Because Climate Change and U.S. Oil Greed
[guest post by Dana]
You know the world has gone mad when a terrorist organization responsible for murdering school boys and kidnapping school girls comes close to getting a pass because Climate Change:
Instability in Nigeria, however, has been growing steadily over the last decade – and one reason is climate change. In 2009, a UK Department for International Development (Dfid) study warned that climate change could contribute to increasing resource shortages in the country due to land scarcity from desertification, water shortages, and mounting crop failures.
A more recent study by the Congressionally-funded US Institute for Peace confirmed a “basic causal mechanism” that “links climate change with violence in Nigeria.” The report concludes:
“…poor responses to climatic shifts create shortages of resources such as land and water. Shortages are followed by negative secondary impacts, such as more sickness, hunger, and joblessness. Poor responses to these, in turn, open the door to conflict.”
Unfortunately, a business-as-usual scenario sees Nigeria’s climate undergoing “growing shifts in temperature, rainfall, storms, and sea levels throughout the twenty-first century. Poor adaptive responses to these shifts could help fuel violent conflict in some areas of the country.”
No explanation was given for what motivated other past crimes against humanity before “climate change” became the go-to. Furthermore, it’s not only climate change that’s at the root of Boko Haram, but U.S. greed for oil. Of course.
According to Prof Jeremy Keenan, a leading Algeria expert at the School of Oriental and African Studies who advises the US State Department, European Union, and Foreign Office on regional security issues, AQIM’s expansion across north Africa has focused on oil-rich regions – particularly Algeria, Niger Delta, Nigeria, and Chad; the latter three precisely where Boko Haram has reportedly received terrorist training.
Over a decade ago, Keenan reports, these countries signed a “co-operation agreement on counter-terrorism that effectively joined the two oil-rich sides of the Sahara together in a complex of security arrangements whose architecture is American.” The agreement evolved into the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative, which was eventually absorbed into the US Army’s African Command (AFRICOM).
Keenan argues that the west’s oil and gas greed has caused our governments to turn a blind eye to the role of oil states like Algeria in fostering regional terrorism – instead exploiting the resulting chaos to legitimise efforts to consolidate access to remaining African energy reserves.
If this analysis is correct, then the hundreds of innocent girls kidnapped in Nigeria are not just victims of Islamist fanaticism; they are also victims of failed foreign, economic and security policies tied to our infernal addiction to black gold.
It goes without saying that third world countries rife with corruption and nearly non-existent economies facing drought and famine drives people to do whatever they need to survive. The author writes that 200,000 farmers and herdsman had lost their livelihoods and, facing starvation, crossed the border to Nigeria where some of those were lured in by Boko Haram. (The author, however, does not speak to those hundreds of thousands facing the very same drought and famine conditions not participating in such atrocities…)
So, at what point do we simply let those who are guilty be guilty? What compels some to find something to explain heinous crimes, to add a sympathetic layer, to make the brutality human? Because if some are now blaming Boko Haram’s behavior on an external, non-direct, still debatable circumstance like climate change (only recently being discussed in the public square), what other abhorrent behaviors will we see blamed on it?
And why not entertain the far-fetched: If this line of thinking were to grow and evolve, it wouldn’t be surprising to see climate change eventually used as a defense in a crime. After all, climate change apparently impacts the entire world, to one degree or another. Who is to say what crimes could or could not be, at least in part, charged to it?
–Dana
Homicide, rape, and assault increase dramatically in warm weather. That’s been true forever. It’s also directly correlated with increased consumption of ice cream.
As for weather being a defense, I read that under the Napoleanic Code if the scirocco, a hot wind blowing North from Africa, blew for more than three days, murder was not a capital offense. Too good to check.
nk (dbc370) — 5/12/2014 @ 8:31 pmnk, it’s funny you bring that up because I was reading about the uptick of crime in Chicago, of all places, during hot weather.
Heat accompanied by drought and famine is one thing. Heat, where there is no drought or famine, is something else altogether.
Dana (9f8700) — 5/12/2014 @ 8:47 pmProfessor Keenan’s ‘expertise’ explains a good deal of the strategy or lack thereof, by those three bodies, of course, what is the other common thread,
narciso (3fec35) — 5/12/2014 @ 8:51 pmin all those countries, what could it be, why is the group called Congregation of the Faith and Jihad, must be Episcopalian,
Alternate lead paragraph:
“Prof Jeremy Keenan comes out in favor of increasing U.S. domestic fracking operations to lessen west’s oil and gas greed in Nigeria.”
However, for some reason, I don’t the professor agreeing with that position, if for no other reason than his fellow leftists would boil him in Nigerian oil if he did.
John (6192ca) — 5/12/2014 @ 9:03 pmI was a criminologist before I was a lawyer, and it is because warm weather lets people be out and about more, being themselves and fulfilling their fun-loving natures, and not because it makes them more irritable.
nk (dbc370) — 5/12/2014 @ 9:03 pmI think they need to raise the minimum wage in Nigeria.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 5/12/2014 @ 9:10 pmWay back in the day, as they say, weather was important not because it was political. It mattered because it meant you might live or die. No one argued about it.
It was a constant. Sometimes it favored a farmer. Sometimes it did not. Sometimes it caused a flood or a drought. It was simply the weather.
No one living today is any different from any ancestor that wanted the best weather for the best row of corn or the fattest cattle.
The only difference is we can go to a store and buy what we need rather than toil for the fruits of hard labor in the United States.
And a whole lot of people want that to not be possible anymore. Not because they want people to starve, but because they are stupid. They live in a world where history stopped today and if you want to progress, the only solution is shut up.
Progressives today are nothing more than Luddites on the wrong side of history.
Ag80 (eb6ffa) — 5/12/2014 @ 9:45 pmi’ll believe
global warmingexcuse me,climate changemake that “climate disruption” is a real problem when the scum who are telling me it’s a problem start acting like it’s a problem for them too.when Al Gore lives in a tiny efficiency walk up apartment, instead of owning multiple mansions, commutes via public transportation and uses the Internet to virtually attend meetings rather than travel around in SUV convoys & private jets, then *maybe* i’ll start taking the issue seriously.
until then, they can sod off with the BS.
redc1c4 (abd49e) — 5/12/2014 @ 9:54 pmit’s China what’s sucking all the oils out of Africa really
cause they have like industries and stuff
America just has food stamps and syphilis
happyfeet (8ce051) — 5/12/2014 @ 10:07 pmChina has a great deal of acrid pollution also. When I was there I noticed this and coughed a lot. Is there a separated- at -birth -Koch brother who lives in China and is causing all this?
elissa (203189) — 5/12/2014 @ 10:15 pmChina is Ahead Of The Game is all I know.
happyfeet (8ce051) — 5/12/2014 @ 10:25 pmmeanwhile, here in #Failifornia, we’re picking our next generation of leaders from the absolute cream of the crop
really. 😎
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-California/2014/05/10/Congressional-Hopeful-Marianne-Williamson-Sees-Green-New-Deal-for-Ca
redc1c4 (abd49e) — 5/12/2014 @ 11:50 pmit seems that “National Climate Assessment” is already old news… even more interesting is *where* it was considered “news” and where it wasn’t.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/12/national-climate-assessment-a-flash-in-the-pan/
redc1c4 (abd49e) — 5/13/2014 @ 12:37 amThe greatest spewers of CO2 in America are Democrats like Obama, Gore, Kerry and the Clintons who maintain multiple mansions, jet around the world to vacation, to raise funds and to hear the sound of their own voice giving speeches.
They claim millions will die from their excess CO2, so why aren’t these climate criminals arrested for causing the climate holocaust?
Perfect Sense (4d5c72) — 5/13/2014 @ 2:26 amBrief background:
Oil was discovered in the Niger River Delta in the mid-50s and now represents 98% of the nation’s export earnings. Prior to the discovery of vast oil and natural gas reserves (3X oil) Niger’s economy was typical of most African nations – based almost exclusively on agricultural exports. From the time of discovery, government officials have been the majority shareholders in all oil profits, which do not reach the Nigerian people, their income from agricultural exports has dropped substantially since the mid-60s.
Nigeria, which is a member of OPEC, is the 10th most oil-rich nation. Income from oil export represents 83% of government revenue, and 95% of foreign exchange. The US imports about 40% of Nigeria’s oil, with India and Brazil each receiving about 10%. Nigeria’s petroleum is highly regarded as both light and sweet, with very little sulphur and is similar to North Sea Bonny Light.
ropelight (b236c8) — 5/13/2014 @ 4:45 amLooks like the only criminals out there today are the climate change dissidents – oops I mean deniers.
Amphipolis (d3e04f) — 5/13/2014 @ 8:10 amIt’s been proven.
askeptic (8ecc78) — 5/13/2014 @ 12:44 pmClimate Change causes cranial calcification in over-educated nit-wits; or,
IOW, Orwell was right:
‘There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.’
10.Comment by elissa (203189) — 5/12/2014 @ 10:15 pm
China has a great deal of acrid pollution also. When I was there I noticed this and coughed a lot. Is there a separated- at -birth -Koch brother who lives in China and is causing all this?
The only thing is, acrid pollution causes global cooling. (for a limited period of time)
Sammy Finkelman (bcd7c8) — 5/15/2014 @ 10:54 am17. Comment by askeptic (8ecc78) — 5/13/2014 @ 12:44 pm
Orwell was right:
‘There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.’
It shouldn’t be necessary to repeat that – that was demonstrated a long time ago. Is it news that it is still true?
Sammy Finkelman (bcd7c8) — 5/15/2014 @ 10:56 am