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12/9/04 Can't Get There from Here
7/29/04 Political Speechmaking  
7/26/04 Words of Praise
6/22/04 Hygene and its Discontents
6/21/04 Summer Solstice -- Financial Fog
1/16/04 No Free Speech at Any Price
1/11/04 New Year's Notes, Cows and Bikes
11/18/03 Pull the Bull
10/20/03 Gardening Delights
8/26/03 Of Elves, Otters and SUVs
8/17/03 Great News on the Population Front
8/8/03 Energy Distribution in Iraq
5/14/03 Taxing Issues
4/20/03 Keeping Santa Cruz Weird
1/28/03 When the "A-Ha!" Moment Scares the Crap Out of You
11/10/02 Elfin Visions
11/2/02 Invisible Demons
5/15/02 Liquid Fuel from Sunlight, Seawater and Fresh Air

1/28/03

When the "A-Ha!" Moment Scares the Crap Out of You

So I read this: Bush's Real Casus Belli on AlterNet, and I'm still shaking, angry, nauseous. I finally get it. It's not just about money for Big Oil, like I'd always assumed. It's really about power. It's about world domination. Cheney is holed up in his undisclosed location, not so much scheming to keep his oily-rich friends richer, but to make sure that America remains #1! (insert image of inebriated, overweight sports fan with big foam finger here)

The thesis, seemingly well-supported in this article by Michael T. Klare, is that the reason to go to war with Iraq is to assure that the USA and no-one else has the ability to influence all other nations through our control of oil (well, not Saudi Arabia too much, except by cutting into their market share and keeping them afraid that they might be next). If we set up a puppet government in Iraq that we can rely on to do our bidding, we could browbeat any potential rival superpower with the threat of constricting their vital energy supply. Of course, this only works so long as worldwide dependence on petroleum continues to grow.

This is what I realized: ignoring all efforts to reduce our dependency on oil isn't only about wealth. It's about not letting new technologies out. Hell, the US military has probably already figured out how to make renewable energy options as compact, lightweight and economical as you'd ever wish. It would only make sense from a strategy standpoint, to be prepared in case the oil supplies get cut off. We promote SUVs, fight increased efficiency standards, and give only the tiniest bit of token support to alternative technologies because this is how you keep the entire world dependent on oil. If really effective, economical solar, wind, hydrogen or biodiesel technology were to blossom, we wouldn't be able to acquire and maintain that kind of leverage. There would be no effective way to keep it out of the hands of others. Any rival, military or economic, could free themselves from our potential stranglehold, then try to dominate us. China, Russia, Germany, France, or Japan might usurp our global hegemony over capital, culture and/or combat.

Small-scale, localized production of energy makes fewer targets for terrorists, so you would think that strategic planning for America's energy future would include shifting to these technologies. But such technologies would not help the cause of global empire. That's why we're not investing in the research to make it happen. Not for public consumption, anyway.

In the immortal words of those pickup-truck bumper stickers "I love my country, but I fear my government."

I now have a more interactive space at my Xanga blog. I will work on adding each entry here to that site, and provide a link from each one here to each one there for now. Xanga will include more brief notes and personal ramblings. I still welcome your comments via e-mail (with your permission, I will post them). E-mail me at: apegrrl@ 
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