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Worried about the rising cost of oil?

You should be.

According to media blurb, the rise in oil price, closing on $100 per barrel and trumpeted by NBC, CNN, and others with all the vigor and excitement of a mammoth lottery payout, is happening due to speculation over low reserves in the US and fear of a shut down in the Middle East.

No-one ventures to suggest where lies the responsibility for these huge increases, muttering vaguely of speculators, OPEC, and Arab uncertainty, whenever the subject is hinted at.

There is one person directly responsible; or, at least, one group of people. The President of the United States and his administration.

The Iraq war was the single over-riding factor responsible for the increase in oil prices since 2003.

In April 2002, gas prices averaged around $1.30 per gallon. By March 2003, the start of the war, they had risen to $1.72.

Since then, while seesawing drastically, the price rose to well over $3.00 in summer 2006, and today is presently close to $3.50 in some areas and heading for $4.00 per gallon.

While some analysts would deem it too simplistic to place all the blame on George W Bush, citing Hurricane Katrina and other factors as relevant to the overall picture, I find those elements superfluous. If the Iraq war had never been waged, they would have created mere hiccups, soon remedied. As it was, they simply added to the overall problem.

However, it is not only the Iraq war that is fueling today’s high oil prices. George W Bush has maintained throughout his presidency that the economy of the US is strong and healthy. If that is so, why has the US dollar been diving to all time lows on the international currency markets for the past five years, as verified by this graph of the dollar against the UK pound:

So low has the dollar now sunk, that investors are moving away from it and into oil, further accelerating the rise in price and guaranteeing the figure will push way beyond the $100 per barrel mark.

The only achievements of George W Bush and his cowboys in the eight years of their reign, has been to devastate the Middle East, slaughter God-only-knows how many in the process, and decimate the US economy by allowing the corporates to dodge their tax obligations and ship most of their production to foreign nations.

It is US citizens, and the rest of the world, who are now reaping the results of this human and economic carnage.

Filed under: Fleecing the world

Two aspects of warfare that raise disturbing questions:

In the first video below, made by members of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines in Fallujah, Iraq, the emphasis is on the “Honor”, “Courage”, and “Commitment” of the great American heroes, who, with tanks, machine guns, white phosphorus, and all the modern weaponry of an advanced military power, take on the men, women, and children of Fallujah in what has now become widely recognized as yet another great American massacre* of innocents.

This clip ends with the quote from George S Patton:

“As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I have no fear because I am the meanest motherfucker in the valley.”

          

The end credits contain what can only be assumed is a sarcastic and distasteful piece of text:

“And a very special thanks to the people of Fallujah for allowing us to film in your city”

I doubt those who remained alive in Fallujah had any choice in the matter.

I suppose when any American soldier prides himself on being “the meanest motherfucker in the valley”, his indoctrination is complete and he is ‘safe’ to be let loose in a foreign country, with no risk of him pausing to consider what exactly he is doing to its people.

The video is doubtless designed to appeal to the young, ultra-macho, would-be warrior champing at his bootlaces to catch a piece of the action while “enemy” still remain to be killed in Iraq. It will no doubt succeed in sending him scurrying to the recruiting center.

Were he to watch this second video, it might just send him scurrying back home to Mommy.

          

If America truly considers “the meanest motherfuckers in the valley” to be the embodiment of honor, courage, and commitment, then it is indeed, one very sick country.

As sick today as the Great Britain of one hundred years ago, when mental illness was callously labeled “cowardice”.

^{*My thanks to TOB for the New Statesman link.}

Filed under: Misplaced values

This subject has created some healthy debate, as I expected it would. Writing as one who has never been competitive, or seen the need for competition other than for purely recreational use – I enjoyed the occasional game of soccer as a lad, and raced sailing dinghies at my local yacht club – but never felt the ‘competitive edge’ to win, win, win……pushed as a vital factor for success, especially in the USA where it has been honed to a fine artform.

The problem with competition: it creates only one winner, but many losers. It is, in that sense, self-defeating as a social tool. Jo, in an excellent essay (see her comment to the previous post) writes of the demise of Sports Day in British schools and mourns the passing.

I don’t.

What purpose does it serve? As a day of fun? Never, as I remember. As a means of physical exercise? There are plenty of other ways to activate kids physically. To teach them ‘someone has to lose the race’? I think they learn that from a very young age without the need to be ostracized for lack of physical prowess.

The desire or need to compete is, I believe, an instinctive remnant from our reptilian brain. Compete to survive – for food, for mates – survival of the fittest. Our reptilian brain is tiny compared to the mass that has evolved around it, yet for much of our social interaction we turn more and more inwards to our basic instincts for survival. The human race still competes for food, leaving the weakest hungry and the most powerful fat-bellied. TV programs entertain by fostering hero worship of individuals prepared to play the dirtiest games to reach the top job or the most powerful position, scattering weaker mortals to the winds in the process.

Is this the way we wish to continue living? It’s unlikely to work for us much longer. Corporate competition between nations is causing such a lack of government action to avert global catastrophe, it is only a matter of time before the planet teaches us a severe lesson in how bad competition really is for the human soul.

Why do we need to be the best; the greatest; the most powerful? Would an individual’s life in America be worse if the US was just another nation among a similar group of nations, working and cooperating with each other to provide the best for everyone. I doubt it. In fact, I believe the quality of life would be much, much better for everyone.

Yes, I know that to some degree I’m preaching idealism, but if we are ever to evolve beyond our present status as self-opinionated apes with a technological bent, we have to define and begin to eliminate the fundamental, inherent instincts of our ancestors that are holding us back. I believe the distorted, competitive, survival instincts we nurture to weave our way through the social structures we’ve created, have a hugely negative effect on those structures, causing them to constantly tear and fall apart.

War is the ultimate example. War is no more than a competition of brute strength, yet it totally destroys whole sections of our societal fabric, both physically and psychologically.

To what end? So the victor can strut about like a farmyard cock, and see the loser humiliated and broken.

The very act of proving oneself better than another, by inference implies the inferiority of the loser. When this occurs on a national scale the trend is to view other nations as inferior. This was the case with Adolf Hitler’s Germany pre-WW2, and has shown itself to be a factor in the invasion of Iraq. The atrocities of Abu Ghraib and the more recent killing of innocent Iraqis by Blackwater employees are just two of many obvious examples.

Children in the US today are taught that being a ‘good’ American means being a winner. Good sportmanship; the pleasure of playing the game for its own sake, is well down the list of priorities. More and more American athletes are using drugs to enhance their performances. So many in fact, that even when the least likely, like Marion Jones, admit to such indiscretions, no-one is really shocked anymore.

Don’t misunderstand; I’m not advocating the banning of all competitive games. Competition, properly harnessed, can be fun and have positive attributes, but when all that matters is winning, the fun vaporizes and the longterm effects can be disastrous.

In most areas of our lives cooperation, rather than competition, between communities and nations at all levels would produce a better world for every one of us.

So I’ll stick with my bumper sticker:

“Cooperation’s Cool, Competition’s for Clods.”

Unless, of course, you can persuade me otherwise.

Filed under: Better ways