Posts

Posted on

The Great Iraqi Oil Robbery

Iraq Oil Liberation

The Coalition of the Gobbling has now set the scene for massive exploitation by its vampirish associates of Iraq’s oil without so much as a murmur from the Iraqi puppet government.

The law is set to be approved in March.

On Monday, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s cabinet in Baghdad approved the draft of the new Iraqi oil law. The government regards it as “a major national project”. The key point of the law is that Iraq’s immense oil wealth (115 billion barrels of proven reserves, third in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iran) will be under the iron rule of a fuzzy “Federal Oil and Gas Council” boasting “a panel of oil experts from inside and outside Iraq”. That is, nothing less than predominantly US Big Oil executives.

The law represents no less than institutionalized raping and pillaging of Iraq’s oil wealth. It represents the death knell of nationalized (from 1972 to 1975) Iraqi resources, now replaced by production sharing agreements (PSAs) – which translate into savage privatization and monster profit rates of up to 75% for (basically US) Big Oil. Sixty-five of Iraq’s roughly 80 oilfields already known will be offered for Big Oil to exploit. As if this were not enough, the law reduces in practice the role of Baghdad to a minimum. Oil wealth, in theory, will be distributed directly to Kurds in the north, Shi’ites in the south and Sunnis in the center. For all practical purposes, Iraq will be partitioned into three statelets. Most of the country’s reserves are in the Shi’ite-dominated south, while the Kurdish north holds the best prospects for future drilling.

Iraq Freedom

The approval of the draft law by the fractious 275-member Iraqi Parliament, in March, will be a mere formality. Hussain al-Shahristani, Iraq’s oil minister, is beaming. So is dodgy Barnham Salih: a Kurd, committed cheerleader of the US invasion and occupation, then deputy prime minister, big PSA fan, and head of a committee that was debating the law.

But there was not much to be debated. The law was in essence drafted, behind locked doors, by a US consulting firm hired by the Bush administration and then carefully retouched by Big Oil, the International Monetary Fund, former US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz’ World Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development. It’s virtually a US law (its original language is English, not Arabic).

Scandalously, Iraqi public opinion had absolute no knowledge of it – not to mention the overwhelming majority of Parliament members. Were this to be a truly representative Iraqi government, any change to the legislation concerning the highly sensitive question of oil wealth would have to be approved by a popular referendum.

In real life, Iraq’s vital national interests are in the hands of a small bunch of highly impressionable (or downright corrupt) technocrats. Ministries are no more than political party feuds; the national interest is never considered, only private, ethnic and sectarian interests. Corruption and theft are endemic. Big Oil will profit handsomely – and long-term, 30 years minimum, with fabulous rates of return – from a former developing-world stalwart methodically devastated into failed-state status.

Once the insurgents, guerillas and Iraqi public become aware of the impending oil rape by the Coalition of the Gobbling, it is quite possible that there will be a strategic unification and uprising against the common colonialist enemy which no Doodoo surge will be able to suppress.

Posted on

Thinking of Leaving Asstralia?

Howard Bush First Family

Be afraid, be very afraid. You can’t rely on the current Howard government to help you out if you’re in strife abroad. The value of being Australian diminishes daily under little Johnny’s uncaring, unscrupulous, double-dealing regime.

Outside court, opposition legal affairs spokesman Kelvin Thomson slammed Mr Bennett’s argument that the government had no legal obligation to help citizens abroad, saying it would “send a shiver down the spine” of Australians overseas.

He said the comments were in stark contrast to Mr Downer’s “boast back in 1997 that `the duty to protect our citizens overseas is a fundamental responsibility’.

Today’s Age editorial highlights Howard’s treason against us Aussies:

What a state of affairs. If there is no legal requirement, then for all intents and purposes a government can wash its hands of its duty to a citizen caught up in trouble abroad, irrespective of whether a person is perpetrator or victim. It makes carrying the Australian passport seem just a little less comforting.

The Judge hearing the Federal Court case against the Howard mob, Justice Brian Tamblin, has reserved his judgement due to the complexity of the case. One would think it would be cut and dried that the role of our government is to represent and protect the interests of its citizens wherever they may be. Apparently not.

Little Johnny’s mob could have past retrospective legislation to enable Hicks to be tried in Whorestralia had they wished and didn’t. Former Lib appointed judge, Stephen Charles, QC, comments on such a Whorestralian trial and reveals possible reasons why little Johnny failed to pursue a fair trial for Hicks in Whorestralia:

“The coercive methods used by investigators would be examined in detail, further damaging the reputations of the US military and both the US and Australian governments. The conclusion seems inescapable that the Australian Government was concerned that the evidence upon which the prosecution relied for a conviction of Mr Hicks would be rejected in a trial in Australia … and that it did not wish him to be tried before an Australian court, precisely because such a trial would have to be a fair one.”

Mr Charles is one of a band of former judges, including former Family Court chief justice Alastair Nicholson and former High Court judge Mary Gaudron, to have spoken out against the Federal Government’s treatment of Hicks.

Posted on

Coalition of the Gobbling vs Iran V11

Hate in mediaThe United Stupids are now pushing for more pressure against Iran in the UN Insecurity Council, while

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator again signaled that Tehran would be willing to engage in “constructive and logical” negotiations with the United States.

Additionally

Iran’s proposal to cap its enrichment at very low levels may be winning some support in Europe.

This is not enough apparently for the Coalition of the Gobbling, who want complete suspension of enrichment. There is a distinct possibility that the United Stupids and United Kooks are choosing precisely the same deliberate path of deception which led to their illegal invasion of Iraq.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated this weekend that she would negotiate with Mottaki as soon as Iran had suspended enrichment.

Iran is not in breach of the NPT – and even the US does not claim it is. The US claims rather that Iran is untrustworthy, and therefore should be denied the rights it has under the treaty.

Like all non-nuclear weapons signatories, Iran maintains the right to have access to nuclear technology, to build nuclear power plants, and to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

Hans Blix, the last weapons inspector in Iraq before the illegal invasion, warns that

“humiliating” Iran over its uranium enrichment could spawn intransigence. “It’s an observation I’ve made before regarding Iraq,” he told reporters in New York today.

“Why did the Iraqis behave as they did in the 1990s (and) send away the UNSCOM inspectors and close the door to them?” he asked, referring to the UN Special Commission mandated to inspect Iraqi weapons of mass destruction after the 1991 Gulf War.

“One element was ‘humiliation’,” he said. “It was not rational of them to stop the inspections, it really worked against their own interest and yet I can see that the humiliation, the fury, was such that they said, ‘To hell with it’,” said Blix.

Iran does not have the capacity at this time to produce nuclear weapons and such capacity by all authoritative sources is years away. The UN’s nuclear watchdog (IAEA) continues to call for de-escalation of the rhetoric and reliance on negotiations, and has reported that there is no evidence of nuclear weapons production.

Israel on the other hand has an arsenal of 200-400 nukes, a threat to the rest of the region for decades. There are no guarantees that at some point in the future, religious and/or political fundamentalists won’t be in power in Israhell. At present, in its continued violation of international law in regard to its occupation of Palestine and Syrian territory, Israel remains an extreme provocation to its neighbours to develop nuclear parity, and if not nuclear parity, chemical or biological weaponry for deterrence.

On several occasions since 1974, countries in the region lobbied in the UN for the Middle East to become a nuclear weapon free zone. The only dissenting voice was Israel. If we are to have peace in the world, and especially if we are to avoid a nuclear holocaust, there must be a universal, not a selective, commitment to the rule of law and international security.

It is important to stress that it was the United States which first introduced nuclear weapons to the Middle East starting in 1958 and has continued to bring tactical nuclear weapons on its planes and ships ever since.

Other countries in the Middle East which are predominantly Sunni, including the fundamentalist Saudi tyranny, are not keen on Iran becoming a dominant power in the region either. The United Stupids and Israhell have both met recently with Saudia, (and so has Iran). With the demonisation of Iran by United Stupids, United Kooks and Israel in full swing, Israhell and the neoziotards are palpably keen for the Coalition of the Gobbling to do the dirty work, with the main impetus coming from AIPAC.

Israeli Defense Force chief artillery officer Gen. Oded Tira has griped that “President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran,” adding that since “an American strike in Iran is essential for [Israel’s] existence, we must help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is conducting itself foolishly) and US newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iran issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure.” Tira urges the Lobby to turn to “potential presidential candidates … so that they support immediate action by Bush against Iran,” while Uri Lubrani, senior advisor to Defense Minister Amir Peretz, tells the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors that the US “does not understand the threat and has not done enough,â” and therefore “must be shaken awake.”

Fundo rabbis in Israel are leading children into prayers against Ahmadinejad – the media propaganda machine is running at full bore to demonise Iran

claiming its leader is a new Hitler and that Jews are threatened with another Holocaust.

A more accurate reading of the situation might be to say that Israel is determined to protect the monopoly of nuclear weapons, which it has enjoyed in the Middle East for more than 40 years.

Concurrently, the Israeli government warns of a regional arms race. Guess who started it, mate? here comes the old blowback denial again.

Condisleazer

Update:

The United Stupids are to have talks with Iran, Iraq and Syria in Baghdad about Iraqi security. The old carrot and stick approach – while the Iranians are threatened with fleets and sanctions, the Stupids will expect them to be cooperative especially since they are deigning to parley with them. What will the Stupids offer? There is doubt about whether Iran is actually destabilising Iraq anyway – the propaganda the Stupids tried to sell that the Iranians were back the insurgency was laughable. The insurgency is predominantly Sunni, and Iranians are Shite. The Iraqi government is majorly Shite as are the Sadr nationalists. Do the Stupids want the Iranians to start backing the Sunnis?

Whilst any talks are a positive sign, the United States may well be sussing out the enemy at close hand under a false pretext. It’s probably too much to hope for that the Stupids might have woken up that the only real, workable long term solution for the whole region, before things go too far, is to start lobbying for a nuke weapon free zone. Whether Israhell would cooperate is another matter, yet if the Stupids insisted, Israhell must follow or risk its benefactor’s largesse and support.

Posted on

Coalition of the Gobbling vs Iraq 11

Dick and John deals

The Iraqi prize – its oil – is about to come under Coalition of the Gobbling companies’ control.

… Now comes new evidence of the big prize in Iraq that rarely gets mentioned at White House briefings.

A proposed new Iraqi oil and gas law began circulating last week among that country’s top government leaders and was quickly leaked to various Internet sites – before it has even been presented to the Iraqi parliament.

Under the proposed law, Iraq’s immense oil reserves would not simply be opened to foreign oil exploration, as many had expected. Amazingly, executives from those companies would actually be given seats on a new Federal Oil and Gas Council that would control all of Iraq’s reserves.

In other words, Chevron, ExxonMobil, British Petroleum and the other Western oil giants could end up on the board of directors of the Iraqi Federal Oil and Gas Council, while Iraq’s own national oil company would become just another competitor.

The new law would grant the council virtually all power to develop policies and plans for undeveloped oil fields and to review and change all exploration and production contracts.

Since most of Iraq’s 73 proven petroleum fields have yet to be developed, the new council would instantly become a world energy powerhouse.

“We’re talking about trillions of dollars of oil that are at stake,” said Raed Jarrar, an independent Iraqi journalist and blogger who obtained an Arabic copy of the draft law and posted an English-language translation on his Web site over the weekend.

More recently from Raed’s blog:

My contacts in the Iraqi government, in addition to some fellow Iraqi bloggers, confirmed that the oil law draft was submitted to the Council of Ministers last week, and is expected to reach to the Council of Representatives (the Parliament) very soon after it gets approved in the Council of Ministers. The law will be considered active in case it gets approved by the parliament.

For a clear analysis of the Coalition of the Gobbling’s proposed endgame for the current episode of the Great Game and its plans for global oil dominance, read William Clark’s stunning article of December 06.

Posted on

Shilling for a War

War - both sides of the storyCon Coughlin does it again in this waffly piece of shillery, overflowing with unnamed senior sources, claiming Israel is seeking authorisation from the Pentagon to whack Iran. Interestingly and simultaneously, the uber conservative Daily Telegraph broadcasts this story wherein Cheney warns that military action against Iran remains a possibility.

AP debunks the Coughlin shillery swiftly.

The subject has a revealing history of similar deceptive preemptive pro-war journalism. Is MI6 involved as well?

A report, put together by Campaign Iran and published at the end of 2006, revealed that Daily Telegraph’s political editor Con Coughlin, the man who ‘broke the story’ of Iraq’s 45 minute WMD capacity, was behind 16 articles containing unsubstantiated allegations against Iran over the past 12 months. The Press Complaints Commission has launched its third investigation into Coughlin in as many months after a number of high level complaints about his latest article on Iran. The investigation is looking at an article by Coughlin on 24 January relying on an unnamed “European defence official” alleging that North Korea is helping Iran prepare a nuclear weapons test.

Back in 2000, the British Journalism Review remarked that “officers of MI6… had been supplying Coughlin with material for years.” It is known that the MI6 has a shadowy programme called “I/Ops” (Information Operations), whose activities within Fleet Street have never before been so clearly exposed.

Supposing the Tele story is an MI6 plant, what should we make of this Times Online story that several US generals are prepared to resign if Doodoo gives the order to attack Iran?

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

A British defence source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. “All the generals are perfectly clear that they don’t have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them.

“There are enough people who feel this would be an error of judgment too far for there to be resignations.”

A generals’ revolt on such a scale would be unprecedented. “American generals usually stay and fight until they get fired,” said a Pentagon source. Robert Gates, the defence secretary, has repeatedly warned against striking Iran and is believed to represent the view of his senior commanders.

The threat of a wave of resignations coincided with a warning by Vice-President Dick Cheney that all options, including military action, remained on the table. He was responding to a comment by Tony Blair that it would not “be right to take military action against Iran”.

Perhaps there are secret wars within the intel agencies themselves. Who is feeding the pro-war line in the Brit press and the Pentagon? Could it be none other than the recently departed torturer and his evul cohorts? Seymour Hersh spills the beans on the United Stupids tilt toward Iran:

The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney. (Cheney’s office and the White House declined to comment for this story; the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said, “The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran.”)

OBL wants war in Iran
Ironically, the tilt against the Shite Iranians will benefit the most radical, fundamentalist Sunnis, from whom the likes of Bin Laden came. Whose side are the torturer’s mob really on?

“The Saudis have considerable financial means, and have deep relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis”—Sunni extremists who view Shiites as apostates. “The last time Iran was a threat, the Saudis were able to mobilize the worst kinds of Islamic radicals. Once you get them out of the box, you can’t put them back.” The Saudi royal family has been, by turns, both a sponsor and a target of Sunni extremists, who object to the corruption and decadence among the family’s myriad princes. The princes are gambling that they will not be overthrown as long as they continue to support religious schools and charities linked to the extremists. The Administration’s new strategy is heavily dependent on this bargain.

Nasr compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda first emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded Al Qaeda, in 1988.

What is the payoff for the torturer? More war, re-election of the neocons, more oil, more profits for Helliburton etc. – his mates.