OIL PRICES AND THE SEVEN SISTERS. ZP AND HIS CRY FOR FREEDOM. CRISIS? ASK WALL STREET

Antonio Parra Galindo.

Fuel  keeps going up but still in the spanish roads you can see big guzzlers. Zapatero, according to the Right wing is the culprit. On times of cholera and on times of crisis one ought to find an scapegoat. What a  buck ZP is,  but there is more than meets the eye. Ask the Seven Sisters. Petrol is the hidden face of the invisible power. The corner stone of the Western economy. We live in a difficult and complicated world, baby, and I have been doing my homework reposing old jotters  and annotations of  when I was a correspondent in New York. In 1977 there was lot of talk on Jomeini and the fall of the Sha was on the offing with a revolution gaping on in Iraq. The Carter Administration backed Saddam Hussein and the moles of the CIA were very active. A lot of hullabaloo. We live in a small world and the masses usually don’t have memory. At that junction, I used to walk on my way to my UN desk through Rockefeller Plaza and I saw the fountain and the big skyscraper a shot in the Manhattan heavens. The building was like the Vatican of the Transitionally. Exxon changed this planet. In 1973 the earnings of the Rockefeller went up 2.5 million dollars. The face of Nelson Rockefeller was the man of the year for Time magazine. His mighty face was haughty like a New England cliff. The New York Radios engaged from time to time on an exercise of alert in case of a nuclear attack by the soviet. Nobody believed in that but the authorities had to keep the appearances. Crime doesn’t pay. But fear among the multitudes renders good dividends. The British independently of the decline of the English pound were making cash. That name-Seven Sisters: BP. Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Shell, Gulf, Armco- fascinated me. The oil glut was streaming over the pipelines.

 When in the summer of 1977 the pump stations all over the nation went on strike people got angry, they nearly went berserk. There was talk of bombing Iran with the big catapult but the pundits said wrong. The time of the Fat Cows were over and meanwhile the best music that could ring in the ears of capitalism: the sound of the cashing tills. And the then the old adage that goes what is good for the Gulf Inc it is good for the USA. In Pittsburgh where the headquarters of Gulf sit, propriety of the Mellon Family, there is an air of secrecy. Mobil residence is in 42nd street Manhattan and they paid good wages. The Seven Sister are a good lot. They finance wars abroad and revolutions. Their regime has full string in autarchy but they define themselves democratic but they could make good deals with totalitarian regimes. The world is in their hands and they thrive on crisis. Therefore politics is scapegoat and they are indifferent to religion. Only among the owners of the Seven Sisters is Jewish family (the Mellons), the rest agnostic or no believers, but for all of them Israel is a prima Donna.  That subject is taboo and out of the question. For the big corporations politics is a buckler. The kingmakers nominate Presidents and overthrow them. They have a fixation with paper tigers, with papers and toys. At home unity is their working horse but they export conflict ad dissent abroad. In a way they have an inferiority complex with Europe. Clover them, crush their big heads and they fear nationalism. French nationalism. English or spanish nationalism. It was like an inferiority complex and to undermine those they sent Henry Kissinger who proposed an idea: let them being “balkanised” step by step. Old Henry as Secretary of State was the inventor of autonomies in Cataluña in Galicia and the Basque provinces. Terrorism was also a tool and a weapon but they could change allegiances easily. All of a sudden a terrorist could become a freedom fighter. In God we trust. Father Dollar who art on heaven thy kingdom come but let them those bastards depend on oil. They supported minorities overseas (Basque, Catalans, Bretons, Russian dissidents) but I have seen in New York Porto Ricans trailing chains at their ankles and being locked up for life only because they vindicated independence for their island. Freedom of speech? Oh Yea but not in Porto Ricans. Human Rights? Of course but not for the Indians of Arizona. On paper they believe on freedom of speech but as the matter of fact they control the press in all the world and the editions. They foment political correction and if you move from the conventions you are out of the photo.

  Rockefeller for example has a motto. Time is money but to keep your mouth shut could be precious. Words are silver and gold silence. Therefore, better to keep your mouth shut and as the rhyme taught an English schools goes:

 “A wise old owl sat on an oak. The more he saw the less he spoke and the less he spoke the more he heard. Why cant we be like that old bird?”.

 Poverty in the world you say? They don’t care much on the subject. When retired they dedicate to philanthropy. As they know the value of money they don’t squander it and that is why they have so much. Paul Getty, the richest man in California, he was mean, however, locked phones at his home in San Diego in order to prevent visitors to make free calls at his expenses. Of course the Seven Sister found an ally in modern technology. Willy Gates is their guru. And he says he goes on retirement. And he has become  philanthropic, too..

 The rise of price of oil means more money and gross revenues  for them and when I was in the States I heard that the USA had the biggest reserves in the world were unearthed upstate New York. 

They are waiting for the resources to become exhausted in Arabia and then their rule shall be firmer. That is the world we live under the rule of the empire. 

ZP with his intuition  makes critic  to Capitalism but they don’t care much. He is audacious and perhaps right. At least he is not an idiot. But I think Wall Street is more at ease with him that those that proclaim themselves friends of the USA. And that big country has no friends. Only interests and they know perfectly well than sometimes things go wrong with the system. Uncle Sam is almighty but no God and there are perspectives out of his control and that could be fatal for the good American fellows. The war of Iraq for example, which became a real riddle for the Pentagon, is a headache . The machine  works in New York and in Boston but not in Ghana. In Africa and Latin America could cause debacles and riots and that is why they baked there dictators. We live in a complex and frenetic world. They are conscious that they control the petrodollar but control the minds of the hungry is more difficult. Fidel Castro has become a thorn in their shoe but they kept him. They didn’t overthrow the dictator. They are intelligent. Not daft you know. And that is part of the sophistication of capitalism that is not understood by certain right-wingers this side of the water, Mr Aznar for example. Washington doesn’t trust Aznar but they have a fascination for Zapatero behind the scenes. They are the masters, the rulers, they live in perpetual contradictions and far away from justice. This is not a fair planet. Never ask for logic among the funds although money is always shy. Certainly investors don’t risk and that is why when they cough we catch pneumonia in Europe and we fill the chill. But really are the Americans with a running nose? Soon we shall all know. We are already feeling the pinch. On the whole I feel fascinated by ZP. He had made great mistakes in government but also he has had great intuitions. I don’t know if he is an statesman but I think he breeds good imagination. He has the feeling that makes a good politician. At least. And I have headaches when I write about all these. What do you think?