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Talking Story |
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From The Asian Reporter, V18, #38 (September 23, 2008), page 7.
Got some good news, some bad news, but all old news
Saturday noodleshop mornings are big around here. Around Portland, Oregon.
Indeed, it’s hard for an informed folk to do without Saturday morning noodleshop talk. It’s slicker than CNN. Faster than the net.
Noodleshop talk can be terrific. Noodleshop news can be awful. But because a balanced diet requires both good and bad, you can get your full dose of each, each Saturday morning over steaming fragrant pho.
The good part of café chatter is the gossipy side. It’s all about who saw whom with whom that very Saturday morning. Who got lucky Friday night. Embellishments are expected. Truth is optional.
The awful part is hearing the week’s national and global news. Exaggerations are not necessary. The news is bad enough.
The thing is: headline news is never entirely new. It’s the same old, same old, as they say. Old World news in a nice new dress. And seasonal shoes.
Take the news about those government guys partying it up with Shell and Chevron boys. When our Filipino engineer brought that up, between slurps and sighs of Madam Bac Mai’s heavenly Hue noodles, I assumed he was talking about Malacañang Palace miscreants. Pilipino politics, as usual.
When our Chinese doctor went on to joke about how those busy bureaucrats got the goodies (sexual intimacies) from big oil company girls, I then figured he was talking about Beijing Communist princelings scoring what their types earnestly believe they’ve got coming.
Philippine corruption, commie party privilege, Korean or Cambodian warlord attitudes, are all the same. It’s the arrogance of power. It’s the power of oil. It’s old news.
Old news, new clothes
Corruption is not new. Deals are inevitable. That’s how we are, both sides of our big Deep Blue. It’s how we think, Saturday mornings.
For as long as our ancient aunties’ memories, arrogant foreigners have bought our local sultans. Corrupted our cultures. For an entire century you could hear working men whisper: Please let my wife be okay, please let our babies be safe, when I get home from work. Safe from them. Please God.
That’s how it’s been. Without deals between rich outsiders and our pragmatic homegrown elites, those hungry foreigners will uncork their fury over our oil. Over us. They will crush our cities and pulverize our farms and we will not be able to bury family fast enough. We will not find all their parts. Ampun’allaah.
All that, all of it, over those strangers’ insatiable thirst for our oil. Oil is maddening as gold, oil is crazy as coke. And that’s for sure. Ask anyone.
And now, here we are. Sitting in this suburban café, on this side of all that craziness. On the consuming side. The wrong side of bad oil business.
Don’t believe it?
Believe this: In 1991, the U.S. and Iraqi presidents, competitors for the same oil — reserves immeasurable, profits unimaginable — went to war. And we all went with them, while our Armadas and Explorers sat on our sloped driveways, while our Jenn-Airs and Frigidaires and big-screen Mitsubishis hummed in our homes.
In 2003, that President’s son, masterfully manipulated by Saudi oilmen’s sons, sent America’s stealthy Air Force, our irresistible Navy, and our ferocious armies over there again. Against that meglomaniac again. Saddam. Together, they and you and me and our kids killed about a million grandmas and fathers and sons and pretty girls — I include here, theirs and ours. Arabs and Americans, all the same. Same family.
About three and a half million folks fled their homes fearing for their lives. Their cozy homes. Their precious lives.
And all that, over our addiction to oil. Their oil, our oil, all the same. Oil doesn’t care who’s feet it’s under. Neither do those oil traders.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised last Saturday, I shouldn’t have been troubled when our suburban noodleshop talk shifted from speculating over Friday night winners (no new scandals) to recent headlines (government guys partying with oil industry girls). It should not have been news, not to us, not to CNN, not to The Oregonian. But it was.
The U.S. Interior Department’s inspector general charged nineteen Mineral Management Service staff. Alleged bad behavior includes 135 occasions of illegal gifts and gratuities, "recreational marijuana and cocaine use," and "brief sexual relationships." Ethical lapses between government regulators and the business they police.
The good news is: They got caught all bleary eyed the morning after. Bad boys and party girls alike. Just like how we giggle and gossip about who got what from whom the Friday night before Saturday noodleshop morning. Just like how we police ethnic enclave drama. The perps got spanked. The system works.
The bad news is: Unlike our juicy little diversions, oil is really big, oil is really bad. Oil is bigger than gold and badder than cocaine because oil’s eaters are us. You and me are in oil’s awful loop of exploration and extraction and exploitation no matter who’s stubborn grandpa or generous ma or vulnerable school kids are doing what they do on top of where oil’s lying. No matter. Getting it matters more.
And that’s the crazy talk of every crackhead, every alcoholic. Asian, Arab, African, American, all the same.
* * *
Notas: The numbers on our current war’s perished, combatants and regular folks, Arabs and us, are as competitive as those who put out these counts. The numbers are numbing. Three conflicting sources of mortality are: The Iraq Body Count (IBC, January 2008); The Lancet Study (U.K. Medical Journal, June 2006); Opinion Research Business (ORB survey, August 2007). Less prone to doctoring are counts of frightened families not in their homes, jobs, or schools. The U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees estimates 1.8 million Iraqis are in neighboring countries, 1.6 million were displaced internally.
Charges against officers of the Interior Dept., Mineral Management Service are set out in: "Oil and Gas Royalties," The Federal System for Collecting Oil and Gas Revenues Needs Comprehensive Reassessment (a report of the United States Government Accountability Office, September 2008).