May 30, 2002 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (APJP) -- Here in Occupied America, one often feels as if 90% of the real news is either buried in Page Z36 of the Business section of the papers, or is so hot that the Powers-That-Be won't even let it into the country, even with the lede buried down to Marianas-Trench-level. (Speaking of which: Check out this story by Nicholas Kristof, wherein he's forced to bury some truly earthshaking statements -- namely, that the government knows who the anthrax letter mailer is, and that he works in a government lab -- deep within his New York Times article.)

For example: did you know that there's going to be a multi-billion-dollar oil pipeline running through Afghanistan -- and that US corporations such as Unocal are going to build it and own it? Not if you only consume US media; you have to go to the BBC for this story!

Speaking of oil and Afghanistan, here's a Halliburton connection, something you won't be seeing Tom Brokaw or Candy Crowley mentioning anytime soon:

Employees of Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton Corporation of Dallas, Texas, are set to arrive at the Bagram airbase in southern Afghanistan in late April or early May 2002 (the exact date is classified) to take over the support services a Force Provider camp. They are also scheduled to arrive at the Khanabad airbase in Uzbekistan, one of the main military support stations for the war in Afghanistan, to run three Air Force Harvest Eagle camps (an earlier version of Force Provider) for the 1,500 U.S troops based there.

Meanwhile, according to New York Times reporters Alex Berenson and Lowell Bergman, Cheney's tenure at Halliburton featured his instituting some rather Enron-like accounting practices (see Mac MacArthur's excellent 05/29/02 story for more on this). However, you won't find this story on American TV, or even in any other American paper. The only other people to pick up on what by rights should be one of the hottest stories in the US are, of course, the fine folks at the British Broadcasting Corporation!

Unocal? You'd better, and soon -- because it's helping to dictate what Cheney and Trifecta Boy are doing. And the best way to do that is to watch what the UK papers are saying about it.