Commentators have been quick to point out that Russia's defeat of Georgia has pretty much killed the chances that new oil and gas pipelines will be built to increase the security of supplies to Europe. It's clear that there is little to stop Russia from rolling its forces up to the existing pipeline or knocking it out of commission if it wanted to. The Washington Post's Steve Pearlstein even suggested that demonstrating the pipeline's vulnerability may have been one of the underlying motives for the Russian incursion.

The United States has been promoting the idea of pipeline routes skirting Russia as a way to promote European energy security, but the chances of making that work have always been slim. The reason: The United States has been simultaneously trying to keep Iran, the world's other major holder of natural gas reserves, out of world markets and out of alternate pipeline networks. Without the Iran card, it's very difficult to win a pipeline game against Russia.

The U.S. has long been pushing for oil and natural gas pipelines from the Caspian Basin that would bypass Russia, especially via Georgia. The current Georgia pipeline began in the late 1990s as a project to carry the estimated 35 billion barrels of oil, and natural gas, from the Caspian Sea area to European markets. One current line, the Baku-Tblisis-Cyhan line, runs through Georgia and then on to Turkey's Mediterranean coast for shipment. Another oil line ends up at the Georgian port of Supsa, which the Russian navy blockaded. A proposed natural gas line, called Nabucco, would go through Georgia to Austria, reducing Europe's heavy dependence on Russian natural gas pipelines.

Was it ever possible for a non-Russian natural gas pipeline route from the Caspian basin to supply enough gas to free Europe from Russia's grip? Not likely given Europe's large needs. Moreover, Iran has perhaps the biggest natural gas reserves outside Russia, and the United States has been simultaneously trying to block any expansion of Iranian natural gas exports. It's hard to think realistically about supplying enough natural gas to the world without either of the countries with the biggest reserves.

One European oil company executive told me today that the Nabucco line, named after a Verdi opera, was simply "not a doable project because there is not enough gas to justify the investment" -- at least without Iranian gas coming into it. "The only thing that can make it viable is by using Iranian gas," he continued. Otherwise, he said, it is "pie in the sky." American policy makers, he said, "want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to keep Europe from using Russian gas and they want to keep Iran in a corner too."

Finally, if the United States is trying to marginalize Russia and Iran, that means a big role not only for the Caspian line but also for the capital-intensive liquefied natural gas projects in Qatar. Will Europe feel more secure by building a new natural gas dependency on the Persian Gulf?

Suddenly the pipelines that run through Georgia seem like just another facet of global energy insecurity rather than enhanced security. Oil and gas experts are fond of saying that energy security lies in diversity.

But especially when it comes to natural gas, achieving enough diversity of supply to feel secure may be impossible.

Post Global 19 August 2008

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.'

"No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon.

"God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.

"God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme." ...

ABC News

Saudi Arabia

Logic might lead you to the conclusion that because the 9/11 atrocity was a mainly Saudi affair, then Saudi Arabia would get the lead place on the Axis of Evil.

Constant babble about "freedom 'n democracy" might lead you to believe that the U.S. would choose allies who conformed to the general idea of free and fair elections between rival parties.

Well, you certainly don't get that kind of nonsense in Saudi Arabia, but the Saudi's are clearly OK, as Bush's recent visit made clear.

Uzbekistan

Then there's the case of Islam Karimov.

A visit to Human Rights Watch's page on Uzbekistan offers the general picture, and might suggest why the Uzbeki president has been flavour the decade with George Bush, who, the Washington Post reminds us, has a prediliction for a spot of, er, 'persuasion' himself. [BDFT]

Pakistan

There's a further mystery about Pakistan, which, as home to the Taliban, might expect to be on the list.

Well, it's no mystery really: if you cannot get an oil pipeline through Iran to the Persian Gulf, it has to go though Afghanistan and into Pakistan. So Pakistan is off the list. But for how long?

Aid warning over Afghan violence

Aid agencies in Afghanistan have warned they may become unable to operate in parts of the country once seen as safe, because of the intensifying conflict.

A statement by 100 aid agencies pointed to a 50% increase in insurgent attacks compared to last year.

Aid agencies were increasingly becoming targets, they said.

The groups also criticised the rising number of civilian deaths, which they said were caused mainly by insurgents but also by air strikes.

In a statement, the Agency Co-ordinating Body for Afghan Relief (Acbar), an umbrella group of non-governmental organisations in Afghanistan, expressed its "grave concern about the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan and the serious impact on civilians".

June saw more attacks on NGOs than in any month since the Taleban's overthrow in 2001 and some agencies have been forced to scale back operations, it said ...

BBC NEWS 01 August 2008

No one in their right mind - or with any historical evidence at their command - would have launched Britain's Fourth Afghan War. The other three went badly, and they took place in the days when Britain was a world power. But Blair was listening to the same Source Of All Wisdom as George Bush, and He told Blair to "get in there and sort it".

If you need an insight into the kind of society that's 'hosting' this branch of the "war on terror", the case of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, who has been sentenced to death, will tell much of what you need to know about this very medieval society:

Mr Kambaksh, 23, was arrested, tried and convicted by a religious court, in what his friends and family say was a secret session without being allowed legal representation. [IND]

His 'crime' was to have downloaded a report on women's rights!

C4 Dispatches - Afghanistan Unveiled - confirmed the barbaric fate awaiting women who were resistant to arranged marriages.

Then there's the issue of Afghanistan's biggest export:

A Reuters news item in October 2007 reported that:

Afghanistan produced 93 percent of the world's opium in 2007 and the industry also funds a growing Taliban insurgency, which British and other Western troops are struggling to contain.

Small wonder the claim is being made that there will be British troops in the country for "decades" to come!

Iraq

Finally, there's the case of Iraq. The U.S. supported Iraq when it attacked Iran in 1980, but when it needed to restore the Iraq-Israel oil pipeline - in addition to the need for Iraqi oil to meet the threat of Peak Oil - an excuse had to be found to attack Saddam Hussein. It says much for 'Tory' Blair's attention to detail that he was completely taken in by the argument that the war was about bringing 'freedom', 'democracy', and McDonalds to Baghdad.

It turns out, on examination, that neoliberalism is about power and realpolitik, which should not really surprise us. All else is propaganda.

Iraq, Iran, China: the emerging axis

MPs 'misled' on Iraqi treatment

Big Oil Firms Ready to Sign Agreements With Iraq

MoD pays £3m over abuse of Iraqis in custody

Key Iraqi Leaders Deliver Setbacks to U.S.

Iraqis Condemn American Demands

Ali Allawi

Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control

Bush's Secret Iraq Deal

Bush's War, Five Years On

"I did what I thought was right"

Miliband: UK has moral duty to intervene

Miliband justifies military intervention

The rise of imperialism lite is prolonging the Iraqi horror

Iraq Body Count

Baha Mousa

Remember Fallujah

... The Book of Revelation refers to "a thousand years" several times, and end-timers have thought that this is a clue that the Rapture will occur around the time of the millennium. Revelation also gives a special role for the city of Jerusalem and these two things help bring about this alliance, overcoming what one might think is an unbridgeable chasm. As Lyons says "Ironically, given American fundamentalism's historic ambivalence about Jews, it was the 1948 founding of Israel, coming as it did near the end of the millennium, that gave the End Times prophecy industry a boost." The true believers see this conjunction of events as a sign of the beginning of the end.

As a result, Christian fundamentalists have become some of the strongest boosters of Israel and the most implacable foes of Islam, supporting even Israel's most hard-line policies on settlement expansion, seeing all these things as fulfillment of Biblical prophecy that the end times are near. Belief in the rapture and seeking to hasten its arrival trumps everything else. At the broadcaster's convention, Hedges says that:

The [American] Christian writer Kay Arthur, who can barely contain her tears when speaking of Israel, professes that although she loves America, if she had to choose between America and Israel, "I would stand with Israel, stand with Israel as a daughter of the King of Kings, stand according to the word of God." She goes on to quote at length from Revelation, speaking of Jesus seated on a throne floating about Jerusalem as believers are raptured up towards him into the sky." ...

Mano Singham's Web Journal

Plans to build a pipeline to siphon oil from newly conquered Iraq to Israel are being discussed between Washington, Tel Aviv and potential future government figures in Baghdad.

The plan envisages the reconstruction of an old pipeline, inactive since the end of the British mandate in Palestine in 1948, when the flow from Iraq's northern oilfields to Palestine was re-directed to Syria.

Now, its resurrection would transform economic power in the region, bringing revenue to the new US-dominated Iraq, cutting out Syria and solving Israel's energy crisis at a stroke.

It would also create an endless and easily accessible source of cheap Iraqi oil for the US guaranteed by reliable allies other than Saudi Arabia - a keystone of US foreign policy for decades and especially since 11 September 2001 ...

The Guardian 20 April 2003

Imperial theology and Corporate fundamentalism, February 19, 2007

By Preston C. Enright

Hedges does a great job of exposing how the Christian Right serves fascism - fascism defined as the marriage of corporate power and the government, along with beligerent nationalism and the utilization of state violence.

There's no better example of that marriage than our massive military industrial complex and the growing prison industrial complex.

It can be difficult to get normal, healthy human beings to support invasions, overthrows, economic injustice and global class war; but when people like Pat Robertson and James Dobson are there to put a smiley, pious face on it, then "good" Americans will rally behind the cause of Christo-fascism.

Hedges isn't the only one sounding this warning, Michael Weinstein's "With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in the US Military" touches on the same themes.

While Weinstein has first-hand experience as a member of the US Air Force, Hedges' experience comes from living in the countries that have suffered the violence of our so-called Christian nation.

He has been to Guatemala, El Salvador, the Occupied Territories, Iraq and many other parts of the world where our investment in war and our training of proxy armies has killed thousands upon thousands of people.

Pat Robertson has been particularly supportive of dictators that the US likes, such as Charles Taylor in Liberia, and Rios Montt in Guatemala. Robertson was also in Nicaragua to support the terrorist Contra army that the US created.

Not surprisingly, the high priests of Christo-fascism, people like Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager and others spend countless hours on this nation's airwaves to rally the troops.

Oftentimes accusing our victims of the sort of terror and plans for world domination that our masters of war have been implementing for generations.

That's one aspect of this pseudo-Christian movement Hedges should've spent more time on, the role of right-wing talk radio to misinform an intellectually vulnerable segment of the US population.

Then again, there are those who simply want to be deceived, since they are the ones who have been pulling the triggers on the Apache attack helicopters and the .50 caliber machine guns.

As Sinclair Lewis said, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross."

It's here.

For some hopeful suggestions as to what to do about it, I read journals like Sojourners, Utne Reader and Yes! magazine, and support progressive media efforts like "Democracy Now!" and "Head on Radio" with Bob Kincaid.

Amazon.com 19 February 2007