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, writes Noam Chomsky.
The Jerusalem-based intelligence-reporting agency, DEBKAfile said oil prices suddenly slumped Tuesday, July 8 under the impact of the secret American-Iranian talks embarked on last month to solve burning issues by diplomatic engagement.
These talks between the US and Iranian delegations, representing President George W. Bush and Iranian supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have yielded ad hoc understandings on controversial issues. One is an agreement not to allow the price of oil to rocket past $150 the barrel.
The former Iraqi oil minister Ibrahim Bahr Al-Aloom declared that the infrastructure of the Iraqi oil sector is the worst ever among the oil producing countries and is not commensurate with the potential of Iraq’s oil.
He added: “we have not been able so far to begin the process of reconstruction in the required form, what makes us very cautious and concerned about the prospects for future development of the foundations would not allow the process capable of maintaining and developing the sector.” He called for a “sound basis of policies that oil be able to develop the infrastructure sector, to ensure the utilization of its revenue in the reconstruction of the country,” Iraq Directory reported.
Reuters reports that the Iraqi army has formed a new battalion that aims to cut the time taken to repair damaged oil pipelines by half.
Iraq’s hundreds of miles of oil pipelines have often come under attack by insurgents seeking to disrupt the flow of Iraq’s main export, and also by criminals siphoning off oil for sale on the black market.
The Engineer Infrastructure Battalion comprises engineers who will go to damaged pipelines, which carry oil to refineries for domestic use, to neighboring Turkey and also to the port city of Basra for export.
Even though Iraqis, enjoying a degree of civil safety these days after years of terror, still endure long gas lines in a country brimming with oil, hope is on the horizon. The government is opening six major oil fields and two natural gas fields to development by foreign firms. There’s talk of an achievable 60 percent increase from current production levels. That would mean more oil for the world and more revenue for the government, already set to take in $70 billion this year.
Americans can cheer that. A richer Iraq can be expected to pay more of its own way as it rebuilds. More oil on the world market — maybe even the prospect of it — helps to lower prices, The News & Observer of North Carolina writes.
The Gulf Times says Crescent Petroleum, the United Arab Emirates-based oil and gas company, along with its affiliate Dana Gas, will start producing gas from northern Iraq’s Kurdistan fields in early August, a company executive has said.
“We will start producing 75mn cu ft of gas a day within weeks and will increase to 150mn cubic feet gradually, reaching 300mn cu ft by early 2009,” Crescent’s executive director Majid Jafar said.
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Leave it to an old Communist like Noam Chomsky to pontificate to the Capitalist West what to do. As if Communism wasn’t already an absolute and total failure and has nothing to commend it to anyone except the willfully blind.
Old Sailor,
For the record Noam Chomsky, the MIT professor, is a self-declared (Social European) Libertarian.
Unlike many neo-Cons, he was never a communist. In his youth, he left an Israeli kibbutz because of its Leninist leanings. Throughout his academic career, he referred to the Soviet Union as a dungeon.
His works are considered worthwhile by prominent elites like Economist Jeff Sachs, India’s pro-market Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and Iraq’s former Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Anyways, Dan Graeber’s link to Chomsky’s article is worth reading. It presents a summary of oil-related politics in Iraq. All of it complete with citations to reputable publications & authors.
If Chomsky is observing this, you can be sure that the mood of the “Arab Street” is not far behind.
Paul,
I was simply making the point that the difference between Socialism and Communism is only a matter of degree. Socialism says, “Vote me into power so I can bring society into the Socialist mold over many years.” Communism says, “If you don’t become Socialist right now, I will kill you.” Both methods want the same goals: to remold society so that it follows Socialist principles (Big Government, High taxation, fewer individual liberties, little or no private property, etc). The democrat party in the US are a bunch of wannabe Socialists. If they could do everything they want with no opposition, America would look a lot more like France or worse.
Don’t believe me that Communists are Socialists and Socialists are Communists? Just ask Kim Jong-Il of North Korea. The North Korean xenophobes are extremely proud to identify themselves as Socialists; just like the old Soviet Union, and communists everywhere else.
So Chomsky didn’t want to use a gun like Lenin? Big deal. That is why I wouldn’t vote for a democrat for President, Senator, Representative, or even dogcatcher, because the democrat party is controlled by Socialists who won’t admit their true stripes. Paul Wellstone was one of the few honest Socialists in that party and he called himself a “progressive”; “progressing” toward what? Socialism, as he himself often admitted as much!!
A vote for a democrat is the same as a vote for a Communist in the long run: you’re getting the same end result: Big Government. Whether you vote them in like the “Social Europeans” in France or England or Sweden, or they force their way into power at the point of a gun like in the old Soviet Union or Red China under Mao, they both want ultimately the same thing and follow similar ideologies. The difference is only one of degree. Big Government is the same to the little guy in the street, no matter whether you label it Nazism (National SOCIALIST), Communism (SOCIALIST), or Democrat/Liberal (SOCIALIST).
No thanks! I prefer my old-fashioned American Constitutional Republic and Free Enterprise any day.
Old Sailor, your comments indicate a vast misunderstanding of Professor Chomsky’s views. If you don’t want to make the effort of attaining a sufficient knowledge of them, why bother commenting? Do not expect any kind refutation when you are not aware of the basics of the topic.
As for North Korea, they are officially a democracy, just as the U.S.S.R. was a republic. Surely their “proud” proclamations of democracy are not enough to deter you from being in favor of a “republic”?
Paul clearly lacks the framework to understand what political view chomsky is advocating. Hes not a democrat/socialist/communist or any other label you’d like to throw on him. Hes a libertarian who believs in social spending. In other words, all candidates on the current American political landscape believe in outspending the rest of the world combined on defense, and maintaining a vast empire of over 750 bases. Incarceration the superfolous elements in society- in addition to other collosal waistes of the american taxpayers’ dollars towards the end of corporate profit and American hegemony, all of witch are contrary to the collective good of our country and the rest of the world. These views are actually congruent with the vast majority of the people in our country — increases in social spending, get out of iraq, decrease in defense spending..etc. Unfortunetly, to hold these views is to challenge the concentrated sectors of power and would be marganalized immiediently by Sean Hannity speak…
North Korea is a democracy? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! What source of information did you dig that out of? Pravda? Try telling that to the millions of dead and dying in their prison camps and the hundreds of thousands who have fled to China and other countries from government persecution. Surely you must be joking.
Clearly, you are the one not aware of the basics of the topic, my friend.
Old Sailor said: “…to remold society so that it follows Socialist principles (Big Government, High taxation, fewer individual liberties…”
I don’t have many good things to say about US Democrats, but how come the US Republicans running this country are the ones that are pushing for big government, and fewer individual liberties (they still do push for “low taxes” i.e. - borrowing money from China that we can never repay…)
http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/the-wiretapping-bill-president-bush-and-fear-lead-the-senate-off-a-cliff/?hp
To: Old Sailor
North Korea is OFFICIALLY a democracy, in case you missed that qualifier. Please stop perpetuating the myth that the USSR was and North Korea is communist. I’ve read Marx. I am no communist but I can tell that Soviet and North Korean society/government in no way resemble the “ideal” communist society. Seriously, any petty thug such as Stalin of Kim Jong Il can claim they only serve the interests the people and are true communistsbut that doesn’t make them so. Israeli kibbutzim are probably the closest match to a communist society the world has seen yet. (Oh FYI, in theory, a true communist society requires the ABSCENCE
Well, if Stalin, Mao, Pol Pol, Kim Il-Sung/Jong-Il, and Castro have failed in their effort to institutionalize Socialism at the point of a gun, which is Communism (using violent revolution to make it happen sooner rather than later) it wasn’t for lack of trying!
So according to you the only “true” Communism is the Israeli Kibbutzim? Here is the definition of Communist from Wikipedia:
“Manifesto of the Communist Party (German: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), often referred to as The Communist Manifesto, was first published on February 21, 1848, and is one of the world’s most influential political manuscripts. Commissioned by the Communist League and written by communist theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, it laid out the League’s purposes and program. The Manifesto suggested a course of action for a proletarian (working class) revolution to overthrow the bourgeois social order and to eventually bring about a classless and stateless society, and the abolition of private property.”
So according to the Communist Manifesto itself, written by Marx and Engels (a Jesuit Priest), Communism uses violent revolutionary methods to overthrow the existing social orders (including Capitalism). But you say that the Israeli Kibbutzim are the true communists? They must not have been reading Karl Marx, which was the basic blueprint followed by Stalin, Mao, etc.
Methinks you don’t know what you’re talking about.
“A vote for a democrat is the same as a vote for a Communist in the long run: you’re getting the same end result: Big Government.”
This is such an a-historic and ignorant comment. The Democratic Party, the freaking Democratic Party who has supported NAFTA, cutting social programs, economic liberalization, who is for a market based healthcare system is communist…only for people who are incapable of seeing the world outside of black and white.
Let’s talk about capitalist development, which you seem to know nothing about. Did you know that South Korea, the “capitalist” alternative to North Korea, developed with MASSIVE state development? They based their developmental model on Japan, another “capitalist” country in which the state controlled the vast majority of economic activity. Know how Japan would fund their highly successful technological breakthroughs? Did big Japanese corporations compete in the marketplace and develop technologies out of “enlightened self interest”? No, the government would get together with the military, the banks, the corporations and they’d all collectively figure out investment, savings, public spending and the like. This was copied by every other country in the region, including recently China. Some “free market” miracle.
I challenge you to show here how South Korea’s state capitalist development was that much different than the USSR’s state capitalist development. How about Chile? They’re the “free market” model for Latin America. Never mind the fact that copper, the state owned copper company that was never privatized, provided the country with 90% of its export revenues, to this day providing around 60% (the rest was raw materials, developed economies don’t export mainly raw materials). Chile was saved just a few years ago by its state copper company from a massive capital flight induced recession. Its “free market” reforms caused Chile to go through the most severe recession in Latin America in the early 1980’s, the only thing that saved it was statist policies far and away more than even Allende called for. Its PRIVATE public transportation system lost over $30 million in April of 2006 and had to be rescued by the far more efficient STATE system. Its conservative candidate during its last presidential election called for a massive reforming of the privatized social security system because of how poorly it has functioned, if you want some quotes from the CONSERVATIVE candidate let me know. By the time Pinochet, one of many “capitalist” dictators the West supported) left, workers made LESS adjusted for inflation than when he took over, wealth concentration and poverty had increased many times over. I challenge you again, find me economists who will call Chile anything but a “free market” economy and a success.
How about our own. I’ll give you a link called “The Conservative Nanny State” that shows how much our economy relies, and always has, on massive state involvement. The military industrial complex, which are state institutions, is where most of our technology comes from. We spend over a TRILLION on it annually, all things considered. We socialize the costs of most corporate R & D through the military system, NASA, public universities and private companies almost entirely reliant on the state. Most of what we export is either state funded weapons or state supported agriculture.
http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:ab581cKDXqgJ:www.conservativenannystate.org/cnswebbook.pdf+the+conservative+nanny+state&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us
The different between “socialist” and “capitalist” development is that in “socialist” development many times the state will try to socialize some of the benefits, which scares off investors and economically isolates the country. If countries want to continue they have to do so by being self reliant, which shows just how little democracy and capitalism are linked. The “capitalist” state development, like we see in modern China, doesn’t. They, like us, socialize most of the costs of economic activity and privatize most of the benefits, so investors are enticed to put their money in.
One last thing, compare what Cuba has been able to accomplish (and they do have democracy in Cuba, far from perfect, but no worse than most of the poor capitalist countries in the world). Less than 3% of the country is malnourished, daily calorie intake is about 2600, they have an almost self sustaining agricultural system that is mostly organic, one of the best educational systems in Latin America, an amazing bio-tech industry, one of the best healthcare systems in Latin America, produce large amounts of doctors who offer their services around the world, has pretty good sports institutions (as evident by Cuba’s performance in international competition and creating professional athletes), and they don’t receive a single cent from the IMF or World Bank. This while being under attack for decades from the world’s superpower just miles off of its coast. The country and its institutions are far from perfect, I just would like to hear a “capitalist” country at the same developmental stage as Cuba who has done a fraction as well for the general public, and was able to accomplish that without help by the West.
What you are holding up as an ideal exists in the minds of people like yourself. You’ve been fed propaganda and you’ll be damned if you have even a passing knowledge if what you’ve been fed, by interests who benefit from your ignorance, has any connection to reality.
By the way, in Iraq most of what has happened economically has happened from the state, in opposition to what the people want, and it has been called “free market”. The state, more specifically the CPA, instituted a whole round of economic policies (basically 100 orders, which Bremer and the US government claim is legally binding for all future governments, who democratic of them) that the population in Iraq disagreed with. Massive privatizations, deregulation, capital liberalization, a complete elimination of tariffs. The policies were so radical that even the Iraqi Chamber of Commerce was outraged. The Iraqis wanted elections to happen immediately. What did the CPA do? They attempted to cancel the elections and install puppets into government. The Iraqis rose up and forced the elections, so the CPA hurried up and put through their economic policies, which over ¾’s of the country opposed. What followed was over 70% unemployment, a foreign corporate takeover of the economy and poverty and despair spreading like wildfire. They tried to privatize Iraq’s oil, which they’re still trying to obviously do, and THAT was stopped and is opposed by over 2/3’s of the country. Now, the country is supposedly doing well (according to the capitalist press) while small business is wiped out, over a million are dead, 2 million internally displaced, the agricultural system in pieces, amongst other horrors. But profits and macro growth is up, so Iraq is “booming”.
These reforms are not “socialist” but they involve the state squashing what the people want and this is only benefiting a small group of elites, mainly the West. People like you claim this only happens in “socialist” countries, so I’m confused. I’m sure you could care less, or are even aware, but it’s sad to hear you talk about “big government” and try to pretend it is something only found on the left. You have to know jack $hit about the subject to say something so stupid.
Chomsky is an anarchist. A damn brilliant one at that. This squabble over Dems and Reps is little more than arguing the pronunciation of tomato. Both achieve great gains for the same few, which is, by some understanding, the tenements of certain forms of socialism or communist government that you abhor. Bottom line is the bottom line, despite what the public says, it depends solely on how they consume that dictates to power what they want.
“This is such an a-historic and ignorant comment. The Democratic Party, the freaking Democratic Party who has supported NAFTA, cutting social programs, economic liberalization, who is for a market based healthcare system is communist…only for people who are incapable of seeing the world outside of black and white.”
Supported NAFTA? True, but only because their masters in the CFR wanted them to. Unfortunately, Republicans are just as guilty on this score as the dems.
Cutting social programs? Name one. The only reason Clinton agreed to reform of welfare was because he was triangulating and trying to stay in power. The dems as a party were virulently opposed to this change.
Economic liberalization? Show the evidence. The dems ever since Roosevelt have been building bigger and bigger government and more regulation every chance they’ve gotten.
Market-based healthcare system? Don’t make me laugh!! A single-payer healthcare system isn’t market based, bud. I actually happen to think that a single-payer system might be what we need, but don’t be fooled into thinking that it is market-based; it isn’t.
“One last thing, compare what Cuba has been able to accomplish (and they do have democracy in Cuba, far from perfect, but no worse than most of the poor capitalist countries in the world). Less than 3% of the country is malnourished, daily calorie intake is about 2600…”
There you go, showing your true colors: RED! And I don’t mean “red-state” (the phoney recolorization of the parties by the media in 2004 or thereabouts); I mean COMMUNIST RED!! Fidel Castro is an absolutist Communist Dictator and a fervent Socialist believer. BTW which is why all the leading lights of the Democrat party like Jesse Jackson, Hollywood and media Liberals have made repeated pilgrimages to visit their hero Fidel and fawn and bubble over him.
Your own words confirm exactly what I’ve been trying to say: Democrats look to Communist Dictators like Fidel Castro as their role models, because THEY AGREE WITH THEM!! Your own words condemn you.
To me is pretty dangerous and funny at the same time that Noam Chomsky is a friend and admirer of the neo-fascist dictator of Venezuela, Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez Frias. Chavez, in a public speech, made by error a reference to “Chomsky’s death” and so sky-rocketed world-wide selling of Chomsky’s books. All those libertarians, US “democrats” ad “political widows” of the Kennedy, McGovern and Gore’s heritage, must come to Venezuela to live in person what Chavez is doing for improving the life of his beloved people: an average of 50 killings motivated by robbery each week-end (only in Caracas!!!) (Question: there are so many in Baghdad ?), decaying Hospital infrastructure, widespread corruption (Antonini Wilson’s briefcase is a good example), extreme poverty, political prisoners, lack of independece of institutions (do you know, “socialists” and Chavez’s lovers, that the Vice-President was not long ago the same General Attorney?), and so on… Venezuela, despite the $ 140.00 per barrel of oil price, is on the edge of becoming a military-ruled “rogue-state”, in fact aligning itself with such “democracies” like Cuba, Iran and North-Korea. Come, come to Venezuela, dear “socialists”, and see by yourself !!!!!