-Caveat Lector-
from:
http://www.hermes-press.com/impintro1.htm
Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.hermes-press.com/impintro1.htm";>The New
U.S.-British Oil Imperialism</A>
-----
The New U.S.
-British Oil Imperialism
By Norman D. Livergood
The American and British ruling circles have been engaged in a policy of
military imperialism 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. 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 cabals 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 oil,
gas, and nuclear 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 Portugal. The engines of war now ran on
petroleum-based products, so ownership of oil could now 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 corporations, now 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 shipping to Japan.
This was said to be in retaliation for the recent 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
Washington, 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 ships 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 shipping 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 oilfields in Romania by 1939 so
Germany would have its own supply of oil. This was accomplished. Then Rommel
was to have captured the oilfields in Persia by 1941, the oilfields 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 oilfields 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 rushing 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 ports like San Francisco, Houston or Los Angeles, not
near any of the large American oil fields. Most oil from the Persian Gulf is
shipped in oil tankers to those large American refinery-ports.
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 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. But in 1954,
Vietnamese General Giap finally defeated and drove out the French at Dien
Bien Phu with weaponry provided by the U.S. Ho Chi Minh reneged on the deal
since he could read too, and he was well aware of the Hoover resource report
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, current Afghanistan 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, 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.
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 Bosporus to the
Mediterranean, but the narrow Bosporus channel is already clogged with oil
tankers from the Black Sea oilfields. An alternate route would be to move the
tankers from the Black Sea, bypassing the Bosporus, 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 oilfields 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 seaport. 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 Rep
ublics 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 membership 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 will now become the base of operations in destabilizing,
isolating, and establishing control over the South Asian Republics and the
Middle-East. 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 support 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 Aminuddin, 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 Corporation, 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 portion 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. Iraq is producing 3 million barrels a day, funneling most of it to
world markets through a United Nations-monitored program that directs the
proceeds to food and medicine for the Iraqi people. But Saddam Hussein is
still exporting his oil to Syria, which is glad to resell Iraqi oil as if it
were Syrian. The United States is one of Syria's biggest customers, because
it likes the low sulfur content of Iraqi oil, says Nimrod Raphaeli, publisher
of the Middle East Economic News, a Washington-based newsletter. Iraq earns
$1.5 billion a year from oil smuggling and oil sales outside UN controls,
through Syria, Turkey, and Jordan, as well as by ship down the Gulf.
Since 9/11/01, the Bush regime has threatened to include Iraq in its
"war on terrorism." But any incursion into Iraq will have to deal with the
reality that American companies, such as Cheney's Halliburton and G.E. are
making billions in Iraq by selling them goods and services. Also, the
eradication of Saddam would seriously compromise America's establishment of
bases on the Arabian peninsula on the pretext of protecting poor Arab sheikhs
against the Iraqi Evil Monster.
Iraq is desperately trying to ingratiate itself with the Gulf Arab
Cooperation Council (GCC) members: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to gain support for the lifting of
the U.N. sanctions against it. Russia, Iraq's closest U.N. Security Council
ally and a major beneficiary of contracts to purchase Iraqi oil and to sell
Iraq humanitarian supplies, is demanding "a comprehensive settlement" of the
sanctions issue, including steps leading to lifting the military embargo
against Iraq. On January 24, 2002, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov made
a formal statement that Moscow was opposed to any U.S. military operation
against Iraq.
Russia's Lukoil Oil Company and two Russian government agencies have a
23-year contract to develop Iraq's West Qurna oil field. By the terms of the
contract, Lukoil gets one half, Iraq one quarter, and the Russian government
agencies get one quarter of the oil field's 667 million tons of crude,
potentially a $20 billion deal. Iraq still owes Russia at least $8 billion
from the old cold war days when Russia armed Iraq, considering it a client
state.
But because of United Nations sanctions on Iraq, Lukoil has not pumped a
drop from West Qurna since it won drilling rights in 1997. In 2001, Saddam
gave Russia $1.3 billion in oil contracts under the United Nations
oil-for-food program that allows Iraq to sell oil to buy supplies to help
Iraqi civilians. In September, 2001, Saddam announced plans to award Russian
companies another $40 billion in contracts as soon as United Nations
sanctions were lifted.
In February, 2002, Russia's foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, said that
Russia and Iraq saw eye to eye on questions of extremism and terrorism and
that the American-backed sanctions against Iraq were counterproductive and
should be lifted. He then emphasized that Russia solidly opposed "spreading
or applying the international antiterror operation to any arbitrarily chosen
state, including Iraq."
Also to be considered in any plans to extend the Standard Oil/Bush oil
imperialism is China's growing interest in supporting Middle-East nations in
their struggle against the U.S. During Jordanian King Abdallah II's January,
2002 visit to China, Chinese President Jiang Zemin said that China wants
stronger ties with Arab countries to help promote peace between Israel and
the Palestinians. Yeah, sure, that's the reason China wants to put its foot
into the Middle East, to promote peace. China has supplied military weaponry
to Pakistan and is ready to intervene in the Middle East if the Standard
Oil/Bush imperialists attempt to attack Iraq as Bush senior did in 1991.
But the Standard Oil/Bush imperialists probably won't concern themselves
with the threat of China in the Middle East. They will likely try to seize
control of all of Iraq's, Syria's, and Iran's oil. Enter phase two of the war
on terrorism: invading countries that Bush says harbor terrorists, with the
real intent to seize those countries' energy sources. And since U.S.-British
a.k.a. Standard Oil imperialism now--since 9/11--results in the killing of
American civilians, we can say that the next phase of the war on terrorism
will soon be at a theater near you.
U.S. soldiers will soon be guarding the north-south pipeline as it's
built in Afghanistan. In the meantime, the hypocrisy of Bush's "war on
terrorism" is apparent for all to see in Colombia where Bush proposes to
spend $98 million to protect Occidental Petroleum's 480-mile-long pipeline
which runs from Colombia's second-largest oil field to the Caribbean coast.
The $98 million will follow the $1.3 billion the U.S. has already given to
Colombia, ostensibly to fight the "drug terrorists." In 2001, the Cano Limon
pipeline was closed for 266 days, due to holes blasted in it. The
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels have blown holes in the
pipeline for the past fifteen years, resulting in 2.5 million barrels of
spilled oil oozing into Colombia's rivers and streams, about ten times the
amount of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
If Bush enters this 38-year old conflict in Colombia which has resulted
in 40,000 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.
Invading Colombia follows the British-U.S. oil imperialism pattern:
going where the oil is. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Colombian
oil production rose from only 100,000 barrels per day in the early 1980s to
approximately 844,000 barrels in early 1999 -- an increase of nearly 750
percent. Colombian oil exports to the United States have also risen sharply,
and today Colombia is this country's seventh largest supplier of petroleum.
Colombia harbors large reserves of untapped oil and natural gas, possibly as
much as 20 billion barrels (and Venezuela has 73 billion barrels in proven
reserves); hence Colombia--and its oil-rich neighbor countries--become one of
many new oil imperialism targets. The United States imports more oil from
Colombia and its neighbors, Venezuela and Ecuador, than from all of the
Persian Gulf.
A revealing feature of the South American "war on terrorism" is that,
unlike the Taliban and al Qaeda, the Bush administration is not destroying
the numerous South American drug terrorists. Why? Because the Bush
administration and its plutocratic controllers are at the center of the $1.5
trillion per year in U.S. cash transactions that result from the
international drug trade.
A drug terrorist, like a Carlos Lehder, a Pablo Escobar, an Amado
Fuentes, a Matta Ballesteros or a Hank Rohn, constantly has something like
ten billion dollars of useless illegal money that he has to put in a
cooperative bank or business venture that will launder it for him. The drug
lord is then more than happy to loan the laundered money at five percent
interest to underwrite the large corporations and crooked politicians
throughout the world.
Wall Street and the Bush administration depend on the South American
drug barons for hundreds of millions of dollars for corporate income and
election campaign finances. For every million dollars of increased sales or
increased revenues that a company like Enron realizes from a buyout, the
stock equity of the one per cent who control Wall Street, increases twenty to
thirty times.
In June, 1999, Colombia's president Andres Pastrana arranged for Richard
Grasso, head of the New York Stock Exchange, to meet with Raúl Reyes, the
head of FARC finances, in the cocaine-producing DMZ of Colombia. The two were
caught in an infamous embrace that saw very little exposure in the media.
Grasso, however, wasn't the only American big-money representative to
cozy up to Colombian drug terrorists. Several months after Grasso's visit,
two wealthy members of the American Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
captured world headlines by flying to a FARC redoubt in the Colombian jungles
to palaver with the terrorists' founder, 70-year-old Manuel Marulanda. After
meeting with the communist drug terrorist, James Kimsey, co-founder and
chairman emeritus of America Online Inc., and Joseph Robert, head of J.E.
Robert Company, a global real estate empire, flew to Bogota to consult with
Colombian president Pastrana. On returning to Washington, the CFR
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 corporations would be
involved in laundering drug money from South American terrorists. Even the
supine media have had to report some of this criminal behavior. A 1983 ABC
News "Close up" on drugs and money laundering fingered Citibank, Marine
Midland, Chase Manhattan, and most of the 250 banks and branches in Miami.
When Ramon Milian Rodriguez, a top accountant and money launderer for the
Medellin Cartel, testified before a Senate subcommittee in 1988, he
implicated a veritable "Who's Who" in U.S. finance:
* Citibank
* Citicorp
* Bank of America
* First National Bank of Boston
"In every instance," said Rodriguez, "the banks knew who they were
dealing with...." The evidence indicates that Rodriguez is right; the banks
often play dumb, but they know what they're doing.
A 1998 investigation of Citibank by the U.S. General Accounting Office
(GAO) revealed that Citibank had secretly transferred between $90 million and
$100 million of alleged drug money for a Mexican client, using many creative
methods to camouflage the movement of the assets.
Oil imperialism rests on our continued dependence on oil, which not only
threatens the future of humanity through prolonged and bloody conflict, but
through another even more insidious threat--climate change and ecological
collapse.
"The oil industry has destroyed Colombia's forests, as well as the
culture and subsistence of its Indigenous Peoples. A major part of the
country's territory has been affected by oil-related activities, including
colonization. Some Indigenous Peoples, such as the Yariguies, have been
exterminated. Others, like the Motilones, the Cofanes and the Guahibos, have
been decimated. Nowadays, the U'wa people find their ancestral lands
threatened by oil exploitation that could destroy their forests, their lives
and their culture.
"The process of territorial occupation by oil companies has been
stimulated by Colombian legislation, which has provided large incentives for
oil projects. Oil companies are allowed to occupy the five-kilometer area
surrounding an oil well, thus displacing Indigenous and farmers' communities
and destroying biodiversity-rich forest zones.
"Currently, seven million hectares of Colombian land are occupied by oil
operations, and ten million more have been awarded to oil companies over
recent years. Thus, 17 million hectares of forested land is currently at the
disposition of transnational oil companies."
Oil imperialism flourishes when a supine press cheers and a groveling
congress grants unconstitutional authority to the oil-saturated Bush dynasty.
Despite our grief and rage over terrorist atrocities, a "war on terrorism"
cannot be fought with bombs and missiles alone. Citizens throughout the world
must awaken to this new U.S.-British imperialism and reclaim their
governments. Once democracy is re-established, we can start a war on
homelessness, poverty, and economic and political inequalities, and begin
work to achieve ecological sustainability for our planet.
Dr. Norman D. Livergood: updated: 8/30/02 -- original article: 10/29/01
Relevant Links and Updates
* 8/30/02: U.S.-British Pipeline Company formed to pump Caspian sea oil to
the West
* 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.
* Afghanistan Aims to Revive Pipeline Plans, 5/30/02
* Ashcroft and Cheney tied to Big Oil campaign contributions and bribes,
5/26/02
* Report Alleges US Role in Angola Arms-for-Oil Scandal, 5/17/02
* The emerging connection between oil plans and the 9-11 attacks, 05/16/02
* Big Oil, the United States and corruption in Kazahkstan,
Part 1, 5/16/02
* Part 2
* World Bank chief in talks over massive central Asian pipeline, 5/15/02
* Afghanistan plans gas pipeline, 05/15/02
* Oil fuels US army role in Georgia, 05/14/02
* Oil Fix -- Bush Will Act Globally to Lock In U.S. Supply, 04/30/02
* America Goes Into the Energy Business With the Former Evil Empire
[Russia], 1/15/02
* U.S. bases pave the way for long-term intervention in Central Asia,
1/11/02
* The Pipeline Plots, 1/9/02
* Oil Company Adviser Named U.S. Representative to Afghanistan, 1/3/02
* Russia Wins the Afghanistan Oil War, 12/23/01
* The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), December, 2001
Ownership structure of CPC
* As the War Shifts Alliances, Oil Deals Follow, 12/15/01, New York Times
* U.S. Oil War Caspian Pipeline Opens, 12/3/01, Washington Times
* "U.S. efforts to make peace summed up by 'oil' , 11/19/01, Irish Times
* "The United States of Oil", 11/19/01, By Damien Cave, Salon
* U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil, 11/15/01
* "You've Got to Go Where the Oil Is", 10/30/01 Special to The Dubya Report
* Another point of view?
* And Another?
Bibliography
* Brisard, J, and Dasquie, G. Forbidden Truth, 2002
* Rashid, Ahmed, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central
Asia, 2000
* Pilger, John, Hidden Agenda
* Klare, Michael, Resource Wars
* Yergin, Daniel, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, (1991)
* Pepe Escobar, The war for Pipelineistan, Asian Times (1/26/02)
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
All My Relations.
Omnia Bona Bonis,
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
