leviathan

welly, welly, well then, looks like the isaelis gots themselves some gas mejor.  just the other day, Noble Energy -- no shit -- announced the discovery of 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The rally at Ratio is thanks to the company's 15% stake in a giant offshore gas field called Leviathan, operated by Houston-based Noble Energy Inc.

On Wednesday, the frenzy got fresh fuel: Noble confirmed its earlier estimates that the field contains 16 trillion cubic feet of gas—making it the world's biggest deepwater gas find in a decade, with enough reserves to supply Israel's gas needs for 100 years.

It's still early days, and getting all that gas out of the seabed may be more difficult than it seems today. But Noble and its partners think the field could hold enough gas to transform Israel, a country precariously dependent on others for energy, into a net-energy exporter.

ya know, the iranians and the ruskies have been yakkin' 'bout an "opec-like" natural gas cartel. bahrain has said, shit, buds, we're in! ben doin' it for awhile now, if i recall.

welly, welly, well, then. how's 'bout a new partner, neighbours? can you imagine israel teaming up with iran and the russians on an opec-like global gas cartel?

we can put aside our rancid, racist, irrational bigotry, informing the brunt of our world view, to team up in a cooperative effort to control global gas supplies, screw the world, and make a fucking fortune doing it.

sounds like it could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

lawless rare earths area

did you know there existed such wondrous places, these "lawless rare earths" areas?  the wild wild rare earths area.  bit wordy. they're in northern Guangdong.  wild wild guangdong. uh. wild wild rare earth west. that's not bad.

anyway, beloved ol' nyt is happily ladlin' up another woe are the prospers of china story.  they be damned for their monopoly o' those luscious rare earths, those marvelous elements of the modern must have age, by bands of rapacious buccaneers, mining their own rare earth loot in wild wild guandong, absconding with thence toward vietnam, where japanese business yops hover, scooping up the contraband, banging it off to nippon, thereby subverting china's embargo of rare earths to japan.

that won't do.

What is new are efforts by China’s national and provincial governments to crack down on the illegal mines, to which local authorities have long turned a blind eye. The efforts coincide with a decision by Beijing to reduce legal exports as well, including an announcement by China’s commerce ministry on Tuesday that export quotas for all rare earth metals will be 35 percent lower in the early months of next year than in the first half of this year.

the problem? CHIGOV only has control of half of it.

Rogue operations in southern China produce an estimated half of the world’s supply of heavy rare earths, which are the most valuable kinds of rare earth metals.
...
China mines 99 percent of the global supply of heavy rare earths, with legal, state-owned mines mainly accounting for the rest of China’s output. That means the Chinese government’s only effective competitors in producing these valuable commodities are the crime rings within the country’s borders.

just how competitive are these rare earth rivals?

Someone abducted the general manager of Pacific Ores, Constant Li. The kidnappers brought Mr. Li to Mr. Crawley’s Hong Kong office one night, bound him to a chair with duct tape, gagged and blindfolded him and ripped open his throat with box cutters.

lawless rare earths area.

out of iraq ... ish

the lede begins with a bold statement by Maliki:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ruled out the presence of any U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of 2011."

whew, potent stuff, which receives a quote from the PM himself.

"The last American soldier will leave Iraq" as agreed,  ... "This agreement is not subject to extension, not subject to alteration. It is sealed."

sealed! says the pm. and so definitive!  the very essence of definitive.  sealed with a kiss.  us troops out!  every last one, by the end of 2011.  finally.

or          not

But Mr. Maliki said the only way for any of the remaining 50,000 or so American soldiers to stay beyond 2011 would be for the two nations to negotiate—with the approval of Iraq's Parliament—a new Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, similar to the one concluded in 2008.

ah, yes, just like then. we remember fondly those busheoise days of the panic attack SOFA and Maliki's bold, firm statements of the ultimate fate, the scrabbling and haggling, threats! oh, it was a juicy time for awhile. immunity! we must have immunity for this and for that.  dates!  a date for withdrawal is a must.  naw.  hate them dates.  gives the damnable terrorists a timeline to terror! generals back pedaling and tsk-tsking the need for realism and "conditions on the ground."  glorious stuff.

 oh well, well, oh my, we'll just have to have a lookie at what's goin' on when it's goin' on, see what happens then.

 'member that?

well, who knows whether Maliki will retain resolve?  he is feeling a tad kingly these days.

hugo hitlerez

readers no doubt will have already surmised, had to readjust the take on the whole winkinglinks thing.  'cause buddy these damnable state cabes have been a hoot, a genuine one.  quite apart from the media dick spin on chosen features. ("hey, all our oppressive dynastic arab leaders want to hit iran!  that must be the right thing to do then!")  not the kind one gets from slomo psyops, but a genuine ass-baring hoot.  makin' all kinna of dumdums look like, well, just what you'd expect. us embassy in honduras: we got us a coo day taah down here! white house: nahh.

gotta say though, doesn't look like manning's imagining that hillary would take a hit came to much.  whiff.  dna grabs and iris scans; barely fluffed her hair.

gotta luv michael freakin moore bustin' a state cable sayin' that cuba had banned Sicko.  Imagine what the exact opposite of a state banning something would be, and that's what actually happened in Cuba.  Cuba honoured Moore, played the film everywhere, even broadcast it on national television.

here's the relevant part of the cable:

XXXXXXXXXXXX stated that Cuban authorities have banned Michael Moore's documentary, "Sicko," as being subversive. Although the film's intent is to discredit the U.S. healthcare system by highlighting the excellence of the Cuban system, he said the regime knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them.

that's what winds its inglorious way to washington. some state dept goober hears from who knows what bimbo pouring the noxious liquor of us interests into his ear that cuba banned moore's lefty anti-american healthcare movie when cuba not only did no such thing, cuba honoured moore and the film.  thur's yur state department classified intelligence.  guess walking to the local cinema required a bit too much diggin'.

actual good stuff is popping out here and there.  not that you'd know from the bastions of merkin media, but faves have been learnin' of coercing Spain and Germany over investigations of war crimes.  the spanish jerk was obvious, wide open.  The Germans?  well, that appears to have been handled a little more discretely.  'til that dag blasted wikifukinleaks came along.  spoilt the good germans' name, it did.  actually, all the exposure did do was make us realize that the us are strong-armin' their way around all the time.  luv that ohfukinbama is strong-arming nations to protect bush et al.  didn't know he had it in 'im.  dink.  manages to get all tuff protecting yet another criminal gop dynasty, goes all gushy doing anything else 'cept ampin' up the wars.  head of the snake!  cut it off!  the Great Satan and the snake at each other's throats.  marvelous.  shouldn't you two be gettin' along better than this?  aren't satan and the snake kinna the same thing?  can't we all just get along, brothers?

anyway, 'nother bunch of cabes have been looked at, turns up a whole lotta stuff 'bout tryin' to whack chavez. yeah, shocker. turns out at some point, some surely more perceptive state goober than the one in cuba is yakkin' wit ol' death squad uribe, who apparently tells our man in bogatá, along with a buncha faithfully attentive us congressmen who came to hear what they wanted to hear, just what they wanted to hear:

Uribe "likened the threat Chavez poses to Latin America to that posed by Hitler in Europe."

zipptydooda, jus' what we wanted to hear. got ourselves another hitler!

murder inc.

ya wonder what that dubya is in the george dubya bush?  yuve heard sum shit about "walker" as in the ol' Harriman george herbert, dealin' up wit his own son-in-law, and fellow Harriman chum, grandaddy prescott, double dealin' and helpin' keep the nazi dream alive.  uh uh.

if ya didn't know it by now, the dubya stands for wrong.

"The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder.”

-- George W. Bush

"Former Canadian Prime Minister Adviser Calls for Assassination of WikiLeaks Founder Assange"

"Fox News Calls For Assassination Of Julian Assange"

"WikiLeaks: guilty parties 'should face death penalty'"

one assumes the lower court there all think they love and adore 'democratic values.'  couldn't live without 'em, they'd surely say.

not just bad ... islamabad

"...several US media outlets did not name Banks, citing national security concerns."

and they didn't, howling away mostly 'bout those dastardly pak isi fucks, outin' thur man in the 'bad.  brits didn't care though. hell, brits splash the cos' name all over the freakin' headlines.  beautiful.

CIA chief in Pakistan leaves after drone trial blows his cover

Jonathan Banks, station chief In Islamabad, back in US after calls for him to be charged with murder over drone attack.

... with little or no resistance

doncha love how easily the repub/obama "tax deal" whizzed through congress?  amazing, really, given the howling we heard the tired demos unleashing about it and how it will not stand.  just a week ago, ol' bernie was doin' his song and senate dance, pledging to do everything he could to the stop the tax deal.  guess that wasn't much.  didn't hear 'bout any filibuster.  you know, like the repubs use on every freakin' bill?  didn't see that happen.

nope.

so there is the courageous dem stand against continued tax breaks for the two percenters.  one eight hour speech.