[continuing]
My friends, we are now in OPEC’s final battle of this 30-year-old secret war. OPEC will lose, but not before they destabilize the entire world’s financial system. Despite their own bumbling, and with a little help from their friends, the western nations are about to win the war – but OPEC will first throw the entire planet into another massive recession, with runaway inflation ad spiraling interest rates that will lead to a stock market wipe-out that will take the life savings of millions. Plus, we may get another Middle East war that will make Desert Storm look like a walk in the park. This is OPEC’s final battle – their last desperate act. And no one-and I mean no one-outside the circle of WSU operatives, government elite’s and subscribers knows the real story. To understand what’s going on right now in the U.S. economy – and even what the Federal Reserve did (or better put, did not do) at its August 22nd meeting – you have to know about the secret war over oil and this latest raging battle. Once you understand this, the pieces are easy to put together.
Until now, this story was only known to a select group of insiders. If it were not for this new oil crisis, you probably would never hear this story. Through the 1950’s and ‘60’s, the oil in the Middle East was controlled by U.S. and British oil companies. They discovered it. They drilled for it. They refined it. They sold it. They made a deal with the Arab countries to split the profits 50/50. And the deal worked will for everyone. The world had ample supplies of oil at fair prices. As a matter of fact, Kuwait was carved out of Iraq by the British government (that was the justification Iraq used when it invaded Kuwait. The real reason was they were given carefully planted misinformation that the U.S. would not retaliate if Iraq attacked Kuwait). Kuwait was formed by the Brits who found some sheik running around the desert and said. "You are now the Emir and this is your land. Here, sign this contract for oil production." Thus, Kuwait was formed. That was done to separate the vast oil reserves that the Brits had found from the never-ending Arabian political turmoil. They needed a stable government they could do business with – and so they created one.
But the Arabs are a proud people and they always dreamed of controlling their oil. As a result, in 1960 OPEC was formed. At first, nothing came of it. Besides having a few meetings, they got virtually nowhere. It was not until 1962, when a fiendishly brilliant man by the name of Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani came on the scene, that things changed. The Arab Oil Embargo was the brainchild of
Sheik Yamani – as was the 1973 attack on Israel. His plots and intrigues have created the energy market we must live with today. He is now out of favor with OPEC. When oil prices dropped to under $8.00 dollars a barrel in 1986, he lost favor. As a side note, he recently warned that the current OPEC manipulation of oil inventories and prices is a big mistake. He said higher prices would bring the demise of OPEC. He said "the Stone Age came to an end not for a lack of stones and the oil age will end not for lack of oil." No one is listening. Yamani is out of power. Oil prices held at ridiculous artificial levels will play hell with the global economy. But in the long run, high prices for oil will force the world to move to alternative technologies that will eventually replace oil as the world’s dominate energy source.
The radical Saudi crown prince, Abdullah bin Abdelaaziz, and Venezuela’s dictator-elect, Hugo Chavez, now control OPEC. These men are the architects of the latest OPEC squeeze. In referring to the present sky-high oil prices, Sheik Yamani gave an ominous warning. "OPEC has a very short memory," he said. "It will pay a heavy price for not acing in 1999 to control oil prices. NOW IT’S TOO LATE!"
He should know. The then king of Saudi Arabia, Faisal, handpicked Yamani in the 1960’s, to bring the western nations to their knees. And Yamani delivered. The Arabs decided they didn’t like the 50/50 partnership with the oil companies. They wanted all of the production profits – even though, prior to the discovery of oil, the Arab states had been among the world’s poorest nations. Make no mistake, the price of oil was fair and the oil companies deal was a gift of Allah for the Arabs. Ever since, OPEC oil has been a rip-off.
To put this in perspective, you have to know that today the production cost for a barrel of Saudi Arabian crude oil is just 50 cents. That’s right: $.50 per barrel. Two quarters. Oil is the most overly priced commodity in the world compared to anything else you buy (especially other mineral producers)-if you take into consideration global exploration costs, the costs of production and a fair profit. If it were fairly priced, oil should cost no more than $8.00 a barrel. No other commodity in the world sells at 15 to 60 (depending on the producer) times its production costs, as oil does. It should be 2 to 3 times cost max.
King Faisal was the power behind Yamani and OPEC’s take-over of the world’s oil. Yamani told the oil
Companies, "Sorry, but you’re not setting the price of oil anymore; we are." The oil companies said, "Screw you, we found the oil, drilled the wells. We own these wells, we paid you for them, we built them and we put in the pipelines and infrastructure." Yamani said, "SCREW YOU, we just nationalized" (a nice word for stole) everything. It’s ours now! Besides, America cannot run without our oil. She is our hostage." The oil companies said, "you can’t just steal our assets! The United States will attack you." Yamani said, "We won’t give you any oil and you won’t be able to attack us." Yamani knows America had fallen asleep and it was 20% reliant on foreign sources of oil (enough to be a slave of OPEC). America had no choice; she had to swallow the rip-off. (As a point of information, the U.S. is now 60% reliant on foreign oil.)
To make their point and get the US’s attention, the Arabs attacked Israel. That was not the real game. Their ploy was to hold the world hostage by making it plain to all that really controlled the world’s oil—and to jack up the price. Their hatred of Israel and the 1973 attack were just a great excuse to embargo oil. It also made their restless and growing fundamentalist fractions happy to see a united Arab attack on Israel and the west on its knees, begging for oil.
And that is what they did, my friends. Make no mistake; the 1973 Arab-Israeli war was nothing less, and nothing more, than an excuse on the part of Saudi Arabia and the other OPEC nations to launch the World Oil Embargo, blackmail the world economy with oil, and make billions in the process. Israel, Syria and Egypt were nothing more than pawns in a much larger, far more sinister, geopolitical chess game over oil.
The Arabs had long sought to rid themselves of the oil companies. In 1970 and’71, Libya’s megalomaniacal leader, "Colonel"Muammar Kadafi, negotiated one of the largest price increases ever with the oil companies. The OPEC nations, which up until then had been largely at the beck and call of the multinational oil companies, sensed weakness. With the diabolical genius of Sheik Yamani, the Arabs forced their hand. On February 14, 1971, in Tehran, the OPEC nations formally agreed on a united front and demanded a 40-cent increase in the price of oil. This was just the first leg of a much bigger plan. Their demand was immediately granted. The bait had been swallowed. They now knew the world was desperate for their oil and they could charge whatever they wanted. That was the beginning of the oil crisis and the start of hostile foreigners controlling America’s energy. (By the way, OPEC isn’t stupid; among the more rational members, the trick always has been to keep prices as high as possible – but not so high that the world would turn to alternative energy sources or serious conservation measures. It’s a delicate balancing, to be sure. In fact, the reason why America – which has the world’s largest coal, natural gas and uranium reserves – virtually abandoned these alternative energy sources is the result of very clever manipulations by the oil companies and OPEC.
The Saudis pushed (with military aid, money and promises of a lot more) Egypt and Syria into war with Israel, which began on October 6, 1973. Knowing the Arab world would take the bait and attack Israel, the trap was laid. Ten days after the war began; OPEC announced the Arab Oil Embargo (the real reason for the war) and said they were unilaterally raising the price of oil 70% from $4 to $7 a barrel. Two months later, they raised the price again – this time by 128% - to $16 a barrel. The result was that the price of crude oil jumped more than 300% in a year. No economy can stand these kinds of energy price increases without devastating results. Not then, not now. Oil eventually rose to more than $37 a barrel, creating havoc in the world economy.
That would have been the end of the story. The Arab world would have corralled the world’s capital and dictated their terms. You might recall world leaders heading to the desert to visit their money and businessmen groveling in the sand, begging for loans. But the Arabs made several key mistakes. They underestimated Israel’s military strength and the underestimated U.S. resistance to geopolitical blackmail. Immediately after the outbreak of the war, the U.S. airlifted more than $2 billion worth of military supplies to Israel. The Arabs sent a message to Washington that if the U.S. did not intervene, then the Arabs would open the oil spigots. You should be proud the U.S. said, "bullshit," and gave the critical supplies necessary without which Israel could not have survived. Israel is the world’s only deterrent to the Arabs. No matter what you politics, remember its Israel and the threat of their formidable military that keeps the Arabs in line. The U.S. skillfully plays its Israel trump card.
What’s more, the western nations didn’t take the Arab blackmail threats lying down. The western powers were pissed off. No one appreciated a global recession, gas lines around the block, skyrocketing interest rates and massive inflation. They were not about to submit to Arab blackmail. The CIA, working with the Israeli Mossad and the big oil companies, decided to teach the Arab leaders in general – and OPEC oil ministers in particular – a lesson they would never forget. They decided to assassinate the Saudi king, Faisal ibn al Saud, who had given the go-ahead for both the Yom Kippur War and the Oil Embargo. Nothing like murdering a guy in his bed to get his friends’ attention.
Faisal was a shrewd power broker. The son of Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, Faisal forced his brother King Saud, to abdicate in a 1964 coup and assumed the throne. The CIA hatched a plot to do to King Faisal what he had done to his brother. With the help of the Mossad and CIA , deep cover Arab operatives approached King Faisal’s nephew, Prince Faisal ibn Musad Abd al-Aziz, and convinced him that there was massive international and domestic support for him to be the next king. He was promised that, if he would play ball with the oil companies, he would quickly replace Faisal and have the full backing of the United States. Foolishly, the young prince believed all this and in 1975 he assassinated King Faisal. The truth is that it was a CIA hit. The Saudis know who was behind the trigger. The point was well taken.
That wasn’t the end of the message, either. The same year, 1975, the CIA and the oil companies decided to hire the world’s most infamous political assassin, Carols the Jackal – Illich Ramirez Sanchez – through Palestinian intermediaries to hammer home another message to the OPEC power base, Saudi Sheik Yamani and Iranian Oil Minister Jamshid Amouzeagar (the brains behind the OPEC power play). It was a fiendishly clever plan, to hire the Arabs’ chief assassin to kill Arab leaders. It was important for OPEC to know that they could be eliminated if they did not play ball and that the world would not take oil blackmail lying down.
Sanchez was the son of a communist Venezuelan lawyer (he named his three sons after the architect of the Russian revolution, calling one Vladimir, another Illich, and the third Lenin). Illich – Carols the Jackal – received his initial guerilla training in Cuba, in the early 1960’s. He graduated with honors in 1969 from Moscow’s Patrice Lamumba University, the training ground for KGB and terrorists agents. In the early 1970’s, he was involved with most of the extreme left terrorist organizations, including Black September, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Italian Red Brigades, Columbia M-19 movement, and the Baader-Meinholf gang.
By late 1975, however, Carlos was running out of friends. As a KGB-trained agent, Carlos’s free lance activities on the part of the Palestinians (including the 1972 attack in Munich) and numerous assassinations-for-hire were beginning to embarrass his Russian handlers. As a result, Carols came to believe (as a result of CIA manipulations) that his former KGB bosses were planning to have him killed and he needed help. As a result, he accepted an assignment from the radical Palestinian PFLP group (really the CIA) to assassinate two OPEC ministers, Sheik Yamani and the Iraqi OPEC representative, Jamshid Amouzeagar. It was a very clever plot designed to send a message to the Arab power base that the radical elements in their own lands could be stirred up to bring them down. The Palestinians wanted to teach OPEC a lesson, for not supporting their cause, as did the oil companies (for busting them out), Israel, for the Yom Kippur war and Western governments (for the embargo). On Friday, December 19,1975, Carlos – along with a handful of Palestinian and German terrorists – met in a safe house in Vienna and were supplied with M-16 rifles, P-38 revolvers, Scorpion machine-pistols and 15 kilos of plastic explosives. On Sunday, December 21, they stormed OPEC headquarters during a high level ministers meeting and took 63 hostages. They had inside help. The building was only being guarded at the time by two Austrian policemen and some Arab security officials, who may have been in on the plot.
Carlos demanded an airplane out of Vienna. The ransom note said: "To the Austrian Authorities: Be are holding hostages, delegates to the OPEC conference. We demand the reading of our command communiqué on the Austrian radio and television network every two hours, starting tow hours from now. A large bus, with windows covered by curtains, must be provided to carry us to the airport of Vienna tomorrow at seven o’clock where a full-tanked DC-9 with a crew of three persons must be prepared to take our hostages and us to our destination. Any delay, provocation, or unauthorized approach under any guise will endanger the lives of our hostages.
The Arm of the Arab Revolution
He also asked for a radio, 25 meters of rope and five pairs of scissors – to tie up his hostages. While he was waiting, to occupy his time and for fun, he tortured one of his victims by shooting him first in the thigh, then the stomach, before finally finishing him off. Sheik Yamani, who got to watch Carlos up close and personal, said the "Carlos is a ruthless terrorist who operates with cold-blooded, surgical precision". The KGB trained him well.
At 6:40 the following morning, on Monday, December 22, a yellow postal bus, with curtains closed, pulled up in front of OPEC headquarters. Carlos separated out the lower-level employees but kept all of the big wigs, taking 43 hostages to the airport. He placed, under the seats of Sheik Yamani and Jamshid Amouseager, enough explosives to blow the Arab leaders to bits, (which is what he had agreed to do). The whole idea of the operation was to show Arab leaders they were flirting with fire and assassinate the two OPEC oil ministers responsible for the oil embargo.
The idea was to make it look like a terrorist attack to the masses and cover the fact it was a western government hit. Please realize that no government wants its people to know how dirty the game really is. The hit was supposed to look like bungled terrorists attack by the PFLP and have nothing to do with America or Israel. Very clever and it worked. As for the PFLP, its leaders did not even know the U.S. or Israel was involved.
At 9:00 am the DC-9 took off from Vienna, bound for Algiers. When the plane landed in Algiers Al-Abid Airport two and half-hours later, Carlos was met like a conquering hero by Algeria’s foreign minister, Abdel Aziz Bouteflika. He was escorted to the airport’s VIP lounge. One of the German terrorists, who had been shot in the initial storming of the building, was taken off the plane and driven to a hospital.
Here is where the script changed. Remember the contract was to kill Yamani and Amouzeagar. Algeria carried a message from Saudi Arabia, a picture of the only woman Carlos the Jackal ever loved (with their son) and a offer of money if he would not carry out the hit on Yamani and Amouzeagar.
Carlos then released 30 non-Arab OPEC officials; the rest, 13, were told to remain on the plane. After refueling, the plane took off for Tripoli. The Libyans, who employed Carlos in the past, asked Carlos to release the Libyan member of OPEC who was on the plane. At that point, $50milllion was given to Carlos (nothing like getting paid twice for the same job) for the release of ALL hostages. The terrorists returned to Algiers after Libya brokered the deal that saved Yamani’s life. Of course, for public consumption Libya announced that they had refused to allow the terrorists to stay.
Upon his arrival in Algiers, Carlos released all of his prisoners in exchange for the $50 million already paid and a guarantee of safe conduct. The Saudis and the Iranians to spare the lives of Saudi Arabian Sheik Yamani and Iraqi Oil minister Jamshid Amouzeagar and to release the other hostages paid the money. In effect, Carlos double-crossed both his CIA contacts and the radical Palestinians in Syria who had recruited him. In exchange for $50 million, he did not kill Sheik Yamani and the Iraqi delegate. The Palestinians in Syria were furious. But the message had still been sent to OPEC’s oil ministers; we killed King Faisal, we could have killed all of you, so don’t screw around with the western powers or you’ll all be in the Garden of Allah faster than you expected.
The message got through. The price of crude oil dropped from a high of $37 a barrel down to a low of $8 a barrel, with a band established between $10 and $18 a barrel by agreement between the Arabs western governments and the oil companies, where it was to stay. Oil crisis over. Everyone went home happy, at least for a while.
Unfortunately, the temptation is too great. The power and money involved in controlling the world’s oil is a temptation few can refuse. Radical Arab groups sought to break the secret agreement and that’s when Iraq hatched the plan to attack Kuwait.
This was repayment by the radical Arabs for the Kuwaitis and the Saudi King Hahd’s loyalty to the U.S. with out whose help the lower prices of oil would not be maintained. Iraq, if successful with the attack on Kuwait, would be the world’s new oil power broker. The combination of Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil would make Iraq the wold’s largest supplier of oil, replacing the Saudis.
Bust as in often the case, things are often not as they appear. There was another daring plan hatched at the highest levels of the world intelligence community. See the Iraqis were building one of the world’s foremost arsenals, including nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. They were playing the Americans and Russians against one another like a virtuoso playing a violin. Also, they had broad Arab support. The Israel Mossad was collecting a lot of data about the formidable threat the Iraqis were becoming.
The problem was the conservative Arabs would not listen, so a plan was hatched to force the Iraqis’ hand. Let the Iraqis believe that they could regain their old territory, Kuwait, with impunity. In a very clever ploy, the U.S. signaled that it would not interfere in the internal affairs of Kuwait and Iraq. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The U.S. had every intention of interfering. The idea was to deal a crippling blow to the rising, more radical Arab groups, stop the Iraqi military build-up and increase U.S. military presence in the region, all at the same time and with the blessing of the OPEC Arabs. The rest of the Arab world leaders stood up and took notice as the Iraqis overran Kuwait, raping and pillaging the country. The silent message was that a powerful Iraq could do it to any of its neighbors.
You better believe Arab leaders welcomed American intervention with open arms. It was a win-win deal for all concerned. The Arabs were able to put Iraq back in its cage. The U. S. was able to end the Iraqi military threat and remind the boys that a superpower is a superpower and put the Arabs back in their place. Unfortunately, the U.S. and Saudis got cold feet and did not march into Baghdad and finish the job – to the chagrin of that great modern American was hero Gen. Storm’ in Norman Schawaartzkoff, who resigned in protest and ended a great career. After the Gulf War, and throughout the 1990’s, the price of imported crude oil stabilized around $15 a barrel, where it was supposed to be by agreement.
Nearly a decade after the Gulf War, something happened; new leadership cam to OPEC – more impetuous leaders who were tired of the accommodating policy towards the west. Those radical elements raised their ugly head once again. As Sheik Yamani said, OPEC has a short memory. All these new leaders believed that $15a barrel oil was costing them a lot of money – and their countries were now posting sizable deficits. (Arab leaders spend a fortune trying to buy off radical elements.) Things changed in the Arab world as extreme fundamentalist elements came to power.
Now we have anew energy crisis caused by the changing of the guard. In 1996,Prince Abdallah bin Abdelaziz – a far more radical Saudi fundamentalist with a hatred for the west, especially the U.S. – assumed many executive powers when his ailing half-brother, King Fahd, suffered a stroke. Prince Abdallah refuses to speak English, hates the United States, and is an open ally of fundamentalist forces within his own sect of Islam. Abdallah is working with another radical, anti-American force within OPEC – Hugo Chavez - the communist dictator-elect of Venezuela. In many ways, Chavez is far more diabolical than his fellow countryman is. Carlos the Jackal – who is also a Venezuelan. Chavez is a communist, a colonel in the Venezuelan military that was imprisoned for a coup attempt. While in prison awaiting execution, he made a deal with the Arabs through his friend, Carlos the Jackal. For the cash he needed to buy his way out of a death sentence and free himself from prison, he agreed to deliver the key supplier of oil to the U.S. (Venezuela) to the radical Arab camp if he ever came to power. See, in the past every attempt to squeeze the U.S. oil market was thwarted by Venezuela and Saudi Arabia coming to the US’s rescue, supplying the necessary oil.
Once he assumed power, Chavez changed the Venezuelan constitution, giving himself dictatorial powers. And in 1999, Chavez joined Prince Abdallah on a secret project to once again jack up the price of oil by controlling supplies dramatically increasing the price of OPEC oil. The present energy crisis is they’re doing. They are doing this a number of ways – by slowing down production, hiding inventories on ships, and then raising the price. They are creating artificial shortages to squeeze the world. Remember that many of the conservative voices are scared to death of a global oil-induced recession. In fact, Sheik Yamani, the man Carlos the Jackal was sent to kill, understands all this. (But he is no longer in power.) In a recent statement, he warned OPEC ministers that any plan to dramatically jack up the price of oil would backfire: "Technology is the real enemy of OPEC. Technology will reduce consumption and increase production from areas outside of OPEC. The real victims will be countries like Saudi Arabia with huge reserves that they can do nothing with. The oil will stay in the ground forever. This year’s oil price scare will benefit rival non-OPEC producers, suppress demand, and most damagingly to OPEC, bring new fuel technologies. Hybrid engines for automobiles and hydrogen fuel cells, dramatically cutting the consumption of gasoline while big new finds lift crude flows from non-OPEC nations." What Yamani failed to mention is that this changeover will take a decade or more. In the meantime, the world economy will be crucified.
As a result of this recent OPEC gambit, the price of oil has skyrocketed since late 1999 over 300%. We have a full-blown energy crisis on our hands and OPEC is to blame. Energy prices are soaring. Supplies globally are dangerously low, in fact, the lowest level in almost a quarter of a century.
