The seven sisters were cousins (March 2003)
Every time there’s a discussion in Europe about the economic motives of an American intervention in Iraq, the accused are the notorious “seven petrol sisters,” demonstrating a large diffusion of ignorance as well as anachronism.
To begin with, of the old seven sisters only three were American: Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company; Texaco, which belonged to Cullinan; and the Gulf Oil Corporation, which was owned by two Texans, Guffey and Galey.
The other four weren’t sisters but cousins: the Caspian and Black Sea Petroleum company, owned by the Parisian Rothschild; the Royal Dutch, which belonged to the Danish entrepreneur, Ziegler; Shell, owned by two English brothers by the name of Samuel; and the Anglo-Persian, which became British Petroleum, born of the cooperation between the Armenian general Kitabgi, the Anglo-Australian D’Arcy, and Burmhan Oil, a Scottish company operating in Birmania. So the seven “American” sisters were really seven “international” cousins.
Today those who are less misinformed talk about the “five” sisters, getting the number right but the relationship wrong. Mobil, Exxon, Chevron, Arco, and Conoco were the five daughters born of the dismemberment of one of the cousins, Standard Oil Trust, imposed by the U.S. government in 1911. And these are the only companies that are accused of every lugubrious evil or interest in the fluid black gold of innocent others.
Shell, BP, the French triplets Elf-Fini-Total and dozens of other non-American oil companies are all obviously charitable organizations. Only the “five sisters” and the government of the United States are beating the warrior drums so they can seize the oil in every corner of the earth.
Instead of confabulating sisterly fairy tales, if the Europeans would only listen to reports on CNN, they’d learn of the engagement the Think Tanks of Washington, summoned by the White House to guaranty that it will be the Iraq people, together with their 4 million refugees, 300,000 of whom are living in the United States, the first and foremost recipients not only of liberty, but of the economic benefits following an eventual intervention.
As we saw in Kosovo and in Afghanistan, all of the worst forecasts of a rapacious America ready to snatch up every economic advantage to the damage of the local population, proved to be clamorously unjustified. However, as Einstein said, “it’s easier to split an atom than a prejudice” and, unfortunately, the nucleus of anti-Americanism is indeed hard to crack.
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