Ukraine and the Rebirth of Fascism in Europe

 

By: Eric Draitzer

News Source: Stop Imperialism

http://stopimperialism.org/ukraine-rebirth-fascism-europe/

The violence on the streets of Ukraine is far more than an expression of popular anger against a government. Instead, it is merely the latest example of the rise of the most insidious form of fascism that Europe has seen since the fall of the Third Reich.

Recent months have seen regular protests by the Ukrainian political opposition and its supporters – protests ostensibly in response to Ukrainian President Yanukovich’s refusal to sign a trade agreement with the European Union that was seen by many political observers as the first step towards European integration. The protests remained largely peaceful until January 17^th when protesters armed with clubs, helmets, and improvised bombs unleashed brutal violence on the police, storming government buildings, beating anyone suspected of pro-government sympathies, and generally wreaking havoc on the streets of Kiev. But who are these violent extremists and what is their ideology?

The political formation is known as “Pravy Sektor” (Right Sector), which is essentially an umbrella organization for a number of ultra-nationalist (read fascist) right wing groups including supporters of the “Svoboda” (Freedom) Party, “Patriots of Ukraine”, “Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defense” (UNA-UNSO), and “Trizub”. All of these organizations share a common ideology that is vehemently anti-Russian, anti-immigrant, and anti-Jewish among other things. In addition they share a common reverence for the so called “Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists” led by Stepan Bandera, the infamous Nazi collaborators who actively fought against the Soviet Union and engaged in some of the worst atrocities committed by any side in World War II.

While Ukrainian political forces, opposition and government, continue to negotiate, a very different battle is being waged in the streets. Using intimidation and brute force more typical of Hitler’s “Brownshirts” or Mussolini’s “Blackshirts” than a contemporary political movement, these groups have managed to turn a conflict over economic policy and the political allegiances of the country into an existential struggle for the very survival of the nation that these so called “nationalists” claim to love so dearly. The images of Kiev burning, Lviv streets filled with thugs, and other chilling examples of the chaos in the country, illustrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that the political negotiation with the Maidan (Kiev’s central square and center of the protests) opposition is now no longer the central issue. Rather, it is the question of Ukrainian fascism and whether it is to be supported or rejected.

For its part, the United States has strongly come down on the side of the opposition, regardless of its political character. In early December, members of the US ruling establishment such as John McCain and Victoria Nuland were seen at Maidan lending their support to the protesters. However, as the character of the opposition has become apparent in recent days, the US and Western ruling class and its media machine have done little to condemn the fascist upsurge. Instead, their representatives have met with representatives of Right Sector and deemed them to be “no threat.” In other words, the US and its allies have given their tacit approval for the continuation and proliferation of the violence in the name of their ultimate goal: regime change.

In an attempt to pry Ukraine out of the Russian sphere of influence, the US-EU-NATO alliance has, not for the first time, allied itself with fascists. Of course, for decades, millions in Latin America were disappeared or murdered by fascist paramilitary forces armed and supported by the United States. The mujahideen of Afghanistan, which later transmogrified into Al Qaeda, also extreme ideological reactionaries, were created and financed by the United States for the purposes of destabilizing Russia. And of course, there is the painful reality of Libya and, most recently Syria, where the United States and its allies finance and support extremist jihadis against a government that has refused to align with the US and Israel. There is a disturbing pattern here that has never been lost on keen political observers: the United States always makes common cause with right wing extremists and fascists for geopolitical gain.

The situation in Ukraine is deeply troubling because it represents a political conflagration that could very easily tear the country apart less than 25 years after it gained independence from the Soviet Union. However, there is another equally disturbing aspect to the rise of fascism in that country – it is not alone.

The Fascist Menace Across the Continent

Ukraine and the rise of right wing extremism there cannot be seen, let alone understood, in isolation. Rather, it must be examined as part of a growing trend throughout Europe (and indeed the world) – a trend which threatens the very foundations of democracy.

In Greece, savage austerity imposed by the troika (IMF, ECB, and European Commission) has crippled the country’s economy, leading to a depression as bad, if not worse, than the Great Depression in the United States. It is against this backdrop of economic collapse that the Golden Dawn party has grown to become the third most popular political party in the country. Espousing an ideology of hate, the Golden Dawn – in effect a Nazi party that promotes anti-Jewish, anti-immigrant, anti-women chauvinism – is a political force that the government in Athens has understood to be a serious threat to the very fabric of society. It is this threat which led the government to arrest the party’s leadership after a Golden Dawn Nazi fatally stabbed an anti-fascist rapper. Athens has launched an investigation into the party, though the results of this investigation and trial remain somewhat unclear.

What makes Golden Dawn such an insidious threat is the fact that, despite their central ideology of Nazism, their anti-EU, anti-austerity rhetoric appeals to many in the economically devastated Greece. As with many fascist movements in the 20^th Century, Golden Dawn scapegoats immigrants, Muslim and African primarily, for many of the problems facing Greeks. In dire economic circumstances, such irrational hate becomes appealing; an answer to the question of how to solve society’s problems. Indeed, despite Golden Dawn’s leaders being jailed, other party members are still in parliament, still running for major offices including mayor of Athens. Though an electoral victory is unlikely, another strong showing at the polls will make the eradication of fascism in Greece that much harder.

Were this phenomenon confined to Greece and Ukraine, it would not constitute a continental trend. Sadly however, we see the rise of similar, albeit slightly less overtly fascist, political parties all over Europe. In Spain, the ruling pro-austerity People’s Party has moved to establish draconian laws restricting protest and free speech, and empowering and sanctioning repressive police tactics. In France, the National Front Party of Marine Le Pen, which vehemently scapegoats Muslim and African immigrants, won nearly twenty percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections. Similarly, the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands – which promotes anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant policies – has grown to be the third largest in parliament. Throughout Scandinavia, ultra nationalist parties which once toiled in complete irrelevance and obscurity are now significant players in elections. These trends are worrying to say the least.

It should be noted too that, beyond Europe, there are a number of quasi-fascist political formations which are, in one way or another, supported by the United States. The right wing coups that overthrew the governments of Paraguay and Honduras were tacitly and/or overtly supported by Washington in their seemingly endless quest to suppress the Left in Latin America. Of course, one should also remember that the protest movement in Russia was spearheaded by Alexei Navalny and his nationalist followers who espouse a virulently anti-Muslim, racist ideology that views immigrants from the Russian Caucasus and former Soviet republics as beneath “European Russians”. These and other examples begin to paint a very ugly portrait of a US foreign policy that attempts to use economic hardship and political upheaval to extend US hegemony around the world.

In Ukraine, the “Right Sector” has taken the fight from the negotiating table to the streets in an attempt to fulfill the dream of Stepan Bandera – a Ukraine free of Russia, Jews, and all other “undesirables” as they see it. Buoyed by the continued support from the US and Europe, these fanatics represent a more serious threat to democracy than Yanukovich and the pro-Russian government ever could. If Europe and the United States don’t recognize this threat in its infancy, by the time they finally do, it might just be too late.

Eric Draitser is the founder of StopImperialism.com. He is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. You can reach him at ericdraitser@gmail.com

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Radical Ukraine: The Rise of Fascism supported by EU & US Govt

Source: Russia Today

http://youtu.be/I7PjcOTF5A4

Who is responsible for the violence on the streets of Kiev? Have opposition groups lost control over their more radical members? Why do Western media overlook the radical ideological tenor of the protests? And what can save Ukraine from being divided? CrossTalking with John Laughland, Tony Halpin and Dmitry Babich.

 

When US Senator John McCain dined with Ukraine's opposition leaders in December, he shared a table and later a stage with the leader of the extreme far-right Svoboda party Oleh Tyahnybok

Photo: http://imgur.com/a/1ghhi/

 

Fingerprints of the 911 Crimes Revealed on The Middle East Show

By: Ken O’Keefe

Source: The Middle East Show on The Peoples Voice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPiMzSQCtG8

This third episode of Ken O'Keefe's Middle East focuses on 9/11 and whose fingerprints are all over this false flag event.

Please support the continuation of the middle East show or other work from Ken O’Keefe on The Peoples Voice at the link provided here: http://www.pozible.com/project/176177

Have the End Times Already Begun?



 By: Stewart Brennan 

The combination of Earth’s ongoing Magnetic Pole Shift, Solar Variation, magnetic interaction between the Earth and the Sun, and the exponential increase in industrial pollution, toxins and radiation are all coming to a head with the destruction of our present biological cycle on Earth the end result.

The fall of civilization has begun and regardless of what is done there will be no stopping it from happening in our lifetime. The warning signs can be seen through the shifts in climate to the steady increase of extreme weather, which will, over time, become exponential, leaving long term weather extremes, widespread chaos and a decline in biological populations and species.

Making matters worse is the exponential increase in Industrial pollution brought on by the exponential growth model we adopted as our way of life 100 + years ago. The extreme greed of this economic model of supply and demand is fuelled by finite fossil fuels which have now been extracted way past their peak. The evidence of this is where we are finding new supplies of oil…ie: Fracking and Tar sands. Or the new way in which electricity will be created ie: Nuclear Energy

Nuclear Nighmare

Nuclear power plants produce Nuclear Waste which are like time-bombs just waiting to go off on a planet that is experiencing extreme weather and climate extremes. Eventually these nuclear time bombs will unleash upon the planet as the weather extremes and natural disasters intensify. Do I need to remind anyone of the ongoing meltdowns of Fukushima Japan?… and as Mike Ruppert of “The LifeBoat Hour” correctly states, “Mankind has yet to build a structure which will last 50,000 years, let alone a million”. So how will we contain millions of tons of nuclear waste from breaking from their containment let alone be safe from extreme weather? The answer is we can’t, so why do we continue to pile up this manmade life destroying industrial waste? To produce more energy to feed an exponential economic growth model that fills the pockets of a few? The World’s leaders want to build thousands more of these nuclear time bombs in an age of peak oil so they can continue the illusion that money is what life is all about…It’s completely insane and suicidal on a Planetary scale!!

Giving Life a Chance

If we are to give life on this planet a fighting chance to survive, then all Nuclear power plants must be shut down now and all nuclear waste must be dealt with as a top priority immediately. All fracking must stop and we must begin to repair the damage we have done to the planet by our industrial contamination…there is a better way to live, just look back 100 + years ago…

Deep down, everyone that has the capacity to use common sense knows the truth of these words…most people know it in their hearts, minds and souls to be true but unfortunately they will not consider making changes in the way they live simply because they are afraid to let go of the illusions that the economic system places in their minds…Just a word of caution to those that don’t get it; when the economic system crashes, it will unleash a series of the worst events in human history…the details I’ll leave to your own imagination…But the path we take doesn’t have to be that way, if we change our values…it comes down to 4 words…”Values change for survival”

Have a listen to what Michael Ruppert has to say and then listen to the back up videos attached at the bottom of this post for a clear picture of what we are facing.

Audio Podcast: The LifeBoat Hour Dec 29^th, 2013

Program Source: http://lifeboathour.podbean.com/

By: Michael Ruppert

TEXT of Michael Ruppert’s The LifeBoat Hour Dec. 29^th2013

There are three things which unequivocally and absolutely guarantee the Near Term Extinction of the human species and quite possibly all life on the planet. They are out on the table, acknowledged, repeatedly confirmed and corroborated and they are having direct, painful and tangible impacts on our lives this minute. And they all have direct bearing on each other.

The first of these is Global Warming and Climate Chaos caused by human industrial activity (infinite growth). Of a certainty a four to six degree Centigrade temperature increase is in the very-near future, and -- by what is now not an extreme calculation – the last of our species should be gone by 2030 because the ecosystem which we need to provide us food, water, air and habitable climates will have been destroyed, the web of life ripped to shreds.

It may very well happen much sooner than that.

According to Guy McPherson, the only thing which might have the slightest mitigating impact on Global Warming – over which humankind has any control – would be the immediate cessation of all industrial activity on a planetary level, immediately removing the ever-increasing release of carbon into the atmosphere, by a meme which runs us and owns us, rather than the other way around. It is a meme which must play itself out.

The second of these “causes of death” is radiation. By now we understand fully that the totally unresolved and uncontrolled disaster at Fukushima has for 33 months bombarded the entire Northern Hemisphere and Pacific Ocean with radiation. A lesser realized truth is that there are some 60 nuclear power plants around the United States that are boiling along long past their planned operating lives. They are rickety. They have fires. They have leaks. They have cooling system failures. They flood. There are also many nuclear storage facilities like Hanford and West Lake outside of St. Louis which in the case of Hanford are releasing or Westlake (in danger of releasing) additional enormous quantities of radiation into the air, the water tables, or the soil.

It takes 40 years, a lot of money (energy) and an enormous amount of fossil fuel to fully decommission a nuclear reactor. Absent industrial civilization it will never be possible to safely shut down all 450 operating nuclear reactors and recover or maintain control of perhaps thousands of nuclear waste facilities around the world. And our obligation is to provide safe and secure storage for all of that radioactive waste for one million years.

Mankind has yet to build a structure which will last 50,000 years, let alone a million.

Damned if we do. Damned if we don’t.

But there is a third element that triply seals our fate. It is called Exponential Growth… Just recently on Facebook a friend posted a great video from the late Professor Al Bartlett of Princeton who, throughout his career, was the Champion of sounding the alarm on what Exponential Growth means. He was a fabulous human being with a wicked sense of humor. It isn’t higher math. It’s actually simple arithmetic. If one starts with a square on a checkerboard and puts one grain of rice on that square, two on the next, four on the next, eight on the next, doubling for each square, by the time one reaches the last of 64 squares there will be an amount of rice greater than the annual output of most Asian nations combined.

Now let’s look at infinite growth as though it were taking place in a glass, or a Petri dish, or on a finite planet which -- when full and containing no more resources – spells the complete die off of whatever was growing inside due to resource exhaustion. It’s true for Caribou. It’s true for bacteria. It’s true for human beings. As the late Terrence McKenna warned as he predicted “the end of history” in the late 1990s, if the doubling takes place every minute, then just one minute before the inevitable population collapse, the Petri dish would only be half full. When McKenna sounded these warnings, roughly a decade before I started, human population was only 3.5 billion. Human population has since doubled in less than 20 years. With enough resources it would double again in less than 15. But we can clearly see that the Petri dish is full.

As we go live on the air tonight:

Fukushima’s ongoing deadly release of radiation has not been contained for 33 months. New records for radioactive emissions are announced weekly. The Japanese – as they have done continually for more than 30 months -- are incinerating tons of highly radioactive waste directly into the atmosphere. The International Atomic Energy Agency has granted TEPCO permission to release ALL of its radioactive water into the Pacific.

The carnage that is human industrial civilization continues absolutely unabated and unrestrained. Tens of thousands of coal fired generating plants continue to operate around the world. Tens of thousands of natural gas fired plants using fracked gas continue to destroy water tables, cause earthquakes and add to the ever-increasing amounts of carbon released into the atmosphere. The plants themselves may not, but the extraction of the gas they burn is one of the most carbon intensive and destructive, toxic processes known. In Canada the tar sands are being voraciously mined with continuing release of carbon, environmental destruction, and rapacious ruination of fresh water supplies. In North Dakota, so-called “shale oil” production proceeds with ferocious intensity. Factories and corporations required to show “growth” and profit continue to churn out cars and TVs and cell phones and junk, all wrapped in plastic which will last about as long as radioactive waste. And because the cheap, easy energy is gone, every year industrial nations resort to more damaging, more desperate, more carbon-intensive means to get their hands on less and less energy, often expending more energy to obtain what they all fuel than they get from burning it.

Absolutely nothing has been – or is being – done about the things that are really killing us, and not just us, but every living thing on the planet. Just a lot of talk. Well I’ve been talking for 35 years and I’m almost done with it.

Every day, as more than 250,000 new humans arrive on the planet, more than 200 species go extinct… forever. Exponential growth of human population has never been addressed, in large part because the economic mandate for infinite growth has never been addressed. Thus the pressures to not do anything at all about the first two problems are ever greater. I call it “Catch 22 Cubed.” More people need more heat, more power, more food grown with fossil fuels… More, more, more.

This is the end of More.

As the Eschaton event emerges, and as we approach it with ever-increasing clarity about what “it” is I have noticed on Facebook -- where I have invested enormous energy in community building and consciousness raising -- a disappointing trend of late. Briefly summarized, it goes like this: The more clearly we see our imminent physical demise, the more people tend to talk about things that are irrelevant to it. They want to talk about Ed Snowden. They want to talk about disaster capitalism. They want to talk about Iran-Contra. They want to talk about whether a specific and alarming radiation reading, in Death Valley, or Idaho, or Colorado, or Washington actually came from Fukushima or not. They want to talk about who did or did not make a good reading somewhere. They want to talk which competing theory/hypothesis on the actual conditions at Fukushima is correct instead of abut the fact that we know what we are being told is an absolute lie. They want to talk about Albert Bartlett’s personality as opposed to the simple arithmetic he presented which they still refuse to see.

My sense of Facebook now is that people are using more and more intelligence and effort to find things to divert their attention away from, rather than towards a reality that is becoming more and more abundantly clear to millions, tens of millions, and soon to be billions of people on this deeply wounded planet. Well baby, if that’s your game… and I play it… Then all I’m doing is validating your game…

I have reached a point of diminishing marginal returns on Facebook and this week I pretty much exiled myself from the page. I do not need to read all these stories that get posted. I find about 90% of them irrelevant now. And I’m real confident that I’m doing some of the best work of my entire life right here on the Progressive Radio Network with you every Sunday.

My Facebook page is an amazingly useful, safe, well-crafted and productive space, free from disinformation. In my absence it will be cared for and protected by loyal friends and tribal members who have been there for the whole ride. I will check in from time to time and make announcements about upcoming shows or when something really serious happens.

We know what’s here. We are beginning to understand what it means. And it’s high time we turned our full gaze and attention to it. This is the culminating event of all of what we have called history.

It’s here. It’s now. It’s what we came here to witness and be a part of. There’s no game left to play but to face it. Not facing it will produce what Terrence McKenna called “A fire in a madhouse.”

In upcoming shows I’ll be discussing more of the only thing that makes sense of it all – and is doing more so every week -- and of my own life’s long and arduous journey. I call it “The Safety Valve at the End of History”.

Hint: Terrence McKenna.

It’s time to sit back, put my feet up and focus on center stage because this is the finale and I don’t want to miss it. It’s what I came here for. So did you.

Michael C. Ruppert

---------------------------

You Can tune into Michael Ruppert’s “The LifeBoat Hour” every Sunday Evening at 9:00 pm Eastern Standard Time at the following link: http://prn.fm/hosts/michael-ruppert/

-------------------------------------------

Sustainability 101 - Professor Al Bartlett (Exponential Growth Explained)

Video Source link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0ghHia-M54

Fukushima and its Long Term Threats

Video Source Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEI4XinYmHc

Original Audio Link: http://prn.fm/progressive-commentary-hour-121613/

NOVA – Magnetic Pole Flip 530,000 Years Overdue and Happening Now

Video Source Link: http://youtu.be/pGKKzsRjJ_Y

Russia Launches “Swarm” Satellites to Monitor Earth’s Magnetic Field

Video Source Link: http://youtu.be/M7VqDsN6mlU

Cliemate – What Doesn’t Make the News

Video Source Link: http://youtu.be/2hOhq0vHfMI

Extreme Weather Events and Disasters of 2013

Video Source Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iZGVUa0BFo

 

Terrence McKenna – Final Earthbound Interview

Video Source Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCaK35DQ4uk

Collapse – Michael Ruppert

Video Source Link:

Saudi ‘gift’ to hide its terror hand

 

By: Finian Cunningham

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/12/30/342785/saudi-gift-to-hide-its-terror-hand/

Saudi largesse is throwing money again – in a bid to cover up its bloodstained hands in violence hitting the Middle East and beyond.

The latest public relations gimmick is the “donation” of $3 billion to the Lebanese army made by Saudi King Abdullah at the weekend.

The Saudi cash – twice the national military budget of Lebanon – is being regaled in the Western media as a noble offer to secure Lebanon from recent terror attacks.

The announcement was made during a visit to Riyadh by French President Francois Hollande, who met the Saudi king and the latter’s Lebanese proxy, Saad Hariri.

The new Saudi military aid to Lebanon is tied to the condition that it must be spent on purchasing French weaponry.

Already, the outlines of a sleazy deal are emerging. The above political actors have done much to destabilize Lebanon with violence, which is now being blamed on the wrong people – Shia Hezbollah – thanks to the deft finger work of billionaire Paris-exile Hariri.

One of the main protagonists of terrorism – Saudi Arabia – now steps in with a military aid “gift” that will allow it to influence the Lebanese army to go after Saudi enemy Hezbollah.

Such an insidious interference by Saudi Arabia in the internal affairs of Lebanon can only but incite further sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia in that country, which is still recovering from a 15-year civil war.

On top of this, the other main advocate of regional subversion and terrorism – France – stands to receive a handsome payback in weapons sales to the tune of $3 billion.

And all the while, the Western media give this despicable charade a veneer of respectability. It really is astounding how Western media can get away with such distortion.

Saudi blood money and sponsorship of terrorism are carrying out demonic work in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Pakistan and even it could be added in Iran’s peripheral southeast region.

Moreover, the Saudi terror connection can also be traced to the weekend double bombing in the southern Russian city of Volgograd where more than 30 people were killed.

In October, a suicide bomber killed six also in a bus attack in Volgograd. Other cities have also been hit with deadly attacks in Russia’s Dagestan in recent months.

The likely Chechen perpetrators behind those attacks – led by Saudi-linked Doku Umarov – are also involved in waging the Saudi-financed terror war in Syria.

Recall, too, that Saudi spymaster Prince Bandar only a few months ago made veiled threats to Russian leader Vladimir Putin that the Sochi Winter Olympic Games were at risk to acts of sabotage. The Games are set to open on 7 February 2014.

Nevertheless, against this appalling background of provable Saudi-sponsored mayhem – stretching from the Mediterranean to the Russian Caucasus – we have this latest ridiculous Saudi public relations stunt.

Saudi King Abdullah, we are told, is to “grant” $3 billion to “help” the Lebanese army to “beef up its security”. France 24, among others, reported that the military boost “would help the Lebanese army fight ... groups like Hezbollah, which has caused a wave of violence in the country.”

The latter claim by France 24 is a risible distortion of the facts. Lebanon has indeed witnessed a wave of violence in recent months, but the main victims of the attacks have been Hezbollah and Shia communities in southern Beirut and Baalbek in the east of the country.

The primary source of this bloodshed in Lebanon is groups linked to Saudi, Israeli and Western intelligence.

For example, the double suicide bombing of the Iranian embassy in Beirut on 19 November, which killed at least 23 including Iranian cultural attaché [to Beirut Hojjatoleslam] Ebrahim Ansari, was claimed by the Saudi-backed al-Qaeda group known as Abdullah Azzam Brigade.

The Saudi king’s act of generosity to “improve security” in Lebanon should therefore be scoffed at by media instead of praised. But this is the Western media performing its dutiful function of inverting reality.

King Abdullah’s show of magnanimity came two days after a prominent Lebanese Sunni politician, Mohamad Shatah, was assassinated in a massive bomb blast that targeted his car in the capital Beirut on Friday morning.

Western media were quick to highlight claims by Saudi-backed Lebanese political leader Saad Hariri that the perpetrators of Shatah’s murder were Hezbollah. The Syrian government of President Bashar al Assad was also implicated for the killing.

There is no evidence to attribute Shatah’s murder to Hezbollah, other than politicized conjecture. Hezbollah and its Syrian and Iranian allies all categorically condemned the killing.

However, there is strong circumstantial evidence that Shatah may have been liquidated by his geopolitical allies as a nefarious means of triggering further sectarian violence inside Lebanon.

The execution of his murder would have required split-second timing and confidential information of his itinerary. He was on his way to meet members of the Hariri-led March 14 group.

This pattern of fomenting sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia, as well as Christian, has been a staple of Saudi, Israeli and Western intelligence operating to destabilize Syria and Iraq over the past three years.

The splurging of $3 billion by Saudi Arabia to “increase Lebanon’s security” is merely cynical public relations to cover up the real source of violence in that country, as well as providing Riyadh military leverage to go after Hezbollah within Lebanon.

It follows the much bigger precedent of $100 billion that Saudi Arabia doled out to the United Nations Anti-Terrorism Center last August.

That donation was made at the end of the Holy Muslim Month of Ramadan as “a gift from the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques of Islam”.

In the previous four weeks before that “gift”, some 1,000 Iraqis were killed in terror attacks mainly committed by the Saudi-bankrolled al-Qaeda franchise known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.

This same group has been engaging in similar atrocities in neighboring Syria, along with [so-called] al-Nusra Front, [so-called] Liwa al-Tawhid and [so-called] Ahrar al-Sham – all of them Saudi-sponsored.

The simple fact is that the sectarian bloodshed inundating Syria and Iraq, and increasingly now in Lebanon, as well as in countries as far apart as Yemen and Russia, would not be happening if it were not for the blood money flowing from Saudi Arabia.

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Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Originally from Belfast, Ireland, he is now located in East Africa as a freelance journalist, where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring, based on eyewitness experience working in the Persian Gulf as an editor of a business magazine and subsequently as a freelance news correspondent. The author was deported from Bahrain in June 2011 because of his critical journalism in which he highlighted systematic human rights violations by regime forces. He is now a columnist on international politics for Press TV and the Strategic Culture Foundation

 

Peak Oil is here and it will Break Economies - BP Geologist

 

By: Nafeez Ahmed

http://www.theguardian.com/profile/nafeez-ahmed
News Source: The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/dec/23/british-petroleum-geologist-peak-oil-break-economy-recession

Industry expert warns of grim future of 'recession' driven 'resource wars' at University College London lecture.

A former British Petroleum (BP) geologist has warned that the age of cheap oil is long gone, bringing with it the danger of "continuous recession" and increased risk of conflict and hunger.

At a lecture on 'Geohazards' earlier this month as part of the postgraduate Natural Hazards for Insurers course at University College London (UCL), Dr. Richard G. Miller, who worked for BP from 1985 before retiring in 2008, said that official data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), US Energy Information Administration (EIA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), among other sources, showed that conventional oil had most likely peaked around 2008.

Dr. Miller critiqued the official industry line that global reserves will last 53 years at current rates of consumption, pointing out that "peaking is the result of declining production rates, not declining reserves." Despite new discoveries and increasing reliance on unconventional oil and gas, 37 countries are already post-peak, and global oil production is declining at about 4.1% per year, or 3.5 million barrels a day (b/d) per year:

"We need new production equal to a new Saudi Arabia every 3 to 4 years to maintain and grow supply... New discoveries have not matched consumption since 1986. We are drawing down on our reserves, even though reserves are apparently climbing every year. Reserves are growing due to better technology in old fields, raising the amount we can recover – but production is still falling at 4.1% p.a. [per annum]."

Dr. Miller, who prepared annual in-house projections of future oil supply for BP from 2000 to 2007, refers to this as the "ATM problem" – "more money, but still limited daily withdrawals." As a consequence: "Production of conventional liquid oil has been flat since 2008. Growth in liquid supply since then has been largely of natural gas liquids [NGL]- ethane, propane, butane, pentane - and oil-sand bitumen."

Dr. Miller is co-editor of a special edition of the prestigious journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, published this month on the future of oil supply. In an introductory paper co-authored with Dr. Steve R. Sorrel, co-director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex in Brighton, they argue that among oil industry experts "there is a growing consensus that the era of cheap oil has passed and that we are entering a new and very different phase." They endorse the conservative conclusions of an extensive earlier study by the government-funded UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC):

"... a sustained decline in global conventional production appears probable before 2030 and there is significant risk of this beginning before 2020... on current evidence the inclusion of tight oil [shale oil] resources appears unlikely to significantly affect this conclusion, partly because the resource base appears relatively modest."

In fact, increasing dependence on shale could worsen decline rates in the long run:

"Greater reliance upon tight oil resources produced using hydraulic fracturing will exacerbate any rising trend in global average decline rates, since these wells have no plateau and decline extremely fast - for example, by 90% or more in the first 5 years."

Tar sands will fare similarly, they conclude, noting that "the Canadian oil sands will deliver only 5 mb per day by 2030, which represents less than 6% of the IEA projection of all-liquids production by that date."

Despite the cautious projection of global peak oil "before 2020", they also point out that:

"Crude oil production grew at approximately 1.5% per year between 1995 and 2005, but then plateaued with more recent increases in liquids supply largely deriving from NGLs, oil sands and tight oil. These trends are expected to continue... Crude oil production is heavily concentrated in a small number of countries and a small number of giant fields, with approximately 100 fields producing one half of global supply, 25 producing one quarter and a single field (Ghawar in Saudi Arabia) producing approximately 7%. Most of these giant fields are relatively old, many are well past their peak of production, most of the rest seem likely to enter decline within the next decade or so and few new giant fields are expected to be found."

"The final peak is going to be decided by the price - how much can we afford to pay?", Dr. Miller told me in an interview about his work. "If we can afford to pay $150 per barrel, we could certainly produce more given a few years of lead time for new developments, but it would break economies again."

Miller argues that for all intents and purposes, peak oil has arrived as conditions are such that despite volatility, prices can never return to pre-2004 levels:

"The oil price has risen almost continuously since 2004 to date, starting at $30. There was a great spike to $150 and then a collapse in 2008/2009, but it has since climbed to $110 and held there. The price rise brought a lot of new exploration and development, but these new fields have not actually increased production by very much, due to the decline of older fields. This is compatible with the idea that we are pretty much at peak today. This recession is what peak feels like."

Although he is dismissive of shale oil and gas' capacity to prevent a peak and subsequent long decline in global oil production, Miller recognises that there is still some leeway that could bring significant, if temporary dividends for US economic growth - though only as "a relatively short-lived phenomenon":

"We're like a cage of lab rats that have eaten all the cornflakes and discovered that you can eat the cardboard packets too. Yes, we can, but... Tight oil may reach 5 or even 6 million b/d in the US, which will hugely help the US economy, along with shale gas. Shale resources, though, are inappropriate for more densely populated countries like the UK, because the industrialisation of the countryside affects far more people (with far less access to alternative natural space), and the economic benefits are spread more thinly across more people. Tight oil production in the US is likely to peak before 2020. There absolutely will not be enough tight oil production to replace the US' current 9 million b/d of imports."

In turn, by prolonging global economic recession, high oil prices may reduce demand. Peak demand in turn may maintain a longer undulating oil production plateau:

"We are probably in peak oil today, or at least in the foot-hills. Production could rise a little for a few years yet, but not sufficiently to bring the price down; alternatively, continuous recession in much of the world may keep demand essentially flat for years at the $110/bbl price we have today. But we can't grow the supply at average past rates of about 1.5% per year at today's prices."

The fundamental dependence of global economic growth on cheap oil supplies suggests that as we continue into the age of expensive oil and gas, without appropriate efforts to mitigate the impacts and transition to a new energy system, the world faces a future of economic and geopolitical turbulence:

"In the US, high oil prices correlate with recessions, although not all recessions correlate with high oil prices. It does not prove causation, but it is highly likely that when the US pays more than 4% of its GDP for oil, or more than 10% of GDP for primary energy, the economy declines as money is sucked into buying fuel instead of other goods and services... A shortage of oil will affect everything in the economy. I expect more famine, more drought, more resource wars and a steady inflation in the energy cost of all commodities."

According to another study in the Royal Society journal special edition by professor David J. Murphy of Northern Illinois University, an expert in the role of energy in economic growth, the energy return on investment (EROI) for global oil and gas production - the amount of energy produced compared to the amount of energy invested to get, deliver and use that energy - is roughly 15 and declining. For the US, EROI of oil and gas production is 11 and declining; and for unconventional oil and biofuels is largely less than 10. The problem is that as EROI decreases, energy prices increase. Thus, Murphy concludes:

"... the minimum oil price needed to increase the oil supply in the near term is at levels consistent with levels that have induced past economic recessions. From these points, I conclude that, as the EROI of the average barrel of oil declines, long-term economic growth will become harder to achieve and come at an increasingly higher financial, energetic and environmental cost."

Current EROI in the US, Miller said, is simply "not enough to support the US infrastructure, even if America was self-sufficient, without raising production even further than current consumption."

In their introduction to their collection of papers in the Royal Society journal, Miller and Sorrell point out that "most authors" in the special edition "accept that conventional oil resources are at an advanced stage of depletion and that liquid fuels will become more expensive and increasingly scarce." The shale revolution can provide only "short-term relief", but is otherwise "unlikely to make a significant difference in the longer term."

They call for a "coordinated response" to this challenge to mitigate the impact, including "far-reaching changes in global transport systems." While "climate-friendly solutions to 'peak oil' are available" they caution, these will be neither "easy" nor "quick", and imply a model of economic development that accepts lower levels of consumption and mobility.

In his interview with me, Richard Miller was particularly critical of the UK government's policies, including abandoning large-scale wind farm projects, the reduction of feed-in tariffs for renewable energy, and support for shale gas. "The government will do anything for the short-term economic bounce," he said, "but the consequence will be that the UK is tied more tightly to an oil-based future, and we will pay dearly for it."

 

Be the Change You Want to See in the World

Message from World United News Blog Owner Stewart Brennan

“Be the change you want to see in the world”…well that is what I have been trying to do for the past 7 years but because there are so many things I wanted to see changed in the world, I took on way too many topics to be any sort of effective change at all. So I made a decision today to focus on one topic that would bring about positive change in the world that could also have an effect on all the topics and issues I cared about and wanted to see changed for the better…my choice also had to be something I really enjoyed doing and really cared about so I decided to concentrate my time and efforts on promoting music.

Over the past 3 ½ years I have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are far more artists in the world that deserve to be in the public spotlight than is presently being offered. Quite simply, I don’t like what the mainstream offers or has offered for a long time, so this is where I want to see change, and the only way to change that is to just do it…Music is an art-form that reflects everyday life and is a powerful medium that expresses our feelings while motivating our wishes and dreams…Music is a creative process that has been silenced for far too long and needs to be unleashed into the World once again…it is the medicine of our souls and the rhythm of our hearts, so “World United Music” is stepping up another notch to bring about musical change in the World.

I know I have already played a small part for some 400 plus bands and artists but it isn’t enough and my goal has not been reached so I hope you will join me on this spiritual quest and share with your friends the music that resonates with you. Your endorsement through sharing with friends is the best way to spread the word and bring about the changes we all want to see in this world…in my mind, our Revolution BEGINS with music…because music is the peoples voice and will not be denied.

Most of my energy will now be focused on the World United Music Website.

Video Source: World United Music YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVArI4EwpEs

Here are a few Music Play lists from World United Music:

Rock & Alternative – 2010 to 2019

Soft Rock – 2010 to 2019

Folk Rock & Acoustic – 2010 to 2019

Blues - 2000 to 2019

Pop Rock - 2000 to 2014

Progressive Rock – 2000 to 2014

Psychedelic Rock – 2000 to 2014

Punk Rock & High Energy Rock n Roll – 2000 to 2014

Hard Rock & Heavy Metal – 2000 to 2014

Southern Rock Country & Bluegrass – 2000 to 2014

Here is the Direct link to the World United Music website

http://worldunitedmusic.blogspot.com/

US appeals court overturns ruling, that 9/11 victims can't sue Saudi Arabia

News Source: Press TV

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/12/20/340948/911-case-against-saudi-arabia-revived/
Video Source: Press TV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUFjc8Yxqek

A federal appeals court in New York City has revived litigation against Saudi Arabia on behalf of families of victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

More than twelve years after the 9/11 attacks and eight years after a lower federal court ruled Saudi Arabia had immunity from prosecution, a three-judge panel of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled on Thursday that families of 9/11 victims can get their day in court against Saudi Arabia.

According to the families of 9/11 victims, the kingdom provided support to al-Qaeda prior to the attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people.

“This opinion is eminently correct and will give 9/11 victims their day in court,” said Stephen Cozen, a partner at the Pennsylvania-based law firm Cozen O'Connor representing the plaintiffs.

“The parties will start over, and we are very, very satisfied that we will meet any defenses, both legal and factual, that are raised,” Cozen added.

The litigation began in 2002, just one year after the 9/11 attacks, when families of the victims said that Saudi Arabia and a charity affiliated with the Saudi government knowingly provided al-Qaeda with funds and other material support to help them carry out the attacks.

However, in 2005, US District Judge Richard Casey dismissed the case ruling that the kingdom was immune from prosecution under the federal Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

In 2008, a 2nd Circuit Court panel upheld the ruling on different grounds but the same interpretation of sovereign immunity law did not apply to Afghanistan against which a 2011 decision allowed similar claims to proceed.

It would be “especially anomalous” to treat the two cases differently, Circuit Judge Chester Straub wrote for the three-judge panel on Thursday, Reuters reported.

“I’m ecstatic, because we have a lot of information and evidence,” William Doyle, who lost his 25-year-old son in the attacks, told the New York Daily News.

Fifteen of the 19 September 11 attackers were Saudi nationals who flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and into a field in Pennsylvania.

Moreover, many Americans and families of the attacks’ victims say there is more to the tragic event than just planes hijacked by Saudi nationals, talking about the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center, Israeli complicity in the events, and many other issues.

Critics have indicated, among other things, to bombs and explosives planted at the World Trade Center that demolished the buildings, jubilant Israeli intelligence agents photographing the attacks, made-up phone calls from the planes, and a warning by the Mossad (the Israeli spy agency) one day before the attacks to Israeli Tower workers and occupants to stay away from the buildings.

A former CIA agent, Susan Lindauer, has also indicated the role of the US intelligence apparatus in the attacks.

Lindauer talks about the CIA’s detailed knowledge of the time, target, and means of the 9/11 attacks over the months prior to the events, saying the “lies are so much bigger than what you know.”
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World Trade Center Building 7 Demolished

Source Video:

http://youtu.be/Zv7BImVvEyk

Rosie O’Donnell & William Rodriguez on 911

Source Video:

http://youtu.be/14f8_y_zWtk

911 Fire Fighters – Three Explosions AFTER Plane hit World Trade Center

Source Video:

http://youtu.be/1IYlEVCpG_0