On: Iran war: Brent oil briefly hits $119 as talks stall

September 12, 1895

This morning, I read of oil prices rising like floodwaters, of wars measured in billions like sacks of grain counted at market. Men in distant capitals speak of “blockades” and “straits” as if these were chess moves, not currents that will drown fishermen, starve families, silence children. The Pentagon - what a curious word, this temple of war - calculates the cost at twenty-five billion. But who has reckoned the cost in the trembling hands of a sailor who does not wish to die for a quarrel he did not choose?

The ships choke the strait, iron beasts bellowing smoke, their bellies swollen with oil that will be burned, spilled, traded, while somewhere a farmer sows his field, unaware that the price of his lamp’s fuel is now written in ledgers alongside the price of bullets. The generals and the merchants speak of necessity, of strategy, of markets. But necessity is the child of their own making - a monster fed by fear and greed, wearing the mask of reason.

I think of the young men who will be sent to die for this. Not for their homes, not for their loved ones, but for the right of one set of rich men to sell what another set of rich men wish to control. And when the war is done, the oil will still flow, the accounts will be balanced, and the dead will be buried in unmarked graves.

Is this not madness? To kill for the right to set a price?