By Jessica CORBETT

An analysis released Tuesday by a trio of groups highlights how Big Oil has cashed in on various crises over the past year—including the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the global climate emergency—while enriching wealthy shareholders.

“Big Oil is living the second half of their unspoken mantra ‘socialize losses, privatize gains.'”

The new report from BailoutWatch, Friends of the Earth, and Public Citizen explains that there are two main tactics that fossil fuel giants use to benefit investors: “First, they repurchase shares of their own stock and retire them, reducing the number of shares outstanding and driving up the value of each share remaining in investors’ hands.”

“Second, they increase dividends, the quarterly payments investors receive for owning shares,” the report continues. “Oil and gas dividends, historically bigger than other sectors’, have spiked in recent months, outstripping every other industry group.”

“Amid high gas prices and war in recent months, oil and gas companies have kicked both tactics into overdrive,” the groups found, based on reviewing public statements and securities filings from the 20 largest U.S.-headquartered fossil fuel corporations.

During the first two months of 2022, “seven companies’ boards authorized their corporate treasuries to buy back and retire $24.35 billion in stock—a 15% increase over all of the buybacks authorized in 2021,” the report states. “Six of those decisions came in February 2022, after Russian warmongering lifted stock prices. The total since the start of 2021 is $45.6 billion.”

The analysis also reveals that in January and February, 11 companies raised their dividends—”often extravagantly”—and notes that “nine were increases of more than 15% and four were increases of more than 40%.”

“Six companies have begun paying additional dividends on top of their routine quarterly payments, including by implementing new variable dividends based on company earnings—a way of directing windfall profits immediately into private hands without any possibility of investment, employee benefits, or other uses,” the document points out.

“So far in 2022, these companies have started paying out an initial $3 billion in special windfall dividends,” the report adds. “Four of these companies—Pioneer, Chesapeake, Conoco, and Coterra—announced variable dividends beginning August 2021, as prices began to rise.”

Chris Kuveke of BailoutWatch said in a statement that “Big Oil is living the second half of their unspoken mantra ‘socialize losses, privatize gains.'”

“Two years after winning multi-billion dollar bailouts from the Trump administration, these newly flush companies are pocketing billions from an international crisis, and they don’t care how it affects regular Americans,” Kuveke added.

As Public Citizen researcher Alan Zibel put it: “Big Oil executives are reaping windfall profits while accelerating the climate crisis and sticking consumers with the bill.”

Zibel also acknowledged efforts to blame President Joe Biden for rising prices, rather than industry profiteering.

“The oil industry and their allies on Capitol Hill falsely claim that the Biden administration’s acceptance of mainstream climate science is stifling investment in the domestic oil industry,” he said. “But the industry’s actions show that they are intently focused on funneling cash to their shareholders rather than lowering prices for consumers.”

According to Lukas Ross, climate and energy program manager at Friends of the Earth: “This is a master class in war profiteering. Oil and gas companies are feeding off humanitarian disaster and consumer suffering in order to reward Wall Street.”

“Oil companies drove us into a climate crisis and are now price gouging us to extinction,” he warned. “Congress and President Biden must take action by passing a windfall profits tax to rein in Big Oil’s cash grab.”

The new analysis follows the introduction of multiple bills targeting Big Oil’s windfall profits, including a proposal spearheaded by Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) designed to crack down on such behavior in all sectors, not just the fossil fuel industry.

Sanders on Tuesday morning held a hearing to call out how corporate greed and profiteering are fueling inflation. During his opening remarks, the chair took aim at Big Oil specifically while listing some examples.

“Yesterday, at a time when gasoline in America is now at a near-record high at $4.17 a gallon, guess what?” Sanders said. “ExxonMobil reported that its profit from pumping oil and gas alone in the first quarter will likely hit a record high of $9.3 billion.”

“Meanwhile,” he added, “Big Oil CEOs are on track to spend $88 billion this year not to decrease supply constraints, not to address the climate crisis, but to buy back their own stock and hand out dividends to enrich their wealthy shareholders.”

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations plans to hold a hearing Wednesday titled “Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America’s Pain at the Pump.” Top executives from BP America, Chevron, Devon Energy, ExxonMobil, Pioneer Natural Resources, and Shell USA are set to appear before the panel.

commondreams.org

In January 2022, Harvard University published the results of a study: people over 65 who live near U.S. fracking sites die earlier than people who do not live in such a neighborhood. Fracking has been practiced in the USA for decades. Environmental damage is well known. But now, for the first time, it’s been studied: are people dying because of it?

The elaborate study was conducted by 10 researchers led by Longxiang Li at the School of Public Health at the elite Harvard University: Exposure to unconventional oil and gas development and all-cause mortality in Medicare beneficiaries. Completed July 17, 2020, the study was published Jan. 27, 2022, in the journal Nature Energy. As early as August 2021, the study had been presented at the annual meeting of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE). So anyone who wanted to know could know. The U.S. government and the German government and the European Union, which have now ordered much more U.S. fracking gas because of the Russia boycott.

2.5 million fracking well sites

The health data examined were those of 15 million (15,198,496 to be exact) U.S. residents over the age of 65 who receive health care from the federal Medicare program and live near fracking sites. These health data were compared to other U.S. residents in this age group who do not live in such neighborhoods. Because 95 percent of people over age 65 in the U.S. are covered by Medicare, the study has high validity.

Health data were collected at more than 100,000 fracking sites, for the years 2001 to 2015, where a total of about 2.5 million drilling sites operated. The sites are located in all major fracking regions of the U.S.: from North Dakota to New Mexico, in the east from New York to Virginia, and in the south between Texas and Missouri.

Fracking: Environmentally harmful – of course!

Unconventional oil and gas development: That’s fracking. It involves blasting open layers of rock at great depths under high hydraulic pressure using sand, water, chemicals and other additives. This allows gas and oil to escape and then be collected.

The fact that air, groundwater, rivers, lakes, drinking water, plants and animals are poisoned in the process and that people’s health is harmed – all this has been known worldwide for years, actually. Thousands of citizens’ initiatives, scientists, municipal councils have been organizing resistance for three decades between California and Wyoming – mostly in vain and politically-major media denied.

The study cites numerous studies that confirm these findings: Ambient air contains volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides, and natural radioactive materials released by drilling. The drilling sites also emit organic compounds, chlorides, and suspended solids. In addition, methane gas also escapes uncontrollably during fracking: it is even more harmful to the climate than CO2. Known health effects include damage to pregnancies, the respiratory system, heart muscles and increased cancer – all of which have been known for a long time.

But not only harmful to the environment, but deadly

But the Harvard study asked for the first time: Does fracking also cause death? Answer: Yes: significantly elevated risk of all-cause mortality.

So fracking is not only harmful to the environment, it is also deadly to people. The closer they live to fracking well sites, the sooner they die. The increased mortality is 2.5 percent, but 3.5 percent in residences downwind of drilling sites. The study used 136 million (more accurately, 136,215,059) person-years – 2.5 percent of which would be about four million life-years that could have been lived but were destroyed by fracking.

Death rates are slightly higher in downwind than in upwind locations. This is due to the poisoning of the atmosphere. But that is just one of the causes of illness and death. The poisoning of water and soil, intensive truck traffic with diesel exhaust fumes, noise, continuous blinding lighting at night, etc. also play a role.

But what about fracking workers?

The study did not look at people under 65. There, too, there are “vulnerable groups,” such as babies or also – as in the case of the Corona virus – people with chronic diseases, which in the U.S. are known to begin in large numbers at an early age.

And another particularly important group has not been studied, and that is the people most directly exposed to the hazardous and toxic emissions: The workers at the drilling sites themselves, including the drivers who bring in and haul away the chemicals, auxiliary materials and vast amounts of water in pick up trucks and trucks. But fracking companies pushed through exemptions against the Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSHA, such as not having to shut down drilling rigs during repairs.

When asked, the head of the investigation stated: We haven’t studied that, and we don’t know of any studies on health and fatality impacts to workers at fracking sites.

And the climate and environmental movement in U.S.-led capitalism – Fridays for Future, Greenpeace, the UN, the European Union, the Greens – how dependent employees are doing, even in the companies directly relevant to the environment, such as the fracking industry here – big no-no.

Accelerated production

The fracking method was developed in the 1940s in the USA, especially by Halliburton. But it was not until around the turn of the millennium that production was accelerated on a large industrial scale: The U.S. wants to become independent of oil and gas imports. The big driver was U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, previously CEO of Halliburton. He enforced theat the fracking companies did not have to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act („Halliburton loophole“).

During the period covered by the study, from 2001 to 2015, fracking companies expanded the number of sites more than tenfold, from about 10,000 to more than 100,000. Thus, the study does not even take into account the acceleration of fracking, which accelerated again after 2015. This additional acceleration was triggered, among other things, by the construction of the Russian-German Nordstream 2 gas pipeline, which is opposed by the U.S. fracking industry and therefore also by U.S. governments, whether the president is Obama, Trump or Biden.

From 2015 to 2020, the number of fracking sites was increased to 160,000. Thus, from 2000 to 2018, the fracking industry increased production more than tenfold from 243 billion cubic feet to 3.61 trillion cubic feet. Exports to date go to 33 states.

More damage than recorded in the Harvard study

Thus, also in this respect, the Harvard study did not capture the full current extent of U.S. fracking.

The acceleration since 2015 has also been to drill even more wells at the same site than before: over 50 well sites at the same location (mega pads) are now not uncommon.

This also increases the amount and concentration of toxins in these sites, and thus the residences, beyond what was studied in the Harvard study.

High energy use: New and expensive fossil fuel economy

Not only is fracked gas environmentally harmful to produce, it also requires much more energy than traditional oil and gas production than, for example, in Russia.

And it’s not just production that requires more energy, but the entire rest of the supply chain: a high energy input is first used to liquefy the gas to one six-hundredth of its previous volume. Then comes the next high energy expenditure: the liquefied gas must be kept cooled to minus 162 degrees Celsius during transatlantic and transpacific transport.

And the construction of technically complex terminals also requires a lot of energy in addition to the raw materials, as do storage and regasification.

This additional, diverse energy input, along with the raw materials still needed for it (for extraction, ships, and terminals), represents a new and also expensive fossil fuel economy. The U.S. government is promoting the construction of new nuclear power plants, and the EU has now declared nuclear energy “sustainable.” The demand for coal is increasing – wind turbines and solar stations cannot keep up, also because the accelerated digitalization needs much more energy than before, for e-mobility, for clouds, for artificial intelligence in companies, hospitals, schools, universities….

Thus, the environmental policy of the EU and the USA turns out to be even much more harmful to the environment than the previous environmental policy, and also much more expensive, and finally deadly for people.

It is also an unspoken class warfare: companies purposefully locate sites near poor communities that are lower income and home to more people of color, the Harvard study notes. They are already weaker health-wise – and then add fracking to the mix.

Collective self-blinding

The EU and especially the German government are particularly “environmentally conscious.” They have established the new Western canon of values: ESG. E = Environment, S = Social, G = good governance. They all look admiringly to Harvard, for example the German Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach who studied here twice and then earned his second doctorate, at the Institute for Public Health and then at the Medical School – but eyes closed and through: Collective self-blindness.

At “Corona” they invoke the protection of “vulnerable groups” – but the vulnerable groups at the fracking sites – they are allowed to die mercilessly for the new gas.

They are in “good company”: according to the head of the Harvard study, all leading U.S. media such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have not reported on the study.

Environmental champion BlackRock in the U.S. government

Speaking of which: The U.S.-led capitalist West’s leading environmental and sustainability admonisher, Laurence Fink – he apparently doesn’t care about fracking deaths either. Fink is head of BlackRock, the largest capital organizer in the Western world, based in New York, and propagandist of the ESG canon of values. No word on the Harvard study from here either.

BlackRock has three high-level managers in President Biden’s U.S. administration. (1) For example, the former head of BlackRock’s sustainable investing division is now the administration’s chief economist. It is pushing fracking, now further spurred by the Russia boycotts.

And BlackRock & Co are not just the leading shareholders in the U.S. defense industry, currently clammily accounting for their profits from 20 years of war in Afghanistan. BlackRock & Co are also leading shareholders in the U.S. fracking industry, such as EOG Resources, Devon Energy, Tellurian, Cheniere, and the largest fracking equipment suppliers Halliburton, Schlumberger, and Baker Hughes. For the rising profits of BlackRock’s environmental champions, not only people in faraway Afghanistan are dying, but also their own citizens in the U.S. itself.

And the overzealous buyer of U.S. fracked gas, Commission President von der Leyen – with Biden she agreed to triple LNG imports – is taking advice on implementing the new canon of values ESG from none other than BlackRock.

Fact deniers, enemies of science. Transatlantically organized self-blinding with (multiple) fatal outcome.

(1) More detailed on BlackRock & Co. see Werner Rügemer: The Capitalists of the 21. Century. An Easy-to-Understand Outline on the Rise of the new Financial Players. 308 pages, tredition 2020, also as e-Book

The United States reportedly boosted its import of Russian oil last month, according to official figures from the Energy Information Administration. The extra imported volume accounted for a 43 percent increase.

This is in spite of an executive order by U.S. President Joe Biden on March 8 to ban all energy and hydrocarbon commodities from Russia. That draconian measure was declared in response to Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine that was launched on February 24.

Admittedly, the United States does not rely heavily on Russia for its crude oil supply. Russia is not in the top five suppliers to the U.S., according to the EIA. Nevertheless, the apparent ramping up of U.S. purchase of Russian oil strikes a bizarre chord.

It comes as Washington is demanding European allies to cut energy trade with Russia. And it’s not just the Europeans that are being ordered to do so. India and other Asian countries are also harangued by the Americans to likewise reduce imports of Russian gas, oil and petroleum products.

Given today’s date, one could be forgiven for thinking this is some kind of April Fools joke. It’s not. But it is a laughable illustration of how reckless and ridiculous American hubris has become.

Washington wants its so-called allies to commit economic suicide by cutting off vital energy trade with Russia all in a bid to satisfy its de facto Cold War agenda of trying to isolate Moscow and draw all countries under U.S. hegemony. The same geopolitical agenda applies to China, although that has taken somewhat of a backseat given the immediate tensions with Russia.

The U.S. may not have large dependence on Russian oil and gas, but many other countries do. Russia is among the largest global suppliers of gas, oil and petroleum products. Washington’s attitude is one of demanding others to cut their noses off to spite their face, or put another way, to shoot themselves in the foot. Meanwhile, the American rulers think they can insulate themselves from harm. Although this week, in a sign of how futile this all is, Biden ordered the biggest release of U.S. strategic oil reserves in order to dial down crazy American pump prices.

It is astounding the level of arrogance among American politicians. If so-called allies conform to Washington’s dictates, it would result in immediate devastation of their economies. In the not-so-long run, too, the American economy will also be ruinously impacted from global supply chains.

The global energy crisis and general economic inflation (or poverty in plainer language) has become the central political problem across the world. The Covid-19 pandemic is part of the precipitating cause to accelerate the demise of U.S.-led global capitalism. The tensions between the West and Russia over the conflict in Ukraine have further amplified the problem. The war in Ukraine could have been avoided if the United States and its NATO allies had engaged respectfully with Moscow to resolve its oft-repeated security concerns. But the Western powers repudiated Russia’s proposals and appeals for genuine diplomacy.

There are tentative signs that several rounds of talks between Ukraine and Russia – the latest round hosted by Turkey this week – might be making progress. The Ukrainian side has reportedly accepted Russia’s demands for neutrality from NATO and recognition of Moscow’s historic claim to Crimea as well as the independence of the Russian-speaking Donbass republics. That outcome is similar to what Russia had been demanding in the months before the tensions boiled over into war. The unnecessary suffering is a tragedy that could have been averted if the U.S. and NATO had any reasonable attitude.

It remains to be seen, however, if Washington will cast a veto over the talks making progress since it is supporting the Kiev regime with weapons and financial loans. One suspects peace is not what the United States wants ultimately. It wants, indeed needs, permanent conflict and tensions because that in essence is the way it maintains U.S. global hegemony.

To everyone else though, it should be clear that a political settlement in Ukraine and more generally between the West and Russia is urgently required for peace and long-term security.

It is counterproductive that Washington and its European allies are insisting on harsher sanctions against Russia instead of addressing the root causes of NATO expansionism and U.S.-led transatlantic dominance. This is only leading to a downward spiral in the global economy on a historic scale that will impact every nation, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable, to price shocks.

American hubris and European servility seem to know no bounds. The Western nations froze Russia’s foreign assets amounting to $300 billion. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin has decreed that all future gas purchases must be made in rubles instead of dollars or euros. Failure to meet Russia’s demands will result in gas exports being cut off. The reciprocal move by Moscow is justified. If the Western powers feel entitled to unilaterally change the terms of trade then why shouldn’t Russia?

It is incredible that some European governments seem willing to toe the American line even when that line is leading them over the abyss. The economic repercussions of this masochistic policy are unleashing social mayhem as citizens in Europe and the U.S. bear the brunt of excruciating living costs. The Biden administration and his Democratic Party are facing an electoral backlash in the forthcoming mid-term elections this autumn.

But the sense is that the political repercussions are much bigger than election backlash. The U.S. policy of confrontation with Russia and China and others is re-creating a Cold War global order that is completely untenable and is rapidly breaking down. European lackey governments are going along with this self-defeating ideology out of cowardice or failure of understanding. Even though the upshot is the ruination of their economies and societies.

The United States through its pursuit of hegemony is cratering the foundations of its own power. European allies following this insanity are causing their own demise from economic devastation. The political elites in the West are fomenting social chaos in their own nations.

Russia’s move to price its gas and other commodities in rubles is a tangible step away from the era of reserve currencies of the dollar and euro. China, India and other nations are beginning to embrace a world without Western financial diktat. A new global multipolar order is emerging in which Western powers are no longer tolerated as privileged.

The contradictions that stem from American and European arrogance have finally hit breaking point. Their attitude of, “Do as we say, not as we do”, is the damnedest April Fool joke today.

Higher fuel and food prices are a sacrifice I’m prepared to make in exchange for a greatly increased likelihood of nuclear armageddon.

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Let’s be clear: you’re not paying more for necessities to punish Putin and save Ukraine, you’re paying more for necessities to fund an economic war of unprecedented scale geared toward collapsing Russia to help secure US unipolar domination of this planet.

It’s not “Putin’s price hike”. This was all orchestrated by the empire, from root to flower. The goal is to use economic warfare and a costly counterinsurgency against western-backed Ukrainians to either collapse and balkanize the Russian Federation or foment enough discontent to secure regime change in Moscow. This is because Putin refuses to kiss the imperial ring.

The western empire could not possibly care less about Ukrainians beyond the extent to which they can be used to roll out this agenda. There hasn’t been nearly enough public rage about the fact that the US government knew this war was coming, knew exactly how to prevent it with very low-cost concessions to Moscow, and chose not to. They made that choice in order to advance this agenda.

That’s what you’re paying for as your cost of living skyrockets. Not freedom and democracy. Not saving Ukrainian lives. Just the very mundane and unsexy unipolarist objectives of a few sociopathic empire managers. Empire managers who, of course, will have no trouble paying for things like fuel and groceries while ordinary people struggle.

And if you think these cold war escalations against Russia are hurting your bank account, wait til the imperial crosshairs move to China.

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One under-appreciated aspect of online censorship is how the fear of losing a valuable platform understandably causes people to self-censor, thereby widening the radius of the censorship campaign’s effectiveness a lot further than the actual censorship:

Never thought I’d be so worried about being censored all the time. Very carefully and cautiously watching what I say and how I say it, deciding I shouldn’t even say it at all. Some democracy we have here on the internet. Very healthy.

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) March 12, 2022

It’s exactly the same as the “cooling effect” that the persecution of whistleblowers and journalists has on leaks and investigative journalism. People shying away from speech they could be punished for does a lot more to restrict speech than the punishments themselves.

If for example a chemical attack occurs in Ukraine and is blamed on Russia, there will be great fear of questioning the official narrative about it on YouTube for fear of losing one’s platform because YouTube has banned skepticism of official stories about violence in that nation. People will self-censor to avoid being punished for their speech.

This is the exact same principle as a king having an artist who spoke ill of him tortured in the public square in order to deter future acts of dissent. Just re-packaged to be more palatable for the modern world.

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When someone brings up bad things the US does in response to outrage over bad things Russia does, it’s not to defend Russia. It’s to get the US to stop doing bad things.

Bleating “whataboutism” at sincere attempts to get the US empire to stop doing evil things is just defending those evil things. You’re basically just saying “Shut up! Now’s not the time to talk about the bad things the US power alliance does, we’re on something else right now!” Okay, so when? Never? Nothing has ever been done about the crimes of the empire. No meaningful changes whatsoever were made after Iraq.

Russia invading Ukraine doesn’t magically erase the fact that the western empire has spent the 21st century slaughtering people by the millions in wars of aggression and working to destroy any nation which disobeys it. Putin would have to work very, very hard to catch up to those numbers. That still needs to be talked about, and it still needs to end.

EXCLUSIVE: Twenty years after 9/11, compelling statistical data suggests that the true death toll of the ‘War on Terror’ is a staggering *6 million people*: which is likely a conservative estimate. I breakdown the data for @BylineTimes https://t.co/YTV6IoZ3ic

— Dr Nafeez Ahmed FRSA (@NafeezAhmed) September 15, 2021

People talk about this like it’s something in the past, something the US and its allies did back in history but now it’s Russia doing it. No, this is happening currently in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela etc, and will continue to happen unless drastic changes are made.

The murderousness, tyranny and omnicidal recklessness of the US-centralized empire is a problem of unequalled urgency regardless of what Russia happens to be doing. You can’t just bleat “whataboutism” and make that go away. It’s a problem that urgently needs to be dealt with.

It’s an objectively good thing if more attention is brought to that urgent problem by someone saying “Oh you’re upset about this war? Wait til you hear about what your own government has been doing.” Any attempt to interfere in their pointing this out is facilitating mass murder. Either help draw attention to this problem or stop interrupting people who are drawing attention to it with power-serving gibberish about “whataboutism”.

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Western leaders appear to have gone to the NYPD Academy of De-Escalation.

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During the Cuban Missile Crisis everyone had a healthy fear of nuclear annihilation, and people wanted de-escalation above all else. Today hardly anyone even cares about the insane nuclear brinkmanship games being played, and all mainstream factions are calling only for escalation.

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Schrödinger’s Putin: Simultaneously a crazy deranged lunatic and also much too level-headed and rational to respond to western escalations with nuclear weapons.

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Love how shitlibs finally decide to become “anti-war” the second their “anti-war” activism has a chance to help manufacture consent for World War 3.

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Four years of demented propaganda about an imaginary Trump-Russia conspiracy, Kremlin Facebook memes and GRU bounties in Afghanistan turned liberals into a bunch of gnashing, frothing zombies starved for Russian flesh. Ukraine just gave them something to sink their teeth into.

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Always wondered how long it would take for DuckDuckGo to get absorbed into the imperial narrative management campaign. https://t.co/yRHoUQHxe3

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 10, 2022

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I don’t understand the common sentiment on the left that we need to spend a lot of energy criticizing Putin for this war in the same way we criticize our own rulers for their warmongering. Like even forgetting about all the things western powers did to give rise to the war in Ukraine, what specifically is the argument here? That the English-speaking world doesn’t have enough criticism of the Russian invasion, and has too much criticism of NATO aggression? That if more antiwar lefties scream about Putin he’ll go “Ah shit I pissed off a few fringe westerners, let’s cancel the war you guys”? It just doesn’t seem like those who make such claims have thought very hard about the position they’re trying to advance.

Our voices can do far more good criticizing the actions of our own governments, which receive barely any criticism, than those of someone else’s government which gets tons. It also can’t be denied that there’s a major propaganda push to manufacture consent for dangerous agendas which pre-date the invasion by many years. Is my voice better used opposing those dangerous agendas, or in helping to facilitate them by saying the same things everyone else is already saying?

Putin is bad! Putin is bad and his war is very bad!

There. I did the thing. Can anyone tell me what I just accomplished, apart from greasing the wheels for new cold war escalations? Did I plow any new ground? Expand awareness in any new direction? What specific good did I do?

None that I can see.

The fact that the Russian people are doing a better job of holding their government to account with massive antiwar protests than people in western nations have says terrible things about us and our obsequiousness to our warmongering masters. If you can’t criticize your government, you are more obedient than Russians living under Putin.

Criticizing Putin is the easiest thing in the world for a westerner to do right now. Low cost, maximum clicks, but has zero impact on the conflict and will save zero people. Criticizing the west for its role is hard; it gets you outrage mobbed, deplatformed and shunned. But it could work.

None of these outrage merchants would ever dream of going against their own government, because if they tried they would find themselves smashed against the invisible walls of our inverted totalitarian cage. On some level they know this. That’s why they project.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

(Click on the image to enlarge)

TJ COLES

Like most countries, the Republic of South Sudan is a complex nation of shifting alliances and external influences.

Recently, President Salva Kiir, who sports a Stetson hat gifted him by George W. Bush, signed a peace agreement with old enemies, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-In Opposition. Around the same time, the so-called Embassy Troika consisting of the US, Britain, and Norway facilitated International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs for South Sudan.

When China proposes investment schemes, US politicians call it “debt-trap diplomacy.” As has been seen in South Sudan, whenWestern corporations seek to plunder poor, resource-rich nations, they call it “development.”

The West’s interest in South Sudan is oil. Invoking the colonial-era “white man’s burden” of 19^th century imperialists, the US government-backed Voice of America recently justified foreign interference in South Sudan by pointing out that the country’s 3.5 billion proven barrels of crude cannot be easily exported due to the lack of pipeline infrastructure and financial mismanagement. The Embassy Troika and its IMF programs insist “that fiscal data – including on oil and non-oil revenues – should be published … regularly and without delay.”

Today, the US has lost control of the proxy it created and South Sudan is descending into a humanitarian crisis. Alan Boswell, a South Sudan specialist at the International Crisis Group, has acknowledged, “US efforts in South Sudan seemed like a final spasm of naive American nation-building, which has all collapsed in epic fashion.”

So what role did the US play in splitting Sudan and driving the country’s south into crisis?

“Tell them Muslims are responsible”

In 1899, Britain created the Condominium of Anglo-Egyptian of Sudan. The “Egyptian” eponym was a misnomer because Britain also ruled Egypt as a so-called “veiled protectorate,” so Sudan and its capital Khartoum were basically placed under British control until independence in 1956.

According to a CIA Intelligence Assessment, a “profitable slave trade was developed by European traders and their Arab cohorts in Khartoum … [T]he violence and cruelty that it fostered have not been forgotten in the South.”

Britain adopted its typical divide and rule strategy. “Christian missionaries kept the slavery issue alive by telling southerners that northern Muslims were responsible.” After independence, the southern region was “barely integrated” with the north.

In 1955, secessionist southern rebels, the Anya-Nya (“snake venom”), initiated the decades-long civil war. The CIA’s Current Intelligence Country Handbook noted that religion was not the only — or even main — point of division. The majority of southerners were black and the ruling officials in the north were overwhelmingly Arab. Resource concentration was a major problem. Heavily dependent on revenue from cotton, Khartoum absorbed Sudan’s wealth to the detriment of the rest of the nation.

CIA analysts were hopeful that the first post-independence dictator, Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Abboud, would follow a pro-Washington course. An Intelligence Bulletin states: “The regime has accepted the American aid program … [and] has moved to curb pro-Communist …. publications.” Gains made by communist politicians a decade later were crushed after the elected government banned left-wing parties and disenfranchised southerners.

As the north’s war against southern secession continued, a reported one million people had died by 1970 and hundreds of thousands had fled to neighboring countries. The US tolerated Soviet arms to Khartoum as it effectively let the USSR fight a proxy war against the south. Israel poured weapons into the south, reportedly to worsen the war in the hope of diverting the attention of the northern government from the Arab-Israeli conflicts.

The South: “exploitable amounts of crude oil”

Between 1971 and ‘72, Ethiopia brokered a short-lived peace between Sudanese ruler, Maj. Gen. Gaafar Nimeiri, and the Anya-Nya’s political wing, the South(ern) Sudan Liberation Movement. The agreement later led to Anya-Nya rebel leader, Lt. Joseph Lagu, heading the High Executive Council of the Southern Sudan Autonomous Region; a political arrangement that lasted until its abolition by President Nimeiri in 1983. By this time, Chevron had spent millions of dollars in a fruitless effort to modernize the south so that it could efficiently extract oil.

US policy shifted to quiet support for the southern secessionists. With Sudan’s oil located mainly in the south, US analysts reckoned that Nimeiri’s regime, which they described as “moderate” and “pro-Western,” had continued de-developing the south. At the time, Washington’s adversary, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, had long been in power next door in Libya. The pro-Soviet Mengistu was ruling Ethiopia on the southeast border. The CIA feared that Sudan’s “severely underdeveloped” south would again rebel, weaken Nimeiri, and leave Khartoum open to Soviet influence.

The 1980s saw the emergence of American “soft power” in Sudan: the use of “aid” and investment to create a viable, independent southern regime.

A history of the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) operations in fertile Sudan noted in the early-‘80s that, “[b]efore Sudan becomes the ‘breadbasket’ of the Middle East and other parts of the world, … it will need a great deal of investment directed towards development projects.” Of greater interest to Washington was petroleum: “The Sudanese government is reasonably confident that commercially exploitable amounts of crude oil have been discovered in southern Sudan.”

In 1983, the Sudanese Armed Forces mutinied. Commander John Garang, who had been trained by the US at Fort Benning, Georgia, led the creation of the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army. A CIA research paper describes Garang as a “socialist.” Other papers note his being backed by Ethiopia and Libya. Their backing wasn’t to last in the face of US “aid” programs.

The Clinton years: “energy management” and soft power

Washington’s slow push for south Sudanese secession probably began in the 1980s, with so-called civil society projects designed to boost the rebel groups opposing the northern government. In 1987, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – the US government-sponsored regime change entity – began funding The Sudan Times, which “uses NED funds to purchase supplies essential to its continued publication.”

In the north, President Nimeiri was overthrown by General Rahman Swar, whose ephemeral reign saw him replaced by the elected President Ahmed al-Mirghani. At this point, the CIA’s record dries up, so it is unclear what relationship the US initially enjoyed with General Omar al-Bashir, who took over in a coup in 1989.

Martin Meredith’s history of Africa notes that from 1991, the ethnic Nuer commander, Riek Machar, was aided by al-Bashir to seize the oilfields by wresting control from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, led by Garang, an ethnic Dinka. Evidence is scarce, but the Clinton administration (1993-2001) presumably saw southern political fractures as empowering their northern enemy, al-Bashir.

The USAID program, Sudan Transitional Rehabilitation, successfully negotiated a peace between Garang and Machar in 1999. The Agency notes that its grants included provision for “Energy management.” Northwest University’s William Reno seems to argue that the effect of USAID’s Operation Lifeline Sudan, which started the year in which al-Bashir came to power, ultimately legitimized the southern rebels. Claiming that they were spies, Al-Bashir’s men executed USAID staff in 1992, leading the Agency to halt its northern programs.

In 1993, Garang was openly courting the US State Department, though media showed little interest and the history is largely confined to specialist publications. At a meeting in Washington, Garang pressed the southern elites’ cause with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and longtime CIA hand, Frank Wisner, and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, George Moose. Eventually, the meetings paid off.

USAID reports: “In 1998, at the urging of Congress, the White House changed policy to allow the United States to provide development assistance to opposition-held areas alongside humanitarian aid countrywide.”

In 1997, an Operation Lifeline Sudan report revealed the grassroots organizing in which USAID and partner NGOs were involved. So-called Capacity Building included working with “community leaders” from Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the political wing of the southern Army (SPLM/A). Training included land surveying and gender empowerment “at odds with cultural norms and values.” The cultural modernization project prepared south Sudan for future independence.

Proxy nations as “front line states”

Garang was a personal friend of Uganda’s pro-Western dictator, Yoweri Musevini, who provided arms to the SPLM/A. Human Rights Watch reported in 1998: “The U.S. is providing U.S. $20 million in surplus military equipment to Eritrea, Ethiopia and Uganda, for defensive purposes (referring to the government of Sudan’s purported support for rebel forces from each of those countries).” Likewise a Library of Congress report notes that, “[d]uring the mid-1990s, [Clinton] instituted a Front Line States policy of pressure against Khartoum with the assistance of Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.”

The Clinton administration sanctioned Sudan, citing as an excuse the Bashir regime’s alleged links with “al-Qaeda” and the political National Islamic Front, which certain US politicians claimed was a terror group.  In 1998, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) revealed: “Dr. John Garang, in his meeting with SFRC staff, insisted that all development assistance be targeted to areas under SPLA control, some of which have not been under [National Islamic Front] control for five or more years.”

So-called aid money continued to pour into the south in an effort to consolidate the rebels and build a sense of southern nationalism in the public psyche. In March 1999, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) President, Carl Gersham, said: “NED grantees continued to play prominent roles in the human rights and democracy struggles in Liberia and Sudan, where NED has mounted significant programs.”

In 2001, NED began funding the Center for Documentation and Advocacy (CDA), which “publishes and distributes the South Sudan Post throughout Sudan and abroad.” The CDA also received USAID grants. USAID notes that ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains was signed in January 2002 at the behest of the US and Switzerland, calming violence between al-Bashir’s forces and SPLM/Nuba people, who sit on enormous oil wealth. The July 2002 Machakos Protocol, according to USAID, “established the premise of ‘one country, two systems’.”

But “one country, two systems” would soon become two countries, two systems. By then, the George W. Bush administration’s (2001-09) attitude towards the north was a little more balanced. Secret “counterterrorism” operations saw quiet collaboration between al-Bashir and the Bush administration, even as the US continued to bolster al-Bashir’s southern enemies. Al-Bashir’s National Security Advisor, Salah Gosh, for instance, was a CIA collaborator who met with Secretary of State, Colin Powell. (Gosh later attempted a failed coup against al-Bashir.)

In 2002, US Ambassador John Danforth described the SPLM as “the chief antagonists in the Sudan conflict.” In December, USAID’s Office of Transitional Initiatives (OTI) sponsored the All-Nuba Conference, which “[brought] together representatives of civil society, the [government of Sudan], the SPLM, and others from all parts of the political spectrum to discuss the future of the Nuba people.”

Peace agreements legitimized southern rebels

USAID’s OTI was described in 2004 as “supporting people-to-people peace processes in southern Sudan.” The program also sought to “increase the participation of southern Sudanese in their governance structures.” This would be achieved by establishing a so-called Independent Southern Sudan Media and the creation of legal aid units, women’s empowerment, and an Education Development Center to establish short-wave radio broadcasts in Dinka, English, Juba-Arabic, and Nuer.

Facilitated by USAID’s  then-administrator, Andrew Natsios, and Ambassador John Danforth, al-Bashir signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 with the SPLM. Though the US took credit, it was a hard-won peace largely negotiated behind the scenes with Garang and Vice President Ali Osman Taha. USAID notes that the CPA “usher[ed] in a new era of American assistance in Sudan.  The country became a U.S. priority in Africa, and among the highest in the world.”

Garang died in a 2005 helicopter crash attributed to “pilot error.” He was replaced with Salva Kiir, whom US President George W. Bush described as “a friend of mine.”

In November of that year, Kiir addressed the US government-funded think tank, the Wilson Center. “I have met very important officials and I have not only come to know at personal levels but has afforded me to know how things work at the American Government,” said Kiir. This led to the establishment of “the two chambers of the national legislatures” in the south, “as well as the council of ministers (Cabinet) of the Government of National Unity.”

“Aid” continued to mold fractured southern rebel movements into a cohesive whole in preparation for the independence vote. In November 2005, US Deputy Secretary of State, Robert Zoellick, noted the southern factions’ “inability to come together (sic).” Perhaps more importantly, aid was also used to propagandize the southern civilians into supporting unity. Run by the Grand Africa Media Service Co., the Khartoum Monitor was established in 2000 by southern journalists. Its publisher, Alfred Taban, won the NED’s Democracy Award 2006.

In 2007, Rep. Frank R. Wolf, a Republican stalwart of humanitarian interventionism, told Bush’s Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice: “Salva Kiir needs his people to be trained with regard to the security, with the death of John Garang, if anything happened to him. So if you can quickly make sure that his people are trained, that would be helpful.”

The Obama years: chasing “millions of dollars worth of oil”

The US-backed Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) promised a referendum on particular forms of government for the south, including the possibility of secession. In September 2010 just months before the referendum, President Obama’s Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and future head of USAID, Samantha Power, said of her boss: “The President decided to participate in this event, which was actually at one point originally intended as a ministerial, because this could not be a more critical time in the life of Sudan.”

NED funded and championed a host of South Sudan civil society and propaganda organizations, including: the South Sudanese Network for Democracy and Elections, Eye Radio 98.6FM, the Internews Community Radio Network the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, and the South Sudanese Women’s Empowerment Network.

With pro-Western PR stunts like wearing the Stetson hat, regional leader Kiir promoted US iconography. This was bolstered by a visit from Hollywood star, George Clooney, who “observed” the referendum, which was officially monitored by the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC) in Khartoum and the Southern Sudan Referendum Bureau (SSRB).

But USAID influenced both organizations: “we are playing a key role by providing technical and material assistance, and have provided significant funding to international and domestic groups to both educate voters and ensure credible observation of the referendum.” This included a voter registration drive, which according to the European Union Election Observation Mission (EUEOM) was more concerned with getting 60 percent of registered voters to participate, as the CPA demanded, than educating the populace about the issues.

The referendum took place in January 2011. Having seized control of southern media, the US by proxy blocked out pro-unity arguments. The EUEOM concluded: “An almost complete absence of pro-unity campaigning created an environment where debate on the consequences of secession or the continued unity of Sudan was drowned out.”

Despite a preposterous 98.83 percent of voters opting for independence, US President Barack Obama instantly recognized the new government of Salva Kiir and his Vice President Riek Machar as the leaders of the Republic of South Sudan.

In 2011, the SPLA was legitimized in the eyes of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM). SPLA soldiers were trained in de-mining and tactical casualty combat care by AFRICOM personnel.

Joseph Kony’s “Christian” Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is the African equivalent of “al-Qaeda”: an elusive terror group that offers the US a pretext to arm several nations under the banner of counter-crime and counter-terrorism. Commenting on the LRA, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Karl Wycoff, said in February 2012 (paraphrased by AFRICOM): “the United States is providing training, equipment and logistical support for military efforts in Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan to fight the insurgency.”

But South Sudan, flooded with US arms and training, descended into civil war. Noting the importance of oil to the equation, AFRICOM stated that “South Sudan’s government in Juba turned off the flow in early-2012, charging that the Sudanese are siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil (sic).” Also in 2012, US President Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travelled “to the world’s youngest country, … where she and President Kiir discussed security, oil and economic opportunity.”

Years of US meddling culminate in humanitarian disaster

US efforts to create an oil vassal state did not go according to plan. The South’s Kordofan and Unity states remained in conflict, with the African Union trying to mediate. With the northern Sudanese government based in Khartoum attacking the states, the SPLA sent troops to occupy the oilfields. Citing SPLA attacks, the Sudanese Armed Forces annexed Kordofan.

A year later in December 2013, Kiir accused Vice President Machar of attempting a coup. This led to the South Sudan Civil War, in which Machar formed the rival SPLM-In Opposition. The peace of 2015 was ruptured after the SPLM-In Opposition splintered and stoked more internal fighting.

In July 2015, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) reported: “The Obama administration is blunt: the humanitarian disaster now underway is the result of unscrupulous political leaders who have exploited an ethnic conflict that they cannot control.” But the CFR neglected to mention who empowered these corrupt leaders.

China has quietly done what successive US administrations had hoped it would not do: courted South Sudan’s government and invested in the country’s energy. The International Crisis Group has said that, “by 2013, roughly 100 Chinese companies were registered in South Sudan, covering energy, engineering, construction, telecommunications, medical services, hotels, restaurants, and retail.”

Meanwhile, the public suffers the consequences of neocolonial games. South Sudan’s GDP is under $5bn compared to Sudan’s already small $35bn. Extreme poverty is over 60 percent, compared to 25 percent in Sudan. Malnutrition is 12 percent in Sudan and not even measured in South Sudan, though USAID suggests that it could be as high as 50 percent. Infant mortality in South Sudan is 62 deaths per 1,000 live births compared to 41 in Sudan. The republic is suffering under internal power struggles and violence, including a border clash that left 24 dead on January 5, 2022.

Many of these economic disparities and political problems existed while the south was part of Sudan, but after decades of US meddling, there is little light at the end of the tunnel.

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Facts are clear: electric cars, at these prices, are much more costly than a diesel cars, cost per kilometre. And without taking into account the increase in electricity prices occurred in the last 3 months, yet to be translated into updated electricity bills and related energy price lists.

Plus the cost of infrastructure, huge, to be built to implement electric mobility. Andwithout taking into account the difficult usability of electric car by virtue of the long charging times, weight of the batteries and planned obsolescence of the same, by physics. And limited autonomy (…).

The situation is clear: in terms of costs per kilometer, at these prices of electricity, gas, CO2 (compared to the thermal engine), the electric car is doomed.

This finding is likely to collapse the castle of lies, especially economic ones, on which stands what still remains of credible in the EU, post-subprime crisis (cfr. the true epitaph of the old capitalist world in terms of reaching its debt limits).

So, either the EU says to its citizens: you have to pay twice the cost per kilometer to get around, thus declaring that the thermal car – with diesel – costs half as much. Or, oil and its derivatives must go straight up in price.

If oil is not getting much more expansive soon, the green deal will fail, the EU plans will fail; and, first of all, Italy will fail. And therefore the Euro, or rather the globalist world plan, will be derailed.

Therefore, it seems easy to derive that, from now on, the EU will become warmonger, due to its own interests. Pro-oil rise. That is, EU will subtly sponsor an “old fashion” conflict, for the black gold (…).

With these metrics, it might be possible to understand the recent attempted coup, on the eve of the Orthodox Christmas,in Kazakhstan, a key energy producersat the border between Western and Eastern world. An element that, in the end, we believe will lead to a kind of green light for a conflict in the Middle East.

In regard to this, Berlin might be ready to sacrifice – just the case – the Aryan ally of 100 years, Persia: the EU and its elites will thus be able to justify economically the “poor Green Deal”, to survive themselves.

We know, Germans have no friends nor enemies forever, this mantra was in fact only inherited from the USA, with H. Kissinger (who is German by birth, childhood and youth). But above all they lack Christian pietas, a concept well summarized in the analysis made by Hitler in Mein Kampf, where he identified the Christian church, or rather the Christian-Catholic religion above all, as the greatest obstacle to his plans of hegemony first of Europe and then of the world.

That is, being in search of a “new world”, ruled by “super men”: Hitler Neuorderung should have absorbed, in Hegelian terms, the values and methods of the Church.

To bend them to an end, precisely, that is Hegelian and not Christian.

* * *

Here we are! After almost 80 years since the end of the last world war, we can do a little math, in regard to an epic change of our lifestyle.

Only to find out that, easily, in a few weeks, verified the sums, net of subsidies for the “green transition”, at these prices the electric car has costs per kilometer more than twice as much as a diesel car!

And, note well, not to mention that the electric infrastructure to be built is huge and time consuming. Huge amount of capital involved….

Similarly, with such transition into electric, there would be a lack of electricity production for traditional consumption, causing prices to explode for at least the next five years (even if a possible reduction in consumption, or consumers, in the EU, might be in progress).

By now, as we understand, Germany and France, together, are pushing for a new kind of nuclear generation as a substitute for oil and its derivatives, given that oil remains in Anglo hands since Yalta. So, with Chinese complicity, they dream the changeover to a society that uses a newer energy technology, as a viaticum to emancipate from the U.S. dominus (…).

The problem is that, as you can see, the reality seems not to go exactly as expected by the post-Hegelian intelligentsia…

So, given a deadly economic crisis in EU, daughter of COVID but not only, as a conclusion we derive that oil must dramatically rise in price in order to save EU Green Deal, the euro and therefore the EU.

Ironically, EU seems to need a war for oil (in many ways COVID has been very useful to hide the economic debacle of a continent without resources, old as population and hyper-indebted, as well as slave to the consumption of others for the sale of their goods, ed.).

* * *

This implies a tragic shift, at least bearing in mind the preambles of the Rome Treaty: at present, EU that seems more and more the heir of the DDR, in terms of freedom “allowed” to its own population, being forced to act to the extreme of its innate cynicism.

That is, EU is aiming at a socio-economic shift, in its Lebensraum, even if this might not be justifiable according to the capitalistic/democratic principles of Adam Smith, the soul of capitalism, I would say the founding element of human sociological behaviour for at least 2000 years.

Such shift seems to go far beyond past metrics. After all, the Superman, first narrated by the German philosophers and only taken up by Nazism, represented a society – the German one – ready since a long time for such a changeover, that is firstly existential.

Exactly, the elite of Supermen in charge.

Tragically, we might be living today, post COVID, the very same Nazi objectives. Together with the control of the masses, a tendency that we can consider a kind of Pavlonian act beyond Gotthard, I would say.

In this context, what is happening in front of us might be a kind of Great Reset, aimed precisely at the New World Order (Neuorderung).

All in all, we are probably at the formalization of the End of History, the real one, as Francis Fukuyama predicted (not having declared where the “new coming” was hiding, I mean the new history, since no one comes to think that history ends, it passes simply to the “next phase”).

But before all this happens – the great transition of minds – it seems there will be one last war for black gold.