तवो एक्साम्प्लेस, विथ उएस्तिओन्स

A little anniversary essay...enjoy?...


TWO EXAMPLES, WITH QUESTIONS

A Thoroughly Biased and Severely Rhetorical Analysis of Power-Structure Objective and Its Manifestations


Preface

This is one in an ongoing series of essays seeking to prove by example the hypothesis that there are those who exert their influence by allowing things to happen; not by starting things, but by not stopping things. This article points, and not gently, to two of those instances: to the CIA - M/I Complex free-for-all in the wake of WWII (the Then), and the endgame currently displayed by Big Oil (the Now) as resources dwindle, demand swells and opportunity balloons. It's not a new theory: Buckminster Fuller called those in the shadows the "Power Elite," Churchill was convinced there walk among us factions of a "High Cabal" and Anakin Skywalker seemed truly enamored with some entity only visible by its effect...I'm not quite there, but am willing to go as far as claiming there exists an element that, throughout human history, adopts an approach more akin to "So who's complaining?"

San Diego, California
July, 2008

(I) Then

Some considered - while others, including the author of the work, positively dismissed - Edward Lansdale as the role model for The Quiet American. What is beyond dispute is that Lansdale did what he did in Vietnam, and that his appointment by Allen Dulles as the first American officially involved in that covert piece of Indochinese history was one of assisting the French by heading up the newly-minted Saigon Military Mission. Noteworthy, according to at least one former Lansdale associate, because it wasn't in Saigon, it wasn't military and it didn't assist the French (successfully) - though, to be fair, Dien Bien Phu, a bellwether if ever there was one, fell just before Lansdale hit baggage claim in June of '54. Did Col. Lansdale think it a bit odd that a wily old man and former OSS asset from '45, one who assisted us against the Japanese, was now rallying enough Viets to beat down the French nine years later? Did he think the counterinsurgency tactics he honed so finely with Ramon Magsaysay in the Philippines of the early fifties would again fly with this Diem puppet-fella in the Vietnam of the late fifties? We can look to his memoirs, taking them at face value while considering the source, but are otherwise left to speculate what level of blinding human ignorance was required for the CIA to take 10,000 generations of rice and ancestor worship and say, in effect, "Here; this is called the 17th parallel. Line up and face south. This is your new home." And then give a resourceful and creative paramilitarist like Lansdale a blank check, one drawn from the "Greater Good" account.

Though it doesn't come up much (and in fact is generally ignored), over a million people were transferred from North to South Vietnam during this time in the mid-1950s. Told they were free to move, a mass exodus ensued, one helped along by US Navy ships and the CIA's Civilian Air Transport. Why would people that are tied so deeply to village, to homeland, so willingly abandoned everything to become refugees in their own country? Remember, this after fighting the French and persevering at great cost, and the Japanese before them, then French colonialism, then China, etc. So what could possibly scare the shit out them so much that each would join a million other mostly Catholic homeless in the unwelcoming South? We can assume the worst of Hanoi during that period, that these emigres-traitors met hideous fates whenever possible, but we can't leave it there. Just as CIA director Allen Dulles had privately green-lighted the go ahead with respect to the SMM, his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, was openly bellicose in his assessment: "We could carry on effective guerrilla operations...and we can raise hell." Not exactly vague, and one might be forgiven to interpret this to mean state-sponsored terrorism condoned at the highest levels of the US government. What does seem clear is that Lansdale operated with impunity during this campaign of political and psychological warfare, cloaked in the nobility of the time.

Another introspective situation arises from something Lansdale did back in the states. His co-authored "Training Under the Mutual Security Program" shows a blueprint, one no doubt presented and implemented the world over, and certainly instilled in every School of the Americas graduate before going back to respective Latin-infused countries to slaughter with both permission and encouragement. It unequivocally states that the military most do the will of the people - by becoming those people. And Lansdale is quite candid where he gets his inspiration: from Mao Zedong, from the Chairman's "the army are the fish, the people are the water - keep the fish in the water" outlook. So here we have, just a couple of years after the misery of the Great Leap Forward has been inaugurated, a fascinating recipe that, when followed, will save huge swathes of confused and unwashed peasantry from the evils of communism: just emulate one of its most powerful henchmen.

An interesting, and occasionally labeled successful, basis for creating sham governments ruled by manicured despots; and a clandestine policy decision that sinks considerably farther down the rabbit hole than that gross CIA misnomer of mere "Fun and Games."


Questions

1a) How is success measured? By not failing? What defines failure?

1b) When this approach is analyzed in "hotwash" context (whether it be a country, a time frame or the entire Cold War), can a beneficiary be named, and regardless of vantage point? If we reverse the causality > analysis model, starting instead with analyzing effect, do the causes change? Furthermore, if the stated effect starts to resemble the definition of objective at any point along the given timeline, thereby forcing additional causes under the column of perpetuation (if not initiation), what conclusions are now available? What predictions?

2) If we can lift the level of argument past interchangeable labels such as "freedom-fighter" or "terrorist," "revolutionary" or "counter insurgent," etc., and we are mature enough to accept that empires sustain themselves through conquest and tribute, can we hold an examination of Lansdale, and by extension all Lansdales, under the lens of objective scrutiny long enough to demonstrate conclusively that he/they either helped ameliorate the Cold War or helped perpetuate it? If we can present consensus and are in general agreement over which groups were not beneficiaries of the Cold War, can we present any groups that were?

3) If the CIA has ever got it right, are specifics available? Granted, this question may seem flip. It isn't.


(II) Now

A more current observation of the way things work still has the imprimatur of ideology all over it, and yet ideology is somehow not nearly as significant, at least not in the context of this example. Whereas a consensus existed (and still exists) that communism started somewhere "over there," forcing us to engage it lest we find ourselves surrounded by fallen, bloodthirsty dominoes, terrorism has always existed, and though the US can't take credit for being the first country to openly sanction Islamic fundamentalism, it has been, without question, one of the most successful. With more than a little irony, it could be argued that the death knell for Soviet communism was the Frankenstein by-product of the US / Saudi / Pakistani intelligence community: the loosely organized, well financed mujahideen of 1980s Afghanistan. The Cold War on Terror, as the commissioned flautist exterminates our rats, and then, sufficiently motivated, exterminates our children. (Whom did we think we were hiring?) But no time to digress; the topic at hand, the purpose of this essay, is the exposure of what lies beneath that veneer of ideology and propaganda.

As bad as the neo-conservatives are and always have been (is there any doubt left as to the true motivations of these spineless sheep, that "hegemony" translates into "Viagra" in neo-speak?), even they appeared to have been trumped in Iraq. And by names that aren't household. Simply put, the neo-cons wanted to privatize the Iraqi oil industry, which makes perfect sense, if you're a neo-con. However, that's not the ultimate in maximizing profit potential.

Every presented reason to go to Iraq could be countered in ten seconds by saying "but Pakistan actually had both al-Qaeda and WMDs." (Actually, that only took about four.) Obviously, it was always clear that a foothold was necessary in geostrategic terms for the next century or so. Pakistan, our supposed pal, comes equipped with both nukes and 170 million people. Iran, with 70 million adherents who generally feel the same about their simian cheerleader as we in this country feel about ours, provides the perfect understudy - one that can never get top billing, as it is most effective cloaked in 24/7 threat status - all as the plan to colonize what's left of Iraq's 30 million people and their petroleum reserves struts and frets its hour upon the stage. Too simple? Perhaps. But facts are facts: For one, we knew exactly where al-Qaeda was because we put them there. This explains both Afghanistan and, in a broad stroke of foreign policy that borders on treason, the hands-off policy regarding Pakistan, specifically Waziristan - though an argument could be made, successfully, that the greatest danger lie not with cave-dwelling zealots hoarding Soviet ammo but the Pakistani ISI, as their fingers are in everything, including 9/11. And for two, the Bush dynasty has willingly mortgaged everything up to and including its dipshit boy-king in order to appease the Saudis, so invading that country, even if through it terrorism financing flows like its crude, is off limits. Anathema, it would seem, for some. (Trick question: was James Baker Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury or did his law firm represent the entire country of Saudi Arabia?). That leaves us with the Wolfowitz Doctrine, known by its 21st century nickname, the Bush Doctrine.

Let's analyze:

These people care not a whit about the human cost, and have repeatedly exhibited their propensity to keep mucking things up (or fucking things up) with such horrendous decision making, thoroughly making the world more violent in the process (J. Paul Bremer, anyone?) So no news there. But what if the objective was and really is to keep that oil in the ground? Though some were no doubt willingly complicit in so many respects, it appears that the neo-cons were used as tools, just like they marshaled (or "tooled") the American public along with a steady diet of fear. Then they, too, were led down a path.

Who has stepped in and back out as needed? All evidence appears to point toward some Black Hand that will see to it that Iraqi oil is not privatized, yet is. That the Iraqi government and oil ministry are doing exactly what they are supposed to do in their house-negro status. Like the hammer dropping when that upstart Mossadegh had the nerve to desire nationalizing his country's carbon goodies, here is the inverse, sorta. Do not sell off the oil fields. Do not privatize; nationalize, and with stipulations decorating the periphery of a fledgling democacy's new constitution while irreversibly goring its innards. Houston, we don't have a problem...

Is it not surprising, then, that Texans (or "Beyond" Petroleum for that matter) look at a very different long throw? Nationalization stays, but with benefits. "Production Sharing Agreements" is the new silk for this emperor; and it's not that he is naked and nobody will speak, but only that a few seem to get it, and most of them are quite happy keeping mum. (A brief, brutal synopsis is attached below; see Appendix A: Headlines Cribbed from the Cooperative Research Web Site. Also, Greg Palast excels at pointing this out, and with wonderfully succinct phrasing such as "...conspiracy nuts are convinced there was a plan to confiscate Iraqi oil. They're wrong. There were two." see Appendix B: Links [iv].)

The attentive researcher may recall that Ahmed Chalabi, whose pre-war fables spun out of whole neo-con-sponsored cloth helped facilitate the destruction of an entire country, and who would not have been out of place videotaped with a cellphone atop those wooden rafters alongside Saddam Hussein, was instead both deputy prime minister and acting oil minister, simultaneously, twice, in 2005. Those heavily circulated stories about how Chalabi "conned the neo-cons," while convenient, are a disservice. A crook, parroting the curveball allegations of another crook (both Iraqi embezzlers), is simply not enough to override the entire American intelligence apparatus, let alone dupe the neo-conservative leviathan. Such things are, and were, allowed to happen. It helps to remember that if the outcome is already predetermined, the empirical data that gets you there may yet prove malleable. Or subject to evaporation. It hurts to remember that those whose qualifications regarding Iraq are impeccable, and whose toenail clippings contain more patriotism than the whole of the Bush Administration, are generally marginalized. (Two Examples - not the essay, but the sentence: Scott Ritter and Joe Wilson.)

Regime change by any means necessary.

Now, 50 years after Mossadegh became a communist (hey; Dubya once became a Christian), we have a situation where the most money to be made is by leaving that buried treasure in the ground. Interesting, isn't it, that the "National" Iranian Oil Company, which was the 1948 renaming of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, a company still in the full stride of decades of humping the Iranian people (and who eventually changed its own moniker to British Petroleum) became, in the wake of the '53 coup, an oil pie chart that was 40% Brit, 40% Yankee, 12% Royal Dutch and the rest French? That is not a typo; the National Iranian Oil Company was British, American, Dutch and French. True, things were different then, seemingly unfettered and less complicated. We had Leave It To Beaver, they had SAVAK...a simpler time...

It is also interesting to note that those contracts inked in Tehran in 1953 were for 25 years. We'll never know what quelling the Iranian Revolution would have done (what, no WMD?), but one clear beneficiary presents itself in the wake of '79: oil prices shot through the Reaganomic roof. The reader is left to speculate how much oil revenue would have been lost had those hostages been snatched in '76 or, removing Carter from the equation altogether, '75. Would that have affected policy differently? Pure speculation, of course. However, the reader is also free to reflect on how, one year after Mossadegh got the boot, the United Fruit Company helped decide exactly when Guatemala would become a communist country, thereby ensuring that freedom-loving plantains stay liberated.

Back to the future: There are Iraqis who openly question why their country sits on so much oil, yet unlike other Arabs they cannot bathe in its wealth. Over here (except for the one percent that is actually shouldering the responsibility over there), Americans do not want and would not want to lose their quality of life, and have never shied away from impinging upon another's quality of life in order to further sustain their own. We are hardly a saintly bunch. However, when (not if) that quality of life actually diminishes for most, and with those few that are gaining immense riches in the process by being dishonest, disloyal and not in the least patriotic, then, like anything else unsustainable, a tipping point may very well occur. One no doubt being discussed, if not in boardrooms, at least on the back nine.

In closing, a cursory review of some simple figures may support this argument better than any long-winded accusations. The price of oil was around $22 a barrel when this war started. And, like that dim-witted bunny from the 70's cereal ads, therein lies the naked truth: Silly Neo-Cons; Oil is for Keeps! This is as fascinating as it is leveling: General Garner, fired by Rumsfeld for having the audacity to demand elections and not sell off the oil fields, is actually closer to the desired result than Rumsfeld, though history will reflect that General Garner was doing the right things for the right reasons. One wonders if the neo-cons didn't see the long throw since (they semi-rightly assumed) they were busy crafting it. Or perhaps that realization became painfully obvious later, the realization that they were water-carriers (or petroleum-shleppers) for a cabal that is hiding in plain sight.

Last year, when the price of oil had ballooned to a whopping $60 a barrel, that sent reserves value for Big Oil into the trillions. At least two of them (not trillion, singular). So when oil is 2 & 1/2 times that $60, at $150 a barrel, is it accurate to assume that those reserves are now worth $5 trillion? Divided over five years, that's about 20 billion a week in green/black gold, and lays bare what is really important when compared to the $2 or $3 billion spent each week on the Iraq war - even as obscene as that latter figure is given what little percentage that actually, financially, "supports the troops." And Big Oil isn't the one spending that $2 to $3 billion - they are just profiting from it.

An analogy comes to mind, one explaining the supposed efficacy in hiring prostitutes: "You're not paying them to stay, you're paying them to leave." The neo-cons just lacked vision, apparently, though they played a highly significant role. Some will no doubt stay behind, running the embassy or picking up the dry cleaning. But with respect to objective, they can leave.


Questions

1) If it can be shown that a government once for, by and of the people has eclipsed those directives during the first decade of the 21st century in favor of protecting corporate interests at a greater clip than it did during the whole of the 20th century; if, indeed, we are morphing from the American covert-ness of the 1970s to the British overt-ness 1770s, what drastic measures this side of a firing squad are required so that the republic doesn't descend into armed chaos and economic ruin? At which point are elected/appointed officials who openly fracture their country's military and economic stability dragged into the public square?

(Extra credit assignment: Compare and contrast two hyper-intelligent figures in foreign policy decision making, Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld. Show whether arrogant negligence, or negligent arrogance, is either an asset or a liability in time of war. Cite clear examples and then define as strengths or weaknesses the ability to manipulate actionable intel, the incapacity to adjust in real time, etc. Finally, condense all argument into a one-paragraph conclusion explaining who was the bigger asshole.)

2) Can limitations be put on participants (businesses) in a free market economy when those participants flagrantly ignore ethical and equitable business practices, all while enjoying the benefits of the host country supporting them? Can we modify the Trading with the Enemy Act to include new definitions of "enemy?" At what point does openly-sanctioned war profiteering and similarly treasonous behavior make the aforementioned firing squad look attractive?

3) When Ngo Dinh Diem handed down edicts that sent the French and the Chinese packing, and the replacement of any established legal, economic or societal infrastructure became an immediate American problem, or when J. Paul Bremer unemployed both the Iraqi army and the entire Ba'ath party with the stroke of a pen, and the replacement of any established legal, economic or societal infrastructure became an immediate American problem, is it enough to file this away under "myopic stupidity?" In the context of this essay, no. With Diem, he didn't lift a chopstick without the CIA's permission. As for Bremer some fifty years later, those who wield influence over such puppets are far less clandestine. The question becomes one that arises repeatedly throughout history: Who benefits from such chaos? In Iraq, one beneficiary is clear. Indeed, when fascism left that country, its replacement wore a suit and stared at the ground. Academically, it may prove helpful to consider whether the oil companies would have held the same covert "lay low and wait" posture shadowing American policy if the politburo in Beijing had decided in the 1990s that Iraq needed to be annexed. Framed this way, that history can always repeat itself, particularly with respect to a successful business model, what future trends might we expect as resources dwindle?


Conclusion (with Mini-Examples)

i) As of this writing, the US Supreme Court has slashed the amount awarded to the victims of the Exxon Valdez spill. Whether even that fraction ($500,000) is eventually paid out, twenty years have passed and the native people, and their coastline, are still destroyed. Indeed, it would seem the natives' best play would have been, upon hearing that $500 billion in punitive damages had been awarded that day in 1994, to politely refuse, and ask the judge instead for $500,000 in Exxon stock. (Exxon Mobil's profits for 2007 alone amounted to some $40.6 billion, another new record.) The reality, however, is that corporate interests very much resemble those of the pathogens still infesting Prince William Sound. Simply due to the nature of its construction, a typical corporation's worldview roughly mirrors the sympathy found in a colony of insects.

ii) The Honourable East India Company, a business, for a time owned most of India, a country, and started a war with China, another country. It was a war fought championing the rights of drug dealers. After getting a "no-bid contract" (actually a "no-tax contract") that allowed the company to unload tea in the Colonies at a rate cheaper than what smugglers like Sam Adams and John Hancock were able to match, a wave of insurgent/patriotism literally spilled into Boston Harbor. Freedom-fighting contras conducting special ops dressed as Narrangasett Indians told big business exactly where to stick it.

We in this country take great pride in the American Revolution, and if for no other reason than that one aspect of having corporate interests and their government lackeys summarily fuck off, we should. Okay; for that whole freedom/liberty thing also.

That system needed a new system.

This system needs a new system.

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Appendix A: Headlines Cribbed from the Cooperative Research Web Site

These headlines are over a year old, but within these few paragraphs, and alongside the fact that this has all but been ignored by the American media, they provide an excellent snapshot of how the future of Iraq will truly be shaped.


February 15, 2007: Draft Iraqi Oil Law Undergoes Additional Changes Changes are again made to the draft of the proposed Iraqi oil law. [ASIA TIMES, 2/28/2007]

According to this draft: Foreign corporations would have access to nearly every sector of Iraq's oil and natural gas industry, including service contracts on existing fields that are already being managed and operated by the Iraqi National Oil Company (INOC). For fields that have been discovered, but which are not currently being developed, the law would require INOC to be a partner in developing these fields. But the new oil law does not require participation of the INOC or any private Iraqi companies in contracts for fields that have not yet been discovered. In such cases, the new law would permit foreign companies to have full access. [IRAQI COUNCIL OF MINISTERS, 2/2007; INTER PRESS SERVICE, 2/28/2007; ASIA TIMES, 2/28/2007]

Companies contracted to develop oil fields would be given exclusive control of fields for up to 35 years, and would be guaranteed profits for 25 years. Foreign companies would not be required to partner with an Iraqi company or reinvest any of its profits in the Iraqi economy. Nor would they have to employ or train Iraqi workers, or engage in any other effort to transfer technology and skills to the Iraqis. [IRAQI COUNCIL OF MINISTERS, 2/2007; ASIA TIMES, 2/28/2007]

An Iraqi Federal Oil and Gas Council would be established and given the ultimate decision-making authority in determining what kinds of contracts could be used to develop Iraq's oil and what would be done with the existing exploration and production contracts already signed with French, Chinese, Russian, and other foreign companies. The law states that council members would include, among others, "executive managers from important related petroleum companies." As an article in the Asian Times notes, "[I]t is possible that foreign oil-company executives could sit on the council. It would be unprecedented for a sovereign country to have, for instance, an executive of ExxonMobil on the board of its key oil-and-gas decision-making body." There is no language in the law that would prevent foreign corporate executives sitting on the council from making decisions about their own contracts. And there is no requirement that a quorum be present when making decisions. The Asian Times article notes, "Thus, if only five members of the Federal Oil and Gas Council met—one from ExxonMobil, Shell, ChevronTexaco and two Iraqis—the foreign company representatives would apparently be permitted to approve contacts for themselves." The new law does not specify what kind of oil agreements could be signed between Iraq and private firms to develop Iraq's oil. Rather it leaves this question to the council, which would be permitted to approve and rewrite contracts using whatever type is agreed upon by a "two-thirds majority of the members in attendance." Previous drafts o f the law had specifically mentioned production sharing agreements (PSAs), a controversial type of contract that is favored by the oil companies. [ASIA TIMES, 2/28/2007] That model, favored by the US and by oil companies, was opposed by many Iraqis, including Iraqi oil professionals, engineers, and technicians in the unions. The Iraqis prefer technical service contracts, like the ones used in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Under such contracts foreign companies would be allowed to participate in the development of oil fields, but only for a limited time. [DEMOCRACY NOW!, 2/20/2007] The companies would be paid to build a refinery, lay a pipeline, or offer consultancy services, but then would leave afterwards. This type of arrangement would help transfer technical expertise and skills to Iraqis. "It is a much more equitable relationship because the control of production, development of oil will stay with the Iraqi state," notes Ewa Jasiewicz, a researcher at PLATFORM, a British human rights and environmental group that monitors the oil industry. She notes that no other country in the Middle East that is a large oil producer would ever sign a PSA because it's "a form of privatization and… it's not in their interests." Critics also note that the signing of PSA agreements with US oil companies would add fuel to the unrest in Iraq and that the US would attempt to legitimize its continuing presence in Iraq with assertions about the need to safeguard US business interests. [INTER PRESS SERVICE, 2/28/2007]

Iraq's national government would not have control over production levels. Rather, the contractee developing a field—e.g., the INOC, or a foreign or domestic company—would be able to decide how much oil to produce. However, the document does say: "In the event that, for national policy considerations, there is a need to introduce limitations on the national level of petroleum production, such limitations shall be applied in a fair and equitable manner and on a pro rata basis for each contract area on the basis of approved field-development plans." But it does not specify who has the authority to introduce such nation-wide limitations or how production levels might be lowered in a "fair and equitable manner." The language appears to signify that Iraq would no longer work with OPEC or other similar organizations. [IRAQI COUNCIL OF MINISTERS, 2/2007; ASIA TIMES, 2/28/2007]

Oil revenues would be distributed to all of Iraq's 18 provinces according to their population sizes. Regional administrations, not Iraq's central government, would have the authority to negotiate contracts with foreign oil companies, monitor contracts, and deal with small disputes. But the ultimate authority would lie with the Federal Oil and Gas Council which would be able to veto decisions made by regional authorities. Critics say this arrangement almost encourages the split of Iraq into three different regions or even three different states. According to Raed Jarrar, Iraq Project Director for Global Exchange, a situation like this would mean that "Iraqis in different provinces will start signing contracts directly with foreign companies and competing between themselves, among themselves, among different Iraqi provinces, to get the oil companies to go… there without any centralized way in controlling this and thinking of the Iraqi interest and protecting Iraq as a country." [IRAQI COUNCIL OF MINISTERS, 2/2007; INTER PRESS SERVICE, 2/28/2007]

February 26, 2007: Iraq Cabinet Approves New Oil Law; Iraq Parliament Has Not Seen It, While Western Governments and Foreign Oil Companies Have

Iraq's cabinet approves the February 15 draft of the proposed Iraqi oil law (see February 15, 2007). The law has not yet been seen by Iraq's parliament. The only parties that have reviewed the law, aside from its authors, have been nine international oil companies, the British and US governments, and the International Monetary Fund. The cabinet expects that the law will be quickly passed by Iraq's parliament and implemented by the end of May. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 2/26/2007; INTER PRESS SERVICE, 2/28/2007]


Appendix B: Links

i) A link to the official draft of the Oil and Gas Law of the Iraq Republic:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=4868

(Not quite the Valachi Papers, but pretty close.)

ii) Here, when one has an afternoon to kill, are the actual Valachi Papers, plus a hefty dose of slanted perspective:

http://www.carbonweb.org/showitem.asp?article=55&parent=4&link=Y&gp=3

http://www.iraqoillaw.com/

iii) Video of a briefing by Hassan Juma'a Awad, President of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, displaying his formidable task of facing down not only the likes of KBR and Shell, but his own country's corrupt politicians and the re-wording of the ominous phrase "Production Sharing Agreements." Specifically noteworthy: the mention of the, quote, "loophole in the Iraqi Constitution" that gives Iraq's 18 provinces the freedom to decide who gets to do what and where, bypassing any national decision making in Baghdad. This, in a nutshell, is a tailor made example of how the tentacles of semi-invisible power structures actually wield their influence; in this case, the framing is that of the Iraqi National Oil Company - whose name strongly suggests an Iraqi company charged with focusing on its nation's oil - a company that Exxon, Shell, BP and the rest all but pat on the head like the dim stepchild they've engineered it to be. Meanwhile, the Iraqi Federal Oil and Gas Council is free to be staffed by global industry experts, and can approve or veto decisions made at the regional level, the regional level that is itself dealing directly with the oil consortiums.

As of this writing, oil costs roughly $1.50 per barrel to extract from Iraqi soil, and sells for roughly $150.00 a barrel on the world market. The Honourable East India Company would be proud.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/jumaa030807.html

iv) Finally, if one can only spare five minutes and considers pictures helpful, there is always the unstoppable Greg Palast (as excellent as it is brief, the following should be printed, laminated and used as place mats in every American household):

http://www.gregpalast.com/wp-content/uploads/smiraqtimeline.jpg


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