This program further develops the subject of the clandestine power politics of the petroleum industry, beginning with discussion of Otto Von Bolschwing, a key SS intelligence officer and (for a time) Adolf Eichmann’s superior in the administration of Hitler’s policy toward the Jews.
Von Bolschwing became a key CIA operative after the war. One of Von Bolschwing’s proteges in the post-war period was Helene Von Damm, who selected the list of personnel from which Ronald Reagan’s cabinet appointees were selected
Von Bolschwing also oversaw a complex Nazi intelligence gambit in the Middle East. Utilizing renegade British intelligence officer Jack Philby, Von Bolschwing authorized apparent collaboration between Saudi king Ibn Saud and the Zionists. This ostensible collaboration entailed a plan to promote Jewish emigration from Europe to Palestine under the protection of the Saudis. Like Ibn Saud (and of course Von Bolschwing and his Third Reich superiors), Philby was a rabid anti-Semite and had no intention of aiding the Jews. His “cooperation” with the Zionists was a deception, intended to betray both the Jews and Great Britain.
After securing British approval for the ostensible Saudi/Zionist collaboration, Philby was instrumental in leaking news of the operation to the Arabs. The result was heightened Arab outrage at the British and consequent sympathy for the Third Reich.
The second half of the program focuses on a complex conspiracy between the Third Reich, the aforementioned Jack Philby, Allen Dulles, Saudi Arabia and major American and British oil companies. A former attorney for the powerful Wall Street law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, Dulles worked for the OSS during World War II. (The OSS was America’s World War II civilian intelligence service.)
Dulles was a traitor to the United States, complicit in the financing of Nazi industry and centrally involved with wartime duplicity by the petroleum industry.
Saudi Arabia collaborated with Nazi Germany, while blackmailing Great Britain and the United States. Dulles and the major American and British oil companies were instrumental in arranging this blackmail. Because the U.S. was able to “outbid” the United Kingdom in paying off the Saudis, American petroleum interests emerged dominant in the contest for control of Saudi Arabian oil.
Program Highlights Include: Texaco’s pivotal role in providing oil to the fascist forces of Franco during the Spanish Civil War; Texaco kingpin Torkild Rieber’s work as a Nazi Spy during the Second World War; the collaboration of Standard Oil of New Jersey with Nazi Germany; the collaboration of Socal with the Third Reich; Dulles’ threat to cut off oil to the British war effort if they exposed the collaboration of “Big Oil” with the Nazis; a similar threat to cut off oil to the American war effort if the petroleum industry’s Nazi links were exposed; Nazi chemical company I.G. Farben’s capital participation in Standard of New Jersey and Socal (it was the second largest stock holder in Standard behind the Rockefeller family); the Bormann group’s inheritance of the I.G.‘s Standard stock; the Wahabbi sect of Saudi Arabia and its historical links to international fascism and U.S. oil companies.
Martin Borman, Nazi in Exile
Ooo...a modern day David and Goliath story which, of course, means Goliath wins:
Just makes you want to shout “Freeeeedom!”, doesn’t it?
Also keep in mind that all of these moves in Texas and elsewhere to ban fracking bans isn’t just being brought to you by Big Oil. It’s brought to you by ALEC, which certainly includes Big Oil, but should really be seen as the Union of Corporatist Corporations of America:
“Pre-emption of local control has been a key ALEC strategy for fighting progressive gains at the local level, such as city living wage laws and sick leave policies.” Yep! And now ALEC has a very well-compensated Texas Railroad Commissioner in Texas that’s more than enthusiastic about ensuring that ALEC’s fight for the freedom to frack without local input continues unimpeded. Goliath win! Surprise!
But also keep in mind that David just might get another chance to defeat Goliath. Or at least defeat Goliath’s proxy-humans. How so? Well, in Texas, being Railroad Commissioner isn’t some dead end job: Texas’s oil queen is meant for higher office:
Yes, Craddick says her office will keep issuing permits in Denton and that, overall, “I have no environmental concerns about fracking.” And she’s just getting started:
Could Craddick’s career in corporate ass-kissing really just be getting started? We’ll see! But if Christi Craddick does decide to go for higher office her corporate sponsors are probably going to be right there to return the favors. After all, as we just saw, Goliath needs an abundance of minions and he knows it. Goliath didn’t become Goliath on his own.
It’s Earth Day. Yay Earth! Or rather, yay life on Earth!
Now that we got that out of the way, here’s a reminder that if we ever want to get to the point where we don’t feel the need to celebrate Earth Day every year, we’re probably going to have to start effectively celebrating Earth Day every day. At least for the foreseeable future. After all, it’s hard to foresee a future that doesn’t involve The Day After Earth Day Because We Destroyed It Day, every day, when the most powerful forces on the planet have business models that more or less guarantee the need for Earth Day are are willing to blackmail continents in order to keep it that way:
“The plant regulations eventually advanced by the commission would leave Europe under a weaker pollution regime than China’s, according to research by Greenpeace.”
Well done, BP. We will be anxiously celebrating Earth Day for decades to come thanks to the damage inflicted on the biosphere by the unyielding efforts by the decision-makers at BP to do whatever it takes to ensure that humanity does basically nothing to prevent the disastrous impacts of climate change.
But BP obviously can’t take all the credit for ensuring Earth Day for the foreseeable future. It’s had help. Some (the sane) might argue WAY too much help. For WAY too long:
“Experts agree that the damage is huge, which is why they are likening Exxon’s deception to the lies spread by the tobacco industry. “I think there are a lot of parallels,” Kimmell says. Both sowed doubt about the science for their own means, and both worked with the same consultants to help develop a communications strategy. He notes, however, that the two diverge in the type of harm done. Tobacco companies threatened human health, but the oil companies threatened the planet’s health. “It’s a harm that is global in its reach,” Kimmel says.”
Worse than the tobacco industry. It isn’t easy creating harm that is global in its reach. If Exxon was a person it would merit some sort of lifetime achievement award. Or at least a very rigorous golf clap. But Exxon isn’t a person who will eventually meet the grim reaper. It’s a corporate entity that can continue to grow in power and influence indefinitely and use that power and influence to keep making the tobacco industry look relatively humane. Unless, of course, we collapse the biosphere. That might be the end of Exxon. But until then, there’s going to be plenty of increasingly urgent Earth Days. Thanks Exxon.
So as we celebrate Earth Day by cleaning trash and shutting off the lights, etc, perhaps part of Earth Day should a discussion about how exactly we address what is increasingly looking like a collective crime against life on Earth perpetuated by many of the most powerful forces on the planet. After all, powerful forces that commit egregious crimes aren’t likely to hold back on using that power to continue those crimes when the crimes are critical to their power. Companies like BP and Exxon would have been amongst the best positioned entities on the planet to lead a green energy revolution and prevent mass catastrophes. But they chose basically the opposite route, making vast fortunes along the way that has left them with enough power and clout to corrupt governments across the globe. And it’s not like those government officials put up much resistance. The efforts to ensure that whatever we do about climate change is too little, too late involved more than just the super-villain behavior by Exxon and BP. It’s been a group effort.
So how do we even begin addressing what amounts to a de facto dictatorship of the powerful forces on the planet using that power to perpetuate that power even when it threatens to destroy us all? It seems like we should spend at least one day a year pondering such issues. If not on Earth Day, how about Offer We All Can’t Refuse Day. A day for brainstorming offers that the global rabble could make to the global power elite that involves transitioning away from the current suicidal kleptocracy and towards some sort of sustainable future where happiness maximization and sanity, as opposed to profit maximization, becomes the global norm.
What do we do when saving the world involves ending the world from the perspective of the people who run the world? When humanity’s collective leadership is sort of of crime against humanity, how does humanity even begin to address a situation like that? It’s a pretty important question, without obvious answers.
With the threat of WWIII heating up as the world waits to see if the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine can achieve some sort of breakthrough, here’s a pair of articles that are a reminder of one of the many long-term potential consequences of an extended New Cold War, where cooperation between Russia and the West on issues of global importance grinds to a halt. That would be the long-term consequences of the climate if the vast stores of oil, coal, and gas stored under the Arctic end up getting tapped and dumped into the atmosphere. Stores that are getting more and more accessible as the polar caps melt away:
Scientists are recording temperatures 50 degrees F above average in the Arctic. At the same time they’re recording temperatures 70 degrees above average in the Antarctic. Yes, both the Arctic and Antarctic — which are supposed to have opposite seasons — are experiencing freakish heat waves at the same time. Needless to say, this shouldn’t be happening. But it’s happening. And the world is going to have to deal with it together if it’s going to be addressed at all:
““They are opposite seasons. You don’t see the north and the south (poles) both melting at the same time,” Meier told The Associated Press Friday evening. “It’s definitely an unusual occurrence.””
Welcome to the future. It’s only getting warmer from here.
And note how extra bizarre this simultaneous record warming is: while we’re now used to alarming stories about the warming Arctic, the Antarctic has actually been warming less than the rest of the globe. That’s part of the reason experts are quick to point out that this is event is likely due to random weather fluctuations. And yes, that’s absolutely true. By definition. Broken weather records still aren’t climate. Still, it’s the latest set of broken records in the same direction:
What is the world going to do about this? Probably not much more than it’s already doing. But as the following article from back in October reminds us, all this melting ice means access to all that Arctic gas is that much easier to tap. Which means if the world is planning on keeping that Arctic gas under the ocean it’s going to need global treaties. With Russia being an obvious major participant in any of those negotiations. So it’s going to be worth keeping in mind that the longer Russia spends divorced from the West, the less likely any such agreements will be arrived at:
“On Wednesday, the EU put forward proposals that could see it pushing to ban the tapping of new oil, coal and gas deposits in the Arctic in an effort, it said, to protect the region from further disruptive climate change.”
A ban on the topping of new oil, coal, and gas deposits in the Arctic. Good luck with that! For real. It would be great for the future if the EU’s ban on Arctic gas was implemented. But Russia clearly has a very different view on any such Arctic bans, which isn’t very surprising given how much of Russia technical falls in the Arctic. Plus, when it comes to countries that might potentially benefit from a warming planet, Russia has to be near the top of the list. Any chance of keeping those massive Arctic deposits in the ground and out of the atmosphere is going to require Russia’s cooperation:
The New Cold War is going to heat up whether we like it or not. Significant climate change is already in the cards even if civilization implemented the radical changes experts warn are necessary to avoid catastrophic disruptions ecosystems and the collapse of the biosphere. Limiting climate change to a moderate catastrophe, as opposed to an existential catastrophe, is the best case scenario we’re looking at. A best case scenario that is looking increasingly unrealistic as the prospect for global cooperation continue to fade.
So as the West tries to decide whether or not to back peace talks between Russia and Ukraine vs adopting a strategy of long-term isolation in the hopes of fomenting some sort of Russian regime change, it’s going to be worth keep in mind the numerous issues of global importance that require Russian cooperation now. It’s just one example of the massive opportunity costs to the world that comes with an extended period of Russian isolation.
And on a grim side note, if anyone is hoping that the nuclear winter from a limited nuclear exchange might be the silver bullet humanity needs to offset global warming, yes, a nuclear winter would indeed lower temperatures. But probably only for a few decades, at which point it’s off to the races again. Don’t get your hopes up.
What did Big Oil know and when did it know it? It’s not just a growing moral question as the process of climate change continues to play out. As the following article describes, it’s a question at the heart of a legal strategy that just might succeed in forcing Big Oil to at least pay some sort of price for the catastrophic damage wrought by climate change. Climate change that Big Oil was fully aware was the inevitable result of rising CO2 levels.
So how is the ‘what did they know and when did they know it?’ question going to be resolved in the courts? It’s all thanks to a 1968 study produced by the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) commissioned on behalf of the American Petroleum Institute (API). And that paper didn’t just explicitly lay out the dire global consequences of rising CO2 levels, but it did so with startlingly accuracy, predicting CO2 levels of 370 parts per million by the year 2000. The measured levels were in fact 369.71 at the beginning of that year.
The fact that the 1968 SRI study was commissions by the API wasn’t an anomaly. As the article describes, the SRI was intertwined with the industry oil and gas industry from its beginning. In fact, industry studies were often commissioned for the purpose of providing materials that could be used to defend the industry from lawsuits. That’s part what makes the now notorious 1968 SRI so compelling: This was the industry warning itself about its own the potential impact on the future. Warnings that were obviously ignored with severe and growing consequences. Along with severe and ongoing profits.
Will any of those industries end up paying any sort of price for those decades of diabolical profits? We’ll see, but that’s the hope of The Center for International Environmental Law, which first discovered and published that 1968 SRI paper back in 2016, resulting in a wave of over two dozen lawsuits against the oil industry by states and localities. It’s that overall dynamic — many different lawsuits that could eventually result in industry-wide payouts — that have advocates hopeful that they finally have the legal path to forcing the most profitable industry on the planet to pay for its historic ongoing crimes. And it’s those same prospects for success that has the industry pressuring the Supreme Court to get all of these state and local lawsuits thrown into the federal courts, greatly reducing the number of potential cases and odds of a victory.
Keep in mind that the SRI didn’t formally separate from Stanford University until 1970, so that 1968 paper was published as part of the University’s work. So with Stanford already facing questions about its ongoing honoring of Nazi war criminals like Alfried Krupp, it’s worth keeping in mind that there’s another ongoing crime against humanity the university helped cover up for decades. After all, it’s not like it was Stanford that notified the world about this damning study. Nor was the study locked away in private archives. It was just sitting there for decades, seemingly forgotten and ignored for years, even after its ominously accurate year 2000 prediction. Stanford and the SRI didn’t share this with the world. It was the environmental activists who dug the study up in 2016. It wasn’t locked away in a vault this whole time. That’s part of the story here too. Who else knew about this study? We don’t know, so let’s hope one of the dozens of ongoing lawsuits centered around this damning 1968 SRI study helps us find out:
“If the cases eventually get before state court juries, advocates for the litigation strategy contend they could extract massive damages — or big settlements — from industry, as happened in litigation over tobacco, opioids, and asbestos. Like the climate suits, those cases alleged “corporate deception leveled at the public for decades, resulting in a huge cost to all society,” said Ben Franta, senior climate litigation research fellow at Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, who has advised some climate plaintiffs. They “are good examples that the legal system can take on big societal harms that the other branches of government frankly are just not addressing.””
The stakes almost couldn’t be higher for Big Oil: If individual states start waging class action lawsuits over climate change, it’s just a matter of time before one of those states scores a big legal victory. The kind of legal victory that threatens the entire industry. That’s the potential significance of the legal strategy currently being pursued by the Carroll Muffett and The Center for International Environmental Law. A strategy centered around a 1968 paper commissions by the American Petroleum Institute and produced by Elmer Robinson and Bob Robbins at the Stanford Research Institute. A paper that delivered an unambiguous warning about the global consequences of rising CO2 levels, produced for an industry trade group. It wasn’t just ExxonMobile. That paper was commissions for the entire US petroleum industry. And the SRI wasn’t just some independent academic outfit. It was basically working on behalf of the oil and gas industry, even providing them with studies they could use to defend themselves from lawsuits. That’s all part of what makes this 1968 paper such a big deal. It opens an invaluable legal avenue for anyone pursuing some sort of industry-wide compensation for the incredible damage done:
As the article notes, even the SRI’s own materials touted the fact that “The prime responsibility of Stanford Research Institute is to serve industry.” But a far more compelling detail is the fact that this 1968 paper was just summarizing what was already the consensus scientific opinion on the consequences of rising CO2 levels. Taken together, the industry’s prior awareness of the incredible environmental destruction it was going to cause is just undeniable:
And then there’s the fact that this 1968 paper was not only prescient but shockingly accurate in its predictions. It just underscores how this wasn’t highly speculative science in that 1968 paper. This was reasonably understood science that proved itself over time. It’s the kind of remarkable accuracy that raises the question: so what responsibility did the SRI itself feel in 2000 to warn the public about the alarmingly accurate predictions made by its own scientists 32 years earlier. The SRI knew what was predicted and, more importantly, knew that the petroleum industry knew too. What is the SRI’s own moral responsibility while it was silently sitting on these studies for decades while Big Oil continued to play dumb?
Finally, note the ominous possible fate of this multi-state legal strategy: If Big Oil can convince the conservative majority on the Supreme Court to move the whole issue to the federal courts, the odds of a big victory plummet:
It would be nice to assume that the petroleum interests aren’t going to have success at the Supreme Court. But that’s obviously not an assumption we can realistically make given the current makeup of the court. So who knows, maybe the industry will manage to wriggle out of culpability for its wildly profitable crimes against humanity one more time. That’s more or less what we should expect at this point. Along with a lot more climate catastrophes. And more wild profits that keep this machine of doom humming along for the foreseeable future. A catastrophic future that was clearly foreseen by the interests making these wild profits more than 50 years ago.