Steve Coll argues that Exxon pursues its own foreign policy
and is willing to contradict the wishes of official US policy. Maybe, but in
other cases it's all too clear that Exxon works in concert with US policy and
certainly with the US Establishment. It is well documented that the CIA has so
infiltrated Wall Street and the corporate sector that sometimes they're hard to
tell apart.
I'm not talking about secret agents planting bugs in board
rooms or clandestinely downloading files onto thumb drives, though plenty of
that happens too. I'm talking about above board people who pass information,
have handlers and/or work in concert with the agendas and concerns of other
extra-corporate organisations. In some cases these people are top figures
within the respected hierarchies, sometimes the figures at the very top.
Right now there's a desperate push to get US natural gas
resources into Asia. The US is trying to bolster its own economy and establish
closer ties of dependency within the group of allies and potential allies in
the new theatre of the Asian Cold War.
Mulacek the founder of Interoil is being marginalised and
he's angry about it. His company has been all but stolen from him but that's
the risk you take when you go public. You get the funds and the ability to
create money out of thin air with inflated stock values, but you can also place
yourself at risk.
Exxon's push into the region is not entirely economic, it's
strategic. Often the two concerns go together. Interoil's discovery of a new
gas field in Papua New Guinea is rightly called a 'goldmine' and it's one that
the US wants to control and ensure that China and any other undesirables is
unable to gain access to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.