"Aircraft dropped 480,000 leaflets at six locations in southern Iraq last week, the seventh time they have conducted such drops in the past three months, according to military officials. The leaflets, distributed in areas where coalition planes recently struck, warned Iraqis against repairing fiber-optic cables and said rebuilding defensive facilities would put their lives in danger.
'We hate them,' said Mesa Ali, 25, a mother of two young boys who lives across the street from the site of the Dec. 1 bombing. The blast shattered her front window, covering her 18-month-old son with broken glass. 'They want to get the oil and make us slaves.'"
"Ugborodo may sit across from Chevron's largest terminal in the delta, but the village does not have a gas station. Villagers buy their gasoline upriver and have it shipped here, paying three times what the rest of Nigeria pays.
One of the few decent-paying jobs for a woman here is prostitution. In their bright miniskirts, tank tops and halters, the girls at the Bush Bar flit from one American to another, sitting on one's lap, holding another's hand, rubbing another's shoulders. They called themselves Esther and Patricia, Milla and Helen, Gina and Joy.
'I love the people and culture of Nigeria!' one middle-aged American oilman said."
So, would you rather be enslaved by:
1. your own home-grown homicidal dictator, or
2. a foreign corporate conglomerate that pollutes your land and pillages your oil for a fraction of what it's worth, leaving your community impoverished and at the mercy of unbelievably corrupt local rulers?
being that most of you are louisianans, you already have some perspective on Option 2.
brandon [email] said at 1:50 AM 12-23-2002: I guess it would depend on how you look at it. Severance taxes (taxes paid on removing natural resources, or even the right to potentially remove natural resources from a state's borders) provide for a brunt of LA's income - even during the oil bust years.
Sure it sucks to have the governor jump every time Exxon or Chevron says "boo" and complains about an approaching moratorium on its own particular state-negotiated version of corporate welfare. But the people of the state would be far, far worse without those revenues. In fact, the state, and all those minimal protections which it gives would effectively cease to exist, and its bond rating would slip even further past California's (they're neck and neck at 50th in the country) to something third world.
That's the situation right now, foreign (out-of-state), corporate masters controlling a puppet-regime headed under weak-in-the-knees, barely coherent, going-to-law-school, jack-of-all-trades Mike Foster.
The last time we had a home-grown dictator was Edwards, and you'll find reaction to his rule mixed - it was certainly better than the neo-nazi's - but some people got screwed along the way (n.o., education, areas depending on out-of-state investment capital).
You bring up an interesting comparison, since, in the end, the feds shut him down like they're going to do Saddam. Furthermore, by the time they got to him, his time was already over - just like Saddam's. Actually, the simile goes deeper: they singled out Edwards, his son, and a couple of state secretaries out of spite because they had an embarassing lack of evidence at the end of their investigation. They left certain malefactors free to go - free even to keep pursuing political power (Cleo Fields in this way resembles Ahmad Chalabi - Cleo never had to answer for his 20,000 dollar on tape pay-off from Edwards, Chalabi won't have to answer for the 300 millions he lost/embezzeled from Jordan's national Petra Bank - No S&L scandal by a long-shot, but we're thinking about installing this crook's people in Saddam's place.
So, as someone who's lived through it. I advise the women of Iraq to keep their babies away from the windows for the duration. And furthermore, those of Nigeria should keep current on their shots, insist on condoms, and keep a slim figure while always being mindful that it's the young exec's who put out the most money - and they only settle for the fat ones when otherwise they'd have to take sloppy seconds.
rick [email] said at 7:30 AM 12-23-2002: The petrochemical industry has not been the great boon to Louisiana that people make it out to be.
Let me be clear: had it been better managed, everything might be rosy now but given that Louisiana is the "Tooth Fairy State" where noone wants to pay for anything and is content to let the petrochemical industry pay for everything, better stewardship of the state's funds is wishful thinking. I guess not paying anything and getting back very little is better than better socioeconomic opportunities, a good infrastructure and schooling system.
Instead, what has arisen is a sorry mix of monoculture and fecklessness. It is scandalous that Louisiana which has the mouth of the Mississippi, so much oil and gas reserves, good cropland and so on and so forth should be behind so many other states that have far less.
Louisiana should envy California. Not to be crass but where would one want to live?
Had Louisiana sought to diversify, sought to give skills to its populace besides those needed for refineries, casinos and mixing drinks to rich, suburbanites from Connecticut in the French Quarter, maybe there would be other sources of income. Maybe mayors would not be so desperate to get even a marginal drop in crime that they would call on people to pray. Maybe kleptocrats who run on giving out free lunches courtesy of the petrochemical industry and little else would not be elected. Maybe the Youth Of Louisiana would stop dreaming of escaping la Republique Banana de la Louisiane.
Is it any wonder that almost no major petrochemical company ( except for maybe Freeport McMoran in New Orleans) is headquartered in Louisiana? They just come every now and then for their lucre. They do not want to actually be associated with Louisiana.
brandon [email] said at 9:19 AM 12-23-2002: O Rick, surely it has not been a boon, indeed! But does not a babbling brook in driest desert appear to the waylaid and dessicated traveler as the deepest ocean?
Truly the great riches and expanses of California, both cultural and otherwise are preferable to the variegated Louisiana panolpy of claustrophobia inducing small towns and agoraphobic sugarcane fields! Yet, California's spendthrift ways have run their debt and budgetary shortfalls into the billions, casting doubt on their ability to make payments on their debt and lowering their mighty bond rating to that of the lowest, of the states Louisiana.
For sure no Petrochemical company would be foolish enough to subject themselves to the jurisdiction of fickle Louisiana interegnums and despotisms. Why buy the cow, Kelly Bundy remarks, when you can get the eggs for free?
In short, your remarks have added to my original points, and I value them as such! Let us not quarrel - in fact - my manifold of Rickles, let us make the sweet fraternal love that only you and I have the, um, lost the momentum.
kara [email] said at 4:26 PM 12-23-2002: Man, I'm totally freaked out by all such security measures. I'd rather just have more risks than more security, and when stuff like this happens to me I get really upset. As a child I often had dreams about the government seaching my person and my stuff, and worst of all, forcing me to get some kind of injections.
art said at 2:22 PM 12-23-2002: He seems like a major hothead - his quote recalling how he was examined "I began to get pissed off, as most normal people would" clinches it.
brandon [email] said at 2:27 PM 12-23-2002: Yep, btw, this guy's story was farked (can we use that word yet, like "to google"?) and the comments section produced some interesting reactions to it. Everything from: "You didn't go far enough, I would have popped a cap in someone's ass if they did it to my wife." to "for security, Pregnant women should be more than willing to submit to the occassional security fondle." Nothing groundbreaking, but interesting all the same.
art said at 2:33 PM 12-23-2002: Agreed. I don't agree with the way she was exposed to the other passengers. But people are always so indignant about being suspected of something but they are argue for greater security measures as long as they aren't suspected.
By the way, in a past life when I managed at a grocery store, we had repeated thefts of cigarettes by pregnant women shoving up their shirts where they would not be noticed as much. It just goes to show you...
