Attention Deficit Nation

November 7, 2005
      The American public's failure to pay attention reached supernatural levels this week as our mass media gloated over falling gasoline prices -- down 24 cents, average, to pre-hurricane levels. The news media took this to mean that all the end-of-the-summer trouble is over with and things can now get back to normal, including especially an economy based on trade in suburban houses.

      What they failed to notice is this: since the hurricanes shredded our Gulf of Mexico oil and gas capacity, Europe has been sending us 2 million barrels of crude oil and "refined product" a day from its collective strategic petroleum reserve. The "refined product" includes 800,000 barrels of gasoline, plus diesel, aviation, and heating fuel. Meanwhile, US domestic production has fallen to around 4 million barrels of conventional crude a day. America uses close to 22 million barrels of oil a day. Bottom line: post-hurricane, total imports have accounted for 80 percent of America's oil consumption.

     Now, the important part of all this is that last week the International Energy Agency (IEA), Europe's energy security watchdog, declared that it would now end the 2 million barrel a day shipments to the US. Not because they are hateful meanies, but because, after all, it is Europe's strategic reserve and they can't sell it all to us because, well, some strategic emergency might come up for them, too.

      It will take a few weeks for the last of Europe's tankers to offload supplies and for the various fuels to work their way through the US fuels retail system. With US production and refining still crippled, we can look forward to watching the price of gasoline, heating oil, diesel and aviation fuel kick back up through Thanksgiving and on into the heart of the Christmas shopping season. At the same time, homeowners will be getting their first substantial heating bills of the season.

      This will be very bad news to the guys in charge. The Hooverization of George W. Bush will resume and accelerate.

     Meanwhile, the new uprising of Islamic youth in France shows no sign of letting up and, in fact, is growing in both intensity and venues. If it continues along the same upward arc, the authorities may soon start making martyrs out of the young car-bombers. The action could spread to Holland, England, and elsewhere across Europe. The potential for wider scale insurrection and systematic terror operations such as bombings is obviously huge. Anybody can get instruction in bomb-making off the Internet now. People and materials move easily over a united Europe with fewer border controls than in the old days.

     Europe knows it can ill-afford antagonizing the Jihadi factions beyond its borders. With the North Sea oil fields depleting at rates as high as 20 percent a year, Europeans have little local production to fall back on if, say, regular tanker shipments of Middle Eastern oil through the Suez canal were to be interrupted for some reason. England's methane gas production is at especially alarming low levels.

     Europe -- France and Germany in particular -- have enjoyed the luxury of laying back since 9/11 and allowing the US to rumble with the Islamic world, while the Europeans enjoyed a comfortable sense of moral superiority about their supposed peaceableness. Those pretenses seem to be reaching an end. So now that Europe has gallantly spent down its strategic petroleum reserve for our sake, it will be interesting to see how soon they may need it themselves.

     I wouldn't venture to guess whether the young rioters of France are getting help and encouragement from somewhere outside, but there certainly are enough Jihadi professionals and cheerleaders on the sidelines to support this new frontal action in Old Europe. It is going to be an interesting holiday season all around the western world.
      

Comments

[Sarah]

yeah, all those millions of anti-war people who came out to show their support for peace when the US invaded Iraq were just faking it.

[sam]

The Islamic youth of France are rioting against the bad architecture of the Parisian suburbs and torching cars in defiance of their dependence on the automobile.

[wyse]

Can someone link me to some articles detailing this oil transfer from the European Union?

[Andy R]

No Sarah, I think they were genuine enough - maybe a bit naive about their own situation though...

Along with Kunstler's "greatest misallociation of resources" etc... the multicultural experiment in Europe could be another case study in "unsustainable living arrangements"

I think in France, the ability to appease the underclass with entitlement goodies is not as great as it was here in America back in the 60s, so it may be a hard row to hoe getting things back in a semblance of order.

Do you think it's true that the multicultural experiment depends on a fair degree of prosperity to be successful?
What if you can't "lift the oppressed masses" to some relative economic equity with the folks who pay the bills? Is France the illustration of what happens next?
Are we "propping up" the multicultural ideal by throwing money at disadvantaged groups in the hope they will assimilate? If so, will it ecver end?
Some of the world's premier multicultural cities are also the most prosperous. While many point to that as a sign that multiculturalism works, it could be said that it's the other way around - it could be that prosperity is the only glue that holds a multicultural society together.

That, and enforced tolerance.

In contrast to the tenuous stability of these arrangements, monocultural societies have common interests and beliefs that can hold sway during troubled times. Tolerance comes easy when affluence is widespread, but it is easier to share misery with those you can relate to. You're "all in it together."

I guess it all depends on the who and the where - and the when, but it's not looking too good for Old Europe just now.

[Mike]

Sam-

Good one. We can only hope, however, that's not true: if it is, how on earth can any Escalade, Kinkos, or townhouse in Anywheresville, USA survive one Islamic youth looking away from the tube and out the window instead?

[Mike]

There's another factor at work in France that's been ignored in all the hand-wringing and punditry: France's intolerant mandate of "tolerance."

In an effort to assimilate those who have no interest in assimilating, integrating or perhaps even remaining in the country, the French have essentially outlawed all religious symbols. Children can't go to school with a crucifix around their necks, no yarmulkas in school or government buildings, and Muslim women have been told to remove the veil.

All well-meaning, in theory (we'll suppose, for the sake of argument), but in practice, this serves to drive the most orthodox further into the imaginary corner they "see" themselves pinned into. The meddling of well-meaning secularists and the corresponding overheated reaction of the creche-in-the-Town Square-crowd in America stands as an analogy.

In addition to many other causes, the chickens are coming home to roost in Paris. When one tries to control the intolerant with a counteracting display of intolerance, it's a small miracle not to have riots in response.

I'm no fan of religion and I wish we could all be tolerant. But you can't force people to "be" something they aren't, nor should anyone righteously tell someone else what she can and cannot wear on her body in compliance with her belief. I think women covered head-to-toe as they stroll next to husbands wearing Tommy Hilfigger & Tivos is an outrage. And that's why I'm married to a woman who values her independence. But that's our choice. I should no more tell others how to dress than I should accept them telling us.

[Teräs Koura]

It's best not to import any Muslims. The potential for serious trouble is huge.

Importing all the Blacks and Arabs from it's former colonies was a huge mistake from France. Out of our own Somali refugee population here in Finland, gangs of young men have formed guilty of robberies and gang rapes. There probably really is discrimination among them on the labor market, which no doubt leads increased criminality among Somalis. But legitimate or not, that and other forms of collective disapproval of the Somalis by the Finnish majority should be respected by policymakers. No more Somalis to Finland, thank you.

[Teräs Koura]

Should have been "...discrimination against them".

[bud4wiser]

Well, "blog" me up, captain. What ever happened to staying on point and using a particular web space for discussing the topic at hand?

I'm sick of the poli-weenie diatribes. (unless you can tie them to energy resource conservation or distribution)

JK, you're getting a case of "scattercasting"...

I suggest you write about what you know - the relationship of oil consumption to the quality of the American way of life. There's enough orally-produced methane on the Internet already.

[hallo]

i'm sorry but you're way off the reality here. for a better and more insightful discussion of these recent event than the fear-inducing "oh god, it's the islamists" see http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2005/11/6/62039/9755
.

[Andy R]

hallo,
The word "apologist" comes to mind after reading that article...

[Parallel Universe]

Normally I'm nodding along with JK, but I think he is way wide of the mark here with his assessment of the French situation. There's nothing remotely jihadist about it; even the Muslim dimension is entirely coincidental. If you read the French papers, it's about the boiling over of frustrations with the overpolicing of non-white youth in public housing ghettos, sparked by the electrocution deaths of two young men who hid in a substation to avoid getting caught up in a regular police sweep in their neighborhood.

They aren't "car bombing", either; they are burning cars. While neither of these activities is exactly positive, "car bombing" suggests suicide terrorism; these kids are vandalizing property, which is orders of magnitude less disturbing.

On another note, I wonder if everyone in Finland is as racist as Teras Koura . . .

[Andy R]

...so things are only a little worse in France than they are during normal times, with the increase occurring because TV cameras are on?

[Leaf]

Good update Jim, most people fail to connect the 2..that is 3rd worls mass scale immigration and peak oil. The situation in Frace is very dismal ...they have on the books 16% non-European living there now "mainly Muslim" and off the books it is suggested at 20% non-French "this include sub sahara negro , Pakis, Indians, and mayly North Africans and others..the Muslim pop is offical at 6 million but real numbers are closer to 8 million with an additional 6 million other non-French. Over 50% of Paris is non-European. Its not the same Paris that it was in 1960's before the hordes of immigrants came along..They really have enriched Western Europe and Paris which ..are now ridden with drugs, crime, gangs and prostitution...no go zones, run down dumps that make Detroit look nice in places and now riots seem to be a daily enjoyment that this great enrichment has brought. The crime rate for example in Sweden is higest per capital in all of Europe...90% of thier criminals are guess? 3rd world immigrants.
England will be lucky to make it past THIS winter non the less the winters of say 2015. off the hook >---> They have 65 million people projected for 2010 "with about 10 million 3rd worlders by then also" The North Sea is Pathetic on the UK side to say the least oil is in steep decline and the Russian pipleline dont go there. Now heres a few monkey wrenches I thought about as of late..Like just use the UK and France.
Farming and food production- for England they import and have bairly enough arable land to support 30 million people. 2 % of its population are farmers heavly dependant on petrol chemical and cheap oil! "And lets not forget trucks to get the produce to the markets and tractors to get the food from the ground" Already with oil at 60 USD bbl farmers of the UK are threating stikes...same goes with the transport industy"they are very closely tied" OK keep this in mind..lets explore France...France can feed itself and about 8% of its population are into farming....but same goes famers small scale are bairly getting by with high fuel cost...Now if France and England had an all white nation with about 50 million in France and 40 million pop in UK they would get by..BUT...Even at that it would make the 1850 Irish potato famine look like a skipped lunch"..here's what will happen...to worsen the already very bleak situation.
The farmers bairly getting by on Peak Oil depletion will be getting looted,ransacked by both white and esp non-white populance who reside in these nation come the slope of depletion thus food production will take a total shit..hungur will be rampant all over..those in London and Paris ect.. will suffer 3rd world riots and starvation on a scale never seen in history of mankind..and cold winters without the lights on, and without money, food and heat....Its going to be very disorderly and these issues I talk about are often overlooked by peak Oil people. This will take place I think around the 5 year mark after peak oil..Around this time is when the systems will go down fast..Take a look at the chart on the Oldovian Gorge
On the riots and political correctness. Here is my take. All of us Peak Oilers will "99%" say we are still living is pretty good times, we have bread, jobs, cars and what not. Now we look at what happened in just the past 3 months alone on the global scale in still "good times" NOLA mainly blacks, Toledo OH mainly blacks, Paris Blacks and Muslims, Denmark this week Paris small scale. These are just a few riots of the past 3 months during "still good times." Also I read today the riots seem to be speading now to Bremen Germany with 7 cars reported burned.
Now lets fast foward to say 5 years post peak oil. Say gas short, energy prices skyrocketed, currency collapse, job loss way up with companies folding,food hard to come by , farmers and truckers stikes, and anouther great depression has hit.
Here are my question.
1. How will the white native Europeans react to the 10%+ non-white Immigrants? Esp once they continue to see acts of riots from them.
2. How will the 3rd worlders in say the UK, France, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands,Spain, Italy, Sweden ect react? That is once job loss is so big that white man can't pay the welfare, the medical, the housing, give the free jobs, and white man can bairly feed himself..How will the 3rd worlders who now in many Wester lands react? How will they take food shortage? How will they take rations? What will they be doing with their time?
If anyone thinks the outcome is going to be good, they are fooling themself! Cheap living via cheap oil has made this political correct,immigration, diversity monster..While the white Europeans had jobs, cars and toys they didnt have to care who was comming in next door in their nations....well thats all about to change come peak oil.Make no mistake we are on a one way route back to being tribal.
So just think we still live in fairly good times..I wouldn't want to live anywhere near Paris, London, Amsterdam and many other European "Multi-Failed Experiment Cultural"cities come the slope of depletion! these nations will have their own set of many probelms just on the energy frount non-the -less the immigration crisis that will EXPLODE. Prediction: What your seeing in Paris this past week is a small scale peek preview of what you'll see all over the diversity multiculture cities.

[dangerbird]

Mike
Christians don't riot and blow up the town when they are told they can't put up a creche in the town square. I'm not worried about any Christians here in the buckle of the bible belt coming to slice my head off if I don't follow their dogmas.
Further, Jews in France aren't rioting because they are being told to not wear a yarmulke to school. They're also being advised to not wear them in public in general any time, for their own safety. No riots.
No friends, the intolerance is mostly one way.
In normal circumstances, your concept of France's intolerant mandate of tolerance might be applicable to a degree. But might it be possible that we are dealing with another set of dynamics here? A whole other phenomenon? Painful questions, I agree. But they need to be considered.
I hope its just a poverty problem. Because the issues involved with that can be addressed and the people can be convinced that the future will be better.
Let's hope that Paris doesn't become the Beirut of Europe.
Now we have to pray for the peace of Paris, as well as Jerusalem.

[nicholas]

For those who are looking for the connections in all of this, try the following blog: globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/

The connections between the regimes we've supported through the course of our addiction has most definitely fueled the current clash between civilizations. Non-Zero by Wright also discusses the crises in economic terms, though I'm sure he would feel that the US in it's current mode represents the past lashing out at the future as well.

Europe will need to clamp down at some point, though they are much better able to do so with cities built from the beginning for defense.

[hallo]

dangerbird, this is a social/economical problem. nowhere in the reliable media there was any mention of this being faith based. i don't understand why everybody seems to be obsess so much over that.

[kd]

Teras,

In the summer of 1995, when I was working in Paris, a bomb went off in the Metro. I could hear the explosion from my apartment on the Seine. It occured on the very train I normally took, at the very time I normally rode it. But that day, for some reason, I stayed home.

I remember rushing outside & seeing smoke pour from the Metro entrance. Ambulances & police cars appeared. A crowd gathered. Voices around me said "Algerians, Algerians."

If I recall, it wasn't long before people were riding the trains again & all seemed normal. Of course, they had no choice. The life of a city must go on. At the time I knew little about the painful relationship between France & Algeria. A old friend-- an artist whom I'd always considered more a Leftist than anything else--ranted over dinner about how France is being ruined by immigrants. "They refuse to assimilate, & their children feel alienated. They become criminals--or worse, terrorists." He said France needed to purge itself of the immigrant threat--that "multiculturalism" was a failure. I listened silently, not knowing how to respond.

Recently I watched the infamous (& remarkable) film "The Battle of Algiers". It raises more questions than answers, & rightly so. I highly recommend it.

Your post reminds me a lot of that dinner in Paris back in 95.

[Shep]

I, too, am amazed at the racism and religious intolerance expressed by various posters to this thread. Being Muslim and Black isn't a prerequisite for being involved in rioting, but long-fester greivances are. Were there any Black Muslims living in Northern Ireland during the many years of social turmoil there?

In the meantime, the main topic - the coming harsh economic realities to face the US and world economies - cannot be denied. When US consumers don't have enough money to buy much of anything in the upcoming holiday season, the resulting loss of business revenue will rebound throughout the entire 'western' financial system, leading to recession and perhaps depression.

We're looking at a serious meltdown here, folks. All would be well served by keeping their minds off of ignorant intolerance and instead focusing on concrete plans to survive for the next 5-10 years.

[Mike]

Danger-

Of course. You'll note I offered that as an additional explanation, not as the "one true explanation."

Hallo-

You are right to make sure people remember the socioeconomic aspects of what's going on. Of course that's one of the manifold reasons. But why the vehement reaction to the suggestion that religion and/or culture may play a role?

I also notice that the "reliable media" you speak of includes odd lnaguage about car burning as harmless. Huh? Tell that to the folks who own those cars. We may think a petroleum-based economy is bad, but it's no excuse to destroy people's property. Ever think that workers used those now-destroyed autos to get to their jobs?

[ross]

I think that in this week's blog I might have discussed the particular focus by the rioting yutes on torching cars. For a peak oiler, this phenomenon is, at least metaphorically speaking, very rich territory indeed. The car, the auto, is a living breathing symbol of numerous things, and one of them is western society's dependence on fossil fuels. Also, cars mean freedom, and the young men who burned the wheeled totems of freedom don't have much freedom themselves other than the freedom to be poor, distrusted and in some cases, reviled second and third class citizens of a prosperous nation.

But back to my point which is the possible meaning of the literal destruction of one end of one "advanced" nations's vast oil infrastructure. I certainly don't see the mass burning of autos as any sort of conscious referendum on the future of our global fossil fuel culture, but nevertheless that may be one aspect of this phenomenon's significance. I fully realize that autos are being chosen for destruction (consciously that is) largely due to the fact that they are right on the street and therefore easily attacked. Still, I think the symbolism, the possible subtext of mass car burning should not be ignored.

Metaphysically yours,

[dangerbird]

Ok hallo,
I won't argue that point too forcefully. I'll allow; no hope that you may be right. What you term the reliable media, is none too reliable. They refuse to use the M word (Muslim), in all their reports. And yet, whether by happenstance or by design, most of the rioters are "Muslim" youth. Is that assessment wrong? I'd be glad to be wrong, so don't hesitate to rebuke me on that one.
However, and most importantly, it is not obssession or racism to come to these thoughts. Its all too natural, given the current climate. And no, its not irrational fear. Its healthy, no responsible to consider these possibilities.

[Leaf]

Let me clue you all in the only glue holding multi-culturalism together is economics....Going to be very disorderly when the money dont come in!

[Edgar Cave Urbanus]

Europe has been in its own Jiminey Cricket syndrome with regard to immigration. It is my opinion that Europeans in general are not fond of immigrants. I have traveled in Europe extensively in the last 21 years thanks to cheap jet fuel. As a college senior I was in Switzerland in 1984. I noticed a lot of Turks working in the big hotel I was staying in. My professor told me they were "Guest" workers. The "Guest" workers had to be off the streets by 8PM. I was shocked to say the least.

[Sarah]

No, Christians don't riot, they just cluster-bomb the hell out of civilian cities and towns when they don't get their way. Torture and kill prisoners. Or establish Holy Inquisitions. Or Crusade their way across continents. Or set fire to innocent women in Puritan towns. Or help the Nazis kill Jews. Or bomb abortion clinics. Or blow up Federal Buildings. Or publicly incite the assassination of political leaders.

Nah, there's nothing wrong with the Christian Right.