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Syndicate
Lard: "I'm not telling."
I just wanted to quote this so you couldn't remove it. Consider it preserved for posterity.
Why on earth would I want to remove it? Seriously, Lard, you sound just like that five-year old.
Sven if you have four large Anglo-American oil companies, and special friends in government controlling the world's largest army all dressed up and no place to go, wouldn't you think the two interests might be combined to drive oil prices higher and do what Adam Smith warned us capitalists would tend to do, which is to conspire toward gouging hell out of people for their stuff through spreading false information, price fixing, wild horse trading and insanely unregulated market speculation etc? Okay, maybe he didn't go that far. But today's market jackals sometimes even get along quite well with leaders like Ahmadinejad who also enjoys making markets nervous and driving oil prices higher. Market fundamentalists and their fixers working behind the scenes love a good war and even just rumors of war. The hedge funders like driving oil prices higher too with speculating on prices. George Soros told Congress that traders in London, Chicago and Atlanta were more than likely collaborating to drive oil prices higher some time before the big meltdown. The traders buy oil and oil futures yet have no intention of actually taking possession of the huge amounts of oil they buy. It's a big con. Enrong and World Con jackals arent as ruthless.
Hell, Fidel, I'd rather have our system of petroleum production than the screwed-up mess in Venezuela (perhaps your second-favorite country after Cuba, no?). There is one of the richest oil countries on the planet...and it can't manage its way out of a wet paper bag, energy-wise. That is what happens when you have a monopoly of state power. Given the choice, I'd rather have the oligarchy of oil companies any day.
Venezuela is so fucked up that when it collapses from its own stupidity (Chavez was so busy shoveling goodies out to "the masses" that he failed to invest the billions of dollars needed to keep the oil pumping -- and now the system is crumbling under his feet), it will likely take down Cuba with it (which depends on half of its oil coming from Venezuela as substantially subsidized rates -- and, even now, Cuba has electrical power issues).
That a tag team Cuba-Venezuela is.
So like far too many Americans, you would rather be gouged at the pumps and on your utility bills, and pay premo premiums to a health insurance mafia who might not cover your medical bills at just the right time sooner than cut your fellow countrymen a break? I get it now. The tiny handful of oligarchs paying their way in Warshington and London and Ottawa love people like you because you empower them. And they wouldn't spit on people like you or me if we were on fire. Socialism for the rich is what you're actually supporting down there, and it's costing all Americans big time - far, far more than actual socialism for ordinary Americans would. But that's your choice you say. I don't think it is your choice, but you can pretend that it is if it makes you happy.
I've met many Americans, Sven. And I know that many of you would rather die sooner than admit your own plutocrats are crooked or not governing in the interests of all Americans. To criticize your own government would be like spitting on the flag and sacreligious and cause you to self destruct on the spot. America, love it or leave it.
I'll take the US (or Canada, for that matter) over Cuba or Venezuela any day, thank you very much. Chavez is, to put it in the most charitable terms possible, a clown.
Say it with me, Fidel: "Chávez es un payaso."
And I'll take Canada (or the US for that matter) over Puerto Rico or that other US client state, Haiti, any day. Besides, we've got the military muscle to threaten anyone we want into playing the "free" market game. I just don't think our descendents will be saying quite the same things in future when democracy finally reigns the world over, and every country is a good place to live after political borders are erased and oligopoly capitalism eliminated for all time. They can run this sting for only so long before billions of proles come to the realization that they outnumber the ruling class by a wide margin.
Remind me again...in how many gigaannums from now will that occur?
As technological capabilities increase, planet prole becomes more and more probable. The problem with empires is that they don't last.
People's democracy within the next one-hundred years. Predatory capitalism will become a rusty footnote of the historical record. And so will we all if we don't smarten up. We can't afford economies driven by consumerism for very much longer. Too wasteful and polluting. And debt-driven monetarism is just a weapon of mass destruction designed around mathematics of the atomic bomb with a sole purpose to destroy civilized society. What the world needs now is a debt jubilee and new Bretton Woods accord. And you thought I was going to say love sweet love.
Private Gain or Public Interest?
Sixteen months ago, this was an opportunity. As oil approaches $80 a barrel once again (as opposed to its position then dropping towards $40), such actions become increasingly unimaginable.
Too bad our politicians lack any imagination....
I hear ya Lard Tunderin Jeezus. I have a problem with this from the CCPA piece:
In order to resist strenuously, it would mean that our stooges have attempted to put some pressure on oil companies to pay first world royalty rates on Canadian oil. And that I find hard to believe about our stooges. They are bought and paid-for stooges and not thinking stooges with minds for business deals. We need some shrewd socialists in power to drive a bargain in the interests of Canadians.
Once again, they're racking up additional billions at our expense:
from gasgouge.ca
And to make matter worse, those of us in an HST province get hit with a tax on tax. I understand governments need money , but the whole concept of tax placed on a consumption tax does make me a bit furious. It is about the only time I get angry about "my taxes"
I am surprised they didn't just put it on my property tax. Did they also put it on liquor? When I saw the pumps spike by 12 cents the day the HST came in. First thought was anger at government(who do deserve it in this case) second was that the gas companies also jacked it an additional 4 cents to see if anyone would notice.
The nighttime pump was 110.9 around the corner from me. While not in toronto we are only 2 hours away from sarnia with a 350,000 market, why is the pump price so much higher than it should be. Gouge!
Prices are up another half cent today. But I'd forgotten about the HST, and don't know if gasgouge.ca has accounted for it yet. As I recall, it was going to add 3¢ a litre to the price, so the multinational oil cartel running our country may only be gouging us for 3.5 billion or so annually at this rate.
And just think - now Stephen Harper and Dalton McGuinty can pay off their billion dollar G20 bill with their ill-gotten share of the proceeds.
editing
Perhaps Mr. Harper's friends in the oil industry are abandoning him.
Checked in with the folks at the CCPA, and indeed, gasgouge.ca has been adjusted to account for the HST. And as of today:
So while the nation is being gouged for over eight billion dollars annually by the oil industry, our governments are crying poor and throwing ten of thousands out of work?
Oh, Canada...
from Why the energy industry is so invested in climate change denial
Just filled up yesterday - gas has been $1.79/liter for a year now. We're an isolated community not connected to the mainland (yet...) and getting a supply of gas to the store is fairly complicated.
Breaking news: "Yesterday, Ecowatch.org revealed that, in September 2008, nearly two years before the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP rig had blown out in the Caspian Sea----which BP concealed from U.S. regulators and Congress."
~ We have an obligation to the rest of the world to help curb corporate America of its voracious appetite for cheap Canadian fossil fuels. - Maurice Strong, 2001
We won't survive as a species unless we stop relying on dead plants as an energy source. Predatory capitalism and resource grabs will be the end of us.
...or more than 7.7 billion dollars annually.
That's obscene.