Oil Things Must Pass

I went to the beach last weekend and stepped in a pile of asphalt that had been floating in Santa Monica Bay and had washed ashore after being dumped by a tanker at the oil refineries south of LAX. It made me mad. Oil companies get away with everything, including soiling my shoes.

Last week, the CEOs of the big five oil companies testified before Congress about why they needed their welfare checks while making record money from gambling. Because of Wall Street oil speculators, the price of a barrel of oil is driven up (in some estimates) $44 a barrel to about $100 a barrel.

Speculation has nothing to do with the hands on exploration and production of oil, nor does it have to do with supply and demand. Speculation should be made illegal or heavily regulated. Obama needs to rein in these speculators. He promised in June 2008 that he would do so. Do you think he will now?

Right. On to the next paragraph.

I believe big oil’s Gang of Five should pay for all wars fought in the Middle East. It is as obvious that Libya is not about human rights as it was that Iraq was not about WMD.

I also believe that in wars fought for oil by governments on behalf of oil corporations, the corporations should not only pay for the wars like a business expense, but they and their proxy governments should be liable for damages just like in business, but not like in oil spills. These are blood spills, so they would not be able to be passed on to the taxpayer, consumer and next generation American like BP is doing in the Gulf. Talk about your entitlements!

This means that killing innocent children in their profiteering wars would cost them monetarily in amounts much greater than the 1-2% taxpayer welfare they so hate to lose. One oil executive threatened to move their operation out of the US. I say “Go ahead! Leave! And don’t let your rig hit you in the ass on the way out!”

Necessity is the mother of invention and if America needs to invent a better way to do everything without oil and gas we will.

In fact, is it not a good idea to start a boycott of one of the big five to send a message and scare the hell out of the other four? Of course it is.

And hey, what about the sequel to Who Killed the Electric Car called Revenge of the Electric Car? Try to see it if you can. We need to change the world we live in. Maybe this is a way.

Children and War

We are human beings with some control over our shared destiny. The world is getting smaller. We are all becoming closer. I have no misconceptions about being able to end war anytime soon. However, is it not possible for all of us to resolve that children should never ever die in a war?

According to an April 14, 2009 article in The Telegraph, of the people killed in US air strikes whose gender could be determined, 46 percent were women and 39 percent were children. The same article states that a sizable number of children killed in Iraq were killed as part of warfare between ethnic and religious rivals.

Regardless of whether its smart bombs or sectarian bullets, the death of children is wrong. It doesn’t matter if today’s religions consider it a sin or not. When I look around the world I don’t see that today’s major religions are making the world better—in fact, their effect is quite the opposite.

A 1996 report from UNICEF titled “Children in War” stated that “Recent developments in warfare have significantly heightened the dangers for children. During the last decade, it is estimated (and these figures, while specific, are necessarily orders of magnitude) that child victims have included:

2 million killed;

4-5 million disabled;

12 million left homeless;

more than 1 million orphaned or separated from their parents;

some 10 million psychologically traumatized.”

That was from 15 years ago.

And then there are the drug cartels. Last April 9 The Washington Post ran an article titled “Mexican drug cartels targeting and killing children”. Read it. The details are abhorrent.

For children who survive war, there’s The Children and War Foundation. You may be interested in finding out more about them and other similar organizations.

From Qaddafi’s grandchildren last weekend, to all those kids killed in Vietnam, to those Hitler destroyed in camps, to the American Indian children massacred by the US Calvary, to the children Herod killed, to all children killed since the beginning of time, killing children for any reason is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. There are some things that should be sacred globally. Loving and nurturing children should be high on that sacred list.

The point I’m trying to make is this: I believe we are supposed to evolve and progress into becoming a peaceful and passive species. If others also believe that, can we not choose to progress toward that eventuality? Is it not a mixture of belief and destiny that controls our fate anyway?

And can we not at least resolve to try to protect children as a step toward eradicating war forever and as a step toward that peaceful, passive destiny?

We may not be able to bring peace to the world, but can we not begin to bring limits to war? To scale it back? I may sound naïve. I may be naïve. But to change things for the better, we must start with what is considered impossible.

The global pro-peace, anti-war movement is within all of us. We just have to choose to follow it and build it. It may not be easy, and it may take a long time, but it can be done.

The first, arguably, attainable goal we must make toward realizing that goal is: no more children will be killed in wars for oil. Maybe we should begin counting the price of a barrel of oil not in dollars, but in the number of bodies of dead children.

And we can strengthen that decision by choosing to permanently move away from oil for all its uses and purposes.