Leave it to that Neanderthal in the White House to blow what could be the last chance to quiet the futures market and stabilize the economy before oil prices send it into free fall.
SINGAPORE (AFP) — Oil prices were higher in Asian trade Monday after weekend talks in Geneva aimed at convincing Iran to halt its nuclear programme made little progress, dealers said.Washington's decision to send Under Secretary of State William Burns to the talks marked a major US policy shift, which has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1980.
Analysts have said the shift was one of the factors that helped to explain a plunge in oil prices last week.
AFP
How do you convince someone to halt what they claim not to be doing?
Iran insists their nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. They've argued all along that it is their legal right, authorized by its membership as a non-nuclear weapon state in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which guarantees its members the right "to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes." What evidence is there to prove they are doing otherwise?
All we have are accusations from Israel and the hearsay of some exiled Iranian groups. Haven't we seen this movie before?
Iran UN envoy: Exiled group feeding U.S. lies on weapons planIran's ambassador to the United Nations said that an Iranian opposition group is feeding fabricated evidence to Washington that purports to show the Tehran government tried to produce nuclear weapons. - Haaretz
We all remember when Iraqi expats, "Curveball" and Chalabi, peddled those lies about Saddam's non-existent WMD.
Same story, different actors.
Posted by Diana at July 21, 2008 01:27 AM.
Now are you starting to get it?
Dubya is not an American, he's an Oilman.
Big Oil's man in our White House is doing this to push prices & profits to the limit. The last thing they want is cheap oil or gas. As producers and distributors, their margin may be constant or grow with prices, but the profits will grow even if demand slips a little.
Consumers have no real alternatives. They have to pay whatever it costs to get from suburb to work, work to suburb. They may cut back a bit, temporarily. But once the Oilco's have established their $3.99+/- price point, the car culture will be back in full force, producing higher profits than ever. People will be happy to pay anything under $5/gal from now on. Thanks to Dubya's saber-rattling.
As to Iran, we should be eliminating nuclear weapons everywhere, not forcing them on nutso Third-World countries. Dubya is helping out the multinational Defense industry by cranking up the old Cold War again. The swords we were going to beat back into plowshares after the end of the first phony Cold War are being retooled worldwide. They don't make money off a "Peace Dividend." And only by maintaining a constant state of fear can a National Security State survive. That's almost absolute power, to do anything your corporate buddies want you to do.
Dubya loves Iran, because they legitimize his paranoid world view, in service of the Oil & Defense industries. If anything, he is enabling their "nukuler" program: Everybody knows now that the US will invade you if you don't have nukes, as in Iraq, but not if you do, as in N. Korea. That's the real lesson of the "Bush Doctrine," and no third-world potentate will ever forget it.
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See my comments in the posts below regarding oil profits.
Iran doesn't need nukes, they have the oil weapon.
WMD are a bogeyman emanating from the paranoid minds of Zionists in Israel and the pro-Israel dominated U.S. Congress, plus the old Cold War farts in the Pentagon. Bush has to appease all these factions with his rhetoric, just as Obama is now being forced to do in order to get into the White House. But with rising oil prices threatening the economy Bush knew he had to dampen things down in the oil pits of the commodities market by talking "diplomacy" (as if he even knows what the word means.)
As to Americans not having alternatives, you are correct. This was by design. The U.S. government, oil and auto companies have worked together to make it so since the 50s, and as Americans loved their cars and gas was cheap and plentiful, there was no incentive, and no pressure, to build mass transportation as an alternative to the car culture. Now that gas prices are higher than people can afford, they will have to. The new administration will have to shift tax revenues from wars that benefit the old status quo, to mass transportation and energy alternatives. There is a new energy paradigm in the world, and the U.S. has to adapt to it. The old power elite either doesn't know how, or simply can't adapt ("Can't teach an old dog new tricks"). All they can think of to do is drill for more oil. Obama is the fresh kid on the block and has talked about an "Appolo" type project. Something on that order will have to be put in play to wean us off our fossil fuel dependency.
Now I ask you, is that what BO and the old war-profiteering military-industrial complex wants?
I don't think so.