Trotskylvania
12-10-2007, 21:52
I found this pretty good article about US colonialist practices in Iraq post invasion. I'm going to post some snips from it, and provide a link to the whole article, entitled Colonising Iraq's Economic Prize (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=14023)
PLATFORM activist Eva Jasiewicz told us:
"The mainstream media, with few exceptions, has uncritically reproduced White House and Foreign Office propaganda over Iraqi oil policy. The reporting has not been lazy; it has actively colluded in the repeated circulation of US-UK lies over revenue sharing, oil for peace and reconciliation as the goals of the law." (Email to Media Lens, October 9, 2007)
Jasiewicz continued:
"The story of the corporate colonization of Iraq's oil, and potential dismemberment of the country under a brutal military occupation, has been disappeared from the news agenda. Reporters ignoring the political and economic realities at stake in Iraq are guilty of deception and of promoting the neoliberal agenda of economic takeover of Iraq."
The Federation of Oil Unions, the largest trade union in the Iraqi oil sector with over 26,000 members, also starkly challenges the media message of "reconciliation":
"Depending on how it is applied, the current draft of the law could increase poverty, undermine state institutions and worsen the conflict in Iraq." (PLATFORM, op. cit.)
In reality, Orwellian-named 'production sharing agreements' are being prepared which would hand over the lead role in the development of oil resources to corporations under highly-profitable contracts of up to 30 years. Unsurprisingly, this has been met with considerable opposition in Iraq. In response, the 'production sharing' terminology has been dropped from later drafts of the law. But as Kamil Mahdi, an economist at the University of Essex warns, "the content remains the same." (Mahdi, 'No law for oil,' Red Pepper, August 2007; http://www.handsoffiraqioil.org)
Mahdi adds:
"The weak, sectarian and fractious Maliki government has proved to be just what the US needs at this time: one that is willing to acquiesce in US military offensives and to pursue the handover of oil to the multinationals, while at the same time applying the harsh economic policies dictated by the IMF, particularly over the domestic price of fuel." (Ibid.)
The UK government has played a key role by boosting the lobbying efforts of oil multinationals. Six of these oil companies collectively appointed lobbyists, the International Tax & Investment Centre (ITIC), to push for Iraqi resources to be opened up to long-term oil production contracts. ITIC was even advised by UK Foreign Office and Treasury officials on how best to influence Iraqi decision-makers.
The real agenda behind Iraq's oil - the striving by powerful states, particularly the US, for strategic control of the resource-rich Middle East - has been all but ignored by the corporate media. When the truth is glimpsed, it is waved away as very much a secondary aim trailing behind the noble commitment to 'democracy'. As one Cambridge academic noted in the Financial Times:
"The war in Iraq is not, of course, about oil. Coalition troops are there to advance democracy and to protect the innocent. But the consequences for the world's energy markets of an unresolved conflict in a country that holds the world's third largest accumulation of oil reserves cannot be ignored." (Nick Butler, director of the Cambridge Centre for Energy Studies at the Judge Business School, 'Iraq needs an "oil for peace" deal,' Financial Times, September 12, 2007)
What is routinely missing from the corporate news media is historical context shedding light on Washington's real, rather than stated, motivations. Of central and long-standing relevance is the 1945 US State Department description of Saudi Arabian energy resources as "a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history". Undiscovered oil fields in Iraq could well boost that country's reserves to 300 billion barrels, even more than in Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the whole of the Gulf region has long been considered "probably the richest economic prize in the world in the field of foreign investment." (Cited in Noam Chomsky, 'Hegemony or Survival', Hamish Hamilton, London, 2003, p.150)
Of course, the people who wrote this are nothing but angry, leftist pinko-homo-commies, so the war wouldn't have anything to do with economic objectives. :rolleyes:
Discuss
PLATFORM activist Eva Jasiewicz told us:
"The mainstream media, with few exceptions, has uncritically reproduced White House and Foreign Office propaganda over Iraqi oil policy. The reporting has not been lazy; it has actively colluded in the repeated circulation of US-UK lies over revenue sharing, oil for peace and reconciliation as the goals of the law." (Email to Media Lens, October 9, 2007)
Jasiewicz continued:
"The story of the corporate colonization of Iraq's oil, and potential dismemberment of the country under a brutal military occupation, has been disappeared from the news agenda. Reporters ignoring the political and economic realities at stake in Iraq are guilty of deception and of promoting the neoliberal agenda of economic takeover of Iraq."
The Federation of Oil Unions, the largest trade union in the Iraqi oil sector with over 26,000 members, also starkly challenges the media message of "reconciliation":
"Depending on how it is applied, the current draft of the law could increase poverty, undermine state institutions and worsen the conflict in Iraq." (PLATFORM, op. cit.)
In reality, Orwellian-named 'production sharing agreements' are being prepared which would hand over the lead role in the development of oil resources to corporations under highly-profitable contracts of up to 30 years. Unsurprisingly, this has been met with considerable opposition in Iraq. In response, the 'production sharing' terminology has been dropped from later drafts of the law. But as Kamil Mahdi, an economist at the University of Essex warns, "the content remains the same." (Mahdi, 'No law for oil,' Red Pepper, August 2007; http://www.handsoffiraqioil.org)
Mahdi adds:
"The weak, sectarian and fractious Maliki government has proved to be just what the US needs at this time: one that is willing to acquiesce in US military offensives and to pursue the handover of oil to the multinationals, while at the same time applying the harsh economic policies dictated by the IMF, particularly over the domestic price of fuel." (Ibid.)
The UK government has played a key role by boosting the lobbying efforts of oil multinationals. Six of these oil companies collectively appointed lobbyists, the International Tax & Investment Centre (ITIC), to push for Iraqi resources to be opened up to long-term oil production contracts. ITIC was even advised by UK Foreign Office and Treasury officials on how best to influence Iraqi decision-makers.
The real agenda behind Iraq's oil - the striving by powerful states, particularly the US, for strategic control of the resource-rich Middle East - has been all but ignored by the corporate media. When the truth is glimpsed, it is waved away as very much a secondary aim trailing behind the noble commitment to 'democracy'. As one Cambridge academic noted in the Financial Times:
"The war in Iraq is not, of course, about oil. Coalition troops are there to advance democracy and to protect the innocent. But the consequences for the world's energy markets of an unresolved conflict in a country that holds the world's third largest accumulation of oil reserves cannot be ignored." (Nick Butler, director of the Cambridge Centre for Energy Studies at the Judge Business School, 'Iraq needs an "oil for peace" deal,' Financial Times, September 12, 2007)
What is routinely missing from the corporate news media is historical context shedding light on Washington's real, rather than stated, motivations. Of central and long-standing relevance is the 1945 US State Department description of Saudi Arabian energy resources as "a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history". Undiscovered oil fields in Iraq could well boost that country's reserves to 300 billion barrels, even more than in Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the whole of the Gulf region has long been considered "probably the richest economic prize in the world in the field of foreign investment." (Cited in Noam Chomsky, 'Hegemony or Survival', Hamish Hamilton, London, 2003, p.150)
Of course, the people who wrote this are nothing but angry, leftist pinko-homo-commies, so the war wouldn't have anything to do with economic objectives. :rolleyes:
Discuss