by DGR News Service | Sep 10, 2019 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Human Supremacy
Image: PRO MIMAROPA
by Liam Campbell
Forest ranger Bienvinido “Toto” Veguilla, Jr. was murdered last week while attempting to stop illegal loggers from ransacking a section of forest in the Philippines. Veguilla was on a routine patrol in the Sitio Kinawagan, Barangay Pasadeña region when he and fellow rangers discovered a group of illegal loggers using a chainsaw and other equipment to destroy the ecosystem for profit. After confiscating their equipment Veguilla and his team departed for their station, but were followed by the illegal loggers and eventually attacked. Unfortunately, Veguilla was unable to escape and was hacked to death by approximately six men.
Veguilla’s murder is a great loss to conservation efforts in the Philippines; he was known as one of the most diligent, hardworking, and courageous members of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). He is not the first ranger to be murdered — in 2017, captain Ruben Arzaga was also murdered by illegal loggers in retaliation for his conservation efforts.
These brave individuals and their colleagues risk their lives on a daily basis to protect Earth’s dwindling ecosystems against destruction, often facing death threats and severe retaliation. Sometimes it is easy for environmental activists in priveleged countries to lose sight of the brutal realities facing their comrades in other parts of the world. Next time you hear someone moralizing about the virtues or necessity of pacifism, remember that those notions are an extreme luxury and that the individuals who preach those sermons are generally far removed from risking life or limb.
by DGR News Service | Jul 30, 2019 | Direct Action, Reclamation & Expropriation
Editor’s note: DGR is not affiliated with the Secret Forest Society (Sociedade Secreta Silvestre) and does not endorse their statements or actions. This article is only for informational purposes. Some content in this article was sourced from the Rio Times Online.
by Liam Campbell
Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s openly fascist President, is loathed by groups who care about preventing climate collapse and protecting the Earth’s last healthy ecosystems. According to the Guardian, Bolsonaro’s policies are now resulting in 3 football fields per minute of rainforest destruction, and scientists fear that the Amazon is reaching a critical tipping point, beyond which it will be impossible to save. If that “point of no return” is breached it will result in massive forest fires, which will release an immense amount of sequested CO2 into the atmosphere, accelerating climate collapse and annihilating one of the Earth’s sources of oxygen. Violence is also increasing and loggers have begun killing indigenous leaders and resistors from the over 400 tribes who call the forest home. Bolsonaro has overseen major funding cuts and firings at the Brazilian indigenous affair agency, which has gutted the few remaining governmental protections for these people.
Presumably this is why the Secret Forest Society (Sociedade Secreta Silvestre) have now targeted Bolsonaro for assassination. Two weeks ago, Veja Magazine interviewed one of the leaders of the Secret Forest Society (SSS), a branch of an international organization called the Individuals Tending Toward the Wild (ITS). The leader, identified as Anhangá, claimed that Bolsonaro was supposed to be executed on the day of his inauguration, but they were temporarily foiled by an unexpected security presence. Since then Bolsonaro has cancelled several key events, including an open car parade. Anhangá stated “We could easily blend in and carry out this attack, but the risk was enormous (…), so it would be suicidal. We didn’t want that.”
It is unclear how or when the Secret Forest Society plans to assassinate Jair Bolsonaro, but their affiliates in the ITS have been linked to letter bombs, University explosions, and the successful assassination of a biotechnology researcher. Their organization claims to stand up against people and systems that lead to environmental destruction, and they advocate for using extreme measures against nature’s enemies.
An excerpt from the book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet, Chapter 13: “Tactics and Targets.”
This leads us to the last major underground tactic: assassination.
In talking about assassination (or any attack on humans) in the context of resistance, two key questions must be asked. First, is the act strategically beneficial, that is, would assassination further the strategy of the group? Second, is the act morally just, given the person in question? (The issue of justice is necessarily particular to the target; it’s assumed that the broader strategy incorporates aims to increase justice.)
As is shown on my two-by-two grid of all combinations (see Figure 13-3), an assassination may be strategic and just, it may be strategic and unjust, it may be unstrategic but just, or it may be both unstrategic and unjust. Obviously, any action in the last category would be out of the question. Any action in the strategic and just category could be a good bet for an armed resistance movement. The other two categories are where things get complex.
Hitler exemplified a number of different strategy vs. justice combinations at different points in time. It’s a common moral quandary to ask whether it would be a good idea to go back in time and kill Hitler as a child, provided time travel were possible. There’s a good bet that this would have averted World War II and the Holocaust, which would have been a good thing, so put a check mark in the “strategic” column. The problem is that most people would consider it unjust to murder an innocent child who had yet to commit any crimes, so it would be difficult to call that action just in the immediate sense.
Once Hitler had risen to power in the late 1930s, though, his aim was clear, as he had already been whipping up hate and expanding his control of Nazi Germany. At that point, it would have been both strategic and just to assassinate him. Indeed, elements in the Wehrmacht (army) and the Abwehr (intelligence) considered it, because they knew what Hitler was planning to do. Unfortunately, they were indecisive, and did not commit to the plan. Hitler soon began invading Germany’s neighbors, and as his popularity soared, the assassination plan was shelved. It was years before inside elements would actually stage an assassination attempt.
That famous attempt took place—and failed—on July 20, 1944.
What’s interesting is that the Allies were also considering an attempt on Hitler’s life, which they called Operation Foxley. They knew that Hitler routinely went on walks alone in a remote area, and devised a plan to parachute in two operatives dressed as German officers, one of them a sniper, who would lay in wait and assassinate Hitler when he walked by. The plan was never enacted because of internal controversy. Many in the SOE and British government believed that Hitler was a poor strategist, a maniac whose overreach would be his downfall. If he were assassinated, they believed, his replacement (likely Himmler) would be a more competent leader, and this would draw out the war and increase Allied losses. In the opinion of the Allies it was unquestionably just to kill Hitler, but no longer strategically beneficial (Figure 13-4).
There is no shortage of situations where assassination would have been just, but of questionable strategic value. Resistance groups pondering assassination have many questions to ask themselves in deciding whether they are being strategic or not. What is the value of this potential target to the enemy? Is this an exceptional person or does his or her influence come from his or her role in the organization? Who would replace this person, and would that person be better or worse for the struggle? Will it make any difference on an organizational scale or is the potential target simply an interchangeable cog? Uniquely valuable individuals make uniquely valuable targets for assassination by resistance groups.
Of course, in a military context (and this overlaps with attacks on troops), snipers routinely target officers over enlisted soldiers. In theory, officers or enlisted soldiers are standardized and replaceable, but, in practice, officers constitute more valuable targets. There’s a difference between theoretical and practical equivalence; there might be other officers to replace an assassinated one, but the replacement might not arrive in a timely manner nor would he have the experience of his predecessor (experience being a key reason that Michael Collins assassinated intelligence officers). That said, snipers don’t just target officers. Snipers target any enemy soldiers available, because war is essentially about destroying the other side’s ability to wage war.
The benefits must also outweigh costs or side effects. Resistance members may be captured or killed in the attempt. Assassination also provokes a major response—and major reprisals—because it is a direct attack on those in power. When SS boss Reinhard Heydrich (“the butcher of Prague”) was assassinated in 1942, the Nazis massacred more than 1,000 Czech people in response. In Canada, martial law (via the War Measures Act) has only ever been declared three times—during WWI and WWII, and again after the assassination of the Quebec Vice Premier of Quebec by the Front de Libération du Québec. Remember, aboveground allies may bear the brunt of reprisals for assassinations, and those reprisals can range from martial law and police crackdowns to mass arrests or even executions.
There’s an important distinction to be made between assassination as an ideological tactic versus as a military tactic. As a military tactic, employed by countless snipers in the history of war, assassination decisively weakens the adversary by killing people with important experience or talents, weakening the entire organization. Assassination as an ideological tactic—attacking or killing prominent figures because of ideological disagreements—almost always goes sour, and quickly. There are few more effective ways to create martyrs and trigger cycles of violence without actually accomplishing anything decisive. The assassination of Michael Collins, for example, by his former allies led only to bloody civil war.
by DGR News Service | Jul 23, 2019 | Direct Action, Education, Strategy & Analysis
Editor’s note: this article contains extensive excerpts from the Irish Republican Army’s Green Book, one of their key training documents during their 20th-century struggle against British occupation.
Written by Liam Campbell
“Don’t be seen in public marches, demonstrations or protests. Don’t be seen in the company of known Republicans, don’t frequent known Republican houses. Your prime duty is to remain unknown to the enemy forces and the public at large.”
Like all successful underground organisations, the Irish Republican Army maintained a strict firewall between their aboveground and underground movements, this ensured that publicly identifiable individuals could not be pressured into revealing underground militants, providing a certain level of safety for both groups. The Irish Republican Army also emphasized the importance of abstaining from alcohol or other drugs, which they identified as the single greatest threat to any guerilla organisation.
“Many in the past have joined the Army out of romantic notions, or sheer adventure, but when captured and jailed they had after-thoughts about their allegiance to the Army. They realised at too late a stage that they had no real interest in being volunteers. This causes splits and dissension inside prisons and divided families and neighbours outside.”
When recruiting, the Irish Republican Army recognised that successful underground members had certain characteristics; they were intelligent, reliable, and they were capable of giving their total allegiance to the cause. These characteristics ensured that they would consistently obey often difficult orders from the chain of command, regardless of the personal cost, and despite any personal issues they may have with their superior officers. Certain qualities could disqualify a person as a candidate: emotionalism, sensationalism, and adventurism were among them.
“The enemy, generally speaking, are all those opposed to our short-term or long-term objectives. But having said that, we must realise that all our enemies are not the same and therefore there is no common cure for their enmity. The conclusion then is that we must categorise and then suggest cures for each category. Some examples: We have enemies through ignorance, through our own fault or default and of course the main enemy is the establishment.”
One of the most essential features of the Green Book was the precision with which it defined enemies. You cannot wage a successful war if your targets are poorly defined. The Irish Republican Army identified three categories of enemy:
Enemies through ignorance are those individuals who can be cured through education. Tactics included marches, demonstrations, wall slogans, press statements, publications, and person-to-person communication. The Green Book stressed that self education was essential, which included ideological understanding and also tactical knowledge about how to organise large groups of people and how to successfully execute different actions.
Enemies through our own fault are the ones created by the Irish Republican Army’s actions, which includes personal conduct and the collective conduct of the movement. These enemies vary greatly. The elderly woman whose door was pulled off its hinges by an IRA member evading capture who doesn’t receive an immediate apology and recompense, the family and friends of an informer who has been punished without their being notified of the reason, and also the collateral victims of violence.
Members of the establishment who consciously take actions to maintain the status quo in politics, media, policing, and business. Although some of these enemies are clearly identifiable, most of them operate with various degrees of anonymity as bureaucratic cogs in a vast machine of oppression; this means that one of the greatest challenges is accurately identifying establishment members. Surprisingly, execution is not always the best way to make a member of the establishment ineffective, often it is better to expose them as liars, hypocrites, collaborators, or subjects of public ridicule.
“Many figures of speech have been used to describe Guerrilla Warfare, one of the most apt being ‘The War of the Flea’ which conjured up the image of a flea harrying a creature of by comparison elephantine size into fleeing (forgive the pun). Thus it is with a Guerrilla Army such as the I.R.A. which employs hit and run tactics against the Brits while at the same time striking at the soft economic underbelly of the enemy, not with the hope of physically driving them into the sea but nevertheless expecting to effect their withdrawal by an effective campaign of continuing harassment contained in a fivefold guerrilla strategy.”
The Irish Republican Army’s strategy included a war of attrition, the destruction of high-value assets, to make large regions ungovernable, to sustain a propaganda campaign, and to protect the movement against criminals, collaborators, and informers. The Green Book emphasized that volunteers need to achieve more than just killing enemy personnel, they must also create and maintain support systems that would not only carry the movement through the war, but would also facilitate a smooth transition after military victory had been achieved.
“Most volunteers are arrested on or as a result of a military operation. This causes an initial shock resulting in tension and anxiety. All volunteers feel that they have failed, resulting in a deep sense of disappointment. The police are aware of this feeling of disappointment and act upon this weakness by insults such as “you did not do very well: you are only an amateur: you are only second-class or worse”. While being arrested the police use heavy-handed `shock` tactics in order to frighten the prisoner and break down his resistance. The prisoner is usually dragged along the road to the waiting police wagon, flung into it, followed by the arresting personnel, e.g., police or Army. On the journey to the detention centre the prisoner is kicked, punched and the insults start. On arrival he is dragged from the police wagon through a gauntlet of kicks, punches and insults and flung into a cell.”
Capture was one of the greatest fears that volunteers lived with on a daily basis, so the Green Book addressed these concerns in detail and prepared volunteers for that possibility. This section was broken down into the actual arrest, the interrogation, and the legal process. There were three categories of torture that volunteers could face: physical, subtle psychological, and humiliation. Physical torture often took the form of beatings, kicking, punching, and cigarette burns. Psychological torture could include threats to family, friends, and self, or threats of assassination and disfigurement. Humiliation included being stripped naked, remarks about the prisoner’s sexual organs, and removing symbolic defense mechanisms.
One of the ways the Green Book prepared volunteers was by reminding them that they could only be held and tortured for a maximum of 7 days. Although the experience would likely be horrific, it could only last for a relatively brief duration; if they confessed or capitulated during their interrogation they could easily face a lifetime in prison where they would experience much of the same torture. One of the coping strategies they employed was to form images in their minds or on the surrounding walls, directing their concentration away from the interrogators and diverting it toward positive or neutral ideas, even something as simple as a flickering candle or a leaf.
Overall, what the Green Book does is it clearly lays out the ideological foundations of the movement, the requirements of its volunteers, the methodology for identifying and categorising enemies, the tactics that should be employed, and it also addresses the greatest fears of volunteers and teaches them how to cope in the event that they must face them. These are the foundational psychological requirements that are needed to recruit and retain effective underground guerillas. They must know why they are taking action, what their actions will achieve, how to behave, who they are targeting, and they need to know that they will be able to overcome their fears should they need to face them.
by DGR News Service | Nov 21, 2018 | The Problem: Civilization
Editor’s note: We live in a world on the brink. As the climate crisis intensifies, racism and patriarchy rise and corporate control expands. What can be done? We Choose to Speak features a collection of essays by writer and organizer Max Wilbert exploring these topics and their solutions.
by Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance
The United States is a military empire that was built and is maintained by organized violence.
The origins of this country lie with the military conquest and either destruction or forced resettlement of indigenous people. Today, the modern American lifestyle is maintained, as Thomas Friedman (someone with whom I agree on very little) writes, by the “hidden fist” of the military.
“McDonalds cannot flourish without MacDonald Douglass,” Friedman wrote. “And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.”
I am reminded of this fact every August. August brings Seafair to Seattle, and with Seafair comes the Blue Angels, a Navy/Marines squadron of F/A-18 fighter bombers that travels the US each year, entertaining the public for an annual cost of $37 million.
As these jet aircraft roar overhead, I cover my ears and wince at the spectacle of widespread public adulation. These war machines are worshipped. Earlier today, I watched a five-year-old boy cheering and yelling “yee-haw” as the fighter formation shot overhead. Out on Lake Washington, a toxified remnant of what was once an ecological paradise, other Seattle residents on boats and rafts raised their hands towards the jets in supplication. As five aircraft passed directly overhead, I watched one white American man hold a can of beer above his face and pour the liquid directly down his throat.
For thousands of people, the roar of an F/A-18 fighter bomber is the last sound they ever heard. The F/A-18 aircraft played a major role during the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Between these two conflicts, more than a million civilians were killed—many of them in bombings. The same jet continues to be used in Syria, in Yemen, in Somalia, and elsewhere all around the world.
The US military uses its power to promote and protect a certain vision of prosperity and societal development. In 1948, George Kennan, then the Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department, wrote in Memo PPS23 that “[The United States has] about 50 percent of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 percent of its population… Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity…”
In the 70 years since Kennan wrote that memo, that “pattern of relationships” has been successfully devised and maintained. The US military is the largest in the world by expenditure, with more than $600 billion in annual funding and more than 2 million personnel (including reservists).
The true costs of this are incalculable. They range from the ecocidal, genocidal destruction of Vietnam and Cambodia to the horrors of Gulf War Syndrome to the toxic remnants of weapons manufactories in cities across the country. In Guatemala and El Salvador, the legacy of US-sponsored right-wing terrorism still echoes through a shattered society. In Nevada and across oceania, indigenous lands remain irradiated from decades of weapons testing, and nuclear waste which continues to leak into groundwater and seep into soils will remain deadly for hundreds of thousands of years.
As Friedman reminds us, military might and corporate power remain inextricably linked in creating consumer culture. We are reminded of this at Seafair, where sponsors include 76, Boeing, Starbucks, Amazon, Uber, Oracle, Microsoft, LG, Samsung, CapitalOne, and many others.
Each F/A-18 costs about $29 million, and is produced by Boeing, the second-largest weapons manufacturer in the world, one of the 100 largest companies in the world, with just under $100 billion in annual revenue. Seattle still fawns over Boeing, which brought so much wealth to this region, just as it now fawns over Amazon and Microsoft. Their digital products colonize our minds, just as Boeing’s weapons help control territory.
Seafair also includes public tours of two warships, the USS Momsen (an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer equipped with 96 missiles) and the USS Somerset (a $2 billion troop transport ship equipped to carry 600+ soldiers and vehicles into combat zones). As thousands of people file through the ships, exclaiming over the might of the empire, we must remember that the US military is also the single largest polluter in the world, responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than any other single entity.
Some people think that because I critique the US military and US empire, I must support this nation’s opponents. This logic is absurd. The Taliban and ISIS, the Nazi regime, the Stalinist Soviet state; US enemies have included countless reprehensible regimes. Repression must be fought, but this nation always has ulterior motives hidden behind humanitarian rhetoric. In the games of empire, the people and the planet are being sacrificed.
Our enemy is empire itself.
But despite my opposition to imperialist wars, I’m not a pacifist. A friend of mine, Vince Emanuele, served in the Marine Corps during the invasion of Iraq. He became disillusioned with the military, left the service, and became a leading voice of dissent against the war.
In the wake of one of the latest calls for mass regulation of firearms, he wrote:
“Sure, I’ll give up my guns, as soon as the NSA, CIA, FBI, DEA, ATF, police, military, and right-wing militias disarm themselves. Until then, my liberal, progressive, and “leftist” friends can eat tofu, watch MSNBC/Bill Moyers, and go fly a kite. Your collective commentary is akin to the “privileged white-classes” that you so often rail against.
Believe me, I’d love to live in a world without guns, violence, and so forth. But, I’m not naive enough to believe these things are going away anytime soon. This nation is extremely sick, twisted, undereducated, and plagued with an exploding prison population, growing inequality, and ever-expanding military empire and surveillance state. We should be expecting much more violence in the future, not less.
Clearly, within the context of rapid climate change, growing social ills, and a collapsing economic system, giving up your weaponry seems a bit insane and utterly naive. Interestingly, it’s the liberals and progressives, who’ve largely grown up in cosmopolitan/suburban areas, who sound like the spoiled little American brats we so often challenge.
If you’ve never carried, fired, cleaned, taken apart, or counted on a weapon to save your life, I suggest taking a more humble approach to this issue. Conversely, if you’ve only fired your daddy’s handgun, shotgun, and rifle in the backyard, I suggest scaling back the glorification of weapons and violence.
If I thought killing and warfare were fun, I would have stayed in the military–but I didn’t. If I though weapons were unnecessary, I wouldn’t own any–but I do.”
Perhaps it’s time for a people’s army—a left-wing guerilla force, grounded in feminism, anti-racism, and respect for human rights—to fight back against the imperialist empire, to bring the fight home and make CEOs and corporations and right-wing neofascists afraid again.
Interested readers can check out this and other radical books at BabylonApocalypse.org
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 16, 2018 | Colonialism & Conquest
by Lauren Smith
When it comes to the ruling elite’s corporate plunder and crimes against humanity, the U.S. national memory’s short and no one, not even its political henchmen, assume blame or suffer real consequences: take Halliburton and former chief executive and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney for example. Not only did Cheney plan and justify the invasion, occupation and pilferage of Iraq’s oil, gold bars and national museum treasures under treasonous false pretenses, but its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR Inc.), overcharged the U.S. taxpayer to a tune of more than $2 billion due to collusion engendered by sole source contracting methods and shoddy accounting procedures. It’s even forgotten that Cheney received a $34 million payout from Halliburton when he joined the Vice President ticket in 2000, in advance of his unscrupulous maneuvers, according to news commentator, Chris Matthews; because on November 5th 2018, in celebration of its 100-year anniversary, its chief executives rang the New York Stock Exchange’s (NYSE) opening bell.
Sadly, as a nation, the U.S. doesn’t recall Cheney’s lies, or his role in planning the contemptible “Shock and Awe” saturation bombing campaign that destroyed a sovereign nation, which posed no threat to the United States, and left the world’s cradle of civilization in ruins. Conveniently, it doesn’t recall the over 500,000 deaths from war related causes, as reported by the Huffington Post in its 2017 updated article; nor does it recall that obliterating Iraq’s government created a sociopolitical vacuum that enabled the exponential growth of the CIA’s unique brand of Islamofascism and its resulting terrorism, which has culminated in war-torn Syria and Yemen.
Iraq’s only “crime” against the United States, if you want to call it that, was being hogtied by Washington’s sanctions and embargo against it – in what can only be called a Catch 22 situation. Iraq couldn’t do business with U.S. corporations not because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to, but because the U.S. government effectively barred Iraq from doing so. This Catch 22 situation is presently being repeated in Venezuela and Iran in advance of its planned invasion and occupation.
Then there is the cost of war itself: according to The Costs of War project at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, “The wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq (the war in Pakistan refers to U.S. counterterrorism efforts there, such as drone strikes and other efforts against al Qaeda) cost $4.4 trillion. Included in the cost are: direct Congressional war appropriations; war-related increases to the Pentagon base budget; veterans care and disability; increases in the homeland security budget; interest payments on direct war borrowing; foreign assistance spending; and estimated future obligations for veterans’ care. By 2053, interest payments on the debt alone could reach over $7 trillion.”
Keep in mind that the U.S. taxpayer directly subsidizes the profits of the military industrial complex, and oil & gas industries. Yet, no U.S. protests against Halliburton are found in the media later than 2007. And, there are no organized disinvestment campaigns of record.
So Wall Street celebrates Halliburton’s 100-year anniversary with a clear conscience, because no one has graffitied its large four column wide sign or is disinvested from its stock. The nation only recalls, according to IBTimes, in their 2013 article on Iraq war contracts, that Halliburton’s subsidiary, KBR, had the most: KBR’s war contracts totaled $39.5 billion in just a decade.
Other than the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, which found Cheney and President Bush et al guilty of war crimes in absentia for the illegal invasion of Iraq, there remains no lasting acknowledgement in the U.S. consciousness of Cheney’s evil doings. Cheney had recent book deals and continues to ramble on with speaking engagements. He was scheduled by Cornell University to issue a keynote address as recent as May 2018. In short, the ruling elite protects those engaged in their dirty work until they prove unnecessary. In this regard, consider the fact that Saddam Hussein was a former CIA asset and a good corporate customer – as the weapons of mass destruction (WMD), he once possessed, were sold to him by the U.S. and Britain. However, according to the former United Nations (UN) chief weapon inspector, Scott Ritter, the UN destroyed Iraq’s stockpiles after the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991) – well before the 2003 invasion. This report was ignored because it contradicted the prevailing narrative that justified the invasion, occupation and looting of Iraq.
Just as the ruling elite engineered Saddam Hussein rise to power when he was useful, they ensured Cheney’s political ascent, and the success of his campaign against Iraq. To illustrate the persuasive power of the oil & gas industry in politics, note that according to Open Secrets.org, oil & gas lobbyists spent over $175M in 2009 (Obama’s first year in office). Of that amount, ExxonMobil spent the most at $27.4M and Chevron Corp., in second place, spent $20.8M. For the record, ExxonMobil and Chevron are successors of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. Prior to President Obama & Vice President Biden, the Oil & Gas Industry lobbyists spent approximately half that amount at $86.5M in 2007. Thus, Bush & Cheney represented a 50% savings for oil & gas lobbyists.
When seeking to “out” the elite, keep in mind that the Rockefeller clan describe themselves “as ExxonMobil’s longest continuous shareholders.” In Iraq, ExxonMobil has a 60% share of a $50 billion market contract developing the 9-billion-barrels southern West Qurna Phase I field, and ExxonMobil is expanding its oil & gas holdings into the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the country’s north.
Within this context, the enemy is not a corporate office, an oilrig, pipeline or refinery; it’s the ruling elite that own and control the means of production. If people of conscience don’t hold them accountable for their crimes, they will continue to commit them in countries such as Venezuela and Iran, which are presently locked in their sights. While henchmen change, the ruling elite remains. Why should the U.S. allow its military and secret service to be pimped out as corporate stooges and glorified security guards?
Imperialism is insatiable and fascism expedient. The time to hold the ruling elite accountable is now before another invasion and occupation is executed against a fake enemy that just so happens to coincidentally have a large desirable oil reserve. Let’s follow Iceland’s lead and seek the prosecution of white-collar criminals that hide behind a facade of corporate stock holdings now, before its too late and they strike again in Venezuela and Iran.
So for Halliburton’s 100-year anniversary wish, let’s wish its stock tanks and that its guilty are remembered, held accountable, and that justice is ultimately served.
Lauren Smith has a BA in Politics, Economics and Society from SUNY at Old Westbury and an MPA in International Development Administration from New York University. Her historical fiction novel based on Nicaragua’s 1979 revolution is due out in 2019.
