The blindness of both those who fund the NeoCons and those NeoCons who are funded is evident in the current rage of the oil industry executives over the nearly unanimnous support by Iraqi politicians of the current “stalling” in approving the future ownership of Iraqi oil.

The question is, whether the meltdown of Iraqi society and economic inrastructure can be a precursor of paradigmatic revolution, as suggested in my recent article in http://www.theamericanmuslim.org.

From a really long-range global perspective of what is in the enlightened interests of America, the latest good news in the Iraq oil imbroglio is the growing Iraqi insistence that the law on sharing revenues among Iraqis must come before the broader law on sharing revenues with foreigners. Sharing the oil profits among Iraqis, in turn, might bypass ethnic and religious conflicts and unite the autonomous nations of the Fertile Crescent by the simple expedient of demonopolizing the “state-owned” oil industry through the issuance of equal, non-alienable, voting shares of stock to every resident of Iraq.

The bad news is that international oil investors might counter this “stalling” by boycotting the restoration of the Iraqi oil industry as a bargaining tool. Of course, the counter-counter might be a rescue operation by China, Russia, and Iran, who might be happy to restrict their operations basically to engineering contracts, such as my consulting firm, the NAEDC (Native American International), recommended to the Navajos and Crow nations thirty-five years ago when Japan offered vastly more favorable terms than did the big domestic coal producers. This was killed by the oil/coal industry as a national security risk. My life was at risk already since I was costing the energy titans billions of dollars by advising the tribes on how to bargain by transferring their vast Indian-owned assets to Chase Manhatten bank and, in effect, ordering it to bargain on their behalf in Congress.

In Iraq, foreign oil-industry bargaining power is increasing as a result of the general meltdown of civilized life. A decade of economic warfare against Saddam Hussein during the 1990s before the 2003 invasion had already turned the Iraq economy into a basket case. Now the bottom of the basket is falling out. One arena of leverage to pressure the Iraqis this time around is the Iraqi electricity industry, which depends on both the production and refining of oil in Iraq. This summer the local regions that produce electricity have begun to cut off their supply of electricity to the national grid in order to maintain their agreed allotments from the total national production. This is devastating the capital, Baghdad, which consumes much more electricity than it produces and now is worse off even than it was in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion. No modern city ever before has gone back to the stone age. Insurgents are gaining proficiency in sabotaging both oil and electricity production, so that now only two high-tension lines are functional out of the dozen or so that feed electricity into Baghdad. No tactical solutions are in sight. Only a totally new strategic paradigm can make a difference.

The problems in Iraq are compounding each other, so that eventually either the U.S. government or the Iraqis or both must compromise. The most viable compromise would be the Just Third Way of the See Eee Sess Jay (Center for Economic and Social Justice), http://www.cesj.org/thirdway/paradigmpapers/iraq-natinbuilding.htm, as I have been advocating together with its president, Norman Kurland, with all the necessary operational details now for many years in my various writings, including those published in http://www.theamericanmuslim.org.

Common sense sometimes triumphs only when all other paradigms have proven to be bankrupt. Right now the people of Iraq have only two options. One is to support their own ethnic and religious group in a quest to control the central government, and the other is to risk everything by trying to destroy it. In fact, most Iraqis are trying to do both at once and are proving to be eminently successful in this quest.

The most critical question as the ballyhooed “surge” proves its bankruptcy is how to change policy in Washington. How do we persuade President Bush that he could go down in history as the world’s greatest peacemaker by the simple, cost-free recognition that the ultimate sovereignty, under God, belongs to every single person in the Fertile Crescent, not to a centralized state government beholden to foreign interests? How can his advisers shift the governing paradigm from peace through power (either “soft” or “hard”) to peace through compassionate justice?

A few years ago, political pundits in America coined the phrase, “It’s the economy stupid!” Now the real global issue both within and among countries is more specific: how to broaden individual ownership of the means of production in a capital-intensive era, without stealing from the already rich, when 90% of the future wealth of humanity will be produced not by labor but by capital. The threat mentality in counter-terrorist thinking must be replaced by an opportunity mentality. The most effective strategy to marginalize the terrorist mentality may be summarized in the simple motto of the American Revolutionary Party: “Close the Wealth Gap! Own or be Owned!”

The relationship between ideology and economics is not 1-to-1 i.e. no corporate-sponsored think-tank in the world is going to align 100% evenly with the political views of those writing the checks. Iran’s growing influence in the most strategically important region in the world (due to the world energy supplying being there) is scaring the crap out of the entire American elite, which is why the Senate voted unanimously(!) for Joe Lieberman’s causes belli vs. Iran resolution a few months ago.

Sure there are a lot of corporations that would stand to lose money due to sanctions or divestment. One could have made the same argument as to why big business should have opposed the sanctions on Iraq. But what is bad for one business or a handful of corporations can be good for the whle of American capitalism depending on the situation. In this case, Corporate America stands to lose a lot if Iran’s influence in the region grows unchecked and they start making major deals with China, creating the real threat of a truly multipolar world, hence the AEI’s anti-Iran hysterics which run up against some of their contributors’ interests.

Some 20 European corporations were recently listed on a SEC website for supporting terrorist supporting states, i.e. Syria. Included was Siemans, the German firm that is helping Syria build high voltage electricity capacity. Syria has been suffering from a severe lack of electricity and frequent blackouts.

The SEC list is threatened with de-listing on US stock exchanges.

The SEC recently took the list off the web due to complaints by the companies, but claims it has done so only for review.