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Brookings Wants to Strengthen the Syrian Rebels by Bombing Hezbollah

By Steven MacMillan – New Eastern Outlook – 24.10.2015

Western think tanks have been working relentlessly to try and counter Russia’s geopolitical masterstroke in Syria, which has clearly taken most strategists in the West by complete surprise. Reading through the analysis by these think tanks on Russia’s role in Syria, one is starkly reminded of how immoral Western foreign policy actually is, when you remember that these organisations are freaking out because Russia is bombing terrorists! Obviously, the reason why they are so distraught is because Russia is bombing the West’s terrorists, which they have been using as proxy armies to try and force regime change in Damascus (a strategy that has completely failed).

Potential countermeasures are the subject of a recent article for the Brookings Institution written by Pavel K. Baev, a nonresident senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, titled: Russia’s Syrian entanglement: Can the West sit back and watch? Baev suggests that “the decision to withdraw the batteries of Patriot surface-to-air missiles [from Turkey] must be cancelled”,before arguing that the US and its allies could bomb “Hezbollah bands around Damascus”:

“Finally, the United States and its allies could deliver a series of airstrikes on the Hezbollah bands around Damascus. That would be less confrontational vis-à-vis Russia than hitting Assad’s forces. Hezbollah has already suffered losses in the Syrian war and is not particularly motivated to stand with Assad to the bitter end, away from [its] own home-ground in Lebanon. (Israel would appreciate such punishment, too.)”

Striking Hezbollah may not have the desired effect Baev seems to envisage however, as this belligerent action is as likely to galvanize the group and ensure it will fight “to the bitter end” with the Syrian army, than encourage it to scale back its involvement in Syria. Airstrikes on Hezbollah could also potentially provoke a response against the perpetrators of the violence, further escalating a conflict that already involves a plethora of regional and international powers. Furthermore, many people would consider an attack on Hezbollah to be essentially an attack on Iran, as the Lebanese based group is funded by Tehran and closely aligned with the country.

Brookings recommendations once again highlight the fact that large sections of the US establishment have absolutely no focus on defeating ISIS in the region, as Brookings is advocating bombing a major group that has been fighting ISIS for years now. Rather, many within the US are still focused on toppling the regime in Damascus (which is never going to happen) in addition to weakening the forces that are battling ISIS. If the West was serious about defeating ISIS, they would support and cooperate with the forces that are truly fighting against this new so-called caliphate.

TTIP is an Geoeconomic Tool against Russia

 Western strategists are terrified of Europe moving closer to the East, and an EU-Russian (especially a German-Russian) alliance arising. Merging Russia and the EU in the future is an objective of some US strategists, but Washington only desires this if both Russia and the EU are completely subservient to US dictates. Today however, Russia is a sovereign, independent nation which is not controlled by the US, and some within the EU are increasingly tiring of being vassals of Washington. This means closer relations between Russia and the EU is a geopolitical disaster for the US at the present moment, as Washington’s power will be severely diminished if this tectonic shift occurs.

By understanding this reality, it is now obvious how essential the trade deal between the US and the EU – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – is to US geostrategy. As well as being a corporate fascist deal that empowers multi-national corporations at the expense of citizens, TTIP is a geoeconomic weapon against Russia to cement the transatlantic alliance between the US and the EU.

Ensuring TTIP passes was a recommendation of another Western organisation that has been working on potential counter strategies to Russia, namely the Washington-based Atlantic Council (AC). In a testimony before the US Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington on October 8, 2015, Gen James L. Jones, Jr., the Chairman of the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security and a former National Security Advisor, Jones emphasises the importance of TTIP “successfully concluding” for the West:

“Energy security is instrumental for transatlantic growth, prosperity, and security. The same can be said of successfully concluding TTIP. Europe and the US have the largest trading partnership in the world. Strengthening it serves our mutual interests and reaffirms the centrality of the transatlantic alliance in the 21st century. TTIP also affords the U.S. a unique opportunity to author the rulebook and roadmap for 21st century advanced economies.”

Jones other recommendations include working to diversify the EU’s energy supply to “undermine Putin’s use of energy as a political weapon”, continuing to impose sanctions on Moscow, in addition to admitting Montenegro into NATO next year and working to pull Macedonia into the military alliance. The retired General also asserts that the US should provide the government in Kiev with “anti-tank missiles, intelligence support, training and counter-electronic warfare capabilities”.

Russia of course is well aware of the importance of TTIP to Washington’s long-term agenda. In Vladimir Putin’s speech at the United Nations at the end of September, Putin appeared to confront some of the US-led trade deals which we have seen being negotiated in recent years, most probably referring to TTIP and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) (from 18.45 into the speech):

“I would like to point out another sign of a growing economic selfishness. Some countries have chosen to create closed and exclusion economic associations, with the establishment being negotiated behind the scenes in secret from those countries own citizens, the general public [and] the business community. Other states whose interests may be effected are not informed of anything either. It seems we are about to be faced with an accomplished fact that the rules of the game have been changed in favour of a narrow group of the privileged, with the WTO having no say. This could imbalance the trade system completely and disintegrate the global economic space. These issues affect the interests of all states and influence the future of the world economy as a whole.”

For a multitude of reasons, defeating TTIP would be a colossal achievement for the world. Many European’s are diametrically opposed to this deal, with hundreds of thousands protesting TTIP in Germany a recent illustration of this sentiment. Stop TTIP!

October 24, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ecuador Using Oil Revenue to Build 400 New Schools by 2017

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President Rafael Correa high-fives a boy during his tour of a new school built in the province of Azuay, Ecuador, Oct. 20, 2015. | Photo: Ecuadorean Presidency
teleSUR – October 22, 2015

Ecuador announced Wednesday that the government intends to build 400 new schools by 2017.

Half of the schools will be the state of the art “Millennium Educational Units” that include scientific laboratories, a library, a multi-purpose auditorium, an administrative wing and ample classrooms. The rest will be prefabricated units that can be constructed much faster and will be built in areas with the most urgent need for new schools.

“There is no better way to achieve true freedom than quality education,” President Rafael Correa said Tuesday during a ceremony to inaugurate a new school in the province of Azuay.

The new Millennium Educational Unit opened in Azuay replaces 13 much smaller schools that were sorely lacking in supplies and space needed to provide a quality education.

According to the Andes news agency, the funding for this particular school came from royalties from a nearby mining project. The stated objective of the Correa government is to take the income generated from extraction projects and invest it into strategic sectors such as education in order to move the country away from its dependence on non-renewable resources.

Ecuadorean law also stipulates that a portion of the income generated by extraction projects be reinvested into the region where the project is located.

Correa says his government had invested at least US$20 billion in education over the past eight years of his administration. The Ministry of Education provides free school supplies, books, uniforms, and meals in order to reduce barriers for low-income students, with a goal of achieving a 100 percent attendance rate.

The political opposition and right-wing press have criticized the Correa government over its spending. During the inauguration ceremony Correa replied saying, “Ecuador does not spend a lot, it invests a lot, which is different.”

The country has already built 57 of the Millennium Educational Units, with a further 48 under construction. The schools are intended to have a lifespan of 100 years. The prefabricated schools have a shorter lifespan at 25 years but take only 11 weeks to build.

October 23, 2015 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

The Navy’s Sitting Ducks

By Tobin Harshaw | BloombergView | October 22, 2015

With Iran testing ballistic missiles, the Russian military bombing in Syria, war grinding on in Yemen and Islamic State as deadly as ever, it may seem like a very dangerous time for the U.S. to find itself without an aircraft carrier near the Persian Gulf. Actually, it’s very unlikely to be a problem, and it’s a good occasion to reconsider the Navy’s plans to build a new fleet of superexpensive “supercarriers.” […]

A Navy war game in 2002 that simulated a swarm attack by speedboats of the type Iran has in the Gulf had devastating results: 16 major warships would be destroyed, including one aircraft carrier. Anti-ship weaponry has only grown more potent since then.

These massive ships were never intended to take on jihadists and other asymmetric threats. But it’s no longer clear that they would be useful in a war against a major power such as Russia or a middling one such as Iran. The Pentagon has spent billions outfitting aircraft carriers with air defenses that are unproven, and the relatively short range of their planes –- an F/A-18 Hornet has to turn around at roughly 500 miles — leaves them vulnerable to land-based missiles that can travel twice that far. … Full article

October 23, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Justin Trudeau and the Liberal majority: The triumph of strategic shallowness

By Greg Felton | October 20, 2015

“Every country has the government it deserves.” — Joseph de Maistre, French diplomat (1753-1821)

In March 2013, I wrote a prophetic column predicting a Liberal victory in this election with the concomitant return of the NDP under Thomas Mulcair to third-party status. I ended it by saying: “Whether Trudeau brings in a minority or majority Liberal government, voters will at least celebrate the fact that the Harper dictatorship will be in the hands of its enemies—Canadian citizens.”

Indeed, the dictatorship is over. Harper has even announced his intention to step down as leader of the Corporatist Party of Canada. Canadians from coast to coast are jublant as the rout of the Blue Meanies heralds the return to power of Canada’s natural governing party.

A columnist always hopes to be proven right in matters such as this, but this is one time when I wish I had been wrong. After nine years of Stephen Harper’s fascism—yes, fascism—the electorate had a chance to vote in the New Democratic Party, which, for all of its flaws, was prepared to return the country to Parliamentary rule and oppose the obsequious official corporatism that has destroyed Canada’s democracy. Instead, voters gave the Liberals, led by the gormless Justin Trudeau, a majority even though Trudeau forced his Liberals to endorse Harper’s corporatist destruction of Canada.

So, why did voters not elect Mulcair and the NDP, which would have repealed the worst excesses of Harperism, such as Bill C-51 (Canada’s Enabling Act), which rendered the Constitution obsolete? There are several reasons, all of which prove that democracy in this country is still a farce.

To begin with, a telegenic neophyte who spouts banalities and poses for photo ops has a better chance of forming a government than a stern but smart leader who articulates coherent policies. This preference for style over substance is not a new phenomenon, of course: the entertainment industry is full of mediocrities who survive on their looks rather than talent, and what is politics if not electoral theatre?

Another reason is grooved thinking. Much of the country still does not take the NDP seriously as a governing party and is, in fact, conditioned to fear it. The reason I suspect is an institutionalized, uncritical worship of low taxes and the false equation of said worship with individual prosperity. Since the NDP puts the public interest ahead of the acquisitiveness of robber barons and foreign governments, it is not adverse to raising taxes, especially on corporations, which enjoy an absurdly low 15% tax rate.

Sufficient numbers of people, robovoters, cannot comprehend that starving the government of tax revenue so that it cannot provide services and run itself effectively is not a sign of fiscal frugality; it is a sign of willful self-impoverishment. The purpose of government is to provide for public wants, said Rt. Hon Edmund Burke, but no rational discussion of public wants, much less the public good, is possible in a climate that has deemed public spending to be tantamount to theft. Harperite fear propaganda made much of this quasi-religious anti-tax/anti-statist fetish and many voters continue to take it seriously. For what it’s worth, the Liberals sing from the same hymn book but not as loudly.

Undoubtedly, the most important reason is betrayal by the national media. Most obviously, it prejudiced the outcome in favour of the Liberals. Even though, the National Compost, Canada’s answer to Der Stürmer, offered up the expected editorial homilies to His Harperness, the Globe and Mail churned out fellatial praise for Trudeau. Clearly, the Canadian Liberal establishment could no longer stomach Harperism and so anointed Trudeau to succeed him. Against this, the NDP had little chance of success since its corporate media allies are few.

Once the voting was underway, the media decisively skewed the voting by declaring that the Liberals were the odds-on favourite to defeat Harper. Upon hearing this, voters rushed to vote Liberal, even those that had wanted to vote NDP or Green. This “strategic voting,” designed to get rid of Harper worked, inflated the Liberal vote at the expense of electoral honesty. Trudeau does not deserve to lead a majority government and the NDP and Greens did not deserve to be slaughtered at the polls. If Canada had a preferential ballot or mixed-member proportional representation, voters would not have been afraid to vote their conscience. The Liberals and NDP, respectively, supported these reforms during the campaign. Will Trudeau keep his word? I won’t hold my breath.

Finally, for nine years the media covered up the essential criminality of Harperism and allowed it to pass for a conservative party. Harper‘s systematic attack on the institutions of Canada should have been cause for national revolution and the media should have led the charge. Instead, it became an accomplice, adhering to an ossified notion of objectivity that allowed Harper to pass himself off as a “prime minister.” Any criticism was kept within strict limits of propriety as the illusion of democratic normalcy had to be maintained at all costs.

The following passionate, succinct excerpt from Martin Lukacs in The Guardian is what voters needed to read and read often:

Harper’s greatest success in hampering the state from serving Canadians has been to strip it of its most important resource: taxes. Continuing a Liberal legacy, Harper’s cuts to taxes – GST, corporate and personal – have enriched corporations and denied the state a stunning $45 billion a year in revenue. … Such policies have reduced the country to depression-era divisions: Canada’s wealthiest 86 people now own as much as the 11.4 million poorest.

He concluded:

On 19 October, Canadians will have their chance to combat a home-grown threat – a threat posed not by veiled women, but by the dismembering of their country. When a regime so utterly ransacks its own lands and people, can we stop describing it as the governing of a nation? It is more akin to a barbarian invasion.

No Harperite candidate deserved a single vote, for there is no redeeming virtue to a party that “utterly ransacks its own lands and people” and then has the gall to pass itself off as a protector of the economy. Yet, the illusion of “conservatism” was allowed to persist unchallenged.

Imagine a journalist writing about taxes as a “most important resource.” Imagine this election after the human, financial and societal costs of Harper’s dictatorship over the past four years had been depicted day in and day out with the clarity and sobriety of Lukacs.

The NDP might have stood a fair chance.

October 20, 2015 Posted by | Economics | | Leave a comment

What I Learned about Climate Change: The Science is not Settled

By David Siegel – October 16, 2015

What is your position on the climate-change debate? What would it take to change your mind?

If the answer is It would take a ton of evidence to change my mind, because my understanding is that the science is settled, and we need to get going on this important issue, that’s what I thought, too. This is my story.

More than thirty years ago, I became vegan because I believed it was healthier (it’s not), and I’ve stayed vegan because I believe it’s better for the environment (it is). I haven’t owned a car in ten years. I love animals; I’ll gladly fly halfway around the world to take photos of them in their natural habitats. I’m a Democrat: I think governments play a key role in helping preserve our environment for the future in the most cost-effective way possible. Over the years, I built a set of assumptions: that Al Gore was right about global warming, that he was the David going up against the industrial Goliath. In 1993, I even wrote a book about it.

Recently, a friend challenged those assumptions. At first, I was annoyed, because I thought the science really was settled. As I started to look at the data and read about climate science, I was surprised, then shocked. As I learned more, I changed my mind. I now think there probably is no climate crisis and that the focus on CO2 takes funding and attention from critical environmental problems. I’ll start by making ten short statements that should challenge your assumptions and then back them up with an essay.

The One Minute Climate Summary

1Weather is not climate. There are no studies showing a conclusive link between global warming and increased frequency or intensity of storms, droughts, floods, cold or heat waves.

2Natural variation in weather and climate is tremendous. Most of what people call “global warming” is natural. The earth is warming, but not quickly, not much, and not lately.

3There is tremendous uncertainty as to how the climate really works. Climate models are not yet skillful; predictions are unresolved.

4New research shows fluctuations in energy from the sun correlate very strongly with changes in earth’s temperature, better than CO2 levels.

5CO2 has very little to do with it. All the decarbonization we can do isn’t going to change the climate much.

6There is no such thing as “carbon pollution.” Carbon dioxide is coming out of your nose right now; it is not a poisonous gas. CO2 concentrations in previous eras have been many times higher than they are today.

7Sea level will probably continue to rise, naturally and slowly. Researchers have found no link between CO2 and sea level.

8The Arctic experiences natural variation as well, with some years warmer earlier than others. Polar bear numbers are up, not down. They have more to do with hunting permits than CO2*.

9No one has shown any damage to reef or marine systems. Additional man-made CO2 will not likely harm oceans, reef systems, or marine life. Fish are mostly threatened by people, who eat them.

10The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others are pursuing a political agenda and a PR campaign, not scientific inquiry. There’s a tremendous amount of trickery going on under the surface*.

Could this possibly be right? Is it heresy, or critical thinking — or both? If I’ve upset or confused you, let me guide you through my journey. … continue reading

October 17, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Environmentalism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Why Big Oil Supports a Carbon Tax, NYT Misleads Again

By David Addison | Seeking Alpha | October 14, 2015

… Internationally, many oil and gas majors which need higher energy prices have rallied around the implementation of a carbon tax. Recently, managements of Total, Shell, BP, BG Group, Repsol, Eni, and other state-run firms called for a carbon tax at a climate change conference in Paris.

While a New York Times editorial has suggested that these companies are finally experiencing the global awakening of the collective environmental consciousness, this move is patently self-serving to higher-cost producers who are struggling and will continue to struggle under a lower commodity price regime.

A tax on carbon emissions would incent utilities to shift from coal toward natural gas, thereby providing price uplift to these companies’ products. Also, such a tax would not likely cost the industry anything since regulatory costs would be passed to consumers. However, it would likely require hosts of compliance specialists, placing a disproportionate amount of stress on smaller, more thinly capitalized endeavors. Driving smaller players out of the business with increased regulation would serve two purposes: it allows the larger players to capture market share; and, it would put upward pressure on energy prices as supply would be driven out. … Full article

October 16, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Uruguay’s Withdrawal From TiSA Trade Deal in Country’s Interests

Sputnik – 15.10.2015

Uruguay’s most important services are transport and tourism, “and these are already liberalized,” therefore the country has “much to lose and little to gain” in the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) free trade deal, according to an Uruguayan senator.

Uruguay’s withdrawal from the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) free trade agreement talks was in the country’s interests, as the proposed deal is designed to serve mainly the United States and the large corporations, an Uruguayan senator told Sputnik.

TiSA is a proposed international trade deal between 24 parties, initiated by the United States and EU member states, to open up trade in services to a greater degree than allowed by the current General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Last month, Uruguay announced that it had pulled out of the multilateral negotiations. Paraguay followed suit shortly afterwards.

“It is not convenient to participate in these kinds of treaties as they mainly follow the line of interests of the United States and transnational [corporations],” Frente Amplio’s Marcos Otegui said, adding that the decision to abandon the talks was supported by a “large majority.”

According to the senator, Uruguay’s most important services are transport and tourism, “and these are already liberalized,” therefore the country has “much to lose and little to gain” in this deal.

Uruguay is betting on regional integration, but is open to the world, the senator stressed

“Today Uruguay deals with more than 160 countries… during much of the 20th century it only traded with 40 countries, therefore regional integration does not put a limit on trading with the world,” he said.

TiSA opponents argue that the controversial deal only seeks to tear down trade barriers to services Washington wants to sell abroad and paves the way for supranational labor laws, as well as finance and industrial policies that will undermine a national government’s ability to protect its citizens.

October 16, 2015 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

France signs deals worth €10bn with Saudi

MEMO | October 14, 2015

France has signed deals worth €10 billion with Saudi Arabia, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said yesterday.

Valls, who is visiting the gulf kingdom, announced the deal on his official Twitter account saying it aimed to “mobilise our companies and employment”.

Saudi King Salman Bin Abdulaziz met Valls in his palace in Riyadh yesterday.

The Saudi Press Agency said the two leaders discussed bilateral relations and ways of enhancing them as well as the latest developments in the region.

Meanwhile, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced during a press conference in Riyadh that the kingdom intends to purchase 30 French naval corvettes before the end of this year. France’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the deal includes the start of negotiations to provide Saudi Arabia with its own communication and observation satellites.

Valls arrived in Saudi Arabia on Monday after a regional tour that included visiting Egypt and Jordan.

October 15, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

US Hedge Fund Threatens Peru over Military Regime’s Debt

teleSUR | October 10, 2015

A U.S. hedge fund is threatening to sue Peru for payment of US$5.1 billion in unpaid bonds issued by the country’s former military government.

The fund, Gramercy, purchased the defaulted debt in 2008 for pennies on the dollar and is now demanding full repayment.

The tactic is similar to one employed by another U.S. hedge fund, Elliot Management, which has tried to use the U.S. legal system to compel the government of Argentina to repay the full amount of its own defaulted bonds.

“It’s ironic that this threat is coming amidst global meetings in Peru that continue to try and stop this kind of predatory behavior,” said Jubilee USA executive director Eric LeCompte, referring to the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund currently taking place in Lima.

Firms that try to collect defaulted debt in this manner are disparagingly referred to as “vulture funds.”

Gramercy is specifically threatening to sue Peru through a tribunal system known as the Investor State Dispute Settlement mechanism, or ISDS.

Peru’s finance minister, Alonso Segura, said on Friday that the government would oppose any legal action outside its borders. “That’s not going to happen,” he said. “This issue will be dealt with by Peruvian laws.”

The ISDS is comprised of special legal tribunals, often established through “free trade” agreements, that allow corporations in one country to collect on debts in another. Critics argue the system prevents country’s from overcoming crippling debts—in Peru’s case, debts incurred by an unelected military regime.

An ISDS-style trade tribunal is reportedly part of the recently signed Trans-Pacific Partnership, which includes Peru and 11 other Pacific Rim nations.

​As an alternative to the ISDS, the Union of South American Nations is currently reviewing a proposal to establish a regional Arbitration Center, which would analyze and propose mechanisms to reform arbitration proceedings that could take into account the broader needs of the society and continent as a whole.

October 12, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

SNP Demands Clear Stance on Trident From Scottish Labour Leader

Sputnik – 11.10.2015

Scotland’s Labour Party must clarify its position on the Trident nuclear deterrent system, the Scottish National Party (SNP) said as quoted by local media Sunday.

“This has been another week of absolute chaos for the Labour party on the issue of Trident,” the UK Press Association quoted SNP member of Scottish Parliament Bill Kidd as saying.

Kidd accused Scottish Labour Party leader Kezia Dugdale of misleading the public over whether Labour supports the ruling Conservative Party’s plan to renew the aging system or backs SNP’s position to scrap it.

Kidd demanded from Dugdale in a statement this week “to be straight with the people of Scotland – will they back the SNP in getting rid of Trident or will they back the Tories in spending 100 billion pounds [$153 billion] on weapons of mass destruction?”

British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn divided the party last week by publicly vowing not to deploy nuclear weapons under any circumstances and opposing the renewal of the Trident program.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister David Cameron said London will acquire four new Trident submarines “in the coming years.”

The Trident system is deployed at the UK Royal Navy’s Faslane naval base in Scotland, the United Kingdom’s only facility capable of hosting the four Vanguard-class ballistic missile-equipped submarines.

British Defense Procurement Minister Philip Dunne has said the so-called “main gate” decision on Trident’s successor is expected next year.

October 11, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Ukrainian Finance Minister: $40 Bln in Assistance Not Enough

Sputnik – 11.10.2015

Finance Minister Natalia Yaresko considers a $40 billion assistance program from the IMF not enough to guarantee Ukraine’s economic stability in the long-term.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Yaresko called for the United States, the EU and other loaners to double financial assistance to the conflict-torn state in 2016.

“Ukraine did everything possible to show its international partners that we do our best and that we are able to live up to our promises,” she explained. “I think it means that international partners should unanimously support us.”

Kiev’s government has won praise from the IMF and sponsors such as the US for making significant progress in implementing economic reforms, although the fund still expects the Ukrainian economy to contract 11 percent this year.

Still, Yaresko said the government needs more financial aid from the international community “to help finance infrastructure and other investment and demonstrate progress to its own citizens.”

Yaresko also announced that Kiev is not going to offer any special conditions to Russia over a $3 billion debt expected to be repaid by December 2015. The Finance Minister insisted on restructuring the debt under the terms of an agreement reached with other creditors in summer.

A four-year $17.5-billion assistance package to Ukraine was approved by the IMF on March 11 in an effort to put the country’s ailing economy on the path of recovery. The overall external financial aid package to Kiev amounts to about $40 billion, to be administered over the next four years and comprising loans from the International Monetary Fund, the United States and the European Union among others.

This year Ukraine already received $6,7 billion from 10 billion allocated for 2015.

October 11, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Oh Oil, where is thy peak?

By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – October 9, 2015

There are two great myths used in recent years to convince the world of imminent catastrophe unless we drastically change our living style in the direction of austerity. Both myths are based on scientific fraud and uncritical propagation by sympathetic mainstream and even some alternative media. One is the idea that world climate is warming, or at least “changing,” owing almost solely to us, to our man-made emissions. The second great myth, launched first in 1956 in Houston Texas by an employee of one of the world’s largest oil companies, was dusted off some 15 years ago at the start of the Dick Cheney-George W. Bush Administration. It’s called the theory of Peak Oil.

The good news is our coastal cities are not about to be washed away by melting icebergs or rising oceans, nor is our supply of conventional oil and gas–hydrocarbons–likely to run out for centuries or more. It has nothing to do with the highly damaging and very costly extraction of tight oil from shale rocks, but with the abundance of conventional oil around the world, the vast part of which has yet to be discovered or even mapped.

The most dramatic discoveries of new oil and gas reserves in recent years has come from the Mediterranean in areas off Cyprus, Israel, Lebanon and believed to be offshore Greece as well. In 2010 Israel and the Houston, Texas company, Noble Energy, discovered the largest offshore gas field, Leviathan. It was the world’s largest gas discovery in a decade, with enough gas to serve Israel for at least a century. The geophysics of the offshore areas around Greece suggest that that hapless country could also have more than enough undiscovered oil and gas to repay all foreign debt and more. Not surprisingly the Washington-led IMF demands that Greece privatize her state oil and gas companies, a near certainty that major Western oil firms would sit on their development as was done in past decades until leases expired in 2004 and reverted back to the Greek Government.

In 2006 Brazil’s Petrobras made the largest offshore oil discovery of the last 30 years, holding at least 8 billion barrels of oil in the Santos Basin 250 kilometers from Rio de Janiero. Then-President Lula da Silva proclaimed it would give the “second independence” for Brazil, that from Western oil imports. In 2008 nearby Petrobras, a state company, discovered an equally large natural gas field called Jupiter near their Santos oil discovery. Under Lula’s presidency, the Parliament passed measures to insure oil development would remain in Brazilian hands under Petrobras and not in those of the American and British or other foreign oil majors. In May 2013 after Lula retired and was succeeded by Dilma Rousseff as President, US Vice President Joe Biden flew to Brazil to meet with her and the heads of Petrobras. According to Brazilian sources, Biden demanded Rousseff remove the laws that kept American oil majors from controlling the huge oil and gas finds. She politely declined and soon after she was hit with a major US Color Revolution destabilization that continues to this day, not surprising, with a scandal around Petrobras at the center.

More recently, Iceland, recovering from her banking crisis, began seriously looking offshore for oil and gas in the Jan Mayen Ridge north of the Arctic Circle in 2012. The geophysics are the same as offshore North Sea and one Icelandic former senior government official told me during a visit some five years ago that a private geological survey indicated Iceland could be a new Norway. According to the US Geological Survey, the Arctic could hold 90 billion barrels of oil, most of which is untapped. China made Iceland a key partner, and the two signed a free-trade agreement in 2013 after China’s CNOOC signed an offshore joint venture in 2012 to explore the offshore.

In April 2015 the energy exploration firm UK Oil & Gas Investments announced it had drilled near Gatwick Airport and found what they estimated could be up to 100 billion barrels of new oil. By comparison the entire North Sea has yielded some 45 billion barrels in 40 years. As well in May, UK oil company Rockhopper announced a new oil discovery in the disputed waters of the Falkland Islands offshore of Argentina believed to contain up to one billion barrels of oil.

Now in August, 2015 the Italian oil company ENI announced discovery of a supergiant gas field in the Egyptian offshore, the largest ever found in the Mediterranean Sea, larger than Israel’s Leviathan. The company announced the field could hold a potential of 30 trillion cubic feet of lean gas in place covering an area of about 100 square kilometres. Zohr is the largest gas discovery ever made in Egypt and in the Mediterranean Sea.

There are huge undeveloped oil and gas reserves in the Caribbean, the area of an impact crater that made numerous fissures and where three active tectonic plates come together and part. Haiti is one such region, as is Cuba. In May the Cuban government released a study that estimated Cuba’s offshore territorial waters held some 20 billion barrels of oil. Russia’s oil subsidiary, Gazprom Neft, has already invested in one section in Cuban waters, and during Russian President Putin’s July, 2014 visit to Havana in which Russia cancelled 90% of Cuban Soviet-era debt worth some $32 billion, Igor Sechin, the CEO of Russia’s state-owned Rosneft, the world’s largest oil company, signed an agreement with Cupet, the Cuban state oil company, to jointly explore the basin off Cuba’s northeast coast. That Russian participation in the huge Cuban oil search might explain the sudden rush of the Obama Administration to “warm up” relations with Cuba.

How oil is ‘born’

The accepted oil industry explanation holds that oil is a finite resource, a so-called fossil fuel, biological in origin, that was created hundreds of millions of years ago by the death of dinosaurs whose detritis by some yet-unidentified physical process transformed into hydrocarbons. The claim is that concentrated biological detritis somehow sank deep into the earth—the world’s deepest oil drilling in Russia’s Sakhalin region, drilled by Exxon, is more than 12 kilometers deep. There it supposedly flowed into underground pockets they call reservoirs. Others say also algae and tree leaves and other biological decayed matter added to the process.

In the 1950s a group of Soviet scientists was tasked with making the USSR self-sufficient in oil and gas as the Cold War heated up. The first step in their research was to critically investigate all known scientific literature on origins of hydrocarbons. As they looked closely at the so-called fossil fuel theory of oil, they were amazed how unscientific it was. One physicist estimated that for the huge oil that has come out of one giant well, Ghawar, in Saudi Arabia, it would require a block of dead dinosaurs, assuming 100% conversion of meat and bone to oil, that would reach 19 miles wide, deep and high. They soon looked for other explanations for the birth of oil.

They made exhaustive tests in the deep-earth research labs in Moscow of the Soviet military. They developed the brilliant hypothesis that oil was constantly being created deep in the bowels of the Earth below the mantle. It pushes upward towards the surface passing through beds of various elements such as ferrite. They did repeated laboratory experiments producing hydrocarbons under temperature and pressure imitating that in the mantle. These migration channels, as the Soviet scientists termed them, were fissures in the mantle caused over millions of years under the expanding of the earth and forced by the enormous temperatures and pressures inside the mantle. The path the initial methane gas takes upwards towards the surface determines whether it emerges and collects as oil or as gas, as coal, as bitumen as in Canada’s Athabasca Tar Sands, or even as diamonds which are also hydrocarbons. The Russian and Ukrainian scientists also discovered, not surprisingly, that every giant oilfield was “self-replenishing,” that is new oil or gas is being constantly pushed up from inside the mantle via the faults or migration channels to replace oil withdrawn. Old oil wells across Russia that were pumped far beyond their natural full rate during the end of the Soviet era when maximum production was considered highest priority, were then shut, considered exhausted. Twenty years later, according to Russian geophysicists I have spoken with, those “depleted” wells are being reopened and, lo and behold, completely refilled with new oil.

The Russians have tested their hypothesis to the present day, though with little support until now from their own government, whose oil companies perhaps feared that a glut of new oil would collapse oil prices. In the west, the last thing Exxon or other Anglo-American oil majors wanted was to lose their (once) iron grip on the world oil market. They had no interest in a theory that would contradict their Peak Oil theory.

‘War for Oil’ nonsense

Today a geopolitical decision by Saudi Arabia to wipe out the market-disturbing recent emergence of the United States as world’s largest oil producer owing to the major increase in shale oil production, has temporarily collapsed world oil prices from over $100 a barrel in July 2014 to around $43 today in the US market. That is leading to a dramatic cut-back in oil exploration around the world. In a fair world, oil or gas should be available at affordable prices to every nation to serve its own energy requirements and not the monopoly of a tiny cartel of British or American companies. Good to know is the fact that the oil and gas are there in super-abundance that we need not freeze in the dark or turn to windmills until the time mankind develops completely different forms of energy that are clean and earth-friendly. Wars to control oil or gas would become silly nonsense.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics.

October 9, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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