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July 10, 2008 at 08:49:35

Government of the Rich, by the Rich, for the Rich.

by William Helbig     Page 1 of 1 page(s)

www.opednews.com

 
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The high gas prices the world is experiencing is a direct result of the Bush/Cheney energy policy as most likely defined in the classified Energy Task Force meeting and documentation, and the resulting invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.  Only portions of the classified documents have been released to the public obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act.  The strategy contained in the documents is classified and will probably never be revealed to the American public for decades to come. However, it is easy to surmise that the energy policy of the Bush/Cheney administration is the ultimate control of the Muslim nations who happen, by a geographic coincidence, to be sitting on the world’s last remaining oil reserves. It is estimated that the Muslim world controls as much as 60 percent of the world’s oil production and 95 percent of the remaining global export capacity. 1

As the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq enter its sixth year, with no apparent end to the occupation for the foreseeable future, and with more saber rattling concerning Iran, and having no other choice, the Arab nations have finally come together, using the only weapon they have, high oil prices, to shield themselves from a complete invasion and occupation of their sovereign lands by Bush and others, who are hell bent on redrawing the Middle East map to secure the world’s last remaining oil reserves.  Any attack on Iran would push oil prices up $200.00 per barrel or more. The pretext justifying the occupation of Muslim lands is the possible use of Islamic terrorism at some possible future date.  Even as the Bush/Cheney junta tries it best to label Iran as a rouge terrorist state, Switzerland and India have signed natural gas contracts with Iran worth billions and lasting for decades.

 

However, the Bush/Cheney junta believes they are saving the Muslim nations from themselves, using the old adage from the Native American period: we must save the Indians from the Indians.  The logic behind this thinking is the same logic the United States used to over-throw 14 sovereign nations, to tenderize them into capitalists so a small group of elite investors could exploit the natural resources of the countries in question, putting must of the indigenous population in poverty. A perfect example is the aforementioned genocide and the resulting internment of the Native American population onto reservations in America. The Native Americans survived US government programs of Sterilization and Termination, and are now gaining political power to enforce treaties that removed them from their own lands, in methods that were brutal and sub-human.  Termination was the “legal process of depriving an Indian of his Indian-ness, divesting him of all his inherited treaty rights, usually in exchange for a cash settlement representing his per-capita share of his or her tribes ‘liquidated assets!’” 2  Again, the same techniques are being employed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it would not surprise this author if the entire populations of the aforementioned countries were interred onto reservations, or perhaps concentration type camps, while the oligarchs busy themselves with removing the last remaining oil reserves from these Muslim countries. 

  

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq cost the US taxpayer trillions per year in fuel costs alone.  The US Military is one of the largest consumers of crude oil on the planet.  For example, During World War II, the average fuel consumption per US soldier was approximately 1.67 gallons per day.  In Iraq, it is 27.3 gallons per day.  If 130,000 US soldiers are serving in Iraq, they use 3,549,000 gallons of oil per day.  That is approximately 1.3 billion barrels per year.  The United States uses approximately 20.7 million barrels per day, or approximately 7.6 billion barrels per year.  At $145 dollars per barrel, the net cost to US taxpayers for the fuel to sustain the Iraq war is about 1.1 trillion dollars per year.3 The Iraq and Afghanistan wars use about one fiscal quarter of fuel supply that could be used by consumers in the US.  All of this net war consumption depletes a finite reserve of fossil fuel and drives up the price of crude oil on world markets.  The irony in this war on terror has been a massive redistribution of wealth from the American consumer to the very people who Bush/Cheney claim are terrorists.  Many oil-rich Arab countries are undergoing massive building campaigns to such an extent that they are running out of steel for skyscraper construction. 

  

To drive this monstrous US military machine the Federal Reserve is printing money like a drunken sailor (no offense to drunken sailors!).  This huge addition to the money supply is causing inflation and the devaluation of the US dollar in relation to other currencies like the Euro.  The Bush tax cuts have driven the US government debt to over 9 trillion dollars, while tax revenues have been falling due to the slow economy.  The United States has lost a tremendous amount of its manufacturing and oil producing capability.  In fact, manufacturing represents about 12 percent of Gross Domestic Product, while the financial services sector represents about 20 percent of the same.  In August of 2007, a perfect storm converged on the financial sector and the consumer sector of the US economy.  One massive storm converged over the US in the form of the housing and credit crisis, and the other storm collided with the first as crude oil prices shot to record levels.  The Bush/Cheney junta complete with what Kurt Vonnegut affectionately refers to in his book, A Man without a Country, as “upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography.”  These C-students from Yale started to dream and fantasize about, what Kevin Phillips, in his book, Bad Money, calls “military and financial imperialism, about exporting mortgage backed securities and collateralized debt obligations to a grateful world.”4 5  Of course the mortgage crisis hit home as thousands of Americans lost their homes, and the oil crisis is depleting much of the American consumer’s disposable income, thereby changing spending habits, and slowing the economy into a recession.  While the American consumer suffers, the oil companies are enjoying record profits, the defense industries as well, and as a final coup de grace, the already overtaxed American consumer must now bail out the big banks and financial institutions that relied on junk bonds and derivatives to make a huge profit, but ultimately lost it all.  Lastly, the Bush administration has finally delivered on no-bid contracts for American oil companies to pump Iraq’s oil reserves, while in the background, Bush fights EPA fuel standards and Global warming initiatives, staying on the same course of oil addiction, thereby enriching his friends in the oil industry, like Dick Cheney.

       
  1. Meacher, Michael. “This War on Terrorism is Bogus.” Guardian/UK 6 September 2003
  2. Hough, Henry W.  “Development of Indian Resources.” Denver: World Press, Inc. 1967, p. 160.
  3. Flaherty, Anne. “Troops in Iraq feel pain at pump.” The San Diego Union Tribune 4 April 2008, SignOnSanDiego.com.
  4. Vonnegut, Kurt.  A Man without a Country.  New York: Random House, 2007.
  5. Phillips, Kevin. Bad Money.  New York: Penguin Group, 2008.
    

 

I hold several degress from the Pennsylvania State University and I love to research what most people call conspiracies. For example, the JFK assassination and 911, and vCJD (Mad Cow disease), to name a few. I have come to realize that we in America do not live in a democracy, but a rule by a small corrupt majority which happens to be filthy rich - the same people who brought us the genocide of the Native Americans, slavery, and endless perpetual wars as part of a national energy strategy for the United States by the collusion of energy corporations and the US Military. My primary goal is to help expose these people who start all of the wars, become bloated with wealth, from the backs of the destitute poor soldiers, and try to make the world a better place for humanity by helping cure the sick, discovering new forms of energy, and to make warfare illegal on planet Earth. The human species has now evolved enough to know better, and we need leaders to show us the way, as we can have heaven here on Earth, not some form of a deranged idea of heaven in some parts of outer space, which extremists of all forms are dying to get into.

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2 comments

I’m an ex-Nun, and I became so after reading the writings of Karen Armstrong, who is also an ex-Nun. She wrote the best-selling books, The History of God, and The Battle for God, and she makes a lot of sense to me. However, more recently I’ve read the writings of a man who feels the same way about the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), but I think more comprehensively understands what is really needed in the world – a reformation of religion and a reformation of government, t...

to see more of bio, click on member name

RuthI’m an ex-Nun, and I became so after reading the writings of Karen Armstrong, who is also an ex-Nun. She wrote the best-selling books, The History of God, and The Battle for God, and she makes a lot of sense to me. However, more recently I’ve read the writings of a man who feels the same way about the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), but I think more comprehensively understands what is really needed in the world – a reformation of religion and a reformation of government, t...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Yes. And there's much more to the story.

U.S. Neo-Imperialism has certainly exploited the people and resources of other countries. No question about that.

But, the majority of citizens right here in American, as well as our environment, our infrastructure, our well being, and our peace of mind have also been adversely affected by the "powers that be."

Joseph J. Adamson wrote an article titled Poverty: America's Hidden Shame, and it starts out like this:

The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. That phrase has been said so many times it has become a worn-out cliche. Practically no one talks about it any more, and most people just think nothing can be done about it. So it has just gotten worse and worse, especially during the last 28 years, and it’s gotten even worse during the last eight years, even in America.

Even worse, when a good, conscientious, influential person does bring the subject up as a political issue, rich right-wing conservatives immediately accuse the good person of "trying to start class warfare." They claim that the American political-economic system is fair. They claim that the rest of us do not get poorer because the richest few get even richer. Some of them even claim that their wealth is a "reward from God." And they claim that all wealthy people deserve what they have, that the poor simply deserve their lot, and that poverty is an inevitable, natural condition created by the poor themselves.

Almost none of that is true, and it's time to acknowledge that the huge and increasing income gap and income disparity is simply not fair, nor is it "natural." And the inequitable distribution of wealth is absolutely not fair or natural, despite what those who profit from it claim.

For example, it absolutely not fair or natural that 90 percent of the total wealth of the nation is pilfered, hoarded and controlled by the wealthiest few.

It is not fair or natural that in recent years the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of large American corporations raked in at least 500 times more income than their middle income workers, and at least 1,000 times more than their lowest paid employees.

It is not fair or natural that the wealthiest few live so very luxuriously and even palatially, while the working poor who work full time and sometimes have to take two jobs to try to support their families, cannot afford some of the most basic necessities of life, like sufficient food, housing, medicine, utilities, transportation, etc.

It is not fair or natural that the disabled and elderly have to live on such meager fixed incomes that they are even less able to afford the most basic necessities of life.

It is not fair or natural that even according to the obsolete and far too low "official" government poverty standard, more than 14 million American children live in poverty. It is not fair that even according to the inaccurate and underestimated government poverty reports, 74 percent of those 14 million poor children live in families with at least one parent working full time! And it is especially not fair that the actual numbers are far higher than that.

It is not fair or natural that about 20 percent of the population live below the poverty line, which has pretty much been true even since the early 1960s, when that fact was first pointed out in Michael Harrington’s book, The Other America. That 20 percent figure has remained incredibly steady ever since, even though it has fluctuated somewhat, but it got even worse since the so-called "Welfare Reform" established by the Republicans in 1996, even though the "official" government statistics now don’t reflect how bad it actually is. That legislation not only made things worse, it has prevented us from being able to accurately know how bad the situation is.

Quoted from: http://reformationcomingsoon.bravehost.com/Poverty.html

The article goes on to explain exactly why our present political-economic system is unfair and corrupt, and must be reformed.

 

by Ruth (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 172 comments) on Thursday, July 10, 2008 at 10:49:14 AM
 

 

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