image left: oil pipelines in the desert, photo taken from the airport bus between Dammam International Airport and the Saudi ARAMCO compound in Dhahran.
Ci joint, le rapportage de Hanan Al-Masri, de Gaza à la télévision Al-Arabiya.
The Israeli governement has announced that next Thursday, Israel will announce that some formerly prohibited items will be lifted--a decision that is not worthy of mentioning:
قرارٌ لا تُرى الحكومة المقالة اهمية تُذكَر
Most food and drink still comes through Egypt, she says. I will attempt to transcribe the rest of her report today at a later time. Enjoy listening to her nice Palestinian accent and the accents of the women she interviews in the main market of Gaza city while you read my blog today on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Saudi Arabia.
The media in the US is mostly covering the oil spill. The coverage is too American. It distracts from the ecological disaster that imperialism causes in Africa and the Middle East. The citing of Thomas Sankara's speech to the Paris Tree conference is much more appropriate:
Nor can the worked-up consciences of a multitude of forums and institutions—sincere and praiseworthy though they may be—make the Sahel green again, when we lack the funds to drill wells for drinking water a hundred meters deep, while money abounds to drill oil wells three thousand meters deep!
As Karl Marx said, those who live in a palace do not think about the same things, nor in the same way, as those who live in a hut. This struggle to defend the trees and forests is above all a struggle against imperialism. Because imperialism is the arsonist setting fire to our forests and our savannas. Paris, Feb. 5, 1986
It should be pointed out that the Oil pushed out from under the sands of the Middle East Countries, comes at the price of millions of gallons of precious well water. The Oasis of Al-Hasa, near ARAMCO in Dhahran is nearly depleted of water because of the huge amounts of water needed to push the oil up from under the desert. The Island of Bahrain used to be all oasis, but now is dry because so much water was used to push out the oil. I guess it is the huge tonnage of water in the Gulf of Mexico which allows offshore oil to be extracted so cheaply. It is this very tonnage of water which keeps the oil gushing out without the Americans having to spend on water pumping, or having to deplete their natural water supply, as the Saudis have to do, in order to keep up with Exxon's and Chevron's, and the other big sisters', demands.
The sanctions on Iran are the way Imperialsm prohibits Iran from developing nuclear energy which could be used to form massive desalination projects to obtain water to pump out their oil, insead of depleting the natural underground fresh-water supply. Even as they are, the current desalination plants in Saudi Arabia, merely to provide waste water, are marvels of technology, much more of "an effort to make the desert bloom" than anything the rogue state of Israel did in the days when their propaganda claimed Palestine was a desert which their immigrants had "made to bloom."
Indeed, the 1947 Israeli immigrants to Palestine, at the bidding of the colonial powers, actually destroyed the water and irrigation system built through centures of practical experience, when they destroyed the 500 Palestinian villages.
If you read this blog, please tell your friends how imperialist policy is depleting the water in the Middle East and Iran.
