Thursday, September 28, 2006

Truth Or Not?

I found an intersting quote in the NYTimes today that I thought was provocative. My mind is not clear about how much truth there is in this sentence. So, I thought I would put it to you. What say you?
There are four enemies of human rights: oil, gas, the war on terror and geopolitical considerations, and we have all four.
- Yevgeny A. Zhovtis of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really like that. Wonder if they're ranked in order of importance? Ascending or descending?

Anonymous said...


Human rights enemy #1, oil and gas

When natural resources are controlled by the state, they give the state a source of income independent of the people. The people live by sufferance of the state, the state has no need for them. The state could, theoretically, hire mercenaries to kill them all. (If such killers could be found.) Kleptocrats don't need the approval of the public, or the public.

All oil states are unhappy in the same way.