"I don't think a jackal like Cheney is capable of recognizing hypocrisy."

i just got around to reading mark ames alternet article on cheney and his brazen oil-grab in the former soviet republics after flatly dissing putin and lighting the fuse for yet another cold war... it's long but it's very good... here are the closing paragraphs...

Putin, now completely and forever disabused of any illusions that he would ever be anything to Bush and Cheney but an obstacle standing between Siberian oil wells and Houston oil oligarch bank accounts, has seen his country become wealthier and bolder. He's fighting back, not just in Russia and its neighbors, but also for example by selling weapons to Venezuela and nuclear plants to Iran. Cheney lost out in his bid to secure Russia's oil, but the Caspian oil is still being fought over, especially as Kazakhstan hasn't started pumping yet most of its upcoming oil streams.

That's what this Cold War hype is about and the bleating about democracy, and the seemingly clumsy display of hypocrisy. It's not a Cold War, it's an oil grab gone bad.

I don't think a jackal like Cheney is capable of recognizing hypocrisy. I think he meant everything he said, with a straight face, and that he saw it as both rationally and morally right to chastise Russia's record on democracy while praising Kazakhstan's and Azerbaijan's in the same trip.

Democracy isn't about voting. It's about serving America's interests.

And serving America's interests is more tightly defined a serving the interests of the oil oligarchs in Houston, where Cheney spent the previous 10 years. In fact, it's even more simple than that. It's personal. America's interests are Cheney's interests. Il est l'etat. In that sense, Putin is indeed a genuine menace.

And that's what makes this Cold War so different: Whereas the last one was a mortal struggle over two different systems, this is a struggle between two short, balding, bloodless men, and the oil -- other people's oil -- that made them as powerful as they are today.

i have to express my appreciation for ames' use of the term "oligarchs..." having just returned from an area of the world that has experienced intense power and money grabs by former communists-turned-oligarchs, turning u.s. mandated privatization schemes to their own huge advantage, it's nice to see someone who is unafraid to apply the same description to our own u.s. slavemasters...

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