Gulf Oil Spill ‘Could Go Years’ If Not Dealt With

by F. William Engdahl* The Obama Administration and senior BP officials are frantically working not to stop the world’s worst oil disaster, but to hide the true extent of the actual ecological catastrophe. Senior researchers tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil migration channels and that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive steps are undertaken, something that seems far from the present strategy.

10 JUNE 2010 From Frankfurt (Germany) Tools Print Send Countries United States Corporations BP-Amoco Themes Environment, Ecology

In a recent discussion, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill flooding the Gulf Coast shores of the United States “could go on for years and years … many years.” [1] According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum, “What BP drilled into was what we call a ‘migration channel,’ a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.” [2] Ghawar, the world’s most prolific oilfield has been producing millions of barrels daily for almost 70 years with no end in sight. According to the abiotic science, Ghawar like all elephant and giant oil and gas deposits all over the world, is located on a migration channel similar to that in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico. As I wrote at the time of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake disaster, [3] Haiti had been identified as having potentially huge hydrocarbon reserves, as has neighboring Cuba. Kutcherov estimates that the entire Gulf of Mexico is one of the planet’s most abundant accessible locations to extract oil and gas, at least before the Deepwater Horizon event this April. “In my view the heads of BP reacted with panic at the scale of the oil spewing out of the well,” Kutcherov adds. “What is inexplicable at this point is why they are trying one thing, failing, then trying a second, failing, then a third. Given the scale of the disaster they should try every conceivable option, even if it is ten, all at once in hope one works. Otherwise, this oil source could spew oil for years given the volumes coming to the surface already.” [4] He stresses, “It is difficult to estimate how big this leakage is. There is no objective information available.” But taking into consideration information about the last BP ‘giant’ discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, the Tiber field, some six miles deep, Kutcherov agrees with Ira Leifer a researcher in the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara who says the oil may be gushing out at a rate of more than 100,000 barrels a day. [5] What the enormity of the oil spill does is to also further discredit clearly the oil companies’ myth of “peak oil” which claims that the world is at or near the “peak” of economical oil extraction. That myth, which has been propagated in recent years by circles close to former oilman and Bush Vice President, Dick Cheney, has been effectively used by the giant oil majors to justify far higher oil prices than would be politically possible otherwise, by claiming a non-existent petroleum scarcity crisis. Obama & BP Try to Hide According to a report from Washington investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, “the Obama White House and British Petroleum are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP’s liability for damage caused by what can be called a ‘mega-disaster.’” [6] Madsen cites sources within the US Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, and Florida Department of Environmental Protection for his assertion. BP chief executive Tony Hayward Obama and his senior White House staff, as well as Interior Secretary Salazar, are working with BP’s chief executive officer Tony Hayward on legislation that would raise the cap on liability for damage claims from those affected by the oil disaster from $75 million to $10 billion. According to informed estimates cited by Madsen, however, the disaster has a real potential cost of at least $1,000 billion ($1 trillion). That estimate would support the pessimistic assessment of Kutcherov that the spill, if not rapidly controlled, “will destroy the entire coastline of the United States.” According to Madsen’s Washington report, BP statements that one of the leaks has been contained, are “pure public relations disinformation designed to avoid panic and demands for greater action by the Obama administration, according to FEMA and Corps of Engineers sources.” [7] The White House has been resisting releasing any “damaging information” about the oil disaster. Coast Guard and Corps of Engineers experts estimate that if the ocean oil geyser is not stopped within 90 days, there will be irreversible damage to the marine eco-systems of the Gulf of Mexico, north Atlantic Ocean, and beyond. At best, some Corps of Engineers experts say it could take two years to cement the chasm on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. [8] Only after the magnitude of the disaster became evident did Obama order Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano to declare the oil disaster a “national security issue.” Although the Coast Guard and FEMA are part of her department, Napolitano’s actual reasoning for invoking national security, according to Madsen, was merely to block media coverage of the immensity of the disaster that is unfolding for the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and their coastlines. The Obama administration also conspired with BP to hide the extent of the oil leak, according to the cited federal and state sources. After the oil rig exploded and sank, the government stated that 42,000 gallons per day were gushing from the seabed chasm. Five days later, the federal government upped the leakage to 210,000 gallons a day. However, submersibles monitoring the escaping oil from the Gulf seabed are viewing television pictures of what they describe as a “volcanic-like” eruption of oil. When the Army Corps of Engineers first attempted to obtain NASA imagery of the Gulf oil slick, which is larger than is being reported by the media, it was reportedly denied the access. By chance, National Geographic managed to obtain satellite imagery shots of the extent of the disaster and posted them on their web site. Other satellite imagery reportedly being withheld by the Obama administration, shows that what lies under the gaping chasm spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be the size of Mount Everest. This information has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it from the public, according to Madsen’s sources. The Corps of Engineers and FEMA are reported to be highly critical of the lack of support for quick action after the oil disaster by the Obama White House and the US Coast Guard. Only now has the Coast Guard understood the magnitude of the disaster, dispatching nearly 70 vessels to the affected area. Under the loose regulatory measures implemented by the Bush-Cheney Administration, the US Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service became a simple “rubber stamp,” approving whatever the oil companies wanted in terms of safety precautions that could have averted such a disaster. Madsen describes a state of “criminal collusion” between Cheney’s former firm, Halliburton, and the Interior Department’s MMS, and that the potential for similar disasters exists with the other 30,000 off-shore rigs that use the same shut-off valves. [9] Silence from Eco groups?… Follow the money Without doubt at this point we are in the midst of what could be the greatest ecological catastrophe in history. The oil platform explosion took place almost within the current loop where the Gulf Stream originates. This has huge ecological and climatological consequences. A cursory look at a map of the Gulf Stream shows that the oil is not just going to cover the beaches in the Gulf, it will spread to the Atlantic coasts up through North Carolina then on to the North Sea and Iceland. And beyond the damage to the beaches, sea life and water supplies, the Gulf stream has a very distinct chemistry, composition (marine organisms), density, temperature. What happens if the oil and the dispersants and all the toxic compounds they create actually change the nature of the Gulf Stream? No one can rule out potential changes including changes in the path of the Gulf Stream, and even small changes could have huge impacts. Europe, including England, is not an icy wasteland due to the warming from the Gulf Stream. Yet there is a deafening silence from the very environmental organizations which ought to be at the barricades demanding that BP, the US Government and others act decisively. That deafening silence of leading green or ecology organizations such as Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club and others may well be tied to a money trail that leads right back to the oil industry, notably to BP. Leading environmental organizations have gotten significant financial payoffs in recent years from BP in order that the oil company could remake itself with an “environment-friendly face,” as in “beyond petroleum” the company’s new branding. The Nature Conservancy, described as “the world’s most powerful environmental group,” [10] has awarded BP a seat on its International Leadership Council after the oil company gave the organization more than $10 million in recent years. [11] Until recently, the Conservancy and other environmental groups worked with BP in a coalition that lobbied Congress on climate-change issues. An employee of BP Exploration serves as an unpaid Conservancy trustee in Alaska. In addition, according to a recent report published by the Washington Post, Conservation International, another environmental group, has accepted $2 million in donations from BP and worked with the company on a number of projects, including one examining oil-extraction methods. From 2000 to 2006, John Browne, then BP’s chief executive, sat on the CI board. Further, The Environmental Defense Fund, another influential ecologist organization, joined with BP, Shell and other major corporations to form a Partnership for Climate Action, to promote ‘market-based mechanisms’ (sic) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental non-profit groups that have accepted donations from or joined in projects with BP include Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club and Audubon. That could explain why the political outcry to date for decisive action in the Gulf has been so muted. [12] Of course those organizations are not going to be the ones to solve this catastrophe. The central point at this point is who is prepared to put the urgently demanded federal and international scientific resources into solving this crisis. Further actions of the likes of that from the Obama White House to date or from BP can only lead to the conclusion that some very powerful people want this debacle to continue. The next weeks will be critical to that assessment. F. William Engdahl Author of Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century and Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order. His other books includeSeeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation. and A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. This author’s articles To send a message [1] Vladimir Kutcherov, telephone discussion with the author, June 9, 2010. [2] Ibid. [3] The Fateful Geological Prize Called Haiti, F. William Engdahl,Voltaire Network, 3 February 2010. [4] Vladimir Kutcherov, op. cit. [5] Ira Leifer, Scientist: BP Well Could Be Leaking 100,000 Barrels of Oil a Day, Democracy Now, 9 June 2010. [6] The Coverup: BPs Crude Politics and the Looming Environmental Mega Disaster, Wayne Madsen, 6 May 2010. [7] Ibid. [8] Ibid. [9] Ibid. [10] Tim Findley, Natures’ Landlord, Range Magazine, Spring 2003. [11] Joe Stephens, Nature Conservancy faces potential backlash from ties with BP, Washington Post, 24 May 2010. [12] Ibid.

The Economic Warfare Waged Against the Human Race

[This is an excellent article, to illustrate the utter ruthlessness of the empire's planners, as they bring about the ruin of civilization in order to establish their new order built upon the ashes.

The only sane solution for Europe is for it to separate itself from "Leviathan," the all-powerful American corporate state.  Instead of sinking vast amounts of unborrowed money into preventing the PIIG countries from entering bankruptcy, EU leaders must see that the only solution is not finding new belt-tightening ways to keep-up payments, but the stopping of all payments to American/Western banks. Take away American power to issue credible economic threats and the playing field becomes leveled between America (the world's most-indebted debtor state) and the rest of the world.  Eliminate the American power to dictate terms to the world and it becomes possible to change the American-designed world which is being constructed in spite of the common will.

All the chips are going to fall, no matter what anyone does to prevent global economic collapse.  When debtor states stop holding up the collapsing economic order, then they will be left with national and local concerns and very few real resources to meet the needs of the people.  This is the point where leaders will regret their American alliances and begin to remove anything remotely American from national life.  The American military leaders have operated on this assumption for a long time, meaning that all plans that have been developed to deal with today's crises have included this contingency.  The American game plan has been to position US assets and interests in such a way as to assure American dominance after the pie hits the fan.

Every responsible leader should be finding ways now to separate his country from this voracious, ever-growing Leviathian.  When responsible leaders from any two countries join together to oppose the encroaching superstate, they will have formed the first anti-empire political bloc.  It will only be possible to resist, or to slow, the superstate barrelling down upon us if leaders of the people stand-up and begin the coalescing process.  The formation of a power bloc requires  that the people be drawn together.  This has yet to happen.

The economic warfare that is now focused upon the shaky European Union is the same warfare that has been used against Americans themselves, in the 2001 attacks.  These people have so much money and influence that they can initiate financial highs or lows, upon which they make sure bets in the stock market.  This power has set them above the fray.  They have discovered an effective tool for creating limitless profit from human suffering.  Their power enables them to manufacture crises and make investments before the fact, in industries destined to profit from the ensuing human suffering.  This is what was meant in the leaked empire document known as "Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars."

These inhuman monsters have been waging war against the entire human race for many decades.  Isn't it time that we fought back?]

€uro: the worst case scenario

by Jean-Michel Vernochet*

The Greek budgetary crisis, which has become a crisis of the euro, is not the inevitable result of market self-regulation, but rather the consequence of a deliberate attack. According to Jean-Michel Vernochet, the crisis was provoked by an economic offensive directed from Washington and London that followed similar principles to those of contemporary military warfare, employing game theory and a strategy of ‘constructive chaos’. The ultimate aim is to oblige the Europeans to enter into an Atlantic bloc, i.e. an empire where Anglo-American budgetary deficits would be automatically financed through the expedient of a dollarised euro. The agreement concluded between the European Union and the IMF, giving the Fund partial oversight of Union economic policies, is a first step in this direction.

The director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. Prevented from returning to the Deutsche Mark, Germany must consent to a European loan from the IMF.

The financial attack launched against Greece because of its sovereign debt and its potential insolvency soon proved to be an offensive against the Euro and to have only a distant relationship with the flaws and structural deficits of the Greek economy itself. These ‘vices’, incidentally, are largely shared by the bulk of post-industrial countries which have acquired the bad habit of living beyond their means and on credit, hence the soaring quantum of debt, a bubble (as any other) doomed to burst.

Everything seems to indicate that behind the brutality of the attack and beyond a simple stampede to pillage some European economies loom other objectives, notably of a geopolitical character, carefully thought out. In any case, the appetites of anonymous financial predators – as sharp as they might be – cannot account for the sustained intensity of the offensive which, in the short term, threatens to shatter the Euro zone, the European Union itself, indeed even beyond …

With the proliferation of crises over the last two decades, a quick reading of the pawn movements on the Grand Eurasian Chessboard is enough to suggest that Europe is actually one battle ground within a geo-economic war (war in the proper sense), a battle that it has besides already potentially lost.

Indeed, the adoption of a European plan – at the insistence of the White House – for the bailing out of heavily indebted EU member states not only does not constitute a panacea, a durable remedy to the structural budgetary crisis that has been rapidly affecting all Western states, but points in the direction desired by the U.S. of a rapid integration of the EU, a necessary prerequisite for the constitution of a united Western bloc.

This European plan responds to a crisis of confidence and solvency (largely artificial at the outset, but which became contagious and is now snowballing) by the recapitalisation of states as if it were a matter of a simple liquidity crisis. A European plan of 750 billion euros, even greater than the 700 billion-dollar Paulson plan designed to bail out the American financial establishment with public funds after the debacle of September 2008. The deviant consequences of that solution can be seen at present in the heavy expansion of the public debt on both sides of the Atlantic.

Thus, the U.S.-born crisis, after having triggered the recession which de-activated the economic pump, has since dried up the fiscal resources of states rendering it more difficult to service an ever expanding debt. Now, the EU has just increased the existing debt by an additional 750 billion euros, which further strain member states’ national budgets (the average indebtedness of the euro zone being actually 78% of GDP), all this with the illusory plan of ‘re-establishing market confidence’.

To this end, the EU has voluntarily placed itself under the thumb of the IMF which has consented to have up to 250 billion euros at the ready. This is the same IMF, whose calling until now has been to support tottering Third World economies through crippling recipes in the guise of so-called structural adjustment plans. It is thus a supranational entity, formally ‘globalist’, which will head, indeed supervise more or less directly, the structures of economic governance which the EU will most certainly adopt if the euro zone does not spontaneously break up beforehand.

Such integrative measures have been vigourously called for by Paul Volcker, Chairman of the White House Economic Recovery Advisory Board, who, while recently in London, lambasted European leaders demanding a boosting of the euro which the Americans and British need to keep their own economies afloat.

Let us note, in passing, that it is probably with a heavy heart that the German Chancellor accepted to subscribe to this mindboggling support plan for the faltering Euro zone countries since her French counterpart – according to persistent rumours – was threatening to return to France if she did not conform. But, while it is true that ‘the worker ant is not altruistic’, a return to the Deutsche Mark would be equivalent to signing the death warrant of the German economy as a strong currency would restrain its industrial exports, at the base of its economy. Like it or not, the situation forces Berlin, under duress, to navigate the strictures drawn up by the Obama Administration.

American ukases that lead to a big open trap: capital borrowed from the markets or lent by the IMF to save the ‘PIIGS’ (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) – threatened with cessation of repayment – must rely on structures guaranteeing long term solvency of the euro. A currency whose soundness cannot be assured, however, by the type of federal institutions which Jacques Attali has been promoting in calling for “… the creation of a European Treasury, immediately authorised to borrow in the name of the EU, and of a European Budgetary Fund, given immediate mandate to control the budget expenditures of any country whose debt exceeds the 80% of the GDP.”

It essentially boils down to subjecting States to economic tutelage under the guise of saving the Euro zone from an allegedly inevitable collapse … since the abandonment of the Euro is an inviolable taboo that nobody apparently dreams of touching.

Certain projects go even further, by prescribing that the budgets of member states should be entirely controlled and decided on by a triumvirate comprising the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the Eurogroup (the member states’ Finance Ministers). What about the popular will and the European Parliament in Strasbourg?

No one cares about denouncing the sophistry or the fallacy of equating economic integration with a return to market confidence. First of all, why should markets, and markets alone, impose their own laws? Besides, is it not time to revisit stock market capitalism, anonymous and volatile, and capable of ruining countries on a whim or from self-interest?

On this account, centralised economic control from Brussels is no more the panacea than is a flood of liquidity the solution to the current crisis. The additional indebtedness generated by the ‘plan’ is without doubt a false solution imposed from outside with the end goal of further enslaving us Europeans to capital markets and their unspeakable dictatorship.

The idea of centralised control proceeds from the same stance for it is literally a non-sense in that it ignores all the societal differences operating across all layers of the European construct: types or models of economic growth, fiscal and social systems, etc. It is basically a “non-idea”, one which is fundamentally ideological by its nature … a smokescreen concealing a whole range of ulterior motives, all in fact foreign to the economic prosperity and well being of the peoples of the EU.

Some have rightly seen that this crisis was only the means and the pretext to precipitate the introduction of a hard-core federal system [1] encompassing all twenty seven member states despite and in contempt of the popular will over which the Treaty of Lisbon has been imposed in the most underhanded fashion. A crisis which is and remains – a cardinal fact to be borne in mind – artificial, fabricated; in a word, it is the opposite of an inherent ‘inevitability’ implied by a self-regulating and disembodied market environment, supposedly steered by an ‘invisible hand’. A reputedly ‘mechanical’ process, which, despite its anonymity, is none the less constituted by corporate executives and traders made of flesh and blood that call the shots and manipulate the market.

It is for this reason that the U.S speaks with a forked tongue through two separate voices, that of its ‘market’ representatives and President Obama himself. The latter intervened to berate the Europeans and press them to stabilise their currency, or, in other words, the European economic policies, good or otherwise, which are inextricably linked to the health of their own currency. Now, don’t start imagining for one second that some kind of meddling in the affairs of Continental Europe could be involved here! Can you picture Madame Merkel and Monsieur Sarkozy asking the White House to clean up Manhattan?

The other voice belongs to those who call the shots … in short, the managers of the self-regulating order, anonymous even to the governments themselves, as French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde shamefully confessed; those who play yo-yo with the markets like a cat plays with a mouse, anticipating the lows and highs that they themselves intentionally provoke. In practice, these people are promoting a very different discourse.

For Paul Volcker, chair of the White House Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Europe must accept external control of economic policy and put the euro at parity with the dollar.

Indeed, how else to explain the evident contradiction between the concerns expressed by President Obama – legitimate by the way, for the EU needs a strong euro that penalises European exporters, but is advantageous to American industry, a useful bonus given the record US fiscal deficit ($1400 billion for 2008-09) and above all necessary to support the ongoing war effort in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan – and the radical destablisation of Western economies by the persistent attacks by the markets against the euro?

No matter how voracious, inconsistent or irrational, the ‘operators’ are nevertheless aware that the pursuit of the offensive against the euro jeopardises the system in its totality and risks plunging the global economy into a new phase of chaos. Then why this dance on the edge of the abyss? Nobody will have us believe this nonsense that the markets have a life of their own, that they are uncontrollable and that all this is simply the result of the economic machine gone awry … In short, that it’s ‘nobody’s fault’, but the simple consequence of the impossibility of managing the agents and the irrational faux pas of the markets?

Clearly said, the risk of systemic collapse is at the very heart of the game currently being played. The big players, the cold calculators, are obvious disciples of the theory of games (since von Neumann & Morgenstern), probabilistic edifice on the foundations of which has been constructed the doctrine of nuclear deterrence … The winners are those who push the lethal bids the highest. A scenario that corresponds line for line to that which is unfolding before our eyes: increasing destabilisation of the European economies, with non-negligible effects for the U.S.

Let’s add that the financial chaos, monetary and economic, on both sides of the Atlantic is an undeniable windfall, for those who prosper in the backwash of the market’s trajectory, provoking and anticipating the cycles of panic and euphoria to play indiscriminately with the rising and falling currents of the hysterically erratic markets.

At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the economist Werner Sombart conceived an embryonic theory of ‘creative destruction’ (subsequently taken up by Joseph Schumpeter). Since then this theory has been developed by, among others, the mathematical theory of the frenchman René Thom (‘catastrophe theory’). Amended by Benoît Mandelbrot, the theory was applied via fractal geometry to market behaviour, perceived already at that time to fall within the province of a theory of chaos, decidedly fashionable.

In the meantime, the economist Friedrich von Hayek, one of the theorists of neoliberalism, claimed to have raised the free-market economy to the status of an exact science. According to his hagiographer Guy Sorman, “… liberalism converges with the most recent theories of physics, chemistry and biology, in particular the science of chaos formalised by Ilya Prigogine. In the market economy as in nature, order is born out of chaos: the spontaneous agency of millions of decisions and pieces of information leads not to disorder, but to a superior order” … One could not say it any better, for a priori we hold there the keys to understanding the crisis.

At the end of the 1990s, the Neo-conservative disciples of Leo Strauss have carried to its logical limits the new dogma of greater disorder in making themselves the bards of ‘constructive chaos’ as a legitimation a priori for all the wars of conquest of the Twenty First Century. From this viewpoint, each is able to see this chaos at work in the Greater Middle East as s/he is able to see it at work today in Europe.

We can wager that the new regional order that the great organisers of chaos intend to see emerge from the crisis itself will be a unified Europe, centralised and federal, placed under the direct influence of the US with the aid of the Federal Reserve of which the European Central Bank will be only a branch, and under the vigilant watch of the IMF, representative or product of an emergent global power, deterritorialised yet omnipresent.

One understands quickly enough that the deification of the market associated with the idea of ‘constructive chaos’, itself complemented by an intensive application of game theory in the hands of the disciples of demolition, constitutes a mixture that promises to blow up in one’s face. An observation immediately comes to mind: ‘chaos’ (intentional) is these days a mode of government, of socio-economic transformation and of unopposed conquest. A heavy duty version of ‘divide and conquer’ even if it means nations will perish and the people with them.

For it’s a risk worth taking if in the end Europe finds itself on its knees. Greece – certainly at the soft underbelly of the euro zone but no more so than Italy, Spain, Ireland or Portugal – has been until now a sort of free electron frustrating a full integration of the Balkans in the American geostrategic orbit.

By way of a provisionary conclusion, if the EU, facing crisis, advances at forced march towards central economic control, a stage will be reached whereby quasi-discretionary power will be granted to the European Commission – for the most part composed of non-elected technocrats and recruits – for a stainless Atlanticist allegiance. To put it plainly, this will signify the obliteration of the European nation states.

In reality, nothing can prevent the integration of Europe within a trans-Atlantic Bloc. In the end, the merging of the euro with the dollar will accelerate the union of the old world and the new world. This conclusion is evidently not a matter of pure speculation but a simple projection of the architectonic tendencies visibly at work in the framework of a process of redistribution or of geopolitical recomposition of the global map. Sufficient to say that if the euro zone does not break apart, the fate of the European peoples seems definitely sealed, tied for better or worse to the manifest destiny of the United States. And this irrespective of a ‘reform’ of the global economic system.

The financiers will perhaps get their fingers burnt if the international community agrees to curb their appetites in regulating the markets, but the fact remains that the promoters of constructive chaos will have won this hand as they set out to recreate the conditions for new conflagrations.

The worse case scenario, often evoked in France by such influential men as Bernard Kouchner and Jacque Attali, happens to be the least improbable at a time when governments, backs to the wall, see themselves condemned to fleeing headlong into the unknown. In Kuwait in 1991, in Iraq in 2003 among the thinly disguised objectives of war, the boosting of the economic machinery through plans of reconstruction was high on the list. Not to mention other more flagrant and immediate interests such as fossil fuels, arms sales and all the related industries.

Whatever the accords between Turkey and Iran on uranium enrichment for medical purposes, whatever the related diplomatic annoyance for the State Department, it suffices to re-read the fabulist Jean de la Fontaine to know that the rhetoric of the wolf always prevails over that of the lamb! In a situation of extreme fragility of the global economy, one must await an end to the crisis at the harrowing door of the chaos constructor.

//

Jean-Michel Vernochet Former journalist for Figaro Magazine and professor at l’École supérieure de journalisme (ESJ-Paris). Most recent published work: Europe, chronique d’une mort annoncée (Éditions de l’Infini, 2009).

Kremlin blocks the supply to Iran of S-300 and membership in the SCO, Confirming Committment to US Dictation

Kremlin blocks the supply to Iran of S-300 and membership in the SCO

The Russian authorities have made contradictory statements about whether it is possible to supply S-300 Iran

Russian officials said that the sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council on Wednesday, hamper deliveries to Iran anti-aircraft missile systems S-300.

These statements contradict the words of several Russian diplomats, who on the eve emphasized that sanctions will not hinder the fulfillment of the terms of Russian-Iranian kntrakta.

“Analysis of the provisions adopted June 9, 2010 UN Security Council resolution number 1929 [...] indicates that they contain restrictive measures and requirements affecting the issue to Iran S-300,” – said in a press release issued by the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC).

Simultaneously, an anonymous high-ranking Kremlin source said that Russia will be enacted amendments to domestic legislation to prevent the supply of missiles to Iran.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who had on Thursday said that the contract with Iran is not subject to sanctions, on Friday said that “to interpret certain provisions of this resolution, no one was instructed,” and President Dmitry Medvedev will issue a decree defining the procedures to implement UN sanctions against Iran for Russia.

System C-300 could significantly strengthen the position of Iran in the event of a possible military conflict with Israel or the U.S..

The U.S. State Department confirmed in its commentary rather the position taken by the Russian foreign ministry on Thursday: the formal delivery of the S-300 in Iran in UN resolution is not prohibited.

However, as the representative of the American diplomatic corps Phillip Crawley, “Russia to show responsibility and restraint and not put those missiles in Iran.”

“As you know, the Russian side has always been a responsible approach to implementing the assumed international obligations, through vigilance and restraint regarding the supply of all types of weapons and materiel,” – said its part FSMTC.

SCO

Together with the supply of S-300 Tehran practically lost the opportunity to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The Russian president said that the country under UN sanctions, can become full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Iran, along with India, Mongolia and Pakistan, has SCO observer status.

At the same time, the expansion of the organization by the big powers “would serve the interests of the SCO, and would enhance its credibility,” Medvedev said at the summit of the Organization in Tashkent.

Medvedev said that there are a number of countries wishing to join the SCO.

“We would carefully examine their treatment, but the decisions will be made by consensus of all members of the SCO. If any party to oppose the organization, membership will not take place” – the words quoted the Russian president’s Interfax news agency.

Then he is not calling the right of Iran, said that the country against which the UN imposed sanctions, enter the SCO can not.

The SCO comprises Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Turkey Still Playing for the Same Team, Turkish energy minister says

‘Change of axis’ claims are unfounded, Turkish energy minister says

ANKARA – Anatolia News Agency

Turkey’s energy minister on Friday rejected claims that Turkey was moving away from the West and toward the Middle East, an assertion that resurfaced this week after the country voted against the U.N.’s latest round of sanctions against Iran.

Turkey has no plans to “shift its axis,” Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yıldız said.

Answering questions before a meeting with ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, officials in Ankara, Yıldız said the argument that Turkey had changed directions was an unfair allegation.

“Our EU goal should not mean that we will not cooperate with Arab countries and the Middle East,” the minister said.

Turkey and Brazil on Wednesday voted against a new round of sanctions against Iran, measures the United States hopes will curb the Islamic republic’s suspect nuclear program.

This month’s crisis over a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that was raided by Israeli commandos also brought Turkey’s diplomacy into the spotlight. Ankara fiercely condemned its once-ally Israel for the attack, during which eight Turks and one American of Turkish descent were killed.

“Turkey has no agenda or goal about a shift of axis. Turkey, as a strong country, has the capacity to have relations with all countries of the world,” Yıldız said.

The Turkish President Abdullah Gül said on Friday that there was no shift in Turkey’s axis. Replying to a question by a reporter in Istanbul, “Turkey is in the middle like the Bosphorus bridge between the European and Asian sides of Istanbul,” the president said.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also strongly rejected allegations in the West that Turkey was shifting toward the East at his speech at the Turkish-Arab Economic Forum on Thursday.

He described the claims as “evil-intentioned” attempts to prevent Turkey from establishing relations with the Arab world.

Whom the gods would destroy…

Anwaar Hussain eagleeye@emirates.net.ae

So what do we have in the aftermath of the Lahore massacre in Pakistan? No protests against the killings, no joint condemnation from the flag bearers of Islam who foam at the mouths at a mere hint of any ‘danger to Islam’, no conciliatory gestures towards the victims, no nothing. We have this instead. According to a BBC Urdu report, a gathering of the leaders of 13 religious and political parties in Lahore claimed that the attack on Ahmedis on May 28 was part of a conspiracy to repeal the laws against them. The meeting also condemned Nawaz Sharif, the twice elected ex-Prime Minister of Pakistan and now the leader of the opposition, for having sympathized with the Ahmadis and calling them his ‘brothers’. The gathering was attended by the leading divines of the Jamaat-i-Islami, Jamiat-i-ulema-i-Islam Fazlur Rahman group, Jamaatud Dawa and Markazi Jamaat-i-Ahl-i-Sunnat among others–almost the entire cast on the honor roll of divinity’s who’s who in Pakistan. Click here to read the report first and then reach for the nearest sick bag. Let us see what the report means in plain English. If we discount the possibility of CIA, Mossad, RAW, Indo-Zionist lobbies of involvement on the grounds that they would rather scheme to have more people leaving the fold of Islam than strategize to get millions of Ahmadis to joining it, only two conclusions can be drawn. One, the hundreds of murdered and injured people conspired in their own slaughter and hurt. Or two, the killers were hired by the fast vanishing secular/liberal/rational section of Pakistani society, who see Ahmadis as common, everyday Muslims and citizens, to commit the massacre to merely initiate a debate to get the label of non-Muslims lifted from the beleaguered community. The scribe is at his wits end to draw any other conclusion from the news. A little dive into history has become unavoidable to shake the collective conscience, or whatever goes by its name in our country, of us common Pakistanis–and to remind us who is a Muslim and who is not. Some fifty-six years back, in the year 1954 to be exact, there was another gathering of the leading stars of divinity’s who’s who of the time in front of Munir Inquiry Commission. Here is a brief backgrounder. Justice M. Munir commission was appointed to investigate the large-scale riots against the Ahmadya sect in Pakistan in 1953 with Justice Muhammad Munir as the president and Justice Kayani as its member. No less than twenty-two leading lights on Islam were invited to define a Muslim. Ironically, no two given definitions coincided with each other. Yet, all these leaders were vociferously adamant as to the validity of their definition of a Muslim and the imposition of their brand of Shariah given a chance. The net result of was that the Shias, Sunnis, Deobandis, Barelvis, Ahl-i-Hadith etc., to name just the main sects, all were non-Muslims according to each other’s definition of a Muslim. All groups thought that any change from one view to the other must be accompanied in an Islamic State with the penalty of death if the Government of the State is in the hands of the party which considers the other party to be kafirs. The justices wrote: “The result of this part of inquiry, however has been anything but satisfactory and if considerable confusion exists in the minds of our ulema on such a simple matter, one can easily imagine what the differences on more complicated matters will be…. Keeping in view the several different definitions given by the ulema, need we make any comment except that no two learned divines are agreed on this fundamental. If we attempt our own definition as each learned divine has done and that definition differs from that given by all others, we unanimously go out of the fold of Islam. And if we adopt the definition given by any one of the ulema, we remain Muslims according to the view of that alim, but kafirs according to the definitions of everyone else.” (Pages 215, 218) They then went on to explain that if Deobandis are in charge, all non-deobandis would become Kafirs, and if Barelvis are in charge all non-Barelvis would be declared Kafir. Depending on the sect, the definition of a Muslim changes, and so everyone else becomes a Kafir. They pointed to one Fatwa from DarulUloom Deoband in India, attached as an exhibit, which declared all Shiites as Kafirs and Murtids. Strikingly bold, the report was an eye opener. However, it’s not just a question of Sunni Islam and Shia Islam and how they interpret the Shariah. There are at least 70 sects within these two main offshoots whose interpretation of Shariah differs with each other. Aren’t we witness to leaders of one sect declaring the murder of the followers of another sect as not only religiously legal but also divinely rewarding? What else was the recent killing of Ahmadis, or the target killings of Shias in the past, a result of? For want of space, the scribe has purposely avoided certain other relevant issues in this piece. For instance, if a Muslim country has a right to dictate the laws of the religion of the majority then, by a natural corollary, every other country should have the same right. The Hindutva buffs then should be allowed to implement in India the laws of the Hindu religion as they see it even if it means sealing the fate of Indian Muslims and other minorities of India. Likewise, visualize Israel enacting the laws from Talmud? The non-Jews probably will be debarred from even entering the state of Israel. For now, suffice it to say that the news perhaps is the most ringing declaration of the bloody drama unfolding itself in Pakistan. It confirms in unambiguous terms that from intolerance to utter madness, we are traveling on a straight line. And if there is any truth in the Latin proverb, “whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad”, the end point on the line now looms ever larger. May the madness end first. http://truthspring.info/2010/06/11/whom-the-gods-would-destroy/

Unknown Militants Linked to BLA Claims Responsibility for Naval Base Attack

LeB claims responsibility for Pak naval base attack

Islamabad: The Lashkar-e-Balochistan has claimed responsibility for a bombing at the gate of a navy base in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi that killed a naval policeman.

The bomb, hidden in a motorcycle that was parked near the gate of the naval base, killed the naval policeman and injured three others yesterday.

Media reports today said the Lashkar-e-Balochistan, which is linked to the Balochistan Liberation Army, had claimed responsibility of the attack.

Police said the attackers apparently wanted to carry out a suicide strike but were unable to do so due to the stringent security at the naval base.

The attackers also were forced to park the motorcycle outside the base and this limited the damage caused by the blast.

Officials also said the attackers may have wanted to target an ammunition depot located near the site of the blast.

Police arrested two suspects after the blast and they were taken to an undisclosed location for questioning.

PTI

Blast Near Balochistan Naval Base Kills 1, Injures 3

Blast near naval base kills 1, injures 3

By Faraz Khan

KARACHI: A Pakistan Naval Police official was killed and three others injured when a bomb exploded at the main gate of the naval base on Hub River Road in Baldia Town on Thursday morning.

According to sources, the Lashkar-e-Balochistan, linked with the Balochistan Liberation Army, has claimed responsibility of the attack.

According to the Bomb Disposal Squad (BDS) experts, the perpetrators planted a bomb containing two to two-and-a-half kilogrammes of explosives on a motorcycle near the gate of the naval base.

Following the blast, a heavy contingent of law enforcers arrived at the scene and cordoned-off the locality.

The blast claimed the life of a contractual Naval police employee Muhammad Zada, 35, and injured a retired deputy superintendent of police Salman Khan, 35, Boat Basin police Head Constable Masood Ahmed and Naval police Assistant Sub-Inspector Badrul Islam, while six motorcycles were also completely destroyed.

Pakistan Navy officials took position as soon as the blast occurred and the people were asked to vacate the area to avoid any untoward incidents.

A bank located near the main gate was closed down, while most officials and customers remained inside.

According to the BDS officials, the bomb was connected to the battery of the motorcycle and a delay switch was used to set the time. They reckoned the bomb exploded eight minutes after the delay switch was turned on.

Police officials suspected the perpetrators wanted to carry out a suicide attack, but were unable to do so due to the stringent security measures taken by the Pakistan Navy at the main gate.

According to South zone Deputy Inspector General Iqbal Mehmood, the attacker had to park the motorcycle outside the naval base, due to which maximum damage was avoided.

Officials suspected the Pakistan Navy Ammunition Depot located near the site of the blast might have been the target of the attackers.

According to sources, the Navy and civil agencies have started investigating the case and would share the outcome with the law enforcers within three days.

Two young suspects, namely Hasnain and Mumtaz, have also been arrested and taken to an undisclosed location for further questioning.

China Signs Deal for Uzbek Gas

Beijing extracts gas from Central Asia. Uzbekistan has signed an agreement with China to 10 billion cubic meters per year

A. Grivach:

Beijing extracts gas from Central Asia
Uzbekistan has signed an agreement with China to 10 billion cubic meters per year

For the second time this week, Russia’s leaders are witness success of competitors in the large gas play.Earlier this week, Turkey and Azerbaijan agreed on the supply and transit of Caspian gas to Europe on the eve of his arrival in Istanbul, the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (see “Time of news” from June 8). But yesterday it became known that during the visit of President Hu Jintao’s visit to Tashkent for a summit of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is involved and Dmitry Medvedev, in the presence of Uzbek leader Islam Karimov between Uzbekneftegaz and CNPC signed the first framework agreement to supply 10 billion cubic meters of Uzbek gas to China. Thus, Uzbekistan close to that followed by Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to commit themselves to gas supply China.

Given the previously signed agreements with Turkmengaz by 40 billion cubic meters and 10 billion cubic meters of KazMunaiGaz overall package of agreements in Beijing with the countries of Central Asia, reached 60 billion cubic meters of gas a year. Approximately as much in the best years of buying in the region, Gazprom. However, to achieve such a target delivery to the Chinese direction will not be soon. The design capacity introduced in December last year, the Turkmenistan-China transit through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan declared at the level of 40 billion cubic meters. In addition, Ashgabat, Tashkent and Astana is no such quantity of gas free from the obligations under existing contracts. In particular, Gazprom continues to buy about 10 billion cubic meters a year from Turkmenistan. In the ten-year agreement with Uzbekistan, which is valid till 2012 inclusive, the Russian group buys about 15 billion cubic meters annually. It’s almost all free volumes. Almost all the gas from the largest Kazakh gas condensate field, Karachaganak is also attending to the case of Gazprom Export (up to 10 billion cubic meters per year).

In the medium term, China is well placed to become a customer number one, surpassing Russia, which since the beginning of the problems in the European market (price volatility and reduce demand) has dramatically reduced activity in Central Asia. Beijing generously funding the construction of transmission infrastructure. For the construction of the Uzbek and Kazakh sites created joint venture, which CNPC and local state-owned companies hold 50 to 50, but the money mostly comes from the Chinese side. For deliveries of Uzbek gas, for example, was specifically changed the route of the second gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China, so that it has gone through major natural gas storage facility in Uzbekistan “Gazley, whose power should be increased to 6 billion cubic meters. The second thread should be completed in September.

Since Soviet times Uzbekistan has the highest level of gas supply, and consumption is around 45 billion cubic meters a year (almost five times higher than in neighboring Turkmenistan) with a pronounced peak in the heating season. A strong gas storage in these conditions to optimize the balance and gas flows. In addition, China National Petroleum Corporation has projects in gas exploration and production in all three countries, and invests in them. Finally, China has consistently implemented a strategy to extend credit to partners. Ashgabat last year received about $ 4 billion in Kazakhstan, Chinese state-owned banks provide financing (2.5 billion dollars) to build a gas pipeline Beynau-Akbulak, which should primarily be used for the gasification of the southern and southeastern regions of the country.

Signing the document was accompanied by arrangements for providing loans worth about $ 2 billion, as well as direct investment in the creation of pipeline infrastructure in Uzbekistan.

As already noted, in 2012, expires on the Russian-Uzbek agreement on gas, and as long as Gazprom failed to extend it for a longer term. The agreements with China on the one hand, strengthen the position of a seller to bid, but on the other – will create for Russia to reduce the risks of their purchases. Thanks to foreign investment volume of Uzbek gas for export to the Russian direction was doubled over the past five years. But keep this momentum is unlikely. So, Tashkent (from 1 January by presidential decree, the country exported only through “Uztransgaz”) will probably have to divide the available gas between Russia and China.

Alex GRIVACH
11/06/2010

Source - Time News

Nature can take revenge.

The tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of the United States can be repeated in the Caspian Sea

S. Novak:

Nature can take revenge

The tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of the United States can be repeated in the Caspian Sea, if not provide all the security measures in the extraction of “black gold”. If in Kazakhstan on the Caspian shelf will ecological disaster of this magnitude, its effects will be much more tragic.

The air heats up to hundreds of degrees!

- What will happen if we have an accident happen today? Even the access roads to the sites of catastrophic gas emissions are of great complexity – is convinced the director of the Scientific Center of the regional environmental problems of the Atyrau Oil and Gas Institute of the National Academy of Sciences Clutch Diario .- Aperture emergency wells will turn into a raging geyser, boiling water. Water mixed with oil and gas, forms the “snaps” pole height up to 300 meters and a diameter of 50 meters. Air and sea bottom around the emergency wells will warm up to several hundred degrees! Also, do not forget – we have shallow water. When the wind flows in oil and gas are mixed with sea water, it dramatically increases its toxicity. Perish aquatic vegetation, plankton, zooplankton, fish, seals, birds …

The level of pressure in the wells at the Kashagan field in a few times (!) More than in the Gulf of Mexico. When the accident oil will come out of the sea to escape velocity.

Tengiz extinguish 398 days

Such a terrible oil and gas release occurred at Tengiz June 23, 1985. At its elimination took 398 days. In the atmosphere was emitted 3.4 million tons of oil and 1.7 billion cubic meters of gas (including 516 thousand hydrogen sulfide), 900 tons of soot … Now in the Caspian Sea developed the giant subsalt high-sulfur oil and gas deposits. All oil tanks represent “a powerful arc of capacity” with abnormally high pressure, temperature and a high content of hydrogen sulfide. Therefore, the consequences could be horrendous. The causes of catastrophic gas emissions somewhat.

It was a tense situation and in April 2000. On the east coast of Kazakhstan’s sector of the Caspian Sea took place large-scale subsidence of the earth’s surface.Flooded huge tracts of high-power fields Kalamkas and Karazhanbas. Under the water it took more than a hundred wells.

Failures can trigger earthquakes

According Muftakhov Diarova, the giant oil reservoirs in the Caspian Sea shelf may lead to natural and man-made earthquake:

- The territory of Atyrau region, including the Caspian Sea have been attributed to portions of the crust with the possible manifestations of a magnitude 6 earthquake on the Richter scale. A large oil subsalt oil and gas – Kashagan, Kairan, Aktoty, Royal and Tengiz – just located on the tectonically active areas. Can you imagine what would happen if the ground shake? In addition, in tectonically active zones in the oil and gas reservoirs are formed voids, cracks, gaps, – explains the academician of diarrhea.- They are able to provoke the manifestation of earthquakes with a magnitude of over 7 points. Thus, it would seem, slaboseysmicheskom Gazliyskom the West Uzbekistan after the development of oil and gas earthquake magnitude 7,0-7,3 points. Possible catastrophic oil and gas emissions and because of the violation of technological modes of drilling and exploitation. For example not far to seek – the tragedy of well № 37 Tengiz oil field 15 years ago.

The risk is great

During the passage of the borehole № 37, pledged to clarify the section of the Tengiz field and the assessment of stocks of raw materials 25 June 1985, at a depth of 4467 meters accident happened. There was a release of oil and gas in the atmosphere. Fountain on fire. The accident happened just because of violation of technological mode of drilling. The radius of the zone of the catastrophic effects of sulfur dioxide was 130 km!

Clutch Diario worried that eliminate possible oil and gas emissions from offshore Kashagan, Kairan and Aktoty will be much harder than it was in the Tengiz catastrophe. Marine deposits are located in the shallow zone, where the depth of one to five meters.

And the risk of large oil and gas emissions, makes forecast our interlocutor. And there can not do without the sacramental question: what can we do? Could an accident at Kashagan, as it is programmed?

“Blame yourself”

- We need a full-scale monitoring of the Earth’s crust, it makes sense to review the contracts for the development of Kashagan – offers academic diarrhea. - Otherwise, nature will say this once: “blame yourself, I will take revenge for the loss of billions of biological resources, disasters worldwide.

Then the Caspian Sea will become a permanent source of enormous pollution. Most of the migratory, nesting and wintering in the Caspian Sea birds – more than 10 million individuals – suffer and some die.

- Toxic cloud formed after the evaporation of polluted sea water will rise into the upper atmosphere to the ozone layer and the air flow will take on a huge area – involves coupling of diarrhea. - Will begin to acid rain … Decision-makers on the development of oil resources, must finally understand the magnitude of the expected environmental disasters.

№ 24 11 June 2010

Svetlana Novak, Atyrau

Source - Caravan

Turning the Gulf Oil Leak Into Bottomless Pit?

[The longer this goes on the more drastic solutions begin to take on the appearance of sanity.  The following video again issues the Hollywood solution to this gushing oil problem--Nuke it.  But reporting on that was not my objective in using this video to make some important points.  The important part of this video is confirmation of a second major oil leak six miles from the original leak sit.  This second site is the probable source of most of the underwater oil mass which has been accumulating.  The second known leak illustrates the dire reality of the situation, that there may be multiple leaks.  If the original gas and oil explosion was in the equipment and piping on the seafloor, then it is possible that it also exploded underground, under the seabed.  This would explain multiple leaks, but it also probably reflects on a small scale the real dangers of bringing in nukes.  An underground atomic explosion is just as likely to crumble the surrounding seabed, (creating hundreds of gas/oil exit points), as it is to seal the well.]

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[What if the nuclear explosion detonated the vast underground gas and oil deposits?

The following article highlights the dangers arising from an underground/seabed explosion.]

WHAT THE U. S. SCIENTISTS ARE FORBIDDEN TO TELL THE MASSES AS TO THE GULF

What you are about to read, is what the scientists in the United States are not allowed to tell you in great fear of the Obama administration. They are under the threat of severe repercussions to the max.. Scientists confirming these findings cannot be named due to the above, but what they believe, they want to be known by all.

SUMMARY OF WHAT IS HAPPENING
The estimated super high pressure release of oil from under the earth’s crust is between 80,000 to 100,000 barrels per day. The flow of oil and toxic gases is bringing up with it… rocks and sand which causes the flow to create a sandblasting effect on the remaining well head device currently somewhat restricting the flow, as well as the drilled hole itself.

As the well head becomes worn it enlarges the passageway allowing an ever-increasing flow. Even if some device could be placed onto the existing wellhead, it would not be able to shut off the flow, because what remains of the existing wellhead would not be able to contain the pressure.

The well head piping is originally about 2 inches thick. It is now likely to be less than 1 inch thick, and thinning by each passing moment. The oil has now reached the Gulf Stream and is entering the Oceanic current which is at least four times stronger than the current in the Gulf, which will carry it throughout the world within 18 months..

The oil along with the gasses, including benzene and many other toxins, is deleting the oxygen in the water. This is killing all life in the ocean. Along with the oil along the shores, there will be many dead fish, etc. that will have to be gathered and disposed of.

SUMMARY OF EXPECTATIONS
At some point the drilled hole in the earth will enlarge itself beneath the wellhead to weaken the area the wellhead rests upon. The intense pressure will then push the wellhead off the hole allowing a direct unrestricted flow of oil, etc.. The hole will continue to increase in size allowing more and more oil to rise into the Gulf. After several billion barrels of oil have been released, the pressure within the massive cavity five miles beneath the ocean floor will begin to normalize.

This will allow the water, under the intense pressure at 1 mile deep, to be forced into the hole and the cavity where the oil was. The temperature at that depth is near 400 degrees, possibly more. The water will be vaporized and turned into steam, creating an enormous amount of force, lifting the Gulf floor. It is difficult to know how much water will go down to the core and therefore, its not possible to fully calculate the rise of the floor.

The tsunami wave this will create will be anywhere from 20 to 80 feet high, possibly more. Then the floor will fall into the now vacant chamber. This is how nature will seal the hole. Depending on the height of the tsunami, the ocean debris, oil, and existing structures that will be washed away on shore and inland, will leave the area from 50 to 200 miles inland devoid of life. Even if the debris is cleaned up, the contaminants that will be in the ground and water supply will prohibit re-population of these areas for an unknown number of years. [End of scientists information release]

[THE FOLLOWING article explains the process used for a hundred years to extract the gas and oil from the continental United States.  According to the author, it is logical to assume that we are living on top of the world's biggest fuel/air bomb.]

THE  GREAT  ABYSS–AN ENTIRE CONTINENT BURNING.
Over the last hundred years or so, the water in our underground aquifers have been heavily pumped by irrigation farmers. This has lowered these water levels by 100 feet.  The result has been that a partial vacuum was created in our water aquifers.

According to the Environmental News Network:
“For fossil aquifers, such as the vast U.S. Ogallala aquifer … depletion brings pumping irrigation water to an end.  Farmers who lose their irrigation water have the option of returning to lower-yield dryland farming if rainfall permits.  In more arid regions, however, such as in the southwestern United States, the loss of irrigation water means the end of agriculture.  http://www.enn.com/top_stories/commentary/21326
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas — three leading grain-producing states — the underground water table has dropped by more than 30 meters (100 feet).  As a result, wells have gone dry on thousands of farms in the southern Great Plains. .Although this mining of America’s underground water (by farming) is taking a toll on U.S. grain production, irrigated land accounts for only one fifth of the U.S. grain harvest, compared with close to three fifths of the harvest in India and four fifths in China.”   (End Quote)

HOW OIL IS BROUGHT OUT OF THE GROUND
Since about the year 1910, America has been extracting its oil and natural gas from the H-P Reserve (referred to below) by pumping high pressure water into it, which it gets from various lakes and rivers throughout America.  This is referred to as the “Water Replacement” process, because in effect, they are replacing the oil and gas they remove from the reserve, with pumped in water.

In order to extract natural gas from what is basically an enormously large, “dry”, and very much interconnected set of chambers called the Hugoton Natural Gas Reserve, which sits directly ABOVE the water aquifer we just discussed, which is separated from same by a thick layer of shale type soil:  America’s energy companies have been using twin locomotive size diesel engines (pictured to the right) at places such as Sanford, Texas (just north of Pantex) to turn incredibly huge water pumps.

In this case these pumps remove water from man-made Lake Meredith (created by a large dam which was constructed on the Canadian River just to it’s north) to pump huge amounts of water into the H-P Reserve, so as to force the oil and natural gas that’s in the reserve up out of the earth, into pipelines, then onward to processing plants.
Now, consider that America has been using this process which the Energy Companies call “Water Replacement” for just over a hundred years.

Do you still wonder where America’s water is going, .and/or has gone ?

Water, not being anywhere near as thick and heavy as oil, will, over a short period of months, eventually seep right down into the water aquifers, where previously, the oil had been prevented by the shale rock from going.

In areas such as the Rocky Mountains, the H-P Reserve, which runs all the way from the northern tip of Canada to the southern most tip of Old Mexico, and from ten miles west into our Pacific Ocean, to about ten miles east into our Atlantic Ocean, consists of little more than dense, oil soaked, layers of shale rock: .And for which reason, at this time, it just isn’t profitable to extract oil or gas from most Rocky Mountain deposits.  Even so, several very rich oil fields co-exist with the H-P natural gas reserve in these same areas of dense shale rock in our mountains.

In places such as south Texas, oil formations are much deeper, and do not generally pose the problem we will be discussing.
However: .Should our shallower natural gas reserves ever become ignited, .them being deeper won’t make any difference,. because literally everything on the North American Continent would either explode, or burn.

Let’s consider the forces at work here:
First, we have a partial vacuum being formed in the cavity that is created by the oil companies removing oil and natural gas from the H-P Reserve (the cavity).

Next, we have the partial vacuum created in the water aquifers by farmers pumping so much water out of them for irrigation, that their depths have been decreased by one hundred feet.  All of which vacuum simply draws even more air out of the cavity that’s created in the H-P Reserve from the removal of oil and natural gas.

A MORE DETAILED EXPLANATION !
1.  According to its own official maps, which we provide below, America (and both its neighbors) sit directly on top of the Hugoton-Panhandle Natural Gas Reserve, which is the largest natural gas reserve on earth.

2.  According to the energy company’s  own public records, they already own, or have the legal rights, to in excess of eighty million acres of land in America that are known to be some of the most oil and gas rich land in the world.

3.  In order to extract natural gas from what are basically an enormously large, dry, interconnected set of chambers, America’s energy companies have been pumping huge amounts of water into them for just under a hundred years, to force the gas out into pipelines, then onward to processing plants.

4.  Once the gas in a given part of the chamber of our natural gas reserve reaches a point where it’s no longer dense enough to be economical to extract gas from, these energy companies simply move on, to areas that are more dense, in hopes that the vacuum caused by the receeding “replacement” water they had pumped into the first area, will suck enough gas in from other areas of the overall reserve, so that the area they just depleted will once again be dense enough to be economical to work.

5.  Meanwhile, the law of gravity has been constantly pulling the replacement water they had previously filled that part of the gas chamber with, into our water acquifers, which are located just below the gas chambers, leaving the partial vacuum which remains, loaded with lower “remnant” levels of natural gas.

6.  Granted, most of the overall gas reserve consists of fairly dense shale rock, but there are large chambers (wide open spaces) particularly in the areas where the energy companies have been removing oil and natural gas, from within the same general area.

7.  With nothing else to fill the void created by the reduced water level in these areas, the resulting vacuum sucks air (oxygen) down into these huge chambers, from the surface of the earth; mostly through vent pipes created by the original drilling operation.

8.  Once the oxygen to gas ratio reaches fourteen percent, the “mix” in this part of the reserve becomes volatile, and subject to exploding if and when it is ever ignited.  A mix of twenty one percent oxygen to gas ratio causes that particular gas chamber to become a genuine fully loaded bomb of a magnitude that even most scientists cannot imagine, that is just waiting to be ignited.

Just the banging together of almost any two pieces of metal would explode it !!

9.  At a point just thirty miles north of Pantex, where America stores its larger (and older) nuclear weapons as they wait to be dismantled, the H-P Reserve is less than – fifty feet – below the surface of the earth;. and subject to being breached by just anything falling from the sky, such as an airplane, a meteorite, or a bomb.

10.  If that should ever take place, the entire North American Continent would be subject to a series of explosions and fires, until it literally ceases to exist, .because the entire North American Continent is literally perched on top of the H-P Reserve.

So, after the explosions, those parts that are made of heavily oil laden shale rock would simply burn until there is nothing left.

Primary oil leak 6 miles from first well head leak

More voices calling for the nuclear solution to this continuing catastrophe.

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Gulf Oil Disaster–High resolution underwater

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NATO Looking to Build New Modern Air Facility In Kyrgyzstan

NATO stands for “Manas”

Americans for the second time trying to open an airbase in Kyrgyzstan

06.11.2010 / Grigory Mikhaylov

The military base in Kyrgyzstan has played an important role in supporting special operations in Afghanistan. Photo Reuters

On Thursday in Bishkek, arrived Special Representative of NATO in Central Asia and Caucasus Robert Simmons. This is his third visit to Kyrgyzstan over the past five years. According to experts, Simmons came to “save” Manas “.

NATO Special Representative Robert Simmons appears in Kyrgyzstan in the moments when the Manas Airbase, for a year is called the center of transit transport facing the greatest danger. Earlier, the diplomat arrived in Bishkek in May 2005. It was in those days, the fate of database caused problems in connection with the change of power occurred as a result of the March Revolution. Another visit to the U.S. general made February 2, 2009 – a fortnight before the former president of Kyrgyzstan Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced plans to eliminate the base. Surely this time the main topic of talks, held behind closed doors, was the continued presence of the Centre of transit for the antiterrorist coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan. While in Bishkek, he met with the head of an interim government Rosa Otunbayeva, as well as acting Finance Minister Temir Sariev responsible for the content of the public treasury. Given that the most serious financial flows NATO Kyrgyzstan pass through the center of transit, the version that the “basic issue” was the principal receives additional confirmation. Parties have something to talk about – in fact one of the reasons for the change of power in Kyrgyzstan, several experts called the dissatisfaction of Moscow that Bakiev has not fulfilled promises to bring the base of the country. Now Simmons has to understand, as can happen in the future fate of the military facility, located 30 km from the Kyrgyz capital.

By the way, the change of power in Kyrgyzstan has attracted attention to a corruption scandal directly linked to the base. It turned out that the U.S. military against the established norms concluded obviously unfavorable contract to supply fuel from a company that, in probability, is directly related to the family of Bakiyev. The whole “beauty” of the situation is that in addition to the Kyrgyz company, and consequently, its owners at the expense of implementing large amounts of kerosene received considerable profits, so also the fuel itself was the Russian-supplied to Kyrgyzstan for internal consumption.

In that EP for some reason the Americans dare to enter the door, experts believe it highly unlikely. According to Kyrgyz media, Americans have paid in advance $ 15 million as rent for the first quarter, and promised to soon list the next tranche. Money is considerable, especially in demand in a critical shortage in the Kyrgyz budget. We can only solve the problem with the supply of fuel.

Because of the revolutionary chaos Center transit fails to perform basic functions – fly U.S. aircraft from the Kyrgyz air base is currently suspended.Stopped working and “Bakiev” Oil Company, and now do not know any organization that will deliver a fuel-based, no matter the price. In this story there is one more interested, though not the most influential party – is itself the airport “Manas”. According to sources, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, the leadership of the main “air gates” Kyrgyzstan eagerly awaiting the outcome of the visit Simmons. The money that pays for the use of an air base runway and equipment, a substantial amount of revenue the airport. Even more, this interest will increase, if confirmed information on the American intent to build a new airport runway, as the money available does not suit them.

Bishkek

Saudi Prince Turki Warns Royal Family It’s Time to “Get Out Of Dodge”

[Take the following with a grain of salt...it came from Iranian site.]

Prince warns S. Arabia of apocalypse

Saudi Prince Turki bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud has warned the country’s royal family to step down and flee before a military coup or a popular uprising overthrows the kingdom.

In a letter published by Wagze news agency on Tuesday, the Cairo-based prince warned Saudi Arabia’s ruling family of a fate similar to that of Iraq’s executed dictator Saddam Hussein and the ousted Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, calling on them to escape before people “cut off our heads in streets.”

He warned that the Saudi royal family is no longer able to “impose” itself on people, arguing that deviations in carrying out the religious concepts that make up the basis of the Saudi government “have gotten out of our hands,” so that the opposition views our acts as “interfering in people’s private life and restricting their liberties.”

“If we are wise, we must leave this country to its people, whose dislike for us is increasing,” said Prince Turki, advising Saudi officials to escape with their families.

“Do it today before tomorrow as long as the money we have is enough for us to live anywhere in the world; from Switzerland to Canada and Australia…we should not return as long as we are able to get out safely, we must take our families quickly and pull out,” he urged.

“Do not fool yourself by relying on the United States or Britain or Israel, because they will not survive the loss; the only door open is now the exit door of no return. Let us go before it closes.”

He finally warned against a military coup against the ruling family, saying “no one will attack us from outside but our armed forces will attack us.”

Prince Turki is a member of the liberal Free Princes movement founded in the 1950s amid tensions between King Faisal and his brother King Saud, requesting the Saudi authorities to implement political reforms and set out a constitution.

The late King Faisal expelled members of the civil rights group to Egypt but later on pardoned them.

With eye on global role, India moving beyond Pakistan

By ALISTAIR SCRUTTON | REUTERS

Published: Jun 11, 2010 00:15 Updated: Jun 11, 2010 00:15

ISLAMABAD: When a senior security official here was asked why Pakistan was not developing long-range missiles, unlike in India, his answer revealed how these two nuclear foes’ geopolitical priorities may be diverging.

“We don’t have ambitions like India has, so we don’t need to develop any further long-range missiles,” he said. “Our missiles cover the entire India, so that’s it.”

Indeed, India has raised eyebrows developing a new long-range missile with a capacity to hit most of China, a signal of how New Delhi’s focus is tentatively moving away from an obsession with Pakistan to more global issues.

For decades, these two countries, which have gone to war three times since independence from Britain in 1947, have been synonymous with each other. Diplomats often like to talk of India-Pakistan as “hyphenated”.

But India is trying to move from that old beat, seduced more by its growing role in the global economy, its stellar growth and preoccupations with other security issues like China than dealing with what many Indians deride as a “failed state”.

Pakistan, meanwhile, often seems stuck in its obsession with India, mired in conspiracy theories, reflecting what critics say are decades-old fears that do little to bring regional stability.

It’s an imbalance that may help redefine how these nations reach for peace as well as create new risks, making an aspiring and globalized India more vulnerable to regional tension, while making Pakistan frustrated it is losing out to its neighbor.

“India sees itself as playing a global role and looks at the region as a stepping stone for its aspirations,” said Siddharth Varadarajan, strategic affairs editor for India’s The Hindu.

“Pakistan sees its ability to be noticed globally as related to its tensions with India.”

Take China. India is focused on boosting trade with China as part of its growing economic clout in Asia, while ensuring security over a disputed border. The two sides fought a brief but bloody border war in 1962. For Pakistan, China is simply source of diplomatic support and weapons to counter India.

In Afghanistan, where both countries are seen in a proxy war for influence, Indian officials laud $1.2 billion aid as their ability to help bring regional stability through “soft power.” Pakistan sees that as an effort to push it out and wants Indian aid scaled down.

The imbalance has already produced tensions with the United States. Washington wants Pakistan to stop worrying about India and focus more on Taleban on its Afghan border.

President Barack Obama hinted at frustration over Pakistan earlier this year when he said that (Pakistan’s) “obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan has been misguided … their biggest threat right now comes internally”.

Those kind of comments irk Pakistan, where policy makers still see India trying to gain the kind of influence it has in its other South Asian neighbors, like Nepal.

“There are American efforts to persuade us to put troops on our Western border,” said Riffat Hussein, chairman of the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Pakistan’s Quaid-e-Azam University. “But no one here is fooled by that.”

The signing of a US civilian nuclear agreement with New Delhi is another source of tension. For New Delhi, the deal was about having access to the global nuclear power market.

Islamabad looked on enviously as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was feted in Washington. Its request afterward for a similar deal has fallen on deaf ears.

Pakistan worries India’s new global role will make New Delhi more arrogant, with fewer incentives for peace when it feels too important to ignore. Those fears may be exaggerated.

Singh, born in Pakistan before Partition in 1947, says India cannot really take its global place without peace in South Asia, with a second attack like Mumbai in 2008, which New Delhi blames on Pakistan-based militants, capable of derailing investor confidence in India’s globalized economy.

“The most cost-effective thing would be to engage Pakistan to improve the atmosphere to a point where you can reduce the possibility of another Mumbai,” said a senior Indian official on condition of anonymity.

“We know if we have to get on with it (India’s global push), we have to move beyond Pakistan.”

India is far more vulnerable to economic shock from another major border build-up than it was in 2002, the year of the last major border crisis that saw the countries nearly go to war again.

It still has most of its army on the border and steep rises in defense spending are also linked to a perceived Pakistan threat.

So if India has one eye on global affairs, it always has the other on Pakistan, a fact not lost on Islamabad.

Photos of the effects of disorder in Osh

Bishkek (AKI) – In the city of Osh in the night of 10 on June 11, riots broke out. There have been fires in the following sites: Osh oblast philharmonic society, a pharmacy, Uzbek Drama Theatre, a kiosk, the TV OshTV, two cafes: “Mercury” and “Alpha”, the Hotel Alay, printing houses, shopping center “Mukaram”.

Photos of the effects of disorder AKI gave Anwar Abdurakhmanov

The situation in Osh. Situation stabilizes

11/06/2010
13:32

On the streets of Osh
Photo Reuters

Bishkek (AKI) – The situation in the city of Osh, where the night of 10 on June 11, riots broke out, remains tense.

Information on 13:30: According to the latest Ministry of Health, the number of riot victims has reached 17 people.

Information on 13:25: The situation in Osh to normal. Law enforcement authorities report that in general the situation is under control.

Correspondents AKI reported that in some places there are minor skirmishes of small groups of people, sometimes heard single shots.

Information at 12:10: Some time ago, near the Kyrgyz-Uzbek University collision of two groups of young people. 3 people were injured, one of them in serious condition in hospital. At the present time the crowd dispersed.

Information at 11:45: Emergency meeting of local authorities with the power authorities and representatives of the Provisional Government was completed. In order to ensure the rule of law decision to place troops in different parts of the city of Osh, where possible collision, and at the entrances to the city.

Meanwhile, according to the Ministry of Health, the number killed in the unrest had reached 14.

Information at 10:50: In the Mayor of Osh began meeting with some members of the Provisional Government, law enforcement agencies and local authorities. They are expected to discuss the situation in Osh. The meeting was attended by Deputy Chairman of the EP Tekebayev and Beknazarov, special representative of VP, Defense Minister Ismail Isakov, a deputy chairman of the State National Security Service Colban Musaev and others.

The building of the Osh regional administration, which is also located in Osh City Hall, surrounded by a large number of military, on the perimeter of the building is armored.

Information at 10:45: As it became known, the management institutes of higher education last night toured the dormitories for safety reasons visitors were taken of girls and women, placing them in the barracks and buildings adjacent to the regional administration.

Information on 10:20: The death toll, according to the Ministry of Health, was 12.

Information on 10:05: The police report that the main street in Osh – street Kurmandjan Datka cleared from the crowd. The firing stopped.

It was learned that the commandant of the city once again became Coursan Asanov (recently appointed head of one police station in Bishkek).

The representative of Osh authorities Kushbak Tezekbaev reported that the village Furkat, attended by hundreds of young people are discussions with a view to prevent clashes between the fuels.

The city stopped the flow of natural gas in the apartment residents.

Information on the 9:45: The city does not stop shooting. Clashes occur in several areas of the city. One of them is the so-called Osh area near the shopping mall capital – hundreds of young men shooting at each other.

Information on the 9:40: On the outskirts of Osh in the village Furqat going to a large number of people. Part of the law enforcement and burn in this direction.

In the skies over Oshom circle 6 military helicopters.

Information on the 9:25: According to the Ministry of Health, hospitals, died 6 people, injured during the clashes.

Information on the 9:10: According to some sources, a large group of people moving through the streets of Kyrgyzstan. In particular, reported that the company suffered “Osh PVA.

Information on the 9:05: The city of Osh region Uzgen situation is calm, but not working urban markets, people do not go to work.

The city of Osh hindered movement, every quarter, put up roadblocks around the city touring armored personnel carriers with machine gunners.

Burning bank building “Eco-Bank” Lenin Street, located near the Philharmonic.

Information on the 8:10: According to the Agency fire safety in fixed sources of ignition in the following sites: Osh oblast philharmonic society, a pharmacy, Uzbek Drama Theatre, a kiosk, the TV OshTV, two cafes: “Mercury” and “Alpha” hotel ” Alay, printing houses, shopping center Mukaram.

Information on 08:00: President of the transition Rosa Otunbayeva intends to make a special appeal.

Information on the 7:50: We hear single shots and bursts, presumably from the Osh Bazaar.

Information on the 7:25: As it became known, some time ago, several hundred people attempted to enter the building of the Osh regional administration, but law enforcement agencies do not let them do it.

Information of 07:00: In different parts of Osh burn several shopping pavilions. On some streets difficult journey – the locals have blocked some sections of the streets.

Information on the 6:40: In some areas of Osh continuing clashes between law enforcement agencies and groups. Clashes occur in the area Frunzenskiy and near the hotel “Alai”. Scattered shots heard.

Information on the 6:30: According to the Interior Ministry, during clashes killed 4 people, 40 were injured to varying degrees.

Information on the 4:30: With 2:00 on June 11 in the cities of Osh and Uzgen, as well as in Aravan and Karasuu areas of emergency. The corresponding decree adopted the Provisional Government, at its emergency meeting.

Appointed commander of the 1 st Deputy Interior Minister Baktybek Alymbekov.

New violence erupts in Osh, Kyrgyzstan

Deadly clashes in Kyrgyzstan’s southern city of Osh

Officials say the shooting has stopped

more about “New violence erupts in Osh, Kyrgyzstan“, posted with vodpod

At least 14 people have been killed in clashes in Kyrgyzstan’s second-largest city of Osh, health ministry officials say.

More than 140 people were also injured when hundreds of youths fought in the streets of the southern city.

Officials say a state of emergency has been declared and armoured vehicles have been sent to the city.

The interim government has been struggling to restore order after a violent uprising in April.

Since then, there have been fears of an upsurge in violence between Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbeks in the south.

Osh is home to a large ethnic Uzbek community, and is the power-base of the ousted president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev.

Appeal for calm

According to local reports, fighting broke out between rival gangs and developed into gun battles.

Reports from Osh said that a number of buildings, including cafes, a local TV channel and a theatre were ablaze.

It appears that the majority of the properties belonged to ethnic Uzbeks.

Firefighters tried to put out the fires, but angry youths reportedly threw rocks to prevent them doing their job.

Several buildings in Osh were set on fire

Residents say the shooting continued into Friday morning and that helicopters were flying low overhead.

However, an Interior Ministry spokesman said the shooting had stopped and that the city was now under the control of the security forces.

It is not clear who is behind the violence, but in an address to the nation, interim President Roza Otunbayeva said mass disorder had been triggered by some small-scale skirmishes, and she called on people to remain calm.

In recent weeks, several incidents have prompted fears of inter-ethnic violence between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz.

The country’s interior and defence ministers are reportedly travelling to the region.

Mr Bakiyev fled with his family to Belarus after clashes between government forces and protesters on 7 April, which left at least 85 people dead in the Central Asian state.

The violence was the culmination of months of discontent over rising prices and allegations of corruption in Kyrgyzstan, which had been regarded as one of the more progressive states in the region.

The violence has also raised fears of a civil war in the country, where both Russia and the US have military bases.

The interim government has promised to hold elections in October, after a constitutional referendum on reducing presidential powers.

Truth Is A Liberating Force Which Cannot Be Contained

TV journalists see benefit in publicizing attempts to censor them

Yuriy Onyshkiv

When STB and 1+1 TV journalists went public in May with allegations of pressure and censorship, it worked – to some extent.
When STB and 1+1 TV journalists went public in May with allegations of pressure and censorship, it worked – to some extent.
Journalists at the two television stations say station management – who many believe were acting at the behest of President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration – eased up. But nobody is declaring victory in Ukraine’s ongoing battles over free speech.
“Our colleagues from other channels used to tell us that it was easier for us to go public, since everyone supported us,” said Nataliya Sokolenko, one of the STB journalists who openly spoke of pressure. “In this case, I usually say that at least morally it is easier to do it together and the result then comes faster.”
Independent experts agree that, based on monitoring, coverage on both TV stations became modestly fairer and less blatantly pro-administration after censorship allegations were raised publicly.
“Since 1+1 and STB journalists declared, several weeks ago, that they are being pressured, coverage on those channels got more or less unbiased,” said Viktoria Siumar, head of the International Media Institute in Ukraine. “Now, at STB, there are no ‘prohibited’ stories for coverage. This is unlike Inter, ICTV, First National Channels, where there is a balance of faces, but not a balance of views.”
Sokolenko said she is glad that journalists went public with their charges of interference in editorial decisions. “I don’t know about our channel’s management, but the journalists do not feel any pressure,” Sokolenko said.
With 1+1, the nation’s second most-watched TV station, the story is a little different. After several 1+1 journalists went public with accusations of outside interference in editorial decisions, the station’s billionaire owner – Igor Kolomoisky – met with journalists and agreed to start from scratch.
“After we publicly raised our concerns we had a breath of fresh air. We got to do some of the stories that were put off the air,” Serhiy Kudimov, a 1+1 journalist, said. “A vivid example of that was [1+1 reporter] Myroslav Otkovych’s story on changes proposed by the Party of Regions deputy Vasyl Kyselyov to a law on the Ukrainian famine, Holodomor, [which claimed lives of several millions of Ukrainians in 1932-33], according to which the word ‘genocide’ should be removed from the law.”
Previously, Otkovych’s story was kept off the air about Yanukovych’s refusal to consider as genocide the Holodomor, the Stalin-ordered famine that killed millions of people.
However, unlike on STB, 1+1 reporters still see reasons for concerns.
“Although we achieved more freedom, some of our demands – like rotation of the channel’s journalists covering the presidential administration, the Cabinet, and the Verkhovna Rada – never materialized,” Kudimov said.

According to some insiders, presidential administration officials dictate to 1+1, and possibly other channels, which reporters they want to see in the president’s pool of journalists, and the station complies. So, in essence, the administration handpicks the most Yanukovych-friendly journalists covering the beat, ensuring favorable coverage.
Moreover, a recent Sunday weekly digest did not cover the parts from the president’s June 4 press conference during which journalists raised the issue of censorship and pressure on a number of TV channels. There was also not a word about what the president failed to do during his first 100 days in the office.
Siumar said that, despite these gradual improvements in freedom achieved at STB and 1+1, most national channels are biased in favor of the presidential administration.
Kudimov says the channel’s journalists enjoy a little bit more freedom, but still do not get the feeling of complete freedom. “The current situation is more of wait and see how things develop,” he said. Summer is not a political season and tempers will remain low for now, unlike in the fall when pressure on us might return, the reporter added.
“We have attained victory at STB and partially at 1+1. Yet, a more global aim – media freedom in other Ukrainian media – is still to be accomplished,” added Sokolenko.
The International Media Institute head has one recipe against censorship.
“If journalists fight for their professional freedom, they eventually get it. But if they prefer to be told what to do, they are not going to make much of a difference,” Siumar said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at onyshkiv@kyivpost.com

Latest Terrorist Mastermind Turns-Out To Be Another Dumb Ass

Why Do the “Most Serious” Terrorist Threats Always Turn-Out To Be Dummies?

 

Jersey Jihadist Carlos Almonte is an idiot, says former computer shop boss

BY BARRY PADDOCK AND RICH SCHAPIRO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

 

He wasn’t the brains of the operation.

Carlos Almonte, one of the terror suspects busted at Kennedy Airport, stunned co-workers at a New Jersey computer shop with his stupidity.

"I’m telling you, this kid is not smart," said a supervisor. "The simplest stuff we told him to do, he couldn’t – like organize this with that."

Almonte worked at the store for more than a year, but quit about two weeks ago, saying life’s "too expensive" in the Garden State, the supervisor said.

"We were planning to lay him off, but he beat us to it," said the boss, who spoke on the condition that his name and the shop not be identified.

Almonte told his co-workers he was moving to another state – apparently a cover for his planned trip to Africa.

Authorities say Almonte and his wanna-be jihadist pal Mohamed Alessa were planning to link up with an Al Qaeda-linked militant group in the hope of getting the chance to kill American troops.

His co-workers were amazed their dunce of a colleague is accused of such an ambitious plot.

"The simplest stuff he cannot do. How’s he going to do something like that?" the supervisor said.

Almonte is not the first accused terrorist to be labeled a bonehead.

Accused Times Square car bomber Faisal Shahzad made simple mistakes in constructing a bomb and left behind reams of physical evidence.

Almonte, 24, and Alessa, 20, are due in Newark Federal Court today for a bail hearing.Barry Paddock

and Rich Schapiro

The Christian Fascists Are Growing Stronger

By Chris Hedges

08 June, 2010
TruthDig.com

Tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a diffuse and fractious movement known as the Christian right, have begun to dismantle the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment. They are creating a theocratic state based on “biblical law,” and shutting out all those they define as the enemy. This movement, veering closer and closer to traditional fascism, seeks to force a recalcitrant world to submit before an imperial America. It champions the eradication of social deviants, beginning with homosexuals, and moving on to immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims and those they dismiss as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace their perverted and heretical interpretation of the Bible. Those who defy the mass movement are condemned as posing a threat to the health and hygiene of the country and the family. All will be purged.

The followers of deviant faiths, from Judaism to Islam, must be converted or repressed. The deviant media, the deviant public schools, the deviant entertainment industry, the deviant secular humanist government and judiciary and the deviant churches will be reformed or closed. There will be a relentless promotion of Christian “values,” already under way on Christian radio and television and in Christian schools, as information and facts are replaced with overt forms of indoctrination. The march toward this terrifying dystopia has begun. It is taking place on the streets of Arizona, on cable news channels, at tea party rallies, in the Texas public schools, among militia members and within a Republican Party that is being hijacked by this lunatic fringe.

Elizabeth Dilling, who wrote “The Red Network” and was a Nazi sympathizer, is touted as required reading by trash-talk television hosts like Glenn Beck. Thomas Jefferson, who favored separation of church and state, is ignored in Christian schools and soon will be ignored in Texas public school textbooks. The Christian right hails the “significant contributions” of the Confederacy. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s, has been rehabilitated, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is defined as part of the worldwide battle against Islamic terror. Legislation like the new Jim Crow laws of Arizona is being considered by 17 other states.

The rise of this Christian fascism, a rise we ignore at our peril, is being fueled by an ineffectual and bankrupt liberal class that has proved to be unable to roll back surging unemployment, protect us from speculators on Wall Street, or save our dispossessed working class from foreclosures, bankruptcies and misery. The liberal class has proved useless in combating the largest environmental disaster in our history, ending costly and futile imperial wars or stopping the corporate plundering of the nation. And the gutlessness of the liberal class has left it, and the values it represents, reviled and hated.

The Democrats have refused to repeal the gross violations of international and domestic law codified by the Bush administration. This means that Christian fascists who achieve power will have the “legal” tools to spy on, arrest, deny habeas corpus to, and torture or assassinate American citizens—as does the Obama administration.

Those who remain in a reality-based world often dismiss these malcontents as buffoons and simpletons. They do not take seriously those, like Beck, who pander to the primitive yearnings for vengeance, new glory and moral renewal. Critics of the movement continue to employ the tools of reason, research and fact to challenge the absurdities propagated by creationists who think they will float naked into the heavens when Jesus returns to Earth. The magical thinking, the flagrant distortion in interpreting the Bible, the contradictions that abound within the movement’s belief system and the laughable pseudoscience, however, are impervious to reason. We cannot convince those in the movement to wake up. It is we who are asleep.

Those who embrace this movement see life as an epic battle against forces of evil and Satanism. The world is black and white. They need to feel, even if they are not, that they are victims surrounded by dark and sinister groups bent on their destruction. They need to believe they know the will of God and can fulfill it, especially through violence. They need to sanctify their rage, a rage that lies at the core of the ideology. They seek total cultural and political domination. They are using the space within the open society to destroy it. These movements work within the confining rules of the secular state because they have no choice. The intolerance they promote is muted in the public assurances of their slickest operators. Given enough power, and they are working hard to get it, any such cooperation will vanish. The demand for total control and for a Christian nation and the refusal to permit any dissent are on display within their inner sanctums. These pastors have established within their churches tiny, despotic fiefdoms, and they seek to replicate these little tyrannies on a larger scale.

Many of the tens of millions within the Christian right live on the edge of poverty. The Bible, interpreted for them by pastors whose connection with God means they cannot be questioned, is their handbook for daily life. The rigidity and simplicity of their belief are potent weapons in the fight against their own demons and the struggle to keep their lives on track. The reality-based world, one where Satan, miracles, destiny, angels and magic did not exist, battered them like driftwood. It took their jobs and destroyed their future. It rotted their communities. It flooded their lives with alcohol, drugs, physical violence, deprivation and despair. And then they discovered that God has a plan for them. God will save them. God intervenes in their lives to promote and protect them. The emotional distance they have traveled from the real world to the world of Christian fantasy is immense. And the rational, secular forces, those that speak in the language of fact and evidence, are hated and ultimately feared, for they seek to pull believers back into “the culture of death” that nearly destroyed them.

There are wild contradictions within this belief system. Personal independence is celebrated alongside an abject subservience to leaders who claim to speak for God. The movement says it defends the sanctity of life and advocates the death penalty, militarism, war and righteous genocide. It speaks of love and promotes fear of damnation and hate. There is a terrifying cognitive dissonance in every word they utter.

The movement is, for many, an emotional life raft. It is all that holds them together. But the ideology, while it regiments and orders lives, is merciless. Those who deviate from the ideology, including “backsliders” who leave these church organizations, are branded as heretics and subjected to little inquisitions, which are the natural outgrowth of messianic movements. If the Christian right seizes the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, these little inquisitions will become big inquisitions.

The cult of masculinity pervades the movement. Feminism and homosexuality, believers are told, have rendered the American male physically and spiritually impotent. Jesus, for the Christian right, is a muscular man of action, casting out demons, battling the Antichrist, attacking hypocrites and castigating the corrupt. This cult of masculinity, with its glorification of violence, is deeply appealing to those who feel disempowered and humiliated. It vents the rage that drove many people into the arms of the movement. It encourages them to lash back at those who, they are told, seek to destroy them. The paranoia about the outside world is stoked through bizarre conspiracy theories, many championed in books such as Pat Robertson’s “The New World Order,” a xenophobic rant that includes attacks on liberals and democratic institutions.

The obsession with violence pervades the popular novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. In their apocalyptic novel, “Glorious Appearing,” based on LaHaye’s interpretation of biblical prophecies about the Second Coming, Christ returns and eviscerates the flesh of millions of nonbelievers with the sound of his voice. There are long descriptions of horror and blood, of how “the very words of the Lord had superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin.” Eyes disintegrate. Tongues melt. Flesh dissolves. The Left Behind series, of which this novel is a part, contains the best-selling adult novels in the country.

Violence must be used to cleanse the world. These Christian fascists are called to a perpetual state of war. “Any teaching of peace prior to [Christ’s] return is heresy…” says televangelist James Robinson.

Natural disasters, terrorist attacks, instability in Israel and even the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are seen as glorious signposts. The war in Iraq is predicted, believers insist, in the ninth chapter of the Book of Revelations, where four angels “which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of men.” The march is inevitable and irreversible and requires everyone to be ready to fight, kill and perhaps die. Global war, even nuclear war, is not to be feared, but welcomed as the harbinger of the Second Coming. And leading the avenging armies is an angry, violent Messiah who dooms hundreds of millions of apostates to a horrible and gruesome death.

The Christian right, while embracing a form of primitivism, seeks the imprint of law and science to legitimate its absurd mythologies. Its members seek this imprint because, despite their protestations to the contrary, they are a distinctly modern, totalitarian movement. They seek to co-opt the pillars of the Enlightenment in order to abolish the Enlightenment. Creationism, or “intelligent design,” like eugenics for the Nazis or “Soviet” science for Stalin, must be introduced into the mainstream as a valid scientific discipline—hence the rewriting of textbooks. The Christian right defends itself in the legal and scientific jargon of modernity. Facts and opinions, once they are used “scientifically” to support the irrational, become interchangeable. Reality is no longer based on the gathering of facts and evidence. It is based on ideology. Facts are altered. Lies become true. Hannah Arendt called it “nihilistic relativism,” although a better phrase might be collective insanity.

The Christian right has, for this reason, its own creationist “scientists” who use the language of science to promote anti-science. It has fought successfully to have creationist books sold in national park bookstores at the Grand Canyon and taught in public schools in states such as Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas. Creationism shapes the worldview of hundreds of thousands of students in Christian schools and colleges. This pseudoscience claims to have proved that all animal species, or at least their progenitors, fit on Noah’s ark. It challenges research in AIDS and pregnancy prevention. It corrupts and discredits the disciplines of biology, astronomy, geology, paleontology and physics.

Once creationists can argue on the same platform as geologists, asserting that the Grand Canyon was not created 6 billion years ago but 6,000 years ago by the great flood that lifted up Noah’s ark, we have lost. The acceptance of mythology as a legitimate alternative to reality is a body blow to the rational, secular state. The destruction of rational and empirically based belief systems is fundamental to the creation of all totalitarian ideologies. Certitude, for those who could not cope with the uncertainty of life, is one of the most powerful appeals of the movement. Dispassionate intellectual inquiry, with its constant readjustments and demand for evidence, threatens certitude. For this reason incertitude must be abolished.

“What convinces masses are not facts,” Arendt wrote in “Origins of Totalitarianism,” “and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system which they are presumably part. Repetition, somewhat overrated in importance because of the common belief in the masses’ inferior capacity to grasp and remember, is important because it convinces them of consistency in time.”

Augustine defined the grace of love as Volo ut sis—I want you to be. There is, he wrote, an affirmation of the mystery of the other in relationships based on love, an affirmation of unexplained and unfathomable differences. Relationships based on love recognize that others have a right to be. These relationships accept the sacredness of difference. This acceptance means that no one individual or belief system captures or espouses an absolute truth. All struggle, in their own way, some outside of religious systems and some within them, to interpret mystery and transcendence.

The sacredness of the other is anathema for the Christian right, which cannot acknowledge the legitimacy of other ways of being and believing. If other belief systems, including atheism, have moral validity, the infallibility of the movement’s doctrine, which constitutes its chief appeal, is shattered. There can be no alternative ways to think or to be. All alternatives must be crushed.

Ideological, theological and political debates are useless with the Christian right. It does not respond to a dialogue. It is impervious to rational thought and discussion. The naive attempts to placate a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to it that we too have “values,” only strengthens its legitimacy and weakness our own. If we do not have a right to be, if our very existence is not legitimate in the eyes of God, there can be no dialogue. At this point it is a fight for survival.

Those gathered into the arms of this Christian fascist movement are desperately struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile environment. We failed them; we owe them more: This is their response. The financial dislocations, the struggles with domestic and sexual abuse, the battle against addictions, the poverty and the despair that many in the movement endure are tragic, painful and real. They have a right to their rage and alienation. But they are also being used and manipulated by forces that seek to dismantle what is left of our democracy and abolish the pluralism that was once the hallmark of our society.

The spark that could set this conflagration ablaze could be lying in the hands of a small Islamic terrorist cell. It could be in the hands of greedy Wall Street speculators who gamble with taxpayer money in the elaborate global system of casino capitalism. The next catastrophic attack, or the next economic meltdown, could be our Reichstag fire. It could be the excuse used by these totalitarian forces, this Christian fascism, to extinguish what remains of our open society.

Let us not stand meekly at the open gates of the city waiting passively for the barbarians. They are coming. They are slouching toward Bethlehem. Let us shake off our complacency and cynicism. Let us openly defy the liberal establishment, which will not save us, to demand and fight for economic reparations for our working class. Let us reincorporate these dispossessed into our economy. Let us give them a reality-based hope for the future. Time is running out. If we do not act, American fascists, clutching Christian crosses, waving American flags and orchestrating mass recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance, will use this rage to snuff us out.

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

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