The Secret of the Seven Sisters

The Secret of the Seven Sisters



A four-part series that reveals how a secret pact formed a cartel that controls the world's oil.

05 Apr 2013 09:18




On August 28, 1928, in the Scottish highlands, began the secret story of oil.

Three men had an appointment at Achnacarry Castle - a Dutchman, an American and an Englishman.

The Dutchman was Henry Deterding, a man nicknamed the Napoleon of Oil, having exploited a find in Sumatra. He joined forces with a rich ship owner and painted Shell salesman and together the two men founded Royal Dutch Shell.

The American was Walter C. Teagle and he represents the Standard Oil Company, founded by John D. Rockefeller at the age of 31 - the future Exxon. Oil wells, transport, refining and distribution of oil - everything is controlled by Standard oil.

The Englishman, Sir John Cadman, was the director of the Anglo-Persian oil Company, soon to become BP. On the initiative of a young Winston Churchill, the British government had taken a stake in BP and the Royal Navy switched its fuel from coal to oil. With fuel-hungry ships, planes and tanks, oil became "the blood of every battle".

The new automobile industry was developing fast, and the Ford T was selling by the million. The world was thirsty for oil, and companies were waging a merciless contest but the competition was making the market unstable.

That August night, the three men decided to stop fighting and to start sharing out the world's oil. Their vision was that production zones, transport costs, sales prices - everything would be agreed and shared. And so began a great cartel, whose purpose was to dominate the world, by controlling its oil.

Four others soon joined them, and they came to be known as the Seven Sisters - Exxon, Shell, BP, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf and Chevron - the biggest oil companies in the world.

Episode 1 - Desert Storms

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2013/04/201344105231487582.html




In the first episode, we travel across the Middle East, through both time and space.


"We waged the Iran-Iraq war and I say we waged it, because one country had to be used to destroy the other. As they already benefit from the oil bonanza, and they’re building up financal reserves, from time to time they have to be bled."

- Xavier Houzel, an Oil trader



Throughout the region's modern history, since the discovery of oil, the Seven Sisters have sought to control the balance of power.

They have supported monarchies in Iran and Saudi Arabia, opposed the creation of OPEC, profiting from the Iran-Iraq war, leading to the ultimate destruction of Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

The Seven Sisters were always present, and almost always came out on top.
Since that notorious meeting at Achnacarry Castle on August 28, 1928, they have never ceased to plot, to plan and to scheme.


http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2013/04/201344105231487582.html

In Iraq’s disputed territories, a health services vacuum

http://www.irinnews.org/Report/97771/In-Iraq-s-disputed-territories-a-health-services-vacuum

Photo: Hermione Gee/IRIN

Iraq’s disputed territories are claimed by both the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil. In Kandal village, neither government provides significant services

KANDAL, 2 April 2013 (IRIN) - At 9am in the northern Iraqi village of Kandal, female residents are gathering in the leafy courtyard of the local mosque. But they have not come to pray; they are here to see the doctor - a rare opportunity in this part of the country.

Kandal sits on a busy main road connecting Erbil, capital of the northern autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, to Kirkuk, one of several disputed territories. Located in Makhmour District, in Kirkuk Governorate, the land Kandal sits on is claimed by both the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).

Although the status of the disputed territories was supposed to be resolved by a referendum before the end of 2007, the vote still has not taken place. Meanwhile, their residents have been caught in between, with neither side willing to provide basic services.

“This place is not a country,” said Jwan Abdullah, an English teacher at the small village school. “We have no government; there is no doctor, no hospital. We don’t have a [phone] number for emergencies, and we need this.”

There is only one small clinic in the nearby town of Makhmour to service the area’s nine villages, which have a total population of around 300 families. The clinic is a small general practice, ill-equipped to handle many cases.

“My son broke his arm playing football,” said the local mukhtar, or village leader. “And they just gave him a pain killer and said we had to go to the emergency hospital in Erbil,” some 100km away.

Falling between the cracks

KRG would like to build a permanent hospital in the area, says Raad Najmadeen, director of medical services at the Erbil Directorate of Health. But the political situation in the region means any attempt to do so would be seen as a land grab.

“The problem is, as I see it, if you build a health centre, this land will be allocated to the [KRG] Ministry of Health, so you will make this land permanently for the ministry… They may see that we are taking the land by this process. So it’s sensitive.”

Instead, these villages depend on visits from KRG’s mobile hospital - which has an operating unit, a dental unit, a lab, an x-ray, and ultrasound and gynaecological support - and a mobile team with ambulances stocked with simple medication and equipment. But these visits occur only once or twice a year.

The Kurdish government has plans to set up an emergency unit halfway between Makhmour and Erbil that would service the district and give residents access to an emergency number and to ambulances.

But in the meantime, the lack of any emergency services means transportation is a problem, particularly for women in Kandal, none of whom knows how to drive.

Iraqi Turkmen Front warns out Iraq would get divided

Salihi stressed ongoing crisis in Iraq has badly affected Turkmen population

Chairman of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, Ersat Salihi said that "the massacres conducted in Turkmen region of Iraq now continued in different forms".

Speaking to the Anadolu Agency (AA), Salihi underlined that the Turkmens were subjected to brutality in Iraq since 1920.

"In the last few days, assassination attempts and bomb attacks on Iraqi Turkmens increased. This is because the Iraqi Turkmens have preserved their national identity. Unfortunately, certain injustices still take place in a democratic Iraq," Salihi underlined.

Touching on anti-government protests in Iraq, Salihi noted that "unless the government took into consideration the demands of the protestors, Iraq would get divided".

"Iraq is presently going through a big crisis. Turkmen population has been badly affected by this crisis," Salihi also said.

Published: 3/29/2013

More evidence emerges of torture by Spanish troops in Iraq

More evidence emerges of torture by Spanish troops in Iraq

By Alejandro López 
28 March 2013

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/28/spai-m28.html

 

A video posted by the daily El País provides more evidence of the involvement of Spanish troops in torture and mistreatment of detainees during the Iraq war. It shows soldiers beating up two men in the detention centre in Al Diwaniyah in 2004, shortly before the newly elected Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) government pulled out of Iraq that year.

Five soldiers are shown entering a cell and shouting, “Get up, get up” in Spanish. When the men don’t move, in all probability because they have no knowledge of Spanish, three soldiers begin kicking and insulting them while two others observe from the door. One of the Spanish soldiers can be heard saying off camera: “Wow! They have killed that one already”, whilst the other laughs at his companion’s joke. The men on the floor can be heard gasping, coughing and moaning.

Spanish troops were deployed in Iraq in August 2003 as part of the US-led coalition forces that former Prime Minister José Maria Aznar agreed with US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Spain also was given the command of troops from Honduras, El Salvador, Dominican Republic and Nicaragua.

A total of 1,300 troops were deployed in Najaf, south of Baghdad, one of the holiest cities in Iraq and a pilgrimage centre for the world’s Shi’ite faithful. Some idea of the mind-set drummed into the troops was indicated by the use of a new arm badge incorporating the Cross of St. James of Compostela—a symbol of the liquidation of the Muslims who were driven out of Spain after centuries of fighting in 1492. This was also the start of the period of colonialist expansion by Spain’s Catholic monarchy.

Even the centre-right newspaper El Mundo was forced to remark, “To put the Cross of St. James of Compostela on the uniforms of Spanish soldiers demonstrates an absolute ignorance of the psychology of the society in which they will have to carry out their mission”. And it added, “It would be difficult to come up with any symbol more offensive to the Shiite population than this cross”.

The Ministry of Defence has admitted the authenticity of the video and that, “In accordance with the instructions of Defence Minister Pedro Morenés, the army has placed in the hands of a military judge in Madrid the first conclusions of a summary of information in relation to a video recently published regarding a case of alleged mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by Spanish soldiers”.

Nevertheless, the essential purpose of this investigation will be to whitewash the role of top policy-makers in encouraging and sanctioning the use of torture. This was not the first time torture was used on detainees by Spanish soldiers and nothing has happened to the perpetrators.

According to the Spanish journalist Olga Rodriguéz, “[In] Diwaniya, in 2004, it was not difficult to find local people who knew that Spanish troops mistreated prisoners. ‘It is an open secret’ said an Iraqi whom I had known for some time”.

In March 2004, US troops detained Flayeh al Mayali, an Iraqi translator who helped journalists and the Spanish intelligence service CNI, accusing him of helping insurgent forces murder seven CNI agents in Iraq. Mayali spent four days in Spanish custody where he says he was hooded, tied up and beaten and deprived of sleep. He then spent a year in the detention camp at Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca, after which he was released without charge. No investigation took place. Even National Court Judge Fernando Andreu, who opened an inquiry into the deaths of the agents, was not informed of Mayali’s detention.

In another instance, a Spanish intelligence officer admitted that the Spanish army used US “enhanced interrogation” methods that included prolonged stress positions, exposure to harsh elements, waterboarding and other examples of physical and mental torture. The officer claimed, “we Spanish do not torture or humiliate, but we put pressure. We follow the North American operating manual: we placed sandbags on the heads of those who did not collaborate to make them lose their sense of direction. For the more stubborn we would put on a heavy metal Metallica CD [...]. We also injected a syringe with liquid up their noses, it does no permanent damage and leaves no marks, but [the victim] spends ten minutes squealing like a pig”.

5 killed, 80 wounded in Kirkuk explosion

5 killed, 80 wounded in Kirkuk explosion

29/03/2013

On March 29, 2013 a car exploded in Kirkuk. 

At least 5 people were killed and 80 have been injured. 

The car exploded in one of the neighbourhoods of Kirkuk targeting a Shi'ite Hussainiya. 

The government fails to give protection to the Turkmens..

“Liberating” Iraqis, Limb by Limb, Life by Life, Home by Home, Gene by Gene

by Felicity Arbuthnot / March 29th, 2013

Why should we hear about body bags and deaths … I mean, it’s not relevant, so why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that …

— Former First Lady, Barbara Bush, Good Morning America, 18th March 2003

In these days of the tenth anniversary of the illegal invasion and near destruction of Iraq, answers are owed not alone for the dead, but to the cancer stricken, the deformed, to their parents, their siblings and all Iraqis. They were left with a land poisoned by depleted uranium in 1991, the burden ever building over twelve more years of (illegal) US and UK bombings, then the enormity of 2003.

Fallujah’s victims have rightly come under medical and media scrutiny since the US military onslaught of April and November 2004, but throughout Iraq, there have been no reports of areas unaffected.

In context, Dahr Jamail writes from Fallujah:

Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing.

As shocking as these statistics are, due to a lack of adequate documentation, research, and reporting of cases, the actual rate of cancer and other diseases is likely to be much higher than even these figures suggest.

He also cites:

… a dramatic jump in miscarriages and premature births … particularly in areas where heavy US military operations occurred …”  as Fallujah.

Jamail cites the study by Dr Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi,“Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth-Sex Ration in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009.” Of it, Dr Busby’s opinion was that the Fallujah health crisis represented “the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied.”

There were numerous reports during the 2004 April and November-December US assaults on Fallujah of, in addition to DU – three times unanimously designated a weapon of mass destruction by UN Sub-Committees – illegal, experimental chemical weapons and napalm being used in the decimation of this city of about three hundred thousand people.

After the second assault, Dr. Saleh Hussein Iswawi of the Fallujah General Hospital told the BBC:

About sixty to seventy percent of the homes and buildings are completely crushed and damaged, and not ready to inhabit … Of the thirty percent still left standing, I don’t think there is a single one that has not been exposed to some damage.

Charred bodies and those half eaten by stray dogs littered the streets. One resident, Yasser Sattar said:

This is the crime of the century. Is this freedom and democracy that they brought to Fallujah?

What happened in Fallujah was a pogrom.  It was by no means the only one.

People leapt into the Euphrates river to put out their burning flesh – it continued to burn in the water. Dead were described as “caramelized”. Other bodies were described as melting, disintegrating, but their clothing staying intact, by doctors who have seen much in Iraq in 1991 and since, but never this.

“All forms of nature were wiped out”, stated the (pro-American) Iraqi Health Minister, Dr. ash-Shaykhli.

Dünya Türkleri Avrupa Platformu DÜTAP yöneticilerinden ziyaretler.

BELÇİKA : Dünya Türkleri Avrupa Platformu Dünya Türkleri Avrupa Platformu DÜTAP yöneticilerinden ziyaretler. / 29-03-2013 Dünya Türkleri Avrupa Platformu DÜTAP yöneticilerinden ziyaretler. Kısa bir dönem önce Türk Dünyasının avrupa yaşayan vatandaşlarının kurmuş olduğu derneklerin bir araya araya gelerek oluşturdukları DÜTAP (Dünya Türkleri Avrupa Platformu), Belçika’nın Antwerpen şehrinde yapmış olduğu Nevruz Şöleni programından sonra Kenan Dağgün, Hasan Aydınlı, Abdumutalip İmirov ve Evren Atlın'dan oluşan bir heyetle bugünde T.C. Brüksel Büyükelçisi Mehmet Hakan Olcay ve T.C. Brüksel Başkonsolosu Ali Barış Ulusoy'u makanlarında ziyaret etti. Gayet samimi bir havada geçen görüşmede DÜTAP hakkında bilgi veren dernek yöneticileri aynı zamanda kurucu üye dernekler listesinide sundular. Görüşmelerden gayet memnun olarak ayrılan platform yöneticileri kendilerine zaman ayırarak, görüşme imkanı sunan sayın Büyükelçimize ve sayın Başkonsolosumuza teşekkür edip beraberce hatıra resmi çekindiler. ATEP KÖKLERE DÖNÜŞ RESİM SERGİSİNİ ZİYARET DÜTAP heyeti daha sonrada Brüksel’de Schaerbeek belediyesinde sergilenen ATEP (Avrupa Türkiye Emirdağlılar Platformu) Köklere Dönüş Resim Sergisini gezdiler. Sergideki resimleri teker teker dikkatle inceleyen Dütap heyeti sergiyi çok güzel ve çok başarılı bulduklarını, sergiyi düzenleyen ATEP yöneticilerinede teşekkür ettiler. http://www.belcikahaber.be/?act=show&code=page&id=2&id_page=10457&resume=0

Iraq official fears split as Kurdistan-Turkey oil trade grows

March 30, 2013 – REUTERS – LONDON : Rising oil trade between Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey threatens to split Iraq in two, a senior Iraqi official said, as the autonomous Kurdistan region ignores Baghdad’s threats of tough action against what it terms illegal exports.


Oil lies at the heart of a long-running feud between the central government and the autonomous Kurdistan region. Baghdad says it alone has the authority to control exports and sign contracts, while the Kurds say their right to do so is enshrined in Iraq’s federal constitution.

“If oil from Kurdistan goes through Turkey directly, that will be like dividing Iraq. This is our big concern,” Iraq’s Deputy National Security Adviser Safa al-Sheikh Hussein said on the sidelines of an Iraq conference.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) started on the path towards economic independence early this year by exporting small volumes of crude oil by truck to Turkey. The move further angered Baghdad, which threatened action against the region and foreign oil companies working there to stop the exports, which it says are illegal. KRG crude used to be shipped to world markets through a Baghdad-controlled pipeline running from Kirkuk to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, but exports via that channel dried up in December due to a payment row with Baghdad. The northern region is now pushing ahead with plans to build its own oil export pipeline to Turkey, despite objections from the United States, which fears the project could lead to the break-up of Iraq. KRG Energy Minister Ashti Hawrami has said a gas pipeline now being laid can be converted to ship up to 300,000 barrels per day of crude by June.

“Kurdistan is almost independent and they want more gains now,” said Hussein, deputy of the National Security Council, created in 2004 as a forum for security decision-making. “They are a little over-confident and overly ambitious.”

TURKEY LINKS

For its part, energy-hungry Turkey has increasingly courted Iraqi Kurds as relations with the Shi’ite-led central government in Baghdad have soured and it now ranks as a major trading partner for the autonomous region.

A broad energy partnership between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan ranging from exploration to export has been in the works since last year. Though steadily developing more energy autonomy, the region still relies on the central government for a share of the national budget from oil revenues. “There’s a lot of tension with the Kurds,” said Hussein. “I don’t think it can be resolved this year, but maybe we can contain it.” Kurdistan’s exploration contracts with oil majors like Exxon Mobil and Chevron are a further source of friction that have prompted Baghdad repeatedly to warn companies they risk losing their assets in the south of the country.

Exxon has been weighing whether to sell out of the giant, southern West Qurna-1 oilfield, but industry sources say Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki offered the company substantially improved terms in January to keep it at the $50 billion project.

Since then, Iraqi and Kurdish officials have both suggested Exxon will side with them.Hussein said that if Exxon were to start to drill in territories disputed with Kurdistan, “there will be a legal response … to end all (of Exxon’s) work in the rest of Iraq.”

“We are determined to resolve our problems peacefully, but this can influence the integrity of Iraq,” he said.

Officials from Exxon and Iraqi Kurdistan last month visited the Qara Hansher oil exploration block that lies in disputed territories where both regions claim jurisdiction and discussed building a camp there. And industry sources said the U.S. major has drilled three water wells at the al-Qush block, also in the disputed zone, in preparation to start drilling by early June. The oil dispute has been accompanied by an increase in military tension between the two regions.

“Neither side wants to end this militarily,” said Hussein, a former Brigadier General in Iraq’s Air Force.