[Dialogue] Petrodictators Redux

[opossum2 at att.net]

Colleagues,

I'm certainly not defending George Bush, but I think it would be better to comment on the issue raised than to see how many ways Friedman (whom I seldom read) can be villified.  I think George Bush is a lower life form, and our own home-grown "democratically" elected dictator, given the powers his henchmen continue to seize for him to misuse.  When he was the governor of this great state, I delighted in referring to him as "the man who put the goober in gubernatorial".

God knows, I wish the people of Venezuela very well.  I've worked with some great professional people from there.  Unfortunately, I think the historical record is exceptionally poor regarding democratically elected strongmen, and I think that Chavez will eventually become a 21st century Juan Peron.  I know he's doing some good stuff for the truly needy, but so did Juan and Evita.

Personally, one of the few (democratically elected) chief execs I have much use for these days is Luna, in Brazil.  A first-rate socialist/communist who has been accused of much corruption (I have no idea if any of it is true), but who is bidding fair to be resoundingly reelected.  I was in Brazil in the early '90s when he was first standing for election (and being defeated), and I was truly sorry.  

As for Ahmadinejad, I can quote from the Al-Jazeera site that he did in fact say that the Holocaust was "The myth of the massacre of the Jews".   To me that's denial.  If you want to split hairs and say that communists, homosexuals, retarded folk and dissidents were killed too, that's fine, but it doesn't alter the fact.  Sure, he has also said that (italics mine):

"If the Europeans are telling the truth that they have killed six million Jews, then why aren't they offering a homeland".  And it is certainly true that the western powers were horrifically remiss in the way Jewish refugees were treated during World War II.  

Still, Ahmadinejad is a dangeous individual, and I say that without qualification.  At least he appears to be smart enough to make up his own hate rhetoric, which is a lot more than can be said for Dubya.

Grace and Peace,

Steve Rhea
Houston, Tx. 


-------------- Original message from Jim Baumbach <wtw0bl at new.rr.com>: -------------- 

Sometimes I wonder how this kind of nonsense sees the light of day. Ahmadinejad and Chavez dictators? These Presidents who were elected by overwhelming majorities in countries are called dictators by a journalist in a nation where its own leadership was not elected by the popular vote nor does the leadership, acting very dictatorially, respect the international and national laws? Friedman's hypocritical condemnations of the actions of the twice democratically elected Chavez trying to influence other national elections fly in the face of the US of A which itself has sponsored a military coup to oust Chavez not to mention brutal CIA coups in other Latin American Countries? The Chavez who has done more for the impoverished people of Venezuela using the oil revenues than the Crawford Ranch vacationing, draft dodger whose tax cuts ruin the nation's educational and health systems for 20 million children? If Chavez is a buffoon; Bush must be a complete moron or worse.

Ahmadinejad doesn't question the happening of the holocaust as much as saying that if the Europeans and Americans were so devastated by the event why did they have to punish the Palestinians by taking their land away when setting up the state of Israel? Why didn't they create the state in the US or Europe? And is Iran really building nuclear weapons? Do we continue to buy into Dubyah's propaganda machine that claims, even against numerous reports by IAEA inspection teams in Iran saying the contrary, Iran is enriching uranium and building bombs? Another set of fictitious weapons of mass destruction story? Is it the ploy to using nuclear weapons against Iran?

America's oil problem is not the problem of the oil producing nations no matter how much Friedman tries to blame them for causing fluctuating oil prices. The profits the Iranians made off of their crude oil all of last year was less than the third quarter profits of the US and British oil companies. The high prices the Americans pay at the pump mean fabulous wealth to Bush's supporters in the oil business. The real Petrodictators are not the legitimate international leaders hated by Bush and his cronies, instead, it is the capitalists who corrupt ours and other governments with their enormous petrodollars. According to our foreign politics, ruthless dictators which actually exist are inconsequential unless we have some national interest in their countries, they are welcomed to stay and rule. Likewise if a democratically elected government conflicts with US interests or their demise promotes political agendas, they are likely to be hurt or destroyed until we get our way.

I'm sorry, but in this article, Friedman has not only crossed the line of sanity but seems to have dropped of the edge.

Jim Baumbach

FacilitationFla at aol.com wrote: 
This is SOOOO true.
 
Fill ’Er Up With Dictators 
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: September 27, 2006
Are you having fun yet?
Skip to next paragraphWhat’s a matter? No sense of humor? You didn’t enjoy watching Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez addressing the U.N. General Assembly and saying of President Bush: “The devil came here yesterday, right here. It smells of sulfur still today.” Many U.N. delegates roared with laughter.
Oh well then, you must have enjoyed watching Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad breezing through New York City, lecturing everyone from the U.N. to the Council on Foreign Relations on the evils of American power and how the Holocaust was just a myth.
C’mon then, you had to at least have gotten a chuckle out of China’s U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, trying to block a U.N. resolution calling for the deployment of peacekeeping troops to Sudan to halt the genocide in Darfur. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that the China National Petroleum Corporation owns 40 percent of the Sudan consortium that pumps over 300,000 barrels of oil a day from Sudanese wells.
No? You’re not having fun? Well, you’d better start seeing the humor in all this, because what all these stories have in common is today’s most infectious geopolitical disease: petro-authoritarianism.
Yes, we thought that the fall of the Berlin Wall was going to unleash an unstoppable wave of free markets and free people, and it did for about a decade, when oil prices were low. But as oil has moved to $60 to $70 a barrel, it has fostered a counterwave — a wave of authoritarian leaders who are not only able to ensconce themselves in power because of huge oil profits but also to use their oil wealth to poison the global system — to get it to look the other way at genocide, or ignore an Iranian leader who says from one side of his mouth that the Holocaust is a myth and from the other that Iran would never dream of developing nuclear weapons, or to indulge a buffoon like Chávez, who uses Venezuela’s oil riches to try to sway democratic elections in Latin America and promote an economic populism that will eventually lead his country into a ditch.
For a lot of reasons — some cyclical, some technical and some having to do with the emergence of alternative fuels and conservation — the price of crude oil has fallen lately to around $60 a barrel. Yes, in the long run, we want the global price of oil to go down. But we don’t want the price of gasoline to go down in America just when $3 a gallon has started to stimulate large investments in alternative energies. That is exactly what OPEC wants — let the price fall for a while, kill the alternatives, and then bring it up again.
For now, we still need to make sure, either with a gasoline tax or a tariff on imported oil, that we keep the price at the pump at $3 or more — to stimulate various alternative energy programs, more conservation and a structural shift by car buyers and makers to more fuel-efficient vehicles.
“If Bush were the leader he claims to be, he would impose an import fee right now to keep gasoline prices high, and reduce the tax rate on Social Security for low-income workers, so they would get an offsetting increase in income,” argued Philip Verleger Jr., the veteran energy economist.
That is how we can permanently break our oil addiction, and OPEC, and free ourselves from having to listen to these petro-authoritarians, who are all so smug — not because they are educating their people or building competitive modern economies, but because they happen to sit on oil.
According to Bloomberg.com, in 2005 Iran earned $44.6 billion from crude oil exports, its main source of income. In the same year, the mullahs spent $25 billion on subsidies to buy off the population. Bring the price of oil down to $30 and guess what happens: All of Iran’s income goes to subsidies. That would put a terrible strain on Ahmadinejad, who would have to reach out to the world for investment. Trust me, at $30 a barrel, the Holocaust isn’t a myth anymore.
But right now, Chávez, Ahmadinejad and all their petrolist pals think we are weak and will never bite the bullet. They have our number. They know that Mr. Bush is a phony — that he always presents himself as this guy ready to make the “tough” calls, but in reality he has not asked his party, the Congress, the people, or U.S. industry to do one single hard thing to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Mr. Bush prattles on about spreading democracy and freedom, but history will actually remember the Bush years as the moment when petro-authoritarianism — not freedom and democracy — spread like a wildfire and he did nothing serious to stop it. 
 
 
Cynthia N. Vance
Strategics International Inc.
8245 SW 116 Terrace
Miami, Florida, 33156
305-378-1327; fax 305-378-9178
http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla

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From: Jim Baumbach <wtw0bl at new.rr.com>
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