"Taking and not giving back, demanding that 'productivity' and 'earnings' keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity-- most of the World, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process."
Gravity's Rainbow p. 412

"I thought of it as dinosaur blood when it dripped on my hand this morning, and it made me wonder how the US war strategy would change if Saddam made a small recalibration in his business practices. Of course, the gasoline that spilled as I refilled my rental car this morning at the DFW airport – and the refined kerosene that will fuel the plane I’ll fly in today – is far more ancient than even the spectacular Tyrannosaurus Rex bones discovered north of here. They vanished around 65 million years ago, but the fossilized plants and bacteria that made my gasoline are 300 to 400 million years old. By the time dinosaurs ruled the Earth, pretty much all of the oil production of the planet was finished. Strange, when you consider it in those terms, that we’d base a nation’s foreign policy on a limited supply of fossils older than the dinosaurs. "
from:
The Dinosaur War – To Protect Corporate Profits


"[...] Perhaps the critics are too generous to suspect merely political gamesmanship or settling a score for dad, for the allies and enemies that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney choose are exactly those of the oil industry they still serve. Iraq crossed western oil corporations 30 years ago, and the oil executives have long memories. In 1972, Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath party nationalized the oil holdings of the Iraq Petroleum Company, which actually was owned by a group of western oil companies including Royal Dutch and American and French firms. The U.S. and Britain launched an embargo of Iraq in an attempt to persuade Hussein to re-privatize oil -- a tactic that succeeded for the U.S. when it embargoed Iran in retaliation for nationalizing its oil industry in 1951. In that case the economic squeeze was topped off with a CIA-assisted coup and "regime change," which instituted the Shah as the new leader in 1953. Obediently, the Shah agreed to let British and American oil companies take over oil production again. But when the U.S. instigated an embargo against Iraq, Hussein simply found a new customer-- the Soviet
Union. [...]"
from:
Bush and Cheney Critics
May Be Too Generous

"The nationalization of the oil industry was considered by the BaÅth leaders to be their greatest achievement. Between 1969 and 1972 several agreements with foreign powers—the Soviet Union and others—were concluded to provide the Iraq National Oil Company (INOC) with the capital and technical skills to exploit the oil fields. In 1972 the operation of the North Rumaylah field, rich in oil, started, and an Iraqi Oil Tankers Company was established to deliver oil to several foreign countries. Also in 1972 the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) was nationalized (with compensation), and a national company, the Iraqi Company for Oil Operations, was established to operate the fields. In 1973, when the fourth Arab-Israeli War broke out, Iraq nationalized U.S. and Dutch companies, and in 1975 it nationalized the remaining foreign interests in the Basra Petroleum Company."
"Iraq" Encyclopædia Britannica
[Accessed October 11, 2002].

"The oil towers stand sentinel, bone-empty, in the dark [....] Time for retrospection here, for refining the recent history that's being pumped up fetid and black from other strata of Earth's mind. . . ."
Gravity's Rainbow, p. 354