Pictures from the oil crisis in 1973
"I waited for five and a half hours. FIVE and a HALF f**-ing hours, then they told me I can only have 3 gallons!"
Bob, the car salesman, looked pretty tense. He wasn't talking about the lack of oil in a 3rd world country, he was talking about the US 35 years ago during the oil crisis. "They didn't have enough for everyone!". Even after all this time, he had a tone of disbelief in his voice.
In 1973 Arab countries decided to stop selling oil to the US and Western Europe as a protest for their support of Israel. The price of oil doubled, and the economy of the strongest country in the world was in jeopardy. For some rare moment in history, Arabs used non-violence as a way to show that they are still in the game. The oil crisis was over in 1974, and since then the American and European support for Israel has been unapologetically enormous.
There were Republican primary elections in Michigan today. It's the state with the highest number of Arab Americans in the US. Nobody on news channels mentioned us, except for a 5-minute report on CNN Monday afternoon. The time that CNN allocated for Britney Spears' underwear was at least 100 times more than the time spent casting light on the opinions of Arab Americans in the coming elections (I'm dead serious). Only one candidate, a democrat called Dennis Kucinich, approached Arab Americans last year. He didn't even mention he would support them; he just recognized their existence.
Every time Barack Obama is asked whether or not he's Muslim he denies this "accusation" as if he would automatically be considered a terrorism supporter. Analysts believe that because 8% of Americans think he's Muslim his chances of winning the nominations are seriously hurt.
Meanwhile, any presidential candidate like Kucinich can kiss his hopes good-bye if he did not show a blind support for Israel and its right to exist, and its right to "defend itself" whatever that means. For a fact, the number of American Jews is not larger, and might as well be less than that of Arab Americans.
I don't want Arabs to cut oil again from any country, but I want them to be able to. I want them to have the option. Nobody died from oil crisis in 1973, but huge numbers of innocent Palestinians have died because of the US and European support of Israel.
We don't need lunatics to run planes into buildings and terrorize people. We can have the most successful resistance without shooting a bullet. We can do it the very calm way, the same way others are using to deny us the right to our own existence.
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5 comments:
This oil as a weapon strategy is seriously losing it's steam. Ever since it was invoked. The US and the rest of the western world is looking for alternatives. And they will use all their reserves then invade and occupy Saudi Arabia if they had to.
It's sad that there's nothing that rivals AIPAC in the Arab American universe. We're too busy winning arguments against each other on what day is the Eid than to turn a serious eye to the freakin crap that is being pulled over our faces!
It's going such a long and gloomy year.
Very well said.
We buy it cheap (even at 100/bl, that is cheap) and we store it in our reserves. Then we get the Saudi's to buy "advanced" weapon systems worth tens of billions of $ to defend themselves against Saddam and Iran and other threats. The Saudi's can't say no to buying these weapons? And frankly they need the US more than it needs them. And if they tried to pull that embargo these days, the sand in the land of Saud would be turned into glass or might even become the 53 state. There is probably more in our US reserves anways then there is in Saudi anyways. The US might someday be selling it to them.
Qwaider, i'm not talking about oil in particular, i'm talking about money, investment, economy. We have a lot of that.
Anonmypus, as I told Waider it's not the oil, it's the investments and all the money, and Arabs have a lottttt of that.
Now Israel is using the same weapon, holding from Gaza the fuel that was probably, most likely, I am assuming was dug out from a neighboring, Arab, Muslim country.
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