[nukkad] The New U.S. -British Oil Imperialism - (3/3)

[Satya <>]

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A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the 
temper of the sufferer. -Joseph Addison, essayist and poet (1672-1719)
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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. 
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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. 
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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.
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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.
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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.-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.
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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.
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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.
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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. 
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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.
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In June, 1999, Colombia's president Andres Pastrana
arranged for Richard Grasso, head of the New York
Stock Exchange, to meet with Raśl 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.
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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 representatives said they were convinced that
Marulanda and FARC are sincere in their claims of
wanting peace and economic reform.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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.

Updated: 12/21/02 -- original article: 10/29/01
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You shall know the TRUTH and the TRUTH shall set you free. 

John 8:32

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