Blood For Oil: Underwriting
the Currency with Petrodollars
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1208-31.htm
The Baker Agenda: Troops out, Oil Companies in?
by Tom Hayden
Recommendations 62 and 63 confirm that control of Iraqi oil is a fundamental
premise of Administration policy. This was denied in the first years of the war,
but this week the President confirmed his belief that Islamic extremists will
"gain access to vast oil reserves and use Iraq as a base to overthrow moderate
governments all across the broader Middle East." [LAT, 12-6-06]. Then James
Baker revealed the interest of his longtime oil industry allies, as well as key
financial and corporate interests, in an Iraq resolution favorable to their
narrow interests.
Recommendation 62 says the US government should help draft an oil law that
"creates a fiscal and legal framework for investment." It further recommends
that the US, in conjunction with the International Monetary Fund [IMF], should
"pres Iraq to continue reducing subsidies in the energy sector...until Iraqis
pay market prices for oil products..." That is, in a country besieged by civil
war, bombings of infrastructure, unemployment at 50 percent levels, and the lack
of necessities, the Baker Report proposes to make everyday life harder for
average Iraqis so that the oil industry profits.
Recommendation 63 says the US should "assist" Iraqi leaders in privatizing the
national oil industry into a "commercial enterprise" to encourage investment by
the multi-national oil companies. Who said it was not about blood for oil?
There's more to uncover. But at this point we know that the Baker commission is
sprinkled with heavyweights from oil, construction, and financial entities with
interests in Iraq. Baker is a Texas oilman whose law firm has interests in debt
repayment to Kuwait and other Gulf States. Lawrence Eagleberger has ties to
Halliburton and Philips Petroleum, and is a former head of Kissinger Associates,
a corporate consulting firm whose clients remain secret [Paul Bremer was
managing partner of the Associates]. Vernon Jordan is a power lawyer at Akin
Gump who is closely associated with the secretive Bilderberg Group [as well as
the Clinton circle and civil rights firms]. Leon Panetta served on the board of
the New York Stock Exchange. The expert working groups for the ISG include
leaders of Bechtel, PFC Energy, and two representatives of Citygroup, Inc., the
firm of Robert Rubin, leading neo-liberal advocate and member of Clinton's
cabinet.
Not a single person from the peace movement, women's, environmental, civil
rights or labor organizations were among the "expert" consultants listed in the
ISG Report, although the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise
Institute were there.
The Report acknowledges that "senior members of Iraq's oil industry" argue for a
nationalized oil company to centralize and allocate revenues fairly by region
and group. But the Baker team dismisses any such idea on grounds that simply
favor private multinationals. They approve of "aggressive" Kurdish investment
deals with oil companies in northern Iraq, and note that Shi'a leaders are
reported to be negotiating for foreign oil companies as well.
The Sunni armed nationalist groups have consistently stood for the Iraqi right
to control Iraqi oil, while also offering a generous role for American
contractors and corporations in their vision of the future.
All this suggests that the ideological goal of the US invasion was not simply to
displace Saddam Hussein but to dismantle the Arab nationalist state as a whole,
opening the oil fields to private penetration. It is even possible that the
grand alliance behind the Baker report includes support for US military
disengagement in exchange for permanent guarantees that privatize the second
largest oil fields on the planet.
As for the peace movement, it has been hobbled by the lack of a powerful
alliance, both organizational and organic, with the "anti- globalization"
movement which has fought the global IMF and WTO privatization plans, and the
environmental groups battling global warming and greenhouse emissions. Without
those unifying linkages, the peace movement has been limited mainly to demands
for US troop withdrawals, an effort that has had an enormous impact.
What if the endgame is US combat troops out, US multinational corporations in?
What if James Baker is remembered as the peacemaker, if not the leader of the
peace movement?
While pushing hard for the removal of troops, it might not be too late to
broaden and connect the peace movement more closely with other social movements
as the historic debate accelerates about the lessons of the war for our
country's future memory.
###
Tom Hayden was a leader of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam era. He has
enlisted as a chronicler of the government's plans for Iraq, and a
self-appointed internet strategist for the anti-war movement since 2003. He can
be contacted at
www.tomhayden.com.
Read also: Big Oil and Oil
Fascists
"The
war costs $100 billion a year and it generates an extra $75 billion in annual
oil profits.
In other words, for every $1 the U.S. government spends on the wars,
the owners of the oil companies earn an additional ¢75 in net profit."
- Taken from "Cheap
Wars"
FROM THE
PROPOGANDA DEPARTMENT
The Big Lie About 'Islamic Fascism'
http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis46.html
The latest big lie unveiled by Washington's
neoconservatives are the poisonous terms, "Islamo-Fascists" and "Islamic
Fascists." They are the new, hot buzzwords among America's far right and
Christian fundamentalists.President George W. Bush made a point last week of
using "Islamofacists" when recently speaking of Hezbullah and Hamas - both, by
the way, democratically elected parties. A Canadian government minister from the
Conservative Party compared Lebanon's Hezbullah to Nazi Germany.
The term "Islamofascist" is utterly without meaning,
but packed with emotional explosives. It is
a propaganda creation worthy Dr. Goebbels, and the latest expression of the big
lie technique being used by neocons in Washington's propaganda war against its
enemies in the Muslim World. This ugly term was probably first coined
in Israel - as was the other hugely successful propaganda term,
"terrorism" -
to dehumanize and demonize opponents and deny them any rational political
motivation, hence removing any need to deal with their grievances and demands.As
the brilliant humanist Sir Peter Ustinov so succinctly put it, "Terrorism
is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich." CLIP
"Each man
must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is
patriotic and which isn't.
You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is
to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor,
both to yourself and to your country."
-- Mark Twain