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| Ray Stevenson |
As this is being written (20/11/02) the NATO "Summit" conveyed in Prague, has given absolute conformation…if such was ever needed…of the war plans and geo-political designs of the dangerous, ultra-reactionary U.S. monopoly oil kingdom. The pernicious megalopoly confronts the world with dubious "Dubya" George Bush and his gang of violently anti-democratic, anti-labour satraps… all seeking to hide behind smokescreens of nauseating curtains of "terrorist" threats. Assembled in Prague with eighteen more monopoly controlled NATO cohorts… including the Canadian Government…and watching from a safe distance the "killer" spill of one of their tankers on the coastline of Spain, we are informed that by some weird alchemy of NATO policy, for their poisoned purpose, "North Atlantic" now includes international boundaries far to the East…to encircle militarily, if not quite the entire world, at least every possible land and country with natural gas and oil resources within reach of the B-1 U.S. bomber. This is neither a flight of fancy, of hyperbole…or even exaggeration.
Seven more countries are now clutched in NATO’s military embrace. They are Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania…all not so long ago members of the Warsaw Pact that was formed for defensive reasons in 1954, five years after NATO gang congealed in what the Wall Street Journal correctly branded, "Jungle Law," on April 5, 1949…the day after the Atlantic Pact was signed. Wall Street Journal stated editorially that the Pact also "nullifies the principle of the United Nations"…correctly. To nobody’s surprise the same editorial endorsed both ideas. The Cold War was already well advanced in April of 1949.
Hanging over the Prague conclave was the U.S. threat to the United Nations of unilateral "pre-emptive war" which could only mean the total trashing of the last vestiges of international law. For all practical purposes the United Nations would be totally irrelevant. That can only mean U.S. war, bomb runs when, where and for whatever reason the U.S. brass decides…with Iraq heading the list…and unlimited war in the Middle East and Central-South Asia an immediate prospect.
Underlining the historic irony and ultra-Imperial symbolism of the Prague event, this was where General Ivan Konev, commanding the triumphant flank of the Soviet Army accepted the final surrender from the hideous Nazi war machine on May 9th, 1945. But now, NATO’s war-jets screamed above the Czech capital, insolently displaying supreme arrogance to the people below. The peace of the world hangs on the slenderest of threads as Bush insistently demands that his NATO partners, both old and new, "Buy American" in new technologies of war. The Bush-U.S.-Pentagon war game of pre-emptive strike on Iraq and its people, and the igniting of very possible Middle East inter-state war and nuclear response from his Israeli-Sharon allies, as withheld only under the thinnest pretext of a proviso of the "return of the UN inspectors" to eliminate any "weapons of mass destruction" Bush and Blair state are held by Saddam. It remains at this writing, totally clear, that the real war aim of the oil monopolies and Bush and his British Blair partner, is the redrawing of the Middle East map and the elimination of every vestige of sovereign rights of the Arabic and Islamic peoples and nations may hope for over the "black gold" natural resource. The "Imperial" history underlines in every country and territory their grip and aggression to control and to dominate this natural "black gold" commodity.
The fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I saw Iraq created by the British Colonial Office under Winston Churchill as he set up the provinces of Kurdistan Mosul in the North, Shiite and Sunni Baghdad and Basra in the centre and the south, and the delineation of Kuwait by drawing a line across the southern area where it was believed the greatest oil resources lay. A puppet King, Emir Faisal ibn Hussain by name, unknown to the new amalgam of Iraq, was installed with a British trained and equipped state army to safeguard the interests of the foreign oil buccaneers. The role of fully participating "partnership" in this massive imperial "thievery" was extended to the U.S, Rockefeller oil interests in1928 with the formation of the Iraqi Petroleum Company. At the same time they were "given" all drilling rights anywhere in the former Ottoman Empire. A form of "independence" was extended to the beleaguered country in 1932, but any substance was notably and totally absent as a British-U.S, trained military force under the tyrant King Faisal continued. The rape of the Iraqi oil proceeded without the tiniest vestiges of popular or democratic or trade union rights…much less economic wealth to the people…until 1958 when a popular uprising headed by Abdul Karim Qasim swept aside the brutal terrorization of the Iraqi people and slowly began nationalization of the oil resources. In addition, this regime opened up new lines of trade and commerce with the USSR.
But the year following, a "gun for hire" in the form of a young Army officer, obviously working on behalf of the foreign monopoly exploiters, attempted the assassination of the popular leader Qasim. A failed attempt, the would-be assassin fled to Egypt. His name was Saddam Hussein and a few years later, in 1963, he returned to Baghdad to participate in the Baath Party overthrow of Qasim. From that time forward the Baath Party of Iraq, masquerading at times in Social Democratic trappings, carried on the most intense and brutal aggression of the Iraqi people. Many thousands of Communists and democratic forces were murdered. Deals ensued with the foreign oil companies once again and Saddam rose to the presidency in 1978. Twelve years later, and wit the assurance from the U.S. diplomats, he invaded Kuwait, apparently in well-founded belief that he had the full approval of the Bush Sr. Presidency of the USA.
That was not to be, for reasons still clouded and obscure and the Bush-NATO war erupted. It is correct to note that U.S. and British monopoly oil interests had other irons in the liquid "black gold" of the area, that did not include emergence of Saddam as totally in control of the Iraqi oil resources, and the government. For them that control could not be tolerated.
Ten years earlier both foreign powers had given their blessing in the form of weapons and material aid to Saddam’s ghastly war on Iran, beginning in the fall of 198-, following the downfall of the U.S. puppet, Shah Pahlevi. This in turn gave the impetus to the Islamic Fundamentalists Government of Khomeini and the students seizure in later 1980 of the U.S. Teheran Embassy. This in turn, was partly responsible for Regan’s election. This Shah Pahlevi was installed by a U.S. coup, CIA engineered to overthrow the Iranian Premier Mossadegh in the early 1950’s, after he had dared to begin the nationalization of Iranian oil and gas resources… at the expense of the foreign monopolies.
Another attack on the stability and sovereign right of people, and of global proportions in the area was the sundering of the Palestinian state and the handing over of its territory and people to Jordan in September of 1970. During the same time slot, U.S. troops were installed in Lebanon.
Thus it is correct to state that without exception the peoples of the Middle East have suffered continuous domination by the Western oil monopolies, and the British, American, French and other foreign "imperial" Governments. The ongoing Israel-Palestinian conflict has remained unresolved precisely because of the foreign domination and control of the "Black Gold" resources. It is impossible to see how it can resolved without recognition of Palestinian rights by Israel of that long standing situation…particularly under the current and past Israeli leaderships’ operating as a "client" of U.S. subsidies.
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If we turn to the oil monopolies ongoing and at this time, successful conquest of the oil and gas resources of Central Asia, first reference is to the ouster in the immediate post-1917 revolution by the fledging Soviet Union from the area of British and U.S. "oil" interests. Included were "oil" investments of Herbert Hoover, future U.S. Republican President and a primary and vicious anti-working class, an ally of U.S. oil monopolies when his "investments" in 1918 were confiscated, long before he became President of the U.S.
Our Northstar Compass exposed one of the final treacherous handing over of Soviet resources in Vol. #1, No. #1, August 1992 and the secretive talks in 1988-89, between then still the Soviet Foreign Minister Shevernadze and James Baker, oil monopoly confidant and U.S. Secretary of State advisor to Texas oil tycoon and U.S. President George Bush Sr. Involved was the opening up and sale of rights of the Tenzig oil fields to U.S. Chevron Standard. At that time these massive resources were still the property of the Soviet state and people. Since then, by its war in Afghanistan, accompanied by the fall of the Soviet Union, which was engineered by Gorbachev, Yakovlev, Yeltsin et al, shady deals by American military "ownership-by-theft"; the presence of U.S. military Eastward from Azerbaijan, through Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenia and also Khirghizia…(mostly all former Muslim Soviet Republics) the oil and gas resources have been burglarized from the Soviet people, to the ongoing enrichment of the Bush cabal of oil pirates and their ilk of the monopoly crowd. B-1 bombers, "smart high-tech" bombs, U.S. occupation troops and degraded, corrupted local leadership native forces hang like a blanket of death over the former Soviet population… just as a similar shroud had hung over the peoples of the Middle East for these many long years…all to slake the insatiable thirst of societies built around the necessity of oil to function, and sky-rocketing capital accumulation for the oil monopoly elites.
It is the obvious truth to say that monopoly fortunes result from war preparations… or better still, war making. History has again and again verified that for us. And if you are running a war economy with upwards of $400 billion annually on the "killing game," the fortunes reaped are beyond imagination. But to keep the guns, bombs, ICBM's and "space war" capacity intact, OIL IS THE CENTRAL COMPONENT OF THE OPERATION. Hitler knew that and so when he met defeat and the fatal loss for him of the strategic initiative in Stalingrad to the Soviets, important to the defeat was the undoing of his plans to reach Baku oil fields and the control of the essential ingredient for war... "oil". The intertwined dependency of "war on with oil" remains even more imperative. The United States of America, with an overall budget many times over the national income of a composite income of the majority of the world's nations, illustrate the facts of life as we head into what is almost certainly yet another U.S.-British oil war on Iraq that may well be a war of generations in length. By the time these words are in print, in the January edition of NSC, there is good reason to believe some highly be-medalled U S. General, trained in the U.S. Ivy League war halls and with the highest IQ's in the administration of "killing" and "oil" culture, could teeter on the verge of turning our "one-and-only" space ship… Mother Earth into a mobilized detention centre for the species. Such a future, like a creeping deadly poisoned fog, is already blanketing most aspects of current life. What may we anticipate from such forces in the future… except more of the same?
If a ferocious "oil war" does erupt between U.S./British monopoly forces claiming that "God is their mentor" vs. the oil resource rich nations of the Middle East, Central and South Asia who claim that "Allah and Islamic Fundamentalist as their mentor" the hope and fate of billions of people seeking a decent and stable life seems remote and desperate. To stop the war making on both sides of that equation, and of every faith and persuasion is the massive task of all humans. The alternative is possible species suicide. Survival today demands total unity to thwart the oil-war makers!!!
At the end of WW II, the tidal wave of anti-war sentiment literally forced Governments to create international law under the United Nations Organization to prevent wars of naked aggression and burglarizing of assets clearly the property of defined nations and their people. What is now the international state of pillaging, robbery and arrant thievery, particularly in the areas of oil and energy, flouts and denies that right of weak nations and people to that right.
Across all national boundaries, beyond the wide expanses of global oceans and land-masses universally even greater popular unity of peoples, regardless of origin, creed, historical development or any difference must now come the universal demand for a return to the unified law of more than a half century ago that created the United Nations Organization.
What reason can there be that gives to monopoly finance and industrial capital the right to wage uncontrolled aggression at their choosing to seize and control the natural resources of any country? Only the ancient discredited dictum of "might is right" and "the spoils of war belong to the armed victor" provides a discredited vindication. Let the people demand that the United Nations in all its majesty establish inviolable national rights for all the people everywhere to sole ownership to the natural resources within their boundaries.
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