أكتفي فقط بالعنوان الواسع للموضوع تاركة للزملاء الكرام وخاصة من يفهمون لغة الأرقام والمصالح أن يشرحوا لنا بلغة علمية موثقة ومبسطة ملامح الصرااع

عربيا لا يوجد اقتصاد إلا في السعودية* نتيجة للفائض الهائل الناتج عن ارتفاع أسعار البترول و أظنها لا تعرف ماذا تفعل بهذا الفائض ، و الدليل شراؤها لأسلحة بقيمة 6 مليارات دولار من الولايات المتحدة مع أ،ها ليست في حالة حرب مع أحد و ليس من المتوقع أن تكون كذلك.

في لبنان تكفي قيمة هذه الصفقة الحكومة لمدة سنة كميزانية ، أما السياحة فيه فهي مهما كبرت لن تصل إلى جزء مما في تركيا أو اليونان ، و حتى القائمون على مهرجان بعلبك كان هدفهم إيراد يغطي النفقات أو يزيد قليلا بحسب ما قالوا على وسائل الإعلام ، لماذا يذهب السائح إلى لبنان و هو يستطيع أن يقضي في تركيا أجازة أطول بربع ما سيصرفه في لبنان ، على أية حال كان الموسم السياحي واعدا بأكمن دولار لن يفعلوا شيئا أمام دين عام يفوق الخمسة و عشرين مليون دولار و بطالة تجاوزت ال 18% ، و هذا كله قبل المصيبة التي حلت به.

بالنسبة لإسرائيل هنالك دائما يد خفية تعوضها ، رغم أن خسائرها هذه المرة كانت كبيرة جدا.

الشرق الأوسط مهم اقتصاديا و لكن ليس لأهله هو مهم للصين و الاتحاد الأوروبي و الولايات المتحدة ، الصين تراهن على إيران و قد وقت عقود بالمليارات في قطاع الطاقة يمتد أجلها حتى 2025 (على ما أعتقد) و أمريكا لا تراهن على العرب فهي تملكهم ، أما الاتحاد الأوروبي فهو ميت تقريبا.

من مقالات ما قبل حرب العراق

Many top officials of the Bush administration come directly out of the oil industry. President Bush himself, as well as Vice-President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans and others all have strong ties to oil companies - Chevron once named a tanker after Rice as a gesture of thanks.


But the U.S. isn't threatening an invasion simply to ensure its continued access to Iraqi oil. Rather, it is a much broader U.S. play for control of the oil industry and the ability to set the price of oil on the world market.

Iraq's oil reserves are second only to Saudi Arabia's. And with U.S.-backed Saudi Arabia increasingly unstable, the question of which oil companies - French, Russian, or American - would control Iraq's rich but unexplored oil fields once sanctions are lifted has moved to the top of Washington's agenda. Many in the Bush administration believe that in the long term, a post-war, U.S.-dependent Iraq would supplant Saudi control of oil prices and marginalize the influence of the Saudi-led OPEC oil cartel. Iraq could replace Saudi Arabia, at least partially, at the center of U.S. oil and military strategy in the region, and the U.S. would remain able to act as guarantor of oil for Japan, Germany, and other allies in Europe and around the world.

Expanding U.S. power, central to the Bush administration's war strategy, includes redrawing the political map of the Middle East. That scenario includes U.S. control of Iraq and the rest of the Gulf states as well as Jordan and Egypt. Some in the administration want even more - "regime change" in Syria, Iran, and Palestine, and Israel as a permanently unchallengeable U.S.-backed regional power. The ring of U.S. military bases built or expanded recently in Qatar, Djibouti, Oman and elsewhere as preparation for a U.S. war against Iraq will advance that goal.

But the super-hawks of the Bush administration have a broader, global empire-building plan that goes way beyond the Middle East. Much of it was envisioned long before September 11th, but now it is waged under the flag of the "war against terrorism." The war in Afghanistan, the creation of a string of U.S. military bases in the (also oil- and gas-rich) countries of the Caspian region and south-west Asia, the new strategic doctrine of "pre-emptive" wars, and the ascension of unilateralism as a principle are all part of their crusade. Attacking Iraq is only the next step.

Who will benefit from a war in Iraq?

U.S. oil companies would be among the first to benefit, through priority access to Iraq's oil reserves, the second largest in the world. This access means not only increased supply of crude oil, but also enormous power in the global oil market, undermining that of Saudi Arabia and OPEC. In the late 1990s through 2002, Iraq signed contracts that would give French and Russian oil companies privileged access to Iraqi reserves once economic sanctions were lifted. The U.S. has used these contracts to pressure France and Russia in Security Council deliberations. The threat - hinted at by U.S. officials and made explicitly by leaders of the Iraqi opposition - was that a post-Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq would void the existing contracts, and that French and Russian companies would have no access to new oil leases if their governments stood in the way of U.S. plans. (The countervailing concern is that in the short term a war-driven drop in oil production could have serious economic consequences. But most oil companies seem to believe they would benefit from the higher retail prices that would accompany such a production decrease. )

Companies producing and installing oil equipment would also benefit. Vice-President Cheney was CEO of one such company, Halliburton Oil Services, before returning to Washington in 2001 as part of the Bush administration. Between 1997 and 2001, Halliburton under Cheney's leadership made deals with Iraq worth at least $73 million to rebuild Iraq's war- and sanctions-shattered oil infrastructure, but U.S.-led sanctions limited this reconstruction. With the U.S. military in control of a post-war Iraq, and U.S. oil companies in privileged positions, oil sanctions would certainly be lifted and companies like Halliburton would win giant rehabilitation contracts.

U.S. arms manufacturers would also benefit. Military producers have already won new, expanded contracts to produce more and better weapons. Boeing Aircraft, for instance, manufacturer of the "J-DAM" kits that transform huge lethal 500 and 2000-pound bombs into huge lethal 500 and 2000-pound "smart" bombs, is working around the clock on Pentagon contracts to produce the kits in anticipation of an Iraq war. Boeing is building a new 30,000-square-foot factory in St. Charles, LA to keep up with demand and its suppliers, including Lockheed, Honeywell, and Textron, are also ramping up production. Boeing spokesman Bob Algarotti anticipates "a higher level of production through the end of the decade

[CENTER]Does Oil Require Blood?
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
[Posted on Monday, January 06, 2003]
[Subscribe at email services, tell others, or Digg this story.]


It's obvious Iraq doesn't want war and the Bush administration does. The administration claims war would be a preemptive strike, but more honest commentators freely admit, as does Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, that oil plays a huge role in the continuing drama, even the decisive role.

"Any war we launch in Iraq will certainly be—in part—about oil. To deny that is laughable." What's more, he says in a twist on a predictable left-liberal trope, "I have no problem with a war for oil—if we accompany it with a real program for energy conservation."

It was the New York Times that recently carried two large articles on Iraq’s oil resources in its prominent "Week in Review" section, one of which contained a map of reserves. The reporter noted, "112 billion barrels of proven reserves is also something nobody can overlook.…Iraq’s ‘ability to generate oil’ is always somewhere on the table, even if not in so many words."

Or consider the MSNBC story, "Iraqi Oil, American Bonanza?" which says, "Iraq’s vast oil reserves remain a powerful prize for global oil companies…. Such a massive rebuilding effort represents a huge opportunity for the companies chosen to tackle it…. It’s unlikely that American firms will be left empty-handed if the U.S. follows through on threats of military action."

What does oil have to do with the Bush administration? The MSNBC reporter gives the reader that information too: "American oil companies are also hoping to benefit from the industry’s unusually strong ties to the White House. President Bush, himself the former head of a Texas oil company, has pursued a national energy policy that relies on aggressively expanding new sources of oil. Vice President Cheney is the former CEO of oil services giant Halliburton. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice is a former director of Chevron."

War and Economics

The connection between the war on Iraq and the desire for oil raises an important ideological consideration. Millions of college students are taught the Leninist idea that capitalist economies are inherently imperialistic. This is supposedly because exploitation exhausts capital values in the domestic economy, and hence capital owners must relentlessly seek to replenish their funds through grabbing foreign resources. In this view, war avoids the final crisis of capitalism.

College students might be forgiven for thinking there is some basis for this in the real world. In American history up to the present day, the onset of war tends to track the onset of economic doldrums. Recall that it was then-Secretary of State James Baker who said the first Iraqi war was all about "jobs, jobs, jobs." The line between the owners of capital and the warfare state has never been that clean in American history, and it has arguably never been as conspicuously blurred as it is today.

The view that sustaining capitalism requires aggressive war is usually said to originate with V.I. Lenin as a way of rescuing Marxism from a serious problem: capitalism was not collapsing in the 19th century. It was growing more robust, and workers were getting richer—facts that weighed heavily against the Marxist historical trajectory. The Leninist answer to the puzzle was that capitalism was surviving only thanks to its military aggression. The prosperity of the West originated in blood.

But Lenin was not the originator of the theory. The capitalists beat him to it. As Murray N. Rothbard explains in his History of Money and Banking in the United States, the idea began with a group of Republican Party theoreticians during the late Gilded Age, who were concerned that the falling rate of profits would cripple capitalism and that the only salvation was a forced opening of foreign markets to U.S. exports. These were the brain-trusters of Theodore Roosevelt, who heralded U.S. aggression against Spain in 1898.

The same year, economist Charles Conant published "The Economic Basis of Imperialism" in the North American Review in 1898. He argued that there is too much savings in advanced countries, too much production, and not enough consumption, and this was crowding out profitable investment opportunities for the largest corporations. The best way to find new consumers and resources, he said, is to go abroad, using force, if necessary, to open up markets. Further, the U.S. industrial trusts then dominant on the landscape could be useful in promoting and waging war. This would cartelize American industry and increase profits. Hence, said Conant, "concentration of power, in order to permit prompt and efficient action, will be an almost essential factor in the struggle for world empire."

While Lenin found imperialism for profit morally wrong, Conant found it praiseworthy, an inspiring plan of action. Indeed, many of his contemporaries also did. Boston’s U.S. Investor argued that war is necessary to keep capital at work. An "enlarged field for its product must be discovered," and the best source "is to be found among the semi-civilized and barbarian races."

By the turn of the century, this view had largely caught on in the economics profession, with even the eminent theorist John Bates Clark of Columbia praising imperialism for providing American business "with an even larger and more permanent profit."

Today the same creed is captured in the pithy if chilling mantra of Friedman: "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist." Lenin couldn't have said it better. Joseph Nye of Harvard fleshes out the point: "To ignore the role of military security in an era of economic and information growth is like forgetting the importance of oxygen to our breathing."

Historian Robert Kagan is even more brutally clear: "Good ideas and technologies also need a strong power that promotes those ideas by example and protects those ideas by winning on the battlefield."

So there you have it: if you want to use a cell phone, you have to be willing to send your son to die for the U.S. imperium in a war against Iraq. And if you lose your son in battle, know that this was necessary in order to shore up U.S. domination of the world economy. This is the creed of the global social democrats who champion both military and economic globalization.

With the communists and capitalists agreeing that war and prosperity are mutually dependent, how is a believer in peace and freedom to respond? While war can result in profit for a few, it is not the case that the entire system of a free economy depends on such wartime profiteering. Indeed, war comes at the expense of alternative uses of resources. To the extent that people are taxed to pay for armaments, property is diverted from its most valuable uses to purposes of destruction.

Commerce Is Peaceful

Indeed, the idea that commerce and war are allies is a complete perversion of the old liberal tradition. The first theorists of commerce from the 16th through the 18th centuries saw that a most meritorious aspect of commerce is its link to freedom and peace, that commerce made it possible for people to co-operate rather than fight. It made armaments and war less necessary, not more.

What about the need to open foreign markets? The expansion of markets and the division of labor is always a wonderful thing. The more people involved in the overarching business of economic life, the greater the prospects for wealth creation. But force is hardly the best means to promote the co-operative and peaceful activity of trade, any more than it is a good idea to steal your neighbor’s mower to improve lawncare on your block. Bitterness and acrimony are never good business, to say nothing of death and destruction.

In any case, the problem in Iraq is not that Iraq is somehow withholding its oil from the market. For ten years, and even before the first war on Iraq, its oil supplies have been available to the world. In one of the great ironies of modern war history, the first Bush administration waged war, it said, to keep Iraq from withholding its oil resources from world markets. The U.S. then proceeded to enforce a decade of sanctions that withheld most of Iraq’s oil reserves from the market.

The Solution

We are not permitted to say this, but the solution to Iraq is at hand. Repeal sanctions and resume trade with Iraq. Oil prices would fall dramatically. Hatred of the U.S. would abate. The plight of Iraq could no longer be Exhibit A for terrorist recruitment drives. The only downside is that U.S. companies connected to the Bush administration would not be the owners of the oil fields but instead would have to compete with other producers.

The idea of free enterprise is that everyone gets a chance, and no single industry or group of producers enjoys special privileges. Through competition and co-operation, but never violence, the living standards of everyone rise, and we all enjoy more of the life we want to live. It is not hard to understand, except in the corridors of the Bush administration, where theorists have linked arms with Leninists in the belief t

بالمناسبة skeptic

كونديليزا رايس كانت في مجلس إدارة Chevron Corporation و هي من أكبر شركات الطاقة قبل أن تستقيل و تكون مستشارة للأمن القومي لبوش في بداية العام 2001

اقتباس:  زياد   كتب/كتبت  

لو كان للصراع وجه اقتصادي لكان الحال مختلف

عربيا لا يوجد اقتصاد إلا في السعودية* نتيجة للفائض الهائل الناتج عن ارتفاع أسعار البترول و أظنها لا تعرف ماذا تفعل بهذا الفائض ، و الدليل شراؤها لأسلحة بقيمة 6 مليارات دولار من الولايات المتحدة مع أ،ها ليست في حالة حرب مع أحد و ليس من المتوقع أن تكون كذلك.

في لبنان تكفي قيمة هذه الصفقة الحكومة لمدة سنة كميزانية ، أما السياحة فيه فهي مهما كبرت لن تصل إلى جزء مما في تركيا أو اليونان ، و حتى القائمون على مهرجان بعلبك كان هدفهم إيراد يغطي النفقات أو يزيد قليلا بحسب ما قالوا على وسائل الإعلام ، لماذا يذهب السائح إلى لبنان و هو يستطيع أن يقضي في تركيا أجازة أطول بربع ما سيصرفه في لبنان ، على أية حال كان الموسم السياحي واعدا بأكمن دولار لن يفعلوا شيئا أمام دين عام يفوق الخمسة و عشرين مليون دولار  و بطالة تجاوزت ال 18% ، و هذا كله قبل المصيبة التي حلت به.

بالنسبة لإسرائيل هنالك دائما يد خفية تعوضها ، رغم أن خسائرها هذه المرة كانت كبيرة جدا.

الشرق الأوسط مهم اقتصاديا و لكن ليس لأهله هو مهم للصين و الاتحاد الأوروبي و الولايات المتحدة ، الصين تراهن على إيران و قد وقت   عقود بالمليارات  في قطاع الطاقة يمتد أجلها حتى 2025 (على ما أعتقد) و أمريكا لا تراهن على العرب فهي تملكهم ، أما الاتحاد الأوروبي فهو ميت تقريبا.

شكرآ زياد لمشاركتك
ويعني كمان الصراع في الشرق الأوسط أو عليه .. مش كتير فارقة..ضمنيآ اللاعب العربي مستثنى من الحالتين..

هل كان مطروحآ على حد علمك في أي وقت في" رومانسيات "التفكير الاقتصادي الأميركي قبل أن يختطف تمامآ ونهائيآلصالح التفكير الإرهابي الإمبريالي الذي نشهد ذروته مع الإدارة الحالية, أن يستثمر التقدم الهائل في مصادر الطاقة البديلة لإنشاء محطات طاقة نووية تغني الأميركين عن السيطرة المباشرة على منابع النفط وأسعاره وسوق الاقتصاد العالمي بالتالي؟
تساؤل أخر: يعني كيف يتم هذا الآن على أرض الواقع؟ أميركا الأن تحتل بشكل مباشر أحد أكبر البلدان المنتجة للنفط الرخيص( يعني هل تتلقى وزارة النفط العراقية أوامرها بشكل كامل من هاليبرتون .., وهي تسيطر منذ على باقي لبلدان العربية المنتجة للنفط.. ما هي صيغ وأساليب التعامل على أرض الواقع وفي كواليس الأحداث؟

إن تستطيع إيراد أمثلة وأرقام و وخلاصة دراسات اقتصادية تحليلية أكون شاكرة جدآ

(f)

وأنا أبحث في النت عن كيف تتم الترجمة العملية لوضع أميركا يدها على النفط العراقي وأسواق الخليج ,عثرت على هذه المقالة بالإنكليزية وهي توثق لفقرات غريبة في الدستور العراقي الجديد






The United States crafted a new oil law for Iraq that provided for production sharing agreements (PSAs), which are contractual terms between a government and a foreign corporation to explore for, produce and market oil. Production sharing agreements are not used by any country in the Middle East or, in fact, by any country that's truly wealthy in oil. They're used to entice investors into an area where the oil is expensive to produce or there isn't a lot of oil.


But Iraq's oil reserves are very easy and cheap to get to. You essentially just stick a pipe in the ground and you get oil. There's absolutely no reason for Iraq to enter into PSAs, but there's every reason for Western oil companies to want them -- they provide the best terms short of full privatization of the oil.


[It's estimated that] Iraq has 80 oil fields. Seventeen of them have been discovered. Under the new oil law -- written into the constitution -- those 17 will be under the control of the Iraqi national oil company.


All undiscovered oil fields are now open to the PSAs. That means, depending on how much oil there is in Iraq, foreign companies will have control over at least 64 percent of Iraq's oil and as much as 84 percent.

PSAs are the worst possible deals for countries; in Latin America some of the worst PSAs gave domestic governments royalties of just one percent of their natural gas revenues.

Iraq's permanent oil law is being written with the help of Bearingpoint Inc. under a contract from USAID. The Virginia-based company (which was KPMG until it changed its name after being embroiled in the Arthur Anderson accounting scandal) prepared a report for the Bush administration in 2003 that concluded "foreign participation [is] the most efficient way of developing the sector," according to Dow Jones. A USAID spokesman said the company "will be providing legal and regulatory advice in drafting the framework of petroleum and other energy-related legislation, including foreign investment."

The principles embedded in the transitional oil law can't be dismissed down the road by Iraq's legislature with a simple vote; they were built into the country's Constitution, a document that Iraqis approved without having a firm grip on its details. (Read more of the interview with Juhasz for some insight into how that happened.)

Chapter 4, Article 109, specifies that all new oil fields will be developed "relying on the most modern techniques of market principles and encouraging investment." While the constitutions of other energy-rich countries lay out principles regarding their resources, Iraq's is unique in specifying that future governments must develop the country's most valuable commodity in tandem with foreign multinationals.

Contrast that with other oil producers; Saudi Arabia's state oil company, Saudi Aramco, has a monopoly on oil production, and it enters into agreements with foreign companies for specific parts of the process. The Saudi government imposes a special tax on foreign energy companies' revenues from those processes and invests the windfall from high oil prices in education and infrastructure.

Under Iraq's new laws, those kinds of policies -- common among oil-producing countries -- are prohibited.

Rewarding the corporations

Saying that Iraq's vast oil reserves -- projected by some analysts to be the largest in the world, greater than Saudi Arabia's -- was the sole motivation for the U.S. invasion of Iraq simplifies a complex issue. Opening Iraq's economy has the potential to reward the Bush administration's corporate allies with enormous windfalls as the country rebuilds after 25 years of war. Iraq has a well-educated work force and is well-positioned on global trade routes. Oil is the cherry on the sundae.

That's why Iraq's new oil laws have to be viewed in a larger context. Gaining control of the bulk of Iraq's oil was a key part of a broader economic invasion of the country, launched by an administration dominated by ideologues who view the agenda of corporate globalization as a vital part of the United States' national, as well as economic, security.

The Coalition Provisional Authority, under L. Paul Bremer (who U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi called the "dictator of Iraq") instituted an infamous set of "100 rules" -- rules that privatized Iraq's state companies, threw open its economy to foreign investment, established a flat tax and instituted a dozen other measures that the big-business right has lobbied for around the world -- largely unsuccessfully -- for decades.

They not only slashed corporate taxes and allowed foreign multinationals to take 100 percent of their profits out of the country, they also gave them -- by law -- the same status as Iraqi firms. That means that all the things countries like Iraq do to direct a portion of their foreign investment income into developing their domestic economies are off the table: Foreign firms can't be asked to invest in the local economy or buy goods from domestic firms or hire a certain number of Iraqi workers or build schools and health clinics or any of the other strategies that are common in poor but resource-rich countries. Saudi Arabia's tax on foreign energy producers would violate Iraqi law.

The same company that's helping draft Iraq's permanent oil law, BearingPoint Inc., planned Iraq's entire economy under a previous contract. All of the Bremer rules worked their way into the Iraqi Constitution as well; Chapter 6, Article 126, specifies that although the rest of the orders issued by the Transitional Authority are canceled, the "100 orders" remain on the books.





http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/36463/?c...=125076#c126801

مقالة من عام 2003!!
[CENTER]
Washington has Found the Solution
"Let's Divide Iraq as We Did in Yugoslavia!"
by Michel Collon

www.globalresearch.ca 23 December 2003 [/CENTER]--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They have found the solution! Divide Iraq into three mini-states and then pit them against one another. Does that remind you of something else? Oh, yes! It's not the first time something like this happened....

The New York Times published an editorial on November 25, 2003 carrying Leslie Gelb's by-line. He's an influential man who, until recently, presided over the very important Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank that brings together the CIA, the secretary of state and big shots from U.S. multinational corporations.

Gelb's plan? Replace Iraq with three mini-states:

"Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south." The objective? "To put most of its money and troops where they would do the most good quickly -- with the Kurds and Shiites. The United States could extricate most of its forces from the so-called Sunni Triangle, north and west of Baghdad.... American officials could then wait for the troublesome and domineering Sunnis, without oil or oil revenues, to moderate their ambitions or suffer the consequences."

In short, starve the central state around Baghdad because the Sunnis have always spearheaded the resistance to U.S. imperialism.

We denounced this CIA plan, which has been around for some time now, albeit discreetly, in an article that appeared in September 2002. But, to divide Iraq has, in fact, been an old Israeli dream. In 1982, Oded Yinon, an official from the Israeli Foreign Affairs office, wrote: "To dissolve Iraq is even more important for us than dissolving Syria. In the short term, it's Iraqi power that constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. The Iran-Iraq war tore Iraq apart and provoked its downfall. All manner of inter-Arab conflict help us and accelerate our goal of breaking up Iraq into small, diverse pieces."


Will you take some ethnic cleansing again?
So, Gelb wants to break up Iraq while transforming the north (Kurdish majority) and the south (Shiite majority) into "self-governing regions, with boundaries drawn as closely as possible along ethnic lines."

But didn't this method provoke a civil war and a bloodbath in Yugoslavia? Because all the diverse regions in that country contained significant minorities, and partition was impossible without the forced transfer of populations. That is why Berlin, and then Washington, discreetly financed and armed racist extremists, who were nostalgic for World War II. This made civil war almost inevitable because the IMF and the World Bank had plunged Yugoslavia into bankrupt to make it submit to triumphant neo-liberalism after the fall of the Berlin Wall. All of this was carefully concealed from the public.

Just as they are now concealing from the public the fact that all of the peoples of the former Yugoslavia have been plunged into misery and unemployment, which is worse now than it has ever been. Meanwhile, multinational corporations have taken the upper hand in controlling the country's wealth.

In Iraq too, the three large populations do not reside "each in their own region," but are, for the most part, intermingled. Furthermore, Gelb knows very well that to start up this strategy in Iraq once again would, in all likelihood, provoke serious "ethnic" conflicts, even maybe a civil war. He cynically announces that the state in the center of Iraq "might punish the substantial minorities left in the center, particularly the large Kurdish and Shiite populations in Baghdad. These minorities must have the time and the wherewithal to organize and make their deals, or go either north or south." In this way, millions of people would be forced to leave the regions where they have always lived, but Gelb doesn't find this inconvenient if it permits the U.S. to secure colonial domination.
Doesn't the Yugoslav precedent serve as enough warning? The truth is that, for Gelb, the civil war in Yugoslavia was a great success for the U.S. because it permitted the breakup of a country that resisted multinationals.

Again the Theory of "Ethnically Pure States"!
In effect, Gelb openly refers to "a hopeful precedent ... Yugoslavia." Curious, indeed! Weren't we told that the United States intervened there in order to prevent "ethnic cleansing"? Not at all, he admits : "ethnically pure" states are alright when they serve Washington's plans.

While extolling "ethnically pure states" (Gelb also speaks of "natural states"!), he criticizes Tito for having regrouped in a united Yugoslavia "highly disparate ethnic groups," while pretending that Iraq is "an artificial state" for the same reasons; Gelb is resorting to old theories held by the extreme right.

His theory about ethnically pure states is really identical to Hitler's: "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer" (one people, one empire, one führer). It is also a theory adopted by Zionists who dream of Israel "purified of Arabs." In Yugoslavia, it was the theory held by Western protégés, the Croat Tudjman and the Bosnian Muslim Izetbegovic. It was also a theory held by the right-wing Serbian leader, Karadzic. It is strange to find the U.S. extolling theories that it once pretended to fight against!

The truth is that the United States -- just as all other colonialists -- is for or against ethnically pure states according to whether or not it suits U.S. strategic interests. The only thing that counts is to weaken resistance. Divide in order to conquer. As always. The Britons carefully organized the division of Ireland, India and Pakistan as well as other places in the world. The influential U.S. strategist, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wants to divide Russia into three countries in order to isolate Moscow from oil reserves. The CIA also has its "own plans" to divide Saudi Arabia. In an era when very large economic and political entities are forming around the European Union and the United States, look at how these same Great Powers are organizing the balkanization of certain other states -- states that resist them.

The guiding principle of U.S. international policy is that there is no guiding principle. The U.S. can pretend to fight ethnic cleansing one day and then organize it the next. And with complete arbitrariness. In the past, the United States had obliged the Kurds to remain inside the Turkish state which was being led by fascist generals, but today, the U.S. is preparing a Kurdish state, allegedly rooted in the principle of "self-determination" (in reality a puppet state). They are pretending to bring democracy to the world, but in these instances the U.S. is rehabilitating fascist theories about "ethnically pure" states.

The Danger of a Theory that Is Exportable throughout the World
The danger of this false theory goes far beyond Iraq and Yugoslavia. Most of the states existing on the planet today are "multinational." And sensible people consider themselves to be enriched by this mixing of cultures. But if one allows theories of "ethnically pure" states, the USA would have a pretext to break up any "multinational" country that resists it.

Washington, in effect, intends to trample to a greater and greater extent international law and state sovereignty. The U.S. is preparing to do throughout the world what it had begun in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, which, unfortunately, a majority of Western leftists allowed them to do for the worst reasons. Stop! It is time to assess the disastrous alliance of this Left with the United States in the Yugoslav and Afghan affaires. If anyone wants to resist global war, that is to say the recolonization of the world, it is time to come to the defense of the sovereignty of Third World countries, a principle that is embodied in the UN Charter. This change for the better took place in 1945 and the USA is intent on dismantling it.

Support the Resistance
The essence of Gelb's plan is to plunge Iraq into a long civil war in order to rescue the U.S. colonial occupation and to be able to continue stealing oil. The U.S. will attempt to divide the resistance -- which can be found in all of the various populations -- by punishing those who would continue to live together and by hypocritically organizing "ethnic cleansing." The U.S. plan is to divide Iraq by blackmail, while defaming the Sunnis, who have long been at the forefront of resistance to imperialism.

Will Washington implement Gelb's plan? What will prevent them from doing so? The fear that an Iraqi Shiite state would join Iran, the most powerful "hostile" army in the Middle East. And the fear that an Iraqi Kurdish state would become a lightning rod for Kurds who want to secede from Turkey, a respected strategic ally that lies on the crossroads of the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East. But if Iraqi resistance continues to grow and unite its diverse currents, including Shiites, then Washington risks missing its chance to implement its plan to break up the country.

The Yugoslav precedent must serve as a solemn warning! Plunging other countries into the same drama is out of the question! In view of the fact that Bush has unleashed new dangers throughout the entire world, and in view of the fact that he is resorting to fascist theories more and more frequently, the only possible answer is to build up a united world front against the policies of the United States and to support the resistance everywhere -- and first and foremost, the remarkable Iraqi resistance (the mainstream media have often characterized them as "terrorists").

The Iraqi resistance is preventing Bush from attacking Iran, Syria, North Korea and Cuba in stride. It shows once again that the United States has never been invincible. Bush is becoming the world's laughingstock. "Paper tiger" is the classic expression. In this way, the Iraqi resistance offsets the discouragement and the pessimism that had begun to spread in Iraq after the "liberation of Baghdad." The war is not over; it's only just beginning. Support the resistance, because we are supporting ourselves.

Translated by Milo Yelesiyevich Also available in French and Spanish michel.collon@skynet.be


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In order to Understand Iraq:

- 23 million inhabitants, divided into 3 large groups (no official census and the USA destroyed state and civil registries).

- Shiites: 55 - 60%. Mostly in the south.

- Sunnis: 20 - 25%. Mostly in the center (between Mosul and Baghdad).

- Kurds: 20%. Mostly in the north (significant Kurdish minorities also live in Turkey, Iran, Syria, Russia). The majority of them are Sunni.

- Minorities (5%): 200,000 to 300,000 Turkmen, Assyrians-Chaldeans (Christians), Yezidis, 2.000 Jews....

- But no region is ethnically "pure":

o At least one million Kurds live outside of Kurdistan (mostly in Baghdad, but also in the south, in Basrah).
o At least one million Shiites live in Baghdad.
o Some Sunnis live in the south.
o Some Arabs live in Kurdistan.


For this reason, dividing up Iraq is impossible without risking a civil war and ethnic cleansing. Especially so in a climate where the U.S. has done everything it could over the past twenty years to stir up conflicts while provoking (i.e., financing) certain minority leaders so that they will favor a breakup. This is exactly how they did things in Yugoslavia.

In short, if the USA is permitted to divide up Iraq, important "minorities" risk being targets throughout the country. Then, Bush is going to say that he is obliged to keep his troops there to "protect" these minorities.

Exactly as in Kosovo, where the U.S. has installed a military base with a landing strip that can accomodate bombers (sic !), after having systematically fanned the flames of the conflict behind the scenes. Today, the USA in Kosovo is protecting KLA criminals and the mafia which practices ethnic cleansing. (see Test-medias, Kosovo questions 2, 5, 7 in our report "Autopsy of Yugoslavia").

الولايات المتحدة توزع استيرادها من النفط على معظم أرجاء المعمورة ، و منها منطقة الخليج و العراق التي تستورد منها 15% من حاجاتها * و لكن بسيطرتها على الخليج تسيطر على 40 - 70 % من استيراد الدول الأوروبية و ما يفوق ال 80 % من استيراد اليابان.

بالنسبة للزوال النفط و التقدم في مجال الطاقة البديلة ، هناك استراتيجية من ثلاث مراحل تبدأ بالتركيز على مجال إدارة الطاقة و تمر باستعمال المحركات الهجينة و تنتهي بالستغناء الكامل على النفط و يقدر أن يكون ذلك بين 2025 و 2050.



*
http://www.eia.doe.gov/

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petrole...s/trade_text.ht

m#Quality%20and%20Politics%20Play%20A%20Role%20Too

ربما يتبع

[QUOTE] زياد كتب/كتبت
الولايات المتحدة توزع استيرادها من النفط على معظم أرجاء المعمورة ، و منها منطقة الخليج و العراق التي تستورد منها 15% من حاجاتها * و لكن بسيطرتها على الخليج تسيطر على 40 - 70 %

ما أريد فهمه هو كيف تتم السيطرة على أرض الواقع؟في مداخلة سابقة وضعت مقال يتعرض بالشرح لفقرات من القانون العراقي الجديد فهمت منها- إن افترضنا صحة المقال تمامآ- أن أي عمليات استثمار مستقبلية هي لصالح تروستات الشركات التي ربحت عقودها الآن! أكراد العراق كما قرأت مرة يتعاونون بشكل وثيق في مجال النفط مع شركات نرويجية وكندية واسرائيلية..لم تكن الشركات الأميركية في قمة المستثمرين..

تصوري البسيط للموضوع هو: عندما احتل صدام الكويت ( مما يعني أن نسبة كبيرة من سوق النفط العالمي أصبح تحت سيطرته, مع إمكانية امتداد جشعه للسعودية) نشأت فكرة في دهاليز الإدارة الأميركية أنها لن تسمح لأحد بأن يفكر في منافستها على التحكم الذي كان عبر المحيطات (حتى ذلك الوقت )في نفط الخليج..منذ ذلك الوقت تقرر أن يكون لأميركا وجود عسكري مباشر كبير في المنطقة لتكسر يد من يحاول مد يده على( نفطها ) سواء من داخل هذه البلدان أو إيران أو حتى روسيا, أو يهدد أمن إماراتها النفطية ومن ارتضتهم حكامآ وارتضوها بودي غارد بما لا يتوافق مع مصالحها, ومن لا يمد يده متعاونآ فالوجود العسكري والاستخباراتي الهائل كفيل بقطع يده واستبدالها بأخرى إما استخبارتيآ مؤامراتيآ أو بطريقة غزوات هاييتي السريعة ولن يعوزها اختراع أسباب..في نفس المرحلة وما بعدها تطورت فكرة تقسيم المنطقة إلى كيانات أصغر , يسهل السيطرة عليها عبر إلهائها بصراعاتها البينية العرقية والطائفية, وجود الصراعات هذه سيبقي على منصب الفتوٌة ومورٌد الأسلحة الذي تتقمصه أميركا بسهولة في أحسن حالاته , ويضمن ألا تتكرر تهديدات صدام( الغبية) أو حتى ناصر الأكثر واقعية,بدولة كبيرة قوية مناوئة لمصالحها وتستطيع وضع عينها في عين أميركا..
التقسيم العرقي والإثني وما يحمله من عوامل صراعات طويلة منهكة يناسب جدآ اسرائيل, وهو الأمر الوحيد الذي "يضمن شرعيتها" وزعامتها للمنطقة.. أنا ممن يعتقدون بوجود بعد عاطفي و إيدلوجي تبعي كبير للحكومات الأميركية كلها تجاه اسرائيل, بغض النظر عن أنها حربة متقدمة لاميركا في المنطقة. ترسخ استيهام أميركا باسرائيل عبر نشاط هائل إعلامي وديني محترف خلال عدة عقود.
لم يكن صدفة أبدآ أن تكون حكومة بوش الأبن متخمة لدرجة رهيبة بأكثر الموالين لاسرائيل استقطابآ على مر تاريخ أميركا كله بعد أن كان أبوه قد أحس أن من أكبر أسباب خسارته الحملة الانتخابية الثانية أنه أول رئيس أميركي اقترف خطأ تهديد اسرائيل بإيقاف المساعدات السنوية بعشرة مليارات دولار ما لم توقف الاستيطان,بل فعلها حتى ولو لفترة وجيزة. واستطاع هؤلاء الذين يدعون عادة بالصقور الجدد استلام الدفة نهائيآ بعد 11 أيلول. يعني حتى بدون تلاحم مصالح , أميركا ستخدم اسرائيل بعيونها ودماء الغلابى

ألا توجد حركات حرةمعارضة اقتصادية لهذه القطبية العالمية؟؟ ما مدى حجمها وتأثيرها؟ لم أوربا عاجزة لهذه الدرجة؟ هل من لا يملك القدرة أو انعدام الأخلاقيات اللازم للغزو والاحتلال العسكري يفقد حقه في الفعل في عالم اليوم؟ هل مصالح أوربا مشمولة ضمنيآ ومحققة إلى حد ما بتحقيق أميركا لمصالحهاas collateral benefit?

هل فات الأوان على محاولة الدخول للجانب الاقتصادي للصراع وإيجاد حركة مقاومة , أو توعية فاعلة على الأقل؟