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Citigroup’s top economist Willem Buitler said in 2011 that the water market will soon be hotter the oil market (for example, see this and this): “Water as an asset class will, in my view, become eventually the single most important physical-commodity based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals.” In its recent 2012 Water Investment Conference, Citigroup has identified top 10 trends in the water sector, as follows:

Specifically, a lucrative opportunity in water is in hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), as it generates massive demand for water and water services. Each oil well developed requires 3 to 5 million gallons of water, and 80% of this water cannot be reused because it’s three to 10 times saltier than seawater. Citigroup recommends water-rights owners sell water to fracking companies instead of to farmers because water for fracking can be sold for as much as $3,000 per acre-foot instead of only $50 per acre/foot to farmers.

One of the world’s largest banks, JPMorgan Chase has aggressively pursued water and infrastructure worldwide. In October 2007, it beat out rivals Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to buy U.K.’s water utility Southern Water with partners Swiss-based UBS and Australia’s Challenger Infrastructure Fund. This banking empire is controlled by the Rockefeller family; the family patriarch David Rockefeller is a member of the elite and secretive Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, and Trilateral Commission.

Barclays PLC is a U.K.-based major global financial services provider operating in all over the world with roots in London since 1690; it operates through its subsidiary Barclays Bank PLC and its investment bank called Barclays Capital. Barclays Bank’s unit Barclays Global Investors manages an exchange-traded fund (ETF) called iShares S&P Global Water, which is listed on the London Stock Exchanges and can be purchased like any ordinary share through a broker. Touting the iShares S&P Global Water as offering “a broad based exposure to shares of the world’s largest water companies, including water utilities and water equipment stocks” of water companies around the world, this fund as of March 31, 2007 was valued at U.S.$33.8 million.

Deutsche Bank is one of the major players in the water sector worldwide. Its Deutsche Bank Advisors have identified water as a part of the climate investment strategies. In its presentation, “Global Warming: Implications for Investors,” they have identified the four following major areas for water investment: § Distribution and management: (1) Supply and recycling, (2) water distribution and sewage, (3) water management and engineering. § Water purification: (1) Sewage purification, (2) disinfection, (3) desalination, (4) monitoring. § Water efficiency (demand): (1) Home installation, (2) gray-water recycling, (3) water meters. § Water and nutrition: (1) Irrigation, (2) bottled water.

Moreover, Deutsche Bank has channeled €6 billion (U.S.$8.55 billion) into climate change funds, which will target companies with products that cut greenhouse gases or help people adapt to a warmer world, in sectors from agriculture to power and construction (Reuters, October 18, 2007). In addition to SCM, Deutsche Bank also has the RREEF Infrastructure, part of RREEF Alternative Investments, headquartered in New York with main hubs in Sydney, Singapore, and London. RREEF Infrastructure has more than €6.7 billion in assets under management. One of its main targets is utilities, including electricity networks, water-treatment or distribution operations, and natural-gas networks. In October 2007, RREEF partnered with Goldman Sachs, GE, Prudential, and Babcok & Brown Ltd. to bid unsuccessfully for U.K.’s water utility Southern Water. § Crediting the boom in European infrastructure investment, the RREEF fund by August 2007 had raised €2 billion (U.S.$2.8 billion); Europe’s infrastructure market is valued at between U.S.$4 trillion to U.S.$6 trillion (DowJones Financial News Online, August 7, 2007). § Bulgaria --- Deutsche Bank Bulgaria is planning to participate in large infrastructure projects, including public-private partnership projects in water and sewage worth up to €1 billion (Sofia Echo Media, February 26, 2008). § Middle East --- Along with Ithmaar Bank B.S.C. (an private-equity investment bank in Bahrain), Deutsche Bank co-managed a U.S.$2 billion Shari'a-compliant Infrastructure and Growth Capital Fund and plans to target U.S.$630 billion in regional infrastructure.

In my 2008 article, I overlooked the astonishingly large land purchases (298,840 acres, to be exact) by the Bush family in 2005 and 2006. In 2006, while on a trip to Paraguay for the United Nation’s children’s group UNICEF, Jenna Bush (daughter of former President George W. Bush and granddaughter of former President George H.W. Bush) reportedly bought 98,840 acres of land in Chaco, Paraguay, near the Triple Frontier (Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay). This land is said to be near the 200,000 acres purchased by her grandfather, George H.W. Bush, in 2005. The lands purchased by the Bush family sit over not only South America’s largest aquifer --- but the world’s as well --- Acuifero Guaraní, which runs beneath Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. This aquifer is larger than Texas and California combined. Online political magazine Counterpunch quoted Argentinean pacifist Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the winner of 1981 Nobel Peace Prize, who “warned that the real war will be fought not for oil, but for water, and recalled that Acuifero Guaraní is one of the largest underground water reserves in South America….”

The old imperialists are gone, but the occupation of Afghanistan continues. The new regime in Kabul just installed by Washington to replace uncooperative former ally Hamid Karzai, rushed to sign an “agreement” allowing the United States to keep some 10,000 soldiers in Afghanistan for years. This garrison will be exempt from all Afghan laws. However, there’s much more to this arrangement. The US combat troops, tactfully labeled “trainers” or “counter-terrorist forces,” are too few in number to dominate all Afghanistan. Their task is to defend Kabul’s sock puppet government from its own people and to defend the all-important US Bagram airbase. Washington clearly plans to continue ruling Afghanistan and Iraq the same way that the British Empire did. Small numbers of British troops garrisoned the capital; white officers led the native mercenary army. But Britain’s real power was exercised by RAF units based in Iraq and Northwest Frontier Province.

Now, US intelligence has besmirched its name once again aiding and abetting Afghan drug lords so as to supposedly wage war on “terrorists.” In dirt-poor Afghanistan, there are only two sources of income: money from Washington, and from narcotics. The collusion of senior members of government, military and police is necessary to export tons of opium to either Pakistan, Central Asia or Russia – where morphine addiction is now a major epidemic. Adding to this shameful record, the US Congressional auditor for Special Reconstruction of Afghanistan just reported that much of the $104 billion appropriated for Afghan “reconstruction” has to no surprise been wasted or stolen. Some of it has been used to irrigate opium poppy fields. Spare parts are unavailable for Russian helicopters bought by the US for use in battling Taliban and supposed opium fighting. Why? Because the US-imposed trade sanctions on Russia bars the US from buying the spare part. Catch-22.

By now, the longest war in US history has cost some $1 trillion, maybe more. No one can properly account for the billions and billions of US dollars flown into Afghanistan and Iraq and dished out to the natives – or the numbers of Afghans killed. For Washington’s allies, like Canada and Britain, the war has been a total waste of lives and treasure. For Canada, 158 dead for nothing; for Britain 453. Forget all the phony claims about “mission” and “nation building.” This has been yet another dirty little colonial war that is better forgotten – and never repeated. So this war will simmer on, at least until Washington finds some face-saving way out of the mess in the Hindu Kush. If the US was wise, it would simply quit Afghanistan. But power, like opium, is highly addictive. So America’s longest war will drag on and on.

“The United States also exported the shells and the technology behind them,” the Times reported. “When Iraq went arms shopping in the 1980s, it found manufacturers in Italy and Spain willing to deal their copies. By 1988, these two countries alone had sold Iraq 85,000 empty M110-type shells, according to confidential United Nations documents.” This is where the story begins to get very disturbing. During the Iraq-Iran War (1980-1988), Baghdad actively sought the development of chemical weapons with the help of a number of Western countries, including the United States, West Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and France, according to internal Iraqi documents.

It is has already been widely documented that at least 50,000 Iranian civilians and soldiers were killed by Iraqi chemical weapons in the course of the war. As the Times report detailed, many of the chemical weapons incidents were centered around the now largely destroyed Muthanna State Establishment, which was “the center of Iraqi chemical agent production in the 1980s.” This is especially worrying because since June, that sensitive area has been in the possession of the Islamic State,

Kostin went straight to the point: “Of course, there is a plan B [in the case of Russia being shut off from the SWIFT bank system], but in my personal opinion it would mean war – if this type of sanction will be introduced. America and Europe did that against Iran but with Iran at that time there were no diplomatic relations, only military containment...if Russian banks’ access to SWIFT will be prohibited, the US ambassador to Moscow should leave the same day. Diplomatic relations must be finished. Banking is the most vulnerable part of the Russian economy because the system is based so strongly on the dollar and the euro.” Next May, Russia’s Central Bank is planning to introduce an analogue to SWIFT – after key consultations with China. It’s always important to keep in mind that China set up a parallel SWIFT to do business with Iran under sanctions. But still there will be a window of four months for a lot of nasty things to happen after a Republican-controlled US Senate is empowered in January.

And then there’s the golden rule. Why is Russia buying so much gold? With the US dollar forced upward and gold downward, it makes total business sense to sell gas for inflated dollars and then buy cheap depressed gold; that’s what the Chinese call a “win-win.” And of course on both counts, the West loses. The Washington/Wall Street elites are fully aware that both Moscow and Beijing won’t accumulate US dollars anymore. As for the Masters of the Universe plutocrats who manipulate/control the value of the US dollar, a case can be made that one of their purposes is wrecking the US’s industrial base and the nation’s middle classes. Moscow, meanwhile, has adjusted to the new “instability.” The weak ruble has a positive effect – already stressed by President Putin – by forcing Russia to diversify its manufacturing and become more self-sufficient.

Of course, the problem remains for Russia to pay the foreign interest on its debt in US dollars. Moscow could always declare a moratorium in debt repayments. The ruble might go down even more. But as everyone from Lukoil to Rosneft converts more US dollars into rubles, that will drive the ruble back up. Not to mention that the ruble is shorted as it stands. The bottom line is that Moscow has learned yet another lesson for the immediate future: never become indebted to the West. What’s certain is that the Empire of Chaos won’t relent in its strategy of heating up the new arc of instability – inside Europe, across the economic/financial spectrum – and instrumentalizing its pre-fabricated New Iron Curtain from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Kremlin seems to know exactly how high the stakes are. As The Saker told me in an email, “Putin is telling both the West and the Russian people that there is a long war in progress and that the Russian people have to morally be prepared to accept sacrifices for the survival of Russia. This is one more step in the 'coming-out' of what I call the ‘Eurasian Sovereignists’ in which the US [has] now openly declared as a Russophobic (Russia-hating and Russia-fearing) enemy, and the Europeans as a powerless colony. Military power is not directly a factor in this, the internal power balance between the pro-Western ‘Atlantic Integrationists’ and the ‘Eurasian Sovereignists’ is.” It’s all here – from the debacle of a regime (Bretton Woods) to the current, provoked crisis, all brilliantly explained by Mikhail Khazin. Russia is getting ready to rock. Is the West?

Not all Palestinian factions agree with a two-State solution. A recognition of Palestine as it is currently envisioned by the Middle East Quartet, the EU, and the Palestinian Authority would also include controversial issues like land-swaps between Israel and Palestine, the loss of the internationally guaranteed right of return of the world’s largest refugee population against what is described as “economic compensation and special privileges in the country that grants them exile”, the usurpation of Palestinian water rights, the ongoing theft of Palestinian natural gas off the coast of the gaza Strip, and a cohort of other controversial issues which raise skepticism about “a” recognition of Palestine without at least guaranties about tangible measures against Israel in the case of non-compliance with international law.

Landslide in Opinion and Recognition of Palestine by UK caused by Alternative Media?

Now let’s take a look at Russian fundamentals. Russia’s government debt totals only 13.4% of its GDP. Its budget deficit in relation to GDP is only 0.5%.  If we assume a US GDP of $16.8 trillion (the figure for 2013), the US budget deficit totals 4% of GDP, versus 0.5% for Russia. The Fed is essentially a private corporation owned by regional US private banks, although it passes itself off as a state institution. US publicly held debt is equal to a whopping 74% of GDP in fiscal year 2014. Russia’s is only 13.4%. The declaration of economic war by the US and EU on Russia – via the run on the ruble and the oil derivative attack – was essentially a derivatives racket. Derivatives – in theory – may be multiplied to infinity. Derivative operators attacked both the ruble and oil prices in order to destroy the Russian economy. The problem is, the Russian economy is more soundly financed than America's.

So yes – it will be all about further moves towards the integration of Eurasia as the US is progressively squeezed out of Eurasia. We will see a complex geostrategic interplay progressively undermining the hegemony of the US dollar as a reserve currency and, most of all, the petrodollar. For all the immense challenges the Chinese face, all over Beijing it's easy to detect unmistakable signs of a self-assured, self-confident, fully emerged commercial superpower. President Xi Jinping and the current leadership will keep investing heavily in the urbanization drive and the fight against corruption, including at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Internationally, the Chinese will accelerate their overwhelming push for new 'Silk Roads' – both overland and maritime – which will underpin the long-term Chinese master strategy of unifying Eurasia with trade and commerce.

Russia does not need to import any raw materials. Russia can easily reverse-engineer virtually any imported technology if it needs to. Most of all, Russia can generate — from the sale of raw materials – enough credit in US dollars or euros. Russia's sale of its energy wealth — or sophisticated military gear — may decline. However, they will bring in the same amount of rubles — as the ruble has also declined.  Replacing imports with domestic Russian manufacturing makes total sense. There will be an inevitable “adjustment” phase – but that won’t take long. German car manufacturers, for instance, can no longer sell their cars in Russia due to the ruble's decline. This means they will have to relocate their factories to Russia. If they don’t, Asia – from South Korea to China — will blow them out of the market.

The EU's declaration of economic war against Russia makes no sense whatsoever. Russia controls, directly or indirectly, most of the oil and natural gas between Russia and China: roughly 25% of the world's supply. The Middle East is bound to remain a mess. Africa is unstable. The EU is doing everything it can to cut itself off from its most stable supply of hydrocarbons, prompting Moscow to redirect energy to China and the rest of Asia. What a gift for Beijing – as it minimizes the alarm about the US Navy playing with "containment" across the high seas.  Still, an unspoken axiom in Beijing is that the Chinese remain extremely worried about an Empire of Chaos losing more and more control, and dictating the stormy terms of the relationship between the EU and Russia. The bottom line is that Beijing would never allow itself to be in a position where the US could interfere with China's energy imports – as was the case with Japan in July 1941 when the US declared war by imposing an oil embargo, cutting off 92% of Japanese oil imports. Everyone knows a key plank of China’s spectacular surge in industrial power was the requirement for manufacturers to produce in China. If Russia did the same, its economy would be growing at a rate of over 5% per year in no time. It could grow even more if bank credit was tied only to productive investment.

Now imagine Russia and China jointly investing in a new gold, oil and natural resource-backed monetary union as a crucial alternative to the failed debt "democracy" model pushed by the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street, the Western central bank cartel, and neoliberal politicians. They would be showing the Global South that financing prosperity and improved standards of living by saddling future generations with debt was never meant to work in the first place. Until then, a storm will be threatening our very lives – today and tomorrow. The Masters of the Universe/Washington combo won’t give up their strategy to make Russia a pariah state cut off from trade, the transfer of funds, banking and Western credit markets and thus prone to regime change. Further on down the road, if all goes according to plan, their target will be (who else) China. And Beijing knows it. Meanwhile, expect a few bombshells to shake the EU to its foundations. Time may be running out – but for the EU, not Russia. Still, the overall trend won’t be altered; the Empire of Chaos is slowly but surely being squeezed out of Eurasia.

"The supply of electricity is carried out at internal Russian prices, while the prices on Ukraine's energy market are much higher.We are doing it deliberately, due to the fact that one [power] unit at [Ukraine's] Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant has broken down," Kozak said.Due to the conflict in Ukraine's eastern regions, Kiev has lost a big part of its coal mines. The country is currently suffering from the lack of fuel for power generation and heating.

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.

Hanni Fakhoury, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said some states and judges are pushing back against stingrays. "In Tacoma, judges now require police (to) specifically note they plan to use an IMSI catcher and promise not to store data collected from people who are not investigation targets," he said. "The Florida and Massachusetts state supreme courts ruled warrants were necessary for real-time cell phone tracking. Nine states—Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin—passed laws specifically requiring police to use a warrant to track a cell phone in real time."

What's striking about Peck's analysis is that it comes from within the NRC itself, and gives a rare look at a dispute within the agency. At issue are whether the plant's mechanical guts could survive a big jolt, and what yardsticks should be used to measure the ability of the equipment to withstand the potentially strong vibrations that could result.The conflict between Peck and his superiors stems from the 2008 discovery of the Shoreline fault, which snakes offshore about 650 yards from the reactors. A larger crack, the Hosgri fault, had been discovered in the 1970s about 3 miles away, after the plant's construction permits had been issued and work was underway. Surveys have mapped a network of other faults north and south of the reactors.According to Peck's filing, PG&E research in 2011 determined that any of three nearby faults — the Shoreline, Los Osos and San Luis Bay — is capable of producing significantly more ground motion during an earthquake than was accounted for in the design of important plant equipment. In the case of San Luis Bay, it is as much as 75 percent more.Those findings involve estimates of what's called peak ground acceleration, a measurement of how hard the earth could shake in a given location. The analysis says PG&E failed to demonstrate that the equipment would remain operable if exposed to the stronger shaking, violating its operating license.

The agency should shut the facility down until it is proven that piping, reactor cooling and other systems can meet higher stress levels, or approve exemptions that would allow the plant to continue to operate, according to Peck's analysis.Peck disagreed with his supervisors' decision to let the plant continue to operate without assessing the findings. Unable to resolve his concerns, Peck in 2012 filed a formal objection, calling for PG&E to be cited for violating the safety standards, according to his filing. Within weeks, the NRC said the plant was being operated safely. In 2013 he filed another objection, triggering the current review.

Now compare a fearful Dr Zbig with Immanuel Wallerstein - who was a huge influence in my 2007 warped geopolitical travel book Globalistan. In this piece (in Spanish) Wallerstein argues that the Empire of Chaos simply can't accept its geopolitical decadence - and that's why it has become so dangerous. Restoring its hegemony in the world-system has become the supreme obsession; and that's where the whole "policy" that is an essential background to the MH17 tragedy reveals Ukraine as the definitive do or die battleground. In Europe, everything hinges on Germany. Especially after the National Security Agency scandal and its ramifications, the key debate raging in Berlin is how to position itself geopolitically bypassing the US. And the answer, as pressed by large swathes of German big business, lies in a strategic partnership with Russia

The damaged MH17 starboard jet engine suggests a shape charge from an air-to-air missile - and not a Buk; that's consistent with the Russian Ministry of Defense presentation graphically highlighting an Ukrainian SU-25 shadowing MH17. Increasingly, the Buk scenario - hysterically peddled by the Empire of Chaos - is being discarded. Not to mention, again, that not a single eyewitness saw the very graphic, thick missile trace that would have been clearly visible had a Buk been used.

As much as Bashar al-Assad in Syria had absolutely no motive to "gas his own people" - as the hysterical narrative went at the time - the Eastern Ukraine federalists have no motive to down a civilian airliner. And as much as Washington doesn't give a damn about the current civilian slaughter in gaza, it doesn't give a damn about the MH17 civilian deaths; the one and only obsession is to force Europeans to sanction Russia to death. Translation: break up Europe-Russia commercial and geopolitical integration.

Moscow, in building its case on the MH17 tragedy, will bide its time to debunk Kiev's claims and maximize its own credibility. The game now moves to the black boxes and the cockpit voice recorder. Still Ukraine will remain the do or die battlefield - a chessboard drenched in blood.