To POLITICO: on "Anxious Democrats"

POLITICO posted a story discussing Democrats in Congress supposedly dithering over whether to tack to the left or center in the upcoming 2010 election. I posted this in the comments:

Unlike the Republicans who must choose between their base of racists, religious extremists, and economic royalists and independents who find them morally repulsive, the Democrats could easily appeal to both their progressive base and independents by implementing progressive policies that broad majorities of Americans would support:

• Reregulate Wall Street & prosecute and imprison those at the top who knowingly committed fraud.
  

• Break up any business big enough to buy or intimidate our democracy.
  

• Enact a Wall Street transaction tax steep enough to kill speculation, and force investors to place long term bets on companies they actually hope will succeed (instead of creating one pump & dump bubble after another).
  

• Base our trade policy on what is good for American families, not speculators on Wall Street.
  

• Pass health care reform that does more to help middle and working class families than it does to protect and enrich insurance companies.
  

• Enact a separation of corporation and state when it comes to foreign policy, so we don't overthrow governments or invade countries just because some oil company, banana plantation, or sweatshop owner got their panties in a knot because the leader of a country drove a hard bargain for their natural resources or raised the minimum wage. This change alone would make it harder for terrorist groups to recruit.
  

• End privatization of government functions that are invariably the result of corruption that in turn then uses our tax dollars to fund further corruption.
  

• Invest more in alternative energy than we do in invading and occupying oil producing and pipeline countries. Besides giving us an endless supply of nearly free energy, it would break the power of oil companies to dictate our foreign policy and impoverish countries like Saudi Arabia that use their oil wealth fund terrorist groups.
  

• Listen to teachers for advice about how to fix schools instead of scammers who hope to make money on privatizing them.
  

• Legalize marijuana and deal with other illegal drugs by reducing demand and through treatment--exactly the way the wealthy and politicians deal with their kids when get caught with the stuff.
  

And that is the bottom line to all progressive positions. Treat your fellow citizens the way you would members of your own family, not overly indulgent, but not as sheep to be fleeced or led to the slaughter either.

If Democrats did things like this, were guided by that principle, or even appeared to be, they would not have to worry about 2010 or any election after that.

Unfortunately, by trying to split the baby between the needs of the working and middle class and the rapacious, insatiable demands of the sociopathic trust fund babies on Wall Street, they look weak and unwilling to stand up for their core principles at best, and at worst, as corrupt as the Republicans only with the lipstick of soothing social justice platitudes instead of the shrill, sharp absolutes of the religious right.

Neither option will get the Democratic base out, nor will it inspire independents to vote for Democrats unless they decide based on a coin toss.

We need more "inconvenient truths:" here's a couple

FOREIGN POLICY: American foreign policy for the last few decades has had little to do with our security or even our economic well-being, nor does it promote the welfare or democracy of countries on the receiving end. Instead, neoliberalism, NAFTA, GATT, WTO, World Bank, and the IMF serve a handful of very wealthy people and corporations.

Americans ignorance of this is how 9/11 can happen and a president can get away with saying it was because they "hate our freedom."

Ignorance of this also kept alarm bells from going off when Bush applied the same program to America that has been used on Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere with the same disastrous results: run up gigantic government debts that can't possibly be paid, and collect by forcing the country to drastically cut social services and privatize everything including essential services like WATER, and sell off their natural resources for a song, allowing all the profits to be expropriated.

CLASS: Class exists. Class warfare exists. If Rush Limbaugh screams about his opponents committing class warfare, it's because the class he serves is winning and don't want anyone to notice. America has always prided itself on access to upward mobility and rags to riches stories, but right now that path is narrower and steeper. We need to open it up.

CULTURAL ISSUES: Both Democrats and Republicans prefer to talk about gay marriage, abortion, flag desecration, prayer in school, and all those other symbolic cultural issues because while people are getting in a lather about something that probably doesn't affect them, the pols can quietly line their pockets and the pockets of their cronies. Whether abortion is legal or not or your gay neighbors are married is not going to help you put food on the table, pay for you to go to the doctor, or put your kid through college. All of those things cost money and some are hard to solve. By contrast, prayer, abortion, etc. costs nothing (at least to the politicians). When a pol hears you talking about that stuff, he breathes a sigh of relief--for all he cares, you could be talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.


DEFENSE: Only a small portion of our "defense" budget is actually for defense. China is an instructive example. They spend about a seventh what we do on defense and yet they are in no danger of being invaded or likely even attacked. Why? They would be hell to occupy. Similarly, if we are having trouble occupying a medium-small country like Iraq, imagine some other country trying to occupy us. Apart from having to cross one of two oceans, every yahoo and his brother have a gun and lots of places to hide and shoot at the for'ners. We would be a pain in the ass.

Most of our defense budget is for OFFENSE, either protecting economic interests overseas or acquiring more. No one in the Persian Gulf region would come over here to attack us if we weren't propping up dictators, and now trying to install the semblance of democracy (so long as it lets our companies pump the oil, at a pace and price of the companies choosing) at the barrel of a gun.

Every war has at least one side who is a thief, sometimes both. He goes to another country to steal their land and resources. Hitler said this plainly in the Hossbach Memorandum before the war. Rarely is an invasion about anything else--maybe never. I don't suppose Hawaii was a threat to us when we annexed them unless they were going to paddle over here and throw pineapples at California.

Marine Corps General and two time Medal of Honor winner Smedley Butler said it best:

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

FULL TEXT:
http://www.hackvan.com/pub/stig/anti-govt/...

When someone of either party tells you we need a Cold War size military, they have one of three things in mind:

• looking tougher than the other guy
  
  
• getting donations from defense contractors
  
  
• using the military to help other business interests.
  

Defense could probably be done with a fourth of our defense budget.

MORALITY IN GOVERNMENT: There is none except what we force them to have. None. Most politicians would not only kill an Iraqi to fill their friends pockets, they would kill you. Here they don't do it with bombs but by blocking safety regulations like inspecting beef for Mad Cow Disease or having safety testing for supplements. I worked for an attorney service and served papers on the company that made herbal ecstasy. Seven kids died at one party from taking it. Orrin Hatch takes money from the supplement industry and bars any testing or safety warnings. Members of both party either serve or cringe before the health insurance industry, which denies millions of us health care by pricing us out of the market or worse, not approving of coverage we paid for and putting us on hold until we die. Politicians know those health care stories. Lots of their constituents have called and said their wife or husband or kid died because they were denied care or couldn't afford it in the first place, and the politician thinks,

"Hmmm...save lives or get a campaign donation. Those insurance companies would really chew my ass if I went after them. Probably back my opponent...Marcy! Send these people an autographed photo! That ought to make them happy."

Got any to add?

5 Nobel Laureates fight Iraq OIL THEFT law pushed by Bush & big oil companies

I got this in an email from Antonia Juhasz, who wrote THE BUSH AGENDA, and has been one of the few journalist writing on the Iraq Hydrocarbon Law that does more than retype Karl Rove's press releases.

See the end of the article for a petition to sign in support.

Forcing the Hydrocarbon Law that was dictated by the oil companies to give them up to 80% of Iraq's oil wealth while our troops are occupying the country is a prima facie war crime. Bush will commit the act, but we will pay the price of being hated for decades to come.

See the end of the article for a petition to sign in support.

You might also email, FAX, or snail mail this to your reps in Congress, Pelosi, Reid, and just for the hell of it, the GOP leadership too.

Find & write your representative & senators

Find & write Congressional "leaders"

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE RECIPIENTS AND CONCERNED PEOPLE OF THE WORLD SIGN ON STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO THE IRAQ OIL LAW

In support of the people of Iraq, we the undersigned Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, state our opposition to the Iraq Oil Law.

We also oppose the decision of the United States government to require that the Iraq government pass the Oil Law as a condition of continued reconstruction aid in legislation passed on May 24, 2007.

A law with the potential to so radically transform the basic economic security of the people of Iraq should not be forced on Iraq while it is under occupation and in such a weak negotiating position vis-à-vis both the U.S. government and foreign oil corporations.

The Iraq Oil Law could benefit foreign oil companies at the expense of the Iraqi people, deny the Iraqi people economic security, create greater instability, and move the country further away from peace.

The U.S. government should leave the matter of how Iraq will address the future of its oil system to the Iraqi people to be dealt with at a time when they are free from occupation and more able to engage in truly democratic decision-making.

It is immoral and illegal to use war and invasion as mechanisms for robbing a people of their vital natural resources.

Signed by

Betty Williams - Ireland
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient 1976

Mairead Corrigan Maguire - Ireland
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient 1976

Prof. Jody Williams - USA
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient 1997

Dr. Shirin Ebadi - Iran
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient 2003

Prof. Wangari Maathai - Kenya
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient 2004

Also signed by:

Yanar Mohammed – Iraq
Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq

Antonia Juhasz - USA
Oil Change International

***

The letter is the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Statement that has been made in to a Sign-on letter and invites your signatures. To sign, please send you name, country of residence, and organizational affiliation (if any) to Kelek Stevenson with Oil Change International at kkelekk@gmail.com . The full text is below.

The petition was written by Yanar and includes the signatures of several prominent Iraqi and American activists. You can sign the online online petition here
www.petitiononline.com/iraqoil/petition.html

I hope you will sign both.

Congressman Jim McDermott of Washington State sent a copy of the statement to every member of the United States Congress.

Jody Williams and I have conducted interviews on radio stations across the United States, Democracy Now! highlighted the statement in a special program on the law, and United Press International did a story on the release of the Statement
www.upi.com/Energy/Briefing/2007/06/20/nobel_laureates_...

The debate in the U.S. Congress has finally shifted from “whether” to “how” to end the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But the devil may yet be in the details. We must be vigilant and demand not only that the occupation end, but that as the details of withdrawal are worked out, that the requirement that Iraqis change their oil system is taken off of the table.

For more information on The Iraq Oil Law and activists steps you can take, please visit the Oil Law section of my website which is updated almost daily at www.bushagenda.net/article.php?id=365, Oil Change International’s website www.PriceOfOil.org, and www.handsoffiraqioil.org

Nobel Women's Initiative Iraq Oil Law page

THEIR PETITION OPPOSING THE IRAQ OIL THEFT LAW

IRAQ OIL THEFT RESOURCES

Iraqis come to US to protest Bush oil theft law

The Iraqis are coming all the way to the US to protest not outside Congress but outside Bearingpoint, the firm Bush hired to write the Hydrocarbon Law that will rob their country's oil income, the source of most of their wealth.

The Iraqis are fighting a Bush war crime, and most Democrats in Congress are looking the other way. In fact, the Democrats included a benchmark in the Iraq Appropriation bill that requires Iraqis to pass the law.

If the Iraqis wanted to, they could do more than protest Bearingpoint--they could sue them using the Alien Tort Statute that allows people to sue American companies for human rights violations in other countries. Aiding an economic war crime might count.

If Bush succeeds in getting this Hydrocarbon Law passed, it will not only prove to Iraqis and the Arab world that we went there to steal their oil and earn decades more hatred, it will also mean that our troops have to stay to enforce the law, which is what Bush meant when he said stay for decades.

KEY EXCERPTS:




Editorial

June 3, 2007, 6:59PM

Oily Law

Protesters from Iraq draw attention to a law they fear will give control of their oil to foreign investors.

On Tuesday Iraqi oil union leaders will protest in Washington outside the offices of a consulting firm called BearingPoint. A contingent from the 26,000-member union of oil workers is on a 14-city tour to bring to the American people a heartfelt plea: Please separate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq from the passage of an oil law by the Iraqi Parliament.

With Congress pushing for benchmarks, the Bush administration has been pressing Parliament to pass the oil law. Administration and media focus has been on the provision that states that oil and gas in Iraq are owned by all its people in all regions and governorates. Unfortunately, the law does not stipulate how to fairly distribute oil revenues. Distribution of the nation's vast oil reserves is vastly unequal, and there is no system of mineral rights, which weren't needed under Iraq's national oil company.

This familiar controversy is not the source of outrage for the visiting union members. Their fear centers around the provisions in the 33-page law that have received little scrutiny in the media. They say the law forces privatization of the Iraqi oil industry, an industry that is responsible for almost 70 percent of the gross domestic product.

The nation's five trade unions, representing hundreds of thousands of workers, issued a statement that the law would amount to handing control over oil to foreign companies and undermining the sovereignty of the state and the dignity of the Iraqi people.

***

The union protesters pose an important question: To what degree will foreign investment be coerced, and to what degree will Iraq share in the wealth created by that investment? If oil profits wind up in the pockets of foreign investors, there might be little of the trillions in oil wealth for Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to share.

FULL TEXT

Iraqis fighting to keep their oil

OIL motive for IRAQ WAR resources

benchmarks bearingpoint oil workers union strike iraq oil contracts oil concessions hydrocarbon law iraq war privatization oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican timetable occupation support the troops hydrocarbon law withdrawal kucinich professor smartass iraq insurgency propaganda corporation democracy war on terror worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news

KUCINICH hammers Democrats for ignorance & inaction on Iraq oil theft law

Why is Dennis Kucinich one of only a small handful of our elected representatives who is talking about the primary motive for the war and an oil law Bush is forcing on the Iraqis that will inspire more animosity toward our troops?

Kucinich said the following in response to a Washington Post story that said Bush is now open to some benchmarks:

“Of course the President isn’t ruling out punishing the Iraqi government for not reaching benchmarks, because his Administration has deceitfully linked concepts of reconciliation and equitable oil revenue sharing to passage of the Hydrocarbon Act which leads to privatization of Iraq’s oil wealth.

“Democrats have denied they are for anything which privatizes Iraq’s oil, which means they may be largely unaware of what is in the bill because of Mr. Bush’s deception.

“This entire matter about control of Iraq’s oil would be a farce, if it were not so tragic in its implication. First, Congress wanted benchmarks because the President wanted them. Now the President wants benchmarks because Congress wants them. Who is the father of this baby?!

“Meanwhile Congress prepares to continue to fund the war while the White House crafts a bipartisan consensus to force Iraq to show “progress,” meaning Iraq gives up control of its oil. This war will never end if Iraqis believe we are trying to steal their oil, and, given the substance of the Hydrocarbon Act, how could they believe anything else?”

http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/0518-04.htm

OIL motive for IRAQ WAR resources

benchmarks iraq oil contracts oil concessions hydrocarbon law iraq war privatization oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican timetable occupation support the troops hydrocarbon law withdrawal kucinich professor smartass iraq insurgency propaganda corporation democracy war on terror worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news

What threatens the lives of our troops? an OIL law Bush loves and Iraqis HATE

When Democrats or others propose a timeline for pulling out of Iraq or say anything that disagrees with Bush, they are accused of endangering the lives of our troops and enboldening those fighting us in Iraq. But is that really what's inflaming the insurgency?

When the invasion of Iraq was complete, Bush appointed Gen. Jay Garner, who had successfully administered the Kurdish region between the wars (it's the only part of the country where the majority likes us) to run all of Iraq. He said the Bush plan to privatize and sell off everything in Iraq, especially the oil, would inflame resistance to the occupation:

General Garner: In fact, I think you’d be hard pressed to go up north and convince the Kurds that all the… they had to be privatised. Now you can convince the Kurds that they don’t own the oil fields, but the privatisation? I don’t think you can do it, and that’s just one fight that you don’t have to take on right now....I’m a believer that you don’t want to end the day with more enemies than you started with.

VIDEO (about two minutes in) TEXT OF INTERVIEW CONTEXT

He was right.

He was also fired.

Fast forward a couple of years, and Bush is pressing on the Iraqis an oil industry written Hydrocarbon Law that lets oil companies take up to 80% of Iraq's oil wealth out of the country. Iraqi scholars, oil workers, and former oil bureaucrats who have read the law strongly oppose it to the point that the oil workers are threatening to strike. The Bush picked Iraqi prime minister said Bush will fire him if the is Hydrocarbon Law isn't passed, and the Iraqi parliament has gone on vacation rather than vote on the law, knowing that if they passed it, it would earn them a bullet from the insurgents, and if they rejected it, Bush's displeasure could be at least as lethal.

When our elected officials and most of the media talk about the Hydrocarbon Law, they stick closely to how it divides oil income among the various Iraqi ethnic group and even made it a benchmark in the Iraq appropriation bill, but avoid like a spider any question of how the law divides the money between Iraqis as a whole and oil companies. A handful, like Dennis Kucinich and Jim McDermott have spoken out on this in Congress. If the rest of them were serious about ending the war, they would be talking about this every day and doing everything they could to let the Iraqis know we don't want to steal their wealth.

Iraqis know that oil is the primary and nearly only source of wealth in their country. If it is taken from them, they are essentially Bangladesh without the flooding.

Now ask yourself, what is going to make an Iraqi more likely to attack our troops: talk of a timeline for pulling out of Iraq, or a plan to rob their country for decades to come?

MORE OIL motive for IRAQ WAR resources

iraq oil contracts oil concessions hydrocarbon law vacation iraq war privatization jay garner oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican antonia juhasz greg palast GOP timetable occupation support the troops hydrocarbon law withdrawal kucinich professor smartass iraq insurgency propaganda corporation democracy war on terror worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news

QUESTION: What makes you think the Iraq War is illegal?

Someone posed that question to me in response to one of my youtube videos.

Here's my response:

Thank you for your thoughtful question.

The Nuremberg War Crime Principles, which we used to prosecute the Nazis, and the UN Charter, which we helped draft and whole-heartedly supported after World War II forbid wars of aggression. While Bush went to the UN about the inspectors issue, he did not seek Security Council approval to invade Iraq, which made the war illegal according to Kofi Annan.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3661134.stm

Oddly, we are very selective about when we like the UN. When they are helping us beat up on Saddam, they are good. When they say anything about how Israel treats Palestinians as many resolutions have, we ignore them

Bush knew Saddam was not a threat to us, and went as far as to use the uranium from Niger claim which he knew was false. Even before the war, intelligence professionals in the CIA, Pentagon, and Defense Department were complaining that the White House was pressuring them to make their reports more alarmist than the facts warranted.

In the case of the Pentagon, the administration went as far as to open a separate “Office of Special Plans” that had no intel professionals or separate streams of information, yet produced reports that exaggerated or contradicted military intel. This intel was them presented to Congress and the American people as factual.

A more slippery lie Bush told was creating the impression that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. 70% of Americans believed this but when Bush was asked about it directly, he was forced to admit on at least three different occasions that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, including the 2004 presidential debate.

Those lies had serious consequences: we will end up spend half a trillion dollars on the this war, have lost over 3,000 troops, with tens of thousands more injured, and over 600,000 Iraqis are dead according to the Lancet, the leading medical journal in Britain. Saddam killed about 100,000 people over the ten years before the invasion.

Even if Saddam had the dreaded WMD, or a nuclear weapon in particular, CIA director George Tenet was forced to admit to the Senate that Saddam would have been unlikely to use them on us unless we were literally about to overthrow him. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2312369.stm

He would be even less likely to give them to terrorist since once he did, he would have no control over how they were used. Saddam may have been evil, but he was not stupid. He probably knew how to count, and we have 10,000 nukes, a handful of which would exterminate everyone in Iraq in minutes. Saddam may have been evil, but he was not stupid. He even asked our ambassador to Iraq what our opinion was before we invaded Kuwait.

The actual intelligence was irrelevant to Bush anyway. In the minutes of his planning the war with Tony Blair, it was made clear that the trips to the UN, and demands for inspectors were simply efforts to “wrong-foot” Saddam and provide the appearance of justification rather than real diplomatic efforts. They went as far as to say “the facts were being fixed around the policy.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/18/nwar118.xml


Before the war even started, the Bush administration drew up a plan to privatize and sell off everything in the country, especially the oil. GOP strategist Grover Norquist proudly admits on camera authoring part of it and some oil executives have admitted their role in the war planning.
http://mysite.verizon.net/myk15/iraqmeetingstimeline.html
http://www.gregpalast.com/adventure-capitalism-the-hidden-2001-plan-to-carve-up-iraq

The privatization of natural resources and government services under Paul Bremer violates Article 55 of the Hague Convention, and the Bush administration themselves were concerned that their restructuring of Iraq’s oil industry to our oil companies liking would be prosecutable under this article.
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/195?OpenDocument

Whether the current government of Iraq is truly independent and sovereign is debatable since Bush vetoed their first choice for prime minister, and exerted heavy pressure on the drafting of the Constitution and the current Hydrocarbon Law.

Iraqis who know about the Hydrocarbon Law don’t like it.
http://www.basraoilunion.org
http://www.niqash.org/content.php?contentTypeID=171
http://www.macroworld.net/m/m.w?lp=GetStory&id=245184201

If we restructure their oil industry to benefit our oil companies, is that going to make people in Iraq and the rest of the Arab World like us more or less? If the war in Iraq has something to do with the War on Terror, it seems odd to do something that will make terrorism MORE likely.


As far as our general treatment of Iraqis, every part of article 147 of the Geneva Convention has been broken except for biological experiments and forcing Iraqis to serve us militarily. While less known than the Abu Ghraib torture, when we were rounding up Saddam’s generals, kidnapped one’s family to flush him out.
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/380?OpenDocument

Veterans like John McCain have said that mistreating Iraqis makes it even more likely that if our soldiers are taken prisoner, they will be mistreated.

The Army has a simple standard for whether the war crime of torture has occurred in their interrogation manual: if the same action was done to US troops, would you consider it illegal?

I’ve attached some of the relevant portions of international law. As Americans, we should be concerned when our government lies to us about the reasons they started a war, particularly when they exploited our feelings of vulnerability after 9/11.

Mike
(end of message)

SOURCES ON INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIME LAWS:

The Geneva Convention of 1949 (IV) we've broken almost every section of article 147, and Bush has personally broken article 148.

Art. 147. Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or
property protected by the present Convention: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, or willfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/380?OpenDocument


The Hague Convention of 1907 (IV) see articles 47, 53, 55

Art. 55. The occupying State shall be regarded only as administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real estate, forests, and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile State, and situated in the occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these properties, and administer them in accordance with the rules of usufruct.
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/195?OpenDocument

The privatization of natural resources and government services under Paul Bremer violates this article of the Hague Convention, and the Bush administration themselves were concerned that their restructuring of Iraq’s oil industry to our oil companies liking would be prosecutable under this article. Whether the current government of Iraq is truly independent and sovereign is debatable since Bush vetoed their first choice for prime minister, and exerted heavy pressure on the drafting of the Constitution and the current Hydrocarbon Law.

Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928

ARTICLE I

The High Contracting Parties solemly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.
ARTICLE II

The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.


http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/kbpact.htm


Nuremberg Principles

Principle VI

The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

(a) Crimes against peace:

(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;

(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

(b) War Crimes:

Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

(c) Crimes against humanity:

Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Principles


UN Charter

Article 2, paragraph 4

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

Article 51

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.

iraq war privatization war crimes oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips united nations antonia juhasz greg palast GOP privatization corruption occupation war of aggression hydrocarbon law grover norquist torture professor smartass iraq john mccain yellow cake uranium niger war on terror public relations worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news hugo chavez venezuela

Ask Dems: We gave big oil Iraq, what did we get back?

I addressed this to Sam Husseini, because he has gotten in the face of top Democrats and Republicans and asked them about things like what they think of letting Big Oil write the law that gives them most of the profits from Iraq's oil.

You can see the video's here:
http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2007/01/sen-reid-...

Sam,

Your videos asking Democrats about Iraq's oil is the best "speaking truth to power" journalism I've seen. Even some very progressive radio people who will talk about the oil issue don't bring it up with Democrats unless they mention it first.

Since Democrats refuse to answer your question on screwing Iraqis out of their oil money, maybe you need to turn it around to an issue they will feel more uncomfortable avoiding:

How does canceling Iraq's oil contracts with foreign companies and giving them to American ones benefit the average American? Was that worth the upwards of half a trillion dollars the war will cost, and the Iraqi and American lives?

If they give you anything like an adult answer it will be something like "strategic access to oil"

The follow up then is why would a country with one product not want to sell it to the consumer who uses 25% of it? Why don't we see China invading other countries to get strategic access, but using contracts and negotiations instead?

As always, these would be good questions for Republicans too, but the chances of getting an honest answer are even slimmer.

The answer to "what did Americans get" is of course demands from big oil for more tax cuts and subsidies, higher prices at the pump, and clearly their boy Bush is still angling to take on another top oil producing country, Iran. Any chance he wants to force terms on them favorable to our oil companies?


iraq war privatization jim mcdermott oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican antonia juhasz greg palast GOP conservative corruption occupation colonialism hydrocarbon law grover norquist jay garner professor smartass iraq peak oil propaganda corporation democracy war on terror public relations worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news 30 year war thirty year war

Senate will investigate Iraq OIL deals Jan. 23! tell them screwing Iraqis = more terrorism

I almost missed this at the very end of her article on the oil machinations in Iraq:

On January 23, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will hold a hearing to investigate "oil and reconstruction strategy in Iraq." This offers a critical opportunity to demand a cessation of all U.S. government and corporate influence over Iraqis as to the future of their oil.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/01/19/its_still_a...

One way to partially atone for the harm the Bushies have done Iraq is to ensure that have an oil law that no Iraqi or any of their neighbors could claim exploits Iraq for the benefit of the oil companies. PSAs would tell the whole Arab world that we really did go in there to steal the oil and despite any protest from Democrats or our future pullout, it will appear our government was fully behind it if they are allowed to go into effect.

While most Americans are unaware of what's going on in Iraq on this issue (and know even less about how little we get for our own oil) people in the Arab world and other oil producing countries do. In the 1950s, the elected president of Iran was overthrown for driving too hard a bargain and closer to home, one of the reasons the Bushies backed a coup against Hugo Chavez was because he wouldn't take a deal that gave just 1% of the profits from oil to Venezuela.

If our elected officials were at all concerned about their "War on Terrorism," they would realize this would inflame hatred against the US for decades to come.

It is imperative that you tell your senators this and senate foreign relations committee:

Find your senators:

http://senate.gov /

And as many of these guys you have time for:

http://foreign.senate.gov/about.html


OIL MOTIVE for Iraq War resources
http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2006/09/iraq-oil-war-resources.html


iraq war privatization jim mcdermott oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican antonia juhasz greg palast GOP conservative corruption occupation colonialism hydrocarbon law grover norquist jay garner professor smartass iraq peak oil propaganda corporation democracy war on terror public relations worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news

pending legalization of OIL profits theft angers Iraqis

Do you think the Iraqis will notice that Bush is forcing their parliament to pass a law that will give 75% of their oil wealth to big oil corporations?

Blood and oil: How the West will profit from Iraq's most precious commodity

Published: 07 January 2007

Mr Muttitt echoed warnings that unfavourable deals done now could unravel a few years down the line, just when Iraq might become peaceful enough for development of its oil resources to become attractive. The seeds could be sown for a future struggle over natural resources which has led to decades of suspicion of Western motives in countries such as Iran.

Iraqi trade union leaders who met recently in Jordan suggested that the legislation would cause uproar once its terms became known among ordinary Iraqis.

"The Iraqi people refuse to allow the future of their oil to be decided behind closed doors," their statement said. "The occupier seeks and wishes to secure... energy resources at a time when the Iraqi people are seeking to determine their own future, while still under conditions of occupation."

The resentment implied in their words is ominous, and not only for oil company executives in London or Houston. The perception that Iraq's wealth is being carved up among foreigners can only add further fuel to the flames of the insurgency, defeating the purpose of sending more American troops to a country already described in a US intelligence report as a cause célèbre for terrorism.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article...

iraq war privatization jim mcdermott oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican antonia juhasz greg palast GOP conservative corruption occupation colonialism hydrocarbon law grover norquist jay garner professor smartass iraq peak oil propaganda corporation democracy war on terror public relations worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news 30 year war thirty year war

the OIL motive: Iraq AND Afghanistan

It's been so long that it's easy to forget the war in Afghanistan and overlook it as the "good war" in response to 9/11, but the same oil interests that wanted the war in Iraq were pushing to get a pipeline in Afghanistan and wanted the Taliban replaced with a more compliant negotiating partner--and that was a couple of years before 9/11.

Oddly enough, that was shortly before we started having trouble with al Qaeda, and had to start attacking Afghanistan.

When will people start talking about this and toss aside the embarrassing sack of propaganda crap the Bushies dealt and Democrats keep dipping into as well, criticizing the taste instead of offering a better explanation?

KEY EXCERPTS:

The Surreal Politics of Premeditated War
by R.W. Behan

Common to both the Afghan and Iraqi lines of dots are energy resources, both oil and gas. It is true our country depends on oil and gas, but it is not the American people who need to corner Mid East oil and gas by force. Dozens of oil companies around the world"the "foreign suitors," for example"can supply us with Iraqi oil or Caspian Basin gas, and would be pleased to do so. There is no reason not to rely on them: we are buying more and more Toyotas and Volvos, and fewer Chevrolets and Fords, with no apparent damage to our national security. Why not do the same with gasoline, diesel, and LNG, and avoid armed conflict?

Why not? Because the bottom lines of Exxon-Mobil, Unocal and other domestic oil companies, in the eyes of the Bush Administration, are sacrosanct. It is not the American consumers, then, but only the American oil companies who benefit from George Bush's premeditated wars.

***

IRAQ:

By early March, 2001, the Task Force was poring over maps of the Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, tanker terminals, and oil exploration blocks. It studied an inventory of “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts”—dozens of oil companies from 30 different countries, in various stages of exploring and developing Iraqi crude. (These documents were forced into view several years later by a citizen group, Judicial Watch, with a Freedom of Information Act proceeding. It wasn’t easy—the Bush Administration appealed the lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court—but the maps and documents can now be seen and downloaded at : http://www.judicialwatch.org/iraqi-oil-maps.shtml.)

Not a single U.S. oil company, however, was among the “suitors,” and that was intolerable. Mr. Cheney’s task force concluded, “By any estimation, Middle East oil producers will remain central to world security. The Gulf will be a primary focus of U.S. international energy policy.”

Condoleezza Rice’s National Security Council, meanwhile, was directed by a top secret memo to “cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered melding two seemingly unrelated areas of policy.” The NSC was ordered to support “the review of operational policies towards rogue states such as Iraq and actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.”

***

AFGHANISTAN:

The strategic location of Afghanistan can scarcely be overstated. The Caspian Basin contains some $16 trillion worth of oil and gas resources, and the most direct pipeline route to the richest markets is through Afghanistan.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the first western oil company to express interest and take action in the Basin was the Bridas Corporation of Argentina. It acquired production leases and exploration contracts in the region, and by November of 1997 had signed an agreement with General Dostum of the Northern Alliance and with the Taliban to build a pipeline across Afghanistan.

Not to be outdone, the American company Unocal fought Bridas at every turn, even spurning an invitation from Bridas to join an international consortium in the Basin. Unocal wanted exclusive control of the trans-Afghan pipeline, and hired a number of consultants in its conflict with Bridas: Henry Kissinger, Richard Armitage (now Deputy Secretary of State in the Bush Administration), Zalmay Khalilzad (a signer of the PNAC letter to President Clinton) and Hamid Karzai. (Eventually Bridas sued Unocal in the U.S. courts, and won.)

Unocal and the Clinton Administration hoped to have the Taliban cancel the Bridas contract, but were getting nowhere. Mr. John J. Maresca, a Unocal Vice President, testified to a House Committee of International Relations on February 12, 1998, asking politely to have the Taliban removed and a stable government inserted. His discomfort was well placed.

Six months later terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and two weeks after that President Clinton launched a cruise missile attack into Afghanistan. Clinton issued an executive order on July 4, 1999, freezing the US held assets and prohibiting further trade transactions with the Taliban.

FULL TEXT:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1203-21.htm


MORE OIL MOTIVE FOR IRAQ WAR BACKGROUND AND LINKS



iraq war privatization iraq study group james baker oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican antonia juhasz greg palast GOP conservative corruption occupation colonialism hydrocarbon law grover norquist jay garner professor smartass iraq peak oil propaganda greg palast corporation fascism democracy political opinion agent provocateur george w bush war on terror public relations worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news rebel