The “Demonization” of Muslims and the Battle for Oil
[This article titled The “Demonization” of Muslims and the Battle for Oil by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky was originally published by Global Research. Click here to read the article on GR.]
Throughout history, “wars of religion” have served to obscure the economic and strategic interests behind the conquest and invasion of foreign lands. “Wars of religion” were invariably fought with a view to securing control over trading routes and natural resources.
The Crusades extending from the 11th to the 14th Century are often presented by historians as “a continuous series of military-religious expeditions made by European Christians in the hope of wresting the Holy Land from the infidel Turks.” The objective of the Crusades, however, had little to do with religion.
The Crusades largely consisted, through military action, in challenging the dominion of the Muslim merchant societies, which controlled the Eastern trade routes.
The “Just War” supported the Crusades.
War was waged with the support of the Catholic Church, acting as an instrument of religious propaganda and indoctrination, which was used in the enlistment throughout Europe of thousands of peasants, serfs and urban vagabonds.
America’s Crusade in Central Asia and the Middle East. The Battle for Oil and Natural Gas
In the eyes of public opinion, possessing a “just cause” for waging war is central. A war is said to be “Just” if it is waged on moral, religious or ethical grounds.
America’s Crusade in Central Asia and the Middle East is no exception. The “war on terrorism” purports to defend the American Homeland and protect the “civilized world.”
It is upheld as a “war of religion”, a “clash of civilizations”, when in fact the main objective of this war is to secure control and corporate ownership over the region’s extensive oil wealth, while also imposing under the helm of the IMF and the World Bank, the privatization of state enterprises and the transfer of the countries’ economic assets into the hands of foreign capital.
The Just War theory upholds war as a “humanitarian operation.” It serves to camouflage the real objectives of the military operation, while providing a moral and principled image to the invaders. In its contemporary version, it calls for military intervention on ethical and moral grounds against “rogue states” and “Islamic terrorists”, which are threatening the Homeland.
Jus ad bellum
Possessing a “just cause” for waging war was central to the Bush administration’s justification for invading and occupying both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Taught in US military academies, a modern-day version of the “Just War” theory has been embodied into US military doctrine. The “war on terrorism” and the notion of “preemption” are predicated on the right to “self defense.” They define “when it is permissible to wage war”: jus ad bellum.
Jus ad bellum serves to build a consensus within the Armed Forces command structures. It also serves to convince the troops that the enemy is “evil” and that they are fighting for a “just cause.” More generally, the Just War theory in its modern day version is an integral part of war propaganda and media disinformation, applied to gain public support for a war agenda.
The Battle for Oil. Demonization the Enemy
War builds a humanitarian agenda. Throughout history, vilification of the enemy has been applied time and again.
The Crusades consisted in demonizing the Turks as infidels and heretics, with a view to justifying military action.
Demonization serves geopolitical and economic objectives. Likewise, the campaign against “Islamic terrorism” (which is supported covertly by US intelligence) supports the conquest of oil wealth. The term “Islamo-fascism” serves to degrade the policies, institutions, values and social fabric of Muslim countries while also upholding the tenets of “Western democracy” and the “free market” as the only alternative for these countries.
The US-NATO-led war in the broader Middle East Central Asian region consists in gaining control over more than 60 percent of the world’s reserves of oil and natural gas. The Anglo-American oil giants also seek to gain control over oil and gas pipeline routes out of the region.
Venezuela has the largest reserves worldwide.
Muslim countries which are the object of US-NATO wars, regime change, etc. include Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen, Libya, Nigeria, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei. These countries possess more than 55% of the world’s oil reserves (see table).
The world’s total reserves are of the order of 1,650,585,140,000.
Click here for the complete list of countries: oil reserves (World oil meters)
Venezuela which has the largest share of oil reserves is threatened by the U.S. which has barely two percent of total oil reserves.
The largest share of the world’s oil reserves lies in a region extending (North) from the tip of Yemen to the Caspian sea basin and (East) from the Eastern Mediterranean coastline to the Persian Gulf. This broader Middle East-Central Asian region, which is the theater of the US-led “war on terrorism,” encompasses according to the estimates of World Oil, more than 60 percent of the World’s oil reserves. (See table below)
Iraq has five times more oil than the United States.
Muslim countries possess more than 58% of the world’s oil reserves.
The major non-Muslim oil reserve countries are Venezuela, Canada, Russia, Mexico, China and Brazil.
Demonization is applied to an enemy, which possesses a large share of the world’s oil and gas reserves. “Axis of evil”, “rogue states”, “failed nations”, “Islamic terrorists”: demonization and vilification are the ideological pillars of America’s “war on terror.” They serve as a casus belli for waging the battle for oil.
The battle for oil requires the demonization of those who possess the oil.
The enemy is characterized as evil, with a view to justifying military action including the mass killing of civilians.
The Middle East-Central Asian region is heavily militarized (see map). The oil fields are encircled: NATO war ships stationed in the Eastern Mediterranean (as part of a UN “peace keeping” operation), US Carrier Strike Groups and Destroyer Squadrons in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian deployed as part of the “war on terrorism”.
Middle East Oil Production
The ultimate objective, combining military action, covert intelligence operations and war propaganda, is to break down the national fabric and transform sovereign countries into open economic territories, where natural resources can be plundered and confiscated under “free market” supervision. This control also extends to strategic oil and gas pipeline corridors (e.g. Afghanistan).
Demonization is a PSYOP, used to sway public opinion and build a consensus in favor of war.
Psychological warfare is directly sponsored by the Pentagon and the US intelligence apparatus. It is not limited to assassinating or executing the rulers of Muslim countries, it extends to entire populations.
It also targets Muslims in Western Europe and North America.
It purports to break national consciousness and the ability to resist the invader.
It denigrates Islam.
It creates social divisions. It is intended to divide national societies and ultimately trigger “civil war.”
While it creates an environment which facilitates the outright appropriation of the countries’ resources, at the same time, it potentially backlashes, creates a new national consciousness, develops inter-ethnic solidarity, brings people together in confronting the invaders.
It is worth noting that the triggering of sectarian divisions and “civil wars” is contemplated in the process of redrawing of the map of the Middle East, where countries are slated to be broken up and transformed into territories.
The map of the New Middle East, although not official, has been used by the US National War Academy.
It was recently published in the Armed Forces Journal (June 2006). In this map, nation-states are broken up, international borders are redefined along sectarian-ethnic lines, broadly in accordance with the interests of the Anglo-American oil giants (see map below). The map has also been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers.
Map of the New Middle East
Note: The following map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006).
The Oil and Natural Gas Lies in Muslim Lands
The oil lies in Muslim lands. Vilification of the enemy is part and parcel of Eurasia energy geopolitics. It is a direct function of the geographic distribution of the world’s oil and gas reserves. If the oil were in countries occupied predominantly by Buddhists or Hindus, one would expect that US foreign policy would be directed against Buddhists and Hindus, who would also be the object of vilification.
In the Middle East war theater, Iran, which is part of the “axis of evil”, is the next target according to official US statements.
US-sponsored “civil wars” and regime change have also been conducted in several other strategic oil and gas regions including Nigeria, the Sudan, Colombia, Somalia, Yemen, Angola, not to mention Chechnya and several republics of the former Soviet Union. Ongoing US-sponsored “civil wars”, which often include the channelling of covert support to paramilitary groups, have been triggered in the Darfur region of Sudan as well as in Somalia; Darfur possesses extensive oil reserves. In Somalia, lucrative concessions have already been granted to four Anglo-American oil giants.
“According to documents obtained by The Times, nearly two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco [now part of BP], Chevron and Phillips in the final years before Somalia’s pro-U.S. President Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown and the nation plunged into chaos in January, 1991. Industry sources said the companies holding the rights to the most promising concessions are hoping that the Bush Administration’s decision to send U.S. troops to safeguard aid shipments to Somalia will also help protect their multimillion-dollar investments there.” (America’s Interests in Somalia, Global Research, 2002)
Globalization and the Conquest of the World’s Energy Resources
The collective demonization of Muslims, including the vilification of Islam, applied worldwide, constitutes at the ideological level, an instrument of conquest of the world’s energy resources. It is part of the broader economic, political mechanisms underlying the New World Order.
ANNEX
The 25 Countries: Oil Reserves
A top essay and historical account enunciating a whole new perspective of events from so long ago, yet ever so poignant in these latter days for not so much it seems has changed… the same tropes, the same flavoured modus operandi initiated to enable the truly nefarious undertakings by these supposed elites of the day… specifically I refer to the following passage written…
“War was waged with the support of the Catholic Church, acting as an instrument of religious propaganda and indoctrination, which was used in the enlistment throughout Europe of thousands of peasants, serfs and urban vagabonds…”
In terms of the modern conflicts we have endured one need only substitute USAID and their lapdogs, the MSM for the Catholic Church … given we know the tentacle like reach commensurate the power the Church had elicited up unto, of that period and beyond… their reach spanning most of the kingdoms and so called developed world of the period… their priests with total obeisance to the church, saying and doing whatever was fed them by Rome, think the talking heads and feature writers our modern media, cable and print, and the impact is the same, in other words the playbook the same save the medium of delivery… yet by way of delivery, nevertheless still the same, sonorous monotoned deliveries from the pulpit designed to both scare the parishioners and to motivate them to sign up, tell or show me the difference in terms the delivery of the message, the narrative building the case for conflict, given the desired results sought in these latter days by the warmongers for in reality there is none.
As noted the trope the same, demonise, build the narrative through lies, deceit, duplicit rhetoric, exacerbate the most ridiculous, the most salacious and suggestive all with the predicate of creating an emotive response comprised of anger, fear, rage… underscored the promise of victory, spoils and riches to those targeted to participate in the “adventure” the prize, the pillage, plunder and theft of the resources belonging to others, those lessor lights, not of the same as those fighting on the side of god.
I mean good lord, the overt hypocrisy, coupled outright blasphemous behaviour all completely antithetical to everything the Church and Vicar of Christ was meant to stand for, sound familiar? It should, think the present conflagration in that Nazi shithole Ukraine, a long gestated conflict, the events of 2008 under Dubbya Bush, how it, the U.S undermining Ukrainians sovereignty, their democracy continued apace under Obama.
Obama then appointed former President J,R Biden, you may recall, V.P Joe Biden to “run point” on Ukraine.. through the orchestration of the 2014 Maidan Coup, the ousting of a sitting and duly elected President, Yanukovich, the ratcheting up of the murder, the killing of fellow Ukrainian citizens in the Donbas by incessant shelling, firing MRL’s at towns and cities and all manner of conurbation that comprised the Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts (regions), the CIA and MI6 trained AZOV Nazi death squads that were let loose, summarily executing the mostly Russian speakin, oriented civilians of the area… for no other reason than they were of Russian ethnicity, such was and until recently remained the vile mindset of the U.S sponsored Uke Government in Kiev.. the entire fiasco a U.S Western construct… yet if we are silly enough to blithely accept at face value, the U.SAID controlled Media’s word for it, as for the past 17 years ex their narrative, being they who on behalf their masters, who demonised Russia and all things Russian, THENST we must blame Russia and Russia alone for the debacle….
However as we know only to well, life never is as portrayed, hence the need in todays world, to be able to assimilate information, to be able to then in having digested what we have learned, to be able to apply what’s been learned together the knowledge retained in the well of our mind, enabling us to think critically, some might suggest cynically whilst the so called elites of the present would clamour and call for censorship, citing contrarian perspectives and fact based truths as conspiracies.
In essence not a lot has altered, the elites still covet plunder and pillage, seek out via their lies the poorest and least educated amongst us to take up arms to fight the righteous and noble cause… all in response to the message delivered either the pulpit or in todays world… the MSM… all while coming down hard on dissenting views or those who dare challenge…
We have witnessed this behaviour for centuries and yet nothing I believe based on the facts has been learned, overreaching it seems as the modern elites perennially have been doing, going back to Vietnam and every kinetic stoush since… seemingly the only real difference between the ancient papal edicts and our modern MSM being that there is none, no difference, every contrived conflict being the mirror image and a rerun of the last such maladventure..
I think and believe that it is rather telling that despite the age we live in, that the rationale, the M.O utilised to foment conflict, war, regime change… remains so very similar, eerily so, now, all these centuries, nearly a millennia later, the modern elites have not modified one iota the playbook used… just saying.
Kia Kaha.
This reads like a psyop to me. In my opinion, Islam denigrates and weaponizes the otherwise honorable and hospitable Arab peoples (and all colonized peoples) into Islamic Supremacists and head choppers stuck in the civilization of the 600's under Sharia law. Any organization that threatens death in it's holy books for apostasy and encourages to die fighting the unbelievers in Jihad to be rewarded sex and salvation in the afterlife doesn't seem so spiritual but political in nature.