A four pages article written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for those interested in history... Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria – POLITICO
Just wait until you have Donald Trump for president then there will be USA policy about anything and between him and Putin maybe even a third world war.
If Trump is elected we will just have a president that is obviously pro-big business instead of the......oh wait, all of the US politicians are obviously pro-big business. Not a d*mn thing will change if Trump is elected.
Ok, for a second there I was thinking this would be about current US ME policy, which I believe may just be theoretical based on the fact that in times past there actually was a US ME policy. I think it's wrong to assume that just because there was one before that anyone has kept up the practice.
Interesting read.... After reading RFK Jr.'s perspectives on BOTH the historical backdrop that is causing all this foment in Syria (and elsewhere in the M.E.) and his solutions, his article ends with these excerpts (for which I will post no personal comment as he pretty much sums up this recent historical U.S./M.E. mess and his solutions to this mess very nicely): “…Like the Syrians fleeing for Europe, no American wants to send their child to die for a pipeline. Instead, our first priority should be the one no one ever mentions—we need to kick our Mideast oil jones, an increasingly feasible objective, as the U.S. becomes more energy independent. Next, we need to dramatically reduce our military profile in the Middle East and let the Arabs run Arabia. Other than humanitarian assistance and guaranteeing the security of Israel’s borders, the U.S. has no legitimate role in this conflict.... The only winners have been the military contractors and oil companies that have pocketed historic profits, the intelligence agencies that have grown exponentially in power and influence to the detriment of our freedoms and the jihadists who invariably used our interventions as their most effective recruiting tool. We have compromised our values, butchered our own youth, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, subverted our idealism and squandered our national treasures in fruitless and costly adventures abroad. In the process, we have helped our worst enemies and turned America, once the world’s beacon of freedom, into a national security surveillance state and an international moral pariah.... America’s founding fathers warned Americans against standing armies, foreign entanglements and, in John Quincy Adams’ words, “going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” Those wise men understood that imperialism abroad is incompatible with democracy and civil rights at home. The Atlantic Charter echoed their seminal American ideal that each nation should have the right to self-determination. Over the past seven decades, the Dulles brothers, the Cheney gang, the neocons and their ilk have hijacked that fundamental principle of American idealism and deployed our military and intelligence apparatus to serve the mercantile interests of large corporations and particularly, the petroleum companies and military contractors that have literally made a killing from these conflicts. It’s time for Americans to turn America away from this new imperialism and back to the path of idealism and democracy. We should let the Arabs govern Arabia and turn our energies to the great endeavor of nation building at home. We need to begin this process, not by invading Syria, but by ending the ruinous addiction to oil that has warped U.S. foreign policy for half a century." (end of article) ********** Interesting read.... V/R, nwlivewire
We need to begin this process, not by invading Syria, but by ending the ruinous addiction to oil that has warped U.S. foreign policy for half a century." (end of article) ********** Interesting read.... V/R, nwlivewire[/QUOTE] I won't disagree with anything RFK said. I will not even disagree with the line in the post above! What I will say is that I am in oil and gas, an owner of land from which production occurs and I have to tell you this: I'm not worried. This is where my livelihood comes from and I'm not worried? Why? Because there is really only one (possibly 2) rational substitute for Petrol/gasoline and diesel and that would be GTL fuel which is gas to liquid. Using natural gas (methane) as a feedstock, fuel can be made that replaces gasoline/petrol, diesel and jet engine fuel. CNG, highly compressed natural gas can't do it. A 757 converted to CNG could take off and fly but it wouldn't be able to carry passengers and luggage because all available space would be required for fuel. CNG is just not concentrated enough. LNG methane chilled to the point it is 1/600th of it's original size. Possible but you would have a reliability problem. You don't want your fuel system to freeze up on the highway and certainly not 6 miles above the earths surface. The powers that be might be willing to kill us off wholesale anyway in the interest of "progress" but the decision isn't theirs. The government doesn't own the supply network. LNG can't be used in (the great majority) current vehicles and it would be expensive to convert vehicles. LNG can not be supplied through fuel stations as they exist today and someone would have to pay for the change. I sure as hell do not be the one to pay for it! Which brings us to GTL. We have literally been drowning in natural gas for decades. Enough natural gas is flared (burned) off every year (because it is inconvenient to collect) to supply the fuel needs of the US. GTL can be distributed through the current network that sells gasoline / petrol, diesel and aviation fuel. All it would take to make GTL fuel a reality is a couple of trillion dollars worth of refineries. No scientific breakthroughs are needed. It is here, now. All it takes is for someone to pay for it. Now, will that be cash, check or credit card? I would like to say it has been a pleasure doing business with you. Not you personally, but someone has to pay for it. Or then again, maybe it will be absorbed in the cost of doing business when change is inevitable, which by the way means you are still paying for your part of it, Just not up front. There are people right now who are saying that peak oil was a lie. They had no understanding of what peak oil meant. Peak oil doesn't mean we run out of oil, it means there will be times that supply will not meet demand because most of the easy to extract oil already has been. There is a huge amount of oil out there and we know exactly where it is. If we can get 15% of the oil we estimate to be in any one spot it is considered great! The other 85% is still there, waiting for time it becomes economic to go after it. North Dakota went from producing a few million barrels of oil to just shy of 40 million barrels of oil per year in just a few years because the state of N. Dakota turned a blind eye. The waste, the ecological damage, the abuse of surface owners, mineral owners and the general public in the oil bearing western part of the state is hard to believe but undeniable. The output from N. Dakota would be 20% of what it is if time was taken to do it prudently with minimal impact. If one signs a lease for their mineral rights, the state makes an equal amount of money off of each well or more than the one who signs a lease and the state wanted the money. They spent most of the money in the eastern half of the state where the population centers are. If the same thing is tried where there is a greater population, it isn't going to fly. Saudi Arabia has claimed the same amount of oil reserves or greater for the last half century or so. That doesn't mean they have them. Not saying they don't still have a lot of oil but they don't have an ever renewing resource. Russia, Venezuela, Mexico must sell oil, every penny it brings in is a penny more than they had before and they need it. Venezuela is already down to selling their gold reserves to service their national debt. Mexico and Venezuela's fields are played out already and they can't seem to interest any foreigners to help them. Some silly thing about them nationalizing the oil fields and kicking the foreigners out. I don't see why companies are not rushing to help them. I'm sure it was all just a big misunderstanding. NOT. Things will go on, feast and famine for a few generations. The time that change is required, has not yet come. The US is brimming with oil at the moment. If there were to be a Mideast war, now would be a good time for it from a US perspective. Maybe that is why US companies have not until recently slacked production. There is literally no place to put any more oil. They are using rail cars for storage. tank farms are at 87% capacity and if they had more they couldn't move the types of oil around as needed. I won't go into what the types of oil are. Oil and the middle east politics (and my income) are inextricably intertwined. If it ever becomes possible to change from oil, we might thank the oil companies for making it possible because it is them who really have made it possible with GTL fuel. To make my point, everyone with an electric vehicle, please raise your cursor! All due respect to RFK but anyone can call for independence from oil, I have yet to hear the workable solution for how that will be done.
I won't disagree with anything RFK said. I will not even disagree with the line in the post above! What I will say is that I am in oil and gas, an owner of land from which production occurs and I have to tell you this: I'm not worried. This is where my livelihood comes from and I'm not worried? Why? Because there is really only one (possibly 2) rational substitute for Petrol/gasoline and diesel and that would be GTL fuel which is gas to liquid. Using natural gas (methane) as a feedstock, fuel can be made that replaces gasoline/petrol, diesel and jet engine fuel. CNG, highly compressed natural gas can't do it. A 757 converted to CNG could take off and fly but it wouldn't be able to carry passengers and luggage because all available space would be required for fuel. CNG is just not concentrated enough. LNG methane chilled to the point it is 1/600th of it's original size. Possible but you would have a reliability problem. You don't want your fuel system to freeze up on the highway and certainly not 6 miles above the earths surface. The powers that be might be willing to kill us off wholesale anyway in the interest of "progress" but the decision isn't theirs. The government doesn't own the supply network. LNG can't be used in (the great majority) current vehicles and it would be expensive to convert vehicles. LNG can not be supplied through fuel stations as they exist today and someone would have to pay for the change. I sure as hell do not be the one to pay for it! Which brings us to GTL. We have literally been drowning in natural gas for decades. Enough natural gas is flared (burned) off every year (because it is inconvenient to collect) to supply the fuel needs of the US. GTL can be distributed through the current network that sells gasoline / petrol, diesel and aviation fuel. All it would take to make GTL fuel a reality is a couple of trillion dollars worth of refineries. No scientific breakthroughs are needed. It is here, now. All it takes is for someone to pay for it. Now, will that be cash, check or credit card? I would like to say it has been a pleasure doing business with you. Not you personally, but someone has to pay for it. Or then again, maybe it will be absorbed in the cost of doing business when change is inevitable, which by the way means you are still paying for your part of it, Just not up front. There are people right now who are saying that peak oil was a lie. They had no understanding of what peak oil meant. Peak oil doesn't mean we run out of oil, it means there will be times that supply will not meet demand because most of the easy to extract oil already has been. There is a huge amount of oil out there and we know exactly where it is. If we can get 15% of the oil we estimate to be in any one spot it is considered great! The other 85% is still there, waiting for time it becomes economic to go after it. North Dakota went from producing a few million barrels of oil to just shy of 40 million barrels of oil per year in just a few years because the state of N. Dakota turned a blind eye. The waste, the ecological damage, the abuse of surface owners, mineral owners and the general public in the oil bearing western part of the state is hard to believe but undeniable. The output from N. Dakota would be 20% of what it is if time was taken to do it prudently with minimal impact. If one signs a lease for their mineral rights, the state makes an equal amount of money off of each well or more than the one who signs a lease and the state wanted the money. They spent most of the money in the eastern half of the state where the population centers are. If the same thing is tried where there is a greater population, it isn't going to fly. Saudi Arabia has claimed the same amount of oil reserves or greater for the last half century or so. That doesn't mean they have them. Not saying they don't still have a lot of oil but they don't have an ever renewing resource. Russia, Venezuela, Mexico must sell oil, every penny it brings in is a penny more than they had before and they need it. Venezuela is already down to selling their gold reserves to service their national debt. Mexico and Venezuela's fields are played out already and they can't seem to interest any foreigners to help them. Some silly thing about them nationalizing the oil fields and kicking the foreigners out. I don't see why companies are not rushing to help them. I'm sure it was all just a big misunderstanding. NOT. Things will go on, feast and famine for a few generations. The time that change is required, has not yet come. The US is brimming with oil at the moment. If there were to be a Mideast war, now would be a good time for it from a US perspective. Maybe that is why US companies have not until recently slacked production. There is literally no place to put any more oil. They are using rail cars for storage. tank farms are at 87% capacity and if they had more they couldn't move the types of oil around as needed. I won't go into what the types of oil are. Oil and the middle east politics (and my income) are inextricably intertwined. If it ever becomes possible to change from oil, we might thank the oil companies for making it possible because it is them who really have made it possible with GTL fuel. To make my point, everyone with an electric vehicle, please raise your cursor! All due respect to RFK but anyone can call for independence from oil, I have yet to hear the workable solution for how that will be done.[/QUOTE] Dear robert k: I made no personal comments to RFK Jr.'s perspectives as I was hoping I would be able to read other perspectives on this as well. Thank-you for taking the time to share yours! Any others???? ********** I've not yet heard of any readily available alternatives/solutions either. That is not to say it can't be done, but more likely, the science and technology either isn't needed yet, or the need to convert hasn't hit "critical mass", or the desire to fund the science and technology R & D to get more energy independent isn't there yet. I doubt we'll ever get to the point where we'll never need a drop of oil. And I don't think that was Kennedy's perspective. But I do think if our country could rely mostly on what oil we can and do produce, plus, move forward with renewable R & D, then we might be able to create and place a more varied mix of energy products into our sovereign basket for everyday consumer use, and hopefully move forward with a greater sense of independence. And avoid getting into these costly "little skirmishes". If nations can put men on the moon in a short time, why not create a tech boom in renewables? After all, us little people got Tang and Teflon from this massive capital outlay - and really alot more, too. Just asking: If not now, when? (Hopefully, not when it's too late....) V/R, nwlivewire
Nwlivewire, not quoting here cause I would like for everything to stay on the same page. I believe there is a tech solution for the US energy supply that doesn't involve fossil fuel. It is Solar. Not terrestrial solar though. We need to collect solar out in space where it is 1,000 times as strong, convert it to microwave and beam it to earth to a place that nobody likes very much from where it can be converted back to electricity and distributed. The problem remains, who will pay for it? The USA doesn't really have a space program anymore because people don't want to pay for it or think it is a boondoggle, how can this be pushed through when we would have to pay for both space program AND the solar power generation project? We humans are a short sighted breed. On the other hand. Dutch Royal Shell already has a GTL plant. GTL is just an expansion of what Nazi Germany did in WW2 except they used coal to make gasoline because they were cut off from oil. I forgot to mention that one of the properties of GTL fuel is that it burns much, much cleaner than gasoline or diesel. People should be demanding it for that reason alone. My personal fortunes would plummet but I can distance myself from what is personally good for me when talking about what would be good for the world. Besides the sheeple aren't going to rise up, even if they did, solar from space and GTL are going to be low on their list of demands.
Even without changing to a clean fuel system there are immediate changes that could be made and are cheaper. How about simply smaller and lighter cars? Less fuel consumption needed and engines could be made less powerful as really no need to go over 75mph. There have been a number of 3 wheel compact car designs that would also be very cheap on mileage and they could even contain a 2 seat and 4 seat system. However storage space like trunk would be fairly small. The vehicles could be made out of much lighter materials as well. The problem is Americans have been brainwashed with size means everything. They want BIG cars, BIG trucks, BIG engines. They also want STRONG frames and super safety features they feel they can get from a strong heavy steel framework. However we could also in smaller/lighter cars add in smart technology we already have developed and implement it nationally making a form of smart car (not the google self driving smart car but a mix of its technology). Have the computer system monitoring and able to take control if erratic driving among other things. That alone could cut fuel costs significantly and increase MPG in fuel quite a bit. I also remember in I think the 60's or early 70's word of a new engine was developed that could get 60mpg and the engine was bought up by a big oil company and never seen enter the market. I also remember electric cars first entering the market in the early 90's and automobile companies refused to sell them instead only leasing and then refusing to renew leases or sell the electric car outright and dumping them all with the rumor that big oil got involved. Also on the electric car the single complaint is that the distance before recharging was fairly low (around 50-60 miles before needing a recharge) and a new battery was developed that could get 100+ miles on a single charge. The battery again was bought up by those who didn't want it to see the light of day because electric cars becoming far more practical would hurt some very big business.
I agree that some things could be done with cars. Chevrolet made an electric car in the 90's that some city commuter people liked and they scrapped it. The Chevrolet was probably the car you were talking about. Electric cars have some problems, life cycle of the batteries being one of the largest. It seems the more efficient the battery, the shorter the life cycle. If you take good care of an IC engine it can last 20 years, not so the electric car battery. Tesla buys back all their cars that burn and as far as I know they have never shown a profit yet. The Brits used to think that speed was armor in a naval ship, they were wrong. Armor is armor. Lighter cars such as Honda City could not pass a US crash safety test. I would own one in the Philippines because they would probably do ok at 50kph or less. Light cars don't fare well in crashes with larger vehicles or even other light vehicles in head on collisions and airbags aren't the be all and end all. I wouldn't risk my family to save $50 a month on fuel. Cars can be made to get great fuel milage with powerful engines, they will pollute though. In France Ford sells a diesel car they love, it is small, pollutes a lot and gets real world 48 miles per gallon. It can't be sold in the US due to the EPA. Asia standard air pollution controls will not pass in the US, their fuel milage and power would suffer if subjected to the same controls. I believe that alcohol in fuel is a net zero unless engines were specifically designed to run on alcohol. Gasoline vehicles get better fuel milage running on, surprise, gasoline. Adding alcohol doesn't do much if you have to burn the same amount of oil to do the same amount of work anyway. Saying there is no need to drive over 75mph tells me you probably didn't live in West Texas, western ND, or a lot of places in flyover country. A car that could not do over 75mph would probably be slow getting to 75 mph or be gearbound and probably wouldn't get good fuel milage. The biggest hurdle to cars that wouldn't do over 75mph is convincing people to buy them. If it were not a commercial success they would disappear from the market in short order. Surely you don't want the Government to mandate it? The government has already banned the lightweight cars that you want, I don't think it would turn out well to involve them further. The words implement it nationally gives me chills. The government does almost nothing well enough that I want them to do more than they do right now. I went to the post office today...... I was a professional mechanic for some years and I notice that pollution control and safety features fail after a few years, cruise control, ABS. I don't want cars that drive themselves or even be able to override what I decide to do. There are some simple things that could have a large impact. If engine manufacturers were told they have to do a better job on the engines they make right now it would make a difference. A camshaft may be installed in an engine and be off by as much as 50 degrees and it will still run. If it is installed retarded the car will be a dog at low RPM but run like a scalded dog at high speeds. If installed advanced it will run well at low to medium speeds /RPM but peter out when trying to attain high speeds. The timing sets that are produced really suck, most of them because the engine will run if they anywhere near close. Car manufactures usually just slap the parts together. In the aftermarket there are offset crank and camshaft keys, gears that gave oversized holes so you could put an eccentric around the camshaft pin, if it has one and change the timing. In the aftermarket there are even adjustable timing sets that you can adjust with an allen wrench to the desired timing. A properly valve timed engine will get much better fuel milage than one that is not. This would not take more than 1 man hour if done when the engine was assembled, I'd gladly pay it. Cars could come with vacuum gauges as standard equipment. Vacuum gauges used to be at least optional. The higher the vacuum reading, the better your fuel milage. No high tech, no computers needed. Tachometers which many vehicles have already today could have a blinking light, or a soft tone added to warn you that you are out of the RPM range that gives the best fuel milage. The speed that one drives is really not the greatest factor in fuel milage, what matters most is how one drives otherwise and The Speed The Car Was Designed To Be Driven At. I bought a ford Ranger, V6 4.11 gear ratio 5 speed manual transmission. In factory trim it got 18 MPG @ 60 mph. I changed the crank pulley to an underdrive pulley and added an electric fan eliminating the mechanical fan and now got 20 mpg @ 60 mph. I pulled the rear differential and replaced the 4.11 gears with 3.27 gears on a limited slip differential and reinstalled. I now got 27 mpg @85 mph. Why would I bother? Because I was working one job that was 90 miles from my house so 180 miles per day 6 days a week for a year. The fuel savings were nice but being able to save money while keeping up with traffic in the Dallas downtown canyon which might be doing 90 mph was a big plus. I didn't "blueprint" the valve timing on this vehicle as it is a big job on an assembled vehicle although it wouldn't take 30 minutes while the engine is being assembled. The biggest difference was the differential gear change which changed the speed at which the vehicle got it's best fuel milage. Most of your ideas seem to involve government mandates or they would never happen. The same government that already bans the light vehicles that you say you want. I think it would be a mistake to invite government into anything it is not already hip deep in. I think a free market solution could work, if people were educated enough to know what they wanted and were firm in not buying what they do not want. The thing is that the greatest number of people today don't give a sh*t and don't know enough about how anything works to know what they should be demanding, but sure enough if you start demanding something that doesn't really solve the problems the Government will get behind it and tax the living hell out of you for giving you what you asked for. All I can do anymore is worry about me and my family and let other people do whatever they are going to do and hope they don't try to get government to do too much because "A government powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take everything you have".
