Russia and Georgia

An excerpt from Network, written by Paddy Chayefsky:

"You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear! You think you have merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity, it is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples...there are no nations, there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds, there is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and imane interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars! Petrodollars. Electrodollars. Multidollars. Marks. Rheims. Rubbles. Pounds. And sheckles. It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality of life on this planet. That is...the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature! And you will atone! Am I getting through to you Mr Beale?

Then get up on your little 21" screen, and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and du Pont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

What do you think the Russians talk about at their Councils of State? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, mini-max solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.

And our children will live, Mr Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company for whom all men will work to serve a common purpose. In which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided. All anxieties tranquilized. All boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr Beale, to preach this evangel."

LINK: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2008/08/russias-hostile.html

"Russia is, for all intents and purposes, a corporation with the trappings of a nation-state. The core business of the Russian corporation is energy, its production and transport (as a result, Gazprom, Russia's key subsidiary, will likely become the world's most valuable publicly traded corporation, valued at over $1 trillion). Internally, production consolidation has led to the destruction of corporate competitors, to include domestic corporations (Yukos) and foreign partners (most recently BP). Externally, the focus has been on consolidating control over energy transportation (pipelines) and downstream integration (Europe, via soft pressure). Recent actions to control energy transportation include:

Georgia. The construction of the BTC pipeline (1 million barrels a day, currently Azeri and potentially Kazakh oil) that bypassed Russian control led to intentional systems disruption that led to a weeklong energy blackout, support for domestic insurgents, and (most recently) a military invasion."

- John Robb