The power struggle in Iraq may be more about Exxon and other oil companies wanting contracts with the Kurdistan regional government than sectarianism

and the US and it’s allies have not tried to prevent sectarian violence, but encouraged it as a means to divide and conquer

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s sacking and arrest warrants for Iraqi Sunni Vice President Tareq Al Hashemi and the bombings happening at the same time are being talked of as sectarian politics resuming due to the withdrawal of US forces.

In fact the divisions in Iraq are about politics and power more than ethnicity or religion and the US government and American oil companies have encouraged them, partly to divide and conquer Iraqis and partly to get the power to negotiate oil contracts devolved to regional governments, which will give oil companies a stronger hand in negotiations than they would have with the central government. The current crisis has probably been triggered by the Maliki government’s decision to declare contracts between Exxon-Mobil and the regional government of Iraqi Kurdistan, made in November 2010, illegal (1).

This and the fact that Maliki allied himself with Moqtadr Al Sadr’s party to get a majority after the 2010 elections may have led the Americans to go all out to try to get the opposition Iraqiya coalition, which includes their client Ayad Allawi, into government.

There are major divisions between Maliki’s Dawa party and it’s ISCI allies on the one hand and the third main Shia party in Iraq – Moqtadr Al Sadr’s; and as in the past Sadr is closer on many issues to two of the three Sunni parties in the Iraqiya opposition than to the Shia Dawa and ISCI.

During the build up to the 2004 Coalition offensive on Sunni rebels in Fallujah, Sadrists and other Shia in Najaf declared their support for the rebels and sent aid convoys of food and medicines to Fallujah (2). Sunnis and Shia have often marched together against the occupation over the last eight years (3) – (4).

In 2008 Maliki, a Shia, was leading the Shia ISCI and Dawa government in joint Coalition and Iraqi government offensives on Al Sadr’s Shia Madhi army militia in Baghdad, but not on other militias responsible for as much or more killing, including the ISCI’s Badr Brigades (5) – (6).

One reason was that Maliki was reliant on US support for his position; and Sadr and his party were allied to Sunni parties in opposing the presence of US troops, US influence in Iraq, and the oil law the US government wanted to get favourable contracts for it’s oil companies. Another was that Sadr was Maliki’s rival for Shia votes. (7)

The ISCI and Dawa are both closer to Iran’s government than Sadr and his party are – the Sadrists historically being strong Iraqi nationalists. The US government’s belief that all Shia are pro-Iranian or Iranian backed is also far from the truth. During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s Khomeini hoped that Iraqi Shia would defect from Saddam’s forces. A few did and joined armed exile groups in Iran, but the vast majority of Shia conscripts fought loyally for Saddam, not because they supported him, but because they were Iraqi before they were Shia. Most Iraqis, with the exception of the Kurds, remain Iraqi first and whatever religious or ethnic group they are second.

The US and other Coalition governments are mostly net oil importers and their main aim in Iraq is to get their own oil companies contracts in Iraq on favourable terms. They are torn between on the one hand wanting to keep a strong central government in Iraq under their control ; and on the other wanting to weaken the central government so they can make separate contracts with regional governments like that of Iraqi Kurdistan. As long as Maliki remains allied to Sadr to stay in power the US has failed in it’s attempt to control the central government so will prefer strengthening the regional governments by dividing Iraqis.

However Sadr and Maliki are increasingly at odds again and the Sadrists’ call for early elections may be more about trying to gain seats from Dawa and the ISCI than about keeping Sunnis out of it, though the Sadrists will not be comfortable with all of the Iraqiya party as it includes former Baathist and then US client Ayad Allawi (8).

One Iraqi website quoting Sadr says he said that “The issue of Hashimy’s trial should take place under the auspices of the Parliament and the people….even the sacking of politicians from their posts must take place in a legal manner.”

“The issue of confessions against Vice-President, Tareq al-Hashimy and the raising of this issue at the current period may harm the country, its unity and security, including the downfall of the current political process and the security situation, along with harming the political process as well,” Sadr said.

Sadr also stressed that the said case “had boosted the isolation of Iraq nowadays, including the transformation of the government into a single-party government and the imposition of its power on the necks of everybody.” (9)

The quotes seem to be confirmed by a CNN report that repeats part of the above and adds ‘Al-Sadr said the crisis could tarnish the prime minister's [i.e Maliki’s] reputation and result in the consolidation of power with one-man rule.’ (10)

An alliance between the Kurds and the Iraqiya party would suit the US as a potential alternative to the Iranian brokered alliance between Maliki’s Dawa, the ISCI and the Sadrists. If Maliki’s accusation that Hashemi and Mutlak were proposing an autonomous Sunni regional government , that would suit Exxon very nicely too (11).

Former Bush (senior) official Peter Galbraith wrote a book called ‘The End of Iraq’ advocating the break up of Iraq into three states – Kurdish, Sunni and Shia – but his motives were cast into doubt when it was found that he was receiving money from oil companies seeking contracts in Iraqi Kurdistan and had a 5% share of any profits in contracts on some  deals. A complete breakup of Iraq would not be needed to achieve the oil companies’ aims though – only a change to regional governments having the final say on oil contracts (12).

The Iraqiya party is made up of three parties. Two of them – Hashemi’s and Mutlak’s are Sunni parties and  have been as strongly opposed to the presence of US troops and US influence in Iraq as the Sadrists, but the third – Ayad Allawi’s party – are US clients and mostly secular (13) – (14).

Allawi, although a Shia, started off as a Ba’athist under Saddam , assassinating Iraqi dissidents who had fled to Europe. Later he fell out with Saddam, went into exile himself and was carried out car and cinema bombings in Baghdad with CIA support. He was appointed Interim Iraqi Prime Minister by Bush’s ‘Governor of Iraq’ Paul Bremer and oversaw El Salvador style US trained Iraqi death squads, along with the TV programme ‘Terrorism in the Hands of Justice’ in which torture victims confessed live to being terrorists (15) – (16).

In the first post-war elections Allawi was the candidate backed by the US and British governments, but he lost heavily. US support for Allawi has continued though under Bush and Obama. The Iraqiya coalition of parties did far better in the 2010 parliamentary elections and was initially thought to have won, but couldn’t form a working coalition.

The idea that the US government and military have been trying to prevent sectarian violence in Iraq , or that their withdrawal and a fall in US influence has been the cause of it, are also pretty far fetched.

The US government and other Coalition members have encouraged sectarian divisions and violence among Iraqis from the start, because unless Iraqis are divided and fighting one another for power, foreign powers can’t have that much influence in Iraq. In the first few years of the Iraq war they trained mostly Shia extremist units like the Wolf Brigade of the US trained ‘Special Police Commandos’ to target Sunnis, on the faulty logic that all Sunnis were Saddam supporters (17) – (19).

Then in 2007 came what Seymour Hersh called ‘the re-direction’. The US government had decided that Shia dominance of Iraq’s politics had given the Shia Iranian government too much influence in Iraq and began paying the same Sunni tribal militias that had been fighting US forces to fight Al Sadr’s Medhi army militia and the Sunni extremist Al Qa’ida instead (but not the Shia, pro-Iranian ISCI’s Badr Brigades, who didn’t oppose the oil law). This was on the dodgy theory that the Sadrists were proxies of the Iranian government, which became a self-fulfilling prophecy (20) – (22).

(1) = NYT 13 Nov 2011 ‘Iraq Criticizes Exxon Mobil for Its Deal With the Kurds’, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/world/middleeast/iraq-criticizes-exxon-mobil-for-its-deal-with-the-kurds.html?_r=1 ; ‘A deputy prime minister overseeing Iraq’s oil industry criticized Exxon Mobil on Sunday over its effort to expand into the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the country’s north…. The statement from the official, Hussein al-Shahristani, said the central government had cautioned Exxon against pursuing oil deals in Kurdistan. The government considers such agreements to be illegal until long-awaited rules can be worked that would divide revenues among Iraq’s fractious regions.

Mr. Shahristani’s office issued its statement after Exxon, whose headquarters are in Irving, Tex., became the first major international oil company to sign a contract in Kurdistan.’

(2) = http://www.juancole.com/2007/01/muqtada-al-sadr-and-sunnis-mickey-kaus.html

(3)  = Guardian 10 Apr 2004, ‘Sunni and Shia unite against common enemy’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/apr/10/iraq.rorymccarthy1

(4) = Guardian 10 Apr 07, ‘Moqtada rallies Shia to demand withdrawal of foreign troops’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2053247,00.html

(5) = Washington Post 26 Mar 2008 ‘U.S. Armor Forces Join Offensive In Baghdad Against Sadr Militia’, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/27/AR2008032700781.html?hpid=topnews

(6) = HRW 28 Oct 2006 ‘Iraq: End Interior Ministry Death Squads’, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/10/28/iraq-end-interior-ministry-death-squads

(7) = BBC News 3 July 2007, ‘Iraqi cabinet backs draft oil law’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6264184.stm

(8) = NYT 26 Dec 2011 ‘In Blow to Government, Sadr Followers Call for New Elections’, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/world/middleeast/moktada-al-sadr-followers-call-for-new-election-in-iraq.html

(9) = the iraqidinar.com 25 Dec 2011 ‘Shiite Cleric, al-Sadr, calls for trial of Iraq’s Vice-President Hashimy under Parliament’s auspices’, http://theiraqidinar.com/2011/12/25/shiite-cleric-al-sadr-calls-for-trial-of-iraqs-vice-president-hashimy-under-parliaments-auspices/

(10) = CNN 26 Dec 2011 ‘Al-Sadr's bloc calls for dissolution of Iraqi parliament’, http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/26/world/meast/iraq-politics/

(11) = Al Jazeera 25 Dec 2011 ‘Iraqi VP refuses to face court in Baghdad’, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/12/20111224191245752178.html ; ‘Maliki convened a meeting of his crisis-response cell on Saturday, his office said. …In separate comments on Saturday, Maliki warned that any efforts to create an autonomous Sunni region within Iraq would cause deep divisions in the country and lead to "rivers of blood".’

(12) = NYT 11 Nov 2009 ‘U.S. Adviser to Kurds Stands to Reap Oil Profits’, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/world/middleeast/12galbraith.html

(13) = Al Jazeera 28 Oct 2008 ‘Iraq Sunni party severs US ties’, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2008/10/2008102644323791621.html  ; ‘But the IIP has been locked in a bitter rivalry with the Sunni tribal leaders who joined forces with the US and that has raised concerns that the political tensions could spark violence and disrupt the Awakening Councils.’

(14) = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_National_Movement

(15) = Times 01 May 2005 ‘West turns blind eye as police put Saddam's torturers back to work’, http://www.infowars.com/articles/iraq/west_turns_blind_eye_saddams_torturers_at_work.htm

(16) = NYT magazine 01 May 2005 ‘The Way of the Commandos’, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/magazine/01ARMY.html

(17) = BBC News 11 Jun 2005 ‘Profile: Iraq's Wolf Brigade’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4083326.stm

(18) = See (14) above

(19) = Guardian.co.uk 28 Oct 2010 ‘Iraq war logs: 'The US was part of the Wolf Brigade operation against us'’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/28/iraq-war-logs-iraq

(20) = The New Yorker 05 Mar 2007 ‘Annals of National Security - The Redirection’, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh

(21) = NPR 17 July 2008, 'U.S. Trains Ex-Sunni Militias as Iraqi Police', http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11240000

(22) = Sunday Times 25 Nov 2007, ‘American-backed killer militias strut across Iraq’, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3076670

The petition by 31,000 scientists on climate change is an Exxon funded fraud ; Solar activity can't account for climate change

Antarctic ice is still melting rapidly in the West far more than it's growing in the East; cold winters or cooling of climate in some parts of the earth do not disprove overall global warming; and Peirs Corbyn is wildly wrong as often as he's right

Some people still seem to believe there’s a petition signed by “31,000 scientists” saying global warming is not man-made and not a problem ( it’s making the earth “lush” according to the petition). This is in fact the fraudulent Oregon Petition, first produced and disseminated by the dubious ‘Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine’ and the George C. Marshall Institute, which is funded by Exxon-Mobil oil, in the late 90s (when it only had 17,000 dodgy signatories)  and then re-released every 5 years or so. The authors of the attached mock up of a research paper are members of the ‘Oregon Institute’ who don’t include any climate scientists at all. They’re variously vets or  physicians or chemists or electrical engineers – though given all the other things they’ve made up they might not even have those qualifications. They falsely claim that the ‘Research Paper’ was published in the journal of the US National Academy of Science, who disowned it and say they have nothing to do with it. Many of the supposed signatories, who include the unlikely ‘Dr. Michael J. Fox’ and ‘Dr. Geri Halliwell’, are not scientists at all; almost none are climate scientists (1) – (6).

Fredrick Seitz, founder of the George C. Marshall Institute - funded by Exxon oil

The man who established the George C Marshall Institute and began the petition was Fredrick Seitz, who was not a climate scientist but a physicist. Before he began producing propaganda against man-made climate change, funded by oil firm Exxon, he did lots of dodgy ‘research’ on how smoking cigarettes was supposedly harmless, funded by tobacco company P JReynolds.

Exxon is among the oil companies which continue to fund groups disseminating climate change denial propaganda (7) – (8). It has offered scientists $10,000 for each research paper they produce contradicting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that average annual global temperatures are rising at an unprecedented rate and that this is more than 90% probability that most of this change is due to human activity (9) – (14). The IPCC, unlike the Oregon outfit, is composed of thousands of actual climate scientists doing peer reviewed research (15) - (16). An independent review of 928 scientific research papers found 75% of climate scientists agree with the IPCC’s assessment and none strongly disagree with it (not surprising as the IPCC mostly analyses and produces a summary of research at intervals of 5 to 10 years) (17).

NASA and others are also often quoted a supposed source that ice is growing in Antarctica. In fact every article on NASA’s website says the opposite, including that such claims are “misleading” and that “the ice sheet is not only losing mass, but it is losing mass at an accelerating rate.” They say sea ice in Eastern Antarctica is growing, but land ice in Western Antarctica is melting on a massively greater scale. (18) – (21).

The theory that solar activity or sunspots account for the majority of climate change is held by a tiny minority of scientists. It’s possible the tiny minority could be right and the vast majority wrong, but it’s not likely. Galileo may have been almost alone in saying the earth rotated around the sun, but at that point there were almost no scientists and it was mostly very religious non-scientists rubbishing his claims.

While there are non-human causes for part of climate change – and the earth did cyclically cool and heat long before the industrial revolution, the vast majority of research by solar scientists has found that solar activity and sun spots can account for at most a quarter of the amount of climate change we’ve seen since 1850, with the majority being man made (22) – (23).

Piers Corbyn has been wildly wrong as often as right in his weather forecasts

Weather Forecaster and physicist Piers Corbyn is much quoted for getting his predictions on the cold winters this and last year right, but his long term weather forecasting, based on solar activity, has been wrong as often as it’s been right. He’s predicted an extremely cold winter almost every year for the past decade and only got it right for two of those. His prediction of hurricane strength winds in the UK in the October and November 2007 was also completely wrong as were his predictions of very cold winters for most years of the last decade, including in 2008 . His overall record suggests that he's right that solar activity accounts for some weather and climate change, but that he's wrong in claiming it accounts for all of, or a majority of it. (24).

Nor are short term weather events evidence against overall climate change Nor is a colder climate in some countries and areas inconsistent with scientists’ predictions on overall global warming. For instance global warming could reduce the temperature difference between the tropics and the poles, slowing or even stopping the current ‘Gulf stream’ warm water convection current which keeps the UK warmer than Alaska. If the Gulf stream stops, then the UK ‘s climate could become as cold as Alaska even though the average annual temperature for the world as a whole has increased.

There is a lot of politics, misinformation and oil company money involved in climate change denial.

(1) = Guardian 19 Sep 2006 ‘The denial industry’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/sep/19/ethicalliving.g2

(2) = The Royal Society March 2005 ‘A guide to facts and fiction about climate change’, http://royalsociety.org/General_WF.aspx?pageid=7318&terms=climate+change&fragment=&SearchType=&terms=climate%20change and http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/News_and_Issues/Science_Issues/Climate_change/climate_facts_and_fictions.pdf (see especially under subheading 2 from half-way down third page)

(3) = Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, http://www.oism.org/  - home page states ‘Several members of the Institute's staff are also well known for their work on the Petition Project, an undertaking that has obtained the signatures of more than 31,000 American scientists opposed, on scientific grounds, to the hypothesis of "human-caused global warming" and to concomitant proposals for world-wide energy taxation and rationing.’ Even if you believe their claims about their qualifications, not one even claims to be a climate scientist (saying they are vets, physicians, chemists, electrical engineers, etc).

(4) = National Academy of Sciences 20 Apr 1998 ‘STATEMENT BY THE COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES REGARDING GLOBAL CHANGE PETITION’,http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=s04201998

(5) = Exxon-Mobil 2007 Worldwide Contributions and Community Investments (company document published on http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=36#src19  and at http://research.greenpeaceusa.org/?a=download&d=4586 – lists $115,000 of donations to the George C. Marshall Institute in 2007 alone

(6) = Seattle Times 01 May 1998 ‘Jokers Add Fake Names To Warming Petition’, http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19980501&slug=2748308

(7) = Guardian.co.uk 01 jul 2009 ‘ExxonMobil continuing to fund climate sceptic groups, records show’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/01/exxon-mobil-climate-change-sceptics-funding

(8) = Guardian.co.uk 10 Mar 2010 ‘US oil company donated millions to climate sceptic groups, says Greenpeace ; Report identifies Koch Industries giving $73m to climate sceptic groups 'spreading inaccurate and misleading information'’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/30/us-oil-donated-millions-climate-sceptics

(9) = Guardian 02 Feb 2007 ‘Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/feb/02/frontpagenews.climatechange

(10) = CNN 05 Feb 2007 ‘Exxon linked to climate change pay out’, http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/02/news/companies/exxon_science/index.htm

(11) = IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007 : synthesis report , summary for policymakers ; ‘1. Observed changes in climate and their effects’,  http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spms1.html

(12) = As above ‘Causes of Change’ http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spms2.html

(13) = Glossary of Terms used in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report / Glossary of Synthesis Report, Likelihood, page 83,http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_appendix.pdf (‘very likely’ defined as greater than 90% probability).

(14) = CNN 29 Apr 2007 ‘Scientists: Humans 'very likely' cause global warming’, http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/02/02/climate.change.report/index.html

(15) = IPCC flyer 2007 http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/press-ar4/ipcc-flyer-low.pdf

(16) = See (2)

(17) = Science3 December 2004: Vol. 306 no. 5702 p. 1686 ; ‘Beyond the Ivory Tower : The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change’, http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full

(18) = NASA 12 Jan 2010 ‘Is Antarctica Melting?’, http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarctica_Melting.html

(19) = NASA 15 Dec 2010 ‘Unstable Antarctica: What's Driving Ice Loss?’, http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/unstable-antarctica.html

(20) = 23 Jan 2008 ‘Antarctic Ice Loss Speeds Up, Nearly Matches Greenland Loss’, http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarctica_Melting.html

(21) = Search results on NASA website for ‘Antarctica ice’, http://search.nasa.gov/search/search.jsp?nasaInclude=Antarctica+ice

(22) = Guardian.co.uk 11 jul 2007 ‘New analysis counters claims that solar activity is linked to global warming’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jul/11/climatechange.climatechange1

(23) = Consequences Vol 2 No 1 1996 ‘The Sun and Climate’, http://www.gcrio.org/CONSEQUENCES/winter96/leanrind.html ; by Dr Judith Lean and David Rind

(24) = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Corbyn

The Other Nine (Thousand) Oil Spills – BP and the Gulf Spill and Exxon, Chevron and Shell in Nigeria

Women in the Niger Delta beside an oil spill in 2009, which began in 2004 (source - Kadir van Lohuizen/NOOR via an Amnesty International report on oil pollution in the Niger Delta = (1))

Americans have suffered from the BP spill – but only a fraction of what Nigerians have suffered for decades – and continue to suffer today. The problem isn’t one bad company – BP is no worse than any other oil firm - the problem is that big firms have been allowed to buy influence with governments leading to poor regulation; coupled with experimental drilling at depths never attempted before in order to try to maintain an oil based society and economy. Unless all governments regulate all oil companies better, this is going to happen over and over again.

BP certainly bear responsibility for the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and for using toxic chemical dispersants even worse than the slick itself.

However the idea that BP is a uniquely bad oil company, while American oil companies are more responsible, is nonsense.

Exxon-Mobil, Chevron and other oil companies based everywhere from the US to France, Italy and the UK have created thousands of oil spills both on and offshore in the Niger Delta in Nigeria for decades – and right up to present.

There have been 2,400 oil spills in the Niger Delta in the last 4 years, many involving Exxon-Mobil. Between 1970 and 2000 the Nigerian government’s figure was 7,000 oil spills, with more independent analysts putting the figure higher, at around 300 every year. The amount spilled by 2006 was estimated at at least 1.5 million tonnes (2) – (4).

When people there who are drinking polluted water and who can’t catch fish or birds to survive because the delta and marshes they live in are polluted by oil spills complain their government doesn’t fine the oil companies and demand they do something about it, as it has in the US (5).

Instead any opposition or complaint from the locals has resulted in oil companies calling in the Nigerian military who have been killing their opponents – peaceful or armed - for decades, often partly paid by and equipped by the oil companies – and transported on helicopters provided by the oil companies. This has resulted in armed rebellions, hijackings of oil rigs and kidnapping of oil company staff, both by rebels and by armed gangs.

Some oil companies, including Shell and Chevron, have even supplied the Nigerian military and police with weapons and helicopters with which to kill their opponents – whether armed rebels or peaceful campaigners like Ken Saro Wiwa, notoriously executed by the Nigerian government for campaigning against pollution, with Shell lawyers refusing to call for clemency when the decision was being made (6).

Ken Saro-Wiwa, a peaceful campaigner for the Ogoni people against oil pollution by Shell, was executed by the Nigerian military - Shell lawyers refused to ask for clemency

The only way many of the people of the, now grossly polluted, Niger Delta can survive is to cut into oil pipelines and drain off oil for sale or barter, or else join armed gangs extorting money for kidnapped hostages. They often die in explosions in the process. On 18th October 1999 300 people burned alive near the town of Jesse , due to such an explosion and the spread of fires to nearby villages. This was one of the largest death tolls, but not unusual.

Gas flaring in the Niger Delta - source - Chidi Anyaeche - Nigeria Village Square

The Ogoni , Ijaw and other peoples of the Niger Delta have had their agricultural land made infertile and their fishing grounds destroyed by pollution from oil pipelines for decades. They have been forced out of their villages by threats and attacks by the Nigerian military to make way for these pipelines. These attacks are routinely described by the Nigerian military as ‘inter-tribal disputes’ (7) - (8).  Hundreds of them “disappear”every year after military and police raids.

On May 25th 1998 one-hundred and twenty one student activists from 42 delta communities carried out a peaceful occupation of an offshore Chevron oil facility in protest against environmental destruction. They were promised a meeting with a Chevron officials at the end of May to discuss their grievances. On May 28th Chevron helicopters ferried Nigerian soldiers to the platform. These soldiers proceeded to gun down two activists, wounded others and removed the rest. On January 4th 1999 Nigerian police and soldiers equipped with a Chevron helicopter and Chevron boats attacked and burned the Ijaw villages of Opiah and Ikenyan in Delta state , killing at least 4 people and wounding others (9) – (10).

Amnesty International reported that during 2009 “The Security forces, including the military, continued to commit human rights violations in the Niger Delta including extra-judicial executions, torture and...the destruction of homes.......the Joint Task Force (JTF) which combines troops of the army, navy, air force and...police, frequently raided communities. Such raids often followed clashes between the JTF and militants, often resulting in the death of bystanders.” (11)

The conflict is often reported as involving “kidnappers” trying to extort money from oil firms, just as there’s much crowing every time a Somalian pirate is shot by the US or Russian navy, or by Israeli security guards on private shipping, without much reflection on the causes of the piracy – a civil war resulting from a dictatorship backed by both the US and USSR throughout the Cold War; US , French and British backing for an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia when one side in the civil war seemed to have one; illegal fishing by trawlers from all over the world in Somalian waters; and illegal dumping of nuclear waste and other pollutants by firms based in the “developed”.

Although Nigeria has had an elected government since 1998 the close relationship between oil and arms companies and the Nigerian military and government remains.

The fact that American firms are responsible for massive oil spills in Nigeria hasn’t stopped American Senators loudly announcing that Halliburton and Exxon-Mobil have told them that they would never be as irresponsible as BP though – Halliburton and it’s subsidiaries of course being so responsible that they were found to have repeatedly grossly over-charged the US military for fuel and supplies in Iraq on a scale that might make the Afghan government blush – and even to have tried to cover up the gang rape of one of it’s employees. That’s not to mention the fact that Halliburton was contracted by BP to seal the oil well which then caused the spill in the Gulf (12) – (15).

The truth is that this is not a case of one uniquely bad company. BP is no better or worse than other oil companies. It, like them, is the product of a system which allows it to buy political influence and deregulation of it’s industry. It’s a case of poor regulation by governments as a result of oil companies buying political influence – and of the risks of drilling for oil at greater depths than has ever been done before, using experimental technology, to try to meet ever increasing demand for oil. Until governments and the public face up to that and people demand much stricter regulation of all oil companies, plus more investment in other energy technologies and reduction in waste of energy, nothing will change.

It’s also the truth that however bad many people in Florida and other states affected by the spill have it, they don’t have it nearly as bad as Nigerians have it – often at the hands of American based oil firms. So it’s no good pretending this is a problem with one company or with foreigners.

The one good side-effect of the Gulf of Mexico spill is that it’s started to raise some questions about these wider issues and the suffering of Nigerians, Colombians and others.

Forming a posse to lynch the furreners and cheer on the good ol’ American oil giants seems to be popular in America right now. It’s not going to stop it happening all over again though.

(1) = Amnesty International 30 Jun 2009 'Oil industry has brought poverty and pollution to Niger Delta' http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/oil-industry-has-brought-poverty-and-pollution-to-niger-delta-20090630#

(2) = Reuters 15 Jun 2010 'Nigeria cautions Exxon Mobil on offshore oil spills', http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE65E22C20100615

(3) = BBC News 15 Jun 2010 ‘Nigeria: 'World oil pollution capital'’,http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10313107

(4) = Independent 26 Oct 2006 'Niger Delta bears brunt after 50 years of oil spills', http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/niger-delta-bears-brunt-after-50-years-of-oil-spills-421634.html

(5) = See (1) above

(6) = Human Rights Watch The Price of Oil HRW , New York & London , 1999;especially p174-5,http://www.hrw.org/en/news/1999/02/23/oil-companies-complicit-nigerian-abuses

(7) = Human Rights Watch The Price of Oil HRW , New York & London , 1999, http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/nigeria/index.htm#TopOfPage

(8) = Catma Productions The Drilling Fields Channel 4 (London) , 23rd May 1994,http://www.journeyman.tv/?lid=59043; full transcript at http://www.ratical.org/corporations/DrillFields.html

(9) = PACIFICA RADIO/Democracy Now 21 Jun 2001  ‘Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship’,http://www.democracynow.org/2001/8/27/drilling_and_killing_chevron_and_nigerias

(10) =  Human Rights Watch press release Oil Companies complicit in Nigerian abuses Lagos ,Feb 23rd , 1999, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/1999/02/23/oil-companies-complicit-nigerian-abuses

(11) = Amnesty International annual report 2010 – Country Report – Nigeria, http://report2010.amnesty.org/sites/default/files/AIR2010_AZ_EN.pdf#page=193

(12) = BBC News 13 Dec 2003 ‘Bush warns 'oil overcharge' firm’,http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3312015.stm

(13) = Observer 22 Feb 2004 ‘Of Halliburton and the mis-spent millions’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2004/feb/22/uselections2004.usnews1

(14) = ABC News 10 Dec 2007 ‘Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR’,
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=3977702&page=1

(15) = BBC News 13 Jun 2010 ‘Halliburton profits up despite oil spill’,http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10688301