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U.S. exempts oil industry from protecting Gulf animals, for 'national security'
- dboreham 7mo ago[flagged]
- mrcwinn 7mo ago[flagged]
- ZunarJ5 7mo ago"Definitive of what capitalism is, this separation severely limits the scope of the political. Devolving vast aspects of social life to the rule of “the market” (in reality, to large corporations), it declares them off-limits to democratic decision-making, collective action, and public control. Its very structure, therefore, deprives us of the ability to decide collectively exactly what and how much we want to produce, on what energic basis and through what kinds of social relations. It deprives us, too, of the capacity to determine how we want to use the social surplus we collectively produce; how we want to relate to nature and to future generations; how we want to organize the work of social reproduction and its relation to that of production. Capitalism, in sum, is fundamentally anti-democratic. Even in the best-case scenario, democracy in a capitalist society must perforce be limited and weak." https://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/publications/centerpiece/fall2018/transcript_jodidi11-5-2018 https://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/publications/centerpiece/fall2...
- dlev_pika 7mo ago[flagged]
- ch4s3 7mo agoThe fascism of Europe in in the 1930s was EXPLICITLY anti-capitalist. You can read tons of statements by various prominent fascists about how capitalism was the tool of the British empire and "globalists"(they often used a different word). They viewed it as separating the people from the land. Capitalists were not in any way fundamental to the rise of Nazism. If you're on about Pinochet, he only embraced market reforms 3 years after coming to power and came to power directly by a military coup. Business leaders had basically nothing to do with it.
- throwawaysleep 7mo agoTrump is also often anti capitalist, between tariffs and government shares in business. There is what fascists say and what they do, and industrialists were often very good Nazis.
- ch4s3 7mo agoLot's of political movements are/were anti-capitalist. > industrialists were often very good Nazis This is sort of banal. Lots of X "were good nazis". Where you could substitute scientists, elementary school teachers, trade unions, priests, bus divers, authors, political scientists, or farmers for X. It was a totalitarian society, everyone who wasn't on board was coerced by threat of violence to at least put on the outward appearance of being in support.
- dlev_pika 7mo agoFrom a Historical perspective, my learning makes me disagree with your statement - that fascism is in essence anti-capitalist. > At the moment that the "normal" police and military resources of the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium – the turn of the fascist regime arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat – all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy. > The social democracy hoped that the docile conduct of the workers would restore the "public opinion" of the bourgeoisie against the fascists. “Fascism: what is it and how to fight it”, Leon Trotsky https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/trotsky/fascism-how-to-fight-it/fascism-what-it-is-trotsky.pdf https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/trotsky/fascism-how-to-fight... Mussolini, after political defeat as a socialist and editor of “Avanti!”, pivoted, started calling himself a “libertarian”, and courted capitalists (industrialists, oligarchs) to fund his newspaper “Il popolo d’Italia” (1914). Ultimately, in Fascism, the only thing that truly matters is the regime itself, as demonstrated by fascist regimes that don’t fit so cleanly in our definition of Capitalism (like Argentina’s 1950s union based, military Peronist movement). From this perspective, I concede that Fascism is anti-capitalist in the sense that it is anti-everything that is not the regime. However looking at the historical European, and contemporary American evidence, capitalistic mechanics and actors (ie. the oligarchy), seem to be the preferred route to it.
- skybrian 7mo agoDo you really want to see votes on "exactly what and how much we want to produce" at each factory? Or what farmers plant?
- jrflowers 7mo agoYeah imagine an economic system where farmers can’t even plant the seeds produced by the crops that they grow every year
- defrost 7mo agoI'm in a massive grain belt ATM, as a sign of the times I can't place whether that's a reference to GM crops or the immediate issue of fuel and fertilizer.
- adrianN 7mo agoThere are very few purely capitalistic countries. All countries that I can think of use taxes and regulations to influence market equilibrium. „letting the market figure it out“ is usually the political expression for „I like the current state better than what the opposition proposed“.
- bit-anarchist 7mo agoCapitalism (in the libertarian sense of the word) makes these "vast aspects of social life" off-limits to democratic deliberation in the same way it does for unrelated private corporations: without authorization from the rightful owners, it is supposed to be illegal (not to say that has stopped either). She uses terms like "us", "we", "collective", but who are these? All the constituents, the people, in their totality, they are not, for people are not a homogeneous mass. In practice, it, along with democracy, just becomes a nice rhetoric device for stripping people of their rights. Democracy was never really a good solution to an inclusive society-wide governance system. Most successful implementation even need to add limits to it to prevent the mob rule that's a feature to it. Some try to pretend it is anti-authoritarian, because the members get a vote. But that vote only matters when the voter is part of a majority. If they aren't, they might as well not even have it. That alone already creates a hierarchy. And it only gets worse: most people belong to minority of sorts, and they, by design, get alienated. This means that the doesn't really represent anyone... other than itself, very much like a corporation. Which leads to the final point: capitalism (in the Marxist sense of the word) isn't antidemocratic. Democracy isn't in opposition to corporatocrocy, it requires a corporation large enough to own everything. Thus, dare I say, the democracy she seems to envision might as well be one of the forms of ultra peak capitalism.
- creationcomplex 7mo agoFascism is the logical fallback to protect wealth from redistribution.
- Mistletoe 7mo agoDon’t say US. They don’t speak for us all. Only 49.8% of voters. Of which I hope a significant portion have seen the error of their ways come midterms and the next election. Every day is a new embarrassment law or action like this for America until then. I’ve never felt lower about America in my lifetime. The hope I had, the pride I felt in America, is gone, chunk by chunk, piece by piece, every day.
- jrflowers 7mo agoThis is a good point. Instead of saying “The US” they should make up a number <50% and put that in the headline. That way it would be confusing and patently untrue
- sheept 7mo agoWhy? I don't see this pedantry for headlines for other countries like China did this, the UK does that. I think it's well understood that it's referring to the government, not a generalization of its people.
- perching_aix 7mo agoMy experience is the exact opposite. It is one of the most common points of pedantry I see in controversial political threads, across nations. Not for no reason either. Turnout was 64.1%, so really it's the active decision of 31.9218% of voters (voting eligibles) culminating in this. Kind of a pattern with modern democracies if you check. Not that passively endorsing this by not voting when the opportunity was there would be much better though.
- Detrytus 7mo agoI hate this line of reasoning. People who didn't vote are equally guilty, because they did not care enough to show up. Or, maybe, they just didn't make it to polling station on time for some reason (having to pick up kids from school, or working second shift or something). You should always assume that the result of the elections is representative of what society thinks. That's how elections (and opinion polls, for that matter) work. Unless you have a really good proof why some minority group was actively excluded from voting.
- crooked-v 7mo agoOppositional defiant disorder on a cultural scale. Liberals want to protect animals and shift to use of green energy; therefore the fossil fuel industry must be promoted at all cost (even when they don't want to be, as with Trump forcing obsolete coal plants to remain open) and endangered animals must be killed off.
- kettlecorn 7mo agoIt often seems like the contemporary American "conservative" feels that in order to oppose progressives they must become regressives.
- throwawaysleep 7mo agoThey are pretty much openly that way.
- glitchc 7mo agoLet me rephrase that to provide a different connotation: Liberals want to kill economic progress to save a few animals. Neither side is honest, it's just a matter of framing and perspective.
- JackYoustra 7mo agoWhat would Trump have to do for you to not give him the benefit of the doubt from that point forward?
- glitchc 7mo agoOkay, since you asked (unpopular, but I have karma to burn, c'est la vie): This myopic focus on Trump ignores the real issue: Environmentalism is a secular religion, a theocracy, a dogma. Like any religion it employs circular reasoning to justify its existence, namely stemming from this assumption that nature is sacred, vulnerable and deserving of our protection. This faulty assumption is treated as a self-evident tautology and questioning it is shunned, the hallmark of any run-of-the-mill religion. Environmentalism says it's not worth discovering fire because we would have to burn trees to use it. Think about this carefully: That's not a rational position but an emotional appeal. The thought process is "I would rather go hungry than hurt this poor tree," whereas that poor tree may have ruthlessly strangled the roots of nearby plants in its quest to thrive and grow. If you understand why this argument is irrational, you understand the basic flaw with environmental thought. Extending that principle to the planet, we come to a foundational truth: Nature is a relentless competition between all organisms on the planet. This is a testable, provable hypothesis. Every modern day human can trace their ancestry to a person who out-competed other organisms. We are here today because successive descendants of our ancestors continued to pass a fitness test, surviving and procreating sufficiently to make us possible. Our continued existence depends on continuing that trend. Aiming for sustainability hamstrings our ability to make progress and leaves us uncompetitive relative to our peers. Those who used fire out-competed those who didn't. Those who cut down trees to build farms, cities, countries out-lasted those who didn't. Those banded together to combine their ingenuity to get better, faster, stronger, heavily exploited their environment in the name of progress, are the ones ahead of everyone else. We did not start this trend, nature did. The rules of the game were established billions of years ago. It is sheer hubris to think we are somehow above or outside this meta-loop, a grand delusion that we are somehow masters of nature. There is only one truth: Either we out-compete or we lose ground. Should we do the other things? Take care of the weak? The poor? The infirm? Sure, but if it comes at the expense of losing our competitive edge, then it won't matter what we do for them, because we won't continue to exist to keep doing it for them.
- nba456_ 7mo ago[flagged]
- foogazi 7mo ago> Current world events Let’s kill animals AND people to make oil expensive
- mtoner23 7mo agowe are already mostly energy independent. dont understand how dumping oil on gulf animals helps
- danans 7mo ago> we are already mostly energy independent The US is the largest oil producer, but also still one of the largest oil importers, and oil prices are set by a global market, so the phrase "energy independent" is at best an accounting trick. The only way we can get truly energy independent is by electrifying most non fossil fuel requiring end uses and supplying that electricity with renewables or nuclear (from domestically sourced uranium) - basically the direction China is going. Then we could perhaps decouple a bit from the global oil market assuming our domestic supplies could be channeled towards things like plastics and jet fuel that are hard to replace. Otherwise we are stuck with the global oil market and its price risks. Reducing animal protection in the Gulf won't change that because US oil producers won't drill unless the can sell at the global oil price.
- MiguelX413 7mo agoThe US should simply ban energy exporting.
- danans 7mo ago> The US should simply ban energy exporting Why would an oil company go through the trouble (and expense) of oil exploration and extraction if they don't have the right to sell it to the highest bidder anywhere in the world?
- crimshawz 7mo ago[dead]
- whalesalad 7mo agoI always thought Trump was such a joke. Completely non-threatening, just a big personality who kept popping up here and there. I even bought a MAGA hat back in the summer before the election explicitly because I thought it was hysterical he was even running, and knew he would lose. I thought the whole thing was a gag, a joke, just like Bloomberg. It didn't even cross my mind that someone so woefully inadequate for the position, so abrasive, so criminal, so disgusting -- could ever get elected to the presidency. In the grand scheme of the universe, he was a nobody. His name would have died with him. Boy was I wrong. His name will be studied for decades to come in all the worst ways.
- SanjayMehta 7mo ago[flagged]
- pstuart 7mo agoHonest is a word that can never be associated with the man, other than an antonym. He's also a hypocrite (he wields Christianity like a weapon but is not a believer), talks about law and order but believes it doesn't apply to him, etc. If I had to use one word in that vein it would be "clear". He makes it very clear who he is and what his values are.
- SanjayMehta 7mo agoHe's an Honest Hypocrite - see what I did there?
- creationcomplex 7mo agoLast week he announced Iran had offered to make him supreme leader. Truth is not even vaguely relevant to anything out of that man's mouth.
- unethical_ban 7mo agoI dissent from your theory that all presidents are equally bad because they all have had some level of imperial streak to them. You notably left out Carter, who was imperfect but was by all measures a more decent and thoughtful citizen than Trump has been in his life. I reject the notion that Trump is in any way honest just because he is openly corrupt. Accepting open corruption because one has seen imperfections in other characters is a path to simply accepting autocracy.
- alanwreath 7mo agoWasn’t diversifying US energy sources also a national security issue? And wind energy was set aside because, wait for it, they killed animals. Birds to be specific.
- helterskelter 7mo agoRemember when we destroyed Iran's nuclear program before we destroyed it last month? This administration is perfectly consistent with being inconsistent.
- Glyptodon 7mo agoThe folks in charge just want what they want without rhyme or reason. Mix a mind virus and joy of power together and get your eratic clown show. And many times it can go on a lot longer than you'd ever guess. Unfortunately as a society we keep moving further and further away from the foundations of a functional society based on a representative government and considering the general welfare.
- linkjuice4all 7mo agoThe rhyme and the reason are pretty much this: - I was able to make money off of this - This pissed off the people I don’t like None of this should come as a surprise. The scoundrels got the mob in power (again) and they’re just going to keep breaking things and stealing the money until stopped or dead.
- unethical_ban 7mo agoThe optimist in me thinks we will pivot from this dark timeline in 10-20 years. That even if we face violent internal strife, we will come out of this dark timeline eventually. Even the threat of omniscient AI surveillance is too much against the will of a free society. I hope.
- steve-atx-7600 7mo agoThat’s not the point. The point is if you lose a presidential election to a grifter, most folks are screwed in almost unlimited ways. Don’t lose an election to a grifter. Be more practical when it comes to not losing an election to a grifter next time.
- arjie 7mo agoThe thing says they can now dispose of trash and do loud things in the Gulf of Mexico (America haha). But what does that actually get us? Googling and LLMing around it allows normal sea operations in the Gulf so drilling is possible etc. Interesting. So they’re going to try to get more oil out of there? Can’t say I trust their competence very much here. It’s more likely to be a carve out for a friend than anything else and I’m pretty pro deregulation in general.
- beerandt 7mo agoThis is more preemptive I suspect- 'they' have been reclassifying different species trying to get a bona-fide Gulf endangered one to use against exploration and production. Especially that one whale subspecies. This kills that on multiple fronts.
- ZeroGravitas 7mo agoI guess the whole Whales killed by wind turbines thing turned out to be concern trolling then. What a surprise! > Fact-checking Donald Trump's claim that wind turbines kill whales https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66928305 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66928305
- beerandt 7mo agoNo- making a fake endangered species to shut down operations that don't actually harm the species (endangered or not)... Is hardly the same as objecting to activities that distress pretty much all animals in the vicinity long term.
- ben_w 7mo ago> Is hardly the same as objecting to activities that distress pretty much all animals in the vicinity long term. A big thing which distresses pretty much all animals in the vicinity is "shipping". One other specific animal harm that wind farm get blamed for is bird deaths. Know what is responsible for more bird deaths? Skyscrapers. The only way to not harm the environment (with current science) is a choice which is unsustainable, because the choice requires everyone everywhere to not only agree now but forever, and "forever" is really hard because anyone defecting from "degrowth" is necessarily stronger for that defection. So yes, objecting to wind turbines on these grounds is absolutely concern trolling.
- cynicalsecurity 7mo ago[flagged]
- diego_moita 7mo agoNo. It is like a drug addict doubling down in its obsession. Oil is in the way out. Only countries addicted to oil don't see that. And the Americans are addicted to oil.
- 0xbadcafebee 7mo ago2028: "To be secure as a nation we need to stamp out all dissent against the government and require all citizens to swear unyielding loyalty to the President."
- kingkawn 7mo agoThis is 100% coming barring a mass political rising
- creationcomplex 7mo agoStart a war. Call dissent treason. Crush the left. Capitalism falls back to fascism to protect wealth, time and time again.
- wise_young_man 7mo agoIf AI takes all the jobs and consolidation of wealth continues it’s not an unlikely outcome. No income no spending = dead economy, poverty and starvation. What are do people do when their government and capitalism fails them?
- Gud 7mo agoAI will perhaps take “all the jobs” in a far distant future. Hopefully by then humanity has managed to get educated and learned to cooperate and share.
- Hasslequest 7mo agoIt doesn't have to take all the jobs. If it can take most of the fake jobs we've invented over the years, it will be massively destructive to our way of life. It seems to already have that level of capability. Funny that you assume education will lead to some sort of egalitarian society. What do you think the point of modern education is? We all take the course in evolution and natural selection, whether we want to or not. We all study history. We all fraternize and learn the little political games or we drop out. Some of us recieve a degree in hard knocks. Why shouldn't the educated be more cutthroat than the rest of us?
- 0xbadcafebee 7mo agoOf the 13 billion barrels of oil the US produces every day, 1.5 billion (15%) comes from the gulf. Despite this being more than enough oil (we are a net-exporter of oil), we import crude oil because our refineries need a different type of crude. The extra 15% of oil we are killing the environment over is for making a profit to export to other nations. It is not for national security.
- stingraycharles 7mo agoGuess which nation also has this heavy type of crude oil? Venezuela, which was invaded earlier this year. If I recall correctly, the US used to have more of this type of oil, that depleted, so now they still have all the refineries on the east coast and need to import it.
- reenorap 7mo agoIt's millions of barrels per day not billions.
- 0xbadcafebee 7mo agoyou're right, brain fart
- unethical_ban 7mo agoBILLION? My god, I didn't know we produced that much. I've known for a while that our refineries are tuned to lighter "sweet crude" than what Canada or US produces, and long have I thought that a more benevolent, heavy-handed government should incentivize our domestic industry to handle our own oil for national security.
- stingraycharles 7mo agoFrom what I understand, the US currently produces more oil than any other country has ever produced.
- 7mo ago
- SilverElfin 7mo agoNote that they also increased the limit on Ethanol. Now, E15 is legal (instead of E10), again in the interest of “national security”. https://www.thedrive.com/news/the-feds-plan-to-start-diluting-gasoline-this-may-explained https://www.thedrive.com/news/the-feds-plan-to-start-dilutin...
- orwin 7mo agoThat's a hidden farmer's subside. It wil probably only benefit on kind of farm, the industrial one though, so I don't think electorally this is great.
- gpi 7mo agoThey called the committee god squad?
- tencentshill 7mo agoYes, as it is only convened when the extinction of an entire species is on the table.
- bl4kers 7mo agoFishermen in the gulf were already struggling. Seems like a death knell to that industry
- kaycey2022 7mo ago[dead]
- nunez 7mo agoI wonder how much the current conflict with the Strait of Hormuz [^0] had to do with this terrifying decision. [^0] https://old.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/1s8u2ho/trump_says_strait_of_hormuz_is_the_worlds_problem/ https://old.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/1s8u2ho/trump_says_...
- comfysocks 7mo agoYes, but this is for national (midterm election) security, so we need gas prices down before November.
- tsoukase 7mo agoNow it's evident that a Rep POTUS mainly surrenders to the military/oil regime while a Dem to the banks/funds one. Tech and movie industry usually follow and adapt to the leader.