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By Tom Pain
Sept. 29, 2006 Dang, I get busy for a few days, too busy to post yet one more repetitious article blowing Keyes’ bigotry out of the water, and he gets all blubbery and emotional on me. If you will bear with me while I address Thomas' insults, I have some interesting data at the end of this article. (OK, you can skip ahead if you already know how Thomas lies.) For the record (and this is something you will never hear Thomas do), I admit to being wrong about Russia having the most oil. I recalled that information from a college class years ago and on investigation, after Thomas pointed out my error, now realize I remembered incorrectly. I am now fairly certain that the description I recalled of Russia pertained to the totality of all its natural resources. No other country comes close to Russia’s abundance of natural resources – it being the largest country on Earth. However, do note that my misstatement had nothing to do with the logic of my post – although Thomas implies that my one mistake renders everything I’ve ever said false. My point was very clearly to compare Russia’s oil self-sufficiency to the US’s lack of sufficient oil reserves to fuel our economy. That Russia is not the MOST self-sufficient, as I mistakenly implied, means nothing. But, of course, as always, Thomas does not want to address the substance of my arguments. Likewise, Thomas uses the fact that I misspelled the name of someone he cited, Senator Fulbright, to prove that my denial of his conclusion based on that Senator’s quote is wrong. How preposterous. He makes these claims as if he is faultless in his grammar. In self-defense to his obnoxious tactics, I have pointed out his errors, graciously, to him in the past. Never have I tried to use his errors to deny his logic. Thomas complains that I didn’t "research" Senator Fulbright before denying his conclusion. What was there to research? He quoted Fulbright stating an OPINION that Israel controlled our Congress – that’s all, nothing else. For the record, Thomas, I will accept that you have accurately quoted Senator Fulbright’s opinion. Perhaps the readers recall the actual substance of my objection to that quote – seeing how you don’t acknowledge it. I simply noted that it was merely opinion - that Thomas was providing no facts that Fulbright cited to substantiate his opinion, and so it was irrelevant to proving whether Israel did, in fact, control our Congress. If I had quoted some other Congressman saying, "In my opinion, Israel absolutely does not control Congress" would that disprove his theory? Of course it wouldn't, neither opinion means anything in a discussion of facts. Thomas further declares me completely wrong in everything I’ve ever said because I made a very common mistake of including Iran among Arab countries. As many times as I have clearly identified Iran as Persian in my UK articles, of which I know Thomas is aware, it is obvious that mine was an error of convenience. Because Iran shares a common religion, geography, boundaries, and hatred of Israel (the subject of the article) with other Arab countries, Iran is often thrown into the group of Arab countries. Thomas is simply groping for any reason to dismiss my common sense logic that refutes his bigoted conspiracy theories. Does anyone besides me wonder why he doesn’t provide evidence that my theory is wrong, rather than dismiss it for an incorrect adjective? Likewise, he describes me listing Egypt as a country with "copious" natural resources. I didn’t. I provided links to a report from the World Bank that documented Egypt as being a net exporter of energy, presumably oil but the report didn’t say. Again, that minor fact was mostly irrelevant to the point I was making, I was merely trying to provide the research Thomas thrives on – as he says: "I spend hours and hours checking out sources, compiling figures, finding corroborative links…." I wish I had hours to spend on such leisurely pursuits. Apparently, being childless and retired himself, he thinks less of me because I have a family to support, which requires employment and does not allow for hours each day cruising the internet. But, if those are the kinds of examples he can cite of me being ill-informed – namely, making innocent mistakes regarding minutia that was irrelevant to my conclusions – I can live with that for now. If he were able to dispute the actual conclusions I make, perhaps I would feel more inclined to do more research. Maybe when I’m old and unemployed, I can aspire to Thomas’ standards. I just hope to not be as hateful and bigoted as he is. Yet, what good does all that research do, if one is too biased to understand it correctly? Time and again, Thomas digs up statistics that sound germane, except he skews a conclusion from them that can’t be supported by those facts. For example, I’ve pointed out twice, because he was ignorant enough to allege it twice, the falsity of his conclusion that Israel owned the US Congress simply because 98 Senators voted in favor of a resolution of support for Israel. Neither time has he come back with any defense to my exposure of that stupidity – I guess that means I didn’t spell anything wrong? Here’s another example. In response to my assertion that the principle underlying cause for the invasion of Iraq is America’s need to insure Middle Eastern oil’s availability on the world market, Thomas says: "I have pointed out to Pain several times that US consumes 20,731,000 barrels of oil a day, of which 10,088,000 are imported. The imported oil includes only 2,400,000 barrels a day from Persian Gulf countries-- Bahrain , Iran , Iraq , Kuwait , Qatar , Saudi Arabia , and United Arab Emirates , or only 11.6% of the amount consumed." How many hours did he spend digging up that irrelevant data? Are you sure we don’t consume 20,731,001 barrels, Thomas? That could matter if one believes Thomas. Should I dismiss it and everything else he’s ever written because of all those spaces between the country names and the commas? I mean, seriously, what kind of idiot thinks there is supposed to be a space before a comma??? Of course, I wouldn’t dismiss him for that. Thomas is an excellent writer who obviously has hours to spend editing his articles. Thomas rarely makes grammar mistakes. No, I dismiss his conclusion because it’s wrong and the data irrelevant. Anyone with even a high school education in economics understands that world oil prices are impacted primarily by supply and demand (yes, world crisis can also drive prices up temporarily). The fact that we don’t get the actual oil we use from the Middle East does not mean that our price for oil would not go up if Middle Eastern oil were taken off the market. But, since Thomas is not striving for the truth, since he is only seeking data that can be skewed to support his bigoted hatred for Jews and Israel, he reads that data differently than the rest of us. In fact, his article, "US-Israel Aggression In The Middle East Is Not About Oil" is typical of his bigoted rants. Look at the title. Anyone impartial person would agree that labeling the US and Israel as "aggressors" exhibits bias. I saw that title and expected his rebuttal to my assertion that the Iraq war was about oil, however, using the same strategy I’ve documented above, nothing in the article disputes any of my conclusions or evidence. The entirety only criticizes my word choice, that misstatement about Russia’s oil reserves, and that idiotic conclusion about US oil imports. He rebuts nothing but uses that outrageous title as if he does. Thomas has no integrity, and by the way, doesn’t he know that the AP style guide would not capitalize the words "in," "the," and "is" in his title? Finally, I would point out that despite his hours and hours of research, Thomas seems to have selected data on Russia’s oil reserves that most supports his desire to prove me wrong. Did he not see any of the contradictory data that came up on the first page of Google when I searched "Russia oil reserves"? It seems that unlike the other countries ahead of Russia on Thomas’ list, whose oil exploration has been performed by Western companies such that the data is accurate and confirmed, Russia’s oil reserves are largely unknown and estimates are based on information provided by their government. It is not unthinkable that Russia might want to underestimate its reserves to the world. In fact, evidence suggests that is exactly the case. Here’s an interesting story prominently linked on that Google page: http://www.mosnews.com/money/2004/04/30/oilreserves.shtml It seems that the British Financial Times reported that "Russia’s proven oil reserves may be much higher than was previously thought." Due to the strict accounting regulations of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which became applicable to Russian oil companies Yukos and TNK-BP when they sought access to US financial markets, they revised their stated oil reserves upward. Here’s what the paper said: "Taking the new information into account some analysts already suggest that Russia’s oil reserves can be three times higher than previously thought which would place the country right behind Saudi Arabia in terms of total reserves. Moreover, some, like Paul Collison, global emerging markets oil and gas strategist at Brunswick UBS, are even more optimistic and "believe that by the end of the decade Russia will be proven to have 50 percent more hydrocarbon reserves than what Saudi Arabia has today". Currently, according to BP Statistical Review, Russian has 60 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and natural gas reserves equivalent to another 280 billion barrels of oil. However, many analysts believe that if other Russian oil companies follow the suit and revise their The net is that when oil and its "equivalent" reserves of natural gas are considered in total, Russia already has more proven reserves than any other country. When the additional reserves that other Russian oil companies (besides the two that had to accurately state their reserves to US authorities) are thought to possess are reported, the will have an estimated 180 billion barrels of oil, or 460 billion barrels of equivalent total – versus Saudi Arabia’s 300 million. That doesn’t even include Mr. Collison’s prediction of even greater reserves yet to be "discovered." There were several other articles in leading publications to the same effect. Funny, that in hours and hours of research, Thomas would have missed those. But don’t expect him to admit being wrong, I’m the only one of us two with integrity. ------------ About the author Tom Pain: Just an American boy with so much common sense, it hurts. Email: thomas.pain@hughes.net Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. 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