The Partys Over |
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ummziba
Senior Member Female Joined: 16 March 2005 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 1158 |
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Posted: 11 September 2005 at 9:47am |
Assalamu alaikum sister duende, A good post! Unfortunately, most humans would prefer to live blissfully in their denial than to face truth head on. Scary times ahead. Peace, ummziba. |
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Sticks and stones may break my bones, but your words...they break my soul ~
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Duende
Senior Member Joined: 27 July 2005 Status: Offline Points: 651 |
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I�ve just finished reading a book which has changed my life. It is not the Koran nor the Bible. It is called The Party�s Over; Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, by Richard Heinberg. While the media groan on about the Palestinian problem, the terrible state of things in Iraq, the lack of direction in the European Union, or the weather, the world is running out of oil. The real threat to our way of life right now is not whether Iran starts producing nuclear weapons, not the threat of terrorism, but the INEVITABLE loss of energy to use as we have been doing for the past century. Nobody is talking about the only other thing we can all face with absolute certainty besides our own deaths: oil will run out. The world can not continue as it is on less oil every year. And since no modern society is prepared for even a gradual decline in energy supplies, the inevitable result of blackouts and too-expensive petrol/ natural gas/diesel/kerosene is anger, and resentment of complacent politicians leading to wide spread rioting and looting. The current US leaders have for long been concentrating their energies on protecting their own interests. American style democracy depends entirely on big corporations and their freedom to behave as they wish in order to reap profits and gains. They have consistently fought regulation as though it were a disease. Politicians have ensured them freedom from infection because politicians generally are bought by these interested parties. Therefore it is largely the big corporations who control American policy. It is obvious the present American administration will stop at nothing in order to preserve its way of life- founded upon the readily available reserves of fossil fuels. America has just 5% of the world�s population but the largest collection of war making machinery, the biggest arsenal, in the world. The United States has refused to sign the Kyoto agreement on reduction of greenhouse gases (most of which are produced by them) It refuses international inspections of its weapons of mass destruction, refuses to acknowledge the international criminal court, it has undermined the UN convention against torture and the biological weapons convention, and generally disregards international laws and treaties. With the price of oil in �petrodollars� every consuming country in the world is subtly subsidising America�s economy. It is America who has the most to lose with the 1 to 2% yearly decline predicted in oil production. Big corporations such as Chevron and Mobil have already begun their timid public awareness advertisements, but nobody is paying any attention. The US is desperately seeking to uphold its own economy, faltering because of the depletion in the world�s oil reserves. Control over its own media means few of its citizens are currently aware of the depletion in oil available, the growing cost of extracting this fuel, and the subsequent inevitable rise in prices to consumers. Those who don�t want to hear about this, or don�t want to think about any life style challenge, will simply say people have been predicting this for years. Well, its time for the predictions to come true and the prophesies to be fulfilled. A peak in world oil production was probably reached in 2003, which means it is downhill from here on. Petrol and everything associated with it will simply get more and more expensive from now on, until it simply becomes too expensive to pump out. Which means all of manufacturing industry, all industrialised agriculture, and all transportation will be affected. America controls a disproportionate degree of the world�s oil production. What it doesn�t yet control, it is actively seeking to: overtly (Iraq under the pretext of spreading democracy and capitalism) and covertly (e.g. mismanaged coup attempts in Venezuela). Meanwhile it has operations underway across the Middle East and Asia in order to destabilize local governments of strategic worth, by promoting �anti-western� religious-based ideologies which can be turned to their advantage. Part of their current strategy involves demonising Islam, a strategy they have successfully sold to Britain�s Tony Blair, and France�s Jacques Chirac. This enables them to build a scenario where Islam becomes the greatest enemy and threat to the petrol-based economies of Western Europe and North America (the only spheres which really matter,) because coincidentally, the world�s energy reserves are found largely in Muslim countries. By painting Islam as the great demon of modern times, they can more easily persuade others who have been affected by so-called Islamic terrorism to unite in their fight to gain control of whatever oil fields they do not already directly control, by the quickest and most effective method available to them: war. America will stop at NOTHING in order to protect its lifestyle and values, at the cost of millions of lives both within the United States and abroad, cashing in the lives of many �brave Americans� using their military strategy, and the lives of insignificant others i.e. foreigners, non-Christians, and particularly Muslims. It is already too late to put in place adequate alternative energy supplies. The only recourse now to maintaining the lifestyle of buy, use and throw away is what the current U.S foreign policy is engaged in doing. For the first time however, the veil has slipped, and the world�s citizens have glimpsed the real reason for America�s alleged zeal for promoting freedom and democracy, and many of us are not willing to support nor condone it. America must increasingly be marginalised from International trade /economic agreements and organisations and allowed to run its own course of inevitable self- combustion. This may appear to be an impossible task, given the scope of �globalization�, but we must make strong efforts to marginalise the United States of America if we are not to be dragged down with it. I feel sorry for people like Bruce, a good Christian American energetically defending his country�s actions abroad. It is impossible for them to accept any of the above, it is too intellectually challenging and I can imagine will cause something akin to apoplexy. This predictably will be externalised as sarcasm or peculiar wit and denial, denial, denial. Laced with as many emoticons as you like. My posting is a small effort to get people to think about something more important for us all than whether or not the world is a safer place since the American invasion of Iraq. |
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