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The Voice of Sanity THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UPSTATE S.C. SECULAR HUMANISTS Visit our web-site for current and back-issues at: www.uscsh.org e-mail: secularhmnst@aol.com

CALENDAR

Our June brunch will be on June12, 10:30 a.m. at Denny's Restaurant, 2521 Wade Hampton Blvd, Greenville/Taylors. This is our last meeting until the August brunch on August 14. There will be no meeting in July and there will be no July Voice of Sanity. Have a great summer.

Our annual picnic will be held on August 22nd, 1:30 p.m. at a place to be announced

The Secular Humorist

By

R. Georges Delamontagne

Being raised by Catholic parents and having attended a Catholic parochial grade school, I learned early on that there were many mysteries of my faith that were quite beyond human understanding and had to be accepted as matters of, well, faith. Among these were the virgin birth of Jesus Christ; transubstantiation, the changing of the bread and wine of communion into the body and blood of Christ; the resurrection of Christ from the dead and his ascension into heaven; the assumption into heaven of his mother, Mary, upon her death; and the mother (and father) of all mysteries, The Holy Trinity. Trinitarianism is the belief that God is comprised of three separate and distinct entities, the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ) and the Holy Spirit. Of the various mysteries attendant to my religious indoctrination, that of The Holy Trinity was the most difficult to understand and the most difficult to forget. It was hard to forget because of the words one was taught to think and/or speak when performing the ritual known as the Sign of the Cross. That ritual involves touching one’s right hand to one’s head and mumbling “In the name of the father;” then moving one’s hand to the chest/stomach area, preferably over the heart, and saying “and of the son;” and finally touching one’s left shoulder then the right, thereby completing the Sign of the Cross, and concluding with the words “and the holy spirit.”

Even though a good Catholic is expected to accept the mysteries as matters of faith, it’s still difficult to resist the temptation of trying to figure out what the heck they really mean and how they came to be. Recently, I have come to understand the origins of the mystery of The Holy Trinity. One day, a few months ago, a light went off in my head when the idea came to me that “IF ‘The Holy Trinity’ is the answer, THEN what is the question?” See below for the question to the answer.*

And now, here’s one from George Carlin from his “You Are All Diseased”:

“Trillions and trillions of prayers every day asking and begging and pleading for favors. ‘Do this’ ‘Gimme that’ ‘I want a new car’ ‘I want a better job’. And most of this praying takes place on Sunday. And I say fine, pray for anything you want. Pray for anything. But … what about the divine plan? Remember that? The divine plan. Long time ago god made a divine plan. Gave it a lot of thought. Decided it was a good plan. Put it into practice. And for billions and billions of years the divine plan has been doing just fine. Now you come along and pray for something. Well, suppose the thing you want isn’t in god’s divine plan. What do you want him to do? Change his plan? Just for you? Doesn’t it seem a little arrogant? It’s a divine plan. What’s the use of being god if every run-down schmuck with a two dollar prayer book can come along and f**k up your plan? And here’s something else, another problem you might have; suppose your prayers aren’t answered? What do you say? ‘Well it’s god’s will. God’s will be done.’ Fine, but if it’s god’s will and he’s going to do whatever he wants to anyway; why the f**k bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me. Couldn’t you just skip the praying part and get right to his will?”

* Question for the answer: How many gods does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

Book Report: “Age of Oil” by Leonardo Maugeri; 2006

This book has the most detailed information on the history of oil that I have ever come across. Below is a very general survey of some of its main points that explain the relationship between oil, world politics, and economics. Unfortunately, I have had to severely limit the report to the Rockefeller trust, and oil history as it relates to Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. The roles Israel and Russia played in the history are too extensive to present below. For anyone using the Greenville library the Dewey decimal number is 553.282 Maugeri, and, of course, there’s always Amazon.com. If you don’t want to be depressed, I suggest you stop reading here, while you’re still laughing at the Secular Humanist. J.B.

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The oil industry began in 1854 when kerosene was patented for use in lamps. The cheap price caused a huge increase in demand that urged speculators to search for a way to tap underground deposits. At this time the only source for oil was surface seepage. In 1859 only five years later the first successful oil rig produced a marketable quantity for the kerosene market. The oil boom of the late 19^th century was limited to kerosene since the automobile hadn’t entered the picture yet. But, the boom exhibited the same characteristics of oil markets that followed. It featured new discoveries, sudden advances in infrastructure and unexpected new uses. This caused great profits followed by huge losses for producers, refiners and shippers.

In 1880 John D. Rockefeller saw an opportunity to take control of the disorganized industry with his newly form company Standard Oil. He and his partner Henry Flagler accelerated the process of buying out competitors by secretly acquiring discounts of up to 30% from all railroads for oil transport. Additionally, since there was no law to form a federal corporation at that time Rockefeller used a loophole called a trust. He established a corporation for every state in the union. Then he formed a national trust and reissued shares as “trustee certificates”, of which 40% were held by various members of his family. The trust was run from New York City and was greatly successful until the arrangement was broken under the administration of Teddy Roosevelt. It was partitioned into thirty companies to comply with federal law. It is interesting to note that later on the California Company, one of the companies formed during this ruling, was the only company to obtain a 60 year oil lease with Saudi Arabia in 1932.

At the beginning of World War I governments realized the importance of oil supply to the military. An illustration of this urgency was the British government’s acquisition of a 51% interest in Persian (Iranian) oil for 2.2 million pounds in 1914. The largest holding, however, came in Mesopotamia (Iraq) when Britain acquired that oil reserve for development with the blessing of the League of Nations during partitioning after WWI. In 1921 they signed an additional agreement with King Faisal requiring him to be advised by the British High Council in the country on all business of interest to Great Britain. The American oil companies were not sleeping. With gradual foreign acquisitions they were included in the formation of international companies nicknamed collectively the Seven Sisters. Their names are: Exxon (Standard Oil of New Jersey), Royal Dutch Shell, BP (now British Petroleum, originally Anglo-Persian Oil), Mobil (Standard Oil of New York), Chevron (Standard Oil of California), Texaco (Texas Oil Corporation), and Gulf Corporation.

World War II brought the western allies to the conclusion that none of them could exist without a steady supply of oil. Fearing a shortage of oil for the military Roosevelt authorized support through Lend Lease for the Saudi Arabian government. Chevron and Texaco had asked for protection because of the Nazi threat. The decision for support was timely because the largest oil field in history was uncovered in 1944 on the peninsula and by 1948 the US was for the first time importing more oil than it produced. Post war international politics changed drastically with emergence of the Soviet Union. Many oil producing countries realized they could at last acquire a fair share of profit from their product because of the competition between the super powers. Mexico, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia had 50/50 profit sharing by 1950.

However, most oil producing countries had been exploited by either private companies, or foreign governments. Iran was a classic example because of its history with BP. In 1941 the British dethroned Reza Khan for his Nazi support. This allowed BP almost total control of the oil reserves. Iran suffered many years of abuse to oil workers following the take over. Finally, in 1951, after several failed attempts to negotiate 50/50 profit sharing, Iran’s parliament approved nationalization of BP’s assets. The country was then sanctioned and any nation helping it was subjected to punishment by international law. In 1952 Iran closed the British embassy and broke diplomatic relations. Its oil revenues had dwindled to nothing making the nation close to insolvency. Worry over the Soviet Union’s proximity to Iran and its possible connection with Iran’s communist party, catalyzed an agreement between the CIA and British intelligence to incite a coup and place Shah Reza Pahlevi on the throne. Afterwards a “International Consortium” for oil was established in the country. Unfortunately, BP obtained only 40% of the agreement rather than the 50% it would have received through profit sharing. The rest was divided up between Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf, Chevron, and the French company Total. This arrangement was not to last. Revolution broke out in1978, partly because of the drift of Iranian culture away from tradition, but mostly because oil profits went to a huge build up of the shah’s military rather than going to improve the economic condition of the civilian population. Oil production plummeted and the price sky rocketed, influencing economic conditions around the world. In 1980 war broke out between Iran and Iraq. This history of only forty years of political and economic changes in one oil-producing country illustrates how easily the prices and availability of oil can soar and plummet worldwide.

Iraq’s oil history started before the acquisition of Mesopotamia, when Britain helped Arab rebels to repel the Turkish military from the Ottoman Empire during WWI. This incident was romanticized in the film “Lawrence of Arabia”. As stated above the partitioning and control of oil resources to Britain came after that war and lasted until 1958 when the Iraqi monarchy was removed by a violent coup d’etat. By 1960 Iraqi parliament passed Public Law 80 by which it took back almost 100% of its oil possessions and joined the newly formed OPEC. Unfortunately, OPEC was no more able to control oil prices and production than previous attempts by other organizations. This stemmed from the inability of its participating nations to co-operate. Also, new, competing sources of oil were being discovered outside the Middle East (Gulf of Mexico, West Africa, Brazil, and the Tarim Basin in China). Saddam Hussein’s war with Iran, begun in 1980 left him in debt to various countries for $50 billion. His national oil industry had been managed poorly and little had been done to improve its infrastructure. Consequently, Iraqi crude prices fell below OPEC’s setting. This exacerbated the country’s economic difficulties. Saddam then accused Kuwait of cheating on the OPEC prices and pumping crude from an oil field straddling both countries, but he also knew Kuwait had a longer coastline and better ports for oil transport. He invaded Kuwait in 1990. The US, who initially had eliminated the country from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1982, started a military operation against Iraq with UN forces following in 1991.

Here I leave the state of Iraqi oil affairs although the book continues on till 2006, covering 9/11 and the resulting second war with Iraq. It is interesting that the US Energy Information Administration estimates Iraq has 115 barrels of oil reserves and only 10% of the country has been explored with modern oil detecting methods. Additionally, Iraqi oil has a reputation for high quality that lowers the cost of production and can result in very high profit. J. Bates