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Topic: Oil in Africa: Heaven or hell?
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Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594
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posted 07 February 2006 04:52 PM
John Stockwell is the highest-ranking CIA official ever to leave the agency and go public. He ran a CIA intelligence-gathering post in Vietnam, was the task-force commander of the CIA's secret war in Angola in 1975 and 1976, and was awarded the Medal of Merit before he resigned. quote:
I did 13 years in the CIA altogether. I sat on a sub- committee of the NSC, so I was like a chief of staff, with the GS-18s (like 3-star generals) Henry Kissinger, Bill Colby (the CIA director), the GS-18s and the CIA, making the
important decisions and my job was to put it all together and make it happen and run it, an interesting place from which to watch a covert action being done.... I testified for days before the Congress, giving them chapter and verse, date and detail, proving specific lies. They were asking if we had to do with S. Africa, that was fighting in the country. In fact we were coordinating this
operation so closely that our airplanes, full of arms from the states, would meet their airplanes in Kinshasa and they would take our arms into Angola to distribute to our forces for us.... What I found with all of this study is that the subject, the problem, if you will, for the world, for the U.S. is much, much, much graver, astronomically graver, than just Angola and Vietnam. I found that the Senate Church committee
has reported, in their study of covert actions, that the CIA ran several thousand covert actions since 1961, and that the heyday of covert action was before 1961; that we have run several hundred covert actions a year, and the CIA has been in business for a total of 37 years. What we're going to talk about tonight is the United States national security syndrome. We're going to talk about how and why the U.S. manipulates the press. We're going to talk about how and why the U.S. is pouring money into El
Salvador, and preparing to invade Nicaragua; how all of.
CIA's secret wars Angola and the Congo and Nigeria should be rich countries today considering the oil and mineral wealth that have been looted from them by western capitalists. Instead, Angola's most successful domestic industry is the manufacture of artificial limbs with so many landmines still littering the countryside. Patrice Lumumba was the first and last democratically elected Prime Minister of the Congo and the first black man ever allowed to speak at the UN. 'Democracy' in Africa and elsewhere were never the west's intentions.
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004
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Boarsbreath
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9831
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posted 07 February 2006 07:16 PM
Definitely, Fidel. But the problem's beyond that. Oil is a curse -- mineral resources period are a curse, for a developing society. It makes the government rentiers. Free money, just for granting companies permission to use other people's land or sea -- OTHER people because the indigenous owners will have no control. At most some of their more unscrupulous leaders will get pieces.So A. governing elites become loaded with wealth, to use in maintaining their position regardless of what they do or don't do for the country; B. cash money beyond any actual productivity, attracted purely by political power, floats through every grasping government hand, and C. potentially productive activity, especially agricultural, is swamped by imports & currency over-valuation. That's disastrous, period, anywhere, even before the CIA berks show up. Here in the Pacific even timber has this effect, let alone the fisheries or poor old fabulously "rich" old Papua New Guinea's oil & gold. This sort of unearned wealth is hard for a developed economy to deal with, without distorting itself & perverting politics (an undervalued factor in Thatcher's success); for a tenuously-united and flimsily-governed developing society it's simply misfortune.
From: South Seas, ex Montreal | Registered: Jul 2005
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eau
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 10058
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posted 11 February 2006 01:12 PM
Corruption in Africa is rife but then corruption everywhere is rife. What is uglier than the dictators taking bribes and buying Maseratis is the corporations that knowingly bribe them.Angola and Chad come to mind while Nigeria is a disaster. So while corrupt officials are part of the problem, at the moment while both Canada and the United States are awash with corruption scandals its best not to point fingers at others. The great sorrow in Africa is that the people really do suffer. Wages in Nigeria are in many instances much the same as they were in the 1970s
From: BC | Registered: Aug 2005
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rici
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2710
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posted 11 February 2006 05:05 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Boarsbreath:
Oil is a curse
Or, "the devil's shit", as it is often referred to in Venezuela ("excremento del diablo"). The Venezuelan "Father of OPEC", Juan Pablo Pérez, published a book just before his death in 1977 called "Hundiéndonos en el excremento del diablo" (Sinking ouselves into the devil's excrement). The historical reference: The Spanish historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (1478-1557), who spent more than 20 years in the Americas, is credited with being the first European to write about Venezuelan oil. His most famous book "Natural and General History of the Indias, Islands and Mainland of the Atlantic" (Historia Natural y General de las Indias, Islas y Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano), includes the following passage, in reference to the island of Cubagua (off the Venezuelan coast): "In the eastern point, beside the ocean, there is a spring of a oily liquor; it has a charmed way of flowing on top of the water, leaving its mark two or three leagues from the island where you can still smell it. Some of those who have seen it say that the natives call it "stercus demonis" and that it is very useful in medicine". 'Stercus' is Latin for excrement. Original Spanish (allegedly, anyway): “(...) tiene en la punta del oeste un manadero de un licor como azeite junto a la mar/ encanta manera que corre por ella encima del agua/ haziendo señal mas de dos y tres leguas de la ysla: aun da olor de si este licor: algunos de los que lo han visto dizen ser llamado por los naturales stercus demonis: que es utilissimo en medicina”
From: Lima, Perú | Registered: Jun 2002
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Boarsbreath
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9831
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posted 11 February 2006 09:01 PM
A little finger-pointing is necessary. Corrupt governments are worse than corrupt corporations anyhow: they're denying their responsibilities, whereas a corporation may well be earning greater profits, and, worse, it's only in governments that anything real can be done to improve things. "Crime" is defined, and "law" is enforced, by governments.That said, we have little to do with those governments, so indeed our leverage is mainly with the companies (and maybe that's what you meant, O'C). Although gosh I'd like to see some of these berks in these kleptocracies denied visas and bank accounts...boy, if you think Canada's awash in corruption, you ain't seen nothin'. It basically is just a sad thing. Sure, Alberta, Norway, UK, Alaska handle unearned wealth fairly well, but why not? They're developed. They're even democratic. The point is that this wealth prevents development -- economic, but especially political, and that frigs up everything else.
From: South Seas, ex Montreal | Registered: Jul 2005
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