YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF HOW THE AMERICAN EMPIRE IS THE GREATEST PURVEYOR OF OPPRESSION IN THE WORLD TODAY, DUE YET AGAIN TO THE PRESERVATION OF THE SUPPLY OIL. How much are we in the West responsible for the oil dictatorship in the West African nation of Equatorial Guinea, as well as for other corrupt, vicious regimes in the Global South that are like it? ExxonMobil is the single largest exporter from Equatorial Guinea, and the oil giant pays the family dictatorship of Teodoro Obiang without any qualms. But the usual reaction from the West is simple: such corruption is indigenous to the Third World, and since there is little or nothing we can do about it, our responsibility is sharply limited. Some of this moral complacency is based on simple ignorance about just how badly the oil giants behave. With The Secret World of Oil, the veteran investigative reporter Ken Silverstein offers a major correction, explaining all those things that can’t be learned in the annual reports of ExxonMobil and Chevron. His fast-paced, colorful exposé looks closely at the fixers and traders who are indispensable in oil, which is still the world’s most crucial industry. He also investigates the American law firms, lobbyists and PR agencies that protect and whitewash the petroleum dictatorships. Silverstein somehow persuaded these normally secretive people to talk frankly, and he even got Ely Calil, a notorious Lebanese-Nigerian fixer, to take him to a high-level meeting at a New York hedge fund that canvassed ways to fob off two dirty secondhand refineries on a Middle Eastern nation. In the course of his investigations, Silverstein learns that old-fashioned bribery has taken on new forms. “You used to give a dictator a suitcase of dollars,” Calil tells him; “now you give a tip on your stock shares, or buy a housing estate from his uncle or mother for ten times its worth.”
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 14:56:31 +0000
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