Afghanistan and the new great game

15 posts / 0 new

Mon, 2009-08-17 15:26

N.Beltov

The CCPA has a new piece by John Foster about Afghanistan that is very helpful in outlining the various (oil and) gas pipeline interests in and around that country. Very informative. It's not listed as Rabble News (yet) but perhaps it belongs here anyway.

CCPA - Afghanistan and the new great game

Foster has written a number of pieces for the CCPA. Here's a list.

Novosti and/or Russia Today have a number of articles outlining the oil and gas competition from the Russian point of view and are good reading, if the search may take a bit, to round out one's understanding of the political economy in that part of the world.

Mon, 2009-08-17 15:43

Fidel

Quote:
Militarizing energy has a high price in dollars, lives and morality. There are long-term consequences for everyone. Canadian voters want to know: Why is Afghanistan so important?

Good article. Yes, and control of energy pipelines equates to regional political influence. I believe Chossudovsky speculates that the west's goal is to project power and influence in Europe and edge of Eastern Europe by pipeline politics. Apparently our oil barons in the west want to compete with the Russians(again) for supplying(and controlling) Europe and former Soviet Republics. It's all about creating free markets in energy, like NAFTA is partly about the American based fossil fuel companies dictating national energy policy to Ottawa and Canadians. I think we've come to realize that bribes, kick-back, and graft is the real free market way.

Mon, 2009-08-17 15:50

N.Beltov

They really want to keep the Russians, and Iranians, out of major oil and gas trading in their own backyards. It's not just so that Western countries, primarily in NATO, can control key resources but also, and perhaps more importantly, to IMPOVERISH the Russians and Iranians and keep them economically (and politically and militarily) weak. The very idea of preventing the Russians and Iranians from trading with their neighbours is a kind of act of war. Like what the Yanquis are doing to Cuba since the 1960's. It becomes necessary, therefore, to make bogey-men out of both countries to justify this predatory foreign policy.

Mon, 2009-08-17 15:56

Fidel

Exactly. I forgot to mention Iran, too, as I wasnt aware, but the CCPA piece by Foster makes that obvious to me now. Trade as a weapon of medieval siege and economic warfare. They are well versed in economic warfare on Latin America and now expanding the geostrategy Eastward. Mackinder and Brzezinski will never be dead.

Mon, 2009-08-17 19:01

B9sus4

Much more detail on the energy issue in the region can be found in Andrew Gavin Marshall's set of three articles on Chussodovsky's web site. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6976. I found this article very useful but it worried me that he quotes Webster Tarpley in several spots. Tarpley of course is one the LaRouche gang. Their over the top paranoid style of Trot/fascist slander and villification is way too much for me. For example, LaRouche rants and raves that Bertrand Russell was the evilest man in history and further that the source of all vileness in the world comes from.. Venetians! No, not Venusians, ie., people from Venus, but evil oligarchs from Venice who fled the collapse of the Venetian empire and took over England on the sly and now rule the world from hidden recesses of the City of London! Tarpley wrote the Unauthorized Biography of George Bush (ie., the elder).. a bizarre slander fest along the lines of the later antisemitic rants of Eustace Mullins. Nonetheless, Marshall's articles are valuable for historical detail about oil and gas in Eurasia if one can ignore the fact he might possibly be somewhat under the spell of the LaRouchians or perhaps merely somewhat naive as to be quoting one of their ranters in an otherwise factual trio of articles.

Mon, 2009-08-17 19:31

Fidel

Yes, Larouche describes himself as a self-styled Hamiltonian type of capitalist. Neocons have actually funded his political efforts in the past as well as Nader's. They not only vote strategically in the states, they fund the enemy of their enemies political campaigns as well. So Larouche figures out the fascist agenda and rails on neoconsfor being the fascists that they really are. And they smear him in kind with the same label, only they have a lot more money and resources to do a better job on Larouche. It's a madhouse down there, but Tarpley is bang on about the Bush crime family and the warfiteering going on since Mckinley to Samuel Prescott Bush, Prescott Bush, and crazy Georges I & II, and the approximately 8,000 or so military contractors corrupting congress and US Defence Dept officials for a long time.

Tue, 2009-08-18 09:41

B9sus4

Indeed, Webster is right about a lot of things but his connection to LaRouche means a lot of perceptive people (I include myself in that) understand that his contentions are suspect because of the huge amount of insane gibberish that comes along with the intelligent stuff. Right in the middle of an analysis he is apt to go off on a wacky rant about how he is the one who first identified "false flag synthetic terror" and then proceed to ignite massive paranoia about the "next impending terror event" that he keeps predicting. Well, Webster, how come it hasn't happened as predicted? Why, simple: Webster's ranting kept the Venetian conspirators and their US Anglophile stooges from attempting it.

Tue, 2009-08-18 15:09

Fidel

Well tarpley may have coined the term synthetic terror, and he's probably not far from the truth when it comes to US based terrorism. If the west was all that interested in stopping terrorism, there would be Green Berets and SAS storming the beaches of Florida where some number of Latin American dictators and anti-Cuban terrorists on the CIA's payroll were given sanctuary from justice over the years. But it was Swiss historian Daniel Ganser who wrote about NATO's secret armies and false flag terrorism in Europe.

[url=http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9907]The Eurasian Corridor: Pipeline Geopolitics and the New Cold War[/url] Chossudovsky

Fri, 2009-08-21 00:49

Neocynic

Tea Party in Afghanistan

My five-year-old daughter, Paige, had a tea party this morning. At a table outside her playhouse, there sat before tea cups her guests: a stuffed monkey missing an eye, a naked Barbie, an orange Cabbage Patch Doll, and a G.I. Joe; all sitting at attention while Paige prattled on with adult pleasantries and poured imaginary tea. Behind her I watched CNN, and witnessed yet another tea party, the Afghan election, brought to us this morning by the usual suspects: our neocons, militarists, profiteers and political poltroons.

Whereas its charming to watch our children playacting in mimicry of adults and their social foibles; it is beyond despicable to watch adults playacting in Afghanistan in cynical mimicry of some political ideals to hide and divert us from their murder and mayhem, mostly for profit, careers, and dumb dogmatism.

The facts of this "election" betray its pure fantastical, make-believe character. NPR reported fully stuffed ballot boxes in Kabul when the polling stations were barely opened. The NYT characterized the turnout as a "trickle", and almost totally bereft of any females. Typically, in Garmser, a city of 80,000, a grand total of 1,683 men were seen to cast votes. Election observers in Khadahar, the location of biggest NATO military installation outside Europe, reported constant rocket attacks.

What a pity that our soldiers have died in support of this delusional tea party. What a disgrace that it is allowed to continue, for the tea we Canadians are now asked to sip in support of this war is the blood of innocent Afgahns, sweetened with the tears of the bereaved on both sides of the world, and made creamy with our profits to be earned, careers to be made, and vile dogma to be served.

Fri, 2009-08-21 09:33

#10

NDPP

Well said. Where is our peace movement?

Fri, 2009-08-21 14:28

#11

N.Beltov

Even assuming Karzai "wins" the election he will still not be President of Afghanistan. B-52 is President of Afghanistan.

Tue, 2009-08-25 09:49

#12

B9sus4

Andrew Gavin Marshall in one of his Empire articles on globalresearch.ca said an interesting thing: the point for the imperialists has always been to stem the flow of oil and gas from the potentially huge source(s) in Eurasia. Throttle the flow to increase the price. Thus the vicious, destructive wars in iraq and Afghanistan are not, as they seem, acquisitive adventures that have gone wrong, but on the contrary, have been devised by the ruling class (ie., far above the political class) to ruin the region and ensure that the product(s) stay in the ground until they have use for it at the high price they want to impose on Europe, India, and China.

Tue, 2009-08-25 12:45

#13

N.Beltov

Keeping a resource in the ground is, in my experience, the approach taken by those wish to manage it more wisely than the usual, rapacious approach characteristic of big business. Furthermore, the Saudis, for example, have, on plenty of occassions, reduced the flow of oil in an effort to affect the global price. But just leaving it in the ground? That would be "not exploiting" the resource.

No, political and/or geopolitical dominance of a region including dominance over access and control of resources COMBINED with economic dominance over your rivals or potential rivals - that's what it's about. Impoverish your "enemies" and keep them under your boot ... forever. That's the (Orwellian) utopia of monopoly capitalism and provides an excellent thumbnail version of capitalism's utter spiritual impoverishment and imaginative illiteracy. Hoo-rah!

Wed, 2009-11-25 01:27

#14

NDPP

Former Soviet States: Battleground for Global Domination

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16243

"As the United States escalates its joint war with NATO in Afghanistan and across the Pakistani border, expands military deployments and exercises throughout Africa under the new AFRICOM, and prepares to dispatch troops to newly acquired bases in Colombia as the spearhead for further penetration of that continent, it is simultaneously targeting Eurasia, and the heart of that vast land mass, the countries of the former Soviet Union.."

Thu, 2010-02-11 15:04

#15

NDPP

Eurasia's Energy Wars: The US, China and Muslims in Pipelinestan

http://canada.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/71449

"IPI and TAPI are then duelling pipelines mapping 2 global geographies..."

This is an excellent treatment of the geopolitics involved