Black Gold - Published in Re:Mix Dec 2002
Oil. Black gold underwrites the planet. Anyone living in the first world cannot avoid using oil. Most people think of oil as petroleum and refined gases: a greasy viscous combustible liquid. Plastic is a product refined from oil compounds as are CDs and some foods, candles and perfumes. We are immersed in oil-derived products; computer cases and cabling, implements, and even clothes are saturated with nylon compounds, waterproof coating and zipper teeth. You’d have to be naïve not to understand that efforts to control oil resources explain world political issues. If you slept through your history classes at high school, hear this: It’s always been about oil.
Consider this. Worldwide oil consumption is expected to exceed available resources within our lifetimes; this includes untapped reservoirs and stockpiles. The economic dependency on annual growth in output to remain stable of a militant, industrial and capitalist civilisation constantly multiplies demand. The world uses about 26 billion barrels of oil per year, but discovers only about six billion in new fields. Known global oil resources are expected to slow to a trickle within 2050 years. Geologists favour an earlier date than sociologists and economists.
Hitler drove his armies to the gates of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942 for the oil reserves beneath the Caspian Sea, desperately needed to supply his war machine. The hustling for the Caspian Sea oil never ended. The Russians will not grant independence for Chenchnya because the discovery of vast reservoirs of oil beneath Chenchnya in the late 1970s ensured that the region would be a global bone of contention as multinational corporations vie for rights to exploitation.
The key is Afghanistan where a 1,000-mile pipeline can be laid from landlocked Turkmenistan through long valleys to Pakistan and from there to the Red Sea. Cold war attempts to control the region resulted in the Russo-Afghan war: a decade of bitter fighting by American-backed Afghan and Arab mercenaries (including Osama bin Laden, recruited by then CIA director, drug smuggler and war profiteer George Bush Sr.) against Russian soldiers. Eventually the war collapsed the Russian economy and ended the cold war.
Fast forward to present day, and the hustling for Middle East oil continues. Why does democratic USA continue to back feudal Saudi Arabia, where all the 9/11 suspects were said to come from? With military bases in Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar, the American military engine’s foothold in the Mediterranean, the Gulf, and the Arabian land mass became permanent after 1990’s Gulf War instigated by then President of the United States, Bush Sr. The American presence is justified as a contra-precaution against invasions by Iraq and Iran in return for plentiful access to oil. It is a great source of irritation for Middle Eastern nations: effectively a military occupation.
Every day the newspapers tell you about the price and scarcity of oil and about unchecked American or American-funded aggression in the Middle East. Terror grips the world every day. The media in America and the rest of the white world are pounding the war drums. Weekly, a new villain is discovered; if it’s not Osama bin Laden, it’s the Washington sniper, and now it’s a ‘rediscovered’ Saddam Hussein and his Iraq.
News media clamour that Iraq poses a threat to the civilised world because of its huge storehouse of biological weapons and potential nuclear capabilities. What they omit is that America and Britain sold these biological weapons to Iraq in the 1970s and 1980s. They also omit that America is the biggest violator of UN law; producing illegal biological weapons; environmental emissions; supplying Israel with financial and military assistance in its genocidal drive through the Occupied Territories of Palestine; daily bombing Iraq; and all manner of unspeakable covert operations.
The truth is that America badly needs Iraq oil. It has hit an energy supply ceiling exacerbated by bad management and reckless consumption. California’s power blackouts in 2000 were triggered by complete deregulation of the energy industry and a shortage of oil to generate electricity with, which meant that power suppliers withheld energy until bills were paid, but because of Enron-style ‘creative’ accountancy practices, that didn’t happen. This is the future of energy in America: shortages. Thus, America’s oil dependency endangers its national security. America consumes roughly 8 billion barrels of oil a year or a quarter of all global oil production. It is not just America that consumes too much oil. So do all the first world countries, including us.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, formed when Venezuela approached its competitors Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia to set a stable price for crude oil in 1949, is a powerful intergovernment oil cartel protecting and unifying oil interests. OPEC believe they ensure a fair return on capital to petroleum industry investors.
Fair? The Group of 7 (G7) countries OPEC supplies, America, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and the UK, generated US$1.7 trillion dollars in taxes from $850 billion dollars worth of OPEC oil revenue over the period 19962000; double the price. The real profiteers (privateers) are the governments of consuming nations, including New Zealand and Australia. The UK receives four times more money from taxation than what OPEC gets from the sale of crude. Our government’s expenditure is also hooked on the tax revenues from our economic dependency on oil. Our governments readily see that our ‘strategic interests’ are at stake. That’s why New Zealand SAS lost limbs to American landmines in Afghanistan and why our minister of trade in opposition warns of American trade sanctions, which were lightened when our governments committed forces to Iraq in early November.
It’s a cliché, but it really is all about maintaining the oppressive white supremacist industrial-military complex of the ‘first’ world. Capitalists exploit consumer dependency on oil. Even at the end of October, OPEC oil prices were at their lowest for the eleventh week with no discernable effect on domestic oil prices. Where does the difference go? Meanwhile, news publishers worldwide are growing alarmed at the possible repercussions American control of the Middle East oil reserves would have on the planet. UN sanctions block access to an enormous 112 billion barrels of crude beneath Iraq’s radioactive sands; the second largest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia’s 264.2 billion barrels. Consider the well-documented connections the current Bush administration has with the oil, pharmaceutical, energy and armaments industries: Bush with Harken; Ashcroft with Enron; Cheney with Haliburton; and Rice with Chervon.
Why wage war on Iraq, when so far the oil industry and the ‘first’ world companies have gotten their way through military dominance in Arabia? The question may be answered by asking who stands to profit from a war on Iraq? Oil industry investors stand to sweep a bonanza if a new Iraqi regime biddable by the US replaces Hussein. One of these investor families is a family with war and oil connections going at least three generations back to a key financier to Hitler, Prescott Bush.
The most cynical realist cannot shy from considering the accusation that the tragedy of 9/11 was allowed to happen to pre-empt the future security of the United States of America. Strategists may have seen inevitable terrorism within America, and seen it as no bad thing. For years before 9/11, thinktanks have predicted a future of worldwide terrorism from dispossessed peoples, as well as a future of oil and water wars: a fourth world war.
So, what does all this have to do with Re:Mix readers? You are involved whether you like it or not. For one thing, this magazine would never reach you. Without oil the records played by DJs would not be made. Your CDs couldn’t be so cheap. Your bottles of Coca Cola would still be glass. You couldn’t fly out of the country. Your nightclub couldn’t sell imported alcohol. You wouldn’t be trading mp3s, surfing the net, chatting on IM, or writing emails. Power wouldn’t be conducted through cables to you. Oil is everywhere, in everything; it flows, and we live. Our lives are soaked in the destruction of the lives of millions of non-white people, crushed so that the ‘first’ world can enjoy abundant oil. Nameless people without number. People like us.
Consider this. Worldwide oil consumption is expected to exceed available resources within our lifetimes; this includes untapped reservoirs and stockpiles. The economic dependency on annual growth in output to remain stable of a militant, industrial and capitalist civilisation constantly multiplies demand. The world uses about 26 billion barrels of oil per year, but discovers only about six billion in new fields. Known global oil resources are expected to slow to a trickle within 2050 years. Geologists favour an earlier date than sociologists and economists.
Hitler drove his armies to the gates of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942 for the oil reserves beneath the Caspian Sea, desperately needed to supply his war machine. The hustling for the Caspian Sea oil never ended. The Russians will not grant independence for Chenchnya because the discovery of vast reservoirs of oil beneath Chenchnya in the late 1970s ensured that the region would be a global bone of contention as multinational corporations vie for rights to exploitation.
The key is Afghanistan where a 1,000-mile pipeline can be laid from landlocked Turkmenistan through long valleys to Pakistan and from there to the Red Sea. Cold war attempts to control the region resulted in the Russo-Afghan war: a decade of bitter fighting by American-backed Afghan and Arab mercenaries (including Osama bin Laden, recruited by then CIA director, drug smuggler and war profiteer George Bush Sr.) against Russian soldiers. Eventually the war collapsed the Russian economy and ended the cold war.
Fast forward to present day, and the hustling for Middle East oil continues. Why does democratic USA continue to back feudal Saudi Arabia, where all the 9/11 suspects were said to come from? With military bases in Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar, the American military engine’s foothold in the Mediterranean, the Gulf, and the Arabian land mass became permanent after 1990’s Gulf War instigated by then President of the United States, Bush Sr. The American presence is justified as a contra-precaution against invasions by Iraq and Iran in return for plentiful access to oil. It is a great source of irritation for Middle Eastern nations: effectively a military occupation.
Every day the newspapers tell you about the price and scarcity of oil and about unchecked American or American-funded aggression in the Middle East. Terror grips the world every day. The media in America and the rest of the white world are pounding the war drums. Weekly, a new villain is discovered; if it’s not Osama bin Laden, it’s the Washington sniper, and now it’s a ‘rediscovered’ Saddam Hussein and his Iraq.
News media clamour that Iraq poses a threat to the civilised world because of its huge storehouse of biological weapons and potential nuclear capabilities. What they omit is that America and Britain sold these biological weapons to Iraq in the 1970s and 1980s. They also omit that America is the biggest violator of UN law; producing illegal biological weapons; environmental emissions; supplying Israel with financial and military assistance in its genocidal drive through the Occupied Territories of Palestine; daily bombing Iraq; and all manner of unspeakable covert operations.
The truth is that America badly needs Iraq oil. It has hit an energy supply ceiling exacerbated by bad management and reckless consumption. California’s power blackouts in 2000 were triggered by complete deregulation of the energy industry and a shortage of oil to generate electricity with, which meant that power suppliers withheld energy until bills were paid, but because of Enron-style ‘creative’ accountancy practices, that didn’t happen. This is the future of energy in America: shortages. Thus, America’s oil dependency endangers its national security. America consumes roughly 8 billion barrels of oil a year or a quarter of all global oil production. It is not just America that consumes too much oil. So do all the first world countries, including us.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, formed when Venezuela approached its competitors Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia to set a stable price for crude oil in 1949, is a powerful intergovernment oil cartel protecting and unifying oil interests. OPEC believe they ensure a fair return on capital to petroleum industry investors.
Fair? The Group of 7 (G7) countries OPEC supplies, America, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and the UK, generated US$1.7 trillion dollars in taxes from $850 billion dollars worth of OPEC oil revenue over the period 19962000; double the price. The real profiteers (privateers) are the governments of consuming nations, including New Zealand and Australia. The UK receives four times more money from taxation than what OPEC gets from the sale of crude. Our government’s expenditure is also hooked on the tax revenues from our economic dependency on oil. Our governments readily see that our ‘strategic interests’ are at stake. That’s why New Zealand SAS lost limbs to American landmines in Afghanistan and why our minister of trade in opposition warns of American trade sanctions, which were lightened when our governments committed forces to Iraq in early November.
It’s a cliché, but it really is all about maintaining the oppressive white supremacist industrial-military complex of the ‘first’ world. Capitalists exploit consumer dependency on oil. Even at the end of October, OPEC oil prices were at their lowest for the eleventh week with no discernable effect on domestic oil prices. Where does the difference go? Meanwhile, news publishers worldwide are growing alarmed at the possible repercussions American control of the Middle East oil reserves would have on the planet. UN sanctions block access to an enormous 112 billion barrels of crude beneath Iraq’s radioactive sands; the second largest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia’s 264.2 billion barrels. Consider the well-documented connections the current Bush administration has with the oil, pharmaceutical, energy and armaments industries: Bush with Harken; Ashcroft with Enron; Cheney with Haliburton; and Rice with Chervon.
Why wage war on Iraq, when so far the oil industry and the ‘first’ world companies have gotten their way through military dominance in Arabia? The question may be answered by asking who stands to profit from a war on Iraq? Oil industry investors stand to sweep a bonanza if a new Iraqi regime biddable by the US replaces Hussein. One of these investor families is a family with war and oil connections going at least three generations back to a key financier to Hitler, Prescott Bush.
The most cynical realist cannot shy from considering the accusation that the tragedy of 9/11 was allowed to happen to pre-empt the future security of the United States of America. Strategists may have seen inevitable terrorism within America, and seen it as no bad thing. For years before 9/11, thinktanks have predicted a future of worldwide terrorism from dispossessed peoples, as well as a future of oil and water wars: a fourth world war.
So, what does all this have to do with Re:Mix readers? You are involved whether you like it or not. For one thing, this magazine would never reach you. Without oil the records played by DJs would not be made. Your CDs couldn’t be so cheap. Your bottles of Coca Cola would still be glass. You couldn’t fly out of the country. Your nightclub couldn’t sell imported alcohol. You wouldn’t be trading mp3s, surfing the net, chatting on IM, or writing emails. Power wouldn’t be conducted through cables to you. Oil is everywhere, in everything; it flows, and we live. Our lives are soaked in the destruction of the lives of millions of non-white people, crushed so that the ‘first’ world can enjoy abundant oil. Nameless people without number. People like us.
posted by oga at
10:30 AM
