Peace On Earth And Goodwill To All Men

By: Andrew_McKillop

What Was His Crime?
I'm not talking about Jesus but the 6-year-old Palestinian child who got off a bus – and got shot in the face at close range with a 15.5gram high velocity rubber bullet. So his crime was 1)Being Palestinian and 2)Not being sufficiently armed to reply to a punk psychopath soldier of the Israeli defense force-IDF or its paid militias. Treat them how you should treat them if they aggress your child with no reason at all.

He should have had a plastsic gun, at least that. Maybe his Dad had Hamas-origin and patent applied for plans for new body belts to carry explosives? Or the child had an Iranian atom bomb packed in his school bag.

At this time of cheer it is almost not necessary to remind readers they should immediately kill any Islamic State punk psychopath within range and with his back turned to you. Kurds can do it from the front! They have the courage to put boots on the ground (along with the Damascus army of al Assad). If the youth are disaffected and want to cut peoples' heads off with a rusty penknife, they made a bad Xmas wish,. They have to be eradicated. That is all.

They Didn't Say Good Will to All Women
In my opinion all the best rock singers since 1979, using English language, are females. For example Linda Ronstadt, the former Milan opera singer who had a bad affair with poor pitiful jerk Mick Jagger. Now known as Sir Mick the Dick. This Dick could be compared to Sir Jimmy Savile because they are both English, but "Mick" hansn't yet been convicted for war crime against rock and roll. So Linda went out and wrote and sang "Poor Pitiful Me".

Sir Jimmy S., who is now an English ikon,  after his death, got convicted by the press and media of doing things like raping a 10-year-old boy on a stretcher waiting to go into an operating theater. Very English! Maybe Sir David Bowie could do the same thing? With boring music!

Sex discrimination is unacceptable. Golda Meir and "Maggy" Thatcher and Indira Gandhi were all wimmin, weren't they? I once had a little job managing an Andorran outward bound school project, for the future King Charles III of Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England, who looks like he could be a hen-pecked male. At that time in the 1970s I didn't happen to have a super girlfriend but  Linda Ronstadt was beautiful.

Chas the Third could maybe duel with Putin the Pariah. But like a real Ninja warrior has to finally ask "Where did the flame come from?: when he studies a candle flame, for hours, and hears things from afar and further.

So I wish a great 2015 to all females.

More Oil Than You Can Ever Pay For
ISIS can supply you stolen oil at say $33 a barrel, so what's the problem? For Kurd oil you can ask Genel Energy plc for the price (not very much) Also the Baghdad government! Oil price "dtermination and fixation" is a line of bizniss for financial analysts, like the guy who now runs the US EIA.

I can confidently place the oil price as located in the range of $45 to $145 a barrel. Just pay me and I will tell you more.

The big news for me at least, is that oil's share in world energy is declining and has been declining for 30 years. Nuclear power's share has only been declining for 20 years. That is a long-term trend and not a "secular trend". But expensive oil was, until recently, vital for Goldman Sachs so I would in no way be surprised at the global economy returning to 2009-style performance.

People don't need oil any more and can also do without, and the same for nuclear power – its like learning to live without David Bowie! Easy, that is.

The Economic Decline
As a roaming anglophone journalist in an anglophone country I get a lot of this. In Scotland they tell me about "the decline" but the narrative often gets choppy, there. Fact is, it soon becomes a story to tell. In Scotland they all seem to know that "the country" is in decline, economically. But what is this country? – it seems to be any European country you can name! That is for starters and I I didn't say anything about Japan.

None of them trust the media, that's clear. Curously though, all over town there are leftover copies of 'Financial Times', sticker price 2.50 GB pounds. Its incredible! They are everywhere.

Also, even if they buy a newspaper they don't read it. Its too distracting and generally unreal! What about that guy Pistorius? Or the death of Michael Jackson? Economic decline is something to do with that – for example junkshops where you can buy any Michael Jackson CD or DVD you like = for 50 pence or 0.50 GB pounds.  Don't show too much interest when you are buying them or the seller might jump the prices. You could offer 75pence each.

It is certainly is not worth that!

Likewise for $45-a-barrel oil.It could be sustained a surprisingly long time (to some) but then its price will spike again. You could always use less if you wanted and in the cases like EU28, Canada, USA, Japan you can cut 33% off their current oil demand – no sweat or fuss. Maybe over 15 years. Some countries are going to have very sharp peaks of national oil demand, for example most African countries.

Urban transport and urban energy systems can be radically improved on a very short time basis for example by using my DEC-distributed energy centre system and process for urban energy. Urban transport can be radically cleaned up very fast (de-dieselized and de-gasolinized) as the city of New Delhi, India can inform you. Quite a lot of urban fixed-rail transport can be run using solar PV systemss for daytime use. Geothermal energy resources are global-distributed also. Fracking and geothermal energy can be considered together.

Penguins Are Not Dying Out
For sheer madness at Noel (and the other 365 days of the year), try the Greenpeace and WWF stuff about penguins, polar bears and snow leopards on TV ads grubbing cash from you. OK, at this time of year our thoughts should go out to polar bears and the Queen of England almost said that in her Xmas message, but she was talking about people who voted "Yes" in the Scottish referendum of September. How about protecting turnips, courgettes and cepe mushrooms? Thy are all affected by global warming, aren't they? I say leave them all alone.

Margaret Thatcher talked about pensguins dying out, in 1989. But she died out, thankfully, and the pensguins did not. Thankfully. Victory to penguins! What does Richard Branson say about penguns? Can they join him on a trip to Mars? Or to the Mojave Desert but if Branson takes a penguin with him I don't want my friend, the penguin, to be injured. Leave penguins alone.

Same goes for polar bears. If polar bears got even meaner with shorter and shorter tempers when they find a human being anywhere near them, by listening to Richard Branson & Co's talkshop, that would be no surprise at all to me. Why pick on polar bears?

When is a polar bear going to get shot dead for waving a plastic gun at a police officer? Or just injured like that Palestinian child. Polar bears do get shot - for raiding trash cans in northern Canadian mining towns. Why shouldn't they? Oh yes! You want him to dance on some slushy ice in the water, like a fool!.Who cares if the ice is melting? For my part I would ask Phoebe Nahanni (from Yellowknife) about all that. She knows.

Once upon a time I could kind-of support and tolerate global warming freaks but that time ended a long way back. I am deliberately evasive on the subject. I say for example: "If you like it that way!". Say 5 degrees Celsius hotter by 2099 or is it 20999? We all have to ring 999 right now (that is a UK joke0. In the US you can call 9-11 and ask for Osama. Ask him for a pizza.

Russia Isn't Dying
This is the big news! We all thought Russia would collapse and Putin would take up drinking vodka like Boris Yeltsin. But he didn't. Well the news, here, is that the world's biofuels industry is still producing about 50 billion liters-a-year of 98-degree proof drinkable alcohol. Don't denature it! That is an additional processing step, anyway.  Chin-chin, Happy New Year and Your Health.

Putin didn't say chin-chin to Obama (why should he?) but Obama said it to everybody (except North Koreans). News coming in says that Saudi Arabia will run a year-deficit of $39 bn in 2015 unless oil prices recover. They could or might recover, but at this exact moment I am not betting. Also I do not have pre-established positions. I already told you the right oil price.

At worst Russia would have to put up with EU38-type stagnation, say +0.5% growth of GDP under the best possible outlook, and more like 0%. Possibly in dollars, its GDP would shrink, but that also includes the world value of the USD,  In some ways Russia's CB was already running a trial float of the rouble, and then also had the oil price factor to handle.

The main point is that neither Obama's end of year Q&A nor Putin's end of year talk-in were particularly aggressive on the US-Russia level. Economic sanctions against Russia are "stupid" in the opinion of Stephen Hanke, Cato Institute. I totally agree with Hanke.

So apart from the Islamic State there are no insurmountable problems. Eradicate the Islamic State and have a very Happy 2015.

By Andrew McKillop

Contact: xtran9@gmail.com

Former chief policy analyst, Division A Policy, DG XVII Energy, European Commission. Andrew McKillop Biographic Highlights

Co-author 'The Doomsday Machine', Palgrave Macmillan USA, 2012

Andrew McKillop has more than 30 years experience in the energy, economic and finance domains. Trained at London UK’s University College, he has had specially long experience of energy policy, project administration and the development and financing of alternate energy. This included his role of in-house Expert on Policy and Programming at the DG XVII-Energy of the European Commission, Director of Information of the OAPEC technology transfer subsidiary, AREC and researcher for UN agencies including the ILO.

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