Saturday, February 25, 2006

Power Spigots

I'm gonna rant about world politics for a while. Feel free to pull out now.

Oil! The word of this decade. Desperation is setting in worldwide.

Saudi Arabia: Suicide bombers failed in an attempt to attack the worlds largest oil processing facility.

Nigeria: An armed rebel group has shut down a fifth of the nations vast oil supply

Venezuela: President Hugo Chavez continues to threaten to cut off all oil supplies to the US.

All this in yesterdays newspaper. The mad scramble is on. Oil is the common thread of luxury wealthier societies enjoy. Poorer people rely on it less. So when it begins to show signs of running out, and the wealthy socities way of life is threatened even a little bit, the natives take their land back and threaten to cut us off.

Pay attention to Hugo Chavez. Venezuela has gobs of oil reserves and he's not playing around with the US. If he totally shuts America off you could feel upwards of $6 a gallon. Today he banned most American flights coming into Venezuela, and kicked out the US embassy on grounds of spying. He recently gave discounted rates for low income American's in Massachusets for their heating bills this winter. Two non-profit agencies distributed the discounts. He also provides Cuba with discounted oil prices. He claims the US has made assasination attempts on him and will continue to do so. He's hardcore socialist and US always bashes him for human rights violations, but then they use censorship in the presses as their example. Latin America will rally behind this guy big time and could prove to be a real stickler to American policy. Frankly I havn't read a whole lot that I didn't agree with. Relax NSA...I'm just saying.

Also in Nigeria 100 people were killed in violence stemming from the cartoon protests. This stuff is still going on. It's become a wildfire throughout the globe of pent up religious hatred that has brought nothing but more venom to the modern crusades. A man draws a picture on one continent. Other, totally unrelated people on a seperate continent, are killing and being killed weeks afterward for this drawing. It's an excuse to incite violence, and oppressed, angry people are ready to pounce. I still think the wave is being supported by more than just anger and demand for religious right. US/Israel have their mitts somewhere in this, for some shadowy reason. Most likely to create further instability in the area and add to the portrayal of extremist violence the US likes to feed us in order to desensitize Americans to Arab deaths.

Lastly, it seems an Iranian invasion is likely. The region is hot, and Iran is the toughest brother of the mid east family right now. If Hamas is backed by Iran that spells trouble for our interest and we wont let that happen. The US military is too stretched to invade so look for European militaries to do so, namely Russia.

I'll spare you for now. We'll do something fun next time, I promise.

Save the Apes y'all.

Mojokong - squashin' soapboxes