The Energy Wars - rise of a new global energy elite

[katty]

cont'd: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12617717/site/newsweek/

The Energy Wars
The rise of a new global energy elite means high oil and gas prices are here to stay.

MICHAEL HIRSH The World From Washington
• World Faces Devastating Energy Wars
The rise of a new global energy elite means high oil and gas prices are here to stay.
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• Why Americans May Never Leave Iraq
• The GOP’s Sectarian War Over Iraq
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Michael Hirsh

Newsweek
Updated: 6:55 p.m. ET May 3, 2006

May 3, 2006 - It is a mantra of the globalization crowd. In today’s global economy, we are told, all that really matters is which country produces the best brains and skills. The world is flat, after all. The playing field is leveled. Wrong, wrong and wrong. What also matters, we are learning, is who controls the world's energy resources. Evo Morales's abrupt decision earlier this week to nationalize Bolivia's natural-gas industry was only the latest worrisome move in a long-term trend. Morales, a leftist elected president last December, was apparently influenced by a meeting he had in Havana last Saturday with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who's rocketed to international prominence by doing much the same thing to his country's oil industry. President Chavez, sitting atop his growing pile of petrodollars, has gleefully thumbed his nose at Washington’s efforts to rein him in. Similarly, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is defiantly enriching uranium and sneering at Western threats of sanctions. And he obviously thinks he can, perhaps because no one is threatening to cut off Iran's oil exports as part of the forthcoming sanctions plan.

The would-be czar of this new global energy elite is Vladimir Putin. Having spent the better part of his six years in office wresting control of his nation's vast oil and gas resources, the Russian president is now playing a brass-knuckle game of power politics. When Putin partially cut off gas supplies to Ukraine and therefore to Western Europe in the first three days of the year—mainly to bully Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko into taking a lower price—the European Union went into a state of near panic.

[Vogon_Glory]

1. Guess Who The Scapegoat Will Be--One, Two, Three

Guess who the scapegoat will be for the price of oil going up? We know. One, Two, Three--Quick! Blame Bill Clinton.

Gee Dubya looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes and said he knew him. I believe that Pooty Poot Poot looked back and saw someone he could take to the cleaners.

[katty]

2. right! clinton will get the brunt of blame...putin has every

intention of exercising energy power.

[phantom power]

3. Of course, there is a way to beat these new hegemons...

Achieve energy independence. But that would require the vision thing. The Bush family doesn't do that. Or any of the other republicans, evidently.

[katty]

4. they are fully invested in the old paradigm and black gold

they are unwilling to transmute-therefore, let others die, first, FOR their interests.