Rudyard Kipling"
āWhen you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldierā
General Douglas MacArthur"
āWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā
āIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā āOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
āThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā
āMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā āThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
āNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
āIt is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
A nice article about Israel's energy potential in the Financial Post: In the first 25 years after Israelās founding in 1948, it was repeatedly attacked by the large armies of its Arab neighbours. Each time, Israel prevailed on the battlefield, only to have its victories rolled back by Western powers who feared losing access to Arab oilfields. The fear was and is legitimate ā Arab nations have often threatened to use their āoil weaponā against countries that support Israel and twice made good their threat through crippling OPEC oil embargoes.
But that fear, which shackles Israel to this day, may soon end. The old energy order in the Middle East is crumbling with Iran and Syria having left the Western fold and others, including Saudi Arabia, the largest of them all, in danger of doing so. Simultaneously, a new energy order is emerging to give the West some spine. In this new order, Israel is a major player.
The new energy order is founded on rock ā the shale that traps vast stores of energy in deposits around the world. One of the largest deposits ā 250 billion barrels of oil in Israelās Shfela basin, comparable to Saudi Arabiaās entire reserves of 260 billion barrels of oil ā has until now been unexploited, partly because the technology required has been expensive, mostly because the multinational oil companies that have the technology fear offending Muslims. āNone of the major oil companies are willing to do business in Israel because they donāt want to be cut off from the Mideast supply of oil,ā explains Howard Jonas, CEO of IDT, the U.S. company that owns the Shfela concession through its subsidiary, Israeli Energy Initiatives. Jonas, an ardent Zionist, considers the Shfela deposit merely a beginning: āWe believe that under Israel is more oil than under Saudi Arabia. There may be as much as half a trillion barrels.ā
Because the oil multinationals have feared to develop Shfela, one of the worldās largest oil developments is being undertaken by an unlikely troop. Jonasās IDT is a consumer-oriented telecom and media company that is a relative newcomer to the heavy industry world of energy development. Joining IDT in this latter-day Zionist Project is Lord Jacob Rothschild, a septuagenarian banker and philanthropist whose forefathers helped finance Zionist settlements in Palestine from the mid-1800s; Michael Steinhardt, a septuagenarian hedge fund investor and Zionist philanthropist; and Rupert Murdoch, the octogenarian chairman of News Corporation who uncompromisingly opposes, in his words, the āongoing war against the Jewsā by Muslim terrorists, by the Western left in general, and by Europeās āmost elite politiciansā in particular.
Where others would have long ago retired, these businessmen-philanthropists have joined the battle on Israelās side. While theyāre in it for the money, they are also determined to free the world of Arab oil dependence by providing Israel with an oil weapon of its own. The companyās oil shale technology ācould transform the future prospects of Israel, the Middle East and our allies around the world,ā states Lord Rothschild.
To win this war, Israeli Energy Initiatives has enlisted some of the energy industryās savviest old soldiers ā here a former president of Mobil Oil (Eugene Renna), there a former president of Occidental Oil Shale (Allan Sass), over there a former president of Halliburton (Dick Cheney). But the Field Commander for the operation, and the person who in their mind will lead them to ultimate victory, is Harold Vinegar, a veteran pulled out of retirement and sent into the fray. Vinegar, a legend in the field, had been Shell Oilās chief scientist and, with some 240 patents to his name over his 32 years at Shell, revolutionized the shale oil industry.
Before oil met Vinegar, this was dirty business, a sprawling open mine operation that crushed and heated rock to yield a heavy tar amid mountains of spent shale. The low-value tar then needed to be processed and refined. The bottom line: low economic return, high environmental cost.
Vinegar boosted the bottom line by dropping the environmental damage. No open pit mining, no spent shale, no heavy tar to manage. In his pioneering approach, heated rods are inserted underground into the shale, releasing from it natural gas and light liquids. The natural gas provides the projectās need for heat; the light liquids are easily refined into high-value jet fuel, diesel and naphtha. The new bottom line: oil at a highly profitable cost of about $35-$40 a barrel and an exceedingly low environmental footprint. Vinegarās process produces greenhouse gas emissions less than half that from conventional oil wells and, unlike open pit mining, does not consume water. The land area from which he will extract a volume of oil equivalent to that in Saudi Arabia? Approximately 25 square kilometers.
Although the Israeli shale project is still at an early stage, its massive potential and Vinegarās reputation have already begun to change attitudes toward Israel. āWe have been approached by all the majors,ā Vinegar recently told the press, and for good reason. āIsrael is very well positioned for oil exportingā to both European and Asian markets. The majors have other reasons, too, for casting their eyes afresh at Israel. Through its natural gas finds in the Mediterraneanās Levant Basin, and with no help from the oil majors, Israel is becoming a major natural gas exporter to Europe. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Levant Basin has vast natural gas supplies, most of it within Israelās jurisdiction.
Attitudes to Israel in some European capitals ā those in line to receive Israeli gas ā have already warmed and the shift to Israel may in time become tectonic, in Europe and elsewhere, when oil is at stake ā 38 countries have an estimated 4.8-trillion barrels of shale oil, many of which would benefit from the shale oil technology now being pioneered in Israel. Speeding that shift could be the Arab Spring, which many fear will flip pro-Western Arab states into hostile camps. Long time U.S. ally Saudi Arabia is reportedly so distrustful of the U.S. following its abandonment of long-time Egyptian ally, President Hosni Mubarak, that it has pulled back its relationship with the West in favour of China.
Before 1973, when the Arab world first punished the West for its relationship with Israel, Israel was a favourite of the left and of most of the free world. Under Arab punishment, much of the world started seeing the world through Arab eyes and turned on Israel. But freed of the threat of Arab punishment, and in a new world energy order, Western countries may turn again, to their benefit. Rupert Murdoch well expresses the highest hopes of his partners: āIf [our] effort to develop shale oil is successful, as I believe it will be, then the news weāll report in the coming decades will reflect a more prosperous, more democratic and more secure world.ā
Isn't it amazing how European attitudes towards Israel might change just because of oil and natural gas? Elder of Ziyon