Australia's Oil Spill

The Indian tribes, having been subjected to countless broken treaties and promises by the swarms of “settlers” from Europe, thought of snakes, and they developed a saying that has rung down through the generations, “White men speak with forked tongues.” And there are other terms for that same sort of behavior, such as “deceit,” “double talk,” and “speaking out of both sides of one’s mouth.”

The current gigantic tragedy that has spilled across Iraq is typified by the profligate use of forked tongues on the parts of the people who are most directly responsible for it, especially when it comes to the question of why the men with their hands on the triggers in mainly English-speaking countries continue to try to cloak their real reasons for having started that conflagration in the first place and why they are still sending gun-toters to Iraq, which mainly serves to keep the flames fanned.

I remember how, in the first days of the Bush-ordered invasion of Iraq, people of all sorts went to great lengths to avoid speaking of the real reason why that happened, which was to take over control of the oil wells. Instead they laid down a vast smoke screen consisting of words like “Saddam,” “terror,” WMD’s,” “democracy,” “freedom,” and the like.

But recently, as it becomes ever clearer that the earth is becoming far less generous in yielding up to a bunch of ever proliferating two-legged locusts a treasure that had taken eons to make, people are starting to concede that soldiers from overseas are in Iraq for one reason and one only -- to keep an iron fist on the Iraqi oil so as to have it for their own disproportionate use.

A day or two ago a big brouhaha broke out in Australia in which a clearer light was shone on all this than is usually the case in the U.S., where apparently there is slightly more marching in lock step. The Defence Minister, Brendan Nelson, said : ““Energy security is extremely important to all nations throughout the world, and of course, in protecting and securing Australia’s interests.” In other words, We are still making our contribution to Geo Bush's bloody enterprise by keeping our vast legion of 1,500 troops somewhere in Iraq to protect OUR share of the oil from the Middle East, because that is OUR oil and no one else’s!


Despite his avoidance of the dreaded “O” word and instead using “energy security,” Nelson’s message came through, and it immediately stirred up the wasps in Australia and elsewhere. But his boss, Prime Minister John Howard, who has probably been even more staunch in following the Bush lead than has Tony Blair, quickly tried to tamp down things by saying, “We’re not there because of oil and we didn’t go there because of oil, we don’t remain there because of oil.” And his Treasury guy, Peter Costello, amplified that by adding,” “We’re fighting for something much more important here than oil, this is about democracy and freedom in the Middle East.”

Yet Howard himself had just finished telling a conference in Canberra that energy demand is a big factor in trying to stabilize the Middle East.


I don’t know how that sounds to you, but to me it looks as if, in Australia, home of the five most deadly species of poisonous snakes in the world, the concept and use of forked tongues is still alive and well.