According to an article in Le Monde on March 25, the US Department of Energy "admits that ''''a chance exists that we may experience a decline'''' of world liquid fuels production between 2011 and 2015 ''''if the investment is not there.''''" This bombshell emerged in "an exclusive interview with Glen Sweetnam, main official expert on the oil market in the Obama administration."

The Le Monde article goes on: "The DoE dismisses the ''''peak oil'''' theory, which assumes that world crude oil production should irreversibly decrease in a nearby future, in want of sufficient fresh oil reserves yet to be exploited. The Obama administration supports the alternative hypothesis of an ''''undulating plateau.'''' Lauren Mayne, responsible for liquid fuel prospects at the DoE, explains : ''''Once maximum world oil production is reached, that level will be approximately maintained for several years thereafter, creating an undulating plateau. After this plateau period, production will experience a decline.''''"

According to a summary of proceedings, the secret meeting that took place Mondaybetween the British energy minister and the business taskforce responsible for last month’s provocative peak oil report was indeed the beginning of an ongoing process to understand and prepare for the end of cheap oil.

“Although Chatham House rules prevent me from stating what the Minister said, there is clearly a desire to continue this dialogue on peak oil,” Rob Hopkins wrote on Wednesday on his blog Transition Culture. A prominent promoter of a movement that actively encourages and monitors societal structures based on a low-energy future, Hopkins joined colleague Peter Lipman as representatives of the Transition network at the closed-door meeting.

As they queue to fill water jugs from a rusty communal tap, the women of Njoro can’t help but gawk at the odd scene across the road. In a wheat field ringed by barbed wire, a dozen men wearing white polyethylene jumpsuits stand in a tight huddle, eyes fixed on the green-and-amber stalks that graze their knees. They chat in foreign tongues — Urdu, Farsi, Chinese — that are rarely heard here amid the acacia trees and donkey carts of Kenya’s Rift Valley. The men’s hazmat-style safety gear suggests they might be hunting down one of the infamous viruses that flourish in this part of the world — Ebola, perhaps, or Marburg.

Then the leader of the huddle, Harbans Bariana, a rotund Australian in an undersize safari hat, begins reading aloud from his clipboard: “Wylah?” he asks.

His colleagues bend down to examine some flaccid plants flecked with red splotches. A lanky Pakistani with a salt-and-pepper beard rakes a finger along one of the mottled stalks; an iodine-like residue rubs off on his skin. “40 S,” he calls out.

The men move three steps right to a slightly more robust clump of wheat. The Australian asks: “Yandanooka?”

“25 MR?” comes the tentative reply from a mustachioed Nepali in a green baseball cap. They slide over to inspect another stalk, and then another.

To the women at the tap, faces scrunched in puzzlement, the call-and-response sounds like gibberish — and to most of the world, it is. But to the jumpsuited strangers in East Africa — a group of elite plant pathologists — these codenames and numbers are a lingua franca, describing just how badly a crop has been ravaged by disease. These specialists have come to Njoro on this autumn afternoon to study a scourge that is destroying acres of Kenyan fields.

(WMR) -- Israeli mall kiosk vendors, identified by the National Security Agency (NSA) and U.S. counter-intelligence agencies as part of an Israeli intelligence-gathering operation in the United States, have started to abandon their kiosks in malls across the United States, according to information received by WMR.

In particular, kiosks that sell Israeli Dead Sea skin care products have recently been vacated by young Israeli nationals at the Arundel Mills Mall in Hanover, Maryland, and at malls in the Philadelphia area. The kiosks have been emptied of their products and have been vacated, according to our sources.

In the past, Israeli mall kiosks sold products ranging from toys to ear jewelry.

NSA security warned NSA employees that the Israeli-owned kiosk at the nearby Columbia, Maryland, mall should be avoided by NSA personnel as NSA intercepts determined the kiosks are affiliated with Israeli intelligence-gathering operations in the United States.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices are again flirting with $80 a barrel after a two-week rally fueled by promising economic reports and worries that troubles in Europe and the Middle East could eventually tighten supplies.

Benchmark crude for March delivery added 75 cents to settle at $79.81 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The price of the March contract, which ends Monday, has increased by 12 percent since Feb. 5.

Most of the trading already has moved to the April contract, which added 64 cents Friday to settle at $80.06 a barrel.

An extended surge in crude prices will force gasoline and other fuels higher as well. Retail gas prices already have started to increase this week, and experts predict the national average will hit $3 a gallon this summer.

If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?”  The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time.  The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it.  I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head.  Exactly what is therapeutic about that I’m not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy.  Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all.  We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers.  Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”.  I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood.  These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.

While very few working people would say they haven’t had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind.  Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.

Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours?  Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies.  Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”.  It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.

And justice? You’ve got to be kidding!

How can any rational individual explain that white elephant conundrum in the middle of our tax system and, indeed, our entire legal system?  Here we have a system that is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand.  Yet, it mercilessly “holds accountable” its victims, claiming that they’re responsible for fully complying with laws not even the experts understand.  The law “requires” a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that’s not “duress” than what is.  If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is.

How did I get here? 

(AP) Police in the Greek capital say a bomb has exploded at the offices of American financial services firm JPMorgan Chase & Co., causing no injuries.

The blast occurred early evening Tuesday in an upscale area of central Athens, following a warning telephone call to an Athens newspaper.

The extent of the damage was not immediately clear.