SPEAKING FREELY - Sweet deals: Behind the Iran crisis

[Now this guy really gets it. He tells us in a nutshell (and quickly) why the US went into Iraq and why it doesn’t matter whether Iraqi oil production has gone down since the invasion or not. The Neocons and Neolibs both understand that oil prices are only going to go up. So Iraq’s 90 or so billion barrels are literally oil in the bank. And the way Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) will work if a stable government authorizes and polices them would result in an enormous windfall of hundreds of billions of dollars of profit for the oil majors (the Bushes and their “base”). So how does that fit with my position that the US has been intending to balkanize Iraq?

There’s really no inconsistency there. In fact I would say that the contingency planners have already weighed the various probabilities and concluded that it might be easier to achieve stable governments in separate Kurdish and Shia states carved out of Iraq than with Iraq as a whole. Then the lucrative PSAs for the northern fields around Mosul would be a cinch. The Kurds are US clients. Ah, you say, but a Shia state carved out of southeastern Iraq couldn’t happen without Iran’s blessing, and it wouldn’t be a client state.

That’s absolutely right. And that’s one reason why the nuclear weapon issue is a complete red herring. It’s also another reason why the US will never attack Iran and why I believe the two countries are quietly moving closer together rather than towards hostilities. A lot of things could go wrong to change all this. No one has ever argued that Peak Oil was going to produce stability, let alone sanity. But the following Op-Ed from the Asia Times is based upon the reading of a really good map. – MCR]

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On reading the recent wave of stories concerning US readiness to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age unless it gives up efforts to produce nuclear weapons, my first reaction was to be "shocked and awed". But then a realization sank in. All this noise concerning Iranian nuclear preparations was, as William Shakespeare had it, "a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

As a former director of an oil exchange with recent experience in Iran due to my involvement in a proposed Iranian oil bourse, it has been clear to me for some time that the nuclear issue is a red herring. But I confess that it had puzzled me for some time why everything except oil is going to be privatized in Iraq.

Well, I did until I recently read an analysis by Greg Muttitt of the plans by Big Oil to enter 40-year Production-Sharing Agreements (PSAs) with Iraq. The deal is this: we develop your oilfields, and in return we get - for 40 years - a major share of your crude-oil production at favorable "at cost" prices. The outcome will be profits beyond the dreams of avarice.

Once these contracts are signed, of course, global institutions (backed by US policing) will ensure that they are honored, whatever happens subsequently in Iraq, and whatever countries are able to influence policy in Iraq. The fact that there is still a US base in Cuba, for instance, illustrates how rigorously international treaties and the rule of law may apply despite differences in ideology.

Does anyone seriously believe that decision-makers in the US would countenance a bombing campaign that would almost inevitably lead to crude oil at US$150 per barrel, whether or not that suited Big Oil?

While the business community at large in the US may be prepared to sit back and let Big Oil pillage Iraq with PSAs as planned, it would certainly not risk an oil crisis of an order that massively increased its energy costs and saw Joe Six-Pack having to pay $6 a gallon ($1.60 a liter) or worse to fill his sport-utility vehicle.

To enter credible PSAs, there has to be a legitimate government in Iraq. There is none in Baghdad now by any stretch of the imagination, and which country has the power to prevent one from being formed? That's right, it's Iran.

Simply put, US President George W Bush's chance of pulling off the Sale of the Century runs out with his term of office in 2009, and that is why we are hearing all about the need to sort out Iran's "nuclear ambitions" before then.

I concede that this is a cynical critique, but I believe Iran has in its power the potential for formulating a constructive solution in the region, which would demonstrate the shortcomings of the "Western" form of the free-enterprise model exemplified by the astonishing proposal to promote "investment" through PSAs.

Alternatively, Iran and its Arab neighbors in the Gulf Cooperation Council might pool some of the proceeds of recent energy sales and use them by investing as "capital partners" in Iraqi crude-oil production.

To do this they could simply create a quasi-partnership known as an "open" corporation - legal forms exist enabling this - where Iraq is the "capital user" member, and the capital provider members/investors take their investment back not in cash but in crude oil at the current price. That is, it amounts to a forward sale of Iraqi crude oil.

So to raise the $2.5-billion-per-year investment it needs, Iraq would simply sell each year a sufficient portion of its future production at the prevailing price per barrel. That is, at $50 per barrel it would sell 50 million barrels.

This mechanism is far more equitable than the typical PSA and, in fact, such revenue-sharing "capital partnerships" have been used for thousands of years and remain at the heart of Islamic finance, notwithstanding the best efforts of the global banking system to subvert them.

You won't hear about it from a financial establishment accustomed to using the toxic combination of debt - "deficit-based" - funding - and "equity" in the form of the joint stock corporation. But it is not rocket science and is far more sensible than bombing Iran.

Oil Prices Show No Sign of Slowing

Tight Supplies, Capacity Spark Talk That Crude Could Reach $80 a Barrel

A seasonally early run-up in oil prices this year is leading analysts to warn that even modest hiccups in energy supplies could send costs well above last autumn's records for crude and gasoline.

As happened in 2005, this year's ascent is coming at a time of solid economic growth, tight crude supply and constrained oil-refining capacity. What is especially worrisome for energy consumers is that this round of increases is happening even before the start of the summer driving season in the U.S., the world's largest petroleum market, and months ahead of the annual hurricane season.

Last year's hurricanes, which ravaged Gulf of Mexico oil-and-gas facilities, sent crude futures soaring above $70 a barrel and U.S. gasoline over $3 a gallon. With prices now nearing $70 again, some traders say that if market trends follow last year's pattern, crude could hit $80 this year.

"We're likely to beat last year's records without any major [supply] disruption," says Antoine Halff, head of research at Fimat USA, a brokerage firm owned by French bank Société Générale SA.

The fundamental trouble is that the global energy system for the past three years has been operating close to its ability to pump and refine crude. And with demand continuing to grow, output sagging in troubled oil regions and another hurricane season approaching, the industry has failed to restore a large cushion of spare capacity.

One big laggard: the U.S. oil patch. More than half a year after the 2005 hurricanes, almost 23% of oil output in the U.S. Gulf is still shut down -- about 340,000 barrels a day.

And production increases that had been expected in other oil-rich countries aren't panning out. Russian output growth sped up sharply earlier in this decade but has slowed to a crawl. A small rebel group in Nigeria has caused a supply shortfall that is greater than a recent capacity expansion by Saudi Arabia. Politically troubled export powerhouses Iraq, Iran and Venezuela are having problems keeping up supply levels.

Officials of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries have acknowledged there isn't much they can do right now to boost supply. Led by the Saudis, the cartel is pumping close to flat out. "OPEC looks in pretty bad shape now," Mr. Halff says.

On Friday, crude oil for May delivery settled at $67.39 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, down 55 cents. Gasoline futures ended at $1.9768 a gallon, down 2.31 cents. Typically, retail gasoline prices are some 65 cents a gallon above levels on the futures market. Crude briefly hit a high of $70.85 a barrel in Nymex trading after Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 30, before settling at $69.81.

For the moment, to be sure, refiners aren't reporting shortages of crude. Some in OPEC fear the opposite: that part of the cartel's high output is being squirreled away in inventories, which have been rising, in consumer countries. Those fattening stockpiles could push prices down, these officials say.

In the past three years, the world economy has weathered the biggest energy-price shock in a generation. Whether the economy can absorb another mighty jump is unclear.

"At some point in time we're going to reach a limit, and we will see a real impact of increased oil prices on our economic activity," U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress last week. "Whether $95 [a barrel] or something north of that, I don't know. I can tell you I'm worried about anything above the current levels."

Analysts say that because this extended price increase is being driven primarily by strong demand, only an economic slowdown can cap it.

Philip Verleger Jr., an oil-industry consultant in Colorado, says the economy's fate hinges less on oil prices per se than on broader inflation trends and how central banks respond to them. A slowdown could come if the U.S. Federal Reserve and its peers see a resurgence in inflationary expectations and raise interest rates sharply to damp them, as they did during the oil crises of the 1970s. But with inflationary expectations still subdued, he says, a slamming of the brakes is unlikely -- and so is an end to the price jump.

"There is no reason [the oil price rise] stops at $100 a barrel," Mr. Verleger says.

Other analysts have talked of the possibility of crude rising to $100 a barrel or more, but most aren't predicting such heady levels for this year unless there is a major loss of supply due to a cataclysmic event. One scenario: Amid Tehran's standoff with the West over Iran's nuclear-energy program, there might be a cutoff of Iranian oil exports or a closure of the Straits of Hormuz, a choke point for oil shipments from the all-important Persian Gulf.

Gasoline inventories in the U.S. have started falling as demand creeps up and refineries, which had been working overtime since last year's hurricanes, undergo maintenance before churning out fuel for the summer. This year, the gasoline market is also being roiled by regulatory and fuel-formula changes. New rules require refiners to blend gasoline with ethanol, a non-petroleum fuel that can't be transported through oil-product pipelines because it corrodes them.

Industry analysts say there could be regional shortages of ethanol. The price of ethanol already has risen sharply this year, to about $2.70 a gallon at the New York harbor, where it changes hands, up 70 cents so far this year, and more than double the $1.25 a gallon of a year ago, according to Larry Goldstein, president of New York-based Petroleum Industry Research Foundation.

"Last time, Mother Nature intervened in the market," Mr. Goldstein says. "This time, prices are being driven by market forces," with gasoline pulling crude and other forms of fuel higher, he says.

As Oil Supplies Are Stretched, Rebels, Terrorists Get New Clout

Media-Savvy Guerrillas Roil Global Oil Prices in Fight With Nigerian Government

The list of people with big influence over the $2 trillion-a-year global oil market has long been an exclusive one, topped by Saudi princes and American presidents. This year, someone calling himself Jomo Gbomo emailed his way into the club.

Since January, the obscure Nigerian rebel group that he claims to speak for has battled Nigeria's military, blown up oil facilities and kidnapped foreign oil workers. All the while, Mr. Gbomo (pronounced BO-mo) has fired off emails to the international media taking responsibility for the attacks or threatening new ones -- and often roiling global oil prices in the process.

"All pipelines, flow stations and crude loading platforms will be targeted for destruction," he wrote hours before a violent attack in mid-February that helped drive oil prices in New York up by more than $1 a barrel. A later email to The Wall Street Journal that also lists the sender as Jomo Gbomo declares: "The fact that we have influenced the price of world oil, no matter how little, and caught the attention of the foreign media indicates we are on the right track." The email's author says that name is a pseudonym. The real identity of the writer is a mystery.

The media-savvy guerrilla group's emergence as a market mover points to a mounting problem for the U.S. and other big oil consumers: maintaining energy security in an era of scarce oil resources and ever-longer supply lines. With today's tight oil markets, even small disruptions -- or the threat of them -- can jolt the world economy, leading to higher costs of gasoline, airline tickets and other goods for consumers everywhere.

That dynamic is giving new power to rebels, terrorists and ornery governments. Al Qaeda is targeting oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, the world's No. 1 exporter. A foiled terrorist attack there helped send prices up more than $2 a barrel in February. Some Iranian officials have threatened to block the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf if the United Nations imposes sanctions over Tehran's suspected nuclear-weapons program. Now even Mr. Gbomo's small group, armed with little more than machine guns and an email account, has realized that it, too, can use oil as a weapon on the global stage.

Mr. Gbomo's group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, wants local control of the region's oil wealth, along with the release of two imprisoned delta leaders. It hopes that by shaking up world markets it can bring international pressure on Nigeria's government to respond to its demands.

Oil sabotage is a longstanding insurgency tactic. Joseph Stalin organized strikes by oil workers in the Caucasus in the early 1900s to weaken the czar. But the number and widening geographic scope of attacks and threats today has the oil industry and governments scrambling to safeguard the world's oil supply.

Sen. Richard Lugar, Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is pushing a bill that would lead to coordination with big, new oil consumers like China on developing emergency stocks and other measures to handle major oil disruptions. The European Union is considering rules to bolster security at energy installations with costly tools like fences and sensors. The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based energy watchdog, estimates it will take $3 trillion in spending over the next 25 years on new oil infrastructure to insulate the world from shocks.

Under the Carter Doctrine of 1980, the U.S. committed to defending its interests in the Persian Gulf, the source of almost two-thirds of world oil reserves. That led to a military mobilization in the region that cost the U.S. some $20 billion a year since the 1980s, according to a relatively conservative estimate by Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy-security expert at Rice University.

Since then, as the U.S. has diversified its energy sources, the challenge of protecting supplies has grown. The list of unstable oil-exporting regions now includes West Africa, Central Asia and South America.

Africa is particularly worrisome, given its growing supply role and political instability. The continent now pumps just over 10% of global oil output, and Houston consultancy IHS estimates it will provide about a third of the world's new oil by 2010. Nigeria alone accounts for 3% of today's global supply. Yet far from evolving into a hedge against Mideast turmoil, the region has become a risky new chokepoint.

Oil has been a source of discord in the Niger Delta almost since it was discovered here in 1956 by Royal Dutch Shell PLC. Ethnic minorities have fought Nigeria's federal government, and each other, over oil benefits. Ransom kidnappings and smuggling flourish. Endemic corruption means little oil wealth reaches communities near the wells. Warri, the western delta's oil capital, is a crime-ridden sprawl of rutted streets and cinderblock shops.

For security, Shell and other oil companies long relied on government forces that they subsidized. Shell also used cash to keep the peace, putting locals on the payroll for nonexistent jobs or doling out payments to community leaders. In 2003, Shell banned such practices, and now relies largely on funding development projects -- about $25 million in 2004 -- to generate good will.

Shell executives declined to discuss most details of their security procedures in Nigeria or elsewhere, citing safety concerns for staff. "We continue to take necessary measures to ensure the safety and security of staff, contractors and the people in the communities where we operate," Shell said in a statement.

The surge in oil prices since 2003 has turned the long-simmering delta from a local nuisance for the oil industry into an international economic flash point. Growing demand whittled away the world's spare capacity of idle oil wells that producers can tap in a crunch. The U.S. invasion of Iraq further crimped supplies. Around that time, Niger Delta rebels began playing the global oil game.

In September 2004, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, a delta warlord whom the Nigerian government had accused of oil smuggling, declared "all out war" on the government. Annkio Briggs, a senior aide to Mr. Asari at the time, says the warlord's comments were carefully crafted and timed to move global prices. Carried by news agencies, the remarks helped push New York futures prices above $50 a barrel for the first time.

"We were aware of the price of oil, and we were aware that it was dependent on supply and demand, and we were aware that supplies had to be stable," says Ms. Briggs in an interview. "We looked around at other countries that were big producers, and we could see anytime there was a crisis the price of oil would go up, so it didn't take a lot of intelligence or mathematics to figure it out."

After a temporary peace with Mr. Asari, the Nigerian government arrested him last September on treason charges. Asari loyalists demonstrated in Port Harcourt, the delta's biggest city. In late December, unknown militants blew up a critical Shell pipeline.

Shortly after that, the group calling itself MEND made its first appearance. On Jan. 11, three speedboats packed with rebels attacked a Shell facility off the Nigerian coast. They engaged a Nigerian navy boat, forcing it to retreat, and then machine-gunned a Shell-chartered support vessel. No one was injured, but the rebels boarded the boat and kidnapped four foreign contractors. In a separate but coordinated attack, gunmen also blew up a Shell pipeline.

Afterward, the first email from Mr. Gbomo surfaced, claiming responsibility for the attacks on behalf of MEND. "We are capable and determined to destroy the ability of Nigeria to export oil," he wrote in the email, sent to reporters. In New York the next day, oil prices soared more than $1 on the kidnapping news, before retreating by the session's close.

The incident rattled big oil companies, which have invested billions of dollars in Nigerian offshore oil production that once seemed insulated from turmoil on land miles away. Shell worried that boat trips to its large field called EA, about nine miles offshore, were no longer safe, and shut down production there.

The U.S. Navy has stepped up deployments in the waters off Nigeria. The U.S. has also given Nigeria a handful of old Coast Guard vessels, and American soldiers have trained Nigerians on small-boat tactics in the delta's creeks. But Nigeria's army and navy remain ineffective "Right now, I don't know how far offshore [the rebels] can go," says Brig. Gen. Elias Zamani, former commander of a Nigerian military unit fighting the militants here.

Details about MEND and its self-described spokesman are scarce. Mr. Gbomo doesn't give interviews in person and declines to provide information on his own age, location or background, except to say that he is male and is part of the "nerve centre" of MEND. In recent weeks, he has sent out detailed field reports after attacks to more than a dozen local and foreign reporters. These accounts, along with his threats of future attacks that actually do pan out and his knowledge of the movement of hostages, appear to corroborate his assertion that he is close to the leadership of MEND. But the extent of the connection couldn't be verified.

The Niger Delta is home to numerous youth gangs whose loyalties shift between political, ethnic or tribal leaders. Experts say that MEND has brought new cohesion to that mix. Its attacks have so far prompted Shell to evacuate hundreds of staff from the western delta and to shut down roughly 455,000 barrels of daily production, about a fifth of Nigeria's total output. "MEND seems to show much more sophistication using Nigeria's contribution to the energy market to advance its goals," says a Western official who has studied the group. "We hadn't really seen this targeted activity before."

Mr. Gbomo does reply to emailed questions, although it's not clear from where. Internet cafes are plentiful in the Niger Delta. Mr. Gbomo's emails, which all come from the same Yahoo account, carry an electronic tag that suggests they were sent via a computer in South Africa. But they could have originated elsewhere. U.S. officials believe there's a clear link between Mr. Gbomo and the MEND attacks, but it's unclear if law enforcement officials have tried to follow his email trail.

In one recent exchange, Mr. Gbomo described MEND as a new umbrella for several militant groups that have been fighting in the delta for years. He said MEND's forces number in the hundreds. "We are not communists or even revolutionaries," he wrote. "Just a bunch of extremely bitter men."

Chief W.O. Okirika, a community leader in the delta who has had contact with MEND leaders, says the group consists of local residents who want the government to start distributing oil wealth to the community. If the government doesn't, he says, "the militancy of the youth will increase and the pipeline attacks will escalate."

Four days after its first attack, on Jan. 15, MEND raided a Shell oil-pumping station in the delta, exchanging heavy fire with soldiers guarding it. Fourteen soldiers and two caterers working for Shell were killed, either shot or drowned, according to Shell and the Nigerian military.

In emails to reporters afterward, Mr. Gbomo demanded the release of Mr. Asari, the imprisoned rebel leader, and a local delta governor recently jailed on corruption charges. He promised "a series of very significant attacks" and called for all oil workers to leave the area. The next trading day in New York, prices leapt more than $2 a barrel. Newswires quoted traders and analysts blaming the price spike on the Nigerian unrest, as well as growing concern about Iran's standoff with the West.

At the rebel base camp, the kidnapped foreign contractors from the Jan. 11 attack slept on mattresses and were provided bottled water, cigarettes and tins of sardines, according to a later account from one of the hostages, Nigel Watson-Clark. The rebel group's apparent leader preached to the hostages about the delta's destitution. Mr. Watson-Clark, an old West Africa hand, came away persuaded that the group was different than the typical Nigerian kidnapping ring out for ransom.

"They made it perfectly clear that they weren't interested in money," he said in a telephone interview from his home in the U.K. late last month. "The main demand was that all [foreigners] would have to leave the Niger Delta, and they had to have some sort of control over their resources." After 19 days, MEND released the hostages unharmed.

Then, on Feb. 15, helicopter gunships under the command of Nigerian Gen. Zamani opened fire on several suspected smuggling barges near Warri. Community leaders said the raid killed villagers and damaged homes. Gen. Zamani denied that, but was relieved of his command last month.

Three days after the helicopter attacks, just past midnight in Nigeria, Mr. Gbomo sent an email to journalists warning of a MEND reprisal. A few hours later, gunmen swarmed a barge near an oil-export terminal run by Shell and kidnapped nine employees of Willbros Group Inc., a Houston contractor. On the next day of trading in New York, prices jumped more than $1 a barrel.

Mr. Gbomo sent out digital photos of the hostages, surrounded by masked men brandishing machine guns. In late February, he arranged for a group of reporters to board speedboats and rendezvous with several boatloads of gun-toting MEND members. In a second, similar meeting, the group surprised reporters by turning over one of the hostages, Macon Hawkins, a 69-year-old Texan with diabetes. They freed the rest over several weeks. After they released the last three hostages in late March, oil prices dropped 10 cents a barrel on the news.

But in a mass email after the release, Mr. Gbomo said MEND wasn't backing down. Caring for the hostages had tied down 800 men who could be better used attacking oil facilities, he said. "Oil companies and their workers should not be deceived into a false sense of relief," he wrote. Financial newswires flashed his comments, helping send crude up almost $2 a barrel the next day.

There are profound lessons to be learned from the ongoing travails of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), under siege by white America at large, the leadership of her own party, and the chairman of her own caucus.

In the aftermath of McKinney’s run-in with a Capitol Hill police officer, we have witnessed an orgy of unadulterated defamation that is actually directed at Black women in general. In rejecting and denouncing McKinney’s defense, her tormentors demonstrate that the very concept of racial profiling was never sincerely accepted among most white Americans, and that 9/11 is just an excuse for undoing decades of legal and political struggles against the abominable practice.

So virulent and shameless have been the attacks on McKinney – spewing caricatures of the six-term lawmaker that reflect whites’ own hallucinatory visions of Black people – it leads us to conclude that racists are conducting a kind of ritual, an exorcism to cast the “militant Black” out of the national polity, once and for all. Disgustingly, a number of Black voices have joined mob, in order to prove that they are reasonable and trustworthy Negroes who won’t intrude on white folks’ illusions of innocence.

Most distressingly, the McKinney affair dramatically demonstrates that the Congressional Black Caucus has been eviscerated as a body. The CBC is revealed as collectively gutless, devoid of any semblance of Black solidarity, without which it has no reason for being.

We at BC had previously believed that April, 2005, when 37 percent of the 42 Black House members voted for Republican bills, was the lowest point in Congressional Black Caucus history. A year later, the CBC has found a new nadir. On the evening of April 5, undoubtedly on orders from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, CBC chairman Mel Watt gathered twenty or so members to browbeat McKinney into firing her legal team and cease appearing before the media. Watt absented himself from the beat-down, so that it would not appear to be an “official” CBC event.

As congressional aides wandered in and out of the room, some Members dutifully echoed Pelosi’s demand that McKinney not frame the March 28 confrontation with the policeman as a “racial” incident, and that she issue an apology on the House floor the following morning. According to several sources who spoke with BC on condition of anonymity, and based on an account given by McKinney staff assistant Faye Coffield to a weekly Atlanta meeting of the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda, a “consensus” was reached that McKinney would deliver the apology and abandon efforts to defend herself in the media (although not her legal team).

The next morning, at the appointed hour, McKinney was prepared to offer her apology to the House. But Mel Watt had already put the word out that CBC members were to renege on their part of the deal. The Caucus must not stand with McKinney when she stepped to the microphone. Mel Watt, Nancy Pelosi’s poodle, attempted to enforce his Mistress’s wish that McKinney appear utterly isolated and alone. Nothing should distract from the Democrats’ non-strategy of doing and saying nothing until mid-term elections in November. The Republicans must be allowed to self-destruct without interference. McKinney’s charge of racial profiling was a distraction from the Democratic non-strategy – so she must be shunned. Mel Watt was the enforcer – the designated shunner-in-chief.

Pelosi appears to harbor a deep hatred for McKinney, whom she cannot control. Most recently, the 51-year-old Georgia lawmaker defied the Leader’s orders, voting in favor of a Republican bill, cynically modeled on Democrat John Murtha’s measure for a quick exit from Iraq. She was among only three Democrats, and the only CBC member, to do so. McKinney also ignored Pelosi’s order that Democrats boycott hearings on Katrina and leave the field to Republicans.

However, Pelosi has been the aggressor all along, bent on bringing the CBC and other progressives to heel as she pursues her spineless non-strategy for victory by default over the GOP – a scenario that by definition requires African Americans to mute their own demands, to be quiet and compliant. When McKinney returned to congress in January 2005 after a two-year hiatus, Pelosi denied her seniority, bumping her down to freshman status despite her previous ten years on The Hill. Not a peep from the CBC, cowed by their Leader and, recent events have shown, packed with members who are themselves fearful that McKinney’s militancy will raise the bar of constituent expectations for their own performances on Black people’s behalf.

On the House floor, the morning of April 6, Pelosi/Watt had set McKinney up for further humiliation. Not only would she be required to deliver an apology that would be seen as an admission of guilt (by those who had already condemned and defamed her), but the absence of CBC members at her side would mark her as a lone “extremist,” a “loon” whose politics could be dismissed out of hand. Why, even McKinney’s own colleagues won’t stand with her. She’s crazy (like the rest of those darkies who cry racism).

According to several congressional sources, McKinney confronted a gaggle of CBC members, reminding them of the consensus agreement of the night before, in which they had promised a display of physical solidarity at the microphone in return for her concessions. White Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), seeing the commotion, hurried over to the Black circle: “I’ll stand with you, Cynthia.” Others stepped forward to fulfill their pledge, despite CBC chairman Mel Watt’s treacherous machinations.

Here is a partial list of those who were videotaped standing with McKinney when she read the words of apology that had been demanded of her:

Only nine of the 20-plus CBC members who had reached “consensus” on standing with their sister the night before, bucked Pelosi’s petty dictatorial edict – and straw-boss Mel Watt’s attempt to enforce it.

Once upon a time, the CBC could collectively call itself “the conscience of the congress.” No more.

By bowing to Pelosi, Black congresspersons reinforce her and other white’s belief that they can pick and choose the African American leaders and representatives they deal with, and isolate the rest, while still retaining mass Black support for the Democratic Party. Such Blacks are enablers of racism, and must eventually pay the price at the hands of their constituents, who are no different than the Black Georgia voters who sent McKinney to Washington six times. Worse, in urging McKinney to drop the “racial” aspect of her defense – to pretend that she was not racially profiled, when they know that police profiling is near-universal – they do grave injury to fundamental Black interests.

Days after his attempt to pound McKinney into dust, the duplicitous Mel Watt related to the Charlotte Observer his own scary run-in with Capitol police “a year or so ago”:

"I was running to the floor to vote and an officer said, `Can I see your ID?' and I said, `No' and kept running. I looked back and he had his hand on his gun. Then another (Capitol) police officer said, `Member.' He recognized me (as a House member). It just so happened that the first (officer) was white and the other one was black ... I was probably very rash. In retrospect, I thought to myself, `You had to be out of your mind.' I was trying to get to a vote and he had a job to do."

Watt understands very well that the Black officer, who didn’t go for his gun, but instead called his white partner off, was intervening in a case of racial profiling. Yet Watt’s desire to stay in the good graces of his Leader, Pelosi, drives him to conspire against a fellow Black congressperson, Cynthia McKinney, whose recent hair makeover is said to have made her fair game to be accosted by Capitol police. Said McKinney:

“Do I have to contact the police every time I change my hairstyle? How do we account for the fact that when I wore my braids every day for 11 years, I still faced this problem, primarily from certain police officers.”

Nobody knows better than Black officers that racism is rampant in the Capitol Police force. Of the 1,200 officers, 29 percent are Black, and many still have racial bias suits outstanding. "You have, basically, a renegade police department up here, that’s been operating under the protection of Congress," said Charles J. Ware, an attorney representing the Capitol Black Police Association.

But it’s not just race. Police officers, like workers in any organization, spend much of their time talking shop. For Capitol police, the subject of their shop-talk is the members of congress they are hired to protect. Cynthia McKinney is famous – no less so on Capitol Hill. She is the Black woman viciously branded as a friend of “terrorists,” the most uppity African American in the federal legislature. The cops are quite aware of what she looks like, new hair-do or not.

A McKinney lawyer got it right when he told a Howard University press conference that his client was targeted for reasons of “sex, race and Ms. McKinney's progressiveness."

The cops know who McKinney is – they have profiled her politically. Michael C. Ruppert, former Los Angeles cop and current honcho of the popular web site From the Wilderness, has felt the police hostility directed at his longtime friend, Cynthia McKinney:

” I have walked the halls of Congress with Cynthia McKinney maybe eight to ten times. I have walked into and out of the Cannon and Longworth house office buildings with her. I have walked to hearings in the Rayburn house office building with her. I have walked the underground tunnels from one of those office buildings directly to the edge of the House floor and its anteroom with her. I can tell you one thing for certain because I have seen it and I have felt it. Cynthia McKinney and her staff get treated differently from just about anyone else on the Hill. It’s subtle, but so is the taste of dirt when it’s in your mouth.”

Although the Capitol police have failed to produce a surveillance tape of McKinney’s confrontation with their officer, the congresswoman captured one incident in the movie, “American Blackout,” now being screened at sites around the country. The film depicts McKinney’s investigation of voting irregularities in the 2000 elections. One segment shows the congresswoman being accosted by police as she and her party approach the Longworth building of the Capitol. McKinney turns to the camera and reports that police subject her to such treatment “all the time.”

California Rep. Tom Lantos, according to the web reference site Wikipedia, “ran over a teenager in the Capitol parking area and refused to stop despite screams from the crowd. He never apologized for the hit-and-run either." The Boston Globe reported that Lantos was not charged with hit-and-run, but was only fined $25 for ''failure to pay full time and attention." However, a teacher accompanying the student was threatened with arrest by Capitol police when she chased Lantos’ car, demanding that he stop.

Apparently Capitol police are quite zealous in protecting their lawmakers – if they are white.

In an otherwise inane, anti-McKinney article, Black columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson gave some historical perspective to recent events:

“In past years, the Caucus raised heck when a white Republican Congressman punched a black Capitol police officer and a year later Ohio Democratic Representative Louis Stokes was hassled by Capitol police. And the Congressional Black Caucus rushed to their defense.”

Not this time, not for Cynthia McKinney. The Congressional Black Caucus is broken.

Around midnight on April 8, Saturday Night Live’s Kenan Thompson performed a grotesque, bewigged skit in which he conjured up a fat, sloppy, dull-witted, belligerent, loud-talking, no-listening, from-deep-in-the-ghetto character who was supposed to be – Cynthia McKinney. Of course, this TV minstrel’s interpretation bore no resemblance to the congressperson – daughter of one of Atlanta’s first Black policemen, a former faculty member at Clark Atlanta University, world traveler and sought-after speaker, six-term legislator. But that did not matter. Although SNL does superb work caricaturing public personalities, its usual standards did not apply in McKinney’s case. The skit was a dehumanizing assault on Black women as a group, with “Cynthia” standing in for the female gender of her race.

A specific profile of Black women exists in the minds of vast sections of white America. As Dr. Abdul Karim Bangura relates in this issue of BC, in “an analysis of White students’ stereotypes of Black women by professor of women’s studies and sociology Rose Weitz at Arizona State University and Wakonse fellow Leonard Gordon at the same university, the students primarily characterize Black women as loud, aggressive, argumentative, stubborn, and bitchy.”

White men (and women, and some Black men) on and off Capitol Hill are eager to vilify and diminish McKinney, to call her a “bitch,” a “racist,” “crazy” and all manner of epithets. This abuse is actually directed against the defamers’ twisted idea of who and what Black women are. So diseased are their minds, they see only their sickness-induced delusions. White supremacy allows them to translate their delusions into public policy. September 11 gave them a free pass to run buck wild, with no apologies, under the umbrella of “homeland security.”

It can be no consolation to Rep. McKinney that she is just a convenient target for what we now recognize as a great resurgence of racism in the United States. The South rules, a South that is not defined geographically, but socio-politically. White Americans have become much more homogenous in the electronic and high-mobility age – to the detriment of sanity. Their never-forsaken dreams of domestic and planetary racial conquest were given a Frankenstein-like jolt and boost by the Bush regime, which spoke directly to the predatory core of American myth and historical practice. Emboldened, they have snared Cynthia McKinney in one of their IRTs: Improvised Racist Traps. She awaits the decision of a grand jury.

The moral and political collapse of the Congressional Black Caucus could not come at a worse time – but it has occurred. Corroded by corporate money, dependent on corporate media – with the near-extinction of independent Black media – adrift in the gulf between the needs of the Black masses and the narrow aspirations of the miniscule hyper-mobile Black classes, and still steeped in rank male chauvinism, much of Black “leadership” cannot abide a genuinely progressive, charismatic female in their midst. Many also look on in sulking jealousy at the burgeoning unity and militancy of Latinos, whose grassroots are on the move, and whose media support their cause.

When CBC members urged Cynthia McKinney to forsake the truth, to hide the ugly fact of racial (and political, and sexual) profiling, they gave enormous aide and comfort to the enemy. If there was one victory that African Americans had achieved in the post-Civil Rights era, it was to make racial profiling legally, politically and socially unacceptable. This victory was the fruit of countless suits, demonstrations – all manner of political struggles – and the legacy of the legions of dead, maimed, jailed and humiliated victims of profiling who became the focus of sustained Black action.

September 11 provided the excuse to undo decades of anti-profiling victories. Profiling is reckoned to be a good thing. Now the racists seek to reestablish arbitrary and capricious white supremacy, with legislation that would de facto deputize every police officer as an agent of “homeland security” who need not respect the constitution in the case of “suspected” undocumented immigrants. At that point, all persons of color become grist for the suspicion mill. Just as the Capitol policeman chose not to “recognize” Cynthia McKinney as a congressperson, any cop could willfully fail to recognize his fellow Americans and strip them of their rights. Such a regime already exists in designated “drug zones” in urban America, where everyone is suspect.

Yet the CBC allows Republicans and racist Democrats to jeer and bully Cynthia McKinney into a legal cul-de-sac, because she dares to cite profiling.

The masses of African Americans know the deal – they are profiled constantly in stores, when observed outside their neighborhoods, on the highways, when breathing while Black. McKinney’s version of events does not seem bizarre to them. Although the laughing racist hyenas convince each other – with the tacit help of CBC chair Mel Watt – that McKinney is on the ropes, it is the Black constituents of Dekalb County who will decide if she is “crazy” for standing up for her (and our) dignity and rights.

When McKinney arrived back in Atlanta shortly after her confrontation with the uniformed profiler, State Representative Tyrone Brooks, president of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, was among those to greet and support her: "It's really not about Cynthia McKinney,” said Brooks. “It's about African-Americans in America who are victims of racial profiling every day."

Much of the Congressional Black Caucus seem to have lost touch with this reality. As a body, they have lost their moorings, and must be rehabilitated, surgically. A bunch of them have got to go.

A recent surge in public criticism of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by retired military leaders is the culmination of months of intense but largely private debate among active duty officers about how best to voice dissent over Bush administration policies, according to officers involved in the discussions.

A number of officers have been critical of Iraq policy — mostly anonymously — since the administration's early days. But the calls for Rumsfeld's resignation are an unusual step for members of the military, who are acutely sensitive to the appearance of challenging civilian leadership of the armed forces.

Displays of public dissension are especially controversial while troops are at war and morale is a concern. In recent months, however, a growing concern that the war's setbacks may have been predictable as well as avoidable has spilled into public view.

The officers said that challenges to civilian policy were not new — similar opposition flared during the Clinton administration, particularly around the issue of gays in the military. But many of the latest condemnations come from officers who served in the Iraq War, and the controversy has split the ranks over whether attacks by those officers so soon after retiring are appropriate.

One current general who has debated the issue with high-ranking colleagues spoke, like others, on condition of anonymity when discussing actions of other officers.

"If every guy that retires starts sniping at their old bosses and acts like a political appointee, how do you think senior civilians start choosing their military leaders?" the general said. "Competence goes out the window. It's all about loyalty and pliability."

The ranks of Rumsfeld's critics were joined Wednesday by retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who served as a division commander in Iraq and was a military aide to former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a primary architect of the Iraq invasion.

Batiste said he believed Rumsfeld should resign, arguing that the Pentagon needed a new leader who could work with top officers "without intimidation."

In an interview, Batiste said negative feelings about Rumsfeld were widespread among generals he served with. He added that there was an almost universal belief that the secretary did not treat military leaders and their opinions with respect.

"It speaks volumes about the leadership climate within the Pentagon," Batiste said. "Civilian control is absolutely paramount, but in order for it to work, there is a two-way street of respect and dialogue that has to exist."

Batiste's criticism follows similar attacks by three other retired generals who were involved in the Iraq war or served in top positions in the Middle East: Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold, former director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, head of training Iraqi forces in 2003; and Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the former head of U.S. Central Command.

Former Defense officials said Batiste's criticisms were particularly surprising because of his direct role in planning and fighting the war, first as Wolfowitz's military aide and then as commander of the 1st Infantry Division when it was deployed to oversee central Iraq in 2004.

"Batiste is really the younger generation who has seen this war firsthand," said Thomas E. White, the Bush administration's first secretary of the Army and a frequent Rumsfeld critic. "When a guy like that steps up, it takes it to an entirely different level."

Batiste said his comments were not part of any organized campaign by retired officers.

Although he has worked with Eaton and Newbold, Batiste said he had not talked to either about his decision to go public.

The officers' falling out with Rumsfeld began over the Defense Department's treatment of retired Army Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who said at a congressional hearing that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to occupy Iraq, only to be chastised later by Wolfowitz.

The shunting aside of Shineski appears to be something of a touchstone for military critics of Rumsfeld, particularly in the Army, where Shinseki is still well regarded.

One current general said that while the recent criticisms may have brought the uniformed military's strained relationship with Rumsfeld into the open, debate over whether they should be more forceful about voicing disagreementshad raged for months.

"The Newbolds and Eatons and the public discussion is spilling over from the internal discussion," said the currently serving general. "This has been a rising issue within the military."

Criticism of political leaders by retired generals is nothing new. Historians note that former military leaders dating back to the American Revolution have written criticisms of the conduct of wars, and Rumsfeld dismissed many of the criticisms this week as just the latest in that tradition.

"It's historic, it's always been the case, and I see nothing really very new or surprising about it," he said at a Pentagon news conference.

But Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of international relations at Boston University and a Vietnam veteran, said he believed it was unprecedented for retired senior officers who had so recently served during a war to criticize civilian leaders while troops were still in the field.

"I would take this as evidence that the search for scapegoats with regard to the Iraq war has now been fully engaged by the military," Bacevich said.

"The officer corps doesn't want to get stuck with responsibility for a war that has already proven to be a disappointment and could result in failure. This is an indication that Rumsfeld has been selected as the military's preferred scapegoat," he said.

The debate within the Pentagon has been influenced by the lessons of the Vietnam War, a conflict many current military leaders believe was lost because military chiefs did not stand up to civilian war plans.

A 1997 book on the subject, "Dereliction of Duty," by H.R. McMaster, now an Army colonel serving in Iraq, has been required reading for many Pentagon officers.

"There was a deep bitterness over Vietnam and the way the [service] chiefs had been co-opted," said Richard H. Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina who oversaw McMaster's work on the book.

Kohn said it was a lesson sent repeatedly to all Army officers: "They said: 'We're never going to put up with this again, we're not going to be put in that position again by the civilians.' "

Nevertheless, Kohn, who has discussed relations with civilian leaders with several top officers, said he believed it might be dangerous for such recently retired generals to go public with such criticism.

"If they go out and attack the policy after leaving and they get personal about it, they're undermining civilian control," Kohn said.

[How far we have come? The fact that the Christian Broadcasting Network is giving Peak Oil both a fair shake and sounding a warning is a major milestone for those of us who have spent so many years sounding the alarm. God bless Roscoe Bartlett. Let’s hope that he stays true to point and doesn’t soften his warnings or try to reassure us with false hopes over renewables. He shows no signs of that. It is time to sweat and to become alarmed. It’s here. I am reminded of an old sign above the Physical Training office at the LAPD Academy that said, “The more you sweat here, the less you will bleed on the street.” It is time to start sweating. – MCR]

Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) is talking about what he thinks could be the biggest challenge in our nation's history.

A huge and sustained increase in the price of oil that would devastate our economy and the world economy, and would force all of us to change the way we live. Why?

It is a phenomenon known as "peak oil." The idea is that oil is a finite resource. There is only so much of it in the ground, and eventually we will start to run out.

One of the leading advocates of this theory is oil industry analyst Matthew Simmons. In his book, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, Simmons uses reams of hard geological data to argue that the oil fields of Saudi Arabia -- the world's largest producer -- are in serious decline, and prices for oil at some point will skyrocket.

The quantity and price of oil follows a bell curve. When Saudi oil was first discovered and oil production was growing, the amount of Saudi oil on the market kept increasing, assuring low prices. But at the point when Saudi oil production falls and can no longer meet demand, prices go up.

And because energy-hungry nations like China and India are in the midst of economic booms, the demand for energy is increasing daily, while the supply of oil, if it is shrinking, will make oil scarcer, and much more expensive.

Some of us remember gasoline prices of 29 cents a gallon or less. Today, we have gotten used to gas prices that were once unthinkable. But what if gas prices were $7 a gallon, or more?

Bartlett said, "The peaking may have already occurred. If not now, then very soon. So I think we are probably beyond the point where we can avoid the consequences of peaking. I think what we need to do now is to simply minimize the consequences of peaking. I don't think we have a prayer of avoiding the consequences of peaking."

What is the absolute worst-case scenario from peak oil? A world war over oil supplies. But the less dire economic scenarios are not much better. It would most certainly lead to a deep worldwide recession, or even a depression.

Our economy and way of life has been built around affordable oil. Many of us live in the suburbs. We have to drive to work, to grocery stores, to just about everywhere. We enjoy a high standard of living, thanks to affordable goods and services made possible because of cheap energy.

An oil price spike to perhaps $200 dollars a barrel or more could wreck whole sectors of our economy, like the airline industry, which is already hurting from oil at $70 a barrel. Just think what would happen if airline ticket prices tripled from today's levels!

Peak oil prices would also pour a lot more money into the coffers of some regimes around the world who do not like the United States.

But if there is a plus side to peak oil, it is that unaffordable oil would finally force businesses to invest seriously in developing alternative fuel technologies.

Simmons' book has created such a stir in the energy industry that the world's largest oil company, ExxonMobil, created an ad to dispute it. It says that the Earth still has plenty of untapped oil to meet demand for decades to come.

Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think-tank, said, “At some point, oil production will peak. I think that is a long ways away…In the early 1930s, the Department of Interior estimated that we'd run out of oil by 1940. So there's a long history of predicting these things, and most of the predictions turn out not to be true.”

There is plenty of oil in the ground right here in America, but environmental protection laws prevent us from drilling for it.

Ebell also observed, “There are political obstacles to oil production in many places in the world -- most seriously in the United States.”

But if Simmons is right, America is facing a serious problem that Bartlett warns may now be too late to prepare for. He says we must begin to conserve, and to develop other sources of energy.

“I think this is going to be the overarching problem for the next decade,” Bartlett said. “We will transition from fossil fuels to renewables (renewable energy). Geology will insist on that. It will be a really bumpy ride or a less bumpy ride, depending on how we relate ourselves to it and what we do now.”

And everyone -- from President Bush on down -- knows how much America depends on oil. Bush has said that "America is addicted to oil."

And if the prediction of peak oil is true, America needs to start moving away from oil as an energy source as soon as possible.