British Petroleum: The Unfinished Crimes and Plunder of Anglo-American Imperialism

In the light of British Petroleum’s grotesque crime, as yet unfinished, against humanity in the Gulf of Mexico it is well to recall briefly BP’s no less hideous crime perpetrated in its earlier incarnation as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) and its further name change to the Anglo Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1936. At the century’s turn, William D’Arcy, financial tycoon and politician, pursuing the advice of his financial associate and empire builder Cecil Rhodes frantically began his quest for oil in the Persian Gulf.

Little did the masters of British imperialism realize that one of the most dazzling El Dorado’s in the long and tortured history of British imperialism would soon be born? Geo-politically it would have reverberations well beyond the region of the Persian Gulf. It was one of the most decisive steps in the march of imperial globalization, the speed-up the concentration of capital and the resulting imperialist rivalries.'

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