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... GLOBAL NEWS ... NEWS CHECHNYA - THE LAST OIL RUSH OF THE 20TH CENTURY by Brian Becker n a book published in 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States national secu- [= adviser, wrote: "For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia. Most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil." Brzezinski's comments are useful to keep in mind when analysing the current conflict rag- ing in Chechnya. This autonomous region, located in southern Russia, is at the pivot of Europe and Asia. Why is the Yeltsin [and now the Putin] regime in Russia carrying out its brutal aerial assault against the separatist rebel movement in Chechnya? Because the Russian Government now fears that the Pentagon and CIA are moving aggressively to grab the former territories of the USSR, especially in the oil-rich Caspian Sea area. This is the same government that has done so much to try to please the United States capitalist estab- lishment since it dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991. Chechnya and Dagestan, where fighting has raged for the last four months, are territo- ries close to the Caspian Sea. The Caspian has vast oil and natural gas deposits. A consortium of 11 oil monopolies from the United States and Europe has gained con- trol of more than 50 per cent of the region's oil since the USSR was dissolved in 1991. The July 6, 1997 Washington Post described this process as the "last great oil rush of the 20th century—targeted at a potential US$4 trillion patch in Central Asia's Caspian Sea". The Yeltsin [now Putin] government in Russia asserts that the United States is stimulat- ing, if not directly supporting, the Islamic separatist movement in Chechnya. "The national interests of the US correspond to a scenario in which an armed conflict is constantly smouldering in the northern Caucasus," Russian Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev said in a recent news conference. A few days later, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Avdeyev said at an international conference organised by the Russian Diplomatic Academy that the country may be heading for a direct conflict with the United States. These were not accidental or isolated comments by Russian officials. The US has a "\..growing readiness to use military force in its direct, most crude form at various lev- els...the [US] operations in Kosovo and Iraq only herald this readiness. We must assume that it may extend to others, including former Soviet territories," said Anatoly Kvashnin, the military head of the General Staff, in a speech to the same conference. THE POLITICS OF AN OIL PIPELINE Before the USSR was dissolved in a US-backed capitalist counter-revolution in 1991, the Caspian Sea was bordered on the east, west and north by the Soviet Union. Now that its former republics are formally independent, five countries border the Caspian. These include Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, as well as Russia and Iran. The United States Government is now attempting to take control over the Caspian Sea oil by transforming the non-Russian former Soviet republics into virtual colonies and grabbing control of the vast oil and gas resources that were once used to fuel socialist construction in the Soviet Union. "The prospects of potentially enormous hydrocarbon reserves is part of the allure of the Caspian region," the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a December 1998 report. "New transportation routes will be necessary to carry Caspian oil and gas to world markets" according to the EIA. Why is a new Caspian oil pipeline necessary? According to the EIA, because "the existing pipelines were designed to link the Soviet Union internally, and were routed through Russia". On November 18, President Bill Clinton and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson met with the presidents of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Tajikstan and Turkey to announce plans to construct a new, US$2.4-billion oil pipeline from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Ceyhan, the Mediterranean port in Turkey. The new pipeline entirely bypasses Russia. It is calculat- ed to turn the Caspian into an "American lake". Throughout the Cold War, United States policymakers insisted that they opposed Soviet socialism because it deprived people of "personal liberty" and "stifled individual initiative in the free market". But now it's easy to see that their hatred of the USSR was based on it having prevented US corporations from exploiting the land and resources of the Soviet Union. (Source: Workers World Newspaper, 9 December 1999, www.workers.org) and Intelligent Systems group. "When people rob banks, they tend to wear motor- bike helmets or some form of disguise," he explains. But you can't disguise your walk without drawing attention to yourself or impeding your escape. (Source: AI in Engineering, vol. 13, p. 359; New Scientist, 4 December 1999) DENTISTRY PROFESSOR'S BACKFLIP ON FLUORIDATION rt Hardy Limeback, DDS, PhD, head of Preventive Dentistry at the University of Toronto and a spokesperson for the Canadian Dental Association for over 12 years, has announced that he no longer sup- ports fluoridation of drinking water. Dr Limeback's opposition to fluoridation came about after he reviewed the scientific literature and concluded that there is very little, if any, dental benefit from swallow- ing fluoride. "In my opinion," he says, there is no question that the risks now far outweigh the benefits." Further, Dr Limeback says that fluoride can adversely affect bones and teeth. "Fluoride accumulates in the bones [and] there hasn't been a single study to show that exposure over a lifetime is safe." (Source: Earth Island Journal, Fall 1999) THE OCEANS ARE LEAKING! Rew: in Japan have calculated that the oceans are leaking water into the Earth's mantle five times as quickly as it is being replenished. Geoscientists believe that a huge reser- voir of water is bound up in minerals in the transition zone between the upper and lower mantles, approx. 400 kilometres (250 miles) below the Earth's surface. Water enters the mantle at subduction zones, where oceanic crustal plates dive under continental plates. It returns to the surface at volcanic hot spots and mid-ocean ridges. However, most researchers have assumed that these flows are roughly in balance. Shigenori Maruyama and colleagues at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have reached a different conclusion. They fig- ure that, each year, around 1.12 billion tonnes of ocean water seeps into the mantle's transition zone, yet they can account for only 0.23 billion tonnes mov- ing in the opposite direction. "The world's oceans will dry up within a billion years," Maruyama speculates. (Sources: New Scientist, 1] September 1999; Daily Mail, London, 9 Sept 1999) NEXUS <9 FEBRUARY — MARCH 2000