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US continues its long history of war profiteering: Writer

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The United States continues its long history of war profiteering while fighting against the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group in Syria and Iraq, says American writer and political activist Mickey Z. 

The author of Occupy This Book and Occupy These Photos made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Friday while commenting on a statement by senior US Treasury official Adam Szubin who accused the Syrian government of buying oil from the terrorist group.

Speaking at Chatham House in London on Thursday, Szubin, the acting undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence with the Treasury, said that Daesh is earning some $40 million a month from oil trade, Reuters reported.

He said “ISIL is selling a great deal of oil” to the government of President Bashar al-Assad. “The two are…engaged in millions and millions of dollars of trade,” said Szubin, without citing any evidence to support his claims.

The US official said the “far greater amount” of ISIL oil ends up under the Syrian government’s control while “some is coming across the border into Turkey.”

Commenting to Press TV, Mickey Z. said, “It’s helpful to understand history when pondering the self-righteous stance [the] US is taking here.”

“During the ‘Good War,’ American businessmen had no trouble trading with the enemy – an enemy considered far more evil than ISIL. For example:

“In December 1933, Standard Oil of New York invested one million dollars in Nazi Germany for the making of gasoline from soft coal. Undeterred by the well-publicized events of the next decade, Standard Oil also honored its chemical contracts with I.G. Farben – a German chemical cartel that manufactured Zyklon-B, the poison gas used in the Nazi gas chambers – right up until 1942.

“Other companies that traded with the Reich and, in some cases, directly aided the war machine, before and during this time, included the Chase Manhattan Bank, Davis Oil Company, DuPont, Bendix, Sperry Gyroscope, and the aforementioned General Motors. GM top man William Knudsen called Nazi Germany ‘the miracle of the 20th century.’

“On the governmental front, US Secretary of State Breckinridge Long gave the Ford Motor Company permission to manufacture Nazi tanks while simultaneously restricting aid to German-Jewish refugees because the Neutrality Act of 1935 barred trade with belligerent countries.

“Miraculously, this embargo did not include petroleum products and Mussolini’s Italy tripled its gasoline and oil imports in order to support its war effort while Texaco exploited this convenient loophole to cozy up to Spain’s resident fascist, Generalissimo Francisco Franco.

“The lesson here is that when the US starts crying about business deals with its enemies, it probably means Americans weren’t cut in for part of the profits.”

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