Labels: bad news, depression, good news
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posted by profmarcus at
7/03/2010
OPEC called Monday on the United States to reconsider a ban on new deep-water drilling that could hold back oil supplies — despite safety concerns in the wake of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Abdalla Salem El Badri, secretary-general of the 12-member Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, says offshore drilling is an important source of oil and any ban would be too hasty when the cause of the Gulf of Mexico spill is still unclear.
"We should not really ban it and we should not jump to conclusions," he told reporters after meeting European Union officials in Brussels.
President Barack Obama last month imposed a six-month ban on Gulf of Mexico drilling after an April 20 explosion at a BP oil rig killed 11 workers and blew out a well 5,000 feet (1,525 meters) underwater — spewing out hundreds of millions of gallons (liters) of oil.
A federal judge last week overturned the ban as rash and heavy-handed. The White House has appealed, saying continued drilling exposes workers and the environment "to a danger that the president does not believe we can afford."
Labels: Barack Obama, environmental damage, Gulf Coast, offshore drilling, oil, OPEC
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
6/28/2010
The uniformity on Planet Norte is striking. Each person is a unit, installed in life support boxes in the suburbs and cities; all are fed, clothed by the same closed-loop corporate industrial system. Everywhere you look, inhabitants are plugged in at the brainstem to screens downloading their state approved daily consciousness updates. iPods, Blackberries, notebook computers, monitors in cubicles, and the ubiquitous TV screens in lobbies, bars, waiting rooms, even in taxicabs, mentally knead the public brain and condition its reactions to non-Americaness. Which may be defined as anything that does not come from of Washington, DC, Microsoft or Wal-Mart.
For such a big country, the "American experience" is extremely narrow and provincial, leaving its people with approximately the same comprehension of the outside world as an oyster bed. Yet there is that relentless busyness of Nortenians. That sort of constant movement that indicates all parties are busy-busy-busy, but offers no clue as to just what they are busy at.
We can be sure however, that it has to do with consuming. Everything in America has to do with consuming. So much so that we find not the slightest embarrassment in calling ourselves "the consumer society." Which is probably just as well, since calling ourselves something such as "the just society" might have been aiming a bit too high? Especially for a nation that never did find enough popular support to pass any of the 200 anti-lynching bills brought before its Congress (even Franklin Roosevelt refused to back them).
On the other hand, there is no disputing that we do reduce all things to consumption. Or acquiring money for consumption. Or paying on the debt for past consumption. It keeps things simple, and stamps them as authentically American.
For example, now faced with what may be the biggest ecological disaster in human history, I'm hearing average Americans up here talk of the Gulf oil "spill" (when they speak of it at all -- TV gives the illusion those outside the Gulf region give a shit), in terms of its effect on: (A) the price of seafood; and (B) jobs in tourism and fishing. Only trolls stunted by generations of inbred American style capitalism could do such a thing: reduce a massive ocean dead zone to the cost of a shrimp cocktail or a car payment.
Meanwhile, even as capitalism shows every sign of collapsing upon them under the weight of its sheer non-sustainability, Norteamericanos wait like patient, not-too-bright children for its "recovery." Recovery, of course, is that time when they can once again run through the malls and outlet stores, the car lots and the fried chicken palaces eating, grabbing and consuming. No doubt, something resembling a recovery will be staged for their benefit, thereby goosing their pocketbooks at least one more time before the rest of the world forecloses on the country.
Labels: BP, capitalism, consumerism, Joe Bageant, materialism, North American, oil, recovery, United States
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
6/27/2010
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