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Entries by Huib (557)

Sunday
Oct292006

Iraq: Coalition of the Drilling (3)

This is the third and last sequence of The Iraq: Coalition of the Drilling series.

The new Iraqi Constitution legalizes plundering of it's oil resources by foreign companies

Joshua Holland on AlterNet:

Of course, the plans for Iraq's legal framework for oil have to be viewed in the context of the overall transformation of the Iraqi economy. Clearly, the idea was to pursue a radical corporatist agenda during the period of the Coalition Provisional Authority when the U.S. occupation forces were a de facto dictatorship. And that's just what happened; under L. Paul Bremer, the CPA head, corporate taxes were slashed, a flat-tax on income was established, rules allowing multinationals to pull all of their profits from the country and a series of other provisions were enacted. These were then integrated into the Iraqi Constitution and remain in effect today.

Among the provisions in the Constitution, unlike those of most oil producers, is a requirement that the government "develop oil and gas wealth … relying on the most modern techniques of market principles and encouraging investment." The provision mandates that foreign companies would receive a major stake in Iraq's oil for the first time in the 30 years since the sector was nationalized in 1975.

Herbert Docena, a researcher with the NGO Focus on the Global South, wrote that an early draft of the constitution negotiated by Iraqis envisioned a "Scandinavian-style welfare system in the Arabian desert, with Iraq's vast oil wealth to be spent upholding every Iraqi's right to education, health care, housing, and other social services." "Social justice," the draft declared, "is the basis of building society."

June 2, 2004: celebration of the new "Iraqi" consitution with Alawi, Chalabi and Brahimi (photo: New York Times)

What happened between that earlier draft and the constitution that Iraqis would eventually ratify? According to Docena:

While [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay] Khalilzad and his team of U.S. and British diplomats were all over the scene, some members of Iraq's constitutional committee were reduced to bystanders. One Shiite member grumbled, "We haven't played much of a role in drafting the constitution. We feel that we have been neglected." A Sunni negotiator concluded: "This constitution was cooked up in an American kitchen not an Iraqi one."

With a constitution cooked up in D.C., the stage was set for foreign multinationals to assume effective control of as much as 87 percent of Iraq's oil, according to projections by the Oil Ministry. If PSAs become the law of the land -- and there are other contractual arrangements that would allow private companies to invest in the sector without giving them the same degree of control or such usurious profits -- the war-torn country stands to lose up to 194 billion vitally important dollars in revenue on just the first 12 fields developed, according to a conservative estimate by Platform (the estimate assumes oil at $40 per barrel; at this writing it stands at more than $59). That's more than six times the country's annual budget.

Now we know, what it meant, "Staying the Course".

The course was and is: control over the Iraqi oil reserves and - production, as well as its commercialisation. Keeping the Chinese and the Indians (and the Europeans) out, influence the OPEC cartel. What the US needs in Iraq, is "stabilization". No matter, if that stabilization takes the shape of a dictatorship, a democracy, a loose confederacy of three or four small states, - whatever. As long as they do not intervene into the oil business.

All the other talk, starting with the WMD and continuing with the so-called mission of imposing democracy, is empty noise, serving the manipulation of public opinion.

In this respect, Bush was right, for once, when he said that "staying the course" means changing the tactics, as often as the hidden goal of the intervention is endangered.

But the Iraqi- and the other Middle East elites are not as dumb as Cheney and the Neocons think: An Americanization of the Iraqi oil resources will be experienced by Saudis, Iranians, even Kowaitians and Nigerians, as a direct attack against their vital interests. China, India and Russia will not hesitate to lend them support.

The Big Oil Struggle is only just beginning.

Saturday
Sep232006

The torture legislation: Shame on the US!

Update: October 3, 2006.
Ah, we all agree. The torture legislation, rushed through Congress, is disastrous. Everybody in the reasonable Left, said so. What can an Alien like me do here?
I read the revelations about the torturing prisons, the renditions, the mock trials before "militaty commissions". It appears, that, first, the FBI (2003) refused to go along. Then, even the CIA and its waterboarding contractors, after the Supreme Court judged it wrong (2005), went on strike. Bush had to do something.
Here is, how he twisted the case, interpreting the FBI, CIA and Justice refusals as a protest against the "vagueness" of the Geneva Convention. Source: CNN.com - Ivins: Saying something over again doesn't make it true - Sep 22, 2006:

(Ivins:)"Bush kept insisting the legislation to permit such tribunals is vital and 'the program will not go forward without it' because young intelligence officers might be accused of breaking the law(!)."

Bush: 'Let's see if I can put it (Article III of the Geneva Convention) this way for people to understand. There is a very vague standard that the (U.S. Supreme) Court said must kind of be the guide for our conduct in the war on terror and detainee policy. It's so vague that it's impossible to ask anybody to participate in the program for fear ... of breaking the law. That's the problem.'
Ivins: "Actually, the problem is the proposed program of tribunals is illegal -- and not young intelligence officers but potentially old war criminals are at risk, as well."
Indeed. The situation looked hopeless for Bush. Soon, he would have had to liberate Charles Graner from jail, as the only person in the US, who would greedily act as torturer in the Bush & Cheney way. And Lynddie England for the women.
But with a diabolic mastership, he succeeded in having his way with Congress.
The new legislation makes an exception for people who are deemed "terrorists" (without a justicial check on the executive) in this, that they may be tortured, are deprived of the rights, any accused in the world has, as to information about the facts he is accused of, etc.
And, listen well, this is US legislation about foreign people. For the time being, American citizens are to be treated in the US in a traditional way. That may change, in the future.

Now, the question to me, is, if the US Army, that has to bear the full burden of this barbaric policy, will execute it without problems. The US army is not built for that job. It goes against its traditions and morals. I guess, that, finally, this whole torture and mock tribunal business will be privatized, and bought with contractors. In Iraq, this is already largely done this way.
And the world outside of the US?
Even staunch allies of the US, who are invited to host American military on their soil, will think twice about it. Even if you are yourself a ruthless dictator, it must be a hard decision, to accept a community of professional torturers and "Nacht-und-Nebel" *) mock-tribunals on your doorstep.

I think, that a complaint with the old International Court in the Hague (that judges affairs between states) has a good chance to end in a shameful condemnation of the United States of America.

*) "Nacht und Nebel" prisoners in Nazi Germany, were prisoners who were judged summarily and secretly by mock tribunals and who disappeared afterwards into the "dark and the fog" of concentration camps.

Thursday
Aug312006

Plamegate, Armitage, Hitchens.

Update: October 3, 2006.
Waiting on my desk: Plamegate's ridiculous conclusion. By Christopher Hitchens in Slate Magazine:

As most of us have long suspected, the man who told Novak about Valerie Plame was Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's deputy at the State Department and, with his boss, an assiduous underminer of the president's war policy.
(His and Powell's—and George Tenet's—fingerprints are all over Bob Woodward's 'insider' accounts of post-9/11 policy planning, which helps clear up another nonmystery: Woodward's revelation several months ago that he had known all along about the Wilson-Plame connection and considered it to be no big deal.)
Read my lips: There is NO conclusion yet for "Plamegate".
From the documents released up to this moment, only one conclusion can be made.
There has been an organized, concerted, Cheney-led, intrigue against the CIA, againist Valerie Plame, with the stated object,
  • to undermine the credibility of her husband's report on the Central African Republic (i.e. that there has never been a beginning of a deal about yellowcake with Saddam Hussein),
and with the UNstated objects,
  • to dislodge the CIA frontstore in Istanbul, led by Plame, that monitored Middle East nuclear fuel dealings by Israel, Turkey, Iran, and, probably other countries in the region,
  • to bring the CIA as a whole in discredit, so as to eliminate a source of truths that ran counter to the Bush war propaganda.
As usual, Christopher Hitchens, in his zealotry, unwittingly reveals these intentions.
The attack by Cheney, Libby, Rove et alia was not directed against Ms Plame or her husband, but against Colin Powell, Charles Tenet (CIA), and Richard Armitage, who signed the Manifest for an American Century in 1998, was one of their pawns in the enemy land of the State Department. Poor Richard, who couldn't help to like his boss, Powell, had been judges "unstable" by the Cheney cabal and the hard core of the Neocons, and was just good for doing dome dirty and nasty shopping.
In an old Stalinist tradition, Armitage was, after being declared lost for the Neocon cause, first forced to do the despicable things, and then, having done his service, sacrified as a scapegoat. Let us compare this story with Stalin's revenge on the old Boshevicks during the 30's. Bukharin, right-leaning Bolshevick, was used against the left oppposition by Stalin in the twenties, then eliminated from power during Stalin's left turn from 1928 on. But the man loved power so much, that he begged for years to be reinstated, renegating his former views. Then, at the next turn in Stalin's policy, he was put in some relatively low position and ordered to write and do some dirty work. When most of the first generation Communists, against whom Bukharin had agitated, had been condemned in "show-trials", in 1938, he was tried and condemned himself for things he had done to please Stalin.
The Hitchens of that place and time, was called Karl Radek, a genial journalist, who was always in the ever changing frontlines to explain, heat up, and construct an ideology for the policy of the day. Radek himself was condemned not long after Bukharin, and disappeared.
He was too intelligent and knew too much.
Hitchens, who is stupid and doesn't know so much, for few people ever tell him anything, will probably not share the fate of Radek.
Like old Karl Marx said in 1849: "In history, things happen as a tragedy at first, and then, later on, repeat themselves as a comedy."

Wednesday
Aug302006

Rumsfeld and Chalabi - the same destiny

War Cabal at the White House, 2002
The more you say about it, the more the Karl Rove-lead spin will work, we thought.
So we kept this subject for almost a month in the vault of our unpublished posts.
The spin is outrageous.
The accusation calls for an impeachment.
But everybody remained silent (including me), until former president Clinton, two days ago, broke the "enthrallment" (dixit Civil War president Lincoln in 1862), "so as to save the country".
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann honored Clinton for his courage to tell -finally- the truth about the "1984"-like Bush manipulation of public opinion.
This is a great moment.
Bush and Rove have gone too far.
Rumsfeld is exposed as a liar and a demagogue. Listen to what he said:
FT.com / World / US & Canada - Rumsfeld accuses critics of ‘appeasing fascism’: "Rumsfeld accuses critics of ‘appeasing fascism’

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (AP)

Published: August 29 2006 19:26 | Last updated: August 29 2006 19:26

US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday accused critics of the administration's Iraq and counterterrorism policies of trying to appease ‘a new type of fascism.’

In unusually explicit terms, Mr Rumsfeld portrayed the Bush administration's critics as suffering from ‘moral or intellectual confusion’ about what threatens the nation's security and accused them of lacking the courage to fight back.
[...]
Mr Rumsfeld spoke to the American Legion as part of a coordinated White House strategy, in advance of the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, aiming to take the offensive against administration critics at a time of doubt about the future of Iraq and growing calls to withdraw U.S. troops.


Real America, "l'Amérique profonde", reacts. I have always kept my trust in it.
It will have been a long waiting. From 2001 to 2006.
But the tides turned.
The American Army protests. The CIA agents are striking against torture orders. A National Intelligence Evaluation (NIE) states, that the Iraq invasion engendered more terrorism, dangerous to the US (and still more to Europe), and not less, as the Bush administration repeats.

Candidates for removal are: Rumsfeld, Rove, Cheney - all have to go the way Ahmad Chalabi went. And Tony Blair?

(The above part was crossposted from At Home in Europe)

A propos: Where IS Chalabi at this moment?

Have a look at:
TomPaine.com - Chalabi And AEI: The Sequel (Dec. 15, 2005):

"The convicted embezzler, the suave fabricator of intelligence, and the secularist -turned-Shiite fundamentalist-turned-Iranian agent, the elusive subject of a slow-moving FBI spy investigation, and the self-described “hero in error” approached the podium at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday after a glowing introduction from Chris DeMuth, AEI’s president. After grumbling that the cherubic man he was about to introduce has been “defamed, undermined and attacked by agencies of the U.S. government,” DeMuth concluded: “Please give a warm welcome to this very great and very brave Iraqi patriot, liberal and liberator, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi.”

He’s back. And one thing is clear—you can never, ever count Ahmed Chalabi out. As the cat has nine lives, Chalabi has an amazing ability to reinvent himself over and over, and he did so once again at AEI on Wednesday.

Chalabi, who affected an aw-shucks manner, noted that it was the eighth time he’d spoken before the think tank that effectively launched his political career. To a packed house—so packed, in fact, that AEI pointedly disinvited your humble correspondent, who had to watch Chalabi in digital replay—Chalabi unloaded a campaign speech for his Iraqi National Congress election list. [...]"

And, after his enormous defeat at the elections, Chalabi has disappeared.
May the same destiny be reserved for Rumsfeld.