THE END of the GRID

[Huck Finn's Electricity Hut is regulated by the State. So Huck can
only charge his customers a moderate fee for service. But one day,
Godzilla comes to town, already in possession of a hundred similar
operations. He offers a pile of money for Huck Finn's Electricity
Hut, and now Godzillacorp has a hundred and one subsidiaries all over
the USA. Clearly, Godzillacorp is an interstate entity, so it is not
subject to the regulations that kept Huck's prices so low in the
past. The laws that once prevented Godzilla from buying up large
numbers of small independent utilities were largely repealed during
the legislative bonanza that brought you Enron. The coup de grace was
the repeal of the Depression-era Public Utility Holding Company Act
last fall. And while the giant lizard is buying up all the small
utility companies, the natural gas needed to generate electricity is
running out. Scarcity will impose cuts in energy use, and whoever
controls the generation and delivery system will be choosing where to
cut. If the weather is harsh (perhaps because of a radically
destabilized climate), access to energy is a matter of life and
death. And if Godzilla is in charge, will Huck and his dirt-poor
client base be around much longer? Deregulation + arbitrage =
hypothermia.

And whom do we find at the heart of all this? May Shattuck, III, the
same key Wall Street player, who, in another incarnation, was
directly tied to some of the largest United Air Lines put options
placed right before September 11th. –JAH]

THE END of the GRID

New, Deadly Links between 9/11 and Peak Oil

Enron was Child's Play

Gobbled Utility Companies Will Spur Rapid Decline in Generation,
Transmission Capacity

by Michael C. Ruppert
From The Wilderness Publications,
http://www.fromthewilderness.com May be circulated, distributed or
transmitted for non-profit purposes only.

In order to argue that the massive and well-documented insider
trading that occurred in at least seven countries immediately before
the attacks of Sept. 11 did not serve as a warning to intelligence
agencies, it is necessary to argue that no one was aware of the
trades as they were occurring, and that intelligence and law
enforcement agencies of most industrialized nations do not monitor
stock trades in real time to warn of impending attacks. Both
assertions are false. Both assertions would also ignore the fact that
the current executive vice president of the New York Stock Exchange
(NYSE) for enforcement is David Doherty, a retired CIA general
counsel. Also ignored is the fact that the trading in United Airlines
stock -- one of the most glaring clues -- was placed through the firm
Deutschebank/Alex Brown, which was headed until 1998 by the man who
is now the executive director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard.

One wonders if it was a coincidence then, that Mayo Shattuck III, the
head of the Alex Brown unit of Deutschebank -- which had its offices
in the WTC -- suddenly resigned from a $30 million, three-year
contract on Sept. 12, as reported by the New York Times and other
papers.

Briefing Paper - The Case for Bush Administration Advance Knowledge
of 9/11 Attacks, Michael C. Ruppert, FTW April 22, 2002



Or, when the new energy bill is signed by George W. Bush, Big Oil
(along with Warren Buffett) might just start buying up every major
power and water utility in the country. They will be allowed to do
that now for the first time since the Great Depression. Then – with
the help of PROMIS software – Big Oil just might shut off the power
selectively to any Enemies of the State it wishes: especially those
who are too loud.

Michael C. Ruppert,
http://www.fromthewilderness.com Aug. 5, 2005



Houston also admitted that the primary company responsible for all of
CIA covert air operations, was a holding company named Pacific Corp.
There is an Oregon-based corporation known as Pacificorp which has a
multitude of sub-entities with varying versions of the name including
Pacific Power & Light, Pacificorp and Pacific Harbor Capital. In 1993
a Seattle paper ran a story connecting Pacificorp to CIA's Pacific
Corp. Under oath, before the Senate in 1976, Houston admitted that
Pacific Corp. owned and controlled such CIA notables as Air America,
Southern Air Transport and Intermountain Air. In 1976 the CIA was
ordered to sell Air America and divest itself of all its holdings.

Michael C. Ruppert, "Only the Godfather," FTW Dec. 1998



January 4, 2006 0800 PST (FTW) – With the eagerness and drive of a
baseball player on steroids, the largest financial powerhouses in the
nation have been gobbling up publicly owned utilities since George W.
Bush signed the new energy bill last fall. It is not just that
ownership of these life-essential services is being concentrated in a
few rich and unregulated hands — it is the identities of the owners
that should make worry about what's coming. If the writing on this
wall got any clearer, you'd need to buy a box of popcorn and sit down
for the horror show.

Best get a blanket and some long johns first.

Since the passage of America's most recent energy bill on August 8th,
many public utilities have been acquired by some of the wealthiest
people on the planet. With the loss of public regulation that came
with the repeal of the Public Utility Company Holding Act as part of
that measure, these "cash cows," to which tens of millions of people
make monthly payments, are being converted into liquid giants that
can be used to acquire other utility companies, or to trade ever-
diminishing energy resources for profit. There is no rationing by
government yet, only the rationing of the "free markets." That's only
until the wheels come off and Peak Oil and Gas trigger uprisings
and "civil unrest" (I absolutely detest that term – the word
is "riot," and it is not solved by a quick second or third
mortgage). Only then will government step in, and then only to try
and prop up the façade of a sustainable paradigm of infinite growth.

Instead of maintaining the grid for as long as possible, these
amalgamating giants will now accelerate its demise. What is about to
happen is the living embodiment of a statement made by a Dutch
economist at a Paris Peak Oil conference in the spring of 2003: "It
may not be profitable to slow decline."1

No more will utilities invest ratepayers' money in extra capacity for
the 20-year drought, the 50-year heat wave or the 100-year cold snap.
Instead, every ounce of extra capacity will be sold off, under-
maintained, or discontinued to maximize cash on hand for the next
buyout or LBO. Ratepayer money will be used for the benefit of
shareholders, not ratepayers. When it comes time to decide whether to
make a handsome profit or keep people warm, there won't even be a
debate. These privately owned giants will be able to arbitrage energy
to the highest bidder. They will be able to buy other, smaller
entities just as the major oil companies have been doing for decades,
adding the smaller companies' reserves and net profits onto their
price/earnings (P/E) ratios.

The grid will not disappear suddenly, as if someone had thrown a
switch. It will behave exactly the way energy supplies behave. Just
as the world will never fully run out of oil or gas, it will have to
make do with less and less. It will be a protracted death, full of
agonies, full of fits and starts, and it will happen sporadically,
with the weakest regions being the first to suffer. The onset of this
terminal illness is becoming apparent this winter.

No more do utilities have as a primary mandate the protection of the
poor and weak. No more will they prioritize the equal distribution of
access to reasonably priced services. Instead, as Peak Oil and Gas
worsen, they must focus their attention on providing energy only to
corporations that make and sell things, or to those rich enough to
pay prices that increase faster than necessary. Their cash will be
used to purchase ever-larger chunks of market share as energy prices
exceed the reach of the public. Employees be damned. Families be
damned.

What we are watching is the start of a bidding war over diminishing
energy resources. But the bidding will only make matters worse. It
will accelerate the inevitable collapse, make it harder, and wreak
needless harm on millions of people.

The man who has stepped onto center stage in this ominous limelight
is none other than Mayo Shattuck, III — the man who, as head of the
Alex. Brown unit of Deutschebank, knew and approved of massive
insider trading in United Airlines stock just before September 11th,
2001. He has just shepherded the largest single utility merger in
American history in an $11 billion deal that will create the largest
utility company in the nation, with a market capitalization of $28
billion. The new company, formed from Constellation Energy Group and
Florida Power and Light, will operate in many states – and thus
remain exempt from state regulation.


(Mayo Shattuck, III – photo Constellation Energy Group Web Site)

Mayo Shattuck resigned suddenly from Alex. Brown on September 12th,
2001, walking away from a multimillion-dollar contract. Instead, he
became CEO of the then-obscure Constellation Energy Group. Shattuck
had never worked in the energy field. That was odd, and it remained
unexplained until about two weeks ago. As I wrote in Crossing the
Rubicon, The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of
Oil:

Mayo Shattuck III — another clue

Mayo Shattuck III is an extremely powerful and influential mover and
shaker in the financial world. As head of the Alex. Brown unit of
Deutsche Bank on 9/11, he had previously been involved in deals with
Russian ruble trading, Microsoft, the Bronfman dynasty, Enron (where
he assisted in deceptively concealing Enron's debts36), and with a
massive insider trading scandal involving Adnan Khashoggi's Genesis
Intermedia right before 9/11.37 He was midway through a three-year,
30-million dollar contract as the head of the Alex. Brown unit of
Deutsche Bank when the attacks came. Shattuck (who knows Buzzy
Krongard well) took over Alex. Brown operations after Krongard had
officially gone to the CIA in 1998. It was under Shattuck's
management that some of the criminal trades on United Air Lines were
placed right before 9/11.

Mayo Shattuck resigned suddenly on September 12th, the day after the
attacks.38 A close associate of CFR powerhouses like Peter G.
Petersen and Steven Bechtel of the Bechtel Corporation, Shattuck is
today the President and CEO of Constellation Energy Group, one of the
firms that gained access to Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task
force, the one from which the Bush administration is
unconstitutionally refusing to release the records.

Alex. Brown also played a key role in refinancing the Carlyle Group
for its acquisition of United Defense Technologies in 2000.39 This
close connection to Bush family business ventures is not a surprise
because Alex. Brown's connections to the Bush family stretch back for
at least seven decades. The Alex. Brown investment bank helped to
finance and organize the firm managed in the first half of the 20th
century by George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush: Brown
Brothers, Harriman.2

In December, 2005 Shattuck presided over the buyout (all stock, and
hence no taxes for shareholders) of Constellation by Florida Power
and Light (FPL) to create the largest utility in the country — one
that will have power plants in Florida, Maryland, New York,
California, Illinois and Pennsylvania. Shattuck will become the
Chairman of the new company, Constellation Energy. FPL's Lewis Hay
III will serve as Constellation's CEO. 3 Constellation will have a
presence in every state except Nebraska, Idaho, Montana and Vermont.4

Where Constellation isn't in power, others (like Warren Buffett,
whose own 9/11 connections remain mysterious) will be. As the New
York Times reported on December 19th:

The transaction extends a heady year for deals in the power industry,
following Duke Energy's acquisition of the Cinergy Corporation for $9
billion; Berkshire Hathaway's [controlled by Buffett] purchase of
PacifiCorp for $5.1 billion; and NRG Energy's acquisition of Texas
Genco last month for $5.8 billion. Energy companies have been using
growing amounts of cash and higher share prices to seize on a pivotal
moment for assets that just a year or two ago were too risky to touch.

The year ahead may bring even more deals, following the relaxation of
laws restricting utility ownership.5

TRADING YOUR HEAT FOR THE HIGHEST PROFIT

We saw it clearly with oil and gas in the wake of Katrina and Rita.
We are seeing it now as we plunge headlong into the winter of 2005-6,
a winter which is barely two weeks old. US News and World Report has
described for us how, under deregulation, natural gas stocks, heating
oil, generation capacity, and other forms of essential heat are now
traded for the highest profit among energy giants.

… That means hundreds of closed factories and enormous hardship for
low-income and working poor families, who can expect scant federal
government help. And if bitter cold rides in on Mother Nature's
coattails, extraordinary measures will be needed to keep energy
flowing, particularly in the Northeast, as natural-gas shortages
spill over into oil and electricity supplies. "We pray for warm
weather. We have a prayer chain going," says Diane Munns, an Iowa
regulator who is president of the National Association of Regulatory
Utility Commissioners. "People are talking not just about high prices
but actual shortages."

…The simple economic rule of supply and demand is now at work: The
market price of natural gas hit $15 per million British thermal units
(Btu) last week, well over double what traders paid last year…

Out of options. Hundreds of factories will be similarly forced to lay
off workers or freeze or cut wages because of high natural gas prices
this winter, says the National Association of Manufacturers. Many
large companies, like chemical giant Dow, have moved major operations
overseas near cheaper fuel. But smaller domestic companies don't have
that option. "In manufacturing, there's just one way to use less
energy, and that's to make less widgets," says Paul Cicio, executive
director of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America.

Industrial shutdowns are actually vital to the current energy market
because they curb demand. Without them, prices would be even higher
for consumers trying to heat homes…

The curtailment of "interruptible" customers will trigger a double
squeeze on consumers throughout the Northeast. First, costs for home
heating oil will skyrocket, as scores of power plants and other
interruptible gas customers switch fuels and make a grab for all the
oil on the market…

…The second threat is a severe electricity shortage in the Northeast--
with possible brownouts or blackouts. Deregulated natural-gas-fired
power generators, under no legal obligation to serve customers as the
old monopoly electric companies were, can simply stop generating
power. Some plants will be interruptible customers with no backup
fuel source. But in other cases, power plants that have firm natural
gas contracts will stop generating electricity anyway and sell their
fuel at enormous profit. That is precisely what happened during the
three-day January 2004 cold snap, when more than 25 percent of New
England's generating capacity went off line and the reserve margin
was near zero.6

This inevitable arbitrage trading of energy at the expense of
ratepayers has been noted by some mainstream press outlets in the
wake of the Constellation - FPL acquisition.

Constellation… has also made a successful foray into energy trading,
surviving a crisis in that field triggered by the collapse of Enron
four years ago. Since then, Constellation has emerged as one of the
strongest energy traders, competing nimbly with elite investment
banks and hedge funds that have built large energy trading operations…
7

MSNBC said it a different way:

Shattuck will also head its competitive wholesale and retail
business, which will serve thousands of commercial, industrial and
utility customers – including 72 FORTUNE 100 companies…

"Ultimately," Hay said, "this will translate into expanded
opportunities to deploy new capital wisely."…

Constellation receives 75 percent of its profits from energy trading
and power sales, which have more volatility…8

The Palm Beach Post was a little clearer. They even resorted to
quoting an organization founded by Ralph Nader.

Its [FPL's] major source of money is its out-of-state power plants,
which brought in $12.5 billion in revenue in 2004 as they cranked out
more than 12,300 megawatts of juice each day in three dozen states
and delivered it to major businesses such as Ford Motor Co., Staples
Inc and Georgia-Pacific Co…

"The primary logic, in my opinion, would be that FPL is big into
merchant power, the non-regulated power plants," said Tim Winter, a
St. Louis-based analyst with A.G. Edwards and Sons…

Some still have troubles. Calpine Corp., owner of the second-largest
fleet of power plants in Northern California, filed for bankruptcy
protection Tuesday. The company suffered under a contract that
committed it to supply 1,000 megawatts of power – enough for 750,000
homes – around the clock. The fixed-price contract led to a $400
million gain for Calpine, but soaring natural gas prices eventually
turned it into a money-losing deal…

Public Citizen, the Washington-based nonprofit consumer group founded
by Ralph Nader, opposes the merger outright. It argues that the
companies are taking advantage of the guaranteed revenues and high
credit ratings from their regulated utilities to finance the
unregulated power operations.

"This is all about subsidizing the deregulation of its merchant power
plants and energy trading," said Tyson Slocum, director of Public
Citizen's energy program. "They trade electricity contracts, and that
is inherently risky, and ratepayers shouldn't be asked to guarantee
risky behavior."

Still, the new Constellation is likely to be the model for the
American future…9

The term "merchant power plants" has come up in several stories. It
suggests, though I have not been able to confirm it yet, that power
companies will now be operating dedicated generating stations for
industrial and corporate users with the best ability to pay. Weaker
corporations, not on the "A" list would be allowed to die-off leaving
more energy for the rest. That would mean that a Boeing plant might
have plenty of power sitting right next to a neighborhood that gets
none at all due to selective service interruptions designed to "curb
demand." As if any residential user would voluntarily have their heat
and power shut off during a cold winter.

Washington Post columnist Jerry Knight has sounded the direst
warnings from the corporate-owned press thus far. This is ironic
because Warren Buffett is a director and major investor in The
Washington Post Company.

Last week's $11 billion deal to create the nation's largest seller of
electricity may bode well for investors…

But the merger may not be such a good deal for customers of Baltimore
Gas & Electric Co., the local utility company from which
Constellation of Baltimore was created. The state-regulated company
that provides their power will become an even smaller part of an even
bigger conglomerate that makes most of its profit through unregulated
energy investments.

Even before the merger goes through, Maryland's top utility regulator
has begun raising questions about whether BGE's finances have been
structured to benefit its corporate parent at the expense of Maryland
natural gas users…

Calling this a "subsidy from BGE ratepayers to Constellation and its
unregulated affiliates," he said the company's financial
practices "create costs for the ratepayers, which would not occur if
BGE were a stand-alone gas company."

…What is now a diverse industry with lots of players, each serving
its local community, is being transformed into a business dominated
by regional, national and multinational giants.

Remember hometown banks like Riggs, American Security and First
American? And local department stores like Woodward & Lothrop and the
soon-to-be-departed Hecht's? Utilities are in the midst of the same
kind of consolidation that put Bank of America and Citibank into
every state in the union and left Federated Department Stores Inc. as
America's only real department store chain.

More than the natural evolution of big business is behind the trend.
First, many jurisdictions -- Maryland, Virginia and the District
among them -- deregulated the electricity-generating side of the
business. Then Congress unleashed the utilities to crossbreed and
create a race of giants by repealing laws that had been on the books
for decades that limited utility mergers.

Unable to resist the urge to merge, power companies have arranged
several major deals this year. Exelon Corp. of Chicago has agreed to
join up with Public Services Enterprise Group Inc. of Newark, N.J.
Duke Energy Corp. of Charlotte plans to hook up with Cinergy Corp. of
Cincinnati. Warren E. Buffett, a director and major investor in The
Washington Post Co., has put together nine utilities under the
umbrella of MidAmerican Holdings Corp. [Emphasis added]

Unleashing utilities to merge arguably rewrote the job description of
power company chief executives. Their first assignment is no longer
to provide electricity and natural gas as cheaply, reliably and
efficiently as possible. Job one is to grow the company as fast as
possible -- and the way to do that is by doing deals. Just a few
months ago, Constellation made Fortune magazine's list of the
nation's 100 fastest-growing major companies…

Constellation executives are so focused on dealmaking that only a
month before agreeing to merge with FPL, they were trying to buy the
biggest coal-burning power plant in England…

The merged company will have 5.5 million electric customers and power
plants capable of generating 45,000 megawatts of power. Wachovia
Securities analysts calculate that the new company will earn 54
percent of its profit from unregulated energy businesses and 46
percent from regulated utilities…10

And how will Mayo Shattuck fare personally? According to the
Baltimore Business Journal:

The deal keeps Shattuck's base salary steady at $1 million for 2006,
with his bonus to be set by Constellation directors. His total base
salary and bonus will be $5 million in 2007 and $2.5 million in 2008
and 2009. The agreement includes a caveat that his total base salary
and bonus in any year will be no less than that of the CEO, Hay.

Shattuck's previous employment agreement with Constellation (NYSE:
CEG) provided that if the company changed hands, he could receive a
payment of three times his annual base salary plus three times the
average of his biggest bonuses in recent years -- potentially as much
as $13 million. Under the new employment agreement filed Monday, when
the merger closes, Shattuck will receive restricted stock with a
market value equal to the cash severance payout he was originally
entitled to.11



WARREN BUFFETT AND 9/11

On the morning of September 11th, 2001 a group of business executives
were gathered at Offutt Air Force Base in Buffett's home state of
Nebraska. The occasion was the 9th annual Buffett Classic Golf
Tournament.12 At least one of those executives, Anne Tatlock of
Fiduciary Trust Company, International, was conveniently away from
her desk in the World Trade Center as the attacks began.13 To my
knowledge, no one has ever been able to determine that day's guest
list. Nor has anyone been able to identify how many WTC executives
were already waiting safely at Offutt when George W. Bush flew there
instead of going directly back to Washington after the attacks. I
spent about twenty futile hours trying to dig out an answer to that
question in 2002, but those cracks had long been sealed and nothing
was leaking.

The connections between Peak Oil and 9/11 have been clearly
established for a long time. Now, they're even stronger.

THE HIDDEN CURSE OF DEREGULATION

Because I quote it so frequently, a remark from energy investment
banker Matthew Simmons has become well known in nine countries. As he
dissented from the 2001 energy report of Dick Cheney's Task Force,
Simmons commented that the reason more generating capacity and
refineries weren't being built was because the "return on investment
was uncertain." Demand was, and remains, an exponentially growing
given. Therefore, poor returns could only be caused by a scarcity of
the fuels running through these facilities. If profit were your only
motive and you had just brought nine or twenty-nine new power
generating stations online over the last four years, and you knew you
needed fifteen solid years to pay them off, would you build any more?
Would you build more even if you knew that another (perhaps badly
needed) generating station would be taking natural gas or coal from
an already shrinking supply? Would you build another if you knew it
would put one of your older plants (one you hadn't paid for yet) out
of commission due to shortages?

I interviewed Matt Simmons in August of 2003 about the big New
England blackout — an event I had predicted in a lecture hall in
Mexico six weeks earlier. Matt also prophetically told us about what
we can expect now.

FTW: What did happen?

Simmons: On a large scale what happened was deregulation.
Deregulation destroyed excess capacity. Under deregulation, excess
capacity was labeled as "massive glut" and removed from the system to
cut costs and increase profits. Experience has taught us that weather
is the chief culprit in events like this. The system needs to be
designed for a 100-year cyclical event of peak demand. If you don't
prepare for this, you are asking for a massive blackout. New plants
generally aren't built unless they are mandated, and free markets
don't make investments that give one percent returns. There was also
no investment in new transmission lines…

FTW: So we have two basic camps saying that the problems are
generating capacity and transmission lines, without addressing
feedstock issues. What about the advocates for deregulation who
argued that there would be more generating capacity as a result?

Simmons: History answers that one. Following the 1965 blackout when
NERC was created there was a mandate that publicly owned and
regulated power providers had to build new plants. Every five years,
ten per cent was added to the generating base. As deregulation was
implemented in the 1990s, it was argued that it would open up vast
quantities of energy in neighboring states. In the first five years
of the decade, only four per cent capacity was added over the entire
period. In the second five years, only two per cent was added.14

Want to try something both scary and enlightening? Do a web search on
Mayo Shattuck and see what major corporations and banks he is
affiliated with. One thing that caught my eye was that Shattuck sits
on the advisory council for Stanford Business School. Stanford is the
home of our Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is formerly both
Stanford's Provost and a former member of the board at ChevronTexaco.
Rice is the same person who swore that the US government had no idea
that airliners would ever be used as weapons.

Nah, there's no connection between Peak Oil and 9/11. Let's all just
wait and see what this winter's weather brings us. For the last few
years it seems that every year has brought us a 10, 50 or 100-year
event. But then there's no such thing as Global Warming either, is
there?


----------------

ENDNOTES
1 Michael C. Ruppert, "Paris Peak Oil Conference Reveals Deepening
Crisis"; From the Wilderness, May 20, 2003;
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/053103_aspo.html

2 Michael C. Ruppert, "Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the
American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil," New Society (2004), p
251.

3 Simon Romero, Andrew Ross Sorkin; "Power Company Agrees to buy
Another for $11 Billion, The New York Times, December 19, 2005.

4 Kristi E. Swartz, "FPL deal navigates seas of unregulated power,"
The Palm Beach Post, December 25, 2005.

5 -- op cit, Romero

6 Marianne Lavelle, "The Big Chill: A winter fuel crisis of high
prices and shortages could darken homes and factories"; U.S. News and
World Report, December 19, 2005.

7 -- op cit, Romero.

8 Kirstin Dorsch; "FPL creates energy giant in $11B deal, MSNBC, Dec
25, 2005.

9 -- op cit, Swartz.

10 Jerry Knight, "Dealmaking Power Companies Change the Utility
Landscape," The Washington Post, December 26, 2005.

11 Rachel Sams, "Constellation locks in Shattuck for three years,"
Baltimore Business Journal, December 19, 2005.

12 Joe Dejka, "Inside StratCom on Sept. 11 Offutt Exercise Took Real-
life Twist" The Omaha World Herald, February 27, 2002.

13 Ron Leuty, Franklin unit rebuilds after 9/11 tragedy," The San
Francisco Business Journal, February 1, 2002.

14 Michael Ruppert, "Behind the Blackout, From the Wilderness, August
21, 2003;
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/082103_blackout.html
<http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/082103_blackout.html>

found at
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?
doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/010306_end_grid.shtml
<http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?
doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/010306_end_grid.shtml>