Category: Archive

by Mike Whitney

October 22, 2006
http://www.uruknet.biz/?p=m27659&hd=0&size=1&l=e

Most people won’t pay any attention to this week’s energy summit in Lahti, Finland, but they should. It is particularly instructive for anyone who is interested in the latest developments in the global resource war.

The purpose of the meeting was to work out the nettlesome issues of energy policy, but the hidden agenda was to pressure Russian President Putin into signing away the control of his country’s critical assets to the big-players in the world energy cartel. The proposed "Energy Charter Treaty" is designed to tie up Russia’s resources through legal obligations which serve the overall interests of the energy giants. The treaty is no different than the EU Constitution which was voted down last year when the "informed" European public realized that it was just another boondoggle set up by big business to override national sovereignty, environmental safety, and civil liberties. The Energy Charter Treaty and the EU Constitution focus on the very same objectives, that is, establishing the legal framework for placing the world and its dwindling resources in the hands of a small cadre of obscenely-wealthy western plutocrats.

Western elites have been waging an intensive public relations campaign against Putin since he nationalized Yukos Oil and put it under control of Gazprom. Gazprom is quickly growing into the world’s largest oil corporation and will probably achieve that goal within the decade.

Putin’s move to nationalize the industry has been popular at home (his personal approval rating is consistently over 70%) and has had a profound effect on stabilizing the ruble and raising the standard of living. Most Russians still remember the country’s bleak experiment with "free market" capitalism during the 1990s when the ruble fell through the floor and Russia’s national assets were raffled off by the chronically-inebriated Yeltsin (under the supervision of western advisors). "The Oligarchs", as they were known, contributed significantly to Russia’s economic decline as well as its loss of prestige in the world. Putin has restored national pride, fueled the new prosperity, and is quickly rebuilding Russia into a world power. If energy prices continue to soar, as they undoubtedly will, Russia will be a force to reckon with throughout the 21st century.

American politicians and corporatists are concerned about Russia’s meteoric rise and are developing strategies to undermine its progress. The ultimate goal is to integrate Russia’s prodigious natural resources into the global system, which is another way of saying that a plan is being devised to assert direct-control over Russian oil and natural gas.

Since greed is inexhaustible, it is not likely that this battle will end anytime soon.

Putin’s name already features prominently in the register of American enemies, which now includes, Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Morales, Castro, Kim Jung-Il, al Assad, Haniyeh, and Muqtada al Sadr. Anyone who defends their national interests over the prevailing system of global feudalism can expect to find themselves in Washington’s crosshairs and to be duly demonized in the American media.

The Energy Charter Treaty

According to the BBC, the proposed Energy Charter Treaty would create a "trade partnership" which would make it easier for companies to invest in the Russian energy sector, and use Russian pipelines to export the oil and gas they produce. The pact would also be designed to ensure that Russia treated all European countries equally, and lay the basis for a long-term trade partnership."

Why?

Why should Putin allow foreign companies to share in Russia’s wealth? Putin is not running a "charity". He is expected to use his nation’s resources to improve things for the Russian people, which is exactly what he is doing. The insistence that he do otherwise by entering into a "trade partnership" violates the central tenet of capitalism; the right to private property. These are Russian resources. They do not belong to the extended family of predatory corporatists.

The meeting in Finland has nothing to do with any principled appreciation of capitalism or "fair play" or anything else for that matter. It’s just more-of-the-same extortion and coercion masquerading as "multilateral negotiations." It’s all baloney.

Putin has been criticized for using oil and natural gas to send a message to rivals in Georgia and Ukraine. Vice President Cheney has called this "blackmail". In reality, it is an effective and peaceful way to send a message to provocateurs that there are limits to one’s patience. It is unwise to tweak the nose of the man who is heating your house and powering your vehicle.

Besides, Cheney is the last one who should be talking about "energy blackmail". Can anyone forget the extortion-racket that Enron conducted against the American people; bilking them of tens of billions of dollars while the Federal Energy Commission (FEC) breezily looked the other way? Or the skyrocketing gas prices (which created unprecedented profits for the oil giants) which have mysteriously plummeted at the pump just weeks before the mid-term elections?

Putin is no tyrant and the media’s spurious attacks on him are ludicrous at best.

Is it mere coincidence that America’s stooge in Georgia, Mikail Saakashvili, arrested 4 Russian officials inciting a furious response from Moscow, just weeks after American elites decided to take a "tougher approach" with Putin? Or is it beyond the realm of imagination to think that the Bush administration would engineer a crisis just to provoke Russia?

And, what about the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya?

The western press seems to have found Putin guilty already without any evidence whatsoever. Thumbing through the 1,400 articles written about the incident, one would believe that they found Putin’s bloody fingerprints all over the corpse, but, of course, that is not true.

Consider this absurd piece in the New York Times10-22-06 edition by Thom Shanker: "Ms. Politkovskaya, shot to death this month in what appeared to be a professional killing, had made a name for herself with tough reporting on the war in Chechnya, and was a fierce critic of the administration of President Vladimir Putin."

Therefore Putin killed her?!?

If Putin was involved in Politkovskaya’s death then he is guilty of a heinous crime for which there is no defense. But was he? The journalist’s death may seem familiar to readers who followed the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The American-backed investigation produced no solid evidence of Syrian involvement, but the damage from the slanted coverage in the media forced Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. This, in turn, paved the way for an attack by Israel just months later.

Another coincidence?

It is unfortunate that the media hasn’t taken a similar interest in the 130 journalists who’ve been killed in Iraq as they have in Politkovskaya’s death. In the most recent case, that of Terry Lloyd, the coroner ruled that he was "unlawfully killed" when he came under fire by American troops. Andrew Walker, the assistant deputy coroner of Oxfordshire said, "Having carefully taken into account all the evidence I am satisfied so that I am sure that had this killing taken place under English Law it would have constituted unlawful homicide."

"Homicide?"

How did that escape the attention of the EU? Or is their indignation as selective as that of the American media, which chooses its heroes and villains according to a script that is written in Washington?

As for the EU and the western media’s sudden interest in Putin’s "rollback of democracy in Russia"; we’ve heard no similar complaints about the flurry of repressive legislation passed by George Bush in the USA; including the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which repeals the 800 year old right to habeas corpus. Nor has the EU shown any particular interest in the proliferation of American gulags, like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, which are now spread across the globe like grains of sand tossed in the wind. The bogus claims of "anti-democratic behavior" are naturally limited to the adversaries of the Bush team.

Putin is a fierce nationalist. He’s doing his best to raise Russia’s standard of living while making the necessary compromises with the global energy giants. According to the Russian News Agency Novosti, Putin said:

"Draft laws are being considered by the Duma aimed at securing foreign and other investments into Russia’s economy, guaranteeing owner’s rights, and minimizing the number of spheres where foreign investment cannot be used."

"These spheres," Putin added, "will mainly be restricted by security issues, and will also include the largest and most unique deposits to be found in the world and Russia. These can be counted on one hand. All the rest will be accessible."

Putin is opening Russia’s markets and looking for ways to satisfy the major oil corporations while growing the Russian economy at the same time. He believes that "mutual dependence strengthens the energy security of the European continent and creates good prerequisites for further rapprochement in other fields."

He’s right, but he’s also tragically naïve. Has he taken a look at Iraq lately?

Entire civilizations are being pummeled into rubble to satisfy the world’s lust for oil. Why would Russia be spared?

We should expect more violence in Chechnya and Georgia as well as a steady stream of abuse in the western press.

Putin is moving up on Washington’s target-list. He is the new Hitler; we just didn’t realize it before.

:: Article nr. 27659 sent on 23-oct-2006 01:49 ECT

:: The address of this page is : www.uruknet.info?p=27659

by Sultan Muhammad

(Wednesday October 18 2006)
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/36725

---

"Will Americans push for the repeal of the Military Commissions Act and avert Martial Law? Will Americans say no to the unilateral power grab of President Bush? Or will we continue to allow our rights to be openly subverted by the smokescreen politics of fear mongering."

---

Moments ago President Bush signed the Military Commission Act into law, stating “This bill provides legal protections that ensure our military and intelligence personnel will not have to fear lawsuits filed by terrorists simply for doing their jobs.

[The] legality of the system I established was challenged in the court, and the Supreme Court ruled that the military commissions needed to be explicitly authorized by the United States Congress. And so I asked Congress for that authority, and they have provided it.”

The Act passed the House on September 29th with 96% of Republicans supporting and 83% of Democrats opposing legislation that allows American citizens to be labeled “enemy combatants,” incarcerated, and tortured. Senator Arlen Specter warned before he inexplicably voted for the bill that the Act would “take our civilization back 900 years.”

Amidst a whirlwind of political sloganeering, mudslinging campaigns, and a Congressional scandal, the public debate concerning the recent passing of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 has remained eerily silent.

Are Mark Foley’s pedophiliac perversions more important than the human rights of world citizens and the freedoms of the American people? Will Americans continue to be distracted by a media fixated on the lurid emails of a pervert while the Bill of Rights is under attack?

Without doubt Foley and those responsible for concealing his depravity deserve to be held fully accountable. However, press saturation on this saga has diverted attention from the most egregious affront to civil liberties since the Patriot Act.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont strongly opposed the Act stating, “this legislation is cutting down laws that protect all 100 of us, and now almost 300 million Americans. It is amazing the Senate would be talking about doing something such as this, especially after the example of Guantanamo. We can pick up people intentionally or by mistake and hold them forever.”

Bruce Ackerman, a Yale professor of law and political science, says the Act “authorizes the President to seize American citizens as enemy combatants [and] once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.”

Ackerman elaborates further, stating, “Ordinary Americans would be required to defend themselves before a military tribunal without the constitutional guarantees provided in criminal trials.”

Law professor Marty Lederman explains the “really breathtaking subsection is subsection (ii), which would provide that UEC [Unlawful Enemy Combatant] is defined to include any person ‘who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.’

Read literally, this means that if the Pentagon says you’re an unlawful enemy combatant — using whatever criteria they wish — then as far as Congress and U.S. law is concerned, you are one, whether or not you have had any connection to ‘hostilities’ at all.”

For legal residents who are not citizens, the Military Commissions Act is far more dangerous. The Act “encourages the justices to uphold mass detentions without the semblance of judicial review,” says Ackerman, entirely denying immigrants access to federal habeas corpus.

“Habeas corpus does not give you any new rights, it just guarantees you have a chance to ask for your basic freedom,” states Leahy, that is “gone for the 12 million lawful, permanent residents who live and work among us, to say nothing of the millions of other legal immigrants and visitors who we welcome to our shores each year.

[Gone] for another estimated 11 million immigrants the Senate has been working to bring out of the shadows with comprehensive immigration reform.” The Act, he says, “not merely suspend[s]the great writ of habeas corpus, it would eliminate it permanently. We do not have to worry about nuances, such as how long it will be suspended. It is gone.”

The Military Commissions Act is not a speculative notion. It is law, already being implemented and now codified. Consider Jose Padilla, held since May 2002 and designated an “enemy combatant” by President Bush.

Padilla was detained at the Chicago O’Hare airport in plain clothes without a weapon. In August major charges against him were dropped, yet he still remains in custody due to the indictment exposing him to multiple punishments for a single alleged crime.

Consider the recent release of 17 innocent detainees from Guantanamo Bay, who are now free but had been held as long as four years. The Associated Press reported, that Shah, a doctor from the eastern province of Paktia whose hands shook when he spoke said, “for four years they put me in jail in Cuba for nothing, [We] all were arrested because of false reports, and the Americans, without investigating, they arrested innocent people.”

Rahman, another released detainee, was once kept awake for 38 hours while being questioned about terrorist ties. “The last time they tortured me like that was four months ago. They were kicking us all the time, beating us with their hands,” he said.

If there is any question that there is a concrete potential for the repeat of a mass detainment program profiling Muslim Americans and peoples of immigrant communities, as with the World War II Japanese internment program, consider the $385 million dollar contract awarded to Kellogg, Brown and Root – a Halliburton subsidiary – to construct detention and processing facilities on American soil; again, significant news that we did not get in mainstream media.

Will Americans push for the repeal of the Military Commissions Act and avert Martial Law? Will Americans say no to the unilateral power grab of President Bush? Or will we continue to allow our rights to be openly subverted by the smokescreen politics of fear mongering.

New EU rules would prevent uploading video without a license

by Steve Watson, October 17 2006

http://www.infowars.net/articles/October2006/171006Internet.htm

The latest move to kill off online freedom and the spread of information comes in the form of proposed EU legislation that would prevent users from uploading any form of video, whether that be a hard hitting political documentary film or your friends goofing around with diet coke and Mentos.

A proposed EU directive could extend broadcasting regulations to the internet, hitting popular video-sharing websites such as YouTube., reports the London Times. This would mean that websites and mobile phone services that feature video images would have to conform to standards laid down in Brussels.

Personal websites would have to be licensed as a “television-like service”. Once again the reasoning behind such legislation is said to be in order to set minimum standards on areas such as hate speech and the protection of children.

In reality this directive would do nothing to protect children or prevent hate speech – unless you judge protecting children to be denying them access to anything that is not government regulated or you assume hate speech to be the criticism of government actions and policy.

Whilst it may not seem a great loss to some people that there would be no more home videos of "Girls snogging for fun" or "Bad Bus Driver", under such rules it would also be illegal throughout the entirety of Europe to upload and spread informative documentary films such as Alex Jones’ Terror Storm, important activist tools which seek to expose the fraud behind the war on terror.

It is safe to say that without the freedom of the internet grass roots activism could never evolve into huge ideologies such as the 9/11 truth movement, which has exploded into one of the most powerful and important movements of modern times thanks to the ease with which the information can be disseminated through the web.

We have previously highlighted the trouble we have had with censorship from Google Video who reset viewing totals for Terror Storm from hundreds of thousands of views on several different video versions back down to zero for each one. This seemingly stalled the viral spread of the film for a while.

However, the proposed EU legislation dwarfs any Google censorship as it would kill off Google Video/You Tube as a project before it had even started.

The latest proposed directive is another in a long line of draconian legislative procedures that seek to totally centralize and regulate the spread of information and ideas. Anyone in Europe can already be arrested and possibly extradited under the European arrest warrant, which passed into law in 2002. This supercedes national law and means that anyone could be arrested for expressing an opinion deemed to be illegal in another EU country.

The BBC reported that under such laws people who distribute stories about fictional children’s hero Biggles or the Old Testament could be criminalized under the guise of anti-racism legislation.

Such laws in turn require implementation and upholding, therefore increasing the need for broad data retention, which had previously come up against opposition as part of anti-terror legislation, but has not faced as much backlash under anti-racist or child protection laws.

This means surveillance on a massive and coordinated centralized scale.

The EU data retention bill, passed in February after much controversy and with implementation tabled for late 2007, obliges telephone operators and internet service providers to store information on who called who and who emailed who for at least six months. Under this law, investigators in any EU country, and most bizarrely even in the US, can access EU citizens’ data on phone calls, sms’, emails and instant messaging services.

Such EU directives mirror US proposals for data retention, the reasoning for which as either a standalone measure or as an amendment to a broad telecommunications bill, is that it is designed to protect children.

This may mean that any normal website or blog would have to fall into line with such new rules and suddenly total web regulation would become a reality.

We are being led to believe that a vast army of maniac pedophiles are on the loose and we must do away with all forms of privacy in order to stop them. This is akin to saying that blanket cctv prevents crime. As if to say "if we film everyone all the time, even innocent people, then no one will ever commit any crimes."

Increasingly we are seeing this in every aspect of our lives. Recording, tracking and retaining our data in the name of keeping us all safe. Everyone is now treated as guilty until proven innocent.

The attack on internet freedom is forging ahead every day. Monday saw Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff declare the internet as a "terror training camp" that attracts Disaffected people. His solution is "intelligence fusion centers," staffed by Homeland Security personnel which will go into operation next year.

The US government is also funding research into social networking sites and how to gather and store personal data published on them, according to the New Scientist magazine.

"At the same time, US lawmakers are attempting to force the social networking sites themselves to control the amount and kind of information that people, particularly children, can put on the sites."

Both American and European moves mimic stories we hear every week out of State Controlled Communist China, where the internet is strictly regulated and virtually exists as its own entity away from the rest of the web.

We have also previously exposed how moves are afoot to clamp down on internet neutrality and even to designate a new form of the internet known as Internet 2.

This would be a faster, more streamlined elite equivalent of the internet available to users who were willing to pay more for a much improved service. providers may only allow streaming audio and video on your websites if you were eligible for Internet 2.

Of course, Internet 2 would be greatly regulated and only "appropriate content" would be accepted by an FCC or government bureau. Everything else would be relegated to the "slow lane" internet, the junkyard as it were. Our techie rulers are all too keen to make us believe that the internet as we know it is "already dead".

The Internet is freedom’s best friend and the bane of control freaks. Its eradication is one of the short term goals of those that seek to centralize power and subjugate their populations under a surveillance panopticon prison, whether that be in Communist China, Neoconservative America or the Neofascist EU.

Only 16% now believe official fable according to New York Times/CBS News poll

Truth Movement has the huge majority of opinion

How will the Bush Cabal react?

By Steve Watson & Alex Jones

October 14, 2006

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/October2006/141006poll.htm

A monumental new scientific opinion poll has emerged which declares that only 16% of people in America now believe the official government explanation of the September 11th 2001 terror attacks.

According to the new New York Times/CBS News poll, only 16% of Americans think the government is telling the truth about 9/11 and the intelligence prior to the attacks:

"Do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?

Telling the truth 16%

Hiding something 53%

Mostly lying 28%

Not sure 3%"

The 84% figure mirrors other recent polls on the same issue. A Canadian Poll put the figure at 85%. A CNN poll had the figure at 89%. Over 80% supported the stance of Charlie Sheen when he went public with his opinions on 9/11 as an inside job.

A recent CNN poll found that the percentage of Americans who blame the Bush administration for the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington rose from almost a third to almost half over the past four years. This latest poll shows that that figure has again risen exponentially and now stands at well over three quarters of the population.

It took 35 plus years for the majority of Americans to wake up to the fact that the assassination of JFK was a government operation. It has only take five years for MORE Americans to wake up to the fact that 9/11 was an inside job on behalf of the Neoconservative crime syndicate within the US.

Reference to past polls show that in the last five years there has been an explosion in numbers of those who do not buy the official line.

In 2004 a Zogby Poll showed that just over half of New Yorkers believed there was a cover up.

In May of this year another Zogby poll indicated that around half of ALL Americans did not buy the official story.

The latest poll also shows a massive awakening has occurred recently given that previous estimates indicated that around 34% still believed the official story and around 30% were oblivious altogether.

Alex Jones declared that the Truth movement has cause to celebrate this evening as it is now beyond any doubt that the vast majority of Americans know that the official story of 19 Saudis with box cutters is ludicrous.

The diligence of those who have worked to educate the world on 9/11 truth from day one cannot be underestimated. We are now seeing the fruits of this hard and at times extremely trying labor hit home.

We would add thought that although this is a major victory for the truth movement it does not mean that the hard work can stop.

The next step is to use the majority opinion as leverage towards officially changing the record of what happened on 9/11, forcing the mainstream media into addressing the issue, not as a quirky news item, but as a serious re-defining of the state of the nation and the world today.

We have not taken the country back yet and the cabal that has taken control of the government continues to systematically use 9/11 and the war on terror as an excuse to destroy the Constitutional foundations of law and order in America.

Can We Call It Genocide Now?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

October 12, 2006

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts10122006.html

W hen does "collateral damage" so dwarf combatant deaths that war becomes genocide?

Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq has cost 655,000 Iraqis their lives. That is the conclusion of a study financed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies and conducted by physicians under the direction of Johns Hopkins University epidemiologists. These are deaths over and above the pre-invasion mortality rate. Bush’s illegal invasion raised Iraq’s mortality rate from 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people per year to 13.3 deaths per 1,000 people per year. The study is published by the distinguished British medical journal, The Lancet, and is available on the journal’s online site (October 11).

The study uses a scientific method known as "cluster sampling." In 87% of the deaths, the researchers requested death certificates, and more than 90% of the surveyed households produced the death certificates. Violence accounted for 601,000 deaths and disease and destruction of civilian infrastructure accounted for 54,000 deaths. The violent deaths are attributed to gunshot wounds, coalition air strikes, and car bombs.

Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist Gilbert Burnham says, "We’re very confident with the results." Columbia University epidemiologist Ronald Waldman says the survey method used is "tried and true" and that "this is the best estimate of mortality we have."

When asked about the report, President Bush stated: "I don’t consider it a credible report." Bush, of course, is not reality-based, and he knows that any unfavorable news is "enemy propaganda." That’s what the neocons who pull his strings tell him, and that is what he believes.

What percentage of these 655,000 deaths were insurgents or "terrorists"? Probably 1% and no more than 2%. Bush’s "war on terror" is, in fact, a war on Iraqi civilians.

Bush’s invasion has also spawned sectarian conflict or civil war, although the Bush regime denies it. Even Bush is smart enough to know that "bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq" is not compatible with setting off a civil war in Iraq. Since Bush, the faith-based, believes that he is bringing "freedom and democracy to Iraq," he cannot accept the fact that he has started a civil war.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are not the only innocent victims of Bush’s illegal aggression. The New York Times (October 11) reports that Department of Veterans Affairs documents show that about one in five US soldiers who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan have suffered at least partial disability.

To date more than 100,000 US troops who are veterans of these wars have been granted disability compensation. Although the US cannot put on the ground in Iraq more than 150,000 troops at one time, 1.5 million troops have served so far and 567,000 have been discharged of which 100,000 are receiving disability payments.

Paul Sullivan, director of programs for Veterans for America, says that the current rate of injuries will produce 400,000 American veterans suffering 30% to 100% disability. Apparently, one of the severe forms of disability is post-traumatic stress, which does not count as a physical wound.

What is America’s reward for Bush’s illegal wars that have killed 655,000 Iraqis, an uncounted number of Afghanis, and disabled as many as 400,000 US troops?

According to the US National Intelligence Estimate and to practically every Middle East expert, Bush’s invasions have radicalized the Muslim Middle East, created legions of recruits for extremists, undermined America’s puppet rulers, imperiled Israel, and destroyed America’s reputation.

We are talking about over one million casualties that have no other cause than blatant lies by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, the bloodthirsty neoconservative cabal that occupies Bush’s subcabinet, and their corporate media propagandists, especially The Weekly Standard, Fox News, National Review, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. The Bush regime deceived America and the world with its lies that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that would be turned against the West by terrorists. By giving speeches that continually mentioned Iraq in the same context as 9/11, the Bush regime created the widespread impression, still prevalent among Americans, that Iraq was responsible for 9/11.

What kind of government would destroy the lives through death or disability of over one million people for no valid reason?

The same kind of government that fires its own lawyers for doing their constitutional duty. Navy lawyer Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift was assigned the task of bringing Salim Hamdan to a guilty plea before the unconstitutional military tribunal that President Bush created for Guantanamo detainees. Instead, Cmdr. Swift did his duty and defended his client, winning in the US Supreme Court. The Bush administration retaliated by blocking Cmdr. Swift’s promotion, which killed his military career and sent the chilling message to all US military and government attorneys that constitutional scruples are career-enders in the Bush regime. Anyone who stands for the US Constitution is against Bush and his neocon regime.

The Bush regime is proceeding exactly as the Nazi regime proceeded.
First, eliminate every person of conscience and integrity from the government. Second, redefine duty as service to the leader: "You are with us or against us"–a formulation that leaves no place for duty to the US Constitution. Patriotism is redefined from loyalty to country and Constitution to loyalty to the government’s leader.

Americans are too inattentive and distracted to be aware of the grave danger that the neoconservative Bush regime presents to American liberty and to world stability. The neoconservative drive to achieve hegemony over the American people and the entire world is similar to Hitler’s drive for hegemony. Hitler used racial superiority to justify Germany’s right to ride roughshod over other peoples and the right of the Nazi elite to rule over the German people.
Neoconservatives use "American exceptionalism" and "the war on terror." There is no practical difference. Hitler cared no more about the peoples he mowed down in his drive for supremacy than the neoconservatives care about 655,000 dead Iraqis, 100,000 disabled American soldiers and 2,747 dead ones.

When Bush, the Decider, claims unconstitutional powers and uses "signing statements" to negate US law whenever he feels the rule of law is in the way of his leadership, he is remarkably similar to Hitler, the Fuhrer, who told the Reichstag on February 20, 1938: "A man who feels it his duty at such an hour to assume the leadership of his people is not responsible to the laws of parliamentary usage or to a particular democratic conception, but solely to the mission placed upon him. And anyone who interferes with this mission is an enemy of the people."

"You are with us or against us."

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

Oil Trip: Nigeria, Chad, Liberia

By Emira Woods

September 29, 2006

http://www.counterpunch.org/woods09292006.html

I t is almost impossible to imagine, as we sit in a well-lit, fully functioning gas station on Main Street, USA, that a community blessed with oil riches under its soil could look as impoverished as Yenagoa in the Nigerian state of Bayelsa.

Yenagoa is the site of one of Nigeria’s first oil wells, built in pre-independence 1956 . Yet as in many communities in Nigeria’s oil rich Delta region, most people of Yenagoa live in mud huts. Some reside only a few feet away from the oil wells. But they lack electricity and indoor toilets. They have no hospitals, no running water, and no schools. And there is unemployment too. Oil companies like Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, and Exxon Mobil bring in foreign workers for even the most menial jobs.

I recently took a trip to Yenagoa as part of a tour of three African countries-Nigeria, Chad, and Liberia-that may well fuel future U.S. energy needs. Historically, the United States has gotten two-thirds of its oil from other countries. Most U.S. oil imports come from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Mexico, and Canada. Increasingly, as the United States, China, and other nations expand their thirst for oil, and instability deepens in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa is becoming a more attractive source for crude. The U.S. National Intelligence Council estimates that Africa could supply 25% of U.S. oil by 2015.

The three countries I visited could well play a role in meeting that goal. Each is at different stages of oil production. In Nigeria, oil exploration dates back to 1956. In Chad, extraction started just three years ago. In Liberia, where I spent much of my childhood, the potential of oil off its expansive coastline holds hope for the future.

In each of these countries, a complex web of geo-political actors, from oil company executives and government officials to military agents, makes decisions that impact the lives in the communities that produce the oil that flows straight to consumers in the United States.

Nigerian Injustice

The residents of Yenagoa lack jobs and basic social services. What they do have in abundance is environmental damage from decades of oil spills, compounded by the constant burning of gas flares necessary to extract the crude. Farmland is rendered useless while rivers and waterways, once well-populated with marine life, are now barren. One local chief explained that he received from Shell oil 150 Naira ($1.15) for each acre of land used by the company. I was astonished when he went on to say, "150 Naira, once every four years." With oil prices at historic highs, how could the compensation to communities long suffering the health impacts of oil spills and gas flares be such a pittance?

Military and security personnel blanket the area around Yenagoa to protect oil interests. The communities are under siege.

In Odi, a community adjacent to a well built in1958, villagers are demanding basic services like clean running water, electricity, and schools. The response from security agents has been severe. Our delegation watched in horror as one young man after another came forward to show fresh wounds from 5 days earlier. They told us that uniformed military men had grabbed 15 youths as they walked home from an adjacent village in the middle of the afternoon. The young men were beaten, tortured, and imprisoned, as a warning to others in the village. For almost a week, the youths languished in a prison miles away. Their family members were forced to walk for a day and a half to see them or bring them food in that decrepit prison. Their crime? Clamoring for basic rights.

As oil companies celebrate record profits and the price of oil hovers close to $65 per barrel, African communities ostensibly blessed with the curse of oil languish in squalor. In fact, with no useable farmland or waterways, many in Nigeria say that they are worse off than their grandparents were before the discovery of oil.

Hope in Chad?

Recognizing the plight of their neighbors in Nigeria, communities in Chad’s oil producing areas worked hard, even before the onset of oil production in 2003, to minimize environmental damage and maximize the benefits to communities from which the oil flows.

The 650-mile Chad-Cameroon pipeline (Africa’s biggest investment project) links landlocked Chad to world export markets through Cameroon’s port city of Douala. It was funded through loans and other support from the World Bank. Heroic measures initiated by activist, civil society, human rights, and religious community leaders led to a forward-looking revenue management law to manage the flow of oil revenues in a transparent way, ensuring resources for future generations.

However, the Chadian government has subverted its own revenue management law. It has diverted spending away from the original priorities of agriculture, health, and education and toward "security." As a result, money that only now is beginning to flow from oil production is spent on weapons and other military equipment, instead of poverty reduction and the interests of future generations.

The oil wells in Chad are newer, so its oil-producing areas haven’t yet experienced the damage caused by decades of oil spills. However, gas flaring, with its related health and environmental damage, is an integral part of the production cycle. When the wind blows, the smell of the burning gas blankets villages miles away.

In a community near Doba, with gas flares as a backdrop, villagers told us about increased death and dying in the past few years from respiratory ailments and contaminated water supplies.

Meanwhile, in Chad’s fertile agricultural zone, mangoes, cotton, gum Arabic, and cattle are abundant. Yet there is not one factory transforming the raw produce into goods for domestic or international markets.

In spite of these challenges, Chadians maintain that their vigilance will minimize negative social and environmental impacts of oil and secure poverty reduction. Chad could easily feed itself and its neighbors if productive capacity were built in the agricultural sector. Oil revenue directed at building an education system, providing healthcare, as well as basic electricity, running water, and roads, could go a long way toward improving the condition of people’s lives.

Throughout the country, in spite of a recent coup attempt and the elections in April that the majority of people boycotted, Chadians remain hopeful. From the capital city to the Southern oil fields, everyone seemed confident that future generations will experience a better life.

Liberian Alternatives

Liberia, the third country I visited, has recently emerged from 25 years of war. People there are hopeful too, despite the 85% unemployment rate and the complete lack of functioning schools or healthcare.

Liberians hope that concessions now being granted for off-shore oil exploration will lead down the road to a new source of revenue. Liberia’s National Oil Company negotiated two contracts with the Nigeria-based Oranto Petroleum Limited and British-based Broadway Consolidated PLC. With exploration already underway, few in Liberia think that leaving the resource untouched is a viable option.

The key question is, whether and how Liberia can escape the oil curse that so clearly has hurt Nigeria, Angola, and other countries in Africa’s richly endowed Gulf of Guinea region.

One possibility is for countries like Liberia to consider alternative models for oil development. What, for example, can Liberia learn from Venezuela’s example of 61% national control of oil revenue and management? Or from Norway’s use of oil revenue to diversify the economy while advancing social services?

Like many Africans, I fear that oil companies look to Africa for its resource wealth without seeing the people. Resource-rich communities are dehumanized and the color line is ever present as the greatest profits flow steadily to wealthy white men who already control enormous wealth and power.

The price of oil has nearly tripled since President George W. Bush took office in 2001, yet the majority of the people who live in the countries from which the fuel flows still experience grinding poverty. Viewed side by side, the $10 billion quarterly profits of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, or Shell and the $1.15 per acre compensation paid (every four years) to some farmers in oil producing zones show just how unfair the global oil industry has become.

The next time you pull up to the pump, stop a moment and remember that the thick black crude is extracted from the earth’s crust at great social, political, and environmental cost. Then do whatever it is in your power to demand dignity and proper compensation for those whose land or sea may be cursed with the blessing of this natural resource.

Emira Woods is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.