Skip to main content

Home/ Socialism and the End of the American Dream/ Group items tagged Directed-Energy

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Paul Merrell

From Energy War to Currency War: America's Attack on the Russian Ruble | Global Research - 0 views

  • Putin announced that Russia has cancelled the South Stream project on December 1, 2014. Instead the South Stream pipeline project has been replaced by a natural gas pipeline that goes across the Black Sea to Turkey from the Russian Federation’s South Federal District. This alternative pipeline has been popularly billed the «Turk Stream» and partners Russian energy giant Gazprom with Turkey’s Botas. Moreover, Gazprom will start giving Turkey discounts in the purchase of Russian natural gas that will increase with the intensification of Russo-Turkish cooperation. The natural gas deal between Ankara and Moscow creates a win-win situation for both the Turkish and Russian sides. Not only will Ankara get a discount on energy supplies, but Turk Stream gives the Turkish government what it has wanted and desired for years. The Turk Stream pipeline will make Turkey an important energy corridor and transit point, complete with transit revenues. In this case Turkey becomes the corridor between energy supplier Russia and European Union and non-EU energy customers in southeastern Europe. Ankara will gain some leverage over the European Union and have an extra negotiating card with the EU too, because the EU will have to deal with it as an energy broker.
  • For its part, Russia has reduced the risks that it faced in building the South Stream by cancelling the project. Moscow could have wasted resources and time building the South Stream to see the project sanctioned or obstructed in the Balkans by Washington and Brussels. If the European Union really wants Russian natural gas then the Turk Stream pipeline can be expanded from Turkey to Greece, the former Yugoslav Republic (FYR) of Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, and other European countries that want to be integrated into the energy project. The cancellation of South Stream also means that there will be one less alternative energy corridor from Russia to the European Union for some time. This has positive implications for a settlement in Ukraine, which is an important transit route for Russian natural gas to the European Union. As a means of securing the flow of natural gas across Ukrainian territory from Russia, the European Union will be more prone to push the authorities in Kiev to end the conflict in East Ukraine.
  • From the perspective of Russian Presidential Advisor Sergey Glazyev, the US is waging its multi-spectrum war against Russia to ultimately challenge Moscow’s Chinese partners. In an insightful interview, Glazyev explained the following points to the Ukrainian journalist Alyona Berezovskaya — working for a Rossiya Segodnya subsidiary focusing on information involving Ukraine — about the basis for US hostility towards Russia: the bankruptcy of the US, its decline in competitiveness on global markets, and Washington’s inability to ultimately save its financial system by servicing its foreign debt or getting enough investments to establish some sort of innovative economic breakthrough are the reasons why Washington has been going after the Russian Federation. [13] In Glazyev’s own words, the US wants «a new world war». [14] The US needs conflict and confrontation, in other words. This is what the crisis in Ukraine is nurturing in Europe. Sergey Glazyev reiterates the same points months down the road on September 23, 2014 in an article he authors for the magazine Russia in Global Affairs, which is sponsored by the Russian International Affairs Council — a think-tank founded by the Russian Foreign Ministry and Russian Ministry of Education 2010 — and the US journal Foreign Affairs — which is the magazine published by the Council on Foreign Relation in the US. In his article, Glazyev adds that the war Washington is inciting against Russia in Europe may ultimately benefit the Chinese, because the struggle being waged will weaken the US, Russia, and the European Union to the advantage of China. [15] The point of explaining all this is to explain that Russia wants a balanced strategic partnership with China. Glazyev himself even told Berezovskaya in their interview that Russia wants a mutually beneficial relationship with China that does reduce it to becoming a subordinate to Beijing. [16]
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • It is because of the importance of Irano-Turkish and Russo-Turkish trade and energy ties that Ankara has had an understanding with both Russia and Iran not to let politics and their differences over the Syrian crisis get in the way of their economic ties and business relationships while Washington has tried to disrupt Irano-Turkish and Russo-Turkish trade and energy ties like it has disrupted trade ties between Russia and the EU. [9] Ankara, however, realizes that if it lets politics disrupt its economic ties with Iran and Russia that Turkey itself will become weakened and lose whatever independence it enjoys Masterfully announcing the Russian move while in Ankara, Putin also took the opportunity to ensure that there would be heated conversation inside the EU. Some would call this rubbing salt on the wounds. Knowing that profit and opportunity costs would create internal debate within Bulgaria and the EU, Putin rhetorically asked if Bulgaria was going to be economically compensated by the European Commission for the loss.
  • It is clear that Russian business and trade ties have been redirected to the People’s Republic of China and East Asia. On the occasion of the Sino-Russian mega natural gas deal, this author pointed out that this was not as much a Russian countermove to US economic pressure as it was really a long-term Russian strategy that seeks an increase in trade and ties with East Asia. [10] Vladimir Putin himself also corroborated this standpoint during the December 18 press conference mentioned earlier when he dismissed — like this author — the notion that the so-called «Russian turn to the East» was mainly the result of the crisis in Ukraine. In President Putin’s own words, the process of increasing business ties with the Chinese and East Asia «stems from the global economic processes, because the East – that is, the Asia-Pacific Region – shows faster growth than the rest of the world». [11] If this is not convincing enough that the turn towards East Asia was already in the works for Russia, then Putin makes it categorically clear as he proceeds talking at the December 18 press conference. In reference to the Sino-Russian gas deal and other Russian projects in East Asia, Putin explained the following: «The projects we are working on were planned long ago, even before the most recent problems occurred in the global or Russian economy. We are simply implementing our long-time plans». [12]
  • According to Presidential Advisor Sergey Glazyev, Washington is «trying to destroy and weaken Russia, causing it to fragment, as they need this territory and want to establish control over this entire space». [18] «We have offered cooperation from Lisbon to Vladivostok, whereas they need control to maintain their geopolitical leadership in a competition with China,» he has explained, pointing out that the US wants lordship and is not interested in cooperation. [19] Alluding to former US top diplomat Madeline Albright’s sentiments that Russia was unfairly endowed with vast territory and resources, Putin also spoke along similar lines at his December 18 press conference, explaining how the US wanted to divide Russia and control the abundant natural resources in Russian territory. It is of little wonder that in 2014 a record number of Russian citizens have negative attitudes about relations between their country and the United States. A survey conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center has shown that of 39% of Russian respondents viewed relations with the US as «mostly bad» and 27% as «very bad». [20] This means 66% of Russian respondents have negative views about relations with Washington. This is an inference of the entire Russian population’s views. Moreover, this is the highest rise in negative perceptions about the US since 2008 when the US supported Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi’s war against Russia and the breakaway republic of South Ossetia; 40% viewed them as «mostly bad» and 25% of Russians viewed relations as «very bad» and at the time. [21]
  • In more ways than one the Turk Stream pipeline can be viewed as a reconfigured of the failed Nabucco natural gas pipeline. Not only will Turk Stream court Turkey and give Moscow leverage against the European Union, instead of reducing Russian influence as Nabucco was originally intended to do, the new pipeline to Turkey also coaxes Ankara to align its economic and strategic interests with those of Russian interests. This is why, when addressing Nabucco and the rivalries for establishing alternate energy corridors, this author pointed out in 2007 that «the creation of these energy corridors and networks is like a two-edged sword. These geo-strategic fulcrums or energy pivots can also switch their directions of leverage. The integration of infrastructure also leads towards economic integration». [8] The creation of Turk Stream and the strengthening of Russo-Turkish ties may even help placate the gory conflict in Syria. If Iranian natural gas is integrated into the mainframe of Turk Stream through another energy corridor entering Anatolia from Iranian territory, then Turkish interests would be even more tightly aligned with both Moscow and Tehran. Turkey will save itself from the defeats of its neo-Ottoman policies and be able to withdraw from the Syrian crisis. This will allow Ankara to politically realign itself with two of its most important trading partners, Iran and Russia.
  • Whatever Washington’s intentions are, every step that the US takes to target Russia economically will eventually hurt the US economy too. It is also highly unlikely that the policy mandarins in Beijing are unaware of what the US may try to be doing. The Chinese are aware that ultimately it is China and not Russia that is the target of the United States.
  • The United States is waging a fully fledged economic war against the Russian Federations and its national economy. Ultimately, all Russians are collectively the target. The economic sanctions are nothing more than economic warfare. If the crisis in Ukraine did not happen, another pretext would have been found for assaulting Russia. Both US Assistant-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Assistant-Secretary of the Treasury Daniel Glaser even told the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives in May 2014 that the ultimate objectives of the US economic sanctions against Russia are to make the Russian population so miserable and desperate that they would eventually demand that the Kremlin surrender to the US and bring about «political change». «Political change» can mean many things, but what it most probably implies here is regime change in Moscow. In fact, the aims of the US do not even appear to be geared at coercing the Russian government to change its foreign policy, but to incite regime change in Moscow and to cripple the Russian Federation entirely through the instigation of internal divisions. This is why maps of a divided Russia are being circulated by Radio Free Europe. [17]
  • Without question, the US wants to disrupt the strategic partnership between Beijing and Moscow. Moscow’s strategic long-term planning and Sino-Russian cooperation has provided the Russia Federation with an important degree of economic and strategic insulation from the economic warfare being waged against the Russian national economy. Washington, however, may also be trying to entice the Chinese to overplay their hand as Russia is economically attacked. In this context, the price drops in the energy market may also be geared at creating friction between Beijing and Moscow. In part, the manipulation of the energy market and the price drops could seek to weaken and erode Sino-Russian relations by coaxing the Chinese into taking steps that would tarnish their excellent ties with their Russian partners. The currency war against the Russian ruble may also be geared towards this too. In other words, Washington may be hoping that China becomes greedy and shortsighted enough to make an attempt to take advantage of the price drop in energy prices in the devaluation of the Russian ruble.
  • Russia can address the economic warfare being directed against its national economy and society as a form of «economic terrorism». If Russia’s banks and financial institutions are weakened with the aim of creating financial collapse in the Russian Federation, Moscow can introduce fiscal measures to help its banks and financial sector that could create economic shockwaves in the European Union and North America. Speaking in hypothetical terms, Russia has lots of options for a financial defensive or counter-offensive that can be compared to its scorched earth policies against Western European invaders during the Napoleonic Wars, the First World War, and the Second World War. If Russian banks and institutions default and do not pay or delay payment of their derivative debts and justify it on the basis of the economic warfare and economic terrorism, there would be a financial shock and tsunami that would vertebrate from the European Union to North America. This scenario has some parallels to the steps that Argentina is taken to sidestep the vulture funds.
  • The currency war eventually will rebound on Washington and Wall Street. The energy war will also reverse directions. Already, the Kremlin has made it clear that it and a coalition of other countries will de-claw the US in the currency market through a response that will neutralize US financial manipulation and the petro-dollar. In the words of Sergey Glazyev, Moscow is thinking of a «systemic and comprehensive» response «aimed at exposing and ending US political domination, and, most importantly, at undermining US military-political power based on the printing of dollars as a global currency». [22] His solution includes the creation of «a coalition of sound forces advocating stability — in essence, a global anti-war coalition with a positive plan for rearranging the international financial and economic architecture on the principles of mutual benefit, fairness, and respect for national sovereignty». [23] The coming century will not be the «American Century» as the neo-conservatives in Washington think. It will be a «Eurasian Century». Washington has taken on more than it can handle, this may be why the US government has announced an end to its sanctions regime against Cuba and why the US is trying to rekindle trade ties with Iran. Despite this, the architecture of the post-Second World War or post-1945 global order is now in its death bed and finished. This is what the Kremlin and Putin’s presidential spokesman and press secretary Dmitry Peskov mean when they impart—as Peskov stated to Rossiya-24 in a December 17, 2014 interview — that the year 2014 has finally led to «a paradigm shift in the international system».
Gary Edwards

Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House | Zero Hedge - 0 views

  •  
    Incredible must read analysis. Take away: the world is going to go "medevil". It's the only way out of this mess. Since the zero hedge layout is so bad, i'm going to post as much of the article as Diigo will allow: Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/06/2014 19:36 -0500 Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com , Many of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet. It's like being buried alive in Jell-O. It's embarrassing to appear so out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a just war. Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything, accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical "recovery" and the "shale gas miracle" on a credulous public desperate to believe, the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations. Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed, vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt - with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process retaining the better qualities of our heritage.
Gary Edwards

'Clinton death list': 33 spine-tingling cases - 0 views

  •  
    "(Editor's note: This list was originally published in August 2016 and has gone viral on the web. WND is running it again as American voters cast their ballots for the nation's next president on Election Day.) How many people do you personally know who have died mysteriously? How about in plane crashes or car wrecks? Bizarre suicides? People beaten to death or murdered in a hail of bullets? And what about violent freak accidents - like separate mountain biking and skiing collisions in Aspen, Colorado? Or barbells crushing a person's throat? Bill and Hillary Clinton attend a funeral Apparently, if you're Bill or Hillary Clinton, the answer to that question is at least 33 - and possibly many more. Talk-radio star Rush Limbaugh addressed the issue of the "Clinton body count" during an August show. "I swear, I could swear I saw these stories back in 1992, back in 1993, 1994," Limbaugh said. He cited a report from Rachel Alexander at Townhall.com titled, "Clinton body count or left-wing conspiracy? Three with ties to DNC mysteriously die." Limbaugh said he recalled Ted Koppel, then-anchor of ABC News' "Nightline," routinely having discussions on the issue following the July 20, 1993, death of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster. In fact, Limbaugh said, he appeared on Koppel's show. "One of the things I said was, 'Who knows what happened here? But let me ask you a question.' I said, 'Ted, how many people do you know in your life who've been murdered? Ted, how many people do you know in your life that have died under suspicious circumstances?' "Of course, the answer is zilch, zero, nada, none, very few," Limbaugh chuckled. "Ask the Clintons that question. And it's a significant number. It's a lot of people that they know who have died, who've been murdered. "And the same question here from Rachel Alexander. It's amazing the cycle that exists with the Clintons. [Citing Townhall]: 'What it
Gary Edwards

Google: Applied Research Associates - Directed Energy and 911 - 0 views

  •  
    Forensic engineer and scientis Dr Judy Wood argues that the evidence of the 911 building collapse points to a directed energy source capable of turning the buildings to dust. Not thermal or heat. Not a thermal explosive style controlled demolition. Nor was it a structural collapse from the impact of the planes. Dr Wood rules out the official story and let's the facts speak for themselves and the facts point directly at Applied Research Associates, and Directed Energy Weapons having been used on 911 to bring down several buildings. What an incredible story. There is an interview of Dr Judy Wood on CoasttoCoastAM.com. If you want to listen, leave me a note and I will send the link. If you have note heard this woman speak, or read her book, "What happened to the Buildings on 911?", you are in for one special, eye opening treat.
Paul Merrell

Israel Retaliates over EU's Directive on Labeling Goods from Occupied Arab Territories ... - 0 views

  • The administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the recently adopted EU directive on labeling goods from occupied Arab territories by suspending the Israeli – European Union dialog over the Israeli – Palestinian peace process. 
  • In November the EU adopted a directive that prescribes the labeling of Israeli products and goods from Israeli occupied Arab territories, which are, occupied territories in the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan Heights, and the Israeli occupied Lebanese Sheba Farm area. The EU stressed that the adoption of the directive was not a hostile act against Israel. Instead, noted the EU, the directive aimed at providing consumers correct information about the origin of goods.
  • Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Cabinet plans reportedly to implement additional measures against six specific countries, which are Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxemburg, Malta and Sweden. The measures are likely to include the suspension of cooperation with regard to rehabilitation projects in the Palestinian Gaza Strip and projects aimed at strengthening the Palestinian Authority (PA).
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • On Wednesday, December 2, the Speaker of the Israeli Parliament (Knesset), Yuli Edelstein commented on the EU directive during a special session of the German Bundestags (Parliamentary) Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Defense Committee. Edelstein denounced the EU directive as “unfortunate” and complained that the EU provides fertile ground for the international Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign. Edelstein especially denounced measures such as economic and academic boycotts as “improper”. Israel has occupied large swaps of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan Heights and the Lebanese Sheba Farm Area since the 1967 “six days war”. Israel continues the occupation in defiance of multiple UN resolutions as well as international and humanitarian law. Israel has officially stated that it plans to permanently annex the Syrian Golan Heights. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, for example, stated that Israel and the Golan are part and parcel, and that the international community should accept the annexation as a fact. It is noteworthy that there has been a discovery of major Syrian oil resources in the Golan Heights. Entrepreneurs with vested interests include the US-based Genie Energy. Members of the “think tank” are, among others, Dick Cheney, James Woolsey, Bill Richardson, Jacob Lord Rothschild, Rupert Murdoch, Larry Summers and Michael Steinhardt who all are members of the Strategic Advisory Board of a Newark, New Jersey-based oil and gas group with the name, Genie Energy.
  • Late November, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel would not concede one meter of the occupied Palestinian West Bank’s Area C. Israel is providing support for the Syrian Al-Qaeda franchise Jabhat al-Nusrah and other jihadist mercenary forces via the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Al-Nusrah insurgents are also known for using the Israeli occupied Lebanese Sheba Farms area to infiltrate into Lebanon, and especially Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
Paul Merrell

Finian Cunningham - Brussels Sabotages EU Energy with South Stream Politicking - Strate... - 0 views

  • The European Union’s ruling elite just hammered another nail into its creaky coffin this week with the critical loss of the South Stream gas project. Russian President Vladimir Putin may have been the one to formally pull the plug on the project while on an official visit to Turkey, but most observers can see that it is EU politicking that lay behind the collapse. Putin said that continual obstruction to the South Stream project from Brussels had made it unviable. Putin said that Russia would henceforth be applying its energy resources elsewhere and unveiled a new pipeline route to Turkey from the Black Sea. It was reminiscent of how Russia has directed new energy trade with China and Asia over the past year partly as a result of Western unilateral sanctions and obstinacy. And who could fault for Russia for that?
  • the contradictions betray an ulterior agenda. The EU’s «probity» over the South Stream is just a cover for its own petty political reasons and a direct corollary of the Washington-Brussels aggressive agenda toward Russia over Ukraine.   Reactions to the news of the project’s cancellation were also indicative of which party was to blame for the debacle. The governments of Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia and Serbia described the decision as a blow. The tone of chagrin was deafening. Tellingly they did not rebuke Russia over the decision. Indeed, the Hungarian government said it was Russia’s right to cancel the project given the backdrop of wearisome wrangling by Brussels. While Slovenia’s prime minister Miro Cerar said he was «not surprised» by Russia giving up on the $40 billion undertaking, which was to come into operation in 2018 following its commencement last year.   The above countries were to have acted as key transit partners and stood to gain billions of dollars worth of fees over the long-term supply of gas to Europe. The pipeline was being contracted to supply some 63 billion cubic metres of natural gas from Russia to Central and Southern Europe, including Austria and Italy. That represents about 40 per cent of Russia’s total supply of gas to Europe in 2013. The South Stream route would thus have been a critical component of European energy security and would have reduced gas costs for millions of households. 
  • Both Brussels and Washington have piled intense pressure on the Eastern European countries that were key to the project. Bulgaria, one of the newest and poorest members of the EU, was singled out for acute pressure from Brussels and Washington.   ‘Bulgaria halts work on the South Stream after US talks,’ reported the BBC back in June this year. Among the US Senators to have lobbied the government in Sofia was John McCain, the self-styled champion of the neo-Nazi and anti-Russian Kiev regime in Kiev that Washington and Brussels helped to install in February.   Bulgaria’s reported halt to the South Stream due to American «talks» finally became a matter of full suspension two months later, in August, after Brussels conducted more «talks». The exact nature of this coercion is not sure. But it is not hard to imagine how all sorts of financial leverage could have been exerted by Brussels and Washington on the vulnerable Bulgarian government. 
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The reaction of Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia and Serbia to the South Stream collapse of course expressed disappointment over the impact on their economies. But their muted regret was more a reflection of consternation with Brussels for its policy of antagonism with Russia. Brussels’ high-handed slapping on of sanctions against Moscow and its repeated baseless accusations of Russian expansionism in Ukraine have led to the present juncture of badly frayed relations. That has, in turn, put the kibosh on what would have been a critically important improvement in Europe’s energy security, with financial benefits to several countries and millions of EU citizens.   It’s one thing for Brussels to be cavalier towards Russia; it’s quite another for the same elitist power centre to be cavalier towards its own increasingly hard-pressed citizens and their best interests. 
  • he debacle over the South Stream clearly shows that the European political elite have no interest in the welfare of its ordinary citizens or poorer member states. It is reported that cancellation of the project will cost manufacturing firms and other businesses at least $2 billion in the immediate term. These firms include German and Italian pipe manufacturers. Thousands of jobs across recession-hit Europe are thus being put at risk by political games that Brussels is playing against Russia for its own arcane geopolitical reasons in cahoots with Washington. 
  •  
    The U.S. demands obedience, not loyalty, from the EU --- and gets it. 
Paul Merrell

WHO EXCLUSIVE: Gen. Wesley Clark on Oil, War and Activism - WhoWhatWhy - 0 views

  • Transcript: So energy is about generating electricity. There you can move pretty quickly into solar and wind. Not only are the costs coming down through better engineering and better scientific development, but also battery technology is improving so you can store it and feed it into the power grid at the time you need it, not just when it’s generated. But on the other hand, there is transportation fuel. And that’s mostly oil. And that’s mostly imported. And that’s what people fight wars about, mostly they don’t fight war about coal, they fight about oil. In the summer of 1973 in Washington, I wrote three reports about the energy crisis for the Pentagon, one of which looked at the impact of being an oil-importing nation on the United Sates. And it was pretty clear even then that this would distort America’s foreign policy, spread lots of money abroad, and might ultimately require us to use U.S. troops to secure access to these energy supplies abroad. Of course that’s exactly what happened.
  • Q: What would you estimate we’re spending annually on keeping the oil pipeline open? Wesley Clark: Well, it’s 300 billion dollars of US foreign exchange to buy the oil, another 600 billion dollars for the defense budget. Not all of that is directed toward energy but you could say that 150 billion dollars a year we‘re spending on the wars is certainly about oil, directly or indirectly. And you could probably say half of the rest of the defense budget is one way or another connected to stationing troops abroad, trying to protect access to oil, exercises, procurement of equipment. And then you could look at the bill for the Veterans Administration. So this comes out to be half a trillion dollars or more a year, is going to this. It’s been a tragic failure of policy and a failure of US leadership.
  • Forces of big oil are the most powerful economic forces in the world. If you look at the entire wealth of mankind, the value of oil reserves in the ground is like 170 trillion dollars. It’s the most valuable commodity as currently priced in the world.
  •  
    Wesley Clark interview recorded in 2011.
Paul Merrell

Nuclear Lab Whistleblower Case Moves Forward - 0 views

  • In 2013 a contract employee at the Los Alamos National Laboratory found himself stripped of his security clearance and suspended from his job shortly after he published an article arguing the benefits of getting rid of nuclear weapon stockpiles. This month he begins mediation with the lab after his second whistleblower claim was accepted by the National Nuclear Security Administration. Dr. James Doyle worked at the Los Alamos lab, one of the laboratories in the Department of Energy nuclear complex, for 17 years. Prior to submitting his article for publication, he had it reviewed by a classification analyst at the lab, met with the director of the security office to address any concerns, and made it clear in the article that he was providing his own opinion as an individual and not as an Energy Department employee. But just two days after the article was published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Dr. Doyle was accused of disclosing classified information. Lab officials searched his personal computer, retroactively classified the article, and suspended his security clearance. Dr. Doyle was understandably confused and filed a complaint alleging that lab officials were retaliating against him for expressing unpopular opinions in the article. After filing the complaint, Dr. Doyle was fired from his position at the lab and his whistleblower complaint was rejected. While the Department maintains that his termination was due to budget cuts, Dr. Doyle believes it was due to his push-back against the retroactive classification of his article.
  • Several nuclear watchdog groups, including the Project On Government Oversight, rallied around Dr. Doyle, sending a letter in 2014 to the Secretary of Energy and the Inspector General urging a review of his case. Dr. Doyle filed a second complaint because he was fired before his first complaint was resolved. The Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor reported last week in an article titled “NNSA Accepts Second Whistleblower Claim From Laid-Off Los Alamos Analyst” (behind a paywall) that this claim was accepted in late 2014 and that Dr. Doyle began mediation with the lab this month. This is a step in the right direction, and one step further than his first complaint ever got.
Gary Edwards

The Divider vs. the Thinker - WSJ.com - 0 views

  • There's a lot to rebel against, to want to throw off. If they want to make a serious economic and political critique, they should make the one Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner make in "Reckless Endangerment": that real elites in Washington rigged the system for themselves and their friends, became rich and powerful, caused the great catering, and then "slipped quietly from the scene."
  • It is a blow-by-blow recounting of how politicians—Democrats and Republicans—passed the laws that encouraged the banks to make the loans that would never be repaid, and that would result in your lost job.
  • It began in the early 1990s, in the Clinton administration, and continued under the Bush administration, with the help of an entrenched Congress that wanted only two things: to receive campaign contributions and to be re-elected.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Specifically it is the story of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage insurers, and how their politically connected CEOs, especially Fannie's Franklin Raines and James Johnson, took actions that tanked the American economy and walked away rich.
  • "the temptation to exploit fear and envy returns." Politicians divide in order to "evade responsibility for their failures" and to advance their interests.
  • "The American Idea"
  • Which gets us to Rep. Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan receives much praise, but I don't think his role in the current moment has been fully recognized. He is doing something unique in national politics. He thinks. He studies. He reads. Then he comes forward to speak, calmly and at some length, about what he believes to be true. He defines a problem and offers solutions, often providing the intellectual and philosophical rationale behind them.
  • But Republicans, in their desire to defend free economic activity, shouldn't be snookered by unthinking fealty to big business. They should never defend—they should actively oppose—the kind of economic activity that has contributed so heavily to the crisis.
  • Here Mr. Ryan slammed "corporate welfare and crony capitalism."
  • "Why have we extended an endless supply of taxpayer credit to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, instead of demanding that their government guarantee be wound down and their taxpayer subsidies ended?" Why are tax dollars being wasted on bankrupt, politically connected solar energy firms like Solyndra? "Why is Washington wasting your money on entrenched agribusiness?"
  • The "true sources of inequity in this country," he continued, are "corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless."
  • The real class warfare that threatens us is "a class of bureaucrats and connected crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society."
  •  
    Peggy Noonan writes about Paul Ryan's "The American Idea" speech he recently gave at the heritage Foundation.  It's a beautifully written summary that goes right to the heart of the matter:  the ruling elites have been enriching themselves, feeding at the public trough of corporate welfare and crony capitalism.  Washington DC is corrupt and rotten to the core, and the hand maiden of Banksters, Global Corporatist, Big Unions, and Big Bearucracy.   One things for sure.  Congressman Paul Ryan is a brilliant thinker aho believes in the great promise he calls "The American Idea".   Funny how, as the presidential primary race rolls on, my hopeful attention is being drawn towards four men:  Herman Cain, Paul Ryan, Ron Paul and Marco Rubio.   Herman unfortunately is soft on Banksters, totally unaware and oblivious to the need to take back the currency, and end the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel.  I also have some difficulties with the "revenue neutral" aspects of his 999 plan.  We need less government, not more.  The private sector needs to keep more money, not less.   Too bad because everything else about Herman excites me.  Especially his authentic, from the heart love of America, American exceptionalism and opportunity, and the founders truly unique "American Idea". Ron Paul has an awesome "American Recovery" plan.  Awesome.  But his remarks on terrorism and foreign policy stray far from his usual reliance on the Constitution and the 10th Amendment.   He's right about the connection between global corporatism and the never ending militarism they push.  But he's dead ass wrong about our enemies and their intentions.  And that's scary.  If RP had stuck to the Constitution and 10th Amendment, i would fully support him.   If it's not an enumerated power, it belongs to the States and individual citizens.  End of story.   Marco Rubio is awesome in the same way Herman is.  He connects with a special authenticity that screams the principles and val
Paul Merrell

The Virtue of Subtlety: A U.S. Strategy Against the Islamic State - 0 views

  • U.S. strategy is sound. It is to allow the balance of power to play out, to come in only when it absolutely must — with overwhelming force, as in Kuwait — and to avoid intervention where it cannot succeed. The tactical application of strategy is the problem. In this case the tactic is not direct intervention by the United States, save as a satisfying gesture to avenge murdered Americans. But the solution rests in doing as little as possible and forcing regional powers into the fray, then in maintaining the balance of power in this coalition. Such an American strategy is not an avoidance of responsibility. It is the use of U.S. power to force a regional solution. Sometimes the best use of American power is to go to war. Far more often, the best use of U.S. power is to withhold it. The United States cannot evade responsibility in the region. But it is enormously unimaginative to assume that carrying out that responsibility is best achieved by direct intervention. Indirect intervention is frequently more efficient and more effective.
  • The United States cannot win the game of small mosaic tiles that is emerging in Syria and Iraq. An American intervention at this microscopic level can only fail. But the principle of balance of power does not mean that balance must be maintained directly. Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia have far more at stake in this than the United States. So long as they believe that the United States will attempt to control the situation, it is perfectly rational for them to back off and watch, or act in the margins, or even hinder the Americans. The United States must turn this from a balance of power between Syria and Iraq to a balance of power among this trio of regional powers. They have far more at stake and, absent the United States, they have no choice but to involve themselves. They cannot stand by and watch a chaos that could spread to them. It is impossible to forecast how the game is played out. What is important is that the game begins. The Turks do not trust the Iranians, and neither is comfortable with the Saudis. They will cooperate, compete, manipulate and betray, just as the United States or any country might do in such a circumstance. The point is that there is a tactic that will fail: American re-involvement. There is a tactic that will succeed: the United States making it clear that while it might aid the pacification in some way, the responsibility is on regional powers. The inevitable outcome will be a regional competition that the United States can manage far better than the current chaos.
  • There is then the special case of the Islamic State. It is special because its emergence triggered the current crisis. It is special because the brutal murder of two prisoners on video showed a particular cruelty. And it is different because its ideology is similar to that of al Qaeda, which attacked the United States. It has excited particular American passions. To counter this, I would argue that the uprising by Iraq’s Sunni community was inevitable, with its marginalization by Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite regime in Baghdad. That it took this particularly virulent form is because the more conservative elements of the Sunni community were unable or unwilling to challenge al-Maliki. But the fragmentation of Iraq into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions was well underway before the Islamic State, and jihadism was deeply embedded in the Sunni community a long time ago. Moreover, although the Islamic State is brutal, its cruelty is not unique in the region. Syrian President Bashar al Assad and others may not have killed Americans or uploaded killings to YouTube, but their history of ghastly acts is comparable. Finally, the Islamic State — engaged in war with everyone around it — is much less dangerous to the United States than a small group with time on its hands, planning an attack. In any event, if the Islamic State did not exist, the threat to the United States from jihadist groups in Yemen or Libya or somewhere inside the United States would remain.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • The issue is whether the United States can live with this situation or whether it must reshape it. The immediate question is whether the United States has the power to reshape it and to what extent. The American interest turns on its ability to balance local forces. If that exists, the question is whether there is any other shape that can be achieved through American power that would be superior. From my point of view, there are many different shapes that can be imagined, but few that can be achieved. The American experience in Iraq highlighted the problems with counterinsurgency or being caught in a local civil war. The idea of major intervention assumes that this time it will be different. This fits one famous definition of insanity.
  • A national strategy emerges over the decades and centuries. It becomes a set of national interests into which a great deal has been invested, upon which a great deal depends and upon which many are counting. Presidents inherit national strategies, and they can modify them to some extent. But the idea that a president has the power to craft a new national strategy both overstates his power and understates the power of realities crafted by all those who came before him. We are all trapped in circumstances into which we were born and choices that were made for us. The United States has an inherent interest in Ukraine and in Syria-Iraq. Whether we should have that interest is an interesting philosophical question for a late-night discussion, followed by a sunrise when we return to reality. These places reflexively matter to the United States. The American strategy is fixed: Allow powers in the region to compete and balance against each other. When that fails, intervene with as little force and risk as possible. For example, the conflict between Iran and Iraq canceled out two rising powers until the war ended. Then Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened to overturn the balance of power in the region. The result was Desert Storm.
  • The American strategy is fixed: Allow powers in the region to compete and balance against each other. When that fails, intervene with as little force and risk as possible. For example, the conflict between Iran and Iraq canceled out two rising powers until the war ended. Then Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened to overturn the balance of power in the region. The result was Desert Storm. This strategy provides a model. In the Syria-Iraq region, the initial strategy is to allow the regional powers to balance each other, while providing as little support as possible to maintain the balance of power. It is crucial to understand the balance of power in detail, and to understand what might undermine it, so that any force can be applied effectively. This is the tactical part, and it is the tactical part that can go wrong. The strategy has a logic of its own. Understanding what that strategy demands is the hard part. Some nations have lost their sovereignty by not understanding what strategy demands. France in 1940 comes to mind. For the United States, there is no threat to sovereignty, but that makes the process harder: Great powers can tend to be casual because the situation is not existential. This increases the cost of doing what is necessary. The ground where we are talking about applying this model is Syria and Iraq. Both of these central governments have lost control of the country as a whole, but each remains a force. Both countries are divided by religion, and the religions are divided internally as well. In a sense the nations have ceased to exist, and the fragments they consisted of are now smaller but more complex entities.
  • This strategy provides a model. In the Syria-Iraq region, the initial strategy is to allow the regional powers to balance each other, while providing as little support as possible to maintain the balance of power. It is crucial to understand the balance of power in detail, and to understand what might undermine it, so that any force can be applied effectively. This is the tactical part, and it is the tactical part that can go wrong. The strategy has a logic of its own. Understanding what that strategy demands is the hard part. Some nations have lost their sovereignty by not understanding what strategy demands. France in 1940 comes to mind. For the United States, there is no threat to sovereignty, but that makes the process harder: Great powers can tend to be casual because the situation is not existential. This increases the cost of doing what is necessary. The ground where we are talking about applying this model is Syria and Iraq. Both of these central governments have lost control of the country as a whole, but each remains a force. Both countries are divided by religion, and the religions are divided internally as well. In a sense the nations have ceased to exist, and the fragments they consisted of are now smaller but more complex entities.
  • There is then the special case of the Islamic State. It is special because its emergence triggered the current crisis. It is special because the brutal murder of two prisoners on video showed a particular cruelty. And it is different because its ideology is similar to that of al Qaeda, which attacked the United States. It has excited particular American passions. To counter this, I would argue that the uprising by Iraq’s Sunni community was inevitable, with its marginalization by Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite regime in Baghdad. That it took this particularly virulent form is because the more conservative elements of the Sunni community were unable or unwilling to challenge al-Maliki. But the fragmentation of Iraq into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions was well underway before the Islamic State, and jihadism was deeply embedded in the Sunni community a long time ago. Moreover, although the Islamic State is brutal, its cruelty is not unique in the region. Syrian President Bashar al Assad and others may not have killed Americans or uploaded killings to YouTube, but their history of ghastly acts is comparable. Finally, the Islamic State — engaged in war with everyone around it — is much less dangerous to the United States than a small group with time on its hands, planning an attack. In any event, if the Islamic State did not exist, the threat to the United States from jihadist groups in Yemen or Libya or somewhere inside the United States would remain.
  • The issue is whether the United States can live with this situation or whether it must reshape it. The immediate question is whether the United States has the power to reshape it and to what extent. The American interest turns on its ability to balance local forces. If that exists, the question is whether there is any other shape that can be achieved through American power that would be superior. From my point of view, there are many different shapes that can be imagined, but few that can be achieved. The American experience in Iraq highlighted the problems with counterinsurgency or being caught in a local civil war. The idea of major intervention assumes that this time it will be different. This fits one famous definition of insanity.
  • Because the Islamic State operates to some extent as a conventional military force, it is vulnerable to U.S. air power. The use of air power against conventional forces that lack anti-aircraft missiles is a useful gambit. It shows that the United States is doing something, while taking little risk, assuming that the Islamic State really does not have anti-aircraft missiles. But it accomplishes little. The Islamic State will disperse its forces, denying conventional aircraft a target. Attempting to defeat the Islamic State by distinguishing its supporters from other Sunni groups and killing them will founder at the first step. The problem of counterinsurgency is identifying the insurgent. There is no reason not to bomb the Islamic State’s forces and leaders. They certainly deserve it. But there should be no illusion that bombing them will force them to capitulate or mend their ways. They are now part of the fabric of the Sunni community, and only the Sunni community can root them out. Identifying Sunnis who are anti-Islamic State and supplying them with weapons is a much better idea. It is the balance-of-power strategy that the United States follows, but this approach doesn’t have the dramatic satisfaction of blowing up the enemy. That satisfaction is not trivial, and the United States can certainly blow something up and call it the enemy, but it does not address the strategic problem. In the first place, is it really a problem for the United States?
  • There is no reason not to bomb the Islamic State’s forces and leaders. They certainly deserve it. But there should be no illusion that bombing them will force them to capitulate or mend their ways. They are now part of the fabric of the Sunni community, and only the Sunni community can root them out. Identifying Sunnis who are anti-Islamic State and supplying them with weapons is a much better idea. It is the balance-of-power strategy that the United States follows, but this approach doesn’t have the dramatic satisfaction of blowing up the enemy. That satisfaction is not trivial, and the United States can certainly blow something up and call it the enemy, but it does not address the strategic problem. In the first place, is it really a problem for the United States? The American interest is not stability but the existence of a dynamic balance of power in which all players are effectively paralyzed so that no one who would threaten the United States emerges. The Islamic State had real successes at first, but the balance of power with the Kurds and Shia has limited its expansion, and tensions within the Sunni community diverted its attention. Certainly there is the danger of intercontinental terrorism, and U.S. intelligence should be active in identifying and destroying these threats. But the re-occupation of Iraq, or Iraq plus Syria, makes no sense. The United States does not have the force needed to occupy Iraq and Syria at the same time. The demographic imbalance between available forces and the local population makes that impossible.
  • The danger is that other Islamic State franchises might emerge in other countries. But the United States would not be able to block these threats as well as the other countries in the region. Saudi Arabia must cope with any internal threat it faces not because the United States is indifferent, but because the Saudis are much better at dealing with such threats. In the end, the same can be said for the Iranians. Most important, it can also be said for the Turks. The Turks are emerging as a regional power. Their economy has grown dramatically in the past decade, their military is the largest in the region, and they are part of the Islamic world. Their government is Islamist but in no way similar to the Islamic State, which concerns Ankara. This is partly because of Ankara’s fear that the jihadist group might spread to Turkey, but more so because its impact on Iraqi Kurdistan could affect Turkey’s long-term energy plans.
  • The United States cannot win the game of small mosaic tiles that is emerging in Syria and Iraq. An American intervention at this microscopic level can only fail. But the principle of balance of power does not mean that balance must be maintained directly. Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia have far more at stake in this than the United States. So long as they believe that the United States will attempt to control the situation, it is perfectly rational for them to back off and watch, or act in the margins, or even hinder the Americans. The United States must turn this from a balance of power between Syria and Iraq to a balance of power among this trio of regional powers. They have far more at stake and, absent the United States, they have no choice but to involve themselves. They cannot stand by and watch a chaos that could spread to them. It is impossible to forecast how the game is played out. What is important is that the game begins. The Turks do not trust the Iranians, and neither is comfortable with the Saudis. They will cooperate, compete, manipulate and betray, just as the United States or any country might do in such a circumstance. The point is that there is a tactic that will fail: American re-involvement. There is a tactic that will succeed: the United States making it clear that while it might aid the pacification in some way, the responsibility is on regional powers. The inevitable outcome will be a regional competition that the United States can manage far better than the current chaos.
  • U.S. strategy is sound. It is to allow the balance of power to play out, to come in only when it absolutely must — with overwhelming force, as in Kuwait — and to avoid intervention where it cannot succeed. The tactical application of strategy is the problem. In this case the tactic is not direct intervention by the United States, save as a satisfying gesture to avenge murdered Americans. But the solution rests in doing as little as possible and forcing regional powers into the fray, then in maintaining the balance of power in this coalition. Such an American strategy is not an avoidance of responsibility. It is the use of U.S. power to force a regional solution. Sometimes the best use of American power is to go to war. Far more often, the best use of U.S. power is to withhold it. The United States cannot evade responsibility in the region. But it is enormously unimaginative to assume that carrying out that responsibility is best achieved by direct intervention. Indirect intervention is frequently more efficient and more effective.
  •  
    The article is by the Chairman of Stratfor, a private intelligence company. I don't agree with its analysis because I am decidedly non-interventionist. But this article should be required reading for all who have fallen for the war fever being spread by the War Party for full-scale military invasion of Iraq and Syria. The article at least lays a sound basis for a large degree of restraint.
Paul Merrell

Gazprom to Lose $3 Billion if EU Sells Gas Back to Ukraine | News | The Moscow Times - 0 views

  • Gazprom would lose nearly $3 billion in 2016 if the EU accepts a Ukrainian proposal to begin large-scale reverse gas flows through Slovakia to Ukraine, a UralSib report said Thursday. In late April, Ukraine and Slovakia signed a reverse flow agreement that would make use of an old, unused pipeline to begin exporting 2 billion cubic meters, or bcm, to Kiev in October. Exports to Ukraine along this pipeline would rise to 8 bcm by early 2015. According to a Kommersant report, Ukrainian energy officials recently forwarded a plan before the EU Commission that would allow Ukraine to increase reverse flows via Slovakia to 30 bcm. Uralsib estimates that Gazprom's 2016 EBITDA — or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — would fall by $3 billion, or 6 percent, in 2016 if Ukraine and the EU agreed to the tactic. Gazprom would end up selling higher volumes of gas to the EU, where prices range from $360 to $380 per thousand cubic meters and gas is subject to a 30 percent export duty, rather than Ukraine's price of $385, where there is no export duty and transportation costs are lower. Ukraine would be able to take advantage of low EU gas demand during the summer to fill its 30 bcm underground storage facilities, thereby replacing the 28 bcm it imports from Gazprom each year, the report found.
  • EU Energy Commission GЯnther Oettinger has said that such a large-scale reversal would be in direct violation of an agreement between Slovakia's Eustream and Gazprom Export. Ukraine, however, insists that the reverse flow is ensured by the EU's Third Energy Package — which, among other things, stipulates equal access to pipelines for gas suppliers. On Tuesday, Gazprom finalized a deal to build the Austrian branch of the massive South Stream gas pipeline, which, if completed, will allow Russian gas deliveries to Europe to bypass Ukraine altogether.
  •  
    Left unsaid in this Moscow TImes article: if the E.U. did as requested by the Ukraine coup government, Russia has the ability to cut off its gas supply to the E.U., which accounts for some 30% of the E.U. gas supply. With the business community in the E.U.already upset with sanctions on Russia that are cutting into exports from the E.U. to Russia, I'll be surprised if this proposal has wings, unless the U.S. pushes it.  
Paul Merrell

China stakes claim in Central and Southeast Europe | Business New Europe - 0 views

  • A Chinese agreement to finance a high-speed railway from Belgrade to Bucharest was one of around $10bn worth of investments, mainly in the energy and infrastructure sectors, signed during a China-Central and Eastern Europe summit this week. By funding the railway, Beijing hopes to establish a rapid connection from Greece’s Pireaus Port through the Balkans to the EU member states of Central Europe. Several agreements on the €1.5bn railway, which will be financed by soft loans from state-owned China Exim Bank, were signed between China, Hungary and Serbia on December 17. When the line is operational, the travel time between Belgrade and Budapest will be slashed from the current eight hours to just 2.4 hours. Macedonian counterpart Nikola Gruevski was also in attendance as there are plans to extend the line south to Macedonia and Greece in future. Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, who headed a 200-strong delegation to Belgrade, said he expected the line would benefit both China and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the EU, according to a Serbian government statement.
  • Chinese shipping giant Cosco Pacific took over the management rights to half of Piraeus port and is now expanding two container terminals under a 35-year concession agreement, with the aim of turning the Greek port into one of Europe’s top five container ports. However, to take full advantage of Cosco’s investment in Piraeus and its potential to become a gateway to the CEE region, investments into transport links across the Balkans are needed. "We will propose construction of a rapid land and maritime route based on the Budapest-Belgrade railroad and the Greek port of Piraeus to improve regional connectivity," Li told journalists in advance of the summit, South China Morning Post reported. Investments into infrastructure to transport raw materials into China and Chinese manufactured goods to foreign markets is nothing new. Closer to home, Beijing is looking to fund a railway across Central Asia to create a direct rail link between its factories and the massive wholesale bazaars of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Further afield, in May 2014, China signed an agreement in Kenya to build a new line from Mombasa to Nairobi that will extend to four other East African states in future.
  • While land rail routes across Eurasia to Europe are also being developed, sea shipping remains the cheapest route from the Far East to Europe, and Piraeus is a convenient entry point to the continent. While growth in the region has been patchy since the recent global economic crisis, in the longer-term the EU member states of Central and Eastern Europe and future entrants from the Balkans are expected to converge with longer-established EU members from Western Europe in terms of spending power. Since 2012, when the first China-CEE summit was held in Warsaw, Chinese attention on the region has steadily increased, with a focus on energy and infrastructure. Aside from the access to new markets, there are further commercial benefits for China, as Chinese companies are selected for lucrative construction contracts on projects funded by Chinese state-owned banks. On December 16, the opening day of the summit, Li told the 16 regional leaders to attend that China would launch a $3bn investment fund for the region.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Also on December 16 Albania signed a deal with Exim Bank on funding for the completion of construction works on the Arber motorway that links the capital Tirana with Macedonia. In the energy sector, Serbian and Chinese officials have signed a loan agreement for the second stage of the Kostolac B thermal power project, which includes the construction of a new 350MW plant and the expansion of the adjacent Drmno open-pit coal mine. The value of the project is expected to be $715mn, of which $608mn will come from a 20-year China Exim Bank loan. In neighbouring Bosnia, Eximbank has signed an agreement with the Bosnian Federation government for a €667.8mn credit to fund construction of the 450MW unit 7 at the thermal power plant Tuzla. China's Gezhouba Group is expected to build the unit.
  • The timing of the summit, amid a sharp falling off of Russia’s influence, may also have helped China extend its influence in the region. With some exceptions, notably Serbia, most of the would-be EU member states in Southeast Europe have opted to join EU and US sanctions against Russia over Ukraine. Tit for tat sanctions imposed by Moscow caused trade between Eastern Europe and Russia to drop, a trend that is likely to continue amid the new economic crisis in Russia. Meanwhile, in a further retrenchment from the region, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on December 1 that Russia will scrap the planned South Stream pipeline that would have supplies numerous states across the region with gas. China, meanwhile, has no political axe to grind in Eastern Europe, but hopes to take advantage of Russia’s weakness to make further inroads commercially. Poland and other countries in the region are, for example, looking to China as a potential market for food products following the Russian embargo. This would add to already booming trade ties. According to Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng, trade between China and Eastern Europe may top $60bn in 2014 - five times its 2003 level, AFP reported.
Paul Merrell

​Ready, reset, go! ...to Cold War 2.0 - RT Op-Edge - 0 views

  • Enter a fragile Europe. Russia is the EU’s third-largest trading partner. Top economies such as Germany, France and Italy are vastly integrated with the Russian economy. A key plank of Washington’s strategy is to de-link Europe from Russia, part of a much larger agenda of preventing by all means Eurasia’s trade/commercial/economic development integration. It all hinges on Germany. That’s the key debate in Berlin nowadays. German business – and even conservative politicians – are reaching a stark conclusion; they do not want a heavily dysfunctional relationship with Russia. Public opinion, at 57 percent, wants a foreign policy more independent from the US. The US Orwellian/Panopticon complex intrusions in Germany have been instrumental as a game-changer.
  • The real, no-holds-barred reason for the Empire of Chaos’s obsessive economic war on Russia is that Moscow, as a BRICS member, alongside especially China and Brazil, is at the leading edge of emerging powers challenging the global financial/political (dis)order – wallowing in the mire of casino capitalism – dictated by the Empire of Chaos. And it gets ‘curiouser and curiouser’, because the effect of the sanctions hysteria has been to accumulate even more sympathy from the developing world towards Russia. The typical Washington rumbling about “the world” united to “isolate” Russia – in a replay of the Iran case – only applies to NATO. I have closely followed the latest chapters in Eurasia integration, from the Russia-China gas ‘deal of the century’ clinched in Shanghai to the St. Petersburg Economic Forum and then closer Eurasia-South America integration at the BRICS summit in Brazil, which created the New Development Bank and advanced the BRICS drive to develop their own parallel global institutions. President Putin even proposed a BRICS energy coalition, complete with nuclear power agreements and its own “fuel reserve bank and an energy policy institute.” Moscow – as well as Beijing - is actively strengthening energy deals across South America, as in Rosatom signing with both Argentina and Brazil to build nuclear power plants.
  • Eurasia integration, on the Asian front, proceeds unabated. Russia will sell more gas at lower prices not only to China, but also, in the near future, to Japan and South Korea as well. Beijing, meanwhile, is carefully moving its financial, economic and geopolitical pieces on the chessboard, and now on full red alert regarding the sanctions hysteria; the collective leadership very well knows that the target one day may be Russia because of Ukraine, but the next day may be China, because of the South China Sea or even a Hong Kong currently moving towards an impasse; should candidates for Hong Kong chief executive be chosen by direct democracy, or by committee, as Beijing prefers? The key point is, forget about a US-Russia reset. The Russia-China strategic partnership will strengthen. China is preparing itself for its turn in the sanction hysteria show. And for the foreseeable future, the new game in the chessboard is Cold War 2.0.
  •  
    The U.S. throws its weight around expecting Germany (and the EU) to commit economic suicide by honoring U.S. sanctions on Russia and sticking with the sinking dollar. The U.S. invests in guns and projection of military power while Russia and the other BRICS nations just offer to do business. Methinks the U.S. has the losing strategy. 
Paul Merrell

Russia Just Pulled Itself Out Of The Petrodollar | Zero Hedge - 0 views

  • Back in November, before most grasped just how serious the collapse in crude was (and would become, as well as its massive implications), we wrote "How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed", because for the first time in almost two decades, energy-exporting countries would pull their "petrodollars" out of world markets in 2015.  This empirical death of Petrodollar followed years of windfalls for oil exporters such as Russia, Angola, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Much of that money found its way into financial markets, helping to boost asset prices and keep the cost of borrowing down, through so-called petrodollar recycling. We added that in 2014 "the oil producers will effectively import capital amounting to $7.6 billion. By comparison, they exported $60 billion in 2013 and $248 billion in 2012, according to the following graphic based on BNP Paribas calculations."
  • The problem was compounded by its own positive feedback loop: as the last few weeks vividly demonstrated, plunging oil would lead to a further liquidation in foreign  reserves for the oil exporters who rushed to preserve their currencies, leading to even greater drops in oil as the viable producers rushed to pump out as much crude out of the ground as possible in a scramble to put the weakest producers out of business, and to crush marginal production. Call it Game Theory gone mad and on steroids. Ironically, when the price of crude started its self-reinforcing plunge, such a death would happen whether the petrodollar participants wanted it, or, as the case may be, were dragged into the abattoir kicking and screaming. It is the latter that seems to have taken place with the one country that many though initially would do everything in its power to have an amicable departure from the Petrodollar and yet whose divorce from the USD has quickly become a very messy affair, with lots of screaming and the occasional artillery shell. As Bloomberg reports Russia "may unseal its $88 billion Reserve Fund and convert some of its foreign-currency holdings into rubles, the latest government effort to prop up an economy veering into its worst slump since 2009." These are dollars which Russia would have otherwise recycled into US denominated assets. Instead, Russia will purchase even more Rubles and use the proceeds for FX and economic stabilization purposes. 
  • "Together with the central bank, we are selling a part of our foreign-currency reserves,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in Moscow today. “We’ll get rubles and place them in deposits for banks, giving liquidity to the economy." Call it less than amicable divorce, call it what you will: what it is, is Russia violently leaving the ranks of countries that exchange crude for US paper.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Bloomberg's dready summary of the US economy is generally spot on, and is to be expected when any nation finally leaves, voluntarily or otherwise, the stranglehold of a global reserve currency. What Bloomberg failed to account for is what happens to the remainder of the Petrodollar world. Here is what we said last time: Outside from the domestic economic impact within EMs due to the downward oil price shock, we believe that the implications for financial market liquidity via the reduced recycling of petrodollars should not be underestimated. Because energy exporters do not fully invest their export receipts and effectively ‘save’ a considerable portion of their income, these surplus funds find their way back into bank deposits (fuelling the loan market) as well as into financial markets and other assets. This capital has helped fund debt among importers, helping to boost overall growth as well as other financial markets liquidity conditions. ... [T]his year, we expect that incremental liquidity typically provided by such recycled flows will be markedly reduced, estimating that direct and other capital outflows from energy exporters will have declined by USD253bn YoY. Of course, these economies also receive inward capital, so on a net basis, the additional capital provided externally is much lower. This year, we expect that net capital flows will be negative for EM, representing the first net inflow of capital (USD8bn) for the first time in eighteen years. This compares with USD60bn last year, which itself was down from USD248bn in 2012. At its peak, recycled EM petro dollars amounted to USD511bn back in 2006. The declines seen since 2006 not only reflect the changed global environment, but also the propensity of underlying exporters to begin investing the money domestically rather than save. The implications for financial markets liquidity - not to mention related downward pressure on US Treasury yields – is negative.
  • Considering the wildly violent moves we have seen so far in the market confirming just how little liquidity is left in the market, and of course, the absolutely collapse in Treasury yields, with the 30 Year just hitting a record low, this prediction has been borne out precisely as expected. And now, we await to see which other country will follow Russia out of the Petrodollar next, and what impact that will have not only on the world's reserve currency, on US Treasury rates, and on the most financialized commodity as this chart demonstrates...
  • ... but on what is most important to developed world central planners everywhere: asset prices levels, and specifically what happens when the sellers emerge into what is rapidly shaping up as the most illiquid market in history.
Gary Edwards

Do You Want To Be RFID Chipped? Another Hidden Secret in Obama-Care | Pakalert Press - 0 views

  •  
    "Modern technology is growing by leaps and bounds. The corporate-controlled media extolls its virtues, but does not cover the known harm of its dark side. Most of this technology goes unchecked for human safety. The following is a short synopsis of the hazards of several invisible technologies that are already an unreported and grave danger to all of us." Article covers these emerging technology threats: ... Nano-Technology This technology is also in the highly toxic Chemtrails aerosols, as nano-coated fiber Aluminum, that, for the past 15 years, are poisoning us daily.  The coating includes nano particalized BARIUM and Fluoride.  The Air Force has admitted to using them. Documents have been published on the Internet, over many years, listing various patents for these covert and criminal programs. And most recently, a former Air Force Industrial Hygienist has confirmed this stealth geo-engineering program from first-hand knowledge. ... RFID Chips RFID [Radio Frequency Identification] chips. They are made of a two-way radio antenna, and some encasement or support, such as small glass vial implanted under the skin. The origins of this technology go back to 1948 when the idea was first conceived. They are now found in ATM and credit cards, and some "enhanced" driver's licenses, highway toll systems, and inventory tracking systems. The latest direction in chipping the human population comes from the hidden part of the Obama "health care" reform. Who reads more than 1,000 pages of mostly incomprehensible "doublethink" drivel? The Senate Healthcare bill HR3200 was passed in 2010, and requires the implant of an RFID chip in every American. This chip will be inserted into our skin and linked to all our banking, medical, and other personal documents. Here is a short quote: "The Secretary shall establish a national medical device registry (in this subsection referred to as the 'registry') to facilitate analysis of postmarket safety and outcomes d
Gary Edwards

Byron York: Justice Department demolishes case against Trump order | Washington Examiner - 1 views

  •  
    "James Robart, the U.S. district judge in Washington State, offered little explanation for his decision to stop President Trump's executive order temporarily suspending non-American entry from seven terror-plagued countries. Robart simply declared his belief that Washington State, which in its lawsuit against Trump argued that the order is both illegal and unconstitutional, would likely win the case when it is tried. Now the government has answered Robart, and unlike the judge, Justice Department lawyers have produced a point-by-point demolition of Washington State's claims. Indeed, for all except the most partisan, it is likely impossible to read the Washington State lawsuit, plus Robart's brief comments and writing on the matter, plus the Justice Department's response, and not come away with the conclusion that the Trump order is on sound legal and constitutional ground. Beginning with the big picture, the Justice Department argued that Robart's restraining order violates the separation of powers, encroaches on the president's constitutional and legal authority in the areas of foreign affairs, national security, and immigration, and "second-guesses the president's national security judgment" about risks faced by the United States. Indeed, in court last week, Robart suggested that he, Robart, knows as much, or perhaps more, than the president about the current state of the terrorist threat in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and other violence-plagued countries. In an exchange with Justice Department lawyer Michelle Bennett, Robart asked, "How many arrests have there been of foreign nationals for those seven countries since 9/11?" "Your Honor, I don't have that information," said Bennett. "Let me tell you," said Robart. "The answer to that is none, as best I can tell. So, I mean, you're here arguing on behalf of someone [President Trump] that says: We have to protect the United States from these individuals coming from these countries, and there's no support for that."
Gary Edwards

"War is a Racket" by General Smedly Butler - 1 views

  • by MAJOR GENERAL SMEDLEY D. BUTLER, USMC - Retired TWO-TIME Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient FULL TEXT ON LINE FREE
  • GET THE NEW PAPERBACK EDITION including two bonus titles.
  •  
    An accidental find, the full text online of USMC Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler's 1935 book, War Is a Racket. Butler served in the Marine Corps from 1899 to 1931 and at the time of his retirement was the most-decorated Marine in history, for both valor and accomplishments. Following his retirement, he became a vehement anti-war activist and public speaker.  This book is easily his most-cited and most-quoted published work. You can capture the flavor from an article he published in a magazine that included the following lines: "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler#Lectures  I look forward to reading this book. The book was reprinted in 2003 and is available from the linked web site, together with two bonus titles. 
  •  
    "WAR IS A RACKET" - free online book CHAPTER ONE WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few - the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations. For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds g
Gary Edwards

Applied Research Associates - The evidence of 911 and Directed Energy Weapons - 0 views

  •  
    The official web site of Dr Judy Wood and her investigation into how the buildings came down on 911.
Paul Merrell

Russia and China: Watch Out Moody's, Here We Come! | New Eastern Outlook - 0 views

  • In 1945 it was easy to get a defeated Europe to agree to Bretton Woods Gold Exchange Standard in which all currencies would be fixed to the US dollar and the dollar alone fixed to gold at $35 an ounce, where it remained until the system collapsed in August 1971 and Nixon abandoned gold-dollar convertibility. By then Europe was booming with modern reconstructed industry and the USA was becoming a rustbelt. France and Germany demanded US gold bullion instead of inflated dollars, and US gold reserves were vanishing. After 1971, the dollar flooded the world unfettered by gold reserve requirements and US military might during the Cold War forced Japan, Western Europe and others including OPEC to accept constantly inflating paper US dollars. From 1970 until about 2000 the volume of dollars in the world had risen some 2,900%. Because the dollar was the world “reserve currency” needed by all for trade in oil, goods, grains, the world was forced to swallow a de facto mammoth inflation after 1971.First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/01/22/watch-out-moody-s-here-we-come/
  •  
    The established New York credit agencies would play a strategic role in this post-1971 dollar system. During the 1970's the US Government's Securities & Exchange Commission, charged with oversight of bond and stock markets, issued a ruling giving the then-dominant New York credit rating agencies-Moody's and Standard & Poor's (and later Fitch Ratings)-a de facto guaranteed monopoly in an unregulated market, when they ruled that only "Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations" would be qualified to issue appropriate ratings, i.e. only Moody's and S&P. Corruption was made endemic to the US ratings game and Washington was party to the dirty deal. By the end of the 1970's, using the vast amount of OPEC "petro-dollars" from the two oil price shocks in 1973 and 1979, New York international banks, using London, began to loan to the rest of the world to finance imports of oil and other essentials. The New York credit rating agencies, previously primarily rating US corporate bonds, expanded into the new foreign debt markets as the largest and only established rating agencies in the new phase of dollarization and globalization of capital markets. They set up branches in Germany, France, Japan, Mexico, Argentina and other emerging markets much like the US Big Five accounting firms. During the 1980s the rating agencies played a key role in down-rating the debt of the Latin American debtor countries such as Mexico and Argentina. Their ratings determined if the debtor countries could borrow or not. Financial market insiders in London and New York openly spoke of the "political" rating agencies using their de facto monopoly to advance the agenda of Wall Street and the Dollar System behind it. Then in the 1990's, the New York rating agencies played a decisive role in spreading the "Asia Crisis" of 1997-98. With the precise timing of its downgrades they could worsen the panic because they had been suspiciously silent right up un
Paul Merrell

Growing the Russia-China New Relationship | New Eastern Outlook - 0 views

  • Russia and China have agreed to build a 7,000-kilometer high-speed rail link from Beijing to Moscow, at a cost of $242 billion, almost a quarter trillion dollars, according to the Beijing city government. The journey from Beijing to Moscow would take two days on a route passing through Kazakhstan. It will take take eight to 10 years to build. The rail project is the most ambitious rail infrastructure project in the Eurasian history, even surpassing the Trans-Siberian Railway project across Russia. The new Beijing-Moscow highspeed rail corridor shown in yellow will transform the economic space of Eurasia In October, 2014, China and Russia signed an agreement to build the first leg of the Beijing-Moscow high-speed rail link. That specified that Chinese firms and their Russian partners will construct a 770-km high-speed line connecting Moscow and Kazan, an important metropolis on the Volga River, en route to Beiing. Then last November as US sanctions and the US-engineered oil price collapse added a new urgency to the project, Alexander Misharin, vice-president at state-owned OAO Russian Railways, said a section would cost $60 billion to reach Russia’s border, and would cut the Beijing-Moscow journey from five days to 30 hours. Misharin at the time compared the new transport network to the Suez Canal “in terms of scale and significance.” In reality, it has the potential to far exceed the Suez Canal as it serves to unify a high-speed transport network integration vast new markets across Eurasia from Beijing to Moscow that draw in some 4.4 billion of the world populationFirst appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/01/31/growing-the-russia-china-new-relationship/
  •  
    In related news, the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has scheduled a meeting of prospective contractors on February 21 to gather expressions of interest in designing and building a nuclear-powered space station weapons platform capable of powering a directed beam energy weapon designed to melt hundreds of miles of railroad track on each orbit of the Earth.  http://www.example.com
1 - 20 of 46 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page