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In the preceding blaster (here), I raised a question of whether the Israelis were trying to hijack the Green Lobby or whether they were ready for the rubber room. This was made in response to a report by Jonathan Cook that contended Israel was greenwashing war the on terror. It turns out that I may have phrased this question in naive, simplistic terms, if my good friend Pierre Sprey (a justifiably well known weapons analyst, mathematician, and recording entrepreneur -- just google him) is correct, Israel's motives for trying to hijack the Green Lobby can be viewed in a larger, longer range context. Attached below is his most interesting analysis of Israel's motives for greenwashing the war on terror:
-----[Comment by Pierre Sprey follows]-----
Chuck,
I totally agree that the currently faddish alternate energy sources are ludicrously uneconomical and, for the most part, environmentally harmful. The only alternate source that could almost completely supplant oil and that actually makes economic and environmental sense, natural gas, is currently among the most unfashionable. [CS Note: Robert Bryce has an excellent discussion of natural gas in his important new book, Power Hungry: The Myths of Green Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future, Public Affairs Press, April 2010.]
Nevertheless, there's an important larger perspective to Israel's dead serious push to raise huge amounts of capital (guess where?) to produce non-oil based energy from trendy green sources in large enough quantities to reduce worldwide oil demand significantly.
That perspective is simple: unbeknownst to most, the absolute highest priority objective of Israeli foreign policy, from 1949 to today, has been to break the Seven Sisters oil cartel's stranglehold on world oil production in order to collapse the world price of oil. From Israel's point of view, that's a perfectly rational strategic objective--and, almost certainly, the only Israeli objective I know of that would be a major benefit to the world.
Whether it's achievable is, of course, another question, given the huge, always-underestimated economic and political power of the oil cartel. In any case, the oil companies recognized the Israeli threat even before 1949 and, so far, have been successful in countering every Israeli move to break Big Oil's grip on the world's oil spigot. Superficially, but more or less correctly, the following paragraph's from Cook's article summarize the Israeli strategic interest in fomenting the Iraq war--and Israel's use of their neocon puppets to implement that strategy:
"There are strong indications that Israel's green technologies drive is related to plans developed by US neoconservative groups in the build-up to the attack on Iraq. Netanyahu is known to have maintained close ties to neoconservatives in the US.
Some of these groups lobbied the previous administration of George W. Bush to invade Iraq so that its oil fields could be privatized and the international markets flooded with oil.
According to the reasoning of officials at one influential think-tank, the Heritage Foundation in Washington, privatization would drive down oil prices, break up the Saudi-backed Opec oil cartel, and drain money away from "terror groups" and radical Islamic education.
Some neocons regarded this policy as particularly beneficial to Israel, because it would starve Hamas and Hizballah of funds and take the pressure off Tel Aviv to end the occupation."
Needless to say, the actual implementation of Israel's strategy to foment the Iraq War and then to use the fruits to tear down the world price of oil was far subtler and far more treacherous than the above simple-minded outline. The chronology is the following:
1. In June 1997, the neocon Project on the New American Century (PNAC)--fronting for Israel--published their manifesto calling for an Iraq invasion to overthrow Saddam. Quite brilliantly, they enlisted the support of the oil majors, as evidenced by getting Cheney and Rumsfeld to co-sign. The lure was the argument that Clinton's Gulf War I oil embargo was sure to end soon and then Saddam, overburdened with debt, would start selling oil and oil leases (to Seven Sister enemies like France, China and Russia, God forbid) as fast as he could. That, in turn, would collapse the world price of oil. So, according to PNAC, it was obviously in the interest of the US and the oil companies to invade Iraq, dump Saddam, and install a tame leader more amenable to leaving the US (read Exxon/Chevron) in control of Iraqi oil fields. Cheney, Rumsfeld and the oil companies went for it.
2. At the first meeting of Bush's cabinet, end January 2001, President Bush, duly programmed by his oil company constituents, made it clear that invading Iraq was a foregone conclusion.
3. In late April 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, implementing the neocon-Israeli agenda, wrote a policy directive for the rapid privatization of all Iraqi state-owned enterprises including the oil sector. Masking this obvious back-stabbing of the neocons' erstwhile oil company allies, Wolfowitz sold the whole package as a principled free market approach to occupying Iraq and reforming the Iraqi economy--and Rumsfeld blithely signed off on this bombshell as the official DoD guidance to the new occupation government. The idea, of course, was to sell at open auction all the Iraqi oil fields piecemeal, thereby enabling all the non-cartel, oil-hungry countries to buy out a large percentage of the huge Iraqi reserves. These cartel enemies, of course, would do the opposite of the Seven Sisters' long-standing policy of keeping as much Iraqi oil off the market as possible. And thus, with one stroke of the Rumsfeldian pen, the world price of oil would crash and Israel would have achieved their coveted goal of strangling the flow of oil money to its Arab enemies.
4. Unlike Rumsfeld, the oil majors were not bamboozled. Moving very fast indeed, by May 6, 2003, they had arranged to have Philip Carroll, recently retired CEO of Shell, appointed as chairman of the occupation government's oil advisory committee. That was five days before Paul Bremer replaced Jay Garner as proconsul of Iraq. And Phil Carroll promptly arranged the demise of any piecemeal auctioning of Iraq's oil fields. Bremer's Coalition Provisional government Order 39, directing the privatization of the entire Iraqi economy, specifically exempted oil extraction and refining. Score: Israel 0, Big Oil 1.
Since that disappointing defeat, it appears that the Israelis have focused on the campaign to get the wealthiest supporters of Israel to finance anything that looks like a major non-oil producer of energy. You can imagine how delighted they are to have Obama financing huge expansions of nuclear electric power. And, as just one example of direct involvement, the Israeli government itself has given sizable seed money (apparently several hundred millions) to an American entrepreneur (a Zionist, of course) who is starting an ambitious venture to establish a US-wide software-controlled network of super-quick battery charging stations for electric cars that his startup company would also design and manufacture.
What's so nutty about Israel propagandizing American Zionists into paying for gambles that might have a chance of taking a chunk out of Big Oil's market? Who cares if the ventures are a long shot, as long as Other People's Money is footing the bill?
Pierre
