Quote:Original post by Pouya
Atricle

So the summary is that Canada is inviting 189 nations for a 2 year sceintific talk on what to do to reduce greenhouse emissions. US rejected participating in it rightaway.

Quote:Original post by smr
At my company we were recently able to get better (read: less costly) insurance coverage because we doubled the number of employees covered by the plan. Now if every one in the nation were under the same plan, wouldn't that mean we could demand the best rates?

Quote:Original post by smr
The lowest rate possible.

Quote:Original post by The Frugal Gourmet
However, the article's basic premise -- that the U.S.'s strategy is to maintain its way of life by seizing foreign oil -- is simply false.

Quote:Original post by The Frugal Gourmet
You'd have to be an economic simpleton to believe that the U.S.'s actions in the Middle East really accomplish that goal. You'd have to be one to believe that would happen *before* the occupation of Iraq, as well.

Quote:
Two-and-a-half years after the US invasion of Iraq, the country's oil industry is still in disarray. An official of the Oil Ministry in Baghdad told ISN Security Watch, on condition of anonymity: “We do not know the exact quantity of oil we are exporting, we do not exactly know the prices we are selling it for, and we do not know where the oil revenue is going to.”
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The seizure of the Iraqi oil fields and the raising of the country’s oil production were two of the most important motives for the US invasion of Iraq. When asked, in September 2002, whether the US could afford a costly military operation like the one planned in Iraq, White House economic adviser Larry Lindsay told the Wall Street Journal: “We can afford it.”

Lindsay added that, after a regime change in Iraq, three to five million barrels per day could be added to the world oil supply and that Iraqi oil would bring in over US$50 billion in coming years. Lindsay said that Iraq would easily be able to pay for the reconstruction effort.

Michael T. Klare, a Professor of Peace and World Security at Hampshire College and author of the book “Blood and Oil”, wrote that it is “an article of faith among America's senior policymakers – Democrats and Republicans alike – that military force is an effective tool for ensuring control over foreign sources of oil.”

He predicts that the US will continue to send troops into politically fragile regions in future due to the dilemma of US dependence on oil sourced from these areas.

However, Klare concludes that “the growing Iraqi quagmire has demonstrated that the application of military force can have the very opposite effect; it can diminish – rather than enhance – America's access to foreign oil.”
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Quote:Original post by The Frugal Gourmet
You'd also have to be a geopolitical simpleton to believe that the U.S.'s primary or sole motivation for invading Iraq was the procurement of oil. It reflects a poor understanding of the current U.S. administration, IMO, and -- again -- to even believe that strategy would satisfactorily improve the American way of life requires a very flawed understanding of macroeconomics. Even ultraconservatives like Pat Buchanan and John Craig Roberts aren't that mercantilist.

Quote:
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Why did Bush invade Iraq? Cynical Americans say the answer is oil. But $300 billion would have bought the oil without getting anyone killed, without destroying America's reputation in the world, and without stirring up countless terrorist recruits for al-Qaeda.
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Will President Bush ever tell us the real reason why he committed America's treasure, the lives of American soldiers, and the reputation of our country to war in Iraq?

Does he even know?

Quote:Original post by The Frugal Gourmet
However much you may disagree with the present U.S. adnimistration's policies in the Middle East, their reasons for occupying Iraq and attempting to establish a pro-U.S. state probably don't stem solely or even largely from oil. Many of the present cabinet members and lackeys (the "war hawks") have long subscribed to the theory that a power base in the Mid. East would be useful to the U.S. -- for military reasons and more.

Quote:
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As early as April 1997, a report from the James A. Baker Institute of Public Policy at Rice University addressed the problem of "energy security" for the United States, and noted that the US was increasingly threatened by oil shortages in the face of the inability of oil supplies to keep up with world demand. In particular the report addressed "The Threat of Iraq and Iran" to the free flow of oil out of the Middle East. It concluded that Saddam Hussein was still a threat to Middle Eastern security and still had the military capability to exercise force beyond Iraq's borders.

The Bush Administration returned to this theme as soon as it took office in 2001, by following the lead of a second report from the same Institute. <2> This Task Force Report was co-sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, another group historically concerned about US access to overseas oil resources. The Report represented a consensus of thinking among energy experts of both political parties, and was signed by Democrats as well as Republicans. <3>

The report, Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century, concluded: "The United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a de-stabilizing influence to ... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/ diplomatic assessments."
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But the US is not just interested in oil from Iraq, it is concerned to maintain political dominance over all the oil-producing countries of the region. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a glimpse of US intentions when he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 6 that success in the Iraq war "could fundamentally reshape that region in a powerful, positive way that will enhance U.S. interests." In conceding that it will be necessary to station US troops in occupied Iraq for the foreseeable future, the US is serving notice to Iran and to Saudi Arabia (both of which were once secure bases for US troops but are so no longer) that the US will reassert its presence as the dominant military power in the region.
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Dominance of Middle Eastern oil will mean in effect maintaining dollar hegemony over the world oil economy. Given its present strategies, the US is constrained to demand no less. As I explain in this extract from my book, Drugs, Oil, and War (pp. 41-42, 53-54), the present value of the US dollar, unjustified on purely economic grounds, is maintained by political arrangements, one of the chief of which is to ensure that all OPEC oil purchases will continue to be denominated in US dollars. (This commitment of OPEC to dollar oil sales was secured in the 1970s by a secret agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia, before the two countries began to drift apart over Israel and other issues.) <8>

The chief reason why dollars are more than pieces of green paper is that countries all over the world need them for purchases, principally of oil. This requires them in addition to maintain dollar reserves to protect their own currency; and these reserves, when invested, help maintain the current high levels of the US securities markets.

As Henry Liu has written vividly in the online Asian Times (4/11/02),

"World trade is now a game in which the US produces dollars and the rest of the world produces things that dollars can buy. The world's interlinked economies no longer trade to capture a comparative advantage; they compete in exports to capture needed dollars to service dollar-denominated foreign debts and to accumulate dollar reserves to sustain the exchange value of their domestic currencies. To prevent speculative and manipulative attacks on their currencies, the world's central banks must acquire and hold dollar reserves in corresponding amounts to their currencies in circulation. The higher the market pressure to devalue a particular currency, the more dollar reserves its central bank must hold. This creates a built-in support for a strong dollar that in turn forces the world's central banks to acquire and hold more dollar reserves, making it stronger. This phenomenon is known as dollar hegemony, which is created by the geopolitically constructed peculiarity that critical commodities, most notably oil, are denominated in dollars. Everyone accepts dollars because dollars can buy oil. The recycling of petro-dollars is the price the US has extracted from oil-producing countries for US tolerance of the oil-exporting cartel since 1973.
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Quote:
Anybody who has read William Engdahl’s excellent book ‘A Century of War – Anglo-American oil politics and the New World Order’ (reviewed here), will not be surprised to learn that the convoluted machinations of those who rule empires, whether past or present, are intrinsic to the workings of the ruling class. History reveals that a mere handful relatively speaking of individuals are able to determine the fate of millions through the economic and political power they wield. The role of the political class that represents the interests of the owners of economic power is to maintain the rule of the owners of capital by making damn sure that opposition is neutralised and/or made to look ridiculous or ultimately ‘removed’. Hence the ‘loony left’, ‘fellow travellers’, ‘dinosaurs’ et al are but a few of the pejoratives the corporate/state-run media use to marginalise the views of those who oppose such power.
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The mainstream media was (and still is) all to quick to condemn all those who cried ‘it’s all about oil’ as ‘conspiracists’ and in their haste to condemn us they revealed much about their own ideological leanings, leanings that would have us believe that the invaders were actually operating out of concern for the Iraqi people. Indeed, the mainstream media was awash with apologists for the invaders. Most are now noticeable by their absence given the results of the invasion and occupation. Most noticeable is the absence of any alternative explanation for the invasion except the laughable “failure of intelligence”, which only a cretin would actually believe.

By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? .… While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies – Dick Cheney in 1999, then CEO of oil services company Halliburton

So, is it all about oil? For over 100 years oil has been lifeblood of capitalism, two world wars have been waged over possession of it, but not merely its possession but because without it, the larger economic objectives of capitalism would be unrealisable, hence to say it’s all about oil is only part of the answer. Oil fuels the armies, powers the factories and control of its production and distribution enables the West to exert control over the natural resources needed to make the entire shambolic enterprise lurch from crisis to crisis and of course, make profits for the shareholders. It is, when all’s said and done, astounding simple, one might say juvenile were it all not so murderous of millions.
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