[MrBean]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', '[')
I'm not sure about all that. Even in the short time I've been in this forum, I've found that a lot of people are using Peak Oil to advance their agendas. Some are claiming we will need to suspend the bill of rights. Some say we'll have to prohibit childbirth and force people to stop consuming. Some say it may even come to the ovens. You seem to be proposing a return to the USSR.

[k_semler]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBean', '.')..and that political (democratic) control (which IMO by necessity means some form of collective ownership) of basic productive means is the best guarantee for population to be able to satisfy their basic material needs (food, clothes and shelter) and to participate in political life on more equal basis.

[k_semler]

All of the subtext under chap #2 was supposed to be italicized. Looks like I closed the tags too soon.

[MrBean]

[quote="k_semler
I have a book that you may be interested in. It was published in the year of 1848 in Germany by Karl Marx. It is available on Amazon.com. If you do not wish to purchase it, there is the full text of it available online. After reading this book, be sure to read these books also. I will provide some quotations of the first reccomended book.
[/quote]

I have some rudimentary knowledge of Marx and Marxism, he was a profound economical theoretician among other things, and with some parts of his theories I agree and with some parts disagree. For Vanguard Communism I have no respect, IMO it is elitist movement doomed to fail (as proven by Stalinism), but I have some intellectual sympathy for Libertarian Communism aka Anarchistic Syndikalism. Enough said for fear of total thread hijack.

If you wish to have intellectual, informative and non-emotional dialogue on Marxism, start a thread dedicated to the subject in the General Forum and I promise to share more of my thoughts.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')We already do have this. If you wish to run for any office in government, you can. If you have enough votes, you will become elscted. Also, several states have passed statues requring the voters to pass a referendum before it becomes state law. Washington State is a prime example.

[Grimnir]

I think what history has shown is that "experts" like Greenspan et al are very good at predicting events that take place within the parameters of the system, but very bad at predicting events that change the system itself. When the Great Depression hit, practically no one saw it coming even though we now think it was essentially inevitable.

[stu]

Good thought John Denver.

I don't truly believe that politicians are incompetent most of the time. Lets face it these people are clever and intelligent and if they were dumb as fuck would probably not get voted into power. (Though you could argue against me by mentioning the current President.) What i'm saying is most politicians are not stupid and if the average "Joe on the street" can figure out peak oil then surely the politicians will know about it because they're the world leaders for Christs sake!

This inevitably leads us to work out they are not saying anything about it. There are a few possible reasons.

1. They don't want to cause a social or financial panic.

Any governmental announcement about peak oil will make the masses very uncomfortable. It could also lead to a dive in consumer confidence which would send the stock market into a crash. But both of these situations will only happen if the government responds to our demands of "What are you doing about it? with the following.

2. They don't have a realistic solution.

From the research i've done i notice that other alternatives to oil will be more expensive and not produce enough energy. Thats why cheap oil has enabled us humans to advance so far technologically. If the government does not have a realistic solution then we start moving towards the conspiracy angle because our leaders will not be telling us the whole truth (but since when did they do that anyway!)

The conspiracy angle

I've been a part-time conspiracy researcher for about 7 years now and have looked at various theories but mainly ones that involve the human race as a whole not just individual and frankly far out ones like Roswell, JFK etc and other conspiracies that are famous in popular culture. The most realisitic one I have seen is the plan by a global elite to create what is commonly known as a New World Order.

For those of you who don't know what that refers to, Google NWO and you will see what i mean. Theres a lot of detail but to cut a long story short there is a plan to create a one world government with one currency, one army etc. The most realistic vision i can give you is in George Orwells 1984 which is (apparently)based on this plan. The plan has been evolving for 200 years and is being conducted by secret societies such as Freemasons. If you know nothing about the NWO then it will take you a few hours of research to learn most of the basics.

A major part of the plan is to reduce the world population to 500 million because it is a lot easier to rule over this many people rather than 6 billion. Apparently what will happen is that the world will be fraught with war and disease and starvation like never before so we will cry out for a solution and a world government will be the answer.

What i'm saying is that all of this happens when the oil runs out. First the economic system will collapse. This will result in mass unemplyment followed by starvation and the breakdown of the basic infrastructure of society e.g transport, healthcare etc. This will mean that diseases will become more rampant and more easily caught eg flu. There will also be a breakdown in the food delivery system and the treatment of water which will kill more people.

On top of that you have also got the fact that all of the major powers in the world will most likely be fighting it out for the last drop of oil. The theory that Iraq was invaded so that the US could get hold of their oil seems to make sense, given all that bullshit about WMD. I would love to see what happens in Iran next because the Russians have helped them build their nuclear sites and surely getting hold of their oil is in the Russians interests. Combine that with the fact that Russia even has a section of it's government devoted to relations with the Iranians then the whole picture becomes very interesting.

But anyway I digress.

This NWO is meant to be run by the rich and powerful and in the event of an oil crisis who are going to be the people less affected? The super rich. Surely with their wealth they can buy their own supplies and own protection. It is interesting to imagine what the likes of Bill Gates et al would do in the event of a post-oil crash world.

The NWO conspiracy theory is to me just that -a theory. In my opinion you have to ask yourself why would secret societies plot this kind of stuff.
What is their ultimate goal? Some conspiracy theorists say they are satanists and are preparing the world for the arrival of the Anti-christ himself. Others say it involves aliens and that Bush, Clinton and the others are actually lizards who are plotting a takeover (that one makes me laugh).

Personally I would love to think that there is something rational and believable to the way that the government treats the peak oil theory. But lets face it - look at the history of the 20th Century.

It was littered with conflicts which mainly involved, directly or indirectly, the biggest consumer of cheap oil in the world- the USA. There are many wars in this world that have been fought over the supply and consumption of oil. The governments never tell us if they are fighting over oil so why should they start being honest with us now.

Some of you will think the above theories are bullshit and that I should be locked up in a mental home. To be honest I don't totally believe them, but all the shit that has happened under the Bush administration has seriously got me thinking. Maybe the NWO theory is just bullshit. Maybe the peak oil theory is bullshit. (I doubt it), maybe we will find 10,000 billion barrels of oil in Kazakhstan (Hope so). Either way all of the above is just theory and would love to hear peoples response to this coz i've only known about this peak oil stuff for a few weeks and it's put the shits up me. Even when i discuss it with other people they just say everything is going to be fine.

We'll soon see about that.

Stu.

[KevO]

An amazing report with pics on last week's meeting of the Bilderberg
group.
Be sure to scroll down to the section titled 'Energy' as well as the
British Elections and the US Neocons plus EVERYTHING else that you
will do for a year!!

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Re ... tulin.html

does this 'Bilderberg' group really exist then?
KevO

[Doly]

The Bilderberg group does really exist. There is plenty of documentation about their meetings. However, it's also true that they are generally very quiet about the content of the discussions. I don't know if the information in the article about their discussions is reliable.

[KevO]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', 'T')he Bilderberg group does really exist. There is plenty of documentation about their meetings. However, it's also true that they are generally very quiet about the content of the discussions. I don't know if the information in the article about their discussions is reliable.

[DomusAlbion]

The Bilderberger are just as much victims of history and geology as we all are. They just think they might have some power to control events and conspiracy nuts think they (the Bilderberg, Masons, Illuminati, whatever) do control history.

B'ah!

[EnemyCombatant]

You would enjoy reading Alex Jones. He believe PO is a scam by the elites to help bring about the NWO.

Here is info on Bilderberg. Alex JOnes has been trying to expose them for many years now. He is an authority on this subject.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/archive_bilderberg.html

[aldente]

I've heard about a study that looked into the nature of urban legends. Neither a completely true nor a completely false story made it to become an urban legend but a combination of both.

In that sense I believe that groups like the Bilderbergs do exist and are influencial but do not and cannot control history as much as they would like to do so.

From another source I picked up that about 300 families share an equal amount of wealth than the rest of mankind combined. It would be very surprising if they would leave political events to random outcome . Not to say that they are all connected and "conspiring" but it should be common sense to understand that such wealth translates into power and these families have their stake in it.

According to William Engdahl the Bilderberg Group was strongly involved in the move away from the gold backed Dollar to the oil backed Dollar:

The Bretton Woods Gold Exchange began to break down, as Europe got on its feet economically and began to become a strong exporter by the mid-1960's. This growing economic strength in Western Europe coincided with soaring U.S. public deficits as Johnson escalated the tragic war in Vietnam. All during the 1960's, France's de Gaulle began to take its dollar export earnings and demand gold from the U.S. Federal Reserve, legal under Bretton Woods at that time. By November 1967 the drain of gold from U.S. and Bank of England vaults had become critical. The weak link in the Bretton Woods Gold Exchange arrangement was Britain, the 'sick man of Europe'. The link broke as Sterling was devalued in 1967. That merely accelerated the pressure on the U.S. dollar, as French and other central banks increased their call for U.S. gold in exchange for their dollar reserves. They calculated with the soaring war deficits from Vietnam, it was only a matter of months before the United States itself would be forced to devalue against gold, so better to get their gold out at a high price.

By May 1971 the drain of U.S. Federal Reserve gold had become alarming, and even the Bank of England joined the French in demanding U.S. gold for their dollars. That was the point where rather than risk a collapse of the gold reserves of the United States, the Nixon Administration opted to abandon gold entirely, going to a system of floating currencies in August 1971. The break with gold opened the door to an entirely new phase of the American Century. In this new phase, control over monetary policy was, in effect, privatized, with large international banks such as Citibank, Chase Manhattan or Barclays Bank assuming the role that central banks had in a gold system, but entirely without gold. 'Market forces' now could determine the dollar. And they did with a vengeance.

The free floating of the dollar, combined with the 1973 rise in OPEC oil prices by 400% after the Yom Kippur War, created the basis for a second phase of the American Century, the Petrodollar phase.

Beginning the mid-1970's the American Century system of global economic dominance underwent a dramatic change. An Anglo-American oil shock suddenly created enormous demand for the floating dollar. Oil importing countries from Germany to Argentina to Japan, all were faced with how to export in dollars to pay their expensive new oil import bills. OPEC oil countries were flooded with new oil dollars. A major share of these oil dollars came to London and New York banks where a new process was instituted. Henry Kissinger termed it, 'recycling petrodollars'. The recycling strategy was discussed already in May 1971 at the Bilderberger meeting in Saltsjoebaden, Sweden. It was presented by American members of Bilderberg, as detailed in the book A Century of War
Source:William Engdahl

[jimmydean]

This rings harmoniously with a conspiracy minded book I read years ago (Creature from Jekyll Island) about the formation of the Federal Reserve.

The depression was a boom time for the few powerful and wealthy people who scooped up assets at cheap prices. Now in the U.S. the banks are literally giving away and people are taking on record debt levels. If there is a oil based economic crash no doubt this will happen again further concentrating the wealth. Banks will be in a better position to survive the economic implosion this time round and no doubt will be foreclosing on assets.

[EnemyCombatant]

You would enjoy Thieves in the Temple. That's for those of you that really want to understand the FRB and all it's glory.

[newby]

Perhaps ... this peak oil is a conspiracy theory?

Perhaps this is a fabricated shortage , so the oil proces go up. A lot of people are making money out of this , and it isnt you and me. In some countries the Governments tax oil/fuel/plastics , and every dollar it goes up they make billions.

Perhaps the oil fields are being turned off one at a time and people are being paid to say "oh that one has run out/ or is running out".

Perhaps the moderators here are government spies spreading the rumours giving rise to a speculating oil price.

Perhaps OPEC are really members of a secret cult that dress up in funny clothes and spread rumors of "oh no my refinery can only make 10 billion barrels , when in realaity , they have the taps turned off and they are all speculating/insider trading on the future markets.

Perhaps the prediction of nostradamus , chapter 10 , quatrain 12
"dark deep trouble forgoes those tricked into battle"
"when the pestalence of the west meet those from the north"
"and the victors believe the lies three times told"
"oil , oil , oil they cry and once again they can drive their v8's"

[T4chibanaUkyo]

ok, there n00by, thanks for getting me started. I also do believe in conspiracy theories, but just because the US government has oviously showed that it will do anything to continue to hold power, ANYTHING. some other thoughts come to mind....

1) Of course, PO is real, its a geological fact (unless you believe its abioitc), but I have heard that secret organizations such as the Illuminati (or the New World Order) are looking forward to PO because it would lead to world wars, destablize the main powers of the world, and reduce population. And such a good time for someone to pick up the pieces and make a global society(mark of the beast, 666, and all that jazz).

2)About energy terms, I do believe that the government is hiding technology that would solve our energy problems, but would dare never release it to the public because they would be giving unlimited power(electrical and political) to the people that they control. Hell, Nikola Tesla was soooooo close to creating a tower that would release unlimited electrical energy, but J.P. Morgan( the financer of the project) didn't see this thing making a profit. After Tesla's death, the CIA got a hold of most of his invention papers, leaving the rest for his relatives to pick up.

In any situation, if our tax dollars that have amassed into the zillions have not found an unlimited energy project in this day an age when we have batteries powered by urine and huge air guns that can shoot out blasts of air that smell like farts, then we as a race have failed science. It just sad that greed and control will get in the way of our energy revolution, so that we may colonize other planets, build great plasma warships able to destroy small moons with one blast and dominate the galaxy.....oh, wait a minute....sratch that idea, let's just stay on Earth and play with sticks and grow corn.

But, good start n00b, the governement would close the oil taps for more money.....but take this thought......to the next level......to the EXTREME!(just kidding)

[JudoCow09]

Oh no! My cat must also be behind this conspiracy! Monitoring my every move.

[PhilBiker]

Everything's a conspiracy if you're self-absorbed and paranoid enough.

[CrudeAwakening]

No, PO isn't a conspiracy, but the lack of serious media attention (or, when it exists, the diversion of attention from issues of substance so as to suggest there is nothing to be concerned about) appears to be an institutional 'conspiracy' of sorts.

[katkinkate]

Well, if it's a conspiracy theory sponsored by TPTB, they're not doing very well, are they?

I mean, where's the news reports on the mainstream media. If they want people to think oil's peaking they should put a bit more effort into telling people, instead of leaving it to us paranoid, intraverted internet-addicted nerds.

Oh, by the way, welcome to the club Newby.