Trump Is Crystal Clear About Our Oil and Gas

oilprice |  Ever since the U.S. signalled through its effective withdrawal from Syria that it now has little interest in becoming involved in military actions in the Middle East, the door has been fully opened to China and Russia to advance their ambitions in the region. For Russia, the Middle East offers a key military pivot from which it can project influence West and East and that it can use to capture and control massive oil and gas flows in both directions as well. For China, the Middle East – and, absolutely vitally, Iran and Iraq – are irreplaceable stepping stones towards Europe for its era-defining ‘One Belt, One Road’ project. Earlier this week an announcement was made by Iraq’s Oil Ministry that highlights each of these factors at play, through a relatively innocuous-sounding contract award to a relatively unknown Chinese firm.

Specifically, it was announced that China Petroleum Engineering & Construction Corp (CPECC) has been awarded a US$121 million engineering contract to upgrade the facilities that are used to extract gas during crude oil production at the supergiant West Qurna-1 oilfield in Iraq, 50 kilometres northwest of the principal oil hub of Basra. The project is due to be completed within 27 months and aims to increase the capture of gas currently being flared across the site. Two factors that were not highlighted in the general announcement were firstly that CPECC is a subsidiary of China’s principal political proxy in the oil and gas sector, China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), and secondly that the gas capture project will also include the development of the oil reserves at West Qurna 1. The current level of oil reserves at West Qurna 1 is just under nine billion barrels but, crucially, the site is part of the overall massive West Qurna reservoir that comprises at least 43 billion barrels of crude oil reserves. “For China, it’s always all about positioning itself so that it is perfectly placed to expand its foothold,” a senior oil and gas industry source who works closely with Iraq’s Oil Ministry told OilPrice.com earlier this week. 

Certainly it makes sense for Iraq to finally begin to monetise its associated gas that it has been burnt off for decades as a product of its burgeoning oil production. Aside from the negative environmental impact of this practice, there is the bizarre practical result that Iraq – which holds some of the biggest oil and gas reserves in the world – has to go to its neighbour Iran every year and beg for electricity imports to plug the huge power deficits that afflict it, particularly during the summer months. As it stands, Iraq has been steadily importing around one third of its total energy supplies from Iran, which equates to around 28 million cubic feet (mcf) of gas to feed its power stations. Even with these extra supplies, frequent daily power outages across Iraq occur and have been a prime catalyst for widespread protests in the past, including last year. The situation is also likely to become worse if change does not occur as, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Iraq’s population is growing at a rate of over one million per year, with electricity demand set to double by 2030, reaching about 17.5 gigawatts average.

Apart from this, burning gas associated with the production of crude oil is costing Iraq billions of dollars in lost revenues. It loses money in the first place because in order to try to minimise power shortages, Iraq is forced to burn crude oil directly at power plants that it could sell in the open market for currently well over US$55 per barrel (and the lifting cost per barrel in Iraq is just US$2 on average). In this context, the average volume of crude oil used for power generation has fallen in the past two years from a peak of 223,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2015 but it still averages around 110,000 bpd, or around US$2.25 billion per year in value. It costs Iraq money in the second place because this associated gas that is flared could itself either be sold off directly or in LNG form or used as high-quality feedstock to finally truly kick-start the country’s long-stalled petrochemicals industry that itself could generate massive added-value product revenue streams. According to the IEA, Iraq has around 3.5 trillion cubic metres (tcm) of proven reserves of gas - mainly associated - which would be enough to supply nearly 200 years of Iraq’s current consumption of gas, as long as flaring is minimised. It added, though, that proven reserves do not provide an accurate picture of Iraq’s long-term production potential and that the underlying resource base – ultimately recoverable resources – is significantly larger, at 8 tcm or more.

Catholic Fascists After Pope Francis Like Adam Schiff After Trump...,

lifesitenews  |  An international group of 100 priests and lay scholars published a statement today to protest the pagan worship of Pachamama that took place last month during the Amazon Synod in Rome with Pope Francis' active participation and apparent support. They called upon the Pope to “repent publicly and unambiguously of these objectively grave sins” and asked bishops’ around the world to “offer fraternal correction to Pope Francis for these scandals.”

Titled “Protest against Pope Francis's Sacrilegious Acts,” the statement (read full below) highlights Pope Francis' personal responsibility for the worship of a pagan idol in Rome. 

Among the signatories, which include more than 20 priests and deacons, are Professor John Rist, Professor Roberto de Mattei, Professor Claudio Pierantoni, Professor Josef Seifert, as well as Professor Anna Silvas. There are also to be found twenty priests and deacons, among them Father Brian Harrison and the outspoken critic of Pope Francis, Father Cor Mennen. The prominent German Catholic laywoman, Gloria Princess of Thurn und Taxis, also signed, in addition to authors such as Henry Sire, José Antonio Ureta, and Dr. Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg.

The priests and scholars “protest against and condemn the sacrilegious and superstitious acts committed by Pope Francis, the Successor of Peter, in connection with the recent Amazon Synod held in Rome,” and they give detailed evidence of the different incidences of pagan worship during the Amazon Synod.

Most prominently, Pope Francis hosted a pagan ceremony with Pachamama statues in the Vatican Gardens on Oct. 4 and even blessed one of the statues. Additionally, he prayed in front of the Pachamama statue at St. Peter's Cathedral on October 7 and then accompanied it in procession into the synod hall.

Pachamama Banished - Catholic Fascists Proclaim "Bolivia Belongs to Christ!!!"

The rich oligarch leader of Bolivia's right-wing coup, Luis Fernando Camacho, was the leader of an explicitly fascist paramilitary group.

Here are some clips from a promotional historical documentary it published:https://t.co/gFMyfjsi2p pic.twitter.com/XXNQfhD7ii

— The Grayzone (@GrayzoneProject) November 12, 2019

thegrayzone |  Bolivian coup leader Luis Fernando Camacho is a far-right multi-millionaire who arose from fascist movements in the Santa Cruz region, where the US has encouraged separatism. He has courted support from Colombia, Brazil, and the Venezuelan opposition.

When Luis Fernando Camacho stormed into Bolivia’s abandoned presidential palace in the hours after President Evo Morales’s sudden November 10 resignation, he revealed to the world a side of the country that stood at stark odds with the plurinational spirit its deposed socialist and Indigenous leader had put forward. 

 

With a Bible in one hand and a national flag in the other, Camacho bowed his head in prayer above the presidential seal, fulfilling his vow to purge his country’s Native heritage from government and “return God to the burned palace.” 

“Pachamama will never return to the palace,” he said, referring to the Andean Mother Earth spirit. “Bolivia belongs to Christ.”

See How it Works?

consortiumnews |  There has been a military coup in Bolivia backed by violent right-wing  rioters and the U.S. government, but you’d hardly know this from any of the mainstream media headlines.

 

“Bolivian President Evo Morales steps down following accusations of election fraud” proclaims CNN.

“Bolivia’s Morales resigns amid scathing election report, rising protests” reports The Washington Post.

“Bolivian Leader Evo Morales Steps Down” says The New York Times.

“Bolivian President Evo Morales resigns amid fraud poll protests” declares the BBC.

“President of Bolivia steps down amid allegations of election rigging” we are informed by Telegraph.

“Bolivia’s President Morales resigns after backlash to disputed election” says the Sydney Morning Herald.

So, there you have it. The indigenous leader of a socialist South American government which has successfully lifted masses of people out of crushing poverty, which happens to control the world’s largest reserves of lithium (which may one day replace oil as a crucial energy resource due to its use in powering smartphones, laptops, hybrid and electric cars), which has an extensive and well-documented history of being targeted for regime change by the U.S. government, simply stepped down due to some sort of scandal involving a “disputed election.” Nothing to do with the fact that right-wing mobs had been terrorizing this leader’s family, or the fact that the nation’s military literally commanded him to step down and are now currently searching for him to arrest him, leading to ousted government officials being rounded up and held captive by soldiers wearing masks.

All perfectly normal and not suspicious at all.

Shifting Gears for a Minute: Lessons Learned from the Bolivia Coup

moonofalabama |  The coup in Bolivia is devastating for the majority of the people in that country. Are their lessons to be learnt from it?

Andrea Lobo writes at WSWS:

Bolivian president Evo Morales of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party was forced to resign Sunday evening by the Bolivian military in a coup backed by the United States. Last night, Morales tweeted that he is “leaving for Mexico” after that country agreed to grant him asylum. After three weeks of protests following the disputed October 20 presidential elections, the imperialist powers and their Bolivian client elite have overthrown the government of Morales. In the context of a deepening crisis of global capitalism and a resurgence of the class struggle internationally, including recent mass strikes among miners and doctors in Bolivia, the ruling class lost confidence that Morales and the MAS apparatus can continue to suppress social opposition.

During his twelve years in office Evo Morales achieved quite a lot of good things:

Illiteracy rates:
2006 13.0%, 2018 2.4%

Unemployment rates
2006 9.2%, 2018 4.1%

Moderate poverty rates
2006 60.6%, 2018 34.6%

Extreme poverty rates
2006 38.2%, 2018 15.2%

But Morales failed to build the defenses that are necessary to make such changes permanent. The leadership of the military and police stood against him. Why were these men in such positions?

Jeb Sprague @JebSprague - 20:19 UTC · Nov 11, 2019

The US coup connection
Officials who forced #Evo to resign worked as #Bolivia's Mil. Attachés in DC. The CIA often seeks to recruit Attachés working in DC.
2013: Gen. Kaliman served as Mil. Attaché
2018: Police Com. Calderón Mariscal was Pres. of APALA in DC

The Agregados Policiales de América Latina (APALA) is supposed to fight international organized crime in Latin America. It is curiously hosted in Washington DC.

These police and military men cooperated with a racist Christian-fascist multi-millionaire to bring Morales down.

Morales had clearly won a fourth term in the the October 20 elections. The vote count was confusing (pdf) because it followed the process defined by the Organization of American States:

Drones For Mapping And Exploring The Deep Blue Sea

sciencefriday |  Giant jellyfish and mussels. Pallid shrimp, fish, and sea cucumbers. Never-before-seen octopus species. All these and more dwell in the deep sea, 200 meters (over 650 feet) and deeper beneath the ocean surface. It’s the largest habitat on Earth, but it’s also one of the least understood. 

As mining companies eye the mineral resources of the deep sea—from oil and gas, to metal deposits—marine biologists like London’s Natural History Museum’s Diva Amon are working to discover and describe as much of the deep sea as they can. Amon has been on dozens of expeditions to sea, where she’s helped characterize ecosystems and discover new species all over the world. And she says we still don’t know enough about deep sea ecology to know how to protect these species, the ones we’ve found and the ones we haven’t yet, from mining. 

[This is not your ordinary pine cone.]

But accessing the deep ocean is expensive; it can cost anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 a day to run a research ship. So roboticists and artificial intelligence designers are developing underwater drones to map and sniff out the secrets of the deep with the help of sophisticated chemical sensors. These robotic explorers could someday hunt down sunken ships or planes, hydrothermal vents, and biological spectacles such as rare species or a whale fall, at a cost significantly cheaper than today. Nine teams of roboticists designing these underwater crafts are now in a race to win the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE.

[The science behind Kilauea’s 30-year eruption.]

In this segment, Amon and XPRIZE’s Jyotika Virmani join Ira to talk about the future of deep ocean exploration—and what we might find there. And Martin Brooke, team leader of Blue Devil Ocean Engineering at Duke University, will discuss his team’s plan for mapping the deep ocean: aerial drones that drop sonar-sounding pods into the seas, then reel them up and move them to the next target.

Genie Energy and Oil in the Golan Heights

lewrockwell |  QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong I live in Israel and today I listened to your podcast with Macrovoices. At some point you mentioned that there is more oil in Golan heights than in Saudi Arabia -and this oil belongs to genie energy. Is it true? How can it be that nobody knew nothing about this in Israel? Are you sure 100 % about this information? I will be happy to know more about this.

ANSWER: Yes. This is one of the best kept secrets. You can imagine that if this went into production, then the disputed Syrian land issue occupied by Israel would come to the forefront. This is why it gets no play but this is one reason Obama was working to overthrow the Syrian government. They would not have political people on the Strategic Advisory Board if they did not need political strings pulled.

Politically, you have the Pipe Line from Qatar being one major issue that was to compete with Russia in selling gas to Europe, which is why Putin is involved. He is not involved in Egypt, Israel, or even Afghanistan. This is the reason why Putin has an interest in Syria and the mainstream media of course championed Obama claiming he was defending children. Then we have Genie Oil and strategic oil reserves within occupied Syria. Just look at the people who are are heavy hitters on the Strategic Advisory Board of Genie Oil!  Not bad for a company nobody has heard of and the glaring issue is why do you need heavy hitters like this just to pump oil? Location! Location! Location! The mainstream media is not going to report on this issue. They even have Rupert Murdoch on their Strategic Advisory Board. This is hush hush in the mainstream media.

Jeff Sessions Should Prosecute the Koch Bros. for Bribery

counterpunch |  On March 22, organizations led by Charles and David Koch, who have made tens of billions of dollars from the environmentally toxic business that they inherited from their father (Koch Industries), issued a lucrative offer to Republican congressmen: vote against Rep. Paul Ryan’s healthcare bill in exchange for generous 2018 campaign donations. Naturally, the flip-side of their offer was a threat: vote for the bill and we give you nothing.

The two multi-billionaires opposed Ryan/Trumpcare because of their libertarian, Social Darwinist belief that everybody, no matter how poor, is on his/her own and should not receive even the most minimal help from the government. This is an old American story – white plutocrats, deluded into thinking that they are self-made men rather than fantastically lucky beneficiaries of their parents’ wealth, opting to manipulate politicians into helping them keep as much of it as possible – and then helping them make even more to boot.

Aside from the Koch Brothers’ callousness, insatiable greed, and arrogant sense of entitlement, the real story here is that they just committed a serious white-collar crime: bribery. Bribery, as defined in federal statute 18 U.S.C. § 201, includes “directly or indirectly, corruptly giv[ing], offer[ing] or promis[ing] anything of value to any public official . . . with intent to influence any official act . . .”

For our purposes, the most important words in this statute are “offers” and “promises.” Even if the Koch Brothers were now to retract their offer or fail to follow through for any particular politician, they still issued it. In this sense, it’s like attempt or conspiracy. It does not require actual consummation – that is, an actual exchange of money for legislative action.

Many, if not most, Americans, including politicians and journalists, probably believe that this kind of “quid pro quo” – the exchange of a thing of value for an “official act” – though distasteful, is perfectly legal, especially after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. But Citizens United did not legalize bribery. On the contrary, it said that bribery – “quid pro quo corruption” or its appearance – is the one thing that corporations may not engage in; pretty much everything else, including spending anonymous and unlimited “independent expenditures” on political advertisements, is constitutionally permitted. Of course, we know that this bribery still goes on all the time between candidates and Super PACs, but we rarely have hard evidence because they are generally smart enough to do all their bribing behind the scenes, not directly in front of the media like the Koch Brothers just did.

venezuela - lack of organic community competency development or victim of economic hitmen?

zerohedge |  As we reported yesterday, Maduro on Friday night declared a 60-day state of emergency due to what he called plots from Venezuela and the United States to subvert him. He did not provide specifics. 

As Reuters adds today, "the measure shows Maduro is panicking as a push for a recall referendum against him gains traction with tired, frustrated Venezuelans, opposition leaders said during a protest in Caracas."

"We're talking about a desperate president who is putting himself on the margin of legality and constitutionality," said Democratic Unity coalition leader Jesus Torrealba, adding Maduro was losing support within his own bloc. 

"If this state of emergency is issued without consulting the National Assembly, we would technically be talking about a self-coup," he told hundreds of supporters who waved Venezuelan flags and chanted "he's going to fall." 

The people's will was already made clear late last year when the opposition won control of the National Assembly in a December election, propelled by voter anger over product shortages, raging inflation that has annihilated salaries, and rampant violent crime, but the legislature has been routinely undercut by the Supreme Court. The lit fuse is therefore entirely in the hands of the increasingly more desperate people. Protests are on the rise and a key poll shows nearly 70% of Venezuelans now say Maduro must go this year. 

Maduro has vowed to see his term through, however, blasting opposition politicians as coup-mongering elitists seeking to emulate the impeachment of fellow leftist Dilma Rousseff in Brazil. 

Saying trouble-makers were fomenting violence to justify a foreign invasion, Maduro on Saturday hinted that a violent crackdown on enemies, both foreign and domestic, may be imminent when he ordered military exercises for next weekend. 

"We're going to tell imperialism and the international right that the people are present, with their farm instruments in one hand and a gun in the other... to defend this sacred land," he boomed at a rally. He added the government would take over idled factories, and in the process "radicalize the revolution:"

"Comrades, I am ready to hand over to communal power the factories that some conservative big wigs in this country have stopped. An idled factory is a factory handed over to the people. We are going to do it, fuck it!"

Critics of Maduro, a former union leader and bus driver, say he should instead focus on people's urgent needs. 

"There will be a social explosion if Maduro doesn't let the recall referendum happen," said protester Marisol Dos Santos, 34, an office worker at a supermarket where she says some 800 people queue up daily.But the opposition fear authorities are trying to delay a referendum until 2017, when the presidency would fall to the vice president, a post currently held by Socialist Party loyalist Aristobulo Isturiz. 

"If you block this democratic path we don't know what might happen in this country," two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles said at the demonstration. 

"Venezuela is a time bomb that can explode at any given moment." 

human conflict arising from natural resources

energyskeptic |  The special issue on Human Conflict (18 May, p. 818) largely ignores a central dimension of violent conflict: the complex role of natural resources in the onset (Ross 2004) and conduct of conflict, peacemaking, and recovery from conflict.

Grievances over access to land have been central to wars in countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nepal (Macours 2011, Kay 2002). Inequitable distribution of oil and gas revenues drove secessionist conflicts in places such as Indonesia’s Aceh and southern Sudan (Collier 2012).

Since the end of the Cold War, conflicts based on resources have grown rapidly in number: Armed groups in at least 18 conflicts have relied on revenues from diamonds, timber, coltan, and a range of agricultural crops from cacao to coca (UN 2009). For centuries, armies have targeted natural resources and the environment to deprive enemies of cover, food, and support (Austin 2000), and the increased use of resources to finance conflicts has enhanced their value as a military objective (Autessere 2010).

Between 1946 and 2008, 40 to 60% of all intrastate conflicts were linked to natural resources. Resource-related conflicts are more likely to relapse, and do so twice as quickly compared with situations following conflicts without a link to natural resources (Rustad 2010).

middle-east water shortage the root cause of war and refugee crisis?

revealnews |  Secret conversations between American diplomats show how a growing water crisis in the Middle East destabilized the region, helping spark civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and how those water shortages are spreading to the United States.

Classified U.S. cables reviewed by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting show a mounting concern by global political and business leaders that water shortages could spark unrest across the world, with dire consequences.

Many of the cables read like diary entries from an apocalyptic sci-fi novel.

“Water shortages have led desperate people to take desperate measures with equally desperate consequences,” according to a 2009 cable sent by U.S. Ambassador Stephen Seche in Yemen as water riots erupted across the country.

On Sept. 22 of that year, Seche sent a stark message to the U.S. State Department in Washington relaying the details of a conversation with Yemen’s minister of water, who “described Yemen’s water shortage as the ‘biggest threat to social stability in the near future.’ He noted that 70 percent of unofficial roadblocks stood up by angry citizens are due to water shortages, which are increasingly a cause of violent conflict.”

Seche soon cabled again, stating that 14 of the country’s 16 aquifers had run dry. At the time, Yemen wasn’t getting much news coverage, and there was little public mention that the country’s groundwater was running out.

These communications, along with similar cables sent from Syria, now seem eerily prescient, given the violent meltdowns in both countries that resulted in a flood of refugees to Europe.

Groundwater, which comes from deeply buried aquifers, supplies the bulk of freshwater in many regions, including Syria, Yemen and drought-plagued California. It is essential for agricultural production, especially in arid regions with little rainwater. When wells run dry, farmers are forced to fallow fields, and some people get hungry, thirsty and often very angry.

The classified diplomatic cables, made public years ago by Wikileaks, now are providing fresh perspective on how water shortages have helped push Syria and Yemen into civil war, and prompted the king of neighboring Saudi Arabia to direct his country’s food companies to scour the globe for farmland. Since then, concerns about the world’s freshwater supplies have only accelerated.

heatwave, mass casualties and suicides strike india amidst two year long drought and water crisis

robertscribbler |  India’s Two Year Drought - The drought itself is an ongoing feature — one that has lasted now for two years in many provinces as abnormally high temperatures and reduced monsoonal rains have produced severe and widespread impacts. In total, 10 of India’s 29 states are now suffering under drought conditions. Some locations, like the Maharashtra town of Latur, east of  Mumbai, are experiencing water shortages so severe that Indian officials have dispatched a drought relief train — containing a half a million liters of water — to provide aid. For hardest hit areas, the situation is so dire that riots are now a risk — prompting authorities to outlaw gatherings of more than 5 people near some water distribution sites. Maharashtra itself is experiencing some of the most severe losses with reports indicating that reservoirs there are at less than 5 percent capacity. Average capacity for all reservoirs throughout India amounted to just 29 percent by the end of March — and the annual monsoonal rains are still at least two months away.

Overall impacts are quite widespread. Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand has declared a water emergency. And the Ganges River is now so low that it is unable to provide water to cool one of the largest coal-fired electrical power stations in West Bengal — forcing it to suspend operations.The great river is dramatically shrunken — causing islands of mud to emerge even as pollutants concentrate in its thinning thread. A diminishing flow that India’s 1.3 billion people rely on for much of their water. It’s a greater crisis so extreme that late last month one of BBC’s India correspondents asked — is this the worst water crisis India has ever faced?

Such broad-ranging and long-lasting drought has hit India’s farmers hard. Last year, more than 3,500 farmers committed suicide after facing some of the worst conditions ever to strike India. This year, the situation is arguably even worse — forcing some desperate regions to consider cloud seeding as a means of possible drought alleviation.

malheur county targetted for gold and uranium mines

oregonlive |  Sprawling Malheur County could soon be in the spotlight as a mining hub -- or a battleground of uranium and gold mining interests vs. environmentalists trying to protect its lonesome sagebrush landscape.

Australian-owned Oregon Energy LLC hopes to mine 18 million pounds of yellowcake uranium from the southeastern Oregon high desert 10 miles west of McDermitt near the Oregon-Nevada boundary. The go-ahead to mine the so-called Aurora uranium deposit could bring up to 250 construction jobs to the county, followed by 150 mining jobs.

Meanwhile, Calico Resources USA Corp., a subsidiary of a Vancouver, B.C., company, may seek permits this month to chemically extract microscopic gold from a high desert butte south of Vale called Grassy Mountain, a project likely to create another 100 jobs.

The proposals will be the first real test of the 1991 chemical processing mining law passed by the Legislature in response to a debate over mining's future in Oregon, said environmentalist Larry Tuttle. The law ushered in tough new bonding requirements to weed out marginal operators and guarantee environmental cleanup.

Approval of the Grassy Mountain project could trigger a deluge of new chemical mining in Malheur County. Up to a dozen gold deposits similar to Grassy Mountain dot the high desert between the Snake River town of Huntington and Jordan Valley.

The county, sparsely populated with only 31,313 people, could use new jobs, said County Commissioner Dan Joyce. Its unemployment rate in November was 10.3 percent, compared with 9.1 percent for Oregon and 8.6 percent for the nation.

Mining companies have passed up the county in the past because of Oregon's environmentally conscious reputation, Joyce said. But this time, the sluggish local and state economies, higher mineral prices and technological advances in mining and cleanup could open a door to mining, he said.

"I'm thinking people are a lot hungrier now than they were," Joyce said.

Uranium mine plan

Oregon Energy's proposal calls for extracting ore from a mile-long, 600-foot wide, 250-foot deep open pit 10 miles west of McDermitt and 3 miles north of the Oregon-Nevada border. The mine, adjoining the former Bretz Mercury Mine, a contaminated open-pit site from the 1960s, would cost $200 million to develop and uranium extraction could continue for up to 20 years, said Oregon Energy President Lachlan Reynolds.

Plans call for the ore to be crushed and mixed with an acid solution in enclosed vats to leach out the uranium, he said. The acid would bond with the uranium and when dry become a sand-like powder called uranium oxide concentrate, or yellowcake. Yellowcake would bring $52 per pound and could fuel nuclear reactors or be processed into weapons.

Tuttle, spokesman for the Portland-based Center for Environmental Equity, foresees environmental problems.

eastern oregon once had a malheur indian reservation, guess what happened?

dailykos |  For most of the 1800s and earlier, Eastern Oregon was largely the territory of the Northern Paiute. The Malheur Indian Reservation was created in 1872 to set aside a small part of their former territory exclusively for Native Americans. The reservation was established by executive order of President Ulysses Grant. This was necessary since Congress refused to ratify the 1868 treaty negotiated with the Paiute (there’s rarely been any political benefit to treating Indians fairly).

Much like the right-wing extremists of today, settlers to the area flouted federal rules and began to illegally graze their cattle on Indian lands:

[...] to make matters worse, local stockmen had begun encroaching upon reservation lands. Some were so bold, [Agent W.V.] Rinehart wrote his 1878 report, “that they have even taken up their residence within the limits of the reservation, and make no secret of their intention to occupy and use the land.”

And yes, that’s exactly what Cliven Bundy is doing on federal lands in Nevada and what his son Ammon Bundy is advocating in Oregon. The illegal encroachment by Euro-American settlers in the 1870s inevitably led to conflict with Indians. This then led to settlers agitating for the Federal government to remove the Indians and redistribute their land to Euro-Americans. They succeeded. 

In 1879, the reservation was closed and the land opened up for Euro-American settlement (Asian-Americans and African-Americans also settled in the area). The closure was precipitated by the Bannock War of 1878 in which the Northern Paiute were peripherally involved. Most Paiute Indians resident in the area were forcibly moved to the Yakima reservation in Washington state and not permitted to return till 1887. Today, the Wadatika band of the Paiute continues to inhabit the small Burns-Paiute reservation. 

You can find a fascinating set of maps of the region and the forced removals at this University of Oregon course website: Decolonizing research — The Northern Paiute History.

Here’s Indian Country’s succinct roundup:

President U.S. Grant established the Malheur Indian Reservation for the Northern Paiute in 1872. It is no coincidence that the historical reservation shares a name with the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, site of the current armed standoff.

White settlement nibbled at the Malheur Indian Reservation until the Bannock War in 1878, which ended with surrendered Paiutes and Bannocks on the reservation being removed, officially to the Yakima Reservation in Washington Territory. Unofficially, Paiutes had scattered all over the Western States that comprised their aboriginal lands. The Burns Paiute Reservation is the remains of the Malheur Reservation and the Malheur Wildlife Refuge is an alternative use for the federal land, for those who believe the federal government exists.

war is a racket

thedailybeast |  Turkey’s relationship with with ISIS is… complicated. Critics have accused the Turkish government of allowing, if not encouraging, the terror group’s activities along Turkey’s border.

On Nov. 24, a Turkish warplane shot down a Russian attack plane that apparently briefly strayed into Turkey’s airspace. One Russian crew member died. Moscow retaliated with economic sanctions and, in early December, accused Turkey of facilitating ISIS’s illicit oil exports, which reportedly account for half of the terror group’s revenue.

On Dec. 3, the Russian defense ministry released imagery—apparently provided by the Persona or Resurs-P2 satellites—that allegedly depict thousands of ISIS oil tankers headed for a Turkish port. At least, that was the Russian claim. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, denied the allegation in no uncertain terms. “Shame on you—those who claim we buy oil from Daesh are obliged to prove it,” Erdogan said, using a slang term for ISIS. “If not, you are a slanderer.”

Whatever the truth, the imagery is a stark reminder that Russia’s campaign in Syria isn’t just an air, ground, and sea war. Moscow’s Middle East intervention also extends hundreds of miles into space.

for racetards and bibtards mistakenly believing they've spotted some common ground...,

salon |  Sometime in 1994, as Afghanistan tumbled into disarray in the wake of the civil war that followed the 1989 Soviet withdrawal, there emerged a highly secretive and heavily armed group known as the Taliban. Its declared purposes were to restore peace, to enforce traditional law and to defend the Islamic character of Afghanistan. The world now knows the rest of the story. After the cleric-led movement captured Kabul, the nation’s capital, in September 1996, it became clear to all observers that the Taliban represented a very troubling development in Islamic radicalism.

The Taliban, which springs from the Sunni branch of Islam, began a genocidal campaign designed to wipe out Shiite Muslims from much of Afghanistan. It openly countenanced international terrorism, harboring the criminal mastermind Osama bin Laden and giving him virtually free rein to plan bombings and assassinations. And it imposed a disturbing and deeply fundamentalist form of Muslim culture on the nation. Under the Taliban regime, girls’ schools were closed and women were forced to quit their jobs (at one time, 40 percent of Afghan doctors were female) and to wear a head-to-toe garment known as the burkha. Movies, television, videos, music and dance — all were banned.

This is a story that needs telling to a wide audience, and journalist Ahmed Rashid, who has covered the Afghan wars for more than 20 years as a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Daily Telegraph, is well equipped to do that. Getting it was not an easy task: The Taliban is about as impenetrable a political organization as exists anywhere in the world. Its acknowledged leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, has never met with Western reporters or diplomats and has never even been photographed.

The tale is even more complicated, though. There’s also the matter of oil — specifically the desire of international oil companies to build a pipeline from the Caspian oil-producing region (home to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and several other small nations) to serve potentially massive markets in South Asia. The route goes directly through Afghanistan, and the result has been what Rashid refers to as “romancing the Taliban”: For years, he reports, U.S. economic interests, driven by oil, took precedence over human-rights concerns; only very recently did pressure from American women concerned about the repression of Afghan women finally lead to a reversal in policy. Rashid was on the scene all along, covering what he calls the new “Great Game” in Central Asia, a late 20th century version of the late 19th century colonial struggle for hegemony. “Policy was not being driven by politicians and diplomats,” he writes, “but by the secretive oil companies and intelligence services of the regional states.”

The chief virtue of Rashid’s account is his ability to delve beneath the surface of events without falling prey to a one-sided Marxist-style economic analysis. Oil is important — but so is geopolitics, including the American desire to play off Afghanistan against Iran; and so are the obvious issues surrounding the oppression of women by the Taliban. As Rashid places the Taliban in its historical and social context, he accomplishes the difficult task of maintaining a degree of empathy while still excoriating the organization as cruel, barbaric and repressive. Its members aren’t even good Muslims by anyone’s standard except their own:

Revelation 2: 12-13 (Pergamum = Turkey)

buchanan |  Turkey’s decision to shoot down a Russian warplane was a provocative and portentous act.

That Sukhoi Su-24, which the Turks say intruded into their air space, crashed and burned — in Syria. One of the Russian pilots was executed while parachuting to safety. A Russian rescue helicopter was destroyed by rebels using a U.S. TOW missile. A Russian marine was killed.

“A stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorists,” said Vladimir Putin of the first downing of a Russian warplane by a NATO nation in half a century. Putin has a point, as the Russians are bombing rebels in northwest Syria, some of which are linked to al-Qaida.

As it is impossible to believe Turkish F-16 pilots would fire missiles at a Russian plane without authorization from President Tayyip Recep Erdogan, we must ask: Why did the Turkish autocrat do it?

Why is he risking a clash with Russia?

Answer: Erdogan is probably less outraged by intrusions into his air space than by Putin’s success in securing the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, whom Erdogan detests, and by relentless Russian air strikes on Turkmen rebels seeking to overthrow Assad.

Imperiled strategic goals and ethnicity may explain Erdogan. But what does the Turkish president see down at the end of this road?

And what about us? Was the U.S. government aware Turkey might attack Russian planes? Did we give Erdogan a green light to shoot them down?

These are not insignificant questions.

belief means not wanting to know what is true - nietzsche

zerohedge |  Six months later, it looks like those plans are on track. As WSJ reports on Friday, "China plans to build its first overseas naval installation in the East African nation of Djibouti, expanding the geographical reach of its armed forces as Beijing seeks to protect its growing economic and security interests around the globe."

True to form, China is attempting to downplay the effort, calling the installation a "support facility." "This facility will better ensure that the Chinese military can carry out responsibilities such as international peacekeeping, naval escorts in the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters, and humanitarian assistance,” a defense ministry spokesman said.

As WSJ goes on to note, "China has often cited its lack of foreign bases as evidence of peaceful intentions, but has been rapidly expanding its military capabilities in recent years to defend its regional territorial claims and project power far into the Pacific and Indian oceans and the Mediterranean."

The US - which also has a base in Djibouti - is adopting Washington's trademark condescending paternalism in discussions with the country's government. "We definitely have concerns and parameters that were communicated in terms of how we think they should manage Chinese or anyone else entering into what is already a fairly congested space."

Here's a bit of useful color from The New York Times:

China announced on Thursday that it would establish its first overseas military outpost and unveiled a sweeping plan to reorganize its military into a more agile force capable of projecting power abroad.

The outpost, in the East African nation of Djibouti, breaks with Beijing’s longstanding policy against emulating the United States in building military facilities abroad.

By establishing an outpost in the Horn of Africa — more than 4,800 miles away from Beijing and near some of the world’s most volatile regions — President Xi Jinping is leading the military beyond its historical focus on protecting the nation’s borders.

Together with the plan for new command systems to integrate and rebalance the armed forces, the two announcements highlight the breadth of change that Mr. Xi is pushing on the People’s Liberation Army, which for decades has served primarily as a lumbering guardian of Communist Party rule.

A presence in Djibouti would be China’s first overseas logistics facility to service its military vessels since the Communists took power, said David Finkelstein, director of China studies at CNA, an independent research institute in Arlington, Va.

“In the grand sweep of post-1949 Chinese history, this announcement is yet another indicator that Chinese policy is trying to catch up with national interests that have expanded faster than the capacity of the People’s Republic of China to service them,” Mr. Finkelstein said.

The new facility would enable the navy to live up to a strategy laid down this year by the Communist Party in a major defense document, known as a white paper, that outlined its ambitions to become a global maritime power.

China has invested heavily in Djibouti’s infrastructure, including hundreds of millions of dollars spent upgrading the country’s undersize port. It has also financed a railroad extending from Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, to Djibouti, a project that cost billions of dollars. The country has a population of about 900,000, many of whom live in poverty.

Strategically, Djibouti offers an excellent place from which to protect oil imports from the Middle East that traverse the Indian Ocean on their way to China, military experts say. From Djibouti, China gains greater access to the Arabian Peninsula.

Indeed they do, and that means not only will Beijing be able to keep a close eye on seaborne crude, they'll also be better prepared to intervene in Mid-East affairs should the situation call for it.

africa: america's laboratory for a new kind of war

tomdispatch | In the shadows of what was once called the “dark continent," a scramble has come and gone. If you heard nothing about it, that was by design. But look hard enough and -- north to south, east to west -- you’ll find the fruits of that effort: a network of bases, compounds, and other sites whose sum total exceeds the number of nations on the continent. For a military that has stumbled from Iraq to Afghanistan and suffered setbacks from Libya to Syria, it’s a rare can-do triumph. In remote locales, behind fences and beyond the gaze of prying eyes, the U.S. military has built an extensive archipelago of African outposts, transforming the continent, experts say, into a laboratory for a new kind of war.

So how many U.S. military bases are there in Africa?  It’s a simple question with a simple answer.  For years, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) gave astock response: one. Camp Lemonnier in the tiny, sun-bleached nation of Djibouti was America’s only acknowledged “base” on the continent.  It wasn’t true, of course, because there were camps, compounds, installations, and facilities elsewhere, but the military leaned hard on semantics.

Take a look at the Pentagon’s official list of bases, however, and the number grows.  The 2015 report on the Department of Defense’s global property portfolio lists Camp Lemonnier and three other deep-rooted sites on or near the continent: U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit No. 3, a medical research facility in Cairo, Egypt, that was established in 1946; Ascension Auxiliary Airfield, a spacecraft tracking station and airfield located 1,000 miles off the coast of West Africa that has been used by the U.S. since 1957; and warehouses at the airport and seaport in Mombasa, Kenya, that were built in the 1980s.

That’s only the beginning, not the end of the matter.  For years, variousreporters have shed light on hush-hush outposts -- most of them built, upgraded, or expanded since 9/11 -- dotting the continent, including so-calledcooperative security locations (CSLs).  Earlier this year, AFRICOM commander General David Rodriguez disclosed that there were actually 11 such sites.  Again, devoted AFRICOM-watchers knew that this, too, was just the start of a larger story, but when I asked Africa Command for a list of bases, camps and other sites, as I periodically have done, I was treated like a sap.

“In all, AFRICOM has access to 11 CSLs across Africa. Of course, we have one major military facility on the continent: Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti,” Anthony Falvo, AFRICOM’s Public Affairs chief, told me.  Falvo was peddling numbers that both he and I know perfectly well are, at best, misleading.  “It’s one of the most troubling aspects of our military policy in Africa, and overseas generally, that the military can’t be, and seems totally resistant to being, honest and transparent about what it’s doing,” says David Vine, author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World.

Research by TomDispatch indicates that in recent years the U.S. military has, in fact, developed a remarkably extensive network of more than 60 outposts and access points in Africa.  Some are currently being utilized, some are held in reserve, and some may be shuttered.  These bases, camps, compounds, port facilities, fuel bunkers, and other sites can be found in at least 34 countries -- more than 60% of the nations on the continent -- many of them corrupt,repressive states with poor human rights records.  The U.S. also operates “Offices of Security Cooperation and Defense Attaché Offices in approximately 38 [African] nations,” according to Falvo, and has struck close to 30 agreements to use international airports in Africa as refueling centers.

the kissingerian realist view of mexico is....?

firstlook |  The U.S. loves human-rights-abusing regimes and always has, provided they “cooperate”: meaning, honors U.S. dictates. On human rights abuses, such compliant regimes “get at least a free pass”: at least, meaning either passive acquiescence or active support. The only time the U.S. Government pretends to care in the slightest about human rights abuses is when they’re carried out by “countries that don’t cooperate,” in which case those flamboyant objections to abuses are used by U.S. officials as punishment for disobedience: to “ream them as best we can.”

This is not remotely new, of course, nor should it be even slightly surprising for people who pay minimal attention to the role of the U.S. Government in the world. But this nonetheless highlights what baffles me most about U.S. political discourse: how – whenever it’s time to introduce the next “humanitarian war” or other forms of attack against the latest Evil Dictator or Terrorist Group of the Moment – so many otherwise intelligent and well-reasoning people are willing to believe that the U.S. Government is motivated by opposition to human rights abuses and oppression.

Support for human rights abuses and tyranny – not opposition to it – is a staple of U.S. foreign policy. Standing alone: how can anyone believe that the same government that lavishes the Saudi regime with arms, surveillance capabilities and intelligence is waging war or using other forms of violence in order to stop human rights abuses? [Read this informative New York Times article today describing the central role played by the U.S. government in the ongoing, truly heinous slaughter of Yemeni civilians by its close Saudi ally, consistent with the months of Yemen-based reporting done by The Intercept on these atrocities].

If one wants to spout the Kissingerian “realist” view that only U.S. interests matter and human rights abuses are irrelevant, then fine: one can make that argument cogently and honestly if amorally. But to take seriously U.S. rhetoric on human rights abuses and freedom – we’re going to war against or otherwise sternly opposing these monstrous human-rights abusers – is totally mystifying in light of U.S. actions. The next time you’re tempted to do that, just read what U.S. officials, in their rare, candid moments, themselves say about how they cynically concoct and exploit human rights concerns.