BYRNE: REAL FREEDOM- ESCAPE FROM OIL.
Byrne and Brian Eno’s newest creation has been on repeat in my car for the last ten days. It is transcendent. I could hear some similarities between the music (all the music was written exclusively by Eno) on this album and that of Coldplay’s Eno-produced Viva La Vida. Echo-laden acoustic guitar tracks and metronome-electronic percussion are prominently featured in both.
Anyway, I read Byrne’s blog with regularity. He is one of my heros. A strange weirdo that captures with brevity something new and intensely important each time he makes his art public. I thought his views on Georgia were particularly interesting. Any thoughts on this anyone?
“The current conflict in Georgia may be about pride, psychology and influence, but it’s also about oil.
Russia has huge oil and natural gas reserves, and in recent years, it has become evident that these resources will launch Russia as a world power. Europe, to country’s west, has no oil of its own, and neither does China to the east. Exporting this black gold requires passage through pipelines in contentious territory. Georgia is one such territory, advantageous for its strategic port, which Russia lacks. It’s therefore inconceivable that Russia would ever allow its oil lifeline to be seized or controlled by a nation unwilling to perform its bidding. In the Russian point of view, a NATO country controlling its artery would be mad.
So of course when, at the urging of the Bush administration, the nutso Georgian president decides to posture for NATO membership and US supplied weapons and uses a breakaway region as a pretext for action, well, the Russians reacted as one might expect them to. Imagine if China decided to seize control of the region where the Alaska pipeline (or better yet, Saudi oil) reaches a port. The result? Instant conflict.
There’s no arguing or reasoning with people’s whose lifelines are threatened. To escape oil is freedom.” - DB
