[nagasadhu]

That's not unique to the Saudis or oil money. Lot of communist regimes have done it too.. Khmer in Cambodia, many central african regimes. Not to mention European history. Probably the best example of this statement would be the early white settlers to North America or European settlers in South America.

[jeffwask]

I was applying this to oil in general not specifically the Saudis and quite honestly the American Oil Corporations are by far the largest offenders they have been doing it longer and harder than anyone.

...everything you said is facts tho.

[nagasadhu]

Interesting you feel that way... The point i was trying to make was that oil or financial strength seems to have little to do with exploitation of humans and other resources. Colonialism for example. I feel its just the dark side of human civilization and comes from a sense of exceptionalism. The Americans and the colonialists before them just took great pains to varnish their actions with random moral arguments and exceptionalism. Many others didn't bother with the whitewashing.

One curious note is that only the gulf countries fuelled religious extremism with oil. Even then not all of them. None of the other major oil deposit holders like Norway or Russia did anything to further ideology. Political power may be. But not ideology.

[jeffwask]

"One curious note is that only the gulf countries fuelled religious extremism with oil."

I think that depends on how one defines religious extremism. In the Southern United States, Evangelical Christianity has ties to oil barons and oil money throughout the last 100 years.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history...

[vba616]

Russia...never promoted...ideology...?

Perhaps you could expand on your definition of ideology because this is confusing.

[aliswe]

can you elaborate on the religious extremism part?

[nagasadhu]

A huge part of the Afghan war against the Soviets was funded by private citizens of the gulf. Huge sums of oil money were spent on recruiting religious mercenaries. Saudis spend huge sums annually on exporting wahabi islam overseas. Iran has their version of this arrangement too. The Saudis offered to build mosques all through Europe when asked to do their share for the Syrian refugees. I call this religious extremism. An intolerance of other religions combined with forceful propagation of your own. Somehow muslims in the gulf and other countries feel the need to fight for muslims in other sovereign countries. Never heard of a practising Christian voicing a protest against treatment of Christians in some sovereign Islamic republic. On the other hand i never heard of the Russian orthodox church meddling in the affairs of other countries. The KGB maybe.. but not the church. The distinction being religious ideology vs others. Political islam is unlike political Christianity. Political Christianity died with the crusades. Political islam thrives in the modern age. Mix that with oil money u get a deadly combo. Sure the west has bombed the daylights out of the middle east but again it was for sake of pure financial gain from oil. America is out for global military dominance. That's the political ideology. It is not fighting a crusade which is a religious ideology.

[ROTMetro]

Since American oil companies were some of the first and largest, they have been doing everything relating to oil the longest and largest, so what is your point?

[PhileasNietzche]

Point? They're just using their knowledge base to excuse the OP's complaint with the typical and weak argument that "everybody does it" while assuming there was some insinuation or belief that oil barons are the only people in the extensive history of humanity guilty of these crimes.

[jeffwask]

I didn't think I would have to explain this to a philosopher on a short form blogging platform but yes there have been numerous destructive forces in society but the comment I was extending was

"oil has enabled bad people to stay in power"

so I wasn't looking to write a thesis

but sure... we can add

religion, colonialism, nationalism, capitalism, gold, big tech...

there are more isms but I digress. And in theory we could lump oil, gold, etc under capitalism but oil (and more broadly fossil fuels) have had an outsized impact over the last 50-100 and in that very short time on overall scale have sewed massive destruction and continue to do so.

It doesn't make other things more or less bad but big oil has more power than countries today. (Big tech is getting close Apple would be ranked in the 30's if it was a country.) Exxon's $316.993B puts them between Singapore and Malaysia and pushing Ireland and Denmark next year... fucking Ireland. (Now think about where they are if you combine all of them because their interests very much align) From what I can see the world is far from prepared for corporations wielding more power than governments in fact that is the topic of a lot of dystopian fiction. It's far from theoretical... governments didn't shut down the Russian economy... they are still debating if they should shut down Russian oil (hmm there it is again) ...it was corporations who shut down Russia which should be a warning light even though many (myself included) agree with the outcome.

The stifling of emissions controls, fuel efficiency, alternative energies, regulation on pipelines and spills, emissions from extraction, fracking are horrific even when compared to other industries and destructive forces. They actively seek to destroy anything that could compete often murdering the tech in the research phase and using their limitless resources to spew propaganda and convince the masses of bullshit.

We can focus on one set of guilty people doing a thing right fucking now without having to include everyone else who has ever done a thing.