Naomi Klein
Since oil surpassed $ 140 a barrel, even more rabid right-wing broadcasters are forced to prove their populist credo devoting a portion of their programs to crush oil companies. Some have gone so far as to invite me to maintain a friendly chat about an insidious new phenomenon: "disaster capitalism." The thing is going well ... until it starts to go wrong.
For example, the speaker "independent conservative" Jerry Doyle and I had a perfectly friendly conversation on the troubled insurance companies and inept politicians when the following occurred: "I think there is a system to quickly bring down prices," said Doyle . "We have invested U.S. $ 650 billion to liberate a nation of 25 million people. Is not it time to reclaim some oil in return? Should be a lot of trucks, one after another, forming a traffic jam towards the Lincoln Tunnel, the stinkin Lincoln Tunnel at rush hour, each with a note of thanks from the Iraqi government ... Why not just go and catch the oil? We earned it liberating a country. I can fix the problem of oil prices in ten days instead of ten years. "
There were a couple of problems with Doyle's plan, of course. The first is that he was describing the biggest robbery in world history. The second, which came too late, "us" we're stealing oil Iraq, or at least we are at the peak of it.
been ten months of the publication of my book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which argued that the preferred method to reform the world according to the interests of multinational corporations to exploit is currently the systematically the state of fear and disorientation that accompanies moments of the population in shock and crisis. Now that the world is being rocked by multiple shocks, it seems a good time to see how it is implementing the strategy.
disaster capitalists have been busy: from private firefighters who served in Northern California fires, the desposeedores land after the Burma cyclone, the new housing law working its way into Congress. The law does not talk too much about affordable housing, shifts the burden of mortgage default to taxpayers and assures that provide bad loans banks make some payments in return for them. Not surprisingly, it is termed in the halls of Congress as "Credit Suisse plan" in honor of one of the banks that generously proposed it.
The disaster in Iraq: "If you break it pays
But these cases of disaster capitalism are quite amateur compared with what is taking place in the Iraqi oil ministry. It began with the procurement auction off ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and Total (not yet signed, but still valid). Paying multinationals for their technical background is not unusual. Yes it is that such contracts almost invariably go to oil companies engaged in distribution, and not those engaged in exploration, production and keep the wealth from the exploitation of these resources fuels and releasing carbon dioxide. As noted by the London-based oil expert Greg Muttitt, the contracts make sense only from the information that the major oil companies have insisted on the right to refuse to produce contracts awarded to Iraqi oil fields, directing. In other words, while other companies from bidding on contracts in the future will be those who always win.
A week after no agreement was announced Auction, the world saw the real price of oil. After years of pressure on Iraq in the back of public opinion, the country has suddenly opened to investors six of its largest oilfields, which together meet almost half of its reserves. According to Oil Minister Iraq will begin to sign long term contracts throughout the year. While ostensibly under the control of the Iraqi National Oil Company (NCIP), foreign firms will keep 75% of the value of the contracts, leaving the remaining 25% to their Iraqi partners.
This type of percentage is unprecedented in the Arab states and oil-rich Persian, in which the national majority control of oil was a decisive victory in anti-colonial struggles. According to Muttitt, the assumption until now was that foreign multinationals would bring development to the new oil fields in Iraq, not those whose production would take already underway and therefore require minimal technical investment. "The policy was to allocate these fields to the Iraqi National Oil Company completely," he explained. This change represents a reversal of that policy, because it gives the NCIP only 25% instead of 100% agreed.
So, what makes it so terrible as those contracts are possible in Iraq, a country that has suffered? Ironically, it is the suffering of Iraq, its endless crises-the basis for a deal that threatens to drain its treasury of its main source of income. The logic is as follows: Iraq's oil industry needs foreign expertise because years of punishing sanctions deprived it of new technology, and invasion, and the violence that followed, further degraded. And Iraq urgently needs more oil. Why? Because of the war, again. The country is in ruins, and the billions in contracts distributed Repo Western companies have failed to rebuild the country. That's where the new contracts out of auction, raised more money, but Iraq has become such a dangerous place to be to induce oil companies to enable them to venture. Mode of invasion is Iraq neatly creates the argument for further looting.
Many of the architects of the Iraq war no longer even bother to deny that oil was the main reason to unleash it. The program To the Point of NPR [National Public Radio], Fadhil Chalabi, an Iraqi senior advisor to the Bush administration before the invasion, recently described the war as a "strategic move by the U.S. and the United Kingdom to have a military presence in the Gulf to ensure that in future the reserves [of oil]. "Chalabi, who served as deputy minister of petroleum and met with oil companies before the invasion, described this move as "a key objective."
Invading countries to seize their natural resources is illegal under the Geneva Convention. This means that the mammoth task of rebuilding infrastructure in Iraq, including its oil infrastructure, is financially responsible for invaders. It is they who should be forced to pay reparations. (Recall that the regime of Saddam Hussein paid U.S. $ 9 billion to Kuwait in reparations for the invasion of Iraq in 1990.) But Iraq is obliged to sell 75% of their national treasures to pay the price of its own invasion and occupation illegal.
The oil price shock: or give us the Arctic or you will never lead
Speech the President and extortionist in chief, pointing to the head of his hostage (nothing less than the whole country) with the fuel pump, or give me the ANWR, or everyone will have to spend their holidays in the backyard of his home. The latest theft-cowboy president.
Despite bumper "Drill here and now pay less", drilling in ANWR would have little discernible impact on actual global oil reserves, as its advocates well know. The argument that might cause a drop in oil prices is not based on pure economics and hard but in the market psychoanalysis: drilling would "send a message" to the oil business is still more oil, and this would they began to lower prices.
are still two points in this reasoning. The first is the attempt by the overactive mentalizing entrepreneurs what actually happens in the government of the Bush era, even in the midst of a national emergency. The second is that never work. If there is anything we can predict the recent behavior of the oil market is that the price will keep rising, no matter how many new reserves are announced.
Take for example the huge boom that is taking place in the famous oil shale reserves in Alberta. With such reserves of oil shale, also known as "oil sands", the same happens with the other sites proposed by Bush for drilling, are close and safe, as the Treaty for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA in the acronym ) contains a clause that prevents Canada cut the U.S. supply. Without making much noise, oil from these sources largely untapped has been flowing into the market so much that now Canada is the largest supplier of oil to the United States over Saudi Arabia. Between 2005 and 2007, Canada increased its exports to the United States in nearly 100 million barrels. Despite the significant growth of these secure booking, oil prices have been rising throughout this time.
What is behind the campaign for ANWR drilling is not done nothing but pure shock strategy: the oil crisis has created the conditions that can be sold a policy before unsaleable, but certainly highly profitable.
The shock of food prices, or modification genetic or famine
closely linked to oil prices are the global food crisis. Not only do high oil prices drive up food prices, but the biofuel boom has blurred the line between food and fuel, farmers evicted from their land and encouraging rampant speculation. Many Latin American countries have insisted on re-examine the strength of biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels and to recognize food as a human right and not as a commodity. Undersecretary of State John Negroponte United States instead has other ideas. In the same speech he tried to sell the U.S. commitment in emergency food aid requested countries lower their "export restrictions and high tariffs" and eliminate "barriers to the use of technological innovations in crop and animal production, including biotechnology." Admittedly this threat was more subtle than before, but the message was clear: the poor countries would do better to open their agricultural markets to American products and genetically modified seeds. Otherwise they risk losing their support.
Genetically modified crops have suddenly emerged as the panacea to the food crisis, at least according to the World Bank, European Commission president - "value and the bull" came to mean, "and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. And, of course, as agribusiness companies. "You can not today feed the world without genetically modified organisms," said Peter Brabec recently, chairman of Nestle, the Financial Times. The problem with this argument, at least for now, is that there is no evidence that GMOs increase crop production, but rather the decline.
But even if there were a magic wand to solve the global food crisis, would we want that was in the hands of Nestle and Monsanto? What would be the price to pay for that use? In recent months Monsanto, Syngenta and BASF have been frenetically buying patents on seeds called "SUV", a type of plants that can grow even in the land parched by drought or salt by the floods.
In other words, plants engineered to survive a future of climate chaos. We know how far you are willing to go when Monsanto to protect its intellectual property, spying on and suing farmers who dare to save seeds from one year to another. We have seen how the patented anti-HIV medications prevent save millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa. Why crop-rounder patents would be different?
Meanwhile, amid much chatter about exciting new drills and genetic technologies, the Bush administration announced a moratorium of up to two years in federal projects for research in solar energy, because, apparently, environmental concerns. We are approaching the final frontier of disaster capitalism. Our leaders do not invest in technologies that will effectively prevent a chaotic climate future, and instead they decide to work side by side with those who just plot increasingly diabolical plans to take advantage of the misfortunes of others.
The privatization of Iraqi oil, the assurance of genetically modified crops, the reduction of trade barriers and the recent opening of the last natural refuges to private exploitation ... Not long ago these goals were achieved one after another through polite trade agreements submitted under the pseudonym "globalization." Now completely discredited agenda is forced to ride on the backs of cyclical crises, selling itself as the medicine that will cure once and for all the pain of the world. Naomi Klein is the author of numerous books, including his latest The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
