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We All Helped Suppress the Egyptians. So How Do We Change?
Very few British people would beat up a poor person to get cheaper petrol. But our governments do it all the time. Why?
The old slogan from the 1960s has come true: the revolution has been televised. The world is watching the Bastille fall on 24/7 rolling news. An elderly thug is trying to buy and beat and tear-gas himself enough time to smuggle his family's estimated $25bn in loot out of the country, and to install a successor friendly to his interests. The Egyptian people – half of whom live on less than $2 a day – seem determined to prevent the pillage and not to wait until September to drive out a dictator dripping in blood and bad hair dye.
The great Czech dissident Vaclav Havel outlined the "as if" principle. He said people trapped under a dictatorship need to act "as if they are free". They need to act as if the dictator has no power over them. The Egyptians are trying – and however many of them Mubarak murders on his way out the door, the direction in which fear flows has been successfully reversed. The tyrant has become terrified of "his" people.
Of course, there is a danger that what follows will be worse. My family lived for a time under the torturing tyranny of the Shah of Iran, and cheered the revolution in 1979. Yet he was replaced by the even more vicious Ayatollahs. But this is not the only model, nor the most likely. Events in Egypt look more like the Indonesian revolution, where in 1998 a popular uprising toppled a US-backed tyrant after 32 years of oppression – and went on to build the largest and most plural democracy in the Muslim world.
But the discussion here in the West should focus on the factor we are responsible for and can influence – the role our governments have played in suppressing the Egyptian people. Your taxes have been used to arm, fund and fuel this dictatorship. You have unwittingly helped to keep these people down. The tear-gas canisters fired at pro-democracy protesters have "Made in America" stamped on them, with British machine guns and grenade launchers held in the background.
Very few British people would praise a murderer and sell him weapons. Very few British people would beat up a poor person to get cheaper petrol. But our governments do it all the time. Why? British foreign policy does not follow the everyday moral principles of the British people, because it is not formulated by us. This might sound like an odd thing to say about a country that prides itself on being a democracy, but it is true.
The former Labour MP Lorna Fitzsimons spoke at a conference for Israel's leaders last year and assured them they didn't have to worry about the British people's growing opposition to their policies because "public opinion does not influence foreign policy in Britain. Foreign policy is an elite issue". This is repellent but right. It is formulated in the interests of big business and their demand for access to resources, and influential sectional interest groups.
You can see this most clearly if you go through the three reasons our governments give, sometimes publicly, sometimes privately, for their behavior in the Middle East. Explanation One: Oil. Some 60 per cent of the world's remaining petrol is in the Middle East. We are all addicted to it, so our governments support strongmen and murderers who will keep the oil-taps gushing without interruption. Egypt doesn't have oil, but it has crucial oil pipelines and supply routes, and it is part of a chain of regional dictators we don't want broken in case they all fall taking the petrol pump with it. Addicts don't stand up to their dealers: they fawn before them.
There is an obvious medium-term solution: break our addiction. The technology exists – wind, wave and especially solar power – to fuel our societies without oil. It would free us from our support for dictators and horrific wars of plunder like Iraq. It's our society's route to rehab – but it is being blocked by the hugely influential oil companies, who would lose a fortune. Like everybody who needs to go to rehab, the first step is to come out of denial about why we are still hooked.
Explanation Two: Israel and the "peace process". Over the past week, we have persistently been told that Mubarak was a key plank in supporting "peace in the Middle East". The opposite is the truth. Mubarak has been at the forefront of waging war on the Palestinian population. There are 1.5 million people imprisoned on the Gaza Strip denied access to necessities like food and centrifuges for their blood transfusion service. They are being punished for voting "the wrong way" in a democratic election.
Israel blockades Gaza to one side, and Mubarak blockades it to the other. I've stood in Gaza and watched Egyptian soldiers refusing to let sick and dying people out for treatment they can't get in Gaza's collapsing hospitals. In return for this, Mubarak receives $1.5bn a year from the US. Far from contributing to peace, this is marinating the Gazan people in understandable hatred and dreams of vengeance. This is bad even for Israel herself – but we are so servile to the demands of the country's self-harming government, and to its loudest and angriest lobbyists here, that our governments obey.
Explanation Three: Strongmen suppress jihadism. Our governments claim that without dictators to suppress, torture and disappear Islamic fundamentalists, they will be unleashed and come after us. Indeed, they often outsourced torture to the Egyptian regime, sending suspects there to face things that would be illegal at home. Robert Baer, once a senior figure in black ops at the CIA, said: "If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear, you send them to Egypt."
Western governments claim all this makes us safer. The opposite is the truth. In his acclaimed history of al-Qa'ida, The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright explains: "America's tragedy on September 11th was born in the prisons of Egypt." Modern jihadism was invented by Sayeed Qutb as he was electrocuted and lashed in Egyptian jails and grew under successive tyrannies. Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, was Egyptian, and named US backing for his country's tyrant as one of the main reasons for the massacre.
When we fund the violent suppression of people, they hate us, and want to fight back. None of these factors that drove our governments to back Mubarak's dictatorship in Egypt have changed. So we should strongly suspect they will now talk sweet words about democracy in public, and try to secure a more PR-friendly Mubarak in private.
It doesn't have to be like this. We could make our governments as moral as we, the British people, are in our everyday lives. We could stop them trampling on the weak, and fattening thugs. But to achieve it, we have to democratise our own societies and claim control of our foreign policy. We would have to monitor and campaign over it, and let our governments know there is a price for behaving viciously abroad. The Egyptian people have shown this week they will risk everything to stop being abused. What will we risk to stop our governments being abusers?
69 Comments so far
Show All"We All Helped Suppress the Egyptians. So How Do We Change?"
Keep all religion, Christianity, Islam and Jewish, out of politics.
A good article by Hari, but not sure what he means by "jihadism."
And, if I may make a second point: I am tired of the constant comparison with Iran and the ayatollahs. Iran is a Shiite Muslim country and Shia Islam has a well defined clerical hierarchy. There is no such equivalent for Sunni Muslims, and Egypt is overwhelming a Sunni Muslim country.
Finally, whatever the outcome of the Egyptian uprising, Egyptians will work out their own form of government over time and will continue to be proud of being Muslims--just as we keep touting our Judeo-Christian values, whatever that means.
Horrified
Well, we certainly agree on your first paragraph.
For the second, I doubt the average American or anyone in the west cares one whit what color the folks in the middle east are nor care particularly about Israel. They do care how much a gallon of gas or heating oil costs.
If you think about it, the uprising's in the middle east, the urge to get rid of the dictator's could easily be a surge of nationalism just as that going on in China, Korea, Russia and the rest of the world. (combined of course with the food and freedom problem's)
Ah but us moron's who are a bit more hesitant to insult folks without cause get it right a lot of the time.
Of course its US policy to support Israel. Did you miss where I said the average American? Try to "listen" occasionally. :)
Amy Goodman, Ed Shultz, Norm Goldman all have opinions, not a patent on the trurh or facts for that matter. Think about it a bit more.
Lingum
You make a very goood point about the confusing claims our government and others make about Iran, Islamic terroists, Sharia law, Sunni's, Shite's, etc. I recently heard a local Congressman refer to "Shairia" Muslim's in Iraq. We don't understand their tribal and religious divisions well enough even today, we still seem to be ruled by the WW1 designation's.
The important thing to remember is that Egypt belongs to Egyptians as you suggest and when one of our pundits or politicians say's we should do "fill in the blank"....time for snowball's.
One more thing. Alt.energy systems cannot simply replace oil. The extreme energy density and portability of oil is what makes it so valuable. In other words, the shift to alt.energy systems also DEMANDS a total reduction of energy use. We need to get rid of cars and trucks and replace them with mass transit and trains; we need to grow food locally and manufacture goods locally (and on a small scale). We need to stop wasting energy on manufacturing crap. Etc etc.
So it isnt just oil company profits. It's the fact that it entails the total transformation of civilization on this planet. The problem is that we dont have any leaders with vision with the power to broadcast that Vision AND get elected. Plus, we have an uninformed populace who dont have a clue about Peak Oil.
And this is the point: you almost never see anyone in the media connect the dots and show how a lot of what is going on in the world now is the result of Peak Oil. Yes there is greed and speculation, no doubt about it, but Peak Oil is the overwhelming reality that is already beginning to impact all of human civilization on this planet in many different ways.
Also, let's not forget how Peak Water, Peak Topsoil/arable land and global climate change in general are driving events, especially as they affect food production.
ezeflyer: I agree, keep all theocracies out of politics. Democracy has no room for religious absolutes.
But as you say, How Do We Change? As long as American society sees political work and spiritual work as being separate, we will continue to be a confused and divided nation. Separation of Church and State has never meant separation of life and faith. If we are ever to transcend a culture of materialism and violence, of political and economic exploitation, Americans need to rediscover the sacredness of human life. All the major religions in the world address the sacredness of human life and global free-market capitalism is its enemy.
Sorry, duplicate posting
Sorry, dulicate posting
“I believe in reason. There are those who want to repress reason. Christian, Muslim, and Hindu fundamentalists, and those who pick a totem market economy, the liberal economic state. These are all anti-reason.” --Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize winner in Economics.
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Indeed, market fundamentalism is far and away THE most dominant and damaging religion wreaking havoc in the world today. The current wave of Islamic, Christian and Hindu fundamentalisms are to a large extents *reactions* to the depredations neoliberal fundamentalism.
Progressive Populist: You quote Amartya Sen, Noble prize winner in Economics....."I believe in reason". But Sen was a philosopher as well. I do not know that much about Sen, but I feel he must have had a contemplative mind when you consider the compassionate fruitfullness of his economic work. I believe he moved beyond the age of enlightenment, the Age of Reason, to a higher spiritual level.
Sen states "There are those who want to repress reason. Christian, Muslim, and Hindu fundamentalists, and those who pick a totem market economy, the liberal economic state. These are all anti-reason.” But I tjhink it is more anti-spiritual than anti-reason. I believe Sen moved beyond reason to spiritual wisdom. Religious fundamentalists are not necessarily anti-reason, they are anti-spiritual. The roots and the great mystics of these religions are spiritual. It is all about the contemplative mind, going beyond reason to a higher level of spiritual wisdom.
the criminal policies are NOT formulated by the people but by their government?
the brits have just voted the conservatives (those who are publicly proud to commit all these crimes) into power.
many americans have just voted for the tea party.
there are no alternatives from the left yet.
i don't buy the bullshit that people wouldn't commit crimes. they do so knowingly. they still go about their daily participation in the crimes as usual. they are still invested in the status quo. most trample and prey on the weak everyday. the government is the people, unless the people are under the gun, literally.
steve: your point is taken and to me it is much more "true" than this lah ti dah tripe offered up by this author about our hypothetically choosing to be more humane and of a higher personal caliber going forward
makes me sick
but you say "the people are the government" and in doing so you are every bit the fool as the author is in her delusional "can't we all just get along" crap
and you profoundly miss the point of our political history especially over the last 30 years
steve: be clear about this - the people are not the government - never have been and never will be. you need to get that straight in your head boy, as do a lot of other folks in amerika
if you can't be clear about anything else these days then you might at least concede that the government doesn't give one sweet fuck about you steve or the horse you rode in on
let's get real bro
don't feel bad about that - there are over 300 million other fools in this country who are deluded as you in this regard and the government doesn't give a fuck about them either - its nothing personal, you just don't matter, you are of no consequence
bro, just open a newspaper you can read all about it
like oh say - the bank bailout - opposed by 100% of the people - too bad
large majorities want out of the wars - too bad
large majorities want single payer health insurance - too bad
your opinions don't matter
its like the dull witted fools who call in to amerikan idol believing their vote "matters"
at 75 cents a call what matters is that idol is racking up millions every week for doing fuck all except offer the lonely sheeple of amerika the slim and desperate stab at helping "make a decision"
pathetic, they feel a "part" of something
now steve - not to come down on you too heavy
let's just get off the "government is the people" riff
and the write of this article needs to get a stress test or something
"The people are not the government - never have been and never will be."
Yes.
It is highly reactionary to blame the working class people for what the ruling class people are doing, yet it is so pervasive among liberals and progressives, and even with self-described Socialists, that you have to wonder if the core political belief for "left-leaning" (what a joke) intellectuals in this country is not "it is all the people's fault."
How do people reconcile in their minds their supposed opposition to the rulers on the one hand - such as that is - and their strong identification with the rulers and contempt for their fellow working class people on the other?
"Contempt" Interesting word to describe an individuals choice to take ownership for their portion of responsibility. You consisently support the victimization of the peoples of the world by the other but when the victim finally rises up individually or en masse, they do so through rejecting victimhood. The only way to stop being the victim. Love for our fellow working class brothers and sisters supports their uprising to all forms of contempt to their basic human rights. If you could reconcile your thoughts on these important matters your portion of contempt for every individuals right to personal power and responsability for how things are, only in respect to their portion, would turn into compassion. Freeing your passion, freeing theirs.
What are you talking about now?
I did not say - or imply or suggest - that "an individuals choice to take ownership for their portion of responsibility" is "contempt." I expressed no contempt toward anyone, either.
Your accusation that I "support the victimization of the peoples of the world" is rubbish.
Maybe Leea is talking about making the choice of walking the 300 feet to McDonald's once in a while, instead of driving every time and blaming the "ruling class" for all your problems?
You accuse the people who dare suggest that an apathetic and ignorant populace is at least partly to blame for the state of affairs in this country, of being "highly reactionary", and having a "strong identification with the rulers and contempt for their fellow working class people." However, it seems to me that you are the one who shows contempt for your "fellow working class people" by treating them like totally incapable of thinking for themselves drones.
If people are so stupefied that they are incapable of waking up, if they feel so powerless that they don't think they can ever fight, what hope is there that anything will ever change?
Just how do you think things might change for the better? Will the elites suddenly embrace the workers, start sharing, and pay a living wage? Will the TV suddenly stop spewing propaganda and tell people what's really going on?
No. The change will have to come from the people. Not from the elites, and not form an Obama-like messiah.
Leea is right - if you feel like a victim, you'll act like a victim; you'll never assume any responsibility for anything that happens to you, and you won't be able to change anything.
Like somebody else has been saying here -- "good luck America, you really need it." With attitudes like yours, Two Americas, I don't think even good luck will help.
I never said or implied that people are "totally incapable of thinking for themselves drones" or "are so stupefied that they are incapable of waking up" nor that they "feel so powerless that they don't think they can ever fight."
I didn't say any of those things, and I happen to think that the opposite is true in each case.
Nor have I ever said anything that could even remotely lead to the conclusion that I think that "the elites suddenly embrace the workers, start sharing, and pay a living wage."
"I never said or implied that people are "totally incapable of thinking for themselves drones ..." -- It might be true that you never said it, but your insistence on complete innocence of the average Joe turns him into a caricature - a semi-moron incapable of choosing anything else, other than what he is force-fed by mass media.
The ruling elites manipulate the public opinion all the time, but does it really mean that the public has no choice but to eat it all up and go along with the program? What is so innocent about that?
Here is an innocent guy - or at least a repentant one:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/11/24
He is, in my opinion, pretty darn close to being innocent. Most other people - not so much.
Why must people's views and opinions always be tied to labels such as liberalism, progressivism, so on? This is really a silly assumption. Same to think that people can only be spiritual through some religion. I only understood the concept of God after breaking with religion. Since then I consider myself a happy person whereas before happiness were tiny little moments in a continuum of despair! Religion to me causes guilt, guilt causes suffering, suffering brings unhappiness and despair. Therefore, no religion is freedom, in my view, of course. Also not being attached to any labels is also freedom. In fact I do not believe it is possible to be free so long as we are attached to anything which does not mean to become indifferent to anything. In fact it may be the opposite! The reason I am bringing this up is that I believe it is smack in the middle of all our problems: attachment and suffering leading to ignorance, despair and violence. Blame has to fall on someone else because the ego is too inflamed, hence a growing dislike for each other.
We are social beings. Freedom is found within association with others. The "church of one" phenomenon, closely associated with individualism, with commercialism and consumerism, and with the rise of Capitalism, as predicted by some observers at the time of the Reformation has come to pass and permeated all areas of thinking.
It would be impossible to talk about politics if we did not refer to groups of people advancing their interests.
Individualism breaks down the social bonds, and that creates the problems that individualism is then applied in an attempt to solve. The less it works, the more people apply it.
It is only within a context of social relations that we can have individualism. When individualism is used in opposition to social relations, everything breaks down, and that is just what we are seeing.
How did it come to pass that people see freedom as freedom from social relations, freedom from others? How did we come to see individualism and social contexts as oppositional? Whom does that serve? Is serves the interests of those who would prey on us.
forget it.
you don't matter, i know and you know too. so what have you done about that? you still go on like it doesn't matter much.
if people are NOT the government and it is as clear as the day,
but people go about their daily business as usual without missing a beat,
either people want what they get, or they deserve what they get.
do you see rebellion? even a little peep? i don't see it. i don't hear a peep. what the hell do you knwo-it-alls waiting for? some freebees after others sacrifice themselves?
Several points:
1. The Conservatives won less than 40% of the vote
2. You are missing Hari's main point, which is that in most of the western countries, who ends up in government usually does not result in any change in foreign policy;liberals or conservatives, foreign policy stays the same, since all of them, along with the civil servants, have essentially similar positions and worldviews. You give western democracy too much credit, if you think that foreign policy is so easily changed by just voting for one mainstream party over another mainstream party once every 4 or 5 years.
3. You give western democracy too much credit. Many governmental systems in western democracries, but especially in the UK and US are designed DELIBERATELY to be able to ignore the will of the masses.
if things are so clear and known to the people and they don't approve of them, why the fuck do they participate in the system day in and day out?
They have no choice. That is the problem.
what do you suppose all the egyptian people shed their blood for, then? for the heck of it? there's no choice, eh? try "COWARDLY ACCESORIES FOR CRIMES".
if this government is not yours, then where's YOUR government?
No need for that. I actually read and consider everything you write.
Explain your position, and what you think I am saying and we can discuss it.
My points:
- Personal choice as a political strategy is weak.
- The ruling class owns the government here, so that is not our government.
- Social conditions in objective reality determine people's consciousness, their consciousness does not create reality.
The worse things get, the more conservative people get, the more conservative people get, the worse things get...
Build windmill powered high speed trains as fast as possible. Two-way parallel tracks lined with windmills from D.C. to San Francisco. Another two-way windmill line from the North East area to Seattle/Portland/Vancouver. And two more from Miami/Atlanta to Los Angeles. Windmill and wave power whiz trains North/South from Toronto to Mexico City and beyond. Use our human imagination linked by modern communications, move to independence from endless government wars to sane people power democracy.
in the words of an early and highly effective aerodynamic engineer:
"simplicate and add lightness"
hachachacha
Since much of the current unrest comes through inflation and food insecurity...
1. Provide immediate food assistance for the millions who can no longer afford the basics;
2. Guarantee food prices for the next several years at a non-inflationary level. Food prices went up by 50% in 2010. This is unacceptable in underdeveloped economies;
3. Guarantee food prices through options or futures contracts which lock in the gain and food oil prices.
4. Do not allow these contracts to be traded. There is concern that "traders" are manipulating the price of food, like they did (do) with oil and gold and everything else, driving up and down prices.
5. Wall Street and Chicago are responsible for starving the masses -
We need to begin a dialogue on food security before millions die. Tunisia was a lot about food. Egypt is a lot about food. Yemen will be about food (and water), India is facing shortages and Pakistan will be emerging ...
This does not consider countries like Ethiopia that have gone from episodic starvation to chronic or endemic drought and starvation. Keep in mind that Ethiopia will be one of the ten largest countries in the world by 2050 and they are also a disappearing source of water for Egypt (and Sudan)
Or we can bury our heads in the larger sand pile. We can wait for the government to do it for us. We watch millions die through no fault of their own - geographic accident.
If you and your family were facing starvation, would you sit quietly ? Or would you be in the streets of Cairo?
Time for a dialogue. Global warming aside. We will be seeing hundreds of millions starving in the very, very near future,
Many New Mexicans are in unheated homes in subzero F temperatures because the west Texas oil and natural gas interests have cut off supply ( like Russia to Europe).
New Mexico recently elected a Texan oil and gas puppet governor.
There is a fierce battle raging in the New Mexico legislature attempting to stop Texas oil and gas interests from destroying New Mexico's water and air as the Texas pillage for oil and gas.
I believe this is akin to Enron's shutting down power plants causing brownouts in California in order to raise Electric prices.
This is Disaster Capitalism, no need to look abroad for societies being abused by thugs/corporatistas
The US needs to stop selling arms to everyone in the world. Gradually change the military industrial complex to the benevolent industrial complex making products which enhance human life and preserve the environment
unfortunately, even though that would enrich them and the rest of us much more
they like weapons, it makes them feel big and important and powerful
I work for that. Though far from perfect, the model so far of the Egyptian army is a foot in the door.
I hold all men and women serving in the military as individual souls who are on the front lines in the inverse sense of being part of a killing machine. Probably one of the hardest things to do is to nurture and encourage conscience and individual integrity in the face of a situation where your superiors are under even more pressure to see through the glass darkly and force their underlings to comply.
The hardest situations and people in our lives are our greatest teachers. In the ancient prophetic sense of the I Ching (book of changes), extremes become their opposites - though not necessarily in the most obvious ways.
Every time we travel in a vehicle powered by petroleum
we
are taking money OUT of the economy through privatized profits
we
are contributing to climate change
we
are contributing to the planetary degradation, oppression, and violence and
we
are further entrapping ourselves.
Less is more.
Better yet, oops! we've done it again!
If "we all suppress the Egyptians," then that sure takes the heat off of the rulers who are actually suppressing the Egyptians, doesn't it though?
I didn't suppress any Egyptians. Honest. I would have remembered something like that. Besides, who has the time? No, I think if anyone suppressed the Egyptians it was people in the governments. They didn't tell me, and I didn't get to vote on it. I can't be responsible for everything.
Absolutely correct.
Half of the people don't vote at all. The majority of those who do cannot see much difference between the choices available. Do you really think there could ever be a "dismantle the empire, Wall Street, and the Pentagon" choice on any ballot under the current system? Do you think that of there were, and if that choice won, that our "Mubaraks" would just walk away?
agree with frodnonag
if regular people had a choice we would all be using cheap readily available alternative renewable fuels
so we wouldn't be beating anyone up
Those who think of the rulers as "we" - and that is most commentators and authors here - and who defend and side with the rulers - for whatever temporary petty complaints they may have about this or that politician - think that "we" are suppressing Egyptians. They project that onto all of the rest of us, for the purpose of getting us to think that we also are on the side they are on. Misery loves company, and guilt can be relieved by doing that. It also allows them to deny which side they are on and to avoid the implications of that.
None of this will change until, at a minimum, there is a Constitutional Amendment to the Constitution of the U.S.A. which would,
Ban private, campaign specific "donations" for all political campaigns,
Put all contributions for political campaigns into one pool of funds which would be distributed equally among all candidates running for office (various amounts might exist depending upon the office sought),
Demand equal time and equal access to all candidates for each office from all media outlets,
And eliminate all "for profit" campaign advertising.
As long as private corporations and the whims of CEO's determine who is heard and seen and who will profit, we will continue to sink in these waters full of corporate sharks.
Absent rigged elections, the U.S. government IS the people (according to the first three words in the constitution people find so frigging sacred.) Our elected representatives are precisely those the majority wanted.
And so, we Mrkns DO beat up middle easterners for gasoline. If you think the government of the U.S. is NOT representative of the people of the U.S., then we MUST have a revolution, no?
"It doesn't have to be like this. We could make our governments as moral as we, the British people, are in our everyday lives. We could stop them trampling on the weak, and fattening thugs."
Before we can stop suppressing the people of other countries, people in America, the UK and other states subject to the fascism of neoliberalism have to rise up and stop the suppression and trampling of themselves by their own leaders first.
Although the situation in the UK is similar, the American people - contrary to the 24/7 propaganda of "freedom" and "liberty" - are a subject populace much like those living in the Soviet Union.
Yes, the oppression may be harder to see but that is why it is much more successful at controlling a population of over 300 million people.
Thus, for Americans to force our leaders to deal more humanely with the citizens of the world, Americans must first force our leaders to deal humanely with Americans.
I mean with the U.S lagging in every quality of life indicator compared to other Western democracies, should it come as a surprise that we don't give a crap about foreign populations when our domestic population is so neglected?
The idea that there are cheap readily available alternative renewable fuels is a pipedream. If there were...we WOULD be using them.
Ethanol was touted in these very pages and post's not so long ago as a cheap renewable non polluter. Turns out that it is not cheap, adds pollution, drives up the cost of food, hurts engines and benefits only corporate corn farmers.
It is our elites that want to confer the privilage of drilling on the people of the middle east but enjoy the benefits of that energy. It is our "enviornmental" community that prefers to transfer the damages to third world countries rather than have any dirty production here.
The sanctimonious positions of these people is disgusting. Does California use less energy because they won't allow energy production? Do they pollute less because they buy energy from other areas instead of producing their own? Because you won't allow "Wind Turbine's" to spoil your view does that make you less responsible because a well was drilled in Saudi Arabia or off the Cuban coast instead?
AVAAZ petition
STAND WITH THE EGYPTIAN PEOPLE
http://www.avaaz.org/en/