Its Oil Again Stupid
By David Truskoff
12 August,
2008
Countercurrents.org
Old timers in Russia are still arguing about whether Michael Gorbachev was the most naive of all Communists politicians, stupid, or just a plain traitor. Gorbachev defenders claim that he was none of those, but he simply and sincerely thought that perestroika, could strengthen the Soviet Union. What he did was destroy the balance of power. That is what Putin meant at his State of the Union speech on April 25, 2005, in which he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." That has proven to be the truth.
The fact is Gorbachev is the one man most responsible for the violence over the last decade in the Balkans. From the outrageous bombing with uranium tipped bombs and child killing cluster bombs that demolished Yugoslavia to the present interference by the United States and Israel in Georgia.
Gorbachev had the world in his hands, but he made blunder after blunder freeing the empire builders to subjugate millions of people.
Speaking at the United Nations in December 1988, Gorbachev renounced the use of force in foreign policy. It was almost laughable. Was he speaking to the president of the United States? GH Bush who at that time said he would modernize America's land-based missiles to make them less vulnerable to a first strike. He favors the Pentagon's way of doing this-putting MX missiles on railways-but wants to keep the option of the Midgetman, a single-warhead missile with a launcher movable by road."
Was he speaking to President, Ronald Reagan who ordered an invasion of Grenada for the reason that is still a mystery? Gorbachev opened the gates to the empire builders. The violence in Georgia is just one result.
Lieutenant Colonel John Dorrian, a spokesman for the US European Command said, "We have upwards of 100 military trainers who are in Georgia now. We've been able to account for all of them. They are not involved in the hostilities."
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said there were no plans to redeploy the estimated 130 US troops and civilian contractors, who he said were stationed in the area around Tblisi. The question is why are they there?
For the first time the world is learning of Israelis’ involvement in Georgia. Including the sale of Advanced weapons to Georgia and the training of the Georgian army's infantry forces. I wonder who paid for that?
OK so what is the military action really about?
Peter Symonds reported in the World Socialist Web 31 May 2005
"Last week’s ceremony in the Central Asian republic of Azerbaijan to open the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline received scant coverage in the international press. Nevertheless the completion of the US-backed pipeline, which has taken a decade to construct, will inevitably accelerate the scramble for oil and gas in the Caspian Basin region and heighten the potential for conflict among rival major powers.
From the outset, planning for the oil pipeline was guided not by immediate economic considerations but long-term US strategic goals. Since the early 1990s, Washington has been determined to exploit the unprecedented opportunity opened up by the collapse of the Soviet Union to establish its hegemony in the key resource-rich region of Central Asia.
The 1,770 km pipeline, simply known by the acronym BTC, is one of the world’s longest and cost $4 billion to build. It snakes its way from the Sangachal oil and gas terminal south of the Azeri capital of Baku on the Caspian Sea through neighboring Georgia and some of the most mountainous regions of the Caucasus to finally reach the Turkish port of Ceylon on the Mediterranean.
As far as Washington was concerned, the chief consideration in plotting
this tortuous path was to undercut the existing pipeline system in
Russia and to avoid Iran, which offers the shortest and cheapest pipeline
route from landlocked Central Asia to a coastline. The US has maintained
an economic blockade of Iran since 1979."
The entire area is a tinderbox. Remember On June 28, 1914, at approximately 11:15 am, Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed in Sarajevo, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, It was the infamous shot heard around the world and supposedly started world war one.
A new confrontation between the two old cold war nations could be great for arms manufacturers and the neocans in America who may have a new way of frightening Americans to vote for their party.
History has taught us that empires built with military might soon deteriorate from within, but much bloodshed occurs before the death rattle.
