Taking stock of 'Peak Oil'

July 26, 2009 - research published in the advanced online issue of Nature Geoscience.:

"Now for the first time, scientists have found that ethane and heavier hydrocarbons can be synthesized under the pressure-temperature conditions of the upper mantle - the layer of Earth under the crust and on top of the core."

Professor Kutcherov, a coauthor, put the finding into context: "The notion that hydrocarbons generated in the mantle migrate into the Earth's crust and contribute to oil-and-gas reservoirs was promoted in Russia and Ukraine many years ago. The synthesis and stability of the compounds studied here as well as heavier hydrocarbons over the full range of conditions within the Earth's mantle now need to be explored. In addition, the extent to which this 'reduced' carbon survives migration into the crust needs to be established (e.g., without being oxidized to CO2). These and related questions demonstrate the need for a new experimental and theoretical program to study the fate of carbon in the deep Earth."

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How Michael Ruppert's 'Peak Oil' Pile is Gaining Tonnage

Dave McGowan
Excerpt
March 5, 2005

It appears that, unbeknownst to Westerners, there have actually been, for quite some time now, two competing theories concerning the origins of petroleum. One theory claims that oil is an organic 'fossil fuel' deposited in finite quantities near the planet's surface. The other theory claims that oil is continuously generated by natural processes in the Earth's magma. One theory is backed by a massive body of research representing fifty years of intense scientific inquiry. The other theory is an unproven relic of the eighteenth century. One theory anticipates deep oil reserves, refillable oil fields, migratory oil systems, deep sources of generation, and the spontaneous venting of gas and oil. The other theory has a difficult time explaining any such documented phenomena.

So which theory have we in the West, in our infinite wisdom, chosen to embrace? Why, the fundamentally absurd 'Fossil Fuel' theory, of course -- the same theory that the 'Peak Oil' doomsday warnings are based on.

I am sorry to report here, by the way, that in doing my homework, I never did come across any of that "hard science" documenting 'Peak Oil' that Mr. Strahl referred to. All the 'Peak Oil' literature that I found, on Ruppert's site and elsewhere, took for granted that petroleum is a non-renewable 'fossil fuel.' That theory is never questioned, nor is any effort made to validate it. It is simply taken to be an established scientific fact, which it quite obviously is not.

So what do Ruppert and his resident experts have to say about all of this? Dale Allen Pfeiffer, identified as the "FTW Contributing Editor for Energy," has written: "There is some speculation that oil is abiotic in origin -- generally asserting that oil is formed from magma instead of an organic origin. These ideas are really groundless." (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/04_04_02_oil_recession.html)

Here is a question that I have for both Mr. Ruppert and Mr. Pfeiffer: Do you consider it honest, responsible journalism to dismiss a fifty year body of multi-disciplinary scientific research, conducted by hundreds of the world's most gifted scientists, as "some speculation"?

Another of FTW's prognosticators, Colin Campbell, is described by Ruppert as "perhaps the world's foremost expert on oil." He was asked by Ruppert, in an interview, "what would you say to the people who insist that oil is created from magma ...?" Before we get to Campbell's answer, we should first take note of the tone of Ruppert's question. It is not really meant as a question at all, but rather as a statement, as in "there is really nothing you can say that will satisfy these nutcases who insist on bringing up these loony theories."

Campbell's response to the question was an interesting one: "No one in the industry gives the slightest credence to these theories." Why, one wonders, did Mr. Campbell choose to answer the question on behalf of the petroleum industry? And does it come as a surprise to anyone that the petroleum industry doesn't want to acknowledge abiotic theories of petroleum origins? Should we have instead expected something along these lines?:

"Hey, everybody ... uhhh ... you know how we always talked about oil being a fossil fuel? And ... uhmm ... you know how the entire profit structure of our little industry here is built upon the presumption that oil is a non-renewable, and therefore very valuable, resource?

And remember all those times we talked about shortages so that we could gouge you at the pumps? Well ... guess what, America? You've been Punk'd!"

For the sake of accuracy, I think we need to modify Mr. Campbell's response, because it should probably read: no one in the petroleum industry will publicly admit giving any credence to abiotic theories. But is there really any doubt that those who own and control the oil industry are well aware of the true origins of oil? How could they not be?

Surely there must be a reason why there appears to be so little interest in understanding the nature and origins of such a valuable, and allegedly vanishing, resource. And that reason can only be that the answers are already known. The objective, of course, is to ensure that the rest of us don't find those answers. Why else would we be encouraged, for decades, to cling tenaciously to a scientific theory that can't begin to explain the available scientific evidence? And why else would a half-century of research never see the light of day in Western scientific and academic circles?

Maintaining the myth of scarcity, you see, is all important. Without it, the house of cards comes tumbling down. And yet, even while striving to preserve that myth, the petroleum industry will continue to provide the oil and gas needed to maintain a modern industrial infrastructure, long past the time when we should have run out of oil. And needless to say, the petroleum industry will also continue to reap the enormous profits that come with the myth of scarcity.

How will that difficult balancing act be performed? That is where, it appears, the 'limited hangout' concerning abiotic oil will come into play.

Perhaps the most telling quote to emerge from all of this came from Roger Sassen, identified as the deputy director of Resource Geosciences, a research group out of Texas A&M University:

"The potential that inorganic hydrocarbons, especially methane and a few other gasses, might exist at enormous depth in the crust is an idea that could use a little more discussion. However, not from people who take theories to the point of absurdity. This is an idea that needs to be looked into at some point as we start running out of energy. But no one who is objective discusses the issue at this time."

The key point there (aside from Sassen's malicious characterization of Kenney) is his assertion that no one is discussing abiotic oil at this time. And why is that? Because, you see, we first have to go through the charade of pretending that the world has just about run out of 'conventional' oil reserves, thus justifying massive price hikes, which will further pad the already obscenely high profits of the oil industry. Only then will it be fully acknowledged that there is, you know, that 'other' oil.

"We seem to have plum run out of that fossil fuel that y'all liked so much, but if you want us to, we could probably find you some mighty fine inorganic stuff. You probably won't even notice the difference. The only reason that we didn't mention it before is that - and may God strike me dead if I'm lying - it is a lot more work for us to get to it. So after we charged you up the wazoo for the 'last' of the 'conventional' oil, we're now gonna have to charge you even more for this really 'special' oil. And with any luck at all, none of you will catch on that it's really the same oil."

And that, dear readers, is how I see this little game playing out. Will you be playing along?

Several readers have written to me, incidentally, with a variation of the following question: "How can you say that Peak Oil is being promoted to sell war when all of the websites promoting the notion of Peak Oil are stridently anti-war?"

But of course they are. That, you see, is precisely the point. What I was trying to say is that the notion of 'Peak Oil' is being specifically marketed to the anti-war crowd -- because, as we all know, the pro-war crowd doesn't need to be fed any additional justifications for going to war; any of the old lies will do just fine. And I never said that the necessity of war was being overtly sold. What I said, if I remember correctly, is that it is being sold with a wink and a nudge.

The point that I was trying to make is that it would be difficult to imagine a better way to implicitly sell the necessity of war, even while appearing to stake out a position against war, than through the promotion of the concept of 'Peak Oil.' After September 11, 2001, someone famously said that if Osama bin Laden didn't exist, the US would have had to invent him. I think the same could be said for 'Peak Oil.'

I also need to mention here that those who are selling 'Peak Oil' hysteria aren't offering much in the way of alternatives, or solutions. Ruppert, for example, has stated flatly that "there is no effective replacement for what hydrocarbon energy provides today." )

The message is quite clear: "we're running out of oil soon; there is no alternative; we're all screwed." And this isn't, mind you, just an energy problem; as Ruppert has correctly noted, "Almost every current human endeavor from transportation, to manufacturing, to plastics, and especially food production is inextricably intertwined with oil and natural gas supplies." )

If we run out of oil, in other words, our entire way of life will come crashing down. One of Ruppert's "unimpeachable sources," Colin Campbell, describes an apocalyptic future, just around the corner, that will be characterized by "war, starvation, economic recession, possibly even the extinction of homo sapiens."

My question is: if Ruppert is not selling the necessity of war, then exactly what is the message that he is sending to readers with such doomsday forecasts? At the end of a recent posting, Ruppert quotes dialogue from the 1975 Sidney Pollack film, Three Days of the Condor:

Higgins: ...It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In 10 or 15 years - food, Plutonium. And maybe even sooner. Now what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?

Turner: Ask them.

Higgins: Not now - then. Ask them when they're running out. Ask them when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them when people who've never known hunger start going hungry. Do you want to know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll just want us to get it for them.

The message there seems pretty clear: once the people understand what is at stake, they will support whatever is deemed necessary to secure the world's oil supplies. And what is it that Ruppert is accomplishing with his persistent 'Peak Oil' postings? He is helping his readers to understand what is allegedly at stake.

Elsewhere on his site, Ruppert warns that "Different regions of the world peak in oil production at different times ... the OPEC nations of the Middle East peak last. Within a few years, they -- or whoever controls them -- will be in effective control of the world economy, and, in essence, of human civilization as a whole."

Within a few years, the Middle East will be in control of all of human civilization?! Try as I might, I can't imagine any claim that would more effectively rally support for a U.S. takeover of the Middle East. The effect of such outlandish claims is to cast the present war as a war of necessity. Indeed, a BBC report posted on Ruppert's site explicitly endorses that notion: "It's not greed that's driving big oil companies - it's survival."

A few final comments are in order here about 'Peak Oil' and the attacks of September 11, 2001, which Ruppert has repeatedly claimed are closely linked. In a recent posting, he bemoaned the fact that activists are willing to "Do anything but accept the obvious reality that for the US government to have facilitated and orchestrated the attacks of 9/11, something really, really bad must be going on." That something really, really bad, of course, is 'Peak Oil.'

To demonstrate the dubious nature of that statement, all one need do is make a couple of quick substitutions, so that it reads: "for the German government to have facilitated and orchestrated the attack on the Reichstag, something really, really bad must have been going on." Or, if you are the type that bristles at comparisons of Bush to Hitler, try this one: "for the US government to have facilitated and orchestrated the attack on the USS Maine, something really, really bad must have been going on."

Easier to find oil

KTH Royal Institute of Technology
September 7, 2009

Researchers at KTH have been able to prove that the fossils of animals and plants are not necessary to generate raw oil and natural gas. This result is extremely radical as it means that it will be much easier to find these energy sources and that they may be located all over the world.

“With the help of our research we even know where oil could be found in Sweden!” says Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the KTH Department of Energy Technology in Stockholm.

Together with two research colleagues, Professor Kutcherov has simulated the process of pressure and heat that occurs naturally in the inner strata of the earth’s crust. This process generates hydrocarbons, the primary elements of oil and natural gas.

According to Vladimir Kutcherov, these results are a clear indication that oil supplies are not drying up, which has long been feared by researchers and experts in the field.

He adds that there is no chance that fossil oils, with the help of gravity or other forces, would have been able to seep down to a depth of 10.5 kilometres in, for example the US state of Texas, which is rich in oil deposits. This is, according to Vladimir Kutcherov, in addition to his own research results, further evidence that this energy sources can occur other than via fossils - something which will cause a lively discussion among researchers for a considerable period of time.

“There is no doubt that our research has shown that raw oil and natural gas occur without the inclusion of fossils. All types of rock formations can act as hosts for oil deposits,” asserts Vladimir and adds that this applies to areas of land that have previously remained unexplored as possible sources of this type of energy.

This discovery has several positive aspects. Rate of success as concerns finding oil increases dramatically – from 20 till 70 percent. As drilling for oil and natural gas is an extremely expensive process, costs levels will be radically changed for the petroleum companies and eventually also for the end user.

“This means savings of many billions of kronor,” says Vladimir.

In order to identify where it is worth drilling for natural gas and oil, Professor Kutcherov has, via his research, developed a new method. The world is divided into a fine-meshed grid. This grid is the equivalent of cracks, known as migration channels, through strata underlying the earth’s crust. Good places to drill are where these cracks meet.

According to Professor Kutcherov, these research results are extremely important not least as 61 percent of the world’s energy consumption is currently based on raw oil and natural gas.

The next stage in this research is more experiments, especially to refine the method that makes it easier to locate drilling points for oil and natural gas.

The research results produced by Vladimir Kutcherov, Anton Kolesnikov and Alexander Goncharov were recently published in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience, Volume 2, August.

For more information, please contact Vladimir Kutcherov at vladimir.kutcherov@indek.KTH.se or on +46 8790 85 07.

Source

Was the Iranian Election 'Rigged'?

By Robert Parry
September 21, 2009

It is conventional wisdom in the U.S. press corps that Iran’s June 12 presidential election was rigged, with the word “fraud” now sometimes appearing without the qualifier “alleged.” But a new poll of Iranians uncovered a different opinion, an overwhelming judgment that the election was legitimate.

WorldPublicOpinion.org used native Farsi speakers calling from outside Iran to interview 1,003 Iranians across the country between Aug. 27 and Sept. 10 and discovered that 81 percent said they considered Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be the legitimate president of Iran. Only 10 percent called him illegitimate, with eight percent offering no opinion.

Sixty-two percent said they had strong confidence in the election results, which showed Ahmadinejad winning by about a 2-to-1 margin, and another 21 percent said they had some confidence in the official vote count, for a total of 83 percent expressing favorable views on the election. By comparison, only 13 percent said they had little or no confidence in the results.

These 8-to-1 margins among Iranians, judging that the official election results correctly recorded Ahmadinejad’s victory, stand in marked contrast to the opinions of U.S. journalists who showed strong sympathy for the opposition street demonstrations that turned violent after the voting.

In recent weeks, some top American journalists even have started treating the allegations of voting fraud as a simple matter of fact, not of contention.

The Washington Post’s David Ignatius wrote in a Sept. 10 op-ed that “some analysts … argue that Ahmadinejad and the Guard were continuing an internal coup that began with the fraudulent manipulation of the June 12 election and the subsequent crackdown against Iranian protesters.”

Yet, the evidence of substantial election fraud has always been thin and many of the allegations that dominated the U.S. news coverage after the June 12 vote failed to stand up to serious scrutiny.

For instance, a prevalent complaint that Ahmadinejad’s claim of victory came too fast ignored the fact that rival candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi was out with a declaration of victory before any votes were counted. The partial results showing Ahmadinejad in the lead followed hours later.

Another claim was that Mousavi would have surely won his home Azeri district handily, rather than lose it outright to Ahmadinejad, but that argument collided with a pre-election poll sponsored by the New America Foundation which had shown Ahmadinejad with a 2-to-1 lead in that area.

Even if the election tightened in the final weeks – as some Mousavi supporters contend – Ahmadinejad’s lopsided lead in Mousavi’s home territory in May undercut the notion that Azeris would automatically back their favorite son. Some Iranian analysts have noted that Ahmadinejad poured government resources into that region, explaining his apparent popularity there.

The pre-election poll’s findings – described in a Washington Post op-ed by two of its administrators, Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty – also discovered that, contrary to widespread Western impressions, Iranian youth overwhelmingly favored Ahmadinejad, that the “18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.”

‘Death to the Potatoes!’

Generally speaking, Mousavi’s support was concentrated among the urban middle class and the well-educated while Ahmadinejad was more the candidate of the poor – of which there are many in Iran. They have benefited from government largesse in food and other programs, and they tend to listen to the conservative clerics in the mosques.

Mousavi seemed to acknowledge this point when he released his supposed proof of the rigged election, accusing Ahmadinejad of buying votes by providing food and higher wages for the poor. At some Mousavi rallies, his supporters reportedly would chant “death to the potatoes!” in a joking reference to Ahmadinejad’s food distributions.

Yet, while passing out food and raising pay levels may be a sign of “machine politics,” such tactics are not normally associated with election fraud.

The last real hope for definitive evidence proving Ahmadinejad’s victory was fraudulent may have passed when Mousavi rejected the possibility of a recount, either random or nationwide. Instead Mousavi insisted on an entirely new election.

Mousavi’s objection to a recount drew support from the New York Times’ top brass. “Even a full recount would be suspect,” the Times wrote in an editorial. “How could anyone be sure that the ballots were valid?”

But a key purpose of a recount is that it may unearth evidence of fraud, especially if ballot-box stuffing was done chaotically, amid panic over the incumbent falling short, or if the tallies were simply fabricated without ballots to support them, as some Western observers have speculated regarding Iran.

By spurning a partial or complete recount, Mousavi suggested that his real fear may have been that he genuinely lost the election and that his only hope for a better outcome was a new election, especially if some of Iran’s powerful clerics could be persuaded to tilt their allegiance toward him.

That interpretation is supported by other findings in the new WPO poll of Iranian attitudes. Of the 87 percent who said they voted, 55 percent said they voted for Ahmadinejad and only 14 percent said they voted for Mousavi.

Asked how they would vote if a new election were called, the breakdown was 49 percent for Ahmadinejad and 8 percent for Mousavi. Twenty-six percent declined to answer, causing WPO’s director Steven Kull to say that he thus discounted “these findings on voting preference [as] not a solid basis for estimating the actual vote.”

Nevertheless, the overall results from the WPO poll suggest that Ahmadinejad remains relatively popular compared to Mousavi.

US Media Disdain

In its press release on the new poll of Iranian attitudes, WPO also didn’t play up the findings about the disputed election, focusing more on Iran’s opinions regarding U.S. President Barack Obama and the prospects for improved relations with the United States.

The findings on Ahmadinejad’s legitimacy were at the end of the press release, possibly reflecting a concern that any data favorable to the Iranian president would draw the wrath of the major U.S. news media.

Indeed, for the past several months, the U.S. news media has shown little of its professed objectivity in its coverage of Iran’s election, an echo of the mainstream U.S. media’s failure to be evenhanded in its pre-invasion reporting on Iraq and its dictator Saddam Hussein.

Shortly after Iran's election in June, a “news analysis” coauthored by New York Times executive editor Bill Keller opened up with an old joke about Ahmadinejad looking into a mirror and saying “male lice to the right, female lice to the left,” a derogatory reference to his rise from the street and his conservative Islamic religious views.

The Times continued its pattern of taking sides on Saturday with a front-page article that three times referred to Ahmadinejad supposedly calling the World War II Holocaust that the Nazis inflicted on European Jews a “lie,” but never giving any context to the partial quote or noting that its meaning was somewhat ambiguous. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What Did Ahmadinejad Really Say?”]

While any insistence on journalistic professionalism in dealing with Ahmadinejad and Hussein are sure to prompt criticism about showing undeserved sympathy for such unsavory characters, the point is that journalists are supposed to set aside their personal feelings and let the American people make their own judgments based on balanced reporting, not slanted coverage.

A similar collapse of journalistic standards occurred in 2002 and 2003 with lopsided and inaccurate reporting about Iraq’s supposed WMD stockpiles. As the Washington Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt later admitted, his editorials treated the existence of those stockpiles as fact, rather than a point in dispute.

“If you look at the editorials we write running up [to the war], we state as flat fact that he [Hussein] has weapons of mass destruction,” Hiatt said in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review. “If that’s not true, it would have been better not to say it.” [CJR, March/April 2004]

You don’t say!

Yes, it is a general principle of journalism that if something’s not true, it’s better not to say that it is, especially when your false statements contributed to an aggressive war that has killed more than 4,300 American soldiers and estimates of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. (Hiatt received no punishment for publishing his Iraq falsehoods and remains in that same job today.)

Now, Iran is in the sights of America’s top editors and a similar bias is in play.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com.

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Obama's peace effort has failed but our struggle continues

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 24 September 2009

There is the old joke about a man who is endlessly searching on the ground beneath a street light. Finally, a neighbor who has been watching him asks the man what he is looking for. The man replies that he lost his keys. The neighbor asks him if he lost them under the streetlight. "No," the man replies, pointing into the darkness, "I lost them over there, but I am looking over here because here there is light!"

The intense focus on the "peace process" is a similarly futile search. Just because politicians and the media shine a constant light on it, does not mean that is where the answers are to be found.

The meeting hosted by US President Barack Obama with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas at New York's Waldorf Astoria hotel on 22 September signaled the complete and terminal failure of Obama's much vaunted push to bring about a two-state solution to the Palestine/Israel conflict.

To be sure, all the traditional activities associated with the "peace process" -- shuttle diplomacy, meetings, ritual invocations of "two states living side by side," and even "negotiations" -- will continue, perhaps for the rest of Obama's time in office. But this sterile charade will not determine the future of Palestine/Israel. That is already being decided by other means.

Before coming to that, let's recall those heady days in May when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set out the Obama Administration's firm policy on Israel's colonization of the West Bank: "We want to see a stop to settlement construction -- additions, natural growth, any kind of settlement activity -- that is what the president has called for."

Obama's envoy, former Senator George Mitchell, traveled to the region almost a dozen times to convince Israel to implement a freeze. Every proposal he took, the Israelis rejected. And to emphasize the point, the Israeli government accelerated the approval of major new settlement plans. Instead of threatening consequences for such intransigence, Mitchell simply diluted American conditions to meet Israeli objections until finally there was little left of the American demands -- or credibility.

So it was that in his remarks at New York, Obama's call for a total construction freeze was reduced to a polite request to Israel merely to "restrain" itself from devouring more Palestinian land.

Speaking to reporters after the New York meeting, Mitchell dropped the demand for a settlement freeze and made the US surrender official. "We are not identifying any issue as being a precondition or an impediment to negotiation," Mitchell said, adding, "We do not believe in preconditions. We do not impose them and we urge others not to impose them."

This is of course completely untrue. The Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration before it, continues to boycott Hamas (which has a legitimate electoral mandate to represent Palestinians under occupation) on the grounds that Hamas has refused to meet one-sided American preconditions!

The next day in his UN speech, Obama repeated the call for negotiations without preconditions. He did not explain why such negotiations would be any more fruitful than the 200-odd negotiating sessions held between the PA and the previous Israeli government headed by Ehud Olmert. Obama may have told the UN that the peace process must "break the old patterns," but he is simply repeating them.

The New York meeting produced yet another image of an American president cajoling reluctant Israeli and Palestinian leaders to shake hands, a kitschy and tiresome reprise of the famous 1993 White House lawn handshake between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin with President Clinton looking on, that sealed the ill-fated Oslo accords. Unsatisfied by its failures to date, the Obama Administration apparently craves more. It aims for a resumption of "negotiations" within weeks, to be inaugurated with what a US official called a "launch event." Ideas under discussion, the unnamed US official told the Israeli daily Haaretz, include "a meeting in Sharm al-Sheikh in Egypt."

That this is the level of thinking within the Obama Administration is utterly depressing. I can see it now -- as we have so many times before -- another meeting at the Egyptian resort attended by all the usual suspects: Israeli and Palestinian leaders (except of course Hamas), "moderate" leaders of repressive US client regimes like Jordan's King Abdallah and Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, and the whole pack of peace process parasites led by Quartet representative Tony Blair and EU "High Representative" Javier Solana. We can expect more statements that there is a "window of opportunity," that this is "the only game in town," and that "time is running out."

If this is not absurd enough, consider what the US is really saying to the Palestinians in the wake of Mitchell's failure: "We, the greatest superpower on Earth, are unable to convince Israel -- which is dependent on us militarily, economically and diplomatically -- to abide by even a temporary settlement freeze. Now, you Palestinians, who are a dispossessed, occupied people whose leaders cannot move without an Israeli permit, go and negotiate on much bigger issues like borders, refugees, Jerusalem and settlements, and do better than we did. Good luck to you."

Even if Israel agreed to a settlement freeze and negotiations resumed, there is no chance for a viable two-state solution or any just resolution coming out of such talks. So like its predecessors, this administration is substituting process and gimmicks for substance.

If the "peace process" is not driving events, then what is? Israeli colonization -- as Obama initially understood -- is the major factor determining the present and future of Palestine/Israel. Geographer and former Israeli deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti, has observed that Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip effectively ended the 1948 partition. "The decades since the war have proved that 1967 was not a disjunction but quite the opposite, a union, and that the preceding period was merely a reprieve," Benvenisti wrote in 2007.

After more than 40 years, Benvenisti views the "occupier/occupied paradigm" as too limited and misleading to describe the post-1967 reality. It is, he writes, an "anachronism that hides behind the portrayal of a temporary condition." He proposes instead that we call the situation in Palestine/Israel a "de facto binational state ... because it describes the mutual dependence of both societies, as well as the physical, economic, symbolic and cultural ties that cannot be severed except at an intolerable cost."

Repartition of Palestine would only change the shape of the conflict, not solve it. Even if Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were given a state, an unreformed, ultranationalist "Jewish state" of Israel would be more likely to turn its aggression and ethnic cleansing against its own 1.5 million Palestinian citizens than live in peace. After all, as Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has asked repeatedly, what is the point of a two-state solution that doesn't produce an exclusively Jewish state?

The 1967 boundary may have legal and political salience, but it does not demarcate geographically compact, ethnically homogenous and economically independent geo-political units. Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Salam Fayyad may harbor fantasies about creating a "de facto" Palestinian state in the West Bank, but the close collaboration between Israel and the PA only confirms the trend towards binationalism -- of the wrong sort to be sure.

Isn't it ironic that the most enthusiastic boosters of the ugly collaboration between the Israeli occupation army and US-trained PA militias to suppress resistance to the occupation, simultaneously insist that it is implausible for Palestinians and Israelis to build a joint society under conditions of equality? Apparently Palestinians and Israelis can collude to maintain oppression and injustice but not to transcend them!

A second factor determining the present and future is the resistance in all its forms that Israeli colonization continues to generate: the movement of Palestinians within Israel for full equality in a state of all its citizens; the refugees' steadfast insistence that Israel not be allowed to prevent them returning home just because they are the wrong religion; the refusal of Palestinians in Gaza to buckle under a crippling blockade. During Ramadan, hundreds of thousands of fasting Palestinians endured unbelievable hardships to break Israel's ring of steel around Jerusalem to enter the occupied city for Friday prayers at al-Aqsa Mosque.

This spirit of resistance is expressed in millions of daily acts and refusals by individual Palestinians, but also in highly directed, creative and organized ways such as the weekly demonstrations against Israel's apartheid wall in the West Bank, or the rapidly expanding Palestinian-directed international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).

These forms of organized resistance and solidarity are changing the balance of moral and political power and have the potential to force Israeli Jews to abandon their quest for ethno-religious purity and domination just as Afrikaners did in South Africa, Unionists did in Northern Ireland, and white Americans did in the southern US. They are bolstered by the growing calls for international accountability, the most recent of which include the Goldstone report's recommendation that Israeli leaders be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Official complicity with Israel's crimes -- such as the Obama Administration's despicable decision to attack and quash the Goldstone report -- are likely only to spur further support for BDS. These sources of power are still comparatively small compared to Israel's military and diplomatic might, but their momentum is increasing and official Israel's panic in the face of the growing challenge is palpable.

For years, scholars and activists calling for serious research and discussion about a unified state guaranteeing the rights of all who live in it, were ignored or ridiculed by defenders of the failed two-state solution. But the growing appeal of a vision that inspires and attracts individuals because of its universalism is terrifying the high priests of partition. The peace process industry, its think tanks and "experts," understand that they can no longer monopolize the discussion. Peace will not be made at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan; it will be made everywhere that people of conscience are prepared to join the struggle for liberation, justice and equality for all the people who live in Palestine/Israel.

In one sense then, the significance of the New York meeting was its utter insignificance. The real struggle for justice carries on regardless.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

Afghanistan: Back Door to War on Iran

By Stephen Sniegoski, September 7, 2009 - Excerpt

The major domestic supporters of an accelerated war in Afghanistan are the neoconservatives. As Ben Smith writes in a recent piece in “Politico” (Sept. 4, 2009), “Prominent conservative foreign policy thinkers and activists who backed the Iraq war are circulating a letter to President
Obama supporting his engagement in Afghanistan against criticism from left and right, and urging him to stay the course.”

Of course, these “conservatives” actually are neoconservatives. Signatories of the pro-war letter include such prominent neocons as: McCain’s major foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann, “Commentary” editor John Podhoretz, Gary Schmitt, Iraq surge architect Fred Kagan, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, “Weekly Standard” editor Bill Kristol, former Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor, Eliot A. Cohen (who coined the term “World War IV”), Eric Edelman, John Hannah, and Joshua Muravchik. These neocons have been intimately involved in the neocon Middle East war agenda and are discussed in my book “The Transparent Cabal.”

In fact, neoocons have been supporting Obama on Afghanistan for some time. Neocon Max Boot wrote in late March in a “Commentary” blog: “The new Afghanistan policy that President Obama unveiled at the White House today was pretty much all that supporters of the war effort could have asked for, and probably pretty similar to what President McCain would have decided on.”

And Barron YoungSmith observed in a “New Republic” blog at the beginning of April:

“Kristol and Robert Kagan–the same duo who founded the Iraq War-boosting
Project For the New American Century–decided to create FPI [Foreign Policy
Initiative] in order to beat back what they perceive to be creeping
isolationism and domestic fecklessness (defined by them as military budget
cuts and troop drawdowns) in the face of existential threats. Ordinarily,
one would expect a group like this to oppose President Obama, but since he
unveiled his strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan last week, they have
become some of his biggest cheerleaders.”

Jacob Heilbrunn titled an article on this neocon support for Obama’s interventionist foreign policy, “The New Neocon Alliance with Obama.” (May 1, 2009)

One can ask why neocons have been so enthusiastic about Obama’s focus on Afghanistan since Afghanistan has not been one of their primary concerns. After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the neocons pushed for an immediate attack on Iraq rather than Afghanistan. Temporarily they lost this fight, but they were soon able to divert the US war from Afghanistan to Iraq. ( “The Transparent Cabal,” pp. 141-150)

Since the occupation of Iraq, the neocons have targeted Iran for attack. Iran is seen as Israel’s major enemy-even, allegedly, a threat to Israel’s very existence. So why do the neocons identify so strongly with Obama’s Afghanistan policy? Won’t that divert attention from the issue of Iran? I think there are fundamentally two reasons-one defensive and the other offensive-that explain the neocons support for an expanded war in Afghanistan, which they believe will facilitate their broader Middle Eastwar agenda.

If the US were to abandon a military solution in Afghanistan, it probably would, as an alternative, seek to bring about stability in that beleaguered country through diplomacy. To be effective, this would involve broadening Iran’s role in Afghanistan. If Iran were working to bring about stability in Afghanistan, it would be virtually impossible for the US to treat it as an enemy. American policy toward Iran thus would be decoupled from that of Israel. Moreover, abandonment of the war in Afghanistan could likely begin a chain reaction that would end American involvement in the entire Middle East/Central Asian region. This would mean that the US would abandon any effort to destroy Israel’s enemies. The neocons’ entire Middle East war
agenda would be completely undermined.

In an offensive manner, an accelerated war in Afghanistan could provide a back door to initiating war with Iran. As the American military became bogged down in a no-win war in Afghanistan, Iran could provide a convenient scapegoat. One can envision the neocons trumpeting allegations that American problems in Afghanistan are caused by covert Iranian support for the Taliban insurgents, and that the only way to an American victory in Afghanistan would be by eliminating the Taliban’s Iranian sponsors. Various intelligence reports citing evidence of Iranian weapons and advisors in Afghanistan would be highlighted in the media. The US government has, in
fact, already made these claims. General Petraeus, for example, has publicly claimed that Iran was supporting the Taliban. As it becomes more apparent that the American military is unable to pacify Afghanistan, US military commanders will have a vested interest in blaming their failure on the alleged involvement of the Iranians.

More than just providing a rationale for an attack on Iran, Afghanistan also can provide the physical opportunity to start a war. In pursuit of insurgents, American troops could enter Iranian border regions leading to incidents that could usher in all-out war. In short, it is quite
conceivable to see the United States going to war with Iran by way of Afghanistan. This would provide a back-door to war with Iran without any real consideration of the ramifications of such a war.

In short, the United States could be involved in a war with Iran without Obama actually intending to bring about such a conflagration. It would simply develop as a result of the expanded war in Afghanistan.

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