_ By GEORGE LOHR

HE word oil wasn’t

mentioned in  Presi-
dent Truman’s) an-
Nouncement of U.S. inter-

vention in Greece and Tur-
key. He spoke of nobler
things, such as the manifest duty
of the U.S. to give support to the
throne of Greece, bolstered by
British bayonets.

- But hard-headed business
8roups were less idealistic in
their appraisal of the Truman
Proposals. “Stability and 4
friendly government in Greece
Mean protection of growing US.
investments in Middle Eastern
oil,” World Report, a business-
man’s weekly, said bluntly on

March 18.
“The loud talk was all of
Greece and Turkey, but the

whispers behind. the talk were
of the ocean of oil to the south,”
‘Said Time magazine a week
later,

Ocean is the right word to
describe this wealth buried be-
Neath the sands of Iran, Iraq
@nq Saudi Arabia. It has been
estimated at a minimum of 26
billion barrels and a maximum
of 150 billion.

These oil fields contain 42
percent of the world’s known oil
reserves; American and Carib-
bean fields contain 46 percent
and Soviet fields 9 percent.

Saudi Arabia alone, where U.S.
firms have complete control, has
oil reserves of at least 20 Dbil-
lions barrels. Already, the oil
wells at Dhahran, near the Per-
Sion Gulf yield 200,000 barrels
- a day and plans call for a daily
production of 500,000 barrels.

The oil concessions in that
country were obtained from
King Ibn Saud by the Arabian-

American Oil Company (Aram-
co), which is owned by Stan-
dard Oil Company of California
and the Texas Company.

A recent agreement has cut
Standard Oil of New Jersey and
the Socony-Vacuum Oil Com-
pany is in on the deal as well.
These companies propose to
spend $300,000,000 to build addi-
tional oil pipelines which are
scheduled to end at the Mediter-
ranean port of Haifa, -in Pales-

tine.
@

N order to get into the Saudi

Arabian oil business, Standard ;
of New Jersey first had to vio-
late a little cartel agreement
which it signed some years ago
to get a share of oil in Iraq.

Oil in that country is con-
trolled by Iraq Petroleum Com-
pany, which is owned by the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, Bri-
tish centrolled Royal Dutch
Shell, the French government
through the Compagnie Fran-
caise des Petroles and the Near
East Development Company,
which again is jointly owned
by Jersey Standard and Soc-
ony-Vacuum.

Representatives of these com-
panies seated themselves before
a map in 1928, drew a rough
red line around the former Ot-
toman Empire and pledged that
none of them would enter into
any separate oil agreements in
that territory.

This Red Line agreement was

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The Fight For Freedom

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by Ivor Montagu. -_-------------------—---- Page 10
@ Tinder-Box of Latin America j

by Joseph Starobin _.__.------------------- Page 11

ARTA ofr 28 RAL

broken by Jersey Standard when
i became a partner to the ex-
ploitation of oil in Saudi Arabia.
Not usually, known for excessive
patriotism, Jersey Standard de-
fended its action by saying the
agreement was abrogated when
Vichy France became an enemy.

The French government , now
is suing in the London courts
in an effort to. keep the agree-
ment alive. Jersey Standard and
Socony, on the other hand, in-
tend to invest $20,000,000 in
Iraq’s oil industry and gradu-
ally freeze out the French and
British completely.

These two partners are also
moving in on Britain in Iran

_where the British government

controls the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company. Winston Churchill,
then First Lord of the Admir-
alty, arranged this deal through
negotiations in 1914.

Now Jersey Standard and So-
cony Vacuum have kindly
‘agreed’ to buy a large share
of the output of Anglo-Iranian
and to build some now pipe-
lines which also will terminate
lines in Palestine. It is estimated
that there are six billion bar-
rels of oil reserves in Iran.

ey THIS battle for oil, being
waged not only by the com-
panies involved but by their
governments as well, the U.S. is
boung to emerge victorious over
Britain and France. The U.S.
Navy already has taken virtual
control of the Mediterranean,
edging out the British Navy
from. its once supreme position
in that area.

Seventy percent of the present
ci] output of Saudi Arabia goes
toward fueling the U.S. Navy
for its ‘good will’ tours all over
the world. During the last war,
too, Saudi Arabia was. the
source of much of the oil con-
sumed by the navy.

U.S. taxpayers paid California
Standard and .Texas Oil the ex-
orbitant price of $1.05 for the
navy’s oil, according to testi-
mony before a Senate sub-com-

mitte by oil promoter James A.
Moffett. The same oil was sold
to the British for 40 cents a
barrel.

Whether the navy is still col-
laborating in this deal is not
known. But the navy and other
advocates of U.S. imperialism
make no bones of the fact that
they consider expansion of oil
production under U.S. control,
vital to their plans.

Unless the U.S. gets more oil
production in the Middle East,
it “will probably not have
enough oil to fuel another global
war,” said Time magazine.

While rapidly expanding their
control over oil in that part of
the world, American circles are
also exerting pressure on the

UNUSUAL

government of Iran to renege
on its agreement to grant oil
leases to the Soviet Union in
Northern Iran.

The contract for the conces-
sion to the Soviet Union has
been approved by the Iranian
government but is now gather-
ing dust in Iran’s legislature. :

U.S. financial interests, operat-
ing through President Truman’s
administration, want to bring
the whole Middle East under
their complete control. The air-
lanes there are already under
the domination of U.S. compan-
ies. U.S. taxpayers’ dollars built
an airport for the army in
Cairo, which was ‘given’ to the
Egyptian government after the
war and whcih now serves the

‘U.S. airlines.

Egypt, too, has the support of
U.S. diplomats in its desire to
have Britain evacuate its troops.
When these troops, under gentle
prodding by Washington, finally
leave, will they be replaced by
U.S. troops, as contemplated in
Greece?

.
g baie sudden interest of the
U.S. State Department in

Palestine fits into this general
picture of American aggression
in the Middle East. When the
Anglo-American Commission of
Inquiry was established for Pal-
estine, it signalized the entrance
of “U.S. imperialism into the
country. As_a beginning, Britain
was forced to make concessions
to the U.S.-owned Trans-Arabian

-Pipe Line Company in Palestine.

U.S. Zionists are cooperating
with financial groups in this
country who covet Palestine.
The Zionist Organization of Am-
erica held a conference in 1945
which was addressed by leading
U.S. business leaders and offi-
cials. Topic of the talks was
“possibilities for increasing post-
war: business relations between
the U.S. and the Middle East.”
‘ Control of the Dardanelles,
through a puppet government in
Turkey, is also welcome to the
U.S. empire builders in Asia
Minor. :

Domination of the Dardanelles
not only fits into the pattern
of the emerging cordon sani-
taire aimed against the Soviet
Union, but every user of the
waterway can be forced to pay
rich tribute. The export of the
Soviet Union can be restricted
by whoever sits astride the stra-
tegic gateway to the Black Sea.

@ George Lohr is foreign

editor of the People’s World in
San Francisco. .

Un - Americans at work

—WASHINGTON

S is a piece of dialogue
out of the Un-American Com-
mittee hearing on the outlaw-

‘ing of the Communist Party.

John E. Rankin (Dem., Mis-
sissippi): Them people in the
Ukraine They’s the white
people of Russia, ain’t they—the
Nordics?

William C. Bullitt (former am-

bassador to the USSR and
France: Well — hardly — not
exactly.

Rankin: Ain’t it true, too,
that they eat human bodies

there in Russia? ‘

Bullitt: (reluctantly) I did see
a picture of a skeleton of @
chilq eaten by its parents.

Rankin: Then they're
like slaves there in Russia?

Bullitt; There are more hu-
man slaves in Russia today
than existed ever anywhere in
the world.

Rankin: You said before that
€0 percent of the members of
the Communist Party here are
aliens. Now what percentage of
them aliens are Jews? d

(The committee doesn’t like
this. It becomes a little too

just

‘strong. They try to shut Rankin

up.)

Rankin: I’m a member of
Congress, ain’t I? Now is it
true, Mr. Bullitt, that the Com-
munists went into the southern

states and picked
and sent them to
study revolution?
aware they teach
blow up bridges?

(Bullitt is embarrassed and
tries to dodge the question.)

Rankin: Now ain’t the Daily
Worker constantly maligning
anti-Communists and the south-
ern states on the race question?

Bullitt: Well—(goes into talk
on melting pot).

_ Rankin:You just talk to these
high class American Jews —
You'll discover different. Now
take this drive against the
British Empire by the Zionists
—Ain’t that a Communist front?

Bullitt: (denies this — points
out that some of his best
friends were Zionists).

Rankin: One of the outstand-
ing Zionists in this country has
two Communist children. We
got to go into Greece because
Palestine is taking up so much
British time.

Bullitt: That’s not so.

Rankin: The man who gave
me that information on the
rumber cf Jews in the Com-
munist Party is a Jew himself.

(Angry cries from the audi-
ence. Thomas finally succeeds in
silencing Rankin, to the relief
cf most of the committee, but
the cat is out of the bag).

up niggers
Moscow to

Are you
niggers to

Sn a

Tpit nie atm tn ean