The Daily Grasshopper

I've been watching and studying politics at the local, national, and international levels for a few years now. This fascination makes me a "political junkie," someone who reads election returns every November with the same zeal that your most ardent baseball fan reserves for box scores in October. I have no idea why or where I contracted this jones for something that seems to bore the crap out of most people. All I know is that I like to try to stay on top of who's calling the shots, and what their agenda(s) might be. This means I also have to pay close attention to what the press is doing (and failing to do), because, after all, they are the ones reporting on all of this.

My favorite part of the electoral season is watching the candidates ignore the giant elephant in the middle of the room. For the uninitiated, that means watching the candidates ignore the hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign "donations" that come from the tiny group of incredibly wealthy people who have an enormous stake in electing our leaders and maintaining the status quo. There is an unspoken "Gentlemen's Agreement" between presidential contenders - you don't go after my big campaign contributors on the stump, and I won't go after yours. This tacit agreement is almost never breached, probably because the same wealthy individuals and giant corporations give generously to Democrats and Republicans alike, to better maintain their stranglehold on the people who decide our economic and foreign policies.

If you've never heard any of this before, two good places to look for information are the websites for The Center for Responsive Politics: http://www.opensecrets.org/ and Public Campaign http://www.publicampaign.org.

All of the above means the candidates spend a lot of time talking about issues that most people don't really care too much about. The mainstream media, who are the main beneficiaries of the candidates' spending (in the form of advertising), are happy to focus on personalities and foibles, as opposed to delving into the differences (or, more crucial, the similarities) between the two major parties. I'm generalizing, to be sure, but the exceptions to this dynamic are few and way too far between. In fact, the one guy who was going to blow the whistle on this little love triangle (The Democrats, the Republicans, and Big Media) was Ralph Nader, whose campaign I helped coordinate here in Massachusetts in 2000. They got so nervous they sent police in riot gear to keep him out of the debate hall at U-Mass Boston, despite the fact that he had a ticket.

I bring this up today because it seems like there's a similar tacit agreement, also being abetted by the corporate media, at the international level. We keep hearing reports about how France, Germany, and Russia are thwarting the U.S. administration's desire to go to war in Iraq. Just yesterday, as all the papers are reporting this morning, "3 MEMBERS OF NATO AND RUSSIA RESIST U.S. ON IRAQ PLANS" (New York Times). France, Germany, and Belgium are blocking the U.S. government's attempt to invoke Article 4 of the NATO Charter, which would allow member countries to send military aid to Turkey immediately. According to the Times article:

"The move by the three NATO members most reluctant to use military force against Iraq marked one of the most serious cleavages in the history of the alliance and was sharply criticized by some members as a blow to the strength and credibility of the organization at the core of trans-Atlantic cooperation."

You can read the whole story here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/11/international/middleeast/11IRAQ.html

There's even a "News Analysis" piece "Fallout From Iraq Rift: NATO May Feel a Strain," written by Steven Weisman. The closest it comes to assessing the reason for the split is to say that "as the possibility of a war in Iraq comes ever closer, French and German leaders appear increasingly uneasy with what they see as President Bush's bullying, unilateralist approach to international affairs." From America, it appears the U.S. is the valiant savior of the world order, leading Bush's much-vaunted "coalition of the willing" into the desert, and the French are, in the immortal words of Groundskeeper Willie from The Simpsons, "cheese-eating surrender monkeys." From the European perspective, the French and Germans, along with Russia, are trying to rein in the American Cowboy and his British lapdog while preserving the rule of international law and maintaining world peace. Each side has its own cherished myths about what's going on, and the reporters dutifully transcribe what the leaders say so they can put it into their reports (and analysis - God forbid a reporter for the Times should actually DO some analysis for his "analysis" piece).

Here's the Weisman "analysis" (I use the term loosely):

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/11/international/middleeast/11ASSE.html

But there's still the elephant in the room. Oil.

Do people know who currently holds the vast majority of the contracts for Iraqi oil? I'll give you one, make that two, guesses. Did you guess France and Russia? Well, you're right.

Now, why can't reporters ask what seems to me to be the obvious question: "Is France's apparently principled objection to war in Iraq due to its desire to give peace a chance, or is it because France knows that if inspections succeed and sanctions are eventually lifted, their multinational oil companies, Elf Aquitaine and Total primarily, will be in for a flood of oil profits?" Does that seem like a fair question? It certainly does to me.

Of course, an American reporter (or diplomat) is never going to bring that question up, because to do so would be to cast similar doubts on the nobility of the motives we're professing in our quest to "liberate the Iraqi people." You see how it could get tricky, don't you? And so the gentlemen, the Europeans and the Americans, leave the real spoils of this war off the table. They talk instead about "a moral approach" (French President Chirac) or "building a coalition in the event that military operations are necessary" (U.S. General Tommy Franks).

And remember how I said the Business pages were a good place to get a more honest assessment of what's going on than you get from the National/International News pages? If you read anything today, read this Wall Street Journal article from 1998 entitled "Global Oil Companies Undercut U.S. Policies Toward Iraq, Iran." You can find it here:

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/pol/wsjoil.html

I know some of you out there prefer to be handed this stuff on a platter, without having to hit all these bothersome links, so, here you go (remember - this is from 5 years ago):

"U.S. officials insist they aren't planning any changes in the dual containment policy -- which seeks to limit the trouble-making potential of Iraq and Iran's governments until they are less inclined to make trouble -- despite the lack of enthusiasm and support from Washington's Western allies. "Clearly, there is an interest in Iranian and Iraqi oil," a U.S. State Department official says, "but some of those nations who are less vigilant than we are on containment are motivated by commercial interests."

That motivation is certainly driving major oil companies toward Iraq and Iran, which have some of the cheapest oil in giant deposits. "The world won't come to an end if we don't have their oil," says Cyrus Tahmassebi, president of Bethesda-based Energy Trends Inc. and former chief economist of Ashland Oil. But it would be a great misallocation of capital to walk away from oil that costs $2 a barrel to produce, and go to the North Sea and other places where production costs are $5 to $10 a barrel, Mr. Tahmassebi says. The U.S. Energy Department puts the cost to produce a barrel of oil in the Persian Gulf at between 99 cents and $1.49 a barrel, depending on the size of the field.

Forecasters assume that, one way or another, the oil capacities of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which Iraq and Iran are members, will be expanded to meet rising demand. Otherwise, says the U.S. Energy Department's oil-market review, prices could escalate...

Only the Persian Gulf countries have the reserves and easy accessibility to markets, and could account for half of world production 15 years from now.

Iraq's proven reserves alone, at some 112 billion barrels, compared to Saudi Arabia's 250 billion barrels of proven reserves, are more than a tenth of the world total. The U.S. Energy Department estimates Iraq's probable and possible resources, an uncertain reckoning, at an additional 215 billion barrels. And they are concentrated in very large, easy to exploit pools of oil -- an attractive prospect for oil companies that can use economies of scale.

Once sanctions are lifted, "there will be an explosion of activity in Iraq," says Alexandre Muller, a geologist specializing in the Middle East at Petroconsultants SA in Geneva."

Well, a few things have changed since 1998. For starters, it looks like sanctions might not get lifted, and the "explosion of activity" is going to be of a slightly different sort than the one Mr. Muller probably envisioned. Of course, you won't get that kind of honesty from the New York Times, or just about any other mainstream media outlet. They prefer to ignore the oily elephant in the middle of the room, because it will make it that much easier to wave the flag when the bombs start dropping and Iraqi civilians start to die. All so we can liberate their oil.

There are clearly other factors at work, and we can never know about all the palace intrigues that color the standoff between the former allies. There is the upcoming Trade War over genetically modified foods, which I wrote about a couple of days ago and which came up again in today's news:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/11/international/europe/11FOOD.html

There is also going to be a trade war over farm subsidies, which also got reported on today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/11/business/worldbusiness/11TRAD.html

France and Germany see themselves as the primary building blocks of a European Union that can challenge the U.S. "hyperpower" economically, but not militarily. The challenges to genetically-modified food, charges of unfair agricultural subsidies, and the debate about whether or not to go to war in Iraq all revolve around who will dominate global trade in the decades to come. France and Germany don't want to get left behind, while some of the others are willing to cast their lot with the U.S. - for now. Allowing the U.S. to dominate the world's oil supply would be bad for European business, so France, Russia, and Germany are out for peace.

But just because the media don't report on the oil angle doesn't mean it's not part of the equation. A LOT of people are aware of what's really going on. That's why tens of thousands of us, maybe even a million of us, will be marching in New York City this weekend (despite the refusal of a judge there to give us a permit - read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/11/nyregion/11MARC.html) to protest the Bush administration's war for oil.

If you want to join the fun, check out: http://www.unitedforpeace.org/. Maybe I'll see you in the streets of New York!