Bosnia, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Afghanistan....It's The Pipelines Stupid

[Dover]

Some important history for those who care to know it.

http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=812

http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpWESSEX/Documents/Ukraine-Caspian.htm

[thunder rising]

1. And?

[Dover]

2. Sound familiar?

There is an abundance of cynicism and hypocrisy on all sides. The US, Britain, France, Germany and the other NATO powers express shock and dismay at Moscow's indiscriminate bombing of cities and other civilian targets in Chechnya, only a few months after their own brutal air assault on Serb towns and cities. As one Russian official complained, when American missiles killed Serb civilians, Washington called it “collateral damage”, but when Russian bombs kill Chechen civilians, American officials talk of human rights atrocities.

Not one of the thousands of Western journalists covering the OCSE summit has noted the obvious irony of American and European leaders gathering to proclaim their devotion to human rights, democracy and peace in a country notorious for police state repression and one of the world's longest and bloodiest military campaigns against an ethnic minority—Ankara's war against the Kurds in the southeast of the country.

The Russians, for their part, justify a brutal aggression to maintain Moscow's grip on the land, resources and impoverished peoples of the northern Caucasus as a police action against terrorism.

As always in conflicts between major capitalist powers, there are the declared motives and the real, unstated aims and interests that lie behind the propaganda. A measure of how sharp antagonisms have become is the statement made last Friday by Russian Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev. Accusing the US of supporting the Chechen rebels, he told a meeting of Russian military top brass, "The United States national interests require that the military conflict in the north Caucasus, fanned from the outside, keeps constantly smouldering.” Sergeyev added, “The West's policy is a challenge to Russia with the aim of weakening its international position and ousting it from strategically important regions."

Reporting Sergeyev's comments, the November 15 New York Times noted, “Such suspicions have been fuelled in Russia by American attempts to persuade former Soviet republics in the region to build an oil pipeline that would skirt Russia and Iran.” This broadly hints at a key issue in the present conflict in Chechnya. What is being played out there is a great power struggle between the US, Russia and Europe over control of the strategically vital Caucasus, which borders on the Caspian Sea, site of the world's largest deposit of untapped oil reserves. At stake in this contest are billions of dollars in oil and gas revenues and the vast military and geopolitical advantages that fall to whichever power gains a dominant position in Central Asia..cont'd


http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/nov1999/chec-n18.shtml

This story is about Chechnya. But it could almost as easily describe what's gone on in Georgia and elsewhere.

[oldskool]

4. Globilization at it's best!!!!!!

[oldskool]

3. Why have the cadidates not been talking about the 200

years of gas and 200 years of oil on the north slope of
Alaska? Politics at it's best!!!!!

[Dover]

6. Biden's been providing a lot of rhetoric about taking back the country from big oil

but I have my doubts. Nor are any of them willing to really lay out our foreign policy decisions
which are PRIMARILY based on the routing and/or seizure of resources like oil/gas/pipelines.
When will they or the MSM educate the American public about that in real terms?

[raccoon]

5. Rec'd. One more puts this on Greatest! nt

[raccoon]

7. Kick. nt