It is pretty obvious when making direct comparisons of the writings this weekend between former Sec. of State James Baker III. Esq., and NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman (BA in Middle Eastern Studies & MA in Philosophy and Pulitzer Prize 3 times) that: 1. It shows in depth of knowledge and writing when one has actually traveled recently in countries one is writing about and talked with more than government officials; 2. You will understand according to your training, some of this by individual skills and weaknesses but most of it by the education you receive.
Mr. Baker is a highly skilled lawyer, trained and accustomed to dissemination of facts that he wants a jury to see and to ignore or reduce the facts that he doesn't want them to see. The "Big Picture" and analysis are not his strengths by training, but using logic in a manipulative fashion is. Our dependency on foreign oil is as bad an affliction as a junkie's on dope. When my daughter was involved with drugs and I struggled to reach her, to convince her of the danger to herself, I finally convinced her that she was hanging around with kids she would never be interested in or friends with sober. They kept a secret together and this bonded them: a dangerous and life-threatening secret, nothing else to like about each other. Thus, as elementary as it is to this group it must be said repeatedly and in myriad ways to various audiences that until we move to more renewable sources of energy, invest in transportation and infrastructure that do not require the vast reservoirs of fossil fuel we use today, we will indeed be entangled in foreign policy with people who give us more trouble than they are worth, in that context. While on my energy soapbox, I'd like to point out that Time magazine also had an opinion piece by Lance Morrow (regular writer) about high speed rail and it's obvious advantages over the airline industry: cheaper to run, safer, quieter, more comfortable to ride, even with huge start-up costs after all these years of lagging behind Europe and Japan, plus the local network options. Indeed, now with the increased security measures that require longer periods of time at the airport, short trips are wasted on an airplane. The cost of a comfortable trip from Portland to Seattle is less than $40 and takes about the same time as it does to drive, 3 hours, but much shorter than driving to, parking at, waiting through, boarding and flying, and then leaving PDX - SEATAC. Portland now has its own extension of the commuter rail MAX to the airport which means you can ride into downtown or almost anywhere else in town for $1.50 one way, a 20 minute ride from the airport to downtown, about the same by taxi - unless you hit traffic on the freeway. Seattle is voting on their own version of intercity rail this fall. I've posted previously about Las Vegas' recent rail boom. MORROW: WHY RAIL TRAVEL IS THE FUTURE @ http://www.time.com/time/columnist/morrow/article/0,9565,338703,00.html Excerpt: "The answer to the nation's transportation problems clearly lies neither in an expansion of aviation nor in putting more cars on additional highways. My choice would be the oldest mode of the three: rail. It is not a sentimental or nostalgic choice. The aviation industry, like the vast infrastructure for cars, is dangerously overbuilt. In recent years aviation has sucked regional boosters into ill-conceived drives for more airports and more flights, even short ones - all at immense expense. Airplanes are indispensable for long trips over oceans, over a continent or half a continent. But air travel makes no sense over short distances. In any case, the evolution of cell phones and e-mail and the Internet and videoconferencing means that people need to travel less on business, not more. When ideas and images fly so magically, then our clumsy, inconvenient bodies need not do so - or not so much. ...Trains are two to eight times as fuel efficient as planes. As things stand, passenger trains receive only 4% as much in federal subsidies as the $13 billion given annually to the airline industry. Highways receive $33 billion in federal funds. Both airlines and highways have dedicated sources of federal funding: gasoline and ticket taxes. Rail systems should receive equivalent sources of income." It's time for a lot of changes. Karen Keith wrote: In comparison with James Baker's nonsensical op-ed in today's NYT, Thomas Freidman's rendering of the real problem that dominates Bush's foreign policy is clear and intelligent. Regarding Freidman's last paragraph (see below), I can't help feeling that America will never give up on wanting Saudi Arabian oil -- simply because there is so much of it (a quarter of the earth's resources) and its production costs are so low compared with all other sources (about 1/15th of the present market price). And there are staggering amounts of natural gas yet to be tapped. Bush has now raised the level of tension so high in the Middle East that I can't help feeling that some immense upheavals are about to take place in Saudi Arabia. Either the Wahhabi clerics will bring out the masses into the streets, or one of the moderniser-Princes will do so. Considering the millions of young men without prospects of a decent income or even being able to afford a dowry, and considering the hundreds of thousands of young women who refuse to get married and have a family because of their likely future subjection to male and religious oppression, I feel that the population could easily swing to the modernisers -- just as they did in Turkey in 1928 (when Kemal Ataturk secularised the law, abandoned the Islamic constitution and has been a hero ever since). The softly, softly approach to modernisation in countries which are so deeply imbued with religious fundamentalism doesn't seem to work. The clerics can easily sniff out any possible danger to their own power base. The King of Aghanistan tried it and was exiled and the Shah of Persia (Iran) tried it and had to flee the country. King Fahd tried it and, to all intents and purposes, he's been exiled since May this year (is anybody prepared to take a bet that he'll ever return?). Maybe a modernist coup is what is actually being planned. Maybe this is why Bush make the elliptical remark the other day that his policy on Iraq would become clear "as time goes on." <<<< DROWNING FREEDOM IN OIL By Thomas L. Freidman On a recent tour of India, I was visiting with an Indian Muslim community leader, Syed Shahabuddin, and the conversation drifted to the question of why the Muslim world seems so angry with the West. "Whenever I am in America," he said, "people ask me, `Why do they hate us?' They don't hate you. If they hated you, would they send their kids to be educated by you? Would they look up to you as a model? They hate that you are monopolizing all the nonrenewable resources [oil]. And because you want to do that, you need to keep in power all your collaborators. As a consequence, you support feudal elements who are trying to stave off the march of democracy." The more I've traveled in the Muslim world since 9/11, the more it has struck me how true this statement is: Nothing has subverted Middle East democracy more than the Arab world's and Iran's dependence on oil, and nothing will restrict America's ability to tell the truth in the Middle East and promote democracy there more than our continued dependence on oil. Yet, since Sept. 11, the Bush-Cheney team has not lifted a finger to make us, or the Arab-Islamic world, less dependent on oil. Too bad. Because politics in countries dependent on oil becomes totally focused on who controls the oil revenues - rather than on how to improve the skills and education of both their men and women, how to build a rule of law and a legitimate state in which people feel some ownership, and how to build an honest economy that is open and attractive to investors. In short, countries with oil can flourish under repression - as long as they just drill a hole in the right place. Think of Saudi Arabia, Libya or Iraq. Countries without oil can flourish only if they drill their own people's minds and unlock their energies with the keys of freedom. Think of Japan, Taiwan or India. Do you think the unpopular mullahs in Iran would be able to hold power today if they didn't have huge oil revenues to finance their merchant cronies and security services? Do you think Saudi Arabia would be able to keep most of its women unemployed and behind veils if it didn't have petrodollars to replace their energies? Do you think it is an accident that the most open and democratizing Arab countries - Lebanon, Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco, Dubai and Qatar - are those with either no oil or dwindling oil reserves? They've had to learn how to tap the talents of their people rather than their sand dunes. The Pentagon is now debating whether Saudi Arabia is our enemy. Yes and no. There is a secularized, U.S.-educated, pro-American elite and middle class in Saudi Arabia, who are not America's enemies. They are good people, and you can't visit Saudi Arabia without meeting them. We should never forget that. But the Saudi ruling family stays in power not by a democratic vote from these progressives. It stays in power through a bargain with the conservative Wahhabi Muslim religious establishment. The Wahhabi clerics bless the regime and give it legitimacy - in the absence of any democratic elections. In return, the regime gives the Wahhabis oil money, which they use to propagate a puritanical version of Islam that is hostile to the West, to women, to modernity and to all non-Muslim faiths. This bargain suits the Saudi rulers well. If they empowered the secularized, pro-American Saudis, it would not be long before they demanded things like transparency in budgeting, accountability and representation. The Wahhabi religious establishment, by contrast, doesn't care how corrupt the ruling family is in private - as long it keeps paying off the clerics and gives them a free hand to impose Wahhabi dogma on Saudi society, media and education, and to export it abroad. So while there are many moderate Saudis who do not threaten us, there is no moderate Saudi ruling bargain. The one that exists does threaten us by giving huge oil resources to the Wahhabi conservatives, which they use to build mosques and schools that preach against tolerance, pluralism and modernity across the Muslim world - and in America. And it is our oil addiction that keeps us from ever confronting the Saudis on this. Addicts never tell the truth to their pushers. Until we face up to that - and curb our consumption and encourage alternative energies that will slowly bring the price of oil down and force these countries to open up and adapt to modernity - we can invade Iraq once a week and it's not going to unleash democracy in the Arab world. >>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
