The Truth will prevail, But only if we Demand it from Congress!
9-11 Inside Job and Neocons Hacked 2004
Buck
By Naomi Klein, The Nation
Posted on July 4, 2008, Printed on July 4, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/90409/
Once oil passed $140 a barrel, even the most rabidly right-wing
media hosts had to prove their populist cred by devoting a portion
of every show to bashing Big Oil. Some have gone so far as to invite
me on for a friendly chat about an insidious new phenomenon:
"disaster capitalism." It usually goes well -- until it doesn't.
For instance, "independent conservative" radio host Jerry Doyle and
I were having a perfectly amiable conversation about sleazy
insurance companies and inept politicians when this happened: "I
think I have a quick way to bring the prices down," Doyle announced.
"We've invested $650 billion to liberate a nation of 25 million
people. Shouldn't we just demand that they give us oil? There should
be tankers after tankers backed up like a traffic jam getting into
the Lincoln Tunnel, the Stinkin' Lincoln, at rush hour with
thank-you notes from the Iraqi government ... . Why don't we just
take the oil? We've invested it liberating a country. I can have the
problem solved of gas prices coming down in ten days, not ten
years."
There were a couple of problems with Doyle's plan, of course. The
first was that he was describing the biggest stickup in world
history. The second, that he was too late: "We" are already heisting
Iraq's oil, or at least are on the cusp of doing so.
It's been ten months since the publication of my book The Shock
Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, in which I argue that
today's preferred method of reshaping the world in the interest of
multinational corporations is to systematically exploit the state of
fear and disorientation that accompanies moments of great shock and
crisis. With the globe being rocked by multiple shocks, this seems
like a good time to see how and where the strategy is being applied.
And the disaster capitalists have been busy -- from private
firefighters already on the scene in Northern California's
wildfires, to land grabs in cyclone-hit Burma, to the housing bill
making its way through Congress. The bill contains little in the way
of affordable housing, shifts the burden of mortgage default to
taxpayers and makes sure that the banks that made bad loans get some
payouts. No wonder it is known in the hallways of Congress as "The
Credit Suisse Plan," after one of the banks that generously proposed
it.
Iraq Disaster: We Broke It, We (Just) Bought It
But these cases of disaster capitalism are amateurish compared with
what is unfolding at Iraq's oil ministry. It started with no-bid
service contracts announced for ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and
Total (they have yet to be signed but are still on course). Paying
multinationals for their technical expertise is not unusual. What is
odd is that such contracts almost invariably go to oil service
companies -- not to the oil majors, whose work is exploring,
producing and owning carbon wealth. As London-based oil expert Greg
Muttitt points out, the contracts make sense only in the context of
reports that the oil majors have insisted on the right of first
refusal on subsequent contracts handed out to manage and produce
Iraq's oil fields. In other words, other companies will be free to
bid on those future contracts, but these companies will win.
One week after the no-bid service deals were announced, the world
caught its first glimpse of the real prize. After years of back-room
arm-twisting, Iraq is officially flinging open six of its major oil
fields, accounting for around half of its known reserves, to foreign
investors. According to Iraq's oil minister, the long-term contracts
will be signed within a year. While ostensibly under control of the
Iraq National Oil Company, foreign firms will keep 75 percent of the
value of the contracts, leaving just 25 percent for their Iraqi
partners.
That kind of ratio is unheard of in oil-rich Arab and Persian
states, where achieving majority national control over oil was the
defining victory of anticolonial struggles. According to Muttitt,
the assumption until now was that foreign multinationals would be
brought in to develop brand-new fields in Iraq -- not to take over
ones that are already in production and therefore require minimal
technical support. "The policy was always to allocate these fields
to the Iraq National Oil Company," he told me. This is a total
reversal of that policy, giving INOC a mere 25 percent instead of
the planned 100 percent.
So what makes such lousy deals possible in Iraq, which has already
suffered so much? Ironically, it is Iraq's suffering -- its
never-ending crisis -- that is the rationale for an arrangement that
threatens to drain its treasury of its main source of revenue. The
logic goes like this: Iraq's oil industry needs foreign expertise
because years of punishing sanctions starved it of new technology
and the invasion and continuing violence degraded it further. And
Iraq urgently needs to start producing more oil. Why? Again because
of the war. The country is shattered, and the billions handed out in
no-bid contracts to Western firms have failed to rebuild the
country. And that's where the new no-bid contracts come in: they
will raise more money, but Iraq has become such a treacherous place
that the oil majors must be induced to take the risk of investing.
Thus the invasion of Iraq neatly creates the argument for its
subsequent pillage.
Several of the architects of the Iraq War no longer even bother to
deny that oil was a major motivator. On National Public Radio's To
the Point, Fadhil Chalabi, one of the primary Iraqi advisers to the
Bush Administration in the lead-up to the invasion, recently
described the war as "a strategic move on the part of the United
States of America and the UK to have a military presence in the Gulf
in order to secure [oil] supplies in the future." Chalabi, who
served as Iraq's oil under secretary and met with the oil majors
before the invasion, described this as "a primary objective."
Invading countries to seize their natural resources is illegal under
the Geneva Conventions. That means that the huge task of rebuilding
Iraq's infrastructure -- including its oil infrastructure -- is the
financial responsibility of Iraq's invaders. They should be forced
to pay reparations. (Recall that Saddam Hussein's regime paid $9
billion to Kuwait in reparations for its 1990 invasion.) Instead,
Iraq is being forced to sell 75 percent of its national patrimony to
pay the bills for its own illegal invasion and occupation.
Oil Price Shock: Give Us the Arctic or Never Drive Again
Iraq isn't the only country in the midst of an oil-related stickup.
The Bush Administration is busily using a related crisis -- the
soaring price of fuel -- to revive its dream of drilling in the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). And of drilling offshore.
And in the rock-solid shale of the Green River Basin. "Congress must
face a hard reality," said George W. Bush on June 18. "Unless
members are willing to accept gas prices at today's painful levels
-- or even higher -- our nation must produce more oil."
This is the President as Extortionist in Chief, with gas nozzle
pointed to the head of his hostage -- which happens to be the entire
country. Give me ANWR, or everyone has to spend their summer
vacations in the backyard. A final stickup from the cowboy
President.
Despite the Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less bumper stickers,
drilling in ANWR would have little discernible impact on actual
global oil supplies, as its advocates well know. The argument that
it could nonetheless bring down oil prices is based not on hard
economics but on market psychoanalysis: drilling would "send a
message" to the oil traders that more oil is on the way, which would
cause them to start betting down the price.
Two points follow from this approach. First, trying to psych out
hyperactive commodity traders is what passes for governing in the
Bush era, even in the midst of a national emergency. Second, it will
never work. If there is one thing we can predict from the oil
market's recent behavior, it is that the price is going to keep
going up regardless of what new supplies are announced.
Take the massive oil boom under way in Alberta's notorious tar
sands. The tar sands (sometimes called the oil sands) have the same
things going for them as Bush's proposed drill sites: they are
nearby and perfectly secure, since the North American Free Trade
Agreement contains a provision barring Canada from cutting off
supply to the United States. And with little fanfare, oil from this
largely untapped source has been pouring into the market, so much so
that Canada is now the largest supplier of oil to the United States,
surpassing Saudi Arabia. Between 2005 and 2007, Canada increased its
exports to the States by almost 100 million barrels. Yet despite
this significant increase in secure supplies, oil prices have been
going up the entire time.
What is driving the ANWR push is not facts but pure shock doctrine
strategy -- the oil crisis has created the conditions in which it is
possible to sell a previously unsellable (but highly profitable)
policy.
Food Price Shock: Genetic Modification or Starvation
Intimately connected to the price of oil is the global food crisis.
Not only do high gas prices drive up food costs but the boom in
agrofuels has blurred the line between food and fuel, pushing food
growers off their land and encouraging rampant speculation. Several
Latin American countries have been pushing to re-examine the push
for agrofuels and to have food recognized as a human right, not a
mere commodity. United States Deputy Secretary of State John
Negroponte has other ideas. In the same speech touting the US
commitment to emergency food aid, he called on countries to lower
their "export restrictions and high tariffs" and eliminate "barriers
to use of innovative plant and animal production technologies,
including biotechnology." This was an admittedly more subtle
stickup, but the message was clear: impoverished countries had
better crack open their agricultural markets to American products
and genetically modified seeds, or they could risk having their aid
cut off.
Genetically modified crops have emerged as the cureall for the food
crisis, at least according to the World Bank, the European
Commission president (time to "bite the bullet") and Prime Minister
of Britain Gordon Brown. And, of course, the agribusiness companies.
"You cannot today feed the world without genetically modified
organisms," Peter Brabeck, chairman of Nestlé, told the Financial
Times recently. The problem with this argument, at least for now, is
that there is no evidence that GMOs increase crop yields, and they
often decrease them.
But even if there was a simple key to solving the global food
crisis, would we really want it in the hands of the Nestlés and
Monsantos? What would it cost us to use it? In recent months
Monsanto, Syngenta and BASF have been frenetically buying up patents
on so-called "climate ready" seeds -- plants that can grow in earth
parched from drought and salinated from flooding.
In other words, plants built to survive a future of climate chaos.
We already know the lengths Monsanto will go to protect its
intellectual property, spying on and suing farmers who dare to save
their seeds from one year to the next. We have seen patented AIDS
medications fail to treat millions in sub-Saharan Africa. Why would
patented "climate ready" crops be any different?
Meanwhile, amid all the talk of exciting new genetic and drilling
technologies, the Bush Administration announced a moratorium of up
to two years on new solar energy projects on federal lands -- due,
apparently, to environmental concerns. This is the final frontier
for disaster capitalism. Our leaders are failing to invest in
technology that will actually prevent a future of climate chaos,
choosing instead to work hand in hand with those plotting innovative
schemes to profit from the mayhem.
Privatizing Iraq's oil, ensuring global dominance for genetically
modified crops, lowering the last of the trade barriers and opening
the last of the wildlife refuges ... Not so long ago, those goals
were pursued through polite trade agreements, under the benign
pseudonym "globalization." Now this discredited agenda is forced to
ride on the backs of serial crises, selling itself as lifesaving
medicine for a world in pain.
Naomi Klein's latest book is The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of
Disaster Capitalism.
© 2008 The Nation All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/90409/
