Black Gold -Iraq and the entire Middle East

COLD WAR YEARS: The existence of Middle East oil – a strategic commodity – drove the United States to block Soviet influence in the region via the shifting of its support among several regional dictators, including the rising Saddam Hussein during the 1960s.

During the early 1970s, as petroleum’s value increased markedly, Iraq moved to nationalize the resource. The US responded by shifting its support away from Hussein in Iraq, concentrating instead on Iran – where the nationalization of oil resources had earlier prompted a CIA backed coup that replaced the offending regime with the Shah of Iran. When the Shah was later ousted, The US again shifted support to Hussein in Iraq, encouraging and then supporting him throughout the Iran-Iraq war.

With the end of the 1980s’ Iran-Iraq war, Iraq was left deeply in debt. Hussein sought to rebuild his country, and to prop his regime, through oil revenues (from an estimated cache of 250 billion barrels). The US then pushed Kuwait and other Gulf states to increase oil exports. The relative oil glut drove prices down, drastically reducing Iraq’s only means of income.

THE 1990’s: Through official and public diplomatic channels, the US State Department signaled Hussein that an attack on Kuwait would not be met with significant reprisal. Immediately following Iraq’s attack on Kuwait, however, the US feigned shock, and prodded the UN to act. The ensuing attack severely damaged Iraq’s civilian infrastructure – including water purification and electricity generation plants. Thousands of Iraqi troops were killed during the relatively brief battle, and thousands more were killed as Iraqi troops retreated. The Gulf War abruptly ended.

President Bush, Sr. called upon anti-Hussein forces within Iraq to rise, implying US support for their efforts would be forthcoming. A sixty to one-hundred-thousand anti-Hussein militia took up arms; they were completely abandoned by Bush, and were slaughtered by forces loyal to Hussein via the use of helicopters ok’ed for use within the US ceasefire agreement. Hussein thereby acted knowingly, or unknowingly, on the US’s behalf by limiting Iraq’s militia – the same militia that, a decade later, would have resisted US forces now occupying their country.

What followed was a decade of “sanctions” resulting in a weakened Hussein regime, and the deaths of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Iraqi children – for want of food, of safe drinking water, and of basic medications.

POST 9-11: The final chapter (to date) involved a sudden focus shift away from Osama bin Laden [see: Timeline 1 – Afghanistan] in the immediate post 9/11 months to Saddam Hussein, with the official war drumbeat stating Hussein was preparing to attack his neighbors or the US with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – despite there being no evidence that such weapons or delivery means existed. Following a huge military buildup in the region, a number of UN inspectors were sent into Iraq to seek out chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and/or the vehicles that could be used to deliver those weapons; NONE WERE FOUND. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the UN publicly stated they had found no evidence for the existence of this capability, but that inspections should continue to fully verify the absence of threat.

Without evidence of Iraqi WMDs, without International authority to act in a preemptive manner, and without the required UN Security Council resolution to proceed, the United States and a handful of other governments – a “Coalition of the Willing” – attacked Iraq while millions throughout the world demonstrated their opposition to what was clearly a resource war.

Fully 3/4 of the world’s oil reserves now fall under US control (Caspian reserves via a trans-Afghanistan pipeline, and two-hundred-fifty billion barrels via Iraqi occupation). The US thus hopes to control world oil trade and to demand that oil be purchased with US dollars as opposed to competing currencies (Euros). Nations throughout the world are thereby forced to hold hundreds of billions of US dollars in reserve, insuring that dollars will remain in maximum demand.

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Oil & other fossil fuels – prized for their energy content – are clearly the commodities of modern war. Unfortunately, their use continues to result in the dramatic rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide now observed. That greenhouse gas is currently – and rapidly – heating our atmosphere; the consequences of that heating are dire, and cannot be overstated. (See: Global Warming).

late 1800s
British worked to control the Middle East as a route to India.
1908
Oil first discovered in Persia (1)
WW-I years

Pre-1914: A weakening Ottoman Empire was in the process of gradually losing its territorial holdings to neighboring European powers. In 1908, the Austria-Hungary Empire formally annexed (previously Ottoman) Bosnia and Herzegovina. Subsequent threats of territorial loss prompted the Turks to seek a protective military alliance with one of their neighbors. France and Russia were approached without success; the Germans (through an interesting series of historical accidents) formed a protective alliance in 1914. [See: A Peace to End All Peace, by David Fromkin]

1914, Sunday morning, June 28: Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austria-Hungary Empire and his wife were assassinated while visiting Sarajevo in Bosnia. Several of the assassins were apprehended and questioned. Austria-Hungary authorities determined that they had received instruction from neighboring Serbia, and responded by demanding return of the co-conspirators who had successfully fled there. The demand was refused, prompting Austria Hungary to declare war against Serbia immediately thereafter (see explanation (2)). A complex set of cascading alliances resulted in multinational war (Austria-Hungary, Germany, Ottoman Empire against Britain, France and Russia.).

1916: Anticipating a successful conclusion to the war and the Ottoman Empire breakup, and despite assurances given to Arab leaders that if they fought to defeat Ottoman forces they would be granted independence, the British and French drew the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement (3), creating national borders of Middle Eastern countries, which would then be divided between the two of them. Mesopotamia, including Baghdad, was to be administered by Britain, with Lebanon and Syria to be under French control.

1917: Britain invaded Mesopotamia (4), which had been controlled by the Ottoman Empire since the 16th century. The newly empowered Bolsheviks in Russia discovered the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement (3) and made public British and French true intentions of acquisition.

1917: US business interests became involved, providing financial and material support to all parties. Each side reacted by attempting to block portions of US shipments to respective enemies. Germany took an aggressive approach, using its submarines to attack and sink US ships enroute. President Wilson, with an eye towards the potential spoils, called for war with Germany and entered the conflict, using a familiar rallying cry to convince a doubting public: “the world must be made safe for democracy.” (4)

1919: With the defeat of Germany and Turkey, Britain and France divided land previously held by Turkey, with the British controlling (newly drawn) Iraq, Kuwait, Palestine, and Jordan. (Kuwait was carved from Iraq – calculated to cut off Iraq’s access to the Persian Gulf, and to afford a future measure of British control over the divided region.) Conflict over allied control of Iraqi oil assets developed, and was solved with division of the Iraqi resource between Britain, France, Holland, and the US.
1920-1923

Treaty of Sevres (5) established British mandate over Iraq via authority of the League of Nations (essentially rubber-stamping the earlier Sykes-Picot agreement (3)), defining its borders (see also: Treaty of Lausanne (6)). (Borders drawn disrupted traditional cultural and economic ties, leading to persistent and ongoing conflicts.)
1920s
European and US oil companies began drilling operations (7) for Middle Eastern oil..
Oct. 3, 1932

Iraq recognized as a sovereign state, joining League of Nations (8) with the Sunnis continuing to control the government and the economically disadvantaged majority Shiites vying for power.
WW-II Years
The victorious allies, predominantly the US and Britain, moved to control Middle Eastern oil and to resist attempts at Soviet expansion into the region. By the close of hostilities, the British Empire had suffered losses, while US influence and wealth expanded considerably.
May, 1948 – Present

Following the Jewish Holocaust in Europe, and with an eye toward establishing meaningful western (military) influence in the oil-rich Middle East (9) , the British and the US moved to create a Jewish state in Palestine through UN authority (10a). (See also: Conf. of Middle East Chiefs of Mission 1951 – pg3, para6 (10b).) Despite the deep anger of the displaced indigenous inhabitants, and under US dominance over the UN, Israel was formally created May, 1948 (10c). (See

Tension and bloodshed between the new state and the indigenous Palestinian people were present from Israel’s founding, and has persisted. Similar discord with Israel’s Arab neighbors also continues with open warfare occurring in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s.

The US has continued to provide Israel with tens of billions of dollars in financial and military aid, building a massive regional military machine (11). This support, and the suffering and bloodshed that have followed the use of those materials continues to foster a deep anger toward the US among regional peoples.
1951 – 1953

Iran: 1951: Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq nationalized Iranian oil fields (12), expelling British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Two years later (1953) Mosaddeq was overthrown via a CIA orchestrated coup (13a), (see also: CIA documents (13b)) placing the Shah of Iran in control. (NOTE: American General Norman Schwartzkopf, Sr. helped the Shah of Iran develop SAVAK secret police.)

Iraq: Oil revenues grew markedly, with little of the money reaching the Iraqi people. Street protests grew, resulting in the government declaring martial law (14), the banning of political parties, and the imposition of a curfew.
1954 – 1956

1954: The US granted Iraq military and economic aid.

1955: Iraq joined the US drawn “Baghdad Pact” (15) of Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, and later Britain. This was feared by Israel as the alliance excluded them. Egypt’s President Nasser rejected the Baghdad Pact and accepted Soviet arms, raising his regional status in his rejection of Western influence. (See: US Secretary of State reaction. (16) )

Egypt – 1956: Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. (17). After an Israeli ship was seized in the Canal, with two Israelis being executed in Egypt, Israel attacked the Gaza Strip – then under Egypt’s control. Syria and Jordan offered Egypt military aid if requested, and Nasser threatened that Israel was doomed. Israel responded on October 29 by invading the Sinai peninsula [The Sinai-Suez War], with Britain and France joining Israel’s efforts against Egypt. Within one week, Israel controlled the Gaza Strip and the Sinai. The Soviets responded by threatening to intervene on Egypt’s behalf prompting a stand-down, and Israel’s return of the captured territory.
1958 – 1959

Years of public impoverishment, while oil wealth flowed to Iraq’s leaders and to Western oil companies, lead to a sudden revolution, lead by Brigadier Abdul-Karim Qassem, overthrowing the British installed king (18). Qassem supported poor farmers and middle class workers, allowed trade unions to form, worked to end the feudal land system long in place, and lifted a ban on Iraq’s Communist Party. Qassem also attempted to negotiate with the Iraq Petroleum Company to increase Iraq’s royalties (finally passing Public Law 80 (19) in 1961- see below). The US and Britain responded with rapid troop deployment to Jordan and Lebanon to head off further regional (and anti-
Oct. 7, 1959

22 yo Ba’ath party member, Saddam Hussein failed to assassinate Qassem in a CIA backed coup attempt (20). Hussein suffered a bullet wound to his own leg, and fled to Syria, then Egypt.(He escaped an imprisonment upon his later return, eventually helping to lead a successful Ba’athist coup in 1968.)
1961

Qassem repeatedly called for reunification of Iraq w/ Kuwait (21) stating at a June 19, 1961 press conference: “Iraq regards Kuwait as an integral part of its territory.” Britain immediately stationed troops in Kuwait and positioned naval forces in the Gulf.

Public Law 80 (22) was passed in December, prohibiting concessions being granted to foreign companies. Qassem also transferred control over Iraq’s oil resources to an Iraq National Oil Company. This, plus the fact that a few cabinet positions were filled with people sympathetic to Communist Party goals, lead the US to label the events as a communist takeover, and to begin actively supporting the Ba’ath Party. Furthermore, the Soviets began making overtures toward the new Iraqi government.
Feb. 8, 1963

Qassem was overthrown and subsequently assassinated via a second CIA backed coup (23a), with Ba’ath Party taking power under A.S. Arif. Thousands of Communist Party members were executed (with the list of members evidently provided by the US(23b). Arif held the presidency through his death in 1966 when the presidency was assumed by his brother, General Abdul Rahman Arif.
1964

The USSR continued to offer support to regional revolutionary movements.
June 1967

“Six Day War” (24) fought with Israeli capture of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and Syria’s Golan Heights. With the war lost, Nasser resigned. (See: Nasser’s resignation speech June 7, 1967. (25)) Iraq-US diplomatic relations were immediately severed .
1968

Arif was toppled by another factional Ba’athist coup July 17, 1968, with Tikriti born, General Ahmed Hasan al-Bakr (26) named as president and Saddam Hussein (27) (who had helped lead the Ba’athists in the failed 1959 coup (20) ) was named as Vice President. Within two weeks many potential rivals were either purged or in some way weakened. (From this position, Hussein developed a vast network of secret police (28) who continued to execute dissident left voices.)
1971

Iraq broke off diplomatic connections with Iran after Iran occupied Persian Gulf Iraqi islands. (29). (Finally settled in 1975 with Iran retaining the islands.)
June 1, 1972

Bakr and Hussein (30a) were supported by the US until this year, when the Iraqi-Soviet Friendship Treaty (30b) was announced in April followed by the Iraqi oil-fields being nationalized (30c) in June, creating the Iraq Petroleum Company. (Note: this occurred after the price of oil, set by OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), was raised from $3 per barrel to $22.) The US State Department under Nixon shifted support to the Shah of Iran, providing an eventual $22 billion in arms sales (31), while labeling Hussein as “unreliable,” placed Iraq on the list of terrorist supporting nations, and began arming Iraqi Kurds in the north. [See: video quote of former Secretary of State Ramsey Clark in Hidden Wars of Desert Storm (32)]
1974

Peace agreement with the Kurdish Democratic Party collapsed with suppression of Kurdish uprising and resulting refugee crisis. Despite the US’s role in encouraging and supporting the Kurdish revolt, it refused to aid the refugees. Kissinger, who had been responsible for crafting the plan stated: “Covert action should not be confused with missionary work (33).”
1975

Iraq and Iran signed the Algiers Accord (34) regarding control of the Shatt-al-Arab waterway that defined an important border between the two countries that allowed Iraq a water passage to the Gulf. With the accord signed, the US-[Nixon]-controlled Shah of Iran immediately withdrew support of the Kurds and stepped up the arming of Iran. (Primary US interest at the time was in limiting USSR influence in the region given the vast petroleum reserves at stake.)
1976
Amnesty International described Iran (35) as having the “highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran.”
1977

The Ayatollah Khomeini was expelled from Iraq, where he had lived in exile since the 1960s. He thereafter moved to France until the upcoming Iranian revolution a short time later (36).

SUMMARY OF EVENTS RE: KHOMEINI: The Shah of Iran passed a series of new laws during the early ’60s, understood by the population to have been created under US influence/dominance, and calculated to bring personal benefit to the Shah. This was vigorously protested by the Ayatollah Khomeini, other religious leaders, and the public. The Shah responded with brutal attacks on demonstrators, killing many thousands of them, and in Khomeini’s imprisonment. Protests were suppressed, but not ended. Ongoing demands for Khomeini’s freedom led to his release and exile in Turkey and then Iraq in 1964, where he lived for the next several years. In 1977, rebellion exploded throughout Iran after the Shah’s security police assassinated Khomeini’s eldest son, who had also been exiled to Iraq. The Shah, hoping distance would interfere with Khomeini’s aid to the growing Iranian rebellion, requested he be expelled from Iraq. That request was granted in 1978, Khomeini’s then moving to a hamlet in France where he lived until his return to revolutionary Iran one year later (1979).
1979

Iran: The Shah’s obvious Western acquiescence along with his continued use of oppressive secret police tactics finally resulted in widespread popular rebellion, then in a full scale revolution in January. The Shah was ousted in February and fled the country. Khomeini, who had earlier returned from France, took control, vowed to spread the Islamic Revolution, and called for nationalism, anti-Americanism, and Islamic fundamentalism (37a). The American embassy in Teheran was overrun a few months later – Nov. 4, with several American diplomats being taken hostage. (The captors demanded that the Shah be returned from the US, where he had been granted asylum. (37b) (Note: The Shah of Iran was said to have died of cancer in Panama the following year – July 27, 1980.)

Iraq: The US, alarmed over the loss of regional influence (and a corresponding increase in Soviet influence), shifted support back to Hussein in Iraq. Saddam Hussein replaced General Bakr, becoming the Iraqi President and Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. Hundreds of party members were immediately executed. Shortly after, Hussein nullified the Algiers [Shatt-al-Arab waterway] Agreement, claiming full control over the waterway (38).
1980

The “Carter Doctrine” (39a), was announced, stating: “… an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America. And such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” (39b)

IRAQ-IRAN WAR: Iraq was supplied military materials by the US, despite the arms embargo in effect, and by September, following a series of border clashes, Iraq invaded its neighbor. [See: Iran-Iraq War (38), and Issues prompting war (40)] Note: Two months into the war (Nov.1980), Khomeini expressed interest in releasing the hostages provided: Iranian assets were released, all sanctions were canceled, and that all of the Shah’s property was returned to Iran. Two months later the agreement was completed and a few weeks later – all remaining hostages were released on January 20, 1981 (immediately upon Reagan’s inauguration).
1980s (early)

Hussein known to be developing and acquiring chemical and biologic weapons (See:”IRAQ – US Military Items Exported or Transferred to Iraq in the 1980s.” (41)
1980 (early)
Evidence exists that a deal was stuck with Iranian intermediaries (“October Surprise (39c)”) in which Iran would release the fifty-two hostages held, delivering them over to a newly inaugurated Reagan/Bush administration in 1981 (as it was highly likely Carter would be unseated). In return, arms would be shipped covertly (via Israel) during the last weeks of the presidential campaign. (A very similar scheme was again utilized in 1985, in another covert arms-for-hostages deal – See”Iran-Contra (47a)” below.) [See: October Surprise – America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan, by Gary Sick; RandomHouse, 1991] [See Also 39d, 39e, 39f, 39g, 39h]
1981

Israel attacked and destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor (42).
1982

Under Reagan’s new administration (inaug.: 1981), Iraq was removed from the US’s list of terrorist-supporting countries. (43)
1983 – 1985
Truck bombs were detonated in Lebanon against American targets in April and October 1983. Pro-Iranian terrorists were said to have been involved in the attacks (44a)/(44b)/(44e). (Multiple seizures of American hostages earlier in Iran, and again, repeatedly in Lebanon in 1983 and 1984 eventually lead to the “Iran-Contra” plan in 1985. (See below (47a)).
1983 – 1984
Reagan’s special envoy – Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly met with Hussein (45a) regarding the US-Iraq relationship and mutual interests. Rumsfeld did not raise the issue of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons despite the fact that the State Department was well aware of Hussein’s use of those weapons in 1982 and 1983 (45b).
1984

Full diplomatic relations between Iraq and the US were reestablished (46a) and increased support in the form of weapons, intelligence information, etc. were given to Hussein (46b).
1985

Reagan administration IRAN-CONTRA (47a) plan: Oliver North worked with Iran, promising US aid to help them topple Saddam Hussein. A deal was struck whereby the Reagan administration, in cooperation with the Israeli government, would secure the release of the American hostages held in Lebanon via the sale of various arms materials, including one-thousand TOW missiles to Iran. (This occurred secretly via official sale of the weapons to Israel. Israel then secretly passed them along to Iran.) A portion of the proceeds of those illegal sales were to be delivered to the Nicaraguan Contras to finance their insurgency against the Sandinista socialist regime then in power, despite Congress’ clear expression that such actions were forbidden. (See also: (47b), White House Email (47c), CIA’s description of cocaine connection (47d), Senate Committee Report (47e), and video testimony of US Dept. of State, David Welch in Hidden Wars of Desert Storm (32)]
1986

Iraq’s use of mustard gas and nerve agents against Iranian soldiers well known to Reagan, VP Bush, Sr., and by senior national security aids (48a). Despite this, US aid to Iraq was increased (including chemical and biologic agents (48b) and (48c)).
(1986 – early 1990s)
Regarding Afghanistan, the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, and the creation of al Qaeda, See: “Timeline-1 Afghanistan.”
1984-87

Persian Gulf Iran-Iraq “Tanker War (49).”
1987
General Norman Schwartzkopf, Jr. named to head CENT-COM. (Note: General Norman Schwartzkopf, Sr. had helped the Shah of Iran develop the brutal SAVAK secret police thirty years earlier.) Following Iranian military successes in the Iran-Iraq war, the decision was made to send send a massive US naval force into the Gulf (50).
1988

Hussein attacked Iranian troops and Kurdish opponents in northern Iraq (Halabja) (51) in the Anfal campaign, again using chemical agents. Total deaths in the campaign have been estimated at 100,000. Note: a top CIA analyst has published information stating that the Iranians were responsible for the gassing of Iraqi Kurds, not Husein. (51a). In any case – despite subsequent claims that Hussein was responsible for these events, the US continued to send billions to Hussein for “agricultural purposes.” (Items included armored trucks, helicopters, large amounts of pesticide chemicals, and anthrax.) Concerns regarding the funding of these items were raised in Congress and were quelled by the Reagan/Bush, Sr. White house.[Hidden Wars of Desert Storm (32)]
Aug. 20, 1988

Ceasefire with Iran. By end of war with Iran, Iraq was economically devastated (52). In order for Hussein to maintain his power-base, he announced a $40 billion program of rebuilding, requiring a maximization of oil income. [Hidden Wars of Desert Storm (32)]
1989
As other Gulf states, including Kuwait, had recently increased oil production, thereby driving down oil prices, Hussein’s plans to rebuild Iraq were frustrated – financing his large army became problematic. He thus began to publicly threaten Kuwait because of their 1) 20% increase in oil shipments over agreed upon quotas, and 2) for slant-drilling/extraction of oil from fields over the Iraqi side of the border. [Hidden Wars of Desert Storm (32)] In response to these statements, the US revised an earlier plan written to counter Soviet threat to the region – War Plan 1002 – renaming Iraq as main threat in region, and renaming the plan as 1002-90 (53).
Jan. 1990
CENT-COM conducted computer analysis/games – testing Plan 1002-90. [Video testimony – Hidden Wars of Desert Storm (32)] US War College report written: “Baghdad should not be expected to deliberately provoke military confrontations with anyone (54). Its best interests now and in immediate future are served by peace.”
Feb. 1990
General Norman Schwartzkopf, Jr. argued to Congress for increased US presence in the Gulf.
May 1990
Saddam Hussein publicly accused Gulf states of waging economic war against Iraq, with Kuwait singled out as using American equipment to achieve slant-drilling across the border into Iraq’s oil-fields (55). At this same time and following urging from the US, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia demanded immediate repayment of loans earlier made to Iraq. In response, Hussein began moving large numbers of troops to the Kuwaiti border. [Hidden Wars of Desert Storm (32)]
July 27, 1990

Despite these growing tensions between Iraq and Kuwait, and despite the US’s dependence on cheap Kuwaiti oil, the US State Department issued the statement that it was aware of the movement of Iraqi troops threatening Kuwait, but that “there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.” — Telegraphing a straight forward message to Hussein: an invasion of Kuwait would not be countered. [See: 1. Hidden Wars of Desert Storm (32) video footage of 07-27-90 US State Dept. Briefing, 2. N.Y.Times excerpts re: Meeting with US Envoy (56a), 3. Reported that US Ambassador April Glaspie issued the same information to Hussein July 25, 1990 (56b)/(56c), 4. Summary study of this disinformation program (56d).] These reports of Ms. Glaspie’s meeting with Saddam Hussein were officially countered by the US government, although the State Department declined to release meeting transcripts (56e)..
Aug. 2, 1990

Iraq invaded Kuwait. UN Security Council Resolution 660 (57a) immediately passed – condemning Iraq for invasion of Kuwait. All Iraqi assets in the US were immediately frozen (57b) and the US Navy instituted a blockade of the Iraqi coast before the UN had a chance to convene.
Aug. 1990

Bush Sr. expressed shock at Iraqi invasion, despite the fact that for several months it had practiced for the exact military situation with troops and armaments in place in the middle east poised for response. [General Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.: “We went ahead and did an exercise, what’s called a command post exercise, which is what ‘Internal Look’ was, to test our ability to deal with this particular scenario and also to uncover any command and control problems that might exist, any doctrine problems that might exist between the air force, and the navy and the army forces. And it just so happened that we were in the middle of conducting the “Internal Look Command Post” exercises at the same time that the crisis developed in the Gulf.” [Video testimony within the highly regarded film “Hidden Wars of Desert Storm (32)”]
Aug. 5, 1990

US State Dept. representatives, including General Colin Powell, flew to Saudi Arabia, telling them that the Iraqis were amassing on their borders preparing to invade. Official press releases included the fact that the Saudis were shown satellite photographs proving this buildup. [ABC and the St. Petersburg times revealed January 6, 1991 that commercial satellite photographs obtained from that same period did not show the claimed buildup (58a) – i.e.. the military photos shown to the Saudis were falsified (58b). [See discussion of evidence (58c) , CS Monitor coverage(58d), and video testimony within Hidden Wars of Desert Storm (32)]
Aug. 6, 1990

UN Security Council Resolution 661 (59) passed – levying sanctions against Iraq and setting a deadline set of 1/15/91 – i.e.. Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday, for Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait.
Aug. 7-8, 1990

Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, after being told by US representatives that Iraq was preparing to invade (See Aug. 5, 1990 above) agreed to the basing of US forces on Saudi land (fulfilling a long held US ambition). Over the next 24 hours, without pre-notification of Congress, forty-thousand troops and a cache of military supplies were flown to Saudi Arabia. [See: 60a, 60b, 60c, 60d, and Hidden Wars of Desert Storm (32)]
Aug. 8, 1990

Iraq announced the annexation of Kuwait (61).
Aug. 25, 1990
UN Security Council Resolution 665 (62) passed – calling for use of force if Iraq failed to withdraw from Kuwait.
Nov. 8, 1990
US increased forces within the area to 400,000 (mostly in Saudi Arabia). The stationing of US troops on sacred Saudi soil infuriated Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi. [Hidden Wars of Desert Storm (32)]
Nov. 29, 1990
UN Security Council Resolution 678 (63) passed by a vote of 12-2 w/ China abstaining – authorizing the use of force if Iraq failed to withdraw from Kuwait by Jan. 15, 1991. [UN states were pressured by the US to vote for war. Example: Yemen voted against the use of force resolution, following which a US representative was quoted as stating “that will be the most expensive no vote you ever cast.” 3 days later, Yemen – the poorest country in the Arab world – had its entire aid budget cut by the US. (64)]
Jan. 12, 1991

US Congress authorized use of force if Iraq hasn’t withdrawn from Kuwait, pursuant to UNSC 678, by Jan. 15, 1991 [Joint Res.77 (65), becoming Public Law No: 102-1 on 1/14/91]
Jan. 17, 1991

US lead “Operation Desert Storm” began air assault using “pinpoint accuracy” (only 8% of bombs used were of the -smart- variety, despite mainstream press reports (66)). The bombing resulted in the deaths of 150,000 to 200,000 people, including thousands of innocent civilians. Bombing included reservoirs, filtration and water treatment plants (67a), electric power distribution, food distribution systems. Civilian deaths included 1,500 within the Al-Amariyah shelter. Kuwait entered by coalition forces. (See: Jan. 15, 1991 National Security Directive #54 (67b))
Feb. 15, 1991
President Bush, Sr. called upon the Iraqi people to “…take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside…” (68a) [See also: Guardian, UK (68b)] [See Mar.-Apr. 1991 below]
Feb. 23, 1991
Beginning of US lead, coalition ground assault eventually lasting 100 hours.
Feb. 26, 1991
Hussein announced an immediate withdrawal of forces from Kuwait. Bush, Sr. issued these comments (69a). A large anti-Hussein militia rose, partially in response to President Bush, Sr.’s February 15, 1991, comments. (69b)
Feb. 28, 1991

Ceasefire announced – war abruptly stopped after coalition forces pursued Iraqi troops only to the outskirts of Basra and Nassiyya.
Mar. 2, 1991
Despite announced ceasefire, thousands of retreating Iraqi soldiers killed by US 24th Mechanized Infantry. UN Security Council Resolution 686 (70) passed – calling on Iraq to revoke their claim to the annexation of Kuwait.
Mar. 3, 1991

Schwarzkopf concluded formal peace agreement with Iraq near the Kuwaiti border, allowing Hussein to continue using helicopter armaments, etc. (UN Security Council Resolution 687 (71) passed one month later – specifying ceasefire conditions, including UN inspections.)
Mar. – Apr. 1991

Popular rebellion spread broadly across Iraq in March. Under the ceasefire agreement, Schwartzkopf allowed Saddam’s helicopters to fly through coalition force lines, that were used to slaughter Shiite rebels in the south and Kurdish rebels in the north (72). In addition, rebelling Republican Guard troops in the south were denied the use of their stored weapons. A massive refugee crisis on Turkish and Iranian borders followed. The failed rebellion resulted in over one-hundred thousand rebel deaths, and in keeping Hussein in power.
1991 – 1992

No-fly zones established in Northern and Southern Iraq..
1991 – 2003

Iraqi embargo continued for 12 years – resulting in the death of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 children from lack of water purification, lack of medications, and starvation (73). In 1991 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 706 (74) – the “Oil for Food Resolution, ” but the US blocked such materials as chlorine, and medications to be supplied – claiming these to have secondary, wartime, uses. Many scholars find that this embargo has functioned (perhaps knowingly) to keep Hussein in power, as survival staples all must come through his regime, not through commerce. In addition, it is noted that keeping Hussein in power allowed the US military to remain in the region and consolidate a presence with thousands of US troops stationed within Saudi Arabia and elsewhere on a permanent basis. In addition, regional arms sales have continued and accelerated resulting in marked profits of the US arms industry.
June 1993

Stated to be a response to an alleged attempted assassination of George Bush, Sr. in April, the US fired twenty-three cruise missiles at Iraqi headquarters in Baghdad (75).
1994

Hussein took titles: Prime Minister and President of Iraq. The Iraqi National Assembly formally recognized Kuwait’s independence (76).
Apr. 1995

UN Security Council Resolution 986 (77) “Food for Oil” program. (Accepted by Iraq in Dec. 1995)
May 12, 1996

Then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, was asked a question on a “60 Minutes News Hour” broadcast: “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And – and you know, is the price worth it?” Her reply: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.” (78)
1998

Inspectors withdrew abruptly from Iraq under orders of Richard Butler; this after he unilaterally violated agreed upon UN Security Council protocols (“Modalities for Sensitive Site Inspections”) – drawn in recognition of Iraq’s legitimate security concerns, and accepted by the UN Security Council in 1996. Butler had acted outside of agreed upon UN Security Council protocol demanding inspection of an Iraqi “sensitive site”; this resulted in Iraqi officials refusing entry. Operation Desert Fox (79) (bombing by US and British forces) over Dec. 16-19, 1998 (79a) followed – justified to the public (79a) – by stating the “Iraq threw the inspectors out.”
1999

UN Security Council Resolution 1284 (80) created UNMOVIC, replacing UNSCOM – rejected by Iraq.
Nov. 2000
Iraq became the first OPEC nation to begin selling its oil for Euros, rather than for dollars
Feb. 2001

Major bombing raid over Iraq by US and British forces
Sept. 11, 2001

A group of SAUDI nationals within the al-Qaeda network and aided by Osama bin Laden, attacked multiple targets in the US. This was said to have been in response to the ongoing US presence and increasing interference in the region. [See: TIMELINE OF OIL AND VIOLENCE]
Oct. 7, 2001
The US attacked Afghanistan where al-Qaeda training camps were said to have been active. [See: TIMELINE OF OIL AND VIOLENCE]
Dec. 2001
Shortly thereafter, the US placed a new regime in Afghanistan that was strongly linked to the oil industry. The building of a US controlled one-million barrels/day trans-Afghanistan oil pipeline, earlier refused by the Taliban, was soon after approved. [See: TIMELINE OF OIL AND VIOLENCE]
2002

The Bush administration and US media suddenly switched focus from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein, despite there being no known connection between 9/11 events and the Hussein regime in Iraq.
Mar. 2002
US and UK aircraft dramatically increased (81a) bombing of Iraqi targets.
May 2002

UN Security Council Resolution 1409 (81b) streamlined Iraqi sanctions.
Jul. – Aug. 2002

Weapons inspections negotiations between Iraq and UN continued without success.
Sept. 2002
Massive airstrikes on Iraqi targets undertaken (81c) (one month before the US Congress voted to give Bush the authority to invade).
Oct. 9 – 11, 2002

Passage of resolution authorizing George Bush, Jr. to employ military force in Iraq without further Congressional action (82a) – House voted 10/09/03 / Senate voted 10/11/03 – thereby abrogating Congress’s constitutional responsibility in the matter of war. [Hear: Senator Robert Byrd’s Senate Floor comments. (82b)] [See roll-calls: House (yes:296 no:133) (82c) / Senate (yes:77 no:23) (82d)
Nov. 2002

UN Security Council Resolution 1441 (83) established Iraqi weapons inspection program, threatening “serious consequences” if Iraq failed to comply. Iraq allowed inspections to resume with work beginning Nov. 27, 2002.
Jan. 27, 2003

Hans Blix [UNSCOM/UNMOVIC] report given to UN Security Council (84) – stating progress being made, and that more time was required to complete the task. Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei’s reported to the UN Security Council that no evidence of an ongoing nuclear program had been discovered throughout Iraq to date. (85)
Feb. – Mar. 2003
The US pushed the UN Security Council to sanction the use of force against Iraq. (86) As the council was sure to vote “no,” the US withdrew that requested vote.
Feb. – Mar. 2003

US ARGUMENTS BEFORE THE UNITED NATIONS – JUSTIFYING WAR W/ IRAQ

ARGUMENT 1 : US may act unilaterally under Article 51 of the UN Charter (87) that any state under imminent threat may respond with military action. Evidence of imminent threat included claims that Iraq held and continued to develop “weapons of mass destruction (WMD),” i.e.. nuclear materials, nerve agents (sarin, tabun, and VX), and biological agents.

Nuclear: In testimony to the UN, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated there was no evidence of an extant Iraqi nuclear weapons program (88), and that nuclear materials were not detected within the country despite exhaustive inspections.

Chemical: Scott Ritter (89), who acted as a UNSCOM inspector for over seven years in Iraq through 1998, explained that 1) all discovered caches of nerve agents were destroyed during inspections in the 1990s, 2) the means of creating new stocks of those agents was destroyed by inspectors in the 1990s and could not be rebuilt under current scrutiny, 3) if any caches of tabun or sarin agents were not discovered in the 1990s, they would have deactivated spontaneously after only five years – i.e. they would be useless by 2003, 4) VX agent not discovered in the 1990s would likely also have deactivated spontaneously over the past decade, and again production means had earlier been destroyed. Dr. Hans Blix, the UN Chief Weapons Inspector addressed the UN Security Council on March 7, 2003 (90) stating there was no evidence of ongoing Chemical or Biological programs in Iraq and that at the current rate of progress it would only take a matter of months (not years) to conclude an exhaustive inspection program.

Biologic: Scott Ritter (89) had repeatedly explained how biological agent production facilities were destroyed in the early 1990s and that new facilities could not be rebuilt given our ongoing inspections and reconnaissance. Regarding evidence of earlier production of anthrax in the 1990s he noted that over this period of time any caches of liquid anthrax would have germinated within 3 years – deactivating it as a biologic weapon. Similar evidence regarding the absence of other agents was provided. Mr. Ritter offered further refutation of evidence of any attempted ongoing programs of biological weapons production within Iraq. (See: UN Chief Weapons Inspector, Dr. Hans Blix’s, statement above. (90))

ARGUMENT 2 : Earlier UN Security Council resolution 687 (71) (passed Apr. 1991) and 1441 (83) (passed Nov. 2002) enables use of force by the US and Britain.

UNSC Resolutions did not specify use of force, UN Security Council Resolution 687 (71) stated that the option of force was available as implied in paragraph I-34: “Decides to remain seized of the matter and to take such further steps as may be required for the implementation of the present resolution and to secure peace and security in the region.”; 1441 (83) similarly stated that further enforcement would require further resolution: “we remained seized on the matter.” The US requested such a resolution of the security council, but as votes could not be found – the request was withdrawn.

ARGUMENT 3 : Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are cooperative.

There was no evidence for this. In fact, Hussein was a secular dictator who worked to crush Islamic fundamentalism and was thus considered to be an al-Qaeda enemy (91).

Mar. 3, 2003
WAR IN IRAQ. NOTE: Thousands of rebels who might have been successful in toppled Hussein in Feb. 1991 had been killed by Hussein forces; this as a result of the US cease-fire policy at the time, and following the US’s failure to support the uprising. (92). As this militia no longer existed, military experts within the Bush (Sr. and Jr.) governments calculated that occupation of Iraq would be met with less militia resistance (suggesting this war came as a result of at least a decade of planning and scripting.) [See: Reports from un-“embedded” observers (93)]
Mar. – Apr., 2003

Hundreds – perhaps thousands – of civilians, including many-many small children, lost their lives and/or limbs in what can only be described as psychopathic bombardment of public places. (Cluster munitions were used on civilian populations – an internationally recognized war crime. (94)) Among those killed include an unusual number of independent journalists (95a). (See also: FAIR (95b) and Fisk (95c) Articles.)

No “Weapons of Mass Destruction” were used (or discovered), the oil fields were immediately secured by US forces, and the museums containing priceless artifacts of our common heritage were left unguarded – and were looted, … and gasoline prices are coming down as Iraqi oil flows westward. (March 7, 2003: IAEA Director General, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei’s comments to the UN Security Council. (96))

Mar. 25: Halliburton Corporation was awarded a contract to rebuild Iraq. In addition Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root was further awarded a contract to operate Iraqi oil facilities and to “distribute” Iraqi petroleum products (97) – despite statements by President Bush that “Iraqi oil is for the Iraqis.” (The contracts are to be worth a great deal more than a contract held by a new Halliburton subsidiary (Dresser Industries) in 1998 when – then Halliburton CEO – Dick Cheney (98) oversaw the subsidiary’s acquisition.)Dick Cheney gave up his CEO position when taking the role of US Vice President in 2000.

Apr. 17: Bechtel, another US corporation with present and former White House ties, was awarded another lucrative contract (99a) to rebuild bomb damaged Iraq.

BECHTEL’S PAST AND PRESENT WHITE HOUSE CONNECTIONS Bechtel notes (99b):1) In December, 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, then working within the Reagan administration, now secretary of “defense”, negotiated with Saddam Hussein to build an oil pipeline across Iraq. 2) The failed pipeline deal was later investigated by Congress as it involved former Reagan White House counsel and Attorney General, Edwin Meese III. 3) George Schultz, former Secretary of State under Reagan, was Bechtel’s CEO before assuming his cabinet position. Mr. Schultz currently serves as senior counselor and as a director at Bechtel.4) Caspar Weinberger, former Secretary of Defense under Reagan was a Bechtel executive before assuming his Reagan White House role.

Apr. – May, 2003
Continued US occupation of Iraq with outbreaks of violently suppressed resistance (100).
Aug. 2003
Halliburton subsidiary contract (US Taxpayer money) now valued at over $1 billion.
Nov. 2003
US occupation of Iraq met with growing Iraqi resistance, and with increasing violence. Leaked CIA report estimates Iraqi resistance at 50,000 and growing rapidly. (‘We Could Lose This Situation’ (101)
Sept. 2004
Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue with no exit strategy (102) apparent. Past Bush Administration statements regarding Iraqi “Weapons of Mass Destruction” now widely held as false. To date over 1000 US Troops and over 13,000 Iraqi civilians killed with tens of thousands injured, [Hear: MoveOn call for censure – 943KB mp3 file (103).]
Oct. 2004
Official and final conclusion of the Iraqi Survey Group (104): 1) No weapons of mass destruction were present in Iraq despite Whitehouse insistence they would be found.
Sept. 2005
Under continued US occupation, over 100,000 Iraqi civilians and 1900 US troops have been killed. Iraq approaches civil war (105).
Oct. 2005
Video hint of the reality of October, 2005 (106), … and the many preceding months.
Feb. 2006
Zogby International Poll of US Troops in Iraq: 72% say ‘US should exit Iraq this year’ (107).
June 2006
Conditions in Iraq continue to deteriorate (see: leaked US Ambassador memo (108a)).Source

Oil and Violence in Afghanistan: 1979-2004

July 3, 1979
President Carter signed a secret directive aiding opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul, calculated to induce a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. (See: Interview with former President Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski)
Mid to Late 1980s

Sept. 1986: In response to apparent successes of the Soviet Hind-D helicopter-gunship in Afghanistan, President Reagan authorized the shipment of Stinger missiles via Pakistan to Afghanistan. Overwhelmingly successful use of the Stinger resulted in neutralization of the Hind-D, and three years later (1989) to full Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The US, wishing to increase its regional influence, worked with the Saudis to import an army of Saudis, Egyptians, and others into Afghanistan. The Saudis chose a member of a wealthy construction family with close royal family ties – Osama bin Laden – to lead the effort. Many of the men bin Laden recruited were connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, a regional fundamentalist group. bin Laden’s newly constructed army (shortly thereafter known as al Qaeda) successfully fought to settle Afghanistan in favor of an Afghan fundamentalist group, the Taliban. [See: Against All Enemies, Inside America’s War on Terror; Richard A. Clark, Free Press (Simon & Schuster), 2004]
Dec. 1991

Collapse of the Soviet Union, and the birth of Caspian Sea nations of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan (1).
1993

US Oil companies reached for the estimated 200 billion barrels of oil in the Caspian Sea area. (Also: 2 3 4 5 6)
1995

Unocal, seeking to build a pipeline across Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (for delivery to energy hungry Asia via the Pakistani Arabian Sea coast), signed an agreement with Turkmenistan for natural gas purchasing rights for transport through a proposed pipeline (7). (See also 2) Unocal also signed an agreement with Turkmenistan for an oil pipeline (8) along the same route.
Aug. 13, 1996

Unocal and Delta Oil Co. of Saudi Arabia signed a memorandum of understanding (9) with Russia’s Gazprom and Turkmenistan’s Turkmenrusgaz to build a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan.
Oct. 1997

Unocal and other oil companies formed Central Asia Gas Pipeline, Ltd. (CentGas) (10) in preparation for building the trans-Afghanistan pipeline.
1997
US Congress passed a resolution declaring the Caspian and Caucasus region to be a “zone of vital American interests”.
Dec. 1997

Unocal invited Taliban representatives to their corporate headquarters in Sugarland, TX. (11) to discuss the pipeline project. They were thereafter invited to Washington for meetings with Clinton Administration officials.
Jan. 1998

Unocal agreement signed between Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and the Taliban (12) to arrange funding of the gas pipeline project, with Unocal also considering a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-Arabian Sea coast oil pipeline.
1998

VP Dick Cheney, then CEO of the giant oil services company, Halliburton, stated: “I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.” (13)
Feb. 28, 1998

Unocal VP International Relations addressed US House of Representatives(14) clearly stating that the Taliban government should be removed and replaced by a government acceptable to his company. He argued that creation of a 42 inch oil pipeline across Afghanistan would yield a Western profit increase of 500% by 2015.
March 1998

Unocal announced a delay in finalizing the pipeline project (15) due to Afghanistan’s continuing civil war
Aug. 7, 1998

Terrorists said to be linked to Osama bin Laden bombed two US embassies (16) in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Aug. 20, 1998

Clinton ordered a 75-80 cruise missile attacks (17) on Afghanistan and Sudan targets.
Aug. 21, 1998

Unocal temporarily halted development of the pipeline(18) project following the US missile attack above.
Aug. 22, 1998

BBC reported that the US and al-Queda leader Osama bin Laden exchanged warnings (19) of things to come following the cruise missile attacks ordered two days earlier. (You may be required to copy and paste -> newsid_156000/156273.stmNov. 1998

The Trade and Development Agency commissioned Enron to perform a feasibility study (20) re: an east-to-west route, crossing the Caspian Mountains and terminating in Turkey along the Mediterranean. (The route was considered impractical as it would cost an estimated $1 billion more than a route through Afghanistan.)
Dec. 1998

Unocal issued a statement (21) that it had withdrawn from the pipeline project on 12/4/98, noting “business reasons.”
April 30, 1999

Excluding US interests, Afghanistan, Pakistan, & Turkmenistan reactivated the pipeline project (22 – cached copy via Google) (see also 22a)
July 4, 1999
An executive order (13129) was issued by Clinton, freezing US held Taliban assets (23), & prohibiting trade plus other transactions. (See also: 23a)
Oct. 15, 1999
UN Security Council Resolution 1267 imposed sanctions on the Taliban (24a), demanding that the Taliban “turn over the terrorist Usama Bin Laden without further delay…”
Oct. 12, 2000

The USS Cole was attacked (25) in the Yemeni port of Aden.
Dec. 19, 2000
UN Security Council Resolution 1333 (24b) demanded compliance with Resolution 1267, and imposed further sanctions on the Taliban (24b).
Jan. – Feb. 2001

Upon taking office, the Bush administration immediately engaged in active negotiations with Taliban representatives (27) with meetings in Washington, DC, Berlin, and Islamabad. During this time the Taliban government hired Laila Helms, niece of former CIA director Richard Helms (28), as their go-between in negotiations with the US government.

Bush (oil) administration (29) includes:

Dick Cheney, VP: Until 2000 – President of Halliburton (in position to build the Afghan pipeline).
Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor: 1991-2000 – Manager of Chevron Oil, and Kazakhstan go-between.
Donald Evans, Sec. Commerce: former CEO, Tom Brown, Inc. (a $1.2 billion oil company).
Gale Norton, Sec. Interior: former national chairwoman of the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates – funded by, among others, BP Amoco.
Spencer Abraham, Sec. Energy: Up through his failed bid for senatorial reelection in the 2000, he received more oil and gas industry money than all but three other senators (January 1997 through July 2000) (30).
Thomas White, Secretary of the Army: former Vice Chairman of Enron and a large shareholder of that company’s stock.

May 15, 2001
Regarding the placement of the Unocal Pipeline, a US Official delivered this ultimatum to the Taliban (via the Pakistani delegation acting as their interlocutors): “Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.” (Ref: Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie in “Forbidden Truth” (31) (Book’s Preface online-pdf format (32) )
June 2001

US Ambassador to Yemen, Ms. Barbara Bodine forbade Deputy Director FBI John O’Neill (33) from entering Yemen in that group’s ongoing investigation into al-Qaeda and the USS Cole attack.
July 2001

Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July (34a) that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. (See also BBC report(34b))
Aug. 2, 2001

Last meeting with the Taliban (5 weeks before the 9/11/01 attack). (35) Christina Rocca, in charge of Central Asian affairs for US government, met with the Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan (Abdul Salam Zaeef) in Islamabad, at which time Taliban representatives were reminded that the US had provided monetary relief assistance. (The above referenced State Department report fails to mention that oil topics were also discussed.) (36).
Aug. 22, 2001

John O’Neill – Deputy director FBI, established national expert on the al-Qaeda network and in charge of that investigation, resigned in protest over the Bush Administration’s obstruction (37) of those investigations. (See also: New Yorker 1/14/02 (37a) )
Aug. 23, 2001

John O’Neill accepted position as chief of security, World Trade Center buildings (38). NOTE: Electronic security for the World Trade Center was provided by Securacom (now Stratesec), a company initially founded with Kuwaiti capital. Marvin P. Bush, President George W. Bush’s youngest brother served as a Securicom/Stratesec board member from 1993 through 2000. (38a)
Sept. 4-11, 2001

July – Sept. 2000 – Pakistani Intelligence Chief (ISI) Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad reportedly instructed British born Saeed Sheikh (alias: Ahmad Umar Sheikh, Mustafa Muhammad Ahmed, ….) in Pakistan to wire $100,000 (7/00-9/00) to two Florida bank accounts held by hijacker Mohammed Atta. (Washington Post 10-7-01 (39a), (Times of India 10-9-01 (30b), (Dawn News 10-9-01 (39c), (World Net Daily 1-30-02 (30d), (Times of India 08-1-03 (39e)

Sept. 4, 2001 – ISI’s Lt. General Ahmad entered the United States and subsequently met with many top officials within the Bush Administration. (Philadelphia City Paper 12-20-01 (39f), (Counterpunch 10-1-02 (39g)

Sept. 11, 2001 – Lt. General Ahmad concluded a breakfast meeting with Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), Representative Porter Goss (R-FL), and Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ). (Graham and Goss subsequently served as CO-Chairs of the Joint-Intelligence Committee investigating the 9/11 attacks.) (Counterpunch 10-1-02 (39h) (Online Journal 8-7-03 (39i), (S.A.Tribune 4-11-04 (39j)

During Ahmad’s brief stay in the US, he also met with: Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman, and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE). (Dawn News 9-10-01 (39k), (Reuters 9/13/01 (39l), (Deutsche Presse-Agentur 9-12-01 (39m), Center for Cooperative Research – See: section: Sept. 11-16 (39n)
Sept. 9, 2001

Ahmed Shah Masood was assassinated in Afghanistan (40). His assassination severely weakened the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, which he had led.
Sept. 11, 2001

World Trade Center attacked by al Qaeda; fifteen of the nineteen were from Saudi Arabia [41a, 41b]. John O’Neill, WTC security chief, and former deputy director of the FBI, where he headed investigation of the al-Qaeda network, was killed in those buildings on that day. (41c)
Sept. 28, 2001
UN Security Council Resolution 1373 imposed further sanctions on the Taliban (26).
Oct. 7, 2001

Military operations with aerial bombardment began in Afghanistan (42)
Oct. 31, 2001

The Bush White House drafted an unprecedented executive order (43a) sealing presidential records including those of prior administrations. [See also: US House Committee on Governmental Reform analysis (43b)]
Dec. 22, 2001

The US-backed interim government headed by Hamid Karzai took office in Kabul, Afghanistan (44a). (Hamid Karzai had formerly functioned as a Unocal Corporation consultant (44b) )
Dec. 31, 2001

Bush appointed Zalmay Khalilzad, as his Special Envoy to Afghanistan (45a). Zhalilzad, like Karzai had earlier functioned as a Unocal consultant, participating in 1997 talks between Unocal and Taliban officials. (Regarding Zhalilzad’s “neocon” credentials, See: 45b).
Jan. 29, 2002

CNN reported: “President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of 9/11/01” (46).
Feb 8, 2002

Afghanistan’s interim ruler Hamid Karzai and the Pakistan president agreed to revive plans (47a) for a trans-Afghanistan pipeline..
Feb 9, 2002

Turkmenistan officially stated that they hoped their trans-Afghanistan route would be soon built.
Feb. 2002

Proposal to deploy US Special Operations forces to the Caucasus state of Georgia (47b) (would help enforce a Washington pipeline policy – neutralizing Russian influence in Central Asia.)
May 13, 2002

Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai to hold talks with his Pakistani and Turkmenistan counterparts (47c) regarding a pipeline from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan, and through Pakistan to the coast. Mohammad Alim Razim, Afghanistan’s minister for Mines and Industries, stated Unocal was considered “the lead company” to build the pipeline. (See also: 47d.)
May 30, 2002
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan agreed to construct a gas pipeline to the subcontinent (48a) (See also: 48b.)
Nov. 2004
The annual US Government estimate for opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan was released Nov. 2004 (49): approximately 206,700 hectares of poppy were grown in 2004, representing a 239% increase in production over 2003 estimates.
Source

The Oil and the Glory in Afghanistan

Testimony before the US Congress is circulating on the internet. It pertains to a proposed oil pipeline through Central Asia that is applicable to the current war in Afghanistan.

On February 12, 1998, John J. Maresca, vice president, international relations for UNOCAL oil company, testified before the US House of Representatives, Committee on International Relations. Maresca provided information to Congress on Central Asia oil and gas reserves and how they might shape US foreign policy. UNOCAL’s problem? As Maresca said: “How to get the region’s vast energy resources to the markets.” The oil reserves are in areas north of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. Routes for a pipeline were proposed that would transport oil on a 42-inch pipe southward thru Afghanistan for 1040 miles to the Pakistan coast. Such a pipeline would cost about $2.5 billion and carry about 1 million barrels of oil per day.

Maresca told Congress then that: “It’s not going to be built until there is a single Afghan government. That’s the simple answer.”

Dana Rohrbacher, California congressman, then identified the Taliban as the ruling controllers among various factions in Afghanistan and characterized them as “opium producers.”

Then Rohrbacher asked Maresca: “There is a Saudi terrorist who is infamous for financing terrorism around the world. Is he in the Taliban area or is he up there with the northern people?”

Maresca answered: “If it is the person I am thinking of, he is there in the Taliban area.” This testimony obviously alluded to Osama bin Laden.

Then Rorhbacher asked: “… in the northern area as compared to the place where the Taliban are in control, would you say that one has a better human rights record toward women than the other?”

Maresca responded by saying: “With respect to women, yes. But I don’t think either faction here has a very clean human rights record, to tell you the truth.”

So women’s rights were introduced into Congressional testimony by Congressman Rohrbacher as the wedge for UNOCAL to build its pipeline through Afghanistan. Three years later CNN would be airing its acclaimed TV documentary “Under The Veil,” which displayed the oppressive conditions that women endure in Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban (a propaganda film for the oil pipeline?).

Rohrbacher then went on to say that a democratic election should take place in Afghanistan and “if the Taliban are not willing to make that kind of commitment, I would be very hesitant to move foreward on a $2.5 billion investment because without that commitment, I don’t think there is going to be any tranquility in that land.”

Beginning in 1998 UNOCAL was chastized, particularly by women’s rights groups, for discussions with the Taliban, and headed in retreat as a worldwide effort mounted to come to the defense of the Afghani women. This forced UNOCAL to withdraw from its talks with the Taliban and dissolve its multinational partnership in that region. In 1999 Alexander’s Gas & Oil Connections newsletter said: “UNOCAL company officials said late last year (1998) they were abandoning the project because of the need to cut costs in the Caspian region and because of the repeated failure of efforts to resolve the long civil conflict in Afghanistan.” [Volume 4, issue #20 – Monday, November 22, 1999]

Three days following the attack on the World Trade Centers in New York City, UNOCAL issued a statement reconfirming it had withdrawn from its project in Afghanistan, long before recent events. [www.unocal.com September 14, 2001 statement]

UNOCAL was not the only party positioning themselves to tap into oil and gas reserves in central Asia. UNOCAL was primary member of a multinational consortium called CentGas (Central Asia Gas) along with Delta Oil Company Limited (Saudi Arabia), the Government of Turkmenistan, Indonesia Petroleum, LTD. (INPEX) (Japan), ITOCHU Oil Exploration Co., Ltd. (Japan), Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co., Ltd. (Korea), the Crescent Group (Pakistan) and RAO Gazprom (Russia).

Just because CentGas had dissolved does not mean that the involved parties have totally abandoned their interest in building an oil pipeline out of Central Asia. There is also talk of another pipeline thru Iran. India and Pakistan are bidding to be the pipeline terminal ocean port since they would obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in fees.

So, in 1998 Osama bin Laden was identified as the villain behind the Taliban, Afghanistani women the victims of an oppressive Taliban regime, and the stage was set for a future stabilization effort (i.e. a war). Was all this a cover story for a future oil pipeline?

In November 2000, Bruce Hoffman, director of the Rand Institute office in Washington DC, indicated that the next US President would have to face up to the growing threat is Islamic terrorism. Hoffman: “The next administration must turn its immediate attention to knitting together the full range of US counterterrorist capabilities into a cohesive plan.” [Los Angeles Times, November 12, 2000]

All that was needed was a triggering event.
Source

Is there Oil in Afghanistan?Surprise!

ExxonMobil confirms that it has filed to bid on a group of Afghanistan oilfields containing an estimated 1 billion barrels of oil and gas, an instant validation of one of the riskiest resource plays on the planet. If the company’s application proceeds, it could set up a battle of colossals, since the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. and India’s ONGC have also filed to bid, I have been told.

The tender deadline was yesterday to file an expression of interest. Company spokesman Alan Jeffers told me that the filing is among Exxon’s global search for new hydrocarbon opportunities. The filings are to be made official after a government meeting Wednesday at which applications will be vetted.

The Exxon filing is surprising because until now the Afghan natural resource play, while rich, has been perceived as highly speculative, a place for the most daring wildcatters, in addition to regional state-owned companies such as CNPC, which won the first Afghan oil tender last year. The reason is both security — no one knows whether a 30- 40-year project would endure since Afghanistan has been at almost constant war for more than three decades — and the lack of infrastructure. Namely, how do you get the oil and gas to the market? Majors of the scale of Exxon rarely pursue ventures, preferring for wildcatters to prove them out, then seek to buy in with their deep pockets.

Source

Blue Gold

PIPE SCHEMES
The water privateers are now also setting their sights on the mass export of bulk water by diversion, by pipelines and by supertanker. Modified tanker deliveries already take place in certain regions that are willing to pay top dollar for water on an emergency basis. Barges carry loads of freshwater to islands in the Bahamas and tankers deliver water to Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. Turkey is preparing to sell its water by shipping it on converted oil tankers and through pipeline from the Manavgat River to Cyprus, Malta, Libya, Israel, Greece and Egypt.
In the summer of 2000, Israel began negotiations to buy over 13 billion gallons of water a year from Turkey; the tankers are already moored to huge yellow floating stations two miles offshore, awaiting delivery orders. Turkey’s water company says it has the pumps and pipes to export four to eight times that amount.
To deal with droughts in southern European countries, the European Commission is looking into the possibility of tapping into the sources of water-rich countries such as Austria. If its plans to establish a European Water Network are realized, Alpine water could be flowing into Spain or Greece, rather than Vienna’s reservoirs, within a decade. “This means that in theory we could supply everyone in the European Union, all 370 million of them,” declares Herbert Schroefelbauer, deputy chairman of Verbund, the country’s largest electrical utility. A high-tech pipeline already transports quality spring water from the Austrian Alps to Vienna, and the proposal to extend this system to other countries is creating great unease among Austria’s environmentalists, who warn of the damage bulk exports could have on the sensitive alpine ecosystem.
Gerard Mestrallet of Suez Lyonnaise is planning another Suez Canal-this time in Europe. He has announced his intention to build a giant 160-mile aqueduct to transport water from the Rhone River through France to the Catalonian capital, Barcelona.
To address England’s growing water crisis, some political and corporate leaders are calling for large-scale exports of water from Scotland, by tanker and pipeline. Already, several British companies are exploring the possibility of water exports and one Scottish entrepreneur told The Scotsmail that Scottish companies are also interested. Complicating the political sensitivities is the fact that Scotland still has a publicly owned water system, while British water is run by privatized companies. Ironically, some of these companies have been lukewarm to exports because the scarcity of water in England has kept prices and profits high.
Professor George Flemming of Strathclyde University claims that it would be relatively simple to extend pipelines and natural waterways that already exist between the north of Scotland and Edinburgh to London and other parts of England. However, support for water sovereignty in Scotland is strong. When Scotland’s water authority, West of Scotland Water, publicly sounded out a plan to sell surplus water to Spain, Morocco and the Middle East, public reaction forced it to back off. Still, many see this reluctance as temporary. Flemming believes that England and Wales are running out of water because of global warming and that imports of bulk water are inevitable.
In Australia, United Water International has secured the contract of the water system of Adelaide (located in southern Australia) and has developed a 1 5-year plan to export its water to other countries for computer software manufacturing and irrigation. Domestic companies were not allowed to bid for this contract because it was assumed that a large transnational would increase the value of the water exports, now expected to be in the range of $628 million.
Several companies around the world are developing technology whereby large quantities of freshwater would be loaded into huge sealed bags and towed across the ocean for sale. The Nordic Water Supply Company in Oslo, Norway, has signed a contract to deliver 7 million cubic meters of water per year in bags to northern Cyprus. During the Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm used water bags to supply water to their troops.
Aquarius Water Trading and Transportation Ltd. of England and Greece has begun the first commercial deliveries of freshwater by polyurethane bags, towed like barges through waterways. The company, whose corporate investors include Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, delivers water to the Greek Islands where a piping system links the bag to the main water supply on the island. Aquarius predicts that the market will soon exceed 200 million metric tons per year. The company’s bag fleet consists of eight 720-ton bags and two 2,000-ton versions. The larger bags hold two million liters of water each. Aquarius has completed research and development on bags ten times larger and is searching for the capital investment to produce them. The company has its sights set on Israel, and claims to have the interest of several major water companies.
Nowhere are dreams for the trade in water as big as they are in North America. Every few years, plans to divert massive amounts of Canadian water to water-scarce areas of the United States, Asia and the Middle East by tanker, pipeline, or rerouting of the natural river systems, are raised only to be shut down by public protest. One of the largest proposed diversion projects was called the GRAND Canal-the Great Recycling and Northern Development Canal. It originally called for the building of a dike across James Bay at the mouth of Hudson Bay (both of which now flow north) to create a giant freshwater reservoir out of James Bay and the twenty rivers flowing into it. A massive series of dikes, canals, dams, power plants and locks would divert this water at a rate of 62,000 gallons a second down a 167-mile canal to Georgian Bay, where it would be flushed through the Great Lakes and taken to the U.S. Sun Belt.
The NAWAPA-the North American Water and Power Alliance-was a similar scheme. The original plan envisaged building a large number of major dams to trap the Yukon, Peace and Liard rivers into a giant reservoir that would flood one-tenth of British Columbia to create a canal from Alaska to Washington state and supply water through existing canals and pipelines to thirty-five American states. The volume diverted would be roughly equivalent to the average total annual discharge of the St. Lawrence River.
In the early 1 990s, a consortium named Multinational Water and Power Inc. spent $500,000 promoting the diversion of water from the North Thompson River (a tributary of the Fraser River) into the Columbia River system for delivery by pipeline to California.
In the last decade, these projects have quietly been drawing support again from the business community in Canada. In 1991 Canadian Banker magazine said that water export would become a multi-million dollar business “The concept of NAWAPA… remains a potentially awesome catalyst of economic and environmental change.”
In the same year, Report OH Business magazine stated “Pollution, population growth and environmental crusading are expected to put enormous pressure on the world’s supply of freshwater over the next ten years. Some of Canada’s largest engineering companies are gearing up for the day when water is moved around the world like oil or wheat or wood…What will be important is who has the right to sell it to the highest bidder.”
Meanwhile residents of water-scarce regions continue to live in denial. In a July 1998 article for The Atlantic Monthly titled “Desert Politics,” writer Robert Kaplan notes the blind faith of people living in the Arizona desert believing that some magical solution to their water shortage will manifest itself while they Id continue to build in an area never meant for human habitat in these numbers. He notes that more than
800,000 people live in greater Tucson alone and four million in Arizona, a tenfold increase in seventy years. According to Wade Graham of Harper’s Magazine, municipal development in Phoenix is occurring at a rate of an acre every hour. Kaplan writes,
“Maybe, as some visionary engineers think, the Southwest’s salvation will come ultimately from that shivery vastness of wet, green sponge to the north Canada. In this scenario a network of new dams, reservoirs, and tunnels would supply water from the Yukon and British Columbia to the Mexican border, while a giant canal would bring desalinized Hudson Bay water from Quebec to the American Midwest, and supertankers would carry glacial water from the British Columbian coast to Southern California-all to support an enlarged network of post-urban, multiethnic pods pulsing with economic activity.”
CANADA AND ALASKA: OPEC OF WATER!
The call to export water by supertanker is heating up again in Canada after a lull of a few years. In British Columbia, a number of export companies such as Western Canada Water, Snow Cap Water, White Bear Water and Multinational Resources were already lined up for business when the government banned the export of bulk water in 1993. One project was to involve a Texas company prepared to pay for a fleet of 12 to 16 of the world’s largest supertankers (500,000 deadweight tons) to operate around the clock. Under one contract, the annual volume of water to be shipped to California was equivalent to the total annual water consumption of the city of Vancouver.
The British Columbian government that made the decision to ban bulk water exports is politically committed to this position; however future governments in B.C. might easily reverse this policy, opening a floodgate of export proposals. Canadian water expert Richard Bocking explains that the same companies would transport oil and water, in some cases, emptying oil on one leg of the trip, and carrying water home on the return voyage
“Water export from the B.C. coast would involve huge supertankers, operating year round on tight schedules. They would wind their way through tortuous coastal waterways, maneuvering around islands and reefs in an area where no well-developed marine traffic management system exists. There are strong and often turbulent tidal currents in coastal inlets where winter winds often reach ferocious velocities.
“These huge tankers would travel through waters that are amongst the world’s finest for recreational boating and fishing. Pods of killer whales move regularly through these waters. Along with commercial and sports fisheries, spawning for almost the entire commercial oyster industry of coastal B.C. is located here. The enormous fuel tanks of supertankers are full of bunker C fuel, the worst possible grade of oil in environmental terms. With currents, winds, rocks, and reefs intersecting with tight ship schedules, the stage is set for tragedy on a grand scale.”
In recent years, two other Canadian provinces received corporate applications to allow the export of bulk water for commercial profit. In the spring of 1998, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment approved a plan by Nova Group to export millions of liters of Lake Superior water by tanker to Asia. However, the province later rescinded the grant after an outcry from the International Joint Commission; (then) U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who claimed that the United States had shared jurisdiction over Lake Superior; and the public, most notably those living in the Great Lakes area of Canada and the United States. The other application, a request to export 52 billion liters of water a year from pristine Gisborne Lake in the Newfoundland wilderness, seemed poised to receive the go-ahead, given recent statements made by Newfoundland’s new premier, Roger Grimes. The company, McCurdy Group of Newfoundland, plans to ship the water to the Middle East by supertanker.
Newspaper and business publications are intensifying the debate. In February 1999 the National Post called Canada’s water “blue gold” and demanded that the government “turn on the tap.” Its business columnist, Terence Corcoran, added fuel to the fire “Canada is a future OPEC of water. Here’s a worthwhile long-term bet By 2010, Canada will be exporting large quantities of freshwater to the U.S., and more by tanker to parched nations all over the globe.
“The issue will not be whether to export, but how much money the federal government and the provinces will be able to extract from massive water shipments. Rather than resisting the idea of water exports, Canada will end up scrambling to head the WWET, the World Water Export Treaty, signed in 2006 by 25 countries with vast water reserves. Using the OPEC model, they will attempt to cartelize the world supply of water and drive the price up.” The Calgary Heraid’s editorial board agreed, “Canada has plenty of freshwater, so let the commercial exports begin.”
However, Canada isn’t the only water-rich region being eyed by transnational business. A Canadian company, Global Water Corporation, has signed an agreement with Sitka, Alaska, to export 18 billion gallons (58 billion liters) per year of glacier water to China where it is to be bottled in one of that country’s “free trade zones” to save on labor costs. Although the company brochure acknowledges that there is a severe water crisis in China, it entices investors “to harvest the accelerating opportunity…as traditional sources of water around the world become progressively depleted and degraded” and laments the fact that the government of British Columbia in Canada has placed a ban on bulk water exports.
The company is now engaged in a “strategic alliance to plan an international strategy to move water globally in bulk tankers” with the Signet Companies, an international maritime shipping company based in Houston, Texas. Signet has been engaged in the bulk movement of water since 1986 when both Western Canada Water and its predecessor contracted the shipping company for the “design, development, analysis and implementation of an international water transport system.” As Global explains, “Water has moved from being an endless commodity that may be taken for granted to a rationed necessity that may be taken by force.”
But Global is only one of the many companies with interests in Alaskan water. Alaska has become the first jurisdiction in the world to permit the commercial export of bulk water. The Ataska Business Monthly bluntly states, “Everyone agrees water has 21st century potential as an export from Alaska, and communities from Annette Island to the Aleutians are thinking about turning on the tap.” The journal reports that a Washington-based company has begun shipping city tap water from Alaska on barges to be bottled in Kent, Washington, and that several other projects are in the works.
Alaska’s water resources are staggering, reports the pro-export Alaska Business Monthly. For example, it suggests that if Sitka filled a million-gallon tanker per day, this would still be less than 10 percent of its current water usage. In Eklutna, Alaska, Brian Crewdson, assistant to the general manager of the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility, estimates the export potential to be as high as 30 million gallons (90 million liters) per day.
He reports that in 1995 a Mitsubishi-leased tanker taking on petroleum by-products for processing overseas also loaded a couple of millions of gallons of Eklutna water for shipment to Japan. He believes this may have been the first tanker shipment of water out of the United States and when word got out, he received calls from companies interested in doing business in New York City, Washington D.C., and Charleston, S.C. Crewdson adds that there is more money in bulk water exports than bottled water exports.
One entrepreneur who is poised to profit from Alaskan water exports spent much of his career shaping water policy in the public sector. Ric Davidge, president of Arctic Ice and Water Exports, served in the U.S. Department of the Interior as chairman of the Federal Land Policy Group and was a key advisor to both the federal and state governments in the clean-up operations for the Exxon Valdez oil spill. As Alaska’s director of water, Davidge was responsible for initiating the marketing of the state’s water and established the policy framework that allowed for the export of water. Soon after he set the export wheels in motion, he moved into the private sector and began a water export business. He is now known as “Alaska’s Water Czar.”
Davidge’s curriculum vitae states that he provides a “wide range of consulting services to foreign and domestic companies developing bulk and bottled water exports from Alaska.” Clients include companies from Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Alaska, Washington, Canada, South Korea, Tanzania, Japan, Mexico, California and Nevada.
There are some who say that bulk export of water is too expensive to be economically viable and suggest that the future lies with desalination. However, the World Bank points out that the world has already tapped all its low-cost, easily accessible water reserves; the financial and environmental costs of tapping new supplies, however they are developed, will be two to three times more than those of existing investments and the demand will be there even if the sources are expensive.
While desalination will be used by some countries, it is a very expensive process and is fossil fuel intensive. Massive desalination projects would be possible only to those countries with abundant energy supplies, and would seriously add to global warming-a crisis already exacerbated by freshwater diversion.
Davidge points out that the price of water on a dollar-per-unit basis is already higher than refined gasoline. “Everything from soft drinks to French wine to microchips will get many times more expensive as area reserves of clean water are drawn down.” He argues that desalinated water is more expensive to produce and more environmentally destructive than bulk water shipments in tankers and water bags.
Quebec businessman Paul Barbeau of Aquaroute, Inc., a company “dedicated to water transportation in bulk,” agrees. He says that water can be easily exported by tanker vessel on very short notice. He claims that at his former company, Enercem Tankers, he converted and operated a petrol carrier into a water carrier which was used to transport Canadian water to the Bahamas. “Capturing water is easy. A floating ship can simply pump what may be declared as a water ballast. This is done daily on any coastal or ocean-going vessel or even more simply with any barge as there are already some on the Great Lakes. The tools to export water afloat are already there. What is missing is the precise development in law to prevent an uncontrolled practice.”
Even some environmentalists believe that water commodification and trade is inevitable. Says Allerd Stikker, “It could very well be that in the beginning of the 21st century clean water will start to become a major regional and inter-regional commodity, being produced and traded in volumes undreamt of today.”
Especially in light of economic globalization, it is a myth that large cross-border transfers of water are not economically feasible. The only difference between these and other mega-projects is that water becomes a product transferred across borders. These megaprojects are identical in purpose to domestic water projects and governed by the same economic analysis. There is no reason to believe that current massive government subsidies to industry and agribusiness are going to end anytime soon. Transnational corporations operating in water-intensive industries are going to expect local governments to find and fund the water supplies they need before making investment and production decisions.
BOTTLED WATER BECOMES BIG BUSINESS
Where there is a demand for the trade of water across borders, it is already well underway. The trade in bottled water is one of the fastest-growing (and least regulated) industries in the world. In the 1970s, the annual volume was 300 million gallons. By 1980, this figure had climbed to 630 million gallons, and by the end of the decade, the world was drinking two billion gallons of bottled water every year. But these numbers pale in comparison to the explosion in bottled water sales in the last five years-over 20 percent annually. In 2000 over 8 billion gallons (24 billion liters) of water was bottled and traded globally, over 90 percent of it in non-reusable plastic containers.
In Canada, the amount of water extracted by bottlers has grown by more than 50 percent in less than a decade; bottlers, who pay no fee for the water they capture, have the legal right to extract about 30 billion liters a year-1,000 liters for every person in the country. Almost half of it is exported to the U.S.
As the world’s freshwater supply becomes more degraded, those who can afford it are favoring the packaged item, even though bottled water is subjected to less rigorous testing and purity standards than tap water. A March 1999 study by U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) found that much bottled water is no safer than tap water and some is decidedly less so. One-third of 103 brands of bottled water studied contained levels of contamination, including traces of arsenic and E. coli and at least one fourth of bottled water is actually bottled tap water, the study found.
Alongside the giants of the industry, such as Perrier, Evian, Naya, Poland Spring, Clearly Canadian, La Croix and Purely Alaskan, there are literally thousands of smaller companies now in the business. As well, the big soft-drink players are entering the market en masse. PepsiCo has its Aquafina line and CocaCola has just launched the North American version of its international label, Bon Aqua, called Dasani. CocaCola predicts that its water line, which is just processed tap water and sells for more than gasoline, will surpass its soft-drink line within a decade.
These companies are engaged in a constant search for new water supplies to feed the insatiable appetite of the business and are engaging in the trade of water by tanker shipments and by purchasing water rights from farmers. In rural communities all over the world, corporate interests are buying up farmland to access wells and then moving on when supplies are depleted. In South America, foreign water corporations are buying vast wilderness tracts and even whole water systems to hold for future development.
Sometimes these companies leave dried-up systems in a whole area, not just their own land. A ferocious debate has been taking place in Tillicum Valley, a picturesque fruit and wine district in British Columbia. Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp. has been mining the ground water of the region so relentlessly that local residents and orchard growers say the company is “draining their water supply dry.”
Of course, the global income gap is mirrored in inequitable access to bottled water. The NRDC reports that some people spend up to 10,000 times more per gallon for bottled water than they do for tap water. For the same price as one bottle of this “boutique” consumer item, 1,000 gallons (3,000 liters) of tap water could be delivered to homes, according to the American Water Works Association. Ironically, the same industry that contributes to the destruction of public water sources-in order to provide “pure” water to the world’s elite in non-reusable plastic- peddles its product as being environmentally friendly and part of a healthy lifestyle.
Source

The Federal Reserve cartel

The Four Horsemen of Banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) own the Four Horsemen of Oil (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP and Chevron Texaco); in tandem with Deutsche Bank, BNP, Barclays and other European old money behemoths. But their monopoly over the global economy does not end at the edge of the oil patch.

According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation.[1]

So who then are the stockholders in these money center banks?

This information is guarded much more closely. My queries to bank regulatory agencies regarding stock ownership in the top 25 US bank holding companies were given Freedom of Information Act status, before being denied on “national security” grounds. This is rather ironic, since many of the bank’s stockholders reside in Europe.

One important repository for the wealth of the global oligarchy that owns these bank holding companies is US Trust Corporation – founded in 1853 and now owned by Bank of America. A recent US Trust Corporate Director and Honorary Trustee was Walter Rothschild. Other directors included Daniel Davison of JP Morgan Chase, Richard Tucker of Exxon Mobil, Daniel Roberts of Citigroup and Marshall Schwartz of Morgan Stanley. [2]

J. W. McCallister, an oil industry insider with House of Saud connections, wrote in The Grim Reaper that information he acquired from Saudi bankers cited 80% ownership of the New York Federal Reserve Bank- by far the most powerful Fed branch- by just eight families, four of which reside in the US. They are the Goldman Sachs, Rockefellers, Lehmans and Kuhn Loebs of New York; the Rothschilds of Paris and London; the Warburgs of Hamburg; the Lazards of Paris; and the Israel Moses Seifs of Rome.

CPA Thomas D. Schauf corroborates McCallister’s claims, adding that ten banks control all twelve Federal Reserve Bank branches. He names N.M. Rothschild of London, Rothschild Bank of Berlin, Warburg Bank of Hamburg, Warburg Bank of Amsterdam, Lehman Brothers of New York, Lazard Brothers of Paris, Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York, Israel Moses Seif Bank of Italy, Goldman Sachs of New York and JP Morgan Chase Bank of New York. Schauf lists William Rockefeller, Paul Warburg, Jacob Schiff and James Stillman as individuals who own large shares of the Fed. [3] The Schiffs are insiders at Kuhn Loeb. The Stillmans are Citigroup insiders, who married into the Rockefeller clan at the turn of the century.

Eustace Mullins came to the same conclusions in his book The Secrets of the Federal Reserve, in which he displays charts connecting the Fed and its member banks to the families of Rothschild, Warburg, Rockefeller and the others. [4]

The control that these banking families exert over the global economy cannot be overstated and is quite intentionally shrouded in secrecy. Their corporate media arm is quick to discredit any information exposing this private central banking cartel as “conspiracy theory”. Yet the facts remain.

The House of Morgan

JP MorganThe Federal Reserve Bank was born in 1913, the same year US banking scion J. Pierpont Morgan died and the Rockefeller Foundation was formed. The House of Morgan presided over American finance from the corner of Wall Street and Broad, acting as quasi-US central bank since 1838, when George Peabody founded it in London.

Peabody was a business associate of the Rothschilds. In 1952 Fed researcher Eustace Mullins put forth the supposition that the Morgans were nothing more than Rothschild agents. Mullins wrote that the Rothschilds, “…preferred to operate anonymously in the US behind the facade of J.P. Morgan & Company”. [5]

Author Gabriel Kolko stated, “Morgan’s activities in 1895-1896 in selling US gold bonds in Europe were based on an alliance with the House of Rothschild.” [6]

The Morgan financial octopus wrapped its tentacles quickly around the globe. Morgan Grenfell operated in London. Morgan et Ce ruled Paris. The Rothschild’s Lambert cousins set up Drexel & Company in Philadelphia.

The House of Morgan catered to the Astors, DuPonts, Guggenheims, Vanderbilts and Rockefellers. It financed the launch of AT&T, General Motors, General Electric and DuPont. Like the London-based Rothschild and Barings banks, Morgan became part of the power structure in many countries.

By 1890 the House of Morgan was lending to Egypt’s central bank, financing Russian railroads, floating Brazilian provincial government bonds and funding Argentine public works projects. A recession in 1893 enhanced Morgan’s power. That year Morgan saved the US government from a bank panic, forming a syndicate to prop up government reserves with a shipment of $62 million worth of Rothschild gold. [7]

Morgan was the driving force behind Western expansion in the US, financing and controlling West-bound railroads through voting trusts. In 1879 Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Morgan-financed New York Central Railroad gave preferential shipping rates to John D. Rockefeller’s budding Standard Oil monopoly, cementing the Rockefeller/Morgan relationship.

The House of Morgan now fell under Rothschild and Rockefeller family control. A New York Herald headline read, “Railroad Kings Form Gigantic Trust”. J. Pierpont Morgan, who once stated, “Competition is a sin”, now opined gleefully, “Think of it. All competing railroad traffic west of St. Louis placed in the control of about thirty men.”[8]

Morgan and Edward Harriman’s banker Kuhn Loeb held a monopoly over the railroads, while banking dynasties Lehman, Goldman Sachs and Lazard joined the Rockefellers in controlling the US industrial base. [9]

In 1903 Banker’s Trust was set up by the Eight Families. Benjamin Strong of Banker’s Trust was the first Governor of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The 1913 creation of the Fed fused the power of the Eight Families to the military and diplomatic might of the US government. If their overseas loans went unpaid, the oligarchs could now deploy US Marines to collect the debts. Morgan, Chase and Citibank formed an international lending syndicate.

J.P. Morgan with Daughter Louisa Morgan and Son J.P. Morgan Jr

The House of Morgan was cozy with the British House of Windsor and the Italian House of Savoy. The Kuhn Loebs, Warburgs, Lehmans, Lazards, Israel Moses Seifs and Goldman Sachs also had close ties to European royalty. By 1895 Morgan controlled the flow of gold in and out of the US. The first American wave of mergers was in its infancy and was being promoted by the bankers. In 1897 there were sixty-nine industrial mergers. By 1899 there were twelve-hundred. In 1904 John Moody – founder of Moody’s Investor Services – said it was impossible to talk of Rockefeller and Morgan interests as separate. [10]

Public distrust of the combine spread. Many considered them traitors working for European old money. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, Andrew Carnegie’s US Steel and Edward Harriman’s railroads were all financed by banker Jacob Schiff at Kuhn Loeb, who worked closely with the European Rothschilds.

Several Western states banned the bankers. Populist preacher William Jennings Bryan was thrice the Democratic nominee for President from 1896 -1908. The central theme of his anti-imperialist campaign was that America was falling into a trap of “financial servitude to British capital”. Teddy Roosevelt defeated Bryan in 1908, but was forced by this spreading populist wildfire to enact the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. He then went after the Standard Oil Trust.

In 1912 the Pujo hearings were held, addressing concentration of power on Wall Street. That same year Mrs. Edward Harriman sold her substantial shares in New York’s Guaranty Trust Bank to J.P. Morgan, creating Morgan Guaranty Trust. Judge Louis Brandeis convinced President Woodrow Wilson to call for an end to interlocking board directorates. In 1914 the Clayton Anti-Trust Act was passed.

Jack Morgan – J. Pierpont’s son and successor – responded by calling on Morgan clients Remington and Winchester to increase arms production. He argued that the US needed to enter WWI. Goaded by the Carnegie Foundation and other oligarchy fronts, Wilson accommodated. As Charles Tansill wrote in America Goes to War, “Even before the clash of arms, the French firm of Rothschild Freres cabled to Morgan & Company in New York suggesting the flotation of a loan of $100 million, a substantial part of which was to be left in the US to pay for French purchases of American goods.”

The House of Morgan financed half the US war effort, while receiving commissions for lining up contractors like GE, Du Pont, US Steel, Kennecott and ASARCO. All were Morgan clients. Morgan also financed the British Boer War in South Africa and the Franco-Prussian War. The 1919 Paris Peace Conference was presided over by Morgan, which led both German and Allied reconstruction efforts. [11]

In the 1930’s populism resurfaced in America after Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bank and others profited from the Crash of 1929. [12] House Banking Committee Chairman Louis McFadden (D-NY) said of the Great Depression, “It was no accident. It was a carefully contrived occurrence…The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so they might emerge as rulers of us all”.

Sen. Gerald Nye (D-ND) chaired a munitions investigation in 1936. Nye concluded that the House of Morgan had plunged the US into WWI to protect loans and create a booming arms industry. Nye later produced a document titled The Next War, which cynically referred to “the old goddess of democracy trick”, through which Japan could be used to lure the US into WWII.

In 1937 Interior Secretary Harold Ickes warned of the influence of “America’s 60 Families”. Historian Ferdinand Lundberg later penned a book of the exact same title. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas decried, “Morgan influence…the most pernicious one in industry and finance today.”

Jack Morgan responded by nudging the US towards WWII. Morgan had close relations with the Iwasaki and Dan families – Japan’s two wealthiest clans – who have owned Mitsubishi and Mitsui, respectively, since the companies emerged from 17th Century shogunates. When Japan invaded Manchuria, slaughtering Chinese peasants at Nanking, Morgan downplayed the incident. Morgan also had close relations with Italian fascist Benito Mussolini, while German Nazi Dr. Hjalmer Schacht was a Morgan Bank liaison during WWII. After the war Morgan representatives met with Schacht at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland. [13]

The House of Rockefeller

JD Rockefeller and son John Rockefeller JrBIS is the most powerful bank in the world, a global central bank for the Eight Families who control the private central banks of almost all Western and developing nations. The first President of BIS was Rockefeller banker Gates McGarrah- an official at Chase Manhattan and the Federal Reserve. McGarrah was the grandfather of former CIA director Richard Helms. The Rockefellers- like the Morgans- had close ties to London. David Icke writes in Children of the Matrix, that the Rockefellers and Morgans were just “gofers” for the European Rothschilds. [14]

BIS is owned by the Federal Reserve, Bank of England, Bank of Italy, Bank of Canada, Swiss National Bank, Nederlandsche Bank, Bundesbank and Bank of France.

Historian Carroll Quigley wrote in his epic book Tragedy and Hope that BIS was part of a plan, “to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole…to be controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements.”

The US government had a historical distrust of BIS, lobbying unsuccessfully for its demise at the 1944 post-WWII Bretton Woods Conference. Instead the Eight Families’ power was exacerbated, with the Bretton Woods creation of the IMF and the World Bank. The US Federal Reserve only took shares in BIS in September 1994. [15]

BIS holds at least 10% of monetary reserves for at least 80 of the world’s central banks, the IMF and other multilateral institutions. It serves as financial agent for international agreements, collects information on the global economy and serves as lender of last resort to prevent global financial collapse.

BIS promotes an agenda of monopoly capitalist fascism. It gave a bridge loan to Hungary in the 1990’s to ensure privatization of that country’s economy. It served as conduit for Eight Families funding of Adolf Hitler- led by the Warburg’s J. Henry Schroeder and Mendelsohn Bank of Amsterdam. Many researchers assert that BIS is at the nadir of global drug money laundering. [16]

It is no coincidence that BIS is headquartered in Switzerland, favorite hiding place for the wealth of the global aristocracy and headquarters for the P-2 Italian Freemason’s Alpina Lodge and Nazi International. Other institutions which the Eight Families control include the World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Conference and the World Trade Organization.

Bretton Woods was a boon to the Eight Families. The IMF and World Bank were central to this “new world order”. In 1944 the first World Bank bonds were floated by Morgan Stanley and First Boston. The French Lazard family became more involved in House of Morgan interests. Lazard Freres- France’s biggest investment bank- is owned by the Lazard and David-Weill families- old Genoese banking scions represented by Michelle Davive. A recent Chairman and CEO of Citigroup was Sanford Weill.

In 1968 Morgan Guaranty launched Euro-Clear, a Brussels-based bank clearing system for Eurodollar securities. It was the first such automated endeavor. Some took to calling Euro-Clear “The Beast”. Brussels serves as headquarters for the new European Central Bank and for NATO. In 1973 Morgan officials met secretly in Bermuda to illegally resurrect the old House of Morgan, twenty years before Glass Steagal Act was repealed. Morgan and the Rockefellers provided the financial backing for Merrill Lynch, boosting it into the Big 5 of US investment banking. Merrill is now part of Bank of America.

John D. Rockefeller used his oil wealth to acquire Equitable Trust, which had gobbled up several large banks and corporations by the 1920’s. The Great Depression helped consolidate Rockefeller’s power. His Chase Bank merged with Kuhn Loeb’s Manhattan Bank to form Chase Manhattan, cementing a long-time family relationship. The Kuhn-Loeb’s had financed – along with Rothschilds – Rockefeller’s quest to become king of the oil patch. National City Bank of Cleveland provided John D. with the money needed to embark upon his monopolization of the US oil industry. The bank was identified in Congressional hearings as being one of three Rothschild-owned banks in the US during the 1870’s, when Rockefeller first incorporated as Standard Oil of Ohio. [17]

One Rockefeller Standard Oil partner was Edward Harkness, whose family came to control Chemical Bank. Another was James Stillman, whose family controlled Manufacturers Hanover Trust. Both banks have merged under the JP Morgan Chase umbrella. Two of James Stillman’s daughters married two of William Rockefeller’s sons. The two families control a big chunk of Citigroup as well. [18]

In the insurance business, the Rockefellers control Metropolitan Life, Equitable Life, Prudential and New York Life. Rockefeller banks control 25% of all assets of the 50 largest US commercial banks and 30% of all assets of the 50 largest insurance companies. [19] Insurance companies- the first in the US was launched by Freemasons through their Woodman’s of America- play a key role in the Bermuda drug money shuffle.

Companies under Rockefeller control include Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP Amoco, Marathon Oil, Freeport McMoran, Quaker Oats, ASARCO, United, Delta, Northwest, ITT, International Harvester, Xerox, Boeing, Westinghouse, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, International Paper, Pfizer, Motorola, Monsanto, Union Carbide and General Foods.

The Rockefeller Foundation has close financial ties to both Ford and Carnegie Foundations. Other family philanthropic endeavors include Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, General Education Board, Rockefeller University and the University of Chicago- which churns out a steady stream of far right economists as apologists for international capital, including Milton Friedman.

The family owns 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where the national Christmas tree is lighted every year, and Rockefeller Center. David Rockefeller was instrumental in the construction of the World Trade Center towers. The main Rockefeller family home is a hulking complex in upstate New York known as Pocantico Hills. They also own a 32-room 5th Avenue duplex in Manhattan, a mansion in Washington, DC, Monte Sacro Ranch in Venezuela, coffee plantations in Ecuador, several farms in Brazil, an estate at Seal Harbor, Maine and resorts in the Caribbean, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. [20]

The Dulles and Rockefeller families are cousins. Allen Dulles created the CIA, assisted the Nazis, covered up the Kennedy hit from his Warren Commission perch and struck a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood to create mind-controlled assassins. [21]

Brother John Foster Dulles presided over the phony Goldman Sachs trusts before the 1929 stock market crash and helped his brother overthrow governments in Iran and Guatemala. Both were Skull & Bones, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) insiders and 33rd Degree Masons. [22]

The Rockefellers were instrumental in forming the depopulation-oriented Club of Rome at their family estate in Bellagio, Italy. Their Pocantico Hills estate gave birth to the Trilateral Commission. The family is a major funder of the eugenics movement which spawned Hitler, human cloning and the current DNA obsession in US scientific circles.

John Rockefeller Jr. headed the Population Council until his death. [23] His namesake son is a Senator from West Virginia. Brother Winthrop Rockefeller was Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas and remains the most powerful man in that state. In an October 1975 interview with Playboy magazine, Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller- who was also Governor of New York- articulated his family’s patronizing worldview, “I am a great believer in planning- economic, social, political, military, total world planning.”

Rockefeller’s Five Sons

But of all the Rockefeller brothers, it is Trilateral Commission (TC) founder and Chase Manhattan Chairman David who has spearheaded the family’s fascist agenda on a global scale. He defended the Shah of Iran, the South African apartheid regime and the Chilean Pinochet junta. He was the biggest financier of the CFR, the TC and (during the Vietnam War) the Committee for an Effective and Durable Peace in Asia- a contract bonanza for those who made their living off the conflict.

Nixon asked him to be Secretary of Treasury, but Rockefeller declined the job, knowing his power was much greater at the helm of the Chase. Author Gary Allen writes in The Rockefeller File that in 1973, “David Rockefeller met with twenty-seven heads of state, including the rulers of Russia and Red China.”

Following the 1975 Nugan Hand Bank/CIA coup against Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, his British Crown-appointed successor Malcolm Fraser sped to the US, where he met with President Gerald Ford after conferring with David Rockefeller. [24]

hangthebankers.com

Soros’s Oil Spill Payoff

Within 48 hours after President Obama issued the six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling, the George Soros-backed Brazilian oil company, Petrobras, contacted a large New Orleans company, Laborde Marine, which services the deep-water drilling market. The company was seeking to lease all its vessels. “If the moratorium on deep-water drilling is not lifted, 33 semi-submersible rigs and/or drill ships affected will simply go to other countries where they will be well received, such as Brazil,” Cliffe F. Laborde and J. Peter Laborde, Jr. wrote in a June 4 letter to their Louisiana Senators.

Could this be merely a happy coincidence for George Soros, the major financial backer of Obama’s presidential campaign who also has $811 million invested in the Brazilian oil company, Petrobras? Wasn’t it enough of a payback to Soros when the Obama Administration loaned up to $10 billion to Petrobras? Soros, with his far left-wing organization, MoveOn, is called the Godfather of world socialism. But most relevant currently is that he has been an enthusiastic proponent of global warming and environmental liberalism. He has urged adoption of a global carbon tax. Could it be more than coincidence that his position is strikingly similar to what Obama called for in his June 14 Oval Office speech on the Gulf oil spill and future energy actions?

“Seizing on the widening calamity in the Gulf of Mexico, to push for legislation he had advocated [a carbon tax] since his campaign” a New York Times article noted. “Mr. Obama said he was willing to look for approaches from Republicans as well as Democrats….” Obama delivered the speech the evening before he was to meet with British Petroleum top executives to demand that they agree to the creation of a multi-billion dollar escrow account to pay claims stemming from the disaster when the company’s rig blew up and spewed oil into the Gulf.

The moratorium could mean the loss of at least 20,000 jobs, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal wrote in a letter to Obama. “The last thing we need is to enact public policies that will certainly destroy thousands of existing jobs while preventing the creation of thousands more,” Jindal’s statement said. Each drilling platform idled by the ban puts 1,400 jobs at risk, according to the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), a group of drillers and companies that support oil production. Lost wages could reach $10 million a month for each rig, according to Jangal. NOIA has said: ”The offshore industry is responsible for nearly 200,000 jobs in the Gulf of Mexico alone, and provides 30 percent of our nation’s domestic oil production….[W]e must be careful not to make things worse.”
More

Obama left his lush golf get-aways and NAACP basketball sprees to depart for a Brazilian vacation. There he personally looked after Brazil’s oil companies.

We’ll also work to strengthen our relationship when it comes to energy. Brazil holds recently discovered oil reserves that could be far larger than ours, and as we seek to increase secure-energy supplies, we look forward to developing a strategic energy partnership. We’ll also continue our shared leadership in green economic growth and clean energy, including everything from biofuels to renewables such as wind and solar power. And as the host of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics, Brazil is expected to invest more than $200 billion in upgrading its infrastructure — an area where America is primed to be a partner.

Obama abandoned the victims of genocide in Libya to help America’s oil opposition. Why?

Out with Western oil, in with Russian and Brazilian oil. Is it just coincidence that George Soros sold his Western oil stock and bought stock in Russia and Brazilian oil companies, about three months ago?

Starting in 2009, George Soros invested heavily in Western oil companies in Libya. His investments brought enormous returns, and then at the end of 2010 he mysteriously sold them, and bought stock in Russian and Venezuelan oil.

Each Western company saw stock prices skyrocket over the last six months: Suncore Energy up 46%, Petroleo Brasileiro SA Petrobras up 15%, Occidental Petroleum up 36%, Marathon Oil Corp. up 61%, Conoco Phillips up 42%, Halliburton up 67%, Hess Corp up 57%.

Soros somehow knew to reduce Suncore stocks on New Years eve. Soros dumped almost all his holdings. Likewise, Soros dumped almost all of Halliburton on New Years eve. Same for Hess. Soros dumped almost all of Occidental at the end of September, along with most of Conoco Phillips. He dumped much of Marathon in June. Soros actually increased PBR but that might have more to do with its huge oil bock buy in Africa. Each company began to tumble over these last few days because of the bloody revolution in Libya.

Soros switched much of that over to Russia and Venezuela oil giant Harvest National Resources, which skyrocketed right after his initial September 2010 buy.

Last March, Soros invested in airport screeners. How did he know to do that? Insider info! But how did he know what would go down across the Middle East?

Soros was behind the Egyptian uprising. But it is crucial for him that Gaddafi must stay in power! Otherwise his Russian investments might lose out. That explains why Obama dittered on something as simple as a no-fly zone for 31 days!
Source

Banks,Middle East and Iran as Greece

Iran oil production

Rank Field Name Formation Initial Oil in Place
(Billion Barrels) Initial Recoverable Reserves
(Billion Barrels) Production

Thousand barrels per day
1 Ahwaz Asmari & Bangestan 65.5 25.5 945
2 Marun Asmari 46.7 21.9 520
3 Aghajari Asmari & Bangestan 30.2 17.4 200
4 Gachsaran Asmari & Bangestan 52.9 16.2 560
5 Karanj Asmari & Bangestan 11.2 5,7 200

Field’s Name Thousand
barrels per day Thousand
cubic meters per day
(onshore)
Ahwaz (Asmari Formation) 700 110
Gachsaran 560 89
Marun 520 83
Bangestan 245 39.0
AghaJari 200 32
Karanj-Parsi 200 32
Rag-e-Safid 180 29
BibiHakimeh 130 21
Darquin 100 16
Pazanan 70 11
(offshore)
Dorood 130 21
Salman 130 21
Abuzar 125 19.9
Sirri A&E 95 15.1
Soroush/Nowruz 60 9.5

 

 

 

Let’s clarify a number of things about Iran. The take-away points will be listed here at the beginning. Afterward we will discuss how they are actually occurring.

[1] Neither Israel nor the West care about Iran’s nuclear program. This is a merely window dressing; an excuse to squeeze Iran. If Iran totally abandoned its nuclear program, then the West would change its anti-Iran propaganda from “world threat” to R2P (responsibility-to-protect).

That is, the West would pay terrorists to enter Iran, the Iranian government would fight them off, and the West would then continue squeezing Iran because of “humanitarian concerns.” It was the same in Libya, and now Syria. The Western media would call Iranian terrorist activity the “Persian Spring” and a “pro-democracy movement,” with terrorists being “human rights activists.”

[2] The West does all this because Iran has oil, plus a state-owned central bank. Worse, Iran is willing to sell oil directly to its customers, rather than sell it through a foreign commodities market via private foreign banks. This cuts Jews and GCC oil sheiks out of the picture.

Iran has its own oil speculators in the Kish Island bourse, but the Iranian government uses the bourse to get the best possible deals for Iran. Jews and GCC oil sheiks use Western bourses (markets) to enrich themselves at the expense of the masses.

Hence the only way Iran’s government could ease Western pressure is to utterly submit to international bankers and speculators, and allow Iran to be reduced to another Greece. One percent of Iranians would become filthy rich, and 99 percent would be plunged into a nightmare of poverty.

Iran is only one front in the West’s global plans. Grab the oil and resources, privatize everything (especially the banks), spread the debt plague, and reduce most of humanity to sweatshop slaves.

Since Iran resists this, Iran must have total regime change. Again, nuclear power is irrelevant.

[3] Iran remains a theocracy because its government uses religion to defend the masses, who do not understand “The bankers want to enslave you.” However they DO understand, “Allah forbids it,” and “You can’t have electricity in your homes because they say we can’t have nuclear power.”

The West likewise uses religion, but offensively, namely the holo-hoax and “Iranian nuclear threat.” If Iran abandons its nuclear program, then the West will change its religious dogma to the holo-hoax and “humanitarian concerns.” In the West, 98.5 percent of the masses believe this dogma. Of the remaining 1.5 percent, 1 percent are rich elitists, and .5 percent are the total among average Westerners who have a brain. The .5 percent is a generous estimate, since in the USA it means that 1.57 million peasants have a clue.

[4] Neither the USA nor its Israeli masters have any intention of directly attacking Iran, since Iran could effortlessly close the Strait of Hormuz with just a few missiles. This would allow Jewish and GCC oil speculators to push fuel prices so high that the West would crash. Likewise Iran dares not close the Straight unless Iran is attacked, for to do so would bring an instant full-scale war. Therefore it’s a military stalemate.

[5] The BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China) are not Iran’s “allies.”

Iran’s only true allies are Syria plus the handful of ALBA nations in South America (e.g. Hugo Chavez). And Hezbollah.

[6] Israel and the West support the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) as free lance assassins and saboteurs, paying them to eliminate people in Iran such as banking officials (plus the occasional nuclear scientist to keep up pretenses). Simultaneously the MEK is formally listed as a terrorist group so the MEK can be kept under strict control.

The MEK are Marxists. If they ever took power in Iran, they would have to ally with international bankers, thereby becoming hyper-capitalists. This would cause the MEK to disintegrate, resulting in chaos, which the bankers do not want. Therefore the MEK remains a death-squad-in-limbo. It is the only designated terrorist group that Washington bureaucrats can legally and openly accept bribes from.

[7] Now that Libya’s oil has been seized, Syria must have regime change in order to further isolate Iran. Also, Syria’c central bank and oil company are STATE OWNED, which is forbidden.

FALSE FRIENDS

China uses Western pressure to get lower prices for Iranian oil, plus better terms, such as contracts in which China doesn’t have to pay for up to a year.

India does same (More about India below).

In January, China International United Petroleum & Chemical Co. (aka Unipec) delayed signing a new contract with Iran in order to get lower prices. Unipec cut its 2012 term contract purchases by 15 percent from 2011, and instead bought oil from Russia, Australia, West Africa, and especially the GCC oil sheiks, who lowered their price to China so China could squeeze Iran. Further, China threatened to raise prices for gasoline shipments to Iran, whose aging refineries struggle to produce enough fuel.

In this way, China forced Iran to agree to discount its oil to China by $20 / barrel. At 550,000 barrels a day sold to China, this cost Iran $11 million per day. Now that China has forced Iran to submit, China is again buying from Iran.

As a result of this pressure, Ahmadinejad has been forced to reduce government subsidies for food staples, thereby causing food prices to rise, and the masses to be squeezed. (The IMF is praising this.) Western sanctions have almost totally cut off imports of essentials like palm oil (used for cooking), allowing producers Indonesia and Malaysia to quadruple their prices. Iran is now franticly stockpiling wheat.

[None of this affects our Israeli masters, who are immune from all sanctions. Israel continues to export seeds, fertilizers, irrigation pipes, etc to Iran, while Iran continues to sell the Israelis pistachios, cashew nuts, and marble to Israel. Israel also buys Iranian oil through various Jewish middlemen.]

Ahmadinejad is trying to ease the pain by giving cash payments of $45 per month to families, but the Western sanctions have forced Iran to devalue the rial currency, such that $45 worth of rials today only buys what $27 bought last year. This makes it easier for Iran to sell exports, but it doubles the price of imports like grain. Iranian currency traders would like to exploit this by hoarding dollars, but the Iranian government forbids this. (Penalties can include execution.)

Some Iranians (i.e. the upper middle class) are stupid and selfish. They blame everything on Ahmadinejad, saying his foreign policy is causing all the problems.

This is why the West beams its propaganda to Iran. Throughout the world, no matter how cynical the masses seem about the media, they continue to believe the media. Propaganda works.

TURKEY sides with the West in threatening Syria, because this lets Turkey avoid US sanctions, and also lets Turkey force Iran to take less for its oil. But Turkey cannot push too hard, since Turkey gets almost half its oil from Iran. Nor can the West push too hard on Turkey, since Turkey pays for Iranian oil via Halk Bankasi, which is STATE OWNED.

Hence the Turkish government issues ambivalent chatter about Syria.

INDIA is also exploiting the Western pressure. 22 % of Iranian oil exports goes to China, and 13 percent to India.

India’s STATE-OWNED company of Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd uses the STATE OWNED UCO Bank to send money directly to Iran’s STATE-OWNED central bank. Last year Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd bought 328,000 barrels a day from Iran.

Again, the Jewish and GCC Arab bankers and speculators are cut out of the picture. This is not permissible.

Therefore Obama is now threatening India with sanctions. This is an empty threat, since India is too powerful, and too big a U.S. trading partner to threaten.

In reality the USA is talking to key politicians in India, saying…

“If you will buy oil only from markets controlled by Jews and GCC oil sheiks, driving up prices in India, and fucking the Indian masses, and if you will send all payments for oil strictly to private banks controlled by Jews and GCC oil sheiks, and if you will agree to not send grain to Iran as payment for oil — then we will compensate you personally. Give us the numbers of your Swiss bank accounts– and by the way, which of you wants to become India’s prime minister?”

If India’s key politicians don’t agree to these bribes, then the West will cut off all Indian banks that send money to Iran’s central bank for oil.

Indian politicians need not agree to this right away. Since India is exploiting Western pressure on Iran to get lower prices from Iran, India too is squeezing Iran.

India may go ahead with projects such as the International North-South Corridor (a pipeline from Central Asia), but India may not pay Iran for this oil directly. India must buy it through the Jewish and GCC Arab-controlled speculative market casinos.

Israeli propaganda outlets (e.g. Debkafile) help out by falsely claiming that India is trying to avoid Western sanctions by using gold to pay for Iranian oil. Nonsense, of course. India buys about $14 billion worth of oil from Iran per year and sells only $2.7 billion in goods back to Iran, but India is also getting great deals, like China, in which India doesn’t have to pay for Iranian oil for up to a year. But most Western bloggers and media outlets (e.g. RT) believe the lies.

Japan and South Korea are the number two and number four purchasers of Iranian oil. They want exceptions from the Western sanctions. The West says okay, but Japan and South Korea may only buy oil through markets controlled by Jews and GCC oil Sheiks.

If Japan and South Korea try to do like India, and save money buy buying oil directly from Iran, sending money directly to Iran’s STATE OWNED central bank, then Western banks will cut off Japanese and South Korean banks.

Japan buys 250,000 barrels a day from Iran, and has promised to try and reduce this by at least 11 percent, and instead buy from the West.

EUROPE

Last year, Europe was the No. 2 importer of Iranian oil. Currently Europe buys 600,000 barrels of oil a day from Iran, but will stop buying any Iranian oil on 1 July 2012. The European Commission still has to approve this measure, but Royal Dutch Shell PLC has already said it will stop buying any Iranian oil.

On 15 Mar 2012, SWIFT, a Belgium-based organization that facilitates banking transactions, will cut off thirty European banks from doing any business with Iran. On 17 Mar 20102 Swift will cut off 25 Iranian banks.

NOTE: A direct military attack on Iran is not necessary. The West is using the banks. A typical oil tanker carries $100 million worth of oil, forcing nations to use electronic bank transfers (unless they want to physically transports mountains of cash or gold bars, which is extremely risky, and leaves a money trail when it is deposited). SWIFT handles more than 80% of the financial transactions and electronic money transfers around the world. Some 10,000 banks and financial institutions in 210 countries used SWIFT. All are being aligned against Iran. Any bank that refuses to cooperate is cut off. The Dubai-based Noor Islamic Bank has already cut all dealings with Iranian banks. All US banks have been cut off — except those that Washington uses to launder money for opium purchases from Afghanistan.

The Iran sanctions do not hurt England and France, since they get only 1 percent of their oil from Iran, and they now own Libya’s oil. But the sanctions are hammering Italy, Spain and Greece, who the bankers want to crush anyway. (Russia has its own oil.) Iran must be reduced to another Greece. THIS IS THE WHOLE POINT. The West wants crush Iran’s state-owned central bank, and get back control of Iran’s oil, which was lost in 1979. Once more, the nuclear issue is a mere smokescreen.

Iran is weak because even though Iran exports 2.2 million barrels of oil a day, this is only 2.5 percent of global demand. So the West is steadily tightening the noose.

Iran is desperate to keep Syria as an ally, and has promised to build 12,500 new houses in Damascus and Aleppo on a non-profit basis.

Western sanctions are already disrupting Iranian crude shipments to global refiners, allowing Jewish and GCC Arab speculators to push up oil prices in the London-traded Brent marker. Oil prices are now $128 per barrel, just $20 short of an all-time high. This translates into higher fuel prices for the European and North American masses. Western oil companies get a piece of the pie, but the real bonanza goes to Jewish and GCC Arab speculators and bankers.

If speculators push oil prices so high that they threaten to collapse Western economies, then key speculators like Goldman Sachs will cause oil process to go down. Goldman does this by placing bets that oil prices will go down. The speculative herd follows, causing prices to actually go down. Up or down, Goldman Sachs makes money.

At the moment the bankers and speculators keep oil prices high by rattling sabers at Iran, and betting that oil process will go up. This will change as election time nears. Goldman will cause oil prices to fall to the point where Goldman can re-install Obama.

Until then, Goldman will keep giving more money to Mitt Romney than to Obama, so Obama looks good, and the masses have an illusion of choice. The other Republican candidates (Santorum, etc) are window dressing.

The Paris-based International Energy Agency cooperates with Goldman in manipulating oil prices by manipulating figures of how much oil is purchased by various nations. If Goldman and the IEA want prices to go down, the IEA claims that there is a glut, or a fall in demand. If they want prices to go up, they claim that there is a scarcity, or an increase in demand.

Most speculators obey the propaganda, since they are generally as stupid and gullible as the masses. Currently the IEA claims that when Europe stops buying Iranian oil in July 2012, Iranian exports will be cut in half. This prediction causes speculators to drive up oil prices worldwide, squeezing the masses.

WAR

A single oil tanker can hold $100 million worth of oil, making electronic bank transfers crucial. Therefore the West is using the banks to squeeze Iran’s oil shipments. Soon we will see more direct approaches, such as “accidents” involving Iranian and Venezuelan oil tankers.

This will further cut revenue to Iran and Venezuela, and cause both countries to be globally vilified for causing pollution. “Accidents” can be engineered by mines, torpedoes, pirates-for-hire, or simply by paying Iranian and Venezuelan captains to crash their tankers in spots that cause the most public outrage.

“Accidents” also greatly increase the insurance premiums that Iran and Venezuela must pay to insure their tankers. The current sanctions already prohibit Western insurance companies from covering any Iranian tanker.

Last month this forced India’s largest shipping company to cancel a shipment of Iranian oil. That was the STATE OWNED Shipping Corp of India. (The West hates anything that is state owned.) The company owns the Maharaja Agrasen tanker, and wanted to use it to ship Iranian oil to India. For future shipments from Iran, the Indian government will have to insure Indian tankers itself. It will also pay for Iranian oil only upon safe delivery.

Thus we are approaching a state of world war in which tankers must be escorted by warships that provide protection and carry gold bars.

It’s a carbon copy of how the USA blockaded Imperial Japan’s oil shipments, and steadily tightened the noose, so that Japan and Nazi Germany could be destroyed. Their crime, like Iran’s, was that they disconnected from international bankers.

At present the West will not push China totally out of Africa, since China must be allowed alternative oil sources. This lets China continue to squeeze Iran on price, thereby hurting Iran’s government and masses.

Now that Libya has been taken, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are slowly winding down, the West is concentrating on reducing Iran’s oil shipments, which provide half the Iranian government’s revenue. The intent is to squeeze the Iranian masses until they beg to become slaves of the international bankers. The banking sanctions are already preventing Iranians living abroad from sending money back home.

CONCLUSION

It’s all quite simple, but most people let propaganda confuse them.

Now that the USSR is gone, WW III (currently in progress) is a global war by global bankers and speculators on the global masses. Unlike WW II, there will be no post-war recovery with the rise of a middle class. From this point on, nothing will really change until the oil finally runs out. All wars are merely skirmishes in the overall World War against the masses.

>>>>In this war, the Iranian nuclear issue is merely a smokescreen. <<<<

Libya has been taken care of, but Iran, Syria, and Venezuela are still in the way. Hezbollah is still in the way of Israel’s annexation of Lebanon up to the Litani River, so Israel can get that water.

DO NOT expect Russia to come to anyone’s aid. Russia only moves if its government feels its interests are directly and immediately threatened (e.g. the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia).

Russia vetoed the West at the UNSC because the West wants to start bombing Syria, and then Iran, which would cause chaos a little too close to home for Russia, with too many variables and unknowns.

If the West starts bombing Syria, there is little that Russian can do about it. And besides, with Iran under Western control, Russia will be able to charge more for Russian oil and natural gas.

Source

Fund Managers in Oil Business- charts

 

 

 

 

Goldman Sachs & Vanguard run Occidental Petroleum.

Vanguard owns 34.47M shares worth $3.28B
STATE STREET CORPORATION owns 31.82M shares worth $3.03B
Wellington Management Company owns 26.65M shares worth $2.54B
Barrow, Hanley, Mewhinney & Strauss owns 14.11M shares worth $1.34B
Neuberger Berman owns 10.10M shares worth $961.38M
TIAA-CREF Investment Management owns 8.44M shares worth $803.93M
Marsico Capital Management owns 8.27M shares worth $787.94M
T. Rowe Price Associates owns 8.25M shares worth $785.53M
Jennison Associates owns 7.24M shares worth $689.60M
WINSLOW CAPITAL MANAGEMENT INC /MN owns 6.70M shares worth $638.48M
Relational Investors owns 5.98M shares worth $569.25M
Inves owns 5.96M shares worth $567.71M
CI Investments owns 5.78M shares worth $550.83M
Bank of America Corporation owns 5.71M shares worth $534.97M
Geode Capital Management owns 5.61M shares worth $534.49M
American Century Companies owns 5.32M shares worth $506.55M
Waddell & Reed Financial owns 5.17M shares worth $492.16M
OppenheimerFunds owns 4.93M shares worth $469.65M
GOLDMAN SACHS owns 4.88M shares worth $464.93M
TCW owns 4.60M shares worth $438.16M
Montag & Caldwell owns 3.59M shares worth $341.47M
Legal & General owns 3.52M shares worth $335.45M
Robeco Investment Management owns 3.46M shares worth $329.96M

*Vanguarde :Reduced shares in these stocks: Apple Inc Com 0378 (-$4.53B), Conocophillips (-$4.34B), Berkshire Hathaway Inc Del cl b new 0846 (-$3.63B), Caterpillar Inc Del (-$2.67B), 3m (-$2.60B), Kraft Foods Inc cl a 5007 (-$2.54B), Altria (-$2.43B), Comcast Corp New cl a 2003 (-$2.32B), Boeing (-$2.13B), Visa (-$2.08B).
Sold out of its positions in Mercury Genl, International Business Machs, Enzo Biochem, Banro Corp Co m 0668, Fastenal, Timberland Co cl a 8871, Centurylink, Selective Ins Group Inc Com 8163, Pan American Silver,
As of March 31, 2012, Vanguard has $741.00B in assets under management (AUM). Assets under management grew from a total value of $524.29B to $741.00B.
Independent of market fluctuations, Vanguard was a net buyer by $560.43B worth of stocks in the most recent quarter.
Latest statistics and disclosures from Vanguard’s latest quarterly 13F-HR filing:

Top 5 stock holdings are AAPL, XOM, IBM, MSFT, CVX. These five stock positions account for 9.73% of Vanguard’s total stock portfolio.
Added to shares of AAPL (+$23.38B), XOM (+$17.99B), IBM (+$10.79B), MSFT (+$10.37B), CVX (+$9.56B), GE (+$8.78B), PG (+$8.24B), T (+$7.72B), JNJ (+$7.48B), KO (+$7.36B).

Suprise: JP Morgan owns shares of Vanguard

Occidental Petroleum 2001.Blood for oil

The US is spewing poison and killing villagers, stealing oil-rich land in the name of the Drug War.

Is $1.6 billion in US drug-war aid intended to solve Colombia’s problems, or make them worse? Human rights advocates believe that it will finance the world’s largest aerial fumigation campaign, the mass slaughter of villagers, poisoning of Colombia’s lands, and the creation of a South American Vietnam.
Blood for oil

450 members of the U’wa tribe of Colombia, some of them women and children, scattered across the morning soil in front of an advancing line of bulldozers, hired by Occidental Petroleum. Police and military fired tear gas grenades into the families as some of them escaped into the forest, and some into the Cubujon river. Three of the children, unable to fight the river’s current, drowned.

They had been surrounded, on their own land, for over three weeks by 1,000 to 1,500 heavily armed units, after holding a peaceful vigil against Occidental’s occupation of their territory. Military helicopters had swooped in a couple of weeks after they were surrounded, and kidnapped three of their leaders before the attack.

It was February 11 of this year, and as of this writing, 15 other U’wa are still missing because of the debacle, which took place on U’wa sovereign land, with the help of the Colombian government, because a wealthy multinational company wants the oil that lies on their property.

The public was shocked. A general strike was called in the surrounding towns. Afterward, 2,500 people gathered to demonstrate at the drill site. The U’Wa threatened to commit mass suicide if Occidental went forward with their plans. Fearing a public-relations nightmare of exactly this nature, the corporation-loving drug-war promoting Organization of American States (see CC#19, Death to South Americans Inc) has demanded that Occidental cease all activity on U’Wa territory since September of 1997. But to no avail.

Occidental Petroleum, like many multinational corporations, has a long and sordid history. In the 70’s, Occidental was responsible for the infamous “Love Canal” toxic waste disaster. Since then, Occidental’s oil has poisoned innumerable rivers and lakes. Their Ca?o Limon pipeline alone has geysered about 1.7 million barrels of oil into watersheds to the nearby north of the U’Wa territory.

Occidental Petroleum has accused the U’wa of narco-terrorist affiliations. The Organization for Geopolitical Drugwatch (OGD), an international investigative organization, has found that, in Colombia, violent bloodbaths targeting so-called “narco-terrorist sympathizers” have a tendency to occur wherever there are poor farmers or indigenous peoples living on oil or mineral-rich lands (See CC#23, Colombia’s Corporate Killers).

In Colombia, everyone from the military to the highest levels of government to rebel and paramilitary factions are involved in the drug trade, so the label of “narco-terrorist sympathizer” is really meaningless. But it serves a purpose? it means that US drug war aid, police and military intervention can be used, literally, to kill babies in campaigns of terror designed to steal land from the poor and give it to the rich.

Money for blood

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Washington DC, someone stands to get very rich from leading the public to believe that more drug war funding will stop the slaughter of indigenous people and the poor. Political wheels turn, seemingly unrelated to the engines of terror set loose among the U’Wa.

“The US must help Colombia’s democratic government promote the rule of law, economic stability and human rights,” announced Barry McCaffrey, US Drug Czar in an April 6 letter to the Financial Times of London. “35,000 Colombians have been killed.” McCaffrey’s solution to the problem is to make it worse ? send another $1.6 billion in drug-war funding to Colombia. According to McCaffrey, another $4 billion will come from the Colombian government, and another $3.5 billion will come from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a free-trade promoting, world-lending institution with big stakes in extracting resources from South America.

80% of the US’s $1.6 billion will go to military hardware, including 30 Hueys, the kind of helicopter used to kidnap U’wa leaders. Plus 30 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, various other weaponry, and further assistance through the already cooperative CIA, their spy network and spy satellites. The remaining 20% of the package will supposedly go to alternative crop development and human rights initiatives. Since, as reported in the New York Times, Colombian president Pastrana opposes the human rights initiative part of the US package,1 the $4 Billion Colombia is providing for drug war activities and the $3.5 billion from free trade organizations will be spent exclusively on military expansion.

The $1.6 bill package has already passed through the House and, despite some resistance from the US Senate, the package will likely be passed sometime in May or June of this year, according to Valerie Van Slyke of the Colombia Support Network, a human rights organization. “Senate majority leader Trent Lott wants it to go through the regular channels, not as an emergency package,” Van Slyke told Cannabis Culture. “He is a republican from Mississippi and he is not against the package in any way, just the way it was introduced.”

The U’Wa-slaughtering profiteers of Occidental Petroleum are among the multinational corporations that lobbied the senate to pass the $1.6 billion in aid, explained the San Francisco Examiner on March 15, 2000. The Examiner also reported that British Petroleum (BP) ? another oil company implicated in using death squads equipped by US drug-war dollars to clear peasants off of oil-rich land (see CC#23, Colombia’s Corporate Killers) ? was also among the lobbyists. According to the San Francisco paper, helicopter contracts went to Textron and United, which each donated approximately a million dollars to both Republican and Democrat election campaigns.2

The US is able to provide military hardware, training and tactical cooperation to steal land and extract oil from Colombia, because the South American country owes the US billions in development loans. Many of these loans are held by the New-York based IMF. All bets might be off if leftist Colombian rebels, known as the FARC, the de facto government of the Southern half of Colombia, should succeed in taking over. So drug-war funding like the proposed $1.6 billion will also go to all-out war against the FARC,3 who are no more involved in the drug trade than the Colombian government? which is to say that they are quite involved. It is no wonder that the FARC have tried everything from promising to quit growing drugs to a recent call for legalization? anything to stop US politicians from using the drug war as an excuse for military attacks on the FARC.

Colombian soldier shows off bodies of dead FARC rebelsColombian soldier shows off bodies of dead FARC rebelsRaining death

A poison rain is killing Colombia’s rainforests, annihilating food crops, causing birth-defects and an epidemic of cancer, and could potentially unleash a fungus plague to spread across North America, creating widespread famine in Canada and the US.

The rain is a US-backed fumigation campaign that will be tripled when McCaffrey’s $1.6 billion in drug-war funding is approved. The fumigation campaign supposedly targets coca, poppy and marijuana crops, but is really intended as an act of war against rebel-governed southern Colombia and anyone else standing in the way of corporate development in that country.

Farmers and townspeople have demonstrated in crowds of thousands against the aerial fumigations, which President Pastrana promised to stop when he was elected. Pastrana’s promise vaporized in the heat of the billion-plus aid deal from the US. When Pastrana’s own anti-drug chief, Ruben Olarte Reyes, complained against US-backed fumigation in May of ’99, Pastrana fired him.4

McCaffrey and others have tried to down-play the amount of spraying the US is prepared to back, but much of the $1.6 billion in aid is geared toward what could be the biggest fumigation campaign in history. When General Jose Serrano, Director General of the Colombian National Police, attended the House Committee on International Relations hearing on US anti-drug policy in his country in 1998, he explained why the Blackhawk helicopters that the US is buying for Colombia are such a significant purchase.

“The poppy is located at more than 3,000 meters above sea level,” said Serrano. “The UH-1H helicopters do not have the capability to carry necessary elements to the Alps to provide the support for the fumigation. And in the Huey, at those altitudes, we can only send two men up. In the Blackhawk, we could put 15 to 18. Where coca is concerned, the narcotics traffickers are planting the coca at greater distances than the range. They know what the range of the Huey helicopter is. So, they calculate that range and plant the coca farther than that.”

Serrano also revealed that CIA cooperation has been instrumental in aerial fumigations.

“We do have support from CIA satellites to be able to map the illicit cultivation of drug crops,” he said. “The satellite images tell us how many hectares are under cultivation. Also, it follows up and takes a look at the results after fumigation.”

Fumigation genocide

In Colombia, few people can speak freely without being killed. But perhaps she had nothing left to lose. With nervous glances at the audience, Omira Morales told of her personal experience with US-backed fumigations, and about how she had helped, behind the scenes, to organize protests against them.

“One can hide in the house, but the planes come in so low,” Omira told the crowd, assembled by the Women’s League for Peace and Freedom in 1996, when anti-spray protests reached a peak. “Our houses are made from wood and it filters in. Not only that, there is the damage caused by the poisoning of the water. This has produced vomiting and diarrhea. This is one reason we started the protest marches [in March of 1996]. The children began losing their hair and had burns and eye diseases. At this time in the places we cultivated, the land is barren. At one point there were 7 fumigations using 3 planes.”5

US drug czar Barry McCaffrey claims that fumigation efforts are aimed at the FARC’s “dangerous drug production sanctuaries in southern Colombia.”6 But investigative reporters Elsa Nivia and Rachel Massey, working for the Global Pesticide Campaigner, revealed that in June of last year, for example, the Yanacona community of indigenous, traditional food crop farmers was the target of a US spray attack.

“Glyphosate [was] sprayed indiscriminately over houses, community centers, schools, water sources, grazing areas and workers in the fields,” reported the Campaigner’s investigative duo. “Men and women talked about their experience of being ‘sprayed like flies’ and becoming ill. Mothers reported on illnesses among children, including respiratory distress, rashes, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, migraines and conjunctivitis. One child had lost consciousness temporarily. One pregnant mother with five children testified that all her children are sick and her livelihood has been destroyed, leaving her with no way to provide for them ? fish and chickens died, other farm animals became ill. The spraying has destroyed the crops they grow to feed their families?”7

The fumigation of Colombia is not all that different from the US agent-orange project in Vietnam. Agent-orange, laced with deadly dioxins, was dropped indiscriminately from the air to defoliate vast tracts of jungle and destroy villages in Vietnam. It killed droves of American War Vets, riddling them with incurable cancers.

Monsanto, the company that created and supplied agent orange, has been supplying glyphosate for use against Colombian villagers and indigenous people since the 80’s. Should glyphosate spraying continue, Monsanto also stands to make a killing on their new, genetically-engineered glyphosate-resistant crop seeds.

Better death sprays

According to Carolyn Cox, of the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides (NCAP), glyphosate is the pesticide industry’s “first billion dollar product, with predictions of three billion dollars in annual sales this year.”8 No wonder that Monsanto claims the product is harmless, despite scientific evidence and first-hand testimony from thousands of Colombians.

According to a fact-sheet produced by the NCAP, quoting a plethora of well-documented studies, glyphosate causes salivary gland lesions, heart palpitations, increased abnormality of sperm, genetic damage to blood cells, increased risk of miscarriage, premature births, liver tumors, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and thyroid cancer.

The US is pressuring Colombia to accept even more toxic substances to be sprayed over Colombia. Included in this deadly arsenal of potential sprays is Tebuthiuron (aka “Spike”). In the 1980’s, fear of the deadly potential of Spike led the head of the US Department of Agriculture’s narcotics lab to quit in protest over plans to use it in Colombia. Spike’s manufacturer eventually declined to sell the product for anti-drug applications. Despite concerns, and under US pressure, the previous Colombian president approved “experimental use” of Spike when he left office in 1998.7

Now the US State Department is using the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) to pressure Colombia into spraying the genetically modified Fusarium oxysporum fungus.9 The virulent fungus is being touted as more “environmentally friendly” than the toxic herbicides now used. The state department claims that the fungus will attack only coca and marijuana plants, yet Fusarium is known to be a highly adapatable, rapidly mutating fungus which already damages a wide array of food crops around the world. The widespread spraying of the “killer fungus” would undoubtedly produce massive environmental destruction of native plant species.

Colombian police march to recognize soldiers killed fighting FARC rebelsColombian police march to recognize soldiers killed fighting FARC rebelsFARC resistance

Their crops poisoned, their livestock sick and dying in the fields, their families dead, many Southern Colombian farmers turn to the FARC to fight back against the American invasions that have destroyed their lives.

US fumigation campaigns rain more than just deadly toxins on farmers, they also rain lead. The Hueys and Blackhawk helicopters are not for spraying, but for “tactical support” for the fumigation planes. They are troop transport units, and are used to deliver death squads into villages that grow crops in FARC territory. Major media around the world are unmasking the US government’s drug-war scam.

In February of last year, the UK Economist printed a story alleging that $290 million in funding for crop eradication went to equipping helicopters with 20mm cannons,10 to cut down peasant growers in their fields and occasionally kill FARC rebels, who sometimes defend farmers in Southern Colombia by shooting down the planes.

“US-financed fumigation campaigns targeting peasant growers actually work to the guerrilla’s advantage by further exacerbating social tensions,” reported Winifred Tate of the Washington Office of Latin America. “This climate of discontent has helped swell the ranks of FARC and has cast the guerrilla organization as the defender of small peasant farmers.”11

“The base has been destroyed. There is nothing left. The police have been taken away? and the soldiers, too.” On August 6, ’98, the Miami Herald related this tale, told by Luis Rodriguez, a Southern Colombian villager, over a two-way radio. Rodriguez was telling how angry Southern Colombians, who had joined the FARC, swarmed from the jungle and killed over 64 police and soldiers, then took another 100 as hostages.12

Such tales are common in Southern Colombia; there is a general awareness that fumigation means more violence; and US drug war chief McCaffrey’s promise that $1.6 bill in funding will somehow bring an end to the Colombian war is a poorly conceived lie.

Crop smoke screen

Colombian villagers are familiar with the kind of “alternative crop development,” that McCaffrey claims is part of the $1.6 billion package, and in their experience it means yet more spraying.
In November of ’99, the New York Times printed the testimony of coca grower “Dagoberto P”. “It wasn’t crop substitution at all,” Dagoberto told the Times. “It was forced fumigation.”

Dagoberto’s tale is common in Colombia. Even when alternative crop development projects get growing, they are often snuffed out in death squad raids and fumigation campaigns. The August ’99 issue of The Global Pesticide Campaigner described how the Colombian towns of Albania and Macizo had successfully begun growing food crops instead of coca and marijuana. They were funded not by US dollars, but by money from the local churches, the UN and the Colombian government.

The Campaigner described “intercropped gardens of native species, pasture areas with tree cover, and small-scale fish farming” ? all wiped out by US-backed fumigation using the toxic glyphosate. Adults and children lay sick in their beds while crops wilted and fish died.7 The Washington Office on Latin America reports the US-backed fumigation of similar non-US funded crop development experiments across Colombia.11

In the past, very little US bucks allocated for crop development have even been spent. Last year, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) revealed to the press that Congress had passed a $15 million crop development package for Colombia in 1998, but by late 1999 only $500,000 had been spent.

Alternative crop development programs are a threat to the multinational corporate forces that sponsor the war on drugs. The big oil, gold and emerald corporations that profit from the drug war already have enough problems clearing peasant farmers off of mineral-rich lands. The reality of successful farming in Colombia might also raise the poverty-level wages currently paid in factories. Why should Colombians work for pennies per hour in heavily-polluted corporate sweatshops when they can successfully work the land?

Counter-spray revolution

Citing widespread environmental degradation, Juan Mayr ? the Colombian Minister of the Environment for the Amazonia region ? called a temporary halt to US spray campaigns over the southern half of the country last March..

Mayr’s announcement came after a February meeting with local mayors and governors, who reported “grave concern for the health of residents of the region, in particular for peasants and indigenous people,” and “pollution and environmental degradation of the headwaters of the region and of the Colombian rainforest” as a result of aerial glyphosate spraying. Attendees of the conference concluded that “The constitutional rights of personal integrity, health, and access to food are being violated as subsistence food crops are destroyed along with the illicit crops.”

In an atmosphere where death threats are as common as office memos, Mayr’s bold stance may last only as long as he lives. In North America, an act of drug-war defiance can be as safe as choosing to ride your bike or walk, instead of taking your car. If all cannabis smokers had even a fraction of the bravery shown by politician Juan Mayr, prohibition would have ended long ago.
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