I love Cenk and TYT but that was a little cringe worthy. Let's watch the Fox News presenter mock perfectly good arguments with silly voices and acting. And then mock Fox News with our own silly voices and acting. (Picard facepalm)
And they are quite right about American foreign policy being a big reason behind the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. I wonder what Iran would look like today if we hadn't ousted the Iranian Prime Minister back in '53, simply to keep Iran from nationalizing their oil supply.

@Asmo

Don't really want to get a more general argument about the history of US foreign policy, I was talking more about the present day. The US's rationale for intervention during the Cold War was an exaggerated sense of the spread of communism and later to prevent anything that might precipitate an oil price spike like in the 1973-74/79. Nowadays with greatly expanded US shale oil supply and no Cold War I simply don't see any real incentive, if anything with the furore over debt, quite the opposite.

@enoch

Successful US intervention in the previous century generally involved large sums of money, whether it be propping up a government (Zaire/Congo) or funding an insurgent militia (Guatemala). Same thing with the USSR (North Korea). The ability to influence public opinion or mount credible propaganda campaigns in my opinion is generally exaggerated especially in a large, modern and educated country like Iran. It's also the conspiratorial myth that repressive regimes (like Iran, Russia) frequently turn to when they need to discredit dissent. A good example is:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2013/11/arab-conspiracy-theories

I mention Russia because this is the line pushed aggressively to both his domestic audience by it's wholly state controlled television media and to a mix of foreign and expatriate audiences (of which Russia Today is most successful) through a web of shadowy funding and home grown sounding organisations (see link below for a nice overview, e.g. http://www.globalresearch.ca/). It's pretty important to view what he says as part of a narrative to vastly exaggerate US and western intervention in Ukraine and previously Georgia, because that allows him to construct his myth of being a counterbalance to present day western imperialism.

https://criticusnixalsverdruss.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/propagramm3.jpg

Can the US really afford another war? Methinks China would be wary of interference with her oil supply.

see: http://videosift.com/video/Robert-Newmans-History-of-Oil

It would further hurt the world's economy, which would affect the US.>> ^direpickle:

The US doesn't import oil from Iran.
Edit: Sorry, didn't read the link first. I'm going to mark the claim that they would block shipments as equally crazy, though. Also, really skeptical that blocking shipments through the Strait of Hormuz would affect the US's oil supply at all.

The US doesn't import oil from Iran.

Edit: Sorry, didn't read the link first. I'm going to mark the claim that they would block shipments as equally crazy, though. Also, really skeptical that blocking shipments through the Strait of Hormuz would affect the US's oil supply at all.

Chilaxe, sometimes you scare me. Sometimes I think you would favor a "final solution". Maybe I'm not creative enough to envision how you solve these problems you outline with useless eaters without extermination.>> ^chilaxe:

@longde
Yeah, above a certain income level, they contribute more than they consume, but there are a lot of externalized costs.
We subsidize their exorbitant 21st century medical care and use of the education system, penal system, and everything else.
Many resources are becoming much more expensive. Diminishing oil supplies will probably skyrocket in price again once industry and consumers pull out of the current recession. Increases in the cost of oil increase the price of everything, and oil is only one out of endless diminishing resources. The trillions of dollars of costs for green tech and pollution mitigation only have to spent because we have so many people who contribute so little but consume & pollute at the same rate.
L.A., for example, wouldn't be an environmental and pollution catastrophe if the amount of people living there was the same as it was in 1970, and that's the same basic story around the world. The total number of high contribution people doesn't increase and most people don't actually improve over time.

Sorry, I don't know you, but from what I can infer from your post you live in the States? You don't "subsidize" anything in Canada. Certainly not the health care system. Who's this 'we' you're talking about?

>> ^chilaxe:

@longde
Yeah, above a certain income level, they contribute more than they consume, but there are a lot of externalized costs.
We subsidize their exorbitant 21st century medical care and use of the education system, penal system, and everything else.
Many resources are becoming much more expensive. Diminishing oil supplies will probably skyrocket in price again once industry and consumers pull out of the current recession. Increases in the cost of oil increase the price of everything, and oil is only one out of endless diminishing resources. The trillions of dollars of costs for green tech and pollution mitigation only have to spent because we have so many people who contribute so little but pollute at the same rate.
L.A., for example, wouldn't be an environmental and pollution catastrophe if the amount of people living there was the same as it was in 1970, and that's the same basic story around the world. The total number of high contribution people doesn't increase and most people don't actually improve over time.

@longde

Yeah, above a certain income level, they contribute more than they consume, but there are a lot of externalized costs.

We subsidize their exorbitant 21st century medical care and use of the education system, penal system, and everything else.

Many resources are becoming much more expensive. Diminishing oil supplies will probably skyrocket in price again once industry and consumers pull out of the current recession. Increases in the cost of oil increase the price of everything, and oil is only one out of endless diminishing resources. The trillions of dollars of costs for green tech and pollution mitigation only have to spent because we have so many people who contribute so little but consume & pollute at the same rate.

L.A., for example, wouldn't be an environmental and pollution catastrophe if the amount of people living there was the same as it was in 1970, and that's the same basic story around the world. The total number of high contribution people doesn't increase and most people don't actually improve over time.

>> ^ghark:

@NetRunner I agree that Republican obstructionism is not good, but if Dem's had the significant majority in both the house and senate would it make a big difference? I think in the past it might have, when the corporate influence in politics wasn't so great, these days... I think it's a very hard argument to make, especially considering the fact they didn't do anything significant when they did have the numbers after the last election. Besides, by saying the GOP made nice comments about Arab Spring then bad comments about these protests, aren't you highlighting their hypocrisy? So what's the big deal about highlighting hypocrisy when it comes from the other side?
@bcglorf Your 'protesters' were mercenaries paid for with oil profits, as I already mentioned (and verified with links) in our last discussion, it seems you do not learn. You also cannot decide what others can and cannot think, as you seem to suggest is possible. Part of the official mission statement of the OWS protesters is the recognition that America has "perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad". I would say that hiring merceneries to secure oil supplies and then installing a friendly dictatorship to ensure trade agreements is pretty damn close to colonialism. The most sickening irony of your statement is that, unlike your fairyland mass graves that don't exist (see below), the rebels actually have been killing government supporters and burying them in mass graves.
Your mass graves
http://news.antiwar.com/2011/10/06/rebel-claims-of-li
bya-mass-graves-come-up-empty-again/
The real mass graves
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world
/about-900-bodies-in-libya-mass-graves-20111006-1lbth.html
By all means, continue to spread propaganda like your life depends on it, you're completely transparent.


So your view on Libya is that Gaddafi didn't leave behind any mass graves, was not on the verge of prosecuting a genocide that he had publicly announced his intentions for, AND there are actual mass graves in Libya but only those dug by the rebels opposing Gaddafi?

So you support Gaddafi then. History won't remember your side well.

@NetRunner I agree that Republican obstructionism is not good, but if Dem's had the significant majority in both the house and senate would it make a big difference? I think in the past it might have, when the corporate influence in politics wasn't so great, these days... I think it's a very hard argument to make, especially considering the fact they didn't do anything significant when they did have the numbers after the last election. Besides, by saying the GOP made nice comments about Arab Spring then bad comments about these protests, aren't you highlighting their hypocrisy? So what's the big deal about highlighting hypocrisy when it comes from the other side?

@bcglorf Your 'protesters' were mercenaries paid for with oil profits, as I already mentioned (and verified with links) in our last discussion, it seems you do not learn. You also cannot decide what others can and cannot think, as you seem to suggest is possible. Part of the official mission statement of the OWS protesters is the recognition that America has "perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad". I would say that hiring merceneries to secure oil supplies and then installing a friendly dictatorship to ensure trade agreements is pretty damn close to colonialism. The most sickening irony of your statement is that, unlike your fairyland mass graves that don't exist (see below), the rebels actually have been killing government supporters and burying them in mass graves.

Your mass graves
http://news.antiwar.com/2011/10/06/rebel-claims-of-libya-mass-graves-come-up-empty-again/

The real mass graves
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/about-900-bodies-in-libya-mass-graves-20111006-1lbth.html

By all means, continue to spread propaganda like your life depends on it, you're completely transparent.

Natural oil supplies are dwindling and these gears need grease. You tell us where we are supposed to get it hmm??

It'll be much easier when we finally reveal our human farms to the public.

>> ^NetRunner:

To me it seems pretty obvious why Libya was urgent for us to get involved in, while not intervening in neighboring countries (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemmen, etc.).
OIL.
Everything in the economic world stayed curiously stable through all the unrest in the middle east, until Libya's oil supply burped for a second. Then everything went haywire on the markets, gas prices immediately jumped like $0.50, and the Dow plunged.
Now I see that today we had a near 200 point rally after the news that we're going to be liberating Libya.
These events are not unrelated. Obama got his marching orders, and then he issued them to the UN, who sent in the missles, bombs, and little kids with guns.
Wall Street is all cheshire smiles today, fat and happy with the knowledge that once more worthless blood will be traded for precious oil.


http://www.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm

They constitute less than 3% of our oil in the US, not that big of a deal in that respect. In raw crude, it is less than 2%.

To me it seems pretty obvious why Libya was urgent for us to get involved in, while not intervening in neighboring countries (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemmen, etc.).

OIL.

Everything in the economic world stayed curiously stable through all the unrest in the middle east, until Libya's oil supply burped for a second. Then everything went haywire on the markets, gas prices immediately jumped like $0.50, and the Dow plunged.

Now I see that today we had a near 200 point rally after the news that we're going to be liberating Libya.

These events are not unrelated. Obama got his marching orders, and then he issued them to the UN, who sent in the missles, bombs, and little kids with guns.

Wall Street is all cheshire smiles today, fat and happy with the knowledge that once more worthless blood will be traded for precious oil.

>> ^NetRunner:

I've got plenty of anger to go around. I'm mad about the fact that there is an entire political party whose purpose is to eliminate responsibility for the rich, and eliminate rights for the poor. I'm mad that their opposition party can often be bribed by corporations to water down any attempts to fix things into near meaninglessness, and that a media-led populace of morons will condemn them all the way up one side and down the other for daring imply that corporations do evil things because, well, the corporate owned media doesn't like it when anti-corporate sentiments break out.
Even after all that, I've still got more than enough anger left over to direct at the people who actually inflicted this particular wound on us, and who're whining about how it's really made them have to put in a lot of long hours.
As for why the government hasn't "stepped in", this is actually part of the rub. See, we don't have a government-run oil company in America (even though virtually all other oil producing nations do), so we have to rely on private expertise in fixing the damn thing. Even as it is, I don't think people grasp this, but if there were easy ways to plug the leak, or even expensive ones, I guarantee it would've been done by now. We're looking, I believe, at the limits of what man can do, and apparently we can't plug a damaged well under water of this depth.
Maybe this will change people's opinion about the risks involved, and our need to get off oil. My read on how the media and the right is talking about this is that it hasn't really had that effect. Other than partially strengthening the left's resolve on the topic, I mostly see people who once proudly chanted "drill baby, drill" still saying the same thing, just slightly less brazenly.


I'm kinda glad to hear you don't buy into the whole "Democrats are saints, Repubs are sinners" bullshit, because enough people on here do. Like Seric said in the post above yours, many different companies were involved on and around the offshore drilling platform, so it will take a while to figure out whose fault it was. In any case, accidents happen, and those are the risks we take in echange for a steady oil supply.

I believe the government hasn't stepped in, because they don't want any blame to be directed at them. Right now the general public are aiming at BP and their incapability to secure the leak. You might be right when you say that BP may very well be doing everything humanly possible to stop the leak, but there might just as well be more capable people outside of BP who could do a better job. However the government would rather keep their hands relatively clean and instead scrutinize BP for their failing efforts. Typical behavior of politicians.

It would be great if this would indeed get people thinking about our oil dependency, especially since it is becoming more of a coffin nail every day. Unfortunately that goes way beyond the grasp of the general public and would first and foremost require people to look at their own squandering of resources and how it creates such an enormous demand for oil, which corporations will always look to profit from.

Nah, too complicated. They'll just blame BP's CEO for everything.

There's no reason that country should have to outsource the oil production to anybody in the first place.


Nope, none at all. I'm sure the remaining employees of Iraq's national oil company could handle everything all by themselves. I'm equally sure that all ties between them and Baath party are long gone and wouldn't cause the Iraqi government any problems. Of course, I don't believe there was anything stopping them from bidding alongside other global companies, was there...



Bet money that option was imposed on them by the US.


Oh, right. Because part of America's evil plan to steal Iraq's oil included guaranteeing over 90% of the profits went to the Iraqi government. Oh, and that the first contracts would go to China, America's closest ally...


And the Kurds? As soon as the fat cats get what they want out of the Kurds, they'll be brushed aside and forgotten all over again.


I think the Kurds are smarter and tougher than you give them credit for. Despite what you might like to think, the world consists of more people than just oil execs and their victims.

The Kurds managed to survive everything Saddam did do them. They've come out with the most stable region in the country and the only productive oil fields. Given they they hold all the power over those oil fields, I think they are in the drivers seat for anybody wanting oil out of those fields, and there will always be somebody interested in buying from a stable oil supply.

Shouldn't you be kicking a Palestinian child and stealing his father's land?

Yes, because it's all the Jew's fault again, isn't it?