All Posts Tagged With: "brazil"

Women’s volleyball semis from Capital Gymnasium

Today was hot by any standards but felt even more so because we just had two nights of rain and uncannily cool weather for August. This, of all days, was the day I chose to wear jeans and boots, partly because I wore shorts and flip-flops through rain yesterday and was not very comfortable. To make things worse: I was at Bird’s Nest through the morning going on two hours of sleep. Let’s just say I’m glad I’m in the comfort of an air-conditioned home right now.

I want to sleep. I want to read. I want to write about the Bird’s Nest and women’s volleyball. I want to find out what exactly happened with the U.S. track relay teams. I want to catch replays for U.S.-Japan softball and U.S.-Brazil women’s soccer, which I missed, or U.S.-Cuba in baseball later this evening, and definitely the basketball games. I want these Olympics to not be ending this Sunday .

Anyway, I was at Capital Gymnasium yesterday — as I mentioned before — watching China take on Brazil, the world’s No. 1 women’s volleyball team. Afterwards I wrote a piece for ESPN The Magazine’s website.


Game photos:



GOOD NEWS! Or bad news?

Environmental HypocrisyMost media outlets have widely reported the discovery by Petroleo Brasileiro SA, also known as Petrobras, the state controlled Brazilian oil company, of a new oil field 155 miles off shore and close to the Tupi oil field found two years ago. The Tupi field was the largest “find” since 1976 in the world

I wonder if they will develop the fields, extract oil, deliver it to downstream users and refiners etc etc? I wonder if they will make a lot of money doing that? Will they gain political power along the way?

In CNN reports this morning there was excitement over the find because it holds the prospect to help in the supply and demand balance currently out of whack from our price perspective only, due to massive increases in oil use in Asia with insufficient corresponding increases in production and because Brazil is closer to the US and more politically stable than the Middle East.

Hundreds of millions of once poor people overseas are now enjoying capitalism and are spending it on cars, gas and so on. Why couldn’t they just be happy remaining poor?

How is it, that “we” are happy when foreign countries find and exploit very profitable polluting energy sources that would be called BIG BAD OIL if it were a US company, owned by shareholders?

It is interesting that these “finds” are the result of aggressive “looking” for oil sources that was unknown to the world before the “find.”

The US, on land and offshore, ostensibly in the interests of environmentalism, has put vast amounts of old energy “finds” off limits which discourages US bases BIG BAD OIL from “looking” for new sources. That forces them to try to negotiate with Foreign Governments to replace waning oil fields and to access new sources for their legitimate business.

How would you like to negotiate to drill for oil in Venezuela, Russia, Iran or other state monopoly circumstances? Think these Capitalist Countries have any conflicts of interests in the deal? Think they meld foreign policy into the deal. They have too much power and US based publicly owned shareholder oil companies enjoy no such advantage although the anti oilers make it sound like US based oil companies are the devil.

Seems we would rather continue to compromise energy security and Hypocritically applaud and continue to use oil found and exploited by foreign governments who will use that oil as a weapon to get what they want.

I am an environmentalist and I thing politically partisan environmentalist deserve all the disdain I hope is heaped on them as our voters, hopefully wake up.

Recently I met a very liberal Canadian who complained that under NAFTA Canada is obligated to delivery a certain amount of oil to the US while they have to buy some from foreign countries. He blamed it on the Bush Administration! Another reason to impeach him.

Were it true I would help pay for the filing of impeachment papers. We need to “impeach” those who force the US to pursue a suicidal oil avoidance policy.

So, is it good new or bad news?

Is Al Gore a hypocrite if he uses Petrobas oil to continue his disproportionate use of energy? Yes, and he should be retroactvely impeached for doing nothing about energy security as a powerful VP in the Clinton Administration,. Nothing except prepare to get rich enough to use egregious amounts of polluting energy which is enriching our enemies.

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