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May 21, 2002
George Monbiot
Riddle
of the Spores:
The FBI and Anthrax
Yulie Khromchenko
Displaced Reality:
Impressions from Jenin
Bernard Weiner
Kenny
Boy to Bush:
"Welcome to the Club"
Ron Jacobs
Confusing the Face
of the Enemy
Gary Leupp
"War
on Terrorism" in Yemen
May 20, 2002
Rep. Ron Paul
Say No to Military Draft
Dave Marsh
Music Monopolies
Jordy Cummings
Israel, Jews and the Left
Francis Boyle
In Defense
of a Divestment
Campaign Against Israel
Christian Salmon
The Bulldozer War
Edward Said
Crisis for
American Jews
May 19, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Where's Twain's Protector Government
Now?
Norman Madarasz
Canada,
NAFTA and Kyoto
May 18, 2002
M.G. Piety
Economic Fiction:
From Here to Annuity?
Michael Colby
Bush Fiddled
While
New York Burned
May 17, 2002
Wayne Madsen
Fox News Flashback:
Defending McKinney
James T. Phillips
Ceasefires
and Terrorists
Phillipe Dambournet
The Truth at Last:
Bush as the Energizer Bunny
Lori Berenson
In Defense
of Political Prisoners
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Terrorist Warnings
Hussein Ibish
Clarifying
the Obstacles
to Peace in Palestine
Alexander Cockburn
Israel and "Anti-Semitism"
May 16, 2002
Marylin Robinson
A Garden
in Tent City, But Where Do You Bathe?
Paul de Rooij
Worse than CNN?
The BBC and Israel
David Krieger
The Bush/Putin
Agreement:
Nuclear Dangers Remain
Steve Perry
Unsafe at Any Speed:
Youth, Sex and the Heresies
of Judith Levine
May 15, 2002
Ahmad Faruqui
Revisiting
Camp David
Rick Giombetti
Spiderman v. Pentagon:
Working Class Hero Battles Corrupt Defense Contractors
Stanton / Madsen
When the
War Hits Home:
Planning for Martial Law, Telegovernance and Suspension of Elections
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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May
22, 2002
BETE
NOIRE
by Gavin
Keeney
Image--Henry Fuseli, "The Nightmare" (1781-82)
All-Purpose Disclaimer: The following is a bad dream--the result of
a feverish brain and hyper-imagination. It bears no resemblance
whatsoever to reality as we know it and readers are advised to
wear protective clothing before wading into this toxic picture
of things to come.
THE GREAT GAME (AGAIN)
"Caspian Sea--Pronounced As: kaspn, Lat. Mare
Caspium or Mare Hyrcanium, salt lake, c.144,000 sq
mi (373,000 sq km), between Europe and Asia; the largest lake
in the world. It is bordered on the northeast by Kazakhstan,
on the southeast by Turkmenistan, on the south by Iran, on the
southwest by Azerbaijan, and on the northwest by Russia."
(Infonautics)
The ongoing U.S. destruction of Afghanistan is
about 'space'--geo-physical and geo-political space--i.e., land
mass and land surface. To be exact, it is about the Central Asian
oil and gas fields that have remained underplayed since the collapse
of the Soviet Union and the inability of the players to find
a suitable overland route to deep water ports. It's about pipelines.
The former oilman now court appointed Chief Executive (George
Bush), the former executive of Halliburton cum Vice President
(Richard Cheney), and the current executive secretary or amanuensis
for Smart Toyz R Us (Donald Rumsfeld) know which side their bread
is buttered on--it's the Central Asian side. From Uzbekistan
to Pakistan represents--after all is said and destroyed--a lucrative
oil and natural gas transmission corridor. To the north and to
the south of the former Afghanistan are the world's oiliest despots
waiting for a slice of the sludge. Why else would they acquiesce
to the liquidation of an entire country?
In this nightmare scenario the neanderthalish non-person pulling
the strings--the master puppetmaster--is Nobody, the Grand Vizier
of Greed, and the shadow (evil twin) of Everybody (formerly Everyman).
Most grand conspiracies transcend mere individuals and reside
in the plutosphere (underworld), the shadowy realm of faceless
automatons, or the velvet netherzone where the day-to-day machinations
of the plutocracy are crafted. This region is inside our
heads, close to the reptilian core of things--a prehistoric relic
where the Manichaean essence of the struggle for the upper hand
originates.
The American public and our so-called Allies have been played
for patsies (dupes) by the Bush League. And no doubt, after the
2004 defeat of the President (by almost anyone), the new global
corporation established to 'handle' the opening of the oil fields
under the Caspian Sea will have a name not unlike 'The Bush League'.
Defeated in 2004? Of course. That is the plan. Why choose an
enfeebled Vice President if you plan to run on and on? Why not
get out after having bilked the American public and bankrupted
the country for your own personal gain? Why settle for a paltry
salary when you can sit at the top of an international cabal
of oil speculators a la Enron? Oh ... Was the collapse of Enron
a surprise to the Bush League? No. It too is part of the plan.
So, what is the plan? After the liquidation of Afghanistan (and
after the Russians have been pacified) an oil deal will be cut
with the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, a route will
be rammed through Afghanistan and Pakistan--with the blessing
of whatever corrupt potentates are nominally the heads of the
countries' armed forces cum police--and the game will shift to
Iraq. If Iraq cannot be 'turned', it can be 'destroyed'. Take
out the Iraqi oil fields and the Caspian Sea fields' stock rises.
Capture and put the Iraqi oil fields back on line and milk the
production for a percentage and it's a win/win situation.
There are only a few companies in the world that can produce
the infrastructural and logistical-financial services required
to launch or relaunch oil production. Bechtel is one (but that's
Bush pere's generation), so is Halliburton (just now engaged
in an Enron-like downward spiral brought on by a spate of asbestos
lawsuits)--the provisional 'Bush League' is another (this is
the hybrid Bush I and Bush II juggernaut, or the passing of the
baton), especially after buying up select pieces of Enron at
fire sale prices.
That Enron was mostly an energy futures trading pyramid scheme
does not matter much. It had tentacles in virtually every sector
of the 'energy' underworld. Those detached tentacles will squirm
about on the ground until bought up by squadrons of lawyers on
behalf of unknown benefactors. Boxed and shipped to Texas those
same tentacle fragments will be nurtured back to full health--full
octopus status--through a special neo-clonal parthenogenetic
therapy similar to the one used by advocates of human cloning
and banned by Bush (i.e., bathed in billions of dollars liberated
from the U.S. Treasury and laundered through tax cuts and breaks
for the uber-rich and their off-shore piggy banks--the uber-leveraged
multinational corporations). The new octopussies will be sent
round the world and lo! the new Bush League will be hatched--er--will
bloom.
OUTTAKES
Caspian
Sea Oil
Afghanistan--"Afghanistan's significance from an energy
standpoint stems from its geographical position as a potential
transit route for oil and natural gas exports from Central Asia
to the Arabian Sea. This potential includes the possible construction
of oil and natural gas export pipelines through Afghanistan,
which was under serious consideration in the mid-1990s. The idea
has since been undermined by Afghanistan's instability. Since
1996, most of Afghanistan has been controlled by the Taliban
movement, which the United States does not recognize as the government
of Afghanistan." (Energy Information Administration)
Enron
& Bush (Common Dreams)
Enron,
Enron & Enron (The Nation)
Enron
at the Whitehouse (CounterPunch)
Enron Commercials
(Rtmark)
Bush,
Enron, and Etc (BBC World Service)
Enron
Liabilities (BBC World Service)
*Work
at Enron--Advertising Risk Management--Bandwidth--Broadband
Services--Coal--Credit Risk Management--Crude Oil Products--Emission
Allowances--Energy Management--Energy Asset Management--Enron
Intelligent Network--Facility Management--Fertilizers--Forest
Products--Freight--Media Risk Management--Metals (also see Steel)--Natural
Gas (Transactions, Transportation, Retail Sales, Storage, Upstream
Services)--Lumber--Oil & LNG Transportation--Petrochemicals--Plastics--Power
(Generation, Retail Sales, Transactions)--Principal Investments--Pulp
& Paper--Risk Management for Commodities (Retail Commodities,
Wholesale Commodities)--Semiconductors--Steel--Streaming Media--Voice
Minutes--Water & Wastewater--Weather Risk Management--Wind
Energy
"Enron is An
Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer"
Gavin Keeney is a landscape architect and
editor of Serious
/ Real, the anti-journal.
He can be reached at:
ateliermp@netscape.net
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