This video from the USA is called Was The Iraq War About Oil?
From daily News Line in Britain:
Wednesday, 6 March 2013
‘PEOPLE’S OIL IS NOT FOR THIEVES!’ says Committee for the Defence of Oil Workers
CHANTING ‘People’s oil for the people not for the thieves!’ hundreds of workers protested against the South Oil Company in Iraq on 19 February 2013, demanding housing, permanent work and payment of delayed benefits.
The protest was organised by the Committee for the Defence of Oil Workers, including IndustriALL Global Union affiliate, and the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU), and follows an earlier similar action on 13 February 2013.
The workers, from the fields of al-Ramlia north and south, al-Berjesia, Gharb al-Karna, and Bab al-Zubair gathered in front of the main door of the South Oil Company in Basra calling for the expulsion of corrupt employees and the dismissal of the company director.
They demanded a meeting with the company director to negotiate the payment of withheld benefits dating back to 2010, 2011 and 2012, the right to housing, permanent job contracts and an end to corruption in the company.
The South Oil Company (SOC), which produces more than 80 per cent of Iraqi oil, is a national company responsible for the oil in the south of Iraq.
As the company director has so far refused to meet with the protestors, they are now requesting a meeting with the management and the government in the coming days to negotiate on the issues.
The protestors have also addressed their demands to the Iraqi Prime Minister.
Some of the workers were subject to threats from company security during the actions.
Meanwhile, on February 15, the Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative (ICSSI) and peace groups marked the tenth anniversary of the worldwide protests against the war on Iraq.
An ICSSI statement said: ‘Today, ten years ago, a global demonstration took place in more than sixty countries around the world, involving millions, to protest against the upcoming war in Iraq.
‘Refusing an illegal war of aggression, protesting against a war for oil, demonstrators firmly rejected the idea a people can be bombed into democracy.
‘Today, ten years after, oil companies are making huge profits in Iraq.
‘While labour rights are not recognised, foreign oil companies have signed 20-year contracts and are benefitting from this denial of the fundamental rights of Iraqi workers.
‘Today, representatives of the Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative (ICSSI) from Italy, UK and France went to ENI, the Italian oil company, to deliver the following letter from Iraqi oil workers, which is also being sent to all foreign oil companies present in Iraq.
An open letter to the international oil companies operating in Iraq, a decade after the US-UK invasion of Iraq
‘Ten years after the US invasion of Iraq, which was undertaken ostensibly to overthrow the former dictator and to promote human rights and democracy, we see that a more essential, long-term goal was for international oil companies to acquire control over Iraq’s newly privatised oil resources, creating a “liberated” Iraq that would serve as an economic model for a “New Middle East” and spread neo-liberalism throughout the region.
‘The project has been a failure on all fronts. Those who suffer the consequences are Iraq’s citizens. Their country is wracked by violence and mounting sectarian conflict.
‘Their rights are violated. Vital services – water and electricity – are unavailable, while international oil companies receive priority access to these scarce resources, and operate under long-term contracts to develop Iraqi oil fields, that were signed while Iraq was still occupied.
‘All this comes at the expense of Iraq’s national oil companies. It has further aggravated an already troubled relationship between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the central Government of Iraq.
‘And, with their narrow focus on increasing production and profits, international oil companies have shown little regard for public accountability or the rights of workers in Iraq.
‘These companies’ frenzied quest to extract ever greater quantities of oil has led to an acceleration of the rampant corruption that now afflicts Iraq.
‘Since the arrival of the companies, bribery and irregular accounting practices have become the norm in the Iraqi oil industry.
‘The companies have not carried out proper planning and resource management but rather are overseeing wasteful policies that deprive future Iraqi generations of their birthright.
‘And, these companies are working without a national Iraqi Labour Law that would protect Iraqi workers’ rights to join unions, bargain collectively, and organise strikes, protests and demonstrations.
‘Their policies punish workers and deny them rights that are internationally recognised and guaranteed in many of the nations in which the international companies are incorporated.
‘Therefore, we strongly urge that all international oil companies operating in Iraq:
‘1 – Respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi people over their natural resources and, noting the lack of legitimacy of their contracts, to relinquish any claims to rights over Iraqi oil.
‘2 – With oil companies now having taken the place of foreign troops in compromising Iraqi sovereignty, set a timetable for their withdrawal, while transferring technology to Iraq’s national oil companies.
‘3 – Stop exacerbating tensions between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the central Government of Iraq, by ceasing to exploit oil until a stable national accord has been achieved, supported by all Iraq’s citizens.
‘4 – Promote transparency in the oil sector in Iraq, by publishing details of all contracts and ensuring Iraqi citizens’ access to information about Iraqi oil resources and their development. This is vital to end the corruption that has become rampant as a result of the presence of international oil companies in Iraq.
‘5 – Support the passage of an Iraqi Labour Law that guarantees all Iraqi workers rights that are in accord with the highest, international standards and that protects their freedom of association and their right to strike.
‘6 – Adopt clear policies to protect the Iraqi environment and agree to utilize appropriate, advanced equipment to monitor the effects of your companies’ activities on the soil, water and air in Iraq.
‘7 – Agree that the security and protection of personnel and equipment in all Iraqi oilfields should be exclusively under the authority of national Iraqi security forces. These responsibilities should not be assigned to private security companies that are based in other nations and that undermine the sovereignty of Iraq.’
‘15th of February 2013.
‘The Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative, and Iraqi unions: Adnan Al-Saffar for the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW) and its oil & gas union; Abdulla Malik for the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU); Abbas Kadhim for the Engineering Professions Union (Electricity Section-Baghdad); Abdullatif Abdul Rahman for the Federation of Salahaddin Unions.’
l The National Union of Iraqi Journalists, on February 28, condemned the arbitrary detention in Baghdad of French journalist Nader Dndon who works for Le Monde Diplomatique.
The union is demanding Iraqi authorities either charge him formally or release him immediately. The NUIJ called on Iraqi security forces to ‘respect’ the constitution of Iraq and stop muddying the political waters.
Reporters Without Borders and Iraqi Press Freedom Observatory wrote to the Iraqi PM calling on him to intervene and secure the release of the French Journalist.
Reporters Without Borders said in a statement on March 1st: ‘Nadir Dendoune, a visiting journalist with French, Australian and Algerian nationality, who was released on bail of 10 million dinars (6,500 euros) on 14 February after 23 days in detention in Baghdad, is still being prevented from leaving Iraq.
‘Why hasn’t he been allowed to return to France?
‘1. First of all, it took 12 days for a Baghdad court to close his case.
‘2. Then his Australian passport and personal effects were returned to him only yesterday (28 February), two days after the case was closed.
‘3. Finally, today, after he had gone through all the airport controls in the presence of the French ambassador and an Australian diplomat and was within minutes of boarding his plane, he was prevented from departing by the aviation and border police, Reporters Without Borders has learned.
‘The reason given? His visa had expired.’
‘It is absurd and Kafkaesque that Dendoune cannot leave Iraq’, Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. ‘After spending three weeks in Iraqi jails and then waiting two weeks for a judge to close the case, he has been prevented from leaving on the grounds that his visa had expired. I am outraged.
‘The Iraqi authorities’ reluctance to let this journalist leave is flagrant and we condemn it with the utmost strength. It is high time this sorry farce came to an end and Dendoune is allowed to recover his freedom.’
An investigative report by the British Guardian and the BBC’s Arabic language service links top US officials to atrocities carried out by Iraqi police forces after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. General David Petraeus and Bush-era Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among others, worked directly with US officials overseeing death squads, secret prisons, and torture practices in US-occupied Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died and millions were displaced as a result of the chaos that the atrocities produced.: here.
Related articles
- British Iraq torture scandal (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
- Revealed: Pentagon’s link to Iraqi torture centres (guardian.co.uk)
- Too Much Money Spent in Iraq for Too Few Results (abcnews.go.com)
- Iraqi sets himself on fire in Dutch refugee center (nzweek.com)
- Oil workers demonstrate in Iraq (nenosplace.wordpress.com)
Today the biggest purchasers of Iraqi oil are Russia, China and their allies – the very enemies of America. Inconvenient fact, sorry.
Hi Mark, your remark on Iraqi oil fits excellently in the bigger picture of the Iraq war. A war, mostly for oil, as also Bush administration officials, their Australian conservative allies, etc. have admitted. A war which killed over a million Iraqi civilians, made over four million of them refugees, made the situation of women much worse, made torture worse then ever (as, among many other sources, a recently published report by a US top ranking officer to Bush’s “defence” secretary Rumsfeld shows), etc.
Even the present Iraqi government, brought to power by Bush’s invasion, hates United States occupiers. Like the Karzai regime in Afghanistan also hate their “big brother” in Washington. Because the people, from Iraqi oil workers to hungry Afghan homeless, hate the occupation. And without at least symbolic nods to that, the regimes would lose their last shreds of credibility. This is why the Baghdad government now sells oil rather to Russia or China than to the USA. Bush’s neoconservative warmongers started the war for oil; but things went differently from what they expected.
By the way, the USA has diplomatic relations with Russia and China and trades with them. It owes much debt to especially China. So, though there are warmongers like the gutter press of phone hacker in chief and burglar in chief Rupert Murdoch, Russia and China are NOT officially enemies of the USA. Maybe, Mark, when you wrote that you drank more whiskey than tea
By the way, on Rumsfeld’s responsibility for torture in Iraq:
Donald Rumsfeld must be indicted over Iraq militias
What he knew of detention centres is not the only point. He was in charge, and if he had a plan the militias wouldn’t have existed
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/07/donald-rumsfeld-iraqi-torture
For all the mess in which Iraq currently finds itself, no sane person would suggest it was better under the life of a man who murdered several million people, and whose impending death would probably have launched the country into a civil war worse than anything Syria could produce. And yes, obviously the US isn’t the “enemy” of China or Russia – but they are in geopolitical opposition throughout the world through Japan, south-West Asia, African aid and all the rest. Even if they were best friends, are you seriously saying that the Iraq invasion was an intention by Buch to provide all to the Chinese government? What?
And for the record, the Iraqi government was not “brought to power” by the West; Talabani was the first democratically elected president Iraq has ever had, and his Prime Minister is anti-Western thug. Hardly the sign of an imperialist stooge.
Yes, indeed very many things are worse in Iraq under the dictatorship of Bush than under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein:
The “new” Iraq which arose since the 2003 invasion, based on George W. Bush‘s and Tony Blair‘s lies, is a country where over a million people have been killed. Where four million people have become refugees. Where children die horrible deaths from the effects of “humanitarian” military intervention.
Where there are more prisoners and more torture than under dictator Saddam Hussein.
Where women’s rights are far worse than under Saddam Hussein.
This “new” Iraq has become the world ‘s most corrupt country, along with those two other “beneficiaries” of US “humanitarian intervention”, Afghanistan and Somalia.
There are far more horrible things to say about the Iraq which Bush and Blair made.
For the moment, let us concentrate on one point.
From Pink News in Britain:
Or you could just ignore all of my points and repeat yourself.
Why don’t you learn to read first before producing your Bullingdon Club brainless one liners.
P.S.: trolling is not welcome at this blog.
You are right, there is tension between Japan and China. That is because the present Japanese Prime Minister is from a family of revanchist war criminals guilty of Pearl Harbor etc. If there is any sense in Washington, they should not ally with those extreme Right Tokyo nutcases.
No, of course “Buch” (a Dutch writer; probably you mean “Bush”) did not start the war for Chinese or Russian oil interests, but for his own, Cheney’s and other US ones. And Tony Blair’s ones. However, he miscalculated.
Arianna Huffington: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” It’s one of Milan Kundera’s most famous lines, from his novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. It’s one worth keeping in mind as we approach March 20, the 10th anniversary of one of the biggest disasters in the history of the United States. That was the day George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and a team of others — along with much of Washington and a very complicit mainstream media — took the nation to war against Iraq. The devastating consequences of that war will continue for decades, but a full accounting has still yet to happen. Allowing the toxic mixture of lies, deception and rationalizations that led to that war to go unchallenged makes it more likely that we will make similar tragic mistakes in the future. So I hope we can use this moment to assess what really happened, to look back in order to look forward.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/iraq-10-years-later_b_2823089.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=030713&utm_medium=email&utm_content=FeatureTitle&utm_term=Daily%20Brief
Also on the Iraq war:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-engelhardt/iraq-war-anniversary_b_2828534.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=030713&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief
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