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Week 51 - December 23rd - 2002 |
David
Seaton's Energy Links® Editorial Reading
the newspapers, a war with Iraq is seen merely as a question of "when",
certainly not as a question of "whether" and the question of "why", is
seen as an ever-mutating shopping list of inconclusive theories. Few, anywhere,
are enthusiastic about the war. Even in the United States - outside of
Washington's "Beltway" - not many people find Bush's arguments for massive
death and destruction convincing. Practically nobody outside of the President's
inner circle and the Israel lobby wants to go to war - certainly the US
Army itself is unenthusiastic - and yet the war is seen as "inevitable".
In most countries expected to cooperate in the adventure public opinion
is running anywhere from 60 to 80 percent against attacking Iraq. Democratically
elected leaders that ignore their voter's opinion to follow Bush are praised
for exercising "leadership" and those leaders, such as Germany's Schröder,
who publicly express the feelings of those who elected them to office are
accused of being "opportunistic" and "cynical. Public opinion is the energy
of public life. José Ortega y Gasset summed it up succinctly when
he said, "a state is a state of opinion". Even in a dictatorship vast sums
are constantly spent on manipulating the thought and feelings of the population.
Democracies themselves are not above attempting to manipulate their public
opinion too, but in a democracy if that opinion refuses finally to be manipulated
then that is the final word. This acceptance of "vox populi vox Dei" is
supposedly a distinguishing characteristic of democracies. When voter's
feelings are ignored they know how to take revenge and democratic politicians
fear and respect that knowledge. Power when used the way Bush is using
it - to bend the world's common sense out of shape - damages the power
itself, among its many victims. In the question of the war with Iraq one
is led to inquire if the word "democratic" in the phrase "democratic
government" is beginning to take on the same "unbearable lightness
of being" as the word "food" takes on in the phrase "fast food".David
Seaton
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| Venezuela's
Oil: Wellspring of Bad Blood (New York Times)
As planning manager for Venezuela's most vaunted company, Petróleos de Venezuela, Juan Fernández was known for caution and restraint as he plotted the state oil giant's financial future. Now, the unruffled American-educated economist is plotting a different kind of future for the company: making sure its taps stay shut long enough to force President Hugo Chávez from power. Charging that Mr. Chávez's left-leaning government is leading Venezuela to ruin, Mr. Fernández, 47, and a vanguard of white-collar rebels have vowed to remain true to a two-week national strike that has paralyzed oil exports from the world's fifth-largest supplier, which provides 14 percent of the oil used in the United States. "I am not thinking of the risks," Mr. Fernández said in an interview at his home. Even as he vowed to stay off the job, the government said Mr. Fernández and four other leading Chávez opponents in the company had been dismissed. "This is my priority," he said. "This is what has become of my life." It is also a struggle for the life of Venezuela. When Mr. Chávez won power here in 1998, he pledged to use the oil revenues as his most powerful tool to remake a country with glaring disparities between a European-descended upper class and the vast majority of Venezuelans and Chávez supporters, who are poor and dark-skinned. "It cannot be seen as a state within a state," the president said of the oil company. Since then, Mr. Chávez's policies have divided Venezuelans as never before, and observers of the two-week political standoff now warn that whoever controls the $46 billion oil company will gain the upper hand and may well end up controlling the nation. "Oil is everything because that's how you control the money," said Roger Diwan, managing director at the Petroleum Finance Company, a Washington consulting company. "If the government succeeds in getting back the oil on line, they would have won. The question is, Is that possible at this stage?" Click here to read more Contents |
| Priming
Iraq's Oil Pumps (Business Week)
Sharif Ali bin AlHussein holds court in a richly decorated London drawing room full of pictures of his Hashemite relatives. Pride of place over the mantel goes to an oil portrait of his cousin, Feisal II, Iraq's last king, who was gunned down in Baghdad in July, 1958, during a military coup. Originally from Mecca, Hashemite kings reigned in Jordan and briefly in Syria after World War I, as well as in Iraq. Only the Jordanian branch has kept the throne. Sharif Ali is determined to return to Baghdad. While he's unlikely to wield much real power in post-Saddam Iraq, he hopes to play at least a titular role. A courteous, 46-year-old ex-banker, he chairs the Iraqi National Congress, a coalition working for the overthrow of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. Sharif Ali is ready, if asked, to return to Iraq as constitutional monarch after Saddam goes. "Our consultations indicate the Iraqi people feel restoration of Hashemite rule would be the best guarantee of a return to democracy," he says. Sharif Ali's mild British voice turns cold when talk turns to the Iraqi leader. "Saddam is a dead man walking," he says. Iraqi officials are contacting the opposition, he adds, seeking to save themselves and their families. "People are looking for bolt-holes. They are not preparing to resist." Sharif Ali also has an encouraging vision of the landscape after Saddam's demise. "It is a unified state with a government that is functioning. A week after the invasion, hundreds of thousands of civil servants will begin turning up asking what to do." He doesn't think a prolonged U.S. military occupation will be necessary. But, he adds, if Iraq's economic situation worsens, all bets could be off. Avoiding economic collapse will require massive debt forgiveness and the revival of Iraq's struggling oil industry. Iraq's petro wealth--its reserves are second only to Saudi Arabia's--is a big plus, but its fields are filled with broken pumps and other dilapidated equipment, according to the U.N. Even before any war wreaks costly devastation, Iraq faces tens of billions of dollars in claims for debt and war reparations from Russia and the gulf states. Click here to read more Contents |
| Beware
an ecological catastrophe in Iraq (International Herald Tribune)
Just over a decade ago, facing imminent defeat by Western forces, Saddam Hussein gave the order to unleash an ecological disaster. As Iraqi forces retreated they set fire to some 600 oil wells across Kuwait and intentionally spilled 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf. Today Saddam could deliberately create another catastrophe if attacked. Iraq has huge oil reserves. The regime would probably strike against invading forces in ways that maximize collateral damage and make the occupation more difficult and expensive. As policy planners discuss postwar political arrangements for Iraq, it is essential to prepare for possible environmental devastation. The human suffering caused by any fighting is likely to be prolonged by environmental destruction. The Gulf in general and Iraq in particular have a fragile ecosystem. What many recall as a short-lived conflict resulting in the liberation of Kuwait was in fact a devastating blow from which the region and its people have yet to recover. Iraqi forces created much of the immediate ecological hardship facing the Gulf region after the war. The oil they spilled into the Gulf not only tarred beaches and killed more than 25,000 birds. Scientists predict that damaged fisheries in the Gulf will not recover for at least 180 years. Click here to read more Contents |
| Oil's
Not Well in Spain (Wired)
When an oil tanker carrying 20 million gallons of oil split in two and sank off the coast of northern Spain in late November, the government downplayed the event, saying most of the oil would congeal in the near-freezing ocean and never reach land. But the black tide did arrive, coating hundreds of miles of pristine shoreline with tar, decimating wildlife and ruining the livelihood of thousands of families who rely on the sea. The Prestige was carrying more than twice the amount of fuel oil contained by the Exxon Valdez when it ran into an Alaska reef in 1989. Nevertheless, the traditional Spanish media -- most of which is controlled by the government -- has largely failed to cover the event. "I believe there is an unjustified alarmism," said Prime Minister José María Aznar in response to critics a week after the Prestige sank. Meanwhile, activists have flocked to the Internet to narrate the untold story with photographs, personal accounts and independent reports of the disaster. "The coast is asphalted as if it were a highway ... the air is unbreathable," wrote Coruña University student Cristina Molina in an e-mail that has been circulated widely. "I assure you that it is one thing to see it on television and another to be there, to touch it, smell it and to see the beaches from the sand, to see the birds completely covered with crude without being able to move, and to see the fishermen, people accustomed to hardships and a hard life, crying when they look at the ocean." The University of Vigo has consistently contradicted the government's pronouncements on the advance of the black tide -- a term never mentioned by the official press, locals say -- with reports published by French and Portuguese experts. Additionally, activists have used online forums to create petitions goading the government to greater action, to coordinate volunteers and to organize protests. "Once again, the Internet has proven to be an effective means of communication when faced with government censorship of the news media," said opposition Sen. Félix Lavilla Martínez. "The Spanish people have seen the images and commentaries; solidarity has been extended through the Web." Click here to read more Contents |
| Madrid
suffers backwash of environmental crisis (Financial Times)
(...)Inevitably, the spill has tarnished the reputation of the government in Madrid, which tried to play down the scale of the disaster and then bungled the cleanup. "There have been six major oil spills off Galicia's coast in 30 years, and we still have no skimmers, no tow boats and no barriers for high seas," Mr Martínez says. "It is as if the authorities had learned nothing from previous accidents." Mr Aznar has been embarrassed by reports that key ministers were away from their desks relaxing when the first slick hit. Manuel Fraga, Galicia's 80-year-old regional president and a member of Mr Aznar's Popular party, was hunting. Hundreds of thousands of Galicians have demonstrated to demand Mr Fraga's resignation. "The Spanish government has been absent throughout the crisis," says Sebastián Losada, a director of Greenpeace in Spain. "Throughout Galicia, it is the fishermen who are organising themselves to combat the oil spill." More than 60 scientists from the University of Vigo also criticised the government for aggravating matters by ordering that the Prestige be towed into high seas. "The government ignored the accumulated knowledge of 25 years of scientific observation of the prevailing winds and currents off the coast of Galicia," they wrote to the prime minister. Meanwhile, Mr Aznar's ministers have been passing the buck. Several harbour hopes of succeeding him in 2004, and none wants to be remembered as the man responsible for Spain's worst oil spill. "This oil spill will be the funeral of many of our fishing communities," Mr Martínez says. "There will be another wave of emigration and then there will be nothing left of our seafaring traditions." Click here to read more Contents |
| European
Council Upholds Oil Spill Prevention Action (Evironmental news Service)
The two day meeting of the European Council that concludes Denmark's Presidency wound up today with full support for efforts to prevent oil spills in European waters like that from the tanker "Prestige" in November. The European Council brings together the Heads of State or Government of the 15 Member States of the European Union and the President of the European Commission. The decisions taken at the European Council meetings point the direction to definition of the general political guidelines of the European Union. The European Council expressed its "regret and grave concerns" with regard to the serious accident of the oil tanker "Prestige" off the northwest coast of Spain. Caught in rough weather November 13, the tanker broke up and sank November 19, spilling at least 15,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil into the Atlantic off Spain's Costa da Morte, or Coast of Death. "The ensuing damage to the marine and socio-economic environment and the threat to the livelihood of thousands of persons are intolerable," the European Council said in its statement today. Click here to read more Contents |
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