Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Don’t you just love being lectured by the Saudis?
Case in point, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, whose nation is the world’s number one oil exporter, called on consumer countries [the USA] to get used to high prices in comments published on Tuesday.”Consumer countries have to adapt to the prices and the mechanisms of the market,” the king said in an interview published by the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassah.
“We have nothing to do with the current sharp increase in crude prices,” he said reiterating the Saudi position that speculation, rising demand and the taxation of oil products in consumer countries were to blame.
“These countries must reduce their taxes on fuel. If they want to contribute to easing the burden on ordinary consumers,” he said.
From the Left 
Camel Breath had better shut his camel hole or he may awaken to find the U.S. military rolling down downtown Riyadh and seizing their God damned oil fields. The U.S. isn’t going to be told what to do by some filthy carpet merchant.
I hate Saudi Arabia and if our military invaded and took their oil, I would love it. Did you know two gay men were recently beheaded in Riyadh after being convicted of homosexuality? Killed for being gay! A woman tourist from Germany didn’t wear a abbaya — a scarf on her head because it was hot and the mutawa sent her in jail. This is a nation stuck in the 12th century and it really pisses me off to hear them lecture us on anything.
The Saudis may be flushed with arrogance right now but statistics show that in the U.S., car sales have dropped to about 14 million a year from 17 million in the first half of the decade and will fall further to about 11 million a year by 2012. Ultimately, the by keeping gas prices high, the OPEC nations are destroying their customer base. China only has 20 million private cars and India has 8 million. Numbers too small to make up the difference here.
@ the first two comments: damn. I don’t even know where to begin, so I’ll just save myself the heart attack and move on.
Anyway, jingoistic warmongering xenophobia aside, there’s another alternative: develop affordable, zero-emission electric or fuel-cell cars. Initiate a Manhattan Project or a WPA-like push to transform our landscape so that we aren’t dependent on oil at all.
What is up with this racist scapegoating?
Get it through your head that speculation and the weak dollar are behind prices. Idiot.
What is up with this racist scapegoating?
WTF? You’re defending a regime that beheads gay men because homosexuality if an affront to Islam?
Fuck off, moron.
@taco;
I hardly think racist (or even near-racist) name calling and warmongering is a proper response to these regimes’ homophobia. Nor was Duder “defending” Saudi Arabia. He/she was attributing the spike in oil prices to its economic roots.
Couple a points.
Obama is just doing what he has to to be prez. JFK did the same thing.
The oil issue is no different than what Enron did, it’s all pocket lining. While Enron and power rates almost sunk Calif., fuel prices are doing the same thing to the USA.
Might be the best cure for consumerism ever?
I’m not sure what “consumerism” means. What I hear and what I read is, workingclass and middleclass Americans — the backbone of this country and who can least afford to live close to work, are being kicking in the gut by these oil prices. As usual, the CEO who can afford to live in a swank abode downtown, near work, isn’t feeling the pinch. The record prices are going to get much worse if the Bush administration and it’s co-bully, Israel, bombs Iran.
Christopher – Thanks for cleaning house. He was driving off your readers and it needed to be done. Again, thanks.
Adirondacky, what I meant by consumerism was that when the working/middle class has no disposable income they’re not shopping at the local wallyworld, etc.
Being a middle/working class guy (oilwell driller, pipefitter) from Canada I can feel the pain, our gas prices are about $5.35/US gal and rising daily. Luckily now that its summer I can commute via my motorcycle with 50mpg.
Also agree about Iran and what it will do to gas prices. Hopefully this will be pulls America back from it’s crazy imperial wars.
BTW…Happy Canada Day. 🙂
Just like the 4th of July, but with alot fewer flags. Love your country but just say NO to all the patriotic bullshit. 🙂
Nothing seems able to control Bush and Cheney and their insanity.
When I read the Sy Hersh piece about the inevitable Iran invasion and the Congress secretly funding Bush’s counterintel plan, I realized at that moment it’s all over.
If the Congress refuses to reign in this Texas lunatic, we’re screwed.
The Chinese gave a similar lecture the last time we had something to say about their currency.
Nobody wants to be lectured by a monkey that has to borrow his lunch money every single day. As a lender, you are more apt TO lecture than to BE lectured.
Fuck the Arabs. I’ll repeat, fuck the Arabs. If that language bothers the apologists, fuck you too. We have a genuine security and economic crisis unfolding and it pisses me off to be lectured to by King Abdullah. Were it not for oil, these filthy SOBs would be living in tents on the sand. Abdullah lacks the wisdom see that one day, the USA will be energy independent and won’t need their dirty asses.
Saudi Arabia is an excellent example of what happens to government when religion is intertwined with politics.
That being said, I believe the King is right about the current situation. I blame our market system for what’s happening here with the price of oil.
BU$HCO will borrow more yuan from China to buy more oil from Saudi Arabia and Congress still has done nothing to control the situation – that’s pretty f*cking lame in my book. The real reason FISA was postponed was because they were waiting for their banker friends to complete this deal.
Nobody learned a damn thing from Enron – it’s happening all over again, but on a much grander scale.
Each time King Abdullah sits on his golden toilet seat, he should reflect upon which consumer nation rescued his kingdom during the Gulf War.
The anti-Arab bigotry in some of these comments is really disturbing. Using heterosexism by the Saudi regime to defend that bigotry becomes obviously senseless when you remember that there are plenty of lgbt Arabs who are getting hate from all sides.
Attack the Saudi regime for their actions, not their ethnicity. That leaves plenty of room for critique.
As for rising gas prices, the main underlying causes are the following:
1) Bush’s war on Iraq.
2) Bush’s saber rattling with Iran.
3) Bush’s saber rattling with Venezuela.
Complete withdrawal from Iraq along with diplomacy with Iran and Venezuela would cause gas prices to drop dramatically, which is the last thing the Bush regime and Big Oil want. The corporate media won’t tell us this because their owners make money off of war and high commodity prices.
I’m so sick and tired of Saudi Arabia. They kill gays and women and then tell their largest buyer of oil to essentially jump off a cliff. The USA is faced with the most dire economic times since the Great Depression and this is what that fat-assed Abdullah tells Americans?
Lib Homo – Your commitment to political correctness while ignoring the rampant homophobia sanctioned by the Saudis is really embarrassing and makes you a true, braindead liberal.
King Ab can get bold like that because he has Bush , his daddy and the rest of ’em in his back pocket and has for a long time. Look at how many 9/11 attackers were Saudi and this guy who plotted to attacj the USS Cole–Saudi. Saudi Arabia has the strictest regime in the Middle East and the royal family has to appease the Islamic fundamentalists who want the West destroyed. But we invade secular Iraq? Come on.
Fuck the Middle East. Fuck Bush even harder.
Nice fascist masturbation party going on here. When you are all done blaming those “dirty brown Arabs” for your problems, we can talk about what is really going on with this economy and how to get out.
I thought the Bush clan and the Saudis were old family friends going back to the 1950’s? Old family friends try to help one another. You don’t tell an old family friend, “tough luck, sucka’,” when they need help.
With oil discovered in the Berring Sea and in North Dakota, I believe in a generation we will be free of our dependence on Middle East oil. Then we really tell Abdullah to drop dead.
Grant,
I heard a report about the oil in the Bering Sea on CNBC last night.
Imagine finding 10 trillion barrels and the recovery will be carried out by a joint USA/Russian government backed team.
I hope we don’t muck this up like we did in Prudhoe Bay. 90% of that oil is going to Japan.
Defenders of Islam and the corrupt Saudi regime need to wake up before spewing this PC garbage.
Don’t forget, Saudi Arabia kills women convicted of extra marital affairs and prostitution. As stated above, gay people are also executed. They don’t deserve to exist in civilized society.
Hey Bush shouldn’t have tried to go behind Bandar Bush’s back and tried to get control of the oil in Iraq to lowball the Saudi’s. Bush called Bandar his brother and see how he did them.Everything is not the Saudi’s fault, they have to live next to Iran and Iraq.The place where a lot of the Saudi’s oil sit is on Shiite land in the Eastern Province.Bush was playing checkers when they were playing chess.A lot of you are right about the bigotry over there, just think of one thing , Prince Bandar’s mother WAS a Slave. that’s too deep for me.
“They don’t deserve to exist in civilized society.”
They WHO?
Halliburton? Dick Cheney? George W. Bush? Republicans en masse? Or are you speaking of “Saudi Arabia and defenders of Islam”? Isn’t it funny who gets to define “civilized”…it’s very nice to sit behind our computers and spout xenophobic and racist vitriol about parts of the world that the majority of us know diddly squat about under the guise of pro-homosexual sentiment (with friends like you, who needs homophobes?), but screaming about King Abdullah and claiming that “they’d all be living in tents if not for us”(lovely) is about as enlightened as claiming that you’ll get 72 virgins for strapping a bomb to yourself and going kamikaze.
I co-sign Roger.People forget who translate for the troops over there. They CAN read English.There are Internet Cafes over there.Don’t judge a whole group by the few (except Kentucky and W. V.)
mbmdl: If you had actually read my post, rather than skimming it and reacting to it in a childish matter, you would realize that I was not “ignoring the rampant homophobia” of the Saudi regime. Do you really think you are helping Saudi queers by attacking them for being Arabs?
Whining about “political correctness” is the first refuge of bigots, whether that bigotry is against Arabs or queers.