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
"War is the health of the state."
-Randolph Bourne, The State
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 circumstances, 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 masses 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 masses 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:
o oilfields in Egypt (In 1908)
o the Russsian Ural-Caspian oilfields (1910)
o Mexican oilfields belonging to Lord Cowdray (Weetman Pearson)
o Venezualan oilfields (which still produce a sixth of Shell's
supplies)
o American oilfields
* Walter Teagle, head of Exxon
o secretly bought a prosperous Texas oil company misleadingly named
Humble (1919)
o 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
o 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 documents
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 documents 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 accumulated 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=FAl 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 circumstances
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 circumstances
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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