JHK: "A Hard Place"
Posted by Prof. Goose on October 2, 2006 - 6:17pm
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: iraq, james kunstler [list all tags]
From our friends at Energy Bulletin comes this piece from JHK:
I don't think it's accurate to call it a "war" anymore. It was one briefly back in 2003, and it may become a wider one again in the region. But for now the American situation in Iraq has degenerated into a dangerous, half-assed policing operation. We're not really fighting anyone, just getting in the way of factions fighting each other. A large part of our failure in this project has been our inability to get the electricity and water running properly. Any group of Americans might be equally pissed off and crazy after three years of that. [...] The purpose of our Iraq project was to stabilize the Middle East by creating a successful buffer state between Iran and Pakistan and the nations west of Iraq, especially Saudi Arabia. Why? To preserve the status quo in our oil deliveries from the region.Discuss.
My response:
Just think how different things might be if the US had not decided to make Iraq the enemy in 1990 and sequester their oil from the market. The Iraqis would be producing 6+ MBD using a state-of-the-art oil infrastructure, the world would be at 87-88 MBD, there would have been no run-up in prices such as we have seen the past few years, and the world might even still have some spare capacity left at this stage.
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/IQ/iraqLaherrere.pdf
Another one with lots of nice maps is at
http://www.searchanddiscovery.net/documents/gong03/index.htm
Just off the top of my google...
But what I find most interesting are the rumors that Iraq doesn't have nearly as much oil as we thought. This was also reported at ASPO.
Supposedly, the U.S. conducted a survey of Iraq's oil reserves after the war. It is classified. It was supposed to be made public in 2004, but here we are, nearing the end of 2006, and it's still classified.
But the "whisper number" that has leaked is only 47 BBL. Not the 112 BBL claimed.
Why so low? Partly, for the same reason Kuwait's reserves are in question. When OPEC decided to base quotas on reserves, everyone juiced up their numbers. Partly, because the oil fields have been severely damaged by the way they were produced during the ten years of sanctions.
Thus preventing the penetration of the peak oil concept into the public mind, ensuring continuing low fuel prices, and causing renewable energy technologies to continue to languish as they did through the 80's and 90's. Right up until we hit geological peak, and find ourselves entirely up a creek.
Maybe the Republicans are alot smarter and more forward-thinking than I've been giving them credit for... Naw. :)
And frankly, I suspect that if prices had remained flat while production grew further, we'd have just ended up with exactly the same scenario we saw from July 2004 til now, only a few years later. Eventually we hit a production plateau and prices rise to constrain demand.
"It's the only major oil exporter occupied by the US military (makes me wonder about the reported production numbers), "
I have thought of this more than once. What if production could be/was pumped up 500,000 or down and nobody knew.
Would it be possible to do that? Have their production be kinda like an "Oil Slushfund" so to speak.
What we need is a rational idea of what we can do to exit it soon without leaving it more of a mess than we are currently making it.
Joe Biden (D-Del) has at least been talking about some new ideas, even if they may have certain flaws
So, let's brainstorm some ideas on the way forward...
Also, if the Ds don't get control of the Senate, impeachment would be a moot exercise. And if that's the best they can do as an alternative agenda to the Republicans, they don't deserve to win...and I mean that.
- how can the speaker change daily? you mean the day after the election results are final or literally daily?
comment -personally, i dont think democracy works, or was designed to work at populations greater than the tribal level(100-200) - democrats and republicans are both primarily influenced by big business, perhaps democrats slightly less so. we really do live in a world of $1 dollar 1 vote. Bush is a knucklehead, but we are kidding ourselves if Kerry or Gore would have made that much of a difference - geology, overpopulation and other woes would have taken the same path, perhaps slowed somewhat by lefter leaning policies. we need to be accountable ourselves and stop relying on (or blaming) a particular political party.
Ultimately we need a new party based on science, run by engineers or some such and headed by a 'benevolent dictator'- but our populace is not conditioned to vote for truth - charisma and abstractions 'feel' better.
You're not wrong Nate, I've often told my classes that representative democracy probably works a lot better when your MoC only represented 10k or so compared to the 700k represented by every MoC today...of course, the problem with that is that the size of the House has been capped at 435 since 1929 and the House Reapportionment Act.
The public has so far been resistant to changing from this system, generally with a compromise (with at least a modest number of competitive districts) occurring only when one party controls the statehouse and another the governorship. Obviously, extremists in general, and most elected officials themselves, have a strong interest in the status quo.
Perhaps, in those states with term limits, the officials could be bribed with a temporary increase in term in exchange for a permanent change in how districts are created. The public must be bribed, too, because they like term limits and the current reapportionist system.
So, my proposal for a CA ballot initiative "Eficiency in Government": change the legislature from bicameral to unicameral (single house) with total legislature spending to decline in proportion with the change in total elected officials, and with half the savings going to schools and the other half a reduction in sales tax; allow a new clock for term limits for the new senate; and, most important, invite various groups, inncluding, say, the black and hispanic legislative caucuses, the league of women voters, each party, the legislature and the governor to each submit a redistricting plan to teh CA supreme court, with the court determining which plan has the largest number of competitive districts. In the case of ties, the court would select the one most likely to result in representation of minorities in proportion to their share of CA population.
CA has sufficient US representatives to also have the number of state senators be the same as the number of US representatives, and could therefore have coincident districts.
I understood Nate Hagens to be saying we needed less democracy, and that we need a scientific ruling elite - Prof Goose seemed to agree, and then to say that we needed more representatives.
I have to say I'm baffled by the idea that we need a scientific ruling elite. I don't think it's an exaggeration (or even disproportionately inflammatory) to say that it sounds like something from 1920's fascist literature, or 1890's socialist literature. I think scientists like Andrei Sakharov would strongly disagree.
Prof Goose: Do I understand you correctly? And, if so, what do you suggest as an improvement?
The problem with democracy, as Madison put it, is that the public will is so subject to emotional decisionmaking that, sooner or later, it will make a decision that is fatal if left to its own devices, hence the creation of the representative republican system.
In my opinion, we need smaller districts/MORE representatives, which would mean concomitantly a MORE representative government, if we're going to stay with the system we have now that is.
I would not favor a pure technocracy, though I think that's where we're heading. A technocratic and corporate elite that controls the massive behemoth of government, whether it's fascist or socialist or whatever, we can all debate that.
Either way you look at it, the size of government is continuing to grow...and the growth that has occurred in the past five years is all attributable to the maintenance of order. Let's see, let me look up the word "reactionary" and "fascist."
Of course, Madison was just guessing, as no one had any experience with real democracy at that point. The original design had senators appointed by governors, the franchise limited to a small % of the population, etc., and yet an expansion of participation has, I think, been clearly an improvement. Has there ever been any real evidence that there can be too much democracy?
I agree that our recent problems with the "current occupant" have been the result of too little democracy, not too much.
"we need smaller districts/MORE representatives" an intriguing idea, and it kind've makes sense to me. OTOH, I wonder why the Senate now seems to be the moderating influence over the much larger house?
"the growth that has occurred in the past five years is all attributable to the maintenance of order. "
And yet, it seems clear to me that all this growth of "maintenance of order" has been counterproductive. The long-term interests of the US would clearly have been better served had we never tried to control the Middle East, starting 60 years ago. The sooner we give up the illusion of control, the better.
The example of Japan seems illustrative. They've prospered with no extension of military power at all, just a mercantilist approach.
So now if the U.S. can just get someone else to spend their money to protect them, they can follow the same path.
I think it is inaccurate to suggest the Japan or Europe would have stay unmilitarized if the US wasn't providing their security servcies for them.
If the US withdrew from Asia, Japan's view of self defense would change very quickly, as would that of every other country in the region.
AFAIK, the US defense of Japan really has been defensive, leaving the corporations of Japan on their own to negotiate with other countries. That has worked very well for Japan economically: their Self-Defence Force has stayed at roughly 1% of GDP, and yet their corporations have been extremely successful. Contrast that with the pre-WWII Greater Japan Co-Prosperity Sphere, or the US's counterproductive projection of power post-WWII.
It's with respect to the conduct of war that democracy posed the biggest problems to the Athenians. They did best when they appointed a dictator for the duration; and they did disastrously badly when the democratic institutions conducted the war themselves.
My main point is to do away with gerrymandering that creates non-competitive districts. Changing from 40 senators and 80 representatives to 53 senators is not increasing teh size of senate seats, but reducing their size. And, it matters not that representatives have smaller districts since the more powerful seneate remains less democratic.
Bush is more (and less) than a knucklehead, but I agree with your basic point.
Ultimately we need a new party based on science, run by engineers or some such and headed by a 'benevolent dictator'- but our populace is not conditioned to vote for truth - charisma and abstractions 'feel' better.
I think this is the wrong direction, however. This sounds too much like Technocracy. The technofix is not the answer to our problems.
We as a culture need to learn to value cooperation rather than domination, people rather than profits, sustainability rather than growth, cutailment rather than consumption, relocalization rather than globalization, and giving birth to creative ideas rather than creating more babies.
Otherwise we cant afford to build the apropriate technofixes.
We need to build technofixes that people both want and need otherwise the products will end up being useless and the profits will be pissed away at marketing.
We need technofixes for the long haul.
Good technofixes need to be recycleable so that we can technofix for hundreds of generations and beyond.
We cant build technofixes for all, some people and production will need to move, perhaps a lot of people and production. Fortunately global shipping via electrified rail and nuclear container ships will be fairly cheap to run in the post peak oil world.
Yes, we will need a lot of new technofixes. And babies, the world would be depressing withouth young people.
Nate - This is nuts. Firstly, to believe in a benevolent dictator, you have to think that power doesn't corrupt. Sure there have been a few instances of successful benign dictators, but it is hardly the rule.
I actually live in a country with a hugely successful benevolent king (Thailand). He is loved and respected because of his committment to thai people. However, almost no one thinks this is a model for other countries. Just great luck.
I have to go with Churchill on this one:
How would people in the US feel in the EU demanded that Mexico be made the 52 state.
I don't know but it doesn't seem like the U.S. is adding anything positive to the equation. Come up with a solution, any solution, but get the hell out within less than a year. If the Dems take over, pass a resolution calling for a planned withdrawal. In the mean time, impeach both the Pres and Vice Pres. I'm sure it won't be difficult coming up with a bill of particulars since it has already been written.
President Bush has stolen our Republic, not to mention democracy. He has gotten himself exempted from his previous crimes and misdemeanors. But he can't get exempted from impeachment.
Frankly, if is a waste of time. Just like there is a huge cultural difference between Eastern (i.e. Kurdish) and Western Turkey, there is a huge gulf between Western Europe and Western Turkey. This is not just about religion it is all-encompassing.
The British government is one of the few that is genuinely in favour of Turkish accession to the EU - just another of these poodle Blair attitudes.
Rubbish. The cultural differences are not that great. And if you don't want people of Oriental culture in the EU, what on earth are the Greeks doing in here?