REPLIES ON GAS AND ETHANOL

Jack,
An independent Ph.D. energy economist disagrees with your dismissal of LNG (liquefied natural gas).  He claims "it’s economic to transport LNG at $3-3.50 mBTU [million British Thermal Units]," and that "if the world price is high enough, it will make economic sense for producers to liquefy it and send it to China."  In other words, natural gas (NG) is not "de-coupled" from the world market as you say.  He asserts that natural gas is "just as fungible as oil."
John M.

Reply:

John,
Could this fellow be shilling for Chevron or some other outfit hyping LNG?  A barrel of crude oil contains (more…)

THE FAT LADY IS WARMING UP FOR AL QAEDA IN IRAQ

Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the al Qaeda chieftain in Iraq (or maybe not, see below) is changing tactics, says London’s Sunday Times (4/30).

Mr. Zarqawi "is attempting to set up his own mini-army and move away from individual suicide attacks to a more organized resistance movement," writes Michael Smith.

Col. John Gronski of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard indicated Monday (5/1) why the change in tactics isn’t such a good idea.  Col. Gronski is commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the Pennsylvania Guard’s 28th Infantry Division, stationed in Ar Ramadi.

Iraqi troops supported by Col. Gronski’s soldiers killed (more…)

THE PRISON DREAM TEAM

Will Mary McCarthy and Dana Priest end up sharing a jail cell?

The CIA announced Friday it has fired a senior analyst for leaking classified information to the news media.After she failed a polygraph examination, Mary McCarthy confessed to leaking to Dana Priest of the Washington Post information about secret CIA prisons for al Qaeda bigwigs.  Earlier this month, Ms. Priest was awarded a Pulitzer prize for her reporting on the secret prisons.

Prison is where they both could end up.

"I have no idea what her motive was," former CIA deputy director Richard Kerr told the New York Times.  (more…)

THE REAL CIA

[First a note on OBL, as so many of you have asked:  how can the Bin Laden audio tape be real when I said he died last December?  Two comments.  Why do we never get to see this guy?  Why is there never a video like with Zawahiri or Zarqawi?  It’s much easier to fake audio than video.  Yet the bottom line now is I don’t know.  My sources in Iran are very – very – well placed.  They all swear OBL died early December 2005, and tell me they have been to his grave site.  They are mystified by this tape and doubt it’s for real.  But they are checking, and I’ll let you know what they know. —ML]

You just don’t get it, but it’s all so obvious. I mean, we had to do something, so I set it up."

I had finally gotten through via my broken-down ouija board to my old friend, the late James Jesus Angleton, for many years the head of CIA’s counterintelligence operations, and I had asked him about the Mary McCarthy story. I had expected him to be furious at the discovery that a CIA officer was meeting with Washington journalists, contrary to agency policy.

ML: Huh? What’s that supposed to mean? You telling me you’re responsible for setting up McCarthy’s conversations (more…)