government, of being a part of the plan to keep him from reelection.
And Chavez thanked comments he said were from Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim and Chilean President Ricardo Lagos for supposedly refusing to take part in a front against Venezuela as Rice suggested.
"'Mr. Danger'," said Chavez, referring to Bush, "you form your front, and we will form ours.
"It doesn't matter what the US government does to us; we will respond in a Christian way: 'If you slap my cheek I will offer you the other.' "I have the moral strength to resist the old cynical and immoral empire, and we shall defeat you, old empire," Chavez pledged.
Chavez took the opportunity to salute allies in communist Cuba and socialist Bolivia, and announced he would travel to Iran in a matter of months.
The only OPEC member in Latin America, Venezuela currently produces some 3.2 million barrels of oil per day and the United States is its top buyer. US-Venezuelan relations have gone downhill since Chavez was elected seven years ago. He frequently accuses Washington of plotting against him, and has charged it backed an aborted coup in 2002.
Relations hit a new low earlier this month when Caracas expelled a US naval attache on espionage charges, prompting Washington to retaliate by kicking a Venezuelan diplomat out of the United States.
Despite the war of words, Venezuela remains the fourth-largest supplier of crude oil to its northern neighbor, selling it about 1.5 million barrels daily and, through Citgo, has three refineries and close to 14,000 gas (petrol) stations in the United States.
‘Get serious’ about oil shock
Author, researcher heads for KC to say it’s coming
By STEVE EVERLY
The Kansas City Star
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/13920591.htm
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
The appearance of $3 gas in the wake of Hurricane Katrina last year showed the tenuous U.S. hold on plentiful and cheap fuel.
The worst of it, however, was soon over, and prices declined.
But what if there were a sharp shortfall in oil supplies that was permanent instead of lasting just a few weeks or months? An event so far-reaching that it could transform the American way of life and much of the world economy?
Matthew Simmons has a message for you: Count on it.
Simmons is the author of the recently published book Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, which has put him at the center of a debate over whether oil supplies will be sufficient in the future. In short, he says, the answer is no. And the time to prepare for it was “yesterday.”
“This is the World War II of energy,” he said in a telephone interview.
Today, Simmons will be in Kansas City and deliver a speech to the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce’s Economic Forum. The event is sold out, so you will have to buy the book or go to www.simmonsco-intl.com to read some of his presentations. Click on his name and go to speeches and papers.
It has been 50 years since the geophysicist M. King Hubbert predicted that oil production in the United States would peak in the 1970s and then begin to decline. Hubbert’s prediction came true, and the idea that the world’s oil production would someday follow suit has steadily gathered believers. The big question, however, is when that peak in oil supplies will happen.
Simmons thinks that time is near. Saudi Arabia, which is being counted on to meet much of that future demand, may have already passed its peak. If the kingdom were to sharply increase its production, that would cause serious damage to its oil fields, he says, and the higher production couldn’t be maintained. And with demand expected to grow sharply, no other country that can take on the role.
“The only player that has that potential is Saudi Arabia,” he said.
The kingdom supplies 1.5 million barrels of oil a day to the United States, which is 15 percent of the country’s imported oil and slightly less than 10 percent of what the country uses daily. Saudi Arabia produces about 10 million barrels a day, which makes it the world’s largest oil producer and exporter. It currently has virtually all of the world’s surplus oil production and about a quarter of the world’s proven reserves, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Simmons is chairman of Simmons & Co. International, a Houston energy investment banking firm he founded in 1974. He says he has nothing but admiration for how the Saudis have produced oil. And he realizes his career is on the line if he has made claims that later prove unfounded. He’s confident he has made the case.
“I didn’t want to make an idiot of myself,” he said.
A self-professed data wonk, he began looking at the size and age of the world’s oil fields and was surprised at what he found. Saudi Arabia in 2004, for instance, relied on eight fields that supplied 92 percent of the country’s oil. Most of the fields are at the age when declines in production typically become a problem. Ghawar, the world’s largest oil-drilling field, was discovered in 1948 and production began in 1951.
He also studied petroleum engineering data, and a visit to Saudi Arabia deepened his conviction that the amount of the country’s reserves was questionable and that it wasn’t in a position to sharply increase production. The kingdom might be able to increase production to 12 million barrels a day, he said, but he has doubts about that.
The Saudis seem to be of two minds about Simmons. They rejected his claims but took them seriously enough to send two executives of Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, to debate him in 2004. They said the kingdom’s oil production had not peaked and that any declines in its current oil fields would be replaced by its massive reserves. They pointed to a plan to increase production to 15 million barrels a day and said that level could be sustained for at least 50 years. And they were being conservative, they added.
In Simmons’ scenario, more goods will need to be made locally to save on transportation costs. Globalization will diminish because it relies on cheap and plentiful energy. More people will work at home to save fuel. In short, things are going to have to change.
“We need to get serious so we don’t get hit in the face with the biggest surprise in the world,” he said.
Army stretched to breaking
Editorial
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
20-FEB-06
http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=EDARMY-02-20-06
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
The Marines may be the most celebrated of the American armed forces, but it's the Army that does most of the heavy lifting, as it is doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the process, the Army is being battered and shattered in the same way that it was in Vietnam.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says that isn't the case; everything's fine. But a recent authoritative study says he is wrong. Commissioned by the Pentagon, the study was done by Andrew Krepinevich of the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He's a West Point graduate who served in a variety of Army roles, including a stint on the strategic plans and policy division, before retiring. He holds a doctorate from Harvard University.
Krepinevich says that coming out of Vietnam, military leaders were determined never again to get bogged down in prolonged small-unit combat. If the Army must fight, it would hit with overwhelming force, achieve its objectives and get out. The need to behave that way was reinforced by the end of the draft late in the Vietnam War. U.S. military forces now needed to focus on their ability to attract new recruits and retain experienced personnel.
That doctrine dictated how the Army was organized for Afghanistan and Iraq. It was totally unprepared to cope with extended battles against insurgencies; the Bush administration's strategy didn't take them into account.
Krepinevich says the Army can deploy no more than 13 brigades to hardship tours at one time. It now has 19 brigades deployed. To fill the gap, two Marine brigades have been sent to Iraq. "Stop loss" and "stop move" orders have been implemented. The reserves have been well tapped out. Active duty personnel now are commonly on their third rotation into Iraq.
The effects of this flawed strategy have been dramatic. The Army has no strategic reserve to call on if another threat were to develop. Divorce rates, domestic abuse and all kinds of mental and physical problems are on the rise among active duty soldiers. In sum, the Army is headed for a "catastrophic decline in recruitment and retention" unless something is done. The "thin green line," Krepinevich says, will break. And don't look to NATO, the United Nations or private contractors for more help, or expect Iraqi forces to develop without many years of effort.
Adding an additional 30,000 to 40,000 personnel, "if aggressively executed, could create a force sufficient to sustain current force levels indefinitely, while maintaining a modest strategic reserve," Krepinevich writes. But even that wouldn't help unless the Pentagon's strategy is changed. From a force organized "to compete as a world-class sprinter," Krepinevich says, the Army must recast itself to run marathons _ to put a "greater priority on stability operations." That, he says, will take years, and there are no good options for getting through the transition, even if nothing else happens in the world requiring the Army's attention.
Thus the Army finds itself just where it was in Vietnam, and without a draft. Its near-term future looks bleak, thanks to the flawed vision of Rumsfeld and Bush.
WHO center is on the trail of deadly bird flu
Team on alert amid fears of pandemic
By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff
February 19, 2006
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2006/02/19/swiss_lab
_is_on_the_trail_of_deadly_bird_flu?mode=PF
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
GENEVA -- In a bunker-like chamber beneath the headquarters of the World Health Organization, day blends into night as teams of virologists and epidemiologists track a killer called H5N1 across a dozen time zones.
Fingertips tip-tap on keyboards as e-mails fly to distant corners of the globe amid a constant murmur of phone conversations. A virologist urgently questions a doctor in Vietnam. On another line, a logistics specialist untangles the knots of moving a mobile lab from one remote village in Turkey to an even more remote hamlet.
The suspicious deaths of wild ducks in Romania warrant fast-track tests for pathogens. Reports of the latest human infections in Indonesia leap onto an electronic screen. Confirmation of strange mortality among chickens in Nigeria sends health teams scrambling for the next plane to Lagos.
Detection of the virus in the carcasses of wild swans in northern Germany last week signaled the swift spread of H5N1, with the virus penetrating deep into Africa and Western Europe for the first time over the past several days. In the latest alarm, the H5N1 virus was confirmed in densely populated India yesterday, less than a day after emerging in Egypt and France, among other places. A new death was reported in Indonesia, one of the epicenters of the outbreak.
The $5 million basement facility here serves as the command center in the global war against bird flu. Using information gleaned from offices in 66 countries, public health and veterinary officers in the field, and breaking health data acquired by computer programs, the war room tracks the relentless spread of the virus case by case, almost minute by minute.
''It is very intense; we are seeing 15 to 20 events every day," said Dr. Michael Ryan, head of the facility, with a staff that includes 112 epidemiologists, logistics specialists, communications technicians, and other specialists from 29 countries.
Each new human infection raises the prospect of a pandemic that could claim millions of lives and wreak economic havoc. For nearly a decade, the H5N1 virus was largely confined to poultry flocks in Southeast Asia. But six months ago the disease blazed across the Russian steppe, veering into Turkey before slicing into southern Europe and backtracking into Central and South Asia. Last week, traveling with a rapidity that has stunned medical watchers, the highly pathogenic virus appeared for the first time in Africa.
Mutations that could change the H5N1 strain into a virus able to spread from human to human could occur in hours. The only signal of the shift would come from an unusual spate of deaths.
''We're not going to have much warning," Ryan said. ''One day, two days, maybe three, if we are extremely lucky. Once contagious among humans, the virus will spread like a tsunami. There will be the flash point -- probably in Asia, perhaps somewhere else -- followed by waves of infection that would hurtle around the world."
In the era of jet travel and world commerce, where almost no place is truly isolated from the rest of the world, every country would quickly become a front line in the battle against a new form of influenza, epidemiologists say.
The facility over which Ryan presides features wall-mounted video monitors, electronic maps, sophisticated communications gear, and banks of ''James Bond" computers (whose screens disappear into desktops with a purr of hydraulics to clear space for meetings). ''This room is the eyes and ears of epidemic response," the Irish physician said. ''We're already providing immediate information to the world, assessing risk in each local outbreak, getting response teams into the field, and coordinating their work once they get there."
Satellite communications equipment is designed to circumvent normal phone systems that could become overloaded in an emergency. A strike force with about 400 public health doctors and other specialists on standby at medical centers around the world -- ranging from the US Centers for Disease Control to Israel's public health agency -- is ready to respond on six hours' notice to emergent disease hotspots.
Influenza pandemics -- a pandemic refers to the spread of deadly disease over vast areas -- have erupted about every 30 years, on average, over the past century: After the 1918 Spanish flu came less-lethal pandemics in 1957 and 1968, which killed millions.
In worst-case scenarios based on extrapolations from the 1918 outbreak, some epidemiologists predict that a pandemic spawned by bird flu could kill 140 million people in a matter of months, and sicken so many hundreds of millions that some governments and national economies would collapse. A study by the Lowy Institute for International Policy, an Australian research center, predicted that a pandemic could wipe out $4.5 trillion in global economic output.
The World Health Organization is urging countries to brace for a ''mild to moderate" pandemic likely to kill 2 million to 7.4 million people, according to Ryan.
''We need to steer away from worst-case scenarios or we'll end up like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck, too terrified to move," he said. ''We need preparation, not panic."
As a sign of mounting concern, international donors led by the United States last month pledged $1.9 billion to fight bird flu worldwide, substantially more than had been expected. The figure includes more than $330 million from the United States and $250 million from the European Union. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has earmarked $7 billion to combat an influenza pandemic on the home front, although the amount will also go toward research and vaccine development expected to benefit the world.
But United Nations health specialists acknowledge that the world is ill prepared to meet a major outbreak among humans.
Although many governments are stockpiling such antiviral medicines as Tamiflu, even the best existing drugs may not necessarily help people infected with an aggressive new virus. An international rush is on to boost the world's production of antiflu vaccines -- but there is no guarantee these vaccines will prove effective because no one knows exactly what form a mutated H5N1 virus might take.
Medicine aside, the trickiest task for the WHO is to persuade countries to recognize outbreaks of the disease, report them immediately, and move swiftly to quarantine outbreak areas. China, in particular, has been accused of refusing to provide timely information on bird flu. Impoverished countries, meanwhile, simply lack the will or the resources to slaughter infected chicken flocks and conduct blood work and other tests on individuals.
Bird flu is believed to be borne by migrating birds, making it impossible to control the spread. Still, epidemiologists have been stunned by the rapid advance of the disease. ''The virus is moving quite substantially into new locations," said David Nabarro, the official responsible for coordinating the UN response to avian and human influenza. ''The truth is, this virus is undergoing changes. This warning that nature is giving us has to be heeded."
So why should a few hundred sick chickens in West Africa set off international alarm bells?
''The greater the spread of the avian disease, the greater the risk for humans," Ryan said. ''The more exposure, the more the danger that virus will mutate into deadlier forms that can be spread from human to human."
In its present form, the H5N1 virus is dangerous only to humans with intensive exposure to chickens, ducks, geese, and other barnyard fowl. Most of the more than 90 people who have died of the disease have been peasant farmers or slaughterhouse workers.
But viruses mutate, often rapidly. And bird flu has a fearsome track record: In 1918, a form of bird flu leapt directly to humans, triggering the so-called ''Spanish" influenza pandemic. In less than a year, Spanish flu killed at least 25 million people and perhaps as many as 50 million, according to medical histories.
''The danger is grave, the threat is real," said Dr. Albert Osterhaus, a virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, head of the Netherlands National Influenza Center, and one of Europe's top ''virus hunters."
''Another pandemic is probable, not just possible. It's only a matter of time," he said in a telephone interview. ''Whether [the H5N1] virus will be the basis of the next pandemic is impossible to say. But the virus is already highly pathogenic."
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Chavez threatens to cut off oil to US if it 'crosses the line'