Oil money has enabled their populations to increase dramatically, they need the oil money to import food among other things. They have hardly been selling their oil cheaply the arab oil belt has profited greatly.
Oh? When did we bomb Norway?
The west has meddled in Nigeria since forever -- search for Shell (the oil company) and Nigeria. (Hint: on the mainstream media you'll find 1/10 of the stuff reported on independent ones without big oil corps as advertisers).
Russia? Are you kidding me? You had a full blown cold war, and tons of "proxy" peripheral wars with Russia for half a century. And the US still tries to influence Russian policy, replace their government with some friendly clown like the early Yeltsin, etc. Countless money are spent in campaigns to influence local policies there (imagine the outburst if Russia sponsored this or that US candidate, and had NGOs and groups report on the elections, gun laws, etc).
Mexico? Heck, California, Texas, etc were part of Mexico. And you don't need to bomb it, since you've controlled the place, and had friendly lackeys in power for decades.
Do you have any evidence for this, beyond the crazed rantings of the late dictator?
>The west has meddled in Nigeria since forever -- search for Shell (the oil company) and Nigeria. (Hint: on the mainstream media you'll find 1/10 of the stuff reported on independent ones without big oil corps as advertisers).
So we went from "the US bombs countrise to oblivion" to "The West meddles in countries' affairs". That's quite a step down. Here we were talking about something interesting, namely bombing, and now we're at nebulous "meddling". All countries "meddle" in the affairs of other countries. What do you think OPEC countries are doing throwing around cash in Washington?
>Russia? Are you kidding me? You had a full blown cold war, and tons of "proxy" peripheral wars with Russia for half a century.
Which had absolutely nothing to do with oil.
>Mexico? Heck, California, Texas, etc were part of Mexico. And you don't need to bomb it, since you've controlled the place, and had friendly lackeys in power for decades.
Sure, California and Texas were part of Mexico before oil existed as an industry. And again, do you have any actual evidence we had "friendly lackeys" in power in Mexico? As far as I can tell, the Mexican government has a lot more influence in the US than the other way around.
And the war with Mexico occurred thirteen years before the US started using oil commercially.
This "wars for oil" stuff is something a lot of people repeat to themselves without really thinking about it.
And then you bring Venezuela, Russia, Nigeria etc as examples where these things didn't happen...
Not only forgetting all the places where those wars DID happen (all over the wider middle east for one), but also the numerous ways the west intervened in those places, from constant pressure with tons of ways (sponsoring political opponents, arming guerilla groups, helping their border states invade them, manipulating their economy, down to toppling governments).
Maybe get 2-3 good books about the subject?
Or an article to start:
http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-pentagon-i...
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=852
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/18/u-s-interventions-in-...
http://www.venezuelasolidarity.co.uk/latest-wikileaks-show-f...
http://www.amazon.com/Crude-Interventions-United-States-Worl...
http://williamblum.org/chapters/freeing-the-world-to-death/u...
A certain country that is rich as anything might get poor 50 or 100 years from now, and the majority of people in that country are of a certain religion and so a lot of people of that religion may decide to relocate and when to hey do, they may come to Europe. And if they do ... so what?
Imagine you favorite town. Say, NY. Imagine 20 million people of a certain religion relocating there. Could be Muslims, hardcore religious nuts from the South, whatever.
Imagine them changing the culture of the place towards their religious views and customs. E.g. persecuting gays. Enforcing strict restrictions to their women (and other women). Not in the "melting pot", ethnic-flavor cutesy way of NY, in the "we are too many of us now here and we want things a certain way".
This can happen to a place. And it has already happened to certain places, neighborhoods in Europe and elsewhere.
The inverse can happen too: a place get full of Westerners, expats, etc, and they alter its color, buy the government to do them favors, pass their own laws, even sponsor a full blown sex industry with the locals as victims, like in Thailand. Usually with them it's through influence though, from their power and wealth, not from their numbers.
This adds the value.