"The oil towers stand sentinel, bone-empty, in the dark"

[Doug Millison]

"Taking and not giving back, demanding that
'productivity' and 'earnings' keep on increasing with
time, the System removing from the rest of the World
these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny
desperate fraction showing a profit:  and not only
most of humanity-- most of the World, animal,
vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process."
(Gravity's Rainbow, 412)

"I thought of it as dinosaur blood when it dripped on
my hand this morning, and it made me wonder how the US
war strategy would change if Saddam made a small
recalibration in his business practices. Of course,
the gasoline that spilled as I refilled my rental car
this morning at the DFW airport – and the refined
kerosene that will fuel the plane I’ll fly in today –
is far more ancient than even the spectacular
Tyrannosaurus Rex bones discovered north of here. They
vanished around 65 million years ago, but the
fossilized plants and bacteria that made my gasoline
are 300 to 400 million years old. By the time
dinosaurs ruled the Earth, pretty much all of the oil
production of the planet was finished. Strange, when
you consider it in those terms, that we’d base a
nation’s foreign policy on a limited supply of fossils
older than the dinosaurs. "
"The Dinosaur War – To Protect Corporate Profits "
by Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1011-05.htm


"[...] Perhaps the critics are too generous to suspect
merely political gamesmanship or settling a score for
dad, for the allies and enemies that Mr. Bush and Mr.
Cheney choose are exactly those of the oil industry
they still serve. Iraq crossed western oil
corporations 30 years ago, and the oil executives have
long memories. In 1972, Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath
party nationalized the oil holdings of the Iraq
Petroleum Company, which actually was owned by a group
of western oil companies including Royal Dutch and
American and French firms. 

The U.S. and Britain launched an embargo of Iraq in an
attempt to persuade Hussein to re-privatize oil -- a
tactic that succeeded for the U.S. when it embargoed
Iran in retaliation for nationalizing its oil industry
in 1951. In that case the economic squeeze was topped
off with a CIA-assisted coup and "regime change,"
which instituted the Shah as the new leader in 1953.
Obediently, the Shah agreed to let British and
American oil companies take over oil production again.


But when the U.S. instigated an embargo against Iraq,
Hussein simply found a new customer-- the Soviet
Union. [...]"
http://www.ReclaimDemocracy.org/war_oil_corporations.html

"The nationalization of the oil industry was
considered by the BaÅth leaders to be their greatest
achievement. Between 1969 and 1972 several agreements
with foreign powers—the Soviet Union and others—were
concluded to provide the Iraq National Oil Company
(INOC) with the capital and technical skills to
exploit the oil fields. In 1972 the operation of the
North Rumaylah field, rich in oil, started, and an
Iraqi Oil Tankers Company was established to deliver
oil to several foreign countries. Also in 1972 the
Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) was nationalized (with
compensation), and a national company, the Iraqi
Company for Oil Operations, was established to operate
the fields. In 1973, when the fourth Arab-Israeli War
broke out, Iraq nationalized U.S. and Dutch companies,
and in 1975 it nationalized the remaining foreign
interests in the Basra Petroleum Company."
To cite this page:
"Iraq" Encyclopædia Britannica
<http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=109319>
[Accessed October 11, 2002]. 

"The oil towers stand sentinel, bone-empty, in the
dark [....] Time for retrospection here, for refining
the recent history thaa's being pumped up fetid and
black from other strata of Earth's mind. . . ."
(Gravity's Rainbow, 354)






=====
<http://www.dougday.blogspot.com/>
<http://www.online-journalist.com/index.html>

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