Oil & Holy Water (Eeeww! That's Not Water)

If you remain unaware that Arianna Huffington is some sort of cultist, involved w/ a pervert who calls himself "John-Roger," get this Gawker item from October 2008.

(Added funny:

But it is all but impossible to read the LA Times' three exhaustive articles on MSIA, dating to 1988 and 1994, without coming to the conclusion that the movement is, in fact, a scary cult, and among the last organizations Huffington should be calling on to prepare HuffPo to keep growing as the economy, and soon politics, cools down.

Politics will cool down soon? Ninny!)

Gawker continues:

John-Roger is depicted as a paranoid leader who secretly wires each room in Insight headquarters with a microphone connected to his office, who taps the phones, and who warns that his critics "had been infected by a powerful and contagious negative force known as the Red Monk," a spirit of whom members were terrified. He removed "negative entities" in a popular "exorcism-like" ceremony known as the "Super II's," organized hours-long "Prana Awareness Trainings" involving "repeatedly answering a simple question," and organized followers into a complex hierarchy, including a Melchizedek Priesthood and an inner, elite circle of attractive young male ministers known as "the Guys."The LA Times said one of these favored sons was among at least three close John-Rogers associates who said they had sex with him "as an important spiritual favor:"

In July of 1977, John-Roger put [Victor] Toso on staff, and he joined the rarefied ranks of "the guys." But things didn't go smoothly. "He kept telling me I didn't have what it took to be on staff," Toso said. Finally John-Roger told him that he would have to move from the hillside estate to the movement's Purple Rose Ashram of the New Age in downtown Los Angeles, he said.

Toso says that he dropped to his knees and sobbed, begging John-Roger to tell him how he might become a better servant of the Traveler.

"It dawned on me what I had to do," he said.

To stay on staff, Toso said he knew he would have to engage in sexual relations with John-Roger. "I decided to make the Faustian pact," he said. "And, indeed, I was admitted into the brotherhood."But the pact didn't sit well with Toso, even as he found his life with the Traveler vastly improved. And one day "I walked in on another staff member having sex with J-R. I had been naive enough to believe I was the only one," Toso said.

In last year's interview, John-Roger denied he had sexual relations with Toso or any other staff member.

Toso said he was later "defrocked" in front of other church members and stripped of his wallet, credit cards, watch, ring and airline tickets, and had to write a "dishonest" letter to get them back. Other former members, named in the series, testify to brainwashing and other forms of manipulation. "My God, I was manipulated and used," former MSIA newspaper editor Victoria Marine told the newspaper.

So Ms. Huffington has some serious problems dealing w/ reality. Further proof will be found at PuffHo, in this column questioning the "biological" origin of oil.

NASA, the oil industry and its complicit profession of English speaking geologists, many on oil industry staff, have been working for several generations to make us believe unquestioningly that oil and gas are of biological origin. It is a cornerstone of the Peak Oil Dogma that has indoctrinated us into the belief that oil is consummately and imminently finite permitting the oil industry and its allies to drive all over us, setting prices beyond the wildest dreams of Croesus. You see if oil supply is running out quickly -- as we are taught (as it has according to oil industry and geological gospel ever since that first well in Pennsylvania in the 1850s) -- a lesson that the oil industry wants us to learn each and every day is that we will have to pay, pay, pay.

No question that oil cos. may have an interest in our paying them every penny the market will allow, & a "pump use" fee on top of that. And that oil interests complicate foreign relations. But are NASA, Big Oil & "English-speaking scientists" engaged in a conspiracy of some sort to deny the "geological origins" of fossil fuel? Yes.

Well just suppose we have been purposely misled. That the Peak Oil Pranksters and their geologist sidekicks have been the purveyors of one of the great con jobs in history. That oil and gas is not the biological phenomenon that has been drummed into us. Rather that oil and gas are a geological phenomenon, inherent to the geological construct of the earth and all that means to its expanse and availability.

We're no scientist (nor have we even played one on tee vee) but one doesn't need a doctorate to see there isn't much science here. The discovery of methane on Mars seems to have brought the idea to fruition in the author's head, though our artsy-fartsy mind doesn't quite get the connection.

You see last year a team of NASA and University scientists achieved the first definitive detection of methane in the atmosphere of Mars. This discovery indicates, according to NASA, that the planet is either biologically or geologically active. Giving credence that the existence of methane might indeed be of geological origin rekindles the question whether the theory attributing the origins of oil and gas to biological (fossil) origins on earth is in large measure a myth.

Does he really want to drive the band-wagon down Lysenko Avenue? What the hell,it's a short-cut, right?

As cited in the post here, "Why Does Abiotic Oil Theory Ignite Peak Oil Theorist Fulminations??", 08.14.08," which questions why so little has been published on this issue in English language scientific/geological journals. This in spite of the rigorous work done by the Russian/Ukrainian geological community which is highly supportive of the theory of the geological origins of oil and gas.

He cites (Very science-y, "cites.") a post concerning not the many experiments performed or whatever it is the people in the white coats do, but the fulminations ignited on the other side. That'll teach 'em to fulminate.

The larger picture being that even were energy entities exactly as advertising agencies portray them on telebision, hell, if they were all anarcho-syndicalist workers' paradises that returned excess revenue to the victims of colonialism, burning shit & spewing particulates into the atmosphere is not a good idea. (Yes, we tire of restating the obvious, which also applies to climate change. Whether or not energy pyromania & CO₂ cause warming, nobody wants to stand downwind from a campfire. Or the raging bonfire of capitalism self-destructing.) That OilCo charges the American people for gas at the pump & again every April 15th so the Defense Dep't. will keep the sea-lanes open & the oil-producing nations threatened on behalf of Aramco, etc., is second on the list. We think either approach will get more traction than implying that oil & gas aren't going away or whatever Learsy is attempting to get at.

Who is this Raymond J. Learsy, one might ask. For one, he's a scholar. Good gig that, very generalized.

In the 1980s, he became a private investor, and from 1982 to 1988, served as a Reagan appointee to the National Endowment for the Arts. Currently, he is a member of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

"Became a private investor." We'll have to guess one of the big oil cos. screwed him royally & he's been bitter (& on wing-nut welfare) since. The W.W. International Center for Scholars? Can you get more medieval? We may to start calling ourself a "scholar" too.

Click on the book covers under Learsy's typing (Arianna doesn't pay you to fill the blank, empty space, but you get free, linked advertising. Nice.) & you'll see this (code in our bold):

Longtime commodities trader Raymond J. Learsy lifts the veil of the Mideast oil cartel, showing how OPEC manipulates the oil markets and destabilizes the world's economy. With refreshing candor and an insider's perspective, Learsy explains how OPEC: Twists bogus perceptions of oil scarcity to hike prices and gain political power; is compromised by Islamist terrorist connections that fuel anti-American hatred with dollars from our own wallets keeps Third-World nations in abject poverty despite their rich oil deposits and became the de facto master of Iraq's newly liberated oil

Red Monks & geological methane. What hath free speech & Arianna wrought?