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Prince of Bugs ![]() Registered: 10/08/02 Posts: 44,175 Last seen: 3 months, 11 days |
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I read this article in the magazine Foreign Policy by the excellent journalist Thomas Friedman. I thought it was a damn good article, and was reminded of it by one of Zappa's posts, so I figure you guys would enjoy it. I think the graphsthey use in the article are silly and unscientific, but they help solidify the author's point, so I included them. I realize it's long, but it's worth the read.
As an addition to the prologue to the article, I would urge anyone interested in international politics to pick up a copy of Foreign Policy. If you like it (like I did), dish out the cash for a subscription. It's real enlightening stuff. It portrays both conservative and liberal points of view, and often has very well-known scholars as gues writers (like Friedman). Zappa said: Quote: Quote:
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fuckingsuperhero Registered: 06/29/04 Posts: 3,531 Last seen: 4 years, 24 days |
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holy shit.. bookmarked, this will take time to digest.
-------------------- No statements made in any post or message by myself should be construed to mean that I am now, or have ever been, participating in or considering participation in any activities in violation of any local, state, or federal laws. All posts are works of fiction.
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blarrr Registered: 06/04/04 Posts: 5,952 |
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I agree with one premise that he seems to put forward: freedom is a luxury afforded societies with a cheap and expanding supply of energy- in our case, oil. If you believe as I do, that oil supplies are being depleted, then you must expect a corresponding loss of freedom to ensue. Even in America. The implications are ominous and the impact is already being felt. It is being noticed by those who are paying attention.
I like to read foreign news. Most Americans read foreign news only when forced to. They only wake up when a war starts over in a place they never heard of until now. Every so often a new war starts, Americans get out their maps and learn to pronounce a new country name. Maybe soon they will start connecting the dots and get ahead of the curve. Ask yourself what most of the major armed conflicts since 1973 involving America have in common. In what region of the world have they occured? Terrorists are figuring out that oil supplies are tight. They will increasingly target oil infrastructure to drive up oil prices. That is know as "leverage". It has just begun. They will hit us where it hurts- at the gas pump. In Latin America, several countries have nationalized their oil fields. This is a growing trend there. The economic strain will surely bring down the U.S. and thus, global economy. It is only a matter of time. This economy is very, very fragile in spite of what economists will tell you and the dollar is hanging on by the skin of its teeth. The dollar is the worlds reserve currency. It and our military might keep us as the sole remaining Superpower. When the dollar crashes, so will the U.S. Buy gold and silver now, my friends.
-------------------- “The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.” -- Rudiger Dornbusch
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horrid asshole Registered: 02/11/04 Posts: 81,741 Loc: Fractallife's gy Last seen: 7 years, 7 months |
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Quote: I think you have missed the entire thrust of the article 100%. First of all he is not discussing "freedoms" in consuming nations, he is discussing "freedoms" in producing nations. I will quote a full paragraph for you, "The First Law of Petropolitics posits the following: The price of oil and the pace of freedom always move in opposite directions in oil-rich petrolist states. According to the First Law of Petropolitics, the higher the average global crude oil price rises, the more free speech, free press, free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, and independent political parties are eroded. And these negative trends are reinforced by the fact that the higher the price goes, the less petrolist leaders are sensitive to what the world thinks or says about them. Conversely, according to the First Law of Petropolitics, the lower the price of oil, the more petrolist countries are forced to move toward a political system and a society that is more transparent, more sensitive to opposition voices, and more focused on building the legal and educational structures that will maximize their people’s ability, both men’s and women’s, to compete, start new companies, and attract investments from abroad. The lower the price of crude oil falls, the more petrolist leaders are sensitive to what outside forces think of them." Quote: Most Americans still can't find Iraq or Afghanistan on a map. Most Americans are oblivious to anything but the most superficial media bleatings. I suspect that this is also true for most of the world. Quote: Why don't you list those major conflicts for us? Do you mean to include Panama and Grenada? Bosnia? Most of the conflicts have obviously been in the Middle East. Most of that is because the Arabs can't stand to have Jews in Israel. The only reason we ever have to pay them any attention at all is because they are wealthy with oil money. Otherwise, they would be nothing but ineffectual loudmouths. We only get 25% of our oil imports from the entire Persian gulf. http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/rank Throw in domestic production and the percentage of our supply from the Gulf is even further reduced. We don't attack Venezuela or Nigeria because they don't attack us. Or anybody else. Quote: Surely you are not equating the nationilization of oil fields in S. America as terrorist acts. The terrorists can make hardly a dent in disrupting oil supplies except on a very small local basis. And the nationalization of oil fields doesn't cut production, it just changes the profit structure. They still have to sell the oil. The biggest contributing factor to the rise in oil prices is our own internal refusal to drill in our own reserves off shore and in Alaska. No new refineries built in decades. Fear of nuclear power. Individual hoggishness. And the acts of speculators who, though not a collective, set the price of the commodity. See tech stock bubble of the late 90s. The fact that this place is oil rich and concurrently the site of our military activities is coincidental except for the fact that these otherwise stone age retards suddenly have the wherewithall to buy powerful weapons. Quote: This is just more of the same nonsense that I have heard my entire life. And you know what? Nothing ever comes of it. Momentary blips. Clinton recessions that get fixed with a simple lowering of the tax rate. If the value of the dollar declines so does the trade deficit. Homeostasis, my friends. The only thing that can kill it is government intervention in response to momentary fluctuations in the market. There will be no dollar crash. Unless too many lunatics get too many nukes and use them. And then it won't matter anyway. But it will take a lot of them and the attackers are not likely to survive at all. Which will be a lesson to the rest of the idiots. Quote: You're about a year too late on that one my friend.
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Stranger Registered: 08/22/05 Posts: 1,839 |
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“I wonder if the president of Venezuela would be saying all these things if the price of oil today were $20 a barrel rather than $60 a barrel,
I think he would. and his country had to make a living by empowering its own entrepreneurs, not just drilling wells.” This guy uses an awful lot of buzzwords and phrases that have no real meaning. When he says "empowering entepenaurs" what does that actually mean? It's a classic bullshit buzzphrase - at first glance you'd think "How could you disagree with "empowering" anyone"? It's only when you realise that what he's actually talking about is demolishing all workers rights, no unions, no health and safety and utter poverty for anyone but a handful of CEO's that it doesn't sound so cute. Entrepenaurs in South east asia are "empowered" by being able to employ 12 year old girls because they're easier to intimidate than men. Entrepenaurs are "empowered" by being able to send the goons round to someones house if they hear them mention the word "union". That doesn't mean it's a good thing. to undertake a total overhaul of its labor laws to make its own people more employable Presumably "more employable" has the same meaning as above. In other words the closer they are to slave labour the better. Therefore, any American democracy-promotion strategy The alarm bells are ringing. Is this guy talking about invading Iraq? I'd like to know what his assumptions are in all this. His first assumption seems to be that America is the beacon of freedom protecting human rights throughout the world.
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Stranger Registered: 06/15/02 Posts: 15,608 |
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Quote: The paradigm of the empowering argument of this guy's article is quite persuasive.
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Stranger Registered: 08/22/05 Posts: 1,839 |
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blarrr Registered: 06/04/04 Posts: 5,952 |
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I think you have missed the entire thrust of the article 100%.First of all he is not discussing "freedoms" in consuming nations, he is discussing "freedoms" in producing nations.
Yes, the article focused on producing nations and I realize the US is not an oil exporter, but since it is my home country you'll have to forgive me for approaching it from that perspective. A few points: Quote: A dent here and a dent there and you have yourself a totaled automobile. There is very little slack in the global oil supply and demand ratio. The terrorists and others know this and they understand the concept of leverage. It only takes a little force applied in the right place to have a major effect on oil prices and thus the economies of the entire world. Pretty good "bang" for your buck there. They don't have to attack us militarily to do us harm and would be stupid to do so now. They realize supplies are tight- all they have to do is cut back on production or refuse to sell us their oil. Venezuala, the fifth largest supplier of U.S. oil, has already threatened to do so. Oil and natural gas are increasingly being used as weapons. Witness Russia earlier this year, through it's gas giant Gazprom, cutting off natural gas supplies to the Ukraine in the heart of winter. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp Welcome to the Future. Resource Wars. As for Nigeria, the fourth largest exporter of U.S oil, MEND (the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) has been launching attacks on oil infrastructure and kidnapping oil workers. The effect has been periodic spikes in the oil prices. You can bet that other armed groups have taken notice and you will see the "piling on" effect soon. More "Dents", more commonly known as "leverage". Osama Bin Laden has said that a fair price for their oil would be north of 200$/barrel. http://www.nationalreview.com/ro What do you suppose such prices will do to the global economy? the nationalization of oil fields doesn't cut production, it just changes the profit structure. They still have to sell the oil. It may or may not cut production, but the history of nationalization demonstrates that along with the departure of the private sector so goes the ability of free markets to create healthy competition. Reduced competition tends to increase prices. Two very important events happened in 1971 that were little-noticed at the time. 1) U.S. oil production peaked. Shortly afterwards there was the 1973 OPEC oil embargo and an upswing of violence in the Middle East which has only intensified to this day. Coincidence? The biggest contributing factor to the rise in oil prices is our own internal refusal to drill in our own reserves off shore and in Alaska. It is funny to me how people react differently to oil depletion depending on where they are on the political spectrum. Left-wingers tend to blame greedy oil companies. Right-wingers tend to blame "tree-huggers" for blocking oil exploration. As if a few ragtag environmental groups have more power than the mighty oil industry. Thinking we can explore our way out of this mess is a pipedream. The U.S. consumes about 24 million barrels of oil a day. The EIA ( Energy Information Administration) says that if opened up, Anwar could reach a peak of only 876,000 barrels a day by 2025! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4542 And by 2025 the world's oil needs are expected to grow by 50% from 80 to 120 million barrels of oil a day! Does anyone seriously believe that number will EVER be met? Oil production follows discovery. There have been no major oil fields discovered in decades and many of the large ones we have now are in decline. There will be no dollar crash. That brings me to the second little-noticed event of 1971: President Nixon took us off the gold standard. Prior to that time US currency was redeemable in gold. Now it is only backed by trust in the govt. and our military. Foreign lenders are starting to figure out that with the massive and growing US debt there is no way in Hell they'll ever get their money back. They are slowly but surely moving out of the dollar as their reserve currency. All currencies in history that were not backed by gold eventually became worthless. ALL of them. This will happen to the US dollar also, it's only a matter of time. And I'm betting it will be sooner rather than later because of the tremendous strain that the oil crisis, massive debt, and world events are putting on it. Don't sell that gold and silver, my friend!
-------------------- “The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.” -- Rudiger Dornbusch
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horrid asshole Registered: 02/11/04 Posts: 81,741 Loc: Fractallife's gy Last seen: 7 years, 7 months |
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Quote: You have done pretty well paying attention to the whole thing this time around. So I will respond Quote: There has never been any major effect on oil prices due to terrorist activity, or nationalization for that matter. They can only cut a pipeline They can't make the oil go away. Saddam set Kuwait afire and what happened? Not much. One speculator with a billion dollars to invest can do far more to the price of oil than all the terrorists have ever accomplished in their history. Dent, dent, dent, Yeah you fix em as they come. The analogy was dumb. Quote: This doesn't concern me. They need the money as much as we need the oil. That's it. It's what makes trade trade. It doesn't matter which particular entity they sell to. They sell to Burkina Faso instead of us, the supplier who previously sold to BK needs to sell their stuff. We'll buy it. OK. No biggie. Venezuela doesn't sell directly to us? So what? And they know it. They have so much of our market because they're close and shipping costs are less. A fart in a hurricane. Quote: And how exactly did that play out? Not so good since the Ukraine controlled the pipe to Europe. Which may change but that's the Ukraine's problem, not at all relevant to us. You can always squeeze a little kid's head. Not so easy with the big boys. Quote: I go back to my earlier assertion that momentary interruptions of supply are basicly farts. Look at what is happenning in the eyes of the market. Iraq Iran Nigeria and Venezuela all crazy. What has it actually amounted too? Not shit. And not one whit due to terrorists. Feh, Chicken Little, you can worry about what you want to and I'll worry about what I want to. The price of oil bringing the US down is not gonna be it. Quote: When has OBL ever been anything other than a bomber. That's like saying John Wayne Gacy says little boys should be free. Quote:Only within the countries themselves. Internationally it means nothing. Quote: See below Quote: ANWAR is not the sole issue. Could we replace all imports with domestic production? No. We sure could replace all Persian Gulf imports though. But that is of no consequence, as I have argued extensively that the specific source is irrelevant. What is the greatest contributor is that we have added ZERO production in 3 decades. And nobody wants nukes and nobody wants this and nobody wants that. I personally like this position regarding domestic oil productionbecause I think we need to bite the bullet and pay higher prices than necessary until the troglodytes run out of oil and we have the only reserves left. Don't tell ME I don't think long term. But I'm willing to bite the bullet and don't think it's a disaster. I despise waste almost as much as I despise government intervention. I think the high price of oil is not a bad thing and you should embrace it as well. Except for the fact that trogs are making dangerous amounts of money. That's a problem. Quote:See above Quote: I don't think so. Some things do effect fundamental change and the gold standard was based on a lack of trust. Now, the dollar is gold for the same reason that gold used to be. Trust. Although you could actually hold it in your hand, historicly, most of it's value was based on it's beauty. And we all know about beauty, right?
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Stranger Registered: 08/22/05 Posts: 1,839 |
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Just out of interest I wonder how human rights under the US installed Shah of Iran varied with the price of oil? I sure don't remember him ever being remotely interested in freedom regardless of the price of oil.
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