Oil Wars

Hugo Chavez threatens to close Venezuela's US-based refineries:

"Let's see what'll happen to the price of crude oil then", Mr Chavez told his audience.

Meanwhile, Wapo points out a fallacy in Bush's SOTU pledge to cut imports from Middle Eastern countries: the global price of crude remains the same, wherever you are buying from.

And that's all kinda funny when US investors are starting to look at Cuba as an alternative oil source.

Meanwhile, polls show ordinary Arabs are more aware of the oil issue than their Western counterparts. 75% of Arabs do not believe Democracy is the USA's main objective in the Middle East:

A full 58 percent of Arabs thought that the Iraq war resulted in less rather than more democracy in the region. Very large majorities of Arabs - three out of every four persons - believed that the main motives of American policies in the Middle East were "oil, protecting Israel, dominating the region, and weakening the Muslim world."

And isn't it - umm... - hypocritical of Bush/Cheney to start talking about increasing nuclear power generation when they want to stop Iran doing the same thing? Maybe they should grow oilseed rape crops instead - but in the desert?

PS: Did you know that Henry Ford planned to run his first Model T Ford on ethanol, while the first diesel engine - unveiled at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris - burned pure peanut oil? And the Austrian city of Graz powers its public transport entirely on fuel made from waste cooking oil collected from restaurants and homes.