'On Earth, petroleum once turned petty thugs into world leaders'

...So goes the statement by Admiral Doughtery in Star Trek: Insurrection, presumably about the Saudis! Or was it?

This has been at the back of my mind for years ever since I saw the film, and I wonder how the writers got away with it. This was a brave thing to say, even if Paramount would never have been able to sell a film in Saudi Arabia again.

What do others think? Good reference to the Saudis (or any other nation in control of oil), or not?

 

What makes you think they were talking about (just) Saudis? He could just as easily been referring to the oil dynasty of ancient Myanmar - or to John Rockefeller, or to Halliburton, or to any of a number of other oil magnates and companies, depending on what 23rd century history has to say about them.

 

I don't think I gave it much thought till Bush the Second managed to snake into the big white house, but it seems like it is referencing the Bush family as archtypical oil baron/politicos to me.

 

Well if they were referring to the Saudis---it's an untrue statement.

The country is a regional player but are in no way "world leaders"

Their influence has never been that great and has been shrinking since before the movie came out.

And Hollywood attacking arabs = brave = laughable.

 

That would be a bizarre reference for a 1998 film, given that Bush I was a one-term failure, and Bush II was still a couple years away from the White House.

 

Or about post-WWIII actors.

 

Not to veer too far into theorizing about the real world here, but a one-term president and two-term Veep who ran the goddamn CIA for years sure as hell sounds like he fits that description, ESPECIALLY given the family links to middle east oil concerns that had already surfaced and only became a going concern postINS when II was in power.

(Just to give a grounding on my perception of things, I'd say if you read Trevanian's SHIBUMI, which postulated a domestic agency that addressed US oil interests worldwide which had all known domestic spy ops in their pocket and essentially working for them, even when it undercut those agencies' own agendas, then you have an idea of exactly how I think the world works. I just don't see some folks who are in the 99.999% earning level as leaving anything to chance, and my worldview is constantly reinforced on that, unfortunately.)

 

Perhaps he was about people like the dude in There Will Be Blood.

I don't see this as a comparison between Ruaffo and the Irwing family in Eastern Canada or a Russian oligarch, but as a comparison between Metaphasic radiation and petroleum or warp drive. It doesn't matter if pre-warp drive Romulan leaders were really a simple bunch of thugs or not. I don't care who they are. They found a new powerful ressource and I wont miss this opportunity.

 

I agree.

 

In my opinion, the leaders of OPEC nations are still nothing but petty thugs. But they are in control of the world.

 

Brave stance--except 100% nonsense.

 

Control of the world may be streaching things, but OPEC's control over a health percentage of the world's petroleum and the petro-dollars that come with it has for decades given them sway in international matters.

Does that put them at the same table as other world leaders? Yes, because they have the ability to malnipulate.

If nothing else, without oil would the banking world gradually be moving to Dubai?

 

OPEC's clout has been declining for decades. The only time they put up a truly united front was the oil embargo of 1973. They are divided into different camps with different agendas.

Their share of the worlds oil market has been declining for decades and will continue to decline as the USA and Canada oil production continues to ramp up and as the Russian's continue to explore more of their vast untapped resources.

Most of the OPEC countries have a single resource--oil, they have no heavy industry of their own, depend on foreign nations for 90% of their arms industry, have backward social infrastructures, limited educational resources, and are plagued by conflicts, uprisings, civil wars, repression and unstable govts.

Anybody who bemoans OPEC's "world control" and "evil agenda" has some pathetic agenda of their own.

 

The whole relying on oil to the point of absurdity thing has blown my mind my whole life.

When I was a teenager in the 70s, I read a novel (one I recently repurchased and reread for the first time in decades) that is very much in the 'ethical use of tech will save us' mode, Ben Bova's MILLENNIUM.

In it, you have Soviet and US forces working side by side in relative peace on the moon, seeing a nuclear exchange on Earth is about to take place between their countries, seize all the ABM laser sats the two countries have in orbit and become their own country to save the planet from itself. Bova also piggybacks the idea of laser guided weather control in the same novel, suggesting if a country violates UN guidelines (giving the UN some REAL power is another notion here), they will simply get their water 'turned off' through weather control, along with a shitload of seriously dry summers and calamitous winters.

Now this is all seriously promethean (and Bova did a nonfic book on prometheanism too, which I used to hand out to people before I stopped my 'true believer' mode on tech solving/saving everything), but it is part and parcel with the notion that if your tech is limited or running out or bad for living things, you get rid of it in place of 'cleaner' or better tech ... and regardless of how I felt about tech being the answer to everything or just a potential tool for same, I always figured we would HAVE to wise up on shit like oil, even if it took riots in the streets.

Double Dumb Ass on Me.

 

The really sad thing is we heard for decades on how "oil will run out in X number of years and or course the year always got pushed back.

Now with oil sands, oil shale, 'clean coal', fracking and tapping the now melting polar regions----oil is surging and won't run out for a hundred years or more---even if consumption continues to grow.

 

It was for the Federation. It was all for the Federation. Dougherty is the politcal leader who will allow or advocate a controversial way of exploitation of natural resources because he's blinded by some results.

Yeah, I put very low royalties on this, but at least, I create jobs. I don't care about quality of life's deterioration for local inhabitants, the economic benefits for our whole society are supposed to be wonderful.

 

I would refer to any head of a nation as a "world leader." Perhaps that was all the writer of that line meant.

Here is a list of the top 10 oil producing countries in the world:

1. Russia
2. Saudi Arabia
3. United States
4. Iran
5. China
6. Canada
7. Iraq
8. UAE
9. Venezuela
10. Mexico

So, we see from this list that some very large countries are in the top 10, including Russia, the US and Canada. Further, we see Iraq listed and I, for one, would agree with anyone that said Sadaam Hussein was a petty thug turned into a world leader by means of petroleum. After all, a coalition of several countries waged 2 wars against Iraq during his rule. He obviously had a bit of influence in world affairs.

Additionally, only 5 of these top 10 oil producing countries are members of OPEC.

 

Right and many of the OPEC nations are completely opposed to the policies of the others---therefore as a bloc their power is very limited and as single players they are for the most part not at all influential.
Even the Saudis influence has taken a tumble from what it was--Iran is a outcast, Iraq nearly in civil war.

Yeah as head of state the leader of San Marino is technically a "world leader" but clearly Doherty was referring to people who actually wielded true power.

 

How about Putin? About as much of a thug as you can get, obviously a World Leader, and doubt he would be where he is now without his Oil influence.

 

He would fit the quote perfectly.