There is a war going on in the Middle East; one in Iraq and the other in Lebanon. It is a war against innocent civilian population, played out by faceless enemies of humanity. Is it only a war in the name of religion, gods, and land? It is also a war in the name of black gold – OIL!
The United States and Britain are only too happy to occupy Iraq and see various parts of it blow up. Iraq's sin is that it has a lot of Oil. But, then, Iraqis are not enough educated and sophisticated people to understand that no one really cares about whether it is Shia oil or Sunni oil. It is a crying shame that Iraqis kill each other in the name of the two factions of Islam – again their only reason for killing is to set the supremacy – and to gain power. Saddam knew too well that Oil was more powerful than anything else in today's world. And Oil is the very reason why he was toppled and put behind bars. It wasn't Saddam's Human Rights violations that the Western governments were too concerned about, it wasn't the Chemical and Biological weapons either, Americans have the receipts of all the weapons of mass destruction they have supplied to Iraq over the years. After all, Saddam Hussein was a CIA dog pretty much under the command of the CIA Boss who later became the President of the US – George Bush Sr.
Saddam had his master's permission to stop Kuwait from illegally slant-drilling petroleum across Iraq’s border. Saddam's Iraqi army invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, not only to stop the petroleum theft but also to teach a lesson to Kuwait and other states in the region that you just don't mess around with his master's favourite Dog. The United Nations slapped economic sanctions on Iraq.
In July 1990, crude oil was priced at 18 USD a barrel. It wasn't Iraq's continuing occupation of Kuwait alone that drove the price up crazy to 36 USD a barrel in October 1990. It is interesting to note that the US started moving its troops into Saudi Arabia on August 7, 1990. On the following day, a combatant Sadddam declared parts of Kuwait to be extensions of the Iraqi province of Basra and the rest to be the 19th province of Iraq. Result: 36 USD for a barrel of sweet crude oil; sweet money indeed.
With American troops protecting Saudi Arabia with 'Operation Desert Shield' – supposedly preventing an Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia – the price of oil started to slide down. In the following two months it was down to 25 USD a barrel.
Uncle Sam and his cowboy buddies gave Saddam Hussein a January 15, 1991 deadline to withdraw from Kuwait. Saddam was of the view that Kuwait was carved out of Iraq in 1922 by the highly manipulative British. Sir Percy Zachariah Cox was the British administrator and diplomat in the British Mandate of Iraq who oversaw the birth of Kuwait as an emirate and he also established the Iraqi army and gave them a constitution. Kuwait, historically, had been under the mandate of the Ottoman governor of Basra. But, then, Sir Cox decided to carve out Kuwait out of the shifting sands of Iraq's vast desert. It is also interesting to note that before the World War 1, under the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913, Kuwait was considered to be an autonomous caza within Ottoman Iraq. It is a fact that Iraq never recognised Kuwait's sovereignty and in the 1960s, the United Kingdom deployed troops to Kuwait to deter an Iraqi annexation.
The United States insisted on Iraq's unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait. Iraq insisted that withdrawal from Kuwait must be “linked” to a simultaneous withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon and Israeli troops from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and southern Lebanon. (wikipedia)
In January, US and buddies kicked Saddam's arse out of Kuwait. Syria, who had were an imperial force in Lebanon were only too happy to join the Americans in kicking Saddam. They bombarded Iraq to submission, drove the Iraqi soldiers out of Kuwait – and the defeated soldiers who were returning home were brutally annihilated.
There are no conventions in a war for oil supremacy.
The Yankees didn't finish off Saddam; they knew a mad dog like Saddam was far better than a Shia ruled Iraq which had Iranian support. After the war, they allowed Saddam to rule for another decade or so, which saw the Iraqi economy cripple – with millions of poor Iraqis were left to die without enough food and proper medical care. Point to be noted, it wasn't poor Sunnis who were dying, it was the Shias who were paying the heavy price.
Iraq has as much as an oil reserve as Saudi Arabia; what the war did was that Iraqis were not allowed to sell oil in the international market. A rich country was made to suffer by the powerful western governments. Saddam and his fat cats had access to good food and medicines and all the luxuries. The UN embargo didn't hurt the rich and powerful of Iraq. The majority Shia community, who were traditionally poor and under-poverished in a minority-Sunni-ruled Iraq, suffered the most through the UN sanctions.
In 1998, the oil price fell to a low of 11.28 USD a barrel. The last time oil price was hovering around the 11 USD mark was in January 1976! Remarkable indeed! Between the two wars in Iraq - led by father and son Bush – for eight years Bill Clinton was the president of the US. In fact, Clinton turned the economy around and America had a budget surplus. Crude oil selling at 11 dollars a barrel was a testimony to the economic policies of the Clinton administration.
In the year 2000, the oil lobby saw their pet chimp – George Bush stealing the American democracy. Saudis were elated – Sheikh Bush became the president. September 11 helped Bush get the necessary public support to turn the government machinery in the oil way.
In 2003, Bush took the missiles out of his trouser-pockets and launched an attack on Iraq to depose Saddam. With the help of a drooling and slobbering media in the US, Bush convinced the faithful that Saddam was in fact responsible for September 11, though most of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia! When a nation has a collective IQ in the negative, chimps becoming presidents and evangelist gorillas like Pat Robertson setting the moral standards is more than a possibility.
The move to depose Saddam Hussein was not a Neocon conspiracy. Just that Bush and his Oil cowboys used the Neocon cover to do the job very well. Saddam was not allowing the Americans and Saudis to determine the oil price; he was one day pumping a lot of oil into the market and another day starving the oil-thirsty market. What the Oil lobby wanted was a steady increase in oil price and lot more profits. They knew too well that in the eight years of stolen presidency of the US, which means control over the US armed forces - they have to make as much money as possible.
Saddam was deposed, puppet government has been installed in Baghdad. Saddam is being tried in an Iraqi court, Shias are in power – which means they have the support of the Shia-power: Iran. Still, Iraq is burning. Sectarian violence is killing more Iraqis. Iraq's northern oil pipeline to Turkey was recently hit by yet another sabotage attack. Iraq, even with its big reserve of crude oil, is not allowed to pump oil into the world market and make some money for themselves to rebuild their country. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that Iraqis find some secret pleasure in starving their children!
Big producers of oil are profiting out of this man-made calamity in the Middle East.
In June 2006, the price of crude oil was hovering around the 70 dollar mark, when Iran-backed Hezbollah decided to take two Israeli soldiers as hostages to bargain with the release of thousands of Lebanese and Palestininans languishing in Israeli jails. How these guys found themselves in the jail is not much of a mystery; Israel have been occupying Palestine and Lebanon for a very long time.
Exactly how Kuwait was carved out of Iraq by the Brits, Israel was also carved out of Palestine in 1948. Of course, Kuwaitis and Jews will have difficulty in accepting this. Israel have been an aggressor in the region; during what is known as a six-day war, in a pre-emptive attack on Egypt on 5 June 1967 that drew Syria and Jordan into a regional war, Israel made massive territorial gains capturing the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula up to the Suez Canal.
The principle of land-for-peace that has formed the basis of Arab-Israeli negotiations is based on Israel giving up land won in the 1967 war in return for peace deals recognising Israeli borders and its right to security. The Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt as part of the 1979 peace deal with Israel. (bbc)
Some of the Arab countries in the region were no angels either. It is interesting to note that in complete defiance of the UN Security Council, Egypt had occupied the Gaza Strip in 1948 and in 1950 Jordan annexed the West Bank. Well, none of the Arab neighbours cared much about the Palestinians anyway. And Palestine or Lebanon has no oil too!
With the blessings of Iran, Hezbollah pushed Israel into a new war in July this year. Of course, their brothers have been in Israeli custody for a very long time - and without the Iranian support Hezbollah would have waited for another chance. Much has been said and made of the two Israeli soldiers being kidnapped in the international media. But, then, Israel seized eight Palestinian government ministers and some 20 legislators on June 29th... Israel was asking for trouble and they got it on July 12th. The Associated Press reported "The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them."
Not much noise has been made in the international and popular media about what Israel did and has been doing. Oh well, it is assumed that all Muslims are terrorists - even if it is a six-month old baby! Such prejudiced thinking in the West helps the Israeli cause.
In January this year, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who was trying to broker a peace deal with the Palestinians had a massive stroke and slipped into a coma. He was fast losing support in Israel just before the elections - after having broken away from the ruling Likud party and forming the new so-called centrist party: Kadima.
As defence minister in 1982, Sharon had masterminded the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, but it led to his temporary sidelining in politics. Without explicitly telling Prime Minister Menachem Begin, he sent the Israeli army all the way to Beirut, a strike which ended in the expulsion of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) from Lebanon. The move stopped the PLO using Lebanon to launch attacks against Israel, but also resulted in the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians by Lebanese Christian militiamen in two Beirut refugee camps under Israeli control. Sharon was removed from office in 1983 by an Israeli tribunal investigating the 1982 Lebanon invasion, finding him indirectly responsible for the killings. (bbc)
With Sharon in the hospital and Kadima winning the general elections, it was his deputy Ehud Olmert who took over as the Prime Minister of Israel. Olmert was in desperate need of a miracle to kick up his popularity in Israel – and the kidnappings of June and July was so well-orchestrated to help his image-building exercise within Israel.
In these muddled waters of the Middle East, chimp chief Bush and his oil buddies from Saudi saw a big opportunity. As soon as Israel started bombing Lebanon, even though Lebanon has nothing to do with the oil business – price of crude oil went up to 78 dollars a barrel - up by 8 dollars in the space of 4 weeks!
Opec, which is the big oil producing club of the world pretty much controls the supply of oil to the world market. With current production level at 30 million barrel a day, the increase by 8 dollars meant that their revenues also went up by 240 million dollars a day!
The additional revenue since the recent Israeli attack on Lebanon, for the oil producing giants of the Middle East reads as follows:
IRAN: 900 million USD
Saudi Arabia: 2.128 Billion USD
Kuwait: 569 million USD
UAE: 582 million USD
Qatar: 224 million USD
Other oil producing countries such as Venezuela, Libya, Nigeria, Russia... all are making big profits.
From the 28 days of killing in Lebanon, the bonus revenue for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE put together stands at 4403 million (4.4 Billion) US Dollars!!
Iran is happy, Saudis are happy – why would they want to stop this killing in Lebanon? When it all started on July 12, Saudi Arabia was quick to blame Hezbollah for the extra profits, oops, for the Israeli attacks!
Gulf News, a daily newspaper in the UAE publishes the number of people killed in this war. It is updated every single day. Today it read,
Lebanese killed: 1048
Israelis killed: 101
It is the Arab nations who are on a charity spree to support the Lebanese people. True, Lebanese need all the support they can muster at this point in history. They are the victims of an extremely dangerous and dirty politics played by their neighbouring countries.
Another way of looking at this terrible human tragedy (which is into the 29th day) is the blood of 1048 innocent lives in Lebanon has yielded an additional profit of 4.4 billion US Dollars to the Arab coffers! That is about 4.2 million USD per Lebanese killed so far. Talk about blood money!
As long as Iran and Saudi keep making the huge additional profits of more than three billion USD a month from this war, why would Iran ask Hezbollah to back off or Saudis put pressure on the Yankees to stop their trigger happy Israeli buddies from bombing?
The United States and Britain are only too happy to occupy Iraq and see various parts of it blow up. Iraq's sin is that it has a lot of Oil. But, then, Iraqis are not enough educated and sophisticated people to understand that no one really cares about whether it is Shia oil or Sunni oil. It is a crying shame that Iraqis kill each other in the name of the two factions of Islam – again their only reason for killing is to set the supremacy – and to gain power. Saddam knew too well that Oil was more powerful than anything else in today's world. And Oil is the very reason why he was toppled and put behind bars. It wasn't Saddam's Human Rights violations that the Western governments were too concerned about, it wasn't the Chemical and Biological weapons either, Americans have the receipts of all the weapons of mass destruction they have supplied to Iraq over the years. After all, Saddam Hussein was a CIA dog pretty much under the command of the CIA Boss who later became the President of the US – George Bush Sr.
Saddam had his master's permission to stop Kuwait from illegally slant-drilling petroleum across Iraq’s border. Saddam's Iraqi army invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, not only to stop the petroleum theft but also to teach a lesson to Kuwait and other states in the region that you just don't mess around with his master's favourite Dog. The United Nations slapped economic sanctions on Iraq.
In July 1990, crude oil was priced at 18 USD a barrel. It wasn't Iraq's continuing occupation of Kuwait alone that drove the price up crazy to 36 USD a barrel in October 1990. It is interesting to note that the US started moving its troops into Saudi Arabia on August 7, 1990. On the following day, a combatant Sadddam declared parts of Kuwait to be extensions of the Iraqi province of Basra and the rest to be the 19th province of Iraq. Result: 36 USD for a barrel of sweet crude oil; sweet money indeed.
With American troops protecting Saudi Arabia with 'Operation Desert Shield' – supposedly preventing an Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia – the price of oil started to slide down. In the following two months it was down to 25 USD a barrel.
Uncle Sam and his cowboy buddies gave Saddam Hussein a January 15, 1991 deadline to withdraw from Kuwait. Saddam was of the view that Kuwait was carved out of Iraq in 1922 by the highly manipulative British. Sir Percy Zachariah Cox was the British administrator and diplomat in the British Mandate of Iraq who oversaw the birth of Kuwait as an emirate and he also established the Iraqi army and gave them a constitution. Kuwait, historically, had been under the mandate of the Ottoman governor of Basra. But, then, Sir Cox decided to carve out Kuwait out of the shifting sands of Iraq's vast desert. It is also interesting to note that before the World War 1, under the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913, Kuwait was considered to be an autonomous caza within Ottoman Iraq. It is a fact that Iraq never recognised Kuwait's sovereignty and in the 1960s, the United Kingdom deployed troops to Kuwait to deter an Iraqi annexation.
The United States insisted on Iraq's unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait. Iraq insisted that withdrawal from Kuwait must be “linked” to a simultaneous withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon and Israeli troops from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and southern Lebanon. (wikipedia)
In January, US and buddies kicked Saddam's arse out of Kuwait. Syria, who had were an imperial force in Lebanon were only too happy to join the Americans in kicking Saddam. They bombarded Iraq to submission, drove the Iraqi soldiers out of Kuwait – and the defeated soldiers who were returning home were brutally annihilated.
There are no conventions in a war for oil supremacy.
The Yankees didn't finish off Saddam; they knew a mad dog like Saddam was far better than a Shia ruled Iraq which had Iranian support. After the war, they allowed Saddam to rule for another decade or so, which saw the Iraqi economy cripple – with millions of poor Iraqis were left to die without enough food and proper medical care. Point to be noted, it wasn't poor Sunnis who were dying, it was the Shias who were paying the heavy price.
Iraq has as much as an oil reserve as Saudi Arabia; what the war did was that Iraqis were not allowed to sell oil in the international market. A rich country was made to suffer by the powerful western governments. Saddam and his fat cats had access to good food and medicines and all the luxuries. The UN embargo didn't hurt the rich and powerful of Iraq. The majority Shia community, who were traditionally poor and under-poverished in a minority-Sunni-ruled Iraq, suffered the most through the UN sanctions.
In 1998, the oil price fell to a low of 11.28 USD a barrel. The last time oil price was hovering around the 11 USD mark was in January 1976! Remarkable indeed! Between the two wars in Iraq - led by father and son Bush – for eight years Bill Clinton was the president of the US. In fact, Clinton turned the economy around and America had a budget surplus. Crude oil selling at 11 dollars a barrel was a testimony to the economic policies of the Clinton administration.
In the year 2000, the oil lobby saw their pet chimp – George Bush stealing the American democracy. Saudis were elated – Sheikh Bush became the president. September 11 helped Bush get the necessary public support to turn the government machinery in the oil way.
In 2003, Bush took the missiles out of his trouser-pockets and launched an attack on Iraq to depose Saddam. With the help of a drooling and slobbering media in the US, Bush convinced the faithful that Saddam was in fact responsible for September 11, though most of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia! When a nation has a collective IQ in the negative, chimps becoming presidents and evangelist gorillas like Pat Robertson setting the moral standards is more than a possibility.
The move to depose Saddam Hussein was not a Neocon conspiracy. Just that Bush and his Oil cowboys used the Neocon cover to do the job very well. Saddam was not allowing the Americans and Saudis to determine the oil price; he was one day pumping a lot of oil into the market and another day starving the oil-thirsty market. What the Oil lobby wanted was a steady increase in oil price and lot more profits. They knew too well that in the eight years of stolen presidency of the US, which means control over the US armed forces - they have to make as much money as possible.
Saddam was deposed, puppet government has been installed in Baghdad. Saddam is being tried in an Iraqi court, Shias are in power – which means they have the support of the Shia-power: Iran. Still, Iraq is burning. Sectarian violence is killing more Iraqis. Iraq's northern oil pipeline to Turkey was recently hit by yet another sabotage attack. Iraq, even with its big reserve of crude oil, is not allowed to pump oil into the world market and make some money for themselves to rebuild their country. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that Iraqis find some secret pleasure in starving their children!
Big producers of oil are profiting out of this man-made calamity in the Middle East.
In June 2006, the price of crude oil was hovering around the 70 dollar mark, when Iran-backed Hezbollah decided to take two Israeli soldiers as hostages to bargain with the release of thousands of Lebanese and Palestininans languishing in Israeli jails. How these guys found themselves in the jail is not much of a mystery; Israel have been occupying Palestine and Lebanon for a very long time.
Exactly how Kuwait was carved out of Iraq by the Brits, Israel was also carved out of Palestine in 1948. Of course, Kuwaitis and Jews will have difficulty in accepting this. Israel have been an aggressor in the region; during what is known as a six-day war, in a pre-emptive attack on Egypt on 5 June 1967 that drew Syria and Jordan into a regional war, Israel made massive territorial gains capturing the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula up to the Suez Canal.
The principle of land-for-peace that has formed the basis of Arab-Israeli negotiations is based on Israel giving up land won in the 1967 war in return for peace deals recognising Israeli borders and its right to security. The Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt as part of the 1979 peace deal with Israel. (bbc)
Some of the Arab countries in the region were no angels either. It is interesting to note that in complete defiance of the UN Security Council, Egypt had occupied the Gaza Strip in 1948 and in 1950 Jordan annexed the West Bank. Well, none of the Arab neighbours cared much about the Palestinians anyway. And Palestine or Lebanon has no oil too!
With the blessings of Iran, Hezbollah pushed Israel into a new war in July this year. Of course, their brothers have been in Israeli custody for a very long time - and without the Iranian support Hezbollah would have waited for another chance. Much has been said and made of the two Israeli soldiers being kidnapped in the international media. But, then, Israel seized eight Palestinian government ministers and some 20 legislators on June 29th... Israel was asking for trouble and they got it on July 12th. The Associated Press reported "The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them."
Not much noise has been made in the international and popular media about what Israel did and has been doing. Oh well, it is assumed that all Muslims are terrorists - even if it is a six-month old baby! Such prejudiced thinking in the West helps the Israeli cause.
In January this year, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who was trying to broker a peace deal with the Palestinians had a massive stroke and slipped into a coma. He was fast losing support in Israel just before the elections - after having broken away from the ruling Likud party and forming the new so-called centrist party: Kadima.
As defence minister in 1982, Sharon had masterminded the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, but it led to his temporary sidelining in politics. Without explicitly telling Prime Minister Menachem Begin, he sent the Israeli army all the way to Beirut, a strike which ended in the expulsion of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) from Lebanon. The move stopped the PLO using Lebanon to launch attacks against Israel, but also resulted in the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians by Lebanese Christian militiamen in two Beirut refugee camps under Israeli control. Sharon was removed from office in 1983 by an Israeli tribunal investigating the 1982 Lebanon invasion, finding him indirectly responsible for the killings. (bbc)
With Sharon in the hospital and Kadima winning the general elections, it was his deputy Ehud Olmert who took over as the Prime Minister of Israel. Olmert was in desperate need of a miracle to kick up his popularity in Israel – and the kidnappings of June and July was so well-orchestrated to help his image-building exercise within Israel.
In these muddled waters of the Middle East, chimp chief Bush and his oil buddies from Saudi saw a big opportunity. As soon as Israel started bombing Lebanon, even though Lebanon has nothing to do with the oil business – price of crude oil went up to 78 dollars a barrel - up by 8 dollars in the space of 4 weeks!
Opec, which is the big oil producing club of the world pretty much controls the supply of oil to the world market. With current production level at 30 million barrel a day, the increase by 8 dollars meant that their revenues also went up by 240 million dollars a day!
The additional revenue since the recent Israeli attack on Lebanon, for the oil producing giants of the Middle East reads as follows:
IRAN: 900 million USD
Saudi Arabia: 2.128 Billion USD
Kuwait: 569 million USD
UAE: 582 million USD
Qatar: 224 million USD
Other oil producing countries such as Venezuela, Libya, Nigeria, Russia... all are making big profits.
From the 28 days of killing in Lebanon, the bonus revenue for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE put together stands at 4403 million (4.4 Billion) US Dollars!!
Iran is happy, Saudis are happy – why would they want to stop this killing in Lebanon? When it all started on July 12, Saudi Arabia was quick to blame Hezbollah for the extra profits, oops, for the Israeli attacks!
Gulf News, a daily newspaper in the UAE publishes the number of people killed in this war. It is updated every single day. Today it read,
Lebanese killed: 1048
Israelis killed: 101
It is the Arab nations who are on a charity spree to support the Lebanese people. True, Lebanese need all the support they can muster at this point in history. They are the victims of an extremely dangerous and dirty politics played by their neighbouring countries.
Another way of looking at this terrible human tragedy (which is into the 29th day) is the blood of 1048 innocent lives in Lebanon has yielded an additional profit of 4.4 billion US Dollars to the Arab coffers! That is about 4.2 million USD per Lebanese killed so far. Talk about blood money!
As long as Iran and Saudi keep making the huge additional profits of more than three billion USD a month from this war, why would Iran ask Hezbollah to back off or Saudis put pressure on the Yankees to stop their trigger happy Israeli buddies from bombing?
** Gulf War
Also read: A Saudi Media Spin
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