On Feb 9, 2:20=EF=BF=BDpm, "garyNOS...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
" <garagui...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> Yours is about as selective and slanted a presentation of history as
> anyone will ever run across. And it's the reason historians such as
> Robert Dallek, David Kaiser, Rust, Howard Jones, Galbraith,
> Schle****nger, Newman, Kaplan, and even people like Vince Bugliosi
> think you're wrong.
>
> If JFK'd been the hawk you take him to be, or had he been susceptible
> to war-making as you supppose, he would have sent in ****ps and troops
> to back up the invasion at the Bay of Pigs, as he'd been advised; he'd
> never have pushed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, against the wishes not
> only of the JCS but also many in his Cabinet; but he *would* have sent
> troops lickety split into battle in Laos, as advised by his JCS and
> Cabinet; he'd have approved "Operation Northwoods," as proposed by the
> JCS; he'd have attacked Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as
> advised by the JCS, LBJ and his entire Cabinet;, etc. And he'd not
> have told as many people as he did that he definitely was NOT going to
> put G.I.s in combat roles in Vietnam.
>
> Sure, he didn't want to lose Vietnam, but he wasn't going to "win"
> Vietnam with American G.I.s; he was only going to help the Vietnamese
> "win" it, nothing more.
>
> What you really need to do is convince some real historians that
> you're right.
>
> Gary
Shalom aleikhem;
"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder,
rapine, and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a
destiny imposed by the deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally
capturing their markets, to civilize savage and senile and paranoidal
peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells or metal
mines."
--John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching
"If you want to rule the world, you need to control oil. All the oil.
Anywhere."
Take the tour safely;
http://pzzzz.tripod.com/nampictour.html
War Is the Health of the State
by Randolph Bourne
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
First part of an essay entitled "The State," which was left unfinished
at Bourne's untimely death in 1918
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To most Americans of the cl***** which consider themselves significant the
war [World War I] brought a sense of the sanctity of the State which, if
they had had time to think about it, would have seemed a sudden and
surprising alteration in their habits of thought. In times of peace, we
usually ignore the State in favour of partisan political controversies, or
personal struggles for office, or the pursuit of party policies. It is the
Government rather than the State with which the politically minded are
concerned. The State is reduced to a shadowy emblem which comes to
consciousness only on occasions of patriotic holiday.
Government is obviously composed of common and unsanctified men, and is
thus a legitimate object of criticism and even contempt. If your own party
is in power, things may be assumed to be moving safely enough; but if the
opposition is in, then clearly all safety and honor have fled the State.
Yet you do not put it to yourself in quite that way. What you think is
only that there are rascals to be turned out of a very practical machinery
of offices and functions which you take for granted. When we say that
Americans are lawless, we usually mean that they are less conscious than
other peoples of the august majesty of the institution of the State as it
stands behind the objective government of men and laws which we see. In a
republic the men who hold office are indistinguishable from the mass. Very
few of them possess the slightest personal dignity with which they could
endow their political role; even if they ever thought of such a thing. And
they have no class distinction to give them glamour. In a republic the
Government is obeyed grumblingly, because it has no bedazzlements or
sanctities to gild it. If you are a good old-fa****oned democrat, you
rejoice at this fact, you glory in the plainness of a system where every
citizen has become a king. If you are more sophisticated you bemoan the
passing of dignity and honor from affairs of State. But in practice, the
democrat does not in the least treat his elected citizen with the respect
due to a king, nor does the sophisticated citizen pay tribute to the
dignity even when he finds it. The republican State has almost no
trappings to appeal to the common man's emotions. What it has are of
military origin, and in an unmilitary era such as we have passed through
since the Civil War, even military trappings have been scarcely seen. In
such an era the sense of the State almost fades out of the consciousness
of men.
With the shock of war, however, the State comes into its own again
Cont'd
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/warhealthstate1918.html
Most of America's modern wars are about oil.
The Rise of Fascism in the American Energy Business
BLACK GOLD HOT GOLD: Far more im****tant to Americans than a few
thousand American deaths
Sup****t the American Empire's Oil Wars
Thus fascism in America is not only alive and well, but is a thriving
mainstream growth industry. It has been entrenched in the center of the US
Federal government since the founding of the Federal Reserve System in
1913 and controls the US economy. With the creation of the US Department
of Education in the 1970's, instruction in the "fascist oil company plan"
has taken over all state and local education systems and reached its goal
about 15 years ago with the introduction of what is called the "Goals
2000" program. Ever wonder why it was called "Goals 2000"?
That program was produced and pushed through congress by something called
the General Education Board. The plan of the Goals 2000 program is to
divide children from parents, prevent any reasonable education that would
produce children who might ask who really runs the world, and foment
division among racial groups through diversity training, along with a
healthy dose of oil company environmentalism. This almost exact same
education plan was used by Adolf Hitler in the 1930's and 40's in his
Hitler Youth movement. It later was adopted by Stalin in the 1950's and
Fidel Castro in the '60s. It can now be found in many countries.
SEE:
http://www.brojon.org/frontpage/bj050701-1.html
http://www.brojon.org/frontpage/bj050701-2.html
http://www.brojon.org/frontpage/bj050701-3.html
http://www.brojon.org/frontpage/bj050701-4.html
"Whether the mask is labelled Fascism, Democracy, or Dictator****p of the
Proletariat, our great adversary remains the Apparatus-the bureaucracy,
the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier or the
battlelines, which is not so much our enemy as our brother's enemy, but
the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter
what the cir***stances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate
ourselves to this Apparatus, and to trample underfoot, in its service, all
human values in ourselves and in others."
- Simone Weil, Politics, Spring 1945
The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror
Narrated by Ed Asner. Keywords: Persian Gulf War, United Nations, U.N., in
violation of international law, bombings, illegal, marc ... all garlasco,
weaponry, iraqi leader****p, mohamed assan, president george w. bush,
administration, andrew shlapak, karen kwiatkowski, saddam hussein,
zbigniew brzezinski, weapons of mass destruction, wmd, pnac, project for
the new american century, vice president dick cheney, donald rumsfeld,
paul wolfowitz, jeb bush, new world order, nwo, neocons, neo-cons, gary
schmitt, randa habib, ahmed chalabi george tenet, john negroponte, cia,
covert operations, energy supplies, mike, michael c. ruppert, oil
consumption, supply, demand, economy, economics, pierre-marie gallois,
supplies, nepdg, noam chomsky, david mulholland, pipelines, price of oil,
dathar al kahar, refinery, refineries, fields, drilling, radioactive,
radioactivity du, depleted uranium, uranium 238, 234, 235, toxicity,
cancers, birth defects, contamination, paul bremer, dyncorp, halliburton,
national security council, nsc, bechtel, guantanamo bay, defense
contractors, kellogg, brown & root, detention concentration camps,
elizabeth hodgkin, abu ghraib, governments covered up, osama bin laden,
taliban, al qaeda, natural gas, ahmed ra****d, mullah omar, enemy
combatants, geneva convention hamed karzai, opium poppies, heroin, anti
coalition forces, resources, terrorism.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3D1130731388742388243
"The working m***** of men and women, they and they alone, are responsible
for everything that takes place, the good things and the bad things. True
enough, they suffer most from a war, but it is their apathy, craving for
authority, etc., that is most responsible for making wars possible. It
follows of necessity from this responsibility that the working m***** of
men and women, they and they alone, are capable of establi****ng lasting
peace."
-Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism
Vietnam was a war for oil:
"It is also time for a reasonable look at both Vietnam and Iraq -- and at
what the former can teach us about the latter. My perspective comes from
military service in the Pacific in World War II (I still carry shrapnel in
my body from a kamikaze attack on my destroyer, the U.S.S. Maddox), nine
terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, and four years as secretary of
defense to Nixon." ---- Melvin Laird
MELVIN R. LAIRD was Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1973, Counselor to
the President for Domestic Affairs from 1973 to 1974, and a member of the
House of Representatives from 1952 to 1969. He currently serves as Senior
Counselor for National and International Affairs at the Reader's Digest
Association.
U.S. Oil Companies in Vietnam for oil.
Newsman, Jack Anderson said that the way to be safe while driving around
in Vietnam was to be in a Shell Oil truck because it was protected.
(Paraphrased)
The New U.S. (and
-British) Oil Imperialism
The Spoils of the Iraq War
The war in Iraq, as has been suggested, is all about oil and most
literate Americans already understand this. It would be far better if
the administration admitted that it is about oil. Americans would
sup****t the truth..They don't care how, or where, we get our oil.
The World Plutocracy
Part I:
Oil Rulers
"The trouble with this country is that you can't win an election
without the oil bloc, and you can't govern with it."
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Plutocracy is that form of government in which, instead of the people
being represented by their elected officials, those with wealth "buy"
the officials. Those officials then create laws and policies which
produce obscene profits for the wealthy owners of cor****ations.
Beginning in the nineteenth century with the Rockefeller monopoly,
persons of wealth and political power decided that the energy of
choice for the world would be oil (not coal)--just as the drugs of
choice would be alcohol and tobacco. They set out to control the
world's oil reserves.
British Petroleum (earlier Anglo-Persian and then Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company) was started by William Knox D'Arcy in 1901 when he bought a
concession from the Grand Vizier in Teheran for 480,000 square miles
(nearly twice the size of Texas) in exchange for twenty thousand
pounds in cash, twenty thousand one pound shares, and sixteen percent
of the net profits. After three years of drilling and finding no oil,
D'Arcy convinced the Burmah Oil Company to put up the extra capital
needed to keep D'Arcy's venture afloat. After another two years of
drilling they finally struck oil and Burmah Oil and D'Arcy formed the
new Anglo-Persian Oil Company. In 1914, three months before the start
of World War I, the British government, through the insistence of
Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, bought 51 percent of
Anglo-Persian for two million pounds, stipulating that the company
must always remain an independent British concern and that every
director must be a British subject. The British navy had converted to
oil (from coal) in 1910 and during World War I, Britain needed more
oil than the Anglo-Persian Company could supply. The remainder was
purchased from Royal Dutch Shell.
Oil Wars
In the early part of the twentieth century, there was fierce rivalry
between the three largest oil companies: Shell, Exxon, and British
Petroleum.
* Henri Deterding, head of Shell, bought:
oilfields in Egypt (In 1908)
the Russsian Ural-Caspian oilfields (1910)
Mexican oilfields belonging to Lord Cowdray (Weetman Pearson)
Venezualan oilfields (which still produce a sixth of Shell's
supplies)
American oilfields
* Walter Teagle, head of Exxon
secretly bought a prosperous Texas oil company misleadingly named
Humble (1919)
Secretly bought out the Nobels' Russian oil interests for $11.5
million (1920)--though the new communist regime seized the oilfields
and paid Exxon nothing
* British Petroleum
BP controlled not only Iran (Anglo-Persian Oil Company) but a
quarter of the oil from the Iraq Petroleum Company. The Iraq
Petroleum Company (earlier called the Turkish Petroleum Company) was
formed following the first world war, composed of British Petroleum
(BP),
Exxon, Gulf, Texaco, Mobil, and Calouste Gulbenkian, an Armenian
entrepreneur.
In 1928, Teagle (Exxon), Deterding (Shell), and Sir John Cadman (BP)
met in Achnacarry Castle in Scotland. They agreed on a price-fixing
scheme that would stop the cutthroat competition that had been
harmful to all of them. These three oil rulers controlled the pricing
and
supply of oil worldwide.
However, a huge new oilfield first drilled in Kilgore, Texas, released
a gush of oil, resulting in the price of crude falling to ten cents a
barrel. H.L. Hunt bought out the original Kilgore wildcat driller,
"Dad Joiner." Hunt became a billionaire, the richest of all the
Texans. But the problem of oversupply was so devastatinig that the
governors of Texas and Oklahoma called in the national guard and
closed down oilfields, enforcing a system of rationing by which the
demand in a particualr month was shared among oil producers by a state
body called the Texas Railroad Commission.
In 1926 Exxon signed an agreement with the German chemical combine,
I.G. Farben, for an exchange of patents and research: Farben was to
stay out of the oil business and Exxon would stay out of the chemical
business. The agreement gave Nazi Germany hundred-octane avation fuel
and synthetic rubber. Exxon held back the research in synthetic
rubber in the U.S. In 1941 the Justice Department bought two antitrust
suits
against Exxon: for conspiring to control oil trans****tation through
pipelines and for making restrictive agreements with I.G. Farben.
Exxon was forced to pay a fine of $50,000.
The U.S. was now involved in the second World War and Japan had just
seized the Malayan rubber plantations, from which America had earlier
derived its supply of rubber. Senator Harry Truman claimed that
Exxon's failure to pursue synthetic rubber research in the U.S., while
developing it in collaboration with the Germans, constituted treason.
Texaco, under the direction of its swashbuckling president, Torkild
Rieber, provided six million dollars worth of oil to Franco, the
Spanish dictator. Rieber also made contact through Spain with leading
Nazis and agreed to supply oil from Colombia to Germany. Texaco
continued to supply oil to Nazi Germany even after the outbreak of
the World War II in 1939, receiving as payment three Hamburg tankers.
Rieber sealed the deal with Goering in Berlin. At Goering's
insistence, Rieber put forward a peace plan to Franklin D. Roosevelt
which would ensure Britain's surrender. Roosevelt told Rieber to get
out of his dealings with Nazi Germany. Rieber ignored Roosevelt and
financed the propaganda mission of Dr. Gerhardt Wesrick, a German
lawyer, to dissuade American businessmen from suplying Britain with
arms. The head of British Intelligence in New York, the Canadian
millionaire William Stephenson, learned of the Westrick fiasco and
broke the story to the New York Herald Tribune. Westrick was forced to
return to Germany on a Japanese ****p. Rieber was discredited and
Texaco shares plummeted.
"An honest and scupulous man in the oil business is so rare as to
rank as a museum piece."
Harold Ickes, U.S. Petroleum Administrator for War during World War
II
Mexican oil was essentially controlled by a Britisher, Weetman Pearson,
later to be titled Lord Cowdray. He began as early as 1901 to buy
concessions in Mexico and by 1918 he was one of the richest men in the
world, the nearest British equivalent to the American Rockefeller. His
fortune laid the foundation for Lazards Bank, the Financial Times, The
Economist, Longmans and Penguin Books. In 1919, Cowdray sold out the
majority of his company to Deterding of Shell. In 1938, Mexican President
Lazaro Cardenas nationalized the seventeen foreign-owned oil companies and
a monument to the nationalized company, PEMEX, was erected in Mexico City,
at which diplomats were required to place wreaths. The American, Dutch,
and British oil companies boycotted the nationalized Mexican oil interests
and the incompetently-run PEMEX was eventually forced to pay $130 million
in compensation for seizing the companies. During the second world war,
the big oil companies drained off much of Mexico's oil reserves, then
switched their attention to Venzuela where they were in league with Gomez,
the dictator.
Meanwhile, in the Middle-East
In 1926, King Ibn Saud, the Muslim desert warrior, had conquered his
rivals in Mecca and the Hejaz and named the whole territory, from the
Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia, the only country to be
named after its ruling family. One of King Saud's principal advisors
was Harry St. John Philby, the Arabist who had quit the British
Colonial Service out of disaffection. Philby had become a Muslim and
was close to Saud. King Saud needed money to finance his enterprises
and Philby suggested that he exploit his land's oil resources. Philby
assisted Socal in getting the concession in 1933. King Saud received
an immediate loan of thirty thousand pounds, with another twenty
thousand pounds eighteen months later, and an annual rent of five
thousand pounds, all in gold. Socal paid Philby a salary of one
thousand pounds a year.
Socal, short of capital and market outlets, sold half of its Saudi and
Bahrain concession to Texaco's Cap Rieber. The joint venture was called
Aramco. In May, 1939, King Saud turned the valve on the pipeline and the
oil began to flow. Saud was so delighted with the money and gifts he
received from Socal and Texaco that he increased the size of the
concession to 444,000 square miles, a plot the size of Texas, Louisiana,
Oklahoma, and New Mexico combined.
Kuwait, one of many small independent sheikhdoms which had cut into the
land mass of Saudi Arabia, had also discovered oil and the concession was
purchased by Gulf in 1927 for $50,000. In 1934 Gulf and BP signed an
agreement with the Kuwaiti sheikh in a joint venture and huge reserves
were discovered in 1938.
During World War II, Britain advanced about twenty million dollars to King
Saud to bribe him to renege on the Socal/Texaco concession and go with BP.
Socal and Texaco appealed to Wa****ngton and Roosevelt sent lend-lease
money to Saudi Arabia. Roosevelt and his advisors decided that the United
States should have a controlling interest in Aramco, to protect the
nation's oil interests. In 1943, Roosevelt authorized the formation of a
new cor****ation to acquire a hundred percent of Aramco.
Harold Ickes, petroleum administrator for War and Secretary of the
Interior, was president of the new cor****ation, the secretaries of State,
War, and the Navy among the directors and Abe Fortas as secretary. Aramco
would not immediately agree to sell its concession to the new federal
cor****ation, so Ickes said the cor****ation would build a thousand-mile
pipeline to carry Saudi Arabian oil to the Mediterranean. In return,
Aramco would guarantee twenty percent of their oilfields as a naval
reserve which would be available to the navy at a cut rate. In the end,
after much political bickering in the U.S. and internationally, Texaco and
Socal built the pipeline themselves, creating the Trans-Arabian Pipeline
Company (Tapline). It was not until 1949 that Syria and Lebanon agreed to
let the pipeline be built at a cost of $200 million. Over the years, the
pipeline was a target for guerrillas, a focus for boycotts, and a
bargaining chip for Syria against America. In 1975 it was shut down.
In 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt promised King Saud that the United States
would not change its policy regarding Palestine--and a Jewish state
--without consulting the Arabs. However, Harry Truman became U.S.
President two months later and gave full sup****t to the establishment of
the new state of Israel. Socal and Texaco worried about the political
climate in Saudi Arabia. They decided to bring two other American oil
companies into Aramco, Exxon (30%) and Mobil (10%).
King Saud continued to demand more money and finally in 1950 the U.S.
State Department and Aramco agreed on a scheme whereby the money Aramco
gave King Saud would be deducted from the company's tax bill, thus
depriving the U.S. Treasury of $50 million or more in taxes each year.
Under the U.S. tax laws establi****ng double taxation, the oil companies
would not be taxed inside the United States. All the major oil companies
adopted the same tax dodge so that by 1973 the five largest companies were
making two-thirds of their profits abroad and paying no U.S. taxes on
those earnings. This arrangement allowed oil companies to pay lower U.S.
taxes than any group of industries. The United States had essentially
turned into a country operated for the profit of the oil rulers.
Reza Shah seized power in Iran in 1921and soon took on the trappings of
the Persian Peacock Throne. In 1941, when Hitler invaded Russia, the Shah
refused to expel his Nazi allies, so the British and Russian armies
invaded Iran to ensure oil and supply routes. The Shah was exiled to South
Africa, where he died. During the war, Britain and Russia ruled, but at
the end of World War II, the old Shah's twenty- one year old son was
placed in power. Iran, like most oil-producing countries, resented the
power its foreign-owned oil company wielded over it. A shrewd older
politician, Dr. Mossadeq, was appointed chairman of a committee on Iranian
oil policy. By 1951, Mossadeq was calling for nationalization and when he
was elected prime minister by the Iranian parliament, Iran immediately
seized BP's oilfields.
Iran was placed under international boycott by BP. When a Panamanian ****p,
the Rose Mary, took on oil from Abadan, RAF planes forced it into Aden
harbor and impounded its cargo. American oil companies joined the BP
boycott of Iran. However, President Truman and the Secretary of State,
Dean Acheson, were appalled by the ****d imperialism of Britain and when
Mossadeq came to America to plead his case to the UN Security Council,
Acheson befriended him.
However, antitrust fever had again overtaken the U.S. In 1952, the Senate
Select Committee on Small Business released a re****t aptly titled "The
International Petroleum Cartel." The re****t showed that the seven largest
oil companies, nicknamed the Seven Sisters, controlled the majority of the
oil-producing areas outside the United States, all foreign refineries,
divided the world markets between them, shared pipelines and tankers
between themselves, and fixed oil prices worldwide. But Eisenhower became
President and John Foster Dulles was appointed Secretary of State, with
the result that the oil cartel was forgotten and the new foreign policy
mythology became anti- communism.
In 1953, the CIA, with British sup****t, began a subversive action against
Mossadeq. Mossadeq had taken control over the Iranian army. The Shah tried
to oust him, failed, and was forced to flee the country. The CIA coup, led
by the CIA's Kermit Roosevelt, spending about $700,000, forced Mossadeq
out of office and the Shah returned to Teheran triumphant. British and
American oil companies formed an international consortium to buy and
develop Iranian oil. BP received 40% of the shares of the consortium, the
five American sisters each got 8%, Shell received 14%, and CFP (Compaignie
Francaise de Petrole) 6 percent. The oil cartel members congratulated
themselves that they had shown the world that no puny nation, such as Iran
or Mexico, could seize their assets and long flourish.
OPEC
In 1961 the Organization of Petroleum Ex****ting Countries (OPEC) was
established with members: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.
Since that beginning, the following countries have attained member****p:
Qatar (1961), Indonesia and Libya (1962), Abu Dhabi (1967), United Arab
Emirates (1974), Algeria (1969), Nigeria (1971), Ecuador (1973), and Gabon
(1975). Their headquarters, originally located in Geneva, moved to Vienna
in 1965. Policy is determined by delegates from members countries, which
meet at least twice a year.
=46rom the beginning of the oil energy monopoly there have been other
sources of energy that are more abundant, more environment-friendly, and
vastly cheaper. Steam-driven vehicles proved efficient but they were
driven out by gasoline-driven vehicles. Since railway engines require less
fuel than automobiles and trucks, they have been allowed to fall into
disrepair, the decrepit U.S. railway infrastructure now producing frequent
calamities.
World oil prices are currently high because OPEC and the American and
British oil companies manipulate the prices to gain the highest profits
possible. It actually costs only about $1 per barrel to pump oil from the
ground, but the present price is $26.41 per barrel. If the market demand
for oil products were allowed to operate independently, gas prices at the
pump could drop by 50 percent at least.
In 1973, OPEC raised oil prices by 70 percent as a political warfare
tactic aimed at western nations sup****ting Israel in the Yom Kippur War of
October, 1973. That same year, in December, prices were hiked another 130
percent and a tem****ary embargo was placed on oil ****pments to the United
States and The Netherlands.
By the early 1980s, however, OPEC's influence began to wane as Western oil
cor****ations discovered new sources of oil and began to use political and
subversive pressure to force OPEC to cut back production to keep prices
artificially high. OPEC's power has been decimated by internal conflicts
and the Iran-Iraq war that broke out in 1980. Within the last several
months, the U.S. has again warned OPEC about its raising prices by
threatening to open up our national strategic oil reserves. The U.S. and
British oil cor****ations insist on being the only ones to manipulate the
price of oil.
The Gulf War was perpetrated by British and U.S. rulers to:
* Warn Japan and the European countries (especially Germany) that the
U.S. controls the world's oil supply (by armed force if necessary)
* Control Iraq's oil production through the embargo resulting from
the war
* Conquer Iraq since it threatens Israel's military hegemony in the
Middle-East
Even though Iraq is under an embargo at present, it's estimated that
Iraq ****ps approximately 100,000 barrels of illicit oil (in excess of
the U.N.-approved ex****t quota) per day. At the end of the U.S.
rulers' war against Serbia in Bosnia and Kosovo, an embargo was
slapped on Serbia. However, recently Serbia has been receiving
blackmarket oil from Russia. That's why U.S. Navy SEALS recently
boarded a Russian ****p in the Gulf of Oman: to warn the Russians not
to continue selling oil to Serbia.
The world oil cartel continues to fix gasoline prices worldwide. As
this article is being written, for example, prices in California have
skyrocketed. During the past year, world crude oil prices have
increased by approximately 340%. The April 1999 decision by OPEC to
cut production quotas contributes to the hyperinflation of oil prices,
but it's only a part of the problem. OPEC now produces about 40% of
the world's oil supply.
The real cause of the current rise in price for oil is that
speculators are now moving into what are called hard commodities:
energy, base metals, and food. On March 8, 2000, Iranian Oil Minister,
Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, pointed out in a speech on Iran State TV that
speculation, rather than physical shortages in crude oil, lay behind
the current surge in oil prices.
This series deals with plutocracy, the rule of a nation by those with
wealth. Plutocrats deal in all sectors of the economy, oil as well as
all others. Currently these plutocratic speculators are making
billions of dollars through their Wall Street scam, primarily in the
technology stocks which are being artificially inflated beyond any
relation to the real value of the companies offering the stocks.
For example, in February, 2000, Bloomberg News re****ted that the stock of
the $23 million Internet company NetJ.com, which went public in November,
1999, had doubled in share price to nearly $4. This occurred despite the
fact that the company plainly disclosed in do***ents submitted to the
Securities and Exchange Commission that it not only had no profits but no
revenues and in fact that it did no business of any kind. The do***ents
indicated that NetJ.com might begin doing business soon, but perhaps not.
If it did begin doing business, it had no specific idea what kind of work
it would do.
Along with their hyperinflationary speculation in the markets, oil
cor****ations continue to buy politicians, resulting in Oil Rulers
dominating every nation in the world.
http://www.hermes-press.com/oilupdate.htm
Big Oil Rulers
Part Two
The Big Oil cartel connected with the Bush family is gambling billions in
the Caucasus--not their own money, of course, but taxpayer subsidies--to
strike it rich in the Caspian oil fields. These oil companies and their
subsidiaries make money by creating new regional wars to which American
troops are sent, with trans****tation and weaponry systems supplied by the
same complex of cor****ations. Naturally, these ventures will be paid for
by American taxpayers, with our money and the lives of our sons and
daughters, while obscene profits will be realized by the oil rulers.
Now that Dubya got into office through a coup d'etat, having raised
the largest campaign war chest in American history from these very
same oil and defense industry interests, the oil cartel will have an
even tighter death grip on the United States. These cor****ations
consider the Bush campaign an investment, looking to a huge payoff
from the profits of the biggest oil bonanza in history. Now that Bush
has made it to the White House, a new Cold War era is almost
guaranteed.
As George Bush Sr.'s hitman for the Gulf War, Dick Cheney bullied and
coerced the middle-eastern countries into sup****ting Bush's War for
Oil. As the senior Bush's Secretary of Defense, Cheney high-pressured
Saudi Arabian officials in August 1990 after Iraq had invaded Kuwait.
The Saudi monarchy, which maintains its power with the aid of U.S.
weaponry, agreed to cooperate after Cheney claimed Iraq planned to
attack the country's border.
Cheney led similar missions to Egypt, Morocco and other Middle
Eastern and North African countries to coerce military cooperation.
Without
this arm-twisting, the U.S. military would have faced much stiffer
opposition to its war on Iraq.
The 1991 Gulf War devastated Iraq's people and infrastructure,
causing enormous social and personal difficulties.
However, Bush Sr., Cheney and the Republicans didn't act alone in
these war crimes. Democrats in both the Senate and the House gave the
war their blessing on January 12, 1991.
The Clinton-Gore administration carried out aerial bombardments on Iraq
every week and the Democrats were heavily involved in the deadly sanctions
against Iraq. On Aug. 2, 1990--before a single bomb was dropped or
artillery shell fired at Iraq--"liberal Democratic" U.S. Senators George
Mitchell, Edward Kennedy and Joseph Biden stood next to right wingers
Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms to sponsor a resolution urging "a full
economic blockade against Iraq." Democrats and Republicans alike continue
to sup****t this genocidal policy. Sanctions have taken a terrible toll on
the Iraqi people. At least 1.5 million people, mostly children under 5,
have died as a result of the U.S.-imposed United Nations sanctions. Five
thousand more perish each month.
Cheney later became CEO of the Dallas-based Halliburton Company, which
over a five year period paid him a whopping $65 million in salary and
stock options. Halliburton gave Cheney a $20 million farewell package when
he became the Republican Vice Presidential nominee.
Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, continues to enrich itself
from the decision made by Cheney at the Pentagon to privatize the
military's logistical sup****t facilities. Brown and Root were given
lucrative Pentagon contracts in Kuwait and throughout the world exceeding
$3.8 billion a year. Joe Lopez, Cheney's aide in the Defense Department,
is now chief operating officer of Brown and Root.
Of the two candidates, Dubya was decidedly the choice of Big Oil.
Gore's connection to Big Oil and Big Money is no less notorious than
Dubya's. His father, longtime Tennessee Senator Al Gore, Sr., maintained
close relations with the infamous international wheeler- dealer and
Kremlin favorite, Dr. Armand Hammer. In his book Dossier, Edward Jay
Epstein maintained that Gore senior was Hammer's principal contact among
the Democrats in the House. In 1950, Hammer made Congressman Gore a
partner in a cattle-breeding business, from which Gore made a substantial
profit. Hammer was Gore Sr.'s guest at five presidential inaugurations,
including that of John F. Kennedy. Senator Al Gore, Jr. invited Hammer to
be his guest at Ronald Reagan's inauguration.
When Gore Sr. was defeated for reelection to the Senate in 1970, after 32
years in Congress, Hammer appointed Gore president of Island Creek Coal,
the nation's third largest coal producer and made Gore a vice president of
Occidental Petroleum with a hefty $500,000 annual salary.
Gore Sr. was a very effective lackey: * arranging for President Kennedy to
give Hammer his official approval for Hammer to travel to the Soviet Union
where he met Soviet leader, Nikita Krushchev * defending Hammer, on the
floor of the Senate, against accusations of attempted bribery * writing a
letter of introduction to the American ambassador in Libya, asking the
ambassador to arrange a meeting between Hammer and King Idris I of Libya *
accompanying Hammer to Libya when Hammer's Libyan oil pipeline opened
operations.
Al Jr.'s Russian Connection
Junior struck up backroom alliances with Russian financial gangsters such
as Viktor Chernomyrdin, who turned Russia's huge energy reserves into
corrupt personal fiefdoms after the collapse of the Soviet regime. With
Gore's sup****t, Chernomyrdin became prime minister of the Russian
Federation.
Chernomyrdin and his cohorts--backed by the Russian Mafia--stole Russia's
natural resources such as oil, gold, timber and daimonds, hawking them on
the black market in Russia and abroad. The proceeds were stashed in
numbered bank accounts all over Western europe.
An equal op****tunity scoundrel, Al Jr. became the "Solicitor General" for
the 1996 Democratic campaign, dunning Big Money contributors at home and
abroad, especially China. Al barely escaped indictment with some fancy
verbal footwork: "I didn't do anything wrong and I won't do it again."
The Clinton/Gore administration has now decided to tap into the Strategic
Petroleum Reserve. This is a key strategy in the Gore campaign:
* Bush is tied into foreign oil and any use of the U.S. Strategic
Petroleum Reserve lowers the price of foreign oil * U.S. voters are fed up
with high gasoline prices and Gore may be seen as the good guy who lowered
those prices
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson maintained that "this is not political,"
as he announced the release of 30 million barrels of oil from the
Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the next 30 days. It was no accident that
Gore was campaigning in Van****t, PA when Richardson made the announcement.
Van****t is one of many U.S. communities where the price of heating oil has
doubled within a year. When a member of the audience said that since Bush
was a "big oilman" he "isn't going to do too much" about rising oil
prices, Gore merely said, "No comment." ---------------------
The New U.S.-British
Oil Imperialism
By Norman D. Livergood
The U.S. invasion of Iraq to loot its oil and politically restructure the
Middle East, is part of a policy of military imperialism that the American
and British ruling circles have been engaged in for several centuries. The
American revolution was fought to bring the United States under new,
non-British rulers, with the new regime sold to the public as a democracy.
Beginning in the twentieth century, these American ruling elites have
revolved around the Rockefeller, Brown, Harriman, and Morgan family
dynasties. The Bush family, beginning with Prescott Bush, have served as
satraps of the Rockefeller, Brown, and Harriman interests.
As we've seen, in earlier articles on these imperialistic rulers
(Part
1, Part 2), the British and American ruling cabal decided that the
energy of choice for the world would be oil and natural gas (not
coal)--just as the drugs of choice would be alcohol and tobacco.
To overcome the problem of his oil holdings being broken apart by the U.S.
government in 1911, John Rockefeller set out to control the world's energy
reserves. World War I was the strategy of the world oil cartel (Standard,
Shell, British Petroleum) to take over the colonies of France, Holland,
Spain and ****tugal. The engines of war now ran on petroleum-based
products, so owner****p of oil could determine who won or lost a
war--therefore who would rule the world. Oil, instead of gold, became the
token of power.
By 1919, the Oil Empire, not based on countries or nations, but on
private cor****ations, ruled the world.
The Big Three oil cartel, which controlled oil in the Persian Gulf and
southeast Asia areas, wanted to gain control over the vast oil reserves in
the southern part of the Soviet Union. They financed the fascist regimes
in Germany, Italy, and Japan with the hope that they would invade and
control Russia. The Oil Rulers planned to defeat the German, Italian, and
Japanese regimes and take control of the oil reserves in the Soviet Union.
The Rockefeller circle also planned to take control of Persian Gulf oil
from the British-Persian Oil cartel and seize control of southeast Asian
oil from Royal Dutch Shell.
The United States was brought into the second world war when in July 1941,
President Roosevelt signed an embargo to stop all ****pping to Japan. This
was said to be in retaliation for the Japanese invasion of French
Indo-China. Roosevelt's U.S. embargo cut off the Japanese oil supply,
which would have quickly shut down Japan's entire economy. In late
November 1941 the Japanese sent a written "war warning" through diplomatic
channels to Wa****ngton, demanding that the embargo be stopped, or else
American sites in the Pacific would be attacked in retaliation. That
formal diplomatic warning was ignored and the U.S. made no reply. Just two
weeks later the Japanese bombed the American embargo ****ps located in
Pearl Harbor.
In 1939 and '40, the Germans and Italians did not attack Russia as the Big
Three had planned. Instead, German General Rommel rushed across North
Africa to grab the Suez Canal and control all oil ****pping through the
canal. Rommel then planned to drive through to Persia and toss out the
British from the British-Persian oil fields. Meanwhile, after a failed
attack on Russia in 1939, the Japanese swept through Southeast Asia and
seized all the oil holdings of Royal Dutch Shell. With the defeat of Japan
in 1945, most of those Royal Dutch fields came under the control of
Rockefeller's Standard Oil.
Hitler had planned to capture the oil fields in Romania by 1939 so Germany
would have its own supply of oil. This was accomplished. Then Rommel was
to have captured the oil fields in Persia by 1941, the oil fields in
Russia in 1942. Only then would Hitler have sufficient fuel for
prosecuting a war with the United States. But less than a week after the
Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese convinced Hitler to declare war on the
United States. Hitler agreed only if the Japanese would attack Russia,
since German troops were now bogged down in Russia and Hitler would gain
strategic advantage if the Russians had to defend themselves from Japan on
their eastern flank. When the Japanese failed to attack Russia, Hitler was
driven out of Russia and now was without a fuel source. The Romanian oil
fields in Ploesti were insufficient for Germany to carry on a war on two
fronts, and Germany's war effort began to collapse.
The last major German campaign was the Battle of the Bulge, in which Field
Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt was to attack the invading allies with his
tanks, then capture the Allied fuel dumps. This would stop the American
and British forces and obtain the necessary fuel for Germany to continue
its war effort. But General Eisenhower ordered the Allied fuel dumps
burned and Germany was defeated.
At the end of World War II, the British-Persian Oil Company controlled the
vast oil fields in Iran. The Persians had declared their alignment with
Adolf Hitler's Nazi "Aryan Race" movement and were fully expecting German
General Rommel to come ru****ng across Africa and "free" them from the
British. They had even proclaimed their alignment with Hitler by changing
the name of their country from Persia to "Aryan," (or "Iran" in the Farsi
language), but the Germans failed to save them.
To take control of Persian Gulf oil from the British, in 1954 Kermit
Roosevelt, nephew of Franklin, led an American CIA coup to take control of
Iran and place in power the American-backed Shah of Iran. The Shah
expelled the British, and Rockefeller's Standard Oil now had control of
the British-Persian petroleum fields.
In the early 1950s, Occidental Petroleum's Armand Hammer, a satrap of the
Rockefellers, negotiated a deal with Russian dictator Joseph Stalin to buy
his oil--thus effectively stealing it from the Russian people. Russian oil
was then sold on the world market at a much higher price than Stalin could
get by marketing it himself, because few countries were willing to buy oil
from Stalin.
Occidental Petroleum and Russia built two large pipelines, from the
Russian oil fields down along both sides of the Caspian Sea, terminating
in the old British-Persian--now Standard Oil--oil fields in Iran. For the
next 45 years, Russia secretly sent its oil out through those pipelines
and Standard Oil sold the oil on the world market at the "West Texas
Crude" price by calling it Iranian oil. For almost fifty yeas most
Americans have been using Russian oil in their cars.
Standard Oil refineries, which produce gasoline from crude oil, are
located at large sea ****ts like San Francisco, Houston or Los Angeles, not
near any of the large American oil fields. Most oil from the Persian Gulf
is ****pped in oil tankers to those large American refinery-****ts.
In 1979, the Standard Oil-backed Shah of Iran was thrown out by a
British-backed coup and the long-time British asset, Ayatollah Khomeni,
put into power. The flow of Russian oil through Iran suddenly stopped.
Other oil pipelines were constructed through Iraq and Turkey. The Russian
oil was now called OPEC Arabian-Middle Eastern oil and marketed at the
even higher "spot market" price. So in 1979, in America and Europe, we
suddenly experienced gasoline shortages and huge increases in the price of
gasoline. Also in 1979 Standard Oil- Russian oil interests tried to secure
an alternate, short, safe oil pipeline route from Russia through
neighboring Afghanistan, but this only resulted in a prolonged war and the
project was abandoned.
When the new British-controlled regime in Iran came into power, the
Rockefeller-influenced U.S. government immediately threatened to seize
$7.9 billion of Iranian assets located in the U.S. On November 4, 1979
Iranian "terrorists" captured and held hostage 65 Americans. Essentially,
Standard Oil was being blackmailed by the hostage strategy. After lengthy
negotiations, the Rockefeller-created President Jimmy Carter approved the
electronic transfer of 7.9 billion dollars from U.S. accounts to the
Iranian regime on January 20, 1981.
On Wednesday January 27, 1988, as announced in the Wall Street Journal,
Standard Oil merged with British Petroleum. This actually represents
Standard Oil's buyout of British Petroleum, the name of the newly merged
company being BP-America. The Wall Street Journal did not see fit to
mention worries about the world-wide predatory marketing practices of a
deceptively titled Standard Oil regime.
During the last 13 years, BP-America has merged with, or controls, all of
the old Standard Oil "mini-companies" which existed before the original
breakup by the U.S. government in 1911. The new Standard Oil regime is now
known as BP-AMOCO, and few people in the world realize what has happened.
It's now possible to understand why British Prime Minister Blair has
become the spokesman for the new wars against terrorism (actually the war
for Caspian Sea and Iraq oil).
At the end of WWII, General Douglas MacArthur became the military Governor
of Japan. MacArthur's assistant was Laurence Rockefeller, one of John D.
Rockefeller's four grandsons. As the second world war was drawing to a
close, the U.S. was preparing for a massive invasion of the Japanese home
islands.
The military had stockpiled vast supplies of weapons and munitions on the
island of Okinawa. Some sources claim that with Vice-governor Laurence
Rockefeller's assistance most of the armaments were sold to the leader of
Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, for something like one U.S. dollar and Ho's
"goodwill." One might wonder why these expensive and critical military
supplies were "given" to the North Vietnamese.
To answer that question we have to go to an almost unknown study in the
1920's prepared by a man named Herbert Hoover, later to become President
of the United States. The study showed that one of the world's largest oil
fields ran along the coast of the South China Sea right off French
Indo-China, now known as Vietnam. This was before offshore drilling had
been invented and before a man named George Herbert Walker Bush was to
become the CEO of a world-wide offshore drilling company.
In 1945, Vietnam was still a colony of the French. Laurence Rockefeller,
it appears, had given the extensive store of weapons to Ho Chi Minh with
the hope that Vietnam would drive out the French so that Standard Oil
would be able to take over the as yet undeveloped offshore fields. In
1954, Vietnamese General Giap finally defeated and drove out the French at
Dien Bien Phu with weaponry provided by the U.S. However, Ho Chi Minh
reneged on the deal since he could read too, and he was well aware of the
Hoover resource re****t and knew there was a vast supply of oil off the
Vietnamese coast.
"In the 1950's a method of undersea oil exploration was perfected which
used small explosions deep in the water and then recorded the sound echoes
bouncing off the various layers of rock below. The surveyor could then
determine the exact location of the arched salt domes which hold the
ac***ulated oil beneath them. But if this method were used off the Vietnam
coast on property Standard didn't own or have the rights to, the
Vietnamese, the Chinese, the Japanese and probably even the French would
quickly run to the United Nations and complain that America was stealing
the oil, and that would shut down the operation.
"In 1964, after Vietnam was divided into North and South, and the
contrived Gulf of Tonkin incident, several U.S. aircraft carriers were
stationed offshore of Vietnam and the 'war' was started. Every day jet
planes would take off from the carriers, bomb locations in North and South
Vietnam, and then using normal military procedure when returning would
dump their unsafe or unused bombs in the ocean before landing back on the
carriers. Safe ordnance drop zones were designated for this purpose away
from the carriers.
"Even close-up observers would only notice many small explosions occurring
daily in the waters of the South China Sea and thought it was only part of
the 'war.' The U.S. Navy carriers had begun Operation Linebacker One, and
Standard Oil had begun its ten year oil survey of the seabed off of
Vietnam. And the Vietnamese, Chinese and everybody else around, including
the Americans, were none the wiser. The oil survey hardly cost Standard
Oil a nickel, the U.S. taxpayers paid for it."
Marshall Douglas Smith. (2001). Black Gold Hot Gold, Ch. 3
So twenty years later and 57,000 Americans and half a million Vietnamese
dead, Standard Oil had enough data and the war in Vietnam could end.
Nelson Rockefeller's personal assistant, Henry Kissinger, represented the
U.S. at the Vietnam/Paris Peace talks and won a Nobel Peace Prize in the
bargain.
After the dust had settled from the war, Vietnam divided their offshore
coastal area into numerous oil lots and allowed foreign companies to bid
on the lots, with the proviso that Vietnam got a percentage of the action.
Norway's Statoil, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, Russia, Germany
and Australia all won bids and began drilling within their areas. Strange
it was that none of them struck oil. However, the lots which Standard Oil
bid for and won proved to have vast oil reserves. Their extensive undersea
seismic research appears to have paid off.
Unfortunately, Big Oil's greed has not abated a whit.The American and
British rulers have a new imperialistic strategy by which they hope to
gain total control of the world's energy supplies and the strategic
Eurasian land mass. First, they sell armaments to a regime (for example,
Panama, Iraq, Yugoslavia/Kosovo, Afghan/Pakistan/Taliban Mujaheddin, Saudi
Arabia). Then, they demonize the regime to which they sold the armaments
and declare war on it (e.g. Panama Invasion, Gulf War, UN Kosovo war,
Afghanistan war, Iraq War). After the war, they station permanent military
bases in the country and use the military bases to control the energy
resources in the surrounding countries. Current U.S. foreign policy is
governed by the doctrine of "full-spectrum dominance": the U.S. must
control military, economic and political developments everywhere.
"If you want to rule the world, you need to control oil. All the oil.
Anywhere."
Monopoly, by Michel Collon
This new strategy began with the Panama invasion, next created the so-
called Gulf War, continued with the UN-sanctioned war in the Balkans, and
now expands with the new wars against terrorism (Afghanistan, the
Philippines, Iraq, and beyond). On January 20, 2001, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld said that he was willing to deploy U.S. military forces in
"another 15 countries" if that is what it takes to combat terrorism. The
reason the so-called "war against terrorism" began in Afghanistan is
because it is critical to the U.S.-British rulers' plans to control the
Caspian Sea area oil and gas.
The UN-sanctioned war in the Balkans was all about oil and the pipeline
easement for Caspian Sea oil to Western European markets through Kosovo to
the Mediterranean Sea. When Yugoslavia refused to play ball with the
International Monetary Fund, the U.S. and Germany began a systematic
campaign of destabilization, even using some of the veterans of
Afghanistan in that "war." Yugoslavia was broken up into compliant
statelets, and the former Soviet Union was contained. The outcome: the de
facto U.S. occupation of Kosovo--where America built its largest military
base since the Vietnam War
The Caspian Sea area has proven oil reserves of fifteen to twenty- eight
billion barrels plus estimated reserves of 40-178 billion, a total of 206
billion barrels--16 percent of the earth's potential oil reserves
(compared to Saudi's 261 billion barrels of oil and America's own 22
billion barrels). Even at today's low prices, that could add up to $3
trillion in oil. With the Saudi regime tottering--an aging king about to
die, widespread internal corruption creating calls for revolutionary
overthrow--and a new source of oil and gas in the Caucasus, the Standard
Oil suzerainty is looking to create a new regime in Saudi Arabia and
develop a new center of operations in Southern Asia--think Iraq.
The huge oil and gas reserves in the Caspian Sea must either be moved west
to European markets or south to Asian markets. The western route is to
move oil from Chechnya, across the Black Sea and through the Bos****us to
the Mediterranean, but the narrow Bos****us channel is already clogged with
oil tankers from the Black Sea oil fields. An alternate route would be to
move the tankers from the Black Sea, bypassing the Bos****us, up the Danube
River and then through a very short pipeline across Kosovo to the
Mediterranean at Tirana, Albania. However, that process was stopped by the
Chinese who have supplied and armed the Albanians, as a client state,
since 1949.
The other difficulty with the western route is that Western Europe is a
tough market, characterized by high prices for oil products, an aging
population, and increasing competition from natural gas. Furthermore, the
region is fiercely competitive, now being serviced by oil from the Middle
East, the North Sea, Scandinavia, and Russia. Western Europe is not a very
attractive market, because substantial infrastructure would have to be
developed to bring that oil from the Caspian to an already
overly-competitive European market.
The only other ways to get Caspian Sea oil and gas to Asian markets is
through China, which is too long a route, or through Iran, which is
politically and economically inimical to U.S.-Standard Oil objectives.
As soon as the Soviets discovered the vast Caspian Sea oil fields in the
late 1970's, they attempted to take control of Afghanistan to build a
massive north-south pipeline system to allow the Soviets to send their oil
directly through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean sea****t. The
result was the decades long Soviet-Afghan war. The Standard Oil-influenced
U.S. government saw the danger of a Russian north-south pipeline and the
CIA trained and funded armed terrorist groups, including Osama bin Laden,
who defeated the Soviets in the late 1980's.
The Russians then tried to control the flow of oil and gas through its
monopoly on pipelines. The Southern Asian Republics of the former Soviet
Union--Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and
Kyrgyzstan--saw through this Russian monopolistic ploy and began to
consult with Western companies.
The Standard Oil-influenced U.S. government now plans to thrust further
along the 40th parallel from the Balkans through these Southern Asian
Republics of the former Soviet Union. The U.S. military has already set up
a permanent operations base in Uzbekistan. The so- called anti-terrorist
strategy is clearly designed to simultaneously consolidate control over
Middle Eastern and South Asian oil, and contain and neutralize the former
Soviet Union. With that strategy, Afghanistan is exactly where they need
to be.
Russia, realizing its weaker position vis-a-vis the United States, has
been making noises as if it fully agreed with the U.S. incursions in
Afghanistan. But Russia has joined the Shangahi Cooperation Organization
(SCO) which includes China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Takijistan and
Uzbekistan. China is using the SCO to try to align Russia economically and
politically towards China and northeast Asia. Russia's member****p in the
SCO is an attempt to maintain its traditional hegemony in Central Asia.
The underlying rationale of the SCO is the control of its members'
enormous reserves of oil and gas.
Despite the misgivings of Russia, China, India, or any other nation,
Afghanistan and Iraq will now become the base of operations in
destabilizing, isolating, and establi****ng control over the South Asian
regimes and the Middle-East. [Note that Iran stands between Iraq and
Afghanistan and you can understand why bush included Iran in the "Axis of
Evil."] After the conquest of this area is complete and the permanent
military posts are set up, they will begin construction of a pipeline
through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to deliver petroleum to
the Asian market.
UNOCAL, the spearhead for Standard Oil interests, has been trying to build
the north-south pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian
Ocean for several decades. In 1998, the California-based UNOCAL, which
held 46.5 percent stakes in Central Asia Gas (CentGas), a consortium that
planned an ambitious gas pipeline across Afghanistan, withdrew in
frustration after several fruitless years. The pipeline was to stretch
1,271 km from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad fields to Multan in Pakistan at an
estimated cost of $1.9 billion. An additional $600 million would have
brought the pipeline to energy- hungry India.
In the spring of 2001, Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's company,
signed a major contract with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan to
develop a 6000-square-meter marine base to sup****t offshore oil
construction in the Caspian Sea. The base will be used to assist
Halliburton's catamaran crane vessel, the Qurban Abbasov, in upcoming
offshore pipe-laying and subsea activities, according to a statement the
company released May 15, 2001.
UNOCAL cut off its earlier agreement with the Taliban in 1998 when it
became clear that the Taliban could not control all of Afghanistan and
provide a stable political environment for a north-south pipeline
construction project. It was likely at this juncture that a new "war
against terrorism" ploy was conceived by the Standard Oil-influenced U.S.
government. The "war against terrorism" in Afghanistan has come to a
hiatus, with war-lords once again ruling the country, and the Bush
administration has put their own man, Karzai, in power to control
Afghanistan.
Karzai was a top adviser to UNOCAL during the negotiations with the
Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from
Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan. Karzai is the leader
of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe. A member of the mujaheddin
that fought the Soviets during the 1980s, Karzai was a top contact for the
CIA, maintaining close relations with CIA Director William Casey, Vice
President George Bush, and their Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence
(ISI) Service go-between. After the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, the CIA
sponsored the relocation of Karzai and a number of his brothers to the
U.S.
The real motives for the Bush administration's war in Afghanistan are
clear for all to see. The U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlain,
met with Pakistan's oil minister, Usman Ami****din, in January, 2002 to
continue plans for the north-south pipeline, encouraging the construction
of Pakistan's Arabian Sea oil terminus for the pipeline.
President Bush says our military will continue its presence in
Afghanistan, which means that while the U.N. forces serve as a
paramilitary police force, U.S. soldiers will be guarding the construction
of the north-south pipeline.
To assure that the pipeline project will proceed apace, the Afghani-
American Zalmay Khalilzad, a previous member of the CentGas project,
became President Bush's Special National Security Assistant. Khalilzad has
recently been named presidential Special Envoy for Afghanistan. Khalilzad
is a Pashtun and the son of a former government official under King
Mohammed Zahir Shah. Along with being a consultant to the RAND
Cor****ation, he was a special liaison between UNOCAL and the Taliban
government. Khalilzad also worked on various risk analyses for the project
under the direction of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, a
former member of the board of Chevron.
Now that the Afghanistan ****tion of the "war on terrorism" is
concluded--with permanent U.S. military bases in Uzbekistan and
Afghanistan in place--where next will the Standard Oil-influenced U.S.
government look to gain further control over oil in the world?
Coincidentally, most of those places are in countries which have been
branded as harborers of terrorists: Iraq, Syria, Iran, and South America,
among others.
Bush Sr.'s Gulf War in 1991 resulted in securing access to the huge
Rumaila oil field of southern Iraq by expanding the boundaries of Kuwait
after the war. This allows Kuwait, controlled by Standard Oil, to double
its prewar oil output.
Iraq, which recently discovered an oil field in its western desert, is
widely regarded as having more oil than Saudi Arabia once its deposits are
developed. Prior to the 2003 U.S. preemptive invasion of Iraq, Iraq was
producing 3 million barrels a day, funneling most of it to world markets
through a United Nations-monitored program that directed the proceeds to
food and medicine for the Iraqi people. Saddam Hussein was still ex****ting
his oil to Syria, which was glad to resell Iraqi oil as if it were Syrian.
The United States was one of Syria's biggest customers, because it liked
the low sulfur content of Iraqi oil, according to Nimrod Raphaeli,
publisher of the Middle East Economic News, a Wa****ngton-based newsletter.
Iraq earned $1.5 billion a year from oil smuggling and oil sales outside
UN controls, through Syria, Turkey, and Jordan, as well as by ****p down
the Gulf.
Beginning in September of 2001, the Bush regime threatened to include Iraq
in its "war on terrorism." Any incursion into Iraq had to deal with the
reality that American companies, such as Cheney's Halliburton and G.E.
were making billions in Iraq by selling them goods and services. Also, the
difficulty that the eradication of the Saddam Hussein regime would
seriously compromise America's establishment of bases on the Arabian
peninsula on the pretext of protecting poor Arab sheikhs against the Iraqi
Evil Monster.
Prior to the 2003 Iraq war, Saddan was desperately trying to ingratiate
himself with the Gulf Arab Cooperation Council (GCC) members: Bahrain,
Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to
gain sup****t for the lifting of the U.N. sanctions against it. Russia,
Iraq's closest U.N. Security Council ally and a major beneficiary of
contracts to purchase Iraqi oil and to sell Iraq humanitarian supplies,
was demanding "a comprehensive settlement" of the sanctions issue,
including steps leading to lifting the military embargo against Iraq. On
January 24, 2002, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov made a formal
statement that Moscow was opposed to any U.S. military operation against
Iraq.
Russia's Lukoil Oil Company and two Russian government agencies had a
23-year contract to develop Iraq's West Qurna oil field. By the terms of
the contract, Lukoil was to get one half, Iraq one quarter, and the
Russian government agencies were to get one quarter of the oil field's 667
million tons of crude, potentially a $20 billion deal. Iraq still owed
Russia at least $8 billion from the old cold war days when Russia armed
Iraq, considering it a client state. Is it any wonder that Russia opposed
Bush's war on Iraq?
But because of United Nations sanctions on Iraq, Lukoil had not pumped a
drop from West Qurna since it won drilling rights in 1997. In 2001, Saddam
gave Russia $1.3 billion in oil contracts under the United Nations
oil-for-food program that allowed Iraq to sell oil to buy supplies to help
Iraqi civilians. In September, 2001, Saddam announced plans to award
Russian companies another $40 billion in contracts as soon as United
Nations sanctions were lifted.
In February, 2002, Russia's foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, said that
Russia and Iraq saw eye to eye on questions of extremism and terrorism and
that the American-backed sanctions against Iraq were counterproductive and
should be lifted. He then emphasized that Russia solidly opposed
"spreading or applying the international antiterror operation to any
arbitrarily chosen state, including Iraq."
The 2003 Standard Oil-Bush junta war against Iraq ended all the prior
Iraqi agreements with nations such as Russia, Germany, and France. The
opposition by these Eurasian nations to Dubya's preemptive attack on Iraq
was understandable--and Dubya's rush to war with Iraq now makes sense.
Also to be considered in any plans to extend the Standard Oil/Bush oil
imperialism is China's growing interest in sup****ting Middle-East nations
in their struggle against the U.S. During Jordanian King Abdallah II's
January, 2002 visit to China, Chinese President Jiang Zemin said that
China wanted stronger ties with Arab countries to help promote peace
between Israel and the Palestinians. Yeah, sure, that's the reason China
wants to put its foot into the Middle East, to promote peace. China has
supplied military weaponry to Pakistan and may intervene if the Standard
Oil/Bush imperialists continue to expand their empire in the Middle East.
'Civilization Begins at Home' NY World, Nov. 26, 1898 But the Standard
Oil/Bush imperialists don't concern themselves with the threat of China in
the Middle East. They've seized control of Iraq's oil and now have their
eye on Syria's and Iran's oil as well. We're now in phase two of the war
on terrorism: invading countries that Bush says harbor terrorists, with
the real intent to seize those countries' energy sources. And since
U.S.-British a.k.a. Standard Oil imperialism now-- since 9/11--results in
the killing of American civilians, we can say that the next phase of the
war on terrorism will soon be at a theater near you.
U.S. soldiers are now guarding the north-south pipeline as it's built in
Afghanistan. U.S. military weaponry to protect the Cano Limon pipelineIn
the meantime, the hypocrisy of Bush's "war on terrorism" is apparent for
all to see in Colombia where Bush proposes to spend $98 million to protect
Occidental Petroleum's 480-mile-long pipeline which runs from Colombia's
second-largest oil field to the Caribbean coast. The $98 million will
follow the $1.3 billion the U.S. has already given to Colombia, ostensibly
to fight the "drug terrorists." In 2001, the Cano Limon pipeline was
closed for 266 days, due to holes blasted in it. The Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels have blown holes in the pipeline for the
past fifteen years, resulting in 2.5 million barrels of spilled oil oozing
into Colombia's rivers and streams, about ten times the amount of the 1989
Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
If Bush enters this 38-year old conflict in Colombia which has resulted in
40,000 deaths in the past decade, he'll be involving the U.S. in a
dead-end power struggle among FARC, the Cuban-inspired National Liberation
Army (ELN), ultra-right paramilitary groups and the U.S.-sup****ted fascist
government. The excuse for spending U.S. taxpayers' money in Afghanistan
was that Bin Laden was responsible for the September 11th attacks. Now the
only pretext for spending taxpayers' money in Colombia is to combat the
FARC and ELN "terrorists" who only threaten U.S. oil company resources,
not American lives.
Invading Colombia follows the British-U.S. oil imperialism pattern: going
where the oil is. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Colombian
oil production rose from only 100,000 barrels per day in the early 1980s
to approximately 844,000 barrels in early 1999 -- an increase of nearly
750 percent. Colombian oil ex****ts to the United States have also risen
sharply, and today Colombia is this country's seventh largest supplier of
petroleum. Colombia harbors large reserves of untapped oil and natural
gas, possibly as much as 20 billion barrels (and Venezuela has 73 billion
barrels in proven reserves); hence Colombia--and its oil-rich neighbor
countries--become one of many new oil imperialism targets. The United
States im****ts more oil from Colombia and its neighbors, Venezuela and
Ecuador, than from all of the Persian Gulf.
A revealing feature of the South American "war on terrorism" is that,
unlike the Taliban and al Qaeda, the Bush administration is not destroying
the numerous South American drug terrorists. Why? Because the Bush
administration and its plutocratic controllers are at the center of the
$1.5 trillion per year in U.S. cash transactions that result from the
international drug trade.
A drug terrorist, like a Carlos Lehder, a Pablo Escobar, an Amado Fuentes,
a Matta Ballesteros or a Hank Rohn, constantly has something like ten
billion dollars of useless illegal money that he has to put in a
cooperative bank or business venture that will launder it for him. The
drug lord is then more than happy to loan the laundered money at five
percent interest to underwrite the large cor****ations and crooked
politicians throughout the world.
Wall Street and the Bush administration depend on the South American drug
barons for hundreds of millions of dollars for cor****ate income and
election campaign finances. For every million dollars of increased sales
or increased revenues that a company like Enron realized from a buyout,
the stock equity of the one per cent who control Wall Street increases
twenty to thirty times.
Wall Street embracing drug terrorism In June, 1999, Colombia's president
Andres Pastrana arranged for Richard Grasso, head of the New York Stock
Exchange, to meet with Ra=EF=BF=BDl Reyes, the head of FARC finances, in
the cocaine-producing DMZ of Colombia. The two were caught in an infamous
embrace that saw very little exposure in the media.
Grasso, however, wasn't the only American big-money representative to cozy
up to Colombian drug terrorists. Several months after Grasso's visit, two
wealthy members of the American Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
captured world headlines by flying to a FARC redoubt in the Colombian
jungles to palaver with the terrorists' founder, U.S. cor****ations
embracing drug terrorism70-year-old Manuel Marulanda. After meeting with
the communist drug terrorist, James Kimsey, co- founder and chairman
emeritus of America Online Inc., and Joseph Robert, head of J.E. Robert
Company, a global real estate empire, flew to Bogota to consult with
Colombian president Pastrana. On returning to Wa****ngton, the CFR
representatives said they were convinced that Marulanda and FARC are
sincere in their claims of wanting peace and economic reform.
It may seem hard to believe that U.S. banks and cor****ations would be
involved in laundering drug money from South American terrorists. Even the
supine media have had to re****t some of this criminal behavior. A 1983 ABC
News "Close up" on drugs and money laundering fingered Citibank, Marine
Midland, Chase Manhattan, and most of the 250 banks and branches in Miami.
When Ramon Milian Rodriguez, a top accountant and money launderer for the
Medellin Cartel, testified before a Senate subcommittee in 1988, he
implicated a veritable "Who's Who" in U.S. finance:
* Citibank
* Citicorp
* Bank of America
* First National Bank of Boston
Citibank "In every instance," said Rodriguez, "the banks knew who they
were dealing with...." The evidence indicates that Rodriguez is right; the
banks often play dumb, but they know what they're doing.
A 1998 investigation of Citibank by the U.S. General Accounting Office
(GAO) revealed that Citibank had secretly transferred between $90 million
and $100 million of alleged drug money for a Mexican client, using many
creative methods to camouflage the movement of the assets.
Oil imperialism rests on our continued dependence on oil, which not only
threatens the future of humanity through prolonged and bloody conflict,
but through another even more insidious threat--climate change and
ecological collapse.
"The oil industry has destroyed Colombia's forests, as well as the culture
and subsistence of its Indigenous Peoples. A major part of the country's
territory has been affected by oil-related activities, including
colonization. Some Indigenous Peoples, such as the Yariguies, have been
exterminated. Others, like the Motilones, the Cofanes and the Guahibos,
have been decimated. Nowadays, the U'wa people find their ancestral lands
threatened by oil exploitation that could destroy their forests, their
lives and their culture.
"The process of territorial occupation by oil companies has been
stimulated by Colombian legislation, which has provided large incentives
for oil projects. Oil companies are allowed to occupy the five-kilometer
area surrounding an oil well, thus displacing Indigenous and farmers'
communities and destroying biodiversity-rich forest zones.
"Currently, seven million hectares of Colombian land are occupied by oil
operations, and ten million more have been awarded to oil companies over
recent years. Thus, 17 million hectares of forested land is currently at
the disposition of transnational oil companies."
'Dogwood' by Bierstadt Oil imperialism flourishes when a supine press
cheers and a groveling congress grants unconstitutional authority to the
oil-saturated Demonic Cabal. Despite our grief and rage over terrorist
atrocities, a "war on terrorism" cannot be fought with bombs and missiles
alone. Citizens throughout the world must awaken to this new U.S.-British
imperialism and reclaim their governments. Once democracy is re-
established, we can start a war on homelessness, poverty, and economic and
political inequalities, and begin work to achieve ecological
sustainability for our planet.
Updated: 3/19/07 -- original article: 10/29/01
Relevant Links and Updates
* 3/19/07: Iraq War: Raising Oil Prices
* 3/19/07: Power ****fts in global oil business
* 10/18/06: Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil
* 5/23/06: The Great Iraq Oil Grab
* 3/21/06: The Bush Junta Accomplished Its Mission in Iraq
* 12/18/05: The Rip-off of Iraq's Oil Wealth
* 10/30/05: Two new movies about contem****ary oil imperialism and its
political implications
* 9/1/05: Oil Companies Intentionally Limited Refining Capacity to
Drive Up Gasoline Prices
* 9/1/05: Big Oil's Big-time Looting
* 6/1/05: Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline: a sign of rising great
power rivalry in Central Asia
* 5/3/05: Oil, Geopolitics, and the Coming War with Iran
* 4/5/05: Another Big Oil Mega-monopoly Merger
* Bush Junta attacks new Russia-China-India-Brazil-Venezuela
coalition "Axis of Evil"
o Rumsfeld escalates threats against Venezuela
o Wa****ngton Focuses on Southern "Axis of Evil"
o The Background of the new "Axis of Evil"
* 3/17/05: Secret U.S. Plans for Iraq's Oil
* 2/2/04: Why Cheney and the Bush Junta Don't Want the Energy Task
Force Records Made Public
* 2/2/04: Maps and Charts of the Oil Corridor
* 12/5/03: Bush Junta Takes Over Georgia to Oppose Russia: Baku to
Ceyhan pipeline slated to open in 2005
* 11/11/03: Israel's Blitzkrieg on Middle East Oil
* 10/14/03: Bush's Lies About the Iraq Oil
* 9/15/03: Bush I in Russia to Secure Oil for ChevronTexaco and
Carlyle Group
* 8/26/03: Wa****ngton Signals Escalation of US Intervention in
Colombia
* 8/11/03: The Spoils of the Iraq War
* 8/8/03: Bush Executive Order Exempts US Oil Companies from
Liability in Iraq and US
* 8/8/03: Bush's oil move backfires
* 5/25/03: Iraq's New U.S.-Appointed Oil "Minister" Cancels Former
Contracts with Russia and China
* 1/9/03: When ExxonMobil and BP need millions to pay for their oil
projects, who do they turn to? The U.S. government.
* 12/21/02: US Bases in Afghanistan to Protect Oil Pipelines
* 11/3/02: Carve-up of oil riches begins
* 8/30/02: U.S.-British Pipeline Company formed to pump Caspian sea
oil to the West
* 5/30/02: After waiting until they thought the American public
wouldn't notice, the Bush administration went ahead on May 30, 2002
with the oil pipeline deal that was the underlying reason for the
Afghanistan war.
* 5/26/02: Ashcroft and Cheney tied to Big Oil campaign contributions
and bribes
* 5/17/02: Re****t Alleges US Role in Angola Arms-for-Oil Scandal
* 05/16/02: The emerging connection between oil plans and the 9-11
attacks
* 5/15/02: World Bank chief in talks over massive central Asian
pipeline
* 05/15/02:Afghanistan plans gas pipeline
* 05/14/02: Oil fuels US army role in Georgia
* 1/15/02: America Goes Into the Energy Business With the Former Evil
Empire [Russia]
* 1/11/02: U.S. bases pave the way for long-term intervention in
Central Asia
* 1/9/02: The Pipeline Plots
* 1/3/02: Oil Company Adviser Named U.S. Representative to
Afghanistan
* 12/23/01: Russia Wins the Afghanistan Oil War
* 12, 2001The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC)
Owner****p structure of CPC
* 12/15/01: As the War ****fts Alliances, Oil Deals FollowNew York
Times
* 12/3/01: U.S. Oil War Caspian Pipeline Opens Wa****ngton Times
* 11/19/01: "U.S. efforts to make peace summed up by 'oil' Irish
Times
* 11/19/01: "The United States of Oil" By Damien Cave, Salon
* 11/15/01: U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil
* 10/30/01: "You've Got to Go Where the Oil Is" Special to The Dubya
Re****t
* Another point of view?
Bibliography
* Brisard, J, and Dasquie, G. Forbidden Truth, 2002
* Ra****d, Ahmed, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in
Central Asia, 2000
* Pilger, John, Hidden Agenda
* Klare, Michael, Resource Wars
* Yergin, Daniel, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power,
(1991)
* Pepe Escobar, The war for Pipelineistan, Asian Times (1/26/02)
Posted by racetoinfinity at 11:17 AM
Also see Israel-United States Memorandum of Understanding
(September 1, 1975) Oil for Israel
Israel will make its own independent arrangements for oil supply to
meet its requirements through normal procedures. In the event Israel
is unable to secure its needs in this way, the United States
Government, upon notification of this fact by the Government, of
Israel, will act as follows for five years, at the end of which
period either side can terminate this arrangement on one year's
notice.
(a) If the oil Israel needs to meet all its normal requirements for
domestic consumption is unavailable for purchase in cir***stances
where no quantitative restrictions exist on the ability of the United
States to procure oil to meet its normal requirements, the United
States Government will promptly make oil available for purchase by
Israel to meet all of the aforementioned normal requirements of
Israel. If Israel is unable to secure the necessary means to trans****t
such oil to Israel, the United States Government will make every
effort to help Israel secure the necessary means of trans****t.
(b) If the oil Israel needs to meet all of its normal requirements
for domestic consumption is unavailable for purchase in cir***stances
where' quantitative restrictions through embargo or otherwise also
prevent the United States from procuring oil to meet its normal
requirements, the United States Government will promptly make oil
available for purchase by Israel in accordance with the International
Energy Agency conservation and allocation formula as applied by the
United States Government, in order to meet Israel's essential
requirements. If Israel is unable to secure the necessary means to
trans****t such oil to Israel, the United States Government will make
every effort to help Israel secure the necessary means of trans****t.
Israeli and U.S. experts will meet annually or more frequently at the
request of either party, to review Israel's continuing oil
requirement.
4. In order to help Israel meet its energy needs and as part of the
over-all annual figure in paragraph 1 above, the United States
agrees:
(a) In determining the over-all annual figure which will be requested
from Congress, the United States Government will give special
attention to Israel's oil im****t requirements and, for a period as
determined by Article 3 above, will take into account in calculating
that figure Israel's additional expenditures for the im****t of oil to
replace that which would have ordinarily come from Abu Rudeis and Ras
Sudar (4.5 million tons in 1975).
(b) To ask Congress to make available funds, the amount to be
determined by mutual agreement, to the Government of Israel necessary
for a project for the construction and stocking of the oil reserves
to be stored in Israel, bringing storage reserve capacity and reserve
stocks, now standing at approximately six months, up to one year's
need at the time of the completion of the project. The project will
be implemented within four years. The construction, operation and
financing and other relevant questions of the project will be the
subject of early and detailed talks between the two Governments.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/mou1975.html
Kirkuk to Haifa Pipeline: Reason for the War?
US discusses plan to pump fuel to its regional ally and solve energy
headache at a stroke Ed Vuillamy in Wa****ngton Sunday April 20, 2003
The Observer
Plans to build a pipeline to siphon oil from newly conquered Iraq to
Israel are being discussed between Wa****ngton, Tel Aviv and potential
future government figures in Baghdad.The plan envisages the
reconstruction of an old pipeline, inactive since the end of the
British mandate in Palestine in 1948, when the flow from Iraq's
northern oilfields to Palestine was re-directed to Syria.
By Steven Scheer
LONDON (Reuters) - Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (news
-
web sites) said he expected an oil pipeline from Iraq (news - web
sites) to Israel to be reopened in the near future after being closed
when Israel became a state in 1948.
"It won't be long when you will see Iraqi oil flowing to Haifa," the
****t city in northern Israel, Netanyahu told a group of British
investors, declining to give a timetable.
"It is just a matter of time until the pipeline is reconstituted and
Iraqi oil will flow to the Mediterranean."
Netanyahu later told Reuters the government was in the early stages
of
looking into the possibility of reopening the pipeline, which during
the British Mandate sent oil from Mosul to Haifa via Jordan.
"It's not a pipe-dream," Netanyahu said.
http://zionofascism.wordpress.com/category/netanyahu-watch/
REUTERS
Published: February 14, 1983
Vietnam accused China today of violating Vietnamese sovereignty by
allowing American oil companies to operate in the Tonkin Gulf, off
northern Vietnam and southwestern China.
More on America's plans for oil:
1. Abstract
The Spratly Islands of the South China Sea are a potential tinder box
in the region. Approximately 44 of the 51 small islands and reefs are
claimed or occupied by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan,
Malaysia and Brunei. The conflict is the result of overlapping
sovereignty claims to various Spratly Islands thought to possess
substantial natural resources -- chiefly oil, natural gas, and
seafood.
Disputes have been propelled by an aggressive China, eager to meet
growing energy demands that outstrip its supply capability.
Overlapping claims resulted in several military incidents since 1974
and in
several countries awarding foreign companies exploration rights in the
same
area of the South China Sea. Regional nation-states not directly
involved in the Spratly disputes became concerned about regional
stability and established a regional forum to discuss the peaceful
resolution of the disputes. Sovereignty and exploration disputes were
thought to be resolved with the drafting of ASEAN's 1992 declaration
which committed members to resolve disputes peacefully and to
consider joint exploration of the territory. Military aggression and
exploration endeavors conducted by China since 1992, however, have
brought into question the validity of the 1992 joint declaration and
raises the
question of what long-term, peaceful solution could prevent the
region from erupting into a continuum of military incidents over
sovereignty
rights to the natural resource-rich Spratly Islands.
2. Description
The Spratly Islands of the South China Sea are a potential tinder box
in the region. Approximately 44 of the 51 small islands and reefs are
claimed or occupied by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan,
Malaysia and Brunei. The conflict is the result of overlapping
sovereignty claims to various Spratly Islands thought to possess
substantial natural resources --chiefly oil, natural gas, and
seafood. Disputes have been propelled by an aggressive China, eager to
meet growing energy demands that outstrip its supply capability.
Overlapping claims resulted in several military incidents since 1974
and in
several countries awarding foreign companies exploration rights in the
same
area of the South China Sea. Regional nation-states not directly
involved in the Spratly disputes became concerned about regional
stability and established a regional forum to discuss the peaceful
resolution of the disputes. Sovereignty and exploration disputes were
thought to be resolved with the drafting of ASEAN's 1992 declaration
which committed members to resolve disputes peacefully and to
consider joint exploration of the territory. Military aggression and
exploration endeavors conducted by China since 1992, however, have
brought into question the validity of the 1992 joint declaration and
raises the
question of what long-term, peaceful solution could prevent the
region from erupting into a continuum of military incidents over
sovereignty
rights to the natural resource-rich Spratly Islands.
Claims to various islands of the archipelago began in the 1930s.
Since the 1950s, the involved claimants have developed 29 oil fields
and 4
gas fields in the Spratly region.(1) China's rising energy demands,
decreasing ability to meet demand growth with domestic energy
sources, and continued reliance on oil have propelled China to look
to
alternative energy sources -- in particular the relatively untapped
South China Sea in general, and the Spratly Islands in particular.
According to Kent Calder, China's energy balance of trade has
dramatically deteriorated since the early 1990s, causing China to
become a net im****ter of oil for the first time in over 25 years.(2)
Dependence on im****ted oil is likely to continue, given its low per
capita energy consumption rate -- 40% of the world average. Unless
China can find a way of coping with the high start-up costs, waste
products and safety concerns affiliated with the implementation of
nuclear energy, oil will remain one of China's leading energy sources
for the mid-to-long term. (3)
3. Duration: 1992 to now
4. Location
The Spratly Islands consist of 100 - 230 islets, coral reefs and sea
mounts (tablemounts).(4) Despite the fact that the archipelago is spread
over 250,000 sq km of sea space, the total land mass of the Spratly
Islands is a mere 5 sq km. The land is not arable, does not sup****t
permanent crops, and has no meadows, pastures or forests.(5) Furthermore,
the Spratly Islands have not been occupied by humans until recently.
Countries with territorial claims use military means --airstrips and armed
forces -- to reinforce their claims.(6) The Spratly Islands are situated
in the South China Sea -- one of the largest continental shelves in the
world. Typically, continental shelves are abundant in resources such as
oil, natural gas, minerals, and seafood. According to James Kiras, a
contributing editor of the Peacekeeping & International Relations journal,
one study conducted by China estimated oil reserves in the South China Sea
to be larger than Kuwait's present reserves.(7)
Oil and natural gas reserves in the Spratly region are estimated at 17.7
billion tons; Kuwait's reserves amount to 13 billion tons.(8) The Spratly
reserves place it as the fourth largest reserve bed worldwide.
You can also visit the CIA World Factbook site for descriptive information
on the Spratly Islands' ecology.
Indirect Actors: the United States: The United States could become
involved on two fronts -- commercial and military. U.S. businesses
participating in off-shore exploration in the disputed islands have a
commercial stake in how inter-state tension and disputed claims are
resolved. On the military side, the United States has a mutual defense
pact with the Philippines, yet analysts indicate the Spratly disputes are
unlikely to invoke the pact.(17) The United States would, however, likely
TAKE ACTION if maritime activity was restricted in a manner inconsistent
with international law.
America must have oil and it does not matter where it comes from or how we
get it.
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