Subject: Fw: Emailing: Asia Times Online Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs.htm
From: "fariborz fatemi" <[email-masked]>
To: "fariborz fatemi" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2010 14:31:24 -0700 (PDT)

To know the real BP you must read the following article.

 

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

 

 

 

  

  

 

   

   

 

   

    

     

       

    

   

    

  

  

   

 

   

    

    

    
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            Middle East 

          
               Jul 1, 2010  

        

        

         

       

       

    

     

      

       

         
          
          BP
          in the Gulf - the Persian Gulf 

          By Stephen Kinzer 

          To frustrated Americans who have begun boycotting BP: Welcome to the
          club. It's great not to be the only member any more! 

          Does boycotting BP really make sense? Perhaps not. After all, many BP
          filling stations are actually owned by local people, not the
          corporation itself. Besides, when you're filling up at a Shell or
          ExxonMobil station, it's hard to feel much sense of moral triumph.
          Nonetheless, I reserve my right to drive by BP stations. I started
          doing it long before this year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. 

          My decision not to give this company my business came after I learned
          about its role in another kind of "spill" entirely - the
          destruction of Iran's democracy more than half a century ago. 

          The history of the company we now call BP has, over the past

            

          100 years, traced the arc of transnational capitalism. Its roots lie
          in the early years of the 20th century when a wealthy bon vivant
          named William Knox D'Arcy decided, with encouragement from the
          British government, to begin looking for oil in Iran. He struck a
          concession agreement with the dissolute Iranian monarchy, using the
          proven expedient of bribing the three Iranians negotiating with him. 

          Under this contract, which he designed, D'Arcy was to own whatever
          oil he found in Iran and pay the government just 16% of any profits
          he made - never allowing any Iranian to review his accounting. After
          his first strike in 1908, he became sole owner of the entire ocean of
          oil that lies beneath Iran's soil. No one else was allowed to drill
          for, refine, extract or sell "Iranian" oil. 

          "Fortune brought us a prize from fairyland beyond our wildest
          dreams," Winston Churchill, who became First Lord of the
          Admiralty in 1911, wrote later. "Mastery itself was the prize of
          the venture." 

          Soon afterward, the British government bought the D'Arcy concession,
          which it named the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. It then built the
          world's biggest refinery at the port of Abadan on the Persian Gulf.
          From the 1920s into the 1940s, Britain's standard of living was
          supported by oil from Iran. British cars, trucks and buses ran on
          cheap Iranian oil. Factories throughout Britain were fueled by oil
          from Iran. The Royal Navy, which projected British power all over the
          world, powered its ships with Iranian oil. 

          After World War II, the winds of nationalism and anti-colonialism
          blew through the developing world. 

          In Iran, nationalism meant one thing: we’ve got to take back our oil.
          Driven by this passion, parliament voted on April 28, 1951, to choose
          its most passionate champion of oil nationalization, Mohammad
          Mossadegh, as prime minister. Days later, it unanimously approved his
          bill nationalizing the oil company. Mossadegh promised that,
          henceforth, oil profits would be used to develop Iran, not enrich
          Britain. 

          This oil company was the most lucrative British enterprise anywhere
          on the planet. To the British, nationalization seemed, at first, like
          some kind of immense joke, a step so absurdly contrary to the unwritten
          rules of the world that it could hardly be real. Early in this
          confrontation, the directors of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and
          their partners in Britain's government settled on their strategy: no
          mediation, no compromise, no acceptance of nationalization in any
          form. 

          The British took a series of steps meant to push Mossadegh off his
          nationalist path. They withdrew their technicians from Abadan,
          blockaded the port, cut off exports of vital goods to Iran, froze the
          country’s hard-currency accounts in British banks, and tried to win
          anti-Iran resolutions from the United Nations and the World Court.
          This campaign only intensified Iranian determination. Finally, the
          British turned to Washington and asked for a favor: please overthrow
          this madman for us so we can have our oil company back. 

          American president Dwight D Eisenhower, encouraged by his secretary
          of state John Foster Dulles, a lifelong defender of transnational
          corporate power, agreed to send the Central Intelligence Agency in to
          depose Mossadegh. The operation took less than a month in the summer
          of 1953. It was the first time the Central Intelligence Agency had
          ever overthrown a government. 

          At first, this seemed like a remarkably successful covert operation.
          The West had deposed a leader it didn't like, and replaced him with
          someone who would perform as bidden - Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. 

          From the perspective of history, though, it is clear that Operation
          Ajax, as the operation was code-named, had devastating effects. It
          not only brought down Mossadegh's government, but ended democracy in
          Iran. It returned the Shah to his Peacock Throne. His increasing
          repression set off the explosion of the late 1970s, which brought to
          power Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the bitterly anti-Western regime
          that has been in control ever since. 

          The oil company rebranded itself as British Petroleum, BP Amoco, and
          then, in 2000, BP. During its decades in Iran, it had operated as it
          pleased, with little regard for the interests of local people. This
          corporate tradition has evidently remained strong. 

          Many Americans are outraged by the relentless images of oil gushing
          into Gulf waters from the Deepwater Horizon well, and by the
          corporate recklessness that allowed this spill to happen. Those who
          know Iranian history have been less surprised. 

          Stephen Kinzer is a veteran foreign correspondent
          and the author of Bitter Fruit and Overthrow, among other
          works. His newest book is Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's
          Future. 

          (Copyright 2010 Stephen Kinzer.) 

          (Used by permission Tomdispatch)

         

        

        

         

          

          

         

           

         

          

          

         

           

         

          Kick
          ass - or buy gas (Jun 19, '10) 

         

          

          

         

           

         

         

        

         

         

       

      

        

          

         

          

          

         

       

     

    

   

  

    

        

      

          

        

         

        

       

     

    

   

    

      

     
      
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