Saturday, January 23, 2016

Fracking is good for human rights - oh, it's just a Spiegel comment

From our series We finally found a comment worse than the K-Landnews standard

Just as a frozen blogster was staring at a blank screen, wondering if writing about writer's block negates the very existence of such block, Der Spiegel saved us, well, maybe.

Oil price: Fracking is good for human rights [Our translation, but accurate]

The piece comes as a "comment", and goes something like this: no more money for ostentatious display of wealth, no more cash for arms and the security apparatus, the low oil price could drive some of the worst despots out of their palaces.

Where would they go, who would take their place?

Enter Saudi bashing.

We are spared details of Saudi investments and financial reserves, which is understandable because the numbers would blow our little Western brains. Instead, we are given the crucial number of princes and princesses in the kingdom: over 7000.

The pressure on the "Saudi decapitators" (that's his words, not mine) is so on.

It's fine, we get it. There are other guys, thieves, potentates, human right abusing regimes in the former soft underbelly of the Soviet Union, then there is another regime in Venezuela, and Russia too, sure. Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, all bad.

Oh, ISIL, yes.

No word about Turkey in that context.

Casual mention that the US fracking boom is to a large extent responsible for the crash of crude prices is made - had to be.

The the commentator addresses the bad side of cheap oil: it's bad for climate change and fosters waste of fossil fuels. Warnings of destabilization get dismissed as cynical, as support of bad actors.

Had one read, just as a random example, The Economist, one might be less strident.
Or a recent well-written, fact based but pretty jargon free German piece on the "curse of cheap oil", one might....

One might....

One could...

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