Iraqis protest attempted PSA rape & pillage maneuver

Back in May, I wrote about Dick Cheney's attempts to force the Iraqi government into Profit Sharing Agreements. This "deal" would effectively rape the nation of it's primary resource, while diverting nearly all of the profits to the foreign oil companies that would run the show.

About 300 oil industry workers gathered in Iraq’s main oil port of Basra on Monday to protest this draft law that they agreed "would allow foreigners to pillage the country’s wealth.”

To compensate for the military and political failure of the US administration in Iraq, this administration is trying to control the country’s wealth,” said the organizers, adding that "if this is endorsed by the parliament it would abolish sovereignty and hand over the wealth of this generation and the generations to come as a gift to the occupier”!

The protesters, employees of the Oil Pipelines Company, wore black surgical masks over their faces and carried banners and black coffins with the word “freedom” written on the sides. The clause in the draft hydrocarbon law allowing for production-sharing agreements with foreign oil companies is rightly seen by many Iraqis see as a throwback to the earlier era of Iraq colonial exploitation.

“This law, in fact destroys the achievements of the Iraqi masses and especially the Law number 80 of 1961 ( part of a bundle of socialist reforms issued by then-Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qassim, which sharply limited foreign involvement in the oil sector) and the nationalization of 1973,” said organizers.

The Bush administration and it's big oil allies, who sought to ram the draft hydrocarbon law through a government they helped set up and assumed that they controlled, can only be surprised by the awareness of the Iraqi people. As Shakes used to say "Don't fuck with me, boys - this aint my first time at the rodeo". The Iraqi people are used to having conquerors on their backs, and equally experienced in throwing them. . .