Vladimir Putin on War

I think he and Satish Kumar would probably get on well together.

Please do watch the whole thing. Particularly what he says from 9 minutes 11 secs.

What Putin doesn't mention, though I'm sure he knows it, is that the people who are responsible for the environmental catastrophe are the same people that are behind the arms race. It was Churchill, when he was First Lord of the Admiralty, during WWI, who pushed the Royal Navy to switch to oil and that was part and parcel of the development of the oil reserves of the Persian Gulf. During the After WWI the Anglo Persian Oil Company took control of the German company British Petroleum.

From http://www.historyhouse.co.uk/articles/british_petroleum.html

Before the First World War, oil and petrol were beginning to replace coal as the main power source for ships, and, of course, for use in cars. Anglo-American Oil supplied much of the United Kingdom market, but other companies sought to challenge them.

In 1907, Shell, a Dutch owned company, signed a contract with British Petroleum Company Limited for them to act as distribution agents of Shell products in the United Kingdom.

British Petroleum had just been established in the UK by a German company, Europäische Petroleum Union, of Bremen. The name was intended to show its operating and distribution area.

Europäische held 50½% of the shares, while French Russian and Belgian shareholders held the rest. Ultimate shareholders included Deusche Bank and the Nobel and Rothschild families. The company also owned Home Light Oil Company Limited (selling to consumers), and Petroleum Steamship Company Limited (a tanker company).

Upon the outbreak of war all three companies and their assets were seized as belonging to the enemy. As one member of Parliament put it, "there was nothing British about it".

And this is how the British and the Iranian Governments became inextricably intertwined. From https://www.counterpunch.org/2010/06/16/a-short-history-of-bp/

In 1901, D’Arcy obtained a concession from the government of Iran to drill for mineral resources, with the exception of the five northern provinces the Russians wanted. This concession, called the “Green Document,” was written on a page of green paper signed by the Shahanshah, king of kings, of Iran. D’Arcy was to pay the government of Iran £20,000 in cash and £20,000 in stock in the proposed operation, plus a royalty of 16% of net profits from all enterprises formed under the agreement.

...

 In 1909, D’Arcy formed the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC). Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, had been following the progress of the burgeoning petroleum industry because he was thinking of converting the British navy’s ships from coal to oil, which he implemented in 1911. In order to protect its supplies of this now-crucial military resource, the British government became part owner of APOC in 1914, acquiring 50 percent of the voting stock, reimbursing all of D’Arcy’s expenditures, and granting him £900,000 worth of shares. D’Arcy remained a director until his death in 2000. In 1923, the company secretly paid £5,000 to Churchill to lobby the UK government to grant APOC a monopoly on Iranian oil resources (Myers 2009).

The US later became inextricably entwined with Britain and Iran when Standard Oil's monopoly was broken up and the Rockefeller fortune was mixed into the pot. Then Bolivia joined in with the Chaco War which seemed to involve Standard Oil somehow, and plenty of Germans! That's the bit we need to look into now, and I would appreciate some cooperation from the  government here.