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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 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 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 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 oil fields. 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 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 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
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 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." - Friends of the Earth -
Les Amis de la Terre - Amigos de la Tierra
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
===========
Relevant Links and Updates
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
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.
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
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
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?
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)
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