 |
 |
|
Pipeline Geopolitics: The Russia German Nord Stream Strategic Gas Pipeline
By F. William Engdahl www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20080 Global Research, July 9, 2010
In the postwar history of the Federal Republic, German Chancellors tend to disappear once they pursue political goals that deviate from the Washington global agenda too much. In the case of Gerhard Schroeder, it involved two unforgiveable “sins.” The first was his open opposition to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The second, far more serious strategically, was his negotiations with Russia’s Putin to bring a major new natural gas pipeline directly from Russia, bypassing then-hostile Poland, to Germany. Today the first section of that Nord Stream gas pipeline has reached the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern coastal town of Lubmin on the Baltic Sea, making Lubmin into a geopolitical pivot for Europe and Russia.
Gerhard Schroeder in effect owed his job to the quiet but influential backing of US President Bill Clinton who, according to our German SPD sources, demanded that a Schroeder Red-Green coalition, if elected, support a US-NATO war against Serbia in 1999. Washington wanted to end the era of Helmut Kohl. By 2005, however, Schroeder was far too “German” for Washington, and, reportedly, the Bush Administration turned its considerable attention to backing a successor.
His last act as Chancellor was to approve a giant gas pipeline from Russia’s port of Vyborg near the Finnish border to Lubmin, called Nord Stream. On leaving office, Schroeder became chairman of Nord Stream AG, a joint venture between Russia’s state-owned Gazprom and German companies E.ON-Ruhrgas and BASF-Wintershall. He also increased his public critique of US foreign policies, accusing US-client state Georgia of initiating the 2008 war against South Ossetia.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
|
|
Some Big Lies of Science
By Dr. Denis G. Rancourt www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19653 Global Research, June 10, 2010
“[T]he majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.”– Harold Pinter, Nobel Lecture (Literature), 2005
The maintenance of the hierarchical structures that control our lives depends on Pinter’s “vast tapestry of lies upon which we feed.” Therefore, the main institutions that embed us into the hierarchy, such as schools, universities, and mass media and entertainment corporations, have a primary function to create and maintain this tapestry. This includes establishment scientists and all service intellectuals in charge of “interpreting” reality.
In fact, the scientists and “experts” define reality in order to bring it into conformity with the always-adapting dominant mental tapestry of the moment. They also invent and build new branches of the tapestry that serve specific power groups by providing new avenues of exploitation. These high priests are rewarded with high class status.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
|
|
|
How Financial Brokers Became Bookies: The Insidious Transformation of Markets Into Casinos
By Ellen Brown www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20121
"You all are the house, you're the bookie. [Your clients] are booking their bets with you. I don't know why we need to dress it up. It's a bet."
Senator Claire McCaskill, Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, investigating Goldman Sachs (Washington Post, April 27, 2010)
Ever since December 2008, the Federal Reserve has held short-term interest rates near zero. This was not only to try to stimulate the housing and credit markets but also to allow the federal government to increase its debt levels without increasing the interest tab picked up by the taxpayers. The total public U.S. debt increased by nearly 50% from 2006 to the end of 2009 (from about $8.5 trillion to $12.3 trillion), but the interest bill on the debt actually dropped (from $406 billion to $383 billion), because of this reduction in interest rates.
One of the dire unintended consequences of that maneuver, however, was that municipal governments across the country have been saddled with very costly bad derivatives bets. They were persuaded by their Wall Street advisers to buy credit default swaps to protect their loans against interest rates shooting up. Instead, rates proceeded to drop through the floor, a wholly unforeseeable and unnatural market condition caused by rate manipulations by the Fed. Instead of the banks bearing the losses in return for premiums paid by municipal governments, the governments have had to pay massive sums to the banks – to the point of bankrupting at least one city (Montgomery, Alabama).
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
|
|
COAST WATER EXPERT SLAMS DESALINATION UPGRADE WORKS
11th MAY 2010
A LEADING Gold Coast water treatment consultant and environmental commentator has spoken out against the technology of desalination saying the Queensland Government has already wasted enough money on the problem-plagued Tugun desalination plant.
Wayne Slack, the principal of Burleigh-based Grander Water Technologies (Australia) Pty Ltd, has over 14 years experience working in top-end water treatment and management. He says the $1.2 billion Gold Coast desalination plant has been plagued with problems since it was commissioned, continues to pose major environmental concerns and shouldn’t be expanded.
“The process of desalination requires pre-treatment with cleansing chemicals that more than often find their way back into the ocean,” he said. These harsh chemicals include chlorine, hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide and once they've lost their ability to clean the water they’re dumped into the ocean to poison plant and animal life,” Mr Slack said.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
From the Gold Coast, Queensland...
