Blood Oil: tyrants, violence and the rules that run the world
Economy | Information | History | Online | Facts | World | Global | Money
Date: Tuesday 1 March 2016 Time: 6.30-8pm Venue: Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House Speaker: Professor Leif Wenar Chair: Dr Margot Salomon Natural resources empower the world's most coercive men. Autocrats like Putin and the Saudis spend oil money on weapons and repression. ISIS and Congo's militias spend resource money on atrocities and ammunition. For decades resource-fueled authoritarians and extremists have forced endless crises on the West - and the ultimate source of their resource money is us, paying at the petrol station and the mall. In this lecture, Leif Wenar will talk about his new book, Blood Oil, which goes behind the headlines in search of the hidden global rule that puts shoppers into business with the men of blood - and discovers an ancient law that once licensed the slave trade, apartheid and genocide. The abolition of this rule marked some of humanity's greatest triumphs - yet the rule zombies on in today's multi-trillion dollar resource trade, enriching tyrants, warlords and terrorists worldwide. By our own deepest principles, over half of the world's traded oil is stolen. Blood Oil shows how the West can lead a peaceful global revolution by finally ending its dependence on authoritarian oil, conflict minerals and other stolen resources. Upgrading world trade will make us more secure at home, more trusted abroad, and better able to solve urgent problems like climate change. Blood Oil shows how citizens, consumers and leaders can act today to avert tomorrow's crises - and to create a more united human future. Leif Wenar (@LeifWenar) is Chair of Philosophy and Law at King's College London. He has been a Visiting Professor at Princeton and Stanford and a Fellow of the Carnegie Council Program in Justice and the World Economy. Margot Salomon is an Associate Professor in the Law Department and the Centre for the Study of Human Rights where she directs the multidisciplinary Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy (Lab). The Centre for the Study of Human Rights at LSE (@LSEHumanRights) is a trans-disciplinary centre of excellence for international academic research, teaching and critical scholarship on human rights.
Comments
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he talks like Obama. I don't like him.
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was this presentation was performed in London? If so, a few years ago, London publicly stated that any person or organisation that brought money to invest in the city, will be welcomed without lifting a finger and ask where they got the money and with full protection and privacy from the the government of the UK. Of course, the statement was a special assurance for the dictators, sons of dictators and corrupt individuals and parties around the world, especially from Africa and the Middle East. Blood Oil seems to be a great work, alas only a small part of the problem.
The problem is not just oil and the the Western rule that Professor Leif Wenar says it is, but there is two more major problems with the West when it comes to their monetary system, a system where money is basically everything, including human dignity and standard morality. There's also the element of fear and the Western banks, next to the blood oil of Mr Wenar. Western banks (especially banks of Europe and the US) accepts billions of stolen dollars by the corrupts of the world, again especially corrupt individuals from Africa and the Middle East. Until this moment, 100 of billions of dollars has disappeared from Iraq and Iran and it's clear it ends in the Western banks, since no one really trust other banks. such as Russians or Chinese. In fact even people like Putin himself don't trust their own banks and keep their money in the Western banks. The west has all kinds of militia (police, military, hundreds of governmental and private security groups,etc.) to protect their interests.
What about the element of fear that's needed as an excuse for limiting freedom, privacy and ultimately democracy in the West? Who better can produce that fear other than a country like Saudi Arabia? No wonder why Islamic Madrasas, while prohibited in most countries in the Middle East, is actually running in the UK, and they may even receive support from the UK government. So, basically, it's not just selling weapons to the corrupt and violent countries of places like the Middle East, and not only taking most of the income of these countries through support and protection of the corrupt of the region, but also generating the element of fear in the western societies, so that people accept the relative poverty, compared to the wealth of the 1%. No one country can generate that fear other than Saudi Arabia. In short, the West benefits from Dr Wenar's coined rule from three angles: 1- blood oil and it's direct advantages to the West 2- taking most of the income of the corrupt countries with oil through the few corrupt individuals that are invited by the West to invest the money in the West 3- and finally generating the element of fear, through barbaric, terror organisations like ISIS, and use it to silence the mass in the Western countries. Mr Wenar only outlined the first point. -
I find the argument somewhat contrived if not outright fantastic. North Korea doesn't have oil. Doesn't prevent it from being what it is. Myanmar doesn't have oil. Cambodia under Pol Pot didn't have oil nor other mineral resources. Oil and gas revenues allowed the majority of Russian population see their life standards grow significantly in the 2000s. The more I think about it, the more it seems like the same old colonialist "white men's burden" argument that the West has a kind of moral standard that it must impose on the lesser people while in reality the West (Europe and later USA) have been the main pillager and raper of the earth for the good part of the last 500 years. Trade in natural resources is an integral part of the world capitalistic system, the system that is designed to serve most and foremost the interests of the Western banking elite. That the transnational companies pay money to African dictators doesn't mean anything as this money goes immediately into the Swiss accounts. The IMF, World Bank loans don't even leave New York, they just go from one account in the West to other private anonymous account in the same place. Money keeps flowing FROM the global South into global North. I expected to hear some factual information, but what I got was a faux moralistic argument that is not grounded in any reality.
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One time I had a terrible job making my boss take the Dodd Franks Act Conflict Mineral requirements seriously. I think that the principles espoused here resonate well with Joe Public and I think the concept has a lot of mileage. Good luck, this initiative has my full support.
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I would urge the speaker to research who is truly behind creation of terrorist groups but when I heard him say that Assad was bombing his own people I realized his source of knowledge is propaganda stations like the CNN and BBC and channel 4 type of outlets.
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7/7 = Mossad. Putin had to make his plays as Western Governments supported terror groups to over throw Governments that got in their way. Israel is the source of the terrorism, and when we talk of power, those with the eye's, know who these people are.
9/11 - Bin Laden CIA asset, Al-qaeda was financed by the British Government, the Al Yamamah Deal between Magret Thatcher and the Saudi Royal Family. The same deal that has 5,000 British personnel on the ground in Saudi who maintain the planes swapped for oil. It is the British Est. who wage war across the globe, with their allies.
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