That’s the kind of base populist rhetoric we’re treated to on the Stop Oil Speculation Now website, which is basically a thinly veiled airline-financed campaign to make oil cheaper. The problem is that while the “solution” will almost certainly have an effect on the market for oil if implemented, it will also almost certainly not be for the good of most consumers. All I see when I read this list of “fixes” is “DANGER! UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES AHEAD!”

The argument against speculation seems to be this: while futures trading does not itself take oil off the market, it encourages those in control of oil to do so (by buying and hoarding or by waiting to pump more oil). In other words, those who are actually doing the allegedy bad thing are not the focus — it’s those encouraging the bad thing. This is like banning miniskirts in public because it is making some homeless men masturbate on rich people’s shoes.

Of course, there is nothing practically wrong with taking oil off the market to make money in the future. If this is a bubble created by speculation, then we will soon be in an era of cheap oil — the bottom will have fallen out of the market and there will be a surplus. If the bubble lasts long enough, like the high prices of the 1970s did, it will fuel another bout of energy efficiency in our machines and lifestyles in general — much as the crisis of the 1970s did — and we will be even better off for it. Oil will be cheap, plentiful, and we won’t need nearly as much of it to do the same things as before the “crisis.” It’s hard to see the problem here.

There’s something else a little unsettling about this movement, as it were: “Every time you buy products such as food or gas, you are impacted by unregulated, secretive and often foreign commodities futures markets.” Oh no, not foreign! There’s a touch of xenophobia reminiscent of Ford’s warnings about the International Jew. I get the same from T. Boone Pickens’ recent fevered blatherings about the “greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind” that buying oil from Ayrabs represents. Apparently T-Dog isn’t aware we get OIL in exchange for our ever-more-worthless greenbacks.

“There is a need to broaden the range of opportunities available to the non-Jewish population,” Sheetrit was quoted as saying.

“My aspiration is for a new Arab city in the Galilee, where young couples can buy a house, just like in any other city in the world.”

Just like any other city in the world? Sorry but no: only in “democratic” Israel are cities built by the state and legally restricted to those of a certain ethnicity/religion. It doesn’t seem to me that Israeli Arabs will be content with their relegation to bantustans.

“Despite the latest stockmarket dips and credit squeezes, world income per head has increased by more over the past five years than during any other similar period on record.”

While certain people are having their irrational gains reversed in the current correction, the world as a whole is still far richer than ever, and there is no sign the trend will not continue through booms and busts, as it always has. So relax.

So when’s the Tesco takeover of Zimbabwe?

Why is this man filled with such bilious hatred for the Iranian people? Iran has attacked exactly zero American interests outside its borders. The US, on the other hand, overthrew a democratically elected Iranian government. Is it because Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doesn’t send Valentine’s chocolates to every American’s favorite dual loyalty, the State of Israel? Honest and informed people already know he hasn’t called for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map. The President of Iran doesn’t even control the country’s armed forces. So what’s the deal?

In light of his hysterical hatreds, his temper tantrums, his misogyny, and his refusal to learn from the utterly disastrous mistakes of the past, McCain is clearly not a man who can be trusted to have his hand on the red button.

“They are not a revolutionary group. They are terrorists — terrorists with a capital T,” said Gonsalves, a Florida resident and Connecticut native.

Okay, tell me, Mr. Gonsalves — what do you call a mercenary hired by a foreign government flying over a country looking for private property to destroy because the sponsor disagrees with the morality and values of the owner? In a vacuum, you’d call him a terrorist. Replace the foreign government with “United States” and country with “Colombia” and mercenary with “Marc Gonsalves” and you have, what — a hero? No, the mercenary group, working for Northrop Grumman on the payroll of the US government, was terrorizing coca farmers trying to eke a meager living off their land by growing the raw material for the recreational drugs many of us rich Americans enjoy. That makes Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes, and Keith Stansell three freed, unrepentant terrorists. And their executed pilot co-worker, Tom Janis, an executed terrorist.

Replacing the “blanks” above with any other organizations or countries, to an American, would provoke shrieks of outrage. But American exceptionalism makes it so that no matter what Americans do, it is by definition virtuous. That’s sort of, um, insane.

FARC is a terrorist group. But so is the US government in its violent drive to rid the world of substances some find morally impermissible.

This is likely a scenario that will repeat itself across America — as the price of gas, not to mention the population, rises, they will seek the quickest, easiest mode of relief: urban living.

And the world will get cleaner and richer in the meantime. Bring it on.