Latest update April 20th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 19, 2020 Editorial
We are not talking about the age of years, but of money as in lesser dollars. This country just got a loud wakeup call, a knock on its head, and yet it pays no attention, as what was happening in the outside world is greeted with a shrug and the equivalent of: so what?
That is how smug we have become in the superiority of our priorities, the rightness of our pathetic selves. We have no time, pay no attention, unless the constant storyline is related to domination and continuation of the ways of old.
Who cares? That was the concerted reaction across the board here, as we remained immovably attached to the measurements of the moment: the count, who won, who lost. It is also of who must not win and who cannot lose. That is our version, our ideal of democracy in action, of the foundation on which we are going to build a constructive and dignified society going forward in the years ahead for the generations to come.
What we are building is erected on sand, of which there are many scattered grains. They cannot hold together, they offer little that binds and commits, that should compel, to nationhood, to bright, enduring, and progressive neighbourhoods. That sand has seized up the machinery of our minds and made it into a grating, hair-raising, stomach churning and ominous reminder of what we do to ourselves, how we have failed to be understanding of what is required of each of us and all of us to rise above that which drags us down into self-destruction.
Well, that is where we are at present, and no dissertations and visions of democracy and procedure and maturity are going to motivate us or generate in us the kind of self-discovery and self-propulsion to something and somewhere, that now mythical and unachievable place, that gives us some scintilla of hope to carry on in a new direction for new beginnings.
From all indications, that is a forlorn hope now, so disconnected are we from one another, whether hated competitors, or now despised villagers, or simply feared and distrusted passing stranger. We are so disturbed by the mere presence of one another, that we have neither interest nor inquiry into what the precipitous fall of oil means, what is the significance of the Saudi-Russian oil differences, and what is represented by the Kingdom flooding the supply channels with abundant cheap oil.
If we had no oil, these developments – especially the market numbers of below $35 and more lower drops promised – would have seen us reaping hay while that economic sun shone. But the reality is that we do have lots of oil, by our own standards, and that it is being produced and transported elsewhere in early attempts to recoup some of the billions poured into the search, and to balance the books of the once swaggering multinationals. The books are not looking too good right now, and the outlook is gloomier still.
From a sound business standpoint, it makes sense to slow down production, if not curtail outright, if only temporarily to ascertain which way the wind blows and how hard and for how long. And yet we fiddle in almost total disinterest, while our immediate dreams go up in smoke.
For to maintain normal or projected output of oil with so much supply released into the world’s pipeline now, is a losing proposition, and that which is just not done by any sane and sensible producer.
Prices are only depressed further, and this would be into the teeth of a steeply falling demand environment helped along and hurried along by the global pandemic brought about by COVID-19.
That raging monster has no friends, nor part of any coalition, nor is slowed down by the impenetrable thickets that are so much a part of this disputatious land. The beast seeks blood and wants more of it.
Our politics make us thoroughly willing and self-sacrificial participants in the dividing, the destructive, meanwhile, a nation of continual losers suck on its own spirit and feeds on the sinew of itself. It is prostrate in helplessness.
Oil at $35 (or $25), it was $22 yesterday. Who cares?
Where is the BETTER MANAGEMENT/RENEGOTIATION OF THE OIL CONTRACTS you promised Jagdeo?
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