Oil be seeing you

Couldn't help but be fascinated by this story, some of which I heard on Five Live this evening on the way home. While the US were issuing press statements asking for restraint and blaming "extremists" and muslim "terrorist groups", a sequence of guests on the Drive show told Peter Allen that (a) it wasn't about Islam; that (b) it wasn't really about democracy as such; (c) that the people released from prison were really just businessmen who'd been trying to gain some economic freedom from a repressive regime; (d) that the repressive regime had been in place for years and that it was being propped up by enormous amounts of US money; (e) that there are oil reserves in Uzbekistan; (f) that the former British ambassador had resigned his post because of the lies he was being asked to support, and that he had investigated unexplained deaths in custody and found evidence of torture - including one guy who was boiled to death.

Still, the Americans were releasing statements talking about Muslim extremists.

We know we've been lied to, but I have never heard those lies being uncovered and revealed so blatantly on live radio before.

Fantastic.

To summarise:

Afghanistan: oil pipeline
Iraq: oil reserves
Uzbekistan: oil reserves.

The frightening thing here is that this naked and rampant pillaging of oil is serious and ongoing. These people aren't playing games, and they will not let up. And they obviously don't care any more about being consistent or even remotely truthful.

As the oil runs out, these wars for the final reserves will get more and more vicious. Who'd a thunk it? The world is full of people willing to die for ideas, and yet WWIII is being fought over people's right to choke the planet with SUVs and buy chinese microphones and guitars for peanuts.