Oil and gas now account for roughly 20 percent of Russia's economy, 55 percent of all its export earnings and 40 percent of its total tax revenues. Russia is the world's second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, and its subsoil contains about 30 percent of the world's gas reserves.
A strong democracy and an effective public sector help explain why oil has not distorted Norway the way it has Nigeria or Venezuela. A lot of oil, combined with weak public institutions, fuels poverty, inequality and corruption. It also undermines democracy.

Hours before the US-led war on Iraq began, Saddam Hussein reportedly withdrew more than $US1billion ($1.37 billion) from the central bank - money that US officials believe he and his supporters are now using to support armed resistance to the occupation forces.
While US forces have recovered most of the cash, US officials say around $US132 million is still missing, ABC news reported.

Last week, the US proposed new taxes on colour television sets from China, only a week after starting proceedings to impose quotas on a range of Chinese textiles, including some not made in the US.


Making things worse, the White House revised its story after revelations of the distortion. The White House now says "it had left the wrong impression" and that actually the conversation took place between Air Force One and the airport tower in London.3 But again, British Airways refuted this tale, with a spokesman for the company telling media "that none of its pilots has come forward to acknowledge either making or overhearing the purported conversation."


" The White House now says "it had left the wrong impression" and that actually the conversation took place between Air Force One and the airport tower in London. But again, British Airways refuted this tale"

mr ed. heres a question: if u were going to go to the trouble of lying and be sufficeintly clever/capable to provide yuorself cover within the airtraffic controllers across a number of countries presumably (it was the london control tower that said 'gulfstream5') - wouldnt you expect to be smart enough to actually get the size of the dummy plane right so that you dont risk the curious response 'oh'? my guess is that most airtraffic controllers would know, within a range, what sort of plane DareForceWon is. and they'd know that it was nothing like a gs5.

on the flipside, you'd also think that rove and his friends would also know the difference - even if the trip was a complete hoax. they take good care of so much detail - one thing that they did well was to get bremmer to introduce the president. according to the media. bremmer was in iraq, bremmer introduced bush, ergo bush is in iraq. it didnt occur to me at the time to actually check the tv footage to see if they actually showed bremmer on the tv - i did check a few news photos, and someone who looks like bremmer is in them - i stopped looking cos i could feel i needed to calm down a bit. so its weird that they would get the gs5 thing wrong for starters - and the most nforgivable mistake they made was to even include any of that 'conversation' in the story - not cos it was a lie, but a) because it served no apparent purpose b) even if it was true, it is explicitly contrary to the position that bush threatened to go home if there was any leak c) the lie was executed really badly. but the 'no apparent purpose' mistake is the worst by far. these guys are so so good at what they do - and they presumably have been preparing the press release since hillary declared in october that she was going to afghanistan for tanksgiving - this press release shuold have been more vetted than SOTU - and it doesnt take a genius to know that lying is difficult to get away with, and therefore u should have reason if u are gonna do it. yogi berra said 'the thing about telling the truth is that u dont have to remember so much'. this fabrication seems about as useful as a foreskin to a eunuch (im not quite sure what that means, but it sounds funny-ish) - but it was a verifiable minefield - a) it countered the 'ill turn back' story b) the whole 'oh' thing just sounded dumb c) the lie relied on an anonymous, but traceable 3rd party. d)the truth/lie was verifiable . and their response about the tower included more lies. also provable. looking at the statements about the precise description of where/when the alleged incident took place is also provable - it wouldnt surprise to hear that there werent any BA planes there at that time. all for no apparent benefit. these people are very very good at what they do - id have to think that most people in the airline industry, and every planespotter, and every rich executive would know immediately that the story was wrong somewhere. and still i cant see apoint for including the anecdote - it was risky and appeared to offer no benefit. i can understand why the journalist story was included, obviously to provide validation, and i can accept that mistakes are made (im sure i counted more than the 13 journos in the story) - but the point is that detail will always trip u up - if they'd said 'a team of journos' then there are fewer opportunites for validation. detail is not the friend of untruthsayers. its impossible to always get all the ducks lined up consistenty.

given that im a complete psycho, my silly brain leads me to even the next level of conspiracy. im amazed that smart people let this error thru - which leads me to question whether it was actually on purpose (everything else these guys do is very purposeful and very tight). too crazy to even think about. what possible reasons could they have for doing that? i have no idea. ummmmmmmmmmmm. ummmmmmm. perhaps they are innoculating against future shocks? ummmmmmmm. perhaps they are testing to see what they can get away with? ummmmmm perhaps. perhaps k.rove is like the joker, or one of those serial killers who leaves some sort of calling card? ummmmmmmmm. perhaps it was a test to see which journos/bloggers see thru their tricks - if i die like a microbiologist in the next 2 months, its not suicide. science can have whatever she wants of my body, and leave the rest in a crematorium. unless you know of a pizza oven somewhere that could use them. im pretty hot. why dont realigious egos accept 'ashes2ashes'? selfimportant trash. any assets to my folks. movie and publishing rights to my story shant suggest amnesia, or rape by iraqi doctors, but please fix up my grammar.

i dont know why that gs5 story was included, but on balance, i'd be more surprised if it was an accident, than if it was intentional.

chasing shadows, not dragons.