There's oil in them thar bombings...

George Monbiot weighs in on same issue:

― turner, Thursday, 8 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Damnit. Here'sGeorge Monbiot.

Wouldn't surprise me at all. Matter of fact, fits in perfectly with George the Turd's M.O. (Witness the massive looting of the federal fisc he and his GOP Congresscritters are planning now under the guise of "economic stimulus" -- essentially, retroactive repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax [enacted in 1986!] which means BIG $$$$ to you guessed right Bushie and Dick Cheney's energy business cronies. Not to mention talk of drilling in Alaska is back on the table.) And, because Bushie and Co. are so phenomenally stupid, if oil realpolitik is their goal in Afghanistan then they might be on the verge of fucking that up too.

Keep flyin' those flags, folks. "Die for oil, suckers," as Jello Biafra said.

Oh yeah, I hope that there's room in Satan's mouth (next to Brutus and Judas) for Bill Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Uncle Thomas, Anthony Kennedy, and Sandy O'Connor, to grind them down for foisting this jack-ass on the nation last December.

Why is it such a bad thing to 'die for oil', as opposed to dying for some idiotic religion? Oil makes all our lives wonderful.

tad i really don't like you calling clarence thomas an uncle tom.

I agree with Tadeusz. For a start, you really couldn't make up the part about the pube on the edge of the soda can Anita Hill said she was given, so it was a *bad day* for women too when he got on the Court.

Oh, and that 'let's roll' speech is doing my head in. Whip up the masses into a great-big gung-ho frenzy of scapegoating which falls outside all rational thought. I hate that man, he's ruining my country and making a pretty good stab at ruining the whole world. And all it took to buy him was years of indoctrination and a few measly million. The petroleum industry got themselves a fucking bargain.

test

The economist had a feature on this about six months ago. Basically there's a big new field comingon stream in the northern Caspian mainly in the Kazak sector, plus kazakstan has more natural gas than it can pump out. American policy on this (right through the clinton years and carried on by chimp boy) is that they'll do anything to stop all of this oil and gas going through russia. Its basically them not want a 'traditional enemy' (read someone they can't walk all over) have control of the supply. (there's also a big arguiment about the boundaries of territorial waters in the caspian they were drawn before this field was discovered. Rather incredibly the USs prefered otions for pipeline is across the caspian sea to georgia and through armenia and georgia (still officially at war over nagorno karabach) and out to the med in turkey. the armenians and the azeris won't have it though

Kazakstan couldn't care less about where the pipe goes but would rather it didn't go through russia ( they don't want their former masters to have control) so they have suggested either east through china (State department sweats) or south through uzbekistan, turmenistan and Iran (State department has fainting fit). So the US went for the least worst option of routing the pipeline through the most pliable regimes, (uzbekistan/tajikistan, afganistan, pakistan), three of this regimes are piss poor and can be manipulated with aid for the next 50 years and pakistan has for a long time been a dubious friend of 'the west. so this is one reason the americans would like a friendly regime in afganistan (they can do what the hell they like to their people, vis 'our friend and ally' uzbekistan a brutal dictatorship int he old style. kazakstan incidentally works on the priciple that as long as evryone votes for Azabayev its ok and as long as he keeps on delivering oil money then thats ok and political freedom be damned and nobody really gives a toss cos its much better than under the soviets.

The russians in the meantime are building a pipeline between their fields near the kazak border to the black sea passing through Checnya and Dagestan. the Russians were quite happy to let the chenchens play at independance before they had to drive the pipe through.

WEsten europe would prefer the russians beef up the old soviet network and have the oil be pipe straight to them either to the baltic or by extending the pipe nettwork from the old east germany.

As far a soil in afaganistan goes its likely to have some in the west of the country but not huge like saudi, iran or kazakstan. Gas will become more important to the west with more and more lectrical generating stations being gas (which everyone aprt from britain and norway are not self suffiecient in) and coal which we have in spades but is deeply unfashionable because it s dirty (there ares everal good clean coal technologies) and its expensive to get out of the ground (good old unionised labour)

(for some reason greenspun wouldn't let me post that as one)

I hardly think the fact that Afghanistan is unstable now will deter the construction of an oil pipeline in the future.

After all, it's precisely the same gameplan they employed in Yugoslavia, the primary aim being to secure a future pipeline easement for Caspian Sea oil to Western Europe through Kosovo.

And once again, NATO is being deployed to further a similar aim in Afghanistan. History has an annoying habit of repeating itself.

I think America's overall strategem here is "Oil's well that ends well."

read this. The nighmare scenario, fantasy but not beyond the bounds of possibility anymore.

that's kind of scary, and very very plausible.

Damien Cave, "Stuck in the Gulf"

the all-islam-now-suddenly-one is considerably less likely than paisley and gerry adams coming to agreement in order jointly to pound westminster: bin laden operates from afghanistan because it is the ONLY islamic state where those islamists who oppose his version of islam are so cowed or fragmented (eg by 20 yrs of horrific civil war) that he can get on with stuff. He is not even really religiously onside w.the Taliban, who like his money. They also happily took money from Bush when that was on the table.

To be honest this kind of stuff is racist terror-porn.

argt that oil = ONLY motive behind kosovo war not convincing: that it is a BIG (and undiscussed) motive = more than fair

I agree with Mark. As per fucking usual.

Suzy: you're British, correct? So please please don't do the little england thang and blame America [fuXoRed as Bush is] for the sitch of the UK. Ya think that Bush or Blair is more concerned about taking the "war on terrorism" vs. the IRA?

Agreed w/ mark. U.S. was provoked into asserting top dog status, but hey, while they're there, might as well do some looting as well as some buring, eh?

Suzy is American.

You can tell by her aggressive foreign policy and the way she forces us to make shoes for one raisin a day.

Ah. Sorry. I'm just sort of touchy about generic anti-americanism these days, which seems to be floating around.

*laughs like drain at Sam*

Yucch, raisins, the rabbit spoor of Satan.

Yes, American but from the People's Republic of Minnesota, where we hate Republicans so much we elected a libertarian wrestler as governor to express annoyance at corrupt Democrats. I didn't vote for Stubya the shortarse because just looking at that little crosseyed freak I could tell we'd be in some kind of DEEP SHIT but I had no idea the cesspit would be this HYOOGE.