In 1994, as I was heading into my last five years of employment as a teacher, the ruling Hutu government in the then small African nation of Rwanda, set out to eradicate its Tutsi minority. The Rwandan Genocide, as this eradication program came to be called, consisted of the mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people. The Hutu people alleged that the Tutsi minority held an unfair monopoly of power in Rwanda. The majority Hutu people had come to power in the rebellion, the revolt, of 195962 which overthrew the Tutsi monarchy, and established a republic. I was just 15 years old in 1959, had just joined the Bahai Faith, and played a lot of baseball, hockey and football. By 1962 I was working on my matriculation studies and had begun to travel and pioneer for the Canadian Bahai community. In the colonialist period, under Belgian rule before 1959, the Tutsis and Hutus, the two ethnic groups concerned, had come to hate each other through systematized inequality and a struggle for power. It is a somewhat complex story that can be easily read by those interested. I shall say no more here. I certainly knew none of this back around 1960, occupied as I was with my local agenda, with growing-up, in the small town of Burlington Ontario. In August 1998 the largest war in modern African history began. Called the Second Congo War, it began on the eve of my retirement after 50 years in classrooms. It directly involved eight African nations as well as about 25 armed groups. It took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. By 2008 the war and its aftermath had killed 5.4 million people mostly from disease and starvation. This war was the deadliest conflict worldwide since World War II. Millions more were displaced from their homes or sought asylum in neighbouring countries. By then, by 2008, I was fully ensconced in retirement, had taken a sea-change, was on a pension, and was still as far removed from all this slaughter in Africa as I had been 14 years before.-Ron Price with thanks to All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, SBSONE, 8:30-9:30 p.m. Parts 1-3, 18/10/11 to 1/11/11. So much of the worlds slaughter goes on in some parallel universe as one eats ones evening meal and tries to get through ones own life unscathed by the slings-and-arrows of outrageous fortune. Ill-equipped to interpret the social commotion at play throughout the planet, we listen to the pundits of error & sink deeper into the slough of despond, troubled by forecasts of doom and doing battle with wrongly informed imaginations as our days pass swiftly as twinkling stars.1 1 Ridvan message 1999, The Universal House of Justice Ron Price 2 November 2011
Unfortunately, Ruwanda did not have any oil, so niether the USA nor Western Europe had much concern. Let us look at the past foreign interventions: Kuwait: tiny country, but essentially its entire economy (and existence) is based on oil Afghanistan: vital pathway for proposed pipeline to pump oil from Turkmenistan and Uzbeckistan through Pakistan (an unlikely allie of the USA) to the Persian Gulf, where it can be shipped out anywhere in the world Iraq: has the largest reserves of oil in the world Libya: large oil reserves, accounted for 80% of their government's revenue before the conflict. (why did the USA and Britain try to assasinate Qaddafi by bombing his personal house, when Qaddafi did not hold any official position in the government? As Qaddafi told a reporter before his death, "I can not resign- there is nothing for me to resign from!") Possible future American interventions? Nigeria Equatorial Guinea South Sudan Venezuala Angola If you are wondering why Britain is always so eager to intervene in foreign conflicts, just remember it is the home of British Petroleum, and most of the corporate investors in Royal Dutch Shell are actually based in London- two of the largest oil companies in the world.
Thanks, Anders Hoveland, for your considered response to my post, my prose-poem. The world has moved in the last several decades to a degree of complexity that staggers the imagination. Ill-equipped to interpret the social commotation at play throughout the world, humanity listens to the pundits of error and the planet sinks deeper into the slough of despond.-Ron Price.
Ally of the UK for decades, and one of their largest suppliers of oil. Also ally of the US, and there was an earlier intervention in 1987 when both Iran and Iraq were targeting their oil tankers. But for some reason, nobody remember this. A pipeline project that was dead and burried years before the war with them started. And the pipeline was for punping natural gas, not oil. Finally, it was to pump natural gas to Pakistan and India for domestic use. It was not to go to the Middle East. And for exporting oil that would be horribly stupid, since the oil comes FROM there, not TO there. Which was slaughtering it's people by the hundreds of thousands. And had been under UN embargo for over a decade. That is simply because Libya had no other real revenue. Prior to the discovery of oil, Lybia was one of the poorest nations on the planet. And if oil becomes worthless, it will return to being one of the poorest on the planet. And here are some interventions you somehow missed: Vietnam, where is the oil? Cyprus, where is the oil? Lebanon, oil may have only recently been discovered there. Korea, where is the oil? Congo, where is the oil? Nicaragua, where ist he oil? El Salvador, where is the oil? Panama, where is the oil? Haiti, where is the oil? Chad, where is the oil? Grenada, where is the oil? Honduras, where is the oil? Bolivia, where is the oil? Philippines, where is the oil? Liberia, where is the oil? Zaire, where is the oil? Sierra Leone, where is the oil? Bosnia, where is the oil? Herzegovina, where is the oil? Macedonia, where is the oil? Albania, where is the oil? Somalia, where ist he oil? Kenya, where is the oil? Tanzania, where is the oil? East Timor, where is the oil? Israel, where is the oil? (Actually their enemies have the oil, we should have supported them by your reasoning) Serbia, where is the oil? Georgia, where is the oil? Taiwan, where is the oil? Do I need to continue? This is what I love about this argument. They look at a few examples, and totally ignore the huge and overwhelming number of interventions that involved nations with no oil whatsoever.
Thanks. I simply hate people who pick and choose their side of an argument, and ignore everything else that should be considered. Personally, I feel that we should have been involved in Iraq long before. And that we should still be in Somalia, and should be in Darfur. And I still support the operations in the former Yugoslavia, which most people seem to have forgotten that we are still involved in, almost 2 decades later. I could not care less about Oil, or Rice, or Gold, or Peanut Husks. When I hear about the kinds of atrocities that have been done in those nations, I want to get involved and put them at an end.
I know.. the problem is we are stretched pretty thin at this point. Iraq could probably have been resolved thru diplomacy.. Saddam needed urgent repairs in order not to ruin the reserves forever.
Vietnam had rubber plantations that were potentially valuable to the automotive industry at the time. Petroleum and coal exports account for around 9% of the countries GDP. The nation of Korea had a a large potential wealth of mineral resources, although most of these exist in the North. A recent Goldman Sachs report found that Pyongyang sits on mineral deposits worth some $3.7 trillion; South Korea puts the figure higher, at $6 trillion or more. The North's economy, dominated by heavy industry, has traditionally been powered by a plentiful supply of coal (the report estimates its reserves at about $505 billion). But the country's deposits of magnesite, limestone, and uranium ore in fact outrank coal as potential earners, and billions of dollars of gold, zinc, manganese, iron, and copper are also waiting to be tapped. But communism was the main concern at that time. Communism threatened the foreign holdings of American companies in other countries. Both in the Middle East region, important footholds to protect oil interests in nearby countries. The USA never really took a serious interest in Lebanon. There are also a number of politically influential jewish groups in the USA that have successfully pushed for foreign aid and military assistance to Israel. Congo is estimated to have $24 trillion (equivalent to the combined Gross Domestic Product of Europe and the United States) worth of untapped deposits of raw mineral ores, including the world’s largest reserves of cobalt and significant quantities of the world’s diamonds, gold and copper. Recently oil reserves, estimated at 2 billion barrels, were found in Congo under Lake Albert, which is in the far north-east of the country. It will be interesting to see how this finding affects foregin relations. Chad has plenty of oil. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5881256,00.html I do not have time to go through all of those countries, but virtually all the interventions have been about protecting American interests in foreign natural resources (mostly oil), or containing communism to prevent the russians from gaining influence in other countries that do have oil. For example, Georgia was important because it would have given the russians open land access to oil-rich Iran, which was then under the control of a US-backed shah (who most Iranians consider to have been a puppet government). Somalia was one of the few instances where the USA actually had good intentions, although securing this vital straight through which oil was transported through the Suez Canal and Red Sea was also likely a factor. But you will notice how quickly the Americans gave up in the country. They were suffering too many losses and expense, and they did not have enough interest in the region want to stay.
Since this thread now deals with a wide range of issues, too many to comment on briefly, I will not add to the complexity.-Ron Price, Tasmania
It has been some 32 months since I first posted on this thread, a thread that has followed a circuitous route since my first post. As I said some 30 months ago: "since this thread now deals with a wide range of issues, too many to comment on briefly, I will not add to the complexity" and I think I will leave it at that since no one has posted here in all this time.-Ron
