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[American Blackout features FTW’s dear friend former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who recently gave us an exclusive interview as she packed up her Washington, D.C. office to head back to her home in Georgia. FTW will always support McKinney as she has always supported us. – MK]
AMERICAN BLACKOUT
Featuring Cynthia McKinney, Greg Palast, Bernie Sanders, Bob Fitrakis and many others...
By Zach Roberts
September 28, 2006
Gregpalast.com
http://www.gregpalast.com/american-blackout-2
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
I'm going to start this with a sales pitch: you need to buy this film. No, really. Not because Greg Palast receives second billing but because you must see this film.
American Blackout is the kind of documentary that only comes along every few years. It's the sort of film that changes things -- changes how you think. If there was any justice in this world this film would receive the same buzz and box office that anything that Michael Moore releases gets. Greg Palast told me the film "blew him away" -- this from a man who is almost always underwhelmed by documentaries, especially ones about his field of expertise.
Watch the Trailer
When delving into the voter issue, the media distracts you with all the things it loves to talk about. But you need to forget the hanging chads and forget the malfunctioning machines. They're just a sideshow to the real story. The real story is a lot less sexy, dealing with road blocks, purged voters, 'misplaced' voting machines, uncounted ballots and long lines. This is the Civil Rights Movement all over again but this time there are no great monsters like Bull Connor. The lynchings today are electronic and political... and the freedom riders nowhere to be found.
American Blackout, directed by Guerrilla News Network's Ian Inaba uses a stunning mix of never before seen archive and firsthand interviews. Inaba knows how to make otherwise dull C-Span clips look like something completely new and interesting. He does this by split-screen and zooming so you know who you're supposed to be looking at -- Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, ChoicePoint representatives. You see them lying to a Civil Rights panel, you see them sweat when questioned by Congresswoman McKinney. All I can say is that I am stunned that I've never seen this technique used before -- it keeps you interested, on your toes and wanting for more. Yes, you will be wanting to see more of this documentary, these 90 minutes fly past quickly. So do take notes -- there will be a test afterwards -- the 2006 election.
Among the great footage in this documentary is a pan shot of lines of people waiting to vote -- I saw this once before, when I was 13 and apartheid came to an end. South Africa held its first free election and Black voters could be seen in lines that went on for miles. But this is America, we are not a developing democracy and should long have emerged from the dark ages of electoral segregation.
The story of Cynthia McKinney that sews the running thread through the film, is uglier than even I knew. Many only familiar with the Congresswoman's press coverage will be aghast at just how distorted a picture the media has fed us. It literally defies belief.
Here we see her cross-examining Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with such surgical precision and grasp of her brief that Rumsfeld is left stammering and ashen-faced. It makes us wonder what kind of country we might have right now if more had put this administration under such factual scrutiny. American Blackout lays out exactly why she has been so relentlessly hounded. Every one of her speeches brings to mind the hoarse pleas of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a force to be reckoned with. (In the DVD extras you can watch "Capitol Policeman Speaks Out" and see why she "lost it" back in March 2006.)
Inaba's film is intense yet easy to grasp for even the most non-political among us.
And for those who can't sit in one place for too long, the DVD comes with a shortened version which still gets the point across in under 20 minutes.
Since I started with a sales pitch it only seems right to end with one: Remember when in the days after 9/11 our president told us to go out and shop? Do the patriotic thing and buy this DVD. In fact I would buy several: you are going to want to pass this one around your friends and chances are you're not going to get it back.
Buy it directly at the American Blackout website. We get nothing from these sales except the knowledge that we are supporting one kick-ass filmmaker with a gotta-see-it call to arms against the racial poisoning of our democracy.
Or donate a tax-deductible $50 or more to our educational foundation and Palast will send you a signed copy of American Blackout. All proceeds support the investigative work of the Palast team.
"A muckraking indictment" (LA TIMES) and "engrossing, fast-paced, stylish... a powerful examination of voting rights in America." (HOLLYWOOD REPORTER)
*****
Leni von Eckardt contributed to this article.
*****
Greg Palast is a reporter for BBC Television and the author of the just-released New York Times Bestseller, Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War. Read his articles and watch his reports at: GregPalast.com
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[The headline breaking in the U.S. is “7-11 Drops Citigo,” connecting it to Chavez calling Bush “the devil.” But according to Felix Rodriguez, CEO of Citgo, that is not accurate. – MK]
Venezuela’s Citgo Says it Decided to Discontinue 7/11 Contract Two Months Ago
By Gregory Wilpert
September 28, 2006
Venezuelanalysis.com
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/print.php?newsno=2092
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Caracas, Venezuela, September 28, 2006 —Felix Rodriguez, the CEO of Citgo, the Venezuelan-owned gasoline producer and distributor in the U.S., clarified yesterday that it was Citgo that had let expire its contract with the 7-Eleven convenience store chain and not the other way around, as was broadly reported.
According to most press accounts, 7-Eleven spokespersons implied that the discontinuation of the supply contract for its gas stations was at least partially motivated by Chavez’s UN speech, in which he referred to President Bush as the “Devil.”
“[The reports are] a manipulation because ever since the month of July have we announced that we did not intend to renew a contract with [7-Eleven], which was 20-years old and that was part of a bad business deal for Venezuela,” said Rodriguez in a telephone interview with the Venezuelan state TV channel VTV.
Rodriguez went on to explain that the contract forced Citgo to purchase non-Venezuelan crude that it would refine and sell to 7-Eleven at a very low price. “We were losing money,” added Rodriguez.
Headlines in a wide variety of U.S. news outlets reported yesterday and today that the decision to cancel the Citgo contract was made by 7-Eleven.
For example, the Los Angeles Times announced, “7-Eleven Dumps Venezuela-Backed Citgo to Pump Own Brand.” Others, such as Associated Press, had a headline that read, “7-Eleven Drops Citgo As Gas Supplier"
7-Eleven spokeswoman Margaret Chabris was apparently the main source for creating the impression that it was 7-Eleven’s decision to drop Citgo and not the other way around. Chabris told the Associated Press, “Certainly Chavez's position and statements over the past year or so didn't tempt us to stay with Citgo.”
Citgo CEO Rodriguez announced that his company would demand from 7-Eleven that it clarify its participation in creating the impression that decision to discontinue the sale of Citgo gas was its decision and was politically motivated.
The LA Times also quoted Tom Kloza, the chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service as saying that 7-Eleven’s public break with Citgo “was opportunistic.” “When we were writing about this awhile ago … they were very quiet about it and there was no fanfare,” he added.
Last July Citgo had announced that it would discontinue supplying 1,300 gas station in the U.S. because its supply contracts with these were detrimental to the company’s bottom line.
According to the company, it had to purchase 130,000 barrels of gasoline per day from outside its own refinery network because the stations were too far from Citgo refineries. Instead, Citgo intended to supply only gas stations located near its own refineries, which are based mostly in the country’s Northeast, South, and Midwest.
See also: Venezuela Cuts Supply to Some Citgo Gas Stations, for Greater Efficiency
[While we have noted many reports of the Venezuelan program to bring discounted oil to poor Americans, this one reveals the program will be brought to Alaska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Virginia, Maryland, and the cities of Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh, Pa. – MK]
Chavez to Discount Oil for U.S. Poor
ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 22, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Chavez.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez visited a Harlem church Thursday and promised to more than double the amount of discounted heating oil his country ships to needy Americans. He also took another swipe at President Bush.
A day after he called Bush ''the devil'' in a speech to the United Nations, Chavez said of the president: ''He's an alcoholic and a sick man.''
Bush has acknowledged that he had a drinking problem when he was young but says he gave up alcohol 20 years ago.
Chavez received a round of applause from the crowd at Mount Olivet Baptist Church, which included activists and other supporters as well as actor Danny Glover. Some laughed and applauded when Chavez compared Bush to cowboy movie icon John Wayne.
He called Bush's policies in Iraq criminal, adding he hopes Americans will soon ''awaken'' and elect a better president. While he opposes Bush, Chavez said the American people ''are our friends.''
He announced that Citgo, the U.S.-based refining arm of Venezuela's state-run oil company, plans to more than double the amount of heating oil it is making available under the program for low-income families to 100 million gallons this winter, up from 40 million gallons.
Chavez started the heating oil program last winter, accusing Bush of neglecting the poor.
Insults have increasingly flown between Caracas and Washington since 2002, when the U.S. swiftly recognized leaders who briefly ousted Chavez in a coup, before Chavez returned to power amid massive street protests.
The Venezuelan leader repeated his warning that if the U.S. tries to oust him, he country would halt oil shipments. He added that he'd like to see a U.S. president ''who you could talk with.''
Chavez said some people have warned him about his safety after he called Bush ''the devil.''
''They've told me since last night, because I said he was a devil ... to be careful, because they could kill me,'' Chavez said, without elaborating. ''I'm in the hands of God. I'm not afraid.''
House majority leader, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, called Chavez a ''power-hungry autocrat'' and said his speech was ''an embarrassment and an insult to the American people.''
U.S. officials regularly call the Venezuelan leader a destabilizing force, and Bush has said he sees Chavez as a threat to democracy. Chavez has called Bush a ''devil'' before in speeches at home.
The American civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson met with Chavez Thursday night, saying he was concerned by the name-calling and believed both sides need to tone down their rhetoric.
''Of course he feels that the U.S. government is part of trying to pull a coup on him... But my appeal to him is get beyond the anger,'' Jackson said.
''I think that he should not be calling President Bush 'devil.' President Bush should not be calling him 'evil' or calling him 'tyrant,'' Jackson said. ''We must cease these hostilities.''
The United States continues to be the top buyer of Venezuelan oil, bringing the South American country billions of dollars in earnings that help fund Chavez's popular social programs.
Chavez's opponents accuse him of squandering Venezuela's oil wealth through preferential oil deals overseas. But Chavez said he is giving away nothing, and that Venezuela also gains by receiving everything from cattle to medical equipment in exchange for oil shipments to Latin American countries.
Citgo said its discounted heating oil will benefit some 1.2 million Americans in 17 U.S. states this winter, including Indians in Alaska, some of whom were flown to New York and attended the ceremony in traditional dress. They performed a dance and offered Chavez a walrus figurine carved out of whale bone as a gift.
''This will go a long way for a lot of families,'' said Ian Erlich, a leader of the Alaska Intertribal Council who said many struggle to afford heating oil where he lives in Kotzebue, Alaska, north of the Artic Circle.
While the program started mainly in the Northeast last winter, this winter it is being expanded to Alaska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Virginia, Maryland, and the cities of Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh, Pa
Venezuela Asks UN to Compel U.S. to Extradite Terror Suspect
By Bill Varner
September 28, 2006
Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid
=20601086&sid=askRnXpAMA1w&refer=latin_america
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuela asked the United Nations to compel the U.S. to extradite terrorism suspect Luis Posada Carriles to face charges that he planned the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro Moros used a Security Council meeting on terrorism to seek the extradition of Posada Carriles, who is in U.S. custody on unrelated immigration charges. President Hugo Chavez has threatened to cut diplomatic ties with the U.S. unless Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born citizen of Venezuela, is turned over to Venezuela to face trial.
``The only way to get rid of the scourge of terrorism is to combat it in a truthful manner, however it seems as though for Mr. Bush and the U.S. government that there are good terrorists and bad terrorists,'' Maduro said. He said the U.S. is guilty of ``hypocrisy and double standards'' in the war on terror.
Maduro's remarks followed Chavez's speech last week to the UN General Assembly, in which he called U.S. President George W. Bush ``the devil'' and a ``world tyrant.'' The U.S. is trying to prevent Venezuela from winning a two-year term on the Security Council when the UN General Assembly elects five new members on Oct. 16.
``The U.S. government refuses to act legally against this terrorist,'' Maduro said, speaking of Posada Carriles. ``It is protecting him and there are strong possibilities for this terrorist to be let free in the coming days.''
Maduro said Posada escaped from a Venezuelan jail and fled to Central America, where he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency before entering the U.S. illegally. He said Posada has confessed to planting bombs that killed European tourists in Cuba.
The U.S. mission to the UN had no comment on the Posada Carriles case. Texas immigration Judge William Lee Abbot last year barred Posada Carriles's extradition to Venezuela or Cuba, saying there was no guarantee that Posada Carriles wouldn't be tortured if he was sent to either Latin American country.
[Remember that our military affairs editor, Stan Goff, had predicted this would be the outcome of the Iraq war from its outset. – MK]
Andrew Bacevich: Chickens are home to roost in Iraq
The Bush administration is running out of troops, money and ideas, warns Andrew Bacevich
September 27, 2006
The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20481756-7583,00.html
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
AS if by stealth, almost without our noticing, the Iraq war's long-awaited turning point has arrived. After the innumerable events touted as decisive that turned out to be anything but that - the capture of Saddam Hussein, the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the various milestones related to the creation of a new Iraqi political order - the end game now becomes clear. And the outcome points ineluctably towards an American failure of immense proportions.
Historians of the global war on terror will likely recall September 2006 as a pivotal moment. Throughout this month, chickens have come home to roost. Each has arrived bearing bad news for the Bush administration.
First came a pessimistic assessment of progress in Iraq's critical Anbar province, the main stronghold of the Sunni resistance. According to the senior US Marine intelligence officer in Anbar, the war there is not being won and without a substantial injection of additional coalition troops may soon become unwinnable.
In their efforts to downplay the significance of this critique, the best that senior US commanders can do is to redefine what they mean by victory. Success in Anbar, it turns out, no longer requires defeating the insurgents. It now means holding the line long enough for Iraqi security forces to have a go.
The second sign of a turning point came in the Iraqi capital. Administration leaders in Washington and commanders in the field have made no bones about the fact that winning "the battle of Baghdad" has emerged as their top priority. Yet the news coming from Baghdad throughout September has been almost uniformly bad. Despite a commitment of US reinforcements, violence in the capital has only worsened. Attacks have increased in frequency, Iraqi militias have become bolder and more defiant, and bodies are piling up everywhere, many showing gruesome signs of torture and mutilation. Baghdad today is not lost. But not even the most wild-eyed optimist can argue that it is being won.
September's third indicator of change comes courtesy of the punditocracy. William Kristol and Richard Lowry, editors of two leading US conservative magazines, The Weekly Standard and National Review respectively, both stalwart supporters of the war, jointly penned a much-noted opinion piece in The Washington Post on September 12, urging George W. Bush to leave no stone unturned in his efforts to win the fight for Baghdad. Kristol and Lowry claim to know exactly what the President needs to do: send more troops to Iraq, upping the ante and breaking the back of the insurgency.
Unfortunately, the hawkish journalists failed to note that there are no more troops left to send. The US Army and US Marine Corps are tapped out. The cupboard is bare. There's no calling for the cavalry: they are already in the fight and surrounded by Indians. The Kristol-Lowry commentary has had the unintended but salutary effect of revealing just how detached from reality members of the stay-the-course school have become. In a single small article, they have demolished whatever credibility remained among those who promoted this misguided war in the first place.
As if to reinforce that point, the hard-pressed US Army has begun signalling that it is fast approaching the end of its rope. This provides the fourth bit of evidence suggesting that things are coming to a head.
According to news reports this week, army chief-of-staff General Peter Schoomaker has refused to submit a budget plan for fiscal year 2008, rejecting as totally inadequate Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld's allocation of $US98.2billion ($130billion).
Schoomaker says that to stay afloat his service needs $US138.8billion, a whopping 41 per cent increase. Perhaps Schoomaker is staking out a negotiating position. Or perhaps he is casting a barely veiled vote of no-confidence in the Pentagon's senior leadership and the policies that are causing the army such distress.
To press the point home, a report appearing in The New York Times on Monday assessed the condition of the army's 3rd Infantry Division as its soldiers prepare for their third tour of duty in Iraq. The essence of the dispatch: this once-crack division is undermanned, inadequately trained and unready. Two of its four brigades don't even have tanks or other heavy equipment.
As the article makes clear, these deficiencies are becoming increasingly common across the army. (Anyone inclined to credit this story to the efforts of an enterprising reporter as opposed to senior military officers sending up signal flares doesn't understand civil-military politics in Washington.)
The final indicator is the most damning: the National Intelligence Estimate completed in April but leaked to the press in the past few days. An NIE represents the consensus of judgment among the 16 agencies that make up the bureaucratically complex US intelligence community. In this instance, the judgment offered by the highly classified NIE can hardly be more devastating: far from reducing the threat posed by Islamic radicalism, the Iraq war is exacerbating that threat, recruiting new terrorists faster than the US and its allies can eliminate them. All the monumental efforts and sacrifices in Iraq have managed only to dig us deeper into our hole.
In Iraq, the Bush administration is running out of troops and running out of money. It has manifestly run out of ideas. This troubling reality is unlikely to impress Bush. A man resembling the character Pyle in Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American in that he, too, is "impregnably armoured by his good intentions and his ignorance", the President won't give an inch.
But the President just may be on the verge of making himself irrelevant.
Andrew Bacevich, a US Vietnam veteran and a contributing editor of The American Conservative, is professor of international relations at Boston University. He is the author of The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (Oxford, 2005).
China's Oil Deals With Iran, Myanmar Put It at Odds With U.S.
By William Mellor and Le-Min Lim
September 27, 2006
Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=aObYnsr7rchs&refer=energy
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Sept. 27 (Bloomberg) -- In a steamy jungle clearing in Myanmar, a lone drilling rig topped by limp red flags bears testimony to China's insatiable thirst for oil.
A century ago, British-owned Burmah Oil Co. made a fortune for its shareholders from oil fields that lie beneath the teak forests and golden-spired Buddhist pagodas of the country formerly known as Burma. In today's Myanmar -- a military dictatorship under Western economic sanctions -- there's little hope of striking another gusher, says Ma Guiming, 36, a stocky, crew-cutted project leader for China National Petroleum Corp.
``Gou qiang,'' Ma says of the search for oil, using a Beijing slang term that literally means it will be chokingly difficult. ``But we have no choice. This is something we have to do.''
As recently as 1992, China was self-sufficient in oil. Today, the world's most-populous country is importing 40 percent of its needs -- a figure that will rise to 75 percent by 2025, the U.S. Department of Energy predicts.
China's oil consumption has almost quadrupled to 7.4 million barrels a day, making China the No. 2 consumer, behind the U.S. and ahead of Japan. As demand soars, production at China's biggest oil field, Daqing, is in decline. ``There's no gentle way of saying this,'' says Han Wenke, 51, deputy director of the Beijing- based Energy -Research Institute, an arm of China's planning ministry. ``We need to find oil fast.''
In its search, China is scouring the backwaters of the world, from monsoon-lashed Myanmar to the deserts of Iran, to the deep seas off Sudan and North Korea, cutting deals with nations the U.S. and many other countries consider pariahs.
Collision Course
China's oil diplomacy is putting the country on a collision course with the U.S. and Western Europe, which have imposed sanctions on some of the countries where China is doing business. ``China is so desperate for energy resources that they will take the heat from the international community,'' says Mike Green, an analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Case in point: Iran. The U.S. and Europe are pushing the United Nations to impose sanctions because of its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment programs. Although China, a permanent member of the Security Council, supported the U.N.'s demand that Iran curtail the program, it has threatened to veto any measures imposing sanctions.
``This is the first test of whether the world can influence China, or China influence the world,'' Green says.
Competing for Reserves
Around the globe, from Angola to Venezuela, China is locked in competition for oil resources with Western nations and another emerging-market giant, India. Jaspal Singh, a Washington-based World Bank adviser, compares this struggle with the Great Game: the 19th-century rivalry between the British and Russian empires in Central Asia. ``The world is entering the post, post-Cold War era, where securing a stable energy supply will be the main theme of the Great Game,'' he says.
China's top oil official, Zhang Guobao, says the U.S. and China should cooperate on some oil and gas projects. ``We share the responsibility of ensuring energy security and the stability of the international oil market,'' Zhang, 59, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, told a U.S.-China forum in Hangzhou in September.
China's search for oil is driven by its growing economic might. Over the past 28 years, China's economy has grown at an average of 9.7 percent a year; in the quarter ended in June, it grew at 11.3 percent.
Middle Class
The booming economy has created a middle class of about 50 million people that demands consumer goods. In 1983, there were no private cars in China. Last year, China was the third-biggest vehicle market, after the U.S. and Japan, with sales of 5.7 million cars, trucks and buses, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
By 2015, the number of cars and trucks on China's roads will more than triple to 100 million from 31 million today, according to New York-based consulting firm McKinsey & Co.
Predictions like that are adding to the pressure on oil prices, which have almost tripled since 2000, to $65.90 a barrel on Sept. 26. ``China is a big factor in driving prices to current levels,'' says John Koh, 43, who helps manage $950 million in Hong Kong at Daiwa Asset Management, a unit of Japan's second-biggest securities company, which owns shares in China's three main oil companies. ``It's not just due to consumption, but projected future demand.''
In the first eight months of 2006, China imported 504,444 barrels a day from Angola, its largest supplier; 473,384 barrels from Saudi Arabia, 342,217 barrels from Iran and 331,420 barrels from Russia. ``I see China and the U.S. coming into conflict over energy in the years ahead,'' says Jin Riguang, 73, a Chinese government oil and gas adviser and member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
Security Concerns
Already last year, U.S. lawmakers cited national security concerns when they rejected an $18.5 billion cash bid by Cnooc Ltd., China's No. 3 oil company, for El Segundo, California-based Unocal Corp.
Lawmakers claimed that Cnooc, which is 66 percent state owned via its parent, China National Offshore Oil Corp., is really the Chinese government, and said that allowing it to own Unocal could endanger U.S. oil supplies. Chevron Corp., the No. 2 U.S. oil company, eventually bought Unocal for $17.8 billion in cash and stock.
Nowhere is the potential for clashes with the U.S. more evident than in China's dealings with Iran. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an Islamic fundamentalist, was elected president in June 2005, Hu Jintao, China's president, was among the first to send congratulations.
Hezbollah Ties
Under Ahmadinejad, Iran has supplied arms to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon and begun uranium enrichment programs. And last summer, Ahmadinejad called the Nazi Holocaust an ``excuse'' by the nations that won World War II to keep Germans ashamed.
China's second-biggest oil company, China Petrochemical Corp., also known as Sinopec Group, signed a preliminary agreement in 2004 to buy a 51 percent stake in Iran's Yadavaran oil field, located in the Western Kurdistan province near the border with Iraq.
If completed, the deal would also allow China to buy 150,000 barrels of Iranian crude a day at market rates for 25 years as well as 250 million tons of liquefied natural gas. China could pay Iran as much as $100 billion for the stake and the purchases of oil and gas over 25 years.
`Unstable Countries'
The Iran agreement should give investors in China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., the New York Stock Exchange-listed unit of Sinopec, pause, CSIS's Green says. ``These are unstable countries, and if I was a shareholder in Chinese oil companies, I would be asking if it's worth the risk,'' he says.
Beijing-based Sinopec Group and its listed subsidiary, known as Sinopec Corp., also operate in Angola, Canada, Colombia, India, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
``Everyone thinks we have the country's backing,'' says Zhou Baixiu, Beijing-based head of Sinopec Group's overseas oil exploration and production unit. ``Well, we don't. We make our decisions as a company, and we operate like any normal company. People are making too big a deal of what we are doing abroad.''
Sinopec Corp. is 71 percent owned by Sinopec Group, which is 100 percent state owned.
Most of China's most-controversial oil assets are held by state-owned parent companies, which in turn control the publicly traded companies, allowing U.S. investors to buy shares in companies whose parents are operating where sanctions are in place. The public companies and their parents often have the same slate of senior executives.
`Better for Business'
Mark Mobius, who manages $30 billion of emerging-market shares at Templeton Asset Management in Singapore, says he has no objection to Chinese companies or their parents dealing with states such as Iran and Myanmar.
``It's better for businesses to deal with them if it means raising the socioeconomic status of these countries,'' he says. ``By not dealing with them, one can't bring about change.''
Mobius, 70, says he owns shares of Cnooc, Sinopec and PetroChina Co., China's biggest listed oil company, in equal quantities and intends to hold on to them. ``Ultimately, it's the Chinese government that's in control,'' he says. ``The parent companies are quite profit oriented. So far, we have been very pleased with that.''
China has no option but to deal with regimes the U.S. disapproves of, says Guan Bin, a Beijing-based analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co., the world's third-biggest securities firm. ``China is a latecomer to the oil exploration scene, and the choicest, most- productive areas have been taken by the BPs and Shells of this world,'' Guan says.
Long Negotiations
The countries China is dealing with aren't easy partners. Talks between Iran and Sinopec about the Yadavaran field purchase have stalled, Sinopec Group President Chen Tonghai said in March. On Aug. 24, when asked by Bloomberg News at a press conference what progress had been made, Chen, 57, replied, ``Still negotiating, still negotiating.''
On Sept. 11, Sinopec Group Vice Chairman Zhang Yaocang said that his company had agreed to provide engineering services at Yadavaran.
Mehdi Bazargan, managing director of Iran's state-owned Petroleum Engineering & Development Co., which supervises foreign projects, says China doesn't get any special favors in Iran. ``In general, Chinese companies are eager to work in Iran and invest in oil projects, and we welcome this under competitive conditions,'' he said in an e-mail reply to questions. ``For us, the fundamental principles are competitive conditions.''
Paying Premiums
To ensure they get deals, Chinese companies have been paying premiums for the oil fields and companies they buy, says Jonathan Woetzel, a Shanghai-based McKinsey director. In Nigeria, Cnooc ended up paying $2.7 billion, 19 percent more than it originally said it would, for an offshore block.
``On average, the country's national oil companies pay at least 10 percent more for foreign reserves than major international oil companies do,'' Woetzel says.
In the past five years, Chinese oil companies have spent $15 billion buying oil fields and oil companies in 100 countries, according to an August report by McKinsey.
Among those deals are some less-controversial ones closer to home, in Russia and Central Asia. Last year, China National Petroleum paid $4.18 billion for PetroKazakhstan Inc., a company that produces about 12 percent of the crude in Kazakhstan, which borders China and has more oil reserves than the U.S.
Pipeline Deals
In August, PetroChina said it would pay $2.74 billion to buy 67 percent of PetroKazakhstan from its parent. Last December, the first direct China-Kazakhstan pipeline was opened. China and Russia, the world's second-biggest oil producer, are also negotiating a cross-border pipeline.
China's oil investments haven't been hurting oil company stock prices. Shares of PetroChina surged 29 percent this year, to 8.17 Hong Kong dollars on Sept. 26 from HK$6.35, compared with a 16 percent rise in the benchmark Hang Seng Index in the same period.
On Aug. 23, PetroChina, whose parent, China National Petroleum, owns stakes in oil fields in Myanmar and Sudan, reported that first-half profit rose 29 percent to a record 80.7 billion yuan ($10 billion) from 62.4 billion yuan.
PetroChina's second-largest shareholder is Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which owns just over 1 percent of the company; state-owned China National Petroleum owns 90 percent. Buffett, 76, wasn't available to comment for this article, according to Debbie Bosanek, his spokeswoman.
Since 1996, China National Petroleum has been developing oil fields in Sudan, where 300,000 people have died and 2 million have been made homeless in the civil war in Darfur -- a conflict the UN has described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
Fields Off Sudan
Last year, China National Petroleum won the right to develop Sudan's first offshore fields in the Red Sea. The company said it produced 329,000 barrels a day in Sudan last year and also owns 50 percent of an oil refinery in Sudan's capital, Khartoum.
China National Petroleum said it wouldn't include the Sudan assets in PetroChina when it listed the company on the New York Stock Exchange in 2000.
At the UN, China has repeatedly blocked sanctions against Sudan and opposed plans to force President Umar Hassan al-Bashir to accept a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur.
China has extended its oil diplomacy throughout Africa, the source of 30 percent of its imports. In April, President Hu, at the end of a state visit to the U.S., stopped off in Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer; Morocco; and Kenya.
In June, Hu's No. 2, Premier Wen Jiabao, visited Angola, Egypt, Ghana, Republic of the Congo, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. The leaders and other Chinese politicians offered their hosts multibillion-dollar loans and new oil refineries, railways and roads.
Largesse for Angola
A leading beneficiary of that largesse is the former Portuguese colony of Angola, scene of a civil war that killed as many as 1.5 million people from 1975 to 2002, according to CIA figures.
When the fighting stopped, the government in Luanda sought International Monetary Fund and World Bank loans to rebuild. After initially agreeing to an IMF program, Angola cut off negotiations last year, when the IMF insisted on knowing more about how it was spending its $10 billion in annual oil revenue. Angola, which ranks among the world's most-corrupt nations, according to Berlin- based research group Transparency International, turned instead to China.
Railroads for Nigeria
China's state-owned Export-Import Bank offered Angola a $2 billion loan in 2004; during Wen's visit in June, that loan was increased to $4.4 billion, according to the state-owned Angola Press Agency. Last year, Sinopec Corp. teamed up with Angola's state-owned oil producer, Sonangol SA, and other partners to make a $2.4 billion winning bid for offshore oil blocks in Angola, where it competes with BP Plc, Exxon Mobil Corp., Total SA and Chevron. Angola, which has the world's 19th-largest oil reserves, is the No. 7 supplier of oil to the U.S.
Nigeria has also scored big from deals with China, which has pledged $2 billion to improve one of the country's four oil refineries and invest in other projects, such as a railroad, according to Tony Chukwueke, head of Nigeria's Department of Petroleum Resources.
In April, Cnooc won a 45 percent stake in Nigeria's offshore Akpo field with a $2.7 billion bid. Its rivals for the stake included India's state-owned Oil & Natural Gas Corp., which pulled out after its government said the deal was too risky.
Overtures in Venezuela
China has also made overtures to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, a critic of the U.S. In August, Chavez visited Chinese leaders in Beijing and announced that he wanted to triple oil exports to China in a bid to reduce his country's dependence on the U.S. market, which currently buys two-thirds of Venezuela's exports.
Chavez said China would invest $2 billion in the country's oil industry and $9 billion to help Venezuela build a 1,000- kilometer (621-mile) railroad.
Whatever the deal achieves, it's unlikely to be profits, says James Brock, a senior adviser in Beijing for Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Cambridge Energy Research Associates Inc.
While China can sell Venezuela tankers and rigs at 30-40 percent less than Japan, Singapore or South Korea, Brock says, Venezuelan oil is heavy in metals and sulfur and unsuitable for existing Chinese refineries. The distance between South America and China would also make the cost of refining the oil prohibitive, he says.
China's ability to link oil deals with government-funded investments in construction projects gives it a big advantage over Western rivals, says Antony Goldman, a London-based independent oil consultant specializing in Africa.
North Korean Deals
``It's not the kind of thing Chevron and Shell, with their obligations to shareholders, can do,'' Goldman, 39, says. ``What's different about China is that it can operate in ways its commercial rivals in the West simply can't.''
Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell Plc would also have a problem dealing with North Korea, which is under U.S. sanctions and is facing UN Security Council demands that it suspend its missile program. Not China.
In June, Chinese government spokesman Liu Jianchao disclosed that China had agreed to jointly explore for oil and gas in the Bo Hai Sea, an oil-rich expanse of water between the Korean peninsula and northeastern China. The sea holds 1.5 billion barrels of oil, or 8 percent of China's proven reserves, according to the U.S. energy department. Both PetroChina and Cnooc own exploration stakes in the area. Liu gave no other details of the deal.
U.S. companies are also barred by government prohibition from making new investments, selling arms or offering financial services in Myanmar, which is also under EU sanctions.
Political Prisoners
After the military massacred 3,000 pro-democracy supporters following a student-led uprising in 1988, the U.S. withdrew its ambassador and has since been represented by a charge d'affaires. More than 1,000 political prisoners remain in Myanmar's jails. Torture, rape and forced labor are rife, according to a U.S. State Department report to Congress in April. So are AIDS, malaria and avian flu.
Myanmar's most-prominent citizen, Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the democratic opposition, remains in solitary confinement 16 years after her party, the National League for Democracy, won elections with 82 percent of the vote. Oxford-educated Suu Kyi, 61, is the daughter of Aung San, an independence hero whose statue can be found in almost every Myanmar town.
Drugs Trade
Since the military seized power in a coup in 1962, Myanmar has been better known for producing drugs than oil. It's the world's No. 2 producer of opium and heroin, after Afghanistan, according to a U.S. government report posted on the embassy Web site, and one of Asia's leading exporters of amphetamine-type stimulants.
The country has become so impoverished that it ranks among the world's 50-least-developed nations, the U.N. says. Gross domestic product per capita is $1,800, less than that of Bangladesh. No Western banks have branches in Myanmar; since 2003, the government has closed three of the local ones after they were accused of laundering drug money.
Even though the country produces 10,000 barrels of oil a day, according to Total, gasoline is scarce. Officially priced at $1 a gallon, it's virtually unobtainable except on the black market -- at three times the official price.
Soros's View
``Burma, like many resource-rich countries with bad governance, suffers from a 'resource curse' -- where the profits from an abundance of oil, gas and minerals help prop up authoritarian rule instead of being used to help its impoverished citizens,'' says George Soros, chairman of New York-based Soros Fund Management LLC, which oversees the $9.6 billion Quantum Endowment hedge fund.
Soros, 76, founded the philanthropic Burma Project, which supports democratic change and has spent $12 million on education and training for Burmese, mostly among the 120,000 refugees on the Thai and Indian borders.
Interfering foreigners are not welcome in Myanmar. Directly opposite the U.S. embassy, a former colonial mansion fronted by a security barrier of oil drums, the regime has placed a sign declaring, ``Crush all internal and external destructive elements.''
The same sign stands at the entrance to University Avenue, where Suu Kyi is imprisoned in solitary confinement behind the wooden fence surrounding her now dilapidated lakeside home. Myanmar's capital, Yangon, a city of once-grand British colonial- era buildings, is crumbling.
Moving the Capital
Rather than restoring it, the military junta led by army general Than Shwe, 76, suddenly announced last November that it has been secretly building a new capital city in the jungle 400 kilometers to the north.
Opponents of the regime say there's little hope of change for the better. ``With Burma, the pessimist will always win the game,'' says Aung Zaw, 38, a former leader of the 1988 student revolt who now runs a campaigning magazine and Web site, The Irrawaddy, from his exile base in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Still, Western companies -- including Paris-based Total and its minority partner, San Ramon, California-based Chevron -- are exploiting Myanmar's gas at an offshore field called Yadana.
Total and Chevron, which inherited its stake when it acquired Unocal, aren't in breach of U.S. and European sanctions because they were there before Myanmar was declared an international outcast by the West. Korea's Daewoo Corp. also has a stake in a separate field.
Competition From Neighbors
Now, Myanmar's three closest neighbors, China, India and Thailand, are competing for slices of the rest. China, Myanmar's largest trading partner, has also proposed oil and gas pipelines from the port of Sittwe to southwestern China's Yunnan province.
In addition to providing a new source of oil and gas, pipelines through Myanmar would allow China an alternative importation route and make it less reliant on the shipping lanes of the Malacca Strait, a notoriously congested choke point that could easily become blocked by accident or design.
Since 2001, small exploration teams from China National Petroleum, Cnooc, Sinopec and a China National Petroleum subsidiary, Chinnery Assets Ltd., have been looking for oil and gas. When China National Petroleum's Unit 70155 arrived in Myanmar, its 30 members went to an oil field near the 4,000 ruined temples of Bagan, one of Southeast Asia's major historical sites.
When no oil was found there, they moved their camp outside of Pyay, a sleepy, pagoda-dotted town beside the broad, brown Irrawaddy River, 300 kilometers north of Yangon.
In June, just as the wet season set in and the 30-kilometer track leading to the main Yangon-Pyay road became boggy, Ma Guiming and his crew set up their rig and camp of converted shipping containers. By mid-August, with the clearing turned into a mud bath, they had drilled 1,000 meters (3,281 feet).
Ma says he'll know before the end of the year whether a shadow found on seismic surveys is a reservoir of oil. Even if Unit 70155 strikes a gusher, it will be only a drop compared with China's overpowering thirst for oil.
To contact the reporters on this story: William Mellor in Beijing at wmellor@bloomberg.net Le-Min Lim in Hong Kong at lmlim@bloomberg.net .
A Tortured Debate
By Molly Ivins
Printed September 29, 2006
AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/story/42018/
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Some country is about to have a Senate debate on a bill to legalize torture. How weird is that?
I'd like to thank Sens. John McCain, Lindsay Graham -- a former military lawyer -- and John Warner of Virginia. I will always think fondly of John Warner for this one reason: Forty years ago, this country was involved in an unprovoked and unnecessary war. It ended so badly the vets finally had to hold their own homecoming parade, years after they came home. The only member of Congress who attended was John Warner.
A debate on torture. I don't know -- what do you think? I guess we have to define it, first. The White House has already specified "water boarding," making some guy think he's drowning for long periods, as a perfectly good interrogation technique. Maybe, but it was also a great favorite of the Gestapo and has been described and condemned in thousands of memoirs and novels in highly unpleasant terms.
I don't think we can give it a good name again, and I personally kind of don't like being identified with the Gestapo. How icky. (Somewhere inside me, a small voice is shrieking, "Are you insane?")
The safe position is, "Torture doesn't work."
Well, actually, it works to this extent -- anybody can be tortured into telling anything that's true and anything that's not true. The more people are tortured, the more they make up to please the torturer. Then the torturer has to figure out when the vic started lying. Since our torturers are, in George Bush's immortal phrase, "professionals" and this whole legislative fight is over making torture legal so the "professionals" can't later be charged with breaking the Geneva Conventions, Bush has vowed to end "the program" completely if he doesn't get what he wants. (The same thin voice is shrieking, "Professional torturers trained with my tax money?")
Bush's problem is that despite repeated warnings, he went ahead with "the program" without waiting for Congress to provide a fig leaf of legality. Actually, we have been torturing prisoners at Gitmo, prisons in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan for years.
Since only seven of the several hundred prisoners at Gitmo have ever been charged with anything, we face the unhappy prospect that the rest of them are innocent. And will sue. That's going to be quite an expensive settlement. The Canadian upon whom we practiced "rendition," sending him to Syria for 10 months of torture, will doubtlessly be first on the legal docket. I wonder how high up the chain of command a civil suit can go? Any old war criminals wandering around?
I was interested to find that the Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition is so in favor of torture he told McCain that the senator either supports the torture bill or he can forget about the evangelical Christian vote. I'd like to see an evangelical vote on that one. I don't know how Sheldon defines traditional values, but deliberately inflicting terrible physical pain or stress on someone who is completely helpless strikes me as ... well, torture. And, um, wrong.
And I've smoked dope! Boy, everything those conservatives tell us about the terrible moral values of us liberals must be true after all. Now, in addition to the slightly surreal awakening to find we live in a country that's having a serious debate on a torture bill, can we do anything about it? The answer is: We better.
We better do something about it. Now, right away. What do we do? The answer is: anything ... phone, fax, e-mail, mail, demonstrate -- go stand outside their offices or the nearest federal building in the cold and sing hymns or shout rude slogans, chant or make a speech, or start attacking federal property, like a postal box, so they have to arrest you. Gather peacefully and make a lot of noise. Get publicity, too.
How will you feel if you didn't do something? "Well, honey, when the United States decided to adopt torture as an official policy, I was dipping the dog for ticks."
As Ann Richards used to say, "I don't want my tombstone to read: 'She kept a clean house.'"
Molly Ivins writes about politics, Texas and other bizarre happenings.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/42018/
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