Oil 40

Beste collega's van me. Nadat jullie jarenlang angstvallig gezwegen hebben en de propaganda keurig hebben herhaald, kunnen jullie nu openlijk zeggen wat ik in 2003 uitvoerig heb beschreven (zie: http://home.planet.nl/~houck006/oorlogomolie2.html) en jullie hoeven niet eens bang te zijn je baantje te verliezen:

'It Was Oil, All Along
Saturday 28 June 2008
by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, t r u t h o u t Perspective

Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al-Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire and ashes. And now the bottom line turns out to be ... the bottom line. It is about oil.
Alan Greenspan said so last fall. The former chairman of the Federal Reserve, safely out of office, confessed in his memoir, "Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." He elaborated in an interview with The Washington Post's Bob Woodward, "If Saddam Hussein had been head of Iraq and there was no oil under those sands, our response to him would not have been as strong as it was in the first Gulf War."Remember, also, that soon after the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, told the press that war was our only strategic choice. "We had virtually no economic options with Iraq," he explained, "because the country floats on a sea of oil."
Shades of Daniel Plainview, the monstrous petroleum tycoon in the movie, "There Will Be Blood." Half-mad, he exclaims, "There's a whole ocean of oil under our feet!" then adds, "No one can get at it except for me!"
No wonder American troops only guarded the Ministries of Oil and the Interior in Baghdad, even as looters pillaged museums of their priceless antiquities. They were making sure no one could get at the oil except ... guess who?
Here's a recent headline in The New York Times: "Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back." Read on: "Four western companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power."
There you have it. After a long exile, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP are back in Iraq. And on the wings of no-bid contracts - that's right, sweetheart deals like those given Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater. The kind of deals you get only if you have friends in high places. And these war profiteers have friends in very high places.
Let's go back a few years to the 1990's, when private citizen Dick Cheney was running Halliburton, the big energy supplier. That's when he told the oil industry that, "By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."
Fast forward to Cheney's first heady days in the White House. The oil industry and other energy conglomerates were handed backdoor keys to the White House, and their CEO's and lobbyists were trooping in and out for meetings with their old pal, now Vice President Cheney. The meetings were secret, conducted under tight security, but as we reported five years ago, among the documents that turned up from some of those meetings were maps of oil fields in Iraq - and a list of companies who wanted access to them. The conservative group Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club filed suit to try to find out who attended the meetings and what was discussed, but the White House fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep the press and public from learning the whole truth.
Think about it. These secret meetings took place six months before 9/11, two years before Bush and Cheney invaded Iraq. We still don't know what they were about. What we know is that this is the oil industry that's enjoying swollen profits these days. It would be laughable if it weren't so painful to remember that their erstwhile cheerleader for invading Iraq - the press mogul Rupert Murdoch - once said that a successful war there would bring us $20-a-barrel oil. The last time we looked, it was more than $140 a barrel. Where are you, Rupert, when the facts need checking and the predictions are revisited?

At a Congressional hearing this week, James Hansen, the NASA climate scientist who exactly twenty years ago alerted Congress and the world to the dangers of global warming, compared the chief executives of Big Oil to the tobacco moguls who denied that nicotine is addictive or that there's a link between smoking and cancer. Hansen, whom the administration has tried again and again to silence, said these barons of black gold should be tried for committing crimes against humanity and nature in opposing efforts to deal with global warming.'

Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/article/it-was-oil-all-along

Oil 39

'Oil settles at record high above $140
Crude prices jump as the Dow enters bear territory, but drift from daily highs towards end of session in anticipation that trading next week will be light.

By Ben Rooney and David Goldman, CNN Money.com staff writers
Last Updated: June 27, 2008: 3:22 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Oil prices settled above $140 a barrel for the first time Friday during a thinly traded session on Friday as a selloff on Wall Street sent the Dow into bear market territory.
Also enflaming crude prices: expectations that the dollar will remain weak and continuing concerns about global supply disruptions.
Light, sweet crude rose 57 cents to settle at $140.21 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The August contract reached an all-time high of $142.99 in the afternoon, but sold off towards the end of the day as traders anticipated light volume next week.
"With people out of the markets for July 4th, traders sold off towards the end of the session to play the market safe for next week," said Peter Beutel, an oil analyst with Cameron Hanover.
The oil market's early rally came as the stock market stumbled with the Dow dropping more than 150 points before recovering slightly Friday afternoon.
"The lack of confidence in financial markets is pushing investors back into the hard-asset class," said John Kilduff, an energy analyst at MF Global in New York.
Stocks have been battered in recent sessions partly because of rising oil prices but also due to fresh signs of weakness in the broader economy.
Many investors view oil and other commodities as a safe haven in times of financial turmoil.
Currency issues: Many analysts say the dollar's decline has been a major driver of oil prices, which have more than doubled in the last year.'

Lees verder: http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/27/markets/oil/index.htm

Klimaatverandering 129

'Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole
Polar scientists reveal dramatic new evidence of climate change
By Steve Connor, Science EditorFriday, 27 June 2008

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.
The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.
"From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water," said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.
If it happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above.
Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally ice-free North Pole this summer are greater than 50:50 because the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away and replaced by huge swathes of thinner ice formed over a single year.
This one-year ice is highly vulnerable to melting during the summer months and satellite data coming in over recent weeks shows that the rate of melting is faster than last year, when there was an all-time record loss of summer sea ice at the Arctic.
"The issue is that, for the first time that I am aware of, the North Pole is covered with extensive first-year ice – ice that formed last autumn and winter. I'd say it's even-odds whether the North Pole melts out," said Dr Serreze. '

Lees verder: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-no-ice-at-the-north-pole-855406.html

De Israelische Terreur 400

De joodse lobby in de Verenigde Staten forceert deze wereldmacht een gewapend conflict te beginnen tegen Iran.

'Ron Paul’s Grave Warning On The Coming Iran War

Press TV June 28, 2008

Ron Paul discusses rising energy costs and Iran. (YouTube)

Republican congressman Ron Paul warns against military engagement in Iran, saying ‘bombing Iran’ will cause energy prices to skyrocket.

In a speech on the House floor, Congressman Paul suggested that the US is inching toward an ‘endless struggle’ similar to the Iraq war.

“In the last several weeks, if not for months we have heard a lot of talk about the potential of Israel and/or the United States bombing Iran. Energy prices are being bid up because of this fear. It has been predicted that if bombs start dropping, that we will see energy prices double or triple,” said the Republican.

“To me it is almost like deja vu all over again. We listened to the rhetoric for years and years before we went into Iraq. We did not go in the correct manner, we did not declare war, we are there and it is an endless struggle,” he told a nearly empty House chamber.

“I cannot believe it, that we may well be on the verge of initiating the bombing of Iran,” said the war veteran.

The 72-year-old former presidential candidate then blasted what he called the ‘virtual Iran war resolution’, which is soon to be considered by the House of Representatives.

“This resolution, House Resolution 362 is a virtual war resolution. It is the declaration of tremendous sanctions, and boycotts and embargoes on the Iranians. It is very, very severe,” Paul said.

Supported by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), House Resolution 362 (and the Senate version Resolution 580), known as the ‘Iran War Resolution’ can be considered a means of imposing harsher sanctions as well as a naval blockade restricting exports to the oil-rich country.

This bill, which was introduced at an AIPAC annual policy conference, has gained 208 co-sponsors in the House and 29 in the Senate. It will likely be put to a vote after July 4.

“The fear is, they say, maybe some day, [Iran is] going to get a nuclear weapon, even though our own CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate has said that the Iranians have not been working on a nuclear weapon since 2003,” continued the 10-term congressman.

The US and Israel accuse Tehran of making efforts to produce nuclear weapons; Iran insists its nuclear program is directed at peaceful purposes.'

Lees verder: http://www.infowars.com/?p=2949

De Israelische Terreur 237

'Zionism’s dead end

Separation or ethnic cleansing? Israel’s encaging of Gaza aims to achieve both*
By Jonathan Cook**
28 June 2008
Jonathan Cook argues that the siege of Gaza offers Israel a template to convert apartheid into “transfer”, or ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, by cutting off Palestinian access to aid, food, fuel and humanitarian services, and through state terrorism ‑ sonic booms, random air attacks and repeated small-scale invasions.
 
 In 1895 Theodor Herzl, Zionism’s chief prophet, confided in his diary that he did not favour sharing Palestine with the natives. Better, he wrote, to
 
 
try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian] population across the border by denying it any employment in our own country… Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.
 
 
He was proposing a programme of Palestinian emigration enforced through a policy of strict separation between Jewish immigrants and the indigenous population. In simple terms, he hoped that, once Zionist organizations had bought up large areas of Palestine and owned the main sectors of the economy, Palestinians could be made to leave by denying them rights to work the land or labour in the Jewish-run economy. His vision was one of transfer, or ethnic cleansing, through ethnic separation.
 
Herzl was suggesting that two possible Zionist solutions to the problem of a Palestinian majority living in Palestine ‑ separation and transfer ‑ were not necessarily alternatives but rather could be mutually reinforcing. Not only that: he believed, if they were used together, the process of ethnic cleansing could be made to appear voluntary, the choice of the victims. It may be that this was both his most enduring legacy and his major innovation to settler colonialism.

In recent years, with the Palestinian population under Israeli rule about to reach parity with the Jewish population, the threat of a Palestinian majority has loomed large again for the Zionists. Not surprisingly, debates about which of these two Zionist solutions to pursue, separation or transfer, have resurfaced.
 
Today these solutions are ostensibly promoted by two ideological camps loosely associated with Israel’s centre-left (Labour and Kadima) and right (Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu). The modern political arguments between them turn on differing visions of the nature of a Jewish state originally put forward by Labour and Revisionist Zionists.
 
To make sense of the current political debates, and the events taking place inside Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza, let us first examine the history of these two principles in Zionist thinking.
 
During the early waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, the dominant Labour Zionist movement and its leader, David Ben-Gurion, advanced policies much in line with Herzl’s goal. In particular, they promoted the twin principles of “Redemption of the Land” and “Hebrew Labour”, which took as their premise the idea that Jews needed to separate themselves from the native population in working the land and employing only other Jews. By being entirely self-reliant in Palestine, Jews could both “cure” themselves of their tainted Diaspora natures and deprive the Palestinians of the opportunity to subsist in their own homeland.'

Lees verder: http://www.redress.cc/zionism/jcook20080628

The Empire 313

De joodse lobby in de Verenigde Staten is zo machtig dat het razendsnel een nieuwe oorlog aan het forceren is.

'Update: Is a New Congressional Resolution Declaring War with Iran?
Emily Blout   
Jun 24, 2008
Washington, DC — A House resolution effectively requiring a naval blockade on Iran seems fast tracked for passage, gaining co-sponsors at a remarkable speed, but experts say the measures called for in the resolutions amount to an act of war.
 
 H.CON.RES 362 calls on the president to stop all shipments of refined petroleum products from reaching Iran. It also “demands” that the President impose “stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains and cargo entering or departing Iran.”
Analysts say that this would require a US naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.
Since its introduction on May 22 the resolution has attracted 205 cosponsors.
In the Senate, a sister resolution S. RES 580 has gained cosponsors rapidly. The Senate measure was introduced by Indiana Democrat Evan Bayh on June 2. It has now accrued 26 cosponsors.
Congressional insiders credit America’s powerful pro-Israel lobby for the rapid endorsement of the bills. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) held its annual policy conference June 2-4, in which it sent thousands of members to Capitol Hill to push for tougher measures against Iran. On its website, AIPAC endorses the resolutions as a way to “stop Iran’s nuclear program” and tells readers to lobby Congress to pass the bill.
Proponents say the resolutions advocate constructive steps toward reducing the threat posed by Iran. “It is my hope that…this Congress will urge this and future administrations to lead the world in economically isolating Iran in real and substantial ways,” said Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN), who is the original cosponsor of the House resolution.
Foreign policy analysts worry that such unilateral sanctions make it harder for the US to win the cooperation of the international community on a more effective multilateral effort. In his online blog, Senior Fellow in the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Ethan Chorin points out that some US allies seek the economic ties to Iran that these resolutions ban. “The Swiss have recently signed an MOU with Iran on gas imports; the Omanis are close to a firm deal (also) on gas imports from Iran; a limited-services joint Iranian-European bank just opened a branch on Kish Island,” he writes.'

Lees verder: http://www.niacouncil.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1141&Itemid=2aa

Salomon Bouman 26

Op de website van het Institute of Social Studies in Den Haag kunt u de uitgeschreven toespraken en discussies lezen die op 19 mei van dit jaar plaatsvonden tussen onder andere de Palestijnse intellectueel Omar Barghouti en de Nederlandse zionist en voormalig NRC-correspondent Salomon Bouman. Ik heb hier de toespraak van Barghouti overgenomen:

'Omar Barghouti: Thank you very much for having me here. To be economic, I decided
to write and read. That is the most efficient way in my experience. The title of my paper
is “ending the Nakba, ethical decolonization of historic Palestine”. The idea is to put the
Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger, said Dov Weisglass, Sharon’s
closest advisor a few years ago. Today Israel is in fact slowly choking occupied Gaza to
death. Indeed bringing 1.5 million civilians to the brink of starvation and a humanitarian
catastrophe. Israel is slowly transforming the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, into
cages that make the term “bantustan” sound desirable in comparison. Israel is
systematically causing the slow disintegration of Palestinian society under occupation
through the wall, the colonies and so on and so forth. Israel is slowing turning the lives of
average Palestinian farmers, academics, workers, students, into a living hell designed to
force them to leave. The fundamental objective of Zionism, then, to ethnically cleanse
Palestine of its indigenous population to make room for Jewish settlers, and them alone,
has undergone only one significant change in more than 100 years of Zionist
colonization. It has simply grown slower. While the brutal en masse dispossession and
uprooting of Palestinians similar to what was done by Zionists in 1948 is no longer
practical or pragmatically possible nowadays, a Nakba by any other name is proceeding
before our eyes with deadly precision, persistence and nauseating impunity under the
radar of most of the world. To us, then, the Nakba is not merely about memory and
memorializing. It’s a current reality, lived reality by the indigenous people of Palestine.
And only by de-Zionizing Palestine, only by ending the Nakba once and for all can this
charming, retched, rich, impoverished, peaceful, bloody, inspiring, frustrating place
called Palestine be transformed into a genuinely promising land, not a false promised
land. But why this obsession with Zionism, somebody may ask? Well simply because
Zionism is not simply a racist, exclusivist ideology that has motivated and justified
Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians; it also perpetuates conflict, therefore
negating any possibility of ethical co-existence between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli
Jews. At its core, Zionism has consistently viewed and treated Palestinians as what I call
relative humans who are not entitled to the full set of rights that full humans are entitled
to. This view of the Palestinians derives from a colonial mentality that the Dutch, French,
British are, well, used to in their past colonies. But there is also another factor, a very
fundamentalist view of Jewish law or Halacha has informed this Zionism in ways that we
shall see. I will give a few examples. Rabbi Kook the Elder, the first Ashkenazi Rabbi of
mandate Palestine, wrote the following in the early 20th
century: quote “The difference
between a Jewish soul and the souls of non-Jews is greater and deeper than the difference
between a human soul and the souls of cattle”, end of quote. Analyzing the decisive and
decades-old influence such founding conceptions of gentiles have had on Zionism and on
Israel’s unique form of apartheid, one cannot escape the conclusion that the poisonous
cocktail of settler colonialism, fanatic nationalism and Jewish fundamentalism that define
Israel makes it perhaps the world’s most faithful apprentice of 20th
century European
fascist thought. A few recent examples will help elucidate this point.

On July 30th, 2006 during its war of aggression against Lebanon, Israel committed its second massacre in the
little village of Qana in South Lebanon, killing dozens of children and women hiding in
shelters. The Rabbinical Council of Yesha, the highest religious authority among Jewish
settlers in the occupied Palestinian territory, defended the massacre in an official
statement, saying: quote, “According to Jewish law, during a time of battle and war, there
is no such term as innocence of the enemy; all of the discussions on Christian morality
are weakening the spirit of the army and the nation and are costing us in the blood of our
soldiers and civilians”, end of quote. Before the massacre, Israel’s then Minister of
Justice, Haim Ramon, had advocated indiscriminately bombing southern Lebanese
villages, saying: quote, “All those now in South Lebanon are terrorists”, so it’s okay to
kill them. Israel’s most popular paper, Yediot Ahronot, suggested entirely destroying any
village from which a Kaytusha is fired. Needless to say, there was no Kaytusha fired
from Qana before that massacre. In harmony, leading religious authorities in Israel
provided edicts justifying acts of genocide in Gaza. Last May for example, in a letter
addressed to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and published in a pamphlet widely
distributed in synagogues all over Israel, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai
Eliyahu ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate
killing of Palestinian civilians during a potential, massive military offensive in Gaza
aimed at stopping the Qassam launchings. According to Jewish war ethics, he explained,
an entire city holds collective responsibility for the immoral behavior of individuals.
Eliyahu’s son, who is the current Rabbi of Safad in the North of Israel, went even further,
advocating the carpet bombing of Gaza: quote, “If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then
we must kill 1000, and if they do not stop after 1000 then we must kill 10,000; if they
still don’t stop, we must kill 100,000, even a million, whatever it takes to make them
stop.” Stop resisting that is. Resonating with such genocidal sentiments, on 29th
February
2008, Israel’s deputy defense minister, Matan Vilnai, threatened Palestinians in Gaza
with a “Shoah”, holocaust. Telling the Israeli army radio: quote, “The more Qassam fire
intensifies, and the rockets reach a longer range, the Palestinians will bring upon
themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.” Of
course, he was alluding to Israel’s nuclear capability. Moreover, at the height of Israel’s
reoccupation of Palestinian cities in 2002, some Israeli soldiers used their knives to
engrave the Star of David on the arms of young Palestinian detainees. In the same year, at
several refugee camps, during mass round-ups of Palestinian males of all ages, Israeli
troops inscribed identification numbers on the foreheads and forearms of Palestinian
detainees awaiting interrogation. More recently, the Knesset unanimously, recently
passed a bill prohibiting animal testing in the development of detergents and cosmetics in
Israel, to comply with EU regulations of course. Very serious in Israel. Ironically, the
Israeli army, in collaboration with research centers, universities and manufacturers of
weapons and security systems, has continued unabated its tests on humans, on
Palestinians, especially in Gaza, using this advantage in marketing. [North] American
author Naomi Klein said such field testing treated not only Palestinians as inmates in an
open air prison but also as, quote, “guinea pigs”. Israel may not be unique, certainly it is
not, in using religious fundamentalism to justify colonial greed or racist policies. White
settlers have committed far worse crimes in the Americas, Australia and so on. But, the
difference is, Israel is doing so in the 21st
Century and is being welcomed as an honorary
member of the elite club of western democracies, whatever that means. Instead of being
treated as a pariah state as it should with boycott, divestment and sanctions, as was
applied against apartheid South Africa, Israel is showered with political, diplomatic and
economic benefits from the U.S. and the EU, even in violation of these own countries’
own laws, not to mention international law and universal human rights. This makes the
EU and the U.S. generally complicit in maintaining the only regime on earth that
uniquely claims a right to have ethno-religious exclusivity and apartheid. Only by ending
this form of apartheid, Israel’s three-tiered form of oppression against Palestinian citizens
of Israel, in the occupied Territories and it’s denial of refugee rights – these are three
forms of injustice – only by ending that can a sustainable, just peace be reached. A
secular democratic state in Palestine offers a true chance for ethical decolonization of
Palestine, without turning the Palestinians into oppressors of their current oppressors.
This de-Zionized Palestine – I’m reaching the end – should allow and facilitate the return
of refugees, and their compensation, grant full, equal and unequivocal citizenship to all
its citizens – Palestinian Arabs, including refugees as well as Israeli Jews – finally,
recognize, legitimize and even nourish the cultural, religious and ethnic particularities
and traditions of each respective community. Only thus can we can end the impasse, only
thus can we have ethical decolonization of Palestine, only thus can we truly end the
Nakba. Thank you.'


Lees verder: http://www.iss.nl/HDS-portal/Projects/Israel-Palestine