Decentralized Currency, Whistle blowers, Green Tech What Information Keeps Us Free and Saves the Planet? WASHINGTON, D.C. WikiLeaks released today the secret text of the Annex on Environmental Services for the Trade in Services Agreement!
WikiLeaks has a history breaking major stories in every major media outlet and robustly protecting sources and press freedoms. A recent expose' in 2023 confirmed that the global trade deal will stand in the way of new environmental and climate safeguards and begin a process of rolling back existing regulations. WikiLeaks also released an analysis prepared by Friends of the Earth, U.S. which unpacks the technical text of the TiSA deal, generally, and the Environmental Annex in particular. No source has ever been exposed and no material has ever been censored. Since formation in early 2007, WikiLeaks has been victorious over every legal (and illegal) attack, including those from the Pentagon, the Chinese Public Security Bureau, the Former president of Kenya, the Premier of Bermuda, Scientology, the Catholic & Mormon Church, the largest Swiss private bank, and Russian companies. WikiLeaks has released more classified intelligence documents than the rest of the world press combined. In fact it is the enemy of fear and cowardice. Most governments use fearmongering to control their people and in an age where climate is an existential threat we need sources that reveal truth rather than fear mongering to move forward in a climate changed world!
The free flow of information via the internet and social media contributes to open debate and an exchange of ideas. Trade negotiators from the United States and 22 other World Trade Organization members, including the European Union, routinely seek to “harmonize” environmental protections down to the lowest common denominator and to privatize environmental services provided by governments. According to one estimate, in 2022 around 5.3 billion people worldwide have access to the Internet. Every single search query, every streamed video and every type of cloud computing, executed billions of times, is responsible for ever-increasing global demand for energy and thus also for increasing CO₂ emissions. But compared to Big oil and the Petro-pharmaceuticals it is not even a drop in the bucket. in fact many would say Big oil distracts from the mountain of their responsibility for global warming by making you focus on your grain of salt blame. The United States produced more crude oil than any nation at any time, according to our International Energy Statistics, for the past six years in a row. Crude oil production in the United States, including condensate, averaged 12.9 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2023, breaking the previous U.S. and global record of 12.3 million b/d, set in 2019. Average monthly U.S. crude oil production established a monthly record high in December 2023 at more than 13.3 million b/d.
The crude oil production record in the United States in 2023 is unlikely to be broken in any other country in the near term because no other country has reached production capacity of 13.0 million b/d. Saudi Arabia’s state-owned Saudi Aramco recently scrapped plans to increase production capacity to 13.0 million b/d by 2027.
It’s been two decades since British Petroleum and the marketing agency then named Ogilvy & Mather deceived lots and lots of unwitting Americans into believing the hands of fossil fuel companies are clean of contributing to climate change through imaginative messaging. To this day, their marketing campaign continues to be highly effective in getting the public to take on the weighty responsibility of halting climate change. We’ve cut back on meat, upped our recycling game and made the creative campaign’s key phrase – “carbon footprint” – part of our vernacular. All in an attempt to make a positive difference – and yes, to clear our consciences.
But are our efforts akin to spitting into the wind! Something is about to break...Wikileaks has revealed in the past year that US diplomats are convinced that Saudi reserves of world's biggest oil exporter have been overstated by over 40%. Millions are being spent on false information to slow down the transition from gas driven vehicles to electric but the young people in America are not so trusting and foolish as their elders were. Big oil is busy scrambling for more oil while simultaneously lowballing and stealing profits from third world countries the goal being always keep them in debt.
Nigeria is Shell Shell set up stakes in Nigeria, the No. 8 oil exporter in the world, before it was even Nigeria. So it shouldn't be a surprise that Ann Pickard, then Shell's vice-president for sub-Saharan Africa, was quoted in one U.S. embassy cable essentially bragging that the Nigerian government has forgotten that Shell had seconded people to all the relevant ministries and that Shell consequently had access to everything that was being done in those ministries. The Guardian has all the details on this cable and several other Shell-Nigeria insights.
Eni flexes its muscle in Venezuela
A January 2010 cable describes just how desperate Venezuela is to attract foreign investment. Just 30 minutes before a signing ceremony to seal a heavy crude development deal between Italy's Eni and Venezuela, which was still refusing to agree to Eni's proposed changes in the deal, the fireworks began. Eni CEO Paolo Scaroni told Venezuela's oil minister "to take it or leave it," essentially pressuring the country to accept all of the company's proposed changes or risk losing the deal.
Chevron pulls profits out of Venezuela A Chevron exec confided in one cable that although two Maracaibo joint ventures with Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA owe over $100 million to various service companies, Chevron is withdrawing profits through a deal to take crude oil shipments to its refinery in Alabama.
A meeting with a Baker Hughes exec revealed the company's strategy is to minimize its exposure and not invest in Venezuela. Crazy Chavez's economic model not so great after all A cable released this week, and reported by The Guardian, describes the piss poor economy in Venezuela, a big reason why president Hugo Chavez agreed to a devaluation that would substantially increase government revenues and offer a short-term solution.
The lesson? Chavez relied heavily on high oil prices to fund his social programs, but knowing big oils agenda always involves destruction of third world countries it promised to blow up in his face -- and it did -- once crude took a nose dive. The price of oil of course controlled by oil companies, as the cable noted, will continue to be a determining factor in any march toward socialism and the potential for social and economic vitality..
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