-Caveat Lector-
http://www.hermes-press.com/impintro2.htm
-----
The New U.S.
-British Oil Imperialism
Part 2
Once the Afghanistan portion of the "war on terrorism" is
concluded--with permanent U.S. military bases in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan
in place--where then 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. Iraq is producing 3 million barrels a day, funneling most of it to
world markets through a United Nations-monitored program that directs the
proceeds to food and medicine for the Iraqi people. But Saddam Hussein is
still exporting his oil to Syria, which is glad to resell Iraqi oil as if it
were Syrian. The United States is one of Syria's biggest customers, because
it likes the low sulfur content of Iraqi oil, says Nimrod Raphaeli, publisher
of the Middle East Economic News, a Washington-based newsletter. Iraq earns
$1.5 billion a year from oil smuggling and oil sales outside UN controls,
through Syria, Turkey, and Jordan, as well as by ship down the Gulf.
Since 9/11/01, the Bush regime has threatened to include Iraq in its
"war on terrorism." But any incursion into Iraq will have to deal with the
reality that American companies, such as Cheney's Halliburton and G.E. are
making billions in Iraq by selling them goods and services. Also, the
eradication of Saddam 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.
Iraq is desperately trying to ingratiate itself with the Gulf Arab
Cooperation Council (GCC) members: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to gain support 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, is 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 have a
23-year contract to develop Iraq's West Qurna oil field. By the terms of the
contract, Lukoil gets one half, Iraq one quarter, and the Russian government
agencies get one quarter of the oil field's 667 million tons of crude,
potentially a $20 billion deal. Iraq still owes Russia at least $8 billion
from the old cold war days when Russia armed Iraq, considering it a client
state.
But because of United Nations sanctions on Iraq, Lukoil has 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 allows 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."
Also to be considered in any plans to extend the Standard Oil/Bush oil
imperialism is China's growing interest in supporting 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 wants
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 is ready to intervene in the Middle East if the Standard
Oil/Bush imperialists attempt to attack Iraq as Bush senior did in 1991.
But the Standard Oil/Bush imperialists probably won't concern themselves
with the threat of China in the Middle East. They will likely try to seize
control of all of Iraq's, Syria's, and Iran's oil. Enter 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 will soon be guarding the north-south pipeline as it's built in
Afghanistan. In 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 lives 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.-supported 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 exports 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 imports 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 corporations 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 corporate income and election
campaign finances. For every million dollars of increased sales or increased
revenues that a company like Enron realizes from a buyout, the stock equity
of the one per cent who control Wall Street, increases twenty to thirty times.
In June, 1999, Colombia's president Andres Pastrana arranged for Richard
Grasso, head of the New York Stock Exchange, to meet with Raúl 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, 70-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 Washington, the CFR repres
entatives 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 corporations would be
involved in laundering drug money from South American terrorists. Even the
supine media have had to report 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
"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."
Oil imperialism flourishes when a supine press cheers and a groveling
congress grants unconstitutional authority to the oil-saturated Bush dynasty.
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.
Dr. Norman D. Livergood: updated: 5/22/02 -- original article: 10/29/01
Relevant Links and Updates
* Report Alleges US Role in Angola Arms-for-Oil Scandal, 5/17/02
* The emerging connection between oil plans and the 9-11 attacks, 05/16/02
* Big Oil, the United States and corruption in Kazahkstan,
Part 1, 5/16/02
* Part 2
* World Bank chief in talks over massive central Asian pipeline, 5/15/02
* Afghanistan plans gas pipeline, 05/15/02
* Oil fuels US army role in Georgia, 05/14/02
* Oil Fix -- Bush Will Act Globally to Lock In U.S. Supply, 04/30/02
* America Goes Into the Energy Business With the Former Evil Empire [Russia]
, 1/15/02
* U.S. bases pave the way for long-term intervention in Central Asia,
1/11/02
* The Pipeline Plots, 1/9/02
* Oil Company Adviser Named U.S. Representative to Afghanistan, 1/3/02
* Russia Wins the Afghanistan Oil War, 12/23/01
* The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), December, 2001
Ownership structure of CPC
*
As the War Shifts Alliances, Oil Deals Follow, 12/15/01, New York Times
* U.S. Oil War Caspian Pipeline Opens, 12/3/01, Washington Times
* "U.S. efforts to make peace summed up by 'oil' , 11/19/01, Irish Times
* "The United States of Oil", 11/19/01, By Damien Cave, Salon
* U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil, 11/15/01
* "You've Got to Go Where the Oil Is", 10/30/01 Special to The Dubya Report
* Another point of view?
* And Another?
Bibliography
* Rashid, 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)
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
All My Relations.
Omnia Bona Bonis,
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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