by Starman » Mon Aug 01, 2005 5:33 pm
Dreams End said:<br><br>"Thank you, proldic for an excellent and ad hominem free post. Indeed, for people on this site to embrace so easily the word of the petroleum industry in terms of oil supply while we all worry about Rockefeller conspiracies is the height of irony."<br><br>????<br>Proldic's posts were completely cut-and-pastes, at least the 2 out of 3 that made the board.<br><br>I found McGowen's assertions and method of argument so disingenous, his deductions often flawed or not demonstrated by example, misleading, and in general belligerant and disrespectful -- Most of the critical issues I pointed-out weren't even addressed in this supposed critique of the PO thesis. What I found esp. objectionable was an inaccurate generalization of what PO is about and a discreditation of those assumptions which is then maintained as conclusively disproving PO in total.<br><br>As I've pointed out several times, US foreign policy has affirmed an unhealthy overreliance on Oil for much of the last fifty years, in its overt and covert military, political and economic intervention in dozens of nations with disasterous consequences, deliberately impeding and confounding economic development and genuine democratic institutions on behalf of neocolonial and hegemonic ambitions.<br><br>Among several quotations or quotes by McGowen or others that I DID agree with in the article Proldic posted, are:<br><br>McGowan:<br>‘…'Resource Denial Theory.' It's a sub-section of Geopolitical Theory, so beloved of the Bushite and Zbigniew Brzezinski crowds, and states you must take control of areas where strategic resources are located - like oil - and prevent rivals from entering. Your power derives from the control of these resources.’ In other words, it's not about seizing the resources that we need to survive; it's about denying our 'enemies' the resources that they need to survive…”<br>. . .<br>"The common white western perception of over-breeding 3rd-worlders ignores the primary economic dimension of birth rates – creating the need for larger families – and the key role of economic exploitation in forming and continuing those conditions of poverty. Birth rates naturally moderate given stable economic conditions." <br>--unquote--<br><br>In this regard-- When I see references to population management or control attributed to Peak Oil doomsayers (as attributed by McGowen) I don't think of eugenics, but of encouraging smaller families through an equitable participation in a state's economy and access to sufficient resources to increase third-world standard-of-living, improving health care to eliminate the need for a strategy of large-families to offset risk of disease and mortality rates. <br><br>As part of any solution to managing resources more equitably and to demilitarize the west's ruinous, destructive Militarization of foreign policy linked to control of energy and other strategic 'National Security' resources, would be the project of creating a truly genuine participatory democratic system of global governance -- One which IMO must acknowledge that all people are stakeholders in the public commons and equal partners in the global community (likely based on socialist principles) -- not the kind of global feudalism which today obtains as the US alone determines its 'legal' authority by manipulated and distorted interpretation of laws and defacto force-of-arms, or the neoliberal/neocon/Straussian/Bush Inc. version of a New World Order protecting the elitist privelege of wealth and power.<br><br>To reitterate -- I don't disagree with many of McGowen's basic points, but I take exception to his contemptuous and dismissive attitude towards those progressives and peace-and-justice activists/thinkers and other liberals he identifies as 'leftists' who share some concern about the politics of scarcity and which he lumps together as PO proponents -- attributing a false unanimity and common agreement.<br><br>As one example where he makes unsubstantiated claims <br>-- not all geologists and engineers, economic analysts and investment service providers who have reported on or discussed information on oil reserves and production shortfalls and current oil-drilling/energy technology are oil industry insiders -- that ONLY insiders have been supporting the PO theory is an incredibly specious and misleading assertion -- which shows McGowen's facility to bending truth to 'prove' his point.<br><br>Among the inconsistencies -- IF readily-accessable abiotic oil resources are as plentiful as McGowen alleges, or that there are abundant capped and unutilizied or untapped oil production reserves/capacity, then why has the US been spending exorbitantly, both human resources and political/wealth capital, on controlling much of the world's oil-production regions -- Since China and Russia and Venezuela and Indonesia should simply be able to ramp-up avalaible capacity and underbid US suppliers?<br><br>As I see it, if there's no incentive to re-evaluate the US's heavy dependency on oil, then there will never be the political will for conservation, recycling, and developing alternative energy/transportation/food production systems, let alone instituting more effective, representative and accountable political governance.<br><br>For a number of reasons, I suspect McGowen may be a disinfo agent, since his approach is to undermine the need or awareness that substantial change is necessary -- his delicate and subtle manipulation of the blame-game to deflect responsibility for past decades of ruinous policies that have increasingly benefitted an elite status-quo onto 'leftists' for not being an effective opposition, is quite clever. It's a way of disempowering people by essentially sayihg, "There's no problem here folks -- Plenty oil for all!" So then, why change? Basically, his premise is that we've been lied to and cheated -- but we deserve it because we haven't effectively challenged the abuses of power. But since the 'catastrophe' of resource depletion and shortfalls is a myth being opportunistically exploited by the oil cartels and the political bosses in concert with the Military Industry (and one would presume the International Banks and 'other' globalist interests), then where's the rush or impetus for change?<br><br>I'm suspicious of anything that deflects the guilt of the world's biggest war criminals and the subsidy of terrorists and treason and organized crime and warlords and dictators and arms-dealers and money-launderers, as the US political/economic infrastructure and its covert intelligence agencies have done, and blames Ruppert for being a disinformationalist instead of, say, top folks in or associated with the CIA and Public Media execs and Lobbying Groups and the Corporatocracy.<br><br>Ruppert also talks about and publicizes a LOT of other issues, like the use of poison weapons like Agent Green and Depleted Uranium, indicting the War-and-energy-and-drugs-and-terror 'industry' for its close collusion in territorial conquest and poisoning communities around the world, health-risk and social justice issues, the prison complex scam and fascist/corporate domination via 'trade agreements' (as example in passing).<br><br>Yeah, I guess I see why the PTB would want to discredit him. SO, who's using WHO?<br><br>It's like, apparently a few folks on this board have begun to suspect Griffin of all people for having a sinister hidden agenda, based on some very spurious claims by somebody who wrote the angieon911 article-reponse in which they made a gross error of attribution (did anybody catch it? Griffin never claimed the Rockefeller Group funded his five-week stay in Bellagio with his wife <br>-- the only 'support' the Rockefeller group gave him and his group (which he acknowledged in the resulting book) was four-five days accomodation/meals) -- yet, it's remarkable how the author of angieon911 overlooked Griffin's projects which criticized the system of global power and corporate-capitalism that has devastated the developing world, in order not to confound their pet-premise. In another context, Wolf Pauli made reference to 'scoffing' -- helluva way to discredit rigorous, independant thinking.<br>Starman<br><!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :smokin --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smokin.gif ALT=":smokin"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>
