I was looking at a website last night and a blogger had written that the war in Iraq helps the poor. Actually he was saying 'What are we going to feed the poor with if we don't have oil? How will we help them heat their homes etc.?'

The main problem I had with that was that wherever the oil companies go they are followed by civil war, aids, degradation of the environment, and not even a helpful road infrastructure in most cases goes with the oil, since they take it off the coasts.

Prostitutes follow around the people who do get low paid jobs. The higher paid expats do not spend their earnings in the villages buying their products. They buy Nescafe etc in the shiny new capitals that come with oil businesses in Nigeria etc.

In some countries oil security firms go around killing villagers, and raping the women. It is to displace them, as is happening in Columbia with the 'war on drugs' now handily changed title to 'war on terror' which is actually war against the rebels trying to defend the natives.

I have not come to the corruption of the oil industry, bribes etc. It should be more transparent but some hope under Bush.

Oil dependency kills the soldiers. And the civilians.


NO BLOOD FOR OIL!

Lazyboy-

I think it would be helpful if we try to understand what the blogger believes…

I think the blogger is expressing a world view that is, at least in decent people, oblivious to the facts that you have given in the paragraphs that followed your above quote.

Too many people believe oil and energy are one and the same. The challenge for those of us who know that energy is abundant in many forms and from many sources, is then one of education - teaching our fellow Americans that energy independence is a valid option now.

The world view that the blogger expressed is embodied in the person of Dick Cheney, as explained By Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, Columbia University in a paper titled: America's disastrous energy plan.

"...Of the many factors that went into the Bush administration's decision to attack and occupy Iraq, one of the most important was the long-held view of Richard Cheney, the vice-president, that America's power was threatened by the potential loss of control over Middle East oil. ...At the root of his approach has been the arithmetic of global oil supplies. US oil production peaked in the early 1970s, leading to a long-term rise in US dependence on imported oil. This year the US will have imported about 11m barrels of petroleum a day and mainstream forecasts project a growth of imports to about 20m barrels a day by 2025. Moreover, global competition for worldwide oil supplies is projected to grow markedly, especially with China's emergence as a huge oil importer. Despite discoveries of new reserves elsewhere, petroleum supplies from the Middle East and the nearby Caspian Sea region are expected to become even more pivotal in the coming decades, accounting for two-thirds or more of the world's petroleum reserves in 2025.
...With oil supplies and production increasingly concentrated in the Middle East, and with growing competition from other oil importers, Mr Cheney and associates believe the US has a long-term strategic need to secure military pre-eminence in the region. This sentiment helped fuel the invasion of Iraq. Yet the vice-president's view of US energy security is dead wrong, in terms of both energy economics and geopolitics. The energy economics mistake is to confuse petroleum and energy. There is indeed a petroleum bottleneck looming in the coming decades - but no energy bottleneck if we think ahead of the curve. That means using energy more efficiently, as well as seeking out new sources.
...The US is playing out Mr Cheney's fantastical vision of national security - one in which a future struggle over scarce and vital petroleum resources must be won by force of arms. It should be replaced by a level-headed and internationally co-operative strategy of economising on petroleum demand and developing energy alternatives that are cost-effective and environmentally sound. Mr Cheney's view is technologically naive and politically disastrous. And yet it has become the strategy of the world's most powerful country."
-Jeffrey Sachs


See: Energy Independence and National Security

And: www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com

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http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...p?showtopic=477

Lazyboy,
It’s beginning to be very clear that many politicians don't have a long sightedness to resolve the energy issues. Primarily because they are owned by their greed. Many researchers are also polarized as to which way to go, but pull for their own need for funds with the research they are "married" to.
Me frankly I don't give a dam about which alternate we choose as long as it is domestic, environmentally friendly, affordable, and realistic. I'm a laborer at a concrete plant and there isn't much anyone can do to hurt me worse then I'm hurt already. My motives are:

Bring the prices down....petrol will only go up.
Clean up the environment.....petrol will never get clean.
Create a domestic source......petrol monies go to others.
Stabilize the supply....petrol is out of our control.
Pull the rug out from under the terrorist home base.....petrol finances our worse enemies.
Provide more jobs to the working class in America.....petrol doesn't.


Anastassia Florine,
The politicians that abuse their power will one day come to trial or at least there is that possibility in this country. Politicians that ignore the general populace are not the real United States, we are. You should fix your flag......




The key words here are We the People!