Do you
know what a BLOG is, Dag? Did
not exist in your time
A BLOG contains many words that everyone
who wants it can write online so that
everyone who wants it can read them
online digital ciphers on
flickering monitors, a personal diary
accessible on the World Wide Web as a
log-book of private thoughts about public
events, often bizarre, sometimes
propagandist
2
You want to know whether these records
are, ultimately, not a deception of the
path that you have described yourself for
your life? These records
O yes,
Dag, your diary, handwritten, as we
presume, as part of your heritage given
to a friend
2
When he had it
published in Stockholm under the title
Vägmärken the book had a
sensational success although it should
have disappointed expectations. Nothing
of politics, nothing of economics or of
society from that world that was your
home as descendant of an old family of
Swedish nobility. Many were baffled to
meet instead of a cool and tight-lipped
politician a religious thinker, a man of
meditation and prayer, a Christian
Statesman, a poet
2
were marks along the way, erected
once you had reached a point where you
would need them as fixed points that were
not to loose. And as that, they remained.
But your life has changed, and now you
have to calculate with possible readers.
Perhaps, you even hope for them! For
some, it may have a meaning to trace the
path of destiny of someone who did not
want to talk about it as long as he was
alive. Yes, but only if your words are
sincere, beyond vanity and
self-admiration.
Well,
BLOGS of the Internet-age are
rather talkative but, above all,
uncensored. With regard to the latter,
they can form sometimes a corrective of
how was it called earlier on?
CONTROL! REPLAY OF YOUR OWN WORDS,
PLEASE!
digital ciphers on
flickering monitors do lead into a
fictitious world manipulated by
specialised handymen of ageless
profiteers of conflicts in the real
world.
Thank
you! Such a weB-LOG is now
flickering on our monitor.
Everything that we heard so far about the
SUDAN was, more or less, a quotation of
male writers only: Karl May for example,
or Wilbur Smith. Therefore, we proudly
present now a female addition, please
welcome:
Frau Martina Kausch from Neunkirchen in
Germany maintaining the WeB-LOG
Kausch & Friends where
she noticed:.
That Sudans
borders have been
drawn artificially and not formed in wars
of conquest can be established with one
brief gaze on the map: they run along a
ruler and are mostly rectangular. Such
type of borders provide a first hint that
foreign powers have agreed on them, more
or less peacefully, with neighbouring
colonial powers. Another hint you may
find in a history-book that would be bold
enough to focus on Africas history
The Scramble for
Africa! Does it tell
you something, Miss? The race for
the juiciest slices of African roast
meat, cut precisely by a carving knife.
That was my time! If you draw a line from
Cape Town to Cairo, thats what I
did, and you draw another line from Dakar
in West Africa to the Horn of Africa in
the East, thats how the French
would have loved to do, then both lines
intersect in Easter Sudan, near the town
of Fashoda, explaining its strategic
importance. The French east-west axis
and the British north-south axis could
not co-exist; the nation that could
occupy and hold the crossing of the two
axes would be the only one able to
proceed with its plan.
A French force of just 120 soldiers and 7
French officers set out from Brazzaville
under Major Jean-Baptiste Marchand with
orders to secure the area around Fashoda
as a French protectorate. They were to be
met there by two expeditions coming from
the east across Ethiopia, one of which,
from Djibouti.
After an epic 14-month trek across the
heart of Africa, the Marchand Expedition
arrived on 10 July 1898, but the other
Expedition failed to make it after being
ordered by the Ethiopians to halt, and
then suffering accidents in the Baro
Gorge.
On 18 September, a powerful flotilla of
British gunboats arrived at the isolated
Fashoda fort, led by Sir Herbert
Kitchener. As the commander of the
Anglo-Egyptian army that had just
defeated the forces of the Mahdi at the
Battle of Omdurman, he was in the process
of re-conquering the Sudan in the name of
the Egyptian Khedive. Both sides were
polite but insisted on their right to
Fashoda.
At the end, Kitcheners better
nerves helped grandmamma to turn the draw
into a victory. After some more
failed efforts, the French government
quietly ordered its soldiers to withdraw.
In March 1899, the French and British
agreed that the source of the Nile and
the Congo rivers should mark the frontier
between their spheres of influence.
Grandmamma?
Well, that has always been my name
for my old homeland, for Britains
power. I know that some people believed I
would think of Queen Victoria, quite
often called Europes
Grandmother; through her nine
children she was related with almost
every European nobility the German
Kaiser was her grandson!
But for me it was rather Britannia
who rules the world.
I lived in an epoch of splendour with
greatest expansion of political power,
with economic prosperity, with imperial
expansion, with India as an Empire!
and with cultural shallowness and
Victorian prudery, Mr. Rhodes, which
somehow as we are still going to
learn had repercussions on your
heritage!
Frau Kausch, please, continue on your
BLOG.
Why am I focussing on
Sudan?
In Western Sudan, there is the region of
Dafur which, a couple of years ago (2003)
was in the centre of media interest. We
are all remembering the pictures, or not?
In the Sudan, there is not much than sand
and OIL! And this gives me an opportunity
to provide a little hint how economy and
politics are working bag to bag, and hand
to hand.
(And should you visit me on the Web, youll
find all sources nicely organised to be
clickable!)
In 1977, Texas-based Chevron
(Texaco-Group) found during test-drills
South of the Nuba-Mountain range rich
oil-sources. That mobilized the Sudanese
government to re-draft borders of the
federal regions in order to bring these
oil-sources under the control of the
North. Unfortunately, people living in
these areas had to be driven away because
government wanted fast drilling and fast
filling of its coffers.
But due to the fact that fighting in the
area continued, Chevron sold
in 1983 its concessions to Canadian
Arakis Oil Corporation, which
holds one quarter of the concession
since. Another forty per cent are held by
Chinese companies, thirty per cent by
Malayan companies, the rest by
government-controlled Sudanese companies.
French, Austrian and U.S.-companies got
also some concessions.
The project to construct a pipeline
between the oil-region and Port Said
received in 1983 two loans by the German
Federal Ministry of Economical
Cooperation (BMZ).
Production by Chinese, Malayan, Canadian
and Swedish companies started in 1999
under heavy military protection. The
result in 2000 was eight million tons of
crude oil; the net-income for the
government in this year was calculated at
three hundred million dollar.
Okay, at this turn I interrupt for a
personal remark: Do you remember the
pictures we saw a couple of years ago on
our screens? Do you remember the
well-fed, well-clothed children who
looked with their great eyes into the
cameras? Do you remember the excellently
built houses and tents in which the
inhabitants of that country lived?
No? You only remember starvation and
misery? Think, what may have happened to
the three hundred million U.S.-dollars of
oil-profit
In 1999, a research, organized by the
Canadian government, focussed on
consequences of the forced oil drilling
for environment and civil population. The
results were horrible: intensified
fighting in the area, escape and
expulsion of people, slave-type labour
conditions, burnt soil
Of course, all quotes above are deformed
and taken out of their context. Thats
why I try to find out what our
government, that is the German Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, does say about the
reasons for the misery in Dafur. I
read:
Traditionally, African tribes which
are resident in Dafur, for example Fur,
Zaghawa and Massalit, compete with
Arab-nomads for scarce resources. Such
tensions were controlled for a long time
through established traditional
mechanisms of conflict solving. The
conflict, however, was aggravated since
the 80s through shrinking of pastureland
and water resources caused by
desertification and spells of drought. In
addition, there is the governments
drive for Arabization that uses the
existing potential for conflict to pursue
own interests
The Janjaweed-militia undertook, partly
in close cooperation with the Sudanese
government and without fear of
punishment, most serious crimes against
humanity and atrocities against civil
population. A commission of inquiry,
established by the UN Secretary General,
reported mass executions, mass rape,
expulsion and forced hindrance of return
of refugees to their villages. The
Sudanese government also blocked over
many months efficient humanitarian
assistance for Dafur.
The commissions report of 2005
clarifies that military actions by the
Sudanese army were directed not that much
against targets of rebels but rather
undertaken to terrorize civil population.
But rebels are guilty as well of serious
crimes against humanity and of war
crimes. The Darfur-conflict has cost so
far an estimated 200.000 lives.
All this, I am told by Berlins
Ministry of Foreign Affairs via Internet.
Do you read anywhere anything about oil?
I didnt
I only found
information about ethnic conflicts and
disputes about pastureland and water,
about malicious rebels and an even more
malicious government. No word about the
real reason why the population was driven
away: to get access to the oil-sources
I am thrilled now to find out whom I have
disappointed again only because I
am warning not to agree immediately with
every demonstration of solidarity.
We have to reflect our own system, our
own claims, our own way of life in
principle! But, perhaps, we are not ready
to do it.
With every click on this keyboard, with
every CD I am burning, with every
kilometre I drive by car, with every
packing I tear open, I am supporting
activities as described above: to produce
such packing you need oil, to produce a
CD you need oil
Do you guess where I am driving at?
And this beginning of thinking does not
taste well, isnt it?
Thank
you, Frau Kausch! And we seem to guess
whose taste you did not meet in any case
isnt it, Mr. Rockefeller?
Catchword CHEVRON!
By 1911,
with public outcry at a climax, the
Supreme Court of the United States ruled
that Standard Oil must be dissolved under
the Sherman Antitrust Act and split into
34 companies. Two of these companies were
Jersey Standard (Standard Oil Company of
New Jersey), which eventually became
Exxon, and Socony (Standard Oil Company
of New York), which eventually became
Mobil.
Over the next few decades, both companies
grew significantly. Jersey Standard, led
by Walter C. Teagle, became the largest
oil producer in the world. It acquired a
50 percent share in Humble Oil &
Refining Co., a Texas oil producer.
Socony purchased a 45 percent interest in
Magnolia Petroleum Co., a major refiner,
marketer and pipeline transporter. In
1931, Socony merged with Vacuum Oil Co.,
an industry pioneer dating back to 1866,
and a growing Standard Oil spin-off in
its own right.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Jersey
Standard had oil production and
refineries in Indonesia but no marketing
network. Socony-Vacuum had Asian
marketing outlets supplied remotely from
California. In 1933, Jersey Standard and
Socony-Vacuum merged their interests in
the region into a 50-50 joint venture.
Standard-Vacuum Oil Co., or Stanvac,
operated in 50 countries, from East
Africa to New Zealand, before it was
dissolved in 1962.
Other Standard Oil break-up companies
include Standard Oil of Ohio which became
SOHIO, Standard Oil of Indiana which
became Amoco after other mergers and a
name change in the 1980s, Standard Oil of
California became the CHEVRON
CORPORATION.
And
what happened to Chevron in Sudan?
1977, oil found close to the Nuba
Mountains!
1983, concession sold to Canadians?
Because of ongoing fighting in the
region?
Twenty years later, a Chinese majority
sits at Sudans oil sources?
Another management-failure to be ironed
out by Room 5600?
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