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Topic:	Science > Abortion
User:	"Xomicron"
Date:	02 Apr 2004 05:00:52 PM
Object:	OPEC *****

I wonder how the Saudi prince ragheads would feel if an "unknown"
explosion suddenly took out 1 or 2 of their biggest oil refineries in
the middle of the night? Of course, the "unknown" would be an American
Cruise missile.
.

User: ""
Title: Re: OPEC *****	02 Apr 2004 05:31:29 PM

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Haven't Saudi funds gone to Bush ?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
.

User: "yetti"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	07 Apr 2004 11:33:23 PM

wrote in message news:<nqtr605rd5dh8qoqbdboirqirs3i2ggsv8@4ax.com>...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Haven't Saudi funds gone to Bush ?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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User: "Farouk Dindar"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	02 Apr 2004 05:05:33 PM

xomicron@wp.pl
Another e-mail for the killfile
This guy could be fundamentalist Christian cult member.
Farouk Dindar
.

User: "yetti"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	07 Apr 2004 11:33:45 PM

(Farouk Dindar) wrote in message news:<Mkmbc.21815$j57.1226752@news20.bellglobal.com>...

xomicron@wp.pl

Another e-mail for the killfile

This guy could be fundamentalist Christian cult member.

Farouk Dindar

User: "Comicboards"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	08 Apr 2004 01:58:05 PM

Let's not blame OPEC for the rise in gas prices. The rise in gas prices is
a direct result of the change in value of the US dollar. Because our
National Deficit has increased substantially, it has reduced the value of
our dollar. Thus the higher price for gas. This can be verified by
comparing the dollar to other foreign currency over the past six months.
Blaming OPEC is simply another cop out by a bumbling republican
administration.
--
Discuss Politics, Race Relations, Gay Rights and Marvel or DC characters.
http://www.comicboards.org
"Xomicron" <xomicron@wp.pl> wrote in message
news:Xns94BFB73AFAFF4xomicron@0.0.0.1...

User: "Richard Walker"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	08 Apr 2004 06:01:44 PM

"Comicboards" <webmasters@comicsboard.org> wrote in message news:<976dnRomvdcmPejdRVn-sQ@comcast.com>...

Gas price? Get real. Gas prices rise slower than any other commodity
we use. Its just that we see those prices day to day in big numbers
by gas stations. People that will drive way out of their way to save
a total of 10 cents per gallon, ($1.50 saved on a tank), won't even
notice the vast price swings at grocery stores, ie, one day a block of
Velveeta cheese is $5.50 at one store and $3.89 at another.
People pay way to much time worrying about the price of gas. Compared
to maintenance, insurance, taxes, tires, oil, depreciation, etc, gas
is nearly insignificant.
As to exchange rates? The budget deficit is not a biggy. The current
account deficit is important and the fed's ultralow interest rate
position have much more impact.
If you want to take a big bite out of US gas prices, despite how low
they are, mandate the construction of 10 new refineries and ditch the
localized "custom" mixes required for each metro market. That'll do
it, though it will take a while to complete construction. Stupid
greens have made it impossible to build new refineries.
.

User: "Comicboards"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	08 Apr 2004 07:55:09 PM

"Richard Walker" <rwwalker@txucom.net> wrote in message
news:e0f71ec4.0404081501.326c543a@posting.google.com...

"Comicboards" <webmasters@comicsboard.org> wrote in message

news:<976dnRomvdcmPejdRVn-sQ@comcast.com>...

Let's not blame OPEC for the rise in gas prices. The rise in gas prices

a direct result of the change in value of the US dollar. Because our
National Deficit has increased substantially, it has reduced the value

our dollar. Thus the higher price for gas. This can be verified by
comparing the dollar to other foreign currency over the past six months.

Blaming OPEC is simply another cop out by a bumbling republican
administration.

Gas price? Get real. Gas prices rise slower than any other commodity
we use. Its just that we see those prices day to day in big numbers
by gas stations.

I see you did couldn't refute my testimony.
--
Discuss Politics, Race Relations, Gay Rights and Marvel or DC characters.
http://www.comicboards.org
.

User: "Richard Walker"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	09 Apr 2004 10:44:24 AM

"Comicboards" <webmasters@comicsboard.org> wrote in message news:<0rydnTGvGYf2aejdRVn-uA@comcast.com>...

"Richard Walker" <rwwalker@txucom.net> wrote in message
news:e0f71ec4.0404081501.326c543a@posting.google.com...

Gas price? Get real. Gas prices rise slower than any other commodity
we use. Its just that we see those prices day to day in big numbers
by gas stations.

I see you did couldn't refute my testimony.

Well let me try again to see if you can understand. In small words.
You said:

The rise in gas prices is a direct result
of the change in value of the US dollar.

The limiting factor on supply for gasoline in the US is NOT oil.
The limiting factor on supply for gasoline in the US is refinery
capacity.
Law of supply and demand, where supply is capped and demand
accelerating, retail prices rise until equilibrium is reached.
It is perfectly true that the rise in CRUDE OIL prices is partially
related to the slip in the dollar's value, but compared to the big
limiting factors on GASOLINE supply, its just a dribble in the ocean.
.

User: "Ray Fischer"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	08 Apr 2004 09:45:19 PM

Comicboards <webmasters@comicsboard.org> wrote:

"Richard Walker" <rwwalker@txucom.net> wrote in message

"Comicboards" <webmasters@comicsboard.org> wrote in message

Let's not blame OPEC for the rise in gas prices. The rise in gas prices

a direct result of the change in value of the US dollar. Because our
National Deficit has increased substantially, it has reduced the value

Gas price? Get real. Gas prices rise slower than any other commodity
we use. Its just that we see those prices day to day in big numbers
by gas stations.

I see you did couldn't refute my testimony.

The price of oil is tied to the dollar.
The first hint of what might be in store came last month when Opec
announced its decision to withdraw 1m barrels of crude oil a day
from the market. Opec is worried about the weakening value of the
dollar: it has lost one-third of its value in just under two
years. Since Opec sells oil for dollars, the oil-producing
countries are losing precious revenue as the value of the dollar
continues to erode. And because oil-producing countries then turn
around and purchase much of their goods and services from the EU
and must pay in euros, their purchasing power continues to
deteriorate. (The euro is currently valued at $1.23.)
http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=687
--
Ray Fischer
rfischer@sonic.net
.

User: "Ray Fischer"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	02 Apr 2004 10:08:08 PM

Xomicron <xomicron@wp.pl> wrote:

You're insane.
--
Ray Fischer
rfischer@sonic.net
.

User: "yetti"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	07 Apr 2004 11:32:56 PM

(Ray Fischer) wrote in message news:<c4ldb7$cl3$1@bolt.sonic.net>...

Xomicron <xomicron@wp.pl> wrote:

You're insane.

User: "Poster Boy"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	02 Apr 2004 10:29:46 PM

On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 04:08:08 GMT,

(Ray Fischer) wrote:

Xomicron <xomicron@wp.pl> wrote:

You're insane.

No, he's just a typical fundamentalist Christian: racist,
misogynistic, homophobic and war mongering. I'm sure Jesus
would be proud! Oops, I forgot... Fundies don't need
Christ, they talk *directly* to God.
.

User: "Xomicron"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	05 Apr 2004 07:41:31 AM

Poster Boy <PosterBoy@localhost.com> wrote in
news:v2fs60tpftslbk3uhimim3ddp1thaqtp6i@4ax.com:

On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 04:08:08 GMT,

(Ray Fischer) wrote:

Xomicron <xomicron@wp.pl> wrote:

You're insane.

And you know this how? I don't expect an answer from you anytime soon.
.

User: "yetti"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	07 Apr 2004 11:31:34 PM

Xomicron <xomicron@wp.pl> wrote in message news:<Xns94C2586A64164xomicron@0.0.0.1>...

Poster Boy <PosterBoy@localhost.com> wrote in
news:v2fs60tpftslbk3uhimim3ddp1thaqtp6i@4ax.com:

On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 04:08:08 GMT,

(Ray Fischer) wrote:

Xomicron <xomicron@wp.pl> wrote:

You're insane.

And you know this how? I don't expect an answer from you anytime soon.

User: "Metaphoric-Motor-Replay"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	08 Apr 2004 10:43:10 PM

Xomicron <xomicron@wp.pl> wrote in message news:<Xns94C2586A64164xomicron@0.0.0.1>...

Poster Boy <PosterBoy@localhost.com> wrote in
news:v2fs60tpftslbk3uhimim3ddp1thaqtp6i@4ax.com:

On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 04:08:08 GMT,

(Ray Fischer) wrote:

Xomicron <xomicron@wp.pl> wrote:

Dark heart of the American dream
It's the most polluted state in the planet's most powerful country. Ed
Vulliamy goes into George Bush's backyard to reveal how big oil got in
bed with big politics and the price paid by the little people
Sunday June 16, 2002
The Observer
There is a perverse beauty to the landscape arraigned below the iron
bridge where Highway 255 strides the Houston Ship Channel: great
towers of light and fire as far as the eye can behold; sinewy steel
piping, plumes of smoke and flame twinkling into a Texas twilight
coloured by a shroud of pollution hanging from the sky. The awesome
prepotency of this smokescape is no illusion, for this is an epicentre
of power, oil capital of the Western world and the most industrialised
corner of the United States. It is also the capital of a power machine
perfected in Texas, elevated to rule the nation and now unchallenged
across the planet. A machine that operates in perpetual motion - an
equilibrium of interests - between industry and politics. LaNell
Anderson, former Republican voter, businesswoman and real-estate
broker who lived many years in this land of smokestacks and smog,
calls it 'vending-machine politics: you puts your money in and you
gets your product out'.
'We don't see ourselves as a dynasty,' said George Bush Sr as his son
launched the election campaign that won him the current presidency,
raiding father's Rolodex to do so. 'We don't feel entitled to
anything.' And yet at no point in the past 50 years - the half-century
since 1952 which defines the modern age - has there not been a Bush in
a governor's mansion (in Texas or Florida), on Capitol Hill or in the
White House - and usually more than one of those at a time. The
'vending machine' is a single family whose tango with the powers which
illuminate this endless horizon of light and flame is a dance around
every corner in the labyrinth of Texan and now national - indeed
global - politics. 'Everything they learned when they started out in
west Texas,' says Dr Neil Carman, once a regulator of pollution in the
state, 'they applied to the governor's mansion, the nation and the
world... Power in America is not so much about George W Bush, it's
about the people from Texas who put him there.'
This is the dynasty's throne, the state whose highways are lined with
the spirited advice 'Don't Mess With Texas' (originally the slogan of
an anti-litter campaign). As if litter would make much difference:
Texas counts the worst pollution record in the US, top in the belching
of toxic chemicals and carcinogens into the air, top in chemical
spills, top in ozone pollution, top in carbon-dioxide emissions, top
for mercury emission, top in clean-water violations, top in the
production of hazardous waste. Houston overtook Los Angeles for the
coveted title of 'most polluted city' in the early 90s.
'You are looking at the biggest oil refinery in the world,' indicates
LaNell Anderson. She refers to the edifice that is the 3,000-acre
Exxon Mobil plant at Baytown, near Houston, producer of 507,800
barrels a day. Here begins a story of both dynasty and destiny, for it
was on this spot in 1917 that the Bush family's oil connection was
forged - where the Humble Oil company, which struck black gold in the
Houston suburb of that name, took root, later to be- come the Exxon
behemoth. Humble's founder, William Stamps Farish, went on to become
president of Standard Oil. His daughter became a friend of George Bush
Sr and his grandson William Jr was taken in 'almost like family' (said
Barbara Bush) while campaigning for George Sr's entr�e into Washington
Senatorial politics in 1964. Farish Jr claims to have been the first
man to whom Bush Sr confided his ambition to be president one day, and
was last year named US Ambassador to London.
At first, Anderson welcomed the benefits to a community of the 200
oil-related industries relocated to the Houston area by the time she
and her second husband set up home in a suburb wedged between Exxon
and the Lyondell chemical plant. Neither she nor he had any history of
disease in their families. But in 1985, her husband's daughter gave
birth to a girl, Alyssa, with a rare liver disease - she died aged six
months. In 1986, Anderson's mother became ill and died of bone cancer
a year later. The following year, Anderson and her sister were
diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, as was a granddaughter in 1992,
and an older sister with Crohn's disease. In 1991, her father died
from emphysema; a year later the mother of Alyssa gave birth to a son
immediately diagnosed with severe asthma. Anderson connects the litany
of disease with mishaps by her industrial neighbours. She paraphrases
their attitude thus: 'If someone doesn't like it, they can sue us if
they can - and since we have more money than God, we will win.'
A thumbnail sketch of politics and the environment in the United
States today depicts oil as the lifeblood running through every vein
of an administration forging ahead with its energy policy. The White
House has just been forced to disclose (after being faced with a
Congressional subpoena) that it drew up a national energy plan based
on increased production without regard to the environment or
conservation, having failed to consult with anyone other than its
friends among the producers themselves, notably the disgraced Enron.
This despite the fact that an energy crisis in California last summer
caused most analysts to draw the opposite conclusion, stressing the
need to curb a gas-guzzling America.
At the hub of this turning wheel of influence is Vice President *****
Cheney, fresh into office from his post as chief executive of
Halliburton, the world's second-largest oil-drilling services company,
where he netted a personal fortune of $36m in the year before leaving,
with help from contacts accumulated while serving under George Bush
Sr. Just last week, however, Halliburton joined Enron in coming under
investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for the same
system of publishing inflated revenues - 'aggressive accounting' - for
which Enron has become a synonym for shame. These alleged misdeeds
took place during Cheney's directorship. The company also faces a
floodtide of civil lawsuits over asbestosis_ unless a model can be
found (as has been established in Texas) to make such resort to the
law nigh impossible for anyone without money.
The entwinement of the Bush dynasty with the energy barons of Texas
has apparently humble beginnings, in the Lone Star State's wild west,
on the plains around Midland and Odessa. This is barren land across
which dust devils fly and trains rumble like iron snakes. This is
where George Bush Sr was sent by his father, Senator Prescott Bush, to
a trainee job with the International Derrick and Equipment Company, a
subsidiary of Dresser Industries, controlled by the Bush family and
selling more oil rigs than anyone in the world. (Dresser later became
absorbed by Halliburton.)
The world first heard of Odessa on that fateful day in December 1998
when Bush Jr was governor of Texas and the sky turned black after an
'upset' at the Huntsman chemical plant literally on the wrong side of
the railroad tracks it shares with poor housing, where Mexicans and
blacks live. (An 'upset' is an unplanned accident releasing pollution,
not part of the plant's normal running procedure, and which does not
count in its regulatory tally.) Lucia Llanez, who lives in this
tightly knit community of bungalows between plant and railroad, will
never forget this one: 'It was dark all over; cars on the Interstate
slowing down and putting their lights on because they couldn't see,
though it was day. There was a rumbling like trains that rattled the
windows, and people were going to hospital for watering eyes,
allergies and problems breathing. The cloud stayed two weeks.'
The story of Huntsman goes back to the days of Bush Sr's arrival, when
Odessa was a town of what retired fireman Don Dangerfield calls
'wildcatters'. In the 40s, the US Air Force bombed deep holes in the
giant Permian oil basin in a search for oil which then attracted a
stampede of speculators (including those from Humble) who would,
recalls Dangerfield, 'spend the nights in a hotel, the End of the
Golden West, and gamble their lots in rooms so thick with cigar smoke
you could hardly see'. Among them was a man he remembers well: John
Sam Shepherd, a former attorney general of Texas and member of the
White Citizens Council - a political wing of the Ku Klux Klan -
disgraced by a land scandal and come to seek his fortune out West by
setting up the El Paso Products company, later Huntsman.
George Bush landed in this mayhem but quickly decamped 20 miles north
to Midland, where new millionaires like him established a country
club, a Harvard and a Yale club, met at the Petroleum Club and played
golf on irrigated lawns. Midland was, recalls Gene Collins, a member
of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in
Odessam 'one of two towns in America with a Rolls-Royce dealership and
more millionaires per head than anywhere'. This was where Bush Sr
built his oil fortune, launched a political career on its shoulders
and raised his son George W Bush in the art and language of power he
now feigns not to speak. The story of how Bush Sr constructed his
empire is well known, as is that of how his son George W was groomed
to follow in his footsteps. Less widely broadcast, however, are the
depths and intricacies of a system the Bush family built in bonding
with the energy industry, as the dynastic machine elevated its methods
from Odessa to the Senate, the governor's mansion in Austin, the oil
centres of Houston and Dallas, the White House and thereafter the
globe.
Neil Carman has a professorial air to him that belies the sharpness of
the surgical blade with which he tries to operate on 'Toxic Texas'.
Originally a plant biologist, he was an investigator for the Texas
Natural Resources Conservation Commission (TNRCC), responsible for
issuing permits for agreed levels of pollution and enforcing
environmental law. In 1989, he took on the General Tire and Rubber
Company for 'systematic violations'.
The firm hired a lobbyist, Larry Feldcamp, from the Baker Botts law
firm whose senior partner, James Baker III, was secretary of state to
then president George Bush Sr and who later, as an attorney, secured
the delivery of the state of Florida for Bush Jr during last year's
election recounts. Baker Botts advertises itself as a 'full service
firm', counting Shell, Mobil, Union Carbide, Huntsman, Amoco on its
books. The other law firm indivisible from the energy lobby and the
Bush fiefdom is Vinson & Elkins, which acts for both Enron and the
Alcoa aluminium giant, whose former chief executive Paul O'Neill is
now US Treasury Secretary. Between these law firms and the regulatory
body supposed to face them down, says Dr Carman, 'there's a revolving
door. Feldcamp's place was taken recently by the most active attorney
on the oil scene, Pamela Giblin - one of the TNRCC's first
appointees.'
Carman resigned because 'all they had to do was hire people like
Feldcamp and you were off the case. They did not deny permits - they
must have issued 50,000 permits for air pollution during my time and
refused only two, on occasions when the public raised hell. And they
don't revoke them - it's not like drunk driving: if you get caught,
they just keep reissuing. They used to refer to these places as
"industrial areas", as if that meant they were outside the law. I
called them "sacrifice zones".'
There is another problem, unique to Texas: the 'grandfathering' rule.
Grandfathering dates back to the Texas Clean Air Act of 1971,
exempting existing installations from compliance with new regulations.
The idea was that they would be modernised or become obsolete and
close. In the event, firms found that not being obliged to spend on
pollution control gave them a competitive edge, and nearly three
decades later, grandfathering accounted for more than 1,000 plants and
35 per cent of all pollution in Texas. Nevertheless, in the early 90s,
the TNRCC began to toughen its stance in accordance with a more
aggressive federal approach to pollution by the new Clinton
administration. Then, in 1994, Texas went to the polls to elect a new
governor - 'And when Bush took over,' says Carman, 'everything
changed.'
Two groups based in Austin - Texans for Public Justice (TPJ) and
Public Research Works (PRW) - crunched the statistics on the wave of
money on which George W Bush sailed into the governor's mansion. It
was what Andrew Wheat of the TPJ calls 'something unheard of in Texas
or anywhere else: $42m on two campaigns'. Grandfathered polluters
poured $10.2m into the campaign coffers between 1993 and 1998, led by
what PRW calls the 'dirty 30', including Exxon, Shell, Amoco, Enron
and the Alcoa aluminium giant. Bush himself received $1.5m from 55
grandfathered companies, led by Enron, with a handsome $348,500 top-up
from the man he calls Kenny Boy - Kenneth Lay, the company's chief
executive, currently under criminal investigation.
Wheat's analysis of the new governor's 'personal time' shows a
revolving door for campaign donors and the energy industry. Andrew
Barrett, Bush's in-house environmental policy advisor, began daily
visits to the TNRCC in preparation for the appointment of new
commissioners: Ralph Marquez, lobbyist for the Texas Chemical Council
and former executive of the Monsanto chemical firm, and Barry McBee,
attorney with the law firm Thompson & Knight, a major contributor to
Bush funds with a host of oil-industry clients.
Legislation based on the notion of 'self-regulation' followed: a law
enabling companies to audit their own pollution records provided they
reported them, in exchange for which there would be absolute
protection from public disclosure. Big oil was delighted, as a memo
obtained by an environmentalist group, the Texas SEED Coalition,
illustrated: a record of a gathering in June 1977 at Exxon in Houston
by 40 representatives of the Texas oil and gas industries - written by
one of their number - said 'the "insiders" from oil and gas believe
that the governor's office will persuade the TNRCC to accept whatever
program is developed between the industry group and the governor's
office'.
It was not until Bush became president that, in its 2001 state
legislature, Texas finally decided to rein in the 'grandfathered'
plants. A bill gave them until 2007 to come into line with federal law
or shut down. Even then, there was a legal challenge to the TNRCC's
science from the Houston Business Partnership, recently entrusted with
millions in federal money to clean up the Gulf coastline. The
partnership is a high-octane chamber of commerce, throwing up a few
familiar names: Exxon, Conoco, Enron, James Baker's law firm Baker
Botts - and George Bush Sr.
Most important of all - and best hidden - was Bush's programme for
Tort Reform. It was this that his father's advisor Karl Rove
(dispatched to steer Bush's presidential campaign and now the White
House itself) insisted the new governor make his hallmark, and this is
potentially the dynasty's greatest gift to big oil. Put simply, Tort
Reform means making it harder for citizens to sue corporations. TPJ
calculated that business interests specifically isolating Tort Reform
on their political agenda poured money into Bush's gubernatorial
campaigns. Soon after being elected governor, says Andrew Wheat, Bush
declared Tort Reform an 'emergency issue'.
This meant appointing a judge to the Texas supreme court whom
President Bush is tipped to bring aboard the Supreme Court in
Washington (to which, some say, he owes his presidency). Alberto
Gonzalez wrote a decision soon after his appointment to the Texas
court which made it all but impossible for citizens to bring class
actions. 'The result,' says Shawn Isbell, a lawyer working on
environmental cases, 'is that it will simply be too expensive to bring
cases against the corporations.'
Another ruling, says Sandra McKenzie, the lawyer who fought a long and
bitter battle against the Formosa Plastics firm, stipulates that
'anyone trying to prove a personal chemical injury had to show that
other people in a similar situation had suffered the same reaction,
according to a study in a published journal'. The new precedents, says
McKenzie, 'changed the laws to establish a no-compromise, "take no
prisoners" approach by the Bushes'.
In 1989, George Bush presented the Governor's Award for Environ mental
Excellence to the Valero chemical refining company. Foremost in the
minds of the proud executives at the ceremony in Austin's luxury Four
Seasons Hotel was their 'refinery of the future' at Corpus Christi, on
the Gulf, at the far end of the coastal strip that runs through
Houston to the Louisiana border.
Alfred Williams gets a better view of the refinery of the future
across the freeway from the garden of his mobile home than Governor
Bush did from the Four Seasons. He can smell it better too - the
inimitable stench on the muggy delta air that signifies the cooking up
of cheap crude-oil 'feed stock' to produce its chemical by-product and
treating the neighbourhood to a dose of sulphur dioxide.
When Williams, an ex-Vietnam Marine, moved here in 1972, 'this was all
farmland'. He now delivers an impassioned requiem for his garden, with
its peach trees dead or buckling over. The light of a quicksilver moon
catches the plume of sulphur along what they call Refinery Row.
'I'm in my golden years,' he reflects. 'But I can't sell my house
because no bank will give a loan without 40 per cent down. And they
won't relocate me, as I'd do if they offered.
'It started with having to wipe residue from off of my car. Then the
iron on my rooftop here started to get corroded, and the trees were
dying. Sometimes I have to come inside because my eyes are burning.'
Williams filed a civil suit against Valero, steered by attorney Shawn
Isbell. The court in Corpus denied Williams class action status in
accordance with the zeitgeist, but Isbell managed to discover how the
refinery of the future was so poorly crafted that Valero had
(unsuccessfully) sued the companies which had built it. She also found
out how the Texas system of overlooking 'upsets' works. Since 1994,
Valero had suffered more than 480 'upsets', but the TNRCC records each
set of emissions separately - for example, Valero's sulphur-dioxide
emissions for 1977 show up on the commission's website as 166.4 tons,
while the reality including 'upsets' is closer to 700 tons.
Nevertheless, says Isbell, 'I've seen the TNRCC go harder after a pig
farmer than I have after these kinds of companies.'
Williams keeps a notebook by his phone to record the 'upsets' over the
road. He reports them to the TNRCC. But, he says, 'I call them
rainbows: they are shut at night and on the weekend when the sulphur
is released, and they only come when the storm has come and gone.'
Cornelius Harmon is a cab driver in Corpus, and takes a drive along
Refinery Row, down a road he calls the 'buffer zone'. It divides a
wasteland of former housing - where those relocated because of
pollution by another plant, Koch, once lived - from the mostly black
and Hispanic community of Hillcrest. 'Are you gonna tell me,' posits
Harmon, 'that the hand of God Almighty drew a line down this road and
He says: "Over yonder side is contaminated and this side is fit for
folks to live ?" And what have we got here? Well, I'll be doggone if
it's not a school, with children playing in the smell. The people who
run these things, they give our kids a new pair of sneakers and go to
church and think they're going to heaven. But at the pearly gates,
they're going to find St Peter in his Afro saying: "Whassup cuz? Seems
like you're trying to get into the wrong place."'
Time came for destiny to fulfil itself, for the son to stand for the
high office in Washington which the Bush dynasty and its backers saw
as having been usurped by Bill Clinton. The story of what carried
George W Bush to the White House is well known: the most ruthlessly
efficient campaigning machine ever assembled - by Karl Rove - with all
the family's best connections filling a treasure chest that broke all
records. As they returned to number-crunching in Austin, Texans for
Public Justice and Public Research Works found little to surprise them
save the machine's speed and efficacy. Within a month, Bush had raised
hundreds of thousands of dollars, with Enron leading the field and two
law firms giving $146,900 - most prominently Vinson and Elkins,
attorneys to Enron and the Alcoa aluminium giant, and James Baker's
company, lawyers to the oil industry.
When Bush came to pick his cabinet, almost all pivotal positions went
to Bush Sr's inner sanctum, apart from the posts of commerce secretary
(Don Evans, longtime buddy of Bush Jr's and a fellow Midland oil man)
and treasury secretary (Paul O'Neill, currently touring the globe with
Bono of U2, and former chief executive of Alcoa, the world's biggest
producer of aluminium).
Alcoa held a stockholders meeting to send O'Neill off with a torrent
of eulogies and an annual pay packet worth $36m, but three speakers
spoiled the party. Two were trade unionists from O'Neill's troubled
plant at Ciudad Acuna in Mexico, challenging the chief executive's
claim that conditions at their factory were so good 'they can eat off
the floor'. The third was the soft-spoken Texan Ron Giles, drawing
attention to the biggest of the state's 'grandfathered' polluters -
the Alcoa smelting plant at Rockdale. If the Rockdale plant were a
single state, it would count 40th for pollution among the 50 in the
union, belching more than 100,000 tons of toxins in 1997.
The smokestacks of the largest aluminium smelter in North America fit
incongruously into the pastoral ranch land northeast of Austin. And
they seem especially odd as backdrop to the 300-acre ranch where Wayne
Brinkley's family has raised cattle since the late 1800s, but over
which hangs a stench wafting across the moonscape of Alcoa's lignite
mine.
Brinkley looks as much the Texan as President Bush in his boots and
Stetson - 'Only difference is,' he says, 'I am one, and Bush is not.'
In his office is a hog, stuffed and mounted, and an awesome collection
of vintage knives and firearms. On his desk is a survey by the
independent Research Analysis Consultations group showing that
concentrations of magnesium, calcium and aluminium register 'very
high' around Brinkley's barn, and sodium and titanium over his fields.
'My son had cancer when he was just a young kid,' he says in a voice
like sandpaper. 'They tried to buy us out. They keep offering various
deals saying I can't talk to anyone about this for 35 years, and then
they changed it to forever. But why should I leave? My family's been
here 100 years; they've been here 50. They should do it by the book,
and keep it clean for the rest of us.'
Alcoa continues regardless, feted by Wall Street for 'dazzling'
returns. But in the last light of a warm evening, quiet rebellion
stirs in the community room of a little town called Elgin. A group of
local people, Neighbors for Neighbors, have obtained records that show
Alcoa to be cheating, making improvements to its production plant
worth some $45m without parallel investments in pollution control. As
a direct result of the Neighbors' expos�, the company was investigated
by a TNRCC with no place to hide this time.
Neighbors for Neighbors, enjoying statewide coverage and acclaim for
its pluck, is itself suing the company. Billie Woods, Neighbors'
president, says that Alcoa has responded by pressing ahead with its
plans for a new lignite mine that would carve up 15,000 acres of
farmland. The company has also made court applications to enter and
search the homes of Neighbors activists. The request was denied, but
the matter moved the usually conservative Daily Texan newspaper to
demand: 'Stop the Alcoa Gestapo!'
Yesterday Texas, today Washington, tomorrow the world. With Bush
family business back home in the US presidency, it now moves, in the
form of the father, to the apex of global finance. The Carlyle Group
defines the next phase of power: a Washington-based private equity
fund with a difference. It is headed by Frank Carlucci, former CIA
director and defense secretary under Ronald Reagan and lifelong friend
of George Bush Sr. Bush (also once director of the CIA) sits next to
Carlucci on the board with a portfolio specialising in Asia and does
not hesitate to communicate with his son on concerns of regional
relevance to Carlyle such as Afghanistan or the Pacific Rim. Bush Jr
was once chairman of a Carlyle subsidiary making in-flight food.
On Carlucci's other flank is the ubiquitous James Baker III. Chairman
of Carlyle Europe is John Major. The group's new asset management is
headed by Afsaneh Beschloss, former treasurer of the World Bank.
Carlyle has grown quickly to be worth some $12bn, specialising in
energy and defence, with particular attention to the oil-producing
Gulf states. Among its most eager investors is Prince Bandar, Saudi
ambassador to Washington and his father Prince Sultan, the kingdom's
defence minister. The group's most spectacular recent coup was to reap
$400m in a stock sale of its subsidiary United Defence Industries,
maker of the Crusader artillery system which most military experts
argued was redundant, but which won $470m in development money from
the Pentagon and whose future in the US arsenal still hangs in the
balance after a series of recent meetings between Carlucci and Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Within a month of 11 September last year,
Carlucci was meeting with Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and
10 days later offered an assessment which exactly predicted the
endless-war scenario: 'We as Americans,' he said, 'have to recognise
that terrorism is more or less a permanent situation.'
'What's the secret?' chided William Conway, a co-founder of the group.
'I don't think we have any secrets. We are a group of businessmen who
have made a huge amount of money for our investors.' 'I never bought
into this conspiracy theory about the Bush family, the energy
companies or the Carlyle Group,' says Michael King, seasoned political
editor of the Austin Chronicle , who has observed the phenomenon for
decades. 'It is perfectly clear what they're aiming at from what they
do in public: managing the global economy to their own advantage, and
doing a pretty good job of it.'
On 11 September, while Al-Qaeda's planes slammed into the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, the Carlyle Group hosted a conference at a
Washington hotel. Among the guests of honour was a valued investor:
Shafig bin Laden, brother to Osama.
.

User: "Torak"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	03 Apr 2004 06:45:21 AM

Ray Fischer wrote:

Xomicron <xomicron@wp.pl> wrote:

You're insane.

Yup. Why would America want to bump *up* the price of oil?
And anyway, could we please cut down a bit on the crossposts? This
appears to have buggerall to do with Warhammer...
.

User: "Wonder Pony"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	04 Apr 2004 06:38:28 PM

"Torak" <andrew@andrew-perry.com> wrote in message
news:406EB111.8060506@andrew-perry.com...

Ray Fischer wrote:

Xomicron <xomicron@wp.pl> wrote:

You're insane.

Yup. Why would America want to bump *up* the price of oil?

And anyway, could we please cut down a bit on the crossposts? This
appears to have buggerall to do with Warhammer...

Or politcs...Or Abortion...Or Space Bastards.
--
Sir Scott "Okay, I'm sorry..." McDaniel
.

User: "yetti"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	07 Apr 2004 11:32:10 PM

"Wonder Pony" <smcdaniel1@cox.net> wrote in message news:<U%0cc.116780$Bg.46137@fed1read03>...

"Torak" <andrew@andrew-perry.com> wrote in message
news:406EB111.8060506@andrew-perry.com...

Ray Fischer wrote:

Xomicron <xomicron@wp.pl> wrote:

You're insane.

Yup. Why would America want to bump *up* the price of oil?

And anyway, could we please cut down a bit on the crossposts? This
appears to have buggerall to do with Warhammer...

Or politcs...Or Abortion...Or Space Bastards.

User: "yetti"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	07 Apr 2004 11:32:31 PM

Torak <andrew@andrew-perry.com> wrote in message news:<406EB111.8060506@andrew-perry.com>...

Ray Fischer wrote:

Xomicron <xomicron@wp.pl> wrote:

You're insane.

Yup. Why would America want to bump *up* the price of oil?

And anyway, could we please cut down a bit on the crossposts? This
appears to have buggerall to do with Warhammer...

User: "yetti"
Title: Re: OPEC *****	07 Apr 2004 11:34:04 PM

Xomicron <xomicron@wp.pl> wrote in message news:<Xns94BFB73AFAFF4xomicron@0.0.0.1>...

Page 1 of 1

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REVERSING PLEDGE, BUSH LETS OPEC BILK AMERICANS
Gospels Are *****: Book of Bart
Re: Here is some more ***** from Eliyahu
Re: BRITISH/ZIONAZI MELODRAMA OF *****
Re: STOP CROSS-POSTING TO SOC.CULTURE.IRANIAN THIS IRELLEVANT ***** YOU FUCKING DIM WIT *****
Planned parenthood = Anti-USA niggers and lazy ***** idiots.

Classic Anti-choice *****
CNN.com readers tell Bush to cut the *****
I Dare Anti-Choice Morons To Stop This Abortion With Their Stupid *****
Re: Cause is *****?
Bush Took New Orleans Levee Construction Money for His ***** War in Iraq (GOP, The Party of Treason)

NEWER

pg.716 pg.544 pg.412 pg.311 pg.234 pg.175 pg.130 pg.96 pg.70 pg.50 pg.35 pg.24 pg.16 pg.10 pg.6 pg.3 pg.1

OLDER