July 26 commentary

"For links to the articles I read on the air, guest websites, archived shows, my commentaries, a listener's discussion forum, and the text of Mark Stanneart’s latest commentary, visit: www.rabblerousing.org."

Next tem: here is an interesting take on the Israeli attack on Lebanon: its from an organization called peaceteam.net. The Bush administration, who is green lighting Israel's every action, is manipulating public opinion at home to escalate this into a nuclear first strike on Iran, to try to regain the dominance lost in Iraq. Until you understand this nothing else will make sense. And in this they have the willing cooperation of Hezbollah and their supporters, who believe they will win the whole game if we do so, and they have our misadventure in Iraq to give them confidence.

They are both wrong. Such a conflagration in the Middle East will end human civilization as we have previously known it. BOTH sides will exchange nuclear weapons strikes. The restraint which has kept the nuclear monster in check since 1945 will be vaporized. Perhaps the other side will only be able to muster dirty bombs, or perhaps a revolution in Pakistan will put fully operational warheads in the hands of Islamic militants at once, and this is assuming they have not already acquired some of the many loose nukes out there, or maybe it will take them a while longer to acquire them. But it will happen. That is all unless we find a way to break the cycle of revenge and insanity.

So what will the United States do? Bush apparently believes that all he has to do is smirk his way through the next couple weeks and he'll be back on top as something even bigger and better than a war president. Now he wants to be a "nuclear war president". He will not willingly save us. But if we can get Congress to act there is still hope.

There are two resolutions before Congress. The first, H. Res. 921, introduced by John Boehner (R) sides with Israel completely, condemns Hezbollah only, and excuses Israel from any fault or blame in their response to the provocation. The only thing it doesn't do is demand Hezbollah surrender in pink dresses. It is in essence a declaration that the U.S. will support Israel in ANY war of THEIR choosing, much like the kind of pacts that precipitated the cascading declarations of war in World War I.

The second, H. Con. Res. 450, introduced by Dennis Kucinich (D) calls on both sides to immediately end hostile actions, and to engage international cooperation to mediate the crisis. The prime minister of Lebanon, a democracy, is pleading for a cease-fire. The U.N. Secretary General is demanding a cease-fire. And only the passage of this second resolution, and a cease-fire, can disrupt the spin of the wheel at the hand of George Bush.

The testosterone-fed macho types on Fox news, along with too many of their bar fight mentality supporters, are all gung ho to unleash the nukes. But let us address their primary contemptuous argument, that you can't have a cease-fire because the "terrorists" won't respect it.

At an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo this last Saturday, moderate Arab governments, some publicly and some privately, were prepared to condemn Hezbollah for the provocation. They might be in a position to pressure Hezbollah in various ways, but they are being undermined by the graphic images of wanton killing and devastation coming out of Lebanon.

Though not to minimize the 30 or so Israelis who have been killed so far, most of the actual destruction raining down is by Israel's hand. If this continues much longer there won't be a Muslim population in the Middle East not screaming for Israeli blood.

Only a cease-fire can save Israel from itself. They have demonstrated they can launch a military strike any time they choose, and could presumably with impunity resume hostilities any time they would wish. But if moderate Arab governments start falling like dominos to militants in their own populations, any opportunity for diplomacy will be lost forever.

Please call your members of Congress in support of the Kucinich resolution, H. Con. Res. 450. We lose nothing by taking a step back from the brink. Otherwise, George Bush will have his World War III. But he still may not go down in history as the nuclear war president, because there may not be any more history when the nuclear fallout clears.

CALL YOUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS NOW AND DEMAND THEY CALL FOR AN IMMEDIATE CEASE-FIRE IN LEBANON TOLL-FREE NUMBERS: 888-355-3588 and 800-828-0498

ACTION PAGE: http://www.peaceteam.net/cease-fire.php

Next item; dateline Chicago. A federal judge has just tossed out the case against att for releasing your confidential records to the govt. reason: the old standby: its in the interest of national security. You get that? You no longer have any right to privacy, in the interests of national security. The exact same thing is happening with the many court cases by surviving family of those who died in 911. all court cases challenging the govt version of what happened are ending up being dismissed. Sorry, you cant prove your govt is lying to you. its in the interest of national security that the truth be hidden. The simple truth is that we no longer have a functioning judicial system, in the interests of national security. I hope you are feeling more secure now.

Next item: I got an interesting email this morn: it was titled, in caps, "urgent alert": I love urgent alerts. Here is the email. Dear PNC Bank Client, This is your official notification from PNC Bank that the service(s) listed below  will be deactivated and deleted if not renewed immediately.  Renew Now  your PNC Bank Bill Pay Services. If you are not enrolled to Online Banking, please enter your checking account number as Member Number  and Social Security Number  as Password. Gee, I wonder what might happen if I sent someone ive never heard of my bank acct # and my social sec #? Especially since there is a grammatical error in the communication, indicating that english is not the first language of the writer. Could be really exciting, eh wat? Anybody out there got stock in pnc bank? Could be a lucrative investment.

Next item: its by greg palest and titled: BLOOD IN BEIRUT: $75. A BARREL. The failure to stop the bloodletting in the Middle East, Exxon's record second-quarter profits and Iran's nuclear cat-and-mouse game have something in common -- it's the oil. I can't tell you how it started -- this is a war that's been fought since the Levites clashed with the Philistines -- but I can tell you why the current mayhem has not been stopped. It's the oil. I'm not an expert on Palestine nor Lebanon and I'd rather not pretend to be one. If you want to know what's going on, read Robert Fisk. He lives there. He speaks Arabic. Stay away from pundits whose only connection to the Middle East is the local falafel stand. So why am I writing now? The answer is that, while I don't speak Arabic or Hebrew, I am completely fluent in the language of petroleum.

What? You don't need a degree in geology to know there's no oil in Israel, Palestine or Lebanon. (A few weeks ago, I was joking around with Afif Safieh, the Palestinian Authority's Ambassador to the US, asking him why he was fighting to have a piece of the only place in the Middle East without oil. Well, there's no joking now.)

Let's begin with the facts we can agree on: the berserkers are winning. Crazies discredited only a month ago are now in charge, guys with guns bigger than brains and souls smaller still. Here's a list:

-- Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's approval rating in June was down to a Bush-level of 35%. But today, Olmert's poll numbers among Israeli voters have more than doubled to 78% as he does his bloody John Wayne "cleanin' out the varmints" routine. But let's not forget: Olmert can't pee-pee without George Bush's approval. Bush can stop Olmert tomorrow. He hasn't.

-- Hezbollah, a political party rejected overwhelmingly by Lebanese voters sickened by their support of Syrian occupation, holds a mere 14 seats out of 128 in the nation's parliament. Hezbollah was facing demands by both Lebanon's non-Shia majority and the United Nations to lay down arms. Now, few Lebanese would suggest taking away their rockets. But let's not forget: Without Iran, Hezbollah is just a fundamentalist street gang. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can stop Hezbollah's rockets tomorrow. He hasn't.

-- Hamas, just days before it kidnapped and killed Israeli soldiers, was facing certain political defeat at the hands of the Palestinian majority ready to accept the existence of Israel as proposed in a manifesto for peace talks penned by influential Palestinian prisoners. Now the Hamas rocket brigade is back in charge. But let's not forget: Hamas is broke and a joke without the loot and authority of Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah can stop these guys tomorrow. He hasn't.

Why not? Why haven't what we laughably call "leaders" of the USA, Iran and Saudi Arabia called back their delinquent spawn, cut off their allowances and grounded them for six months?

Maybe because mayhem and murder in the Middle East are very, very profitable to the sponsors of these characters with bombs and rockets. America, Iran and Saudi Arabia share one thing in common: they are run by oil regimes. The higher the price of crude, the higher the profits and the happier the presidents and princelings of these petroleum republics.

This Thursday, Exxon is expected to report the highest second-quarter earnings of any corporation since the days of the Pharaoh, $9.9 billion in pure profit collected in just three months -- courtesy of an oil shortage caused by pipelines on fire in Iraq, warlord attacks in Nigeria, the lingering effects of the sabotage of Venezuela's oil system by a 2002 strike... the list could go on.

Exxon's brobdingnagian profits simply reflect the cold axiom that oil companies and oil states don't make their loot by finding oil but by finding trouble. Finding oil increases supply. Increased supply means decreased price. Whereas finding trouble -- wars, coup d'etats, hurricanes, whatever can disrupt supply -- raises the price of oil.

A couple of examples from today's Bloomberg newswire are:

"Crude oil traded above $75 a barrel in New York as fighting between Israeli and Iranian-backed Hezbollah forces in Lebanon entered its 14th day... Oil prices rose last month on concern for supplies from Iran, the world's fourth largest producer, may be disrupted in its dispute with the United Nations over its uranium enrichment ... [And, said a trader,] 'I still think $85 is likely this summer. I'm really surprised we haven't seen any hurricanes.'''

In Tehran, President Ahmadinejad may or may not have a plan to make a nuclear bomb, but he sure as heck knows that hinting at it raises the price of the one thing he certainly does have -- oil. Every time he barks, 'Mad Mahmoud' knows that he's pumping up the price of crude. Just a $10 a barrel "blow-up-in-the-Mideast" premium brings his regime nearly a quarter of a billion dollars each week (including the little kick to the value of Iran's natural gas). Not a bad pay-off for making a bit of trouble.

Saudi Arabia's rake-in from The Troubles? Assuming just a $10 a barrel boost for Middle Eastern mayhem and you can calculate that the blood in the sand puts an extra $658 million a week in Abdullah's hand.

And in Houston, you can hear the cash registers jing-a-ling as explosions in Kirkuk, Beirut and the Niger River Delta sound like the sleigh-bells on Santa's sled. At $75. a barrel, they don't call it "sweet" crude for nothing. That's up 27% from a year ago. The big difference between then and now: the rockets' red glare.

Exxon's second-quarter profits may bust records, but next quarter's should put it to shame, as the "Lebanon premium" and Iraq's insurgency have puffed up prices, up by an average of 11% in the last three months.

So there's not much incentive for the guys who supply the weaponry to tell their wards to put away their murderous toys. This war's just too darn profitable.

We are trained to think of Middle Eastern conflicts as just modern flare-ups of ancient tribal animosities. But to uncover why the flames won't die, the usual rule applies: follow the money.

Am I saying that Tehran, Riyadh and Houston oil chieftains conspired to ignite a war to boost their petroleum profits? I can't imagine it. But I do wonder if Bush would let Olmert have an extra week of bombings, or if the potentates of the Persian Gulf would allow Hamas and Hezbollah to continue their deadly fireworks if it caused the price of crude to crash. You know and I know that if this war took a bite out of Exxon or the House of Saud, a ceasefire would be imposed quicker than you can say, "Let's drill in the Arctic."

Eventually, there will be another ceasefire. But Exxon shareholders need not worry. Global warming has heated the seas sufficiently to make certain that they can look forward to a hellacious -- and profitable -- season of hurricanes.