Hey Rupert? What Happened To All Those Post-Saddam $20 Barrels Of Oil?
Oil Touches $100, But Will Go Beyond In 2008
By Darryl Mason
yournewreality.blogspot.com
No power king on the face of the planet did more to warp reality than Rupert Murdoch in helping to create the American mindset that backed the War On Iraq in early 2003.
Using his massive media blitzkrieg marketplace control in the US, the UK and Australia (70% of all daily newspapers), Murdoch pumped the always extremely dodgy case(s) for War On Iraq with all the desperate enthusiasm of a Depression-era carnival huckster with two families to feed and a baseball bat wielding loan shark taking aim at his kneecaps.
You must remember what Rupert had to say about how good the Iraq War would (could) be for the price of oil, right?
In case you've forgotten, here's Rupert Murodch, from February 12, 2003, as quoted in the Australian Financial Review :
"The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be US$20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country."
Rupert won over a lot of people with that prediction. A lot of business and oil people anyway. A lot of media people, too. Particularly his media people.
They really believed that getting rid of Saddam would let them control the majority of Iraq's oil, and flow another 4 or 5 million barrels a day into world markets. Invading and occupying Iraq was also going to help free the United States from its terror-soaked death grip with the Saudis, who were, and remain, the dominant force in Middle East oil.
How dominant? More than a dozen of Saudi Arabia's countrymen allegedly carried out the 9/11 attacks, and BushCo. paid them back by, errr, bombing goat herders in Afghanistan and flying out dozens of members of the Bin Laden family from the United States under the protection of the CIA. Talk about a hardline.
But even though Murdoch could spin Wall Street, and readers of the financial media, he never really convinced most of the readers of his tabloid print and TV media, even though the pro-war message was relentless and unforgiving. That's why more than ten million people around the world marched in protest against the Iraq War in early 2003.
Murdoch's media ranted and raved and spite bile at all the protesters, even the World War 2 veterans and the little kids with their hand-drawn signs saying 'Please Don't Kill Iraqi Kids'. Murdoch's media labeled veteran and child alike a bunch of Saddam sympathisers and terrorist-enablers, sometimes on the front pages of the newspapers. Before the protests even began.
But they still marched. In cities, towns, villages, even along country roads where the only people to see them were interstate truck drivers. In the United States, in England, in Australia, the United States, Canada, across Europe, across Asia.
Even though Rupert controlled the vast majority of tabloid newspaper markets in Australia, the UK and the US, and he directed them all too, as one former Murdoch journo told me in 2004, "really get behind this now", he could never get the majority of the people in Coalition Of The Willing nations onside for the Iraq War. They didn't have to step in it to know it was bullshit from the get go.
When the Iraq War began on Mach 21, 2003, more than 70% of Australians opposed the illegal invasion and occupation. The opposition was higher in the UK, and much less in the United States.
For most people, already trying to deal with rising fuel price, the only thing the Iraq War had going for it was Rupert's claim that $20 a barrel oil would likely be the result of massacring Iraqis.
So where are we now, four and a half years on from Rupert's infamous "$20 a barrel" quote?
Oil is closing in on $100 a barrel, and the financial media is discussing how oil beyond $100 a barrel will effect economies around the world.
Venezuela is happy, Iran is very happy, Russia is happy, Canada is happy, Mexico is happy. East Timor, if oil prices stay this high, will also soon be very happy. The Saudis? They're fucking ecstatic. They'll have to start burning money logs soon just to get rid of all that cash.
If you're an excess-oil-producing nation (meaning you produce enough to sell on international markets) you're probably burning candles and bowing down before shrines of President Bush, Dick Cheney and the coterie of NeoCons who have done so much in the past few years to unleash so much havoc and destruction and fear and chaos across the Middle East, further destabilising the confidence of the world's oil markets.
Without Bush, Cheney and all those NeoCons and let's not forget the Iraq War enabler himself Rupert Murdoch, the 'evil' leaders of Iran, Venezuela and Russia would not be so rich and powerful.
How rich? How powerful? Well, think about this. Venezuela, Iran and Russia now owe international creditors next to nothing. They've paid off once near crippling loans to the World Bank and IMF. Collectively, they owe a few billion, less than $10 billion, tops.
And the United States? Trillions in debt. Not billions. Trillions.
Who knows? Maybe there really is something in the ultra-weird conspiracy theory that the leaders of Iran, Venezuela and Russia are secretly working in cahoots with President Bush's oil baron friends to drive up the price of the black gold. It would probably make sense around the boardroom table. Everyone gets rich.
Except for you, of course.
After all, we keep hearing about a looming War On Iran, it's always just a few weeks away, but it hasn't happened yet, has it? Flicking back through my files I see stories from 2003, saying that Bush would launch air strikes on Iran "within weeks". That's more than four years ago now.
And look at Venezuela. Chavez has never been so powerful, or so popular. His anti-American rhetoric, and his interference in how American corporations suck oil from his nation, have helped to make oil a very, very unstable commodity. Chavez, compared to the days before the CIA tried to assassinate him, is now leading one of the most oil-rich socialist nations on the planet. And thanks to all that oil wealth, Venezuela is soon to become even more socialist.
Questions.
So many unanswered questions.
What about the new Oil Shock? Isn't oil running out? What if Venezuela cuts off supplies to the US? Is the Iranian president really crazy? Does he actually believe in the 12th Iman? Is he going to sink oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and disrupt more than 1/4 of the world's oil from getting to market if Israel nukes his reactors? What if Iran bombs Israel? What if Israel bombs Syria? What if Turkey invades Northern Iraq and that oil pipeline up there goes up in flames? And what's with Putin? Could China and Russia really go to war with the US to protect their hundreds of billions of dollars worth of new business interests in Iran? What would that do to the world's oil supplies?
And up and up and up the prices go.
Where they will stop?
Nobody knows.
Well, they'll have to stop before $200 a barrel. That's the price where even the most optimistic economists say the world's economies will grind to a halt.
And nobody wants that.
Well, not yet.
"The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be US$20 a barrel for oil."
Thanks for that, Rupert. It's one of the greatest misguided, or false-positive quotes since all those quotes in the 1940s where scientists and radio station owners said "this TV thing" would never take off.
Now, the chaos in Iraq, mostly unleashed thanks to the Murdoch-backed war, is not the only reason why oil is now closing in on $100 per barrel.
But it sure isn't helping.
It's amazing to remember that President Bush, and others, particularly in Murdoch's worldwide media, pushed the line that Iraq would, within only a few short years, be pumping oil to the tune of 8 to 10 million barrels a day. That was how the reconstruction of Iraq was going to be paid for. Before the American taxpayers got shaken down for more than $600 billion. And probably another few hundred billion more.
The Council On Foreign Relations, the Vatican of nutcase war pigs and NeoCon destroyers-of-nations, also pushed the line back in 2002 that the Iraq War could only mean good things for the price of oil. They failed to tell us, however, that when they meant "good things" they weren't talking about oil at $20 a barrel.
How they all must have laughed when Rupert Murdoch said the Iraq War could see oil prices plunge from $30 or $35 a barrel (late 2002 prices), down to a measly $20. That would have showed those damned Saudis and Iranians - wink, wink.
But instead, we got oil closing in on $100 a barrel, and a tank of petrol becoming the sort of luxury expense that millions of Americans, Australians and Brits are increasingly unable to afford so they can, you know, get to work.
A few hundred years ago this pack of clowns now purposely driving up the price of oil to once unimaginable prices would have been hung in the village square and pelted with cow turds.
Now they sit back and watch their stock prices soar. And they're doing it in the US, in the UK, in Australia, in Venezuela, in Russia and across Europe. And of course, in Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Welcome to the New Poverty. It's pretty much like the old poverty, but much, much worse. You'll be poor, you'll be able to only eat shit food, but you'll still have a job. However, you probably won't be able to afford the fuel to get to work.
UPDATE : To be fair to Rupert Murdoch, he did get one prediction right from the days before the War On Iraq was unleashed. And that was this prediction about President Bush if he didn't end up 'winning' the war :
"He will either go down in history as a very great president or he'll crash and burn."
Crashing and burning.
Great essay, and so true.
Excellent work. Best rant I've read in ages. Murdoch's a lying shitbag.
May the souls of Iraq's dead children haunt his every sleeping moment for the rest of his life.
$20 barrels of oil? Would you like to buy a bridge as well? How about a moon of Jupiter?
"hung in the town square and pelted with cow turds"
love it, I can see it in my mind
wonderful
too late darryl
all we have left is our guns and our right to bear them against the ones who want to disarm us
FUCK THEM ALL!!!!
don't be intimidated
don't be afraid
don't let them deny the rights you have left while you still have them
THEYRE COMING FOR ALL OF US!!
Never Stop Fighting..
Truer words ever spoken
Theyre coming for you me and everyone in between.
American insurgency looms.
Know who you're real friends are today. You need to know people you can trust.
Never Stop Fighting..
Truer words ever spoken
Theyre coming for you me and everyone in between.
American insurgency looms.
Know who you're real friends are today. You need to know people you can trust.
Cold Dead Hands
your message was so important you had to post it twice eh?
post it a dozen times and more!
believe it my friends
They're coming for all of us
I used to drink with Rupert & Co in NYC .. man! They don't drive themselves and have to pay at the pump or anywhere else. They don't buy Conrail passes or hightail it in from Long Island. They haven't a CLUE what transpires in the real world, they don't care to find out either.
Their minds and hearts are as toxic as BuZh&Co and the other Texas Boyz. And them coming together at the bar was a pretty mutually exciting proposition ..
As long as the bartenders keep pouring their drinks, as long as their medical doctors keep giving them pills to pop, as long as their credit cards keep them ca$hless and smoothe their way and as long as the Fed Reserve keeps cutting down trees to print money on, they are happy. As long as they keep their fancy little restaurants to "dine" in, they'll be in there, hanging out together creating new victims for a very sick system.
To them, individuals are just numbers to move around on piecharts or excel spreadsheets to prove their points.
Murdoch and the neoCONS have this in common - they AREN'T nice (to anyone at all), they couldn't care less about anybody but themselves and those they get stoned with.
When bar closing time hits and they are aggressive - stay outta their WAY. They'll take you down or get someone to do it for them.
Never let these guyz drink on YOUR side of the bar, NEVER.
If someone suggests you believe a SINGLE word they say, have a talk with the bartender who will assure you that they aren't gentlemen!!
It's high time these drunken idiots were INTERVENED and put away, as their truly erratic behavior and delusions were exposed and shown for the INSANITY it really is.
As for only having our guns left? They're controlling the ammo supply. What good are the gunz?
Hug your families instead. Start doing arts and crafts. Talk a nice long walk. Learn to enjoy watching seeds grow. Keep an inner smile. Listen to Meatloaf .. they cannot rock N roll ..
You've done a fine job with their total insanity in this essay.
It's time to 86 them once and for all!! or as we say in Canada, TURF THEM OUT!
Cheers! (as I hoist a V8 cocktail salute to you)