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Pipelineistan, Part 1: The Rules of the Game
Friday, January 25, 2002
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online

Image Credit: Asia Times.

As for US corporate-controlled media -- from TV networks to daily newspapers -- they just exercise self-censorship and remain mute about all of these connections.

War against terrorism? Not really. Reminder: it's all about oil.

A quick look at the map is all it takes. It's no coincidence that the map of terror in the Middle East and Central Asia is practically interchangeable with the map of oil. There's Infinite Justice, Enduring Freedom -- and Everlasting Profits to be made: not only by the American industrial-military complex, but especially by American and European oil giants.

Where is the realm these days of former US secretary of state James Baker, former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, former White House chief of staff John Sununu and former defense secretary and current Invisible Man Dick Cheney? They are all happily dreaming of, and working for, the establishment of Pipelineistan.

Pipelineistan is the golden future: a paradise of opportunity in the form of US$5 trillion of oil and gas in the Caspian basin and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. In Washington's global petrostrategy, this is supposed to be the end of America's oil dependence on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). This is of course the heart of the matter in the New Great Game -- compared to which the original 19th-century Great Game between czarist Russia and the British Empire was a childish tin soldier's diversion.
(More: Asia Times Online News Source)
2002 © Asia Times Online Co., Ltd.

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* Pipelineistan, Part 2: The Games Nations Play
Asia Times Online
Saturday, January 26, 2002

Absolute gospel -- for anyone with a mere 2D view of the world.

As feigned ‘public outrage’ continues of the U.S. victory over the Taliban, please expect more of this brand of ‘bandwagon-tripe’.

Dan