It’s the Oil, stupid!

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By Noam Chomsky

Anwaar’s Note: If wishes were horses, I would be Chomsky. More people would listen to me than they are doing now. After this, please do read my Hydro Carbon Law for Dummies written way back in March 2007.

iraqoilfields.jpg The deal just taking shape between Iraq’s Oil Ministry and four Western oil companies raises critical questions about the nature of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq - questions that should certainly be addressed by presidential candidates and seriously discussed in the United States, and of course in occupied Iraq, where it appears that the population has little if any role in determining the future of their country.

Negotiations are under way for Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP - the original partners decades ago in the Iraq Petroleum Company, now joined by Chevron and other smaller oil companies - to renew the oil concession they lost to nationalisation during the years when the oil producers took over their own resources. The no-bid contracts, apparently written by the oil corporations with the help of U.S. officials, prevailed over offers from more than 40 other companies, including companies in China, India and Russia.

“There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract,” Andrew E. Kramer wrote in The New York Times.

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TS Picks

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1. The Truth Commission : By Nicholas D. Kristof : The NYT

2. War on Iran: The Perfect Storm From Hell‏ : By Timothy Alexander, Rense.com

3. Anxious in America : By Thomas L. Friedman : The NYT

4. America, its Time for some Serious Wakeup Calls : By D.L. Dewey, Dewey’s World

5. Why Gentile Americans Back the Jewish State : By Walter Russell Mead, Martinfrost.ws



“The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”

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On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, held at Rochester’s Corinthian Hall. It was biting oratory, in which the speaker told his audience, “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.” And he asked them, “Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day?” TS is proud to present it today.

blck-1.jpgFellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too Ñ great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory….

…Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

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TS Picks

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1. Preparing the Battlefield : By Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker

2. Coded prejudice is cloaked dagger : By Dahleen Glanton, Chicago Tribune

3. Gloom and Doom? Nah; Just for the U.S. : Interview with Peter D. Schiff, Barron’s

4. China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo : By Scott Shane, The NYT

5. Amid policy disputes, Qaeda grows in Pakistan : By Mark Mazzetti and David Rohde - The IHT



Welcome to the Badlands

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What must never, repeat never, be done is to negotiate a treaty with these elements from a weaker position. A Pathan despises weakness as much in himself as in any one else. Such treaties are not worth the paper these are written on.

By Anwaar Hussain

oie_talibanselected4.jpgThe badlands were not always badlands.

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, or FATA as these are more commonly known, are an amazing place with a fascinating history. This unique region of pine-scented vales, tall mountains, deep gorges, harsh topography and even harsher demography has traveled a tortuous path throughout its known history.

Starting from 500 BC to date, the region which includes Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier of Pakistan has seen perhaps more invasions in the course of history than any other country in Asia, or indeed in the world. However, during most of this period when the plains surrounding this region had been dominated by great powers of the times, these hill tracts and the tribes that inhabited these remained fiercely independent.

The people of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and FATA as well as the adjacent eastern regions of Afghanistan are overwhelmingly Pathan, or Pashtun as they are alternatively called, with a total population of around 40 million. About 18 million of these are living on the Pakistani side. Within the NWFP province, geographically, FATA runs north to south, forming a 1,200-kilometer wedge between Afghanistan and the settled areas of the NWFP. The Durand Line supposedly divided Pathan tribes between British India and Afghanistan in 1893. Supposedly because the line has never been effectively able to divide these tribes and since then this delineation has been viewed with great contempt and bitterness by Pathans on both sides of the line.

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TS Picks

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1. Energy crisis: Turning-point of humanity : By Rudo de Ruijter, Independent Researcher

2. Your Brain Lies to You : By Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt, The NYT

3. Karzai is telling half-truth : By Jehangir Khattak, The Dawn

4. The grim dangers in FATA : By Rahimullah Yusufzai, The News

5. What Obama should say on Iraq : By Fareed Zakaria, Khaleej Times

6. Islamabad blinks at Taliban threat : By Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times

7. Four paths to Israeli security : By Mohammad Akef Jamal, Gulf News









Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


US loses its status as economic world power
DAVOS, Switzerland, 2008
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