[A-List] Oil Addiction: The World in Peril - 5

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

by Pierre Chomat (Universal Publishers, 2004)

translated from the French by Pamela Gilbert-Snyder


Part I. Man's Egosystems

Chapter 5. The Oil Addicts go to Market

How did our excessive appetite for ergamines become a problem for humanity? Only
ten years ago, this question would not have received much attention - although
many countries had already taken up arms to satisfy that appetite.

One would think that the world's disadvantaged, way off over there somewhere -
the ones we barely know about - must look at the way we live and wonder how
anyone can behave so carelessly. Perhaps they are amazed that we take airplanes
at the drop of a hat, sometimes just to satisfy some vague curiosity. Or that we
like to show off our superiority by parading around in SUVs, perched high above
the rest. Or that we live in huge houses while they, for the most part, have to
be content with shelters lacking all conveniences. Or that we illuminate the sky
over Las Vegas with millions of electric lights, just for fun. Or that we roar
around on snowmobiles over the hideouts of hibernating bears, badgers, and
squirrels in national parks where we pretend that Nature still reigns supreme.
Or that we make a deafening noise with our leaf blowers, just to push a few dead
leaves off into the street.

We may be ready to admit in the West that we have taken our energy consumption
way too far. We may even be ready to admit that our mania for automating
everything around us has become downright eccentric. But it seems we still have
trouble accepting that our oil-addicted lifestyle is threatening our very future.

The abundance of the petroleum reserves we have discovered so far has led us to
believe that energy is Nature's gift to Man. These incredible reserves of power,
stored within the Earth for so long as if waiting just for us, have certainly
given us some strange habits. We have been unable to adequately grasp just how
much we really use them and how precious they are. We have not relied solely on
Nature's renewable energy sources - wind and water - for many, many years. By
relying on the Earth's stores of fossil materials, which can be renewed only
over millions of years, we are living beyond the means of our globe! Worse yet,
most of the industrialized nations now depend on far-off hydrocarbon-producing
nations to meet their domestic energy needs, which have become gargantuan.
Western Europe and Japan have been in this situation for some time. The United
States, which once had its own rich reserves of oil and natural gas, has also
reached this stage.

The industrialized world has placed itself in a situation of dependency. Its
strength is based on weakness!

The first danger we face due to this paradoxical dilemma is an ongoing one: our
society, high on energy, has to continually mobilize its modern-day centurions
in the constant search for oil. The slogans of my dream come to mind: "Find the
oil and bring it to us! Wherever it may be!" and "I Vroom, Therefore I Am!"

Another more insidious - and equally alarming - complication is that the
ergamine, as it dies, does not vanish without a trace. The carbon dioxide gas
that it releases, which we negligently allow to escape into the atmosphere, is
not just "passing through"; it is here to stay! We will talk more about this in
the chapter entitled "The Earth's New Cloak".

Sometimes countries that claim to be rich, despite not having easy access to the
fuel needed to maintain their industrial standing, adopt very aggressive energy
policies toward the oil-producing nations. I saw this firsthand, between 1975
and 1978 in the Middle East. At that time I was closely involved in the
development of the petroleum reserves of Iran, but my work took me also often to
Iraq. This gave me the opportunity to witness the implementation of the
industrialized nations' geopolitical strategies in and around the Persian Gulf.

The Gulf region may seem to some to be nothing more than an immense market for
ergamines. But the Middle East is much more than oil. Some of civilization's
oldest and most inspiring historical sites are located in this region.

The history of Persia is visible in its ancient glorious monuments. The Chogha
Zanbil ziggurat in the land of the Elamites, the palace at Persepolis, and,
nearer to our time, the Isfahan palaces and Shiraz rose gardens, where Saadi
wrote his poetry: all were extremely important to the development of Western
civilization.

Thanks to Firdausi, Omar Khayyam, Saadi, Hafiz and some other Persian writers,
it is still possible to conjure up the memory of the palaces and gardens of
ancient Persia.

That castle once
claimed to rival
the whirling
heavens.

How many Kings
have fallen
prostrate
at its doors?

And on its ramparts
now a ringdove sits
and mourns.

- Omar Khayyam {4}


Iraq's history, even more than Iran's, is directly linked to our Western past;
its history is that of Mesopotamia, where our culture had its first stirrings.
Traveling across that country, I could not escape the feeling that I was
traveling back in time. In Sumer, I could sense the bustle of the world's first
cities, Ubaid, Ur, and Uruk, and I caught a glimmer of our present civilization.
Walking along the stone walls eroded by time, I "heard" the sound of chiselers
engraving the first lines of writing ever set down in the West. Thanks to them,
the Sumerians and Akkadians still speak to us.

In ancient Babylon, I imagined Hammurabi discussing his code of laws. On the
banks of the Euphrates, I "saw" Queen Semiramis in her gardens presiding over a
reception in honor of some mysterious emissary. I trod lightly, not wishing to
disturb her ...

In 1978, Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. His Islamic
revolution was largely the result of the years of exploitation Iran had suffered
at the hands of Europe and the United States.

In 1980, a conflict between Iraq and Iran erupted in a war which lasted up to
1988. It claimed millions of lives, all of them unfortunate citizens reduced to
dust to satisfy Saddam Hussein's policy of war, which not many Iranians or
Iraqis, beyond the Sovereign of Baghdad's faithful few, even knew about. And yet
this war was about oil. For, in fact, Saddam was seeking control of the rich oil
fields of Iran's Khuzestan province, which borders Iraq. In 1990, he tried again,
this time invading Kuwait. Given the importance of this tiny country's oil to
the Northern hemisphere, the United States and Europe could not stand idly by
and watch this act of aggression; they had to do everything they could to rout
the Iraqi troops. Once again many Iraqi soldiers and civilians paid with their
lives for this latest incursion on the part of their master. Perhaps one-third
of the Iraqi soldiers who took part in those battles now lie buried in the
desert.

Let us return later to those dramatic events, which were never clearly explained
to the world. Saddam Hussein's excesses were attributed sometimes to the actions
of a power-mad individual, sometimes to an attack against an Islamic
fundamentalist regime, sometimes to a great Satan. These judgments were
obviously made with little reflection. The truth is not so simple. It lies
elsewhere. The Iraqis, Iranians and Kuwaitis who died in these wars gave their
lives for the control of oil.

And when I hear the word "oil", I cannot help but think of the nations of the
Northern hemisphere. They are the ones who give black gold its excessive value.
Even though Saddam Hussein behaved with murderous aggression in seeking to
secure more reserves of this fabulous elixir, we cannot completely exonerate the
West for its share of responsibility in these conflicts. All of us, in Europe,
Japan, and America, who benefit from the Middle East's hydrocarbons, share
responsibility for what occurred there. The West's great interest in the
petroleum of the Persian Gulf was profoundly disrupting these countries'
histories. Oil confers great economic power on the industrialized nations, but
it also makes them just as powerfully dependent on the Middle East. However,
such dependency has also changed the entire direction of this region, and its
peoples' way of thinking. The source of Saddam Hussein's murderous madness lies
at least partly in the West. That is where he acquired weapons for his wars, at
any rate.

Then, in 2003, the West entered into another conflict with Iraq, a war
instigated by the American government. Why, once again, would men risk being
blown apart by missiles in this region? Why was another American general bound
for glory?

When the plan to attack was announced, my first reaction was that this was
completely unacceptable and the words of an Iraqi I had met in Baghdad during
the 1970s came to mind.

"In the developing nations", he said, "the future is still mired in the past.
For years we have made great plans, formulated the best resolutions; sometimes
we have even written beautiful constitutions for our citizens. But history does
not respect them. We cannot leave our past behind because we are in denial as to
who we really are. Our plans have no basis, because our leaders' goals are
constantly at odds with the interests of the wealthy nations. Our plans are only
fairy tales. Our future does not belong to us."

Thirty years later, I suddenly felt as if I were finally grasping the full
import of his words. In 2003, Iraq was officially considered an independent
nation; it was even a "republic" with representatives "elected" by the people.
But in reality these people did not possess the thing that was most essential to
them - the freedom to make their own decisions regarding matters that directly
concerned them. The tragedy Iraq was about to experience had been organized
according to the needs of foreign interests. This war served the interests of
the United States, above all, as well as England and a few other countries, but
certainly not the interests of the Iraqi people. Without a doubt, the history of
Iraq still does not belong to the Iraqi people.

As the days went by, it became increasingly clear that the United States
intended to make Iraq one of its guaranteed oil suppliers, like Saudi Arabia.
This strategy was apparent in all of the news, so carefully distilled by the
American media day after day. The battle to be launched against Saddam Hussein,
the "evil" master of Baghdad, was an ideal alibi. At the most official levels,
Hussein was depicted as an imminent threat, even though the CIA clearly had
trouble delivering the necessary arguments to support its government's thesis.

The American government reported that Saddam Hussein had thumbed his nose at
international conventions, but it failed to mention that the United States was
doing the same. It had rejected any form of agreement to attempt to slow global
warming. It had not signed the 1997 Geneva Convention prohibiting the production
and storage of landmines. It had withdrawn from the anti-ballistic missile
treaty with Moscow. It was even refusing to submit to the jurisdiction of the
International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Washington claimed that pre-emptive action - in reality, a "preventive war" -
was the way to stop terrorism, although there was not a shred of evidence that
Iraq had participated, directly or indirectly, in the attacks on New York of
September 11 2001, to which the US government referred unabashedly in its
justifications.

It was difficult to understand how, in the 21st century, the government of a
democratic nation could still twist information so easily to manipulate its own
people. When you live far from North America, you tend to believe that the
United States is the land of total political transparency - that its words and
actions are even somewhat naive. If that had ever been the case, it was no
longer so. The government was lying to its own people, manipulating information
to suit its purposes. The six groups that own the majority of the country's
fifteen hundred daily newspapers {5} assisted their president in this task. An
American citizen who wanted to know how the nation's intellectuals were reacting
to the president had no alternative but to turn to specialized or foreign media.
Like other American intellectuals at the end of 2002, university professor and
author Michael Klare had to rely on the European press {6} to make his opinions
known.

By this time, it was clear that we were witnessing the attempt of an
oil-addicted nation to secure its ergamine markets, and that the war that the
American government was preparing against Iraq served a strategy that certain
events, real or fabricated, had given it the opportunity to implement. There was
no longer any doubt that this war had been in the making for some time, that it
was a way to satisfy the great American machine's insatiable appetite for energy.
The United States Army was being sent into combat as part of the nation's energy
strategy. The United States was heading to Iraq, preceded by missiles, to secure
its oil market.

To disguise its aggression, the United States government was talking about
national security and whipping up a frenzy of fear among its citizens in order
to hide the truth and to instill a feeling of hatred for the Iraqi leaders. And
we all know what happened next.

The energy we draw from the Earth is no longer merely our source of well-being,
our way of life. It is much, much more. It is almost the sole guarantor of power
for the countries of the Northern hemisphere; it is certainly the guarantor of
United States supremacy. These nations are forced to acquire from countries
beyond their borders the magic potion that constitutes their strength. And they
are doing it! Without scruple! Their might justifies their right!

It is sad beyond words.


Notes

{4} Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat.

{5} "Matters of Scale: The American Way of Choice",
World Watch Magazine, (March-April 2001): 19

{6} Le Monde Diplomatique, Paris, France, November 2002.


Bill Totten     http://billtotten.blogspot.com/