They could have broke the back of OPEC
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A guy from Indiana talked to Mark about the war in Iraq.
Mark: Which oil cartel?
Guy: OPEC.
Mark: OPEC. Right. And they were gonna like stop everything being hitched to the dollar and like..?
Guy: No. We could have broke…. When they went into Iraq they could have broke the back of OPEC. The biggies are Saudi Arabia, Iran. Syria does not a have a place. Venezuela. Kuwait.
Mark: Indonesia.
Guy: Yeah, they are not a big enough supplier.
Mark: Twenty per cent. Twenty per cent they have.
Guy: They could have broke them if we could have got Iraqi oil. If we got Iraqi oil then if we had control we could produce enough oil out of Iraq, if it was stable to manipulate, to…
Mark: OPEC?
Guy: To stop OPEC from saying “Oh well we need more money blah blah blah. We will shut down.” They could have cranked it up. They could have done it. And they did it. There were no weapons of mass destruction. That was a joke. If you are going to do it then fine. Go ahead and break OPEC. See what happens later. The problem is…it was Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld had never talked to a policeman to know that when you go into a country, take over a country and you disband the military, you disband the police; how many police officers do you need on the street to control Chicago or New York? How many police officers do you need to do this? This is not…This is New York, Chicago, LA. Any city. This is not a city with all the obvious (going by…I read a book) ethnic difficulties of Iraq. They had no way of controlling Iraq. They had like …what?!…one tenth of the…
Tags: business, cartel, conversational-style, currency-market, discourse-analysis, economics, idioms, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, military-industrial-complex, monopoly, narrative-style, narrative-voice, oil, OPEC, politics, pronouns, Real Conversations, Rumsfeld, Saudi-Arabia, syria, the-dollar, Venezuela
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Here are some lesson ideas if anyone wants to use them.
Internet Research Projects
1.Which countries have the largest oil reserves?
Rank them in ascending order.
2. Which countries are the largest producers of oil?
Rank them in the same way.
3. Write a paragraph about the history and role of OPEC.
4. What is the military industrial complex and what is the origin of the term?
Discussion Questions.
1. Is it possible to live in a society without laws?
2. Is it possible to live in a society without corruption?
3. Who said “The more laws, the more corrupt the state?” What did (s)he (he or she) mean?
[...] What a mess! Use your dictionary to find out exactly what each term means then write a report and post it in the comments section at the bottom of this page. To break the back of something [...]