personal photos
Can anybody tell me what this is? I was just lucky to be walking by. Seems to be Corvette-based.
LeMans car after scrutineering on Saturday
LeMans car after scrutineering
Classic car race, SaturdayWon by Bobby Rahal
-Cosine67~~~
Thursday 29 October 2009
trip to Silverstone for LeMans series
Sat, August 11 2009
personal photos
Can anybody tell me what this is? I was just lucky to be walking by. Seems to be Corvette-based.
LeMans car after scrutineering on Saturday
LeMans car after scrutineering
Classic car race, Saturday
Won by Bobby Rahal
-Cosine67~~~
personal photos
Can anybody tell me what this is? I was just lucky to be walking by. Seems to be Corvette-based.LeMans car after scrutineering on SaturdayLeMans car after scrutineeringClassic car race, SaturdayWon by Bobby Rahal
-Cosine67~~~
Wednesday 28 October 2009
houses full of stuff destroy the environment
Modern humans are so intelligent that they can make houses which completely separate us from the wild,so much so, that a bug is seen as an invader.
___
Update: In a Hallowe'en story to scare people, the BBC has been saying that the average house has 30 bugs. Run for the hills! It seems that many Brits have arachnophobia. If they were poisonous, so would I, but most aren't. In Oz, they ARE a problem.
____
But, houses are actually destroying the environment in so many ways and I don't mean just the wasting of wood, glass, cement and man-made materials.
1. House price increases lead to the destruction of more of the environment.
So, you want to live in a city, say London. You need to find a house and the closer you get to the center of town, the more expensive the houses get.
So, what do you do? Go to a brand new housing development 2 hours from your work, built on greenspace. That might be within your budget. So, high prices force builders and homeowners to tear up greenspace. We force government to extend roads, rails, public utilities (sorry, privatised utilities) into the wilderness.
2. Mortgages worsen destruction of the environment
The ease with which people can get mortgages encourages them to ask for much more money than they should. They want just enough rope not to hang themselves. So, they buy a much bigger house than they really need, wasting materials and paying a 100% premium, in interest, risking bankruptcy, and requiring them to work more.
3. Consumerism destroy more of the environment
Our consumerism means we keep more junk than our houses can hold, so, we get bigger houses than we really need, just to store our stuff.
[pic d4all.com, George Carlin, A place for my stuff. Saw his live show for this album.]
[pic utvols.com, Steve Martin, The Jerk. "I just need my chair, and my..."]
UPDATE:
When I try to explain my belief in keeping a house uncluttered, I bullshit people and tell them I feng shuei my house. It gets a laugh, but I have my hoarding tendencies for certain things. I hang on to stuff to recycle it at the right place, even if it takes some planning. I also keep lots of newspaper clippings. I buy used books and videos etc., but some people are nuts about stuff...worthless stuff.
Along comes a show to solve this problem for lots of real hoarders. It's called "Gutted" and its on the Home channel in the UK. I saw it advertised on another channel, and because this is Britain, it's not actually on the Home channel. At least, not on my freeview access to the Home channel.
Anyway, I just wanted to watch people 'see the light' and get over the shock of losing their 'stuff'. I truly feel that our materialism is basically a psychological ILLNESS.
Secondly, it's wasteful in ways we can only begin to imagine. Think about all the things that go into motion when your purchase creates the need for a replacement for the thing you bought. From raw materials to the factory, to the box, to the transport (usually from China), to the store, to the bag, to the car you used to go shopping, to the place to put your stuff. Nutso!
Thirdly, most of it is not necessary for survival, but it could push you into bankruptcy, or other lesser financial problems. So, think! Do you need a certain thing to survive, or not? Everything else is secondary.
Fourthly, stuff and distance cut us off from other people. We all need community and communication but folks nowadays are much happier in their place with their stuff.
Businesspeople love logistics. They sort out how to source materials and take a product through the stages of production and delivery. They think nothing of filling a ship in China and using fossil fuels to ship their junk over to us. To hell with 'em. Who needs their junk?
Globalisation is a much bigger issue, but rich folk knew that they could get much richer by making stuff in Asia and using cheap fuel and shipping services to move their products over to us, the hungry consumers. Meanwhile, they lied to us about the fact that they would be taking our manfucturing jobs the likes of which would never return. So, after 3 decades of this stuff, we're into a cycle of crises, heavily in debt, buying crap while Asia is basking in the glow of globalised capitalism. Great! By not buying, you'll be sending your own little message to the globalisers. Hi, globalisers! Screw you, pals 'o mine! Bye, now!
If you NEED something, buy it from a manufacturer nearest to your house. It's hard, but not impossible. Buy local, as they say.
e.g. Do you really need for your wine to be imported from Australia? I know it only costs 1 dollar a bottle for transport, but I only buy European plonk, when I'm not drinking beer. I can't understand why it's necessary for us to have Aussie grapejuice. We have so much choice, even without Aussie wine. I wish I knew the name of the French winemaker who has started shipping its bottles to the UK by sailboat. Anybody know?
unlabelled pics from fotosearch.com
checkitout:
the home of Gutted: www.lovehome.co.uk
Thursday 4 June 2009
Autosport show January 2009
[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]
Here are some pictures of the technical issues I'll be discussing.
My point? That British car manufacturing was always about three nutty guys working incessantly in a garage. They never could cut it as a car-manufacturing nation, and so they no longer are.
Quaife sequential gear shift
Mini with a Hyabusa motorbike engine out back. Simple. Light-weight. Sounds like a rocket.
Morgan . Try getting GM to make one of these.
Caterham . Lithe. Low, like a python.
Ginetta racer
Ariel tube-frame car . No fat.
Here are some pictures of the technical issues I'll be discussing.
My point? That British car manufacturing was always about three nutty guys working incessantly in a garage. They never could cut it as a car-manufacturing nation, and so they no longer are.
Quaife sequential gear shift
Mini with a Hyabusa motorbike engine out back. Simple. Light-weight. Sounds like a rocket.
Morgan . Try getting GM to make one of these.
Caterham . Lithe. Low, like a python.
Ginetta racer
Ariel tube-frame car . No fat.-Cosine67 ~~~
Wednesday 3 June 2009
Grease is the word; oil, that is. Causus belli. Yee-haw
[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]
Ever wondered what our dependence on oil and gas, especially from other countries has done to the planet, environmentally?
Well, as far as the big boys (BP, Shell, US, UK, Russia etc.) are concerned, that doesn't even enter into the equation because they're gonna use every last drop anyway.
[Update: Turkmenistan didn’t sign with US, Azerbaijan after all.]
-Cosine67~~~
Ever wondered what our dependence on oil and gas, especially from other countries has done to the planet, environmentally?
Well, as far as the big boys (BP, Shell, US, UK, Russia etc.) are concerned, that doesn't even enter into the equation because they're gonna use every last drop anyway.
It's GEOPOLITICS TIME!
Yes, Ladies and Lads
It's that time
in the history of the Earth
when large political entities
will fight it out
for control of oil and gas.
In other words
CAUSUS BELLI time
ding-dong, ding-dong
goes the bell-i
goes the bell-i
Here's an article from Pepe Escobar of Tomdispatch.com
about the pipeline contest. To the winner goes all the hot gases in Central Asia.
Step right up. Take a sniff.
__
[my comments- Cosine67]
Pepe Escobar tomdispatch.com
Pipeline-istan
As Barack Obama heads into his second hundred days in office, let's head for the big picture ourselves, the ultimate global plot line, the tumultuous rush towards a new, polycentric world order. In its first hundred days, the Obama presidency introduced us to a brand new acronym, OCO for Overseas Contingency Operations, formerly known as GWOT (as in Global War on Terror). Use either name, or anything else you want, and what you're really talking about is what's happening on the immense energy battlefield that extends from Iran to the Pacific Ocean. It's there that the Liquid War for the control of Eurasia takes place.
Yep, it all comes down to black gold and "blue gold" (natural gas), hydrocarbon wealth beyond compare, and so it's time to trek back to that ever-flowing wonderland -- Pipelineistan. It's time to dust off the acronyms, especially the SCO or Shanghai Cooperative Organization, the Asian response to NATO, and learn a few new ones like IPI and TAPI. Above all, it's time to check out the most recent moves on the giant chessboard of Eurasia, where Washington wants to be a crucial, if not dominant, player.
We've already seen Pipelineistan wars in Kosovo and Georgia [I freakin' new it! Something caused the US to change its policy on Yugoslavia overnight. I'd like to find out which lobbyist came-a-visiting that fateful night. And, you can put aside that fairytale about Russian oppression of Georgia because Georgia has tried to use the US to limit Russian influence and gas markets& pipelines and the US has tried to use Georgia for the same reason. It's a diplomatic stand-off, cold-war style.], and we've followed Washington's favorite pipeline, the BTC, which was supposed to tilt the flow of energy westward, sending oil coursing past both Iran and Russia. Things didn't quite turn out that way, but we've got to move on, the New Great Game never stops. Now, it's time to grasp just what the Asian Energy Security Grid is all about, visit a surreal natural gas republic, and understand why that Grid is so deeply implicated in the Af-Pak war.
Every time I've visited Iran, energy analysts stress the total "interdependence of Asia and Persian Gulf geo-ecopolitics." What they mean is the ultimate importance to various great and regional powers of Asian integration via a sprawling mass of energy pipelines that will someday, somehow, link the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, South Asia, Russia, and China. The major Iranian card in the Asian integration game is the gigantic South Pars natural gas field (which Iran shares with Qatar). It is estimated to hold at least 9% of the world's proven natural gas reserves.
As much as Washington may live in perpetual denial, Russia and Iran together control roughly 20% of the world's oil reserves and nearly 50% of its gas reserves. Think about that for a moment. It's little wonder that, for the leadership of both countries as well as China's, the idea of Asian integration, of the Grid, is sacrosanct.
If it ever gets built, a major node on that Grid will surely be the prospective $7.6 billion Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, also known as the "peace pipeline." After years of wrangling, a nearly miraculous agreement for its construction was initialed in 2008. At least in this rare case, both Pakistan and India stood shoulder to shoulder in rejecting relentless pressure from the Bush administration to scotch the deal.
It couldn't be otherwise. Pakistan, after all, is an energy-poor, desperate customer of the Grid. One year ago, in a speech at Beijing's Tsinghua University, then-President Pervez Musharraf did everything but drop to his knees and beg China to dump money into pipelines linking the Persian Gulf and Pakistan with China's Far West. If this were to happen, it might help transform Pakistan from a near-failed state into a mighty "energy corridor" to the Middle East. If you think of a pipeline as an umbilical cord, it goes without saying that IPI, far more than any form of U.S. aid (or outright interference), would go the extra mile in stabilizing the Pak half of Obama's Af-Pak theater of operations, and even possibly relieve it of its India obsession.
[So, the control of Pakistan is mostly for oil reasons, not their nuclear bombs or terrorism. that's why they put Musharaf in charge, even though they must have known he couldn't stay forever.]
If Pakistan's fate is in question, Iran's is another matter. Though currently only holding "observer" status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), sooner or later it will inevitably become a full member and so enjoy NATO-style, an-attack-on-one-of-us-is-an-attack-on-all-of-us protection. Imagine, then, the cataclysmic consequences of an Israeli preemptive strike (backed by Washington or not) on Iran's nuclear facilities. The SCO will tackle this knotty issue at its next summit in June, in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
Iran's relations with both Russia and China are swell -- and will remain so no matter who is elected the new Iranian president next month. China desperately needs Iranian oil and gas, has already clinched a $100 billion gas "deal of the century" with the Iranians, and has loads of weapons and cheap consumer goods to sell. No less close to Iran, Russia wants to sell them even more weapons, as well as nuclear energy technology.
And then, moving ever eastward on the great Grid, there's Turkmenistan, lodged deep in Central Asia, which, unlike Iran, you may never have heard a thing about. Let's correct that now.
Gurbanguly Is the Man
Alas, the sun-king of Turkmenistan, the wily, wacky Saparmurat "Turkmenbashi" Nyazov, "the father of all Turkmen" (descendants of a formidable race of nomadic horseback warriors who used to attack Silk Road caravans) is now dead. But far from forgotten.
The Chinese were huge fans of the Turkmenbashi. And the joy was mutual. One key reason the Central Asians love to do business with China is that the Middle Kingdom, unlike both Russia and the United States, carries little modern imperial baggage. And of course, China will never carp about human rights or foment a color-coded revolution of any sort. [re Ukraine. Another democracy fairytale. The Gringos were just trying to mess with Russia's markets and pipelines.]
The Chinese are already moving to successfully lobby the new Turkmen president, the spectacularly named Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, to speed up the construction of the Mother of All Pipelines. This Turkmen-Kazakh-China Pipelineistan corridor from eastern Turkmenistan to China's Guangdong province will be the longest and most expensive pipeline in the world, 7,000 kilometers of steel pipe at a staggering cost of $26 billion. When China signed the agreement to build it in 2007, they made sure to add a clever little geopolitical kicker. The agreement explicitly states that "Chinese interests" will not be "threatened from [Turkmenistan's] territory by third parties." In translation: no Pentagon bases allowed in that country.
China's deft energy diplomacy game plan in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia is a pure winner. In the case of Turkmenistan, lucrative deals are offered and partnerships with Russia are encouraged to boost Turkmen gas production. There are to be no Russian-Chinese antagonisms, as befits the main partners in the SCO, because the Asian Energy Security Grid story is really and truly about them.
By the way, elsewhere on the Grid, those two countries recently agreed to extend the East Siberian-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline to China by the end of 2010. After all, energy-ravenous China badly needs not just Turkmen gas, but Russia's liquefied natural gas (LNG).
With energy prices low and the global economy melting down, times are sure to be tough for the Kremlin through at least 2010, but this won't derail its push to forge a Central Asian energy club within the SCO. Think of all this as essentially an energy entente cordiale with China. Russian Deputy Industry and Energy Minister Ivan Materov has been among those insistently swearing that this will not someday lead to a "gas OPEC" within the SCO. It remains to be seen how the Obama national security team decides to counteract the successful Russian strategy of undermining by all possible means a U.S.-promoted East-West Caspian Sea energy corridor, while solidifying a Russian-controlled Pipelineistan stretching from Kazakhstan to Greece that will monopolize the flow of energy to Western Europe.
The Real Afghan War
[The US and UK have hydrocarbon companies that stand to gain some bloody lucre. Meanwhile, Canada is the Elliot Ness of the Afghan war. Loss of life, with no political or military gain.]
In the ever-shifting New Great Game in Eurasia, a key question -- why Afghanistan matters -- is simply not part of the discussion in the United States. (Hint: It has nothing to do with the liberation of Afghan women.) In part, this is because the idea that energy and Afghanistan might have anything in common is verboten.
And yet, rest assured, nothing of significance takes place in Eurasia without an energy angle. In the case of Afghanistan, keep in mind that Central and South Asia have been considered by American strategists crucial places to plant the flag; and once the Soviet Union collapsed, control of the energy-rich former Soviet republics in the region was quickly seen as essential to future U.S. global power. It would be there, as they imagined it, that the U.S. Empire of Bases would intersect crucially with Pipelineistan in a way that would leave both Russia and China on the defensive.
Think of Afghanistan, then, as an overlooked subplot in the ongoing Liquid War. After all, an overarching goal of U.S. foreign policy since President Richard Nixon's era in the early 1970s has been to split Russia and China. The leadership of the SCO has been focused on this since the U.S. Congress passed the Silk Road Strategy Act five days before beginning the bombing of Serbia in March 1999 [The Gringos bombed a TV station that was airing something Clinton didn't like. What was it? They also bombed the Chinese embassy. Was that a hint to China re the control of gas supplies?]. That act clearly identified American geo-strategic interests from the Black Sea to western China with building a mosaic of American protectorates in Central Asia and militarizing the Eurasian energy corridor. [They Gringos’d rather work with the do-anything Albanians than the Slavic Serbs and FYROMians, who, in the end, will likely side with Russia. You should see what the Gringos've done to FYROM politics. They jerked their chains by recognising the name Macedonia the day before a plebecite which would have given the powerless Albanian minority enough powers to essentially 'secede' from the new Macedonia, taking 40% of the country with them. Slavs can no longer do anything in the 'Albanian' north. Same as Kosovo. Need any more proof?]
Afghanistan, as it happens, sits conveniently at the crossroads of any new Silk Road linking the Caucasus to western China, and four nuclear powers (China, Russia, Pakistan, and India) lurk in the vicinity. "Losing" Afghanistan and its key network of U.S. military bases would, from the Pentagon's point of view, be a disaster, and though it may be a secondary matter in the New Great Game of the moment, it's worth remembering that the country itself is a lot more than the towering mountains of the Hindu Kush and immense deserts: it's believed to be rich in unexplored deposits of natural gas, petroleum, coal, copper, chrome, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, and iron ore, as well as precious and semiprecious stones.
And there's something highly toxic to be added to this already lethal mix: don't forget the narco-dollar angle -- the fact that the global heroin cartels that feast on Afghanistan only work with U.S. dollars [going for strength. Oil and heroin.], not euros. For the SCO, the top security threat in Afghanistan isn't the Taliban, but the drug business. Russia's anti-drug czar Viktor Ivanov routinely blasts the disaster that passes for a U.S./NATO anti-drug war there, stressing that Afghan heroin now kills 30,000 Russians annually, twice as many as were killed during the decade-long U.S.-supported anti-Soviet Afghan jihad of the 1980s.
And then, of course, there are those competing pipelines that, if ever built, either would or wouldn't exclude Iran and Russia from the action to their south. In April 2008, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India actually signed an agreement to build a long-dreamt-about $7.6 billion (and counting) pipeline, whose acronym TAPI combines the first letters of their names and would also someday deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India without the involvement of either Iran or Russia. It would cut right through the heart of Western Afghanistan, in Herat, and head south across lightly populated Nimruz and Helmand provinces, where the Taliban, various Pashtun guerrillas and assorted highway robbers now merrily run rings around U.S. and NATO forces and where -- surprise! -- the U.S. is now building in Dasht-e-Margo ("the Desert of Death") a new mega-base to host President Obama's surge troops.
TAPI's rival is the already mentioned IPI [and the Taliban, who must be paid off], also theoretically underway and widely derided by Heritage Foundation types in the U.S., who regularly launch blasts of angry prose at the nefarious idea of India and Pakistan importing gas from "evil" Iran. Theoretically, TAPI's construction will start in 2010 and the gas would begin flowing by 2015. (Don't hold your breath.) Embattled Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who can hardly secure a few square blocks of central Kabul, even with the help of international forces, nonetheless offered assurances last year that he would not only rid his country of millions of land mines along TAPI's route, but somehow get rid of the Taliban in the bargain.
Should there be investors (nursed by Afghan opium dreams) delirious enough to sink their money into such a pipeline -- and that's a monumental if -- Afghanistan would collect only $160 million a year in transit fees, a mere bagatelle even if it does represent a big chunk of the embattled Karzai's current annual revenue. Count on one thing though, if it ever happened, the Taliban and assorted warlords/highway robbers would be sure to get a cut of the action.
A Clinton-Bush-Obama Great Game
TAPI's roller-coaster history actually begins in the mid-1990s, the Clinton era, when the Taliban were dined (but not wined) by the California-based energy company Unocal and the Clinton machine. In 1995, Unocal first came up with the pipeline idea, even then a product of Washington's fatal urge to bypass both Iran and Russia. Next, Unocal talked to the Turkmenbashi, then to the Taliban, and so launched a classic New Great Game gambit that has yet to end and without which you can't understand the Afghan war Obama has inherited.
A Taliban delegation, thanks to Unocal, enjoyed Houston's hospitality in early 1997 and then Washington's in December of that year. When it came to energy negotiations, the Taliban's leadership was anything but medieval. They were tough bargainers, also cannily courting the Argentinean private oil company Bridas, which had secured the right to explore and exploit oil reserves in eastern Turkmenistan.
[An Argentinian affront to the US. Ole']
In August 1997, financially unstable Bridas sold 60% of its stock to Amoco, which merged the next year with British Petroleum. A key Amoco consultant happened to be that ubiquitous Eurasian player, former national security advisor Zbig Brzezinski, while another such luminary, Henry Kissinger, just happened to be a consultant for Unocal. BP-Amoco, already developing the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, now became the major player in what had already been dubbed the Trans-Afghan Pipeline or TAP. Inevitably, Unocal and BP-Amoco went to war and let the lawyers settle things in a Texas court, where, in October 1998 as the Clinton years drew to an end, BP-Amoco seemed to emerge with the upper hand.
Under newly elected president George W. Bush, however, Unocal snuck back into the game and, as early as January 2001, was cozying up to the Taliban yet again, this time supported by a star-studded governmental cast of characters, including Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage, himself a former Unocal lobbyist. The Taliban were duly invited back to Washington in March 2001 via Rahmatullah Hashimi, a top aide to "The Shadow," the movement's leader Mullah Omar.
Negotiations eventually broke down because of those pesky transit fees the Taliban demanded. Beware the Empire's fury. At a Group of Eight summit meeting in Genoa in July 2001, Western diplomats indicated that the Bush administration had decided to take the Taliban down before year's end.[they should have known that it was impossible. What kind of mafia thinks they can wipe out a government that won’t cooperate?] (Pakistani diplomats in Islamabad would later confirm this to me.) The attacks of September 11, 2001 just slightly accelerated the schedule. Nicknamed "the kebab seller" in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, a former CIA asset and Unocal representative [Oh, those poor Pashtun tribesmen! All they need is democracy and Christianity! LOL UPDATE: Soldiers are proselytising in Afghanistan. lookitup!], who had entertained visiting Taliban members at barbecues in Houston, was soon forced down Afghan throats as the country's new leader.
Among the first fruits of Donald Rumsfeld's bombing and invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 was the signing by Karzai, Pakistani President Musharraf and Turkmenistan's Nyazov of an agreement committing themselves to build TAP, and so was formally launched a Pipelineistan extension from Central to South Asia with brand USA stamped all over it.
Russian President Vladimir Putin did nothing -- until September 2006, that is, when he delivered his counterpunch with panache. That's when Russian energy behemoth Gazprom agreed to buy Nyazov's natural gas at the 40% mark-up the dictator demanded. In return, the Russians received priceless gifts (and the Bush administration a pricey kick in the face). Nyazov turned over control of Turkmenistan's entire gas surplus to the Russian company through 2009, indicated a preference for letting Russia explore the country's new gas fields, and stated that Turkmenistan was bowing out of any U.S.-backed Trans-Caspian pipeline project. (And while he was at it, Putin also cornered much of the gas exports of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as well.)
Thus, almost five years later, with occupied Afghanistan in increasingly deadly chaos, TAP seemed dead-on-arrival. The (invisible) star of what would later turn into Obama's "good" war was already a corpse.
But here's the beauty of Pipelineistan: like zombies, dead deals always seem to return and so the game goes on forever.
Just when Russia thought it had Turkmenistan locked in…
A Turkmen Bash
They don't call Turkmenistan a "gas republic" for nothing. I've crossed it from the Uzbek border to a Caspian Sea port named -- what else -- Turkmenbashi where you can purchase one kilo of fresh Beluga for $100 and a camel for $200. That's where the gigantic gas fields are, and it's obvious that most have not been fully explored. When, in October 2008, the British consultancy firm GCA confirmed that the Yolotan-Osman gas fields in southwest Turkmenistan were among the world's four largest, holding up to a staggering 14 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, Turkmenistan promptly grabbed second place in the global gas reserves sweepstakes, way ahead of Iran and only 20% below Russia. With that news, the earth shook seismically across Pipelineistan.
[This is why US NGOs are telling Turkey to embrace MidEast and Turkophone countries. It's always the Texas tea; oil, that is.]
Just before he died in December 2006, the flamboyant Turkmenbashi boasted that his country held enough reserves to export 150 billion cubic meters of gas annually for the next 250 years. Given his notorious megalomania, nobody took him seriously. So in March 2008, our man Gurbanguly ordered a GCA audit to dispel any doubts. After all, in pure Asian Energy Security Grid mode, Turkmenistan had already signed contracts to supply Russia with about 50 billion cubic meters annually, China with 40 billion cubic meters, and Iran with 8 billion cubic meters.
And yet, none of this turns out to be quite as monumental or settled as it may look. In fact, Turkmenistan and Russia may be playing the energy equivalent of Russian roulette. After all, virtually all of Turkmenistani gas exports flow north through an old, crumbling Soviet system of pipelines, largely built in the 1960s. Add to this a Turkmeni knack for raising the stakes non-stop at a time when Gazprom has little choice but to put up with it: without Turkmen gas, it simply can't export all it needs to Europe, the source of 70% of Gazprom's profits.
Worse yet, according to a Gazprom source quoted in the Russian business daily Kommersant, the stark fact is that the company only thought it controlled all of Turkmenistan's gas exports; the newly discovered gas mega-fields turn out not to be part of the deal. As my Asia Times colleague, former ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar put the matter, Gazprom's mistake "is proving to be a misconception of Himalayan proportions."
In fact, it's as if the New Great Gamesters had just discovered another Everest. This year, Obama's national security strategists lost no time unleashing a no-holds-barred diplomatic campaign to court Turkmenistan. The goal? To accelerate possible ways for all that new Turkmeni gas to flow through the right pipes, and create quite a different energy map and future. Apart from TAPI, another key objective is to make the prospective $5.8 billion Turkey-to-Austria Nabucco pipeline become viable and thus, of course, trump the Russians. In that way, a key long-term U.S. strategic objective would be fulfilled: Austria, Italy, and Greece, as well as the Balkan and various Central European countries, would be at least partially pulled from Gazprom's orbit. (Await my next "postcard" from Pipelineistan for more on this.)
IPI or TAPI?
Gurbanguly is proving an even more riotous player than the Turkmenbashi. A year ago he said he was going to hedge his bets, that he was willing to export the bulk of the eight trillion cubic meters of gas reserves he now claims for his country to virtually anyone. Washington was -- and remains -- ecstatic. At an international conference last month in Ashgabat ("the city of love"), the Las Vegas of Central Asia, Gurbanguly told a hall packed with Americans, Europeans, and Russians that "diversification of energy flows and inclusion of new countries into the geography of export routes can help the global economy gain stability."
Inevitably, behind closed doors, the TAPI maze came up and TAPI executives once again began discussing pricing and transit fees. Of course, hard as that may be to settle, it's the easy part of the deal. After all, there's that Everest of Afghan security to climb, and someone still has to confirm that Turkmenistan's gas reserves are really as fabulous as claimed.
Imperceptible jiggles in Pipelineistan's tectonic plates can shake half the world. Take, for example, an obscure March report in the Balochistan Times: a little noticed pipeline supplying gas to parts of Sindh province in Pakistan, including Karachi, was blown up. It got next to no media attention, but all across Eurasia and in Washington, those analyzing the comparative advantages of TAPI vs. IPI had to wonder just how risky it might be for India to buy future Iranian gas via increasingly volatile Balochistan.
And then in early April came another mysterious pipeline explosion, this one in Turkmenistan, compromising exports to Russia. The Turkmenis promptly blamed the Russians (and TAPI advocates cheered), but nothing in Afghanistan itself could have left them cheering very loudly. Right now, Dick Cheney's master plan to get those blue rivers of Turkmeni gas flowing southwards via a future TAPI as part of a U.S. grand strategy for a "Greater Central Asia" lies in tatters.
Still, Zbig Brzezinski might disagree, and as he commands Obama's attention, he may try to convince the new president that the world needs a $7.6-plus billion, 1,600-km steel serpent winding through a horribly dangerous war zone. That's certainly the gist of what Brzezinski said immediately after the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, stressing once again that "the construction of a pipeline from Central Asia via Afghanistan to the south... will maximally expand world society's access to the Central Asian energy market."
Washington or Beijing?
Still, give credit where it's due. For the time being, our man Gurbanguly may have snatched the leading role in the New Great Game in this part of Eurasia. He's already signed a groundbreaking gas agreement with RWE from Germany and sent the Russians scrambling.
If, one of these days, the Turkmenistani leader opts for TAPI as well, it will open Washington to an ultimate historical irony. After so much death and destruction, Washington would undoubtedly have to sit down once again with -- yes -- the Taliban! And we'd be back to July 2001 and those pesky pipeline transit fees.
As it stands at the moment, however, Russia still dominates Pipelineistan, ensuring Central Asian gas flows across Russia's network and not through the Trans-Caspian networks privileged by the U.S. and the European Union. This virtually guarantees Russia's crucial geopolitical status as the top gas supplier to Europe and a crucial supplier to Asia as well.
Meanwhile, in "transit corridor" Pakistan, where Predator drones[Terminator] soaring over Pashtun tribal villages monopolize the headlines, the shady New Great Game slouches in under-the-radar mode toward the immense, under-populated southern Pakistani province of Balochistan. The future of the epic IPI vs. TAPI battle may hinge on a single, magic word: Gwadar.
Essentially a fishing village, Gwadar is an Arabian Sea port in that province. The port was built by China. In Washington's dream scenario, Gwadar becomes the new Dubai of South Asia. This implies the success of TAPI. For its part, China badly needs Gwadar as a node for yet another long pipeline to be built to western China. And where would the gas flowing in that line come from? Iran, of course.
Whoever "wins," if Gwadar really becomes part of the Liquid War, Pakistan will finally become a key transit corridor for either Iranian gas from the monster South Pars field heading for China, or a great deal of the Caspian gas from Turkmenistan heading Europe-wards. To make the scenario even more locally mouth-watering, Pakistan would then be a pivotal place for both NATO and the SCO (in which it is already an official "observer").
Now that's as classic as the New Great Game in Eurasia can get. There's NATO vs. the SCO. With either IPI or TAPI, Turkmenistan wins. With either IPI or TAPI, Russia loses. With either IPI or TAPI, Pakistan wins. With TAPI, Iran loses. With IPI, Afghanistan loses. In the end, however, as in any game of high stakes Pipelineistan poker, it all comes down to the top two global players. Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets: will the winner be Washington or Beijing?
[Follow the twisting gas pipeline. Oil is already gone. They can take Iraq’s oil, but maybe not Iran’s.]
Copyright 2009 Pepe Escobar
As Barack Obama heads into his second hundred days in office, let's head for the big picture ourselves, the ultimate global plot line, the tumultuous rush towards a new, polycentric world order. In its first hundred days, the Obama presidency introduced us to a brand new acronym, OCO for Overseas Contingency Operations, formerly known as GWOT (as in Global War on Terror). Use either name, or anything else you want, and what you're really talking about is what's happening on the immense energy battlefield that extends from Iran to the Pacific Ocean. It's there that the Liquid War for the control of Eurasia takes place.
Yep, it all comes down to black gold and "blue gold" (natural gas), hydrocarbon wealth beyond compare, and so it's time to trek back to that ever-flowing wonderland -- Pipelineistan. It's time to dust off the acronyms, especially the SCO or Shanghai Cooperative Organization, the Asian response to NATO, and learn a few new ones like IPI and TAPI. Above all, it's time to check out the most recent moves on the giant chessboard of Eurasia, where Washington wants to be a crucial, if not dominant, player.
We've already seen Pipelineistan wars in Kosovo and Georgia [I freakin' new it! Something caused the US to change its policy on Yugoslavia overnight. I'd like to find out which lobbyist came-a-visiting that fateful night. And, you can put aside that fairytale about Russian oppression of Georgia because Georgia has tried to use the US to limit Russian influence and gas markets& pipelines and the US has tried to use Georgia for the same reason. It's a diplomatic stand-off, cold-war style.], and we've followed Washington's favorite pipeline, the BTC, which was supposed to tilt the flow of energy westward, sending oil coursing past both Iran and Russia. Things didn't quite turn out that way, but we've got to move on, the New Great Game never stops. Now, it's time to grasp just what the Asian Energy Security Grid is all about, visit a surreal natural gas republic, and understand why that Grid is so deeply implicated in the Af-Pak war.
Every time I've visited Iran, energy analysts stress the total "interdependence of Asia and Persian Gulf geo-ecopolitics." What they mean is the ultimate importance to various great and regional powers of Asian integration via a sprawling mass of energy pipelines that will someday, somehow, link the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, South Asia, Russia, and China. The major Iranian card in the Asian integration game is the gigantic South Pars natural gas field (which Iran shares with Qatar). It is estimated to hold at least 9% of the world's proven natural gas reserves.
As much as Washington may live in perpetual denial, Russia and Iran together control roughly 20% of the world's oil reserves and nearly 50% of its gas reserves. Think about that for a moment. It's little wonder that, for the leadership of both countries as well as China's, the idea of Asian integration, of the Grid, is sacrosanct.
If it ever gets built, a major node on that Grid will surely be the prospective $7.6 billion Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, also known as the "peace pipeline." After years of wrangling, a nearly miraculous agreement for its construction was initialed in 2008. At least in this rare case, both Pakistan and India stood shoulder to shoulder in rejecting relentless pressure from the Bush administration to scotch the deal.
It couldn't be otherwise. Pakistan, after all, is an energy-poor, desperate customer of the Grid. One year ago, in a speech at Beijing's Tsinghua University, then-President Pervez Musharraf did everything but drop to his knees and beg China to dump money into pipelines linking the Persian Gulf and Pakistan with China's Far West. If this were to happen, it might help transform Pakistan from a near-failed state into a mighty "energy corridor" to the Middle East. If you think of a pipeline as an umbilical cord, it goes without saying that IPI, far more than any form of U.S. aid (or outright interference), would go the extra mile in stabilizing the Pak half of Obama's Af-Pak theater of operations, and even possibly relieve it of its India obsession.
[So, the control of Pakistan is mostly for oil reasons, not their nuclear bombs or terrorism. that's why they put Musharaf in charge, even though they must have known he couldn't stay forever.]
If Pakistan's fate is in question, Iran's is another matter. Though currently only holding "observer" status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), sooner or later it will inevitably become a full member and so enjoy NATO-style, an-attack-on-one-of-us-is-an-attack-on-all-of-us protection. Imagine, then, the cataclysmic consequences of an Israeli preemptive strike (backed by Washington or not) on Iran's nuclear facilities. The SCO will tackle this knotty issue at its next summit in June, in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
Iran's relations with both Russia and China are swell -- and will remain so no matter who is elected the new Iranian president next month. China desperately needs Iranian oil and gas, has already clinched a $100 billion gas "deal of the century" with the Iranians, and has loads of weapons and cheap consumer goods to sell. No less close to Iran, Russia wants to sell them even more weapons, as well as nuclear energy technology.
And then, moving ever eastward on the great Grid, there's Turkmenistan, lodged deep in Central Asia, which, unlike Iran, you may never have heard a thing about. Let's correct that now.
Gurbanguly Is the Man
Alas, the sun-king of Turkmenistan, the wily, wacky Saparmurat "Turkmenbashi" Nyazov, "the father of all Turkmen" (descendants of a formidable race of nomadic horseback warriors who used to attack Silk Road caravans) is now dead. But far from forgotten.
The Chinese were huge fans of the Turkmenbashi. And the joy was mutual. One key reason the Central Asians love to do business with China is that the Middle Kingdom, unlike both Russia and the United States, carries little modern imperial baggage. And of course, China will never carp about human rights or foment a color-coded revolution of any sort. [re Ukraine. Another democracy fairytale. The Gringos were just trying to mess with Russia's markets and pipelines.]
The Chinese are already moving to successfully lobby the new Turkmen president, the spectacularly named Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, to speed up the construction of the Mother of All Pipelines. This Turkmen-Kazakh-China Pipelineistan corridor from eastern Turkmenistan to China's Guangdong province will be the longest and most expensive pipeline in the world, 7,000 kilometers of steel pipe at a staggering cost of $26 billion. When China signed the agreement to build it in 2007, they made sure to add a clever little geopolitical kicker. The agreement explicitly states that "Chinese interests" will not be "threatened from [Turkmenistan's] territory by third parties." In translation: no Pentagon bases allowed in that country.
China's deft energy diplomacy game plan in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia is a pure winner. In the case of Turkmenistan, lucrative deals are offered and partnerships with Russia are encouraged to boost Turkmen gas production. There are to be no Russian-Chinese antagonisms, as befits the main partners in the SCO, because the Asian Energy Security Grid story is really and truly about them.
By the way, elsewhere on the Grid, those two countries recently agreed to extend the East Siberian-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline to China by the end of 2010. After all, energy-ravenous China badly needs not just Turkmen gas, but Russia's liquefied natural gas (LNG).
With energy prices low and the global economy melting down, times are sure to be tough for the Kremlin through at least 2010, but this won't derail its push to forge a Central Asian energy club within the SCO. Think of all this as essentially an energy entente cordiale with China. Russian Deputy Industry and Energy Minister Ivan Materov has been among those insistently swearing that this will not someday lead to a "gas OPEC" within the SCO. It remains to be seen how the Obama national security team decides to counteract the successful Russian strategy of undermining by all possible means a U.S.-promoted East-West Caspian Sea energy corridor, while solidifying a Russian-controlled Pipelineistan stretching from Kazakhstan to Greece that will monopolize the flow of energy to Western Europe.
The Real Afghan War
[The US and UK have hydrocarbon companies that stand to gain some bloody lucre. Meanwhile, Canada is the Elliot Ness of the Afghan war. Loss of life, with no political or military gain.]
In the ever-shifting New Great Game in Eurasia, a key question -- why Afghanistan matters -- is simply not part of the discussion in the United States. (Hint: It has nothing to do with the liberation of Afghan women.) In part, this is because the idea that energy and Afghanistan might have anything in common is verboten.
And yet, rest assured, nothing of significance takes place in Eurasia without an energy angle. In the case of Afghanistan, keep in mind that Central and South Asia have been considered by American strategists crucial places to plant the flag; and once the Soviet Union collapsed, control of the energy-rich former Soviet republics in the region was quickly seen as essential to future U.S. global power. It would be there, as they imagined it, that the U.S. Empire of Bases would intersect crucially with Pipelineistan in a way that would leave both Russia and China on the defensive.
Think of Afghanistan, then, as an overlooked subplot in the ongoing Liquid War. After all, an overarching goal of U.S. foreign policy since President Richard Nixon's era in the early 1970s has been to split Russia and China. The leadership of the SCO has been focused on this since the U.S. Congress passed the Silk Road Strategy Act five days before beginning the bombing of Serbia in March 1999 [The Gringos bombed a TV station that was airing something Clinton didn't like. What was it? They also bombed the Chinese embassy. Was that a hint to China re the control of gas supplies?]. That act clearly identified American geo-strategic interests from the Black Sea to western China with building a mosaic of American protectorates in Central Asia and militarizing the Eurasian energy corridor. [They Gringos’d rather work with the do-anything Albanians than the Slavic Serbs and FYROMians, who, in the end, will likely side with Russia. You should see what the Gringos've done to FYROM politics. They jerked their chains by recognising the name Macedonia the day before a plebecite which would have given the powerless Albanian minority enough powers to essentially 'secede' from the new Macedonia, taking 40% of the country with them. Slavs can no longer do anything in the 'Albanian' north. Same as Kosovo. Need any more proof?]
Afghanistan, as it happens, sits conveniently at the crossroads of any new Silk Road linking the Caucasus to western China, and four nuclear powers (China, Russia, Pakistan, and India) lurk in the vicinity. "Losing" Afghanistan and its key network of U.S. military bases would, from the Pentagon's point of view, be a disaster, and though it may be a secondary matter in the New Great Game of the moment, it's worth remembering that the country itself is a lot more than the towering mountains of the Hindu Kush and immense deserts: it's believed to be rich in unexplored deposits of natural gas, petroleum, coal, copper, chrome, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, and iron ore, as well as precious and semiprecious stones.
And there's something highly toxic to be added to this already lethal mix: don't forget the narco-dollar angle -- the fact that the global heroin cartels that feast on Afghanistan only work with U.S. dollars [going for strength. Oil and heroin.], not euros. For the SCO, the top security threat in Afghanistan isn't the Taliban, but the drug business. Russia's anti-drug czar Viktor Ivanov routinely blasts the disaster that passes for a U.S./NATO anti-drug war there, stressing that Afghan heroin now kills 30,000 Russians annually, twice as many as were killed during the decade-long U.S.-supported anti-Soviet Afghan jihad of the 1980s.
And then, of course, there are those competing pipelines that, if ever built, either would or wouldn't exclude Iran and Russia from the action to their south. In April 2008, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India actually signed an agreement to build a long-dreamt-about $7.6 billion (and counting) pipeline, whose acronym TAPI combines the first letters of their names and would also someday deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India without the involvement of either Iran or Russia. It would cut right through the heart of Western Afghanistan, in Herat, and head south across lightly populated Nimruz and Helmand provinces, where the Taliban, various Pashtun guerrillas and assorted highway robbers now merrily run rings around U.S. and NATO forces and where -- surprise! -- the U.S. is now building in Dasht-e-Margo ("the Desert of Death") a new mega-base to host President Obama's surge troops.
TAPI's rival is the already mentioned IPI [and the Taliban, who must be paid off], also theoretically underway and widely derided by Heritage Foundation types in the U.S., who regularly launch blasts of angry prose at the nefarious idea of India and Pakistan importing gas from "evil" Iran. Theoretically, TAPI's construction will start in 2010 and the gas would begin flowing by 2015. (Don't hold your breath.) Embattled Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who can hardly secure a few square blocks of central Kabul, even with the help of international forces, nonetheless offered assurances last year that he would not only rid his country of millions of land mines along TAPI's route, but somehow get rid of the Taliban in the bargain.
Should there be investors (nursed by Afghan opium dreams) delirious enough to sink their money into such a pipeline -- and that's a monumental if -- Afghanistan would collect only $160 million a year in transit fees, a mere bagatelle even if it does represent a big chunk of the embattled Karzai's current annual revenue. Count on one thing though, if it ever happened, the Taliban and assorted warlords/highway robbers would be sure to get a cut of the action.
A Clinton-Bush-Obama Great Game
TAPI's roller-coaster history actually begins in the mid-1990s, the Clinton era, when the Taliban were dined (but not wined) by the California-based energy company Unocal and the Clinton machine. In 1995, Unocal first came up with the pipeline idea, even then a product of Washington's fatal urge to bypass both Iran and Russia. Next, Unocal talked to the Turkmenbashi, then to the Taliban, and so launched a classic New Great Game gambit that has yet to end and without which you can't understand the Afghan war Obama has inherited.
A Taliban delegation, thanks to Unocal, enjoyed Houston's hospitality in early 1997 and then Washington's in December of that year. When it came to energy negotiations, the Taliban's leadership was anything but medieval. They were tough bargainers, also cannily courting the Argentinean private oil company Bridas, which had secured the right to explore and exploit oil reserves in eastern Turkmenistan.
[An Argentinian affront to the US. Ole']
In August 1997, financially unstable Bridas sold 60% of its stock to Amoco, which merged the next year with British Petroleum. A key Amoco consultant happened to be that ubiquitous Eurasian player, former national security advisor Zbig Brzezinski, while another such luminary, Henry Kissinger, just happened to be a consultant for Unocal. BP-Amoco, already developing the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, now became the major player in what had already been dubbed the Trans-Afghan Pipeline or TAP. Inevitably, Unocal and BP-Amoco went to war and let the lawyers settle things in a Texas court, where, in October 1998 as the Clinton years drew to an end, BP-Amoco seemed to emerge with the upper hand.
Under newly elected president George W. Bush, however, Unocal snuck back into the game and, as early as January 2001, was cozying up to the Taliban yet again, this time supported by a star-studded governmental cast of characters, including Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage, himself a former Unocal lobbyist. The Taliban were duly invited back to Washington in March 2001 via Rahmatullah Hashimi, a top aide to "The Shadow," the movement's leader Mullah Omar.
Negotiations eventually broke down because of those pesky transit fees the Taliban demanded. Beware the Empire's fury. At a Group of Eight summit meeting in Genoa in July 2001, Western diplomats indicated that the Bush administration had decided to take the Taliban down before year's end.[they should have known that it was impossible. What kind of mafia thinks they can wipe out a government that won’t cooperate?] (Pakistani diplomats in Islamabad would later confirm this to me.) The attacks of September 11, 2001 just slightly accelerated the schedule. Nicknamed "the kebab seller" in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, a former CIA asset and Unocal representative [Oh, those poor Pashtun tribesmen! All they need is democracy and Christianity! LOL UPDATE: Soldiers are proselytising in Afghanistan. lookitup!], who had entertained visiting Taliban members at barbecues in Houston, was soon forced down Afghan throats as the country's new leader.
Among the first fruits of Donald Rumsfeld's bombing and invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 was the signing by Karzai, Pakistani President Musharraf and Turkmenistan's Nyazov of an agreement committing themselves to build TAP, and so was formally launched a Pipelineistan extension from Central to South Asia with brand USA stamped all over it.
Russian President Vladimir Putin did nothing -- until September 2006, that is, when he delivered his counterpunch with panache. That's when Russian energy behemoth Gazprom agreed to buy Nyazov's natural gas at the 40% mark-up the dictator demanded. In return, the Russians received priceless gifts (and the Bush administration a pricey kick in the face). Nyazov turned over control of Turkmenistan's entire gas surplus to the Russian company through 2009, indicated a preference for letting Russia explore the country's new gas fields, and stated that Turkmenistan was bowing out of any U.S.-backed Trans-Caspian pipeline project. (And while he was at it, Putin also cornered much of the gas exports of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as well.)
Thus, almost five years later, with occupied Afghanistan in increasingly deadly chaos, TAP seemed dead-on-arrival. The (invisible) star of what would later turn into Obama's "good" war was already a corpse.
But here's the beauty of Pipelineistan: like zombies, dead deals always seem to return and so the game goes on forever.
Just when Russia thought it had Turkmenistan locked in…
A Turkmen Bash
They don't call Turkmenistan a "gas republic" for nothing. I've crossed it from the Uzbek border to a Caspian Sea port named -- what else -- Turkmenbashi where you can purchase one kilo of fresh Beluga for $100 and a camel for $200. That's where the gigantic gas fields are, and it's obvious that most have not been fully explored. When, in October 2008, the British consultancy firm GCA confirmed that the Yolotan-Osman gas fields in southwest Turkmenistan were among the world's four largest, holding up to a staggering 14 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, Turkmenistan promptly grabbed second place in the global gas reserves sweepstakes, way ahead of Iran and only 20% below Russia. With that news, the earth shook seismically across Pipelineistan.
[This is why US NGOs are telling Turkey to embrace MidEast and Turkophone countries. It's always the Texas tea; oil, that is.]
Just before he died in December 2006, the flamboyant Turkmenbashi boasted that his country held enough reserves to export 150 billion cubic meters of gas annually for the next 250 years. Given his notorious megalomania, nobody took him seriously. So in March 2008, our man Gurbanguly ordered a GCA audit to dispel any doubts. After all, in pure Asian Energy Security Grid mode, Turkmenistan had already signed contracts to supply Russia with about 50 billion cubic meters annually, China with 40 billion cubic meters, and Iran with 8 billion cubic meters.
And yet, none of this turns out to be quite as monumental or settled as it may look. In fact, Turkmenistan and Russia may be playing the energy equivalent of Russian roulette. After all, virtually all of Turkmenistani gas exports flow north through an old, crumbling Soviet system of pipelines, largely built in the 1960s. Add to this a Turkmeni knack for raising the stakes non-stop at a time when Gazprom has little choice but to put up with it: without Turkmen gas, it simply can't export all it needs to Europe, the source of 70% of Gazprom's profits.
Worse yet, according to a Gazprom source quoted in the Russian business daily Kommersant, the stark fact is that the company only thought it controlled all of Turkmenistan's gas exports; the newly discovered gas mega-fields turn out not to be part of the deal. As my Asia Times colleague, former ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar put the matter, Gazprom's mistake "is proving to be a misconception of Himalayan proportions."
In fact, it's as if the New Great Gamesters had just discovered another Everest. This year, Obama's national security strategists lost no time unleashing a no-holds-barred diplomatic campaign to court Turkmenistan. The goal? To accelerate possible ways for all that new Turkmeni gas to flow through the right pipes, and create quite a different energy map and future. Apart from TAPI, another key objective is to make the prospective $5.8 billion Turkey-to-Austria Nabucco pipeline become viable and thus, of course, trump the Russians. In that way, a key long-term U.S. strategic objective would be fulfilled: Austria, Italy, and Greece, as well as the Balkan and various Central European countries, would be at least partially pulled from Gazprom's orbit. (Await my next "postcard" from Pipelineistan for more on this.)
IPI or TAPI?
Gurbanguly is proving an even more riotous player than the Turkmenbashi. A year ago he said he was going to hedge his bets, that he was willing to export the bulk of the eight trillion cubic meters of gas reserves he now claims for his country to virtually anyone. Washington was -- and remains -- ecstatic. At an international conference last month in Ashgabat ("the city of love"), the Las Vegas of Central Asia, Gurbanguly told a hall packed with Americans, Europeans, and Russians that "diversification of energy flows and inclusion of new countries into the geography of export routes can help the global economy gain stability."
Inevitably, behind closed doors, the TAPI maze came up and TAPI executives once again began discussing pricing and transit fees. Of course, hard as that may be to settle, it's the easy part of the deal. After all, there's that Everest of Afghan security to climb, and someone still has to confirm that Turkmenistan's gas reserves are really as fabulous as claimed.
Imperceptible jiggles in Pipelineistan's tectonic plates can shake half the world. Take, for example, an obscure March report in the Balochistan Times: a little noticed pipeline supplying gas to parts of Sindh province in Pakistan, including Karachi, was blown up. It got next to no media attention, but all across Eurasia and in Washington, those analyzing the comparative advantages of TAPI vs. IPI had to wonder just how risky it might be for India to buy future Iranian gas via increasingly volatile Balochistan.
And then in early April came another mysterious pipeline explosion, this one in Turkmenistan, compromising exports to Russia. The Turkmenis promptly blamed the Russians (and TAPI advocates cheered), but nothing in Afghanistan itself could have left them cheering very loudly. Right now, Dick Cheney's master plan to get those blue rivers of Turkmeni gas flowing southwards via a future TAPI as part of a U.S. grand strategy for a "Greater Central Asia" lies in tatters.
Still, Zbig Brzezinski might disagree, and as he commands Obama's attention, he may try to convince the new president that the world needs a $7.6-plus billion, 1,600-km steel serpent winding through a horribly dangerous war zone. That's certainly the gist of what Brzezinski said immediately after the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, stressing once again that "the construction of a pipeline from Central Asia via Afghanistan to the south... will maximally expand world society's access to the Central Asian energy market."
Washington or Beijing?
Still, give credit where it's due. For the time being, our man Gurbanguly may have snatched the leading role in the New Great Game in this part of Eurasia. He's already signed a groundbreaking gas agreement with RWE from Germany and sent the Russians scrambling.
If, one of these days, the Turkmenistani leader opts for TAPI as well, it will open Washington to an ultimate historical irony. After so much death and destruction, Washington would undoubtedly have to sit down once again with -- yes -- the Taliban! And we'd be back to July 2001 and those pesky pipeline transit fees.
As it stands at the moment, however, Russia still dominates Pipelineistan, ensuring Central Asian gas flows across Russia's network and not through the Trans-Caspian networks privileged by the U.S. and the European Union. This virtually guarantees Russia's crucial geopolitical status as the top gas supplier to Europe and a crucial supplier to Asia as well.
Meanwhile, in "transit corridor" Pakistan, where Predator drones[Terminator] soaring over Pashtun tribal villages monopolize the headlines, the shady New Great Game slouches in under-the-radar mode toward the immense, under-populated southern Pakistani province of Balochistan. The future of the epic IPI vs. TAPI battle may hinge on a single, magic word: Gwadar.
Essentially a fishing village, Gwadar is an Arabian Sea port in that province. The port was built by China. In Washington's dream scenario, Gwadar becomes the new Dubai of South Asia. This implies the success of TAPI. For its part, China badly needs Gwadar as a node for yet another long pipeline to be built to western China. And where would the gas flowing in that line come from? Iran, of course.
Whoever "wins," if Gwadar really becomes part of the Liquid War, Pakistan will finally become a key transit corridor for either Iranian gas from the monster South Pars field heading for China, or a great deal of the Caspian gas from Turkmenistan heading Europe-wards. To make the scenario even more locally mouth-watering, Pakistan would then be a pivotal place for both NATO and the SCO (in which it is already an official "observer").
Now that's as classic as the New Great Game in Eurasia can get. There's NATO vs. the SCO. With either IPI or TAPI, Turkmenistan wins. With either IPI or TAPI, Russia loses. With either IPI or TAPI, Pakistan wins. With TAPI, Iran loses. With IPI, Afghanistan loses. In the end, however, as in any game of high stakes Pipelineistan poker, it all comes down to the top two global players. Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets: will the winner be Washington or Beijing?
[Follow the twisting gas pipeline. Oil is already gone. They can take Iraq’s oil, but maybe not Iran’s.]
Copyright 2009 Pepe Escobar
___the end
[Update: Turkmenistan didn’t sign with US, Azerbaijan after all.]
-Cosine67~~~
formula one. sport, from bad to worse
[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]
Formula one. technological marvel, (often) a good show, waster of public money, or international anachronism? I've got (1) photos to come, from the 2009 Autosport show and an (2) article from an environmental perspective. (1)
PERSONAL photos from Autosport 2009
Red Bull. With all its Taurine-feuled drink earnings, it's actually in the running, THIS year. I guess staff have been drinking the stuff.
The good old days, when racers took their lives into their own hands. Nowadays, the cars are safe and the drivers rich. So, no reason to try hard, is there?
Big rubbers, exposed engine. Growl!
Sissified modern cars.
(2)
See my article on Decroissance on outnaboutcanuck.blogspot.com for a fuller explanation.
Here's a complaint letter to Le Monde about how Formula 1 and the arrogant governments which cow-tow to it play fast and loose with laws and morals by trampling on sensitive farm land. (I'll give a review later.)
Les dinosaures s’obstinent
Hervé Kempf - 27 avril 2009
Ce devait être - ce doit être - un projet exemplaire, enthousiasmant, prometteur : sur un terrain de 175 hectares, situé à côté des usines Renault de Flins, trois jeunes paysans s’installent, en agriculture biologique. Ils ont été choisis au terme d’un appel d’offres rigoureux - plus de 60 candidats ! -, entrepris par plusieurs agences et administrations, et dans le cadre du schéma directeur régional prévoyant le maintien de terres agricoles. Le tout sur une zone de captage d’eau alimentant près de 400 000 Franciliens. Ainsi donc, il serait possible de réinventer un avenir, de préserver des terres cultivées d’une urbanisation incontrôlée, de donner le feu vert à l’agriculture de demain ? Il serait possible de traduire une utopie modeste dans la réalité ? Oui ?
Non. Les dinosaures, les hommes du passé, les bétonneurs de toujours, les nostalgiques des gaz d’échappement veillent au grain : en octobre 2008, la préfète des Yvelines prend des arrêtés changeant la destination des terres, afin de permettre au conseil général d’y lancer un projet de circuit de formule 1 visant à accueillir le Grand Prix de France. Sur son site Internet, le conseil précise sans rire : "Notre démarche est développement durable."
Formule 1 : activité consistant à faire tourner des voitures le plus vite possible sur un circuit clos. Bruit, pollution, consommation d’essence, gaz carbonique, gros moteurs, machisme de base, fascination des foules mâles, télévision, droits télévisés, argent, beaucoup d’argent.
Mais, interrogent les ignorants, il y avait un circuit, à Magny-Cours (Nièvre), qui a accueilli ledit Grand Prix pendant dix-sept ans. Pourquoi couler du béton nouveau ? Pourquoi ? Parce que Bernie Ecclestone, président d’un organisme qui distribue les licences de Grand Prix et capte avec le génie des cupides les droits télévisés, ne veut plus de Magny-Cours.
L’amour du sport a conduit M. Ecclestone à accumuler une fortune de 2,4 milliards de livres. L’amour du sport conduit les hommes politiques des différents pays à se coucher devant ce monsieur. Les vaillants édiles des Yvelines - encouragés par divers ministres, comme Bernard Laporte, secrétaire d’Etat aux sports et homme d’affaires - sont donc prêts à débourser 112 millions d’euros pour leur piste de béton. Cent douze millions pour commencer, car ce genre de sauterie coûte toujours plus cher que prévu. Les contribuables paieront... La place manque pour détailler le dossier, qui ne tient pas debout. On ne peut qu’espérer que les décideurs ultimes sauront raison garder.Au fait : une formule 1 consomme environ 1 l d’essence au kilomètre. Le véhicule mis au point par des étudiants de l’université de Laval, au Québec, qui a remporté le Shell Eco Marathon d’Amérique le 18 avril, a roulé 1 172 km avec... 1 litre ! Soit une consommation mille fois moindre. A votre avis, de quel côté est l’avenir ? Que périssent les dinosaures, vive Homo sapiens !
Source : Article publié dans Le Monde du 26-27 avril 2009.
more info:
Pour en savoir plus : http://www.collectif-flinssansf1.org/et : http://www.yvelinesf1.fr/categories...
___Le fin
-Cosine67 ~~~
Formula one. technological marvel, (often) a good show, waster of public money, or international anachronism? I've got (1) photos to come, from the 2009 Autosport show and an (2) article from an environmental perspective. (1)
PERSONAL photos from Autosport 2009
Red Bull. With all its Taurine-feuled drink earnings, it's actually in the running, THIS year. I guess staff have been drinking the stuff.
The good old days, when racers took their lives into their own hands. Nowadays, the cars are safe and the drivers rich. So, no reason to try hard, is there?
Big rubbers, exposed engine. Growl!
Sissified modern cars.(2)
See my article on Decroissance on outnaboutcanuck.blogspot.com for a fuller explanation.
Here's a complaint letter to Le Monde about how Formula 1 and the arrogant governments which cow-tow to it play fast and loose with laws and morals by trampling on sensitive farm land. (I'll give a review later.)
Les dinosaures s’obstinent
Hervé Kempf - 27 avril 2009
Ce devait être - ce doit être - un projet exemplaire, enthousiasmant, prometteur : sur un terrain de 175 hectares, situé à côté des usines Renault de Flins, trois jeunes paysans s’installent, en agriculture biologique. Ils ont été choisis au terme d’un appel d’offres rigoureux - plus de 60 candidats ! -, entrepris par plusieurs agences et administrations, et dans le cadre du schéma directeur régional prévoyant le maintien de terres agricoles. Le tout sur une zone de captage d’eau alimentant près de 400 000 Franciliens. Ainsi donc, il serait possible de réinventer un avenir, de préserver des terres cultivées d’une urbanisation incontrôlée, de donner le feu vert à l’agriculture de demain ? Il serait possible de traduire une utopie modeste dans la réalité ? Oui ?
Non. Les dinosaures, les hommes du passé, les bétonneurs de toujours, les nostalgiques des gaz d’échappement veillent au grain : en octobre 2008, la préfète des Yvelines prend des arrêtés changeant la destination des terres, afin de permettre au conseil général d’y lancer un projet de circuit de formule 1 visant à accueillir le Grand Prix de France. Sur son site Internet, le conseil précise sans rire : "Notre démarche est développement durable."
Formule 1 : activité consistant à faire tourner des voitures le plus vite possible sur un circuit clos. Bruit, pollution, consommation d’essence, gaz carbonique, gros moteurs, machisme de base, fascination des foules mâles, télévision, droits télévisés, argent, beaucoup d’argent.
Mais, interrogent les ignorants, il y avait un circuit, à Magny-Cours (Nièvre), qui a accueilli ledit Grand Prix pendant dix-sept ans. Pourquoi couler du béton nouveau ? Pourquoi ? Parce que Bernie Ecclestone, président d’un organisme qui distribue les licences de Grand Prix et capte avec le génie des cupides les droits télévisés, ne veut plus de Magny-Cours.
L’amour du sport a conduit M. Ecclestone à accumuler une fortune de 2,4 milliards de livres. L’amour du sport conduit les hommes politiques des différents pays à se coucher devant ce monsieur. Les vaillants édiles des Yvelines - encouragés par divers ministres, comme Bernard Laporte, secrétaire d’Etat aux sports et homme d’affaires - sont donc prêts à débourser 112 millions d’euros pour leur piste de béton. Cent douze millions pour commencer, car ce genre de sauterie coûte toujours plus cher que prévu. Les contribuables paieront... La place manque pour détailler le dossier, qui ne tient pas debout. On ne peut qu’espérer que les décideurs ultimes sauront raison garder.Au fait : une formule 1 consomme environ 1 l d’essence au kilomètre. Le véhicule mis au point par des étudiants de l’université de Laval, au Québec, qui a remporté le Shell Eco Marathon d’Amérique le 18 avril, a roulé 1 172 km avec... 1 litre ! Soit une consommation mille fois moindre. A votre avis, de quel côté est l’avenir ? Que périssent les dinosaures, vive Homo sapiens !
Source : Article publié dans Le Monde du 26-27 avril 2009.
more info:
Pour en savoir plus : http://www.collectif-flinssansf1.org/et : http://www.yvelinesf1.fr/categories...
___Le fin
-Cosine67 ~~~
Saturday 28 March 2009
Brooklands, near Weybridge
This is Brooklands, built 1907, which was the first purpose-built race circuit in the world, and an aerodrome from WW2 until the seventies for Vickers.
I have a lot to say about its history, the day, and other issues regarding the present state of the track. This site is presently a museum of old race cars and non, and airplanes. It served its purpose to auto and airplane history and is now a sedate site for a visit, surrounded by nature which has swallowed up much of the track.
Centenial of the test hill (1909 for you dummies)
This hill was designed for manufacturers to test the drivetrains on their new motors.
The brochure says the hill starts at an 8:1 slope then goes 5:1 and 4:1.
I gave a donation and got a run up the test hill and around the banking in a Lamborghini.
Here's the Lambo 1/3 of the way up. Got that one on high-speed film.
This hole-shot takes about 7 seconds. (I'll try to upload the MP3 sound.)
and another car reaching the crest of the test hill. Check the look of surprise on the lady's face.
the banked track
I actually got up to the top of the banking for this photo. It wasn't easy climbing down. Try to find a video on youtube and you'll see that cars used to ride up here.
[Notice the bridge. You'll see other photos taken from there.]
Even this remaining part of the track looks a bit ragged. You can see the moss and the weeds at the edge, but it is 102 years old.
This is most of the rest of the track, from the bridge:
Most of the rest of this massive track has been torn up. Interestlingly, right past this photo is Mercedes-Benz World. They've used the glitter of the track to make their own test track and shrine to their new models. Those pesky Germans, always manufacturing such good stuff!
the cars
a fine collection from the in-house museum and some special 'visitors'.
This is an aero-engined car.
It's the second of four [next pic].
All hell broke loose when they cranked these up. [having difficulty uploading the MP3 material.]
The green one fired up first, the blue second (0:50) and the silver Napier Railton third (1:50), all of them in front of me. The Red car was further away.
the planes
this one was fished out of Loch Ness.
You've also got a Concord with multi-media show inside.
There's also a huge wind tunnel and other technological marvels, if you know what you're looking at.
-Cosine67 ~~~
I have a lot to say about its history, the day, and other issues regarding the present state of the track. This site is presently a museum of old race cars and non, and airplanes. It served its purpose to auto and airplane history and is now a sedate site for a visit, surrounded by nature which has swallowed up much of the track.
Centenial of the test hill (1909 for you dummies)
This hill was designed for manufacturers to test the drivetrains on their new motors.
The brochure says the hill starts at an 8:1 slope then goes 5:1 and 4:1.
I gave a donation and got a run up the test hill and around the banking in a Lamborghini.
Here's the Lambo 1/3 of the way up. Got that one on high-speed film.
This hole-shot takes about 7 seconds. (I'll try to upload the MP3 sound.)
and another car reaching the crest of the test hill. Check the look of surprise on the lady's face.
the banked track
I actually got up to the top of the banking for this photo. It wasn't easy climbing down. Try to find a video on youtube and you'll see that cars used to ride up here.
[Notice the bridge. You'll see other photos taken from there.]
Even this remaining part of the track looks a bit ragged. You can see the moss and the weeds at the edge, but it is 102 years old.
This is most of the rest of the track, from the bridge:
Most of the rest of this massive track has been torn up. Interestlingly, right past this photo is Mercedes-Benz World. They've used the glitter of the track to make their own test track and shrine to their new models. Those pesky Germans, always manufacturing such good stuff!
the cars
a fine collection from the in-house museum and some special 'visitors'.
This is an aero-engined car.
It's the second of four [next pic].
All hell broke loose when they cranked these up. [having difficulty uploading the MP3 material.]
The green one fired up first, the blue second (0:50) and the silver Napier Railton third (1:50), all of them in front of me. The Red car was further away.
the planes
this one was fished out of Loch Ness.
You've also got a Concord with multi-media show inside.
There's also a huge wind tunnel and other technological marvels, if you know what you're looking at.
-Cosine67 ~~~
Thursday 26 March 2009
Jurassic era revisited
The Jurassic period and this period here, the Thongmyassic, are similar in many ways. As we've seen from all the documentaries, all the evolutionary paths of animals and dinosaurs eventually arive at an end; species die off. Honestly, we've done a lot to speed up that process for many an animal.
So, I've been thinking that, if environmentalist's projections are correct, we may be in the process of destroying our species. If we destroy our environment so much that it does not allow us to live, then we're gone.
It seems that we'll die off, but not everything will. The world will do just fine without us. In fact it'll be saying:
"don't let the door hit you on the arse."
We are, of course, in the enviable position of being able to analyse everything that happened and will happen. So, we can watch the end coming. We'll probably put it on television and sell advertising.Maybe there's a reason why rich, wasteful people are using and destroying everything within their reach; they have accepted their mortality, and Darwinism, and are just enjoying the moment. (You know the maxim: "the one who dies with the most toys wins")
Maybe there's also a reason why governments are essentially doing nothing to stop this hayride to hell:
There's a profit to be made from our self-destruction!
Unfortunately, the fact that the powers are doing this while others are trying to save the planet pisses most of us off, myself included.Discuss amongst yourselves:
When will we finally wipe ourselves off the face of the earth?
Do you think that we will be able to see our end coming?
That reminds me of a joke:
What's the last thing that goes through a bug's mind,
before it dies on a windscreen/windshield?
It's arse.
Get it?
before it dies on a windscreen/windshield?
It's arse.
Get it?
-Cosine67
green buildings, literally speaking
It's about time that we try to make cities look more like nature. It lowers air-conditioning costs, produces valuable oxygen and looks amazing.
Let's all get in on the trend. Here's an idea for a new show:
"Pimp my crib"
"Jungle my hut"
"Green my scene"
or anything as long as it doesn't star that whack radio one dj. Respec."Jungle my hut"
"Green my scene"
-Cosine67
Tuesday 24 March 2009
gestation of the beast
Since the early days of our species, we have tried to use technology to harness and control nature for our benefit.
This blog will look at the technology that we've developed, in any form, but with an eye on nature as well, and how technology can be used to actually lessen our footprint on this planet. I enjoy technology, but its use is often a problem. It breeds consumerism which will be the death of us and our planet. Newer, bigger, faster. It has in fact led us to this financial catastrophe. Instead, I'm very interested in things which cost nothing, and yet fulfill a purpose.
On one big issue: I believe that cars should be a toy only. Commuters should just find another solution. So I enjoy being around cars, but I don't actually have access to one most of the time. But when I do grab one, it's usually for a rip around a race track. Do I think this is schizophrenic? Maybe.
Cosine67, ahead of the (sine) curve
This blog will look at the technology that we've developed, in any form, but with an eye on nature as well, and how technology can be used to actually lessen our footprint on this planet. I enjoy technology, but its use is often a problem. It breeds consumerism which will be the death of us and our planet. Newer, bigger, faster. It has in fact led us to this financial catastrophe. Instead, I'm very interested in things which cost nothing, and yet fulfill a purpose.
On one big issue: I believe that cars should be a toy only. Commuters should just find another solution. So I enjoy being around cars, but I don't actually have access to one most of the time. But when I do grab one, it's usually for a rip around a race track. Do I think this is schizophrenic? Maybe.
Cosine67, ahead of the (sine) curve
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