- Online Reviews -
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- "I first ran across this book referenced in a footnote
about three years ago and tried to track it down. First I tried to purchase
it, but found that it was out of print and used copies were going for $100+
on the internet. I found this curious since it was relatively recent (1993)
and, given its topic, was certainly of tremendous interest to US readers,
even before the events of 9/11 and the subsequent Gulf War II. I was fortunate
to find it in my university library and have since read it several times.
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- I am tempted to go 'on and on' about this book, especially
since it is not easily available for people to read. Nor does anyone seem
to feel that they can (or are able to?) republish what should be a 'best
seller' in the current geopolitical climate and circumstances. Engdahl,
whose personal background includes engineering and law (Princeton), working
in Texas oil industry, and international economics (University of Stockholm),
does a penetrating and eloquent job of sorting out the complex web that
connects the controlling interests of international politics with the goals
and objectives of global oil and financial interests, these having merged
in the last century into the powerful and dominant hegemony of an Anglo-American
consortium.
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- There are so many revelations that are so well documented
that one has to slow down and completely reorientate his or her conception
of and attitude toward recent history. His tone is neither particularly
vindictive nor is it conspiratorial. It looks at people and events and
provides plausible motives and methods that are not part of the conventional
awareness.
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- For example, (fact) the British navy decided in the late
19th century to change their primary fuel source from coal to oil, thereby
(objective) needing to secure access to oil reserves, basically in perpetuity.
(result) British agreements for oil resources with the Sheikh of Kuwait
date from 1899. (fact) Oil then comes to supplant coal as the primary energy
source for all of the industrializing world, and a decade later Germany
threatens to become the leading industrialized nation in Europe and (objective)
needs a secure source of oil, so they begin construction on the Berlin
to Baghdad railway intending to capitalize on agreements to import Iraqi
oil. (question) How does Britain meet this emerging geopolitical threat.
(objective) Block Germany's access to Middle East oil. (result) Curiously
WWI begins with an out-of-the-way assassination in Croatia that just happens
to occur near the route of that railway. War ensues and not only is the
B-to-B railway cut off, but Germany loses all colonial power in the Middle
East.
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- Shortly after WWI the leaders of the seven major western
oil companies meet and agree to not compete with each other but to cooperate,
and in 1928 drew up the Red Line agreement that gave virtually control
of virtually all Middle East oil to the Anglo-American cartel. Even France's
portion was minimalized to Turkish reserves. The Anglo-American consortium
came to be known as the Seven Sisters and over the course of the ensuing
decades become more and more infused with global banking and financial
interestes, i.e., Rockefeller, J.P.Morgan, the Warburgs, the Rotheschilds,
Brown Harriman, etc., coming to dominate the world economy by controlling
the primary energy source. It is "all about oil" and has been
since the turn of the century.
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- Engdahl's references are extensive and substantiate his
disturbing interpretation of history, like the intentional suppression
of the German Mark after WWI and the intentional manipulation of the OPEC
oil embargo of the 1970s as a premise to artificially inflate global energy
costs (a Bilderberg target objective), thereby making BritPetr North Sea
oil exploration efforts solvent and bankrupting the debt burdened Third
World. [This reviewer left out that the high energy prices were designed
in a way to destroy generalized development worldwide that would have endangered
the 'monopoly politics' of U.S/Europe. He additionally talks about nuclear
politics.]
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- Engdahl's revelatory insights go up through Gulf War
I and one can only speculate as to his thoughts on the current Bush administration's
economic/tax policies, the Iraq intervention, and their relationship to
consolidating control of the global economy into the hands of a few staggeringly
wealthy individuals and corporations. This book should be IN PRINT and
TODAY!"
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- Reviewer: A reader
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- ... This book examines the real reasons. Every time it
has involved geopolitical manuevering for profit and to contain the aspirations
of competitors. Retaining or gaining control of oil supplies has been a
lead motivator. ... I actually have a much better view of the common man
after reading this book. The elites have manipulated, lied, and used the
masses for wars for their own economic gain. Most of the men who fought
did so for high ideals that they were manipulated into believing. I supppose
if the elites were up front and said" You are reguired to fight in
a war so I can increase my corporation' profits and if you don't you will
go to jail" then people would feel like they were a slave and rebel.
But that's the reality...just can't let the fodder know it.
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- Fine study of the importance of oil to world politics
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- February 2, 2005
- Reviewer: William Podmore (London United Kingdom)
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- This fascinating book examines the huge role that oil
played in the 20th century. The rival empires' struggle for the Middle
East's oil was one of the causes of the First World War. Control of this
resource was one of World War Two's great prizes.
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- The oil price rises of the 1970s made the North Sea and
Alaska fields profitable and led to the petrodollar monetary system, based
on speculation not investment, profit not production.
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- Oil money has always funded the environmental and anti-nuclear
movements. The Rockefeller Brothers' Fund financed the 1970s Club of Rome
report `Limits to Growth', which proposed a `post-industrial' policy, meaning
`destroy industry and stop development'.
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- The oil-funded International Institute for the Environment
and Development (board member Roy Jenkins) produced the book `Only One
Earth', which also promoted `post-industrialism'. The German environmentalist
Petra Kelly worked for the Ford Foundation-funded National Resources Defense
Council.
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- Oil companies funded the Aspen Institute (board member
war criminal Robert McNamara), whose operatives ran the 1972 UN Environment
Conference. The Atlantic Richfield Oil Company funded Friends of the Earth,
and bought the Observer to spread the anti-industry message.
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- In 1979, Thatcher and Reagan carried out the anti-industry
programme, destroying industries and causing record debts and deficits,
which pay Wall Street bond dealers and their clients record sums in interest
income.
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- Vice-President Dick Cheney says, "You've got to
go where the oil is", summing up much of world history since 1900.
Sure enough, oil fuels imperial seizures in the Caspian Sea, Venezuela,
Yugoslavia (which the USA and EU destroyed, leading to permanent US military
bases in Kosovo, like Camp Bondsteel astride the pipeline route from the
Caspian), and Afghanistan, a handy pipeline route, which Bush and Blair
attacked and occupy.
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- Most important is the Middle East, where, as the group
Project for a New American Century said, "The United States has for
decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security."
Now the US state intends to occupy Iraq and run its oil exports, permanently.
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- http://www.amazon.com/exec/obid
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