greed

britain's role in the iraqi oil law

antarchi's picture

'The UK government has played a key role in developing the oil law, alongside the US government. There are serious questions regarding the appropriateness of the UK, as an occupation power, participating in policy discussions on the future of Iraq’s natural resources. While attempts have been made to describe the British role as “advice”, it is highly unlikely that Iraqi officials would treat it as neutral advice, to be taken or left, given the UK’s military position'

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See this post for some of the details of the oil law, still being forced down the the Iraqi's throats. British citizens can - and should - urge their MP to sign EDM 1180, which 'calls on the Government to disclose to the House all representations it has made in relation to the oil law'. It appears they have been many.

Here are some of the more brazen attempts by the oil companies and the British government to bludgeon the Iraqis into submission:

  • Passage of the law was made a condition of relief of the foreign debts accumulated by the Saddam Hussein dictatorship, during his wars, and through his personal enrichment. In November 2004, the Paris Club of wealthy creditor nations agreed to conditionally cancel 80% of Iraq’s debts to them in three stages: 30% immediately, 30% when Iraq entered into an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, and 20% following a satisfactory review by the IMF after three years of the programme. Iraq entered an agreement with the IMF in December 2005. The conditions included the passage of a law opening Iraqi oil to foreign investment, by the end of 2006.
  • Future Iraqi oil policy was further developed under the Coalition Provisional Authority. During that time, former executives of multinational oil companies were appointed as senior oil advisers. Two of these advisers were paid by the UK taxpayer, and reported to the UK authorities in Iraq.
  • Six oil companies collectively appointed lobbyists, the International Tax & Investment Centre (ITIC), to push for Iraq to offer long-term oil production contracts known as production sharing agreements. ITIC was advised by officials of the FCO and HM Treasury on their strategy for influencing Iraqi decision-makers.
  • ITIC’s primary lobbying document, entitled Petroleum and Iraq’s Future, was sent to the Iraqi Minister of Finance in late 2004 by the British Ambassador to Iraq. According to ITIC, he “formally” submitted it to the Minister, implying UK endorsement of its contents...
  • Since the completion of the first draft of the oil law in July 2006, British officials in both Whitehall and Baghdad have actively worked on the law. It was first seen by British officials in July, eight months before it was seen by members of the Iraqi parliament, who first saw it in March 2007.

(emphasis mine)

let them eat cake

antarchi's picture

How much of the world do we eat?

pieces of cake

(Click on the diagram for a slightly better image)

A bit crude since it uses GDP figures, and mostly from 2003/2004. Populations scaled down by a lot: each person on the diagram represents 110,038,757* people in real life. Oceania excluded.

Figures taken from GeoHive

Roughly as follows:

China: $ 7,505,600,000,000
Asia (without China): $ 13,998,897,000,000
Africa: $ 2,092,300,800,000
Northern America: $ 12,776,478,300,000
Latin America and the Caribbean: $ 4,299,879,000,000
Europe: $ 14,244,444,000,000
Oceania: $ 737,226,300,000
World Total: $ 55,654,825,400,000

* Chosen so that the number of people on the picture was 60. Total world popn. is approx 6.6 billion

eradicating wall street's hunger

antarchi's picture
The US $600 billion coughed out in just one week could have completely eradicated hunger (the 854 million people estimated by the FAO to go to bed hungry each night) from the face of the planet. The additional US $900 billion that the US has spent in the past one year could have lifted the world's estimated 2 billion poor people from poverty, and that too on a long-term sustainable basis. The one trillion dollar bailout package that George Bush is promising could have wiped out the last traces of poverty, hunger, malnutrition and squalor from the face of the Earth.

14 more planets

antarchi's picture

...if the whole world wished to consume at the level of the United States - a consumption pattern which has been fuelled, incidentally, by the credit binge which led to the current economic crisis - we would need, conservatively, over 5 planets like earth to support them. But, under the current pattern of unequally distributed benefits from growth, to lift everyone in the world onto a modest $3 per day, would require the resources of around 15 planets like ours. Where, you might ask, will the other 14 come from?

capital flight

antarchi's picture

Intimately linked to the debt crisis is the enormous burden that capital flight from Africa has imposed on this poorest continent. Recent work by Léonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce of the University of Massachusetts reaches the conclusion that Africa’s wealthy have, during the period from 1970 to 2004, exported a total of $420 billion, nearly double the total debt burden of Sub-Saharan Africa in 2004, which in 2004 was $227 billion. Most of this money was not acquired legally. With the interest this capital could have accumulated over the 35 year period, the authors estimate the total loss to Africa at $607 billion.

x

trickle-down

antarchi's picture

Half the population in Britain today, taken together, earns only one-third of the combined income of three per cent of our fattest cats.

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