Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Petro-dollar, petro-euro, Iraq, China, and You
On a list I write to, someone made a statement that the Iraq War was actuallly alll about the almight petro-dollar. Someone then retorted

PPLLEEAASSSEEE… … don’t try to make the totally absurd assertion
that the war in Iraq is not about oil. If Iraq had no oil we would not
be there. This IS a war about control of energy resources… plain and
simple.

Being of sound mind and body, I had to insert my two sense and I responded:

Actually, you are BOTH correct. It’s not a zero-sum Boolean thing – it’s a confluence of complex and inter-related actions, needs, desires, demands, and systems.

First, you are *not* completely correct in saying it is a war “about control of energy resources… plain and simple.” There is nothing pure or simple about this conflict.

That is certainly a major part of the equation, but Ron’s point about petro-dollars is equally important. Iraq was under our thumb and a virtual non-entity during the Clinton Administration, because he basically bombed the crap out of them. Iraq was in a nearly identical, if not somewhat worse, condition at the invasion than it was on the last day of the Clinton White House. What changed was S.Hussein’s decision to move Iraqi oil off the dollar toward the euro. One of the first things to be implemented upon the invasion of Iraq was to put it back on the petro-dollar.

So, yes, Oil *is* fundamental to the war in Iraq, but not the only – the economic machine around it is of equal importance, as is the geo-political strategies of how to deal with a powerful China.

Example: Let’s say ALL oil producers sell oil in a variety of currencies – pretend there is no “petro-dollar”, making the market similar to pre-1945. Then the invasion of Iraq would be seen as an absolute grab for the resources, as the only way a given resource would be salable would be in the prevailing currency of the invading party, in this case, the USA.

We had vast control over the inputs and outputs of Iraq throughout the 1990s, Iraqi oil was in petrodollars, and there was no invasion. Once Hussein started grumbling about dumping the dollar, things got interesting, and when he made moves to pull out of the dollar and go to the euro – bingo: the hammer comes down and he’s found hiding in a spider hole.

Another aspect of this is the geo-politics of China, especially their strategic vision of the USA and geopolitics in general. This report is getting a little dated (pre 9/11 and Bush) but the fundamentals it discusses are very much a part of the continuing picture.

CHINA DEBATES the FUTURE SECURITY ENVIRONMENT by Michael Pillsbury, January 2000, National Defense University Press.

Both Clinton and China shared a similar long range outlook: a multi-polar vision of global security, where the USA gradually builds down into being a local power primarily dominating the Americas, China dominating east asia, and the EU in Europe. With this kind of an arrangement, the threat to China would be mostly economic, from India. China’s military was not united in their analysis, and some felt that the USA would not go to a multi-polar system for at least another generation. The installation of the Bush Junta proved their skepticism.

So: combine these factors, and the contemporary situation makes a lot more sense – it’s not just *merely* the oil resource itself, it is the economic and monetary structure that surrounds it that is of grave importance as well. With that in mind, we can see why Iran is such a threat to the Bush Junta’s neocon plans of unipolar global dominance. A devalued petrodollar that is weak against the petro-euro makes it harder to finance the military adventures necesary to prop up the petrodollar and access to the resource that the petrodollar denominates: Oil.

Since the USA is bogged down in Afghanistan and iraq, it is extremely unlikely that the USA can actually succeed in invading Iran. Therefore, proxies will be found to remove the Iranian nuclear capabilities, military or otherwise. This would, obviously, fall to Israel.

However, this wil not necessarily remove the Iranian petro-euro policy – and that becomes a significant stumbling block to the unipolar desires of the Bush Junta War Machine. It will serve to devalue the dollar, and gradually eat away the debt assets owned by the Chinese. However, the inflation created by this devaluation might not lead to a hyper-inflation, as the monetarist policies of the Fed will step in and raise interest rates to reduce the inflating money supply.

Depending on how high the interest rates go and the inflation rate rises, debt management becomes interesting – those with old debt will see their debts reduce in value with the lower dollar. Those with new debt or interest variable debt will get stuck if:

a: the interest rates wildly exceed the inflation rate
b: the interest rates don’t drop as fast as decreases in inflation
c: an oddly contradictory position of finding money very hard to get, and not worth very much when you do get it… Stagflation on steroids.

To counter these problems, the US.gov will have to directly reduce the deficit to zero, ASAP, in order to reduce pressure on the interest rates and free up money. How it does that will be “very interesting…”

This makes for a complex and volatile situation – enemies of the unipolar American Empire working to undermine the currency, economic rivals competing for the declining resources, a deeply conflicted populace in the American Empire, and burgeoning populations – it’s not a good situation, and it certainly demonstrates that the war in Iraq is not as straight-forward a “pure and simple” resource war as one might think.

Monday, January 23, 2006
A debate

I’m on the ROE2 email list, and Matt Savinar made some statements that I disagreed with.

My rant follows:

I think this needs some perspective and intelligence applied here.

Someone wrote:

>I’m just tired of this “if you understand PO and
> protest the war you’re a hypocrite” schtick.”

and Matt Savinar replied

>I guess it should be “if you understand Peak Oil, protest the war
>and fail to lower your energy consumption to the absolute bare-
>minimum, then yes you are a hypocrite.”

And I have to pull out my “bullshit” card.

The simple fact is, the SIMPLEST interactions with our economy is directly dependent and involved with:

1. a wildly destructive industrial system of resource consumption and tool/commodity production.
2. a massively exploitative method of labour organisation that has far reaching effects in terms of energy and resource consumption.
3. an intricate web of social and material relations of interdependency between these massively destructive systems and citizens of the societies that engage in such practices.

If we use Mr Savinar’s judgment “to lower your energy consumption to the absolute bare-minimum” we have no sense of what constitutes the “bare minimum”, in fact we have no sense of what constitutes the bare maximum, but that’s another issue.

This reductivist nonsensical position reminds me of National Lampoon’s record “Lemmings” where a “Weatherman” takes the stage. I have it almost memorised (I’ve owned the record since I was 14) and the rant (performed by a young and long haired Chevy Chase) goes like this (Caps are on purpose, because he shouts the whole thing):

“YA KNOW – YA DON’T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO TELL WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS! ALRIGHT! ALL OF US HERE, EVERY MAN WOMAN AND CHILD -ALL OF US – WE’RE OPPRESSORS – PIGS! WE OWE IT TO THE THIRD WORLD TO OFF OURSELVES!!! IF YOU’RE NOT A BLACK HOMOSEXUAL WORKING CLASS WOMAN – YOU’RE AN OPPRESSOR – PIG!!! YOU DESERVE TO DIE!!!! EVERYTIME YOU SHIT OR PISS YOU DUMP URAEIC ACID ON THE MOTHER EARTH AND THEN YOU WIPE YOUR ASS WITH THE GUTS OF A TREE! YOU’RE NOT WORTH THE LIFE OF THE COW THAT MADE YOUR BELT YOU RUNNING DOG JACKAL! ALRIGHT!!! NOW, AS WE ALL KNOW, THE CAPITALIST PIGS OWN THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION FOR GUNS AND RAZOR BLADES AND ALL THE OTHER MEANS OF SELF EXTERMINATION. SO WE SUGGEST THAT IF YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING MEANINGFUL THAT YOU BEAT YOURSELF TO DEATH IN A FOUR FOOT DEEP PILE OF ORGANIC COMPOST! AND FOR THOSE WHO CAN’T DO THAT, WE HAVE TNT SUPPOSITORIES! POWER TO THE CORRECT PEOPLE! PEACE AND LOVE!”

Basically, to be quite simple, the ENTIRE system is completely rotten to the core, and it will have to disappear. However, I can assure you it will not be replaced by some benign and gentle wonderment of enlighted self-rule. Such notions are bourgeois/industrialist mythology and false consciousness. IT ain’t gonna happen. It will be replaced by a system of repression and brutality, just as nasty and vicious as anything that has preceded it. It might be “nicer” than the previous system, and “cleaner” than the previous system, but it will still exist by standing on the necks of the working poor, just like this one, and
the manorial feudalism that preceded us, and the imperial slave states that preceded that, and the theocractic slave states that preceded them, and so on and so forth.

There was no golden past, and there is no golden future. There is only this struggle – forever.

There is no possible reduction to purity or innocence, and Mr Savinar’s claims require such like as prerequisites of understanding. Without that there is no liminal value of “bare minimum” as a possible judgement.

Rather than engage in such histrionic nonsense, I think it is much more useful to say “this is where we are – it’s complex, and messy. We need to get to some close approximation of (here), and how we do that is of utmost importance to the continuance of the human project.”

What (here) is, often devolves into metaphysical thumb twiddling by the self satified or finger-pointing by the self-righteous. What needs to happen is organisation and co-operation around a common goal: the de-carbonisation of society.

This may *or may not* result in the complete collapse of industrialism itself – I don’t think any of us will live long enough to find out. However: it *is* up to us to *consciously* set into motion the social, political, and material practise of the rudiments of the society that will follow ours. I have stated before and I will say it again: everyone born between 1945 and 2010 has a special mission: we *must* do our dead level best to again “set into motion the social, political, and material practise of the rudiments of the society that will follow ours.” If we don’t, then it’s game over for humanity.

Matt Continued:

“If I may be so bold, I’m tired of this “I can have my cake and eat it too” schtick which maintains that a person can make individual and regular use of the most “death-dealing device every devised” while still saying (with a straight face) that they opposse the death-dealing necessary to get the energy to run the device.”

I’m not, because every breath you take, every move you make, every step you take, every bond you break, has far reaching and devastating effects on the entire system of life on this planet. Except for the energy from the sun, and the crap that falls from the sky, the earth is a closed system. “Everytime you shit or piss, you dump ureic acid on the mother earth and you wipe your ass with the guts of a tree”. So kindly dispense with the rhetoric, and get on with the real problem: how we use energy to accomplish how we live.

Matt then writes:

“Thing is, without giving up individual use of the car at a minimum, your individual energy use is still going to be “collosal.” Giving up individual use of a car does not, in of itself, lower your consumption to sustainable levels but it is at least a big jump in that direction. ”

That depends. Let’s say I DON’T own a car. But I live in a single family suburban home, and I’m afraid of the dark so I leave all the lights on, and I hate the cold so I pump the heat, and I spend an hour every day in my hot tub. And how do I get to sell my labour? By riding a diesel bus to work every day.

Now, one might own a USED car, and live in a cave eating roots and berries.

Cars are only one part of the puzzle: it’s the puzzle itself that is the problem. So rather than whinge about who is more destructive than the other, I think a far better use of time (which is geting shorter by the day) and energy (which is running lower by the day) would be to organise and develop social and political systems to transition to a new resource practice.

It WILL be slow, and it WILL be complicated. Tough. That’s life. There won’t be an apocalypse. Sorry. We don’t deserve one – it would be too simple.

THAT all said, I MUST say that Mr Savinar’s website is a truly wonderful thing, and I support and applaud his efforts in raising
consciousness regarding energy consumption. That is the critical first step. The next step (and it is several orders of magnitude more complex and difficult) is to organise – we need to spend time with our neighbours and develop the society we want to live in.

Nihilism will not get us out of this fix, anymore than terminal starvation is a successful method of losing weight. We “ate/reproduced” our way into this mess, we will have to “eat/reproduce” our way out of it.