Unfortunately Mr Canuck, you 've gone off on one again without anything to back you up (sorry if some parts of this are bit rushed, I typed a reply out once and my PC crashed just as I pressed the send button. Aaaaargh!)
Its quite possible that the CIA reckons the oil price has been going up but I'm not "simply wrong" according to Shebonti Ray Dadwal, Research Officer, The Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, in "Oil Price Crisis: Implications for Gulf Producers":
" In mid-February 1999, the price of crude oil, which had averaged between $13 to $11 per barrel in 1998 (from around $19.30 per cent in 1997), slipped into single digit figures of $9.96 per barrel of Benchmark Brent, sending the international oil market into a fresh tailspin. Though news of
continued depressed oil prices was welcome to oil-importing countries, including India, it brought little cheer to oil-producing and exporting countries, especially those belonging to the increasingly ineffective Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Concern was voiced that the producers did not have the political will to tackle an increasing crude oil stockpile; some members like Saudi Arabia complained that fellow members like Venezuela and Iran were showing no inclination to implement the cuts which had been agreed to in 1998 while Kuwait tried to rally others to agree to additional production cuts. Meanwhile, non-OPEC members like Mexico and Norway, who in a rare show of solidarity with OPEC, had agreed a year ago to a historic agreement to shave around three million barrels per day (b/d), declared that they would not consider any fresh output cuts till there was full compliance by all producers. In fact, the OPEC Secretaries said that an average of secondary sources showed that the cartel's supply had increased in the month of January by 280,000 b/d to 27.47 million b/d. The fall in oil prices began in end-1997 due to several factors. Despite signs that an Asian financial crisis was setting in, in December 1997, OPEC, led by the biggest producer, Saudi Arabia, decided to go in for a 10 per cent quota hike, thereby raising the cartel's production to 27.3 million b/d. At the time, the Saudis, fed up of playing the role of swing producer, had reasoned that this would stabilise production and put an end to the quota busting indulged in by some of the members, like Nigeria and Venezuela. But the timing was wrong and had disastrous consequences on oil prices and the market in general. "
Which kinda rumbles your argument. We can argue about the price of oil if you like, but that doesn't change the facts. You also talk about "the 5 million foreign guest workers in Saudi Arabia, doing the dirty work. How do they fit in with your neat theory?". But if you had actually read the article I was originally referring to you would have seen that it explicitly talks about the fact that Saudi Arabia's "strategy was aimed at reducing the large and growing unemployment rate among its young citizens, its dependence on oil exports, and its huge foreign labor force (in 1993 there were 4.6 million foreign workers out of a total population of 14.6 million; today they are approximately 6 million in a population of about 23 million) by "getting the economy moving again." "
Strike 2?
For someone who gets so upset about being called a bar-room loudmouth, you're not slow to wheel out the insults yourself. You suggest that because I don't want to live in a commune that I'm "unprepared to do anything truly difficult, in the name of [my] ideals." I've spent 23 years getting involved in industrial action, community struggles, direct action and street protest. I've been assaulted, attacked, imprisoned, fined, spied on and harassed. Quite honestly, going off to commune with nature and live in a wood for a bit sounds like the sort of thing people do for a holiday! If you think that defending my colleagues as a union shop steward against aggressive bosses who've just sacked 12 people on the spot is easier than going without TV for a while, I think I would have to disagree (sacrifice air-conditioning? I don't even know anyone with air- conditioning!).
You also wheel out all the old stereotypes about anti-Capitalists that you've picked up from right-wing newspapers. I'm not middle class or from middle class roots, and although I did go to college (on a full maintenance grant), I wouldn't say that has had more effect on me than the rest of my life spent working in quarries,on farms and building sites, driving buses, delivering cars (and post for a while), cleaning offices and schools (ugh! the boys toilets still haunt me!), fixing machines etc etc. What really made me laugh out loud was the suggestion that "the system ... continues to nurture [our] right to dissent". This in the year that 4 people have been shot down by the police during demonstrations in Europe, one fatally, in the year that hundreds of people were prevented from travelling across borders to protests because they were potential "troublemakers", when hundreds of people were assaulted by the Genovese police for daring to protest against the G8 summit, including people who were battered senseless, tortured and jailed
without charge. In the wake of Sept 11th we are going to get new laws that will increase the amount of surveillance, spying and harassment of activists. This in the year that it has been almost impossible to hold protests in London without being subject to new police Section 60 powers (of detention and forcible photography) on thousands of people. Far from "nurturing" dissent, it has
become abundantly clear over the last 12 months that the Government is intent on
criminalising dissent.
The other pathetic slur that you charge us with is that we "apparently either sympathize with or adulate" the Sept 11th hijackers. Once again, you show that you didn't even bother to read the posts you are slagging off. In the very post of mine you are referring to I said "we need to clearly articulate our opposition to both versions of the ruling class - the West's and the funda-mental-ists, neither of whom have anything to offer the working class but an eternity of misery". You seem to be caught up in this frenzy of blame and revenge, so much so that you have abandoned your interest in liberty, to the point where you believe that trying to understand the events around us is equivalent to supporting mass murder. Its sad that rather than make a coherent response to this tragedy you would rather wade through the blood of poverty-stricken children and hand the
funda-mental-ists the Islam/West polarisation of the middle east that they desperately need to survive. I read
something the other day, written by some liberal commentator that I'd never heard of before, which is perhaps relevant here: "If Americans fail to understand why their country is hated, it is often because they barely comprehend the extent of its influence. No one travels halfway round
the world to kill themselves amid a people with whom they feel no connection. Even in the Arabian desert, America is uncomfortably close. For the US, it may seem like a foreign war, but on the other side it is more like a civil war"
Strike 3, you're outta here!
, i called you a nasty person with a wink and smile 
