Today sees the start of the Copa América which is being held in Venezuela for the first time in the long history of the competition. One can only hope that the tournament will be more meritocratic than the Gold Cup which CONCACAF (with some considerable help from the officials) literally gave to a very moderate USA team – Canada should feel particularly aggrieved after their farce of a semi final.
The signs are promising. The matches are to be played in nine stadiums spread around this stunningly beautiful country which should enable soccer to broaden it’s fanbase at the expense of the national sports of rounders and beauty contests. Furthermore, although Hugo Chávez exhibits a megalomaniacal streak, it is refreshing to be in a country where socialism isn’t a dirty word – as soon as you land at the Simón Bolívar International Airport, you become aware that there is something significantly different about the place.
Over the duration of the competition, we are going to attempt to put together a series of posts relevant both to our blog and to the situation in both Venezuela and South America in general. Today we start with a little geopolitical pattern recognition in relation to black gold.
Venezuela is big in oil which was the prime reason for the unsuccessful US backed coup in 2003. Chávez has led the way in South America in renegotiating the abusive oil contracts established by the global oil giants by effectively renationalising the industry in favour of the populations rather than the shareholders of Exxon Mobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell. Blinkered individuals who believe that US foreign policy isn’t dictated by the needs of Big Oil and the inappropriately close links between this industry and the hierarchy of the American administration should consider the data below. We have listed the ten countries with the largest known deposits of oil together with the number of years that the stuff should last if it is continued to be pumped out of the ground at current rates. The figures are from BP.
Saudi Arabia 264 billion barrels (67 years)
Iran 135 billion barrels (87 years)
Iraq 115 billion barrels (100+ years)
Kuwait 105 billion barrels (100+ years)
UAE 95 billion barrels (90 years)
Venezuela 80 billion barrels (78 years)
Russia 80 billion barrels (22 years)
Libya 40 billion barrels (62 years)
Kazakhstan 35 billion barrels (77 years)
Nigeria 35 billion barrels (40 years)
Interesting eh? Observing geopolitical events directly linked to US strategies brings virtually all these territories into sharp focus. America has only a decade of oil left and the refusal of the hyperpower to recognise the necessity of a multi-tiered energy policy has resulted in huge numbers of innocent (and not so innocent) deaths in the last fifteen years as the US has either targeted the major global oil producers or has allowed such nations a very privileged status on a mutually beneficial level.
We would wish to offer a few examples of cynical realism for your delectation! Most of the collaborators and perpetrators of 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia and, yet in the aftermath of the atrocity, senior Saudi officials (including relations of Bin Laden) were allowed to leave the US without questioning. Is there anybody out there who is naïve enough to believe that a similar accommodation would have been allowed if the plotters had been from, say, Cuba? Thought not… The first Iraq “war” was initiated solely because Saddam exhibited the temerity to cross the border into Kuwait with it’s oil reserves that will last into the next century - a similar strategy was conspicuous by it’s absence in Rwanda, for example. Additionally, once oilmen realised the supply side problems, peace was quickly established with Qaddafi despite the Lockerbie bombing and Kazakhstan has been fast tracked to the upper economic tables despite a government of dubious legality. For goodness sake, their football team is even allowed to compete in Euro 2008 which, considering the country is firmly located in Asia, is the sort of entertaining skewing of reality that is usually only reserved for the likes of that other great European country, Israel. The Niger Delta is one of the most destabilised regions in the world and Nigeria frequently ranks among the most corrupt countries in the various global surveys. Nigeria is one of the few countries on the planet that exhibits income inequality greater than that in Britain and the disenfranchised population have taken to kidnapping to get their deserved slice of the action before the cash is returned to shareholders as dividends. The re-energisation of the Cold War (which, lets face it never really ended) is another oil industry backed campaign. The multi coloured pseudo revolutions in Georgia and the Ukraine (amongst others) are indicators of the geopolitical creep in eastern Europe. The illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq together with the attempted coup in Venezuela are further indicators of US geopolitical aims.
Not content with correlating US foreign policy with a commodity grab from the biggest oil inventories, the intelligence agencies and mercenaries of the US, Britain and Israel have been active in the supplementary territories too. Mossad took out Savimbi and oil is now great in Angola. Sudan can continue to murder, rape and pillage in Darfur as Khartoum is a second division oil producer with close links to China – if serious pressure was to be placed on Sudan, the supply crisis would deepen sending global oil prices higher still to the detriment of the world economy. It has reached the stage where satellite discovery of oil reserves is ALWAYS bad news for the masses in the countries concerned as Equatorial Guinea discovered when a bunch of South African and British mercenaries including Thatcher’s idiot son were caught plotting a coup there. Were there any arrests and convictions for the main perpetrators? This is a question that simply doesn’t even warrant an answer!
We have deliberately left one country in the top ten oil nations out of our assessment – Iran. One of the prime reasons that US policy in the Middle East appears so befuddled to observers is that there is minimal usage of the standard divide and rule tactic. If the regional hotspot had been a simple matter of politics, the US would have undoubtedly sided with either the Shia’s or the Sunni’s to drive forward their alleged democratic agenda. History does not support the reality of any such tactic. I’m too busy to go into details but the various conflagrations in the region are a random walk of US support for the various Islamic factions where the choice is entirely related to the requirements of Big Oil.
So, there are just two of the main oil countries that have come through this process with any degree of autonomy having successfully fought off US imperial interests - Saudi Arabia is simply too important to undermine and Venezuela will simply not put up with the interfering input of the CIA being crackers in Caracas.
And up from the ground came a bubbling pool...
Vamos Venezuela!
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
