randomWalks

Last night I watched an excellent documentary on BBC2 about the terminal decline in global oil production and the importance of Iraq's oil fields (nationalised in 1972) to the West. A British geologist who forecast that the decline in oil production would begin around 2010, said that the current war was about establishing 'a military presence in the Middle East - aimed partially at Iraq by all means but with a wider significance to control the production elsewhere.' The documentary noted that: "For a war supposedly not about oil, military planners made a high priority of securing the oilfields. Apart from a handful of wells torched by Iraqi troops, the huge southern oilfields were taken largely intact. But other major oil-producing regions are still in Iraqi hands and there is still a danger that, as in Kuwait 12 years ago, massive sabotage may hit oil production for years to come."

From today's Guardian:

• Gary Younge on the ghost of McCarthy haunting America today; and
• Hani Shukrallah, managing editor of the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Weekly, on how Arab pride has been restored over the past week.