“… Fuel for international travel and transport of goods, including food, is exempt from taxes, unlike trucks, cars and buses. There is also no tax on fuel used by ocean freighters.”

Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale. Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground. Half of Europe’s peas are grown and packaged in Kenya.

… Under longstanding trade agreements, fuel for international freight carried by sea and air is not taxed. Now, many economists, environmental advocates and politicians say it is time to make shippers and shoppers pay for the pollution, through taxes or other measures.

… Proponents say ending these breaks could help ensure that producers and consumers pay the environmental cost of increasingly well-traveled food.

The food and transport industries say the issue is more complicated.

- Elisabeth Rosenthal @ New York Times: April 26, 2008: Link.

Via Jon Taplin’s blog: Link.

“In one shoot-out, the KGB found themselves up against men from the interior ministry, as the security services were effectively privatised, each arm guarding a different client.”

Toby Clements reviews McMafia: Crime without Frontiers by Misha Glenny –

By the Mafia, Misha Glenny means any group of organised criminals, not just those with their roots in Sicily. Balkan cigarette smugglers, Nigerian internet phishers, Russian oligarchs, Chinese snakehead people-traffickers, South African drug lords, Bombay extortion-racketeers, Israeli money-launderers and Brazilian cyber-thieves are among the many who play their part in a complex network of links that the author estimates makes up nearly 20 per cent of global trade.

… Where did all this money come from? In a word, Russia.

… Stark differences in wealth is one thing that typically excites criminal activity, but as … traders grew luridly wealthy, the state institutions collapsed around them, and services such as the KGB found themselves without prestige, money or purpose.

A supply of bored young men with guns is the other stimulus to crime, and soon the oligarchs needed bodyguards. In one shoot-out, the KGB found themselves up against men from the interior ministry, as the security services were effectively privatised, each arm guarding a different client.

Toby Clements @ The Telegraph : Link.

Via The Day They Tried to Kill Me: Link.

McMafia: Crime Without Frontiers, by Misha Glenny: Amazon: Link.

Tower of Babel: The multilingual, multicultural online journal and community of arts and ideas.

Babel seeks multilingual and multicultural writers, editors, bloggers and translators proficient in using web tools to continue building in over 250 languages what has been recognized since 2001 by the United Nations as one of the most import social and human sciences online periodicals.

There are over 250 subdomains of towerofbabel.com ready to be configured by those who are interested in taking the language-oriented subdomains and helping to build the tower ….

Design your language’s tower however you wish but continue what has already been pioneered as an attempt to build a tower aiming for the highest egalitarian, altruistic, philanthropic and humanitarian structures.

Tower of Babel: Link.

Babel English Blog: Link.

Free market economy? Level playing field? I don’t think so:

• The US Trade Representative makes trade concessions to the European Union, related to internet gambling.
• The deal is not subject to Congressional scrutiny or approval.
• A US Congressman requests that the USTR disclose the concessions.
• USTR rejects the request, “claiming the agreement was classified for national security reasons.”

Congressman Calls for U.S. Trade Representative to Provide Details of WTO Internet Gambling Settlement

Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) has requested the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) disclose trade concessions made to foreign trading partners without Congressional approval. DeFazio’s inquiry raises the possibility of Congressional intervention to void new market access commitments granted by USTR to the European Union and other complainants as compensation for a United States trade violation regarding Internet gambling.

In a letter circulated to all members of Congress last week, DeFazio encouraged his colleagues to join him in calling for the USTR to provide a copy of the concession agreement between the United States and the European Union. The USTR had recently rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for the same document, claiming the agreement was classified for national security reasons. “There is a concern that the USTR may have been ambitious in its use of a ‘national security’ classification to avoid any publicity of which new business sectors are to be subject to the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) treaty,” said DeFazio’s March 6 letter.

… The DeFazio request comes following a contentious trade dispute over Internet gambling, in which the Caribbean nation of Antigua successfully challenged the regulation of Internet gambling in the United States. The European Union announced earlier this week that it will open an investigation into a possible international trade violation by the US on this issue. The investigation is the result of a Trade Barriers Regulation complaint filed by the Remote Gambling Association (RGA), which represents the largest remote gambling companies in Europe. The RGA claims the US is in violation of international trade law by threatening and pursuing criminal prosecutions, forfeitures and other enforcement actions against foreign Internet gaming operators, while allowing domestic U.S. online gaming operators, primarily horse betting, to flourish.

- @ Eye on Gambling: Link.

Office of the United States Trade Representative @ Wikipedia: Link.

“It is precisely Obama’s experiences in Hawaii, Indonesia, and Kenya that are soul-forming for a future global leader.”
- William Irwin Thompson

Thompson explains why he likes Barack Obama, and what’s wrong with Hillary Clinton and John McCane:

… We are now heading into a period of enormous cultural transformation, and Obama is the kind of soul that can instinctively feel and understand, indeed, articulate a new planetary civilization. Obama is not a messianic figure that we need fear as some crazed cult leader; he more simply, and more enduringly, embodies a paradigm shift in American political leadership. Hillary may scoff at him and claim that his years in an Indonesian Muslim elementary school do not count as foreign policy experience, because she is thinking as the technocratic policy wonk that she is. It is precisely Obama’s experiences in Hawaii, Indonesia, and Kenya that are soul-forming for a future global leader. Hillary and McCain are the old paradigm of politics: the Eastern technocratic manager and the sunbelt suburban Goldwater-Reagan reactionary calling for tax cuts and militarism to solve all problems with a hatchet or a bomb.

- William Irwin Thompson, 3/3/2008: Link.

Thanks, E.B.

Submarine telecommunications cable disruption

The 2008 submarine cable disruption involved damage involving up to five high-speed Internet submarine communications cables in the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East from January 23 to February 4, 2008 causing internet disruptions and slowdowns for users in the Middle East and India.

- Wikipedia: 2008 submarine cable disruption

Spying? Sabotage? Could be economic or psychological warfare against Iran (or other parties). Or not: might be normal breakage, the wear and tear on thousands of miles of cables. Impossible to tell: if spy submarines are cutting cables, maybe installing taps, the mission is probably too secret for the truth to come out anytime soon. Meanwhile, here’s some more links:

Wired: Cable Cut Fever Grips the Web

Engadget: Fourth undersea cable cut near UAE, suspicions rise

Boing Boing: Reports of 5th undersea ‘net cable cut

Slashdot: Fifth Cable Cut To Middle East

Khaleej Times: Cable damage hits one million Internet users in UAE

CNN.com: Internet failure hits two continents

MSN.com: Ships did not cut internet cable

AntiWar.com: The Cable-Cutter Mystery

GovernmentExecutive.com: Cable Cut Paranoia

Richard Sauder: Connecting The Many Undersea Cut Cable Dots

Internet Traffic Report: Asia

Gabriel: Comment and links

“IBM is launching a new, free to play MMO called PowerUp that will challenge players to solve problems involving solar, wind, and hydropower before the environment of a fictional planet is destroyed by mounting crises.”
- Kotaku.com: Link.

More from Worlds in Motion:

The game features three missions for solar, water and wind power that must be solved, either by players alone or in groups, before various environmental crises destroy the planet. IBM says it developed the online world to support educators in engaging children on environmental issues, leveraging kids’ interest in virtual worlds and games. Interaction between players is restricted to phrase-based avatar chat, IBM says, to ensure safety.

IBM says it took 16 months to develop the online game, with advice from nearly 200 teens in the Connecticut Innovation Academy. IBM’s TryScience team from the New York Hall of Science worked with The Tech Museum in San Jose, California and the Bakken Museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota on the activities and game content.

The game will be accompanied by classroom lesson plans associated with the topics presented in the online experience, and will also include an interactive module to educate kids on 3D technologies used in virtual world building.

- Worlds in Motion: Link.

See powerupthegame.org.

“We’re always thinking that we’re much more powerful than we are, because we’re boosted by technological powers that exert a really, really high cost on the environment – a cost that isn’t calculated and that isn’t put into the price of things.”
- Kim Stanley Robinson

… [I]f you think of yourself as terraforming Earth, and if you think about sustainability, then you can start thinking about permaculture and what permaculture really means. It’s not just sustainable agriculture, but a name for a certain type of history. Because the word sustainability is now code for: let’s make capitalism work over the long haul, without ever getting rid of the hierarchy between rich and poor and without establishing social justice.

Sustainable development, as well: that’s a term that’s been contaminated. It doesn’t even mean sustainable anymore. It means: let us continue to do what we’re doing, but somehow get away with it. By some magic waving of the hands, or some techno silver bullet, suddenly we can make it all right to continue in all our current habits. And yet it’s not just that our habits are destructive, they’re not even satisfying to the people who get to play in them.

- Kim Stanley Robinson, interview @ BLDGBLOG : link.

Via Boing Boing: Kim Stanley Robinson on Comparative Planetology.

Iranian oil no longer available for U.S. dollars

Iran has decided to abandon oil export settlements in U.S. dollars.

Our current policy is to sell crude oil for any currency but U.S. dollars, Iran’s Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said in a statement, adding that all settlements in the U.S. currency had been ruled out.

Iran has been considering this move for a long time, consistently limiting the inflow of petrodollars in the past two years. Iranian officials claim that the reason behind their decision is the devaluation of the dollar. An Iranian source said that the dollar’s decline was greatly harming the oil exporting nations’ economies and that they had no more trust in the U.S. currency.

… Incidentally, on November 30, Gazprom’s Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev said in New York that the Russian gas monopoly was considering a possibility of selling gas for rubles instead of dollars or euros. The gas giant was compelled to change its currency policy by the current situation on the global financial markets. Although he did not specify the date, Andrei Kruglov, head of Gazprom’s Finance and Economics Department, said the decision would be made soon enough.

… The U.S. dollar has certainly lost much of its attractiveness worldwide, unlike the euro which is gaining popularity, even if not in all countries.

… Other monetary units are being added to the pool of the main reserve currencies. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which includes the key Middle East oil and gas exporters, has said it was planning to set up a single regional currency, the Gulf Dinar, which would be put in circulation in three years and would be as important as the dollar and the euro. The GCC includes the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman.

… Xu Jian, a vice director of the People’s Bank of China, said last week that the dollar was “losing its status as the world currency,” adding that it was likely to continue weakening in 2008 due to the growing U.S. trade deficit.

- Dr Igor Tomberg, economist, senior research associate at the Energy Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of World Economy and International Relations. Russian News and Information Agency, 11/ 12/ 2007: link.

Iran Drops Dollar From Oil Deals

Major crude producer Iran has completely stopped carrying out its oil transactions in dollars, Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said on Saturday, labelling the greenback an “unreliable” currency.

… Nozari did not specify in which currencies Iran was now being paid. In the past, officials have said most oil income was in euros, with a significant percentage in yen.

Japan, which purchases 20 percent of Iran’s crude oil, has recently agreed to pay for the crude oil in yen, officials have said. The UAE dirham has also been mooted as a possible payment currency.

… The United States has in recent months successfully encouraged major European and Asian banks to cut their dealings with Iran in a bid to make the Islamic republic give way on its controversial nuclear programme.

AFP, 11 December, 2007: link.

Iran stops selling oil in US dollars

… OPEC giant Iran has completely stopped selling any of its oil for US dollars.

… Iran says the weak US currency is eroding its purchasing power. At the latest November summit of OPEC, Iran suggested oil should be sold in a basket of currencies rather than dollars, but failed to win over other members except Venezuela.

- South African Broadcasting Corporation: December 08, 2007, 13:45: link.

Iran ‘euro-based’ oil bourse underway

An official said that the managing director of Iran’s first petroleum exchange “Iran Oil Bourse” is expected to be appointed soon, bringing the oil-rich nation a step closer to opening its first ‘oil bourse’. Majid Shayesteh, managing director of Kish Free Trade Zone Organization, said that President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has directed Iran’s ministers of oil, economic affairs and finance to appoint the board of directors of the oil exchange and its managing director. He did not specify when exactly the exchange would open.

He also said the building which will house Iran’s first oil exchange has been constructed on the Persian Gulf island of Kish and that the required technical equipment has been installed.

Shayesteh added that three major organizations are involved in the groundbreaking project, saying that coordinating efforts between the various groups initially delayed the project.

According to the official, the articles of association for the oil exchange have since been approved. Last month, a separate official announced that the petroleum exchange would begin operation “in the near future.”

Mahmud Salahi, secretary of the High Council for Free Trade and Industrial Zones, had said that Iran decided to establish the euro-based oil exchange on Kish because “there was no such oil trading body in the region.” The oil exchange will transact petroleum, petrochemicals and gas in various non-dollar currencies, primarily the euro. It would also establish a euro-based pricing mechanism for oil trading, or ‘oil marker’ as it is commonly called by traders.

Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh said earlier that a stock market for trade in shares of oil companies will be established in Iran’s southern of Kish in the near future. While touring of a local gas transfer operation, the minister said the stock market will be set up in cooperation with the oil and finance ministries.

Last month, after a year of speculation, Iran changed its oil bourse from petrodollars to petroeuros.

- Persian Journal: Mar 11, 2007: link.

Iran turns from dollar to euro in oil sales

The world’s fourth-biggest oil exporter has inserted a clause in its oil contracts allowing it to request payment in alternative currencies.

… Iran announced plans in 2004 to develop an Iranian oil bourse, a commodity exchange that would become a Middle Eastern rival to the major exchanges in New York, London and Singapore, which set benchmark oil prices.

The Iranian bourse would also challenge the petrodollar by setting oil prices in euros. However, there has been little progress in establishing the bourse, which failed to launch as planned last March.

… The fall in the dollar against major currencies has had a dramatic impact on the revenues of oil exporters and has exacerbated the rumbling anti- American feeling in the Gulf.

Although Gulf Arab states are predominantly dollar export earners, they mainly purchase in euros and yen, buying food, consumer goods and manufactured products from Europe and the Far East.

In March the United Arab Emirates said that it would switch 10 per cent of its currency reserves from dollars to euros, a decision that closely followed the attempt by the US Congress to block the acquisition by Dubai Ports World of a number of ports in the United States.

Times Online, December 22, 2006: link.

Iran to replace dollar with euro
Iran also indicated that it will calculate its budget revenues in euros

The Iranian central bank is to convert the state’s foreign dollar assets into euros and use the euro for foreign transactions.

“The government has ordered the central bank to replace the dollar with the euro to limit the problems of the executive organs in commercial transactions,” Gholam Hossein Elham, a government spokesman, said on Monday.

“We will also employ this change for Iranian assets [in dollars] held abroad.”

Elham said that Iran’s budget would in future be calculated in euros.

“Until now the budget has been calculated according to revenues in dollars but this calculation will now change,” he said.

- Aljazeera, December 18, 2006: link.

The Emerging Euro-denominated International Oil Marker

In 2005-2006, The Tehran government has a developed a plan to begin competing with New York’s NYMEX and London’s IPE with respect to international oil trades - using a euro-denominated international oil-trading mechanism. This means that without some form of US intervention, the euro is going to establish a firm foothold in the international oil trade. Given U.S. debt levels and the stated neoconservative project for U.S. global domination, Tehran’s objective constitutes an obvious encroachment on U.S. dollar supremacy in the international oil market

… ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ was a war designed to install a pro-U.S. puppet in Iraq, establish multiple U.S military bases before the onset of Peak Oil, and to reconvert Iraq back to petrodollars while hoping to thwart further OPEC momentum towards the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency.

… [A] Financial Times article dated June 5th, 2003, … confirmed Iraqi oil sales returning to the international markets were once again denominated in US dollars, not euros. Not surprisingly, this detail was never mentioned in the five US major media conglomerates who appear to censor this type of information ….

“The tender, for which bids are due by June 10, switches the transaction back to dollars — the international currency of oil sales - despite the greenback’s recent fall in value. Saddam Hussein in 2000 insisted Iraq’s oil be sold for euros, a political move, but one that improved Iraq’s recent earnings thanks to the rise in the value of the euro against the dollar.”

… To date, one of the more difficult technical obstacles concerning a euro-based oil transaction trading system is the lack of a euro-denominated oil pricing standard, or oil ‘marker’ as it is referred to in the industry. The three current oil markers are U.S. dollar denominated, which include the West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI), Norway Brent crude, and the UAE Dubai crude. However, since the spring of 2003, Iran has required payments in the euro currency for its European and Asian/ACU exports - although the oil pricing for trades are still denominated in the dollar.

Therefore, a potentially significant news development was reported in June 2004 announcing Iran’s intentions to create of an Iranian oil Bourse. (The word “bourse” refers to a stock exchange for securities trading, and is derived from the French stock exchange in Paris, the Federation Internationale des Bourses de Valeurs.) This announcement portended competition would arise between the Iranian oil bourse and London’s International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), as well as the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). It should be noted that both the IPE and NYMEX are owned by U.S. corporations.

The macroeconomic implications of a successful Iranian Bourse are noteworthy. Considering that Iran has switched to the euro for its oil payments from E.U. and ACU customers, it would be logical to assume the proposed Iranian Bourse will usher in a fourth crude oil marker – denominated in the euro currency.

The IPE, bought in 2001 by a consortium that includes BP, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, was unwilling to discuss the Iranian move yesterday. “We would not have any comment to make on it at this stage,” said an IPE spokeswoman. ”

… Additionally … Saudi investors may be interested in participating in the Iranian oil exchange market, further illustrating why petrodollar hegemony is becoming unsustainable.

“…Along with several other members of OPEC, Iranian oil officials believe crude trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange and the IPE is controlled by the oil majors and big financial companies, who benefit from market volatility.”

… A successful Iranian bourse would solidify the petroeuro as an alternative oil transaction currency, and thereby end the petrodollar’s hegemonic status as the monopoly oil currency. Therefore, a graduated approach is needed to avoid precipitous U.S. economic dislocations. Multilateral compromise with the EU and OPEC regarding oil currency is certainly preferable to an ‘Operation Iranian Freedom,’ or perhaps an attempted CIA-sponsored repeat of the 1953 Iranian coup – operation “Ajax” part II.

- William Clark @ Global Research, 27 October 2004: link.

Wikipedia: Petroeuro.

“$197m coming Jamaica’s way [from China]”

So much for the Monroe Doctrine:

Caribbean economies are expected to swell from billions in foreign direct investment from China in the next three years, as the world’s fourth largest economy makes good on its commitment to improve economic ties with the region.

… China has also committed itself to improving trade conditions with the region and strengthening its capacity. Two thousand Caribbean government officials and technical professionals will be trained over the three-year period, while scholarships will be made available for Caribbean nationals to study in China. Some 600 persons have already been trained.

… Responding to the Vice Premier’s announcement, Barbados Deputy Prime Minister Mia Motley hailed China for its continued support of the region, noting that its assistance was welcomed as struggling Caribbean states would be forced to open themselves for free trade by 2008.

Jamaica Gleaner News: September 10, 2007

“Dr Corell … had flown over the Ilulissat glacier and “seen gigantic holes in it through which swirling masses of melt water were falling. “

Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment:

“I first looked at this glacier in the 1960s and there were no holes. These so-called moulins, 10 to 15 metres across, have opened up all over the place. There are hundreds of them.”

This melt water was pouring through to the bottom of the glacier creating a lake 500 metres deep which was causing the glacier “to float on land. These melt-water rivers are lubricating the glacier, like applying oil to a surface and causing it to slide into the sea. It is causing a massive acceleration which could be catastrophic.”

The Guardian.

Via Boing Boing: “The Greenland ice cap is melting so quickly that it is triggering earthquakes as pieces of ice several cubic kilometres in size break off.”

“That’s 20 countries in 30 days and about one third of the way round the earth. In an ice cream van.”

Ryan Walker … is leading a team of three intrepid travellers across Europe and Central Asia on a gruelling and bizarre race.

The Mongol Rally is a charity event limited to 200 teams and this year all the places were snapped up in under one minute. Participants travel a third of the way around the world from London to the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, in about four weeks, in a vehicle with a one-litre engine or less.

Each team has to design their own route and, unsurprisingly, not all vehicles are expected to make it over the finishing line. The principal charity for the Mongol Rally is Mercy Corps with the money raised funding projects in Mongolia that support rural communities.

Ten thousand miles of freezing mountains and scorching deserts - temperatures potentially hitting 50°C and going as low as -25°C. That’s 20 countries in 30 days and about one third of the way round the earth. In an ice cream van.

[BBC: Link]

Via Fark.

“An April 2007 report … suggests that the Pentagon might consume as much as 340,000 barrels (14 million gallons) every day. “

Sixteen gallons of oil. That’s how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis — either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone.

Multiply that daily tab by 365 and you get 1.3 billion gallons: the estimated annual oil expenditure for U.S. combat operations in Southwest Asia. That’s greater than the total annual oil usage of Bangladesh, population 150 million — and yet it’s a gross underestimate of the Pentagon’s wartime consumption.

… For every soldier stationed “in theater,” there are two more in transit, in training, or otherwise in line for eventual deployment to the war zone … Moreover, to sustain an “expeditionary” army located halfway around the world, the Department of Defense must move millions of tons of arms, ammunition, food, fuel, and equipment every year by plane or ship, consuming additional tanker-loads of petroleum.

… It can be difficult to obtain precise details on the DoD’s daily oil hit, but an April 2007 report by a defense contractor, LMI Government Consulting, suggests that the Pentagon might consume as much as 340,000 barrels (14 million gallons) every day. This is greater than the total national consumption of Sweden or Switzerland.

[Michael Klare: June 14, 2007: Mother Jones]

“Wolfowitz’s study of nuclear policy was more than a higher mathematics; it was a kind of mystical Kabbalah …”
- Sidney Blumenthal

He was a good boy, not a rebel. Unlike some neoconservatives who had begun on the left and swerved right, his path was straight. His mathematician father’s only complaint about him was that he had not become a mathematician. Instead, young Wolfowitz fell under the spell of one of his father’s friends, Albert Wohlstetter, an old Trotskyist turned Cold War nuclear theologian. Wolfowitz was a pupil in the most exclusive school. (Richard Perle was another acolyte of Wohlstetter’s.) Wolfowitz’s study of nuclear policy was more than a higher mathematics; it was a kind of mystical Kabbalah …. Wolfowitz’s doctoral thesis was on why Israeli development of a nuclear weapon threatened Middle Eastern and world stability.

Wolfowitz’s recruitment onto the “B Team” in the late 1970s, created under the Ford administration through conservative pressure in order to discredit the CIA’s assessments of the Soviet Union’s nuclear capabilities, signaled his entrance into the sanctum sanctorum of nuclear theologians and Republican policymaking. The factual rebuttal of the B Team’s assertions was not a black mark. Conservatives were on the ascendancy and Wolfowitz was a rare young man among them with a first-class mind and education.

[Sidney Blumenthal: salon.com]

Thanks, EB

Vinod Khosla writes:

I do not focus on peak oil as much but that does not mean I don’t recognize it as a potential problem. I do think we will probably (nothing is certain) run out of air to put the oil emissions into before we run out of oil.

[Vinod Khosla: The Oil Drum]

Via Boing Boing.

Vinod Khosla @ Wikipedia