Steve Bull's Blog, page 1175
March 2, 2018
Emails Reveal Trump Admin Mulling Big Oil Plan to Transfer Public Land to States
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During its first year under Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Interior has coordinated closely with the oil and gas industry to accomplish its priorities on the nation’s expansive federal lands. Among them: considering a plan to transfer control of oil and gas development on public lands to the states. This revelation comes from emails and documents obtained by the Western Values Project through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The key coordinator of this plan has been Timothy Williams, who has served as the go-between for the oil and gas industry and Interior Department. Williams, deputy director of the agency’s Office of External Affairs, formerly served as the field director of the Nevada state branch of Americans for Prosperity, a front group founded and funded by Koch Industries.
Williams, the emails show, has served as the point of contact for outreach on policy issues for groups such as the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), Western Energy Alliance, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and its state-level branches, and other oil and gas companies such as ConocoPhillips, Chesapeake Energy, and EOG Resources. IPAA is best known as the creator of the front group Energy in Depth, which serves as an outspoken voice on issues pertaining particularly to hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the U.S.
The emails also portray discussions of the policy fight over endangered species protections for the greater sage grouse and other regulatory topics, with regular outreach to and input received from the oil and gas industry. They further exhibit many examples of Interior Department officials, including Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, being invited — and often accepting invitations — to speak at industry events and conferences.
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Is Washington Sufficiently Intelligent to Be Trusted with an Independent Foreign Policy?
As I figured would be the case, Putin’s message to the West that Russia cannot be intimidated and that the nations must work together to deal with world problems was far over the heads of the dumbshit “exceptional” Americans. CNN rushed out an idiot named Samantha Vinograd who served as a staffer on Obama’s National Security Council to declare that Putin’s speech was only aimed at one person in the world—President Trump. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/01/opinions/russia-missile-trump-opinion-vinograd/index.html
Putin, the idiot Samantha Vinograd says, is “poking at Trump’s insecurities” with the threat that “my missiles are bigger than yours.”
The stupid Samantha Vinograd repeats the lie that Russiagate was Putin’s plot “to destabilize the United States.” So, how is the US a superpower when Russia controls US elections? Doesn’t this mean that Americans are of no relevance whatsoever in the world?
I mean, really. With intelligence levels this low on Obama’s National Security Council, no wonder the neoonservatives were able to run over the Obama regime and resurrect the Cold War, thus returning the world to a high chance of nuclear Armageddon.
The idiot Samantha Vinograd says the solution is more sanctions on Russia. She is the epitomy of Einstein’s rule that “insanity is to continue doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
All the illegal sanctions did was to produce Russian military superiority over the utter fools in Washington.
I really do not think that there is enough intelligence in Washington for the world to allow Washington to have an independent foreign policy.
The world won’t be safe until the government of the United States is committed to an insane asylum
The Powerful Global Spy Alliance You Never Knew Existed
Photo: Kristian Laemmle-Ruff
THE POWERFUL GLOBAL SPY ALLIANCE YOU NEVER KNEW EXISTED
IT IS ONE of the world’s most powerful alliances. And yet most people have probably never heard of it, because its existence is a closely guarded government secret.The “SIGINT Seniors” is a spy agency coalition that meets annually to collaborate on global security issues. It has two divisions, each focusing on different parts of the world: SIGINT Seniors Europe and SIGINT Seniors Pacific. Both are led by the U.S. National Security Agency, and together they include representatives from at least 17 other countries. Members of the group are from spy agencies that eavesdrop on communications – a practice known as “signals intelligence,” or SIGINT.
Details about the meetings of the SIGINT Seniors are disclosed in a batch of classified documents from the NSA’s internal newsletter SIDToday, provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden and published today by The Intercept. The documents shine light on the secret history of the coalition, the issues that the participating agencies have focused on in recent years, and the systems that allow allied countries to share sensitive surveillance data with each other.
The SIGINT Seniors Europe was formed in 1982, amid the Cold War. Back then, the alliance had nine members, whose primary focus was on uncovering information about the Soviet Union’s military. Following the attacks on the U.S. in September 2001, the group grew to 14 and began focusing its efforts on counterterrorism.
The core participants of the Seniors Europe are the surveillance agencies from the so-called Five Eyes: the NSA and its counterparts from the U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. As of April 2013, the other members were intelligence agencies from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden.
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Oklahoma Bolsters Earthquake Protocol For Frackers
Oklahoma has witnessed a surge in earthquakes over the past decade. Regulators and scientists largely agree that the higher seismic activity is associated with the injection of wastewater from oil and gas production into wastewater wells.
Now Oklahoma is tightening its seismic protocol for the oil and gas operations in the state in an effort to reduce the chances of induced earthquakes. The oil industry welcomed the move, describing it reasonable and data-driven.
Earlier this week, the Oil and Gas Conservation Division (OGCD) at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission announced changes in the seismic protocol to “further address seismicity” in the state’s largest oil and gas play.
Under the tougher seismic protocol, all operators conducting hydraulic fracturing operations are now required to monitor real-time seismicity readings during active operations by using a seismic array, a system of linked seismographs arranged in a regular geometric pattern to increase sensitivity to earthquake detection.
Oklahoma is also lowering the minimum level at which operators must take action, from a 2.5 magnitude (ML) to 2.0 ML. Generally, the minimum level at which people can feel earthquakes is about 2.5 ML.
The third key change in the seismic protocol is that some operators will have to pause operations for 6 hours at 2.5 ML, with the magnitude level now lowered from the 3.0 ML minimum level at which operators had to pause operations under the previous protocol.
“The overall induced earthquake rate has decreased over the past year, but the number of felt earthquakes that may be linked to well completion activity, including hydraulic fracturing, in the SCOOP and STACK has increased,” OGCD Director Tim Baker said.
“Ultimately, the goal is to have enough information to develop plans that will virtually eliminate the risk of a felt earthquake from a well completion operation in the SCOOP and STACK,” said the Director of the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS), Dr. Jerry Boak.
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Kuroda Shocks Markets Hinting At QE End; Nikkei, USDJPY Tumble
In addition to the suddenly escalating global trade war, overnight traders had one more thing to worry about: another central bank unwinding its QE program. This happened shortly after midnight ET, when BOJ Governor Kuroda unexpectedly announced that the Bank of Japan will start thinking about how to exit its massive monetary stimulus program around the fiscal year starting in April 2019, and that there could be policy change before the 2% inflation target is achieved, marking the first time he’s provided any clear guidance on timing for normalizing policy.
“Right now, the members of the policy board and I think that prices will move to reach 2 percent in around fiscal 2019. So it’s logical that we would be thinking about and debating exit at that time too,” he said. “I’m not saying that the negative rate of 0.1 percent and the around 0 percent aim for 10-year bond yields will never change, but it is possible. We will be discussing that at each policy meeting.”
In immediate reaction, Japanese shares fell sharply, the Nikkei sliding as much as 2.9% as the Yen surged as much as 0.5%, with the USDJPY tumbling below 106, a 15 month low, while JGB yields jumped across the curve.
“Kuroda’s comments are important because he officially acknowledged a change in policy was likely before the end of fiscal year 2019,” said Rodrigo Catril, a currency strategist at National Australia Bank Ltd. in Sydney. “A move sub-105 yen over the coming days wouldn’t be surprising under the current risk off/trade war concern environment”
In testimony that lasted about three hours, Kuroda seemed to try mitigating the negative market impact by saying that this doesn’t affect his “overshooting commitment,” which pledges the BOJ to continue expanding the monetary base until inflation exceeds 2 percent in a stable manner.
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Beast From The East: Europe’s Feeling The Chill
The “Beast from the East” has well and truly arrived in Europe, blanketing much of the continent in snow.
The Siberian weather system has sent temperatures plummeting to as low as -30°C in some places and, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy reports, at least ten people have died due to the cold spell since Monday. Many major European cities have experienced their coldest temperatures in years as the following infographic shows.
You will find more infographics at Statista
On Wednesday, Rome was experiencing lows of -6°C while the average February low in the Italian capital is 3°C, according to Current Results. The city also saw its first snowfall in six years while Naples had to deal with its heaviest bout of snow in decades. The mercury usually doesn’t dip below 5°C during February in Naples.
Residents in both London and Amsterdam have been shivering in temperatures of -7°C but Munich and Berlin are even worse off.
Yahoo Weather put Wednesday’s low in Munich at -17°C while Berliners had to endure -12°C, far colder than the average February low of -2°C.
The Hackneyed Imperialist Tool of Demonization
The systematic dehumanization of the leaders of other countries; the routine exaggeration of their military capabilities; the monotonous falsification of the nature and attitudes of other peoples; the reckless application of double standards in comparing the conduct of others with our own, as well as the inability to recognize the common character of many problems of others with our own, and the consequent tendency to see all aspects of the relationship with others in terms of a total and irreconcilable conflict of concerns and purposes. These, I believe, are not signs of the maturity and discernment that can be expected in the diplomacy of a great power…
Although the above description may seem applicable to Washington’s current foreign policy, it is a warning that George Frost Kennan (1904-2005), a long-serving diplomat and American historian, reminds us of the fact that it was Kennan who formulated and advocated a “policy of containment” against alleged Soviet expansionism, but later changed his theory.
Kennan enunciated his “containment policy” in February 1946 in a text that is remembered as the long message (“the Long Telegram”) he sent from Moscow in 1946 against so-called Soviet expansionism at the end of World War II. The text, signed with just one “X”, appeared in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, intended to analyze the structure and psychology of Soviet diplomacy at that time. It was widely disseminated by Washington and brought Kennan a lot of popularity in the academic world.
Shortly after that same year, he was appointed director of policy planning at the State Department and, in 1949, advisor to that department. He returned to Moscow in 1952 as his country’s ambassador and in the following year, he had to return to the United States after being declared persona non grata by the Soviet government.
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The Colorado Gas Wars: Where Things Fall Apart, for There is No Center
Things stay mostly the same in Colorado, where climate change doesn’t exist in the minds of many politicians and some captains of industry. The marvels of fracking are a constant. Wells explode with regularity; each week thousands of barrels of toxic liquids from hydraulic fracturing are injected into the bowels of the earth for ‘safe keeping’; gasses, some of them threatening to all life, drift down from the oil patch in rural Weld County to create ozone and other air problems for the state’s urban population; frackers with massive drilling paraphernalia invade neighborhoods with impunity–and the political elite proclaim fracking safe and necessary to the economy.
One new thing did occur. Xcel, the corporate utility that provides most of the energy for urban users, sought bids for new power generation to replace two coal fired power plants. Pricing for wind and solar energy, including battery storage, came in much lower than for fossil fuel, including natural gas. This development ends for the moment the old charge that renewables can never compete with fossil fuels because storage is too expensive.
The industry will concoct new scare stories, for their existence depends on it. Still, before the ink dried on the Xcel bids, Jim Robo, CEO of NextEra Energy, a large southland utility, predicted that by the 2020s it will be cheaper to build new wind and solar plants with storage than to continue running old coal and nuclear plants. The executives at Xcel will undoubtedly contest this assertion since it is asking Coloradans for billions in stranded costs to retire old power plants.
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Racing Towards a Low-Yield Armageddon
Photo by James Stencilowsky | CC BY 2.0
On February 3 the Washington Post observed that “the United States can deliver a [nuclear] strike anywhere in the world in 30 minutes with astounding accuracy” and questioned the need for “a new generation of low-yield nuclear weapons,” quoting the commander of the strategic force, General John Hyten, as saying “I’m very comfortable today with the flexibility of our response options.” But it appears that no matter the quantity and world-destroying capability of the US nuclear arsenal, there is always room for more — and more devastating — weapons of mass annihilation.
General James Mattis, the US Secretary of Defence, discussed Washington’s recently composed Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) with the Armed Services Committee of the House of Representatives on February 6. He was attempting to justify the upgrading and huge expansion of the US nuclear arsenal which the Congressional Budget Office has estimated will cost some 1.2 trillion dollars over the next 30 years, and described in detail some of the projects that have been planned. The entire exercise does not fit well with the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in which it is agreed by almost every country in the world that the nuclear arms race should be halted and that all possible measures should be taken towards achievement of nuclear disarmament.
But Washington’s notions of global nuclear disarmament are curiously ambivalent, as there is unconditional support for Israel’s highly developed nuclear weapons’ capabilities, yet obsessive criticism of North Korea’s program to arm itself with nuclear missiles. Nobody can defend or approve of North Korea’s wild nuclear fandangos which are beggaring an already downtrodden and poverty-stricken population on the verge of starvation, but Pyongyang’s rationale is that its policy “is the best way to respond with powerful nuclear deterrent to the US imperialists who are violent toward the weak and subservient to the strong.”
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Colonizing the Western Mind
Photo by Marco | CC BY 2.0
In Christopher Nolan’s captivating and visually dazzling film Inception, a practitioner of psychic corporate espionage must plant and idea inside a CEO’s head. The process is called inception, and it represents the frontier of corporate influence, in which mind spies no longer just “extract” ideas from the dreams of others, but seed useful ideas in a target’s subconscious. Inception is a well-crafted piece of futuristic sci-fi drama, but some of the ideas it imparts are already deeply embedded in the American subconscious. The notion of inception, of hatching an idea in the mind of a man or woman without his or her knowledge, is the kernel of propaganda, a black art practiced in the States since the First World War. Today we live beneath an invisible cultural hegemony, a set of ideas implanted in the mass mind by the U.S. state and its corporate media over decades. Invisibility seems to happen when something is either obscure or ubiquitous. In a propaganda system, an overarching objective is to render the messaging invisible by universalizing it within the culture. Difference is known by contrast. If there are no contrasting views in your field of vision, it’s easier to accept the ubiquitous explanation. The good news is that the ideology is well-known to some who have, for one lucky reason or another, found themselves outside the hegemonic field and are thus able to contrast the dominant worldview with alternative opinions. On the left, the ruling ideology might be described as neoliberalism, a particularly vicious form of imperial capitalism that, as would be expected, is camouflaged in the lineaments of humanitarian aid and succor.
Inception 1972
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