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Thom fits recent events in Georgia into a historical context and into the competition for oil. This is a very, very serious situation, what's going on in Georgia, and I want to take it, bring it out to the whole great big picture because the media won't do it. The corporate media won't do it. And the Republican Party definitely won't do it and the Democrats probably won't do it because they're all, by and large, to one degree or another, complicit in how this all came about. So let's just kind of play the way back machine here, all the way back to 1860. In 1860, I think it was 1865 or 1867 [1859], the first oil well, Colonel Drake drilled the first oil well in the United States in Titusville, Pennsylvania, the first gusher and thus began the American era of oil. And we had a hell of a lot of oil in the United States. Pennzoil was the Pennsylvania Oil Company.

Georgia Power recently got some good news and bad news as it continues its push for new nuclear reactors in the state. The good news: Neither the Georgia Public Service Commission's public interest staff nor the state's biggest industrial customers oppose the new reactors outright. The bad news: Both the PSC staff and the industrial customers slammed the company's proposal to begin charging for the new reactors five years before they're complete. In filings late last week, the staff said it was recommending approval of the reactors subject to adoption of a number of financial limits.

Water is needed to generate energy. Energy is needed to deliver water. Both resources are limiting the other-and both may be running short. Is there a way out? In June the state of Florida made an unusual announcement: it would sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the corps's plan to reduce water flow from reservoirs in Georgia into the Apalachicola River, which runs through Florida from the Georgia-Alabama border. Florida was concerned that the restricted flow would threaten certain endangered species. Alabama also objected, worried about another species: nuclear power plants, which use enormous quantities of water, usually drawn from rivers and lakes, to cool their big reactors. The reduced flow raised the specter that the Farley Nuclear Plant near Dothan, Ala., would need to shut down.

Washington will seek to boost alliances and offset Russian energy dominance when Vice President Dick Cheney visits Georgia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine next week, a White House official said. In light of rising tensions with Russia over its conflict with Georgia, Cheney's trip is part diplomatic mission, part effort to boost alternate pipeline routes that would reduce Europe's dependence on Russian oil and gas.

As an additional preamble, when I say that the West has no more credibility than Russia on this conflict, it does not mean that Russia has any credibility, or that I love Putin, it means that the West has no credibility whatsoever; when I mock the West's claims about human rights and democracy, it does not mean that I think Russia is a defender of human rights and democracy, just that we have no credibility either on the topic. All of that stated, here are a few facts worth noting about Georgia and the current behavior of its president, Russia, and decision makers in Washington: