So, if you are in the peak oil movement, don't worry too much. Whatever you do or say, it won't change a thing. So, take it easy!

The real estate/mortgage market inthe US is beginning to 'price in' peak oil. Most of the foreclosures have taken place in the 'edge cities' and exurbs that require two and three hour auto commutes.

I suspect the Soviet Union was a mess long before the collapse. I recall an article written by a US military officer who went to Moscow as a part of an arms treaty negotiation. He had to meet an official outside of the city. He noted that the road to the meeting place was a single lane dirt road. He remarked that the US fear of 'Soviet Might' was misplaced; the USSR was a third world country.

The best place to experience the post- peak world ... and get drunk too ... is to visit New Orleans. Some parts are nice ... some parts are really hellish. It's a peak oil study, too. When the 1980's Gulf of Mexico oil boom ended, that's when NO went into terminal decline.

As for our current economic crisis ... I don't think it has an oil component, more of a 'long- term return on investment' component.

Don't read my blog!

http://stevefromvirginia.blogspot.com/

The thing is though, as an individual it can take years to prepare for peak oil. Part of it is that it takes time to eliminate debt, part is that it takes time to mentally prepare. It takes time to get yourself in a position where your transportation needs are minimized. It goes on and on..

Yet the world is still filled with people who are still on that treadmill.

I have been trying to alert and prepare people for about seven years. I first heard of peak oil on the afternoon of Sep 11 2001, when by chance I picked up a book by Deffeyes in a bookstore in Berkeley (a date that I remember very well). I did some work on that, I think: setting up ASPO-Italy, publishing more than 500 articles and posts (most in italian), participating, I think, to at least a hundred meeting and conferences, appearing in TV (in Italy) dozens of times.

Very often, all that work was personally rewarding but, apart from my personal satisfaction, it was mostly useless. The concept of peak oil just doesn't "stick" in people's minds. We had 10 years, at least, to prepare; from the time when Campbell and Laherrere published their first article on peak oil in Scientific American; in 1998. And we are still moving blithely onwards. What is being done is too little and too late. At this point, I think that collapse is unavoidable, we can't avoid it. We can only try to cushion its effects, as individuals and as members of local communities. But it is still a shame, it is an epochal failure because we had been warned well in advance and we could have avoided it. But nothing was done, it is like one of those nightmares where you are chased by a monster but you can't run away.

What I can suggest is to read Orlov's book. I read it twice. It is very rare that I find a book so good and so interesting that I want to read it twice in a row, from cover to cover. But it had on me an effect similar to that of that first book by Deffeyes that I read in 2001. People say that wisdom comes from experience, and we have no experience of an actual collapse. But that book tells you of a collapse that really happened. That knowledge comes from experience and that is the way to gain a little wisdom. We'll badly need it in the future.

About 3/4ths of the Economy of Japan is in the service industry - "Banking, insurance, real estate, retailing, transportation, and telecommunications." If they had oil they'd be relying on it unduly, Russia's example should come as no surprise, nor will Mexico's.

It pays to view the world as a whole and think of it as a city. Japan are in the big business district, they of course also cover parts of industrial zoning, which is almost entirely where the OPEC nations reside, albeit with a component which has offices in the skyscrapers. Most of the populace lives in really run down slums.

Hey hey Cslater8,

I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion that a lack of a natural resource, like oil necessarily means collapse.

I agree. Resource constraints are a huge factor, but not the determining factor. It is a societies ability to adapt to the changes that determines its success. I find it surprising that Jared Diamond's book Collapse, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, isn't mentioned anywhere in the thread. I do think that the US will choose to fail, but I'm not so sure about other oil dependent countries.

Tim

It seems that the USA's main export is dollars. The real and imminent danger is not going to be lack of dollars but that nobody will want them.

It's all about resources and not money. Money has no intrinsic value. It merely represents our agreements amongst ourselves. Imagine, for example, Hoover Dam. It was built of scads of concrete, huge amounts of energy, gaggles of labor and cost beaucoup dollars. Which of these could be eliminated, and yet the dam still be built? Only the dollars. Take away the limestone or energy needed to cook it into concrete or the labor or (yes, again) energy needed to mold it all into a structure, and it couldn't be done. Take away the dollars and it could all still be done. We swim in a paradigm of dollars such that we cannot see that they ultimately have no real value. Sure, I know, you can shoot back at me - "Well, try to get by without money." Since we have constructed such a paradigm, it is difficult, but everything we do could be done without money. But none of it could be done without energy, no matter how much money was available.

Dmitry, once again, is spot on.

Reading Orlovs latest I'm struck with the thought that Paulsons move with this “Mother of all bailouts” is perhaps an attempt to counter the expatriation of US assets by the major $ holding Countries.

But then again I’ve probably read too many who done it’s in my life and am reading too much into this.

He remarked that the US fear of 'Soviet Might' was misplaced; the USSR was a third world country.

You can not ignore them but I suspect the danger was over blown as both sides had enough to do each other away. All the various military plans by the US ( Minuteman, MRV etc) was just more fancy gadgets to keep the funding going. It was creating jobs, was probable partly the rational.

What Orlov says is fine and dandy except that Russians have a longer history of self reliance. Self reliance has been beat out of the gene pool in the US for sure. What ever you need is in the store, no?

Hmmm ... Soviet oil production did actually peak, and their economy did actually collapse.

Availability of excess affordable energy comes before any economic growth.

Their subsequent recovery to more affordable oil following investment proves that production peaks have nothing to do with reserves - peaking is about oil that is both profitable and affordable.

There has to be an excess of affordable energy for economies to grow, in the case of Russia new investment led to increased affordable production for a while - they were not at the limits of technology/debt at their first peak.

You should not assume that the world can produce ever more affordable oil and still make a profit forever - it is mathematically impossible and Russia currently seems to be an example proving that fact. (As well as the UK , Mexico, Norway etc who use the best technology available!)

So present your counter-argument, rather than just complaining about the lack of one.

Did you read this post? Russia: There Is Life After Peak Oil

Also see the early comments where this was discussed. I can't say I'm totally convinced but wouldn't call it a "radical, odd, strange, and narrowly fanatic idea".

I will say that much Carter era strategic planning was focussed on the Soviet Union making a grab for Middle Eastern oil, not to deprive the West of oil, but to make up for falling Soviet production.

This is why so much material was prepositioned and infrastructure created in places like Oman and KSA.

Basically, Saddam Hussein did not realize that by invading Kuwait, he was involving himself in a major part of the planning for World War III - from cruise missiles and stealth fighters to state of the art airbases.

Peak oil may not be part of the framework of military strategic thinking - but the effects of depriving your opponent of oil were discussed theoretically before World War II, and those theories then tested against what actually occurred to Germany and Japan.

a fanatic desire to tie anything and EVERYTHING that has ever happened in history to peak oil

RC,

Don't fret about the down arrows.
It's just a poll by likely voters of the moment.

You forget the natural inclination of the human brain to seek out a convenient narrative (or a narrative fallacy as Nassim Talib of "Black Swan" fame would call it).

So the story that appeals to the mob depends on which mob you're talking to.

1) If we were all Republicans then the correct narrative would be that the Soviet Union collapsed because our wise and sage leader spoke magic words, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall."

2) If we were all employed by the US military-industrial complex then the correct narrative would be that the Soviet Union collapsed because we out-spent them in our desire to build an unworkable system called "brilliant pebbles".

3) If we were all members of MADD then the correct narrative would be that the Soviet Union collapsed because they drank too much vodka.

4) But the fashionable truth of the moment is that we are all TODders and therefore the Soviet Union collapsed because of one simple minded story: oil. (Just as Rome collapsed because of one simple minded story: wood.)

THINK, QUESTION, ASK.

RC - The collapse of the world oil price, as a result of the Saudis opening up the oil spigot, was a central factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union. I agree with your contention that that is dis-similar to the notion of Peak Oil. However, Orlov contended that oil was the linchpin in the Soviet Economy, when that oil production peaked (1987) the EROI equation of the Former Soviet Union couldn't compete because their cost of production exceeded world price.

With the invasion of disaster capitalism in the 90's selling off the means of production to the highest bidder made a lot of Russians rich. It did little however for the average citizen. As the price of oil has risen tenfold so have the fortunes of the Russian Empire, making a comeback, which has benefited Russians in a kind of trickle-down effect.

You need to remember a couple of things about TOD. The posters here do so without research grants or underwriting. These posts are not meant to be scientifically academic. The comments that posters make in response to these free posts are as much a part of the inquiry as the actual post itself, like a catalyst. Just as your comment was thoughtfully considered in an egalitarian fashion.

The informality of this site is what makes it alive and relevant.

Joe

I can say that of all the radical, odd, strange, and narrowly fanatic ideas I have ever read, this one takes the cake.

Sweet Jeebus, talk about hyperbole. The idea that the proximate cause of the demise of the USSR was the sudden collapse of money from oil is more far out than Velikovsky's origin of the solar system, Scientology, or alien abductions is one of the most absurd over-statements I've ever read.

What is so odd about the idea that the corrupt and inefficient Soviet economy could limp along for 70 years so long as it had something to prop it up (war, loot from Eastern Europe, oil revenues) and then finally collapsed when its support collapsed? Or are you one of those Americans who believe it was the Great and Glorious Ronald Reagan, who stared down the Commie Juggernaut and told them to "Tear down that wall!", who was responsible for the collapse?

To be fair to Orlov, the latter says:
"[In the superpower contest]... we will probably never know for certain why the Soviet fighter chose to take a dive in the fourth round, because that certainly did not look like a proper knock-out."
It does look something like a slide in system-confidence (collapse of legitimacy).
In the case of the US,with regard to the link between finance and oil, Orlov assumes that the value of the US dollar over recent decades is largely because it is the currency most of the world uses when buying oil (value maintained in the face of ever larger US trade and fiscal imbalances). See also the question posed by puntaldia this thread.
To quote Orlov again; "Perhaps most importantly, America's national mythology makes it anathema to think of collective failure."
Phil

I'm no expert on Soviet history. But I wonder: wasn't imperial overstretch in Afghanistan a key factor in Russia's collapse, both as a financial and a national-confidence issue ?

The reforms backfired, for a variety of reasons, and evnetually in the late 1980s you had a chaotic situation of local governments competing with a central government that lost legitimacy and power. In such a situation it is not surprising that oil production plummeted - everything seemed to be disintegrating including food trade (within the USSR) so why would the oil industry be any different.

Why should the oil industry be any different? Indeed, however the coal and gas industries were different. Why would oil be different to coal and gas if it was just a case of everything disintegrating?

The Soviet Union experienced peak oil first hand—a 43% decline in domestic oil production between 1987 and 1996. This crisis caused Soviet society to fall into devastating economic impoverishment. Can this be proven? Yes. Here is the quick story: The oil decline in the Soviet Union preceded the GDP decline. A statistical test, Granger causality, shows this. Oil decline did not follow the GDP decline, it was ahead of it, and therefore it caused it. However, Granger causality is not always sufficient proof; more evidence is needed.

...

But, Soviet coal production declined after GDP started declining. How could this internal chaos have caused reductions only in oil production but none in coal production prior to the GDP decline? If you argue that Cold War military expansion precluded oil sector spending to keep oil production high, then why would not it have also precluded coal sector spending at the same time? Also, natural gas production was not affected during the Soviet collapse. Again, why would internal chaos arbitrarily affect oil before the collapse, but not natural gas? Thus it was scarcity of oil and not internal inefficiency that caused the oil to decline.
www.energybulletin.net/node/19837

Hi Yair,

I think that is a valid comment. It is almost a chicken and egg scenario - which comes first - societal/economic collapse or falling oil 'production' (which can be driven by depletion or lack of investment or both). I think Cuba which was on the end of the Soviet oil supply chain is the best example in some ways of the 'Peak Oil' driven collapse as their social structures remained relatively intact (see: The Power of Community), while they lost most if not all of their imported oil supply, and more importantly - fertilizer and pesticide.

Interesting study nonetheless on what happens to those caught in the matrix of industrial society when it all goes wrong...

L,
Sid

Re Russian peak oil in the late 1980s, probably more of an infrastructure collapse than a peaking of exploitable reserves - obvious given the snap back in production on the last decade. Russia was chronically short food stuffs in the 1980s and used the post-Iranian Revolution oil spike to gain foreign exchange with which to buy grains in the world market. (In addition, some foreign exchange was used to import basic consumer goods to keep the populace somewhat happy.) When the Saudis opened the valves in 1986 to punish OPEC cheaters, oil prices plunged, as did the Soviet economy. Although the CIA had concluded in the late 1970s the USSR was rather falling apart internally based on data for infant mortality, food production and other stats, the Iranian Revolution price spike kept the Soviet ball of wax glued together for roughly a half-a-decade, then the bottom fell out. (In my book, the Saudis, not Reagan, "defeated" communism; Soviet military spending did not increase in the Reagan years in response to Star Wars and other acts of US militarism, the US did not bankrupt the USSR in an accelerated arms race.) What happened in the Soviet oil sector was a total breakdown of maintenance - basic items like pumping stations failed and so forth. The ability to move oil around the country slowly fell apart, hence lower output, not a constraint related to lack of petroleum resources in the ground.

Let me try to summarize as I understand it, feel free to correct:

Approaching peak oil caused the huge oil price increase since 2002.
The average American Joe's wages have been stagnant since 2000.
The economy was rigged such that it needed to grow to be stable.
Increased energy costs reduced Joe's spending power, cutting in to growth.
Joe used home equity to keep spending for a while longer.
Housing bubble finally popped. Credit crisis ensues.

George Mobus, who has posted here on TOD, has written some interesting things on the ties between the economy and energy. Think in terms of global energy production. One barrel of oil is about 50,000 hours of human labor (IIRC). How can the economy keep growing indefinitely when the total energy going into the system is decreasing.

This is oversimplified, but I hope it gets you started on finding your own answers.

Peace,
Hacker

The general picture is that an economy (or business) based on the infinite growth paradigm (neoclassical economics) and using an interest-bearing debt-based currency can exist in two modes, either with exponential growth, or economic collapse and backrupcy.

The "economic" (GNP/GDP) growth of industrial economies is almost completely derived from increasing energy consumption (one estimated correlation is 99%). As peak oil approaches rates of return on investments suffer, and more deregulation and financial speculation is encouraged in an effort to sustain previous levels of profits. Wealth has to be extracted increasingly from naive investors/savers rather than generated by growth. The housing bubble is just the latest method. The debt burden has increased to unmanagable levels as people try to hang on to middle-class lifestyles without the income to support it.

Whether or not financial crises are deliberately planned, insiders position themselves to profit from them. In the US (and probably UK) a currency collapse will be the main outcome. A recent article by Dave Lindorff (here or here) compares the FSU and prospects for the USA:

The US will be left behind, a smoking ruin, with Americans, like Weimar Germans before them, going shopping with wheelbarrows full of worthless green paper to exchange for a few days’ groceries.

Well, one part of the link between PO and the financial situation is the rising cost of nearly everything - especially food and energy. Remember, 70% of the economy rests on consumer spending - if consumers shift their spending to buy less stuff, the economy begins to teeter. Despite the constant narrative that the whole problem is falling housing values in the rich world, I personally think we've dramatically underestimated the impact of rising food prices, especially in the poor world - growth was fastest in the emerging economies, and some authorities are to be believed, China is teetering pretty seriously. Other nations that were growing are retreating back to poverty quite rapidly - much of the economic growth of the last decades came as the world's poor moved out of poverty - and the combination of rising energy and fertilizer prices and the move to biofuels have sent them back to poverty - they aren't buying cell phones and bicycles anymore, because they have to buy rice and fertilizer to grow rice.

There are other, less direct connections, but most of them, I think come down to energy - or rather, food. Now we do use oil to grow food, and so you could call energy the defining factor, but I'm not sure that the reverse isn't also true - food is energy in a host of ways, and it drives economic activity in deep ways.

Sharon

Thanks for any insight ... I never understood why the current financial crisis would be related to PO.

Dear Punta,

Here you were being polite and all, and yet the inner mongo in me was reaching for the down arrow. I was going to crush your question down just like another piece of junk paper.

No. Your question is a fair and good one. So I refrained from an instantaneous down vote.

But let's rephrase your question slightly:

... I never understood why the current [American] financial crisis would be related to [American] PO.

If you look back at some older American history books, they brag about how America's industrial might was based on placing our steel mills conveniently adjacent to our abundant iron ore mines and our coal mines. There were certain economic efficiencies to be had by placing the means of production adjacent to the resource sites, adjacent to shipping ports, and exporting our finished goods to all over the world.

And the same was true for placing American oil refineries adjacent to our biggest oil fields, in Texas and shipping (well no, piping) the finished good to all over America and to the rest of the world. Everything got big and rich in Texas. Why we could do anything and everything, including having a guns and butter economy and making repeat trips to the Moon according to LBJ (US president from Texas).

Then came American Peak Oil around 1971 and American might faltered. More and more "wealth" was no longer pouring into our country. We stopped going to the Moon. Our will to fight foreign wars of conquest (Vietnam) stumbled. It was the beginning of a slow and long hollowing out of American power. One by one, our core industries collapsed: steel mills, automobile manufacturing, tool and die, semiconductor fabrication, ... we became a nation of "service" providers instead of a nation that actually produced the physical real stuff. We no longer shipped finished goods to the rest of the world. The flow was reversing. The Emperor no longer wore any clothing. But that's OK, said our illustrious Bill Clinton, because this is the "new" information age and we are the kings of information. Funny how on 9/11, we didn't seem to have any advanced information. And how the knocking down of just two buildings in a nation this big and powerful, could cripple our powerful "economy" so much.

But the truth is that by 9/11/2001 we no longer had a powerful economy. Sure we lied to ourselves and said we can take anybody on anywhere in the world. Our then wise and sage president, GWB, said "bring it on". He didn't realize we were already a collapsing economy. More and more of our oil was coming from "them who don't like us very much" and we still didn't understand what that meant. One turn of the valve and our life blood stops. We die on the spot.

Fast forward to just a few weeks ago when crude oil was trading north of $120/bbl. What that really said was that the American dollar was no longer worth much. Couple that with rising unemployment (because where is the average American Joe to work if there are no more steel mills, no more auto factories, no more construction jobs, etc.?) and you start to see the recipe for final collapse. The average American Joe pays his mortgage from the money he makes at his average American job, except there is none because the oil is over there and not over here. So the average American Joe defaults on his mortgage. And suddenly banks all over America are holding junk paper. Do you see?

Hi Puntaldia,

For an insight into this issues, check out Gail the Actuary's The Connection Between Financial Markets and Energy - Open Thread

In actual fact we (humanity) are caught in a triple whammy of economic, energy and environmental 'peaks': peak debt, peak cheap energy, and peak environment. The lack of a credible finance system will put in jeopardy any attempts to discover new sources of energy and/or mitigate the decline in current energy sources. The high probability of 'resource' depletion - soil erosion/water scarcity/mineral depletion and climate change look set to make things even worse.

Its not just the one straw that breaks the donkeys back, but all those other straws that have been piling up for decades...

L,
Sid.

Puntaldia: Let me be honest up front,Iam not sure your question is sincere, if it is, I will try and clarify for you. First you must forget all you think you know about economics, at least in so much as you learned from the media or schools of higher education.
I will demonstrate the above sentence thusly....A chimp like looking president informs his nation that tax cuts to the wealthiest, will make them richer and thus trickle down to the poorest classes....tradgedy stikes (read 9/11) and the chimp lookalike president informs the masses of the poor, "go shopping" or else the richest folks might lose money.

Did you catch the contradiction? At first it was presented that the wealthiest drove the market "when it was beneficial to portray such" and the next second it was offered that the poorer and average folks, were the driving force behind the markets and economies, again when it was convienent? OR was it the truth in the latters case?

Of course it was known by youself all along. You mentioned people losing their homes....surely you didnt mean the uber rich lost their homes, did you?
You mentioned the average joe in suburbia being squeezed by higher fuel costs...surely you didnt imply the rich couldnt afford $5.00 a gal gas! and had to move because the house was foreclosed on.

Puntaldia stating "(I don't think so)" really isnt a plausible argument or evidence of your position. It matters little what you think about gravity, jump out at 30,000 without a parachute and mull that over.
OH YEAH...do that thingy the Roadrunner always did when you try it..okay?

Hey hey Puntaldia,

I think that peak oil caused this financial crisis. Peak oil certainly would cause a financial crisis, but it is entirely possible for the banks to do themselves even when energy supplies are growing like they did in The Great Depression.

Others have explained why in greater depth, but in short, credit is a claim against the future production. As long as the the future continues to grow those debts are paid back. Post peak, the future would not be able to make good on the debts it owes and the defaults would cripple the financial sector.

This credit crisis is due to willfully blind financial choices, not willfully blind energy choices. The greatest growth in the US economy for the last few years has be in financing and housing. Essentially, loans of ever greater size were given to borrowers with ever decreasing credit worthiness. Prices shot up to unrealistic levels and demand cooled. Once the houses stopped appreciating then creditworthiness became important again. It happened in Japan in the 90's as oil production was growing in volume and declining in price.

The reason everyone is so worked up about this crisis is not because peak oil caused it, but because it will 'hide' peak oil by reducing demand. It will also removes funding and incentives to increase oil production or alternatives at a crucial time. While no one knows exactly when the peak will occur it is widely believed that we are at or near peak. The present financial catastrophe effectively guarantees that we are now at peak because the global slow down will reduce the development of new oil. Meaning that when the world recovers from is recession it will not be riding an undulating plateau or at the onset of a gentle decline, it will run smack into an advanced depletion rate.

I never understood why the current financial crisis would be related to PO.

For a thought experiment, try to imagine a scenario where declining energy would NOT cause a widespread economic and financial crisis. Then look at how many fundamental parameters you had to change to make that work. Taleb in "Black Swan" points out how it's far, far easier to know when something is wrong than when something is right. It seems really obvious to me that Peak Oil is a critical part of the financial meltdown - the arguments about energy, work and the resulting economy from physics and thermodynamics are too strong - but it's not so obvious when one tries to pin down the direct cause. The size of the slice of the economic pie that has to go to energy increases markedly - that might be the easiest way to see it. Except that so much of our economy is off the books buried in "environmental services".

Without cheaper energy - energy that takes smaller and smaller slices of the economic pie - roughly how might we recover from this meltdown? I don't see it. And if the powers that be have reached a point where they don't see it either, then they will make no more loans but focus instead on grabbing everything they can. Putting a quarter of the American people into the fields will keep them alive, but it won't look like an "economic recovery" by any standard measure except maybe employment.

Yes, there are a lot of intertwined threads running through here. The lottery mentality has been common. I was just talking with someone yesterday about these lavish weddings that people throw - I made the observation that a lot of people probably threw these types of lavish affairs because they could use a HELOC to finance the whole thing, but those days are now over...

Unfortunately we can't pick the Peak Oil thread out of the knot and study that in isolation from all of the others.

Who's the dummy? He had 170K worth of fun he'll never pay for.

We talked a little about Prof McKay's book a couple of months ago when the pre-publication draft was available online. It is indeed a good approach, very informative.

The comment by urbanteacher56 about his 60 year-old friend who has mortgaged himself to the hilt is best understood by reading this book:

A World of Chance

This book turns upside-down the economists' standard figure - the Economic man or Homo economicus

Essentially, people behave in funny ways once they get past 50-60 years old and when they perceive that they have not made it

Well at least the US is moving towards state-owned-housing these days...

In my opinion a lot of that is nonsense (freemasons occult experiment? mind control via fluoride?), but the TV thing I've been wondering about: will they really turn off analog TV broadcasting in the US this coming February as planned? What will keep "the masses" under control then? They ARE handing out $40 coupons to subsidize the buying of digital-to-analog conversion boxes, but still? How will the Official Truth be disseminated when those pale screens go "psst"?

Depends on what era of Russian history you speak of. The Soviet collapse of recent history or 1917 and the
Bolsheviks revolution was pretty grim. Historians cant agree if it was 40 million or 60 million that were killed during that era. Hey! whats a few ten million amongst comrades anyway? I wont quible about tens of millions but it was huge to say the least.

Could it happen here in America? WHY NOT? I say it could, and is more probable then not. Why might I say that? Well...taking a look around at the situation I can say without hesitation that America is the most violent and extreem super power in the history of mankind. Without the need to post facts and figures that are so generously offered by the American gov no less ( I will gladly enter the data and sources if asked) its a matter of American culture in so much as our music, cinema, literature, the entire she-bang reeks of it and always has. One would fail if they tried to deny the ruthless violent war hungry nature of the USA as a whole. Its indelibly etched into the American fabric to the point that mothers dress newborn infants in military camo and the first toys many toddlers posess are military plastic weapons of such realism, cops shoot kids who are holding them.

Sad? yes...true? sure....Does it hurt to say or admit it? oh my certainly. Is it dangerous to speak of it?
Ask the Quakers who were investigated for private meetings concerning peace or any others of millions under investigation in the good ole USA for simply seeking peacefull relations with Iraq or Iran. Investigated by CIA, FBI, NSA, SS, and who knows what other acronyms. I can give dot gov sites to prove everything Ive said above if asked.