Break Up the Big Oil Cartel

Republican Rhetoric; Democratic Cluelessness

Break Up the Big Oil Cartel

By RALPH NADER

What a week it has been for the giant oil companies! Billions in record quarterly profits rushing into their coffers. An even bigger round of quarterly profits coming up. Gargantuan executive pay bonanzas. And a pile of “forces beyond our control” excuses to publicize in response to the empty outrage of Washington politicians and the real squeeze on consumers and small businesses.

Oil man Bush, atop his administration marinated with ex-oil executives in high positions, keeps saying there is little he can do. It is the market of supply and demand. Only fuel cells and hydrogen sometime down the 21st-century road can save the country from dependency on foreign oil, he says repeatedly. Plus more drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

The public heat about energy prices prodded Mr. Bush this week, however, to at least make a little change in rhetoric. He repeated his warning that his government will not tolerate any gouging. Yet the supine reporters did not ask him whether he has ever caught a gouger. But he did mumble something about higher fuel economy standards so that your car guzzles a little less gasoline. He said he will be meeting with the domestic auto company executives in the White House in mid-May. He praised ethanol again. He visited a gas station in Mississippi to feel the pain of the motorists.

Will Hollywood ever leave Washington, DC?

On Capitol Hill–aka wurthering heights–the Republicans are starting to talk tough, mumbling about larger taxes on oil industry profits–an idea Bush said he would veto last year. The Democrats cannot even agree on an excess profits tax, preferring the greasy band-aid of lifting the 18.4 cent gasoline tax for sixty days. This new detour is pathetic since it takes the heat off the industry’s skyrocketing gasoline price which are well into the $3 to $4/gallon range in many places.

A few, very few members of Congress, like Senator Byron Dorgan (D–North Dakota) know what has to be done to this industry and its long-time grip over the federal government. First, the gouging profits must be recaptured and returned now to the consumer. The government must also invest in advanced public transit systems.

Big oil has been on a marriage binge and the mergers, including the wedding of Exxon (number one) and Mobil (number two), have tightened further the corporate cartel of oil as it feeds off the government producers’ cartel of oil abroad. Antitrust break up action is necessary.

The claim by the oil barons that they’re just responding to the marketplace of supply and demand is laughable. Why are they making double and triple profits? Why are their top executives tripling their own pay? Hard-pressed sellers of oil would not have such a luxurious profit and pay spiral. Hard-pressed sellers of oil would not have paid $144,000 every day to Exxon CEO, Lee Raymond since 1993 and then send him off with a $398 million retirement deal.

A competitive domestic oil industry would not be so able to close down scores of refineries and then turn “refinery shortages” into higher gas prices at the pump. Nor would competitive companies get away with a return on capital of 46 percent for upstream drilling and production operations, plus a 32 percent for refining and marketing. Washington Post business reporter, Steven Pearlstein, call these returns “hedge fund returns.” Except with hedge funds there is a risk of losing from time to time. Not so with the corporate government of Big Oil.

A President, preoccupied with his criminal, fabricated war in Iraq, would not leave Americans defenseless as oil prices eat into their family budgets. A standup President would order an all-fronts investigation of the oil industry’s pricing practices from the oil well to the gasoline station.

There would be full use of subpoenas and public testimony from the oil bosses under oath by his regulatory agencies. He would organize with his Republican majority in Congress a repeal of past and recent unconscionable tax breaks and stop giving away your oil on federal property in the Gulf of Mexico to the oil companies without any royalties. He would press for an excess-profits tax and legislation raising by statute the fuel efficiency performance for new motor vehicles, including SUVs, Minivans and light trucks.

A standup President would raise margin requirements to tone down the speculation in oil futures that are swelling the New York Mercantile Exchange and contributing to higher gasoline and heating oil prices. He would support tariffs on imported refinery products to push the companies to expand and build new cleaner refineries in the U.S. Where? In some of the exact locations where the oil industry shut down these refineries over the past thirty years to contract overall output and move operations to cheap labor locations abroad.

A standup President would give an address to the nation that mobilizes small and larger businesses which use oil to join with consumers in a common cause against the looming inflationary jolts that will raise prices for many regular products and lead to higher interest rates by the Federal Reserve.

Bush can never proactively do this for the American people who already by more than a 2 to 1 margin believe he cares more about the interests of Big Business than the interests of regular people.

But, mobilized small business can get him to relent and let some of these changes happen.

The small business revolt can start with several hundred economically squeezed truckers bringing their 18 wheelers to Washington in a protest that encircles in a wide arc the Congress and the White House and the federal buildings in between. Now that would be more than a message. It would be an irresistible visual image for the television cameras day after day.

Source: CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.com/nader04292006.html

Musharraf says he’s no US “poodle”

Thu Apr 27, 10:22 PM ET

Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf has rejected accusations he is a Western “poodle,” saying his fight against Islamic militants is for his country’s benefit, not for the United States or Britain.

“I am nobody’s poodle,” he said in an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper on Friday. “I have enough strength of my own to lead.

“When you talk about fighting terrorism or extremism, I am not doing that for the U.S. or Britain, I am doing it for Pakistan.”

Musharraf, an important ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, has faced repeated opposition protests about his relationship with President Bush.

A 10,000-strong crowd gathered in the central Punjab region last month to hear opposition leader Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman call a visit by Bush an attempt at “enslaving the Pakistani nation and rewarding General Musharraf for his patriotism to America.”

Newspapers have carried critical pieces on U.S. foreign policy in Pakistan and one has a “Mush & Bush” column lampooning the two leaders’ relationship.

Asked by the Guardian if he had the “teeth” to bite back at his Western allies, Musharraf said: “Yes sir, I personally do — a lot of teeth. Sometimes the teeth do not have to be shown. Pragmatism is required in international relations.”

Pakistan has captured or killed hundreds of al Qaeda members since Musharraf joined a U.S.-led war on terrorism after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Anger has been building in Pakistan over repeated U.S. attacks in the country, including an airstrike in January which killed 18 civilians in the remote Bajaur region.

Musharraf told the Guardian: “The strike was an infringement of our sovereignty and I condemned it.”

Source: Reuters via Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/pakistan_musharraf_dc

Pakistan scales back F-16 purchases from US

Pakistan scales back F-16 purchases from US
By Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad

Pakistan has scaled back by half its ambitious planned purchase of new fighter planes from the US to help pay for the relief costs of last year’s devastating earthquake.

Foreign secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan announced on a visit to Washington that rather than buy new Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters, Pakistan would purchase “a mix” of old and new planes. The plan would be “far less ambitious”, he said without giving figures.

Western diplomats familiar with the US-Pakistan discussions said Pakistan was now likely to spend US$1.6bn-US$1.8bn on the F-16s, down from as much as U$3.5bn.

The original plan for at least 75 new F-16s had been cut to 18 new and 36 used planes, with an option for a further 23 fighters some time in the future, said one western diplomat.

The US last year lifted a 15-year-old ban on the export of F-16s to Pakistan, a key ally in its war on terror. “We are committed to the sale of American F-16 aircraft to Pakistan and we intend to begin [formal] consultations with Congress shortly,”said Nick Burns, US undersecretary of state, on Thursday.

October’s earthquake forced Pakistan to postpone the purchase as it sought more than US$5.2bn from donors to help with reconstruction costs.

“It is possible that the US urged Pakistan to be more realistic about how much money it could spend on this deal. The Bush administration must have thought Pakistan would loose its goodwill with other donors such as Europeans if it insisted on such a large spending on defence,” said the western diplomat.

Earlier this month, the Pakistani cabinet approved the purchase of 77 F-16s, although it was not clear if these were all new planes.

It also approved air force plans to buy an unspecified number of Jian-10 fighter planes from China.

Diplomats said on Friday they had no evidence of any change in plans over the J10 purchase, which was currently for up to 36 fighter planes in a deal worth up to US$1.5bn.

The Pakistani Air Force favours a purchase of fighter planes from a source other than the US because of concerns about a repeat of Washington’s past sanction on the F-16s which sharply widened the gap between the capability of the PAF and its closest rival, the Indian Air Force.

Source: Financial Times

Silverstein surrenders right to develop Freedom Tower

Larry Silverstein, the Manhattan developer who has fought a nearly five-year battle to maintain control of rebuilding on the World Trade Center site, on Tuesday surrendered the right to develop the Freedom Tower, the tallest and most symbolic of the buildings on the 16-acre property.

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The agreement was hailed as the end of months of stalemate and inaction at Ground Zero that has increasingly become an embarrassment for New York officials. All five buildings on the site are planned to be completed by 2012 under the new framework.

Under its terms, Mr Silverstein will yield control of the Freedom Tower and one other building to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. But he will still have the right to build three other buildings on the site, which are thought to have more commercial potential than the Freedom Tower.

Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor, and officials from the Port Authority have been putting pressure on Mr Silverstein for several months in the hopes of wresting some control of the project from him. Talks have been acrimonious at times, with both sides accusing each other of impeding progress on the site.

“Make no mistake, we have made real concessions,” Mr Silverstein said. ”This is about moving the rebuilding forward as quickly as possible.”

Tuesday’s agreement was a re-structuring of the 99-year lease that Mr Silverstein signed just six weeks before the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks. Under the new terms, Mr Silverstein will turn over 38 per cent of the insurance proceeds he received to the Port Authority. He will also continue to pay rent to the Port Authority as if the Twin Towers still existed and were fully leased.

But Mr Silverstein still stands to gain from the terms of the new lease. He will be paid a fee to build the Freedom Tower. And he would also gain control over a shopping centre on the site.

Both sides have acknowledged that the Freedom Tower – estimated to cost about $2bn – carries significant risks as a commercial enterprise, since it is not expected to attract corporate clients. But George Pataki, New York governor, has pledged to secure tenants from federal and state agencies, a strategy that recalls the early days of the original World Trade Center. And construction costs will be offset by tax-free Liberty bonds in addition to the insurance proceeds.

Source: Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/192ae362-d4ac-11da-a357-0000779e2340.html

________________________________________
Editor’s Note: Larry Silverstein benefited greatly from September 11th attacks, particularly from the destruction of his WTC Building #7. In total, he collected more than $5 billion dollars in insurance settlements. Some conspiracy theorists allege him being part of a bigger inside job. (Another reference).

NBA OR NFL?

36
have been accused of spousal abuse7
have been arrested for fraud

19
have been accused of writing bad checks

117
have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses

3
have done time for assault

71,
repeat
71 cannot
get a credit card due to bad credit

14
have been arrested on drug-related charges

8
have been arrested for shoplifting

21
currently
are defendants in lawsuits, and

84
have been arrested for drunk driving
within the last year

Can
you guess which organization this is? NBA? NFL?

Give up? Scroll down

Neither.
It’s the 535 members of
the United States Congress.

The same group who crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep US in line.

Source: Chain e-mail letter

Fox News host is new Bush spokesman

Wednesday 26 April 2006, 17:50 Makka Time, 14:50 GMT

Tony Snow, a commentator and radio host with the Fox News network, has been named as the new White House press secretary, putting a new face on a troubled administration.

Snow replaces Scott McClellan, who announced his resignation last week as part of a staff shake-up engineered by Josh Bolten, the new White House chief of staff, directed at reviving George Bush’s presidency.

Bush made the announcement on Wednesday.

“My job is to make decisions and his job is to help explain those decisions to the press corps and the American people,” Bush said, with Snow and McClellan at his side in the White House briefing room.

Snow’s appointment is notable in a White House that has a reputation for not suffering criticism. He even has had some harsh things to say about Bush.

Sources familiar with the situation said Snow wrestled with the decision for several days on whether to take the job.

A speechwriter for the senior Bush when the latter was the president, Snow was treated for colon cancer last year.

Fox News said on its website that Snow was given a clean bill of health by his oncologist on Tuesday, after a CAT scan and other tests that were undertaken last Thursday.

He was said to have been waiting for the all-clear from his doctors before accepting the job.

Active role

Snow, 50, a conservative pundit, has been host of Fox News Radio’s The Tony Snow Show and for a time was anchor of the Fox News Sunday programme.

The Washington Post said Snow decided to accept the job after top officials assured him that he would not be just a spokesman but an active participant in administration policy debates.

The Post quoted sources as saying that Snow viewed himself as well-positioned to ease the tensions between the Bush White House and the press corps because he understood politics and journalism.

Snow, in an Associated Press interview on Tuesday, did not dispute that he has been a tough critic of Bush.

“It’s public record,” he said. “I’ve written some critical stuff. When you’re a columnist, you’re going to criticise and you’re going to praise.”

A liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress, circulated a sampling of Snow’s opinions, restricting the observations to those critical of the president.

It quoted Snow in September as writing, “No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives.”

Last month, Snow wrote that Bush and the Republican Congress had “lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc. (treasury).”

Staff shake-up

Since taking over as Bush’s chief of staff, Bolten has embarked on a shake-up in a drive to revive the presidency and rebound from job approval ratings that, according to a CNN poll this week, have dipped to an all-time low of 32%.

Last week, in addition to McClellan’s resignation, the shake-up led to Karl Rove, senior Bush political adviser, giving up his day-to-day policy role to focus on helping Republicans retain control of both houses of the US Congress in November mid-term elections.

Snow, a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, will be a rare case in which a Washington journalist takes over as the White House spokesman.

The job will come with a pay cut, down to about $161,000 a year.

5 Truths About Darfur

By Emily Wax
Sunday, April 23, 2006; B03

KOU KOU ANGARANA, Chad

Heard all you need to know about Darfur? Think again. Three years after a government-backed militia began fighting rebels and residents in this region of western Sudan, much of the conventional wisdom surrounding the conflict — including the religious, ethnic and economic factors that drive it — fails to match the realities on the ground. Tens of thousands have died and some 2.5 million have been displaced, with no end to the conflict in sight. Here are five truths to challenge the most common misconceptions about Darfur:

1 Nearly everyone is Muslim

Early in the conflict, I was traveling through the desert expanses of rebel-held Darfur when, amid decapitated huts and dead livestock, our SUV roared up to an abandoned green and white mosque, riddled with bullets, its windows shattered.

In my travels, I’ve seen destroyed mosques all over Darfur. The few men left in the villages shared the same story: As government Antonov jets dropped bombs, Janjaweed militia members rode in on horseback and attacked the town’s mosque — usually the largest structure in town. The strange thing, they said, was that the attackers were Muslim, too. Darfur is home to some of Sudan’s most devout Muslims, in a country where 65 percent of the population practices Islam, the official state religion.

A long-running but recently pacified war between Sudan’s north and south did have religious undertones, with the Islamic Arab-dominated government fighting southern Christian and animist African rebels over political power, oil and, in part, religion.

“But it’s totally different in Darfur,” said Mathina Mydin, a Malaysian nurse who worked in a clinic on the outskirts of Nyala, the capital of South Darfur. “As a Muslim myself, I wanted to bring the sides together under Islam. But I quickly realized this war had nothing to do with religion.”

2 Everyone is black

Although the conflict has also been framed as a battle between Arabs and black Africans, everyone in Darfur appears dark-skinned, at least by the usual American standards. The true division in Darfur is between ethnic groups, split between herders and farmers. Each tribe gives itself the label of “African” or “Arab” based on what language its members speak and whether they work the soil or herd livestock. Also, if they attain a certain level of wealth, they call themselves Arab.

Sudan melds African and Arab identities. As Arabs began to dominate the government in the past century and gave jobs to members of Arab tribes, being Arab became a political advantage; some tribes adopted that label regardless of their ethnic affiliation. More recently, rebels have described themselves as Africans fighting an Arab government. Ethnic slurs used by both sides in recent atrocities have riven communities that once lived together and intermarried.

“Black Americans who come to Darfur always say, ‘So where are the Arabs? Why do all these people look black?’ ” said Mahjoub Mohamed Saleh, editor of Sudan’s independent Al-Ayam newspaper. “The bottom line is that tribes have intermarried forever in Darfur. Men even have one so-called Arab wife and one so-called African. Tribes started labeling themselves this way several decades ago for political reasons. Who knows what the real bloodlines are in Darfur?”

3 It’s all about politics

Although analysts have emphasized the racial and ethnic aspects of the conflict in Darfur, a long-running political battle between Sudanese President Omar Hassan Bashir and radical Islamic cleric Hassan al-Turabi may be more relevant.

A charismatic college professor and former speaker of parliament, Turabi has long been one of Bashir’s main political rivals and an influential figure in Sudan. He has been fingered as an extremist; before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks Turabi often referred to Osama bin Laden as a hero. More recently, the United Nations and human rights experts have accused Turabi of backing one of Darfur’s key rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement, in which some of his top former students are leaders.

Because of his clashes with Bashir, Turabi is usually under house arrest and holds forth in his spacious Khartoum villa for small crowds of followers and journalists. But diplomats say he still mentors rebels seeking to overthrow the government.

“Darfur is simply the battlefield for a power struggle over Khartoum,” said Ghazi Suleiman, a Sudanese human rights lawyer. “That’s why the government hit back so hard. They saw Turabi’s hand, and they want to stay in control of Sudan at any cost.”

4 This conflict is international

China and Chad have played key roles in the Darfur conflict.

In 1990, Chad’s Idriss Deby came to power by launching a military blitzkrieg from Darfur and overthrowing President Hissan Habre. Deby hails from the elite Zaghawa tribe, which makes up one of the Darfur rebel groups trying to topple the government. So when the conflict broke out, Deby had to decide whether to support Sudan or his tribe. He eventually chose his tribe.

Now the Sudanese rebels have bases in Chad; I interviewed them in towns full of Darfurians who tried to escape the fighting. Meanwhile, Khartoum is accused of supporting Chad’s anti-Deby rebels, who have a military camp in West Darfur. (Sudan’s government denies the allegations.) Last week, bands of Chadian rebels nearly took over the capital, N’Djamena. When captured, some of the rebels were carrying Sudanese identification.

Meanwhile, Sudan is China’s fourth-biggest supplier of imported oil, and that relationship carries benefits. China, which holds veto power in the U.N. Security Council, has said it will stand by Sudan against U.S. efforts to slap sanctions on the country and in the battle to force Sudan to replace the African Union peacekeepers with a larger U.N. presence. China has built highways and factories in Khartoum, even erecting the Friendship Conference Hall, the city’s largest public meeting place.

5 The “genocide” label made it worse

Many of the world’s governments have drawn the line at labeling Darfur as genocide. Some call the conflict a case of ethnic cleansing, and others have described it as a government going too far in trying to put down a rebellion.

But in September 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell referred to the conflict as a “genocide.” Rather than spurring greater international action, that label only seems to have strengthened Sudan’s rebels; they believe they don’t need to negotiate with the government and think they will have U.S. support when they commit attacks. Peace talks have broken down seven times, partly because the rebel groups have walked out of negotiations. And Sudan’s government has used the genocide label to market itself in the Middle East as another victim of America’s anti-Arab and anti-Islamic policies.

Perhaps most counterproductive, the United States has failed to follow up with meaningful action. “The word ‘genocide’ was not an action word; it was a responsibility word,” Charles R. Snyder, the State Department’s senior representative on Sudan, told me in late 2004. “There was an ethical and moral obligation, and saying it underscored how seriously we took this.” The Bush administration’s recent idea of sending several hundred NATO advisers to support African Union peacekeepers falls short of what many advocates had hoped for.

“We called it a genocide and then we wine and dine the architects of the conflict by working with them on counterterrorism and on peace in the south,” said Ted Dagne, an Africa expert for the Congressional Research Service. “I wish I knew a way to improve the situation there. But it’s only getting worse.”

waxe@washpost.com

Emily Wax is The Washington Post’s East Africa bureau chief.

Source: The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/21/AR2006042101752.html