The Standard

Week in Review

**** The Iraqi government voided a contract with the Russian company LukOil to develop the West Qurna oil field. The contract, canceled once during the Saddam era, had had dubious merits.

**** Shares of PetroChina nearly tripled during its first day of trading on the Shanghai market. The company's resulting market cap of more than $1 trillion flamed concerns about an asset bubble in the Chinese stock market.

**** The Russian lower parliament voted 418 - 0 to withdraw Russia from the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE). Putin and the upper house are expected to fully ratify the measure by December 12.

**** China's National Development and Reform Center (NDRC) issued a new enforcement guide that will advise Chinese officials to restrict foreign investment in several industries and welcome it in sectors where China stands to gain technological know-how.

Russia Loses Iraqi Oil Contract

Iraqis Nix Saddam-Era Deal

The Iraqi government has voided a contract with the Russian company LukOil to develop the West Qurna oil field.

The field is estimated to hold 11 million barrels of untapped reserves.

The contract was signed in 2002 while Saddam Hussein was still in power.

It was then rescinded by the Hussein government shortly before the American invasion.

Mr. Hussein had been angered that LukOil brokered agreements with opposition groups in the event that his regime might fall.

The Russian government has called the decision an "outrage."

Energy, Politics and Russian Nationalization

There has been growing concern in the West about the role of state-run energy companies in serving the Kremlin's political interest.

In August, the Kremlin leveraged the last independent oil entrepreneur, Mikhail Gutseriev, out of the country and swallowed up RussNeft, a company that represented a mere 3% of the Russian oil production market.

Last October the state-run gas monopoly GazProm suddenly announced an unpaid $1.3 billion Ukrainian debt and threatened to cut off Ukrainian gas supplies.

The surprise debt was announced the day after after pro-West parties triumphed in Ukrainian parliamentary elections.

The Ethics of War

I prefer to post links with context, but sometimes a piece is written that needs no context.

From The Economist:

"...Even in the hell of Iraq, however, it is important to look at some things straight. And one of those things is that not all kinds of killing are equal. Some are less acceptable than others. This is not a callous or nit-picking legal point: it concerns a vital distinction between legitimate and illegitimate violence that has long been spelled out under the laws and moral requirements of war and must not be fudged.

George Bush is rightly criticised for lumping together as “terrorists” anyone who takes up arms against America or its allies. This is a simplistic formula that blurs necessary distinctions and makes for clumsy policy. Yet some opponents of the superpower's occupation of Iraq make an equal mistake when they lump together—and condone—as “resistance” all of the violent acts committed by America's foes in Iraq.

No excuses

This is profoundly mistaken. Military attacks against foreign soldiers who have come uninvited into your country can certainly be classified as resistance, whether you think such resistance justified or not. But the mass murder of Iraqi civilians can make no such dignified claim. The most lethal atrocities are those carried out by suicide-bombers, most of them from Saudi Arabia, who have imbibed some version of the al-Qaeda idea of war to the end against the unbelievers, who in their minds include Iraq's Shia Muslims. Many Iraqi Sunnis have in their turn been killed—for revenge or as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing—by Iraqi Shias, sometimes acting alone and sometimes at the bidding of organised militias, often with links to a political party or to Iraq's government.

Under all established norms and laws of war (and by most accounts under Islamic law, too) the deliberate targeting of civilians for no direct military purpose is just a crime. This remains true regardless of the justice of the cause, and whether the killing is done by states, armies, groups or individuals. The world should never tire of condemning such deeds."

Here's the link for the full article.

Journalism lives on...

Bush Laments 'Tyranny'

On a slow news day like this, it can be fun to put things into context.

A story like the one in WaPo comes along, where US President George W. Bush laments that he's had trouble "ending tyranny in our world" because of US "bureaucracy".

Now, everyone in the US can admit the bureaucracy's gotten a bit rough since some of the new 9/11 legislation.

This said, Mr. President, shedding some light on the last six years of your government might help us figure out why it seems so tough preserving democracy and ending tyranny in the world today.

In fact, Mr. President, we'll do it this way. We'll pretend I'm not a mere private citizen with a voice, but your advisor - a member of the Cabinet.

And we'll pretend it's six years ago.

Here's my advice.

1) Do not use cheap legal language to justify the existence of a military prison at Guantanemo Bay that holds prisoners of war without trial and spits in the face of Habeas Corpus rights -- the legal bedrock of modern civilization and the pride and dignity of governments ruling over the English-speaking peoples for the last 500 years.

2) Do not take unilateral action to start a war that is counter to the interests of the American people, counter to the national security interests of the United States, and undermines the authority of the United Nations -- the only possibility the community of free nations might have to legislate the world in a way that secures liberty for all humankind.

3) As leader and news figure, do not consistently refuse to acknowledge reality and have colleagues spread bad information in a way that corrupts the American news landscape, spurring hatred among the American people and undermining American civil society.

4) If, by chance, you do happen to do all of what I've told you not to do.

Do not appoint ambassadors and government officials that drive a wedge between the US and European governments in an attempt to justify the poor, ill-planned, unnecessary war, that (hypothetically, of course) would be counter to the interests of nearly every nation in the world except Iran.

It will be hard to plant trees abroad if you burn the forests at home, Mr. President.

It's the ash on your hands, sir.

It will do something to the seeds.