Wednesday, June 21, 2006
This is great...Inconvenient Truth, Indeed
No, all of this greenhouse gases and carbon emissions mumbo-jumbo is cover for a Zionist-Likudnik-neocon plot. If the Gore plan catches on and American citizens start demanding engines free of fossil fuel and candidates dedicated to overtaxing gasoline and forcing car manufacturers to meet European air quality standards, it will be worse than 20 Projects for a New American Century, 50 Weekly Standards, a hundred Charles Krauthammers.
Do I jest? I only suggest that an America powered by alternative fuels is a disaster to Middle East Studies as we know it. Who will endow university chairs reserved for professors who compare Israeli policies to Syrian ethnic cleansing if Saudi Arabia's chief export is sand? Who will pay for all those Council on Foreign Relations studies demanding endless negotiations with Iran or reenergized peace processes, if the big oil companies suddenly no longer care about canoodling with the Arab and Persian despots? What will become of the diligent CIA operations officer when he wants to retire if there are no more oil companies or family owned oil kingdoms to employ him? Realist foreign policy may never recover from Al Gore's environmentalism.
That's just the impact in Washington. If Saudi Arabia falls, consider the devastation to the Madrassa start up business on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. If Iran's petroleum profits dry up, where will Hezbollah fighters receive their spiritual guidance, let alone their small arms and phony passports? Mr. Gore's Daily Kos fans may eventually wake up to the prospect that his vision could stop Hugo Chavez of Venezuela from using his oil profits to tip the balance of Latin America's elections in favor of anti-American populists.
The netroots should have seen this one coming. I say, the moveon.org speech for Mr. Gore was only a ruse. If you look back at the man's career, he has been consistently in the pocket of the Israelis. Aipac lobbyists used affectionately to call him the third senator from New York. In the 1980s, Mr. Gore had the audacity to press for a resolution demanding that Arafat be made to account for his role in approving the assassination of a former American ambassador in Khartoum, just as American Jews were beginning to meet with members of the Arafat organization in Oslo, Norway...
...So when people talk about an inconvenient truth and let them talk about who really benefits from Al Gore's crusade against global warming? The only thing stopping the Israelis for now is the internal combustion engine foisted off on the American people by none other than Henry Ford. The case is rested.
It makes as much sense as 90% of the analysis out there.
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"It makes as much sense as ..."
Actually more sense than 90% of the analysis out there. :-)
I always wondered why the Saudis didn't prepare for the day when demand for oil would sharply diminish. That day is bound to come. Why did they never use their oil profits to diversify their economy? I remember once hearing that Saudi investments included a great deal of real estate in London. At the time, I thought, "but that's suitable for a family's investment portfolio, not for a country's economy." (I know, the Sauds ARE a family).
First, the Saudis could've started with products made from petroleum--plastics and textiles, for instance. Then, with their share of these markets solidified, they could find alternative components for these products whenever their accessible oil deposits started to run low. Or they could simply jump to non-oil-based products. That way, oil could have been a useful springboard to a mature, well-developed and well-diversified economy. They could've still gone on selling oil, but they wouldn't have been dependent on those sales.
Why didn't they do this? They had decades. I (vaguely) remember a time when "made in Japan" was a sign of something cheap or tacky, like toy party favors. By the 1970s, that was no longer the case. And Japan has no natural resources to speak of.
A diversified economy also means a healthier society, with room for entrepreneurialism and for a larger middle class. Also for greater opportunites to develop different talents: After all, Saudie wouldn't have to look for jobs in just one industry. Since there would be many business owners, not just the royal family, new wealth and new ideas could've germinated from the bottom of Saudi society as well as from the top.
Of course, that may not be what the Saud family wants. I heard that a single-industry economy can retard social and politcal development because all the wealth comes from the top, and so all the power continues to reside at the top. An independent middle class would be just that: independent. Maybe it suits the Sauds to leave things as they are. Also, I've heard that there is no great clamor among Saudi citizens for a broader economy, for a greater variety of jobs that could serve as an outlet for their talents and energies. There is no clamor for work at all. Apparently, they're happy importing their labor, even highly skilled and highly paid labor.
I've often wondered over the years why the Saudis never diversified. Why was oil never used as a bridge to further things? As it turns out, some Saudis were asking the same thing. Or at least one Saudi. I only recently heard that Sheik Zaki Yamani, the oil minister during the OPEC embargoes in the 1970s, did indeed want to use oil to make other products. He figured that there would eventually be an alternative to oil as a fuel. I like the quote attributed to him: "The Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of stones." Obviously, no one listened to him.
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