by ubercynicmeister » Thu 01 Jun 2006, 23:14:46
Heaven Help Us, but the following article is so wonderfully off in the Politcally Correct direction it's a good reason for the non-Peak Oil Aware public to reject Peak Oil entirely
(link to article):
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shepard Bliss', 'W')hat might women... have to contribute to the growing awareness of Peak Oil and its potential consequences? How will they be impacted by oil descent? Would they tend to raise issues of family ...and relationships more? Would they be more concerned not just with clear thinking but with how people feel when they hear about oil descent? Would they tend to be less competitive and more cooperative?
My answer: firstly, the cliches are so over-the-top they are meaningless ("...have to contribute to the growing awareness of..." is a well-hackneyed cliche, now so utterly devoid of meaning, it's useless).
Secondly: in answer the above question about whether women are less competitive than men, I reply: Margret Thatcher.
Maggie was a woman, yup, she was. She was also Prime Minister Of Great Britain & Northern Ireland. She also damn near got herself a Civil War over the coal miner's issues (so much for being "sensitive" & "caring"...if Britain had been shown much more of Maggie's Caring & sensitivity, they wouldn't have a Britain today). This conflict went on for many a year, and was the reason Margret Thatcher's name ended up being so roundly hated by the Working Class.
She promoted Clueless Consumerism as a way of drinking up vast quantities of North Sea Oil, which she gave away at a bargain basement price, to break the afore-said Coal Miner's strikes. She promoted sneering Yuppie-ism, a la Ayn Rand's "The Virtue Of Selfishness", and let's face it, if selfishness ever was a virtue, Margret Thatcher was a saint in that regard.
She went to war with the Argentinians over a useless scrap of land in the middle of the South Atlantic known as the Falkland Islands. So much for the much-promoted idea of the Politically Correct that "if women were in charge, there would be no wars."
Maggie privatised EVERYTHING that wasn't nailed down, sending the railways (British Rail) into bankruptcy, after years of showing a steady cash profit. People in England will be paying increasing water bills for decades, until the monoploy (the "freemarket") she created on their water supply contracts run out - some for as long as 30 years, it is said. And those Freemarket Monopolies will cut pensioners off without a moment's hesitation, too, if they cannot pay the bills, which are always going up and up (but the pensions never do).
She promoted clueless massively expensive road-building and savagely cut spending on rail both in terms of new construction and also maintenance, which has resulted in that "recent" run of catastrophic derailments & crashes on British Rail, which (pre Maggie) was seen as one of the most safe ways to travel. She shut down old industry after old industry to concentrate on "high tech" all of which ended up in China, anyway. She deregulated every Corporate Control, and thereby gave the world the Bank Of Credit & Commerce (International) scandal some years back, which saw the entire Western World's banking sector come closer than ever to collapse, precipitated by the Barclay's Bank supposed "rogue trader" scandal, all of which would have been easily prevented under the old pre Margret Thatcher Regulations.
She influenced one Ronald Ray Gun in his politics, and was the person who really ran the US, in the late 1980's. Reaganomics would have been a lot more accurately called "Thatcherite Economics" because that's who the actual author was.
She spent her time helping brutal dictator after brutal dictator right the way around the world, the best-known of which was one General Pinochet of Chile, whose murderous regime was well-known to everyone. Pinochet, Bye The Way, nearly sent Chile broke, and only AFTER he reversed almost all of the Thacherite Freemarket Monoply reforms (de-privatising) did Chile become a moderately good economy again.
Have we FORGOTTEN all this? Or is it not Politically Correct to mention how bad Maggie was?
Now, Britain will pay and pay dearly for what Maggie did - and she really does deserve the name of "Mad Margret". because of her, all of the newer British Industries went over to Natural Gas, and now, they have found They Are Running Out.
At a time when there was the huge bonaza of the North Sea Oil, she could have been promoting research into Non Oil Energy Sources. Instead, Maggie - in spite of being scientifically trained - was the person who consistently underfunded research budgets to the point of their being meaningless in the UK. Only now are they starting to recover.
A good example is that research into Nuclear Fusion, which got canned in 1979 in the West...do you REALLY think it was some form of coincidence that this was the year Maggie came to power in Britain? Not At All: the US needed Britain (and Europe's) help to sustain the research dollars. Maggie Wouldn't Budge and spend the cash. The project foundered, the teams were disbanded, the experience lost, the effort destroyed.
Now (belatedly) they have the research dollars, and are 30 years behind where they should have been. As the old research teams were scattered, the new ones have to re-learn all the stuff the old ones knew, before they can take the project any further than what was acheived in 1979. This puts the completion of the project ever further off into the future, possibly never to be completed, given how energy-intensive the research is. After all, when you've got an energy crisis, you can't afford to put too much of it aside for energy-intensive research.
All Thanks To Margret "Virtue Of Selfishness" Thatcher.
If Margret Thatcher represented "women's caring and nurturing" then what the world needs right now is the DEAD OPPOSITE.
We need more research into Non-Oil-Energy Sources, not LESS, as "that women" did.
We need to have more localised employment (as was the case in PreThatcher Britain), not the brain-dead almost random Downsizing as "that woman" did.
We need to get rid of the Clueless Consumerism, not promote it, as "That woman" did.
We need to get rid of this monopolistic "freemarket" that is sending the world broke because it's the most expensive thing around, not back it to the hilt, like "that woman" did.
We need to be rid of this over-regulated "de-regulation" (which has actually seen more regulations than ever before) because it stops all small business and volunteer organised efforts from being competitive with Big Business - not create thousands of ever more obscure and sometimes secret trade rules which "that woman" did, under the name of "deregulation".
We need to be rid of this Oil-based economy (indeed, Peak Oil guarentees this!) but we need to do so in a voluntary way, NOT promote Oil's use, as "That woman" did.
We need to fearlessly face the truth about this planet & the fact that it is a finite resource, no matter how one looks at it, no matter how long one thinks we've got in terms of Oil. And tell the truth, offensive to some though it may be, NOT promote (as this article does) the Pleasant Politically Correct Lies which seek not to "offend" anyone.
We need to be rid of the modern Politically Correct idea of the eternal never-ending debate, where (supposedly) "everyone's voice is heard" (I guess they'll all start saying "I'm hungry" after a while), because debate never fixed a THING. It is the Poltically Correct Way of making sure NOTHING EVER HAPPENS. "
BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone" is the finest expression of Political Correctness' spirit.
I put it to you: starvation is offensive, but it's CERTAINLY Equal Opportunity.
If we ever stop Peak Oil from becoming Peak Energy, then part of the solution will be through ditching the two curses of modern life: Political Correctness and Economic Rationalism / Freemarket Fundamentalism / Globalisation. These two things promote (firstly) a fantasy world of never-ending cheap abundant energy, and secondly a world of consumerist opportunity for "everyone" (except, one presumes, the underage workers in the Third World who sew together the garments).
If we aren't rid of both of these hypocritical derangements, then we won't fix Peak Energy's problems at all.
Let us call a spade a spade, and those Corporate Psychopaths (Yuppies) who're running the place into the ground, which psychology has made invincible by providing them with (firstly) every excuse for their behaviour and (secondly) with even more methods of extending their cruelty - let's call them the psychopaths they really are.
.
"To Get Rich you have to:
*Get up early;
*Work Hard;
*Strike Oil"
J Paul Getty