Customer Reviews

It's the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet

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War, Big Oil and those that stand to profit are putting themselves above all else. We are but pawns in worldwide game of profit and greed. This book makes a compelling case for escaping the grip of oil and moving on to an alternative - almost any alternative.

Why did the USA attack Iraq? What drives American policy? Why was the Iraqi oil ministry the first location to be "secured" following the American push into Baghdad? Why did the American Donald Rumsfeld declare publicly that anyone caught setting Iraqi oil fields ablaze would be treated as a war criminal? What is America doing meddling in countries all over the globe?
In a book that seems to answer the pertinent question posed a couple of years earlier by Michael Moore in Dude, where's My Country Linda McQuaig connects the dots between the intentions, patronage, words and public proclamations of Bush-ites - and its predecessors - and their actions upon ascending to the throne of presidency.
McQuaig, by way of introduction, is the kind of journalist whom is given a token weekly space in an otherwise right wing newspaper in order to give the said paper a vestige of balance. Here though, she methodically sorts out the real reason for America's attack on Iraq ("low hanging fruit") in 300 or so pages and demonstrates the oil companies' scandalous plotting against the oil-producing countries, their own nations and ultimately their own constituency. McQuaig, whose pieces are essential reading for the open-minded and visual poison for the corporate types, of course does not stop at the weekly columns. She has several noteworthy books to her name. The latest is It's The Crude, Dude.
She debunks the notion that Iraq (or most other US policies) had anything to do
with democratization and uses documents and quotations to demonstrate America's criminal and nefarious plot to gain control of oil in a repeat of the cycle seen repeatedly in the last 100 years. She correctly describes a defenseless Iraq as prey for America's greed. There is something clearly obscene and revolting about the colonial attitude, but unusually the book makes the case that America's policies have not been good even for its own population. They have primarily been devised in favour of the multinational oil companies which have, in turn, channeled huge dollars into the coffers of their preferred politicians. It is this system that encourages corporations and lets them get away with it too. For instance, the book points to climate change and its dangers that are remarkably ignored by Americans, as if they have their heads in the (Iraqi) sand. Elsewhere, the book provides time-lines and maps, including a graphic stemming from a meeting with oil companies presided over by US Vice President Dick Cheney in 2001 where Iraqi resources were carved up. This is two years before Saddam supposedly refused to cooperate with the UN, UNESCO, WTO, NFL and whatever other sham reasons were given for blitzkrieging that country. Propelled by voracious American corporations setting US policy and a media which gladly runs with whatever propaganda it is fed, McQuaig points to the true drive behind America's many dealings worldwide as being related to oil and the profitable trade that comes with it. Interestingly, McQuaig cites studies and points out that the world is running out of oil, or as she puts it oil is being used faster than new discoveries are coming aboard, which can only translate to the commodity's rapid increase in value which, in turn, can only mean more greed and transgression.
Using extensive interviews, quotations and historical records and after travelling to different countries to speak to experts, the author dedicates several chapters to historical context and discusses and examines the options of the oil-producing countries and
America's policies vis-à-vis these. She also discusses the notable example of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez who has taken control of his country's resources and mobilized them to his peoples' benefit. There is another option.
In sum, the book is an important book with much to elucidate even if it possibly poses one too many rhetorical questions with obvious answers.
It's The Crude, Dude should urgently come in Braille.

Now that I have read "It's the Crude, Dude", "American Dynasty - Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush" by Kevin Phillips, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy", by Greg Palast, the more recent books by Michael Moore, "The Long Emergency" by James Kunstler, "Power Down" by Richard Heinberg, and "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance" by Noam Chomsky, a consistent and disturbing theme emerges from all of these works, that portrays access to and control of oil as the lynchpin of US foreign policy, to the extent that the Bush administration and a number of its predecessors have engaged in activities deemed by many observers to be uncaring toward democracy, illegal and immoral.

Author Linda McQuaig does an excellent job of providing a detailed history of the emergence of oil as a source of energy over the last 150 years, leading, as this story sadly does, to the domination of oil-rich, typically lesser-developed nations, first by Britain and later by the US. McQuaig provides full commentary on the role of the Rockefeller family as it strove, usually with huge success, to control oil supplies and prices at a near-global level.

The disdain held by current and previous US administrations for energy conservation is described as being disturbing, if not appalling. McQuaig also points at the lazy, complicit media in the US, that have, especially since 9/11, failed to push the government or the public to answer the question: "Why do a growing number of groups of people, especially in the Middle East, detest the US to the point where those groups will commit acts of violence against the US, its interests and its allies?" For me, having read "It's The Crude, Dude" has helped me to arrive at an increasingly succinct answer to this question. Both the governments and the major oil companies in the US and other `developed' countries have, in the past, subverted democracy and free markets in the interest of securing access to, if not also control of, large supplies of oil. In this context, sufficient supplies of oil are equated with economic and personal freedom, certainly sacrosanct notions within the American psyche. Energy conservation, by contrast, is regarded as an affront to the US concept of freedom.

I highly recommend this book. It is well researched and, for the most part, well written.

Other reviewers of this book suggest that it is either difficult or impossible to buy "It's the Crude, Dude" in the US. If this is true, it's quite scary.

"We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of the world's population...In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task...to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security...We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization...the less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."

George Kennan
US State Department
Policy Planning Staff
Excerpts of de-Classified Memo, 1948

"The state-sponsored schools will never tell you this, but governments routinely rely on hoaxes to sell their agendas to an otherise reluctant public. The Romans accepted the Emperors and the Germans accepted Hitler not because they wanted to, but because carefully crafted illusions of threat appeared to give them no other choice."

Michael Rivero
FAKE TERROR: THE ROAD TO DICTATORSHIP

"Naturally the common people don't want war...That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who detremine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along...All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

Herman Goering
Germany, Third Reich
During his trial at Nuremburg
before he was hanged

Like it or not, there are still things called evidence, fact and objective truth in the world. A person could easily be led astray as to what significance this book has by looking at it from an *opinion* perspective--"right-wing/left-wing"--without the clarity of context. In fact, the three things people should know about this book by Linda McQuaig is the following, in order of importance:

3) The United States Freedom of Information Act of 1975 has made all kinds of otherwise classified documents of the Pentagon and earlier Presidential administrations available to any historians or investigative journalists with the actual interest of knowing just how the world has worked in the past and continues to work for those running it today. McQuaig's source material is not a collection of out of touch flower-child opinions gained from smoking too much pot and listening to too much Jimi Hendrix, nor a metaphoric use of a Freudian projection/transference regarding some undistinguished paternal child abuse. It is these Pentagon papers--political, economic and military in nature--combined with the truism of Iraq's oil fields being second in volume of product only to Saudi Arabia's in the world and the agenda of the current American administration (which has been in the world news for several years now) that form the basis of her research and source material.

2) Dr. Noam Chomsky, head of linguistics and philosophy at MIT; considered one of the most important intellectuals of the 20th and 21st century since Einstein; a man whose books--the latest being HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL--routinely make the bestseller's list of papers around the world, despite his total censorship from American newspapers and television, has given this book the most impassioned review I have personally ever heard or read him give anything. This includes the work of some of his best friends, like Howard Zinn (A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES) and the late Edward Said (ORIENTALISM). Most authors of "the dissident literature," like Ahrundati Roy, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Tanya Reinhart and William Blum are happy with a kind blurb on their books from Chomsky, the Godfather of speaking truth to power. They are honored, in fact, by a blurb with ten percent of the passion with which he has reviewed this book by McQuaig.

And most importantly:

1) THIS BOOK IS NOT AVAILABLE IN THE UNITED STATES. Not even the American Amazon.com, or the British Amazon.co.uk will sell it. It has been listed as "not yet published" for months on both sites, despite it selling strong and being nearly ready for a second printing in Canada where I found it. (I discovered IT'S THE CRUDE DUDE in a bookstore while on business in Toronto a couple of months ago; otherwise I would have never heard of it--and that's someone from New York City. Imagine the chance of Des Moines, Iowa or Lexington, Kentucky ever even hearing of this.) Not even Gore Vidal has experienced censorship in his homeland to this degree. Without the Information society's computers most Americans without frequent flyer miles out the wazoo wouldn't even know McQuaig exists. Acknowledge this: IT'S THE CRUDE DUDE, much like debate on its subject matter in even the most trivial of ways during this Iraq war, is effectively censored from the one population of voters (Americans) who, in an actual democracy, could effect change on the world policies she blisteringly analyses if they knew both its contents and the consequences of ignoring them.

Could it be possible that what we call democracy and globalization is really just window dressing and social control through docility, draping over the 15th century feudalism that really runs the world?

And could that be pushing us all toward an apocalyptic return to that violent age in every way, when the oil of the world runs out?

Buy this book. Read it. Be afraid. Then don't just stand there; do something.

...by one of Canada's preeminent left wing scribes, and she titled it "It's the Crude, Dude..." AFTER the release of Michael Moore's "Dude, Where's My Country". Now that's integrity.