"Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed upon the housetops."Greg Palast shouts it loud and clear. Right out in the glaring spotlight of BBC News, reporter Palast blasts out W.'s dirty little secrets that were whispered in the darkness. Palast, an American, has to tell the truth at BBC because major American news channels won't report the truth about Mammon's war. Then again, why would Mammon's media bite its master?
Jesus
Luke 12:1-3
"What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Isn't it because there is a whole army of evil desires within you? You want what you don't have, so you kill to get it. You long for what others have, and can't afford it, so you start a fight to take it away from them."
James 4:1-2
But, thank the Lord, brother Palast proclaims loudly and clearly the truth, just as he did with his book "The Best Democracy Money Cany Buy" and his documentary "Bush Family Fortunes." Once again, Mammon, the archetypal idol of Greed, Opportunism and Profiteering that was decried by Jesus, has started another war by invoking God, country and the fear of mama getting violated by godless hordes.
The Bible is full of stories like the sordid tale of greed Palast reveals. Since time immemorial, Mammon has invoked the unholy trinity to do his bidding. The unholy trinity is the conspiracy of elitist government, false religion and oppressive economic system to make the rich richer at the expense of the poor. The rich live like they are already in heaven while all of us dwellers in earthly hell get the promise of winning the lottery and making it to heaven.
Mammon, like modern corporations, is totally transnational and has no interest in ideology or belief. That is other than to manipulate people's beliefs and hopes to get them to do what they would not otherwise do. Mammon uses every trick in the book but loves to pull his scams and shams waving the local icon and wearing the local flag. Mammon doesn't only use right-wing American fundamentalists. Palast accurately paints Osama as greedy and power hungry. And as Palast proves, Mammon steals presidential elections, like the one held in the US in 2004.
As a forensic economist, Palast does an excellent job of following the money. Which, in the case of the Iraqi war, is about like trying to watch an adroit octopus pull an eight-card monte under strobe lights in a house of cracked mirrors. Without making trite the complex, Palast translates the scam into everyday English. Palast shows that the war is not as facile as blood for oil. Actually, it's more like "blood to keep us from having oil." Iraq has way too much untapped oil reserves for the liking of the Saudis. He reasons that it is not in Saudi Arabia's or OPEC's interests for too much oil to be on the market. A glut of oil dries up the profits.
Traditionally, Iraq has never produced anywhere near its capacity as part of a scheme to maximize profits by having higher prices. Saddam Hussein threatened that stability by his unpredictability. Namely, Saddam fluctuated between periods of overproduction and underproduction, which dramatically impacted OPEC's status quo. The Saudis do not like sharing control of OPEC. They have found that the slower the oil flows, the more the profits flow to them. Indeed, the only recent time that Saudi Arabia increased to full production - which caused gases prices to drop - was right before the last presidential election. Wasn't that a nice favor for the Saudis to do in appreciation of all that the Bushes have done for them?
Then there is the matter of the Saudis fearing Osama. Thus, American troops had to leave Saudi Arabia. Which, by the way, was also the demand of Osama bin Laden. His stated objective in ordering the attacks on 9/11 was to get the infidel American soldiers out of the holy Arabian peninsula. On the day President W. landed on the aircraft carrier to celebrate the mission being accomplished, Donald Rumsfeld sheepishly admitted that American troops were being withdrawn from the Saudi peninsula. Round one goes to Osama.
America needed a new base of operations. What better place than Iraq? It had your brand-name bogeyman, convenient location and all our oil-to-be under their land. But as Palast so lucidly illustrates, there was not simply one plan for what to do with the oil but there were two. The neo-con plan backed selling off Iraqi oil to private interests and pump so much oil as to flood the market and drown-out OPEC once and for all. The neo-cons wanted to bring down Saudi Arabia. Big oil's plan put an end to the neo-con plan.
American big oil companies didn't and don't want to hurt OPEC. They would be shooting themselves in the pockets. Big bucks for OPEC means big bucks in Houston. Forget bringing down Saudi Arabia because that would mean bringing down gas prices which would bring down big oil's profits which would bring down the Bush dynasty. The rich are not known for choosing ideology over money.
In reality, so-called American big oil corporations aren't actually American anymore. All corporations are transnational. Profit for the sake of profit is their only purpose. Countries, politics, religion and even people are disposable. Profits aren't. Many modern corporations are really little more than cults dedicated to Mammon, who would do business anywhere there is a buck to be made from communist China to dictatorial Arabia.
Further, as Palast provides poignant evidence, Mammon wants more. In the form of organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, third world countries are basically becoming indentured servants by their debt bondage. The IMF is better described as Insatiable Mammon Feasting. As Palast shows again and again, the Mammonite economic system sucks the wealth straight up to the super rich.
And all the time that we are being ripped off, all we are doing is fighting a cultural war over gay marriages and stem cell research. As we torment each other, Mammon is feasting off another war for profit. Then again, hasn't that been the scenario as recorded time after time by the prophets in the Bible?
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