March 18 peace symbol event in context of four years of area actions against the Iraq war
Please go to You Tube and comment on it or favorite it. Especially, please pick up the code and send it to other sites. It is also posted at From Every Village Green.
Extraordinary coverage of March 17–18 peace events
Local newspaper cares now, this war must end
Years ago, the Bangor Daily News was among the very most reactionary newspapers around–much like the Union Leader in New Hampshire. As recently as 2002 they all but ignored several of our peace rallies at the Federal Building in Bangor. They’re making up for it. What you see above truly is amazing coverage. I thank them from the bottom of my heart.
Here are two of the most important stories from about a dozen published since last week:
From Every Village Green, Monday March 19; Details on our big peace-symbol event near the Paul Bunyan statue in Bangor…
And this,
Iraq veteran home, now protesting war
By Toni-Lynn Robbins
Saturday, March 17, 2007 - Bangor Daily News
OLD TOWN - The boots. The helmet. The rifle. The dog tags.
A tribute to a fallen soldier. A faceless memorial, unless it belongs to a friend.
“It’s not a good story,” Spc. Brian Clement began.
“As the armorer, I had to take care of his weapon, which he had been carrying when he was killed,” Clement continued, his speech slowed as he sought the words to describe his friend’s death….
Brian may be forced back into the military from inactive reserve.
Bangor Daily News leads today with a stellar anti-war editorial!
15 cm of snow followed by 5 cm of rain with ice in between postpones Saturday protests
Today was going to be a day of over 100 anti-war demonstrations throughout the state of Maine, some large some small. The big storm pushed events in most places to Sunday. The Bangor event (one of the large ones) now will occur Sunday at 1pm next to the Paul Bunyan statue on Main Street. Full details at the Every Village Green website HERE.
Some places did hold their events today. Reports HERE.
Meanwhile, the Bangor Daily News has a positively smashing lead editorial today!
Bring the peace
By BDN Staff
Saturday, March 17, 2007 - Bangor Daily News
If all goes well today [and now Sunday], thousands of Mainers will gather on village greens to protest the war in Iraq, just as protesters are gathering in Washington to recreate the 1967 march on the Pentagon that marked the turning of public opinion on Vietnam. We hope their voices are strong and their message is heard. But “Stop the war” can’t be the only message. “Bring the peace” deserves even more support because with it comes the victory of lives saved in Iraq.
Four years into the Iraq war, the Bush administration’s original justifications for fighting have drifted away, with the falsity of the weapons of mass destruction claim exposed and the reality of Saddam Hussein dead, and been replaced with a grinding fight it didn’t properly anticipate. The public frustration and anger are understandable…
[READ THE REST HERE.]
The editorial concludes that Congress “must make peace as vigorously as it was willing to let the president make war.” Bravo, BDN!
This editorial follows excellent news coverage the last few days. THIS STORY on the Every Village Green project was great:
[Ron] Greenberg was drawn to active protest of the Iraq war by what he said was the lack of responsiveness from Maine’s two U.S. senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Letters expressing his concerns about the war drew no response from the two legislators, he said.
“I got no response at all. I was just ignored. That’s what got me so upset,” he said. “I got the sense that they were just rolling their eyes. I felt insulted as a citizen.”
Frustration led him to Snowe’s office in Bangor last summer where he and 10 others were arrested, which, in turn, led to a Bangor protest that drew several thousand people from all over Maine.
“They were frustrated and angry, and happy to have an outlet,” he said.
It was during that protest that Greenberg thought about people unable to make the trip to Bangor.
He came up with the Every Village Green concept.
Momentum. Let’s hope this hopeful thrust to stop this war continues to grow.
Law assigns powers to “executive managers from important related petroleum companies”
Antonia Juhasz may be the most important writer on Iraqi oil. She had an oped in the New York Times a couple of days ago, that I will reproduce below.
This oped by Ms. Juhasz is a refreshing departure for major media where just about only thing you ever hear about the Iraq Oil Law is that supposedly it will distribute evenly an unexplained portion of revenue on a per capita basis. In theory, this is probably the right way to do it. But that is just a small section the law. What never is discussed is that it is a blueprint for the privatization of control of Iraq’s oil.
A couple of brief media snippets from yesterday illustrate elite posturing on Iraq’s oil and the oil law. First, this is what Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) said in response to a C-SPAN caller’s question about “stealing” Iraqi oil.
I don’t think our intentions are to steal any oil from the Iraqi people. We are hoping to get those oil wells up so that the Iraqi people can build their nation back. They’ve got a lot of infrastructure to replace. Saddam basically decimated that country during his rule. We’re bringing a tremendous amount of resources to that country and not taking resources out of that country.
Note the lack of discussion about what actually happens to the money received from Iraqi oil sales, which has been stolen by both the American occupation and corrupt Iraqis. During the period beginning with the 2003 invasion, the US-run CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) did in fact steal every dollar in Iraq’s oil accounts.
It’s also a great technique to blame everything that happens on Saddam, even though he hasn’t been around for four years and, arguably, life for Iraqis along with their oil infrastructure vastly is worse today than it was four years ago today. There is not even mention of the oil law and how, as described below, it will privatize Iraq’s oil and empower multinational oil executives to make the most important decisions about it.
Second, just briefly, a Pentagon report yesterday said, “Some elements of the Iraq war are properly descriptive of a civil war.”
NPR dutifully reported yesterday on All Things Considered the Pentagon take on this admission, including mention of the “positive success” of the oil law, “which would evenly distribute revenues around the country. That’s expected to be debated soon in the full Iraqi Parliament. ”
If you’re curious about the actual text of the law, an expat Iraqi blogger has the whole thing translated here.
Note that the ORIGINAL draft was in English, brewed at a Camp David war council last June after several years of preparation. Then it was TRANSLATED to Arabic. Raed, the blogger, then translated it BACK to English after getting a copy that even the New York Times could not get.
Here’s how the system will work: Iraq will have a “Federal Oil and Gas Council” that will “assist the Council of Ministers in creating Petroleum policies and related plans”.
According to the Law, the Council SHOULD include
Check out that fifth item–”executive managers from important related petroleum companies” will be the ones deciding what is best for Iraq’s oil!
Among many other absolute powers in deciding all aspects of exploration, development, and production contracts,
The Federal Oil and Gas Council is the competent authority to review and approve the transfer of rights among holders of Exploration and Production rights, the Federal Oil and Gas Council is responsible for ensuring that Petroleum resources are discovered, developed, and produced in an optimal manner and in the best interest of the people in accordance with legislation, regulations and contractual conditions as well as recognised international standards.
“Optimal manner” looks like an absolutely loaded phrase, doesn’t it? I’ll take it to mean that those “executive managers of from important related petroleum companies” will have at their disposal control of Iraqi oil valves, thus taking direct control of world swing oil production–what the Saudi’s have been in charge of since the Texas Railroad Commission lost its power due to the depletion of Texas oil reserves after 1971. The only way to keep these executives in charge will be to keep thousands of American troops in Iraq for an indefinite time, at least until the reserves deplete.
by ANTONIA JUHASZ
Published: March 13, 2007
TODAY more than three-quarters of the world’s oil is owned and controlled by governments. It wasn’t always this way.
Until about 35 years ago, the world’s oil was largely in the hands of seven corporations based in the United States and Europe. Those seven have since merged into four: ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP. They are among the world’s largest and most powerful financial empires. But ever since they lost their exclusive control of the oil to the governments, the companies have been trying to get it back.
Iraq’s oil reserves — thought to be the second largest in the world — have always been high on the corporate wish list. In 1998, Kenneth Derr, then chief executive of Chevron, told a San Francisco audience, “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas — reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to.â€
A new oil law set to go before the Iraqi Parliament this month would, if passed, go a long way toward helping the oil companies achieve their goal. The Iraq hydrocarbon law would take the majority of Iraq’s oil out of the exclusive hands of the Iraqi government and open it to international oil companies for a generation or more.
In March 2001, the National Energy Policy Development Group (better known as Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force), which included executives of America’s largest energy companies, recommended that the United States government support initiatives by Middle Eastern countries “to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment.†One invasion and a great deal of political engineering by the Bush administration later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq oil law would achieve. It does so to the benefit of the companies, but to the great detriment of Iraq’s economy, democracy and sovereignty.
Since the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has been aggressive in shepherding the oil law toward passage. It is one of the president’s benchmarks for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a fact that Mr. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Gen. William Casey, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and other administration officials are publicly emphasizing with increasing urgency.
The administration has highlighted the law’s revenue sharing plan, under which the central government would distribute oil revenues throughout the nation on a per capita basis. But the benefits of this excellent proposal are radically undercut by the law’s many other provisions — these allow much (if not most) of Iraq’s oil revenues to flow out of the country and into the pockets of international oil companies.
The law would transform Iraq’s oil industry from a nationalized model closed to American oil companies except for limited (although highly lucrative) marketing contracts, into a commercial industry, all-but-privatized, that is fully open to all international oil companies.
The Iraq National Oil Company would have exclusive control of just 17 of Iraq’s 80 known oil fields, leaving two-thirds of known — and all of its as yet undiscovered — fields open to foreign control.
The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire Iraqi workers or share new technologies. They could even ride out Iraq’s current “instability†by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country. The vast majority of Iraq’s oil would then be left underground for at least two years rather than being used for the country’s economic development.
The international oil companies could also be offered some of the most corporate-friendly contracts in the world, including what are called production sharing agreements. These agreements are the oil industry’s preferred model, but are roundly rejected by all the top oil producing countries in the Middle East because they grant long-term contracts (20 to 35 years in the case of Iraq’s draft law) and greater control, ownership and profits to the companies than other models. In fact, they are used for only approximately 12 percent of the world’s oil.
Iraq’s neighbors Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia maintain nationalized oil systems and have outlawed foreign control over oil development. They all hire international oil companies as contractors to provide specific services as needed, for a limited duration, and without giving the foreign company any direct interest in the oil produced.
Iraqis may very well choose to use the expertise and experience of international oil companies. They are most likely to do so in a manner that best serves their own needs if they are freed from the tremendous external pressure being exercised by the Bush administration, the oil corporations — and the presence of 140,000 members of the American military.
Iraq’s five trade union federations, representing hundreds of thousands of workers, released a statement opposing the law and rejecting “the handing of control over oil to foreign companies, which would undermine the sovereignty of the state and the dignity of the Iraqi people.†They ask for more time, less pressure and a chance at the democracy they have been promised.
Antonia Juhasz, an analyst with Oil Change International, a watchdog group, is the author of “The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time.â€
Update: I checked to see about cross-posting this over at Daily Kos, but there are already three good diaries on this oped. Plus another interesting diary concerning an attempt by Rep. Dennis Kucinich to “offer an amendment on the floor to strip out the oil law benchmark from the supplemental” funding bill for Iraq. Sad that we are not so far stopping this funding entirely.
Update 2: HERE is an entry at Huffington Post describing the Kucinich “oil law not a benchmark” effort.
Banner hung Wednesday from the Bangor office window of US Senator Susan Collins
Besides the video that has appeared here at Deep Blade Journal and two posts at the Every Village Green blog, news coverage of the March 7 Occupation Project protest at all the Congressional offices in Bangor has been sparse. It looks like one TV channel eventually came, a buried story appeared in the Bangor Daily News print edition (but not on the net), and WERU community radio faithfully covered the story.
So, here is some additional coverage along with a few photos from those shot by Kelly Bellis during the protest. First, read this story at Every Village Green:
Occupation Project Results in 12 Arrests
Twelve Maine peace activists were arrested just after 5:00 PM Wednesday for refusing to leave the Margaret Chase Federal Building and the offices of Senator Susan Collins. As part of the Declaration of Peace events planned calling on Congress to defund the war and end the occupation of Iraq, the protesters were in the vanguard of acts of nonviolent civil disobedience scheduled nationwide to coincide with the marking of the end of the fourth year that America has been mercilessly terrorizing Iraq, and sadly the beginning of the fifth horrific year.
[Read the rest HERE.]
In Senator Collins’s office on Wednesday
Robert Shetterly draws Beau Beaulieu, fallen soldier in Iraq
Walking to Snowe’s office on Wednesday (yours truly w/camera)
Below is the full text of the Bangor Daily News story, page B5 of print edition Thursday March 8. As of the end of the day March 8, this was not posted on the net.
Protesters in Bangor want troops home
By CHELSEY LEDUE and AARON SMITH of the News staff
BANGOR — Bring US. combat troops home from Iraq by the end of the year; a group of activists and ministers urged Wednesday morning, offering a veteran of the war as their featured speaker at a downtown news conference. Later in the day 12 anti-war protesters who occupied US. Sen. Susan Collins’ office were arrested for criminal trespassing after refusing to leave.
The focus of the rally and protest was President Bush’s proposal to increase the US. combat presence in Iraq by some 21,000 troops, an escalation known as the surge.
“We want to be much dearer about what we want,†said Sara Stalman of Brooksville during the press conference at the Bangor Public Library in the morning. Representing the Maine People’s Alliance, a self-described grass-roots organization that claims 28,000 members, Stalman said, “We want all combat troops home by the end of the year. President Bush has shown a total disregard for the views of the Iraq, Study Group and the American people.â€
Led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, the Iraq Study Group’s mandate was to conduct an independent assessment of the current and prospective situation on the ground in Iraq, its impact, on the surrounding region, and consequences for US. interests, according to its Web site.
Brian Clement of Gardiner, an Army veteran who was deployed days after he graduated from high school, was at the news conference to signal his opposition to a widening war Clement served as a specialist with the Army’s 1st Cavalry in Taji, a city five miles from Baghdad.
“I thought, at the time, that we could make a difference,†he said. “But my mentality started to change while I was in Iraq. We were doing more damage and destruction and not being a positive influence,†he said.
Now a student at the University of Maine and a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War Clement said he encouraged Maine’s two Republican US senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, to help stop the Iraq war and prevent further loss of life in Iraq.
“I support the troops in Iraq. They are my brothers and sisters,†Clement said.
The Maine People’s Alliance and other protesters said they were joining Americans Against Escalation In Iraq, a national bipartisan group made up of veterans, union members, civic activists and others.
“We believe in our congressmen and senators because of the people they are and the people we are,†said Stalman. “We want to give the power to our government -to fix this. That’s.the way democracy works.â€
Other speakers at the morning event Included Sarah Bigney of the Progressive Student Alliance; the Rev Brad Mitchell, Interim minister at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor; the Rev. Elaine Hewes, pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church of Bangor; and the Rev Gary Vencill of the United Methodist Church of Brooksville.
“Only Americans can save and preserve America,†Mitchell said.
Shortly after the press conference, more than two dozen protesters made their way down the street to Collins’ office at the Margaret Chase Smith Federal Building. Six protesters sat in her office on the second floor, while another 20 or so stood with anti-war signs in the lobby of the building until it closed at 5pm.
After being warned to exit the federal building, 12 of the protesters who refused to leave either the office or the federal building were arrested, according to Bangor police. Everyone who was arrested was’ cooperative when taken into custody said Bangor police Sgt. Ed Potter The six protesters in Collins’ office, said they were with the Civil Disobedience and Occupation Project and expected to be arrested.
“We intend to stay here until we get what we want,†said protester Patricia Wheeler of Deer Isle.
“We’re here today essentially to present our grievances to the war that will hopefully fall on the ears of Susan Collins,†said Judy Robbins of Sedgwick.
At least one of the people arrested Wednesday, Nancy Hill, 54, of Stonington, had been among 11 activists arrested for criminal trespass at Snowe’s Bangor office in September last year.
Another 19 protesters were arrested for refusing to leave Collins’ office in December 2005.
Bangor police provided a list of those arrested Wednesday evening, which in addition to Wheeler, Robbins and Hill, included Maureen Block, Robert Shetterly, Jonathan Kreps, James Freeman, Dudley Hendrick, Douglas Rawlings, Peter Robbins, Henry Braun, and Diane Fitzgerald. No hometowns were provided.
A downloadable mp3 recording of Iraq war veteran Brian Clement of Gardiner, Maine speaking during a University of Maine teach-in last October is available at peacecast.us HERE.
On March 7, peace activists from Maine acting in concert with the national Occupation Project delivered a strong message to our representatives in Congress. This 3-1/2-minute clip records visits to the Bangor, Maine offices of Congressman Mike Michaud and Senator Olympia Snowe with the demand they STOP FUNDING WAR. Two additional clips below contain statements from Robert Shetterly and Doug Rawlings prior to entering the office of Senator Susan Collins with the same demand.
Update: Twelve were arrested at Susan Collins’s office in the Margaret Chase Smith Federal Building in downtown Bangor. No news story appears to be available on the Internet by the end of the day on March 8. The only media covering this protest (besides Deep Blade) appears to have been WERU community radio and the print edition of the Bangor Daily News (not the Internet edition) for Thursday.
President Bush has asked for an extra $93 billion on top of the $439 billion military budget appropriated by Congress in the fall. Congress is poised to vote for more war, and indeed to increase the expenditure beyond the president’s request. It’s time to demand that they STOP FUNDING WAR.
Below is video of the statement given prior to the March 7 visit to US Senator Susan Collins’s office by Brooksville, Maine artist Robert Shetterly.
President Bush has asked for an extra $93 billion on top of the $439 billion military budget appropriated by Congress in the fall. Congress is poised to vote for more war, and indeed to increase the expenditure beyond the president’s request. It’s time to demand that they STOP FUNDING WAR.
Below is video of the statement given prior to the March 7 visit to US Senator Susan Collins’s office by Doug Rawlings of Veterans for Peace, Maine Chapter.
On March 6, 2003, President Bush issued his clearest case for attacking Iraq. By my count, he gave the reason– “disarm” Saddam Hussein –45 times, while underlining that disarmament was “in the name of peace and the security of our people.” This implied that the president believed Iraq to be an immediate threat to the US proper. Even the answer to a question about the specter of Vietnam was “our mission is very clear: disarmament.”
Of course, because Saddam Hussein had none of the weapons the president said must be disarmed, the casus belli was a fraud. Iraq had been truthful in its December 2002 declaration when it said it did not possess weapons of mass destruction. It appears that the rush to war was more about heading off the threat that the UN weapons inspectors would certify Iraq free of WMD before the country could have been forcibly taken than any threat Iraq itself posed. Mr. Bush’s handpicked inspectors later did just that.
And talk about “willful” charades! The president’s gibberish–”I hope we don’t have to go to war, but if we go to war,” and “I’ve not made up our mind about military action. Hopefully, this can be done peacefully,” and “We hope we don’t go to war; but if we should, we will present a supplemental [budget].”–should have been transparent at that point. For the most part, the sheepish press corps was more interested in Mr. Bush’s “faith.”
It is also striking how almost nobody in the room seemed at all interested in the president’s long-term plan for Iraq, and what the costs of a lengthy occupation might be. Only that question about Vietnam even raised the issue about going down a long, destructive path. Of course if the attack had been presented as leading to a lengthy occupation possibly costing thousands of American lives, which at the time even this administration certainly could have expected, support for it would have been much lower.
Below are excerpts of what Mr. Bush said that night in March 2003, including all the phrases containing “disarm.”
2006 average production level decrease precipitous 8%;
Does the US see its Iraq project as a sort of replacement OPEC?
Monthly Saudi production levels for 2006, assembled by Stuart Staniford at The Oil Drum
Here is another major story about oil that has received no ink in the mainstream press: According to data from official sources, oil production in Saudi Arabia has been declining since the beginning of 2006.
Stuart Staniford at The Oil Drum has written a very careful analysis, citing key news stories about production in specific Saudi fields. Staniford unpacks recent Saudi press releases suggesting production cuts have been intentional.
Staniford writes, “The entire ‘production cut’ may be a public relations exercise to disguise other processes.”
In my own analysis, this story suggests there is yet another nail in the coffin containing Saudi’s history as the world’s swing oil producer. Staniford bets against Saudi posturing that it will optimize “upstream operations, and development and depletion strategies” in order to achieve “maximum sustained capacity to 10.7 million barrels per day.” If he is right, Saudi’s swing producing days are over.
Furthermore, Saudi oil decline suggests an underlying motivation behind the continuing US project in Iraq. The new Iraqi oil law (discussed below, updated HERE by blogger Raed Jarrar with the “final, official” version) could allow the US occupation to appoint itself a sort of OPEC on the Tigris through the new Iraqi Federal Oil and Gas Council established in the law, replacing Saudi as the world’s swing producer. That is, when or if conditions in Iraq ever allow development of the resource to full production potential of six or eight million barrels per day (from barely two million barrels per day today), Washington itself would acquire power it has until now always cooperated with the Saudi royals in order to exert.
The notion of American “success” in Iraq that officials so often bandy about in reality means that there will be permanent military enforcement of the swing production role that Bush-connected Washington elites desire. It should be emphasized that it is not that oil itself that is at issue, but the hand on the tap. Noam Chomsky has it right, as outlined by Daily Kos diarist indefinitelee last week, “if the United States controls Middle East resources it’ll have veto power over its industrial rivals.”
Control of oil is the linchpin behind the unspoken US strategy in the Middle East. Ability to control swing production through its Iraqi client, backed by the US military in order to make the oil law stick, is a major long-term goal of this endless occupation.
UPDATE 3/7: See THIS item at The Oil Drum for important additional discussion.