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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has promised to
begin an immediate, gradual withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq
if he is elected president. And if you believe Ismael Hussein-Zadeh,
a professor of economics at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa,
this very act would help stop the crippling increases in energy and
food prices.
The professor does not endorse Sen. Obama but he
does blame the US war on Iraq and Afghanistan for driving the prices
of crude oil in his article titled, “Worried About the Price of
Gas? End US Wars.”
A lot of reasons have been said to explain why
oil prices continue to increase. People have blamed Opec. The US
government urged it recently to boost production or else it would
lift federal restrictions against opening up its oil and gas
reserves on federal lands. There’s the idea of peak oil—that we
reached that point of maximum global petroleum production after
which can only follow terminal decline. There are the pipeline
attacks in Nigeria. There’s the increasing demand for oil by India
and China, whose economies have been growing rapidly.
Hussein-Zadeh says these are explanations that
“deflect attention away from war as the main culprit for the
skyrocketing energy prices—tend to blame secondary or marginally
relevant factors: Opec, China and India for their increased demand
for energy, or supply-demand imbalances in global markets.”
“Whatever the contributory role of these
factors, the fact remains that the current oil price hikes started
with the beginning of the Bush administration’s wars against Iraq
and Afghanistan. Furthermore, a closer examination of these factors
reveals that their roles in the current price inflation of oil have
been negligible,” Hussein Zadeh said.
“Oil prices have gone from the mid $20 range
in the fall of 2002 to $127 yesterday (it’s now at $135 plus per
barrel)—a rise of $100/barrel in just over five years,” he said.
Hussein-Zadeh attributes those increases mainly
to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to the threats of war
against Iran. “Soon after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq
the price of oil began to escalate in tandem with the escalation of
war and political turbulence in the Middle East . . . Anytime there
is a renewed US military threat against Iran, fuel prices move up
several notches.”
Hussein Zadeh also blames the US military
campaign in Iraq and Afghanistan for the fall of the dollar since,
he notes, the war has been costing the US government $200 billion a
year, all in borrowed funds.
There is no other choice as far as Hussein-Zadeh
is concerned. “The political-implications of this discussion are
clear: to bring down the prices of fuel and food requires bringing
home the troops. By lowering the energy costs of production and
transportation this will help save our own and many other economies
from the plagues of inflation and stagnation. It will bring relief
to hundreds of millions worldwide who are burdened by crippling
energy bills and the crushing costs of feeding their families.”
If Hussein-Zadeh is correct, if Obama wins the
US presidency, and if he would be true to his word, we might see a
better chance for cheaper oil. But those are big ‘ifs’, all of
them.
Corrupt cops again
I’ve written about this in previous columns
but I will not tire of it until something is satisfactorily done.
Mayor Alfredo Lim of Manila recently asked the Philippine National
Police to speed up the transfer to Mindanao of these notoriously
corrupt cops who were recently charged with extortion, robbery,
grave threats and physical injuries by a hotel chef who was a victim
of their “hulidap” operation.
The corrupt cops—Senior Insp. Rolando Mendoza,
Inspector Nelson Lagasca, SPO1 Nestor David, PO3 Wilson Gavino and
PO2 Roderick Lopena—were recently suspended for 90 days without
pay over the incident, in which they allegedly tried to extort money
from Christian Kalaw, a chef at the Mandarin Hotel, who happened to
be in the Vito Cruz/Pablo Ocampo area at the time this notorious
mobile patrol unit was looking for victims. What happened to Kalaw
is all over the Internet, and I recounted it in a previous column.
In short, Kalaw claimed the corrupt cops
arrested him and tried to extort money from him, taking him to a
nearby ATM. They tried to frame him for shabu possession. He refused
to give them money and instead insisted on a drug test to clear his
name. They took him to the parking lot of the Ospital ng Maynila,
beat him up, forced him to swallow shabu, then demanded P200,000 for
his release.
Mayor Lim wants them transferred immediately to
Mindanao. But like I said, Mindanao deserves upright and efficient
policemen just like Manila does. These corrupt cops don’t deserve
to stay in their uniforms, not in Manila, not in Mindanao. Indeed,
they deserve to be behind bars, to make citizens feel much safer.
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