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Who would’ve thought it would come to this? Certainly not the Obama Administration, and their brilliant geo-political think-tank neo-conservative strategists. John Kerry’s brilliant “win-win” proposal of last September during his September 11 Jeddah meeting with ailing Saudi King Abdullah was simple: Do a rerun of the highly successful State Department-Saudi deal in 1986 when Washington persuaded the Saudis to flood the world market at a time of over-supply in order to collapse oil prices worldwide, a kind of “oil shock in reverse.” In 1986 was successful in helping to break the back of a faltering Soviet Union highly dependent on dollar oil export revenues for maintaining its grip on power. So, though it was not made public, Kerry and Abdullah agreed on September 11, 2014 that the Saudis would use their oil muscle to bring Putin’s Russia to their knees today.

It seemed brilliant at the time no doubt. On the following day, 12 September 2014, the US Treasury’s aptly-named Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, headed by Treasury Under-Secretary David S. Cohen, announced new sanctions against Russia’s energy giants Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, Lukoil, Surgutneftgas and Rosneft. It forbid US oil companies to participate with the Russian companies in joint ventures for oil or gas offshore or in the Arctic. Then, just as the ruble was rapidly falling and Russian major corporations were scrambling for dollars for their year-end settlements, a collapse of world oil prices would end Putin’s reign. That was clearly the thinking of the hollowed-out souls who pass for statesmen in Washington today. Victoria Nuland was jubilant, praising the precision new financial warfare weapon at David Cohen’s Treasury financial terrorism unit. In July, 2014 West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark price for US domestic oil pricing, traded at $101 a barrel. The shale oil bonanza was booming, making the US into a major oil player for the first time since the 1970’s. When WTI hit $46 at the beginning of January this year, suddenly things looked different. Washington realized they had shot themselves in the foot.

They realized that the over-indebted US shale oil industry was about to collapse under the falling oil price. Behind the scenes Washington and Wall Street colluded to artificially stabilize what then was an impending chain-reaction bankruptcy collapse in the US shale oil industry. As a result oil prices began a slow rise, hitting $53 in February. The Wall Street and Washington propaganda mills began talking about the end of falling oil prices. By May prices had crept up to $62 and almost everyone was convinced oil recovery was in process. How wrong they were.

The details are emerging of a new secret and quite stupid Saudi-US deal on Syria and the so-called IS. It involves oil and gas control of the entire region and the weakening of Russia and Iran by Saudi Arabian flooding the world market with cheap oil. Details were concluded in the September meeting by US Secretary of State John Kerry and the Saudi King. The unintended consequence will be to push Russia even faster to turn east to China and Eurasia. One of the weirdest anomalies of the recent NATO bombing campaign, allegedly against the ISIS or IS or ISIL or Daash, depending on your preference, is the fact that with major war raging in the world’s richest oil region, the price of crude oil has been dropping, dramatically so. Since June when ISIS suddenly captured the oil-rich region of Iraq around Mosul and Kirkuk, the benchmark Brent price of crude oil dropped some 20% from $112 to about $88. World daily demand for oil has not dropped by 20% however. China oil demand has not fallen 20% nor has US domestic shale oil stock risen by 21%.

What has happened is that the long-time US ally inside OPEC, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has been flooding the market with deep discounted oil, triggering a price war within OPEC, with Iran following suit and panic selling short in oil futures markets. The Saudis are targeting sales to Asia for the discounts and in particular, its major Asian customer, China where it is reportedly offering its crude for a mere $50 to $60 a barrel rather than the earlier price of around $100. [1] That Saudi financial discounting operation in turn is by all appearance being coordinated with a US Treasury financial warfare operation, via its Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, in cooperation with a handful of inside players on Wall Street who control oil derivatives trading. The result is a market panic that is gaining momentum daily. China is quite happy to buy the cheap oil, but her close allies, Russia and Iran, are being hit severely.

The US-Saudi oil price manipulation is aimed at destabilizing several strong opponents of US globalist policies. Targets include Iran and Syria, both allies of Russia in opposing a US sole Superpower. The principal target, however, is Putin’s Russia, the single greatest threat today to that Superpower hegemony. The strategy is similar to what the US did with Saudi Arabia in 1986 when they flooded the world with Saudi oil, collapsing the price to below $10 a barrel and destroying the economy of then-Soviet ally, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and, ultimately, of the Soviet economy, paving the way for the fall of the Soviet Union. Today, the hope is that a collapse of Russian oil revenues, combined with select pin-prick sanctions designed by the US Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence will dramatically weaken Putin’s enormous domestic support and create conditions for his ultimate overthrow. It is doomed to fail for many reasons, not the least, because Putin’s Russia has taken major strategic steps together with China and other nations to lessen its dependence on the West. In fact the oil weapon is accelerating recent Russian moves to focus its economic power on national interests and lessen dependence on the Dollar system. If the dollar ceases being the currency of world trade, especially oil trade, the US Treasury faces financial catastrophe. For this reason, I call the Kerry-Abdullah oil war a very stupid tactic.

Israel is set to become a major exporter of gas and some oil, if all goes to plan. The giant Leviathan natural gas field, in the eastern Mediterranean, discovered in December 2010, is widely described as “off the coast of Israel.”

Coupled with Tamar field, in the same location, discovered in 2009, the prospects are for an energy bonanza for Israel, for Houston, Texas based Noble Energy and partners Delek Drilling, Avner Oil Exploration and Ratio Oil Exploration.

However, even these estimates may prove modest. In their: “Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources of the Levant Basin Province, Eastern Mediterranean”, the US Department of the Interior’s US Geological Survey, wrote in 2010: “We estimated a mean of 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and a mean of 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas in this province using a geology based assessment methodology.”

A few days ago, when we wrote our "explainer" on the need for Russia to have an alternative pathway for its gas, one which bypasses Ukraine entirely and as the current "South Stream" framework is set up, crosses the Black Sea and enters Bulgaria before passing Serbia and Hungary on the way to the Central European energy hub located in Baumgarten, Austria, we said that "one short month after Putin concluded the Holy Grail deal with Beijing, he not only managed to formalize his conquest of Europe's energy needs with yet another pipeline, one which completely bypasses Ukraine (for numerous reasons but mostly one: call it a Plan B), but scored a massive political victory by creating a fissure in the heart of the Eurozone, after Austria openly defied its European peers and sided with Putin."

As Itar-Tass reports, citing Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, "Russia’s gas giant Gazprom does not rule out gas transit via Ukraine may be stopped completely." "What happened once is a tendency, nothing happens incidentally. In 2009, gas supplies were stopped completely — so, we know precedents,” Miller told a briefing on Friday. Clearly, this is bad news for Ukraine: Gazprom not interested in participation in Ukraine’s gas transportation system (GTS), “train has departed”, CEO said. “The train has already departed. It seems it departed yesterday,” Miller said. “It belongs to no one. The GTS has no owner,” he said. “The GTS of Ukraine does not belong to Naftogaz but to the Ukrainian government. Before discussing things with someone regarding modernization and cooperation, it should appear on the balance sheet of this or that economic entity.”   “Property and legal issues should be resolved first,” Miller said. In fact, the civil war torn country may soon lose all leverage it had with both Europe and Russia as a transit hub for natural gas, which also means that it is quite likely that Ukraine is about to be abandoned by its western allies who will no longer have any practical use for it. 

The Gazprom chief added that “a dozen Ukrainian laws need to be changed to be able to do something with the GTS.”  Confirming that Ukraine's leverage at least with Russia is now effectively zero, Gazprom's CEO also said that “As for the continuation of negotiations with Ukraine, today there is no subject for talks. First, they must repay their debts." “The gas price for Ukraine is fair - this price is fixed in the contract,” he stressed. There have been no requests on the part of Ukraine’s national oil and gas company Naftogaz Ukrainy on a change of the transit deal with Russia, Alexei Miller said. Miller told journalists that it would be bad news if such requests had been received. At least we now know what the Ukraine endgame will look like: as Russian transit through the country is completely cut off, the nation will lose all strategic importance first to Russia and then to Europe, which is still over-reliant on Russian gas (see map below), but which will increasingly turn its attention to the countries which the South Stream passes through.

Royal Dutch Shell has stopped Arctic oil and gas exploration off the coast of Alaska after "disappointing" results from a key well in the Chukchi Sea.In a surprise announcement, the company said it would end exploration off Alaska "for the foreseeable future".Shell said it did not find sufficient amounts of oil and gas in the Burger J well to warrant further exploration.The company has spent about $7bn (£4.5bn) on Arctic offshore development in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas."Shell continues to see important exploration potential in the basin, and the area is likely to ultimately be of strategic importance to Alaska and the US," said Marvin Odum, president of Shell USA. "However, this is a clearly disappointing exploration outcome for this part of the basin."

Indeed some analysts suggested Shell might give up on the Arctic completely. "It is possible that Shell might almost be relieved as they can stop exploration for a legitimate operational reason, rather than being seen to bow to environmental pressure," Stuart Elliott from energy information group Platts told the BBC."With the oil price around $50 a barrel, it was a risky endeavour with no guarantee of success. "You could argue that this has been bad for Shell's reputation and it wouldn't be a big surprise if they abandoned Arctic drilling altogether."

So, what changed?Certainly, the first findings from the Burger J exploration well 150 miles off the Alaskan coast were not promising.Second, although President Barack Obama had given the necessary permissions for drilling to start again following the problems of rig fires in 2012, Mrs Clinton's tweet revealed that political risks were still substantial.

At the time the Poplar pipeline ruptured, about 110 feet of it was completely uncovered along the bottom of the Yellowstone River, exposing it to damage.

Bridger Pipeline LLC was so sure its Poplar oil line was safely buried below the Yellowstone River that it planned to wait five years to recheck it. But last month, 3.5 years later, the Poplar wasn't eight feet under the river anymore. It was substantially exposed on the river bottom—and leaking more than 30,000 gallons of oil upstream from Glendive, Montana. An ExxonMobil pipeline wasn't buried deeply enough for the Yellowstone River, either. High floodwaters in 2011 uncovered the Silvertip pipe, leaving it defenseless against the fast-moving current and traveling debris. It broke apart in July, and sent 63,000 gallons of oil into the river near Laurel, Montana.

Both companies underestimated the river's power and its penchant for scouring away the earth that's covering and protecting their pipelines. That miscalculation led to the Exxon Silvertip spill and it's likely to be declared a significant factor, at a minimum, in the Poplar spill. Such misjudgments have potentially troubling implications nationwide, since pipelines carrying crude oil and petroleum products pass beneath rivers and other bodies of water in more than 18,000 places across America. Many of them are buried only a few feet below the water. "There were a lot of people who wanted to think that the last pipeline spill in the Yellowstone River in 2011 was a freak accident that would never happen again. After this most recent spill, no one believes that anymore," said Scott Bosse, Northern Rockies director for American Rivers. "The truth is, there are probably hundreds of pipelines across the country that are at considerable risk of rupturing under our rivers."

In another sign that fracking is increasingly being acknowledged as a cause of earthquakes, the insurance industry has announced that it is now linking the controversial drilling procedure with seismic activity in establishing its rates. Before insurance companies set their rates for an upcoming year, they turn to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for information on quake activity. Specifically, insurers look at the USGS’s National Seismic Hazard Map, which “predicts where future earthquakes will occur, how often they will occur and how strongly they will shake the ground,” according to the Dallas Morning News. But this map will now take into account earthquakes that occur within the vicinity of fracking wells, the USGS has decided. That means insurance rates may go up in some areas considered more at risk of seismic events because of fracking operations. Between the years 2010 and 2013, central and eastern United States had an average of five times as many quakes per year as between 1970 and 2000. Human activity, including fracking, has been cited by scientists as the cause, according to Dallas Morning News.

Last year, USGS connected a 5.7-magnitude quake in Oklahoma to that state’s robust fracking industry. “The observation that a human-induced earthquake can trigger a cascade of earthquakes, including a larger one, has important implications for reducing the seismic risk from wastewater injection,” USGS seismologist and coauthor of the study Elizabeth Cochran said at the time. More than 120 quakes have hit the Dallas area in the past six years, and scientists have cited the work performed at nearby fracking sites as the reason, according to Homeland Security News Wire. Even the Texas Oil & Gas Association agreed that some research into the nexus of fracking and quakes is called for. “The oil and natural gas industry agrees that recent seismic activity warrants robust investigation to determine the precise location, impact and cause or causes of seismic events,” Todd Staples, the association’s president, said in a statement. A study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America says fracking near Ohio’s Poland Township triggered a previously undiscovered fault. The result was more than 70 earthquakes ranging in magnitude of 2.1 to 3.0, the latter of which was described as “rare” by the experts.

Amidst the wilderness of mirrors surrounding the Syrian tragedy, a diamond-shaped fact persists: Despite so many degrees of separation, the Saudis are still talking to the Russians. Why? A key reason is because a perennially paranoid House of Saud feels betrayed by their American protectors who, under the Obama administration, seem to have given up on isolating Iran.

From the House of Saud’s point of view, three factors are paramount. 1) A general sense of ‘red alert’ as they have been deprived from an exclusive relationship with Washington, thus becoming incapable of shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East; 2) They have been mightily impressed by Moscow’s swift counter-terrorism operation in Syria; 3) They fear like the plague the current Russia-Iran alliance if they have no means of influencing it.

That explains why King Salman’s advisers have pressed the point that the House of Saud has a much better chance of checking Iran on all matters - from “Syraq” to Yemen - if it forges a closer relationship with Moscow. In fact, King Salman may be visiting Putin before the end of the year.

So the EU “defeated” Putin by forcing him to cancel the South Stream pipeline. Thus ruled Western corporate media. Nonsense. Facts on the ground spell otherwise. This “Pipelineistan” gambit will continue to send massive geopolitical shockwaves all across Eurasia for quite some time. In a nutshell, a few years ago Russia devised Nord Stream – fully operational – and South Stream – still a project – to bypass unreliable Ukraine as a gas transit nation. Now Russia devised a new deal with Turkey to bypass the “non-constructive” (Putin’s words) approach of the European Commission (EC). Background is essential to understand the current game. Five years ago I was following in detail Pipelineistan’s ultimate opera – the war between rival pipelines South Stream and Nabucco. Nabucco eventually became road kill. South Stream may eventually resurrect, but only if the EC comes to its senses (don’t bet on it.)

The 3,600 kilometer long South Stream should be in place by 2016, branching out to Austria and the Balkans/Italy. Gazprom owns 50 percent of it - along with Italy’s ENI (20 percent), French EDF (15 percent) and German Wintershall, a subsidiary of BASF (15 percent). As it stands these European energy majors are not exactly beaming – to say the least. For months Gazprom and the EC were haggling about a solution. But in the end Brussels predictably succumbed to its own. Russia still gets to build a pipeline under the Black Sea – but now redirected to Turkey and, crucially, pumping the same amount of gas South Stream would. Not to mention Russia gets to build a new LNG (liquefied natural gas) central hub in the Mediterranean. Thus Gazprom has not spent $5 billion in vain (finance, engineering costs). The redirection makes total business sense. Turkey is Gazprom’s second biggest customer after Germany. And much bigger than Bulgaria, Hungary, and Austria combined. Russia also advances a unified gas distribution network capable of delivering natural gas from anywhere in Russia to any hub alongside Russia’s borders.

And as if it was needed, Russia gets yet another graphic proof that its real growth market in the future is Asia, especially China – not a fearful, stagnated, austerity-devastated, politically paralyzed EU. The evolving Russia-China strategic partnership implies Russia as complementary to China, excelling in major infrastructure projects from building dams to laying out pipelines. This is business with a sharp geopolitical reach – not ideology-drenched politics.

The U.S. will remain the world’s biggest oil producer this year after overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia as extraction of energy from shale rock spurs the nation’s economic recovery, Bank of America Corp. said. U.S. production of crude oil, along with liquids separated from natural gas, surpassed all other countries this year with daily output exceeding 11 million barrels in the first quarter, the bank said in a report today. The country became the world’s largest natural gas producer in 2010. The International Energy Agency said in June that the U.S. was the biggest producer of oil and natural gas liquids. “The U.S. increase in supply is a very meaningful chunk of oil,” Francisco Blanch, the bank’s head of commodities research, said by phone from New York. “The shale boom is playing a key role in the U.S. recovery. If the U.S. didn’t have this energy supply, prices at the pump would be completely unaffordable.”

Oil extraction is soaring at shale formations in Texas and North Dakota as companies split rocks using high-pressure liquid, a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The surge in supply combined with restrictions on exporting crude is curbing the price of West Texas Intermediate, America’s oil benchmark. The U.S., the world’s largest oil consumer, still imported an average of 7.5 million barrels a day of crude in April, according to the Department of Energy’s statistical arm.

“The shale production story is bigger than Iraqi production, but it hasn’t made the impact on prices you would expect,” said Blanch. “Typically such a large energy supply growth should bring prices lower, but in fact we’re not seeing that because the whole geopolitical situation outside the U.S. is dreadful.”

srael has granted oil exploration rights inside Syria, in the occupied Golan Heights, to Genie Energy. Major shareholders of Genie Energy – which also has interests in shale gas in the United States and shale oil in Israel – include Rupert Murdoch and Lord Jacob Rothschild. This from a 2010 Genie Energy press release: Claude Pupkin, CEO of Genie Oil and Gas, commented, “Genie’s success will ultimately depend, in part, on access to the expertise of the oil and gas industry and to the financial markets. Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch are extremely well regarded by and connected to leaders in these sectors. Their guidance and participation will prove invaluable.” “I am grateful to Howard Jonas and IDT for the opportunity to invest in this important initiative,” Lord Rothschild said. “Rupert Murdoch’s extraordinary achievements speak for themselves and we are very pleased he has agreed to be our partner. Genie Energy is making good technological progress to tap the world’s substantial oil shale deposits which could transform the future prospects of Israel, the Middle East and our allies around the world.” For Israel to seek to exploit mineral reserves in the occupied Golan Heights is plainly illegal in international law. Japan was succesfully sued by Singapore before the International Court of Justice for exploitation of Singapore’s oil resources during the second world war. The argument has been made in international law that an occupying power is entitled to opeate oil wells which were previously functioning and operated by the sovereign power, in whose position the occupying power now stands. But there is absolutely no disagreement in the authorities and case law that the drilling of new wells – let alone fracking – by an occupying power is illegal.

Israel tried to make the same move twenty years ago but was forced to back down after a strong reaction from the Syrian government, which gained diplomatic support from the United States. Israel is now seeking to take advantage of the weakened Syrian state; this move perhaps casts a new light on recent Israeli bombings in Syria. In a rational world, the involvement of Rothschild and Murdoch in this international criminal activity would show them not to be fit and proper persons to hold major commercial interests elsewhere, and action would be taken. Naturally, nothing of the kind will happen.

What is really behind the deep-state infighting over the U.S. elections and the "wire tapping" of the Trump campaign? Why was the CIA-Neocon axis vehemently lobbying against Trump? What foreign interests and what money is involved in this? Answers to these questions are now emerging. The former director of the CIA under Clinton, James Woolsey, went to the Wall Street Journal and offered some information (likely some true and some false) on the retired General Flynn and the lobbying businesses he was involved in. Woolsey is an arch-neoconservative. He had worked on the transition team of Trump but got fired over "growing tensions over Trump’s vision for intelligence agencies." Flynn is the former National Security Advisor of Trump who later also got fired. Woolsey was a board member of Flynn's former lobbying company FIG. Woolsey claims: In September 2016 he took part in a meeting between Flynn and high level Turkish officials, including the Turkish foreign minister and the energy minister who is the son-in-law of the Turkish president Erdogan. During the meeting, Woolsey claims, a brainstorming took place over how the Turkish cult leader Fethullah Gülen could -probably by illegal means- be removed from the U.S. and handed over to Turkey. Gülen is accused by the Erdogan mafia of initiating a coup attempt against it. The U.S. claims officially that there is no evidence for such an accusation and that Gülen can therefore not be rendered to Turkey. Gülen is an old CIA asset that helped the U.S. deep state to control Turkey.  Erdogan divorced from the Gülen organization after it became useless for his neo-Ottoman project. Here is the WSJ report on the Woolsey claims and a video clip with parts of his WSJ interview. Woolsey also went on CNN where he repeated his WSJ story. Flynn was accused by the anti-Trump campaign to have worked for Russia. He had taken several $10,000 for speeches he gave in Moscow. He also, at times, had argued for better U.S. relations with Russia. But Flynn's pro-Russia stand was probably honest. (Or the bribes involved were just smaller than the ones paid by others.) The money he got on the speaker circus was rather small for a man in his position. Flynn's real corruption was on another issue. After having been fired from the Trump administration, Flynn retroactively filed under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). His lobbying firm had a contract over $530,000 to work for a company near to the Turkish president Erdogan: In its filing, Mr. Flynn’s firm said its work from August to November “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” The filing said his firm’s fee, $530,000, wasn’t paid by the government but by Inovo BV, a Dutch firm owned by a Turkish businessman, Ekim Alptekin.

This lobbying, not the alleged Flynn-Putin relation, is the real scandal and part of the Trump/CIA/Clinton deep-state in-fighting. The meeting Woolsey described was under the "Turkish" Flynn contract. The Turkish business man, and owner of Inovo, Ekim Alptekin is a member of the Erdogan gang. But hidden at the very end of the WSJ story is the real key to understand the shady network: Inovo hired Mr. Flynn on behalf of an Israeli company seeking to export natural gas to Turkey, the filing said, and Mr. Alptekin wanted information on the U.S.-Turkey political climate to advise the gas company about its Turkish investments. It was the Israeli gas company, not the Alptekin outlet, that drove the issue. The Leviatan (and Tamar) gas fields in the Mediterranean along the Israeli coast are a huge energy and profit resource IF the gas from them can be exported to Europe. Several companies are involved in the exploration and all are looking for ways to connect the fields to the European gas network. There are (likely true) rumors that huge bribes have been payed in Israel, Jordan and elsewhere to win exploration contracts and to sell the gas. Negotiations between Israel and Turkey over the pipeline have been on and off. They depend on a positive climate towards Israel in the Turkish government which again depends on the often changing political position of the Erdogan gang.

The picture evolving here (lots of sleuthing and sources) is this: An Israeli company (or whoever is behind it) wants a gas pipeline to Turkey. It hires Flynn and Alptekin to arrange a positive climate for the Leviathan pipeline within the Turkish government. It offers Flynn more than half a million for a little (4-month long) influence work. His job is to create a "friendly atmosphere" for the deal by using his influence in the U.S. to accommodate Erdogan. A major point that is expected from Flynn is to arrange the handover of Gülen, by whatever means, from the U.S. to Erdogan. After accepting the (lobbying) bribe Flynn-the-whore suddenly changes his former anti-Turkish, pro-Russian, pro-Kurdish political position into a pro-Turkish, neutral-Russian and anti-Kurdish one. (His lobbying firm also makes some smaller payments related to the Clinton email-server scandal. This may be related to links between the Clinton family and the Gülen school empire.) He has a meeting with the Turkish government/Erdogan officials part of which is a discussion of a removal of Gülen to Turkey. He pens a pro Erdogan anti-Gülen op-ed which is published on the day of the election and he denigrates the Pentagon plan to work with the Kurds in Syria. The NSA, CIA and the FBI are listening to Flynn's conversations with Turkish and Israeli interests. (For the old and long history of such "wiretapping" of Turkish and Israeli connections and various dirty and criminal deals they revealed read and ask Sibel Edmonds.) The projects which Flynn is involved in, especially removing Gülen, are against the long term interests of the (neoconservative-driven) CIA. Selected tapes of his talks are transcribed and distributed within the anti-Trump campaign. This is the origin of the "wiretapping" of the Trump Tower the U.S. president lamented about. The stuff the CIA dug up about Flynn's dealing was and is used against Trump. Woolsey is caught up in this as he also worked for Flynn's lobbying firm. (His neocon-pro-Zionist history suggests that he is the senior Israeli watchdog over Flynn in all this.) He is now engaged in damage control and is "coming clean" and selectively leaking his anti-Flynn stuff to exculpate himself. (There is probably also some new, better deal involved that will pay off from him.) The Israeli-Turkish pipeline and the related deep-state fight are not the only issue involved in the campaign against Trump. There are also British interests and British intelligence involvement especially with the accusations against Russia of "hacking" of the DNC. If and how these fit in with above has not yet been revealed.

Bibi Netanyahu’s election, persistent violence through much of the Middle East and North Africa, and intensified efforts to forge a nuclear deal between the P5+1 and Iran topped the news here in Washington this week. But a much bigger story in terms of the future order of global politics was taking place in Europe and Beijing. The story was simply this: virtually all of the closest European allies of the United States, beginning with Britain, defied pressure from Washington by deciding to apply for founding membership in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). This Chinese initiative could quickly rival the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank as a major source of funding for big development projects across Eurasia. The new bank, which offers a serious multilateral alternative to the Western-dominated international financial institutions (IFIs) established in the post-World War II order, is expected to attract about three dozen initial members, including all of China’s Asian neighbors (with the possible exception of Japan). Australia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states are also likely to join by the March 31 deadline set by Beijing for prospective co-founders to apply. Its $50 billion in initial capital is expected to double with the addition of new members, and that amount could quickly grow given China’s $3 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves. More details about the bank can be found in a helpful Q&A here at the Council on Foreign Relations website.

Along with the so-called BRICS bank—whose membership so far is limited to Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—the AIIB poses a real “challenge to the existing global economic order,” which, of course, Western nations have dominated since the establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in the final days of World War II. As one unnamed European official told The New York Times, “We have moved from the world of 1945.” That Washington’s closest Western allies are now racing to join the AIIB over U.S. objections offers yet more evidence that the “unipolar moment” celebrated by neoconservatives and aggressive nationalists 25 years ago and then reaffirmed by the same forces after the 2003 Iraq invasion is well and truly. And yet, these same neoconservatives continue to insist that—but for Obama’s weakness and defeatism—the United States remains so powerful that it really doesn’t have to take account of anyone’s interests outside its borders except, maybe, Israel’s. (That Washington’s closest Western allies are now racing to join the new bank over U.S. objections could also presage a greater willingness to abandon the international sanctions regime against Iran if Washington is seen as responsible for the collapse of the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Tehran. Granted, Iran’s economy—and its potential as a source of investment capital—is itsy-bitsy compared to China.)

Indeed, commentators are depicting US allies’ decision to join the AIIB (see here, here, and here as examples) as a debacle for U.S. diplomacy. The Wall Street Journal editorial board has predictably blamed Obama for defeat, calling it a “case study in declining American influence” (although it also defended Washington’s decision against joining and accused Britain of “appeasing China for commercial purposes.”) What the Journal predictably didn’t mention was a key reason why the administration did not seek membership in the new bank: there was virtually no chance that a Republican-dominated Congress would approve it. Indeed, one reason Beijing launched its initiative and so many of our allies in both Asia and Europe have decided to join is their frustration with Republicans in Congress who have refused to ratify a major reform package designed to give developing countries, including China, a little more voting power on the Western-dominated governing boards of the IMF and the World Bank. The Group of 20 (G20) biggest economic powers actually proposed this reform in 2010, and it doesn’t even reduce Washington’s voting power, which gives it an effective veto over major policy changes in both institutions. As a result of this intransigence, the United States is the only G-20 member that has failed to ratify the reforms, effectively blocking their implementation.

Fracking remains enormously controversial, but the report that the oil-extraction technique is about to lift the United States' oil production beyond that of mega-producer Saudi Arabia means it's probably here to stay. The practice, which involves injecting water into the ground in order to fracture the rock and allow oil and gas to escape, has been associated by critics with earthquakes and heightened pollution, to name just two problems. Just today, Thursday, Ohio authorities shut down a local fracking operation while geological detectives investigate whether it could be behind the 11 quakes recorded there in a few days.

But an indication of just how crucial fracking has become to the American economy comes from next-door Tennessee, where lawmakers voted down proposals to ban the practice (and mountaintop mining, while about it). As The Independent reported today, thanks to the practice, the United States is about to become a bigger oil producer than Saudi Arabia.

Proponents of the technique point mainly at economic benefits, not least achieving American independence from imported oil. Opponents bewail contamination of ground-water, depletion of fresh water supplies, and ground contamination from the rising hydrocarbons. More recently concerns have arisen that like mining, fracking can stabilize local geology and cause quakes. The United Kingdom had banned fracking but later lifted the prohibition, favoring regulation instead. In the United States, legislation on the matter depends on the state, and Germany frowns on the practice but hasn't outlawed it. France has, becoming one of the countries to adopt the position of opponents and ban fracking outright, in 2011. Just today a French court voided a drilling license held by the American energy company Hess for fear that it would frack.

An internal combustion can burn gas and CNG (or propane). All that was necessary to allow the switch from one fuel to another was some additional plumbing and calibration of the car’s ECU (the computer that makes air-fuel ratio adjustments and so on). So, no worries about running empty – and no waiting for hours to refuel. Three, CNG was (is) cheap and burns very cleanly and is massively abundant right here in the U.S.  At a stroke, the three major charges leveled against the pure-gasoline-burning car are vacated. The CNG car hardly pollutes and it greatly reduces and potentially eliminates dependence on “foreign” oil. Also, the cost of the CNG car itself was within reason because no uber-elaborate technology was necessary (unlike electric cars and hybrid electric cars). Just some modifications to an existing car. Sure, there were some issues to be sorted out – the big one being making it easy (and safe) for the average person to refill the CNG tanks. But the technology of the car itself worked – and was economic.

As a retired high-ranking oil company executive, one might expect Louis Allstadt to sing the praises of opening up New York to natural gas hydraulic fracturing.But Allstadt, who worked 31 years for Mobil Oil, stood among elected officials from several upstate communities Tuesday to urge the state not to allow hydrofracking, and instead encourage development of more renewable energy."Making fracking safe is simply not possible, not with the current technology, or with the inadequate regulations being proposed," said Allstadt, retired executive vice president of Mobil.

Allstadt became Mobil's head of exploration and production in North America in 1996 and was promoted to lead oil and natural gas drilling in the Western Hemisphere in 1998, about two years before the company merged with Exxon.