The logistical and security challenges posed by next month’s royal visit to Ireland are immense As I write, I am stuck on a halted train somewhere north of Dundalk, unable to cross the Irish border. There is a bomb alert, not only on the rail link but also on the M1 motorway running parallel to it. To pass the time while we wait for instruction from staff on the 7.30am Dublin to Belfast Enterprise service, I peruse the coverage of the proposed royal visit to Ireland next month. And, as I read the details of the trip, I cannot believe my eyes. The first startling element to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh’s historic Irish tour – the first by a British monarch since 1912 – is the time. They will stay for three days, between May and 20 May. Hardly anyone had expected, when the visit was first announced, that the royal couple would stay in the Republic for more than one day. To string out that visit over 72 hours will undoubtedly give those opposed to it more of a chance to cause mayhem. However, the most stunning aspect of the planning (or lack of?) for this are some of the locations the Queen will attend. Among her stops will be a ceremony in Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance and later Croke Park, the national/spiritual home of the Gaelic Athletic Association. Even if you leave aside the historic neuralgia that these places hold for a lot of nationalist-minded Irish people, the sheer logistical and security challenges they pose are daunting. The Garden of Remembrance commemorates those who died in the 1916 Easter Rising and later the War of Independence against the British. Croke Park was the scene, in 1920, of the first Bloody Sunday massacre when British troops fired into the crowd, killing 16 civilians in retaliation for Michael Collins’s assassination squads murdering British agents across Dublin. The prospect of a British Queen visiting those hallowed sights will inflame further the passions of the unrepresentative but vocal, often violent, minority who adhere to dissident republicanism. Yet it is the geography that poses a serious modern-day problem for the Irish and British officials who are choreographing this groundbreaking royal visit. Take first the Garden of Remembrance, which is located at the northern end of O’Connell Street. Overlooking the gardens are a row of splendid and well-preserved Georgian houses that are home to the Irish Writers’ Centre, a museum dedicated to Irish authors and poets, and an award-winning restaurant. All these buildings will presumably have to be evacuated of their staff and then occupied by Garda officers in order to secure them. Behind the main memorial, which was completed in time for the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising, is the Rotunda Maternity Hospital which, it is assumed, will also have to be taken over by the Garda in order to keep the Queen and the Duke safe from any line of dissident fire. And even if you also temporarily leave out the prospect that the likes of the Real IRA, the Continuity IRA and Óghlaigh na hÉireann will deploy security alerts across Dublin to disrupt the royal entourage, the Irish state still faces the prospect of horrendously damaging global publicity. If we stay with the Garden of Remembrance, it is worth noting that is only a short walk from there to inner city working class Dublin redoubts which have long been steeped in republican traditions. The dissident republicans could gather demonstrators in, say, the Summerhill area and march them up towards the end of Parnell Street, where it intersects with the north end of O’Connell Street. In those kind of routes, the Garda’s riot squad would have to be deployed leading to potentially violent clashes between anti-royalist protestors and the force. All of this would be within earshot of the Queen and and Duke inside the gardens and, more critically, in front of the world’s cameras. If the anti-ceasefire republicans get mobilised, they could grab world headlines, with violent street disorder taking place just a couple of hundred yards away from where the Queen is standing. The logistics of her tour of key sites in north inner Dublin is further complicated by the question of how to get her and the Duke, and their security teams, up to Croke Park. The Garda Síochána will have to create a huge cordon sanitaire along one of the main arterial northern arterial routes into the city centre. They may have to corral demonstrators off the road along Dorset Street prior to the royal cavalcade reaching the GAA’s magnificent stadium on the banks of Dublin’s appropriately named Royal Canal. Overall, if violence erupts on the streets around the heart of Dublin’s north inner city, these pictures will be beamed all around the planet; they will partly – if not largely – colour the coverage which, for a republic seeking to rebuild its international image after the national humiliation of going with the begging bowl to Europe and the IMF, is disastrous. None of this is to suggest that the majority of Irish people oppose the royal visit. Far from it. Judging by opinion polls, the views of the country’s main political parties and the ongoing fascination with the House of Windsor in Irish newspapers, magazines, television and radio programmes, the overwhelming majority welcome the arrival of the Queen. But in the era of 24/7 news, it is very often a militant and determined minority who can, through violent actions, steal the headlines and dominate the agenda. This is what organisations like Republican Sinn Féin or the Real IRA-aligned 32 County Sovereignty Committee are hoping for. The ill thought-out logistical planning for the royal visit, especially in Dublin, makes that scenario all the more possible. In the meantime, the train has rolled back to Dundalk, with buses waiting at the station to transfer us up north by road. We cannot travel on the main route into Northern Ireland as the M1 remains shut. Only six days after republican dissidents caused outrage with the murder of a young Catholic police officer in Omagh, they are back inflicting more disruption to the lives of ordinary Irish citizens who do not sympathise at all with their narrow, futile agenda. Yet provoking such opprobrium doesn’t seem to bother them, and nor will it if they succeed in disrupting the royal visit next month. The Queen Ireland Henry McDonald guardian.co.uk
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World Development Report 2011 warns that chronic cycles of criminal and political violence remain the biggest threats The World Bank is calling for a new focus in global development efforts towards providing justice, law and order to the estimated 1.5 billion people living in fragile and failed states. In its World Development Report 2011 , the bank warns that one of the biggest threats to development in the 21st century is chronic insecurity caused by cycles of criminal and political violence that defy easy answers. The report asks: “How is it that, almost a decade after renewed international engagement with Afghanistan the prospects of peace seem distant? How is it that entire urban communities can be terrorised by drug traffickers? How is it that countries in the Middle East and north Africa could face explosions of popular grievances despite, in some cases, sustained high growth and improvement in social indicators?” Patterns of global violence have changed in recent years, with fewer conventional conflicts between two identifiable sides. The number of deaths from civil wars are only a quarter of what they were 30 years ago. In their place, since the end of the cold war, is what Sarah Cliffe, one of the report’s directors, calls more fluid types of violence, often driven by cross-border crime, such as drug trafficking. “Peace processes in southern Africa and central America have been threatened by criminal violence,” Cliffe said. “In Guatemala you have more people dying now from criminal violence and from drug trafficking than you did during the civil war.” In such circumstances, conventional development spending may do little or nothing to improve the situation for ordinary people. Cliffe said: “The message is that getting the basics in place is crucial. Without a basic functioning justice system, for instance, and an economic stake in society for people, then more sophisticated plans to improve education or health systems or infrastructure tend not to work, because they get undermined by turbulence and instability.” Escaping from repeated cycles of violence in fragile or failed states could take a generation at best, the report argues, but it is possible through the gradual rebuilding of legitimate institutions. It says the priority should be placed on those institutions that provide three crucial ingredients of a stable society: citizen security, justice and jobs. This means outside assistance is often best provided by specialists in human rights, mediation and policing, alongside traditional humanitarian and development aid workers. The international community has a role in trying to cushion an affected society from the external stress of conflicts on its borders or drug trafficking. The report cites Ethiopia, Mozambique and Rwanda as countries that have successfully emerged from violent conflict and are making rapid progress towards reducing poverty. “What we look at in the experience of countries which have gone through these transformations is the emphasis on what it takes to keep the peace during periods of dramatic change,” Cliffe said. “It’s very much less linked to technocratic approaches to how to build the best schools or dams.” World Bank Conflict and development Aid Economics Global economy Poverty Drugs trade Julian Borger guardian.co.uk
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Women wearing a face veil in public could now be fined or given lessons in French citizenship France’s ban on face veils, a first in Europe, went into force on Monday, and anyone wearing the niqab or burqa in public could now face a fine of €150 (£132), or lessons in French citizenship. The centre-right government, which passed the law in October, has rolled out a public relations campaign to explain the ban and the rules of its application that includes posters, pamphlets and a government-hosted website. Guidelines spelled out in the pamphlet forbid police from asking women to remove their burqa in the street. They will instead be escorted to a police station and asked to remove the veil there for identification. Widely criticised by Muslims abroad as impinging on their religious freedom, the law has provoked a limited backlash in France where a strict separation of church and state is seen as central to maintaining a peaceful civil society. A property dealer is urging women to engage in “civil disobedience” by continuing to wear the veil if they so desire and has called on supporters to hold a silent prayer in protest of the ban in front of Notre Dame cathedral. Rachid Nekkaz, who is a Muslim, said in a webcast he would help pay fines and was putting a property worth around €2m up for sale to fund his campaign. “The street is the universal home of freedom and nobody should challenge that so long as these woman are not impinging on anyone else’s freedom,” he said. “I am calling on all free women who so wish to wear the veil in the street and engage in civil disobedience,” he said. In Avignon, Vaucluse, Reuters TV filmed a woman boarding a train wearing a niqab, unchallenged by police. “It’s not an act of provocation,” said Kenza Drider. “I’m only carrying out my citizens’ rights, I’m not committing a crime … If they [police] ask me for identity papers I’ll show them, no problem.” France has 5m Muslims, but fewer than 2,000 women are believed actually to wear a face veil. Many Muslim leaders have said they support neither the veil nor the law banning it. On Saturday, French police arrested around 60 people who turned up for a banned protest over the veil ban which had been called by a Muslim group in Britain. One of the protesters was arrested on his arrival from Britain, a police spokesman said. The timing is all the more sensitive after France’s ruling UMP party called a debate on the role of Islam in French society, a forum that some criticised as unfairly singling out a portion of the population as problematic. The guide sent out last week to police notes that the burqa ban does not apply inside private cars, but it reminds officers that such cases can be dealt with under road safety rules. France Europe Islam Religion Women guardian.co.uk
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Deputy prime minister says ‘alternative arrangements’ will be made if GP practices are not ready to become commissioning consortiums by April 2013 deadline The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, has signalled that a key deadline set by the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, for a switch to GP-based commissioning will not be implemented unless GPs can prove they are ready to take the responsibility. In a sign that the government is prepared to make a key concession on Lansley’s reforms amid tensions within the coalition, Clegg said “alternative arrangements” would be made if GP practices were not ready by April 2013, the date set by the health secretary. Clegg revealed a more flexible approach as he sought to play down a threat from one of his closest allies to quit over controversial NHS reforms. Norman Lamb, a government whip who serves as one of the deputy prime minister’s senior advisers, said his party’s MPs and peers would be unable to support the health and social care bill if their concerns were ignored. Among the demands laid out by Lamb, a former Lib Dem health spokesman, was a call for a 2013 deadline for GP-based commissioning consortiums to be scrapped in favour of an “evolution, not revolution” approach, with GPs having to opt into consortiums and the retention of a cluster of primary care trusts to observe the “performance management” of GPs. Clegg appeared to bow to one of the demands in an interview with BBC Radio 4′s Today programme. He said ministers “have to get it right” on NHS reforms, saying it was a “good thing” that the government would be listening to concerns over the shake-up in the next two months and was willing to “change things where necessary”. While he stressed that there were “some virtues and some drawbacks” to calls for GPs to opt into consortiums because of the “uneven” approach this could create in the NHS, he made it clear that the 2013 deadline imposed by Lansley could be relaxed. Clegg said GP practices would have to meet a “whole series of tests” before being allowed to take on commissioning functions. “I have been very clear we are not going to allow GP consortia who are not ready to take on these commissioning functions if they are not ready by the 2013 deadline,” he said. “You clearly set in motion a whole series of tests to make sure they are able to take on those responsibilities. “If they are not, they will not, and then alternative arrangements would need to be made the Asked whether the government would reconsider the plan to scrap primary care trusts, Clegg said there was no point having a “pause” in the legislation unless there was a proper rethink. “I think it’s a good thing that we are listening,” he said. He sought to play down party divisions by insisting that neither ministers nor his own party wanted to “reopen the Pandora’s box of the basic design” of the bill – giving GPs more financial responsibility, reducing bureaucracy and giving local authorities a greater say in the way the health systems works. While NHS reforms were necessary, “the devil lies in the detail” of the legislation, Clegg said. “Everybody agrees it is right to put more financial responsibility in the hands of GPs who know the patients best, but how you do that … the devil lies in the detail,” he added. “The details of how you make these principles work in practice are of course things we want to get right. “I couldn’t agree more with Norman – we have to get this right. The NHS is too precious, to me and everyone else who relies on it in the country, to not get the principle translated properly into practice.” Clegg rejected the suggestion that the Lib Dems were now portrayed as a party less committed to the idea of public services as a “complete caricature”. “It was Labour that crowbarred private sector providers – through so-called independent treatment centres – by rigging contracts with the private sector, which very deliberately, subconsciously undercut the NHS,” he said. “We are outlawing that. We are saying there has to be a level playing field with voluntary groups, the NHS and other providers and we are actually saying there should be no price competition whatsoever. In other words, we are providing a more open approach.” A series of “listening events” are to take place across the country over the coming weeks as Clegg, David Cameron and Lansley seek to demonstrate that they are taking criticism and advice on board. NHS Health Nick Clegg Health policy Hélène Mulholland Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk
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Bob Shennan defends station from attacks by commercial rivals and BBC Trust, saying he is not chasing a younger audience The Radio 2 controller, Bob Shennan, has defended his station from criticism by its commercial rivals and the BBC Trust, saying “entertainment is not a dirty word”. The station, which with nearly 14 million listeners is by far the most popular in the UK, has faced calls to take more risks with its daytime output and reverse a decline in the number of its older listeners. Shennan rejected suggestions that he was chasing a younger audience and said he had already taken steps to increase the amount of public service content in its mainstream schedule. “I would maintain that we have made Radio 2 even more distinctive,” added Shennan. “Which commercial radio station is launching a children’s writing competition in their breakfast show to bring 50 kids to the Hay Festival [as Chris Evans has done]? We are doing standup comedy awards on Steve Wright’s show, Simon Mayo’s launched a book club in drivetime. I don’t think there are any of those on [Global Radio's commercial network] Heart. “Chris Evans played six Matt Monro songs in one programme the other week. I don’t think I’m going to hear that on commercial radio. What we don’t do is test music to find out what we think the audience loves then feed it to them remorselessly. We lead tastes, we don’t pander to them.” The BBC Trust, in a review of Radio 2 published in February last year, said the station needed to put more comedy and documentaries in its peak-time schedule and take action to reverse the decline in the number of its listeners aged over 65. It echoed concerns expressed by commercial radio trade body, the Radio Centre, which has accused it of having an “obsession with youth” and marginalising its public service content in the “inexorable pursuit of popularity”. But Shennan said the average age of the station was 51, the same as it was five years ago. “Radio 2 is an entertainment and music service and I make no apology for that,” he said. “Entertainment is not a dirty word.” The Radio 2 controller also oversees BBC 6 Music and said the digital music station had the capacity to double its current audience to 2 million. But Shennan was cautious on the issue of digital radio switchover – initially mooted for 2015 but now likely to be much later than that – and the date that Radio 2 would be in a position to go digital-only. “The feeling was that 2015 was ambitious,” said Shennan. “What’s clear is that we are going to be in a hybrid world for some time. This is a slower process than television [switchover] and we will live in a multiplatform world for the foreseeable future.” A total of 21.1% of all listening to Radio 2 is via digital platforms, according to industry figures, lagging behind the industry average of 25% and the BBC radio average of 25.5%. The BBC Trust, in its review last year, said Radio 2 had been “less successful than other BBC stations at encouraging its audience to listen digitally or go online” and called on the station to “use its influence to promote the benefits of digital media so that hard to reach groups do not get left behind”. “We’d obviously like to see it grow, that’s one of the challenges,” said Shennan. But he declined to put a figure on how much of its total listening would have to be on digital before he would consider switching off Radio 2′s analogue FM signal. “Obviously I have to look after the interests of my audience and not just wilfully deprive them of something whilst encouraging them to move towards digital. That’s the balance we’ve got to strike,” Shennan said. “We are not quite sure where that tipping point is. We’d need to be really confident that we could migrate our audience,” he added. •
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To mark the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first man in space, his elder daughter Elena gave her first ever interview for Western media about her father to Andrea Rose of the British Council . This is the complete transcript The interview was conducted for a BBC Radio 4 Random Edition Special which is broadcast at 11am on Monday Andrea Rose: Do you have any memories of April 12, 1961, the day your father was the first man to fly into space? Elena Gagarin: No, I was too young, I was only two years old, and don’t have any recollections of the day itself. AR: So when was the first time that you knew what your father had achieved? EG: Well, it was just a part of my life and growing up. He was always the First Cosmonaut of the World for me, and his whole life was connected with space and space exploration. There wasn’t a before and after for me. AR: Did he talk to you as you grew up about taking that first flight? EG: No. He talked about it so often, and with so many people, that it seemed to me he was rather tired of talking about it. What he talked about to me was his childhood – about what it was like to grow up in Smolensk, and about the war. His family lived under German occupation for three years, and he talked to us a great deal about that. AR: What did he tell you about growing up in Smolensk? EG: That life was extremely
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Suspect has been accused of poisoning milk from two dairies, which killed three children in Gansu province Investigators have found that a tainted milk incident in north-west China which killed three children appears to be a case of intentional poisoning and have detained a suspect, state media said. Investigators found that nitrite, an industrial salt that can be deadly, was added to fresh milk from two dairies last week in Gansu province in order to harm people, the China Daily newspaper reported on Monday. A suspect in Pingliang, where the poisoning took place, had been taken into custody. The three children who died were all under two, with the youngest being 36 days old, the China Daily said. An earlier report in the Pingliang News, a local government-run paper, said 36 other people, mostly children, became ill in the incident. China’s worst food safety scandal in recent years involved fresh milk, infant formula and other dairy products tainted with the industrial chemical melamine, which can cause kidney stones and kidney failure. Melamine was widely used by Chinese dairy manufacturers to artificially boost protein levels and profits. It ended up killing six children and making more than 300,000 others ill in 2008. Much of the food in China is still produced by backyard farms and small-scale manufacturers, which makes enforcing food safety standards difficult. A series of embarrassing problems, including the 2008 tainted milk scandal, prompted China to pass tougher food safety regulations and step up inspections, though many problems remain. In a separate report on Monday, the China Daily said authorities in the central province of Henan had detained 95 people involved in a profit-seeking tainted pork scandal. The detainees allegedly made, sold or used pig feed laced with clenbuterol, a banned drug that causes pigs to convert fat to muscle quickly. Clenbuterol is illegal because it can cause nausea, dizziness, headaches and heart palpitations in humans, but pig farmers like to use it because it helps yield more lean meat, which is costlier than fatty meat. The investigation was launched after tainted pork was found being sold by Shuanghui Group, China’s largest meat processor. Authorities traced the contamination back to an illegal chemical factory that sold raw clenbuterol to middlemen who mixed it with starch and resold it to farmers, who mixed it into their feed, it said. Authorities found 18 tonnes of clenbuterol-tainted feed in Henan, and a random check of nine farms in the province found that 52 out of 1,512 pigs tested positive for the drug. China guardian.co.uk
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• Arsenal will be 10th Premier League club in foreign hands • American businessman to acquire majority shares Arsenal will make a statement to the stock exchange on Monday announcing that Stan Kroenke has control of 62% of the club, making them the 10th Premier League side to fall into foreign ownership. Kroenke is already Arsenal’s largest single shareholder, and a board member of the club. Now the American is believed to have secured formal undertakings for share sales from both Danny Fiszman and
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• Lloyds already ordered to sell 600 branches by EU • All banks should ring-fence savings operations • RBS estimates benefits of ‘universal’ banking at up to £4.8bn Lloyds Banking Group should sell more branches to reduce its dominance on the high street and all banks should be forced to ring-fence their savings operations from the rest of the business under proposals unveiled on Monday by the independent commission on banking. Lloyds, created by Labour during the 2008 financial crisis to save HBOS, is already being forced to sell 600 branches to appease EU regulators. The independent banking commission, chaired by Sir John Vickers, is now suggesting that even more be sold off to tackle its 30% share of current accounts, 24% of mortgages – more than any other bank – and a 23% share of small business banking, second only to RBS. Lloyds was the first bank to respond to the commission’s much-anticipated report. “We are currently assessing the full implications of the report and will provide a further update to the market once we have had the opportunity to review the report in detail,” Lloyds said. The major banks will also be affected by the commission’s propositions that they be forced to separate their savings business from the rest of their operations to reduce the need for another taxpayer bailout of the system. This means that so-called universal banks will argue that their costs of doing business will rise. Vickers and his four commissioners are also recommending that these ring-fenced operations hold more capital than at present – suggesting a 10% core tier one ratio. RBS is the only bank to have made a public estimate about the benefits of being a universal bank – putting it at between £3.5bn and £4.8bn annually – and analysts at Goldman Sachs believe Barclays has most to lose. Lloyds may fight hard against any demands that it is forced to sell off even more branches. The former chief executive Eric Daniels told the Financial Times this year: “One of the things that characterises most modern governments is that when you make an agreement with the state, it’s an agreement with the state independent of which political party is in power. There was a sentiment [then] that financial stability was more important and that the issue of competition took second place. As a result of that, the secretary of state signed off the deal. That is a matter of public record.” Banking Barclays HSBC Lloyds Banking Group Royal Bank of Scotland Jill Treanor guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …More Pa. Town Hall Obamabsurdity: Three Media-Ignored Misleads on Oil Reserves and Production
April 10, 2011 No CommentReasonably astute readers will catch the falsehoods and fallacies inherent in the following statement made by President Obama last Wednesday at the town hall meeting held in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania: But here’s the thing about oil. We have about 2, maybe 3 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves; [1] we use 25 percent of the world’s oil. [2] So think about it. Even if we doubled the amount of oil that we produce, we’d still be short by a factor of five. [3] The average Associated Press or other apparatchik following Obama has apparently given these statements little if any thought, simply assuming that they're “obviosuly” true. Each of the President's three key number-tagged statements is either demonstrably false or seriously misleading. Each is badly in need of a specific refutation. [1] — We have about 2, maybe 3 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves . The President is wrong on this one, but in a direction that would appear to reinforce his ultimate point. The 2010 CIA Factbook, which is based on data as of the end of 2009, says that proven reserves in the U.S. amount to 19.12 billion barrels . Wikipedia's related link calculates the percentage of worldwide proven reserves correctly at 1.37%, which places the U.S. fourteenth in the world. The proven reserves figure is lower than the 22.3 billion barrels published by t he U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in November 2010. The higher figure only changes the worldwide share to about 1.6%. But Jeff Dunetz at BigGovernment.com (and many others, I'm sure) point out that proven reserves is not the correct frame of reference in measuring truly available resources: The number is America’s proven reserves where we are already drilling. It does not include the 10 billion barrels available in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It does not include most of the 86 billion barrels available offshore in the Outer Continental Shelf, most of which President Obama has placed under an executive drilling ban. And it does not include the 800 billion barrels of oil we have locked in shale in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. Those shale resources alone are actually three times larger than the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia, so the claim that the U.S. only has 2% of the world’s oil is clearly false. In the sense that Obama defenders can say “Well, he was talking about proven reserves,” Obama is technically correct. But in context, Obama is trying to convince Americans that the rest of the world has 30-50 times more oil than we do and that we therefore can't possibly produce our way out of our current situation. That just isn't so, especially when one realizes that the correct figure for shale oil alone may be more like 2.5 trillion barrels instead of Dunetz's 800 billion barrels (though I'm not clear on its degree of recoverability). [2] — We use 25 percent of the world’s oil. That was the big campaign theme in 2008, wasn't it? We have only 5% of the population greedily burning through 25% of the world's oil. It's just so unfair. Well, the percentage has gone down: An article at Rittholtz.com berates the U.S. for consuming 25% of the world's oil production. But the actual numbers on the map shows the U.S. consuming 18.686 million barrels a day, with the world consuming 84.077 million. Uh, that's actually 22.2%. These numbers agree to those found in a spreadsheet I found at BP's web site here . 2010 U.S. consumption averaged about 19.145 million barrels today, per Table 4A at the EIA's March 2011 Short-Term Energy Outlook ( large PDF ). Table 3A at the same link shows worldwide consumption as average of 87.18 million barrels during 2010. U.S. consumption was 21.96% of worldwide consumption. From the same report as in the previous bullet, project 2011 U.S. daily consumption is 19.28 million barrels. Worldwide, it's 88.2 million. That works out to 21.86%. All three percentages are closer to 20% than 25%, eliminating any potential “well, we were just rounding up” excuse. The President, who is supposed to be up on these things, doesn't get the benefit of the doubt on this one. He's relying on old data, and should stop using the 25% canard; the press should stop assuming the canard is true. [3] — Even if we doubled the amount of oil that we produce, we’d still be short by a factor of five. This is by far the biggest howler of the bunch, and is easily disproven. Obama's math-challenged calculation simply multiplies the proven reserves number of “2%-3%” by two to arrive at roughly 5%, and then claims that this result is only one-fifth of our 25% share of world consumption. Thus, we're supposedly “short by a factor of five.” Lord have mercy. Let's look at some real numbers: As seen above, our 2009 daily consumption was 18.686 million barrels. A preliminary EIA document for that year
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