Folks,

Dux-P20:

Now don't hold back chaps just because of me.....say what you really feel.

Of course this really isn't the place for deep, intellectual discussions regarding world politics or perhaps anything else for that matter. However it is clear that, as Joel Gray once sang in Cabaret while wearing a full pound of make-up, "Money Makes the World Go Around". Would that it were love instead. For one thing, I have a more than sufficient supply of that and precious little of the other.

Here is what the Canadian press reported over here:
The Canadian Press
PARIS - From start to finish, there was no respite from the protests. Only moments after the first Olympic torchbearer began his descent down the Eiffel Tower, a protester shouted "Freedom for the Chinese!

China! With 1.3 billion people, the People's Republic of China is the world's most populous country and the second largest oil consumer, behind the U.S. In recent years, China has been undergoing a process of industrialization and is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. With real gross domestic product growing at a rate of 8-10% a year, China's need for energy is projected to increase by 150 percent by 2020. to sustain its growth China requires increasing amounts of oil. Its oil consumption grows by 7.5% per year, seven times faster than the U.S.'

Growth in Chinese oil consumption has accelerated mainly because of a large-scale transition away from bicycles and mass transit toward private automobiles, more affordable since China's admission to the World Trade Organization. Consequently, by year 2010 China is expected to have 90 times more cars than in 1990. With automobile numbers growing at 19% a year, projections show that China could surpass the total number of cars in the U.S. by 2030. Another contributor to the sharp increase in automobile sales is the very low price of gasoline in China. Chinese gasoline prices now rank among the lowest in the world for oil-importing countries, and are a third of retail prices in Europe and Japan, where steep taxes are imposed to discourage gasoline use.

Where will China get its oil? China’s ability to provide for its own needs is limited by the fact that its proven oil reserves are small in relation to its consumption. At current production rates they are likely to last for less than two decades. Though during the 1970s and 1980s China was a net oil exporter, it became a net oil importer in 1993 and is growingly dependent on foreign oil. China currently imports 32% of its oil and is expected to double its need for imported oil between now and 2010. A report by the International Energy Agency predicted that by 2030, Chinese oil imports will equal imports by the U.S. today.

China's expectation of growing future dependence on oil imports has brought it to acquire interests in exploration and production in places like Kazakhstan, Russia, Venezuela, Sudan, West Africa, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Canada. I have read (but can I trust it?) that the US actually imports more oil from Canada than from the Middle East.

Despite its efforts to diversify its sources, China has become increasingly dependent on Middle East oil. Today, 58% of China's oil imports come from the region. By 2015, the share of Middle East oil will stand on 70%. Though historically China has had no long-standing strategic interests in the Middle East, its relationship with the region from where most of its oil comes is becoming increasingly important.

Implications for U.S.-China relations:U.S.-China relations are influenced by a wide array of issues from Taiwan to trade relations and human rights. But undoubtedly access to Middle East oil will become a key issue in the relations between the two powers. Clearly, in the short term, China recognizes that its energy security is increasingly dependent on cooperation with the U.S., rather than competition with it. China would like to maintain good relations with the U.S. and enjoy the economic benefits derived from such cooperation. But this inclination is balanced by the feeling among many Chinese leaders that the U.S. seeks to dominate the Persian Gulf in order to exercise control over its energy resources and that it tries to contain China's aspirations in the region. The U.S. is therefore considered a major threat to China's long-term energy security.

Although China is banking on oil development projects outside the Middle East, IMHO Beijing most likely will insist on nurturing its relations with the main oil-producing states in that region as an insurance policy. But its attempts to gain a foothold in the Middle East and build up a long-term strategic links with countries hostile to the U.S. could also bear heavily on U.S.-China relations. Especially troubling are China's arms sales to the region, its support of state sponsors of terrorism and its proliferation of dual use technology.

A report by the U.S.-China Security Review Commission, a group created by Congress, reportedly warned that China's increasing need for imported energy has given it an incentive to become closer to countries supporting terrorism like Iran, Iraq and Sudan.

Having had the dubious fortune of being around quite a few events that were deemed worthy of TV broadcast over the years, it never failed to amaze me how much different things appeared on the 11:00 news broadcast from what I had observed being on the scene myself. Of course everything we experience in life is run through the subjective filter of our past experience, isn't it?

How often has what someone said turned out to be different from what you heard? Everyone, especially the press has an agenda. Once they just reported the news or the facts as they saw it. Now everything seems to be subject to some sort of spin. It is difficult for us average blokes to get a true read on anything we do not see for ourselves. Pity me, I knew I couldn't implicitly trust our own news organizations yet I had always thought that in watching the BBC I was getting an unbiased view of what was really going on, especially over here. It has been said by someone wiser than I that in a totalitarian society the people themselves have to be controlled and that in a free democracy information has to be controlled.

I was trained on how to deal with the press in case of some dire emergency. We were a group of executives put through an annual course of training by a gung-ho firm of public relations experts in Chicago to prepare us for any future disaster. We were given various scenarios and forced (almost at gun point) to write and then to read statements to and take questions from a hostile press while being filmed on camera. Afterward the films were critiqued. Jolly good fun as you can well imagine. I quickly learned not to trust anyone poking a microphone in my face.

Nice pic, Dux. Old Hans Ulrich was quite a tank buster. Much to the chagrin of many a Russian tank driver, he could do things with a Ju87 that defied all logic. I have read his biography several times. If he had not been such a devout NAZI I might have even grown to like him. Hans has gone on to what ever private hell there may be set aside for ardent NAZIS, however, I suppose his great grand children all speak Spanish with an Argentinian accent these days?