Peace through superior firepower

A few days ago I was engaged in conversation with a non-conspiratorially minded chum who works in UK property sales

Times are definitely a changing as, for the first time, he acknowledge to me that, yes, the UK possibly was headed towards a period of severe economic hardship for the massses. He was, however, confident that the UK government ‘has got clever people working behind the scenes who can see what’s coming and the government probably has already started spending money on starting up some industries that will help pay us out of the mess the country’s in’

My response was that there is absolutely no sign of that whatsoever and that whatever industry we could think of getting into, the Asian economies can think of getting into with a much lower cost base.

Even if they consented to enduring the same standard of living as the Chinese or Indians, the wages of British workers cannot be slashed to be competitive with Chinese or Indian labour because UK property costs are so much higher. Property costs that the British have to meet directly in rent or mortgages and indirectly through the rentier element concealed within the price of essential goods and services

However, as I explained to my chum, I have seen copious evidence that the British, and other Western, establishments are preparing for the possiblity of some kind of economic collapse. They haven’t invested much in the way of productive manufacturing industry but they have spent shed loads on tooling-up their police forces

But that, my chum argued, was necessary because of the threat of terrorism…

Evidently, he’s still in need of a little more conspirasizing

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I’ve been pulled up a couple of times in this blog for suggesting that British police have become more like para-militaries in recent years. The people who’ve pulled me up have have referred to the pitched battles, complete with cavalry, during the miners strike and the treatment meted out to people like Blair Peach and Stephen Waldorf as being evidence that the police have always been a bit ‘tasty’ when it comes to dealing with people who get in their way

And, yes, these commentators have a point but, with all respect, have you taken a look at the British police recently…

Even former senior coppers and yes, though I still can’t quite believe it, Max ‘Have you read my book about how great the SS were‘ Hastings have recently written articles suggesting that having machine-gun toting police who can execute people with impunity is probably not the way for supposedly civilised societies to go…

How can the public feel safe when the police are so scared?

Of course, the police have a tough job. But to shoot dead Mark Saunders like a mad dog was an affront to the values of a decent society

Sir Max Hastings – sole liberator of the Falkland Islands and born-again bleeding heart pinko fag subversive

But even these (presumably) principled voices against the militarisation of our police compromise their argument by agreeing that, because of the threat of terrorism, there is a place for some British policemen to be kitted out with the kind of weaponry and mentality that wouldn’t be out of place in a 1970s junta, but only sometimes

Now, to me, it’s plain as day that the Terror threat is being at least bigged-up, and possibly at least partially instigated, by the numerous interest groups that benefit from a society collectively crapping its pants

But that’s actually a moot point

Even if I believed that the Terror threat was 100% genuine and as really, really scary as our Overlords keep telling us it is, we should still reject the surveillence state and militarised police on the time-honoured bases that those who surrender liberty for a little temporary safety really do deserve neither, that freedom has a price and that if we change our society in response to terrorism the terrorists have achieved their objectives

You will hear none of these arguments being promoted by British politicians, journalists or officially sanctioned (low) pressure groups like Liberty

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The gun fashionably displayed by the group of licenced potential killers in this photo is a variant of the iconic Heckler & Koch MP5…

The MP5 can chuck out bullets at rates of up to 500-600 rounds a minute. It’s black, it’s scary looking and it can kill a lot of people very quickly. It’s the kind of high-quality weapon that gives serious gun nuts a roaring chubby just thinking about it.

MP5s, and a smattering of the higher velocity H&K G36, are now a common sight in London in the hands of Metropolitan police officers. If you’re ever at one of London’s airports take a look up sometime and you’ll see police officers at the mezzanine levels strutting around with their MP5s, presumably ready to cut loose from elevated positions of fire at the drop of a hat.

If you think about it for a moment that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Even if the quality of domestic terrorist was to take a quantum leap up from the kind of sad losers who make bombs out of flour and set fire to their underpants to the kind of terrorists who actually have access to guns, are the police really going to open fire with machine guns in crowded airport terminals? And, even if so, why do those armed police have to be there right in front of our fucking faces all the time?

The answer, I fear, is the same reason why the government sent light tanks to Heathrow before the invasion of Iraq. That weaponry is not there to scare potential (and, remember, allegedly suicidal) terrorists. It’s there to scare us

The reason why I mention all of this now is because of this recent snippet from the State Broadcasting Company…

Police in training for ‘Mumbai-style’ gun attack in UK

…suspects were planning to copy the 2008 attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai*, where 10 gunmen went on a three-day rampage, killing 166 people and injuring more than 300, the sources said.

In response police armed response units are being given more powerful weapons.

Our correspondent said the UK authorities had been planning for such an attack ever since Mumbai* happened.

“David Cameron has taken a personal interest in the problem ever since his first threat assessment given to him when he took office in May.

“Now police armed response units are getting their firepower and their stocks of ammunition increased to deal with multiple terrorists armed with automatic weapons,” he said.

More powerful than MP5s and G36s?!

What the fuck are they planning to start dishing out?

Bring me the head of Silvino Herrera

[The beheading story is eerily similar to this quote I received from a troubled Marine vet, about beheading a Panamanian officer to send the head back to Noriega before the invasion:

"One of the ops I remember, "we" (me and the Army guys), took the head of a (what I now believe) high ranking military officer.  I carried "it" back to the C-141 we rode on, in a black cloth bag, and put it in a cooler with ice.  I vaguely remember the CIA guy talking about sending it to Noriega." ]

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“Us versus them” and other “modern” myths of war and civilization

By Daniel Patrick Welch
Against the background of the leaking of the USA’s  secret Iraq war crimes files by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, Daniel Patrick Welch peers beneath the West’s self-proclaimed cultural and moral superiority in the face of atrocities against innocent people all over the world.

“When we peel away all the layers of burning flesh, all the carefully constructed fiction of human progress and benefits of science and technology, we must face a reality perhaps even more grim. There simply is no ‘us versus them’. The side claiming to represent progress has done more and done worse, using as low-tech and brutal methods as any on either side of the technological and cultural divide.” (Daniel Patrick Welch)

They behead – we do it with smart bombs. There is, of course, an ugly truth to this recently minted axiom: the horror of state terrorism is that the overwhelming machinery of death in the hands of all-powerful governments far outweighs individual atrocities by madmen, small groups and non-state entities. While, with their beheadings and murders of innocents, the heathen thugs and killers may indeed be barbarians, it is almost impossible to accomplish with their amateur methods the slaughter of half a million children, as did the Anglo-American/UN sanctions in Iraq.

“… the brutal repression of movements that strive for greater human freedom, workers’ rights and a life worth living is ignored, while the “atrocities” of those trying to resist are seen as backward and evidence of cultural and moral inferiority.”

This is the same reasoning that puts the lie to the sanitized concept of war and destruction which makes the self-satisfied “West” so smug and confident of its moral superiority. There is an underlying, and often overt, racism which allows so-called “modern” warmakers and their electorates to tolerate the huge disparities in casualties that have come to define modern conflict. In virtually every case, the brutal repression of movements that strive for greater human freedom, workers’ rights and a life worth living is ignored, while the “atrocities” of those trying to resist are seen as backward and evidence of cultural and moral inferiority.

However, one problem is not just that the disparity in terror torpedoes the moral superiority argument. It is true that the 20th century was indeed a most horrific one, unbeknownst to most lay observers: at its dawn, 90 per cent of war dead were combatants and 10 per cent non-combatants. By its end, the ratio was reversed, making it the most deadly and, arguably, least “advanced” century in human history. True also, the machinery of war, with its amoral measurements in “kilomorts”, its chemistry of napalm designed to stick to human skin and burn, its phosphorous and gas, its cluster munitions – not to mention the almost surreal evil of neutron bomb technology, which are meant to kill people while leaving buildings intact – shows that the actual brutality of burning flesh and exploding body parts is in no way less barbaric than other methods. The United States gets no props from the rest of the “civilized” world for instituting the pain-free technology of lethal injection to a practice most governments consider a barbarous anachronism.

When we peel away all the layers of burning flesh, all the carefully-constructed fiction of human progress and benefits of science and technology, we must face a reality perhaps even more grim. It is not merely us standing cynically by, wringing our hands while they hack each other to death with machetes, as when almost a million Tutsis died in Rwanda. There simply is no “us versus them”. The side claiming to represent progress, the “march of history” and the fulfilment of the human desire for freedom and self-rule, has done more and done worse, using as low-tech and brutal methods as any on either side of the technological and cultural divide. There is a famous photo, not of Nick Berg, not of John the Baptist, but of Silvino, one of the lieutenants in Augusto Sandino’s resistance army. Rather, it is a photo of Sr Herrera’s head held triumphantly aloft by a US Marine, a conquering hero of the few and the proud. It turns out we behead, too.

US Marine Lt Remmington holding Silvino Herrera’s head, 1930

When I was in Nicaragua, I heard testimony of the victims of Somoza’s National Guard, women with their breasts cut off, left alive and maimed on purpose to terrorize their families. Resistance fighters and their supporters and trade unionists killed with their genitals cut off and stuffed in their mouths. Victims forced at gunpoint to swallow a button on a string while laughing guardsmen kept trying to pull it up. Like all the henchmen throughout Latin America, these murderers, nun-rapists, “deplaners” (who simply pushed terror victims out of a moving plane to their unacknowledged deaths), clown-killers and assorted scum received training and backing from the CIA, the Pentagon and the dreaded School of the Americas. As Franklin D. Roosevelt, hero of the US mainstream left, once bragged: “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a-bitch.” It turns out we do all that other stuff, too.

Likewise, I had mostly considered the shot of triumphant soldiers standing atop a pile of bones of the conquered dead to be mainly a cartoon representation. Wrong again – the only such true photo I have ever seen was of US soldiers in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century, when over a half million Filipinos were slaughtered in the successful attempt to secure the islands for the American empire. The scene is repeated ad nauseum in US history, in murderous rampages across our own continent from sea to shining sea, through Central America, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Despite George Bush’s audacity and isolation, there is absolutely nothing new about Iraq. Conquest, pacification, occupation and the transfer of “sovereignty” to a puppet government is the textbook modus operandi. The only phase yet to be completed is the few decades in which the world is supposed to forget the origins of the dictatorship, after which US forces return to suppress rebellion or resistance movements and install democracy, as if the cycle had no beginning.

In this context, it is almost unbearable to hear the shallow, mind-deadening “debate” between Democrats and Republicans about “how to handle” Iraq, not to mention the infrastructure of organized theft that transfers trillions of dollars from South to North, from workers to capital, from poor to rich, from brown to white. To my mind, there are three crises – allowing for some consolidation and overlap – which surpass all else in their urgency today. They can be summarized as empire (by which we include Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Venezuela, Colombia and the rest), WalMart and the crushing of labour, with its attendant rape of the national treasury and the healthcare system, and the prison state, whereby incarceration is abetting and supplanting vote suppression, the Klan and slavery as the new racist ideology.

“Self-delusional, feel-good bromides about the ‘greatness of America’ and a wilful suppression and misrepresentation of our history will seal the deal, and we will plummet headlong into the looming environmental catastrophe that is waiting to engulf us all.”

These are, of course, big problems. They are, however, exploding problems, and ones which threaten the very existence of humankind (combined with the rapacious consumerism which holds the lot together). Just the kind of all-encompassing issues one might foolishly expect a national election campaign to address. This huge history, soaked with blood and death for the benefit of profit and oligarchy, is completely unconcerned with the party hacks nibbling at its corners, unthreatened by the sorry excuse for “ideology” and “values” espoused by the political and economic system it nurtured and generated. Self-delusional, feel-good bromides about the “greatness of America” and a wilful suppression and misrepresentation of our history will seal the deal, and we will plummet headlong into the looming environmental catastrophe that is waiting to engulf us all.

As a young pupil celebrating America’s bicentennial, I remember being paraded in a choral production called “Our Country ’tis of thee”. One lyric still sticks in my mind and in my craw, sung by our chorus of mind-controlled, ignorant, chirpy sixth graders:

There’s a peaceful sky in my backyard
Far away from fear and doubt
But the whole wide world is my hometown
And I’ve gotta help my neighbour out
There’s a peaceful sky in my backyard
Far away from a far off land
But the whole wide world is my hometown
When freedom needs a helping hand

Thinking about it today still makes my skin crawl with embarrassment and self-loathing, even though I was only 11 years old. Sort of like a post-traumatic lapse for a former cult member. Lack of self-doubt combined with ignorance of one’s history is perhaps the most dangerous combination known to humankind. Torture at Abu Ghraib is not the tip of the iceberg; it is simply the latest link in the chain. Facing that history head on, with the disillusionment, fear and doubt that rationality and honesty implies, is the sobering task of those who would resist the current onslaught. It is the first step in a long, long road to sanity, and it is not a comfortable one. As Rosa Luxembourg famously remarked, “it will always be the most revolutionary act to say the truth out loud”.

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Translations of this article are available in German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish.

© Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to danielpwelch.com.

Crimes of the dictatorships in Eastern Europe

Signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939 (photo: AP)

Nazi torturers simply changed to the Stalinists

“Crimes of the dictatorships in Eastern Europe” conference of the Literature House in Berlin

Frank Hessenland

At a conference in Berlin, researchers discussed the cooperation between fishing Nazi crimes and those of the Stalinist dictatorship in the Soviet Union. But many projects have stalled.

In addition to the 40 speakers were more than a handful of listeners come, it would have probably been a hot debate in the rotunda of the Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Because the focus of the three-day international conference on “crimes of the dictatorships in Eastern Europe” was the internationally controversial documentary “The Soviet Story”. It tries the Baltic director Edvins Snore show that between Stalin and Hitler, between SS and NKVD between Reichswehr and Red Army until 1941, such a close and friendly ‘working relationship’ was that one can speak of the equivalence of the two terrorist regimes, such example, the British historian Norman Davies in the movie.

“The whole Western world has lived for over 60 years with the assumption that the crimes were in the 20th century essentially Nazi crimes. And this assumption is very difficult to change. But mass murders are still mass murder.”

The film recalls the long-forgotten fact that Stalin had already starved seven million Ukrainians in 1932 on purpose, just as Hitler did 1942/43 with three million Poles. It displays documents to which experts on torture and forced labor camps of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union exchanged words. Even with respect to the totalitarian claim of creating a ‘new man’, the design of propaganda similar to the regimes in the 30er/40er-Jahren. Only the terrorist walked into the Soviet-occupied countries after the war just continues, as reported at the conference “crimes of the dictatorship” from Eastern Europe who had come historians, archivists, and journalists. From Hungary, half a million went to the Siberian labor camp, from the Baltic States or from Romania even more, says historian Marius Oprea and civil rights activist from Bucharest.

“Deported came during the communist period are over 600,000 people for political reasons in labor camps and many have been. 200 000 died during this time and we are still hidden mass graves of people who were shot without trial, in the mountains and forests.”

Not infrequently, confirmed the deputy director of the museum “House of Terror” in Budapest, Hungary, the tormentors of the Nazis changed after the lost war, just the sides and continued for the Stalinists. Accordingly, today, many civil rights activists demand in Central and Eastern Europe of the legal equality of the two great crimes of dictatorships, for example, Hubertus Knabe, director of the memorial Hohenschönhausen:

“The same cars, same situation in the home loss and large population displacements. This is basically extremely inhumane totalitarian approach that is quite so universal that you discuss this topic is not always against each other, but can rather talk about how these regimes each have produced millions of victims. “

Have achieved the former civil rights activist last year at the European level, the declaration of a Memorial Day for the Victims of Communism 23 August, the date of the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact. But other projects are stalled, such as uniform European rules in dealing with the perpetrators, research initiatives consistent or uniform educational standards in dealing with the communist dictatorship. Considerable resistance experienced such efforts not only by the socialist parties in many European countries. Jewish organizations also fear the relativization of the Nazi past for obvious reasons. And then there’s the research from the perspective of perhaps the most important point is that the Russian archives for historians remain extremely difficult to access.

Crime turf war fear in Winter Olympics city of Sochi

• From:The Australian

THE huge cash influx for the 2014 Winter Olympics has raised fears of rampant corruption and a bloody turf war between crime clans.

The Sochi Games are the pet project of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who, like Stalin before him, has his summer residence on the outskirts of the Black Sea resort.

The Games are estimated to cost a record $14 billion. All the sporting facilities and stadiums, new railways, new motorways and a new airport have to be built from scratch.

The Kremlin was embarrassed last week after the murder of a crime boss known as “the Carp” was linked to crime gangs seeking a cut of the Olympic investment cake.

Eduard Kakosyan was drinking coffee at his regular table in a cafe in Sochi when a black-clad hitman on the back of a motorbike opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle.

Kakosyan is said by police to have represented the criminal interests in Sochi of Aslan Usoyan, 73, known as Grandpa Hassan and widely described as the former Soviet Union’s most powerful criminal godfather.

Hassan narrowly survived an assassination attempt last month when a sniper shot him near the Kremlin. The botched attack is thought by Russian police to be linked to a row between Hassan and another powerful figure in organised crime, who is in jail partly because of his involvement in lucrative racketeering and construction scams in Sochi.

“Hassan controls a lot of business interests in Sochi, especially hotels and restaurants,” said a Russian crime expert. “The cash flowing into the city since it was awarded the Winter Games has been phenomenal. It has attracted the interest of organised crime, big time.”

Police are now bracing themselves for revenge attacks and a full-scale turf war.

The Sunday Times

“Al-CIAda” In Belfast?

[First official reaction was that this was not linked to "global terror" incitement, but just wait....]

Police find two bombs in Northern Ireland

October 31, 2010 – 11:29PM

AFP

Northern Ireland police said on Sunday they had found and disarmed two bombs, one near Belfast airport, blaming groups intent on taking the once conflict-torn province “back to mayhem and misery”.

Staff at Belfast International Airport raised the alert on Saturday afternoon after spotting a vehicle in the long stay car park, which contained “a viable device along with suspected flammable liquid”, police said.

It was made safe by explosives officers and the alert ended about 2.00am (1300 AEDT) on Sunday.

Air traffic was not affected and police said there was no link to the global alert provoked by the discovery of bombs on two US-bound planes on Friday.

Meanwhile in Lurgan, a town southwest of Belfast, about 40 kilogrammes of home-made explosive materials were found in a beer keg on Friday, prompting police to carry out a number of controlled explosions.

A number of nearby homes were evacuated overnight and, because the device was found under a railway bridge, the main rail service between Belfast and Dublin was suspended for 24 hours, police said.

“Both devices had the potential to cause injury and damage. They were left in places used by the public and with no regard for the public,” said Assistant Chief Constable Duncan McCausland.

He added: “In recent days police have stepped up their measures to counter the threat posed by misguided individuals and groups who seek to drag the country back to mayhem and misery.

“Our efforts will continue and we would ask everyone in the community to be vigilant about their surroundings as they go about their daily business.”

There has been a resurgence in attacks and attempted attacks in recent months, most blamed on dissident republican groups seeking to undermine peace.

For three decades up until the 1998 peace accords, Northern Ireland was scoured by violence pitching Catholic nationalists against pro-British Protestant unionists. The conflict left about 3500 people dead.

Last month, the British government raised the threat level from Northern Ireland-related “terrorism” to suggest an attack was now a “strong possibility”.

© 2010 AFP

Diplomacy turbocharged

By Neena Gopal

It’s only natural, that it would be here in the gleaming glass-fronted National Convention Centre in Hanoi, celebrating its 1,000th year and festooned with Vietnam’s national flags, that India and China’s intricate minuet should come to some kind of part denouement.

The bonhomie in Hanoi — from the elaborate courtesy shown by the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao to the host nation, the praise showered by Mr Jiabao on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over his “sagacity and wisdom”, and again, over the clinking of glasses at the high table during the gala dinner when Dr Singh was seated, interestingly, between Mr Jiabao and Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan — begs the question: In the face of India’s fledgling steps to strings its own pearls across a region long seen as China’s stomping ground, and some say egged on by the United States and Russia, has Beijing, tuned in to “understand the voices of others around the globe,” reverted from its newfound ‘frown’ diplomacy to the ‘smile’ diplomacy that won them entry into a slew of economies in the first place?

No asnwers as yet. But India has deftly played along. Dr Singh, borrowing a leaf from the Chinese perhaps, in mouthing platitudes in the public domain has finally moved at a surprising pace on his moribund Look East policy, tying up civil nuclear ties with Japan and South Korea, military ties with Vietnam and Malaysia, and trade and economic bonds with Singapore, South Korea and soon with Thailand and Indonesia. All, uniformly wary of the demonstrably muscular face of the new China.

Vietnam, chair of Asean, could be the starting point when the scales finally fall from Asian eyes. Vietnam stands as a bulwark at the mouth of the South China Sea, a beneficiary of Chinese largesse and investment as are other countries in the South East and East Asian region where Beijing seeks to bolster its own economy and tie the investment hungry countries into a much tighter embrace.

Vietnam is the only nation to have defeated every invader — the Mongols several centuries ago, the French, the Americans and the Chinese more recently. While it wants to be the next Asian tiger, not chary of accepting once sworn enemy

China’s help to pull itself up by the boot-straps, it is its invitation to India, the United States and Russia to the East Asian summit, that has to be seen for what it is — summoning the cavalry against the economic and sabre-rattling militaristic power of Beijing, which has in recent months, steadily upped the ante.

China has laid claim to the Spratlys, also known as the Paracel islands, held Japan to ransom by halting a supply of rare earths vital to the development of advanced technologies, and made a dramatic shift in its India policy by not only reiterating its claim to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh but weighing in on the side of Pakistan on Jammu and Kashmir by offering ‘stapled’ visas to people from that state. The meeting of the Asean 10 and the six from the immediate neighbourhood — which includes India and China, and now Australia, New Zealand, Russia and the United States — is therefore, no accident.

Vietnam’s concerns, that in return for trade and development investment from China to speed up

economic recovery after years of wars, it could face an economic implosion as China manipulates its currency to create an artificial imbalance in trade, are echoed across the region.

Chinese officials have baldly told the US that the South China Sea is a “core interest” of Beijing. At the ASEAN Regional Forum Hanoi meet in July this year, nearly half the heads of the 27 delegations raised the issue. Only for the Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi to castigate and remind the Southeast Asian leaders of their economic ties with Beijing, and angrily threaten that they could be broken at any point. Sitting in the room was US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

This Asean-East Asia Summit is therefore all the more an eye-opener, coming as it does just days ahead of US President Barack Obama’s visit to India on November 6, as significant a signal as Dr Manmohan Singh’s state visit to Washington in 2009, of the place that India holds in the American calculus. Ditto, the nations from this region.

India’s reaction to the Chinese bogeyman has been a carefully calibrated attempt to build its own security and trade architecture by seeking free trade agreements with all Asean states. It bears the comprehensive imprint of the Indian prime minister, who seems to publicly give the Chinese the benefit of the doubt, as do many Asian nations even in India’s South Asian backyard where there is a willingness to turn a blind eye to Beijing’s backing of Myanmar and even its moves to further nuclearise Pakistan. But not so in private.

Obama’s scepticism over China’s motives, too, have not been vocalized but they are shared by many in government who, however, are still deeply divided over whether India should tie itself further into a larger security wheel that already has Japan and Australia as the spokes. US plans to build India up as a counterweight to China, much denied all around, is no secret. Whether India has the moxy to take its newly rejigged Look East policy to its logical conclusion and be able to emulate and counter China’s smart power — even with the Americans holding our hands — is, however, the real question.

Rare earths & pouring rain

While in Japan, India moved quickly to offer to supply Japan rare earths, a group of 17 minerals that are vital for the manufacture of a wide range of sophisticated electronic items, industrial and military equipment. One such rare earth, Neodymium, is the reason why audio company Bose is able its tiny jewel-cube speakers. India’s offer came in the wake of attempts by China, which currently mines 97 per cent of the world’s supply of rare earths, to deny those minerals to Japan, the US and other big consumers — a move that was immediately described as the new “Great Game”. Until 1948, India and Brazil were the world’s main contributors of rare earths. By offering rare earths to Japan, India not only sought to revive that position, it also managed to soften Japan on a civil nuclear deal.

After the slaughter, gold will stand tall

John Hathaway

The days of the US dollar as the dominant reserve currency are numbered and its breakdown will be will be chaotic, writes John Hathaway.

The world’s monetary system is in the process of melting down. We have entered the endgame for the US dollar as the dominant reserve currency, but most investors and policymakers are unaware of the implications.

The only questions are how long the denouement will last, and how much more damage will be inflicted by new rounds of quantitative easing or more radical monetary measures to prop up the system.

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Whether prolonged or sudden, the transition to a stable monetary system will become possible only when the shortcomings of the status quo become unbearable. Such a transition is non-linear. So central bank soothsaying based on the extrapolation of historical data and the repetition of conventional wisdom offers no guidance on what lies ahead.

Telltale signs of future trouble are not hard to spot. Only a few months ago, the US Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, and other high-ranking Fed officials were talking about exit strategies from the US central bank’s bloated balance sheet and the financial system’s unprecedented excess liquidity.

Now those same officials are talking about pumping more money into the system to stimulate growth.

They are not alone: six months ago, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, suggested that raising inflation targets to 4 per cent from 2 per cent would not be too risky.

This sort of talk must grate on the nerves of China, India, Russia and others, who have accumulated pyramids of non-yielding US Treasury debt. And bickering among central bankers over currency manipulation and rising trade tensions does not reinforce one’s confidence.

The prospects for an orderly unwinding of the extreme posture of global monetary policy are zero. Bernanke, Jean-Claude Trichet and Mervyn King, his counterparts in Europe and Britain respectively, are huddling together upon the most precarious perch in the history of monetary affairs. These alleged guardians of monetary stability have simply created the incinerator for paper money. We are past the point of no return. Quantitative easing may well become a way of life.

The consensus investment view seems to be that the credit crisis of 2008 was a freak occurrence. That is wishful thinking. Monetary policy has painted itself into a corner. Based on our present course, there will be more bubbles and more meltdowns.

Financial markets and institutions sense trouble, as reflected in the flight to supposedly safe assets such as treasuries and corporate-debt instruments with paltry yields, as well as the reluctance to lend by commercial banks. We are stuck in an epic liquidity trap. The irony is, if global central banks succeed in creating inflation, the value of these safe assets will be destroyed. It is a slaughter waiting to happen.

In the pedantic mentality of central bankers, their playbook creates just the right amount of inflation. As inflation accelerates, consumers will spend to get rid of their dollars of diminishing value and spur the economy. Once consumers start spending, it will be time to raise interest rates because a solid foundation for prosperity will have been established, they say.

But whatever the playbook promises, the capacity of financial markets to overshoot cannot be overestimated. The belief among policymakers and financial markets in the possibility of this sort of fine-tuning is preposterous.

The breakdown of the monetary system will be chaotic. When inflation starts, it will be highly disruptive. The damage to fixed-income assets will seem immediate. Foreign exchange markets will become dysfunctional. The economy will become even more fragile and unpredictable.

Gold is an imperfect, but comparatively reliable, market gauge for the extent of monetary destruction.

The anti-gold pundits provide a great service to those who grasp this historical moment: they facilitate the advantageous positioning of the one asset most likely to be left standing when the dust settles.

Bloomberg

John Hathaway is a managing director of Tocqueville Asset Management in New York.

America Refuses to Understand

Tariq Alhomayed

After Afghan President Hamid Karzai acknowledged that his administration was receiving “bags of money” from Iran, US sources commented on this by saying that this behavior was a “mystery” that needs to be investigated. However the true mystery is not the Afghan or Iranian behavior, but the US being surprised at this, for Washington and its elite seems to be unable to comprehend the nature of the conflict that it taking place in Afghanistan, Iraq, or even Lebanon. Washington is also unable to understand the nature of this geographic region, and how the foreign element is one of the most important factors fueling the conflict in this region. The problem that Washington and its elite are having [in understanding this] is that they are looking at the world from the perspective of the American experience, which is very simple: there is a civil war going on in every country – like America – and these countries will overcome this by maturing, on the basis that countries, like individuals, learn from their experience, becoming more rational. In other words, a country’s history of war and bloodshed guarantees that it will develop towards rationality. However this is something that is untrue with regards to the majority of our Arab and Islamic world. We are not neighbors with Europe or Japan, or even South Korea. America is separated from the influence of the outside world by an ocean, which also protected America from constant foreign interference [in its affairs] for a long period of time, until the famous Pearl Harbor attacks In fact America remained far-removed from direct and constant foreign influence until the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which affected America in a divisive manner. However with regards to the Iraqi, or Afghan, or Lebanese situation, external influence has been constant and unceasing, whether historically or in the modern period. Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq are united by the large number of wars that have taken place in their territories throughout modern history, as well as by the frequency of foreign involvement in their affairs. Mexican President Porfiro Diaz once said “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States” however what would he say about Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon, who are close to Iran but far away from peace and stability? We have seen some major parties in Iraq receiving financial and military support from Iran, as well as Hezbollah publicly boasting of “pure” Iranian money, in addition to Karzai acknowledging that he receives “bags of money” from Tehran. Everybody is doing this openly! Despite all of this, Washington and its elite continue to deal with these regions and this conflict with a democratic and transparent mentality. However these are two things that are far away [from this], for these countries do not know stability, but rather are being plagued by tribal and sectarian problems, and there are [also] those who are working in the interests of Iran with regards to money and arms. As for Lebanon, the situation is getting worse whether this is due to the existence of Israel and its crimes, or the absence of a peaceful solution to defuse the situation there. Therefore the Americans do not want to understand that these countries, and particularly Iraq and Afghanistan, are in need of a strong and rational central government to put an end to foreign intervention and domestic incitement, supporting natural progress, even if this is slow. This is better than the ongoing bitter conflict [that is taking place], and it is enough for Washington to contemplate the Turkish army’s experience and role in protecting Turkey as we see it today, economically, politically, and otherwise, particularly if the Americans recall the disaster of disbanding the Iraqi army, and the consequences of this. What I mean to say is that the world is not America, and that in politics there is more than one solution to every problem. ….UNN

Georgia in the Crosshairs

[The crashing of Sakaashvili's delusions and the triumph of Vladimir Putin marked the turning point in history and  the current era of the "Russian reset."  This also confirmed for me that the great pipelineistan plan was also crashing down.  It also confirmed for me the fact that Israel does not really control American foreign policy, just most of it.  The failure of the mad Georgian leader to boot Russia out of the southern Caucasus was also the failure of Israel's plans to launch a sneak attack against Iran.  August the 7, 2008  marked the end of a two-week series of failures in the Evil Empire's secret plans.  Israel was no longer safe behind American lines in Georgia, where it could lash-out at the Mullahs.  Had there been American support at the last minute, things might have continued on their insane course, but, just like in the previous Israeli attacks upon Lebanon, no American air support was forthcoming.

The Georgian attack upon S. Ossetia was about a week late, coming on the heels of the total ruin of the Welch Club scheme in Gaza, which saw the forces of Hamas completely rout the forces of the Palestinian Authority/Fatah, in Gaza.  Bush and Cheney, as well as Condoleeza Rice and her Zionazi buddies, must have been in tears at the failure of their plan to let Israel do all the heavy lifting for the Empire in the Middle East.

It is a week that I have thanked God for.  The changes of that week meant that the locomotive has been slowed-down, if not derailed.  Thank God for bumblers like Sakaashvili and Mohammed Dahlen! (SEE: Can an Ex KGB General Save America From Itself?).]

Walter Russell Mead

Part of any trip to Georgia getting the most out of local color: the food, the scenery, theStalin Museum.

But there’s another dimension to Georgia: geopolitics.  Divided, occupied in part by Russian troops, Georgia is one of the world’s most at-risk countries and the shadow of new crises with Russia hangs over everything in the country.

Some of Georgia’s problems are, frankly, the fault of bad decisions by its government.  The reckless and aggressive Georgian policies toward Russia in the summer of 2008 — policies it undertook in defiance of warnings from the Bush administration and the rest of the West — gave Putin an opportunity to occupy South Ossetia, create a new wave of Georgian refugees, and make trouble for both Georgia and the United States.  Even today, there is a certain trust deficit.  Many in western Europe for example simply do not trust Georgia’s president and I do not believe that Georgia will be admitted to NATO until either he or his successor convinces skeptics in Europe that things have changed.  Most of the Georgians I spoke with, including political allies of President Mikheil Saakashvili understand this.  But it is not clear that Georgia’s president or its political process can or will summon up the necessary “strategic patience”.

President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, speaking at the United Nations in 2009 (Credit: UN).

In fact, while I was visiting the country Georgia announced a new policy of ‘visa-free’ travel for residents of the Northern Caucasus — including places like Chechnya.  The move angered Russia (which wants to keep the lid on tightly in the North Caucasus and already blames Georgia for allowing arms and people smuggling in and out of the troubled region); it also seriously annoyed the United States, which does not does not want Georgia poking at the Russian bear; the US also objects, strenuously, to the idea of Islamic militants crossing the Georgia border and then roaming freely around a country with many US Peace Corps volunteers, diplomats and other personnel.  Georgia is trying to attract many more native English speakers to beef up the country’s fluency; good luck with that if militants are crossing over from the North Caucasus.

The visa move also struck a blow at Georgia’s relations with the EU; Georgia’s hopes for easing the restrictions on Georgians working in or traveling to the EU were not furthered by demonstrating a careless attitude toward a serious security issue on its frontiers.  One suspects that the foreign investors Georgia seeks desperately to lure are also put off by a decision that, to say the least, does not enhance the security of foreign personnel and installations.

As far as I could determine, the Georgians did not consult with the Europeans, the Americans or anyone else before taking this step, reinforcing the belief that Georgia’s hotheaded leadership is unpredictable and impulsive.  The hard and even brutal lesson that Georgia needs to learn is this:  NATO’s European members will not accept a rash and headstrong Georgia into the alliance.  Ever.

Georgia’s worst enemy could scarcely have harmed the country more.

The behavior of the Georgian president, rightly or wrongly perceived as reckless and rash by both Europeans and Americans, has so spooked the NATO alliance that Georgia will not be joining it anytime soon.  The US has no power to change this; European members of NATO are free to make up their own minds and new members must be admitted by a unanimous vote.  (A military alliance could hardly run its affairs in any other way; free peoples cannot be bound to go to war in defense of someone else without at some point giving their consent.)  The US supports Georgia and Georgia’s aspirations to NATO, but we are not going to make a bilateral security treaty with Georgia like the one we have with Japan.

That leaves Georgia in a pickle.  It is embroiled in a series of disputes with Russia, with Russian troops currently occupying Abkhazia in the northwest and South Ossetia in the north-center.  Almost 300,000 Georgian refugees were driven from or fled their homes in these regions.  With Russia’s blessing, Abkhazia and South Ossetia have declared their independence.  Georgian public opinion can be rabidly nationalistic, and the 4.4 million residents (about 85% of whom are ethnically Georgian) are divided by geographical, cultural and clan lines into many quarreling factions.  Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, Georgia has known two revolutions and, depending on how you count them, three civil wars and two significant international ones.  New wars could flare up unpredictably, though it seems to me that with the Winter Olympics scheduled in nearby Sochi in 2012, Russia is unlikely to seek new conflicts that could spoil its Olympic celebration.

A Georgian magazine laments NATO’s perceived tardiness (photo by Walter Mead).

Hotheaded Georgian policy has made matters worse, but Georgians have a point when they complain that many of the country’s problems are not its fault.  As a transit route for oil and gas from the Caucasian Sea and Central Asia to the west (the only such route not controlled by Russia), Georgia engages the attention of many powerful countries; Russia wants to control the pipeline, and the US and the Europeans don’t want that to happen.

Georgia’s situation is to some degree a hostage to developments in Ukraine.  While Ukraine’s government was pushing the country toward NATO membership, Georgia’s aspirations seemed reasonable.  Now, with NATO pretty much off the table for Ukraine, Georgia (despite its border the fellow NATO member Turkey) seems a long way from NATO’s headquarters in Brussels.

The cooling of expansionist fervor in the EU also leaves Georgia exposed.  There was a time, not all that long ago, when many observers thought that Turkey and Ukraine would both be joining the EU.  It now seems likely (though in my view very unfortunate) that neither country will get an invitation.  There is simply no way that Georgia can get in if both of these larger countries stay out.  That leaves Georgia out in the cold as far as powerful international organizations and alliances are concerned.

Again, none of this is Georgia’s fault.  The incompetence, corruption and political infighting that doomed the hopes of Ukraine’s Orange Revolutionaries also changed the character of the ex-Soviet space.  The serial political and economic crises and failures of the EU have dramatically weakened the ability of EU elites to impose large, unpopular changes like eastward expansion on their sullen and resentful publics.  Geography and politics make it profoundly unlikely that Georgia can enter the EU before Turkey does; with Turkish membership looking increasingly as if it is scheduled for the 12th of Never (or the Greek kalends as the ancients used to say), it looks as if Georgia’s accession date will be on the 13th.  The growing distance between the new foreign policy of the AK Turkish government and the US threatens over time to make it more difficult for Georgia to please both its Western patrons and its Turkish partners.  The confrontation between Iran and the United States continues to cast shadows over the prospects for peace and stability throughout the region.

An American visiting Georgia is in an interesting situation.  On the one hand, Georgians are grateful to the United States for our support; more than one person told me that without US help, Georgia would have long since been eaten by the hungry bear.  On the other hand, there’s some bitterness that we don’t do more.  Where is Georgia’s membership in NATO?  Where are missiles Georgia needs to protect itself?  Why is the US trying to ‘reset’ its relationship with Russia, and isn’t this a cynical sacrifice of Georgia’s vital interests?

Georgians in the opposition want to know why the US supports the current president.  Georgians aligned with the president want to know why we criticize him so much and support him so little.  Refugees from Abkhazia and South Ossetia want to know why we are doing so little to help them get back to their homes.  Members of Georgia’s ethnic minorities want to know why we aren’t doing more to protect their cultural rights.

Many Georgians believe that the Republicans are their true and loyal friends, while Democrats are a bunch of spineless wimps and appeasers.  The road in from the airport is named for George W. Bush; if there are plans to name anything big after President Obama, I didn’t hear about them during my trip.  Some Georgians were clearly hoping that GOP majorities in Congress after the midterms would bring more support from the US.

These hopes, I think, are misplaced, and only partly because Congress doesn’t have all that much power over American policy towards Georgia.  More fundamentally, Georgians seem to have forgotten what happened in the summer of 2008.  Various western diplomats I spoke to in Georgia told me that according to their information the Bush administration categorically warned the Georgians in 2008 to avoid responding to Russian provocations.  Georgia ignored those warnings, perhaps hoping that the US would have no choice but to back it in a conflict with Russia.  The Bush administration felt there was no alternative but to let Georgia face the consequences of its folly.  The Bush administration, not President Obama, pulled the plug on Georgia.

Yet Georgians are easily led by their hopes rather than their reason.  ”Georgia has some very good friends in America,” one Georgian said by way of rebutting my comments that Georgia cannot afford provocative or hotheaded behavior.  And there are people in the US whose natural sympathy for a small, threatened nation in a strategic hotspot moves them to say things that Georgians like to hear.

Americans and Georgians would both do well to remember the Hungarian tragedy of 1956.  American politicians were talking about ‘rolling back’ Communism, but they were indulging in political rhetoric rather than making serious plans to send tanks across the Iron Curtain.  Unfortunately the Hungarians failed to understand that these were just vain and empty words; in part because they were deceived by rhetoric on Voice of America, the Hungarians rose against the Soviets — and were left alone to face the Soviet tanks.

This is not a pleasant message to carry, and I did not enjoy delivering it to a country under the shadow of a partial Russian occupation, but to do anything else would be irresponsible, dangerous and cruel.

There is approximately zero prospect that Georgia will join NATO anytime soon.  There is even less chance that the Russian occupation of large chunks of Georgia will end in the near future.  Georgian anger and fear given these facts is natural and understandable.  But rash Georgian action will only make a bad situation worse — perhaps catastrophically worse.

To improve their situation, the Georgians are going to have to the kind of dull and boring things that many Georgians don’t like.  They are going to have to follow a discreet and modest foreign policy, avoiding all unnecessary provocations of Russia and being guided by the advice of their friends.  They are going to have to take a very long-term view about Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  They need to work on developing the territory they still have, at building a prosperous economy and a stable democracy.

If Georgia can do these things, over time its prospects will improve.  As the west (slowly) regains confidence in Georgia’s political leadership, and perhaps also as NATO-Russia relations improve, NATO membership could once again be a realistic prospect.  Russia itself ultimately needs stability in the Caucasus more than anything else; a prosperous and stable Georgia would be an important regional partner in helping Russia bring security and peace to the restless peoples of its southern fringe.

I hope Georgia succeeds.  This is a beautiful country with a glorious past and an extraordinary culture.  But Georgia’s future today is as cloudy as it was when I first visited twenty years (and several wars) ago.

Building Nuclear Reactors In Spite Of Uranium Supply Deficit

Will ‘Megatons To Megawatts’ Solve The Uranium Supply Pinch ?

By: Andrew_McKillop

MEGATONS TO MEGAWATTS
World uranium supply deficit, currently running at about 12 500 to 15 000 tons (2010 mine and supply forecasts relative to demand forecasts), or about 20 percent, is covered from sources especially including stocks held by mining companies, power plant operators and builders. This massive deficit is also partly covered, perhaps by 4 000 tons of uranium equivalent per year, with recycled and diluted highly radioactive wastes including plutonium that are converted to so-called MOX fuel (Mixed OXide), almost exclusively in France and the UK.

 

There is one other “supply side solution”, which is given periodic headline treatment, and that is the US-Russian “Megatons to Megawatts” programme, turning Russian arms, and an undisclosed number of US warheads into ploughshares by dismantling surplus atom bombs and recycling their atomic materials as reactor fuel. This programme was first mooted from just before the collapse of the USSR, in 1990-1991. The first physical operations, concerning 500 tons of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) from Russian bomb warheads started in July1993, but the first arrivals in the USA of 24 tons of Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) reactor grade fuel produced from 0.786 tons of Russian HEU only started in January 1995.

For this first year of shipments from Russia, the specially created US public-private entity US Enrichment Corp. (USEC) which administers this trade and partners with a small number of fully private entities on the commercial downstream received atomic materials equivalent to about 244 nuclear warheads (or 6.1 tons of HEU able to replace 186 tons of LEU reactor grade fuel). As of end 2009, the USEC says on its Web site that some 15 294 warheads have been “recycled” this way. According to the US Natural Resources Defense Council, the combined US and Russian atomic weapons stockpiles peaked in the 1985-1987 at about 41 000 warheads, and had already fallen well below 40 000 warheads by the time the Soviet Union collapsed.

Megatons to Megawatts is basically a “diluting” operation, stepping weapons-grade HEU down to the LEU fuels needed for most conventional civil power reactors. Plutonium is also separated, and can be “cut” into utilisable fuel using the MOX route although the amounts treated this way are not published and may be very low. The amount of fresh mined uranium the programme “displaces” , almost exclusively in the USA and not elsewhere, is however controversial. It is claimed by some sources like the WNA (World Nuclear Association) and the OECD’s NEA (Nuclear Energy Agency) to have “displaced” about 13 percent of world reactor fuel requirements, around 8 000 tons of uranium in 2009, covering about 45 percent of the USA’s total reactor fuel that year.

According to the US Council on Foreign Relations in a paper published January 14, 2010 and as of December 2009, a total of about 382 tons of HEU, equal to 15 294 warheads, has been turned into about 11 000 tons of fuel, for which the Russian government received more than US $8 billion, valuing the uranium equivalent fuel at around US $ 72 per kilogram (well below the current uranium price and far behind the 2007 most recent peak price of about US$ 290 per kilogram). The potential value of cut-down and diluted bomb materials, recycled as reactor fuel, can be gauged from analysts forecasts for uranium prices, in 2011, probably attaining US $ 175 per kilogram

END IN SIGHT ?

One major problem for this rather small but heavily mediatized fuel source is the probable near-term end to the “Megatons to Megawatts” programme, which is presently scheduled to stop in 2013. The “political and policy considerations” include just how much more of their weapons stockpiles the USA and Russia want to scrap. They also include the willingness or not of Russian suppliers to sell at below-market prices, into a very opaque market that can quickly add 20% or more to reported prices for the declared transactions that are used to report prices. Other factors weighing against Megatons to Megawatts include technical and technology issues, notably the amount of converted bomb material that can be used in reactors.

When we look at the actual declared amounts that are traded, by commercial private companies, we find quite large “missing amounts” of finished fuel (or upstream scrapped weapons), suggesting that uranium stocks and reactor (but not bomb warhead) materials are increasingly entering the programme.

The major authorized private company operating this market, the world’s largest uranium mining and fuel supply company Cameco, is estimated by industry observers as buying and reselling around 7 million pounds (3182 tonnes) of Russian ex-military source uranium fuel each year, in the past 2 to 3 years. Other suppliers handle much less than this, and Cameco’s agreement with the sole Russian supplier, the state firm Techsnabexport (Tenex) will terminate in 2013 unless president Obama and the Medvedev-Putin duo make a decision to continue scrapping warheads.

For the select group of North American re-seller companies including Cameco, for which this supply represents about one-quarter of its total sales of uranium, termination will represent a major challenge. For the USA’s 100-plus civil reactors in current operation, a claimed 45 percent or more of their present annual fuel generates a need for at least 8000 tons a year, perhaps more, to satisfy the 45 percent claim.

The most important point is that any start of phasing down in operations of the Megatons to Megawatts programme from the most recent rate (since 2006) of an average 1200 warheads scrapped each year, which was already lower than the rate in the preceding 3 years 2002-2005), will automatically increase the quantities of “fresh mined” uranium needed by US reactor operators. This will quickly add another twist to a world supply/demand context already heavily in deficit.

OPAQUE MARKET – TRANSPARENT PRICE OUTLOOK

There is no “open market” for uranium fuel of any kind, either produced or “fabricated” from fresh mined uranium, or MOX fuels derived from nuclear wastes, or fuels from scrapped nuclear weapons. The few entities which provide price data, such as TechTrade and UxC, report prices given on private transactions by the parties concerned, often with several weeks delay, and with no capacity for verifying the actual or real amounts, and prices. The Megatons to Megawatts programme fits well with this secretive hard to verify business, to the extent that real amounts of uranium equivalent fuel supplied may be well below the published amounts. On the Russian side these are likely made up to the declared amounts through mine stocks of uranium, and uranium fuel stocks from so-called “research and military” reactors, for which no data is available.

All of these sources to, and substitutes of the Megatons to Megawatts programme are unlikely to increase their net supplies of uranium equivalent fuel, and the majority may quite rapidly decrease. As already mentioned we have a basic and massive undersupply of world uranium fuel supply, but also have some 56 new reactors under construction and 439 in operation, with perhaps as many as 200 more reactors planned or proposed for the next 9 years (2011-2020). Results of this “outright and announced crisis” will certainly include a radical increase of uranium prices, triggering more mine investment and development, and possibly a Russian decision to cash in on the coming uranium price boom through staying their decision to stop scrapping bomb warheads in 2013.

To be sure, fuel costs for nuclear reactors are a small slice of total costs, but over and above about a uranium price of US $ 80 to 100 per pound, fuel costs start to become very significant for power plant operators and builders, because of stockpiling needs and their costs, with first loading requirements of a typical industry standard 900 MW reactor being about 250 – 350 tons. Probably much more important for the industry, any long-term structural-type fuel shortage will cast a long and deep shadow on the highly mediatized “Nuclear Renaissance”.

By Andrew McKillop

gsoassociates.com

Project Director, GSO Consulting Associates

Former chief policy analyst, Division A Policy, DG XVII Energy, European Commission. Andrew McKillop Biographic Highlights

Andrew McKillop has more than 30 years experience in the energy, economic and finance domains. Trained at London UK’s University College, he has had specially long experience of energy policy, project administration and the development and financing of alternate energy. This included his role of in-house Expert on Policy and Programming at the DG XVII-Energy of the European Commission, Director of Information of the OAPEC technology transfer subsidiary, AREC and researcher for UN agencies including the ILO.

Contact: xtran9@gmail.com

© 2010 Copyright Andrew McKillop – All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

 

© 2005-2010 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk – The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.

Nord Stream gas pipeline underwater construction starts

[Thanks to hughbris for this article.]

The construction project is due for completion in 2012

Construction of the controversial Nord Stream pipeline from Russia to western Europe under the Baltic Sea has been officially launched.

Gazprom holds 51% of Nord Stream, which will run from the Russian port of Vyborg to Germany’s Greifswald.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attended the ceremony near Vyborg.

The project was given the go-ahead only in February amid fears that the pipeline could damage the Baltic Sea.

President Medvedev said at the ceremony that the pipeline “for the first time – which may be one of its main achievements – will ensure direct supplies of Russian gas to western Europe, bypassing transit territories”.

The existing pipelines run from Russia to EU countries via Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova.

‘Binding obligations’

All the gas volumes have either been contracted, or have been formalized in binding obligations Alexander Medvedev, Gazprom Should Gazprom fear shale gas revolution?

Russia provides up to 30% of the gas consumed in Europe, and many European countries have been keen to secure alternative energy supplies.

Critics have argued that European countries do not need more gas from Russia and that the project is too expensive.

But Gazprom deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev said there was plenty of demand for the gas.

“All the gas volumes have either been contracted, or have been formalized in binding obligations,” he told journalists.

Gas supplies from Russia to Europe have been threatened or disrupted in the past due to political and financial disputes between Moscow and its neighbours.

But Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said at the ceremony: “This country [Russia] has been cooperating with European neighbours in the gas sector for over 40 years.

“This cooperation has stood the test of time to the full extent.”

The ceremony was also attended by Nord Stream board chairman and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and European Commissioner for Energy Gunther Oettinger.

First phase

President Medvedev and Gerhard Schroeder were among the guests

Russian gas monopoly Gazprom said on Wednesday that the first pipe had been laid under the sea.

The pipeline will be passing through Russian, Finnish, Swedish and German waters.

Last month, Nord Stream secured a 3.9bn-euro ($5.4bn; £3.5bn) fund to complete the first phase of the pipeline.

“Debt financing will cover 70% of the project costs while the remaining 30% will be provided by the project shareholders,” said Paul Corcoran, financial director of Nord Stream AG.

German companies BASF-Wintershall and E.On Ruhrgas each own 20% of Nord Stream, while Gasunie of the Netherlands holds 9%.

Alexey Bulgakov from Troika Dialog investment bank pointed out that “Gazprom and its partners seem to have managed to raise funds at rather low interest rates.”

The overall cost of the project, due for completion in 2012, is expected to reach 7.4bn euros.

Environmental worries

The first pipe was laid under the sea on Wednesday

Russia hopes to pump up to 55bn cubic metres of gas a year to EU countries through the pipeline.

Supporters of the project say that it will secure gas supplies from Russia to Europe.

But environmentalists argue that building the pipeline could lead to toxins lying on the sea bed being stirred up, as the Baltic sea is one of the most polluted in the world.

Finland had refused to give the green light to construct the pipeline, but finally agreed to it in February under the condition that ships laying the pipeline do not lay anchor in Finland’s economic zone.

The final hurdle was overcome after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin assured Baltic leaders that the project was safe, as extensive research had been carried out into any environmental impact of the pipeline construction.

Alternative projects

Apart from the Nord Stream, Russia has been planning another pipeline, the South Stream, which will run from southern Russia to Bulgaria under the Black Sea.

Meanwhile, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Austria last July signed an agreement to construct the long-planned 3,300km Nabucco natural gas pipeline.

It is expected to pump up to 31bn cubic metres of gas annually from the Caspian and the Middle East across Turkey and into Europe.

Al-CIAda fishes for Turks seeking jihad

[Suddenly, with reports of the car-bomb in Istanbul, we see a wave of Western sources urging us to believe in the reality of a new "Al-CIA-da wave" sweeping across Europe and Turkey.  This is the method of American "public diplomacy," begun by Reagan and Casey in Nicaragua (SEE: Iran-Contra's 'Lost Chapter')--reports emerge in the foreign press, warning about the terror threat and simultaneously new waves of terror take place.  Especially suspicious is this report from a known "mouthpiece" of the CIA and ISI (SEE:  CIA Agent Sees Dead People).  Since we know that "CIA-da" is CIA, we know that any European attacks are agency actions.  The big question becomes, once again, as it does wherever the "Islamists" raise their ugly heads, whether Turkey's own intelligence agencies or Ergenekon elements are staging false flag attacks themselves.  Recall the recent reports of Turkey's enlistment for joint action with the West (SEE: Is Death of Nabucco Bringing “Al CIA da” and Ergenekon Together in Turkey? ).  It is unlikely that this hints at future spook attacks across Europe.  What is more likely is that this is all just psy-op, intended to convince the people of the West that terror central in N. Waziristan (and now, they say, Balochistan) must be wiped-out.  Everything points to an imminent invasion of Pakistan as the only possible solution to Obama's war problems.]

By Simon Cameron-MooreTurks have been bit part players in Al-Qaeda’s global jihad, but a recent security scare in Europe pointed to a small but growing number in Germany and Turkey who have joined militant ranks in Pakistan. Muslims from many parts of the Islamic World went to Pakistan during the jihad to end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. There may be nothing new about Turks taking that path, but recent obituaries on jihadi websites and tales of the exploits of Turkish jihadis have been eye-catching.

Turkey serves as a gateway for Al-Qaeda, through which it channels both funds and recruits for operations abroad,” said Tim Williams of Stirling Assynt, a political and terrorist risk consultancy in London. “The growing number of Turks appearing in the Af-Pak theatre…(is) evidence of that.” Turks returning from Afghanistan were involved in the Nov 2003 bombings that killed 57 people in Istanbul and wounded hundreds more in a series of attacks that targeted the British consulate, an HSBC bank and two syn
agogues.

I am concerned about increased radicalisation among Turkish youth – not just in Turkey but also in Europe,” said Zeyno Baran, a scholar at Washington’s Hudson Institute. An more critical focus on Israel and the West by some sections of the media has hardened attitudes in a society that is becoming more conservative, more Islamic, according to Baran. “That propaganda has a powerful impact on the youth, some of whom seem to be joining the militant ranks in Af-Pak region.

Surveys by Washington’s Pew Research Center show Turks share similar levels of antipathy toward the United States as Egyptians, Pakistanis and Palestinians. Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul based security analyst noted a proliferation of jihadi websites with Turkish language pages over the past couple of years. With an overwhelmingly Muslim population of 75 million, and a large diaspora, particularly in Germany, it is natural that Islamist militant groups should try to make inroads.

Turkey, with its democratic foundation and orientation towards the West, is not a natural breeding ground for Islamic militancy. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s brand of religious conservatism, while opening the door to the Islamic Middle East, gives no quarter to the likes of Al-Qaeda. If militancy is growing, it remains at least for now on the fringe. Israel’s Gaza offensive two years ago fuelled sympathy for militant causes among some, analysts say. “The Israeli incursion into Gaza in 2008 had a profoun
d effect, leading to increased recruitment of Turks by Al-Qaeda and allied groups,” Williams said. “We believe that the numbers increased dramatically in the wake of that operation.

It is a touchy issue for NATO’s only Muslim member. Turkish troops serve in non-combat roles in Afghanistan. Officials are guarded about the presence of Turkish militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They say nationalities of the martyrs named on jihadi websites are unconfirmed. But arrests back in Turkey show the authorities are vigilant. In January, police detained more than 120 Al-Qaeda suspects in raids mostly in east and central Anatolia, though barely any details emerged from those arrests. Then last
week, police arrested a maths student from a university in the western city of Izmir who was in contact with a Turkish militant described as the head of Al-Qaeda’s Aegean cell and who is now fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Student Abdulkadir Kucuk’s extra-curricular studies involved bomb-making and devising computer programs to jam flight signals for drone aircraft used by NATO forces in Afghanistan. Four other suspected fundraisers for the cause were detained too. They were later freed pending trial, but in a follow up operation this week police in Istanbul rounded up a dozen more. A senior Turkish security official told Reuters that all the Turks who have joined Al-Qaeda’s ranks in Afghanistan-Pakistan belong to one group.
He went on to name its chief as well as a commander, Zekeriya, whom Kucuk was caught emailing. “Their leader is named Ebuzer, the leader of all Turks in Al-Qaeda. Zekeriya is another high-ranking leader of Turks there,” he said.

The Washington-based Jamestown Foundation identifies Ebuzer as Serdar Erbashi, a veteran of the second Chechen war, who, it says, had headed Al-Qaeda’s cell in Ankara. The Turkish official didn’t name the group, but a Pakistani security officer in Peshawar, the main city in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, identified it as Taifatul Mansura, a Quranic reference meaning “Assembly of the Victorious”.

Based in North Waziristan, a Pakistani tribal region known as a hotbed of Al-Qaeda and Taliban activity, Taifatul Mansura’s profile has risen over the past year on jihadi websites and anti-terrorism blogsites. The Pakistani security official says its ranks have been depleted by clashes and drone missile attacks, and a splinter group broke off a few months ago. The faction appeared to emerge out of the Ittehad-e-Islami, or Islamic Jihad Union (IJU).

The ISU is itself a by-product of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Central Asian jihadi movement that has forged ties with Al-Qaeda and actively recruits in Europe. Jihadis who do not fit easily into South Asian or Arab militant camps gravitate to groups like Taifatul Mansura which, according to the Pakistani official, is made up of Turkic-language speaking Central Asians, as well as Turks and European Muslims, notably from Germany. “It is a motley crowd out there in the North (Waziristan),” the
Pakistani security official told Reuters. “There are people from virtually everywhere, including the Turks.” – Reuters

Portugal meeting builds anti-NATO protest

Special to Workers World
Oporto, Portugal

A forum at the Literary Club here on Oct. 23 heard two speakers discuss the dangers facing the world’s people coming from the U.S. and NATO’s war machines.

From left, Frederico Carvalho, John Catalinotto.. WW photo: Ellen Catalinotto

John Catalinotto, representing the U.S. anti-war movement, spoke on the U.S. use of NATO in a strategy of reoccupying and controlling areas of the world that had been liberated during the period of existence of the Soviet Union. Catalinotto is a managing editor of Workers World newspaper.

Frederico Carvalho, a Portuguese environmentalist and expert who studies the impact of weapons, discussed the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and the new U.S. weapons systems such as the drones, where there is a great distance between the operator of the weapon and its targets.

Speakers and the organizers discussed the upcoming NATO summit in Lisbon Nov. 19-21 and the Portuguese anti-war movement’s plans to hold a mass protest on Nov. 20.

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Istanbul blast injures at least 15, may be suicide bomb

Riot police may have been the target

At least 15 people have been injured in what appears to have been a suicide bomb attack in the centre of Istanbul, Turkish media say.

Police have cordoned off the area around Taksim Square where the blast occurred on Sunday morning.

Television pictures from Taksim Square showed body parts lying on the ground.

No group has said it carried out the attack, but a two-month-old ceasefire by Kurdish rebels was due to expire later on Sunday.

Ambulances have been taking some of the injured to hospital, while medical staff are treating others at the scene.

The blast occurred near the independence monument in Taksim Square, says the BBC’s Jonathan Head in Istanbul, near a point where anti-riot police are stationed.

Istanbul police chief Huseyin Capkin said six of the injured were civilians, while nine were policemen.

Our correspondent says suspicion is likely to fall on Kurdish separatist factions or groups linked to al-Qaeda.

The Kurdish separatist PKK party has carried out bomb attacks in Istanbul in the past, as have extreme left-wing and Islamist groups.

Taksim Square is on the European side of Istanbul and is a popular destination for tourists.

“THERE ARE NO SUNGLASSES”–LIFE IS NOT A MOVIE, BUT THE SCRIPT IS FOR REAL

[This is a re-post from July 11, 2008, one of my earliest entries on this blog.  Thanks to Kenny over at Kenny's Sideshow, for running this article on the theme of this site.  It's about time somebody got it.  I guess I should thank the folks at AMC channel for running "They Live," yet again.  I thought that everybody had already seen this sci-fi classic; my all-time favorite John Carpenter movie.  By the way, Carpenter is remaking the movie, with an updated formula, which might leave-out the sunglasses angle.  It has not begun production yet, but they released the following trailer:

THERE ARE NO SUNGLASSES

_______________________________________________________________________

LIFE IS NOT A MOVIE

BUT THE SCRIPT IS FOR REAL

THEY LIVE, the movie, is the theme of this blog; some people ask why? What’s the deal with the the “No Sunglasses” thing?

The premise of this resistance blog is based on the small resistance movement in the movie, which formed to resist the secret dictatorship. The movement was based on the idea that resistance scientists had discovered that society was dominated by a parasitic super-class, who were something other than human.

The discovery that the wealthy elite had created a scientific method for hypnotizing the human race into a kind of mental and spiritual blindness, led these scientific resisters to the discovery of a polarized sunglasses lens, which filtered-out the hypnotizing technology, allowing the wearer of the glasses to actually see the secret elitists (who turned-out to be an alien species), hidden amongst the people.

The wearer of the sunglasses was thus freed from the brainwashing subliminal suggestions, which were covertly influencing our lives, every minute of every day. The scientists had discovered that there was a hidden signal buried in the broadcast transmissions of every TV station. The signal was a carrier wave that directly affected the subconscious and unconscious minds. Shutting this signal off, instantly revealed the hideous parasitic vulture race that was feeding upon humanity, for who knows how long.

THERE ARE NO SUNGLASSES is here to shut the signals down! We have found the secret signals hidden within every facet of our daily existence.

more about “They Live“, posted with vodpod

“Our impulses are being redirected.

We live in an artificially-induced state of consciousness.

The movement began…by a group of scientists…accidentally

discovered these signals being sent.

The under-class is growing.

Human rights are non-existent.

In their repressive society, we are their unwitting accomplices.

Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness.

We have been lulled into a trance.

They have made us indifferent.

We are focused only on our own gain.

They are safe as long as they are not discovered.

That is their method of survival.

Keep us asleep.

Keep us selfish.

Keep us sedated.

We are their cattle.

We are being bred for slavery.

We cannot break their signal.

The signal must be shut off at the source.

They want benign indifference.

All we really are is livestock.”

From “They Live” script:

This new website, therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com is dedicated to building the American resistance movement. It will be limited in scope at first, so that it can remain focused on the search for finding more effective ways to resist the empire, as it moves against the American people, freedom’s last defense.

It is pretty amazing, the similarities between the story line of “They Live” (a parasitic elitist class covertly dominates the world for alien commercial interests) and our own situation. Our world has been drained economically by a parasitic capitalist blood-letting that is only intensifying, as the elitist plan escalates the military stalemate to complete their domination of all resources before the sleeping majority awakens to their schemes.

The purpose of this blog is to find ways to give the sleeping sheeple a wake-up call. They will not be able to successfully maneuver the heavily sedated herd into the waiting stockyards if enough of the sheep are awakened, to create the resistance necessary to stop the forward surge of the human lemmings into the pens and over the cliff.

American freedom and democracy stand on the edge of oblivion, prepared for flushing down the memory hole. It is no secret that the insane men and women who lead us are working overtime, driving the American sheeple toward the big round-up. But there is a secret history of our country that has been suppressed by the elitists and their “mainstream media” which explains why our country stands on the edge of that precipice today.

The secret history reveals the patterns created from testimony and circumstantial evidence, which proves that the “war on terror,” the creation of the international Muslim brigades (a.k.a. “al Qaida”), the crashing of the American (and global) economy, the conversion of American democracy into a dictatorship, as well as many other elements are all parts of the plan to destroy this Nation, carried-out by our own government and its collaborators. This blog exists to provide the evidence that our own government has purposely worked in collusion with financial and corporate interests to subordinate American national security to foreign interests.

The small minority of us who really understand what has been happening to our country and what is about to happen have little to show for all our efforts to organize antiwar resistance to the rapidly approaching disaster. If this blog fulfills its purpose, then we will have helped to raise an aroused, enraged American resistance movement. Such a movement would then move forward to erase all the awful things that will be described in this blog. Americans must wake-up to our own interests as a free Nation, in order to free us from those deadly “foreign entanglements” that George Washington tried to warn us about.

As for right now, it seems like there is little, or no hope.

That’s what “THEY” want you to believe. The tiny elite minority that controls most everything in our world is counting on you to give-up hope. Don’t do it! RESIST!!!

Do not give your consent to your own slavery! Find ways to contribute to the resistance. Do not conform to their directives.

Putin’s Shiner

Putin ‘Tired, Not Bruised’

Strategy 31 demonstrators are assaulted by Moscow police–31/05/2010

OMON thugs clamp down on democratic protesters in Moscow

Strategy 31 demonstrators are assaulted by Mosc…, posted with vodpod

 

Cold War International History Project–Virtual Archive 2.0

Cold War International History Project

Virtual Archive 2.0

[The Mitrokhin Archive is a collection of notes made secretly by KGB Major Vasili Mitrokhin during his thirty years as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate. When he defected to the United Kingdom he brought the Archive with him. Two books, Sword and the Shield and The KGB and the Battle for the Third World, based on the Archive and hundreds other sources were published in 1992 and 2005, which gives details about much of the Soviet Union's clandestine intelligence operations around the world. The books were written by British intelligence historian Christopher Andrew. Their publication provoked parliamentary inquiries in the U.K., India, and Italy.]

The Mitrokhin Archive

The Mitrokin Archive — A Note on Sources
January 01 1990 – A note on sources contextualizing the Mitrokhin Archive. Please read this first in order to understand the nature of the material.

Letter to the [CWIHP] Editor — A Note on Sources
June 01 2000 – Letter to CWIHP from Vasiliy Mitrokhin on the submission of the KGB in Afghanistan Manuscript. This letter places the KGB in Afghanistan entry into further context. Please read this before using the materials.

CWIHP Note on the Mitrokhin Archive — A Note On Sources
June 01 2000 – CWIHP note on the Mitrokhin sources, first published in the introduction of the KGB in Afghanistan Volume.

Biography of Vasiliy Mitrokhin
December 22 2000 – Short biography of Vasiliy Mitrokhin, which provides context for the materials in the Mitrokhin Archive collection.

The KGB in Afghanistan – Geographical Volume 1
February 01 2002 – This text is an edited version of a manuscript outlining the KGB’s operational activities in Afghanistan between 1978 and 1983, authored by Vasiliy Mitrokhin, a former KGB archivist who defected to Britain in 1992. Mitrokhin tells us that the KGB was deeply involved with Soviet Afghan policies from the very beginning. The piece deals with events in and around Afghanistan and the activities of the Bolshevik nomenklatura in the region between 1962 and 1983. It is based exclusively on information from the KGB archives to which Vasily Mitrokhin had access to. Please read the note on sources under the collection listing to understand the limitations of this material.

Please click here for a response to this document.

KGB Active Measures in Southwest Asia in 1980-82
April 01 2004 – Materials provided by former KGB archivist Vasiliy Mitrokhin to the CWIHP, following the publication of the Mitrokhin WP40 “The KGB in Afghanistan.” As with all Mitrokhin’s notes, his compilation on Soviet “active measures” in South and Southwest Asia is based on other smuggled-out notes and was prepared especially for CWIHP. Please read the Notes on Sources for information on the nature and limitations of these documents.

(read HERE)

Chinese Getting Irked Over US Meddling In China Sea

US, Russia join Asian summit as regional spats simmer

By Sarah Stewart (AFP) – 11 hours ago

HANOI — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Saturday join 16 Asia-Pacific leaders at a summit in Vietnam dominated by China’s territorial disputes.

The United States and Russia will be formally invited as members of the East Asia Summit at the group’s annual gathering, in what analysts say is a blow to Chinese attempts to diminish US influence in the region.

Their entry into the EAS, which elevates its diplomatic heft, comes despite Chinese attempts to promote another grouping — which does not include the US — as the region’s premier forum for regional cooperation.

US membership is seen as part of its strategic return to Southeast Asia to balance China’s growing influence in the region, where Beijing’s more aggressive stance on territorial disputes has unnerved its smaller neighbours.

Clinton, in a speech on Asia-Pacific relations made in Honolulu earlier this week, downplayed suggestions the US is duelling with China for influence.

“There are some in both countries who believe that China?s interests and ours are fundamentally at odds. They apply a zero-sum calculation to our relationship. So whenever one of us succeeds, the other must fail,” she said.

“But that is not our view.”

Nevertheless, China has been irritated by Washington wading into the issue of its claim over the resource-rich South China Sea, where several Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries are also claimants.

Clinton said in July that resolving disputes over the strategic area is “pivotal” to regional stability and offered to negotiate a settlement.

On the eve of the Hanoi summit, China hit out at Clinton’s remarks that other disputed islands in the East China Sea, the flashpoint for a serious feud with Japan, fall within the scope of the US-Japan security alliance.

“The Chinese government and people will never accept any word or deed that includes the Diaoyu islands within the scope of the US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security,” foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said.

The disputed islands — called Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan — have been at the centre of a deepening row between Beijing and Tokyo which erupted again in Hanoi, evaporating hopes for talks between their leaders.

Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara met his Chinese counterpart Friday and said they had agreed to improve ties. Japan’s delegation announced direct talks between the leaders, but then retracted the statement.

China’s assistant foreign affairs minister, Hu Zhengyue, then issued a statement using extremely strong terms to condemn Japan.

“Japanese diplomatic authorities have partnered with other nations and stepped up the heat on the Diaoyu island issue,” he said.

He said Japanese comments had “violated China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

“The Japanese moves, which is clear for everyone to see, have ruined the needed atmosphere for a meeting between the two leaders. Japan should take full responsibility for the result.”

Japanese Premier Naoto Kan’s spokesman, Noriyuki Shikata, said there was no reason for “heightened tensions… between the two countries” and that Japan stood ready to “engage in dialogue.”

The neighbours have been feuding since the September 8 arrest of a Chinese trawler captain after a collision with Japanese coastguard vessels near the disputed East China Sea island chain.

The United States called on China and ally Japan to ease tensions.

“We want China and Japan to sit down, to have dialogue and work through the issues,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters in Washington.

“We would hope that both countries will take affirmative steps to de-escalate tensions around this issue and that will create the conditions for a meaningful dialogue.”

The East Asia Summit is a forum for dialogue on strategic, political and economic issues involving the 10-member Southeast Asian bloc as well as Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.

Mocking the French for getting it right

James Clay Fuller

Everything the American public has been told by the corporate news media about the anti-austerity uprisings in France, England and other European countries is a lie. 

The picture we’ve been given by our big newspapers, magazines and television – as always, especially television – is as phony as a photograph showing Sarah Palin sitting on Barack Obama’s lap and nibbling his ear. It’s a picture so false as to make Fox News domestic political coverage look fair and objective by comparison.

This is important. The real story hidden by the fakery is enormously important to the people of the United States.

If Americans knew what the protests really are about, and what actually is being done by the governments of France and England, and Greece and Spain and other countries, some, at least, would have a different understanding of what is being done here to place total economic power into the hands of the very rich. The protests would take on an aspect 180 degrees from what most Americans now believe of them.

The focus has been on France, because that presents the easiest target in this country for false coverage.

We’ve been told over and over by everybody from Fox to the New York Times that the blockades and shouting and marches in France are all about the “fact” that President Nicolas Sarkozy and his gang want to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.

Snotty coverage implies, or flatly states, that the lazy, sex-loving, low-producing French people simply are not willing to work to age 62, that they want to have their six-week summer vacations and long weekends and retire with full, abundant pensions at 60. Virtually all of our corporate media states, or strongly implies, that those silly French people just can’t or won’t grasp economic realities which require “belt tightening” and major reductions in spending for social programs in order to save their national economy from collapse.

The picture is akin to the stereotype of listless, music-lovin’ “darkies” once common to the American press, and it is no more accurate.

Descriptions of the French economic problems are equally fictional, as false as the stories Americans have been told for the past year and a half or so about our own economic situation.

First: The French are rightfully angry about a hell of a lot more than “raising the retirement age from 60 to 62.” But even just on the retirement question, what we’ve been told is false. Most of the French don’t, as implied, now get to retire with “full benefits” at age 60.

French law allows retirement at that age with some pension benefits, but the actual amount of pension one receives depends on how many payments one has made into the retirement system, which means, in effect, how long one has worked. Sarkozy and crew are raising the number of years one must work to retire with full pension from 40 to 43, and they obviously intend to go on increasing that number.

Most French people already must work to 62 or even 65 or older to get full government retirement benefits. The new level will be higher, with more raises in retirement age to come.

Remember, most people don’t start working full time at 16 or 18 or even 22 any more. To be fully and well employed in France, as here, one has to get an education or some sort of advanced training, and then wiggle into a career or long-time job path, which takes time.

“Full” retirement benefits, not incidentally, amount to about 40 percent of one’s pay at the time of retirement. On its own, that does not provide a life of ease for people in France any more than it does here.

A more complete explanation of the retirement situation, and what the French are really angry about, is in a very good piece on http://www.counterpunch.org by Diana Johnstone. She is the author of many articles and books on European politics and a graduate of my alma mater, the University of Minnesota. She has lived and worked in Europe much of her life.

Very briefly — in my view, not Johnstone’s — Sarkozy is France’s Ronald Reagan, with strong overtones of George W. Bush. He is taking his country down the road to a new Gilded Age. He campaigned on a theme of improving the economy for all the French but, like Reagan and Bush, what he’s really about is giving as much power and as much of the country’s wealth as possible to the already super-rich at the expense of the average French citizen.

Like Bush, especially, his inner circle is full of self-enriching egoists who seem to devote themselves mainly to finding extremely high-paying “positions” for their wives, offspring and cronies. Some of them are known for personal tax dodging on a jaw-dropping scale.

As here, the French people have had their pockets picked in order to replenish and expand the purses of the very wealthy people who contributed most powerfully to that country’s and the world’s economic distress. There, as here, there has been no real attempt to hold any of the financial finaglers and outright frauds responsible for their actions.

The major difference between France and the United States in these circumstances is that many of the French, better educated than average Americans and with a far greater understanding of basic economics, know that they’re getting screwed and, even more importantly, they know who’s doing the screwing.

In America we get Tea Parties and such -– gangs of the terminally ignorant howling after “liberals” and working mightily on behalf of rich right wingers such as the Koch brothers to bring about their own economic and political ruin.

In France, a substantial number of the people know they are the targets in a class war designed to put the wealth and the political power of the nation entirely into the hands of a tiny minority who already have most of the wealth and a great deal of the political power.

That demonstrates, I think, that the dumbing down of the public education system, long a major part of the right wing crusade in this country, is farther along here than in Europe. European oligarchs also are behind in pricing the poor and middle class out of higher education.

(An oligarchy, and corporate moguls, most emphatically do not want an educated public; they want a public trained for jobs, but with little capacity for critical thought beyond solving small on-the-job problems.)

What’s going on in Britain and, to varying degrees, elsewhere in Europe is part of the same movement under way here and in France. The British far right, often less willing to hide itself behind populist fiction than American and continental right wing extremists, is more openly stomping on the general public and grabbing its worldly goods for the very rich. If the British oligarchs were less obvious, they may not have triggered the degree of anger they now face from some of the British public, which seems to be little, if any, brighter than our own.

That’s just a guess on my part, based on what I see in reading the news coverage we don’t get from our own “media.” I’ve spent some time in England, but not for quite awhile, and I make no claim to really knowing the British.

You’ll note that American news and commentary about the situation in Britain is greatly different from news and commentary on France’s upheavals. For reasons I have never fully understood, Americans love to take a superior attitude to the French, to belittle them and to pretend they are considerably less than they are. For example, the fact that French workers are more productive than American workers on an hour by hour, week by week basis, as shown by various productivity studies, would horrify most Americans — if they could bring themselves to accept the demonstrable truth.

Anyway, that attitude makes it easy for our media, politicians and corporate leaders to sell this country on the idea that the French are just being their usual silly selves in protesting government moves designed to weaken their economic standing and shift more power to the money elite.

My local birdcage liner, the Minneapolis Star Tribune (known in recent years to many of my news-savvy friends and older journalists as the Star Trivia) has carried not only the inaccurate “news” coverage but a couple of commentaries specifically created to trivialize the fight of French against big buck elitists.

One was an editorial from the Wall Street Journal, which always can be counted on to scorn the interests of the general public anywhere. That piece of trash took the standard corporate line that the French economy –- and, indeed, all economies -– soon will crash if working people don’t give up their “entitlements” (such as pensions, health care and other trivial luxuries) and allow the rich to determine what they can “afford.” It’s attitude was belittling in the extreme.

The other was a piece by one of the paper’s fluff columnists, a sort of surrogate shopping wife who specializes in stroking the egos of those whose lives are devoted to trivial pursuits. She said she lived in France for a while when she was in her 20s. Demonstrating a complete absence of knowledge of what the fight really is about, her take was that the French are quaint in their insistence on fighting pension cuts because “a way of life is at stake here, including long vacations and even longer lives of retirement freed from having to work at all.”

This popsy also declared her love of “scrumptious” France and went on for some time describing fictional French attitudes that essentially created a picture of a country populated by good natured, charming but self-centered children. Just like those darkies.

(To be fair, her male counterpart is equally trivial.)

She may have lived in France, but she was a suburban American tourist the whole time, apparently. Her fictional, cute France is nothing like the reality as I’ve seen it.

But her take is common in this country. Millions of Americans seem unaware of the fact the French people are normal human beings who study, work, love, live, sometimes fight and die just like real human beings. As I said, the fiction helps the economic elite trivialize the very real struggle of at least some of the French people to save their economic and political system.

This is not just a French fight, of course. Nor an English fight. Nor a problem faced just by the people of Greece and/or Spain.

The corporate elite is international to a degree it has never been before. The banks, other financial institutions and most major industries are fully international. A board chairman of one company may be French, another Italian and another American by birth. Those national designations mean nothing any more, other than a current place of principal residence. The CEOs anchor their $30 million yachts in the same harbors at the same seasons, and they sleep in each other’s beds.

Sadly, we won’t see Americans taking to the streets to protect their way of life. Those we do see in the street are marching on behalf of the very people who are pushing us back to a life of economic servitude.

Russia’s Message to Turkmenistan: Export Your Gas Anywhere Except Europe

OCTOBER 29, 2010

Vladimir Socor On October 28, Turkmenistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement strongly contradicting the Russian government’s views on the bilateral gas trade and on Turkmen gas export policy in general. The statement follows six days after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and a governmental delegation held talks with President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov in Ashgabat. The Turkmen MFA’s statement rejects the “unsubstantiated,” “completely groundless,” and “counterproductive” assertions by unnamed “Russian officials” in connection with Medvedev’s October 22 visit. Those assertions are being “assessed in Turkmenistan [i.e., by the President] as an attempt to hinder our country’s normal course of international cooperation in the sphere of energy” (Turkmenistan.ru, October 28). This tenor is reminiscent of the April 2009 polemics triggered by Moscow’s sudden halt in gas imports from Turkmenistan, without advanced notification, and the resultant blowup of the transmission pipeline in Turkmen territory. For Turkmenistan, it was the ultimate proof that it could not rely on Russia for security of demand, spurring Turkmen efforts to diversify gas export routes away from Russia. The October 28 statement takes issue with Russian assertions that Turkmen gas is not in demand in Europe; that Moscow is holding talks with Ashgabat about Gazprom’s participation in the proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline; and that Turkmenistan has abandoned the Caspian Littoral Pipeline project, designed to run from Turkmenistan via Kazakhstan to Russia. In what reads like a stinging rebuke to Gazprom, the document says that Turkmenistan values European companies for “proving themselves to be reliable, predictable, acting in good faith and on economic-commercial logic. Accordingly, Turkmenistan will continue to develop the European direction for its gas exports.” The MFA statement dismisses the possibility of an agreement with Gazprom on the proposed TAPI pipeline. And it says almost explicitly that Moscow criticizes Ashgabat over the Caspian Littoral Pipeline project only as a pretext for Moscow’s own decision to drastically reduce gas imports from Turkmenistan since 2009. Most of the incriminating assertions in Russian media can be traced to Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin (Interfax, RIA Novosti, October 22; Kommersant, Vedomosti, October 25). Sechin was extraordinarily loquacious with the media during Medvedev’s visit to Ashgabat. The Russian president, by contrast, sounded serenely disengaged, worked his I-pod, and extolled the virtues of energy conservation; as if dress-rehearsing in Ashgabat for the benign post-modern reformer’s role, imminently due for an on-stage performance in Brussels. Sechin, however, went out of his way to discourage Turkmen gas exports to Europe. He insisted that European gas markets could hardly absorb Turkmen gas in the years ahead, due to depressed demand and diversification of supply from sources other than Turkmenistan. He stated, repetitively, that the EU-backed Nabucco project had “no future” due to insufficient gas supplies (an outcome that he promoted by trying to discourage Ashgabat from participating). Moreover, Sechin claimed, Russia’s South Stream project will advance faster than Nabucco, preempting gas resources and making Nabucco redundant. He implied that Ashgabat shared his views; an insinuation rebuked six days afterward in Ashgabat’s statement. Conversely, Sechin encouraged Turkmenistan to increase gas exports to China, an “almost infinite market” that could absorb both Turkmen and Russian gas. He also offered every possible assistance in directing Turkmen gas exports, via Afghanistan, to Pakistan and India through the proposed TAPI pipeline. Apparently on Gazprom’s behalf, Sechin proposed four possible versions of the Russian state monopoly’s participation in TAPI, listing them in crescendo order. First, Gazprom would design the pipeline; second, Gazprom would be the designer of the project and subcontractor of the construction work; third, Gazprom would be an investor and stakeholder in the project consortium; and fourth, Gazprom would participate in gas extraction onshore in Turkmenistan, as well as in the marketing of gas in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Three days later, Russia’s Deputy Energy Minister, Anatoly Yanovsky, announced that the Russian government had forwarded this set of proposals officially to the Turkmen government (Interfax, October 25). Turkmenistan is rapidly increasing its export pipeline capacities to the east (China), south (Iran), and west (toward the Caspian shore, awaiting a transportation solution to Europe). However, the new pipeline capacities can not yet accommodate Turkmenistan’s current export potential for gas. The old pipelines northward to Russia (via Kazakhstan and via Uzbekistan-Kazakhastan, respectively) are being utilized far below capacity since the spring of 2009, due to depressed demand in Russia and Europe, and pending a post-crisis recovery. Russia has contracted to buy only 10.5 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Turkmen gas for 2010, down from the pre-crisis level of 40 to 45 bcm per year (which almost fully occupied the existing pipeline capacities running toward Russia). The Caspian Littoral Pipeline project was designed in 2007 for a substantial increase in Turkmen gas exports to Russia, probably intended to supply the South Stream project, which Moscow launched that same year. Construction work seems never to have started on the littoral pipeline, however. Meanwhile, Turkmenistan has been compelled to reduce its gas production at the fields dedicated for export to Russia, and is losing export revenue as a result. President Berdimuhammedov had hoped to reach at least a preliminary agreement with Medvedev and his delegation for an increase of export volumes to Russia in 2011. Such an agreement did not materialize on this occasion, but may yet be reached by December. Meanwhile, Russia’s message to Ashgabat gas can not be made more explicit: Export your gas anywhere except Europe, and Gazprom will help you in this regard. URL: http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/

New Poland-Russia gas deal suits long-term EU plan to leave Russia out in the cold

New Poland-Russia gas deal suits long-term EU plan to leave Russia out in the cold

(Source: Datamonitor)In 2009, a deal was negotiated to bring more of Russia’s gas to Poland and give Gazprom and PGNiG exclusive control over the Polish section of the Yamal pipeline. However, the EU raised concerns that the agreement contravened laws over pipeline ownership. The deal has now been renegotiated to bring it in line with EU legislation, weakening Moscow’s long-term prospects in the European gas market.

The EU recently stole a march on Russia in the race for supremacy in the continent’s naturalgas market. Last year, Russia was able to negotiate a deal that would have extended Poland’s gas delivery deal with Moscow through to 2045. Under the agreement, Poland would have increased its gas imports from Russia by over two billion cubic meters (bcm) a year until 2037, and extended its current gas transit agreement until 2045. In addition, Russian oil and gas giant Gazprom and Polish state-owned utility Polskie Gornictwo Naftowe i Gazownictwo (PGNiG) demanded that they be given exclusive rights to the section of the Yamal pipeline that runs through Poland on its way to Germany. However, under the new deal supplies will only increase until 2022, and the gas transit agreement will be valid until 2019, not until 2045.

The Polish part of the Yamal pipeline is owned and operated by the Gazprom/PGNiG-run Europol Gaz. The original deal allowed for Europol Gaz to preserve the ownership, commercial and operating rights of the Yamal pipeline in Poland. Under EU legislation, oil and gas pipelines must not be monopolized, which would have been the case here, with Gazprom and PGNiG taking exclusive control.

It is in the EU’s interests to prevent Poland from being locked into long-term gas contracts with Russia, as this undermines the union’s plans to diversify its energy sources and to develop a liberalized, universal EU energy market. The proposed Nabucco gas pipeline project was devised as a response to Russia’s growing authority in the region’s gas market and the political instability that is a symptom of this dominance. This latest move by the EU – stepping in and forcing renegotiations between Moscow and Warsaw – comes as further evidence of its political objective of trying to circumvent Russia in the gas supply chain.

Poland imports about 65-70% of the 14bcm of gas it consumes each year from Russia, a situation that has worried politicians and citizens alike for some time. Russia has a history of using its authority in the gas market to flex its political muscles; for example, it cut off supplies to Ukraine in 2007 and again in 2009. This did a great deal of damage to Gazprom’s already ailing reputation as a reliable energy partner, so the thought of the state-owned Russian company tightening its energy grip on an important new EU member country carried with it too much risk.

With gas demand in Europe rising more slowly than anticipated, the price of liquefied natural gas from Asia falling sharply thanks to America’s booming shale gas industry, and the increasing excitement over shale deposits in Eastern and Northern Europe, including Poland, fears over energy security no longer carry the weight they once did in the continent. However, with the future of the Nabucco project still uncertain (as is the outlook of its Russian rival pipeline, South Stream) it is vital for the EU not to relinquish control of large chunks of its members’ gas markets to Russia if it is serious about developing a common EU energy policy and reducing its dependence on Russian gas supplies.

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.

Russia-Poland energy deal prompts threat of legal action

 

The European Commission on Oct. 29 threatened to take Poland to the European Court of Justice over an energy deal that calls for Poland to import more natural gas from Russia. The commission believes the deal violates an EU unbundling regulation, though Russia and Poland have said the agreement complies with the requirement. Russia is Poland’s only option in the short to medium term for natural gas supplies, and while the European Union wants to prevent a Russian energy monopoly, its efforts could be backfiring in Poland.

 

Analysis

Russia and Poland signed a new natural gas agreement Oct. 29 in Warsaw after months of negotiations and delays. The agreement calls for Poland’s imports of Russian natural gas to increase from 7.5 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year to more than 9 bcm and will be in effect from 2011-2022. In response, the European energy commissioner’s office has threatened to take Poland to the European Court of Justice if the agreement does not conform to the EU unbundling regulation, which requires that energy companies separate their production from transportation assets. With the Polish-Russian natural gas deal, the European Commission wants the Yamal-Europe pipeline, which carries Russian natural gas via Belarus to Poland and Germany, to be operated by an independent regulator.

The commission’s insistence that the deal between Poland and Russia conform to the EU unbundling regulation could sour Poland’s relationship with the commission. Until now, the Central European states have considered the commission a potential protector against a Russian energy monopoly. However, Warsaw has already expressed its displeasure at the commission for taking issue with the Russia deal, which brought Poland closer — at least in terms of a working relationship — to Russia.

The agreement between Russia and Poland primarily is a result of economics, rather than politics. Poland’s economy has continued growing, and so has its energy consumption. Furthermore, Warsaw expects to become more reliant on natural gas as it attempts to conform to EU environmental standards that likely will force it to stop using coal for electricity generation. Poland therefore needs more natural gas, and it has turned to Russia, which is a major natural gas provider to Poland and many other Central European countries, to increase its supplies. While Poland has reasons to be wary of becoming even more dependent on Moscow for energy and has touted diversifying away from Russian energy, finding a comparable energy source simply cannot be done immediately. Until Poland’s shale gas development (still in its infancy) and plans to build a liquefied natural gas plant (expected in 2014) come online, Poland will continue to rely on natural gas — which means it will continue to rely on Russia.

But the European Union has been extremely hesitant to accept this deal on the terms it was made. The union wants energy producers — both Russian and European — to allow independent producers access to energy infrastructure in order to spur competition and lower prices. A geopolitical purpose behind the legislation is to break Gazprom’s monopoly by encouraging competitors not only in Europe but also in Russia by forcing Gazprom to give up its exclusive right to pump natural gas through Europe’s main pipelines. The Yamal-Europe pipeline is jointly operated within Poland by Gazprom via a subsidiary, EuRoPol Gaz, and the Polish Oil and Gas Company (PGNiG). Gazprom and PGNiG each own a 48 percent stake in EuRoPol Gaz, and 4 percent ownership is in the hands of a Polish investor. The EU unbundling regulation therefore requires EuRoPol Gaz to give control of Yamal-Europe to Gaz-System, a Polish independent operator in charge of overseeing access to the Polish natural gas pipeline network owned by the Polish Treasury.

Both Russian and Polish officials announced Oct. 29 that the new deal conforms to EU demands. However, the European Commission has said it cannot verify this until it sees the contract and if it does not see the contract, along with details of how Gaz-System would regulate the Yamal-Europe pipeline, it will pursue legal action against Warsaw. The commission’s reaction might have been prompted not by the lack of details on the agreement, but by comments EuRoPol Gaz CEO Miroslaw Dobrut made Oct. 27 indicating that Gaz-System would only regulate whatever capacity is left in Yamal-Europe that is not already used up by Gazprom’s shipments. When asked how much excess capacity there is now, Dobrut said there was none. This is certainly very different from what the EU believes Gaz-System should be doing, which is allowing third-party producers access to the pipeline. From Gazprom’s perspective, however, giving up control of a pipeline that it invested $15.6 billion in during the 1990s not only makes little business sense, it is tantamount to private property appropriation. And for Warsaw, the commission’s demands are detrimental if compliance means that Poland will get no natural gas.

Poland and Russia have therefore chosen to work around the EU demand. The question is now how far the European Commission wants to take its fight with Russia’s Gazprom and a sizeable EU member state. Warsaw is already irked by EU involvement in the deal. On more than one occasion, Polish officials have pointed out that Germany’s deal with Gazprom over NordStream has not received the same level of scrutiny from the European Union. Essentially, Poland is beginning to see the union not as an ally in its efforts to become energy independent but as a nuisance. Meanwhile, Russia has been accommodating during the negotiations, even choosing to extend natural gas shipments past an Oct. 20 deadline as another sign of the “charm offensive” aimed at Warsaw. Also, Russian oil company Rosneft expressed interest on Oct. 29 of investing in the privatization of Polish energy companies.

In the short to medium term, Poland has no alternative to Russian natural gas. This puts Warsaw in a vulnerable position, and Poland does not need the European Union making it any more vulnerable. Ironically, Brussels’ efforts to break Gazprom’s monopoly could be turning Poland into an appreciative Russian energy customer.

“Russia-Poland Energy Deal Prompts Threat of Legal Action” is republished with permission of STRATFOR

Russian Forces In Transnistria Roadblock to Russification of European Union

Kiev supported the position of Brussels

Russian forces create tension at the Ukrainian borders

Svetlana Gamow

Konstantin Gryshchenko discussed with the Europeans the problem of Transnistria. Photo PhotoXPress.ru

To solve the Transnistrian conflict is necessary to find such an option, which would include the withdrawal of Russian troops from Transnistria. On this Wednesday in Brussels, said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Konstantin Gryshchenko. This provoked a mixed reaction in Kiev and Chisinau, suggesting that Ukraine in the Transnistrian settlement takes no side in Moscow and the EU.

EU’s position is known: Russia must fulfill the Istanbul agreement and withdraw its troops from Moldova. Brussels is in this for 15 years and recently has been particularly active advocates with relevant statements. Known and the condition of Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel transferred to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev: Berlin will support the initiative of President of the Russian Federation concerning European security, if Moscow withdraws its troops from Transnistria.

At a recent meeting in Deauville, the Transnistrian issue has been discussed already in expanded format: to Merkel and Medvedev joined French President Nicolas Sarkozy. After the summit, Dmitry Medvedev, said that conflict can be resolved and conditions for this, but we must wait for a regime change in Moldova and then sit at the negotiating table leaders in Chisinau and Tiraspol. Medvedev described in this party, from which will depend on the final decision: This is in addition to the conflict Russia, EU, and Romania.Ukraine from the formula of the Moldovan-Transnistrian reconciliation fell. It is recalled after a speech by Konstantin Gryshchenko in Brussels.

“We believe that you need a comprehensive solution that eliminates the presence of troops there (in Transnistria. -” NG “)” – quoted the head of the Moldovan Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine news agency Interlic.

It should be noted that in Transnistria deployed Operational Group of Russian Forces (OGRF), securing ammunition dumps left over from the 14 th Army, and the formation of the peacekeeping battalions of the Russian Federation.

Verkhovna Rada deputy of the faction “Our Ukraine – People’s Self-Defense Kaskiv told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that the presence of Russian troops in Transnistria, is working to escalate tensions in the region and it can not but worry Kiev.The more so because everything is in close proximity to the Ukrainian border. In his opinion, the Russian military must leave the Transnistrian region.

Verkhovna Rada deputy of the Party of Regions Inna Theological commented on the situation, “Nezavisimaya Gazeta:” We are interested in the withdrawal of Russian troops from Transnistria, but only after the Transnistrian conflict will be resolved and Transnistria is endowed with the appropriate status. Before the withdrawal can be no question. “ In her opinion, the statement Gryshchenko is consistent with the Medvedev-Yanukovych memorandum, in which “it was about changing the format of MS under the auspices of the OSCE after the Transnistrian issue.”

“The military presence of Russia in Transnistria – is not just a peacekeeping operation under the mandate of the CIS in the zone of conflict on the Dniester, but an instrument of deterrence of the Euro-Atlantic sentiment in Ukraine, the penetration into the region of Romania and NATO control of the situation in the region as a whole”, – noted in an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta Director of the Center for Civil Society Problems Vitaly Kulik.

The expert noted that “Kiev is not interested in maintaining the peace operation of hard-security, based on a Russian military contingent in Transnistria. The Ukrainian side has always pointed to the need to change the mandate and the expansion of operations due to its internationalization (holding the EU). But the pedal this issue, set any conditions of the Ukrainian side will not. “ Although, according to Kulik, Ukraine has a “golden share in the Transnistrian settlement process, and solve the Transnistrian problem without it will not.”

Kulik said that the Deauville was the beginning of the settlement process. He did not rule out the possibility that Moscow could agree (in exchange for some preference in the field of European security) to change the format of the peacekeeping operation: a “hard” (hard – the military) to “soft” (soft – police), even under the mandate of the OSCE ” .

In Chisinau, also rely on the effectiveness of Deauville. ”It said that the expectations associated with the new power in our country. We have 28 November – Parliamentary elections. The main thing – to find a compromise formula of reconciliation, which would suit all parties concerned and the withdrawal of troops, “- said the” NG “honorary chairman of the Democratic Party of Moldova Dumitru Diacov.

Humanist Party leader, former Defense Minister of Moldova Valeriu Pasat believes that the main thing – not the withdrawal of troops and ammunition dumps that are stored on the left bank of the Dniester. There are more than 20 tons. ”Withdraw troops – meant to take the banner to load the military and get in the echelons. And what to do with weapons – to equip them Transdniestrians? “- Asked the politician. He said the Nezavisimaya Gazeta that withdrawal can not be separated from the settlement process is interrelated.

Director of the European Institute for Political Studies, Viorel Cibotaru attention Nezavisimaya Gazeta that the four major parties, which is over all forecasts will be included in the Parliament – The Communist Party (leader – former President Vladimir Voronin), Liberal (Acting President Ghimpu ), Liberal Democratic (Prime Minister Vladimir Filatov) and Democratic (former Speaker of the Parliament Marian Lupu) – “would come from the law on Transnistria, adopted in 2005, which reads: Russian troops must withdraw from the territory of the republic.” At one time, the Communists, said the expert, once in office, offered not only to withdraw Russian forces, but also to disarm both banks of the Dniester, that is to demilitarize the region. Nevertheless, said Cibotaru, will these political forces that would seek a compromise between this law and the settlement plan, known as the “Kozak Memorandum” – he assumes the federalization of the Republic of Moldova. And it will be a compromise between the proposals of Moscow and Chisinau.

Afghan President calls for Russia and the U.S. to explain for anti-drug operation

The head of state did not understand why he had not asked permission

Hamid Karzai has demanded clarification

Photo: AP

Yegor Arefiev – 30/10/2010 14:56

The head of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai has demanded an explanation from NATO command in conjunction with the United States and Russia counter-narcotics operations in Afghanistan.

President’s Office sent out a statement by Karzai in Kotormo shown an bewilderment at the fact that the operation went “without his permission.”

Operation narkopolitseyskih U.S., Russia and Afghanistan was held Thursday in the village Zerasari Achin district of Nangarhar province. There have been eliminated four clandestine drug laboratories, confiscated 932 kilograms of heroin, 156 kilograms of opium, transmits ITAR-TASS.

Pakistan, US at odds over definition

Islamabad identifies certain groups for negotiations, including the Haqqani network but the US does not agree.

ISLAMABAD: Behind-the-scene efforts to seek peace with insurgents fighting Nato troops in neighbouring Afghanistan have made little or no progress because of differences between Pakistan and the US over the definition of‘reconcilable’ Taliban.

The Express Tribune has learnt that Islamabad, as part of the reconciliation efforts to find an end to the years of bloodshed in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas, has identified certain groups for negotiations. One such group is North Waziristan-based al Qaeda-inspired Haqqani network.

But the US does not agree. “This is the real contentious point. Pakistan believes the Haqqani network is reconcilable but the US certainly does not think that is the case,” a senior American diplomat told The Express Tribune.

Requesting not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, the diplomat questioned the wisdom of Pakistan over considering a group reconcilable, which has strong links with al Qaeda.

Led by aging Jalauddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin Haqqani, the group has strongholds in Afghanistan’s Paktia, Paktika and Khost provinces. But, it has also foot soldiers in several parts of the war-ravaged country to fight the US-led Nato forces. And that is the reason the Obama administration has been pressing Pakistan to eliminate ‘safe heavens’ of the group from the tribal areas.

But, Pakistan’s policymakers think differently.

“The US policy is really confusing at this stage. They want reconciliation yet they ask Pakistan to target groups who can be helpful for a political settlement,” remarked a military official. “We have been telling the Americans that don’t alienate all elements of the Afghan Taliban by using force against them,” said the official, who requested not to be identified.

He said Pakistan does not believe that launching an offensive against the Haqqani network at this stage will be in the ‘national interest.’

“The Haqqani network has to play a major role in any future political settlement of Afghanistan,” he added. And this is why, Pakistan is very careful about going after them, he maintained.

A senior foreign ministry official talks more candidly. “We do not consider the Afghan Taliban as Pakistan’s enemies. They never threaten us, they are our assets,” was the blunt response of the official when asked to share Islamabad’s perspective on the Afghan Taliban.

US officials say this confirms their fear that Pakistan has a ‘hands-off’ approach towards certain groups. “Pakistan has nurtured groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba as their assets and now the same militant organisations are haunting you,” said a senior US diplomat. “Gen Patreaus and Gen Kayani have been discussing these issues regularly,” he said.

He said the Obama administration is in favour of reconciliation but not with groups identified by Pakistan.

“It is a known fact that the Haqqani network is closely-linked with al Qaeda and this is a disqualification,” he said.

Former ambassador to Afghanistan Rustam Shah Mohmand said Pakistan would have to pay “a heavy price” if it goes after the Haqqani network.

“If Pakistan, for the sake of $2 billion in US aid, goes after the Haqqani network, it will have to face (serious) consequences over the next 50 years,” warned Mohmand, who is part of the Pakistan-Afghanistan jirga and considered to be linked with the military establishment.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 30^th, 2010

China assures US on key ‘rare earth’ minerals

Rare earth metals come from China – they are vital for production of a range of electronic items

China has told the US it will continue to be a “reliable supplier” of so-called “rare earth” minerals, key to the global high-tech industry.

China recently suspended export of the metals to Japan following a diplomatic spat.

But the US has pressed China, which has pledged not to use the minerals as a diplomatic weapon, to defuse the row.

Representatives from China and Japan also held informal talks on the fringes of an Asean conference in Vietnam.

“We have made very clear to both sides that we want the temperature to go down,” a US official said, following a meeting between Hillary Clinton and her Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, in Hanoi.

China produces some 97% of these valuable commodities, which are used to produce electronic items such as mobile phones.

The stoppage followed a spat between China and Japan last month over islands whose ownership is disputed.

Earlier, in Hawaii, Mrs Clinton said Chinese export restrictions were a “wake-up call” for the world to seek additional sources of rare earths.

Should Pakistan Shoot Down a Drone?

By Dr. Haider Mehdi for Opinion Maker

On that side there is much mistrust, on this side such weakness!

Neither can she ask, nor am I able to speak. Let me pull myself together, O despair! What calamity is this?                                                       I am beginning to lose even the thread of thought about my love.                                                                              (Narrate/translate here “love” as the “love” of my country – this thought added.)

Multiple Drone Attacks

Today, Pakistan is at the crossroads of its destiny: Either the deprived masses of this country, through a strongly demonstrated expression of their political will, will transform it into a sovereign, independent and dignified nation – or the incumbent ruling regime in Islamabad will turn this country into a permanent US-Nato subservient state fighting a war against its own people to infinity and auctioning out its armed forces to fight proxy wars for their “masters” in Washington, London, Bonn, Paris and elsewhere. It is a desperate situation, a calamity, the beginning of losing even “the thread” of one’s “love,” as Ghalib would have described it.

Zalmay Khalilzad, true to the literal meaning of the phonetic sound of his name (in the Urdu language the word “Zulam,” sounding like Zalmay, means the embodiment of cruelty), was one of the most vocal and staunch advocates of the war and a formidable and influential political actor in the invasion and destruction of his native land, Afghanistan. Now, in a New York Timesarticle entitled “Get Tough on Pakistan,” Zalmay Khalilzad is advocating a similar US foreign policy/military approach towards Pakistan: namely the unilateral invasion of Northern Waziristan by American troops and to carry the war into Pakistan’s territory using massive air-power and the incursion of troops by land routes.

The Zalmay approach is a recipe for the destruction of Pakistan.  In addition, he also calls for a larger presence of CIA

An Afghan Zionist

operatives in the country and, in a nutshell, advocates a blue-print of turning Pakistan into a paid military-political satellite for serving the global financial interests of the US neo-conservative elite and multi-national corporations. Obviously, Zalmay is the front-line salesman of future American expansionist global policies. It is quite evident in the aforementioned article that Zalmay Khalilzad is projecting the mainstream American thinking on Pakistan and Afghanistan in terms of the future directions of US foreign policy in the South Asian region and in the Central Asian Islamic states.

Expounding on future American resolve in regards to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, Zalmay states, “More fundamentally, the United States needs to demonstrate that, even after our troops depart Afghanistan, we are resolved to stay engaged in the region.” This is the crux of thinking in the elitist military-corporate oligarchies within the American political establishment. Pakistan is to be transformed into a precise American political-military tool, an instrument of US policy affirmation; in this context Zalmay states that “… among the options being discussed by American and Pakistani officials this week is a security pact that would mean billions of dollars more. But such efforts have led to only the most incremental shifts in Pakistan’s policy… to induce quicker and more significant changes, Washington must offer Islamabad a stark choice between positive incentives and negative consequences.”

In the context of Pakistan’s on-going contemporary political-military engagement with the US, it is vitally important to fully understand the mindset and political conduct of important American political actors, such as Zalmay Khalilzad, as they reflect the mainstream ideological and strategic thinking of the inner-most ruling elite in Washington. Zalmay, like the majority of the powerful inner circle of foreign policy decision-makers in the US, suffers from a historically macho but pathological psychosis related to insecurity. In psychological terms, it is called the “megalomania” syndrome: the desire to feel superior and the deeply imbedded compulsion to have “power” over others – with a self-induced perception of grandeur and majestic command. The psychological impetus in this kind of behavior, though not genetic, comes from deep-seated feelings of inferiority, reasserted as brutal, unscrupulous pursuit of power, prestige and domination. These are the driving forces in the American psychic.

It is true that America has been an innovative leader in science, technology, medical science, information technology and above all in weapons engineering, but advancement in science and technology, in itself, does not produce a

An Afghan Child wounded in a Drone Attack

humanitarian ideology of compassion for human life. It is precisely this element which has been the missing link in the sociological paradigm of American political conduct when it comes to dealing with non-white, non-Judeo-Christian people and nations with diverse economic-political ideologies different from the US belief system. America has carried out massive killing and destruction all over the world on account of these factors. And now, American political heavyweight neo-conservatives, among them Zalmay Khalilzad, are advocating more destruction and killings in Pakistan, Iran and possibly in the entire region in the near future. This is 21^st century and the US-Nato are still wholly devoted to the 19^th and 20^th century colonial mindset. However, they cannot fool the world any longer.

Pakistan’s national tragedy in its deadlock of alliance with the US-Nato is that the incumbent political clan in Islamabad is not very different in its “megalomaniac” affliction than its counterparts in Washington and West European capitals. The incumbent regime in Pakistan is power hungry – it will do anything to stay in power – even marginalize the nation to an onerous, oppressive and burdensome existence of a total subservient state serving US-Nato global interests and hegemonic objectives at the expense of its people. It will surrender Pakistan’s sovereignty, its dignity, its territorial integrity and even push the nation into an endless war  – to please its “masters” in Washington and the Nato capitals. Megalomaniac leaderships have no limits and no boundaries in their irrational political conduct. But the question is: how long will the Zardari-Gilani clan defy growing public discontent with the intrusive American-Nato political behavior in this country?

What Pakistan needs is a surgical strike at the US-Nato military adventurism inside Pakistan’s territory. Should it shoot down the next drone that violates Pakistan’s air space and kills Pakistani citizens?

Indeed, the choice rests with Washington and Nato headquarters. If Zalmay and neo-cons can advocate the extension of a full-scale American war inside Pakistan, then why can’t Pakistan respond in kind to defend itself against a blatant “act of war”?

Zalmay, in his article “Get Tough on Pakistan,” wrote, “… The United States should…carry out operations… with or without Pakistani consent. Arguments that such pressures would cause Pakistan to disintegrate are overstated. Pakistan’s institutions, particularly the country’s security organs, are sufficiently strong to preclude such an outcome.”

Indeed, Zalmay is right in assessing the power of Pakistan’s armed forces. Hence, I advocate the shooting of the next drone that flies Pakistan’s skies – a sufficiently powerful communicative political act for pre-damage control against an evolving US-Nato policy and possible emerging military adventurism inside Pakistan.

Indeed, Obama would not want to put his presidency and re-election at stake by dragging his feet  into yet another war. Would he? He knows better than that.

Oh despair! What calamity is this?

Let me pull myself together…  As Ghalib would have said!

First and foremost, the entire nation should speak out and let the “megalomaniac” ruling elite in the power corridors of Islamabad know that they will not take any more “torments” of their “love”… the destruction of their country.

The Zardari-Gilani regime cannot be a part of the solution to Pakistan’s problematic…!

They are a part of the problem!

Who’s the Conspiracy Theorist Now? Gov’t Scaring the Public with Aliens, Asteroids, and Global Pandemics

“Is everything a conspiracy?  No, just the important stuff.” — Jeff Wells, Rigorous Intuition

Nicholas West
Activist Post

Pandemics, Aliens, and Asteroids — Oh My!  It appears that the corporate-government-media has recently become the number one propagator of conspiracy theories.  That is, of course, as long as the fear campaign pushes the right buttons for the agenda.

The dumbed-down public will always be led by fear until they realize that no major events happen by mistake in the matrix.  All major events, reactions, and proposed solutions are thoroughly orchestrated and performed by the power players.  They hit all the right notes, all of the time, save for some minor tuning as needed.

It’s convenient for establishment leaders to claim that major events are mistakes. For example, we’re told the attacks of September 11th were a massive failure on the part of the intelligence community. Additionally, we’re told that the “idiots” on Wall Street did not see the housing collapse coming, or predict the 2008 financial meltdown, or the recent currency wars, or the recent gold and commodity rush.

It’s the typical story told to the public when catastrophe strikes:  whoops, who could have seen that coming? Even some of the most enlightened minds that predicted these events still call the people in charge “stupid” for not seeing or adapting to it.  Perhaps many of the useful idiots who run the gears of the system don’t know the fundamentals well enough to predict events, but the true controllers know exactly what they’re doing, what reaction they will get, and what calculated solution will ultimately give them more power and wealth.

We all witnessed the incredible consolidation of wealth and power orchestrated by our corrupt state since the 9/11 attacks, all at the expense of the common man’s treasure, blood, and rights — all caused by 19 (U.S. funded) extremists with box cutters who came from caves.  Only scared little sheep could believe that theory, especially given what has transpired to date.

Yesterday’s article in AOL News announced that Obama’s science czar John Holdren is concerned about threats of asteroid impacts on Earth.   While a valid concern, the timely disclosure seems to be yet another attempt to reach out to the alternative media.  This comes after the increasing stories which seem to be leading up to revealing the alien threat to the public, while other new threats of currency wars and new pandemics abound.

However, the 9/11 problem-reaction-solution playbook seems stale, as Al-Qaeda seems less scary by the day.  The matrix is now moving on to the next stage of fear campaigns with aliens, asteroids, more pandemics, and more manufactured economic catastrophes.  This is their all-out attempt to hit us with full spectrum fear. It seems that if the establishment can’t defeat the “conspiracy” crowd, they’ll seek to distract, divert, or co-opt it to the best of their ability.  As a sign of their desperation to control free humanity, their version of the threats facing us read more like a comic book or a science fiction script, rather than news about actual events.

For those who doubt that any of our multi-threats could have been orchestrated, I suggest you look around to see which part of society actually has benefited from terror and the constant threat of more terror.  The conclusion should be clear:  The Mega-Cartels that seek higher levels of control over their slave population.

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Halliburton Accused Of Flawed Job on Rig

Contractor Accused Of Flawed Job on Rig

Halliburton Shares Hit by Panel Report

By BEN CASSELMAN And SIOBHAN HUGHES

Halliburton Co. found repeated problems with the cement it was planning to install in BP PLC’s doomed oil well but used it anyway—perhaps without alerting BP—according to federal investigators studying the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

Halliburton tests showed that cement similar to that used to seal BP’s Macondo well would be unstable, but neither BP nor Halliburton acted on the data before the blowout, according to new documents. Siobhan Hughes joins the News Hub to discuss.

The cement was supposed to seal the well and prevent explosive natural gas from flowing in. Why the seal failed has been a central question in the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 workers and set off the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

The investigators’ findings brought new scrutiny to Halliburton, which until now has escaped most of the blame for the disaster. Halliburton’s stock price tumbled 8% on the news closing at $31.68 on the New York Stock Exchange, despite the company’s assurance that it was indemnified by BP for damages.

BP declined to comment Thursday.

European Pressphoto AgencyBP will be less likely to be found “grossly negligent” if several different companies share the blame for the April 20 explosion of its Gulf well.

Halliburton late Thursday questioned the investigators’ cement tests, saying discrepancies between those results and the company’s “may be due to differences in the cement materials tested.”

The company said in a statement that the federal commission tested off-the-shelf cement and additives, whereas Halliburton tested the unique blend of cement and additives that existed on the rig at the time its tests were conducted. It added it has been unable to provide the commission with cement, additives and water from the rig because it is subject to a federal court preservation order, although the materials will soon be released to the Marine Board of Investigation.

Halliburton previously blamed BP for failing to heed its advice on the design of the well and failing to do all the necessary tests, while BP has said that Halliburton’s cement mixture itself was to blame.

Investigators cautioned that their findings don’t let BP off the hook, noting that cement failures are relatively common. It is up to the well’s owner—BP, in the case of this well, called Macondo—to test the cement and fix any problems, they noted.

“The story of the blowout does not turn solely on the quality of the Macondo cement job,” investigators wrote in a letter to members of the presidential commission probing the disaster.

Other seals and valves higher up the well also should have stopped the flow of explosive natural gas. Workers from BP and Transocean Ltd., which owned the rig, failed to detect gas entering the well, and misinterpreted a key test that should have revealed problems. Another important test was never done.

By the time the workers realized something had gone wrong, gas had already risen past the blowout preventer, the huge stack of valves meant to shut down a well in an emergency. And the valves didn’t work after the initial explosion, allowing oil to pour into the Gulf.

The investigators’ letter provided new evidence that the cement, which included additives and nitrogen, may have been faulty. Halliburton performed four tests on the cement mixture it planned to use in the months before the blowout. The cement failed the first three tests, and only passed the fourth after engineers changed the testing procedure, commission staff members wrote. Halliburton made minor changes to the cement formula after the second failed test, investigators said. They also said the third test may have been performed incorrectly.

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It isn’t clear what BP knew about the tests. Halliburton provided the results of an early test, along with other information, in a March 8 email to BP.

But according to the commission, “There is no indication that Halliburton highlighted to BP the significance” of the results. The results of the other three tests were apparently never reported to BP. The commission also asked engineers fromChevron Corp. to try to recreate the cement mixture used on the well. When they did so, they couldn’t get a good seal.

Those results “strongly suggest” that the cement mixture was unstable, the investigators wrote. Halliburton and perhaps BP “should have considered redesigning the [cement mixture] before pumping it at the Macondo well,” investigators wrote.

Robert Mackenzie, an energy analyst with FBR Capital Markets and a former oil industry cementing engineer, noted that Halliburton’s final test apparently showed that the cement would work. He said it isn’t unusual for engineers to tweak a formula several times to find one that satisfies them.

In September, Halliburton’s vice president of cementing, Thomas Roth, told a National Academy of Engineering panel that “all of the design work, all of the testing work that was done by Halliburton in advance of this job indicated that the foam system was stable.”

Halliburton’s contract makes it unlikely that Halliburton will face much liability for the disaster, said Matthew Conlan, an analyst for Wells Fargo Securities. But the latest revelations could hurt Halliburton’s reputation, he added. “The integrity of their product is being questioned and the integrity of their advice is being questioned.”

From the Archives

• Halliburton Faulted Over Cement Job
• Halliburton Engineer Says He Warned BP Seal Might Fail
• Drilling Process Attracts Scrutiny in Rig Explosion

BP could benefit if investigators determine that Halliburton’s cement design was faulty, experts said.

Under federal pollution laws, BP will face much higher penalties if it is found to have been “grossly negligent” in the spill. Such a finding is less likely if several different companies share the blame.

Halliburton has long denied responsibility, saying BP ignored its warnings that the cement job would likely fail if BP didn’t use more “centralizers,” devices that keep steel pipe centered in the hole to ensure the even distribution of cement. Halliburton also said BP broke with industry best practices by failing to clean out the well fully before pumping cement and by failing to test the cement after the job was completed.

As the investigation has developed, however, Halliburton’s version of events has drawn more scrutiny. In testimony before a different federal panel, Halliburton engineers acknowledged that they never warned the well could blow out if the centralizers weren’t used and that they never explicitly recommended that the cement test be run.

Write to Ben Casselman at ben.casselman@wsj.com and Siobhan Hughes atsiobhan.hughes@dowjones.com