I hope I don’t pretend to have expertise on everything. On fracking I have none. My entirely amateur views on the subject are that the major risk appears to be pollution of aquifers. The UK seems too seismically stable for earthquakes or volcanoes to be a serious concern. I am not terribly worried about the local environmental consequences of the installations – human activity of all kinds detracts from the natural environment in a sense. This spot was doubtless a great deal more pleasing aesthetically before Dundee was built upon it. But then Dundee has a great deal more human utility.
It is also plain to me that humans are going to have to burn fossil fuels for a while yet, despite the very obvious fact that we also need to put much more energy and resource into developing renewable alternatives.
So I am not opposed to fracking in principle, which I know will upset some people. But nor can I understand the hurry. Fracking is being undertaken on a very large scale in the United States and elsewhere. Onshore fracking is not actually a new technology at all, but its widespread use is new. Given concerns especially about the effects on underground water supplies, why don’t we just wait for thirty years and see how it turns out elsewhere? That should give time for a good accumulation of evidence.
The hydrocarbons are not going anywhere – they will still be there in thirty years time and I predict will be a good deal more valuable. So my entirely unprofound, non-fundamentalist and dully pragmatic view on fracking is that there should be a thirty year moratorium. Then we can think about it.
How to start a war and lose an empire
By Dimitry Orlov
A year and a half I wrote an essay on how the US chooses to view Russia, titled The Image of the Enemy. I was living in Russia at the time, and, after observing the American anti-Russian rhetoric and the Russian reaction to it, I made some observations that seemed important at the time. It turns out that I managed to spot an important trend, but given the quick pace of developments since then, these observations are now woefully out of date, and so here is an update.
At that time the stakes weren’t very high yet. There was much noise around a fellow named Magnitsky, a corporate lawyer-crook who got caught and died in pretrial custody. He had been holding items for some bigger Western crooks, who were, of course, never apprehended. The Americans chose to treat this as a human rights violation and responded with the so-called “Magnitsky Act” which sanctioned certain Russian individuals who were labeled as human rights violators. Russian legislators responded with the “Dima Yakovlev Bill,” named after a Russian orphan adopted by Americans who killed him by leaving him in a locked car for nine hours. This bill banned American orphan-killing fiends from adopting any more Russian orphans. It all amounted to a silly bit of melodrama.
But what a difference a year and a half has made! Ukraine, which was at that time collapsing at about the same steady pace as it had been ever since its independence two decades ago, is now truly a defunct state, with its economy in free-fall, one region gone and two more in open rebellion, much of the country terrorized by oligarch-funded death squads, and some American-anointed puppets nominally in charge but quaking in their boots about what’s coming next. Syria and Iraq, which were then at a low simmer, have since erupted into full-blown war, with large parts of both now under the control of the Islamic Caliphate, which was formed with help from the US, was armed with US-made weapons via the Iraqis. Post-Qaddafi Libya seems to be working on establishing an Islamic Caliphate of its own. Against this backdrop of profound foreign US foreign policy failure, the US recently saw it fit to accuse Russia of having troops “on NATO’s doorstep,” as if this had nothing to do with the fact that NATO has expanded east, all the way to Russia’s borders. Unsurprisingly, US–Russia relations have now reached a point where the Russians saw it fit to issue a stern warning: further Western attempts at blackmailing them may result in a nuclear confrontation.
Continued here: http://cluborlov.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/how-to-start-war-and-lose-empire.html
“For almost a century, various predictions have been made that the human race is imminently going to run out of available petroleum. The passing of time has proven all those predictions to have been utterly wrong. It is pointed out here how all such predictions have depended fundamentally upon an archaic hypothesis from the 18th century that petroleum somehow (miraculously) evolves from biological detritus, and is accordingly limited in abundance. That hypothesis has been replaced during the past forty years by the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins which has established that petroleum is a primordial material erupted from great depth. Therefore, petroleum abundances are limited by little more than the quantities of its constituents as were incorporated into the Earth at the time of its formation; and its availability depends upon technological development and exploration competence.”
http://www.gasresources.net/energy_resources.htm/
Hear, hear Mr McDonnell (the PM we never had) and Mr Ashmsn.
‘John McDonnell MP, who has tabled early day motion No 377 in support of the Occupy Democracy protesters, condemned the Met’s use of force.
“I have contacted the Metropolitan Police Commission to condemn the disproportionately large number of police officers used to break up what was simply a group of largely young people who wish to use the venue of Parliament Square for a time-limited period to engage in political discussion.
“It’s what we call democracy.”
Before being chucked into a police van another activist, Dan Ashman, shouted out: “This is not democracy, nothing is transparent.
“We’ve got secret trade deals like TTIP threatening our democracy, fracking going ahead without our consent, NHS privatisation and rapidly increasing inequality.
“Nobody voted for any of this. We need to be allowed to speak, say what we want, where we want.
“Democracy needs to be real democracy, not in name but in how we practice it.
“We have been oppressed and silenced this morning.”’
Police haul off Parliament Square protesters
Metropolitan Police tries to close off green to Occupy activists
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-372f-Police-haul-off-Parliament-Square-protesters#.VEdXh-F0z4Y
22 October 2014
For John Goss.
Nothing on the BBC about Serena Shim as we predicted but her death was reported in the Guardian and Mail.
Serena Shim killed in Turkey days after she claimed intelligence services had threatened her
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2799924/mystery-american-journalist-killed-car-crash-turkey-just-days-claimed-intelligence-services-threatened-coverage-siege-kobane.html
Iranian broadcaster raises suspicions about death of …
The Guardian
2 days ago – Serena Shim was reported to have died in a car accident while returning to her hotel in Turkey after leaving the strategically important Syrian …
http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/oct/20/journalist-safety-turkey
What have we done?
Alberta Tar Oil Sands – Before and after.
http://tiny.cc/wpe4nx
Keystone Pipeline A Nasty Headache For Obama
The President faces accusations of going back on an inauguration pledge to combat climate change if he approves the project.
Wednesday 22 October 2014
The proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline is one of the most controversial projects on American soil, and a nasty headache for Barack Obama. He must approve it because it runs across a national border, from Canada to oil refineries in Texas.
Say yes and critics will say he is breaking his pledge to combat climate change. Say no and he will be accused of being anti-jobs, progress, and energy security.
Protests over KXL oil pipeline. Keystone XL has come to symbolise the fight over America’s energy future
His decision has been six years in the making, postponed multiple times.
Now Keystone XL symbolises the fight over America’s energy future, at a time when oil prices have hit a two-year low, driven in part by a North American production boom.
Speaking at an anti-pipeline concert in Nebraska, musician Willie Nelson told Sky News: “I want the President to be watching what’s going on here today, learn something, and do the right thing: stop the pipeline.”
In part Mr Obama is waiting to see what happens in Nebraska before he makes a decision.
Although there are many who support the pipeline in this state, the anti-Keystone movement has forced a legal battle over the proposed route, stalling the whole process until the local courts make a decision.
Keystone XL would run for more than 1,000 miles, cutting through Nebraska’s prime farmland.
Opponents say they oppose a foreign corporation building a pipe through their land.
Many worry that spills could threaten Nebraska’s vast underground reservoir, and that the pipeline would increase global dependence on fossil fuels.
The company building the pipeline is Transcanada. It says Keystone XL will be one of the safest ever built. It has promised thousands of jobs, and changed its route to minimise impact on environmentally sensitive areas.
Transcanada’s pipeline would start in the Alberta oil sands.It is the third largest proven oil reserve in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, producing almost two million barrels of oil every day.
Cenovus energy company spokesperson Al Reid took us on a guided tour of one of his oil extraction operations. He said: “Before we even produce oil in Alberta at a facility like this, we go through a two to three-year regulatory process that looks at all the environmental and social aspects of what we’re going to do.”
But critics say the bitumen underground there is ‘dirty’ oil.
It needs heating to be extracted and transported which can emit more greenhouse gasses than with other similar fuels.
But a recent State Department report said that building Keystone XL would not have a significant impact on climate change, in part because oil sands development will happen anyway.
Heritage Foundation energy policy expert Nick Loris said: “It’s a great idea.
“You have a pipeline that’s bringing up to 830,000 barrels of oil a day and it’s coming from a safe reliable trading partner. Because oil is a globally traded commodity, the more oil we put in the market, the better Americans will be whether that is exported or not.”
http://news.sky.com/story/1357701/keystone-pipeline-a-nasty-headache-for-obama
Mary, regarding Serena Shim was almost certainly killed by the secret services. She was very frightened in that report. If Turkey really is holding the driver of a cement mixer in custody for the “accident” they’ve fitted him up. Think about it? How hard is it not to drive into a cement mixer? It’s not like you don’t see it. So the cement mixer must have driven into the car. It was an assassination.
Your truth always makes me uncomfortable Habbalies, because it isn’t truth.It is someone elses narrative that you are paid to spout.
The desert bloomed long before Israel was a country.
The Jaffa orange was a world reknowned brand before 1900 and the first Israeli settlers landed in Palestine.In the orange groves of Petah Tikva you can still find the ruins of the people who used to own them.Ethnically cleansed.
Like most history in Israel today it is manufactured and anything which makes it look incorrect is disappeared, whether it be people,mosques,artefacts,towns or villages.Luckily there is still an abundance of material showing the vibrant civilisation that existed in Palestine before the arrival of European ashkenazi Jews.
Heritage Foundation energy policy expert Nick Loris said: “It’s a great idea.
“You have a pipeline that’s bringing up to 830,000 barrels of oil a day and it’s coming from a safe reliable trading partner. Because oil is a globally traded commodity, the more oil we put in the market, the better Americans will be whether that is exported or not.”
————————————————————————
Oh yes. I’m trying to find out if Heritage Oil, Mr Nasty’s oil company, is connected in any way with the Heritage Foundation. I notice both are subscribers to hospitality for Alistair Darling and David Davis (Theyworkforyou but actually they work for themselves). I wonder how many others they buy? A bit busy. Have to leave this now. Thanks Mary.
The War on Terra – Canada vs Australia [RAP NEWS 17]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM3W5XBrVEA&list=UUKRw8GAAtm27q4R3Q0kst_g
Sorry, I meant Tony Buckingham when I wrote Mr Nasty for those not familiar with the owner of Heritage Oil. You are judged Alistair Darling (and others) on the company you keep.
Ishmael Australia and Canada sing exactly the same song from the same song-sheet. Here is Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Australian Prime Minister John Howard delivering the same speech (no doubt provided by the USA) to take us into an illegal war with Iraq. It is the real coalition of evil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYfDTsjwE58
Mr Taub (Israeli Ambassador to the UK) was apeaking at the Cambridge Union.
Press reports from last night’s action
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Pro-Palestine-societies-protest-talk-Israeli/story-23276114-detail/story.html
Pictures in this report
http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/news/0033119-palestine-forum-protest-israeli-ambassador.html
From this TCS piece it seems the noise protest had the effect of delaying the talk.
http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/news/0033115-israeli-ambassador-at-the-cambridge-union-live.html
Activity in Parliament yesterday.
Replies in the links.
TUESDAY 21 OCTOBER 2014
1. Chris Bryant [in Recall of MPs debate]: “Our primary role is no longer to scrutinise the Government or hold them to account; the majority of Members think that our primary role is to staff or sustain the Government. In the end, that is a problem. It is why we have all the planted questions and obsequious speeches and why votes we pass—on Magnitsky or Palestine—with massive majorities are completely and utterly ignored by the Government. It is why we still have a completely and utterly unreformed House of Lords where patronage remains vital.” [extract]
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm141021/debtext/141021-0002.htm
Commons Debates
2. Lord Hylton [in Bosnia and Herzegovina debate]: “I cannot help ending by agreeing most strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, on the point that he was making about visas. I have had experience of that in a different context—in my case, a Palestinian one. It is outrageous that very poor people are expected to pay large sums of money to get a visa. The Palestinians, for example, had to go to Amman in Jordan to get their visas to leave Palestine in order to come to England. That is the kind of thing that we are up against. I urge the Government to simplify, cheapen and improve the visa system.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldhansrd/text/141021-0002.htm#14102193000534
Lords Debates
3. Lord Maginnis of Drumglass: What assessment have HMG made of any relationship between their support for Palestinians’ right to self-determination and their position in respect of Turkish-Cypriots’ rights since 1963, in the light of their status as a guarantor power under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee?
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldhansrd/text/141021w0001.htm#14102178000227
Lords Written Answers
4. Lord Warner: Do HMG consider the marine territory relating to Gaza to be that agreed in the Oslo Accords or some lesser distance from the shoreline; and which country they consider to be the owner of mineral rights in such a marine territory?
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldhansrd/text/141021w0001.htm#14102178000244
Lords Written Answers
@John: as always with the murder of someone who is acting against the declared US strategic interest, the question has to be asked “Qui Bono?” One of the worst remarks I ever heard was uttered by Tony Blair in 2001… effectively “America is a force for Good”. There must have been many thousands of such unfortunate co-incidental deaths of good people daring to stand against the tyranny of US Foreign Policy over the years, probably starting from Hiroshima, and to be fair, many of such reported deaths may have had nothing to do with them. Also, I’m sure many other regimes would be just as bad, or even worse, if they had the resources and influence of the US. Power corrupts, and the rise of Hitler wasn’t an isolated incident. We shouldn’t be surprised when another tragic death occurs, but I hope someone is counting and keeping record, and justice will be done some day… As Nelson Mandela said “Forgive, but never forget”.
This news is mildly Fracking related, as in it refers to the peninsula formerly known as Ukraine’s Crimea, and those mad-as-a-bat Americans, who seem to have succeeded in winding-up those damned confusing Russkies.
But…but wasn’t that the NATO plan?, after all why spend years planning this color revolution in the Maidan if you didn’t consider the strategic implication? The economic and information war currently under way, was mentioned by an American Professor at NYU , Mark Galeotti has observed “Sanctions, of course, don’t kill people. In some ways, they are an inverse neutron bomb, leaving people alive while shattering economic infrastructures.” and he paints a bad-ending? But wars must end, and a well-planned war needs an achievable, meaningful goal. Again, let the recent adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq loom in the corner as bloody reminders of the risks in having no such goal. Until the West not only clarifies its collective goals, in the most explicit terms, and communicates this to Moscow, the risk is that Putin will assume the worst. I find more and more of my Russian interlocutors from government circles talking in apocalyptic terms, of a West determined to break, tame or humble the Motherland. And if Putin comes to believe he has nothing to lose in this undeclared war, what is to stop him escalating, invoking the most extreme and disruptive asymmetric options at his disposal?
I personally would like to keep my European life equidistant from US & RUS politics & influence, I don’t know if I’m in favor of Fracking to defeat Russia, TTIP to defeat Russia or color revolutions to defeat Russia – as these haven’t yet been explained to me, this is not done with my informed consent, just undertaken covertly. I’m annoyed that the ‘strategy of tension’ is being increased with CBRN nuclear things waved around, by idiots who shouldn’t be let near a tea-pot never mind a committee to overthrow a formerly independent European state.
Well done chaps!, now back to the pointy things, or remote Fracking devices as some might call them.
lets have some swear-words from gchq to dissuade the search-engines, how will that rebuild the INF credibility?
Tony M, Mary and Silvio.
Vladimir Putin released Khodorkovsky from prison in 2013 because (a)he said he was not interested in politics (he lied); more importantly (b)Vladimir encourages tighter cooperation with European allies on Russian terms and not in the way Khordorkosky advocates, particularly ‘toppling’ the ‘Putin regime’ i.e. the neo-con American way of forcing transition touted and conspired today by the CFR and Freedom House so called intelligent think-tanks.
Revolution, coup or assassination are the tools of Britain and America. Such methods have resulted in chaos plainly witnessed in Ukraine, Libya, Syria and Iraq.
I believe Khordorkosky is only interested in the ‘gravy train’ secreted in blood from the West to counter another ‘rotation’ of power in Russia and the knowledge that Russians are nationalists in the main and back Putin’s aspiration of an effective Russia.
Khordorkosky is aware the peaceful transition supported by Open Russia is futile. The assumption the West has retained an influence on Russia with its values position is long gone, drained away by an apathy towards the value of human life.
The picture of moral strength the West once framed has fallen between the cracks of war, the lesions of burning young flesh and the darkness of deceit and lies.
@Youknowmyname: A highly ironic LOL!
In the words of Corporal Jones, “They don’t like it up ’em!”
Links:
http://www.cfr.org/political-movements-and-protests/mikhail-khodorkovsky-open-russia-building-civil-society/p33572
http://www.freedomhouse.org/blog/khodorkovsky-s-speech-freedom-house-awards-dinner#.VEYpn_nF-3i
@Mark: I’m sure this doesn’t just apply to Russians but humane beings across the whole planet.
” If Turkey really is holding the driver of a cement mixer in custody for the “accident” they’ve fitted him up. Think about it? How hard is it not to drive into a cement mixer? It’s not like you don’t see it. So the cement mixer must have driven into the car. It was an assassination. ”
By that logic RTC’s just don’t happen and every one of the 3,865 people killed last year on Turkey’s roads must also have been the victim of an assassination.
But is it even feasible?…etc
Don’t know. Why don’t you find us some links for a change? I’m sick of having to educate you.*
And you omit my preference for bioengineered root bacteria, (which would make the question irrelevant), completely.
*and this blog is begining to suck donkey balls anyway.
Peak Oil basically means they aren’t making dinosaurs anymore, but they are better at finding a fossilized bone than they used to. It’s not a renewable resource. The Earth has limited quantities, but someone always wants to revise our thinking on that.
“Then the data took a detour from the bell curve. In 2008, the U.S. produced five million barrels a day. In 2009, U.S. oil production began to rise—at first slowly, then quickly. It is still rising today. Through the first half of 2014, it averaged 8.3 million barrels a day.
What changed? An innovation in oil-field technology, which peak-oil theory didn’t anticipate. Energy companies combined hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling to wring oil out of super-tight rock formations in North America. The industry figured out that pumping chemically slickened water and sand into shales could create thousands of fractures, each one a tiny path for energy molecules to travel into a well.”
http://online.wsj.com/articles/why-peak-oil-predictions-haven-t-come-true-1411937788
They can wrap it up like a Christmas package with bright bows and sparklies all they wish. The decorations don’t change the fact that we will run out of oil no matter how good we get at picking up scraps. Use that window for developing technology for the transition to non-fossil fuel. It’s coming like sundown.
Apparently, Obama’s fingerprints are all over this shit.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/21/white-house-cia-torture_n_6018488.html
WASHINGTON — White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough is personally negotiating how much of the Senate’s so-called torture report, a probe into the CIA’s post-9/11 detention and interrogation program, will be redacted, according to sources involved in the negotiations.
McDonough’s leading role in the redaction discussion has raised eyebrows in the Senate, given that his position comes with a broad array of urgent responsibilities and that the Obama White House has a team of qualified national security advisers.
Despite the White House’s public reluctance to get involved in the widely aired spat between the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee over the report, McDonough’s role suggests that the Oval Office sees the feud as a high-stakes one.
The White House confirmed McDonough’s involvement in the negotiations, but would not discuss the extent of it.
Pattern recognition is integral to human intelligence.
Christophe de Margerie was murdered.
Sweden recognises Palestine. Then a foreign submarine turns up off Stockholm.
I wonder where the sub is from…
Putin’s revenge: it’s a two-fer.
http://www.euractiv.com/sections/energy/moscow-ukraine-expects-west-pay-its-31-billion-gas-bill-309341
Puts it in the neighbourhood, I would say:
http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/09/08/powerful-submarine-joins-israels-navy/
“Don’t know. Why don’t you find us some links for a change? I’m sick of having to educate you.*”
I did and in my humble opinion the numbers would not add up.
“And you omit my preference for bioengineered root bacteria, (which would make the question irrelevant), completely.”
So you say.
“*and this blog is begining to suck donkey balls anyway.”
Nobody is twisting your arm to read it.
Mike,
How does your source put it in the neighbourhood? INS Tanin arrived in Haifa on the 24th of September.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Netanyahu-welcomes-new-submarine-This-sends-a-clear-message-to-our-enemies-376192