As much as the Vietnam War was won by Hollywood, Iraq will eventually be cloned by Disney as a theme park - complete with a Mainstream Green Zone, the Sunni Triangle megamall, Adventureland jihad rides, spot-the-IED fun and games, fake Kalashnikov target practice in Frontierland, a multi-season Survivor pitting Sunnis against Shi'ites, a multi-season Jihadi Bachelor, a multi-season Desperate Ba'athist Wives and a monster kebab food court. (p 131)

Well, okay - that's Escobar taking a rare time out from this very comprehensive analysis of the entire planet Earth, or "a warped geopolitical travel book" as he calls it, and indulging in a bit of dark humor. But it turns out it really was about oil, all along.

But not only in Iraq, and not only oil. Using the palette of his own Roving Eye observations and those of others liberally quoted (including, of course, Monty Python), Escobar paints a terrifying picture of the world he calls Globalistan, a world driven by greed for energy and by the means to monopolize its acquisition, its production, and its transportation ("Pipelineistan"), and to keep the Other (other nations, "terrorists" and above all the burgeoning billions of dispossessed in Slumistan) from having enough of it. Or of anything else, for that matter.

What we have here is Liquid War. This, we learn in the Introduction, is the name of a video game, but in the book its use is based more upon Polish-born sociologist Zygmunt Bauman's concept of "liquid modernity". It is a war that is always in flux, even changing its name to suit the circumstances or - more often - the needs of the spinmeisters (as in the "war on terror", which can also be World War IV, or the Long War).

Voracious readers of Asia Times Online won't find all that much new in Globalistan. Various ATol contributors, as well as Escobar himself, have written much on the subjects that make up this volume. Several of them, including Syed Saleem Shahzad, Henry C K Liu, F William Engdahl and others are cited therein. What makes the book valuable - and fascinating - is the way it ties so many apparently disparate threads of 21st-century geopolitics into a single tapestry. These disparate threads are the "stans" that compose this bizarre atlas - Corporatistan, Jihadistan, Talibanistan, of course Americastan, even Osamastan and many others, transported and intermixed by Pipelineistan and overseen by the mother - or rather the unruly daughter - of all "stans", Globalistan itself.

Probably the most important chapter in the book is "Pipelineistan", which describes in intricate detail the complexities and the politics of the transport system for oil and gas. Intrigue, regional, ethnic and religious rivalry, economic ideology, the challenges of geography - all that and more are in the mix. Much has been written elsewhere about exploring for oil (and gas), extracting oil, fighting over oil, and yes, transporting oil in gigantic tankers, but the lowly pipeline - itself a multibillion-dollar business - is crucial to all of this. For example, everyone knows that Iran ships oil through the Persian Gulf; far less has been written about the complicated deals Iran has with the Central Asian republics to import their oil and export Iranian oil in a swap arrangement.

It's all here, as is analysis of how Pipelineistan affects - and is affected by - the politics not only of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and the Persian Gulf states but of the Central Asian dictatorships, the vast nation of Putinistan, the rising Asian giant Chindia, and even South America - now noticed even by the lethargic US media because of the antics of Hugo Chavez, yet we learn here that Bolivarian Pipelineistan extends far beyond Venezuela, under whose startlingly beautiful Orinoco rainforest lie petroleum riches that might make even the Arab oil sheikdoms envious.

Chavez, unlike nearly every other world leader mentioned in this book, comes off as a hero; this is probably not surprising given Escobar's South American roots and the fact that Chavez' policies and style are, for the moment, utterly pro-people, anti-establishment and in-your-face. Still, Escobar's nearly unbridled praise for this man who (after the book went to press) gave himself temporary (we are told) power to rule by decree seems a bit over the top. For everyone else, especially those at or formerly at (eg the "murderously incompetent" Donald Rumsfeld) the top echelons of the George W Bush administration, there is nary a gentle word.

Pepe Escobar is a lively writer, but not surprisingly much of this book is heavy going, given the complexity of the subject matter and the amount of documentation by way of supporting quotes from other authors. Unfortunately, plowing through the book is made more difficult by the indifferent (to put it kindly) copy-editing; in effect it is not edited at all, and this tends to make Escobar seem a clumsier writer than he actually is (English is, after all, approximately his fourth language).

Worse than the poor editing, perhaps, is the low quality of the graphics. Escobar has gone to a lot of trouble to try to illustrate 

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