Royal Dutch Shell is patenting a technique to convert shale to petroleum at a cost of only about $30/barrel. If it works, the world's single largest source of oil would be... the United States:

Over the past few years, more and more apocalyptic stories have been popping up about a supposed phenomenon known as "peak oil." The theory is that we're running out of oil, the big powers are keeping it quiet, and as supplies dwindle, world-wide economic chaos will ensue.

This is hardly a new theory. According to the Chicken Littles of the world, we've been "about to run out of oil" for over thirty years. Obviously it hasn't happened yet. With the recent upswing in strife in the Middle East, however, the notion has gained in popularity.

The thing is, this theory is utterly false, and can be laid to rest with a single well-established fact: there is more oil in the Colorado shale fields than the entire Middle East had at its peak. The only reason we're still importing oil is that, at present, it is cheaper to do so than to extract it from shale. Until recently, getting oil out of shale has been a nasty and expensive business.

That's about to change, though, as engineers at Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) have applied for a patent on a new method of extracting shale oil cheaply and cleanly. (As an interesting side note, it is the largest patent application in U.S. history.)

Amazingly, this method:

• Is cleaner than conventional drilling
• Generates the highest grade of light-sweet crude oil, which burns cleaner than other varieties
• Becomes profitable with oil just north of $30 a barrel (which we've already blown past)

Mounir el Motassadeq was a member of the Hamburg sleeper cell that “planned and carried out” the September 11 attacks. A “close friend of 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Samir Jarrah,” reports the McClatchy News, el Motassadeq “had signed wills, taken over power of attorney for the hijackers and wired money for logistical support, including flight training.”

Yesterday, he was sentenced to 15 years for his conviction as an “accessory to murder for the 246 people who died on the four airliners,” but not for the thousands murdered in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. His 15-year sentence, the maximum allowable under German law, means el Motassadeq will serve (assuming he’s not eligible for parole) a little over 22 days for each murder.

(Are seeing-eye dogs next? A faithful reader from Australia emails this from the Herald Sun.)

(The Australian weighs in with this editorial: “It is a situation which both demonstrates the global nature of the debate on values and which presents a textbook case of how not to deal with Islamic fundamentalists in the West. Rather than threatening such cabbies with fines or loss of licence for refusing to carry fares, the Metropolitan Airports Commission has proposed special colour-coded lights to indicate which taxis are driven by non-Muslims and those willing to tote alcohol and those where sharia applies bumper to bumper. This is exactly the wrong solution. It opens moderate Muslim taxi drivers who are willing to carry passengers possessing alcohol open to harassment from their more radical co-religionists. It violates the long-enshrined legal principle that taxis are a public conveyance open to all….”

I suspect the airport commission believed it had no choice: either give in or face chaos on the sidewalk. I also doubt this will end at the airport curbside. Some of these same cabbies may decide to keep the special colored light on while in the queue to pick up fares at area hotels, for example. What about if you call for a cab? In some places, will we reach the point where the dispatcher has to ask if you will be carrying liquor? I hope not. In any event, having the government’s imprimatur on such an airport policy raises many other questions that I'm sure will be debated. Stay tuned.)

Posted on October 1, 2006:

I suspect this issue will surface at other airports in the U.S. From the AP:

Muslim Cabdrivers May Have to Signify Alcohol-Free Cars

MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 30 (AP) — Hundreds of Muslim cabdrivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport may soon be required to put different colored lights atop their vehicles after refusing to take customers they know are carrying alcohol.

The proposal, which would allow airport workers to direct travelers to cabs more efficiently, needs approval from the airport’s taxicab advisory committee, and airport officials hope to have the lights ready by year’s end.

If the proposal is adopted, cabdrivers without the light who refuse a fare will be sent to the back of the line, which often means a three-hour wait.

Some said they would rather wait for another fare than carry a passenger with alcohol. “It is forbidden in Islam to carry alcohol,” said Muhamed Mursal, a cabdriver.

Pat Hogan, an airport spokesman, said a handful of drivers began refusing to carry alcohol 10 years ago. Now he estimates that three-quarters of the 900 airport cabdrivers are Somali, most of them Muslim.

Mr. Hogan said drunken passengers have not had trouble getting a cab, just the ones who mention that they are carrying a bottle. He said, “It’s slowly grown over the years to the point that it’s become a significant customer service issue for us.”

Some travelers are taken aback by the idea that they might be refused a ride.

“They’re really kind of imparting their religious views on the public,” said Katie Patterson of McKinney, Tex. “I can understand if somebody’s drunk; that’s a whole different issue. But to just bring in a closed container, maybe you should look for other work.”

(The Australian weighs in with this editorial: “It is a situation which both demonstrates the global nature of the debate on values and which presents a textbook case of how not to deal with Islamic fundamentalists in the West. Rather than threatening such cabbies with fines or loss of licence for refusing to carry fares, the Metropolitan Airports Commission has proposed special colour-coded lights to indicate which taxis are driven by non-Muslims and those willing to tote alcohol and those where sharia applies bumper to bumper. This is exactly the wrong solution. It opens moderate Muslim taxi drivers who are willing to carry passengers possessing alcohol open to harassment from their more radical co-religionists. It violates the long-enshrined legal principle that taxis are a public conveyance open to all….”

I suspect the airport commission believed it had no choice: either give in or face chaos on the sidewalk. I also doubt this will end at the airport curbside. Some of these same cabbies may decide to keep the special colored light on while in the queue to pick up fares at area hotels, for example. What about if you call for a cab? In some places, will we reach the point where the dispatcher has to ask if you will be carrying liquor? I hope not. In any event, having the government’s imprimatur on such an airport policy raises many other questions that I'm sure will be debated. Stay tuned.)

Posted on October 1, 2006:

I suspect this issue will surface at other airports in the U.S. From the AP:

Muslim Cabdrivers May Have to Signify Alcohol-Free Cars

MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 30 (AP) — Hundreds of Muslim cabdrivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport may soon be required to put different colored lights atop their vehicles after refusing to take customers they know are carrying alcohol.

The proposal, which would allow airport workers to direct travelers to cabs more efficiently, needs approval from the airport’s taxicab advisory committee, and airport officials hope to have the lights ready by year’s end.

If the proposal is adopted, cabdrivers without the light who refuse a fare will be sent to the back of the line, which often means a three-hour wait.

Some said they would rather wait for another fare than carry a passenger with alcohol. “It is forbidden in Islam to carry alcohol,” said Muhamed Mursal, a cabdriver.

Pat Hogan, an airport spokesman, said a handful of drivers began refusing to carry alcohol 10 years ago. Now he estimates that three-quarters of the 900 airport cabdrivers are Somali, most of them Muslim.

Mr. Hogan said drunken passengers have not had trouble getting a cab, just the ones who mention that they are carrying a bottle. He said, “It’s slowly grown over the years to the point that it’s become a significant customer service issue for us.”

Some travelers are taken aback by the idea that they might be refused a ride.

“They’re really kind of imparting their religious views on the public,” said Katie Patterson of McKinney, Tex. “I can understand if somebody’s drunk; that’s a whole different issue. But to just bring in a closed container, maybe you should look for other work.”

I suspect this issue will surface at other airports in the U.S. From the AP:

Muslim Cabdrivers May Have to Signify Alcohol-Free Cars

MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 30 (AP) — Hundreds of Muslim cabdrivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport may soon be required to put different colored lights atop their vehicles after refusing to take customers they know are carrying alcohol.

The proposal, which would allow airport workers to direct travelers to cabs more efficiently, needs approval from the airport’s taxicab advisory committee, and airport officials hope to have the lights ready by year’s end.

If the proposal is adopted, cabdrivers without the light who refuse a fare will be sent to the back of the line, which often means a three-hour wait.

Some said they would rather wait for another fare than carry a passenger with alcohol. “It is forbidden in Islam to carry alcohol,” said Muhamed Mursal, a cabdriver.

Pat Hogan, an airport spokesman, said a handful of drivers began refusing to carry alcohol 10 years ago. Now he estimates that three-quarters of the 900 airport cabdrivers are Somali, most of them Muslim.

Mr. Hogan said drunken passengers have not had trouble getting a cab, just the ones who mention that they are carrying a bottle. He said, “It’s slowly grown over the years to the point that it’s become a significant customer service issue for us.”

Some travelers are taken aback by the idea that they might be refused a ride.

“They’re really kind of imparting their religious views on the public,” said Katie Patterson of McKinney, Tex. “I can understand if somebody’s drunk; that’s a whole different issue. But to just bring in a closed container, maybe you should look for other work.”

The Globe and Mail in Canada has more on the plot to destroy a British landmark using 600 kilograms of ammonium nitrate.

She started out looking for a husband. Instead, the young Carleton University student became a key conduit for thousands of dollars that, police say, was financing terrorism.

Zenab Armend Pisheh, an Ottawa-area chemistry student in her early 20s, says she was used by young, aspiring jihadists in Britain and Canada and that she was handpicked because "sisters don't get caught -- brothers get caught if they send money.

(New Hampshire tax dollars at work. From Reuters: A University of New Hampshire professor has come under fire from state politicians for teaching his unconventional view that a U.S. government conspiracy allowed the September 11, 2001 attacks to occur…. "What we learn in the mainstream is not the full story," [William] Woodward said in an interview. "To label this as extreme is really a frame that the mainstream media has promulgated to the exclusion of scientific views.")

Posted on June 21, 2006:

The U.S government murdered thousands of its own citizens on September 11, 2001. That theory has been circulating among an assortment of America haters, Jew haters, paranoids … and a few professors at U.S. universities. An upcoming cover story in The Chronicle of Higher Education looks at a group called “Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which includes about 50 professors – more in the humanities than in the sciences – from institutions like Clemson University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Wisconsin.” The co-chair of the group, Steven E. Jones, is from, of all places, Brigham Young University and has been roundly denounced by his colleagues at the Utah campus. Jones and the others believe preplanted explosives took down the World Trade Centers. Why? In order to “manipulate Americans” into supporting policies, as the conspiracy thinking goes, that seek world domination through the barrel of a gun and to fatten the profits of the oil companies and weapons manufactures. Another “scholar,” David Ray Griffin, wrote the book, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11, “exposing to the American people and the world the truth about 9/11.” A blurb on the book’s jacket reads:

The most persuasive argument I have seen for further investigation on the Bush administration’s relationship to that historic and troubling event.

The blurb’s author isn’t some obscure academic. It’s Howard Zinn, professor emeritus at Boston University, best-selling author and frequent speaker at American universities across the country. The good news is that unlike Zinn most other academics in the U.S. believe “Scholars for 9/11 Truth” are just a bunch of crackpots.

Securitywatchtower.com has a good roundup of news (with multiple links) on the terrorist bomb plot here (scroll up a bit). At the Counterterrorism blog, Evan Kohlman comments:

Though for some, news of a reported Al-Qaida plot to down multiple commercial airliners with liquid explosives may sound exotic and unusual, in fact, U.S. authorities have been aware of such a threat from Al-Qaida affiliates for over a decade.

In 1995, when U.S. and Philippine security services uncovered a plot by 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and his uncle 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to bomb over a dozen U.S. airliners simultaneously over the Pacific Ocean, they quickly moved in and arrested their co-conspirators. One of the detained men, trained commercial pilot Abdel Hakim Murad, described Ramzi Yousef's plans in detail -- including his intention to travel to "France, Egypt, and Algeria after the activities here in the Philippines. The purpose was to train those Muslim brothers thereat, on using a Casio watch as a timing device, chemical mixtures to compound bombs, and to share his expertise in eluding detection on an airport's x-ray machine, and eventually smuggling [onboard] this liquid chemical bombs. Furthermore, France has a lot of Algerians staying and that these Egyptians and Algerians ha[ve] no experience on making these bombs and [do] not know the basics of smuggling liquid bombs through the airport."

Eleven years later, we once again return to the same threat to commercial aviation posed by liquid explosives. Only now, it would appear that the fabrication of such high-tech terrorist weapons by Al-Qaida operatives inside Western Europe is no longer an insurmountable challenge.

Senate reaction to the plot:

BOWLING GREEN, KY— U.S. Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell made the following statement Thursday regarding the disruption of a major terrorist plot centered in the United Kingdom, and the need for continued anti-terror efforts in the United States:

“This is yet another reminder, if anyone needed one, that the war on terror is not over. And it is a reminder that our military, law enforcement and intelligence forces are working around the clock and around the world to prevent attacks here at home.

“That's why we need more tools, not less, to fight terrorists. It is clear to anyone paying attention that our law enforcement and intelligence forces need every legal means at their disposal to be able connect the dots and prevent and disrupt al Qaeda’s attacks. Tools such as the terrorist surveillance program and others allow us to prevent the attacks before they happen, not just to respond when it’s too late. We must continue to arm our forces, so that they can disarm terrorists.”

Kofi Annan's deputy, Mark Malloch Brown, takes a swing at the "U.S. heartland,” and UN Ambassador Bolton fires back. It’s too bad. Brown had made an effort to reach out to UN skeptics in the U.S., holding luncheons, etc. and acknowledging that the UN needed major structural reform. His remarks may make the liberals at the Center for American Progress all tingly inside but they will further harm the UN’s reputation among conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill and “heartland” Americans. Considering how much good America does in the world – a truly outrageous statement to make if one only read and believed what’s on some of the lefty blogs -- Mr. Brown really blew it on this one.

PS: Senate Republicans should make Democrats squirm and seek a confirmation vote on the recessed-appointed Bolton as soon as possible.

Today's Edmonton Journal reports "several of the young men allegedly went from being typical Muslim adherents to radicalized extremists in little more than a year." The men frequented two Toronto area mosques and at least one opposed Canada's role in Afghanistan. It's also been reported that Canadian intelligence had these mosques under surveillance for some time and presumably has recordings/transcripts of what was being said inside. Did any of the sermons encourage radicalism? What about the literature distributed? If so, do the mosques receive any foreign funding? What about the terror suspects?

In addition, contrary to what Richard Clarke told ABC News yesterday (hat tip: Weekly Standard contributor Dan Darling), the plotters may have connections that extend well beyond the Canadian border. According to the Los Angeles Times,

The senior U.S. law enforcement official said authorities are combing through evidence seized during raids in Canada this weekend to look for possible connections between the 17 suspects arrested Friday and at least 18 other Islamist militants who have been arrested in locations including the United States, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Britain, Denmark and Sweden.

The investigation began as separate probes into what authorities believed were localized cells of militant Muslim young men, who shared an interest in radical ideology on the Internet in various countries and, to a lesser extent, in local mosques and training camps.

But over the past year, the counter-terrorism authorities of those countries began to see connections among the cells, in part through electronic surveillance of phone calls and Internet correspondence, as well as ground surveillance of individual suspects, several U.S. officials said in interviews Sunday.

Hoover fellow Arnold Beichman wrote the following Weekly Standard piece before Canadian officials revealed the recent terrorist plot. Most worrisome, Beichman notes, is how well terrorists may have blended into Canadian culture.

Is Canada Next? Time to look at the northern border.

THE CANADIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE has just issued this warning: There is an increasing threat from what Canada's CIA calls "home-grown terrorists" living in communities across Canada. And presumably awaiting orders.

The warning came from Jack Hooper, CSIS deputy director of operations, in May 29 testimony before a Canadian Senate defense committee. He told the committee that, since 2001, some 20,000 immigrants from the Afghanistan/Pakistan region have entered Canada. And said Hooper in what passes for Canadian understatement: "We're in a position to vet one-tenth of those. That may be inadequate."

What that means for the United States is obvious. Our northern border must be guarded more closely than ever before in history. Indeed, it has been, for a century, an unarmed, unpoliced border.

Hooper said, according to CBC News, that young Canadians with immigrant backgrounds are: (1) becoming radicalized through the Internet and (2) seeking targets within Canada itself, not abroad.

"They are virtually indistinguishable from other youth," said Hooper. "They blend in very well to our society, they speak our language and they appear to be--to all intents and purposes--well assimilated. They look to Canada to execute their targeting."

Hooper pointed out that the men responsible for the London 2005 subway bombings were from immigrant families. He testified ominously: "I can tell you that all of the circumstances that led to the London transit bombings, to take one example, are resident here and now in Canada."

A Canadian resident, trained in Afghanistan and at one time living in Vancouver, British Columbia, played a key role in the August 1998 al Qaeda attack on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. He was the one who trained the embassy bombers.

Even more ominous was Hooper's admission that the CSIS could vet only about one-tenth of the immigrants from Afghanistan and Pakistan. In other words, apart from bare details, which themselves may be spurious, Canada knows nothing--not even current addresses--of approximately 18,000 immigrants from that part of the world who have arrived just in the last five years. According to a report in the Toronto National Post, Hooper admitted that his agency was troubled about its inability to track these immigrants.

That Canada may be a terrorist target is a distinct possibility. Canada has about 2,300 soldiers deployed in Afghanistan on a mission that was recently extended until 2009. And as Hooper noted in his testimony, "Canada has been named on several occasions as one of six Western 'target countries' by al Qaeda leaders, most recently last summer."

But there is now a new and startling concern: Canadian-born fanatics, whose numbers are on the rise. Said Hooper about these nontraditional votaries of Islamist terrorism: "We have cases of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants converting to the most radical form of Islam. These are people who blend in with us and our neighbors." Hooper said the CSIS does a good job at containing threats it uncovers, but what about those threats it does not uncover?

"We stay up at night," he said, "worrying about the threats we don't know about, and we always used to work on a ratio of ten to one. For every one we knew, there were probably ten out there we didn't. I worry that the ratio has increased."

A new and conservative government rules Canada today. The U.S.-Canada border should be a top priority on the binational agenda when both sides meet again.

From Reuters:

Some members of a group of Canadians arrested on terror-related offenses may have been in contact with two U.S. suspects now in custody who were based in Georgia, the FBI said on Saturday.

"There is preliminary indication that some of the Canadian subjects may have had limited contact with the two people recently arrested from Georgia," said FBI spokesman Richard Kolko in an e-mail.

Syed Haris Ahmed, 21, of Atlanta, Georgia, was arrested March 23 after a grand jury returned an indictment charging him with material support of terrorism. He has pleaded innocent and has not yet come to trial.

Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, 19, left Georgia after Ahmed's indictment but was later taken into custody in Bangladesh and returned to the United States, where he was charged in New York's federal court with lying to federal officials in an ongoing terrorism investigation.

Sadequee and Ahmed traveled to Canada on March 13, 2005, to meet with Islamic extremists, according to a U.S. Justice Department statement.

The two "stayed with an individual with whom they were conspiring concerning travel to terrorist camps, and met with three subjects of an FBI international terrorism investigation and discussed strategic locations in the United States suitable for a possible terrorist strike," the statement said, citing the complaint against Sadequee.

U.S. Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said on Saturday there were no plans to change the U.S. security posture following Saturday's arrests in Canada.

(Markos Moulitsas, founder of the liberal blog Daily Kos, is an example of why Senator Clinton may not have an easy run to the nomination. His piece in yesterday's Washington Post is also a reason Democrats would have been better off nominating Howard Dean in 2004. The ensuing electoral blowout would have thoroughly discredited the McGovern resurgence that has since gained momentum in the Democratic Party. Now Hillary faces a dilemma on the road to the White House.)

Posted on April 13, 2006:

The fact that the Democratic Party's base is firmly against the Iraq war has put its leading presidential candidate in a tough spot on Iran. Will Senator Clinton continue to embrace a hawkish position on Iran or adopt a softer line? She voted for the Iraq war but, unlike Kerry and Edwards, hasn't abandoned (so far, at least) her position in support of the war -- support that has brought her withering criticism from the Left. Will she defy the anti-war base again on Iran?

Last September, the senator stated, “a nuclear-armed Iran would shake the foundations of global security to its very core.” But she hasn't said much since, except to say that Bush should take the nuclear option "off the table" in reaction to Seymour Hersh's over-the-top New Yorker piece. Presumably she stands by her September position and would support the use of force should it be necessary to prevent a "nuclear-armed Iran" that would "shake the foundations of global security to its very core." But it's extremely doubtful that Democrats who oppose the Iraq war agree with Hillary's current position on Iran. They'd support sanctions but would rather live with a nuclear-armed Iran than with what they believe would be the consequences of an attack. This is probably why Hillary Clinton has been so quiet on Iran lately.

Since her election, Hillary has positioned herself as a Scoop Jackson Democrat on many national security issues. But Scoop didn't win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972; McGovern did. It's not clear today that Democratic activists have learned the lesson of McGovern, which is why Sen. Clinton faces a dilemma on Iran and why her road to the Democratic nomination won't be smooth sailing.

(From the Toronto Star: "Stephen Harper's government has quietly committed Canada to 'indefinite' participation in NORAD and agreed to give the military alliance new responsibilities to watch for a terror attack by sea. Fresh off his softwood lumber truce, Harper's government yesterday gave another boost to Canada-U.S. relations when it signed off on the renewal of the landmark North American Aerospace Defence Command treaty.")

Posted on March 17, 2006:

Leadership matters. Tuesday's Globe and Mail has some interesting poll results on the Canadian troop deployment to Afghanistan.

Canadians' views have shifted sharply in support of the Afghan military mission even as troop casualties have mounted over the past three weeks, a new poll suggests.

A modest but clear majority -- 55 per cent of respondents to a nationwide poll taken for The Globe and Mail and CTV over the past four days -- now broadly support the decision to send troops to Afghanistan. Only 41 per cent oppose the deployment.

In late February, more than 60 per cent said that given a vote in Parliament, they would opt against sending troops to the war-torn country. Only 27 per cent said they would vote in favour.... Perhaps most surprisingly, a clear majority -- 59 per cent -- said they are willing to tolerate Canadian casualties to "help achieve security and stability in the region."

The poll results "suggest that a concerted public campaign in defence of the mission by senior military officers, as well as political figures from both the Conservative government and Liberal Opposition, has had an impact."

This change in public attitude doesn't surprise me. A while back, the German Marshall Fund released a poll that found increased European disapproval of President Bush's foreign policy but with an interesting twist. One exception was in Britain (I should note that Poland’s approval numbers mirrored those in the U.S.), “where there was a slight upturn in approval.” I doubt it was a coincidence that this “upturn” occurred in a nation where the national government most vigorously made the case for getting rid of Saddam and for promoting democracy in the region. Bush’s lowest ratings were in countries, namely France and Germany, whose leaders adamantly and very publicly opposed Bush's policies. Even so, Germany's Gerhard Schröder ran on an explicitly anti-American platform and lost to an opponent who forcefully countered his demagoguery. Canada's Stephen Harper did the same against the anti-U.S. rhetoric of Paul Martin. And, of course, Australia's John Howard won a fourth term, while Tony Blair was elected to an unprecedented third. Is there a message here?

(From today's Boston Globe: "As record oil prices turn attention to the need for renewable fuels, momentum is building in Congress to buck Senator Edward M. Kennedy's bid to block the proposed Cape Cod wind energy project, potentially reviving efforts to construct the sprawling windmill farm in Nantucket Sound.... The maneuver to stop the wind farm 'is clearly a backroom deal, and they're going to get called publicly on it,' said John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA. 'The Democrats are going to kill the first big offshore wind farm in the United States because of their relationship with Ted Kennedy.'")

Posted on April 25, 2006:

Gas prices have skyrocketed and the 36th annual Earth Day just passed. So it's hardly surprising that many Democrats have taken the opportunity to bash the president's environmental and energy policies. Senator Minority Leader Harry Reid has demanded a "bipartisan national energy summit to solve the problem of America’s dangerous dependence on foreign oil...." And Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida delivered his party's radio address on Saturday. He urged a higher "mileage standard for all passenger vehicles," which is interesting because Democratic Sen. Carl Levin has often led the charge against stiffer mileage standards. Nelson further warned Americans, "We must confront some powerful interests, including the oil lobby" if we our to cut our "dependence on foreign oil."

Like Sen. Nelson, Greenpeace is also confronting "some powerful interests." According to the National Journal, the group has taken on the Senate's premier liberal for his opposition to a proposed wind farm that "would provide 75 percent of the area's energy needs with clean and safe wind power."

Greenpeace takes on a surprising target this week: Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

The 30-second spot features a cartoon Kennedy pounding wind turbines as they sprout from the water. A voice meant to be Kennedy's -- but lacking the senator's trademark New England drawl -- complains that "I might see [the wind farm] from my mansion on the cape!"

Kennedy recently backed an amendment to a Coast Guard reauthorization bill that would make the first offshore wind energy project vulnerable to state veto.

Of course, I don't blame Sen. Kennedy (or Sen. Kerry for that matter). I wouldn't want to sit on the porch of my beachfront mansion staring into a sea of turbine generators either.

Gas prices have skyrocketed and the 36th annual Earth Day just passed. So it's hardly surprising that many Democrats have taken the opportunity to bash the president's environmental and energy policies. Senator Minority Leader Harry Reid has demanded a "bipartisan national energy summit to solve the problem of America’s dangerous dependence on foreign oil...." And Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida delivered his party's radio address on Saturday. He urged a higher "mileage standard for all passenger vehicles," which is interesting because Democratic Sen. Carl Levin has often led the charge against stiffer mileage standards. Nelson further warned Americans, "We must confront some powerful interests, including the oil lobby" if we our to cut our "dependence on foreign oil."

Like Sen. Nelson, Greenpeace is also confronting "some powerful interests." According to the National Journal, the group has taken on the Senate's premier liberal for his opposition to a proposed wind farm that "would provide 75 percent of the area's energy needs with clean and safe wind power."

Greenpeace takes on a surprising target this week: Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

The 30-second spot features a cartoon Kennedy pounding wind turbines as they sprout from the water. A voice meant to be Kennedy's -- but lacking the senator's trademark New England drawl -- complains that "I might see [the wind farm] from my mansion on the cape!"

Kennedy recently backed an amendment to a Coast Guard reauthorization bill that would make the first offshore wind energy project vulnerable to state veto.

Of course, I don't blame Sen. Kennedy (or Sen. Kerry for that matter). I wouldn't want to sit on the porch of my beachfront mansion staring into a sea of turbine generators either.

Last night, PBS' American Experience chronicled the building of the Alaska Pipeline, which traverses some 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez. Planning for the pipeline began in 1968, but a mountain of legal challenges put off construction until 1975. Two years later oil began flowing south. What kick-started actual construction was the October 1973 Yom Kippur War and the subsequent OPEC oil embargo against the U.S. Relying so heavily on foreign energy sources, Congress figured out, wasn't such a good idea. From American Experience:

July 17: With a vote of 50 to 49, the Senate narrowly passes the Gravel Amendment which declares that the Department of the Interior has fulfilled all the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, allowing Alyeska to move forward. Vice President Spiro Agnew casts the deciding vote.

October 6: On the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, Egyptian forces attack Israel, while at the same time Syrian troops assault the Golan Heights in a surprise offensive. With help from the United States, Israel succeeds in reversing the Arab gains. The clash will have repercussions for the U.S. oil supply.

Pumps closed due to the gasoline shortage October 17: The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) strikes back against the United States and the Netherlands for their support of Israel in the war. OPEC imposes an oil embargo. Overnight, the price of a barrel of oil rises from $3 to over $5. Gas at the pumps will soon rise from 30 cents per gallon to $1.20, and drivers will wait in long lines to fill up their tanks.

November 16: In direct response to the oil crisis, President Nixon signs the Trans Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law. Nixon introduces "Project Independence" in a televised speech: "Throughout history, America has made great sacrifices of blood and also treasure to achieve and maintain its independence. In the last third of this century, our independence will depend on maintaining and achieving self-sufficiency in energy."

Some things never change on the independence front.

(From today's Wall Street Journal: "Few things are less becoming in a political party than desperation, as Republicans are now demonstrating as they panic over rising oil and gas prices. If blaming private industry for Congress's own energy mistakes is the best the GOP can do, no wonder its voters may sit out the November election....There's been unconscionable behavior all right, most of it on Capitol Hill. A decent portion of the latest run-up in gas prices--and the entire cause of recent spot shortages--is the direct result of the energy bill Congress passed last summer. That self-serving legislation handed Congress's friends in the ethanol lobby a mandate that forces drivers to use 7.5 billion gallons annually of that oxygenate by 2012....These columns warned Republicans this would happen. As recently as last year, ethanol was selling for $1.45 a gallon. By December it had reached $2 and is now going for $2.77. So refiners are now having to buy both oil and ethanol at sky-high prices. In short, the only market manipulation has been by politicians.")

Posted on April 18, 2006:

Gas prices are way up and it's not just because of soaring oil prices on the world market that are beyond our control. Under the GOP's watch and pushed farm state legislators, Congress mandated more ethanol use in our gasoline. The net result, as Irwin Stelzer explains, is tighter gas supplies and even higher prices at the pump.

Finally, there is gasoline. In the good old American tradition of believing there is a solution to every problem, voters want to know what Congress is planning to do about gasoline prices, which are once again on the rise. Perhaps holding off until Congress was safely out of shouting range, the Department of Energy announced a precipitous drop in gasoline inventories, and released its forecast of gasoline prices. It expects the average price of regular grade gasoline to hit $2.73 next month, $0.57 and 26 percent higher than in May of last year. Part of this is due to the mandated increase in the use of ethanol, which is rising in price as producers find themselves hard-pressed to meet skyrocketing demand--up from 1.8 million barrels a month in 2002 to 7.4 million barrels this month. This is a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences--not unforeseen by experts, but neither foreseen nor intended by legislators. In order to blend ethanol into gasoline and still avoid violating air quality regulations, refiners must remove other components, with the net effect of reducing gasoline supplies by 1.7 percent in the face of increasing demand.

Good job, Republicans. ADM may be happy but I doubt most voters are -- for now at least.

Agence France Presse reports that,

Saudi Arabia will exert all efforts to fight terrorism and its financiers, the kingdom's crown prince said, calling it a "disease" that threatens the whole world.

Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, who is also deputy prime minister and defence minister, said terrorist acts are contrary to the teachings of Islam.

Sounds good. Hopefully, this means the Saudi government will stop funding stuff like this.

From the Associated Press:

Chertoff: U.S. would have been safer with Dubai company at ports

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. missed an opportunity to make its shores safer when it drove away a Dubai-based company poised to operate cargo terminals at several American seaports, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday.

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Chertoff said the international shipping firm DP World could have helped implement stronger security at many ports where the U.S. now has limited influence.

"We could (have) actually built in some additional assurances, which would have given us more security in the wake of the deal than we had before the deal," Chertoff said. "The oddity of this, the irony of this, is that had the deal gone forward, we would have had greater ability to impose a security regime worldwide on the company than we have now."

DP World, the world's third-largest ports company, got a role in loading and unloading cargo from ships in at least 20 U.S. ports when it purchased the British company Peninsular & Oriental. The Bush administration defended the deal, but under pressure from Congress, the company said this month that it will sell its U.S. businesses to an American buyer.

The decision followed a month of attacks by critics who said they did not trust a government-owned company from the Arabian Peninsula to be given a sensitive role handling cargo at U.S. ports. DP World is owned by the Emirate of Dubai, which is part of the United Arab Emirates.

Chertoff, however, said DP World has a good track record with U.S. authorities and has long been trusted to help move U.S. military materiel and personnel.

Here are two pieces worth reading on the Mearsheimer-Walt paper on the "Israel Lobby" in the U.S.

From Max Boot in the LA Times (reg. req'd):

IN HIS CLASSIC 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," the late Richard Hofstadter noted: "One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality that it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed." As examples, he cited a 96-page pamphlet by Joseph McCarthy that contained "no less than 313 footnote references" and a book by John Birch Society founder Robert Welch that employed "one hundred pages of bibliography and notes" to show that President Eisenhower was a communist.

For a more recent instance of the paranoid style, a modern-day Hofstadter could consult "The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy," a "working paper" by John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. With 83 pages of text and 211 footnotes, the Mearsheimer-Walt essay (part of which appeared in the London Review of Books) is as scholarly as those of Welch and McCarthy — and just as nutty.

And from Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe.

Walt and Mearsheimer are not the first to wade into these swamps. In March 2003, US Representative James Moran inveighed against Jews at an antiwar rally: ''If it was not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq," the Virginian Democrat fumed, ''we would not be doing this." It was at about the same time that Professor Edward Said of Columbia University was writing, ''Wherever you look in the Congress there are the tell-tale signs either of the Zionist lobby, the right-wing Christians, or the military-industrial complex, three inordinately influential minority groups who share . . . unbridled support for extremist Zionism." A year earlier it had been South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, lamenting that ''the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal" in the United States; no one dares oppose Israel ''because the Jewish lobby is powerful -- very powerful."

(See here and here.)

Posted on March 21, 2006:

It would be interesting to know whether the NSA program helped snag Babar and his buddies across the Atlantic. From the BBC:

Seven British citizens had acquired "most of the necessary components" to launch a bombing campaign in the UK, the Old Bailey has heard.

Prosecutor David Waters QC said "pubs, nightclubs and trains" were discussed as potential targets, but police moved in before the plot "reached fruition"....

Mr Waters told the jury they would be hearing from an American citizen, Mohammed Babar, who conspired with the defendants.

Babar has pleaded guilty to terrorism offences in the US and, according to the prosecutor, "has an insight as an insider into the events and plans which an outsider could not have".

It is claimed Babar met several of the defendants in England and in Pakistan, where many of them have family connections.

Mr Waters said the defendants' "principal purpose" in travelling to Pakistan was "to acquire expertise in relation particularly to explosives".

It was during a meeting with Babar that 24-year-old defendant Omar Khyam, from Crawley in West Sussex, allegedly told Babar his targets could include pubs, nightclubs and trains....

The prosecutor said Mr Khyam and co-defendant Salahuddin Amin, 31, from Luton in Bedfordshire, both told Babar they worked for a man who they claimed was "number three in al-Qaeda".

It would be interesting to know whether the NSA program helped snag Babar and his buddies across the Atlantic. From the BBC:

Seven British citizens had acquired "most of the necessary components" to launch a bombing campaign in the UK, the Old Bailey has heard.

Prosecutor David Waters QC said "pubs, nightclubs and trains" were discussed as potential targets, but police moved in before the plot "reached fruition"....

Mr Waters told the jury they would be hearing from an American citizen, Mohammed Babar, who conspired with the defendants.

Babar has pleaded guilty to terrorism offences in the US and, according to the prosecutor, "has an insight as an insider into the events and plans which an outsider could not have".

It is claimed Babar met several of the defendants in England and in Pakistan, where many of them have family connections.

Mr Waters said the defendants' "principal purpose" in travelling to Pakistan was "to acquire expertise in relation particularly to explosives".

It was during a meeting with Babar that 24-year-old defendant Omar Khyam, from Crawley in West Sussex, allegedly told Babar his targets could include pubs, nightclubs and trains....

The prosecutor said Mr Khyam and co-defendant Salahuddin Amin, 31, from Luton in Bedfordshire, both told Babar they worked for a man who they claimed was "number three in al-Qaeda".

Leadership matters. Tuesday's Globe and Mail has some interesting poll results on the Canadian troop deployment to Afghanistan.

Canadians' views have shifted sharply in support of the Afghan military mission even as troop casualties have mounted over the past three weeks, a new poll suggests.

A modest but clear majority -- 55 per cent of respondents to a nationwide poll taken for The Globe and Mail and CTV over the past four days -- now broadly support the decision to send troops to Afghanistan. Only 41 per cent oppose the deployment.

In late February, more than 60 per cent said that given a vote in Parliament, they would opt against sending troops to the war-torn country. Only 27 per cent said they would vote in favour.... Perhaps most surprisingly, a clear majority -- 59 per cent -- said they are willing to tolerate Canadian casualties to "help achieve security and stability in the region."

The poll results "suggest that a concerted public campaign in defence of the mission by senior military officers, as well as political figures from both the Conservative government and Liberal Opposition, has had an impact."

This change in public attitude doesn't surprise me. A while back, the German Marshall Fund released a poll that found increased European disapproval of President Bush's foreign policy but with an interesting twist. One exception was in Britain (I should note that Poland’s approval numbers mirrored those in the U.S.), “where there was a slight upturn in approval.” I doubt it was a coincidence that this “upturn” occurred in a nation where the national government most vigorously made the case for getting rid of Saddam and for promoting democracy in the region. Bush’s lowest ratings were in countries, namely France and Germany, whose leaders adamantly and very publicly opposed Bush's policies. Even so, Germany's Gerhard Schröder ran on an explicitly anti-American platform and lost to an opponent who forcefully countered his demagoguery. Canada's Stephen Harper did the same against the anti-U.S. rhetoric of Paul Martin. And, of course, Australia's John Howard won a fourth term, while Tony Blair was elected to an unprecedented third. Is there a message here?