A desire for universal health insurance:

The struggle to establish universal health insurance, dormant for more than a decade, is back. Should it actually succeed over the next few years, historians may trace that triumph, at least in part, to a news conference on Capitol Hill — and to a most unusual figure who participated in it. The event took place in early December, just after the Democrats won back control of Congress. Its sponsor was Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, who was unveiling what would become the first universal-coverage proposal of the new political alignment. The impending change in Congressional leadership lent the announcement greater significance than usual — Wyden’s proposal would actually get a hearing, for one thing.

In many respects, the news conference seemed rather mundane. Universal health care has always been a liberal’s cause, after all, and Wyden is one of the Senate’s most liberal members, somebody who has long defined universal coverage primarily in terms of fairness and equal opportunity. Among those flanking Wyden onstage were other longtime advocates of universal coverage, including Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union. He, too, paid homage to the traditional rationale, arguing that Wyden’s plan “sets down a moral test: Why doesn’t every American have the right to the same health care as the president, the vice president, 535 members of Congress and three million federal workers?”

One of the men alongside Wyden and Stern stood out, however, politically if not visually. He was Steve Burd, chairman and C.E.O. of Safeway supermarkets. Nobody has ever accused Burd of having a bleeding heart: a former management consultant with a graduate degree in economics, he became notorious two years earlier when he helped lead California grocers into battle with their labor unions over employee medical benefits. Burd insisted that the unions accept skimpier insurance to save his company money. In the four-month walkout that ensued, newspapers ran articles about checkout clerks defaulting on their cars and homes. Union supporters blasted Burd as “evil” and “a rat.” At one point, a group of clergy members marched on Burd’s California estate, holding a prayer vigil and delivering a handwritten plea for him to compromise. He didn’t. And eventually he won, forcing major concessions from the union.

Yet here was Burd in Washington, arm in arm with one of labor’s most passionate leaders, endorsing a plan in which the government would guarantee affordable, high-quality insurance to every single American. “Our nation is facing a crisis that requires immediate attention,” Burd declared. “Working together, business, labor, government, consumer groups and health-care providers can collectively solve this problem.” And while the “working together” line had the feel of boilerplate, Burd meant it. In the year that Wyden took constructing his proposal, Burd was quietly advising him; eventually they or their staffs were conferring almost every week.

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This is a good idea: a program to help librarians—and everyone else—know how to use Web 2.0 effectively. Read about it.

Interesting admission:

In 1999, Matthew Dowd became a symbol of George W. Bush’s early success at positioning himself as a Republican with Democratic appeal.

A top strategist for the Texas Democrats who was disappointed by the Bill Clinton years, Mr. Dowd was impressed by the pledge of Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, to bring a spirit of cooperation to Washington. He switched parties, joined Mr. Bush’s political brain trust and dedicated the next six years to getting him to the Oval Office and keeping him there. In 2004, he was appointed the president’s chief campaign strategist.

Looking back, Mr. Dowd now says his faith in Mr. Bush was misplaced.

In a wide-ranging interview here, Mr. Dowd called for a withdrawal from Iraq and expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s leadership.

He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a “my way or the highway” mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides.

“I really like him, which is probably why I’m so disappointed in things,” he said. He added, “I think he’s become more, in my view, secluded and bubbled in.”

In speaking out, Mr. Dowd became the first member of Mr. Bush’s inner circle to break so publicly with him.

He said his decision to step forward had not come easily. But, he said, his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s presidency is so great that he feels a sense of duty to go public given his role in helping Mr. Bush gain and keep power.

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Even if you muzzle the victims so they are not allowed to talk about it (this detainee could, but Hicks can’t):

A high-level al-Qaeda suspect who was in CIA custody for more than four years has alleged that his American captors tortured him into making false confessions about terrorist attacks in the Middle East, according to newly released Pentagon transcripts of a March 14 military tribunal hearing here.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who U.S. officials believe was involved in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 and who allegedly organized the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, told a panel of military officers that he was repeatedly tortured during his imprisonment and that he admitted taking part in numerous terrorism plots because of the mistreatment.

“The detainee states that he was tortured into confession and once he made a confession his captors were happy and they stopped torturing him,” Nashiri’s representative read to the tribunal, according to the transcript. “Also, the detainee states that he made up stories during the torture in order to get it to stop.”

Nashiri’s allegations came just days after Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, also alleged abuse during a similar hearing before a Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) at this island detention facility, though his claims were submitted on paper and have not been released.

It is impossible to confirm or evaluate Nashiri’s allegations regarding his interrogation by the CIA. U.S. government officials often caution that terrorists are trained to allege abuse at the hands of their captors, and portions of the 36-page transcript that appeared to detail the locations and methods of the alleged abuse were redacted. But such allegations could call into question the veracity of Nashiri’s interrogations and those of other detainees previously held at secret CIA prisons, and could make trying the men at military commissions difficult if the alleged coercion elicited misleading information.

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It doesn’t make a lot of sense:

Australian David Hicks pleaded guilty here Friday to supporting terrorism in exchange for a nine-month prison sentence under a plea deal that forbids him from claiming he was abused in U.S. custody.

In return, Hicks, 31, will be allowed to leave Guantanamo within 60 days to serve out the sentence in his native Australia. And he will be free by New Year’s Eve.

It was a startling conclusion to the first U.S. war-crimes tribunal since World War II.

“They told us this was one of the world’s worst terrorists, and he got the sentence of a drunken driver,” said Ben Wizner, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Bush administration had originally sought life in prison for Hicks. Eight senior U.S. military officers were told they could sentence him to seven years for providing material support to terrorism, which they did.

But moments after they were ushered out of the tribunal chambers at 8:15 p.m., the presiding officer, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, disclosed that a Pentagon official had cut the deal.

Under the deal, Hicks agreed not to talk to reporters for a year, to forever waive any profit from telling his story, to renounce any claims of mistreatment or unlawful detention and to submit voluntarily to U.S. interrogation and testify at future U.S. trials or international tribunals.

The agreement drew criticism from civil liberties and human rights attorneys monitoring the trial. They were especially critical of the order forbidding Hicks from protesting any mistreatment, saying such a requirement would be unconstitutional in a civilian U.S. court.

“If the United States were not ashamed of its conduct, it wouldn’t hide behind a gag order,” Wizner said. “The agreement says he wasn’t mistreated. Why aren’t we allowed to judge for ourselves?”

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Just got a call. The Older Grandson is at his first Go tournament ever. Top players there are 8-dans (very strong), but there’s a good range. Since this is his first tournament, his rating is provisional, but he’s definitely still in the early stages of learning Go. Still: he lost his first game, but won his second. Very exciting for all of us, as you can guess.

From an Australian newspaper, about one of the “guilty” pleas from a Guantánamo detainee:

David Hicks’s father, Terry, has slammed the conditions of the Guantánamo Bay detainee’s release, under which the confessed terrorism supporter will be a free man by the end of the year.

A US military tribunal has sentenced Hicks to seven years’ jail but he will only have to serve nine months.

The US must send Hicks home within two months so he can serve his sentence in Australia.

The tribunal judge accepted Hicks’s guilty plea as part of an agreement that limited his sentence to seven years in prison, in addition to the five years he has been held at Guantánamo.

The plea agreement bars the former kangaroo skinner from speaking to the media for a year and selling his story.

He has also been banned from taking legal action against the US.

Hicks has previously said the US military abused him but in his plea agreement, he said he had “never been illegally treated while in US custody”. [But note his earlier affidavit. - LG]

Terry Hicks says his son is being forced to sign a document to say he was not mistreated.

“It’s probably a poor thing from the American side to make people sign these papers to say that they were treated OK, no abuses, when we all know that he has been abused and others have been abused,” he said.

“But if he had to do it to get out of there, then so be it.”

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This morning I used the last of the Classic soaps I recently received: the Lilac. The brush was the charming little Simpsons Chubby 1 Best, and the lather was good. The razor was the redoubtable Wilkinson “Sticky,” and it delivered a fine shave with whatever blade it held. Alum bar and the the Ogallala Bay Rum aftershave—and their cologne as well, why not?

The Census Bureau claims that it keeps all information confidential. The claim, alas, turns out to be a lie:

Despite decades of denials, government records confirm that the U.S. Census Bureau provided the U.S. Secret Service with names and addresses of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

The Census Bureau surveys the population every decade with detailed questionnaires but is barred by law from revealing data that could be linked to specific individuals. The Second War Powers Act of 1942 temporarily repealed that protection to assist in the roundup of Japanese-Americans for imprisonment in internment camps in California and six other states during the war. The Bureau previously has acknowledged that it provided neighborhood information on Japanese-Americans for that purpose, but it has maintained that it never provided “microdata,” meaning names and specific information about them, to other agencies.

A new study of U.S. Department of Commerce documents now shows that the Census Bureau complied with an August 4, 1943, request by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau for the names and locations of all people of Japanese ancestry in the Washington, D.C., area, according to historian Margo Anderson of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and statistician William Seltzer of Fordham University in New York City. The records, however, do not indicate that the Bureau was asked for or divulged such information for Japanese-Americans in other parts of the country.

Anderson and Seltzer discovered in 2000 that the Census Bureau released block-by-block data during WW II that alerted officials to neighborhoods in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Arkansas where Japanese-Americans were living. “We had suggestive but not very conclusive evidence that they had also provided microdata for surveillance,” Anderson says.

The Census Bureau had no records of such action, so the researchers turned to the records of the chief clerk of the Commerce Department, which received and had the authority to authorize interagency requests for census data under the Second War Powers Act. Anderson and Seltzer discovered copies of a memo from the secretary of the treasury (of which the Secret Service is part) to the secretary of commerce (who oversees the Census Bureau) requesting the data, and memos documenting that the Bureau had provided it [see image Census memo .]

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Laura Rozen has it:

From 1991 to 1993, a young lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve was working as a program manager in a Pentagon intelligence office. His name was Mitchell John Wade. His boss, the assistant secretary of defense for command, control, communications and intelligence, was Duane P. Andrews. Andrews’s job at the Pentagon was essentially to serve as intelligence advisor to the secretary of defense. The secretary of defense at the time was someone that Andrews knew well and respected immensely: Dick Cheney.

Back during the Reagan administration, Andrews had served as a professional staff member to the House Intelligence Committee, of which Cheney, then a Wyoming Republican congressman, was a prominent member. In a recent interview with a federal technology magazine, Andrews lists Cheney as his personal, lifelong hero.

In 1993, at the end of George H.W. Bush’s presidency, Cheney went on to become CEO of the oil services giant Halliburton; Andrews joined the massive government contractor SAIC, where he would rise to become CIO; and Wade, then 30 years old, moved to form his own defense contracting firm, MZM, Inc. But it wasn’t until 2002 that MZM would get its first federal government contract: a peculiar one-month, $140,000 contract from the White House, later revealed to be for providing computers, office furniture, and specialized computer programming services to the Office of the Vice President.

Wade’s company would later get three more contracts from the White House and tens of millions of dollars in contracts from the Defense Department and other federal agencies, many of them for classified intelligence work. In the summer of 2005, of course, it all began to unravel for MZM, after journalist Marcus Stern of the San Diego Union Tribune/Copley News service noticed that San Diego congressman Duke Cunningham had sold his house to a company that listed as its name a Washington, D.C. street address, 1523 New Hampshire Ave. This was the address of MZM. After an extensive investigation that led to a sprawling federal probe run out of the San Diego U.S. attorney’s office (the now-fired Carol Lam), Wade pled guilty last year and is awaiting sentencing on charges related to bribing Cunningham, who himself pled guilty on bribery-related charges and is serving out an eight year prison sentence. In February, three more indictments were issued in the case, this time against a San Diego-based defense contractor and Bush/Cheney Pioneer with whom Wade had closely worked, Brent Wilkes; Wilkes’s longtime friend-turned-CIA executive director Kyle Dustin Foggo, who is accused of steering Wilkes CIA contracts and has since resigned; and the nephew of a Greek American businessman who is accused of laundering some of Wilkes’s and Wade’s bribes to Cunningham through his mortgage company.

Cheney’s office declined to comment on why Wade’s MZM received the $140,000 contract, or describe any possible contacts with Wade. Andrews did not respond to messages left at his current company or home in northern Virginia. There is no indication that he played any role in Wade’s efforts to get federal contracts.

But this past week,

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This particular acronym got a lot of use in the recent pass, and it’s still very applicable:

The White House today lashed out at Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for daring to visit Syria in the coming days. White House spokesperson Dana Perino:

I do think that, as a general rule — and this would go for Speaker of the House Pelosi and this apparent trip that she is going to be taking — that we don’t think it’s a good idea. …

I’m not sure what the hopes are to — what she’s hoping to accomplish there. I know that Assad probably really wants people to come and have a photo opportunity and have tea with him, and have discussions about where they’re coming from, but we do think that’s a really bad idea.

Not only are the administration’s attacks on Pelosi hypocritical, but the timing suggests they are a partisan hit. ThinkProgress has learned that a delegation of Republicans is currently in Syria. (This has not been previously reported by the press.) Why did the White House wait until Pelosi’s imminent visit to raise this issue publicly, and not make mention of the Republicans already there?

Here’s what the White House isn’t talking about:

Republican Reps. Aderholt and Wolf are currently visiting Syria. According to a congressional official on Rep. Robert Aderholt’s (R-AL) staff, Aderholt and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) are currently visiting Israel and Syria.

Republican Rep. Hobson accompanying Pelosi on Syria visit. Speaker Pelosi will be traveling with a contingent of members of Congress to Syria. The delegation includes Reps. David Hobson (R-OH), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Tom Lantos (D-CA), Henry Waxman (D-CA), Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Nick Rahall (D-WV).

Moreover, as the AP reports, “Earlier this month, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey held talks with a senior Syrian diplomat on how Damascus was coping with a flood of Iraqi refugees, the first such talks in the Syrian capital for more than two years.”

It’s not just Bush who has an eye for incompetent and corrupt staff—Gonzales is good at it, too:

The U.S. Attorney Scandal has struck a new victim: the American taxpayer. A judge ruled Wednesday that an epic blunder by federal prosecutors in the largest tax prosecution ever means that the treasury can’t recoup at least $100 million in restitution.

Telecommunications entrepreneur Walter Anderson pled guilty to tax evasion, but U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said the binding plea agreement listed the wrong statute. This problem could have been overcome had prosecutors not failed to include any discussion of probation as is routine in such deals.

Because of the technicality, Judge Friedman said, “I’ve come to the conclusion, very reluctantly, that I have no authority to order restitution. . . . This is a very poorly drafted agreement.”

The case was prosecuted by the office of the interim U.S. Attorney for D.C., Jeffrey A. Taylor. Taylor was appointed directly by Attorney General Gonzales without Senate confirmation in November 2006 under a provision of the Patriot Act that Congress has recently voted to reverse.

Sure enough, Taylor came straight from the Bush Administration. He served as Counselor to Attorney Generals John Ashcroft and Gonzales for four years prior to his selection. Before that he worked as an aide to Sen. Orrin Hatch, where he actually participated in the writing of the Patriot Act.

Jeffrey Taylor has also given hundreds of dollars to the Republican National Committee and to George W. Bush.

As the acting U.S. attorney for D.C., Taylor has the sole authority to enforce House or Senate subpoenas through citations for contempt of Congress. Even if Taylor actually chooses to prosecute an administration official for refusing to testify - which is highly unlikely - could we trust him not to screw it up?

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Arianna Huffington in the LA Times:

There is a subject being forgotten in the 2008 Democratic race for the White House.

While all the major candidates are vying for the black and Latino vote, they are completely ignoring one of the most pressing issues affecting those constituencies: the failed “war on drugs” — a war that has morphed into a war on people of color.

Consider this: According to a 2006 report by the American Civil Liberties Union, African Americans make up an estimated 15% of drug users, but they account for 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted and 74% of all drug offenders sentenced to prison. Or consider this: The U.S. has 260,000 people in state prisons on nonviolent drug charges; 183,200 (more than 70%) of them are black or Latino.

Such facts have been bandied about for years. But our politicians have consistently failed to take action on what has become yet another third rail of American politics, a subject to be avoided at all costs by elected officials who fear being incinerated on contact for being soft on crime.

Perhaps you hoped this would change during a spirited Democratic presidential primary? Unfortunately, a quick search of the top Democratic hopefuls’ websites reveals that not one of them — not Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama, not John Edwards, not Joe Biden, not Chris Dodd, not Bill Richardson — even mentions the drug war, let alone offers any solutions.

The silence coming from Clinton and Obama is particularly deafening.

Obama has written eloquently about his own struggle with drugs but has not addressed the tragic effect the war on drugs is having on African American communities.

As for Clinton, she flew into Selma, Ala., to reinforce her image as the wife of the black community’s most beloved politician and has made much of her plan to attract female voters, but she has ignored the suffering of poor, black women right in her own backyard.

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From today’s paper:

Scientists with the Food and Drug Administration have linked a chemical to the illness and deaths of cats eating tainted food and raised for the first time the possibility that dry pet food may have been affected as well as wet food.

F.D.A. officials said at a news conference today that they have linked the chemical melamine, which they said is used as a fertilizer in Asia, to the kidneys of the affected cats. Thousands of owners of both cats and dogs who feed their pets wet or dry food have complained that their pets have become ill, but the F.D.A. has not yet determined if those illnesses are linked to pet food.

The agency has recalled a batch of contaminated Chinese wheat gluten that was sent to many pet food manufacturers, including one that makes dry dog food.

But they said they do not know yet if the contaminated wheat gluten has been used to make pet food. And the F.D.A.’s finding was also immediately disputed by the New York State Food Laboratory, the testing facility that announced last Friday it had identified Aminopterin, a rat poison, in samples of tainted cat food.

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Excellent. Apparently she thought she could just ignore Congress:

At the heart of the CIA leak scandal was a false claim, made by President Bush in the infamous 16 words from his State of the Union address, that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger for a nuclear device.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has been trying for years to investigate how this fraudulent claim became part of the basis for sending our country to war, beginning with a letter to the White House two days before the war began.

The Bush administration has consistently refused his requests for information. Since the war began, Waxman has written 11 letters to Condoleezza Rice alone — she hasn’t responded to a single one.

On March 12, 2007, he wrote his first letter to Rice as committee chairman, asking that she respond by March 23. She didn’t, and Waxman has had enough:

Dear Madam Secretary:

On March 12, 2007, I sent you a letter renewing, as formal requests of the Committee, prior letter requests that I sent to you between 2003 and 2006. These requests sought information on the claim that Iraq sought uranium from Niger, White House treatment of classified information, the appointment of Ambassador Jones as “special coordinator” for Iraq, and other subjects. My March 12 letter is attached.

The March 12 letter requested a response by March 23 to several of the inquiries, but the Committee received no response from you.

I now request your appearance before the Committee at a hearing on Wednesday, April 18, 2007, at 10:00 a.m. in Room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building. At this hearing, you will be asked to provide testimony and respond to questions on the subjects outlined in the March 12 letter and the original request letters. …

Sincerely,
Henry A. Waxman
Chairman

Since Waxman wrote his March 12 letter, Rice has done more than a dozen press events, including interviews with Sean Hannity and Fox & Friends. Now it’s time she spend a few hours with Congress.

Thanks to Matt Hulan for pointing out this story:

Much to the chagrin of the White House, House Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) wants to hear from Susan Ralston.

Jack Abramoff’s former personal assistant, Ralston became Karl Rove’s assistant in 2001, where she was his “implant” at the White House.

But after a report last October by Waxman’s committee (then chaired by Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA)) showed that Ralston had accepted thousands of dollars in gifts from Abramoff without compensating him, she abruptly resigned.

At the time, the White House was clear that Ralston’s resignation meant the end of the issue. “She recognized that a protracted discussion of these matterrs would be a distraction to the White House and she’s chosen to step down,” said deputy White House press secretary Dana Perino. “We support her decision and consider the matter closed.”

But it’s not closed, according to Waxman, who, in a letter sent today, invited Ralston to appear before the committee on Thursday, April 5, to answer questions about Abramoff’s access to the White House.

The hearing will also be a good opportunity for Waxman to press for more details about White House employees’ use of outside email accounts provided by the Republican National Committee. Ralston used such outside accounts when corresponding with Abramoff, even writing to him once, “I now have an RNC blackberry which you can use to e-mail me at any time. No security issues like my WH email.”

Yet again:

The Bush administration has been trying to force Congress to abandon its support for an Iraq withdrawal time line by claiming that a “clean” Iraq spending bill must be signed by mid-April or U.S. troops will suffer. The Hill reported, the Pentagon and the White House have been “sounding alarms and sketching worst-case scenarios if Congress does not pass the 2007 supplemental by April 15.”

Renewing his veto threat on Wednesday, President Bush told Congress “the clock is ticking for our troops in the field“:

BUSH: Congress continues to pursue these [withdrawal] bills, and as they do, the clock is ticking for our troops in the field. Funding for our forces in Iraq will begin to run out in mid-April. Members of Congress need to stop making political statements, and start providing vital funds for our troops.

Meanwhile, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and others have been arguing that Bush is wrong, and that funds won’t dry up until June, giving plenty of time for negotiations:

Murtha says he believes the April 15 date for funds running out is incorrect. Based on the inquiries he’s made, he said, the Pentagon will start running out of money at the beginning of June.

“We’ve never had a year where they didn’t give us bad information,” said Murtha, who’s known for his contacts inside the military. “We’ve been asking people and we think it’ll be the end of May.”

Now we know who’s right. A new report from the Congressional Research Service makes clear that Bush’s deadline is completely fabricated:

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Take a look.

What a hack:

When a college intern in the Justice Department whined that all he was doing was filing and answering phones, Monica M. Goodling took him aside. If he wanted to do “substantive work,” she told him, he was going to have to prove himself first.

The intern walked out of the office in a huff, and when he returned an hour later, Goodling took him aside again. “You’re fired,” she said.

“Some people in the office thought: ‘Wow! That was tough,’ ” said Mark Corallo, her former boss in Justice’s Office of Public Affairs, who recalled the incident. “But I thought, ‘Good for her.’ “

Part of a generation of young religious conservatives who swept into the federal government after the election of President Bush in 2000, Goodling displayed unblinking devotion to the administration and expected others to do the same. When she started at Justice, “no job was too small for her,” and as she moved rapidly up the ranks, none “was too large,” Corallo said.

“She was the embodiment of a hardworking young conservative who believed strongly in the president and his mission,” said David Ayres, former chief of staff to Bush’s first attorney general, John D. Ashcroft.

This week, Goodling, 33, became the most prominent federal official to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying before Congress since Lt. Col. Oliver L. North refused to answer questions — until he received immunity — during the 1986 Iran-contra hearings.

Goodling, now on an indefinite leave, most recently served as senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and as Justice’s liaison to the White House. Her name appears on several e-mails about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are eager to ask her about those dismissals.

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How’s that alternative energy search going? How are we doing on Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE)? Are we still happy with getting the same average mileage as we did in 1975? That’s one generation ago.

This is all going to change once we hit peak oil: once global oil production starts declining at the same time demand is rising, you’re going to see panic. Our government could take the lead, but our current Administration (and the GOP Congress it enjoyed for 6 long, terrible years) is more interested in protecting oil interests.

Anyhow, it’s here:

In a worst-case scenario, global oil production may reach its peak next year, before starting to decline. In a best-case scenario, this peak would not be reached until 2018. These are the estimates made by Fredrik Robelius, whose doctoral dissertation estimates future oil production on the basis of the largest oil fields. The dissertation will be publicly defended at Uppsala University in Sweden on March 30.

Fredrik Robelius bases his forecasts on studies of global oil reserves, historical production, and new finds. He focuses on the very largest oil fields, so-called giant fields, which produce a total of at least 500 million barrels of oil.

Giant fields comprise only about one percent of all oil fields in the world, but they nevertheless account for more than 60 percent of total production. Unfortunately, the trend is heading downward when it comes to new giant-field discoveries, both in terms of the number of fields and the volume of the fields located. The majority of the largest giant fields are found around the Persian Gulf and are more than 50 years old.

“The dominance of giant fields in global oil production supports the thesis that they will be crucial to what future production will look like,” says Fredrik Robelius.

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