Kucinich Claims War Masks the Real Objective: Iraqi Oil

It’s all about Iraq’s oil - rich, abundant, and coveted by multinational companies waiting to line their deep pockets.

• the White House and Democratic-led Congress are helping oil companies grab a stake in Iraq’s vast oil fields while claiming to be interested merely in winding down the Iraq war.
• The claim has brought Kucinich derision within his own Democratic Party. Leaders reject the suggestion that they would help “privatize” Iraqi oil.
• And Republicans dismiss him altogether, with Republican Party spokesman Dan Ronayne saying, “It sounds like congressman Kucinich is trying to get noticed with a nutty conspiracy theory.”
  

At the heart of the issue is a measure that, if ratified by the Iraqi parliament, would set the stage for rebuilding the war-torn country’s oil industry.

• Oil in Iraq, with the world’s third-biggest reserves, could pay for massive reconstruction and modernization.

• only 15 of Iraq’s 74 discovered oil fields have been developed, according to a study by Amy Myers Jaffe, a fellow in energy studies at Rice University in Houston.

• Who should develop that? What role should Baghdad play and what role should provincial governments have? If private industry helps, how should it be rewarded?

The framework for answering these questions is in the bill before the Iraqi parliament - a bill that’s been gaining detractors in Iraq.

• Some members of Congress - but not Kucinich - say it or some other so-called hydrocarbon act could serve as a benchmark for Congress and the administration to measure Iraq’s progress. It could be a measure on which to base eventual withdrawal of American troops.

• with Sunnis and Kurds differing on the central question of provincial versus central control.

• Some in Iraq also see the measure as a way for Western corporations to gain control through revenue- sharing provisions.

“Everyone knows that the oil law does not serve the Iraqi people, and that it serves Bush, his supporters and the foreign companies at the expense of the Iraqi people who have been wronged and deprived of their right to their oil despite enduring all difficulties,” Hasan Jum’a Awwad, head of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, said in a May 12 letter to Democrats in the U.S. Congress.

• Iraq’s oil industry is in shambles. It needs help, but outside experts keep getting killed. Multinational oil companies, whose shareholders expect a return on investment, could help.

• Iraq could go it alone, but ... Iraq needs up to $10 billion to restore production to pre-war levels, she said, and more than $20 billion - ... - to raise output to about 5 million barrels a day, the high end of its historical production levels.

• “If it is decided that higher levels of production are desired,” Jaffe wrote, “it is inevitable that the potential role of outside investors and lenders will loom large.”

While that does not mean companies would give their resources and expertise out of charity, Karen Matusic, a spokeswoman for the American Petroleum Institute, says it does not mean privatization, either. She asks why Kucinich would not want to help Iraq, which lacks the tools.

• “They don’t have the kinds of funds or even technology needed to develop those fields,” she said.

• Sen. George Voinovich, an Ohio Republican, shares that view.

• “That oil is capital,” and all sides in Iraq need it, said Voinovich spokesman Chris Paulitz.

• Kucinich agrees with the sentiment. But he worries it won’t work out that way.

• “It’s clear,” he said, “that the people of Iraq are under enormous pressure to give up their oil.”

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: skoff@plaind.com, 216-999-4212

© 2007 The Plain Dealer

WORLD POPULATION

What happened around 1830?

76 IRAQI MAPS

there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go

TWO POEMS

THE FIRST

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
-electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born-pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if-listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go


AND THE OTHER


when god decided to invent
everything he took one
breath bigger than a circustent
and everything began

when man determined to destroy
himself he picked the was
of shall and finding only why
smashed it into because

GRAIN: 800 MILLION AUTOS VS. 2 BILLION POOR. GUESS WHO WINS

Gwynne Dyer: Biofuel mania ends days of cheap food
5:00AM Tuesday July 10, 2007
By Gwynne Dyer

The era of cheap food is over. The price of maize has doubled in a year, and wheat futures are at their highest in a decade. The food price index in India has risen 11 per cent in one year,

But after the war, a series of radical changes, from mechanisation to the green revolution, raised agricultural productivity hugely and caused a long, steep fall in the real price of food.

...we are entering a period when three separate factors are converging to drive food prices up.

• Not only is the global population continuing to grow - about an extra Turkey or Vietnam every year -

• but as Asian economies race ahead, more people in those populous countries are starting to eat more meat.

• 10 years from now, people in the developing countries will be eating 30 per cent more beef, 50 per cent more pig meat and 25 per cent more poultry.

• The animals will need a great deal of grain, and meeting that demand will require shifting huge amounts of grain-growing land from human to animal consumption

• A sixth of all the grain grown in the United States this year will be "industrial corn" destined to be converted into ethanol and burned in cars, and Europe, Brazil and China are all heading in the same direction.

• The amount of United States farmland devoted to biofuels grew by 48 per cent in the past year alone,

• Global warming hits crop yields, ... for every 0.5C hotter, crop yields fall between 3 and 5 per cent.

• So 2C hotter, which is the lower end of the range of predicted temperature rise this century, means a 12 to 20 per cent fall in global food production.

U.S. demands Pakistan act against militants, threatens intervention

SLAMABAD, Pakistan — An ambush of a military convoy that killed 17 troops near the Afghan border Wednesday pushed the death toll in a series of attacks to at least 101 Pakistanis in the past five days

The Bush administration, after publicly demanding that Musharraf rein in militants linked to al Qaida, on Wednesday threatened to launch attacks into Pakistani territory if it sees fit.

"We certainly do not rule out options, and we retain the option especially of striking actionable targets," said White House spokesman Tony Snow. "But it is clearly of the utmost importance to go in there and deal with the problem in the tribal areas."

Still Privatizing After All These Years; WORLD BANK CASE STUDY

The World Bank's Russia office turns 15

By Alexander Zaitchik ( zaitchik@gmail.com )

Browse Author (21)

« Previous (19)

Next (1) »

Russia-watchers know the horrific stat about Russian men's grotesquely low life expectancy, which in the 1990s reached levels normally associated with Tse Tse fly-infested backwaters in Africa. But over the past few years, things have started to turn around. Russia's male life expectancy has risen from a Congo-like low of 56 to nearly 60, which, coincidentally, is the retirement age for Russian men. Finally, they're about to live long enough to start collecting their pensions.

Oil Pressure: A History of U.S. Involvement in Iraq’s Oil Development

Feb.-March 2001: White House Energy Taskforce produces a list of “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.”3

December 2002-April 2003: U.S. State Department Oil and Energy Working Group brought together influential Iraqi exiles, U.S. government officials, and international consultants. The result of the project’s work was a “draft framework for Iraq’s oil policy” that would form the foundation for the energy policy now being considered by the Iraqi Parliament. The final report noted that Iraq “should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war.4 Later, several Iraqi members of the group became part of the Iraqi government. The Group included future Iraqi Oil Minister, Bahr al-Uloum.

January 2003: The Wall Street Journal reported that representatives from Exxon Mobil Corp., ChevronTexaco Corp., ConocoPhillips, and Halliburton, among others, were meeting with Vice President Cheney’s staff to plan the post-war revival of Iraq’s oil industry.5

...

April 19, 2007: Defense Secretary Robert Gates travels to Baghdad to push political benchmarks and specifically the oil law.34

May 9 2007: U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney travels to Baghdad to push political benchmarks and specifically the oil law.35

June 12, 2007: U.S. Admiral Fallon, head of the Central Command, warned Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in a closed-door conversation to pass the oil law by July.36

July 3, 2007: Iraq cabinet approves oil law draft.37

July 12, 2007: The White House released its Initial Benchmark Assessment Report. Benchmark #3, “Enacting and implementing legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources” is found to be not met. The report notes, “The effect of limited progress toward this benchmark has been to reduce the perceived confidence in, and effectiveness of, the Iraqi Government. This does not, however, necessitate a revision to our current plan and strategy, under which we have assigned a high priority to this subject, and the process overall has continued to move forward.”38

OIL TO THE USA

The top five crude-oil exporters to the U.S. market last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Figures are in barrels.

_Canada, 650,874,000

_Mexico, 575,135,000

_Saudi Arabia, 518,739,000

_Venezuela, 415,676,000

_Nigeria, 380,715,000

"HANDS OFF IRAQI OIL" BLOGSITE

Hands Off Iraqi Oil is a UK coalition opposing any foreign exploitation of Iraq's oil reserves that rips off the Iraqi people. Members include Corporate Watch, Iraq Occupation Focus, Jubilee Iraq, Naftana, PLATFORM, Voices UK, and War on Want. To be added to our updates list, please email: handsoffiraqioil@googlemail.com.


July 16, 2007 at 16:59:54

Iraqis Protest Oil Law Today

by Kathlyn Stone Page 1 of 1 page(s)

http://www.opednews.com

www.handsoffiraqioil.org

The draft hydrocarbon law being pushed by the Bush Administration is uniting citizens and disparate groups within Iraq against the U.S. government. Protests within Iraq are escalating as the Iraqi Parliament is pressured to pass the law which would turn over 70-80% of oil revenues to foreign companies. The Parliament is also wrangling over whether the oil law will be implemented under regional or national management. The Iraq Freedom Congress and the Anti-Oil Law Frontier staged a mass demonstration in Baghdad on July 7. Subhi Al-Badri, head of the Frontier, predicted an intensifying revolt against the law as pressure mounts for its passage. He said the majority of Iraqis "reject the oil law and it is in fact the law of slavery and servitude." ...

For further information, go to: www.priceofoil.org or www.uslaboragainstwar.org.

[1] Demands from the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions to Parliament include to: (1) reject the proposed oil law; (2) expel the current Oil Minister; (3) abolish the recently announced hike in oil and gas prices in Iraq; and (4) pass a law to establish labor rights and legalize trade unions.

Contact: For information on the Iraq Oil Law: Antonia Juhasz, Oil Change International (415) 846-5447. For information on the Oil Workers Union and Protest in Basra: Denice Lombard, U.S. Labor Against the War (202) 320-5588.

www.kathystone.squarespace.com

Kathlyn Stone is a Twin Cities, Minnesota-based writer covering science, health policy, the economy and international relations.

Hundreds of Iraqis protest draft oil law

About 500 oil industry workers gathered in Iraq's main oil port of Basra on Monday to protest a draft oil law

CHE ON YOUTUBE

RON PAUL RAKES IT IN - FROM THE MILITARY

Congressman Ron Paul says:

• staunchly critical stance on the Iraq war,
• that it was a "mistake to go and a mistake to stay."
• US security has been worsened by its military presence in Iraq,
• Bush's pre-emptive war doctrine represented one of his administration's greatest moral failings.
  

One might think such criticism of the war and the Commander-in-Chief's leadership would make Paul a pariah to the military community, however, the latest figures indicate the antiwar Republican is receiving more donations from employees of the US military than any other Republican candidate.

But a closer look at the reports reveals a less obvious but more remarkable development--the antiwar Republican received nearly 50% of the money donated by employees of the US military.

BENCHMARKS

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A report on U.S.-set benchmarks for Iraq shows “satisfactory progress” in eight areas, while highlighting that there’s “more work to do” in other areas, President Bush said Thursday.

“Of the 18 benchmarks Congress asked us to measure, we can report that satisfactory progress is being made in eight areas,” Bush said during a White House news conference.

Iraqis “have provided the three brigades they promised for operations in and around Baghdad,” said the president. However, Iraqis have “not done enough to prepare for local elections or pass a law to share in oil

UNSATISFACTORY

1. De-Ba'athification laws
2. Distribution of oil revenues
3. Independent electoral commission
4. Disarming of militias
5. Increase number of Iraqi security forces capable of operating independently
6. Allocation of $10bn in Iraqi reconstruction
7. Ensure political authorities are not undermining security forces
   

MIXED

1. Enacting and implementing legislation addressing amnesty

SATISFACTORY

1. Constitutional review
2. Training of three key Iraqi army brigades
3. Providing Iraqi commanders with authority to pursue US troop "surge" without political interference
4. Even handed law enforcement by Iraqi forces
5. Reduce sectarian violence
6. Establish joint US-Iraqi security stations in Baghdad
7. Protect rights of minority political parties
8. Enacting and implementing legislation on procedures to form semi-autonomous regions
9. Ensure that the Baghdad security plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of their political affiliation
10. Establishing supporting political, media, economic and services committees in Baghdad in support of the security plan

From BBC

From Military Keynesianism to Global-Neoliberal Militarism

by James M. Cypher

In mid-summer of 2006 a Harris Opinion poll:

• 50 percent of the U.S. public believed that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had been found in Iraq by U.S. forces

• nearly 67% of those polled thought that the Iraqi regime had been collaborating with al-Qaeda forces prior to the Washington invasion in the spring of 2003.

• a large majority of the population believed that the invasion had been a mistake and favored significant troop withdrawals in the near future.

Psychologists might interpret these discordant results as indications of mass cognitive dissonance.

• Although the United States suffered significant losses in terms of death and injury to its fighting forces, the economy boomed during the war, the Depression faded, and the fight was “over there.”

• This unique positive U.S. relationship between economic recovery and heavy bouts of military spending (if not war) has remained up to the present.

• With the onset of the Persian Gulf War of 1991, a new factor was thrown into the relationship—high-tech, “precision-guided” weaponry would make combat antiseptic.

• A childish and disengaged language also began to circulate in this period. There were “good guys” and “bad guys.”

• High-tech war would eliminate the bad guys—not innocent civilians whose deaths had been compartmentalized heretofore as collateral damage.

• The presentation of war as entertainment during the 1991 Gulf War was designed to beat back the Vietnam Syndrome—what conservatives saw as a pathology regarding the U.S. population’s increased reluctance to support interventions in the third world.

• The public will support military adventurism, but it will not sustain high human costs of war in the United States.

• In the United States militarism is and has been since the late 1940s a hegemonic societal perception—the prism through which global political events and U.S. foreign policy are interpreted.

...

HE'S POLL PROOF. IT'S GOING TO TAKE A BALA

Great article by LEE SUSTAR

VENEZUELA’S “BOLIVARIAN Revolution” ... “socialism for the twenty-first century.” Revenues from the state oil company, PDVSA, have funded vast increases in social spending.

• reduction of poverty from 55 percent of the population to 34 percent

• share of gross domestic product (GDP) on social spending has increased from 7.83 percent to 14.69 percent;

• the achievement of literacy for 1.5 million adults;

• the virtual elimination of hunger through subsidized grocery stores that service 13 million people;

• medical care provided by Cuban doctors via free clinics in slums, reaching 18 million people, nearly 70 percent of the population;

• access to higher education for the poor and working class;

• and special affirmative action programs for indigenous people.

• The minimum wage is now the highest in Latin America at $286 per month,

• and the workweek is to be shortened from forty to thirty-six hours by 2010.

• Land reform has shifted 8.8 million acres to impoverished families, more than half of that from private owners.

• Government seed money has increased the number of cooperative enterprises from fewer than 800 to 181,000 to try and provide more stable employment for the approximately half of Venezuelan workers who toil in the informal sector of the economy.

• All this is being achieved despite the implacable hostility of Venezuelan capital and of U.S. imperialism,

• Chávez looms ever larger on the world stage, having turned Venezuela from one of the most compliant states in Washington’s “backyard” into the cutting edge of the revolt against neoliberalism and a laboratory for socialism in the twenty-first century—

• all with oil money earned from exports to the United States.

• Oil prices are high, of course, owing to the Iraq War,

WARNING SIGNS FROM THE BLOG "STATION CHARON"

This is a new feature here at Station Charon looking at how the signs were there for the current global fascist corporate police state and the looter capitalist system that it uses as a tool for the coming hostile takeover of the United States.

Warning Signs Part One: Saul Alinsky

All their old values seem to have deserted them, leaving them rudderless in a sea of social chaos. Believe me, this is good organizational material.

The despair is there; now it's up to us to go in and rub raw the sores of discontent, galvanize them for radical social change. We'll give them a way to participate in the democratic process, a way to exercise their rights as citizens and strike back at the establishment that oppresses them, instead of giving in to apathy.

Warning Signs Part Two: Henry A. Wallace

...the creation of the CIA, the McCarthy years during which the real left was beaten back and degraded as a political force, the gradual and growing influence of the military industrial complex, the creation of a massive, well-funded infrastructure of think tanks and media shills, the hijacking of religion, the dumbing down of Americans through incessant propaganda, the destruction of the quality of education available in public schools, the erosion of worker’s rights as well as globalist ‘free trade’ pacts that would facilitate the looting of the fascist oligarchs...

Warning Signs Part 3: Smedley D. Butler

Those were the good ole days when the wetwork of building the empire was primarily done by the use of the U.S. military rather than the CIA, the economic hitmen and mercenary armies like Blackwater.

AL QAEDA'S GRAND STRATEGY: SUPERPOWER BAITING

An in depth interview with Saad al-Faqih, an expert on al Qaeda, provides some insight into this. See also, Frontline, Asia Times, BBC,

• The American mentality is a cowboy mentality-- if you confront them with their identity theoretically and practically they will react in an extreme manner.

• They will then elevate you and this will satisfy the Muslim longing for a leader who can successfully challenge the West. ...(you must) identifying every American as a target.

• The statement in February 1998, which was only 3 or 4 lines, effectively sanctioned shedding the blood of every American.

This decision resulted in the east African embassy attacks of 1998. The result of these attacks were as follows:

• ...the Americans over-reacted by bombing Afghanistan and Sudan and consequently shifted the focus of blame away from al-Qaeda.

• Clinton himself identified Bin Laden as the enemy and, in effect, delivered a hero to the Muslims. Bin Laden was transformed into a popular hero.
  
• The immediate effect of this was that thousands of Muslims travelled to Afghanistan.

He goes on to explain the motivation for 9/11 and the result of the American reaction:

• The next stage involved initiating a full scale polarization between Muslims and America.

• The 9/11 attacks forced America into a cosmic battle with Muslims.

• Ultimately the real issue here is the perception of Muslims and the vast majority of Muslims around the world feel besieged by America.

The result of this, according to al-Faqih will be internal turmoil in America and its eventual adoption of an isolationist policy:

• Now strategically I think America has not only lost but it is likely to vanish.

• It has started a campaign which has forced the majority of Muslims against it.

• There are many people in America who want to tackle the matter in a much more intelligent manner but they have been silenced by this pervasive McCarthyism.

• Once the next attack occurs they are likely to say ... is the time to try a different approach.

• Now of course the right wingers, the Zionists and the arms lobby will refuse to give ground and then a clash inside America is likely to ensue.

FROM 2005: THE OPEN-SOURCE WAR BY JOHN ROBB

Originally published as an op-ed in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/15/opinion/15robb.html
Republished with permission of the author.

...The insurgents have ... expanded their campaign of violence to include Iraqi troops, police officers, government officials and Shiite civilians. Since the American military's objective is to gain a monopoly on violence in Iraq, these developments indicate ...a rapid loss in market share.

According to the military, it kills or captures 1,000 to 3,000 insurgents a month. Its estimate of the insurgency, however, is a mere 12,000 to 20,000 fighters. Simple math indicates we have destroyed the insurgency several times over since it started.

... observers estimate that up to 20 percent of the two million former Baathists

...that the insurgency isn't a fragile hierarchical organization but rather a resilient network made up of small, autonomous groups. This means that the insurgency is virtually immune to attrition and decapitation.

First, out-innovating the insurgency will ... prove unsuccessful. The insurgency uses an open-source community approach (similar to the decentralized development process now prevalent in the software industry) to warfare that is extremely quick and innovative. New technologies and tactics move rapidly...innovation cycles are faster than the American military's slower bureaucratic processes ( body and vehicle armor).

Second, there are few visible fault lines in the insurgency ... Like software developers in the open-source community, the insurgents have subordinated their individual goals to the common goal of the movement. ... the military is not going to find a way to chop off parts of the insurgency through political means - particularly if former Ba'athists are systematically excluded from participation in the new Iraqi state by the new Constitution.

Third, the United States can try to diminish the insurgency by letting it win. The disparate groups in an open-source effort are held together by a common goal. Once the goal is reached, the community often falls apart.

Unfortunately, this solution arrived too late. There are signs that the insurgency's goal is shifting from a withdrawal of the United States military to the collapse of the Iraqi government.

What's left? It's possible, as Microsoft has found, that there is no good monopolistic solution to a mature open-source effort. In that case, the United States might be better off adopting I.B.M.'s embrace of open source. This solution would require renouncing the state's monopoly on violence by using Shiite and Kurdish militias as a counterinsurgency.

In fact, it appears the American military is embracing it. In recent campaigns in Sunni areas, hastily uniformed peshmerga and Badr militia supplemented American troops; and in Basra, Shiite militias are the de facto military power.

If an open-source counterinsurgency is the only strategic option left, it is a depressing one. The militias will probably create a situation of controlled chaos that will allow the administration to claim victory and exit the country. They will, however, exact a horrible toll on Iraq and may persist for decades.

John Robb is working on a book on the logic of terrorism. Visit his blog at: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/johnrobb/

GIULIANI AND PODHORETZ

The naming of leading neoconservative Norman Podhoretz as one of Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani's senior foreign policy advisers is disconcerting to those Americans who have hoped that the current disagreements with Iran might be resolved short of war. Giuliani

Podhoretz has recently called on the United States to bomb Iran and he describes the current situation -- pitting Washington against what he describes as "the Islamofascist threat" -- as World War IV. Podhoretz basically advocates a world-wide conflict not unlike World War II to defeat Islamists everywhere they are to be found. Giuliani is already the U.S. presidential hopeful who is perceived most favorably in Israel because of his uncompromising stance on issues like the Iranian threat and terrorism, and the addition of Podhoretz will certainly be viewed favorably by many influential neoconservatives. Podhoretz is himself an uncompromising advocate of what he sees as Israeli national security imperatives very much in the mold of the right-wing Likud party.