Recently, Gene shared with me a weekly newsletter from our congressional representative, Ron Paul.  (The prospect of reading more political-speak almost proved prohibitive, but not entirely.)  His newsletter was entitled,  "Prediction for an Unwritten Future."  And his observations, given the current nature of global and domestic policy, sound both realistic and unsettling.

You may read the newsletter here: http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2002/tst042902.htm

For those of you with draft-age children, the prospect of a reinstatement of the draft appears to loom in the not distant offing, as we do not appear to have the enlisted military in numbers sufficient to supply our proposed international actions.   Perhaps the prospect of the draft will suffice to scare some of us from our patriotic slumber.

Perhaps the prospect of World War III may stir up the rest of you.

Is it possible that the very people who are hard at work declaring war on everyone holed up near a viable oil supply, could just be interested in securing that oil supply for themselves and their posterity?

I can show you some of  an overwhelming abundance of evidence to support what must sound like an outlandish intimation, beginning with proposed maps of the hotly contested Asian Pipeline, courtesy of The Albion Monitor, and The Asia Times.

I found this article to be a credible, well researched proposal concerning what may well be the incentive behind current foreign policy.  Part 2 of the article may be found at:

Could our own sons and daughters fighting in Afghanistan possibly be unwittingly protecting major oil company investments for such as Enron?

Six US oil giants, alone -- Unocal, Total, Chevron/Texaco, Pennzoil, Amoco and Exxon -- have invested heavily in the massive oil field potential in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The region's untapped oil reserves are estimated to be worth up to $2,000 billion.

Federal Election Commission records show that Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay donated more than $350,000 directly to Bush
campaigns since 1997.  (You may vaguely remember Enron, the biggest single contributor to the Bush-Cheney campaign of 2000...Find out who gave $ to whom, HERE).  In fact,  Enron proved to be the largest single financial contributor to the Republican party. Mr. Lay himself gave another $100,000 to Republican candidates and fundraising committees.  In addition, Enron Corporation, including employees, also donated $1.5 million in soft money to Bush and Republican committees. FYI, Lay and his wife donated $10,000 to the "Florida Recount Fund," and another $100,000 to the "Presidential Inaugural Fund."  And as one of GW's fundraising "Pioneers," Lay helped raise more than $100,000 for Bush's campaign for president.

Well, Enron also conducted the feasibility study for the US $2.5 billion trans-Caspian gas pipeline built under a joint venture agreement signed in February 1999 between Turkmenistan, Bechtel and General Electric Capital Services.

One serious drawback, however, the participating major oil companies have faced to date is getting all the goods to market.http://www.time.com/time/magazine/1998/int/980629/cover_story.caspian_blac7.html.

Afghanistan is the only Central Asian country with very little oil supplies of their own, and appears, by far, to be the best route to transport the oil. Provided Afghanistan's government---whatever that is---will comply.

See:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,579401,00.html

An array of former cabinet members from the Bush Sr. administration have been actively involved in negotiations on behalf of major oil interests with peripheral Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan for some time.[1]  These include former secretary of state James Baker, former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, former chief of staff, John Sununu---and Dick Cheney, former secretary of defense, now Vice President.

Cheney was instrumental in negotiating a Caspian Sea pipeline for Chevron----in fact, I suggest looking into Chevron's many profitable roles in all pipelines around the globe, both realized and proposed.

And just look at: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2001/11/26/daily17.html .  While the rest of the world was recoiling in fear, horror, and grief at the events of 9-11, ChevronTexaco was busy celebrating the opening of the Caspian Pipeline!  Chevron, the largest oil company member of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, holds a 55 percent ownership interest with the Republic of Kazakhstan in Tengizchevroil. (The 40-year, $20 billion joint-venture company was formed in 1993 to develop the Tengiz field, one of the world’s largest oil fields with 6 to 9 billion barrels of recoverable oil. British-owned BP is also a partner)

Condaleezza Rice herself worked as a director for Chevron Oil, now ChevronTexaco, for ten years from 1991 until her presidential appointment in 2001, her work having been so impressive as to inspire a Chevron Oil tanker named in her honor.[2]  And Commerce Secretary Donald Evans is a former chairman of Tom Brown Inc, a Denver-based oil and gas company, while Under Secretary of  Commerce nominee Kathleen Cooper is currently (as of 4/1) chief economist at ExxonMobil.

In 1994, Dick Cheney, then CEO of Halliburton (Lawrence Eagleburger, a seasoned Bush counselor who held top State Department posts under Bush Sr., is a director of Halliburton Corporation), a multi-billion dollar corporation and the world's largest oil field services company holding contracts with oil supercorporations, including Chevron, helped to broker a deal between ChevronTexaco and the state of Kazakhstan when he sat on this country's Oil Advisory Board. (Cheney received $34milllion when he cashed out of Halliburton to run for Vice President). In November 2001, Halliburton was awarded a $140 million contract to develop an oil field for Saudi oil corporation, Aramco. Halliburton's global network of investments includes projects in politically volatile areas including the Caspian Sea region.  The Caspian crude oil pipeline is a 900-mile project stretching from western Kazakhstan to the Black Sea that  will primarily benefit Chevron by connecting the Tengiz oil field to the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk in Russia.

In an article found in TruthinMedia.org, dated June 30, 2001, it is stated that,

"The US based AMBO pipeline consortium is directly linked to the seat of political and military power in the United States and Vice President Dick Cheney's firm Halliburton Energy. "Also, "the feasibility study for AMBO's Trans-Balkan Oil Pipeline, conducted by the international engineering company of Brown & Root Ltd. [Halliburton's British subsidiary] has determined [conducted feasibility studies for Haliburton] that this pipeline…will become a part of the region's critical East-West corridor infrastructure which includes highway, railway, gas and fiber optic  telecommunications lines. " (An archived article there from November 1998, details the Asian/Caspian plans).

Let's look at some other recent oil company contribution totals made just to the Republican Party:
(Source : Center for Responsive Politics, Washington, DC):

Unocal =              $43k
Carlyle Group =  $109k
Marathon Oil =   $162k
Amerada Hess = $165k
SAIC =                $313k (another defense contractor like Carlyle)
Texaco =              $353k
TRW =                 $379k
Halliburton =        $384k
Chevron =            $770k

Note Table 4 near bottom of table at "South Pipeline (Central Asian)" at the following Department of Energy* web site (data as of February 2002):  http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/caspgrph.html

In a hauntingly prophetic article written in September 2000 for Corporate Watch Magazine, [3], we read:

"Enron and its executives are also the single largest contributors ($550,000
 and counting) to the political ambitions of Texas Governor George W. Bush, Republican
 candidate for President of the United States. Kenneth Lay, the chief executive of Enron, has
 personally given at least $250,000 in soft money to Bush's political campaigns. He is also one of
 the 'Pioneers'--a Bush supporter who has collected $100,000 in direct contributions of $1,000
 or less.

 What is Enron? And what does it get in return for this largesse?

 Enron is the largest buyer and seller of natural gas in the country. Its 1999 revenues of $40
 billion make it the eighteenth largest company in the United States. Enron invests in energy
 projects in countries around the world, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, China, India,
 Indonesia, Mozambique, and the Philippines.

 The company has recently expanded onto the Internet, buying and selling a dizzying array of
 products ranging from pulp and paper to petrochemicals and plastics, as well as esoteric
 products like clean air credits that utilities purchase to meet emission limits.

 Texas activists say that the tight connection between Bush and Lay bodes ill if Bush is elected.
 Andrew Wheat, from Texans for Public Justice, a campaign finance advocacy group in Austin,
 compares the symbiotic relationship between Enron and the governor to 'cogeneration'--a
 process used by utilities to harness waste heat vented by their generators to produce more
 power. 'In a more sinister form of cogeneration, corporations are converting economic into
 political power,' he says. 'A Bush election fueled by Enron dollars could ignite in the public
 policy arena, and consumers would get burned.'

 And so may people in the Third World."
 

Did you know that the Bush family and, until recently, the Bin Laden family, made money every time the Carlyle Group
 secures a defense contract?

Don't believe me----read about it yourself from one of our most trustworthy governmental watchdogs, Judicial Watch, here:

War is indeed profitable!

According to a December 2001 newsletter of Waltham Greens-----Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer, & Feld, a huge law firm with offices in Washington, D.C., Texas, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has many partners who are very close friends with George Bush Junior, and represents wealthy Saudi businessmen and an Islamic charity, Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, based in Texas, whose assets were frozen last week for ties to Hamas, a militant Palestinian terrorist group.
Akin, Gump, etc., also represents many Saudi elite recently linked to bin Laden, including Idris, owner of the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant destroyed by U.S. cruise missiles in 1998 in retaliation for the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzanian, presumed to have been ordered by bin Laden. The U.S. Treasury Department tried to freeze Idris' $24mil assets, but Akin, Gump sued the U.S. for $50mil, so the assets were not frozen. [4]

Did you know that the commercial media knows all of this, but has been ineffective in its coverage.

In much the same way that the President tied the hands of the FBI, shortly before 9-11, by reissuing Clinton's Executive Order  (W)199-EYE-WF-213589.......ordering the FBI not to touch Arabs, any members of the Saudi Royal family or Iraqi Republican Guard, and further, to purge from FBI and airport computers all the names of any middle eastern types brought over here to be trained in in the US, at our military bases and at our own expense, and taught to fly airliners at our own flight schools, the media at large has been discouraged from publicly examining the data.

Former Deputy Director of the FBI, John O'Neill [5], famed for his personal perseverance against terrorism, resigned his position at the FBI on account of the issuance of EO# 199-EYE, and at his and his department's own hands having been tied by it.  He was offered a new job as head of security at the WTC (which alleged to pay $300, 000 more than his FBI salary), and barely two months after the execution of order # 199-EYE, he died on his first day of work at the WTC, on September 11, 2001.[6]

Coincidence?  I can't even go there.....

Supporting data exists for all of the above, a preponderance of it, and it is available via highly credible national and international newspapers, television, and radio broadcasts.  You can go to your local libraries and also utilize the internet.

Let's pull our heads out of the sand, America.  Look carefully at those plastic flags you have taped to your car antennae they read, "Made in China?"   Why do you think our economy now sucks?  Where are those factories for such major companies (like Dell, Wal-Mart) located now?   Who is that un-employing?   Who is NAFTA benefiting?

If war is indeed profitable for the economy, who is it that is currently benefiting, since our economy sucks? (see Carlyle Group)  Why am I surprised that the bombings in Afghanistan have not been logistically straightened so as to save millions of US dollars on digging trenches?

In Part 2 of this editorial section of my web site, I wrote about how the USA Patriot Bill had been hastily signed under duress with few knowing the content of this 342 page, 1000+ section document, especially the congressmen who signed it.
Now, under that USA Patriot Bill -HR3162 with its broad definition of "terrorist", even I could be deemed a terrorist for just expressing my feelings here, publicly. [7]

Free thought is henceforth discouraged.  Free speech is henceforth punishable by law.

Read The Patriot Bill for yourself and make up your own mind. Just type in HR 3162 at the following Library of Congress web site: (http://thomas.loc.gov)

What we don't know can hurt us.  And, our ability to review all documents and presidential activities, under the Freedom of Information Act, is rapidly disappearing-----that ability, under the Freedom of Information Act has been permanently prohibited by  President Bush in November 2001, subsequent to the Patriot Bill -- in an additional executive order EO#13233, which prevents even the records of his staff members and family from EVER coming under public scrutiny, or any future president from reversing his order.

Now, what do you think it is that everyone connected to the oval office is apparently trying to prevent the world from finding out?

If we cannot review our own government's action under privilege of the Freedom of Information Act,  how will this impact the status of our democratic republic?

If our elected officials are no longer reviewable/answerable/accountable to us, what kind of government do we truly have?