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- ON THE FOURTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE IRAQ WAR -
NO BLOOD OR OIL! -- CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW! -- TO STOP WAR, END EMPIRE!
We are members of Bay Rising affinity group and friends who work for environmental, global, and climate justice. We have protested at Chevron's world headquarters and its Richmond refinery. We wish to support on-going struggles against Chevron, its expansion of global climate chaos, and its role in driving wars for oil.
WE WILL
EXPOSE THE OIL AGENDA BEHIND THE WAR!
"Although the final decision for inviting foreign investment
ultimately rests with a representative Iraqi government, I believe in due course the invitation will come." —Peter J. Robertson, Chevron vice chairman, 2003
We are joining with activists from across Europe and the US who, on March 18 and 19, will demand that Big Oil and our governments get their "Hands Off Iraqi Oil!" and expose a new law near passage in Iraq that would turn Iraq's oil over to U.S. and British oil companies – including Chevron.
For Chevron, the war has meant record profits and an unprecedented opportunity to take control of Iraq's oil. The "smoking gun" that would "win" the war for oil in Iraq is currently making its way through the Iraqi Parliament.
The brain-child of the Bush administration and U.S. oil companies, the new Iraqi national oil law (if passed) would radically transform Iraq's oil system and open it to private foreign corporate control. It would give Chevron and others contracts to extract and control Iraqi oil for a generation.
It's simple: Before the war – U.S. and British oil companies were all but shut out of Iraq's oil. After the war, they'll be in control of it.
The Bush administration and the oil companies are trying to get the best deal and the most oil possible out of a war-ravaged and desperate people. They are holding 25 million Iraqis – and 150,000 American troops – hostage to their oil agenda.
Chevron has profited from Iraq's oil for a decade. It sold Iraqi oil throughout the 1990's and it was the first oil company to sell Iraq's oil after the 2003 invasion. It refines that oil in Richmond.
Chevron was at the table when Cheney's Energy Task Force parceled out Iraq's oil back in March 2001. It has kept its seat ever since: remaining in negotiations for contracts with the Iraqi government ever since the invasion. Within a year of the invasion, Chevron's profits nearly doubled, and in every year since then, Chevron has set new record profits, with 2006 the company's most profitable year ever.
Chevron is now poised to win the big prize: control of Iraq's oil under the ground for 20 to 35 years.
Literally shepherded through by U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, the law passed the Iraqi Cabinet and is expected to pass the Parliament in the coming weeks unless we support Iraqi civil society groups – including the Union of Oil Workers – in their demand to stop the law and its implementation!
We Demand a HALT to U.S. Government and Corporate Pressure on the Iraqis to Pass the new "Iraqi Oil Theft Law!"
We Demand an End to the leading form of Pressure – the US Occupation of Iraq!
WE DEMAND CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW!
Climate change is earths greatest threat.
Oil corporations, a corporate-globalized economy, and oil-driven industrialized nations are the primary causes of greenhouse gas pollutants which fuel climate crisis.
The US and Chevron are the leaders of this ruthless pack. The United States contains 4% of the world's population yet releases 25% of all global carbon emissions. Chevron is the second largest oil company in the U.S. and the fifth largest in the world. It is sabotaging domestic efforts to transition to a green economy and refuses to invest in any significant way in alternative forms of green energy.
In 2000 alone, 25 million people were forced to leave their homes due to climate change and associated environmental stresses, according to the Red Cross. And nearly every frozen thing on the planet – from permafrost to the polar caps - is melting. In the future, the U.K. Government-commissioned "Stern Review" predicts the disappearance of drinking water in the South American Andes and parts of Southern African and the Mediterranean, up to 10 million people affected by yearly coastal flooding, and 10 to 40 percent of species on Earth going extinct. And humans are on the endangered list.
Chevron poisons local communities from Richmond, to Ecuador, to Nigeria.
The Chevron refinery in Richmond spews a deadly array of toxins into the air, water, and land, including cancer-causing dioxins, on the largely African American, South East Asian and Latino communities. The refinery and plant have had hundreds of accidents, including major fires, spills, leaks, explosions, toxic gas releases, flaring and air contaminations inflicting severe illnesses including asthma and deadly cancers, on the people of Richmond. The people of Richmond are fighting back and demanding that Chevron clean up or get out.
Even if the world's industrialized countries adopted the Kyoto Protocols, which calls for industrialized nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 5 to 10% by 2010, the doomsday-like scenario of economic, social and environmental catastrophe painted by the world's top climate scientists could become a reality. We need to take immediate action -- Reduce 90% of greenhouse gas emissions, kick our addiction to oil and companies like Chevron, drastically reduce consumption, and embrace a 100% renewable energy system!
We BELIEVE
TO STOP WAR, END EMPIRE!
We Demand
NO ILLEGAL ATTACK ON IRAN!
Troops home now from Iraq and all foreign bases!
To end current and future U.S. wars and occupations, to stop global warming and climate chaos, to increase democracy and human rights at home and to redirect resources to urgent human and environmental needs, we must change the underlying U.S. government policies of empire.
These problems are rooted in a globalized economic and political system that benefits wealthy corporations at the expense of the rest of the planet.
U.S. wars of aggression and occupation did not begin with Iraq and won't end with Bush.
As the U.S. military wages illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, conducts illegal attacks on Somalia, and supports Israel's invasion of Lebanon, the U.S. government is now poised to attack Iran.
U.S. foreign policy violates our own Constitution, which forbids domestic and international wars of aggression, the targeting of civilians, and torture.
U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler said in1933, "There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket."
Racket is one term, empire is another.
The U.S. government spends $441 billion a year on a military of over two and a half million soldiers (2,685,713 with reserves). It has more than 700 military bases spread across 130 countries. Since the collapse of the "other superpower," the Soviet Union, "empire" has become a common term among both critics and advocates referring to the unparalleled US system of economic, political, cultural and military domination of the world.
The price is high. It saps resources for healthcare, education, and housing. It also requires keeping the domestic population in check through propaganda and the corrosion of civil liberties and human rights.
The United States cannot be an empire and have democracy!
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