T. Boone Pickens says US Firms 'Entitled' to Iraqi Oil
T. Boone Pickens says US Firms 'Entitled' to Iraqi Oil
WASHINGTON - Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are "entitled" to some of Iraq's crude because of the large number of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq.
Boone, speaking to the newly formed Congressional Natural Gas Caucus, complained that the Iraqi government has awarded contracts to foreign companies, particularly Chinese firms, to develop Iraq's vast reserves while American companies have mostly been shut out.
Pickens forgot to mention, that we didn't go kill over a million Iraqis, just a show of friendship. We did it to show the Iraqis that they are our property, they are our slaves. We can slaughter them anytime we like, because we own them as if they are animals.
But Pickens does make a good point. If a young father from Tennessee get s his head blown off, then T. Boone Pickens should get a new sports car and another wing added to one of his mansions. The widow and the children of the dead soldier should be proud that every dead soldier represents a profit center to Mr. Pickens, as they wait in the government lobby, to see a food stamps case worker.
And in Iraq, orphans should be glad that T. Boone Pickens gets to enjoy lobster for breakfast, lunch and dinner, because their parents were slaughtered in a war to steal Iraq's oil.
Death makes the vultures fat. And the vultures are proudly preening over it.
posted by Weaseldog @ 7:42 AM
12 comments
12 Comments:
It isn't often the wolves take off their sheep costumes so publicly. What an evil little bastard Pickens is!
On another subject, I am getting less and less impressed with the ArchDruid Report author.
He is obviously well-read and has thought deeply about the issues, but he is very rigid and never seems to get into a real debate about the ideas. He mainly seems to reward those who agree with him, and refuse to engage those who disagree, other than by directed them to his own ideas. I liked your recent comment on his blog about how the USA may be in, or close to, a form of soft fascism. I sent another comment to him referring to a good book by the Princeton Political scientist Sheldon Wolin entitled Democracy Incorporated:
Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism.
I'll be interested to see if he posts my comment with a reference to this book, which compellingly makes the case that a new type of managed political system has been created, which he calls "inverted totalitarianism." Check out the link.
Publius, I saw you comment about corruption in government, and how JMG brushed that aside as some sort of fringe conspiracy theory.
I responded politely on that point, arguing that a simple perusal of the mainstream press would back up your arguments. And used Goldman Sachs illegal front running of trades, using flash trades, as one example of legalized crimes.
I referred him to the Wall Street Journal as a source for further research into the epidemic of white collar crimes.
I could think of many examples of each point you made on corruption from the Fed on down, and the undue influence that banks have on our government.
As of this morning, my comment hasn't been approved.
I don't know how he can say that that there's no corruption in the top levels of our Federal Government, unless he's lying, or he just doesn't keep up with the news.
I suspect that he's very out of touch with day to day affairs in his own country. Then again, he is a religious leader and his day to day concerns are likely largely focused on his flock.
Now if he really doesn't know anything about how much influence the biggest banks and gambling houses have on the Federal Government, then all of his arguments about the USA being a real democracy make perfect sense. If you don't know anything about the people setting the economic policy and writing the laws, you can imagine that we have any kind of government that you wish us to have.
JMG, like many other folks, seem to need every 'i' dotted before they can see a pattern emerging. I learned long ago in school of all places, that the world is not so tidy.
One of the lessons taught to me by a science teacher is that the evidence almost never backs up a theory 100%. So part of the challenge in science is to understand why you can't get perfect results, and to understand your errors. The cases in science where the evidence is accurate, are often contrived to simplify the model as much as possible to provide evidence fora theory. Newton's laws of motion worked well for this, as did Mendel's pea plants.
But in the real world, there is often a something missing, or something a little off. JMG believes that fascism requires violence, without considering the purpose of the violence, which in my view is control. If you already have control of a population, then you don't need the violence. And so I don't see that violence is a necessary trait of fascism, but rather a symptom. And a condition doesn't have to display all of the symptoms to be evident.
My neighborhood is now home to regular out breaks of West Nile virus. I get it a number of times every summer. The symptoms are usually mild and I recognize them now. I mentioned to a friend that I had the symptoms and he asked if I had a fever. I saw, I haven't had a fever to speak of since I had typhoid as a teen. He announced I can't have West Nile, because I don't have a fever. Never mind the popping joints, body aches, back aches and headaches that follow mosquito bites. If a single symptom is missing, I'm not sick...
JMG is not alone in being dogmatic... It seems to be epidemic.
Do does this mean that the war was about the oil after all? The dead servicemen's families will be glad to hear that.
Well, JMG posted our comments and responded.
I'm glad that he did, but I still don't think he "gets" the drift of our argument and fear: that the end of fascism is the control of society by dividing it into bundles of corporate interests, and managing this bundle (but in whose interests?).
And that when, not if, the non-violent control mechanisms falter, the gloves will come off.
Our system is still nominally federal, such that states and regions will attempt to negate Federal control if it becomes highly repressive or coercive. At least some states will attempt to resist. But as the Civil War showed, not much success is likely unless peak oil really puts a huge dent in the resources of the national government. Not likely soon.
Who knows... I get the sense that we are all just talking past each other. At least JMG doesn't completely censor.
Publius, I think you're right.
I just double posted there.
The first post was mainly a clarification that I am trying to understand his point of view and that his references to 'evil' are confusing for me. If habitual criminal behavior, isn't evil, then how does hes define it? I hinted that I made an assumption about what he meant by it and misunderstood him.
My second comment was this, JMG, I really am just trying to understand your position. I'm not married to the hypothesis that I've put forth. As I said, perhaps we need new words, to make our meanings clearer.
Have you read, "This Perfect Day" by Ira Levin?
If so, how would you classify the society described in the novel?
The original fascists provided inadvertent cover for succeeding generations of kinder, gentler fascists. Because now most people think you can't be a fascist unless you're wearing a black shirt and herding dissidents into concentration camps.
In your comment, did you remind Greer that the first decade of Mussolini's fascism, say 1922-32, was not over-the-top totalitarianism, just that merger-of-corporate-and-government-interests thing? Did you bring up how "Communist" China is now more like Mussolini's fascism? Anyway, Ilargi took Greer's argument down pretty well.
It's funny to hear left-wing talk radio people reacting to T. Boone's bloody comment. Some on the Left had hope for him because he got behind that wind energy thing, even though they knew it was a profit-maker for him, not altruism. And no one forgot that he helped pay for the Swiftboat campaign that sand that mook Kerry. But people of my ilk were hoping that Pickens might have a small good side. But naaaaaah, he's a bastard right down to the Boone...
Bukko, Greer I think completely misses the point.
He makes the argument of moral equivalencies. That the crimes committed by Goldman Sachs are morally equivalent to cheating on taxes.
And by extension, we all share the guilt.
I don't agree that my guilt or innocence is determined by the intentional actions and crimes of people I have no contact with.
This comment has been removed by the author.
That the crimes committed by Goldman Sachs are morally equivalent to cheating on taxes...
The crimes of GS go far deeper than raping and plundering. A person who owns stock in the MIC or fascist regime bears some of the guilt, as do anyone who works for them overty or not. I feel no guilt for all the raping and pillaging because if it were up to me they would all be swinging from the Brooklyn Bridge.
I remember an argument I had in 1983 with a housemate of mine, a fellow reporter at the newspaper where I was working. He was more left-wing than I was at the time. I had stock in Boeing and Northrup-Grumman then, and he saw the glossy annual report from one of them. He called me a pig for owning a piece of companies like that, and I got all snotty right back, saying that I didn't care what they did, they were profitable. What a shit I was.
I'm better now -- I even sold the last of my good, dividend-paying Chevron stock a few years ago when the depth of their environmental crimes became too much to ignore. But when I want to get inside the mind of a selfish, right-wing arsehole, I just think back to myself 25 years ago.
As it stands now people who own stock in the ahole corporate scum buckets are/will be getting raped too. Karma is coming, even to the ignorant imo.
T Boone Pickens is a parasite, and parasites cannot be self-sustaining.
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