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Oil – Three Dollars A Shot?

One of the primary causes of rising food prices throughout the world is the cost of crude oil. Neo-con World Bank president Robert Zoellick – hastily transplanted to the position by George W Bush when Wolfowitz crept away in shame – says it’s all down to Third World countries suddenly eating too much. But he’s wrong, of course. This is a crisis in the making five years, not the decades necessary for emerging economies to make a serious difference.

In fact, food shortages have come about so rapidly in Asia that no-one heard about them in the West until a few months ago.

So who, or what, is to blame?

Look at any graph of oil prices from 2003 to present day and you’d need an Abrams tank to negotiate the curve. In 2002, gas price at the pump was $1.35. Today, it’s $3.55….and rising. The Iraq war (Bush’s War) began in March 2003, as did the rise in oil prices. Today, the Iraq war (Bush’s War) continues to create mayhem in the Middle East, and the price of oil goes ever higher.

In 2002, George W Bush set in motion a crazy, unregulated system supposedly to create “……5.5 million more [minority] homeowners by 2010……”.[1] To achieve this goal, he let loose the financial institutions on what we now know as the “Great Sub-Prime Mortgage Fiasco”. The resulting crisis was enough to tip America into a full-scale recession, and send banks and finance houses around the world into meltdown.

As a result, investors moved their money, large-scale, into the safer commodities markets, causing more pressure on food prices already under siege from crude oil hikes.

In January 2007, George W Bush mandated a seven-fold rise in the use of ethanol from corn and other vegetable matter by 2017[2]. Such criminal irresponsibility in the face of surging oil prices, and knowing full well the state of the economy (which, at the time he was declaring as ‘good and healthy’) indicates Bush’s true interest in the world outside the United States.

Put simply, he has none, and is prepared to sacrifice thousands of non-American lives to starvation, in the pursuit of corporate wealth.

Bush’s reasoning behind increasing ethanol production was, by his own admission, to do away with US reliance on Middle Eastern oil (after all, Iraq’s oilfields weren’t exactly fulfilling the neo-con dream) but his doing so made it painfully obvious where the markets would end up. Farmers in the Mid-West moved over to ethanol-corn production en masse, creating the equivalent of yet another world recession, only this time in food.

When the American Mid-West can’t provide enough corn to feed its people and its animals, the whole world suffers.

The American vulture media has once again found something to feast upon. A few quick shots of Haitians rioting over food shortages switch rapidly to the appalling news that from today, Sam’s Club and other major retailers are limiting customers to only four 50lb bags of Basmati rice at one time. How long can this nation’s populace endure such horrendous hardship?

The media consumes every spare moment of late with ghastly tales of rocketing fuel prices, a sinking economy, Americans made homeless by bad mortgage deals, and the possibility of much worse to come. Yet, it never, ever, asks the question: who is to blame for it all?

Can there be anywhere else that the buck stops – other than at the desk of the one man responsible for the predicament faced by the world today? The leader of the nation that has created and maintains this crisis.

When asked about these present catastrophes, George W Bush and his minions repeatedly make vague reference to a ‘downturn in world markets’. They’re not lying. What they forget to mention is the ‘downturn’ results directly from their own failed policies; policies designed to make them extremely wealthy, America even more of a dictator state ruling the world, and greed the driving force that is leading this earth to the brink of disaster.

Today, the price of oil rose another three dollars. Analysts announced it was due directly to an incident in the Persian Gulf when an American vessel fired towards small boats in the area.[3]

Clear evidence, then, of the cause of spiraling oil prices. One minor incident is all it takes to up the price – at three dollars a shot.

The only other question left unanswered by the American media is – who gets those three dollars per barrel?

[1] “One Heckuva Job”, Sparrow Chat, March 13th, 2008

[2] “Ethanol Industry Gets a Boost From Bush”, Washington Post, January 25th, 2007

[3] “Oil near $119 after report of Iranian boat firing”, MSNBC, April 25th, 2008

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