Fifteen Years After Invasion of Iraq: Anglo-American Oil Giants Start to Flaunt the Spoils of War

Just a reminder of who actually profits as various factions in Washington lobby for war and regime change in nations big and small.

The British oil and gas company BP won the contract to operate the Rumaila Oil Field back in 2009, and now proudly boast of its new drilling capabilities on Twitter. Rumaila is simply huge; by some measures it is the third largest reserve of crude oil on the planet, and is currently extracting 100 million dollars worth of oil every day – enough to cover the annual health budget of Iraq under the wartime rule of the US coalition every five days.




One of the board members of BP at present is Sir John Sawers, the former Chief of MI6 from 2009 to 2014 who acted as UK special representative to Iraq during the occupation. He cashed in a few favours and joined BP as an Independent Non-Executive Director in 2015, one year after he departed MI6 and two years after BP had been handed a licence to exploit one of the most valuable pools of liquid gold on the planet. There was seemingly no regulatory oversight of this very British oligarchy.

In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, BP denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as “highly inaccurate” and denied that it had any “strategic interest” in Iraq, while Tony Blair described “the oil conspiracy theory” as “the most absurd”.

However, memos disclosed by The Independent in 2011 tell a very different story. In a series of meetings in 2003, BP revealed that they had approached Labour Peer Lady Symons to lobby the Blair government into demanding a share of spoils from the Iraq War in return for UK military support.

1944 poll: Would you rather have Social Security handle health insurance?

It's remarkable that people understood this even back then and our elected representatives have resisted what we would call Medicare for All today for so many decades.

If Democrats want to win, and more importantly, do the cost effective and morally right thing, they would say "Medicare for All" every time someone puts a camera in their face.

That three word framing of the issue essentially is the beginning and end of the debate, and the rest is just filling in the details, which would actually be easier than Medicare for old people since you would capture all those younger, healthier people who don't buy insurance now because they are playing medical emergency roulette.


https://twitter.com/HistOpinion/status/877562114939990017

At UN Human Rights Council, Saudi Arabia Supports Right To Torture & Execute LGBT People

This is from 2016, but as various groups ramp in Washington up tensions and possible military conflicts, it's worth remembering what offenses our government ignores when it's in the interest of our financial elite.

To their shitty human rights record, utter lack of democracy, spreading of violent fundamentalism and terrorism, including sponsoring (and possibly directing) the 9/11 hijackers, we can now add wars of aggression with Yemen.

The "whataboutism" defense was invented because comparing any of our "enemies'" human rights or democracy violations to our "allies" like Saudi Arabia immediately shows that our government's case against their enemies are excuses not real causes.

A handful of people in Congress are right on this like Tulsi Gabbard. Democrats who want to regain AND HOLD ONTO the majority in Congress could change to a foreign policy that is honest about who is pushing for various wars and regime change and how they expect to profit from it, which is something the Republicans are inherently incapable of doing.

Can election rigging charge against Trump snare Kris Kobach too?

I don't know if he is tied in with it, but it seems this is the only time vote rigging and voter suppression has made it into the mainstream news without being called a kooky conspiracy theory.

If there's a way to take down the electronic vote rigging companies and the various voter purge scams like Kobach runs with inter state crosscheck along with Trump, I'd be all for it.

How to find out how out of it Trump is: Ask him why he hasn't appointed...

Secretary of Institution Racism yet.

Or what he's going to do about the refugees from Narnia.

After Trump's Haiti & Africa comment, how long until he uses the N-word in public?

He's about three-fourths of the way there.