It's all well known now that the US and the UK
are the main proponents of the widened
war in Syria that has gone on for 5 years. It's
been proved well (I'll try to locate sources).
They have not funded the moderate rebels
but the crazy Daesh militants.
So, if you cause, through action or inaction
for a country to be levelled by bombs, then
you must take responsibility for the refugees
who will invariably stream out.
Some other odd issue in this situation. Syria
was an advanced society with education and
health care for all. The people tended to have
money. So, the only reason they would leave
is because they are afraid of dying at the hands
of Daesh. and this was a complex society
with Muslims, Druze Christians and others.
It is interesting how they were escaping but
also had advanced mobile phones through
which to plan strategy. Earlier refugees
provided information for later ones. I've seen
the reports on tv.
Also interesting is how they mostly have
the same goal, to go to Germany or
perhaps Sweden. Obviously these people
are intelligent and knowledgeable, but
if you're fleeing for your life, and
a country offers you refuge, like Greece
has, you accept it. You shouldn't get the
country of your choice. If that were to
happen, and it is, because the EU is
circus masquerading as a state, some
countries will be swamped.
Today, 14 000 refugees arrived in
Munich; one city.
A further issue is whether they are economic
migrants, or refugees. It is often lost in the
discussion that while Libyans, Syrians, Iraqis
and Afghans have every right to go to the US
or UK for refuge, because of the wars started
by those two countries, there are also
economic migrants mixed in. The media
focuses on the Syrians and ignores
the Iranians, the Pakistanis, and Africans.
Anyway, the EU has enough food and
resources for these refugees, wherever they go.
Governments may plead poverty because of
EU austerity, but refugees should not be
stopped from entering. They should be
taken care of.
two stories:
Syria: Imperial Responsibility, Imperial Conscience
Posted on September 7, 2015 by Charles Hugh Smith
I am not an unbiased observer of the Syrian refugee crisis, for we have a Syrian friend. She is a young woman, with legal residency in the U.S. She is completing her university studies in computer science. Her uncle served honorably in the U.S. Army for many years in theater (Iraq) and recently retired in California’s Central Valley.
Her brother is completing his medical studies and wants to practice medicine in the U.S.
If you’ve been to a major hospital in the U.S. recently, you know that if all foreign-born doctors vanished, the current shortage of physicians would be much, much worse.
This is to remind us all that not every immigrant or refugee is a terrorist or welfare recipient.
We have a number of young Vietnamese-American friends who are the children of Boat People who fled Communist oppression after 1975. Those who were unable to escape often served years in re-education labor camps, i.e. concentration camps, for the heinous crime of working for the Americans during the American war in Vietnam.
Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese risked their lives and the predations of pirates as they attempted to reach freedom in overloaded leaky craft. Uncounted thousands lost their lives in the process.
Today, it is self-evident that the Vietnamese-American community has paid back the help extended by the U.S. to those who bore the brunt of our Imperial meddling in Vietnam many times over.
In 1975, the U.S. did not wait for the full catastrophe to strike before accepting tens of thousands of refugees. Tiny Wake Island, an atoll in the middle of the Pacific and home to a mere 251 U.S. military and civilian personnel at the time,processed 15,000 Vietnamese refugees. (Tens of thousands of others were processed through Subic Bay and Guam.)
With the imminent fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces, President Gerald Ford ordered American forces to support Operation New Life, the evacuation of refugees from Vietnam. The original plans included Subic Bay and Guam as refugee processing centers but due to the high number of Vietnamese seeking evacuation, Wake Island was selected as an additional location.
In March 1975, Island Commander Major Bruce R. Hoon was contacted by Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) and ordered to prepare Wake for its’ new mission as a refugee processing center where Vietnamese evacuees could be medically screened, interviewed and then transported to the United States or to other resettlement countries. A 60-man civil engineering team was brought in to reopen boarded-up buildings and housing, two complete MASH units arrived to set up field hospitals and three Army field kitchens were deployed. A 60-man Security Police team, processing agents from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and various other administrative and support personnel were also on Wake. Potable water, food, medical supplies, clothing and other supplies were shipped in.
On April 26, 1975, the first C-141 military transport aircraft carrying refugees arrived. The airlift to Wake continued at a rate of one C-141 every hour and 45 minutes, each aircraft with 283 refugees on board. At the peak of the mission, 8,700 Vietnamese refugees were on Wake.
When the airlift ended on August 2, a total of about 15,000 refugees had been processed through Wake Island as part of Operation New Life.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is how America once acted: with responsibility and conscience, not with tepid half-measures but with presidential orders that mobilized the U.S. government to alleviate the suffering of tens of thousands of people.
If you want a taste of frenzied fear and hatred of immigrants, please refer to the response of native-born Americans to the flood of Irish immigrants in the 19th century. It was feared the nation could not survive the onslaught of poor Irish, who brought with them a full spectrum of destruction: drunk, prone to criminality, ready to use their fists at the drop of a hat, typically Catholic–the list of horrors appeared endless.
Now might be the right moment to mention that I’m 38% Irish, and one branch of the family (Scots-Irish) immigrated to the U.S. in the Great Potato Famine. (As for rest of my mongrel mix: 37% Scots/English, 14% Viking, oops I mean Scandinavian, and 11% French, i.e. everything that mixed it up in France. Oh, and let’s not forget the 2% Neanderthal buried in the mix… that 2% might have kept me in one piece after many an injury.)
I wonder how many of the mealy-mouthed congress critters who oppose aiding Syrian refugees have relatives who arrived in the U.S. as immigrants or refugees (or slaves). Shall we hazard a guess that it’s 100% if we set aside traces of Native American heritage?
The hypocrisy is self-evident. That the U.S. has covertly supported the overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria is an open secret. That there are no American boots on the ground (at least officially) does not absolve the U.S. of partial responsibility for the refugee catastrophe unleashed by the Syrian war.
Of an estimated 4 million Syrian refugees, the U.S. has accepted a mere 1,500.We’re told Many Obstacles Are Seen to U.S. Taking in Large Number of Syrian Refugees. I am sure President Ford was told the same thing: it was “impossible” to absorb hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees.
Fortunately, President Ford (a Navy veteran himself) rejected both the defeatism and the implicit wish to wash our hands of any responsibility for our decisions and actions.
Our friend has told us of her childhood visits to relatives in Old Damascus, one of the most ancient cities in the world. Rather than reprint photos of the horrific destruction that has been wrought on Syrian cities, I want to share a photo of Old Damascus by photographer Hasan Bryiez:
image: http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2015/old-damascus-hasan-bryiez.jpg
According to our friend, a cosmopolitan mix of ethnicities and religious faiths co-existed peacefully in Old Damascus.
Now that world is no more. The social order that enabled peaceful co-existence has been shredded by the war. Though Old Damascus may appear materially undamaged, it too has passed the point where the previous pluralism can be re-established.
Syria: The Chaos of War:
This is the bargain that Damascus and Syria made: live under an iron fist in exchange for a social safety net and a space for religious and cultural, if not political, pluralism. Then Syrians took peacefully to the streets in early 2011, claiming that a family mafia oppressed not only the Sunni majority but all citizens. The government responded with overwhelming force, and its opponents turned to arms.
The war in Syria is being fought on multiple levels. One is the Great Game, the geopolitical chess game that I have often addressed: Oil, Empire and Playing the Great Game (October 1, 2014).
It’s clear that the goal of ridding the region of the Assad regime will eventually succeed; what is much less clear is what will be made of the torn battlefield.
The U.S. has around 317 million residents. How much of a burden would 50,000 or 100,000 Syrian refugees place on a nation of 317 million, a nation that once airlifted supplies to West Berlin for over a year in defiance of a Soviet blockade, a nation that airlifted 15,000 refugees to a remote atoll in the Pacific in hundreds of C-141 sorties?
Empire comes with responsibilities, and it should come with conscience. The U.S. is not a passive observer in Syria. Those of us outside the Deep State have no idea what’s been done or supplied or promised in the name of the American people.
Shall we accept 5% responsibility for events in Syria? That equates to 5% of 4 million refugees or 200,000 refugees.
There are many Syrians already here who are willing to sponsor relatives and friends. There are Christian churches willing to sponsor refugees of any faith, because they seek to walk in the path of Jesus.
There is no shortage of good will in the U.S., only a lack of political will. Sadly, we no longer have presidents or congresspeople who make the “impossible” happen to alleviate the suffering of civilians fleeing war zones.
So every refugee has to be interviewed, screened, and possibly receive medical care.How could the U.S. do so for tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees in a matter of months, yet now we are so crippled we can only manage to process 1,500 refugees from the Syrian war?
Politico toadies who like to pin American flag buttons to their lapels while ignoring our Imperial responsibilities and the conscience that should go with it are beneath contempt.
Come on, America. We could better and should do better. If we feel no obligation to the refugees from Syria, we owe it to those Americans who stepped up and did their part for refugees from wars past.
Read more at http://www.maxkeiser.com/2015/09/syria-imperial-responsibility-imperial-conscience/#JitTMCYVoGtG6C4E.99
2 Guardian
Bishop says Britain has a moral duty to accept refugees from its wars
Rt Rev David Walker, bishop of Manchester, says it is ‘unworthy’ for politicians to label displaced migrants as criminals, and country should take in ‘fair share’
Bishop of Manchester: I want leaders who look on migrants with compassion
Mark Townsend @townsendmark
Saturday 25 April 2015 20.33 BST
Last modified on Sunday 26 April 2015 00.00 BST
One of the country’s most senior bishops has said that Britain has a moral imperative to accept refugees from conflicts in which it has participated.
Bishop of Manchester: I want leaders who look on migrants with compassion
Read more
After a week in which the death toll of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean into Europe grew to 1,700 so far this year, the bishop of Manchester, David Walker, said there was a duty to treat the survivors with compassion.
In a piece for the Observer published online, he writes: “They are pushed, not pulled, towards the EU, forced out of their homelands by war, terrorism and the persecution of minorities. A political rhetoric that characterises them as wilful criminals rather than helpless victims is as unworthy as it is untrue.”
The UK’s pivotal role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq prompted a sectarian war that the UN said had forced two million Iraqis to flee the country, an involvement that ran alongside the 13-year Afghanistan war and was followed by the 2011 attacks on Libya, both of which precipitated significant regional instability and migration.
According to the UN Refugee Agency in 2013, one in four refugees was Afghan, although most were in neighbouring countries, while the ongoing instability in Libya was credited with making the north African state a haven for people smugglers.
Walker writes: “The moral cost of our continual overseas interventions has to include accepting a fair share of the victims of the wars to which we have contributed as legitimate refugees in our own land.
“I want my country to be governed by those who are prepared to look at the faces of the desperate, be it the desperation of the asylum seeker or of the food bank client, and to look at them with compassion.”
He also criticised the language of mainstream parties on issues such as immigration and suggested that politics needed a new moral compass in the context of the growing number of deaths in the Mediterranean. “I want my political representatives to show they have values beyond expediency and appeal to the muddled middle. Only such politicians will I trust with the wellbeing of my family, my community and my nation.”
How do I offer a room to a refugee?
Read more
Advertisement
Despite the huge numbers of migrants heading north, only 5,000 resettlement places across Europe have been offered to refugees under an emergency summit crisis package agreed by EU leaders, with the rest sent back as irregular migrants under a new rapid-return programme coordinated by the EU’s border agency, Frontex.
“Welcome though it was that European leaders sat down to talk about the situation this week, their conclusions seem more directed at making the symptoms less visible than at tackling the disease,” said Walker.
Last year 170,000 migrants made it to Italy; as of 17 April this year, Italian authorities had registered 21,191 more. A 2014 report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime estimated that there might be 600,000 migrants on the north Africa coast who could try to get to Europe by sea.
Monday 14 September 2015
How civil rights leaders get killed
There has been a claim that a civil rights photographer
who was a central member of the entourage of
Dr. Martin Luther King was also a paid informant for
the FBI. It seems to have been proved.
Let's look at what this means for King's assassination.
We already know (I'll find it if I can) that the
FBI was at least complicit in King's murder. There
were around 40 agents following King's every
move. So, it was hard for the FBI to claim that
it didn't have a hand in his murder. I believe a
civil case proved this.
Of course, the actual killer was some "loony"
extremist. But, it has been shown convincingly
that he was put up to it, set up, and aided by
the FBI.
Now, what else would the FBI need in order
to make sure their plans work out? How
about an insider who can tell them about
King's future movements.
I hate to say it, but when somebody is a
well-known opponent of the System,
it is vital to have at least no leaks of
information about your planned movements.
If they can be there ahead of you, the FBI
can set a trap.
Well, this fellow may have set the trap
by providing information. I wonder if
indeed he had a hand in (probably
unwittingly) providing key info on
the day of the killing.
I wonder how he slept at night. While
this man was a photographer who catalogued
the civil rights movement and the injustices
suffered by US blacks, he also seemed to
have uncanny knack of being at the right
place. He was a close confidant of the King
family.
I wonder how the informer's family feel
about this coming out 3 years after his
death.
checkit: New York Times
Civil Rights Photographer Unmasked as Informer
By ROBBIE BROWN
SEPT. 13, 2010
Ernest C. Withers in his Beale St. studio in Memphis. F.B.I. files indicate that Mr. Withers, who died in 2007, was an informant. Credit Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
ATLANTA — That photo of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. riding one of the first desegregated buses in Montgomery, Ala.? He took it. The well-known image of black sanitation workers carrying “I Am a Man” signs in Memphis? His. He was the only photojournalist to document the entire trial in the murder of Emmett Till, and he was there in Room 306 of the Lorraine Hotel, Dr. King’s room, on the night he was assassinated.
But now an unsettling asterisk must be added to the legacy of Ernest C. Withers, one of the most celebrated photographers of the civil rights era: He was a paid F.B.I. informer.
On Sunday, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis published the results of a two-year investigation that showed Mr. Withers, who died in 2007 at age 85, had collaborated closely with two F.B.I. agents in the 1960s to keep tabs on the civil rights movement. It was an astonishing revelation about a former police officer nicknamed the Original Civil Rights Photographer, whose previous claim to fame had been the trust he engendered among high-ranking civil rights leaders, including Dr. King.
Withers was often called the Original Civil Rights Photographer, for images like this 1961 shot of the Memphis Greyhound bus station. Credit Ernest C. Withers courtesy Smithsonian Institution
“It is an amazing betrayal,” said Athan Theoharis, a historian at Marquette University who has written books about the F.B.I. “It really speaks to the degree that the F.B.I. was able to engage individuals within the civil rights movement. This man was so well trusted.”
From at least 1968 to 1970, Mr. Withers, who was black, provided photographs, biographical information and scheduling details to two F.B.I. agents in the bureau’s Memphis domestic surveillance program, Howell Lowe and William H. Lawrence, according to numerous reports summarizing their meetings. The reports were obtained by the newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act and posted on its Web site.
A clerical error appears to have allowed for Mr. Withers’s identity to be divulged: In most cases in the reports, references to Mr. Withers and his informer number, ME 338-R, have been blacked out. But in several locations, the F.B.I. appears to have forgotten to hide them. The F.B.I. said Monday that it was not clear what had caused the lapse in privacy and was looking into the incident.
Civil rights leaders have responded to the revelation with a mixture of dismay, sadness and disbelief. “If this is true, then Ernie abused our friendship,” said the Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., a retired minister who organized civil rights rallies throughout the South in the 1960s.
Others were more forgiving. “It’s not surprising,” said Andrew Young, a civil rights organizer who later became mayor of Atlanta. “We knew that everything we did was bugged, although we didn’t suspect Withers individually.”
Many details of Mr. Withers’s relationship with the F.B.I. remain unknown. The bureau keeps files on all informers, but has declined repeated requests to release Mr. Withers’s, which would presumably explain how much he was paid by the F.B.I., how he was recruited and how long he served as an informer.
At the time of his death, Mr. Withers had the largest catalog of any individual photographer covering the civil rights movement in the South, said Tony Decaneas, the owner of the Panopticon Gallery in Boston, the exclusive agent for Mr. Withers. His photographs have been collected in four books, and his family was planning to open a museum, named after him.
His work shows remarkable intimacy with and access to top civil rights leaders. Friends used to say he had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. But while he was growing close to top civil rights leaders, Mr. Withers was also meeting regularly with the F.B.I. agents, disclosing details about plans for marches and political beliefs of the leaders, even personal information like the leaders’ car tag numbers.
David J. Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who has written biographies of Dr. King, said many civil rights workers gave confidential interviews to the F.B.I. and C.I.A., and were automatically classified as “informants.” The difference, Mr. Garrow said, is the evidence that Mr. Withers was being paid.
Although Mr. Withers’s motivation is not known, Mr. Garrow said informers were rarely motivated by the financial compensation, which “wasn’t enough money to live on.” But Marc Perrusquia, who wrote the article for The Commercial Appeal, noted that Mr. Withers had eight children and might have struggled to support them.
The children of Mr. Withers did not respond to requests for comment. But one daughter, Rosalind Withers, told local news organizations that she did not find the report conclusive.
“This is the first time I’ve heard of this in my life,” Ms. Withers told The Commercial Appeal. “My father’s not here to defend himself. That is a very, very strong, strong accusation.”
who was a central member of the entourage of
Dr. Martin Luther King was also a paid informant for
the FBI. It seems to have been proved.
Let's look at what this means for King's assassination.
We already know (I'll find it if I can) that the
FBI was at least complicit in King's murder. There
were around 40 agents following King's every
move. So, it was hard for the FBI to claim that
it didn't have a hand in his murder. I believe a
civil case proved this.
Of course, the actual killer was some "loony"
extremist. But, it has been shown convincingly
that he was put up to it, set up, and aided by
the FBI.
Now, what else would the FBI need in order
to make sure their plans work out? How
about an insider who can tell them about
King's future movements.
I hate to say it, but when somebody is a
well-known opponent of the System,
it is vital to have at least no leaks of
information about your planned movements.
If they can be there ahead of you, the FBI
can set a trap.
Well, this fellow may have set the trap
by providing information. I wonder if
indeed he had a hand in (probably
unwittingly) providing key info on
the day of the killing.
I wonder how he slept at night. While
this man was a photographer who catalogued
the civil rights movement and the injustices
suffered by US blacks, he also seemed to
have uncanny knack of being at the right
place. He was a close confidant of the King
family.
I wonder how the informer's family feel
about this coming out 3 years after his
death.
checkit: New York Times
Civil Rights Photographer Unmasked as Informer
By ROBBIE BROWN
SEPT. 13, 2010
Ernest C. Withers in his Beale St. studio in Memphis. F.B.I. files indicate that Mr. Withers, who died in 2007, was an informant. Credit Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
ATLANTA — That photo of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. riding one of the first desegregated buses in Montgomery, Ala.? He took it. The well-known image of black sanitation workers carrying “I Am a Man” signs in Memphis? His. He was the only photojournalist to document the entire trial in the murder of Emmett Till, and he was there in Room 306 of the Lorraine Hotel, Dr. King’s room, on the night he was assassinated.
But now an unsettling asterisk must be added to the legacy of Ernest C. Withers, one of the most celebrated photographers of the civil rights era: He was a paid F.B.I. informer.
On Sunday, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis published the results of a two-year investigation that showed Mr. Withers, who died in 2007 at age 85, had collaborated closely with two F.B.I. agents in the 1960s to keep tabs on the civil rights movement. It was an astonishing revelation about a former police officer nicknamed the Original Civil Rights Photographer, whose previous claim to fame had been the trust he engendered among high-ranking civil rights leaders, including Dr. King.
Withers was often called the Original Civil Rights Photographer, for images like this 1961 shot of the Memphis Greyhound bus station. Credit Ernest C. Withers courtesy Smithsonian Institution
“It is an amazing betrayal,” said Athan Theoharis, a historian at Marquette University who has written books about the F.B.I. “It really speaks to the degree that the F.B.I. was able to engage individuals within the civil rights movement. This man was so well trusted.”
From at least 1968 to 1970, Mr. Withers, who was black, provided photographs, biographical information and scheduling details to two F.B.I. agents in the bureau’s Memphis domestic surveillance program, Howell Lowe and William H. Lawrence, according to numerous reports summarizing their meetings. The reports were obtained by the newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act and posted on its Web site.
A clerical error appears to have allowed for Mr. Withers’s identity to be divulged: In most cases in the reports, references to Mr. Withers and his informer number, ME 338-R, have been blacked out. But in several locations, the F.B.I. appears to have forgotten to hide them. The F.B.I. said Monday that it was not clear what had caused the lapse in privacy and was looking into the incident.
Civil rights leaders have responded to the revelation with a mixture of dismay, sadness and disbelief. “If this is true, then Ernie abused our friendship,” said the Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., a retired minister who organized civil rights rallies throughout the South in the 1960s.
Others were more forgiving. “It’s not surprising,” said Andrew Young, a civil rights organizer who later became mayor of Atlanta. “We knew that everything we did was bugged, although we didn’t suspect Withers individually.”
Many details of Mr. Withers’s relationship with the F.B.I. remain unknown. The bureau keeps files on all informers, but has declined repeated requests to release Mr. Withers’s, which would presumably explain how much he was paid by the F.B.I., how he was recruited and how long he served as an informer.
At the time of his death, Mr. Withers had the largest catalog of any individual photographer covering the civil rights movement in the South, said Tony Decaneas, the owner of the Panopticon Gallery in Boston, the exclusive agent for Mr. Withers. His photographs have been collected in four books, and his family was planning to open a museum, named after him.
His work shows remarkable intimacy with and access to top civil rights leaders. Friends used to say he had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. But while he was growing close to top civil rights leaders, Mr. Withers was also meeting regularly with the F.B.I. agents, disclosing details about plans for marches and political beliefs of the leaders, even personal information like the leaders’ car tag numbers.
David J. Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who has written biographies of Dr. King, said many civil rights workers gave confidential interviews to the F.B.I. and C.I.A., and were automatically classified as “informants.” The difference, Mr. Garrow said, is the evidence that Mr. Withers was being paid.
Although Mr. Withers’s motivation is not known, Mr. Garrow said informers were rarely motivated by the financial compensation, which “wasn’t enough money to live on.” But Marc Perrusquia, who wrote the article for The Commercial Appeal, noted that Mr. Withers had eight children and might have struggled to support them.
The children of Mr. Withers did not respond to requests for comment. But one daughter, Rosalind Withers, told local news organizations that she did not find the report conclusive.
“This is the first time I’ve heard of this in my life,” Ms. Withers told The Commercial Appeal. “My father’s not here to defend himself. That is a very, very strong, strong accusation.”
Iraq War: the conspiracy will be proved by Chilcot
...if Chilcot ever gets the chance.
As folks on twitter have argued, a conspiracy
theory is only a theory until it is proved to be a
true conspiracy. The conspiracy theory is more
often believed than the lies that public officials
throw around to fool people.
Now we find that, as one Roman leader said:
Iraq's wells. It would be hard to believe, for
normal people , that an oil company could
be so callous as to kill 4 million people just
to get that oil. Or, that politicians would be
party to this wholesale genocide with the use
of trained national defense armed forces.
But that is exactly what the article below
is indicating. The oil companies asked
for an invasion of Iraq and since they
talked to ministers of the then Labour government,
those oil companies wanted to hide behind
their government. A reason had to be
concocted by politicians to trick the public into
supporting this debacle and War Crime.
So, according to this report, our oligarchy
is full of vainglorious murderous basterds.
checkit: Independent
Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
By Paul Bignell
Tuesday 19 April 2011
Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.
The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.
The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd".
But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.
Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change.
The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.
Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: "Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis."
The minister then promised to "report back to the companies before Christmas" on her lobbying efforts.
The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq "post regime change". Its minutes state: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity."
After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office's Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: "Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in [Iraq] for the sake of their long-term future... We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq."
Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had "no strategic interest" in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was "more important than anything we've seen for a long time".
BP was concerned that if Washington allowed TotalFinaElf's existing contact with Saddam Hussein to stand after the invasion it would make the French conglomerate the world's leading oil company. BP told the Government it was willing to take "big risks" to get a share of the Iraqi reserves, the second largest in the world.
Over 1,000 documents were obtained under Freedom of Information over five years by the oil campaigner Greg Muttitt. They reveal that at least five meetings were held between civil servants, ministers and BP and Shell in late 2002.
The 20-year contracts signed in the wake of the invasion were the largest in the history of the oil industry. They covered half of Iraq's reserves – 60 billion barrels of oil, bought up by companies such as BP and CNPC (China National Petroleum Company), whose joint consortium alone stands to make £403m ($658m) profit per year from the Rumaila field in southern Iraq.
Last week, Iraq raised its oil output to the highest level for almost decade, 2.7 million barrels a day – seen as especially important at the moment given the regional volatility and loss of Libyan output. Many opponents of the war suspected that one of Washington's main ambitions in invading Iraq was to secure a cheap and plentiful source of oil.
Mr Muttitt, whose book Fuel on the Fire is published next week, said: "Before the war, the Government went to great lengths to insist it had no interest in Iraq's oil. These documents provide the evidence that give the lie to those claims.
"We see that oil was in fact one of the Government's most important strategic considerations, and it secretly colluded with oil companies to give them access to that huge prize."
Lady Symons, 59, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank that cashed in on post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts. Last month she severed links as an unpaid adviser to Libya's National Economic Development Board after Colonel Gaddafi started firing on protesters. Last night, BP and Shell declined to comment.
Not about oil? what they said before the invasion
* Foreign Office memorandum, 13 November 2002, following meeting with BP: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP are desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity to compete. The long-term potential is enormous..."
* Tony Blair, 6 February 2003: "Let me just deal with the oil thing because... the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it. The fact is that, if the oil that Iraq has were our concern, I mean we could probably cut a deal with Saddam tomorrow in relation to the oil. It's not the oil that is the issue, it is the weapons..."
* BP, 12 March 2003: "We have no strategic interest in Iraq. If whoever comes to power wants Western involvement post the war, if there is a war, all we have ever said is that it should be on a level playing field. We are certainly not pushing for involvement."
* Lord Browne, the then-BP chief executive, 12 March 2003: "It is not in my or BP's opinion, a war about oil. Iraq is an important producer, but it must decide what to do with its patrimony and oil."
* Shell, 12 March 2003, said reports that it had discussed oil opportunities with Downing Street were 'highly inaccurate', adding: "We have neither sought nor attended meetings with officials in the UK Government on the subject of Iraq. The subject has only come up during conversations during normal meetings we attend from time to time with officials... We have never asked for 'contracts'."
As folks on twitter have argued, a conspiracy
theory is only a theory until it is proved to be a
true conspiracy. The conspiracy theory is more
often believed than the lies that public officials
throw around to fool people.
Now we find that, as one Roman leader said:
"he who benefits from the crime,
committed it"
It's a very weak philosophical position but a great
determiner of the results of political tricks on the
national or international stage. What many people
neglect is that the end result is often planned, but
may be executed in the strange ways.
If you were to ask who would be interested in
invading and occupying Iraq, many would say
that the oil companies would want to controlIraq's wells. It would be hard to believe, for
normal people , that an oil company could
be so callous as to kill 4 million people just
to get that oil. Or, that politicians would be
party to this wholesale genocide with the use
of trained national defense armed forces.
But that is exactly what the article below
is indicating. The oil companies asked
for an invasion of Iraq and since they
talked to ministers of the then Labour government,
those oil companies wanted to hide behind
their government. A reason had to be
concocted by politicians to trick the public into
supporting this debacle and War Crime.
So, according to this report, our oligarchy
is full of vainglorious murderous basterds.
checkit: Independent
Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
By Paul Bignell
Tuesday 19 April 2011
Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.
The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.
The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd".
But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.
Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change.
The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.
Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: "Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis."
The minister then promised to "report back to the companies before Christmas" on her lobbying efforts.
The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq "post regime change". Its minutes state: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity."
After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office's Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: "Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in [Iraq] for the sake of their long-term future... We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq."
Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had "no strategic interest" in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was "more important than anything we've seen for a long time".
BP was concerned that if Washington allowed TotalFinaElf's existing contact with Saddam Hussein to stand after the invasion it would make the French conglomerate the world's leading oil company. BP told the Government it was willing to take "big risks" to get a share of the Iraqi reserves, the second largest in the world.
Over 1,000 documents were obtained under Freedom of Information over five years by the oil campaigner Greg Muttitt. They reveal that at least five meetings were held between civil servants, ministers and BP and Shell in late 2002.
The 20-year contracts signed in the wake of the invasion were the largest in the history of the oil industry. They covered half of Iraq's reserves – 60 billion barrels of oil, bought up by companies such as BP and CNPC (China National Petroleum Company), whose joint consortium alone stands to make £403m ($658m) profit per year from the Rumaila field in southern Iraq.
Last week, Iraq raised its oil output to the highest level for almost decade, 2.7 million barrels a day – seen as especially important at the moment given the regional volatility and loss of Libyan output. Many opponents of the war suspected that one of Washington's main ambitions in invading Iraq was to secure a cheap and plentiful source of oil.
Mr Muttitt, whose book Fuel on the Fire is published next week, said: "Before the war, the Government went to great lengths to insist it had no interest in Iraq's oil. These documents provide the evidence that give the lie to those claims.
"We see that oil was in fact one of the Government's most important strategic considerations, and it secretly colluded with oil companies to give them access to that huge prize."
Lady Symons, 59, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank that cashed in on post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts. Last month she severed links as an unpaid adviser to Libya's National Economic Development Board after Colonel Gaddafi started firing on protesters. Last night, BP and Shell declined to comment.
Not about oil? what they said before the invasion
* Foreign Office memorandum, 13 November 2002, following meeting with BP: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP are desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity to compete. The long-term potential is enormous..."
* Tony Blair, 6 February 2003: "Let me just deal with the oil thing because... the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it. The fact is that, if the oil that Iraq has were our concern, I mean we could probably cut a deal with Saddam tomorrow in relation to the oil. It's not the oil that is the issue, it is the weapons..."
* BP, 12 March 2003: "We have no strategic interest in Iraq. If whoever comes to power wants Western involvement post the war, if there is a war, all we have ever said is that it should be on a level playing field. We are certainly not pushing for involvement."
* Lord Browne, the then-BP chief executive, 12 March 2003: "It is not in my or BP's opinion, a war about oil. Iraq is an important producer, but it must decide what to do with its patrimony and oil."
* Shell, 12 March 2003, said reports that it had discussed oil opportunities with Downing Street were 'highly inaccurate', adding: "We have neither sought nor attended meetings with officials in the UK Government on the subject of Iraq. The subject has only come up during conversations during normal meetings we attend from time to time with officials... We have never asked for 'contracts'."
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