Yahoo News:

A senior military commander warned that any attack on Iran would start a new world war, as Tehran pressed on with its controversial nuclear drive despite the risk of further UN sanctions.

“Any aggression against Iran will start a world war,” deputy chief of staff for defence publicity, Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, said in a statement carried by the state news agency IRNA.

Iran is under international pressure to halt uranium enrichment, a process which lies at the core of fears about Iran ‘s nuclear program as it can make nuclear fuel as well as the fissile core of an atom bomb.

“The unrestrained greed of the US leadership and global Zionism… is gradually leading the world to the edge of a precipice,” Jazayeri said, citing the unrest in Afghanistan , Iraq , Sudan and Georgia.

“It is evident that if such a challenge occurs, the fake and artificial regimes will be eliminated before anything,” he said, without naming any countries.

Read the full article at Yahoo News

- Yet another rethoric warning from Iran, I don’t think I can count the number of warnings from both side of the this Iran Crisis in the past 2 years.

Sounds like Iran is pretty sure they can eliminate their “enemies” in one swift stroke but they might be pretty sure what the “enemies” can do in their counterattack in one swift stroke too.

Unless Iran are so sure about their “military” might to defend against major nuclear holocaust raining down on them and probably around the world…this rethoric “doomsday” scenario might not turn out true.

Same goes to the other side…unfortunately unless there is a miracle cure for the addiction of oil…this war might be inevitable in the long term. Someone will be so sure oil is the cure for economic problems that are willing to declare war without brains.

It may not be the United States declaring war first, it could be states inside oil producing countries be declaring independence from their parent owners as they are “ultra-rich” from oil fields within.

The action from Russia supporting independence of Georgia signifying a possible revolution in the making. Many states within big countries may or may not be “ambitious” to declare independent and become a more manageable country.

However, this will send a cold chill down many big countries like China & Russia…probably other countries too as this will mean a declaration of civil war almost everywhere.

Fighting for land is probably be long and millions will be dead by the end of it, now that resource war might be even worst.

If anyone plays any computer games called “real time strategy” or RTS games, the game usually start off with “full” resources available for harvesting either for energy, money or food. When the time comes for victory…usually the one that have the most resource wins the war or the first one to die off completely leaving the resource free for plunder.

There is another scenario that most people that play the games hardly tried (which is not surprising) is to build their base without fighting for all players and wage no wars to conquer each others’ land or resource.

Usually, the game ends bitterly when both side exhaust their resources and reached their “LIMIT” number of units that they can build and starts the “mass suicidal” war by rushing to each others’ throat thinking they can possibly survive the war.

Ultimately, most of them will die leaving a small pocket of soldiers hidden somewhere in an unseen land or island and uncontrolled by their masters with zero resources left.

Players then can declare victory and “restart” the map and play again. Unfortunately, there is no restart in this “Earth” map but the optimistic analyst will say that the world already figuring out how to tackle the energy problem but by the look at what Iran’s rhetoric declaration….it seems that they are anxious to see the end game and taunting the others to make their “first move”.

This usually is a trap but will a simple conflict at Georgia entice the whole world into this senseless war?? Not for the people apparently but for the oil flowing through Georgia from the Caspian sea…this will be the resource for the Real Life RTS game that the Russian had choosen to start.

Iran is saying “Game On, You Start Please!”

Russia is saying “It had already began so what?”

USA Obama is saying “You trying to trick us into war! You Terrorist!”

USA McCain is saying “Game On, ICBM on the way!”

NATO is saying the usual “All Talk No Action is preferred”

EU is saying “Why fight?, you supply us oil & gas”

Asian is saying “Peace is imminent, negotiation a must”

China is saying “Not my problem….yet”

Rest of the world is saying “Hunger…..Powerless…Shortages…arghhhh”

Yahoo!Singapore News:

KATHMANDU (AFP) – - How to get hold of petrol is one of the hottest topics in Nepal ever since its sole supplier, India, began refusing to sell fuel on credit a year ago to Nepal’s state-run fuel monopoly, which owes it millions of dollars.

The ensuing shortage has led to rationing and pump queues of several kilometres.

The three men standing by their cars as night fell peered into the little white taxi, and recognising the Nepali cab driver as a friend, hissed, “Need petrol? We know where you can get some.”

The driver slowed, and said he would return later for the few litres of black market petrol that would save him from losing an entire day queueing.

“I parked the truck in this line at 7:00 pm yesterday,” said food transporter Krishna Bahadur Shrestha, 40, who was number 56 in a queue for diesel.

“They will only give me 10 or 15 litres. I won’t be able to run my truck for even a full day on that.”

- This is a pretty serious event that is happening all over the world. The rich countries don’t have such issues because there are no subsidies and the people simply pay higher prices. Now that the oil companies are getting nervous about buying oil on credit and refused to sell oil on lower subsidised prices.

The Nepali government continues to subsidise pump prices for fear of widespread protests in the country, still navigating a two-year-old peace process that saw Maoist rebels lay down their arms after a decade of war.

The policy has led the Nepal Oil Corporation into a sink-hole of almost 230 million dollars of debt — and counting.

This will not end in a happy ending if the price of the pump don’t go up together with crude oil but the fear of protest made the government worry about their next election instead. From the look of this, they might not be calming the public and even risk a serious shortage of fuel.

According to Yahoo!News:

Chennai, Aug 26 (IANS) Diesel users in Tamil Nadu had a tough time for the 10th consecutive day Tuesday, as the fuel shortage continued unabated.

Long queues were seen in many parts of the state. According to petroleum dealers, the current crisis has been triggered by the state-run oil companies, which have curtailed supplies to hike prices again to combat mounting losses.

Tamil Nadu is losing at least Rs.25 million a day due to the fuel shortage, which has affected movement of essential goods across the state. Prices of vegetables and other essential goods have shot up.

However, the oil companies say the crisis is a result of acute power shortage in the state.

Many industries and IT companies in Chennai, Tiruvallur, Cuddalore, Kanchipuram, Villupuram and Vellore are now powering their plants and offices with diesel gensets, a move that resulted in a sudden jump in demand for diesel.

Read the full article at Yahoo!News:

- Ok, a severe power shortage had created a sudden shortage of diesel due to spike in usage of diesel generators. This ripple effects will be inevitable to reach the pockets of the ordinary folks and to the far reaches of the world.

IT Companies requires huge amount of electricity to use their computers, laptops and gadgets to virtually write thousands of profitable softwares and websites. These IT companies are the back bone of many global software giant’s IT support such as “Microsoft”.

Cost of operation will almost certainly go up and it will be very bad news for India’s IT industry there.

Solution that I can think out of is to build solar panels and windmills now immediately in specific zones to cater the power supply to the region in India where it needs the most.

According to Yahoo!News:

LONDON – Oil rose nearly $2 to around $117 a barrel on Tuesday, as concerns grew about possible disruption to U.S. offshore oil and gas output from a strengthening Hurricane Gustav.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Gustav, a category one hurricane, had strengthened slightly in the central Caribbean as it churned toward southwestern Haiti.

Weather models showed it either heading in a westerly direction toward Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula or steering northwest and moving into the central Gulf of Mexico by early Sunday, to potentially disrupt offshore oil and gas production.

Read the full article at Yahoo!News:

- Obviously the oil prices went up slightly due to “risk” of hurricane Gustav strengthening but we must also examine effects of the Beijing Olympic as well.

According to my friend’s analysis on the fall of commodities was due to the shut down of China oil consumption to reduce pollution for reducing the effects on the Olympics athletes.

A quick survey to a local China born PRC and I found out that China had restrict vehicles on the road by “odd” & “even” license plate alternate days usage method during the Beijing Olympic. This drastically reduced the demand for oil for this short period of time.

Now with the Olympics over, we can expect a technical rebound unless China’s non-pollution rules remains unchanged.

If the rules remains then it will be bad news for China’s economic growth and probably will have devastating effects on China’s manufacturing industry.

There are also lingering political tension in oil producing countries like Iran and Russia that potentially spiral out of control. (Peace will be essential for sustainability too…support no war!)

Oil Went up from lowest of US$112.36 to highest at US$117.89 and now consolidating around US$115.79 per barrel.

Seems like my previous old prediction that oil price to reach $150 per barrel by end August will be pretty hard to materialize unfortunately. Well, this may be good news for the common folks that does not invest in oil but are worried about inflation figures.

There are many articles circulating in the world wide web about world war 3 may had already began silently on the beginning of the Beijing Olympics 2008. The problems now is the news agencies are too starting their own news on talks about world war 3.

According to Asia Times Online:

” Obviously, Russian troops can overwhelm the Georgian military, but they do not stand a chance against the United States. Active military doctrine has an answer to that – limited Russian use of nuclear weapons against the military bases from which Americans mount attacks and against command and control centers. We are talking about an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean and perhaps a few US bases in Europe. Welcome to World War III – mostly conventional and spiced with a few nuclear mushrooms here and there.“

Read the full article at Asia Times Online

According to DailyToreador:

” But regarding oil, obviously, the era of America as the obese energy consumer of the world is in its twilight. Why do you think all these politicians have been harping about ‘energy independence?’ Because we have to get out of China’s way in their desperate hunger for energy. A bidding war over oil with China would get ugly fast, especially as they align themselves with Sudan, Iran, and even Russia.”

Read the full article at DailyToreador

According to TimesOnline:

” Suddenly this has not worked. The world is showing alarming parallels with the 1930s. Lights are turning to red as the world again approaches depression. The credit crunch and the collapse of world trade talks are making nations introverted. Meanwhile, the defeated power of the last war, Russia, is flexing its muscles and finding them in good working order.”

Read the full article at TimesOnline:

- All these sudden talk about global conflict sprang up only today in my RSS reader and it’s without a doubt pointing towards WW3. Millions will probably die in nuclear annihilation if such events were to materialize.

World war 2 ends with 2 atomic bombs falling in Japan killing hundreds of thousands in an instant. There are saying that World War 3 will probably start and end with similar results and may have no economic values to even start in the first place.

It’s not that simple at all, for one is resource conflicts will be more frequent then we can imagine as major consumer like United States, China, Japan, Britain, France, South Korea and many other countries need these natural resources such as fossil fuels to sustain a growing economy and sustain the lives living inside these countries.

We may reach a certain point in time that WW3 may be inevitable, the question is will anyone be prepared? I am not prepared…but most people I know may not even know what’s going on and question my intention of spreading doom to their happy “business as usual” lives.

Well, if you are not dead in 5 years time…life still carry on and obviously I don’t preach losing hopes just be prepared mentally that economy will go down the drain and jobs won’t be as secure as you want it to be.

Don’t tied yourself in debts and get ready for sustainability assets that can give you the following.

1. Cheaper Food
2. Cheaper Water
3. Cheaper Electricity
4. Cheaper Transportation
5. Cheaper Communication
6. Proper Shelter
7. Safety

If you cannot get the above using money then start acquiring the necessary skills and assets that can provide the following as soon as possible.

The worst that can happen is man made disaster such as biological/chemical warfare that can spread anytime during war time. Be prepared is crucial for survival and do not panic in times of crisis.

The key word is…don’t panic. But be prepared.

According to Channelnewsasia:

SINGAPORE: The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for households increased by 7.1 per cent in the first half of 2008 compared with the same period last year.

Households in the lowest 20 per cent income group were the hardest hit, with inflation rate at 7.4 per cent.

The CPI for the middle 60 per cent and highest 20 per cent income groups went up by 6.9 per cent each.

The Department of Statistics say food, housing and transport and communication costs contributed to the significant increase in CPI for all income groups in the first half of 2008.

For the lowest 20 per cent income group, the higher inflation rate was due primarily to more expensive food, as well as higher housing costs and electricity tariffs.

- It’s time to smell the roses and cut cost! Reduce and reuse. I will be exploring ways to cut things like mobile bills, electricity usage, Internet usage, water and transportation. Food is still the killer for we Singaporeans love good food and usually it cost a bomb…time to cut down to the minimum for buffet and steamboats.

Any installments that need servicing? Loans to repay? Time to watch out for more such traps that usually look harmless when you first took the bait to buy that brand new car, house or overprice gadgets of yours.

Contracts signed for mobile phones, internet, television subscriptions and more are more debt traps. Stay clear if possible…

Credit cards & Line of credit are obvious no no if you cannot afford it…don’t use it. Future money are too risky for you to use and regret later.

Look out for more money saving tips in the future posts! If you have any ideas, do share with us in the comments! No ideas are too ridicules or too stupid to share.

I had tried putting some stones in the toilet flushing “catchment” tank to reduce water usage previously but didn’t monitor before and after quantity but probably negligible savings. Haha…but it’s an idea nevertheless!

According to Channelnewsasia:

Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff office said 56,000 South Korean troops and 10,000 US soldiers were taking part in the five-day Ulchi Freedom Guardian drill which involves large-scale computer-simulated war games.

Some 4,000 government offices and more than 300,000 civil servants nationwide are also involved.

President Lee Myung-Bak presided over a National Security Council meeting and a separate cabinet meet in an underground bunker as part of the exercise, his office said.

“We are conducting the drill the way we should do in case of war,” a senior presidential aide told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The South’s military upgraded its defence readiness condition by one notch to DEFCON II. The cabinet issued a national mobilisation order authorising a limited call-up of reservists and civilian equipment, the aide said.

- This is not going to easy for N.Korea to swallow as S.Korea conducts such a large scale military exercise. It seems that S.Korea felt it’s worth the risk to do it after one S.Korean Tourist was shot at the tourist spot in N.Korea that was opened previously.

What will be the implication of this event? If S.Korea goes to war with the north….Does it mean the end game is approaching? But of course that’s when N.Korea gave up using nuclear as the “instrument of blackmail” for more food & fuel assistance from S.Korea and China…and goes “crazy” and attack the S.Korea.

I do not speculate that they will do such as it will be a risky venture, North Korea don’t have the resource to fight a prolong war in fuel and food.

They might detonate nuclear bombs in high altitude to destroy the electronics in large area in the south….and the radiation will spread everywhere…including back to N.Korea.

I will almost beg all S.Korean to protect your electronics against EMP attack (Electromagnetic Pulse) caused by the nuclear explosion.

With the oil prices moving crazily lately, there are no prediction where it will go next.

Just opened up my live oil chart and not surprisingly the oil moved north again. This time blamed on the drop of U.S. Dollar and forecast of lower supply of gasoline as the main culprit for this sudden rise of over $5 in Nymex Sweet Crude Oil Prices.

“It just went up and up”

The latest figure from Nymex.com, lowest is $111.64 and highest is $116.65 per barrel with over $5 rise!!

It may fluctuate further as the above chart shows that a single super high volume was traded which probably bring about the sudden spike in oil prices.

I don’t predict the future but looking at this spike, it may not last unless more higher volume are traded otherwise it will either drops slowly back to $110 – $113 per barrel.

Tomorrow might have a bigger spike when the U.S. Inventory report is due.

According to Yahoo!News:

LONDON, Aug 18 – BP Plc said on Monday that exports of Azeri oil by rail to Georgia had stopped after the line was damaged in Georgia, which accused Russian troops of blowing up a railway bridge.

The halt further limits BP’s options in shipping oil from Caspian Sea fields it manages. But the main route, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan link to Turkey, may reopen in a few days, Turkey’s energy minister said.

“Rail exports have stopped from Azerbaijan to Georgia,” BP spokesman Robert Wine said. “There’s been some damage along the line in Georgia.”

A shipping agent said oil tankers from Batumi were unlikely to be delayed as supplies should resume along the railway line through Georgia before oil held in storage is used up.

“We do not expect delays,” said Garsevan Jorbenadze of TeRo Co., which is based in Batumi.

Due to the disruption, the BP-led Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oilfields in the Caspian Sea have cut output to about 250,000 bpd from about 850,000 bpd before the BTC link was damaged, according to industry sources.

The closures leave BP with a pipeline to Russia’s port of Novorossiisk to export crude from fields in the Azeri part of the Caspian Sea. About 100,000 bpd of Azeri oil can be exported that way, analysts say.

Another export route, a pipeline from Baku to the port of Supsa in Georgia, was shut as a precaution due to the fighting in Georgia. There were no tankers loading at Supsa, TeRo Co. said.

- This article probably calm down the market a little….most likely giving the impression that everything will be alright even though the Russia is taking their own sweet time to pull out of Georgia.

Probably “Russia” might take over Georgia and the west might have to either negotiate or fight the Russian with “threats” of “a price to pay”.

According to thestar.com.my:

MIRI: A nearly six-hour blackout gripped Sarawak yesterday (9th August 2008), affecting more than two million people over a distance of 1,000km from Kuching to Miri.

Cities and towns were plunged into total darkness, causing massive chaos, with people caught by surprise at about 6.30pm.

Thousands were caught in massive traffic jams and those in commercial complexes were reportedly evacuated safely.

The power failure started in Kuching and rapidly spread northward to Sibu, hitting Miri at 7.30pm.

As of 8.45pm, power was restored to certain parts of the state and by midnight, the situation returned to normal statewide.

- It was said to be the most serious blackout in Sarawak in recent time. Even bloggers are blogging their experiences online [1] [2] and shows how extensive is the blackout.

A further research on the blackout shows that the blackout may happen again…

KUCHING: The blackout that hit most parts of Sarawak on Saturday night, which was due to Circuit 1 state grid between Bintulu and Sibu being shut down for an upgrading exercise, may recur in the next few days.

State Public Utilities Minister Datuk Awang Tengah Ali Hasan warned that as the upgrading work would be completed only by Thursday, Aug 14, there was still a risk of a “system split.”

- The blackout was “blamed” on an upgrading work and warned of a possible recurrence of blackout. Obviously this is unacceptable to the people living in the affected region.