I will believe the Saudis don't see any upcoming problems with Ghawar when they cancel one of their projects due to low oil prices. If they continue to be full steam ahead with increasing their capacity then I think they are aware that Ghawar may not be as robust in 5 years time as they would like us to believe.
Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 3:23 pm Post subject: Could someone liberate this text?
Mr Ruppert wanted to spread this article to a wider public. For some reason he thought that the best way was to put it in the subscribers only section of FTW. *Ahem* Could someone kind of "liberate" it? In the same way as Mr Ruppert "liberate" text from "subscribers-only" sections of other media:
Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century (PART ONE OF THREE) - By Dmitry Orlov
MacG? It is expressly forbidden to post stories from FTW on any other website. Sorry.
But there's GOOD news! FTW policy is that after 30 days, members-only stories go to the public pages! So after July 1 (I'd say wait till after July 4, as they may not be editing during the holiday weekend), you can access the Russia story directly! I agree with you; it is a great story to have on hand if you want to know what post-peak life could be like. Copy it for your personal library--that's allowed. Don't go distributing it around to everyone, though, until you've gotten the FTW editors' permission to do so. Click on "Contact Us" on the main page to find out how to get hold of them.
There are two other parts coming to this story. Check the post date on 'em, and come back in a month and fetch 'em!!
MacG? It is expressly forbidden to post stories from FTW on any other website.
A bit of assymetry here? FTW are usually not very shy and frequently reproduce material from other sites while popping the:
"In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes."
Considering that they seem to have gotten the material from Dmitry for free and not through their own research it seem rather pretentious to suddenly make a big case of some form of "copyright" ....
This gets into the grey area of copying material from other sites. Generally speaking re-posting subscription only material is not permitted. Nor is re-posting material publicly available because a site pays for the right to host it. (stuff other than from news agencies mostly)
The "non-profit use" clause is the grey area and used by e.g. Energy Bulletin to repost info. Some stuff, like deep linking to NY Times stories is borderline and NYT would probably ask they stop if they found out. After a while stories get recycled so many times it sometimes gets hard to tell what came from what.
Joined: Aug 18, 2004 Posts: 694 Location: SF Bay Area, Calif
Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 9:27 pm Post subject:
Yes, re-posting material written by someone else on your own website is a grey area. Some thoughts:
1. It's important to give atrribution for the work -- to tell who originated the material and if possible give a link. It's a big no-no to claim other people's work as your own.
2. The rules are more forgiving if you are a volunteer group, not engaged in profit-making activities. For example, educational and public service groups.
3. If possible, it is courteous to ask permission of the originator.
4. If I re-post material, I try to do it in such a way as to support the people who originated the post. For example, "The author of this article also wrote a book on the subject -- (link)". Or, "check out the online magazine from which this article came."
5. I prefer to re-post the minimum amount necessary for my purpose. Often it's enough just to have an excerpt of 2-4 paragraphs with a link.
6. If a publication really doesn't want its material re-posted -- for example, if they make it subscriber only -- I prefer to leave it alone. There is plenty of free material. For example, Agence France Presse recently sued Google (or was it Yahoo") for putting AFP's headlines and photos on their news pages. Fine, let's just leave them alone and not give them any publicity.
The ironic thing about the Web is that it is a true gift economy. The more you give, the more you receive in return. If you are stingy or mean-spirited, the Web won't work very well for you. Courtesy and respect for others works wonders.
I don't think I would re-post Ruppert's material as long as he wanted it subscribers only.
Joined: Feb 16, 2005 Posts: 251 Location: Siberia of Canada
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 1:25 pm Post subject:
This article is a piece of... drivel. The author mixes together the breakup of the Soviet Univon and the economic crisis in Eastern Europe in 1990. Those are two separate albeit related events. The breakup of the USSR was the result of the end of the Cold War when the Soviet Union's primary function was to oppose the western countries, primarily the US. The Cold War was the primary reason to keep all the diverse people of the USSR within the same country. The economic crisis was caused by the inability of the military economy of the USSR to grow any further. When the Soviet citizens got tired to be poor and bored, they forced the leadership to reform the economic system. The reform had a lot of opposition among the ruling elites who wanted so preserve the status quo, so the reform was not smooth and resulted in a crisis. The same will happen in the US if the elites fail to embrace the need to switch from oil to renewables and conserve energy and come up with reasonable laws for that. As far as the breakup of the USA is concerned, I do not see how this can happen in the near future.
When the Soviet citizens got tired to be poor and bored, they forced the leadership to reform the economic system.
My Russian friends say something else: There was a deep public distrust and aversion towards "perestroika" and "glasnost". But they did not live in Moscow or Leningrad.
Last edited by MacG on Thu Jun 16, 2005 2:52 pm; edited 1 time in total
I'm not a subscriber so not sure it's the same article, but one sounding very similar has been posted on either AlasBabylon or RunningOnEmpty2 yahoo groups in the last couple of days, might want to check the archives for those groups.
Joined: Sep 25, 2004 Posts: 4667 Location: Boston, MA
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 7:04 pm Post subject:
"Liberate this text"...hmmm
Does that mean we have to claim the text has Weapons of Mass Destruction, ignore UN demands, and go in to remove its evil dictator?? _________________ "www.peakoil.com is the Myspace of the Apocalypse."
Joined: Feb 16, 2005 Posts: 251 Location: Siberia of Canada
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 7:58 pm Post subject:
MacG wrote:
Russian_Cowboy wrote:
When the Soviet citizens got tired to be poor and bored, they forced the leadership to reform the economic system.
My Russian friends say something else: There was a deep public distrust and aversion towards "perestroika" and "glasnost". But they did not live in Moscow or Leningrad.
This is not "something else". Before "perestroika" and "glasnost" there also was an aversion towards the Soviet command economy that provided the standards of living of a prison. Then came Gorbachev who started "perestroika", the economic reforms that screwed up. But even after this screwup there was an all-USSR referendum on whether the Soviet Union should be saved or broken up. The majority voted for saving the USSR.
Another reason for the breakup of the USSR is that the Russians became incapable of creating a ruling elite that would act on behalf of ordinary Russians and other people of the USSR. Eventially, the population of the Soviet republics other than Russia realized that their interests are not accounted for in the USSR. It became even clearer after a failed coup attempt when old farts from the Politbureau decided to return the country to the command and control economy. So the other people of the USSR endorsed their local elites to oppose this change and the easiest (and most beneficial for the local warlords) way to oppose was to secede.
Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 10:39 pm Post subject: Soviet disintegration and economic collapse
The key connection between the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the economic collapse that followed is this: the command and control economy was structured so that regions specialized in certain types of production, and were not self-sufficient. Supply chains were long, and often crossed borders of Soviet Socialist Republics. When these internal borders suddenly became borders between uncooperative, fledgeling sovereign nations, the supply chains broke apart, and enterprises throughout the Former Soviet Union were starved of key components and resources. Production lines ground to a halt, and the economy shut down. This is very highly relevant to the U.S., because the current globalized U.S. economy is structured similarly to the Soviet economy, in that there are long supply lines and geographic specialization. The U.S. economy will not fail because of consequences of a political disintegration, which I see as unlikely, but because rising transportation costs will render its entire structure sub-economic. I doubt that it will be possible to re-localize the economy under crisis conditions at anywhere near its present size.
As to the ultimate reasons for the disintegration of the Soviet Union, it remains a deep dark secret. Nobody knew it was coming, nobody could believe it was happening, and now nobody can offer a particularly compelling explanation for why it happened the way it did. No matter; it is not particularly relevant to us.
Now, there is one more thing I want to mention in passing. There are people who are victims of anti-Soviet propaganda, and there are some Russians who amplify their misconceptions by claiming that life in the Soviet Union was like life in a prison, or other such hyperbole. I grew up in the Soviet Union, in an average middle-class family. We had an apartment in the city, a country house, and a car. I played with chemistry sets, had a rather good microscope and an interesting collection of test tubes and petri dishes, and, with my father, built shortwave radios out of kits. We travelled widely every summer, spending a month at a time in idyllic remote villages. I had access to most of world literature in excellent-quality translation. Prison indeed!
Joined: Feb 16, 2005 Posts: 251 Location: Siberia of Canada
Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 11:25 pm Post subject: Re: Soviet disintegration and economic collapse
dima wrote:
The key connection between the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the economic collapse that followed is this: the command and control economy was structured so that regions specialized in certain types of production, and were not self-sufficient. Supply chains were long, and often crossed borders of Soviet Socialist Republics. When these internal borders suddenly became borders between uncooperative, fledgeling sovereign nations, the supply chains broke apart, and enterprises throughout the Former Soviet Union were starved of key components and resources. Production lines ground to a halt, and the economy shut down. This is very highly relevant to the U.S., because the current globalized U.S. economy is structured similarly to the Soviet economy, in that there are long supply lines and geographic specialization.
This is true, but the supply chains were eventially restored. Nevertheless, the economy started growing again only in 1997 and the industial recession ended only in 1999 (five and seven years after the dissolution of the USSR respectively) because many companies privatized shortly after the Soviet Union had been gone could not make any profits in free market and in the absence of government's orders for military equipment.
dima wrote:
The U.S. economy will not fail because of consequences of a political disintegration, which I see as unlikely, but because rising transportation costs will render its entire structure sub-economic. I doubt that it will be possible to re-localize the economy under crisis conditions at anywhere near its present size.
As to the ultimate reasons for the disintegration of the Soviet Union, it remains a deep dark secret. Nobody knew it was coming, nobody could believe it was happening, and now nobody can offer a particularly compelling explanation for why it happened the way it did. No matter; it is not particularly relevant to us.
It is not a secret. There are tons of books on the subject. The subject is relevant because Russia itself may eventually disintegrate for the same reason.
dima wrote:
Now, there is one more thing I want to mention in passing. There are people who are victims of anti-Soviet propaganda, and there are some Russians who amplify their misconceptions by claiming that life in the Soviet Union was like life in a prison, or other such hyperbole. I grew up in the Soviet Union, in an average middle-class family. We had an apartment in the city, a country house, and a car. I played with chemistry sets, had a rather good microscope and an interesting collection of test tubes and petri dishes, and, with my father, built shortwave radios out of kits. We travelled widely every summer, spending a month at a time in idyllic remote villages. I had access to most of world literature in excellent-quality translation. Prison indeed!
Lucky you. I did live in the USSR in my childhood, but I did not have a fraction of what you had. Lots of ppl around us lived in shacks or tenements. Meat, sugar and other food items as well as soap and some other things were rationed (e.g., 1 kg. of meat per person per month in Rostov-na-Donu region). Those that were not could only be had if you wait in long lines for hours, maybe days. Things like oranges or bananas were available only in Moscow and a few other cities. Many other kinds of fruit, like pinapples, were only for big communist bosses. Those who had cars were considered very rich. And so on.
Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 2:47 pm Post subject: Re: Soviet disintegration and economic collapse
Russian_Cowboy wrote:
Lots of [people] around us lived in shacks or tenements. Meat, sugar and other food items as well as soap and some other things were rationed...Those that were not could only be had if you wait in long lines for hours... Things like oranges or bananas were available only in Moscow and a few other cities. ... Those who had cars were considered very rich. And so on.
Except for the erroneous point about fruit vis a vis the "big communist bosses" (deleted) this helps dispel a myth some people have tried to perpetuate, that Soviet society consisted solely of a prosperous party elite, and everybody else, and that everybody else was very poor. In fact, there was a large, well-educated, relatively prosperous middle class, as well as a lot of poverty, both urban and rural, at the other extreme. There was less homelessness, and a minimal level of medical care was almost always available. The overall level of personal consumption was lower than in the US, of course.
But it's important to note that the way Soviet society was stratified was not entirely dissimilar to the US, (with the exception that the very rich did not exist), and that therefore comparisons between the two societies' responses to economic collapse can be fruitful.
There are some other notions here I disagree with. Regarding relocalization, the discussion quoted seems to rely on some sort of market-based analysis, instead of projected energy availability. The questions of whether Soviet-era supply chains were reconsitututed (not quite), and whether Russia will shortly disintegrate, are both irrelevant to the topic of the article in question (which, by the way, has been liberated a while ago; see link above).
Part II of the article is due out in about a week, on FTW, and Part III a month later. I suspect there will be more to discuss then. Eventually, the entire article will be "liberated" on survivingpeakoil.com.
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