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FTR #723 Doin’ the Earth Island Boogie

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ September 18, 2010Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
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Intro­duc­tion: (NB: This descrip­tion con­tains impor­tant infor­ma­tion not includ­ed in the orig­i­nal broad­cast.) High­light­ing maneu­ver­ing in the vast, strate­gi­cal­ly crit­i­cal por­tion of the world known to gen­er­a­tions of geopoliti­cians as “The Earth Island,” this pro­gram sug­gests that intel­li­gence agen­cies, Islamist and Pan-Turk­ist ele­ments are attempt­ing to shift the polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and social order in that area. In par­tic­u­lar, forces at work in the Cen­tral Asian states that emerged from the for­mer Sovi­et Union give indi­ca­tions of attempt­ing to con­trol fos­sil fuel and [pos­si­bly] key strate­gic tran­sit points for those resources and Afghan hero­in as well.

The pro­gram begins by not­ing the prox­im­i­ty in time between a US/Russian diplo­mat­ic rap­proche­ment and the break­ing of a Russ­ian spy scan­dal. On the heels of Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s meet­ing with Russ­ian pres­i­dent Medvedev in which progress on var­i­ous mat­ters appears to have been achieved, a “Russ­ian spy scan­dal” dom­i­nat­ed the head­lines.

In FTR #706, we exam­ined John Lof­tus’ con­tention that there are two CIA’s–one Demo­c­ra­t­ic that serves the inter­ests of the Unit­ed States and one Repub­li­can, which serves the inter­ests of the trans-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions. Is the “Repub­li­can CIA” work­ing to poi­son rela­tions between the two coun­tries, there­by weak­en­ing Oba­ma’s admin­is­tra­tion?

The inci­dent brings to mind the U‑2 inci­dent of 1960, in which the CIA’s appar­ent­ly delib­er­ate sab­o­tage of a U‑2 spy plane deep-sixed a pro­posed sum­mit con­fer­ence between Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er and Pre­mier Khr­uschev of the U.S.S.R. (This was dis­cussed in Part I of “The Guns of Novem­ber.”)

Also inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate in this con­text is a Decem­ber 2009 pro-jihadist con­fer­ence in Geor­gia, held with appar­ent U.S. sup­port, dis­cussed in FTR #710. Part of the rap­proche­ment achieved between Medvedev and Oba­ma con­cerned Amer­i­ca’s place­ment of a jihadist ter­ror­ist on the inter­na­tion­al ter­ror watch list, as desired and request­ed by Rus­sia.

Did this run counter to the wish­es of a pro-Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, pro-jihadist ele­ment asso­ci­at­ed with transna­tion­al petro­le­um com­pa­nies? Are they, in turn, seek­ing to sep­a­rate the Cau­casian and Cen­tral Asian fos­sil fuel resources from Rus­sia? Will it serve the inter­ests of the Under­ground Reich, seek­ing to man­i­fest tra­di­tion­al Ger­man Ost­poli­tik, while exac­er­bat­ing ten­sions between the U.S. and Rus­sia? Will it serve the inter­ests of the GOP, by weak­en­ing Oba­ma’s for­eign pol­i­cy?

In the for­mer Sovi­et Cen­tral Asian repub­lic of Kyr­gyzs­tan, eth­nic ten­sions have flared between the gov­ern­ment and the Uzbek minor­i­ty in the key towns of Osh and Jalal­abad. Seek­ing to take advan­tage of this ten­sion, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood affil­i­ate Hizb ut-Tahrir has promised that the instal­la­tion of a caliphate would pro­mote social jus­tice.

Of strate­gic sig­nif­i­cance in this con­text is the fact that the Fer­ghana Val­ley (dom­i­nat­ed by Osh and Jalal­abad) is a key tran­sit area for Afghan hero­in and the pres­ence of a key U.S. air base in Kyr­gyzs­tan, a facil­i­ty that is essen­tial for the Afghan war effort. Indeed, the gov­ern­ment of Kyr­gyzs­tan is blam­ing the trou­ble on Islamists.

Anoth­er con­sid­er­a­tion to be weighed in the con­text of “The Earth Island Boo­gie” is maneu­ver­ing around the Afghan hero­in crop, which NATO forces have refused to destroy. (The pop­py is one of the few sub­sis­tence crops avail­able to Afghan farm­ers, and destroy­ing the har­vest could alien­ate the pop­u­la­tion and dri­ve them toward the Tal­iban.)

Rus­sia has request­ed that the crop be destroyed, because hero­in orig­i­nat­ing in Afghanistan is caus­ing enor­mous prob­lems in Rus­sia. This rejec­tion has led Rus­sia to charge that NATO is aid­ing the pro­duc­tion of Afghan hero­in. Is it pos­si­ble that a Saudi/Safari Club/petroleum/Underground Reich milieu may be prof­it­ing from Afghan hero­in, while using the drug as a weapon to sub­vert Russ­ian influ­ence in a new “Great Game?” Are these net­works sup­ply­ing some of the prod­uct that has been trans­port­ed by the milieu inves­ti­gat­ed by Daniel Hop­sick­er?

The broad­cast con­cludes with exam­i­na­tion of the flotil­la incident–the pro­found involve­ment of Turk­ish gov­ern­ment ele­ments with the affair. Seen by some ana­lysts as an attempt at re-assert­ing its pri­ma­cy in the Mus­lim world, the Turk­ish maneu­ver­ing is rem­i­nis­cent of the Turk­ish hege­mo­ny over the Arab world dur­ing the Ottoman Empire. Con­cep­tu­al­ized by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as an ide­al state of affairs, the “Caliphate” is some­thing it has worked to restore.

Are we see­ing a renewed Pan-Turk­ism in places like Kyr­gyzs­tan and Uzbekistan–areas with Turko­phone pop­u­la­tions? We will be see­ing a dove­tail­ing of the Islamist move­ment and tra­di­tion­al­ly sec­u­lar Pan-Turk­ist move­ment (which has adhered to the rig­or­ous stan­dards adopt­ed by Kemal Attaturk at the end of World War I.) In FTR #721, we saw how Pan-Turk­ist ele­ments work­ing first for Nazi Ger­many and lat­er for the Fed­er­al Repub­lic and ele­ments of West­ern intel­li­gence were linked to the bur­geon­ing Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Are peo­ple like Ruzy Nazar “doin’ the Earth Island Boo­gie?” (Nazar is pic­tured above, at left).

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The dev­as­tat­ing wild­fires hap­pen­ing in Rus­sia; review of the Islamists’ use of for­est fires as weapons of jihad; review of the Safari Club net­work; review of the links between the Bank al-Taqwa milieu and the par­ty of Turk­ish prime min­is­ter Erdo­gan; the pro­found links between the IHH orga­ni­za­tion that spon­sored the flotil­la inci­dent and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood; a 1997 Turk­ish gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tion that revealed IHH to be a jihadist orga­ni­za­tion, seek­ing, among oth­er things, to over­throw Turk­ish sec­u­lar­ism!

1. The pro­gram begins by not­ing the prox­im­i­ty in time between a US/Russian diplo­mat­ic rap­proche­ment and the break­ing of a Russ­ian spy scan­dal. On the heels of Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s meet­ing with Russ­ian pres­i­dent Medvedev in which progress on var­i­ous mat­ters appears to have been achieved, a “Russ­ian spy scan­dal” dom­i­nat­ed the head­lines.

In FTR #706, we exam­ined John Lof­tus’ con­tention that there are two CIA’s–one Demo­c­ra­t­ic that serves the inter­ests of the Unit­ed States and one Repub­li­can, which serves the inter­ests of the trans-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions. Is the “Repub­li­can CIA” work­ing to poi­son rela­tions between the two coun­tries, there­by weak­en­ing Oba­ma’s admin­is­tra­tion? Are the petro­le­um indus­try, Under­ground Reich, Islamist net­works and Pan-Turk­ist net­works seek­ing to blunt that U.S./Russian rap­proche­ment?

The inci­dent brings to mind the U‑2 inci­dent of 1960, in which the CIA’s appar­ent­ly delib­er­ate sab­o­tage of a U‑2 spy plane deep-sixed a pro­posed sum­mit con­fer­ence between Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er and Pre­mier Khr­uschev of the U.S.S.R. (This was dis­cussed in Part I of “The Guns of Novem­ber.”)

Also inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate in this con­text is a Decem­ber 2009 pro-jihadist con­fer­ence in Geor­gia, held with appar­ent U.S. sup­port, dis­cussed in FTR #710. Part of the rap­proche­ment achieved between Medvedev and Oba­ma con­cerned Amer­i­ca’s place­ment of a jihadist ter­ror­ist on the inter­na­tion­al ter­ror watch list, as desired and request­ed by Rus­sia.

Did this run counter to the wish­es of a pro-Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, pro-jihadist ele­ment asso­ci­at­ed with transna­tion­al petro­le­um com­pa­nies? Are they, in turn, seek­ing to sep­a­rate the Cau­casian and Cen­tral Asian fos­sil fuel resources from Rus­sia? Will it serve the inter­ests of the Under­ground Reich, seek­ing to man­i­fest tra­di­tion­al Ger­man Ost­poli­tik, while exac­er­bat­ing ten­sions between the U.S. and Rus­sia? Will it serve the inter­ests of the GOP, by weak­en­ing Oba­ma’s for­eign pol­i­cy?

With the strange tim­ing of the sur­fac­ing of this Russ­ian spy­ing scan­dal, are we see­ing ‘U‑2, II”?

2. Recent­ly, Rus­sia has been plagued by drought and wild­fires. In FTR #667, we looked at Islamist ele­ments pur­su­ing wild­fires as weapons of jihad. Are the jihadist ele­ments referred to above involved in any way with the set­ting of these fires?

3. In the for­mer Sovi­et Cen­tral Asian repub­lic of Kyr­gyzs­tan, eth­nic ten­sions have flared between the gov­ern­ment and the Uzbek minor­i­ty in the key towns of Osh and Jalal­abad.

Seek­ing to take advan­tage of this ten­sion, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood affil­i­ate Hizb ut-Tahrir has promised that the instal­la­tion of a caliphate would pro­mote social jus­tice.

Of strate­gic sig­nif­i­cance in this con­text is the fact that the Fer­ghana Val­ley (dom­i­nat­ed by Osh and Jalal­abad) is a key tran­sit area for Afghan hero­in and the pres­ence of a key U.S. air base in Kyr­gyzs­tan, a facil­i­ty that is essen­tial for the Afghan war effort.

4. Indeed, the gov­ern­ment of Kyr­gyzs­tan is blam­ing the trou­ble on Islamists.

5. Anoth­er con­sid­er­a­tion to be weighed in the con­text of “The Earth Island Boo­gie” is maneu­ver­ing around the Afghan hero­in crop, which NATO forces have refused to destroy. (The pop­py is one of the few sub­sis­tence crops avail­able to Afghan farm­ers, and destroy­ing the har­vest could alien­ate the pop­u­la­tion and dri­ve them toward the Tal­iban.)

Rus­sia has request­ed that the crop be destroyed, because hero­in orig­i­nat­ing in Afghanistan is caus­ing enor­mous prob­lems in Rus­sia.

6. This rejec­tion has led Rus­sia to charge that NATO is aid­ing the pro­duc­tion of Afghan hero­in. Is it pos­si­ble that a Saudi/Safari Club/petroleum/Underground Reich milieu may be prof­it­ing from Afghan hero­in, while using the drug as a weapon to sub­vert Russ­ian influ­ence in a new “Great Game?”

7. The shift­ing and maneu­ver­ing tak­ing place on the Earth Island involves some sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal pos­tur­ing by Turkey. In the recent, lethal inci­dent in which Israeli forces inter­dict­ed a Turk­ish-based flotil­la attempt­ing to pierce the block­ade of Gaza, one can read­i­ly dis­cern Turk­ish diplo­mat­ic and polit­i­cal over­tures to the Arab pop­u­la­tion of the Mid­dle East and the world’s Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion in gen­er­al.

Far from being mod­er­ates, the orga­ni­za­tion behind the flotil­la has strong links to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and jihadist ele­ments.

In 1997, the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment itself raid­ed offices of IHH and revealed the orga­ni­za­tion’s true nature.

8. Dis­claimers to the con­trary notwith­stand­ing, the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment and that coun­try’s polit­i­cal elite are direct­ly tied to the IHH.

The Turk­ish char­i­ty that led the flotil­la involved in a dead­ly Israeli raid has exten­sive con­nec­tions with Turkey’s polit­i­cal elite, and the group’s efforts to chal­lenge Israel’s block­ade of Gaza received sup­port at the top lev­els of the gov­ern­ing par­ty, Turk­ish diplo­mats and gov­ern­ment offi­cials said.

The char­i­ty, the Human­i­tar­i­an Relief Foun­da­tion, often called I.H.H., has come under attack in Israel and the West for offer­ing finan­cial sup­port to groups accused of ter­ror­ism. But in Turkey the group has helped Prime Min­is­ter Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan shore up sup­port from con­ser­v­a­tive Mus­lims ahead of crit­i­cal elec­tions next year and improve Turkey’s stand­ing and influ­ence in the Arab world.

Accord­ing to a senior Turk­ish offi­cial close to the gov­ern­ment, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because of the polit­i­cal del­i­ca­cy of the issue, as many as 10 Par­lia­ment mem­bers from Mr. Erdogan’s gov­ern­ing Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty were con­sid­er­ing board­ing the Mavi Mar­mara, the ship where the dead­ly raid occurred, but were warned off at the last minute by senior For­eign Min­istry offi­cials con­cerned that their pres­ence might esca­late ten­sions too much.

When lead­ers of the char­i­ty returned home after nine Turks died in the Israeli raid, they were warm­ly embraced by top Turk­ish offi­cials, said Huseyin Oruc, deputy direc­tor of the char­i­ty, who was aboard the flotil­la.

“When we flew back to Turkey, I was afraid we would be in trou­ble for what hap­pened, but the first thing we saw when the plane’s door opened in Istan­bul was Bulent Arinc, the deputy prime min­is­ter, in tears,” he said in an inter­view. “We have good coor­di­na­tion with Mr. Erdo­gan,” he added. “But I am not sure he is hap­py with us now.”

The raid has caused a rup­ture between Turkey and Israel, and height­ened alarm in the Unit­ed States and Europe that Turkey, a large Mus­lim coun­try and a major NATO mem­ber, is shift­ing alle­giance toward the Arab world. Turkey has warned that its coop­er­a­tive ties to Israel could be irrepara­bly dam­aged unless the Israelis apol­o­gize and accept an inter­na­tion­al inves­ti­ga­tion, steps Israel has so far refused to take.

The charity’s mis­sion, polit­i­cal ana­lysts said, has advanced Mr. Erdogan’s aim of shift­ing Turkey’s focus to the Mus­lim east when its prospects for join­ing the Euro­pean Union are dim.

The gov­ern­ment “could have stopped the ship if it want­ed to, but the mis­sion to Gaza served both the I.H.H. and the gov­ern­ment by mak­ing both heroes at home and in the Arab world,” said Ercan Citli­oglu, a ter­ror­ism expert at Bahce­se­hir Uni­ver­si­ty in Istan­bul.

Turk­ish offi­cials said that the char­i­ty oper­at­ed inde­pen­dent­ly and that its lead­er­ship had refused to drop plans to break Israel’s naval block­ade of Hamas-con­trolled Gaza, despite requests from the gov­ern­ment. The offi­cials said they had no legal author­i­ty to stop the work of a pri­vate char­i­ty.

Ege­men Bagis, Turkey’s min­is­ter for Euro­pean affairs, said in an inter­view that the char­i­ty and the Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty, called the AK Par­ty, had no sub­stan­tive ties, even if peo­ple in pol­i­tics often became involved in char­i­ta­ble groups. “The I.H.H. has noth­ing to do with the AK Par­ty, and we have no hid­den agen­da,” Mr. Bagis said.

But crit­ics say such state­ments belie the close con­nec­tions between the par­ty and the char­i­ty, as well as the extent to which Turk­ish offi­cials were close­ly attuned to the details of the flotilla’s mis­sion before its depar­ture. . . .

“Spon­sor of Flotil­la Tied to Elite of Turkey” by Tyler Hicks; The New York Times; 7/15/2010.

9. Pri­or to the flotil­la inci­dent, the Erdo­gan gov­ern­ment was doing poor­ly in pre-elec­tion polls.

The Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty (AKP) won about 39% of the vote, accord­ing to uncon­firmed results — down from the 47% gen­er­al elec­tion land­slide of 2007.

“This is a mes­sage from the peo­ple and we will take the nec­es­sary lessons,” said a som­bre Mr Erdo­gan.

At least five peo­ple were report­ed­ly killed in elec­tion-relat­ed vio­lence.

The deaths came in the pre­dom­i­nant­ly Kur­dish east of the coun­try, as sup­port­ers of rival can­di­dates for a non-par­ty posi­tion of vil­lage chief fought armed bat­tles.

In Sun­day’s elec­tions, the gov­ern­ing AKP lost ground to both oppo­si­tion and Kur­dish rivals, who had focused on grow­ing eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties and cor­rup­tion alle­ga­tions.

“Turk­ish PM’s Par­ty Slips in Polls”; BBC News; 3/30/2009.

10. As seen in FTR #408, Erdo­gan’s par­ty is very close to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the milieu of the Bank al-Taqwa.

Discussion

15 comments for “FTR #723 Doin’ the Earth Island Boogie”

  1. Hel­lo Dave Emory,

    I am a great admir­er of your work and I love both your show and your site.

    Thank you for men­tion­ing, dur­ing the broad­cast, the HAARP tech­nol­o­gy that might have been used for the pro­duc­tion of droughts and fires in Rus­sia recent­ly. It seems pret­ty obvi­ous that ele­ments of the Third Reich have now gained use of this tech­nol­o­gy to put for­ward their agen­da. We can men­tion, as well, recent floods in Pak­istan fol­low­ing the Wik­ileaks sto­ry, the Kat­ri­na floods of New Orleans, etc, as pos­si­ble uti­liza­tion of HAARP recent­ly.

    I agree with what you have writ­ten. I just would like to add maybe anoth­er angle. In a series of shows you men­tioned a chris­t­ian-right orga­ni­za­tion called “The Fam­i­ly”. To what extent the agen­da of that group dove­tails with the one of the Third Reich/Muslim Brotherhood/GOP/Republican branch of the CIA/Big Corporations/Oil Princes, etc? I men­tion this because I have the dis­tinct impres­sion that some­body is try­ing to force real­i­ty to take a form that would fit the world described in the Book of Revelations...like floods, famines, war, death, pesti­lence... In oth­ers terms, to what extent The Fam­i­ly and the Third Reich car­tel have been work­ing hand in hand in the last years to pro­duce a series of envi­ron­men­tal catastrophies,illnesses, dis­as­ters, inci­dents, to pro­duce the impres­sion in the mind of the peo­ple that the world is com­ing to an end?

    Before leav­ing, I would like to pro­pose a path of reflec­tion and research on that very top­ic. A famous author named Frank Her­bert wrote a series of books sev­er­al years ago called “Dune”. One has been made out in a film by Davind Lynch. In a nut­shell, those books describe how a roy­al house suc­ceeds in tak­ing con­trol of a desert plan­et and its resources (includ­ing a drug called the “spice melange”...)and putting a Mes­si­ah in place as its leader in the process. Many aspects of those books deserve clos­er exam­i­na­tion because they relate to the events that are unfold­ing before our eyes.

    Thank you and keep on fight­ing!

    Posted by Claude | September 19, 2010, 6:02 pm

  2. [...] the con­trol of resources, oil, mines, lands, etc. That is why that part of the world is called the Earth Island, a stretch of land that begins at the Detroit of Gibral­tar and goes way up to the con­fines of [...]

    Posted by Afghanistan: Bzrezinski’s Grand Chessboard game and the continuation of the Anglo-Afghan War | lys-dor.com | April 10, 2011, 11:44 pm

  3. [...] the con­trol of resources, oil, mines, lands, etc. That is why that part of the world is called the Earth Island, a stretch of land that begins at the Detroit of Gibral­tar and goes way up to the con­fines of [...]

    Posted by Invisible History Blog » Blog Archive » Blogger Praises Gould and Fitzgerald | April 29, 2011, 1:25 pm

  4. A recent Rand cor­po­ra­tion study on pos­si­ble future con­flicts requir­ing a robust US Army raised the fol­low­ing sce­nario as one of the pos­si­ble rea­sons to main­tain high mil­i­tary spend­ing.

    If a future of mega-urban war wasn’t bleak enough, pan­elists also pre­dict­ed that the end of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would actu­al­ly lead to an increase in ter­ror­ism. “Ter­ror­ists and mil­i­tants engaged with forces in Afghanistan may turn to attacks on U.S. and Euro­pean soil,” a Pow­er­Point slide warned. When Dan­ger Room asked them to back up that point — since it implies the wars are fail­ures — Patrick Tai­tano of the Army’s Materiel Com­mand said he was mere­ly pre­dict­ing “increased oper­a­tional plan­ning to con­duct attacks.” Feel safer?

    Increased ter­ror­ism isn’t the only land-based threat Amer­i­ca has to fear. A “North Korea implo­sion” will force the Army to “plan for forcible entry (amphibi­ous, air­borne, etc.).” Sim­i­lar state col­laps­es in Pak­istan and Sau­di Ara­bia might com­pel sim­i­lar inva­sions. So might the resur­gence of old rivals, like the “draw­ing togeth­er of Ger­many and Rus­sia because of nat­ur­al gas,” said the Rand Corporation’s Bri­an Nichiporuk, “a realign­ment there, pos­si­bly pulling Ger­many away from NATO.” (Asked by Dan­ger Room about such a pro­found his­tor­i­cal rever­sal, Nichiporuk quick­ly backpedaled, “I’m not say­ing con­clu­sive­ly that Ger­many and Rus­sia will form an alliance.”)

    Giv­en the cur­rent major push by Putin for a “Eurasian union” and talk of Rus­sia join­ing the EU and adopt­ing the euro, such a union/alliance can’t be ruled out.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 31, 2011, 8:37 am

  5. @Pterrafractyl: Inter­est­ing stuff here.

    Posted by Steven L. | October 31, 2011, 11:07 am

  6. @Steven L.:
    Also note the con­tin­u­ing ascen­dance with­in the Krem­lin of neo-fas­cist mys­tic Alexan­der Dug­in and his Eurasian Project...articles like this make me want to reread Coogan’s “Dream­er of the Day” (and then I get lazy and just re-lis­ten to the Coogan inter­views FTR320 and FTR598).

    Putin’s grand vision and echoes of ‘1984’
    Finan­cial Times
    By Charles Clover in Moscow
    Octo­ber 5, 2011 1:32 am

    The prospect of unit­ing with Kaza­khstan and Belarus is unlike­ly to fill most Rus­sians with a sense of grand impe­r­i­al des­tiny. But for a small group of com­mit­ted “Eurasian­ists”, the announce­ment by Vladimir Putin of a “Eurasian Union” between the three coun­tries marks the epit­o­me of their ambi­tions, the pay-off for a life­time spent in the polit­i­cal wilder­ness.

    “We have wait­ed for 25 years for these words to be uttered in pub­lic by our lead­er­ship,” the leader of the Eurasian­ist Move­ment, Alexan­der Dug­in, said in Moscow on Tues­day. For two decades he has worked to make dic­ta­tor­ship hip. Beard­ed and deep voiced, he veers effort­less­ly in con­ver­sa­tion from the hero­ism of Muam­mer Gaddafi to the US con­spir­a­cy to destroy Rus­sia.

    In his hard­line vision, the moth­er­land is threat­ened by a west­ern con­spir­a­cy known as “Atlanti­cism” to which it must cre­ate a bas­tion of “Eurasian” pow­er

    ...

    Today, few, least of all Mr Dug­in, try to hide the fact he has a close rela­tion­ship to the Krem­lin and has worked on many Krem­lin-inspired polit­i­cal projects, such as the nation­al­ist Rod­i­na par­ty and the Eurasian Youth Union.

    On Tues­day, he even took some cred­it for Mr Putin’s arti­cle “Eura­sia: the future which is being born today” pub­lished in the Izves­tia news­pa­per. “We did help in the prepa­ra­tion, but, unfor­tu­nate­ly, they soft­ened our for­mu­las,” he told a small con­fer­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Moscow, before intro­duc­ing the next speak­er – Iran’s ambas­sador to Rus­sia. Indeed, the event was timed for the day the Russ­ian prime minister’s arti­cle came out.
    .....

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 31, 2011, 8:50 pm

  7. It begins:

    Ex-Sovi­et states take first step to ‘Eurasian Union’

    (AFP) – Nov 18, 2011

    MOSCOW — Three ex-Sovi­et states were Fri­day to agree the first steps towards cre­at­ing a Eurasian eco­nom­ic union, a project backed by Russ­ian Prime Min­is­ter Vladimir Putin to bind clos­er the for­mer USSR.

    Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Dmit­ry Medvedev and his Kaza­khstan and Belarus coun­ter­parts Nur­sul­tan Nazarbayev and Alexan­der Lukashenko were to sign a dec­la­ra­tion on fur­ther eco­nom­ic inte­gra­tion at a sum­mit in Moscow, the Krem­lin said in a state­ment.

    “The dec­la­ra­tion will set out the ulti­mate aim (of eco­nom­ic inte­gra­tion) as the cre­ation of a Eurasian eco­nom­ic union,” it said.

    Putin first evoked the idea of cre­at­ing a Eurasian Union in a news­pa­per arti­cle pub­lished short­ly after the announce­ment that he would seek to return to the Krem­lin as pres­i­dent in 2012 polls.
    ...

    Just a reminder, the arti­cle Putin wrote pro­mot­ing the “Eurasian Union” is the very same arti­cle influ­ence by mys­tic cryp­to-fas­cist Alexan­der Dug­in (talked about in the above com­ment).

    ...

    The sin­gle eco­nom­ic space is due to come into force in 2012 along­side a Eurasian Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion, a body that would appar­ent­ly be run on lines sim­i­lar to its Brus­sels-based EU equiv­a­lent.

    “The com­mis­sion — the first such in post-Sovi­et his­to­ry — will be neu­tral in rela­tion the coun­tries involved and will grad­u­al­ly take on nation­al pow­ers,” the Krem­lin added.

    The Krem­lin did not give a date for the cre­ation of the Eurasian Union itself but the Vedo­mosti dai­ly quot­ed sources as say­ing that 2015 would be giv­en as the tar­get date.

    The ini­tial mem­bers would be Belarus, Kaza­khstan and Rus­sia but any ex-Sovi­et state would be wel­come to join, it added.

    Putin in his arti­cle said the union would build on the expe­ri­ence of the Euro­pean Union and would be a “his­toric break­through” for ex-Sovi­et states.

    ...

    Ah, Vas­sal State Tech­noc­ra­cy, where would we be with­out you?

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 20, 2011, 8:22 pm

  8. Giv­en all the ex-Sovi­et states that are now part of the EU, pos­si­ble con­flicts between the EU and the emerg­ing “Eurasian Union” seem quite pos­si­ble. Then again, so is an even­tu­al merg­er of the two that has Ger­many and Rus­sia as duel lynch­pins in a much larg­er eco­nom­ic zone. In case any­one is inter­est­ed in what the pos­si­ble “cri­sis” could be that “force” an even­tu­al EU/Eurasian union, here’s an oldie but a good­ie:

    Nuclear war could erupt along Rus­si­a’s bor­ders with Europe, warns Krem­lin com­man­der
    By Dai­ly Mail Reporter
    Last updat­ed at 12:13 PM on 18th Novem­ber 2011

    Rus­si­a’s top mil­i­tary com­man­der has warned of nuclear war on its bor­ders with Europe.

    Gen­er­al Niko­lai Makarov said Nato’s east­ward expan­sion meant the risk of Rus­sia being dragged into con­flicts had ‘risen sharply’.

    Many coun­tries which used to be part of the War­saw Pact of east­ern Euro­pean nations have since joined Nato.

    The gen­er­al said: ‘The pos­si­bil­i­ty of local armed con­flicts along near­ly the whole bor­der has increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

    ‘In cer­tain con­di­tions, I do not rule out local and region­al armed con­flicts devel­op­ing into a large-scale war, includ­ing using nuclear weapons.’

    At a meet­ing of a Russ­ian par­lia­men­tary watch­dog, he added: ‘Prac­ti­cal­ly all the coun­tries of the for­mer War­saw Pact have become Nato mem­bers.’

    Among those coun­tries who have swapped the War­saw Pact for Nato are Poland, Hun­gary, the Czech Repub­lic, Latvia, Esto­nia and Lithua­nia.
    ...

    Gen­er­al Makarov, 62, was a for­mer pla­toon com­man­der for the Red Army in East Ger­many and has served in many posts in strate­gi­cal­ly sen­si­tive areas for Moscow.

    In Sovi­et times, he served with Sovi­et forces in Siberia, and after the fall of the Red flag was chief of staff of a Russ­ian forces in Tajik­istan.

    A mil­i­tary high-fly­er whose career was boost­ed by strong­man leader Vladimir Putin, he was land and seashore com­man­der of the Baltic Fleet, and sub­se­quent­ly first deputy com­man­der, Moscow Mil­i­tary Dis­trict.

    He has been Russ­ian chief of defence staff since 2008, and also serves as a deputy defence min­is­ter.

    ...

    Don’t for­get, part of the whole idea behind the for­ma­tion of the EU was to pre­vent anoth­er con­ti­nen­tal war, so it isn’t that out­landish to imag­ine duel threats of vio­lence and eco­nom­ic inte­gra­tion (same ends, very dif­fer­ent means). But at least the next gen­er­a­tion of East­ern Euro­peans will be left with one great freedom...the free­dom to choose the type of soci­etal fusion:

    1. Political/economic fusion (run by a bunch of bankster psy­cho­phants)

    or

    2. The oth­er kind.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 20, 2011, 8:47 pm

  9. Here’s a reminder of how water wars are going to be bub­bling up through­out Asia in the near future and it’s only going to get worse from there:

    FEATURES/Biggest Ques­tions Of 2012 | Dec 24, 2011 |
    Will Water Scarci­ty Increase Ten­sions Across Asia?
    by Sun­deep Waslekar

    Gov­ern­ments across the under­de­vel­oped regions of the world are already fac­ing the threat of water wars. We believe 2012 will be the year the world starts look­ing for solu­tions to its aqua prob­lems
    ater will be one of the defin­ing issues of the next half cen­tu­ry. It’s a crit­i­cal issue and this real­i­sa­tion will start from 2012.

    There are a num­ber of rea­sons why water will be so crit­i­cal. Let’s start from South­east Asia and go all the way to Africa. Viet­nam, Cam­bo­dia, Thai­land, Laos; then there’s Chi­na, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Pak­istan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syr­ia, Turkey; then we go south to Israel, Pales­tine, Egypt and all the way to Tan­za­nia. It’s a mega arc of hydro inse­cu­ri­ty.

    If water sup­ply drops by 5 per­cent in 20–25 years in Chi­na and India, food pro­duc­tion here will also drop, while demand would have gone up sub­stan­tial­ly. Already there are food crises. The world noticed that in 2008 when prices went up for the first time. Right now, India and Chi­na are not in the mar­ket in a big way. In anoth­er 25 years you have a pos­si­bil­i­ty of these coun­tries enter­ing the food mar­ket as buy­ers. This will wreak huge hav­oc.

    This won’t take place 25 years from now; it’ll start in the next two years as peo­ple start notic­ing these trends. Spec­u­la­tion in com­modi­ties will increase sub­stan­tial­ly.

    Water is already emerg­ing as a glob­al issue in the secu­ri­ty debate, not in the glob­al eco­nom­ic or food debate. The ini­tial response is short sight­ed.

    They are con­stant­ly engaged in nego­ti­at­ing allo­ca­tion of respec­tive shares, which actu­al­ly leads to con­flicts between upper and low­er ripar­i­an coun­tries. You have ten­sions between Turkey and Syr­ia, Iraq; Israel-Pales­tine; Egypt-Ethiopia. There’s now ten­sion between Viet­nam, Thai­land, Cam­bo­dia and Laos as well.

    ...

    Sweet, expec­ta­tions of water short­ages in a cou­ple of decades is spec­u­lat­ed to lead to spec­u­la­tors swoop­ing in on that sec­tor in a cou­ple of years. That will no doubt turn out well.

    And here’s an inter­est­ing pri­vate water fun-fact: Oil and water do indeed mix...in Pick­en­s’s port­fo­lio:

    Look­ing for gold in water invest­ments

    By Manuela Badawy

    Mon Dec 12, 2011 10:13am EST

    (Reuters) — Mon­ey man­ag­er Bill Bren­nan spends most of his wak­ing hours think­ing about some­thing most Amer­i­cans take for grant­ed: water.

    It may be the most essen­tial of all com­modi­ties because with­out it none of us would be alive. But as an invest­ment, water has had nei­ther the glit­ter of gold nor the allure of oil.

    ...

    It is a niche cor­ner of the invest­ment world with about $6 bil­lion in assets. There are few­er than a dozen of pure-play water-invest­ment funds glob­al­ly, a drop in the buck­et com­pared with oth­er com­mod­i­ty-based funds.

    But the sec­tor is one that some see as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make mon­ey as fresh water becomes scarcer in parts of the globe due to pop­u­la­tion growth, farm­ing and indus­try.

    ...

    But skep­tics say water invest­ing car­ries a good deal of risk and the mar­ket’s small size is an indi­ca­tion that many mon­ey man­agers are not sold on the growth poten­tial. Oth­ers note pure-play water funds are often heav­i­ly invest­ed in illiq­uid assets — like water rights — which can be hard to val­ue or trade.

    ...

    PICKENS TRADE

    Maybe one of the best-known water investors is Texas bil­lion­aire T. Boone Pick­ens, more com­mon­ly known as an oil man. He is the largest indi­vid­ual water own­er in Amer­i­ca, with rights over the Ogal­lala Aquifer in the Texas pan­han­dle, the third-largest under­ground aquifer in the world.

    It sup­plies 27 per­cent of all irri­ga­tion in the Unit­ed States and 70 per­cent to 90 per­cent of the irri­ga­tion water in Kansas, Texas and Nebras­ka, three of the most impor­tant grain pro­duc­ers in the coun­try, accord­ing to indus­try data.

    Anoth­er way to play water is to invest in desali­na­tion tech­nol­o­gy, which pro­duces fresh water from sea water.

    Com­pa­nies such as Cal­i­for­nia-based Ener­gy Recov­ery Inc, which through its high-effi­cien­cy devices has reduced the high cost of desali­na­tion, could ben­e­fit from clean water demand. The com­pa­ny has more than 80 per­cent of the glob­al mar­ket share in ener­gy-sav­ing pres­sure exchang­ers for desali­na­tion, but just 8 per­cent of its busi­ness comes from the Unit­ed States, its CEO Thomas Rooney told Reuters.

    Although the Unit­ed States is the largest sin­gle water mar­ket, most of the com­pa­nies in the water-funds derive their rev­enues from emerg­ing mar­kets, espe­cial­ly from Asia. Chi­na alone has 21 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion but only 7 per­cent of the renew­able water resources.

    ...

    It looks like the spec­u­la­tors are already spec­u­lat­ing. I love read­ing invest­ment-speak arti­cles about civ­i­liza­tion-destroy­ing envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion trends. Why do I get the impres­sion that if you’re a fund owns major oil, mil­i­tary, water and land rights in thirsty nations, cli­mate change sim­ply con­sid­ered a pos­si­ble invest­ment yield force mul­ti­pli­er?

    Oh well, here’s an unusu­al water sto­ry that involves a very dif­fer­ent type of cli­mate change:

    Russ­ian riv­er water unex­pect­ed cul­prit behind Arc­tic fresh­en­ing near US, Cana­da
    Jan­u­ary 4, 2012

    Frigid fresh­wa­ter flow­ing into the Arc­tic Ocean from three of Rus­si­a’s mighty rivers was divert­ed hun­dreds of miles to a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent part of the ocean in response to a decades-long shift in atmos­pher­ic pres­sure asso­ci­at­ed with the phe­nom­e­non called the Arc­tic Oscil­la­tion, accord­ing to find­ings pub­lished in the Jan. 5 issue of Nature.

    The new find­ings show that a low pres­sure pat­tern cre­at­ed by the Arc­tic Oscil­la­tion from 2005 to 2008 drew Russ­ian riv­er water away from the Eurasian Basin, between Rus­sia and Green­land, and into the Beau­fort Sea, a part of the Cana­da Basin bor­dered by the Unit­ed States and Cana­da. It was like adding 10 feet (3 meters) of fresh­wa­ter over the cen­tral part of the Beau­fort Sea.

    “Know­ing the path­ways of fresh­wa­ter in the upper ocean is impor­tant to under­stand­ing glob­al cli­mate because of fresh­wa­ter’s role in pro­tect­ing sea ice – it can help cre­ate a bar­ri­er between the ice and warmer ocean water below – and its role in glob­al ocean cir­cu­la­tion. Too much fresh­wa­ter exit­ing the Arc­tic would inhib­it the inter­play of cold water from the poles and warm water from the trop­ics,” said Jamie Mori­son, an oceanog­ra­ph­er with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton’s Applied Physics Lab­o­ra­to­ry and lead author of the Nature paper.

    Mori­son and his co-authors from the UW and NASA’s Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry are the first to detect this fresh­wa­ter path­way and its con­nec­tion to the Arc­tic Oscil­la­tion. The work is based on water sam­ples gath­ered in the field com­bined with satel­lite oceanog­ra­phy pos­si­ble for the first time with data from NASA satel­lites known as ICE­Sat and GRACE.

    Tak­en as a whole, the salin­i­ty of the Arc­tic Ocean is sim­i­lar to the past, but the change in the fresh­wa­ter path­way means the Eurasian Basin has got­ten more saline while the Cana­da Basin has got­ten fresh­er.

    “The fresh­en­ing on the Cana­di­an side of the Arc­tic over the last few years rep­re­sents a redis­tri­b­u­tion of fresh­wa­ter, there does not seem to be a net fresh­en­ing of the ocean,” Kwok said.

    In the Eurasian Basin, the change means less fresh­wa­ter enters the lay­er known as the cold halo­cline and could be con­tribut­ing to declines in ice in that part of the Arc­tic, Mori­son said. The cold halo­cline nor­mal­ly sits like a bar­ri­er between ice and warm water that comes into the Arc­tic from the Atlantic Ocean. With­out salt the icy cold fresh­wa­ter is lighter, which is why it is able to float over the warm water.

    In the Beau­fort Sea, the water is the fresh­est it’s been in 50 years of record keep­ing, he said. The new find­ings show that only a tiny frac­tion is from melt­ing ice and the vast major­i­ty is Eurasian riv­er water.

    The Beau­fort Sea stores a sig­nif­i­cant amount of fresh­wa­ter from a num­ber of sources, espe­cial­ly when an atmos­pher­ic con­di­tion known as the Beau­fort High caus­es winds to spin the water in a clock­wise gyre. When the winds are weak­er or spin in the oppo­site direc­tion, fresh­wa­ter is released back into the rest of the Arc­tic Ocean, and from there to the world’s oceans. Some sci­en­tists have said a strength­en­ing of the Beau­fort High is the pri­ma­ry cause of fresh­en­ing, but the paper says salin­i­ty began to decline in the ear­ly 1990s, a time when the Beau­fort High relaxed and the Arc­tic Oscil­la­tion increased.

    ...

    In com­ing years if the Arc­tic Oscil­la­tion stops per­pet­u­at­ing that low pres­sure, the fresh­wa­ter path­way should switch back.

    Mori­son and the co-authors argue that, com­pared to pri­or years, the Arc­tic Oscil­la­tion has been in its cur­rent state for the last 20 years. For exam­ple, the changes detect­ed in response to the Arc­tic Oscil­la­tion between 2005 and 2008 are very sim­i­lar to fresh­en­ing seen in the ear­ly 1990s, Mori­son said.

    ...

    So since the end of the Cold War, the Arc­tic Oscil­la­tion shift­ed, lead­ing to mas­sive two-decade long trans­fer of fresh water from the Eurasian Basin to North Amer­i­ca. Now who’s steal­ing whose pre­cious bod­i­ly flu­ids? Bwwa­ha­ha­ha­ha!

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 7, 2012, 10:36 pm

  10. It’s look­ing more and more like Rus­si­a’s protest move­ment could have seri­ous sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Maybe even “Russ­ian Spring”-level sus­tain­abil­i­ty. It’s a large­ly Face­book-dri­ven, lead­er­less-ish, and urban youth/yup­pie-ish dri­ven mass protest move­ment that emerged out of a bla­tant­ly rigged elec­tion for Putin’s par­ty and his announce­ment of a third pres­i­den­tal run, and now a num­ber of promi­nent peo­ple are now pub­licly ally­ing them­selves with the pro­tes­tors.

    Putin appears to be play­ing a “hide in the Krem­lin and hope every­thing turns out” approach the elec­tion two months from now. Definit­ly start­ing to feel like spring­time in Rus­sia. And it’s not like Putin can say or do much to counter an anti-vote-rig­ging/­cor­rup­tion/one-par­ty-rule movement...that’s what oli­garch-run “man­aged democ­ra­cies” are all about. What the pro­test­ers are ask­ing for isn’t in Putin’s tem­plate (note that the tem­plate did not earn Putin his orig­i­nal­i­ty-when-design­ing-a-thug­goc­ra­cy mer­it badge). And then there’s the rest of Putin’s puta­tive Eurasian Union....(it went live on Jan 1st! We’ve got a the new EU! Let’s-insan­i­ty com­mence!).

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 14, 2012, 2:44 pm

  11. @Pterrafractyl: It may be good news, but my ques­tion is: will TPT­B’s hench­men try to hijack that move­ment, too, as they did with the Arab Spring movements(although at least a few Egyp­tians have real­ized that they’ve been used, and are revolt­ing against the MB. Hope­ful­ly, that’ll keep grow­ing.)?

    Posted by Steven L. | January 16, 2012, 3:37 am

  12. @Steven: Scar­i­ly, it looks like nation­al­ist infiltration/takeover of any Russ­ian ‘Spring’ is one of the most imme­di­ate prob­lems, and the threat comes from a sur­pris­ing source. Not only has an anti-gov­ern­ment far-right move­ment also been grow­ing in recent years. But even Alex­ei Naval­ny, a charis­mat­ic 35 yr old for­mer Yobloko politi­cian that’s one of the de fac­to lead­ers in the large­ly lead­er­less move­ment, appears to have a scary affin­i­ty for the far-right nation­al­ists. He was thrown out of the Yabloko par­ty in 2007 for attend­ing the Russky Marsh/Russian March, a far-right nation­al­ist event where atten­dees are sight­ed mak­ing Nazi salutes (see pics). He’s also pub­licly cham­pi­oning var­i­ous anti-immi­grant caus­es, espe­cial­ly the “Stop Feed­ing the Cau­cas­es” move­ment, which calls for an end to pub­lic sub­sidy for the major­i­ty-mus­lim south­ern Cau­cas­es. While there’s plen­ty to be con­cerned about in Rus­sia South­ern Cau­cus­es (it’s one part of the coun­try where the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood could actu­al­ly play a role in any “Russ­ian Spring”), that par­tic­u­lar move­ment appears to be advo­cat­ing the kinds of puni­tive poli­cies that will just encour­age mind­less anti-immi­grant sen­ti­ments and solve noth­ing. He’s viewed as the poten­tial great uniter of the nation­al­ists and the mid­dle class and it’s rather trou­bling:

    Russ­ian Oppo­si­tion Leader Alex­ei Naval­ny: Unit­ing Nation­al­ists and the Urban, Edu­cat­ed Mid­dle Class

    Post­ed on | decem­ber 31, 2011
    On Decem­ber 5, the day after Russia’s Duma elec­tions, the anti-cor­rup­tion cru­sad­er and pop­u­lar blog­ger, Alex­ei Naval­ny, told a rau­cous crowd, “I want to say to you: Thank you. Thank you for play­ing you part as a cit­i­zen. Thank you for telling these ass­holes, ‘We’re here!’ For telling the beard­ed [Elec­toral Com­mis­sion head Vladimir] Churov and his supe­ri­ors: ‘We exist!’ We have our voic­es. We exist! We exist! They hear that voice and they are afraid! They can chuck­le on their zom­bie-box­es. They can call us “microblog­gers” or ‘net­work ham­sters!’ I am a net­work ham­ster, and I will slit the throats of these cat­tle!” Short­ly after giv­ing this speech, Naval­ny was arrest­ed, and by the next morn­ing, sen­tenced to 15 days in a pet­spriy­omnik (spe­cial deten­tion cen­ter) out­side of Moscow. Naval­ny was released on Decem­ber 20, and has been con­sid­ered among many the de fac­to leader of the Russ­ian oppo­si­tion.

    ...

    Revolt of the Nation­al­ists

    The oth­er side, some would say the dark side to Alex­ei Navalny’s pol­i­tics is that he’s a Russ­ian nation­al­ist. As Kevin Rothrock has argued in con­vinc­ing detail, Navalny’s nation­al­ism is no mere dal­liance or oppor­tunis­tic attempt to feed off Rus­sians’ dis­taste for Cen­tral Asians and Cau­casians. Rather, he has a long tact record of polit­i­cal involve­ment in nation­al­ist pol­i­tics. In 2007, he co-found­ed the nation­al­ist group NAROD (The Nation­al Russ­ian Lib­er­a­tion Move­ment). Their man­i­festo, an admix­ture of what Naval­ny calls “demo­c­ra­t­ic nation­al­ism,” includes calls for demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol of the state along with volk­ish pre­cepts like “end­ing the degra­da­tion of Russ­ian (russkii) civ­i­liza­tion” restor­ing the “organ­ic uni­ty of the Russ­ian past, present and future” and “every Russ­ian (russkii) must have the right to receive Russ­ian cit­i­zen­ship and the pos­si­bil­i­ty to return to the Moth­er­land.” Yabloko expelled Naval­ny in 2007 for his par­tic­i­pa­tion in NAROD and oth­er nation­al­ist activ­i­ties. At the end of his expul­sion hear­ing, he yelled “Glo­ry to Rus­sia!” and stormed out. Among his oth­er nation­al­ist fits, he wrote off the neo-fas­cist Move­ment Against Ille­gal Immi­gra­tion as harm­less as “girl scouts”; declared that immi­grants “will NEVER assim­i­late” and are a “bomb under our future”; called on Rus­sians to arm them­selves against “Mus­lim-look­ing crim­i­nals,” sup­port­ed the nation­al­ist inspired “Stop Feed­ing the Cau­ca­sus” cam­paign, and most recent­ly joined the orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee of the year­ly nation­al­ist pow­wow, the Russ­ian March. When Russ­ian lib­er­als flew into a tizzy over the last move, Naval­ny explained it thus: “I clear­ly sup­port­ed this long-held idea of mine, if you don’t like those who will go on the Russ­ian March, go there your­self and make it bet­ter. There they will talk about real prob­lems and ‘lib­er­al-schmib­er­al’ labels are non­sense.”

    What­ev­er one thinks of Navalny’s nation­al­ism, the truth of the mat­ter is that his beliefs coin­cide with the major­i­ty of Rus­sians’ views on immi­gra­tion and the North Cau­ca­sus. Nation­al­ism and immi­grant bash­ing has pop­ulist res­o­nance in Rus­sia, and until recent­ly the Krem­lin was will­ing to tap it to con­sol­i­date its own pow­er. For many Rus­sians, nation­al­ist or not, Putin sym­bol­izes the ide­al Russ­ian man: con­ser­v­a­tive, ath­let­ic, sober, reli­gious, and patri­ot­ic. He returned Rus­sia to inter­na­tion­al promi­nence after ten years of humil­i­a­tion after the col­lapse of the Sovi­et Union. Even the extreme right love him for his recog­ni­tion that the core Russ­ian val­ues are “none oth­er than patri­o­tism, love of one’s moth­er­land, love of one’s own home, one’s peo­ple.” But Putin’s stature of a defend­er of the Slav­ic nation, like his approval in gen­er­al, is shrink­ing among nation­al­ists as an esti­mat­ed four to eight mil­lion ille­gal immi­grants enter Rus­sia every year to do much of the labor to fill the pow­er elites’ pock­ets with mon­ey. “There is more than just mas­sive dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the state,” Valeriy Solovey, the nation­al­ist aca­d­e­m­ic and ide­o­logue told Reuters. “It’s hatred. That hatred is direct­ed at all organs of the state and it’s direct­ed at the very top — I mean the prime min­is­ter and the pres­i­dent.”

    Russ­ian nation­al­ists might be able to gar­ner at least the moral sup­port of the pub­lic to their cause. True, most Rus­sians scoff at the rhetoric of extreme nation­al­ists, but their obses­sion with immi­gra­tion does con­sti­tute a “real prob­lem.” Accord­ing to polls con­duct­ed by the Lev­a­da Cen­ter, the major­i­ty of Rus­sians iden­ti­fy with the nation­al­ist slo­gans “Rus­sia for Rus­sians” and “Stop Feed­ing the Cau­ca­sus.” When asked whether they sup­port­ed the slo­gan, “Stop Feed­ing the Cau­ca­sus,” 62 per­cent answered that “def­i­nite­ly sup­port” or “par­tial­ly sup­port.” To the ques­tion “How do you relate to the idea ‘Rus­sia for Rus­sians’?” a total of 54 per­cent answered with some sup­port, while 32 per­cent called it “fas­cist.”

    Naval­ny rec­og­nizes the poten­tial of unit­ing Russia’s mid­dle class­es and nation­al­ists. In fact, it’s an alliance he’s been advo­cat­ing since at least 2007. There is no doubt he’s made some inroads into both camps. A vir­tu­al cult has sprout­ed around him in lib­er­al cir­cles. One of his biggest boost­ers is the promi­nent lib­er­al pun­dit Yulia Latyn­i­na, who recent­ly labeled him the “only elec­table Russ­ian.” And just this week his for­mal par­ty, Yabloko, was get­ting pres­sure to nom­i­nate Naval­ny as their pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. To which, the party’s leader Sergei Mitrokhin angri­ly tweet­ed: “Naval­ny will not be nom­i­nat­ed. 1) He didn’t express any desire to be; 2) He was expelled from Yabloko for nation­al­ism. He has not giv­en up this view;” And “Nation­al­ism would be ruinous for the Rus­sia. Yabloko can­not sup­port nation­al­ists even if they’re pop­u­lar. We will not change out prin­ci­ples for pop­u­lar­i­ty.” He then told “Navanly’s fans” to shut up about it.

    Navalny’s efforts to cajole the nation­al­ists have been less suc­cess­ful. His mem­ber­ship to the Russ­ian March orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee notwith­stand­ing, his slo­gan “Par­ty of Crooks and Thieves” made few inroads among the Russ­ian Impe­r­i­al flag bear­ing and Seig Heil-ing crowd. Nation­al­ist like Kon­stan­tin Krylov, Vladimir Tor, Dmitrii Demushkin, Alexan­der Belov see Naval­ny as an ally, but not their leader.

    Plus, lib­er­als and nation­al­ists remain deeply divid­ed with­in the protest camp. A few hun­dred nation­al­ists joined the mass protest at Bolon­taya, but many in the crowd shout­ed that they were provo­ca­teurs and orga­niz­ers only allowed Krylov to address the crowd. Both groups are try­ing to take pos­ses­sion of the move­ment sparked by the Decem­ber 4 elec­tions. Protest orga­niz­er and human rights activist, Lev Pono­marev is argu­ing for the neces­si­ty to put the nation­al­ists “in their place once and for all.” The nation­al­ists are fir­ing back that they will pre­vent the lib­er­als from “pri­va­tiz­ing” the move­ment.

    ...

    So yeah, one of the move­ments top lead­ers has a his­to­ry of attend­ing march­es with neo-nazi salutes and it looks like he has­n’t stopped attend­ing them. :

    Alex­ei Naval­ny, key engine behind Russ­ian protests

    By LYNN BERRY, Asso­ci­at­ed Press – Dec 27, 2011

    MOSCOW (AP) — Alex­ei Naval­ny has done more than any oth­er oppo­si­tion leader to lay the ground­work for the protest move­ment now chal­leng­ing Prime Min­is­ter Vladimir Putin’s 12-year grip on pow­er. His reward came last week­end when he took the stage before tens of thou­sands of cheer­ing demon­stra­tors.

    Work­ing the crowd like a fire­brand preach­er, Naval­ny had peo­ple respond­ing to his calls with cries of “Yes” and “We are the Pow­er!” His role now looks set only to grow.

    The 35-year-old cor­rup­tion-fight­ing lawyer and pop­u­lar blog­ger has inspired and mobi­lized many in Rus­si­a’s young Inter­net gen­er­a­tion, who until recent­ly had seemed reluc­tant to get up from their lap­tops.

    He reach­es tens of thou­sands through his blog, con­sis­tent­ly among the top three on Live Jour­nal, and has more than 167,000 fol­low­ers on Twit­ter.

    He has tapped into deep anger through­out soci­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the cor­rup­tion that per­vades pub­lic life and the gen­er­ous sub­si­dies sent to the restive most­ly Mus­lim regions in south­ern Rus­sia. Naval­ny’s descrip­tion of Putin’s polit­i­cal par­ty as the “par­ty of crooks and thieves” and his call to “Stop feed­ing the Cau­ca­sus” have become catch­phras­es of the oppo­si­tion.

    The Krem­lin has wok­en up to the threat posed by the charis­mat­ic and ambi­tious Naval­ny, but efforts to silence him have only added to his stature.

    Naval­ny was arrest­ed after lead­ing a protest march in defi­ance of police the day after Dec. 4 par­lia­men­tary elec­tions. The shame­less fal­si­fi­ca­tions that had helped Putin’s Unit­ed Rus­sia par­ty retain its major­i­ty out­raged many Rus­sians, and more than 5,000 joined what turned into the largest anti-Putin demon­stra­tion in years. Naval­ny was jailed for 15 days, but the protests only grew.

    ...

    Naval­ny took part in last mon­th’s Russ­ian March in which thou­sands of nation­al­ists marched through Moscow to call on eth­nic Rus­sians to “take back” their coun­try, some rais­ing their hands in a Nazi salute.

    Many Rus­sians resent the influx of dark-skinned Mus­lims into Moscow and oth­er cities. Many also resent the dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of bud­get mon­ey sent to Chech­nya and oth­er Cau­ca­sus republics, seen as a Krem­lin effort to buy loy­al­ty after two sep­a­ratist wars.

    Naval­ny defends his asso­ci­a­tion with nation­al­ists by say­ing their con­cerns are wide­spread and need to be addressed as part of any broad move­ment push­ing for demo­c­ra­t­ic change, but many in the lib­er­al oppo­si­tion fear that he is play­ing with fire.

    Some oppo­si­tion lead­ers also seem alarmed by Naval­ny’s soar­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty.

    “We are already see­ing signs of a Naval­ny cult,” Vladimir Milov wrote in a col­umn in the online Gazeta.ru. “I would­n’t be sur­prised if grand­moth­ers from the provinces start show­ing up here ask­ing where they can find him so he can cure their ill­ness­es.”

    Milov, who is 39, said some of the old­er lib­er­al oppo­si­tion lead­ers who have been involved in pol­i­tics since the 1990s would try to pre­vent Naval­ny from tak­ing over the protest move­ment.

    ...

    At the end of the day, it looks like human­i­ty’s con­gen­i­tal Stock­hole Syn­drome almost wires us to choose the far-right when we’re emerg­ing from a peri­od of author­i­tar­i­an ruled. Who knows why that is, but extreme con­ser­vatism and a his­to­ry of abu­sive rulers and pover­ty seem to go hand in hand. We just have to hope the pop­u­lace there can avoid­ed anoth­er extend­ed social exper­i­ment in author­i­tar­i­an rule.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 17, 2012, 6:18 pm

  13. Meet the Earth Island-lite: The “Grand Area”:

    GFP
    In the EU’s “Grand Area
    2012/07/26
    BERLIN
    (Own report) — A Euro­pean think tank, with ties to Ger­many, is call­ing for the estab­lish­ment of an EU con­trolled “Grand Area” stretch­ing from the Arc­tic, through Cen­tral Asia, the Mid­dle East to North Africa. With this “Grand Area,” the “Group on Grand Strat­e­gy” (GoGS) seeks to cre­ate a pow­er base for a Euro­pean Fed­er­al State, it con­sid­ers nec­es­sary to estab­lish. This “Grand Area” should also serve Euro­pean inter­ests in resources and deter for­eign pow­ers from med­dling. This con­cept, which cor­re­sponds, in many ways to Ger­man inter­ests, also includes the estab­lish­ment with­in the “Grand Area” of a net­work of “Euro­pean” mil­i­tary bases, which there­fore would be out­side any nation­al con­trol. The Ber­tels­mann Foun­da­tion, one of the most influ­en­tial Ger­man think tanks, also has a rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the GoGS Advi­so­ry Board. With­in the Foun­da­tion, that polit­i­cal sci­en­tist’s work is cen­tered on the theme, “Europe’s future.”

    Lib­er­al Order
    The “Grand Area” plan was elab­o­rat­ed by James Rogers, one of the co-founders of the Group on Grand Strat­e­gy (GoGS). In his com­pre­hen­sive paper, “A new Geog­ra­phy of Euro­pean Pow­er?” Rogers makes a plea for the EU to take con­trol over such a “Grand Area.” Euro­pean mil­i­tary and civil­ian forces should reg­u­lar­ly inter­vene to arrest “dis­or­ders” and insure a “lib­er­al order.” Accord­ing to Rogers the “Grand Area” should “show the least like­li­hood of sig­nif­i­cant encroach­ment by pow­er­ful for­eign actors” and should be defend­ed “most cost-effec­tive­ly through the expan­sion of the Com­mon Secu­ri­ty and Defence Pol­i­cy.”[1] The “Grand Area” cov­ers all of Europe includ­ing Ice­land and Green­land, stretch­es to Cen­tral Asia and parts of South East Asia all the way to the Mid­dle East and North Africa. For the most part, the map is ori­ent­ed along cur­rent, inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized, bor­ders, how­ev­er in the case of Rus­sia, it dis­sects its nation­al ter­ri­to­ry.

    ...

    Ger­many: “Ter­res­tri­al Pow­er”
    In GoGS pub­li­ca­tions, Ger­many is explic­it­ly char­ac­ter­ized as a “ter­res­tri­al pow­er,” that clings “tena­cious­ly” to a “Bis­mar­ck­ian ter­res­tri­al strategy.”[4] This strat­e­gy, aimed at win­ning con­ti­nen­tal influ­ence, pos­es, nev­er­the­less, a dan­ger to the “mar­itime pow­ers” Great Britain and France, accord­ing to one of the reports. The strate­gist of the GoGS, Luis Simón, a for­mer Volk­swa­gen Foun­da­tion fel­low, warns that a future “Ger­man-Russ­ian axis” could devel­op. But “for the moment” Ger­many is cling­ing to the EU. How­ev­er, Simón adds that the “British — Amer­i­can Pow­er” in the Baltic — mean­ing the par­tial­ly close col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Baltic coun­tries and Poland with the USA and Great Britain — is pre­vent­ing a more elab­o­rate Ger­man-Russ­ian rap­proche­ment. Accord­ing to the author, over the next few years, Great Britain will rein­force its influ­ence in East­ern Europe, to make a rap­proche­ment between Berlin and Moscow more difficult.[5] As a mat­ter of fact, British troops have been per­ma­nent­ly sta­tioned in the Czech Repub­lic since 2000, where they car­ried out the Unit­ed King­dom’s largest air­borne maneu­vers in 2010. James Rogers adds that a Ger­man renun­ci­a­tion of the “Atlantic Alliance” would renew the rival­ry between Berlin and Lon­don, and “his­to­ry has shown that noth­ing good can come of that.”[6]

    ...

    Carl Schmitt
    The term “Grand Area,” used by the GoGS, had once been pop­u­lar­ized by the “Third Reich’s Crown Jurist” Carl Schmitt, in his 1939 book “Völk­er­rechtliche Großrau­mord­nung und Inter­ven­tionsver­bot für raum­fremde Mächte. Ein Beitrag zum Reichs­be­griff im Völkerrecht.”[7] In this work Schmitt pos­tu­lat­ed that the “prin­ci­ple of non-inter­fer­ence by pow­ers for­eign to the realm, is a valid inter­na­tion­al legal prin­ci­ple,” which was sup­posed to secure sole access for Ger­many to all coun­tries in Europe. To show the suc­cess of his Grand Area the­o­ry, Schmitt used the exam­ple of Ruma­nia. As crit­ics point out — Ruma­nia was inte­grat­ed into the Ger­man “Great Area,” at the “expense of its nat­ur­al resources and eco­nom­ic substance.”[8] The Group on Grand Strat­e­gy is obvi­ous­ly also demand­ing that the coun­tries with­in the “Great Area” sur­ren­der their wealth to the advan­tage of Ger­many and the EU.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 8, 2012, 12:46 pm

  14. [...] that struck Europe may well have been set by Al Qae­da or oth­er jihadists ele­ments.  In FTR #723, we spec­u­lated about the pos­si­bil­ity that dev­as­tat­ing Russ­ian for­est fires [...]

    Posted by Smokey the Bear Says: Only You Can Prevent–Forest Fire Jihad? | The Freedom Report | July 9, 2013, 3:30 pm

  15. Here’s some­thing to keep in mind regard­ing the “Earth Island” con­cept and any future strug­gles to gain geopo­lit­i­cal dom­i­na­tion over the world’s largest land mass: that giant land mass is sched­uled to have some very desta­bi­liz­ing weath­er over the next cen­tu­ry, with no short­age of floods or droughts:

    The Finan­cial Times

    Asian coun­tries are warned of cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe
    Swaths of con­ti­nent face 50% more rain and sum­mers 8C hot­ter this cen­tu­ry, ADB says

    by: Michael Peel in Bangkok
    July 13, 2017

    Asian coun­tries will be among the worst affect­ed by ris­ing tem­per­a­tures, extreme weath­er pat­terns and floods caused by cli­mate change, accord­ing to a report by the region’s main devel­op­ment bank.

    Dam­age rang­ing from falling crop yields to bleach­ing of coral reefs will affect mil­lions of peo­ple and add bil­lions of dol­lars to food import costs, accord­ing to the Asian Devel­op­ment Bank research pub­lished on Fri­day.

    Mean sum­mer­time tem­per­a­tures in north-west Chi­na, Pak­istan, Afghanistan and Tajik­istan are pro­ject­ed to rise as much as 8C by 2100. Rain­fall is fore­cast to climb by half in many land areas of the Asia-Pacif­ic region, cre­at­ing new flood­ing risks.

    The sober­ing take on the impact of cli­mate change on the world’s most pop­u­lous region is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between the bank and Germany’s Pots­dam Insti­tute for Cli­mate Impact Research. It comes after lead­ing inter­na­tion­al banks this week pledged to exam­ine their expo­sure to risks relat­ed to cli­mate change.

    “The Asia-Pacif­ic region is par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to cli­mate change,” said Preety Bhan­dari, direc­tor in the ADB’s sus­tain­able devel­op­ment and cli­mate change depart­ment. “Not only because of the intense impact felt across the region but also because of the large pop­u­la­tions liv­ing in coastal areas or depen­dent on sec­tors like­ly to be bad­ly affect­ed.”

    The report uses exist­ing data and new mod­els to project decades ahead and attempt to esti­mate the human and finan­cial impact of cli­mate change on Asia. Hans Joachim Schellnhu­ber, direc­tor of the Pots­dam Insti­tute, said it would be a “major task” for the region even to adapt to a 1.5C tem­per­a­ture rise above pre-indus­tri­al lev­els by the end of this cen­tu­ry — a cen­tral tar­get of the Paris agree­ment on cli­mate change.

    More than three-quar­ters of the world’s cities most exposed to a 1m rise in sea lev­els are in Asia, sev­en of them in the Philip­pines. The region also accounts for almost two-thirds of the 20 cities it is esti­mat­ed will suf­fer the great­est increase in finan­cial loss­es to flood­ing over the next decades.

    Five of those fore­cast to be most affect­ed are in Chi­na, includ­ing the indus­tri­al cen­tre of Guangzhou, while anoth­er four are in India, among them Mum­bai, the com­mer­cial cap­i­tal.

    Rice yields are fore­cast to plunge by half in some South­east Asian coun­tries by the end of the cen­tu­ry in the absence of reme­di­al action. The west­ern Pacific’s remain­ing coral reefs would bleach and col­lapse in the same sce­nario, destroy­ing fish­eries and tourism.

    Ris­ing tem­per­a­tures risk killing tens of thou­sands more old­er peo­ple, while dead­ly or debil­i­tat­ing mos­qui­to-borne dis­eases such as malar­ia and dengue fever are like­ly to flour­ish, the report says. These and oth­er grow­ing hard­ships could fur­ther dri­ve migra­tion of peo­ple along routes such as the Pacif­ic Islands to Aus­tralia and Bangladesh to India.

    ...

    ———-

    “Asian coun­tries are warned of cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe” by Michael Peel; The Finan­cial Times; 07/13/2017

    “Mean sum­mer­time tem­per­a­tures in north-west Chi­na, Pak­istan, Afghanistan and Tajik­istan are pro­ject­ed to rise as much as 8C by 2100. Rain­fall is fore­cast to climb by half in many land areas of the Asia-Pacif­ic region, cre­at­ing new flood­ing risks.”

    Mean sum­mer­time tem­per­a­tures are expect­ed to spike in cen­tral Asian places like north west Chi­na, Pak­istan, Afghanistan and Tajik­istan while the rain­fall could climb by as much as 50 per­cent along with Pacif­ic, a region that con­tains a mas­sive per­cent­age of the globe’s pop­u­la­tion. It rais­es the ques­tion of which direc­tion will the refugee flow gen­er­al­ly go? From the coasts to the cen­ter, or vice ver­sa? And while ris­ing sea lev­els and flood­ing sug­gests an inevitable inward inward away from the coast, keep in mind that the areas that aren’t pro­ject­ed to get flood­ed are prob­a­bly going to see droughts instead:

    Bloomberg News

    Cli­mate Change May Bring Dis­as­ters and Deep­er Pover­ty to Asia

    * Warmer tem­per­a­tures could change region’s weath­er, agri­cul­ture
    * Hot­ter cli­mates may pose exis­ten­tial threat to some nations

    July 13, 2017, 10:00 PM CDT

    Asia and the Pacif­ic, home to two thirds of the world’s poor, are at the high­est risk of suf­fer­ing deep­er pover­ty and dis­as­ter due to unabat­ed cli­mate change, revers­ing cur­rent devel­op­ment gains, accord­ing to the Asian Devel­op­ment Bank.

    The Asian land­mass will see a tem­per­a­ture increase of 6 degrees Cel­sius (10.8 degrees Fahren­heit) by the end of the cen­tu­ry under a busi­ness-as-usu­al sce­nario, ADB said in a state­ment on Fri­day. The com­ment is based on find­ings includ­ed in a report from the bank and Pots­dam Insti­tute for Cli­mate Impact Research that analy­ses cli­mate risks in Asia and the Pacif­ic.

    Some coun­tries in the region could expe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant­ly hot­ter cli­mates, with tem­per­a­ture increas­es in Tajik­istan, Afghanistan, Pak­istan, and north­west Chi­na pro­ject­ed to hit 8 degrees Cel­sius, ADB said.

    ...

    Oth­er find­ings in the report include:

    * Under a busi­ness-as-usu­al sce­nario, annu­al pre­cip­i­ta­tion is expect­ed to rise by as much as 50 per­cent over most land areas in the region, although nations such as Pak­istan and Afghanistan may see a decline in rain­fall by 20 to 50 per­cent
    * 19 of the 25 cities most exposed to a 1 meter sea-lev­el rise are locat­ed in the region, 7 of which are in the Philip­pines alone. Indone­sia, how­ev­er, will be the coun­try in the region most affect­ed by coastal flood­ing
    * 13 of the top 20 cities with the largest growth of annu­al flood loss­es from 2005–2050 are in the region
    * Cli­mate change will also make food pro­duc­tion in the region hard­er and will raise pro­duc­tion costs. In some coun­tries of South­east Asia, rice yields could tum­ble by up to 50 per­cent by 2100 if no adap­tion efforts are made
    * Marine ecosys­tems, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the West­ern Pacif­ic, will be in seri­ous dan­ger by 2100. Even with a 1.5 degree Cel­sius tem­per­a­ture increase, 89 per­cent of coral reefs are expect­ed to suf­fer from seri­ous bleach­ing, severe­ly affect­ing reef-relat­ed fish­eries and tourism in South­east Asia
    * Heat-relat­ed deaths in the region among the elder­ly are expect­ed to rise by about 52,000 cas­es by 2050 due to cli­mate change, accord­ing to data from the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion. Deaths relat­ed to vec­tor-borne dis­eases such as malar­ia and dengue may also increase
    * Cli­mate change can exac­er­bate ener­gy inse­cu­ri­ty through con­tin­ued reliance on unsus­tain­able fos­sil fuels, reduced capac­i­ties of ther­mal pow­er plants due to a scarci­ty of cool­ing water, and inter­mit­tent per­for­mance of hydropow­er plants as a result of uncer­tain water dis­charges, among oth­er fac­tors

    ———-

    “Cli­mate Change May Bring Dis­as­ters and Deep­er Pover­ty to Asia”; Bloomberg News; 07/13/2017

    “Under a busi­ness-as-usu­al sce­nario, annu­al pre­cip­i­ta­tion is expect­ed to rise by as much as 50 per­cent over most land areas in the region, although nations such as Pak­istan and Afghanistan may see a decline in rain­fall by 20 to 50 per­cent”

    Pak­istan and Afghanistan could see a pre­cip­i­tous drop in their pre­cip­i­ta­tion lev­els. At least in some parts of those coun­tries. Oth­er parts will still get flood­ed.

    So any pow­er­ful groups around the world with plans for effec­tive­ly gain­ing con­trol of the “Earth Island” over the next cen­tu­ry won’t have too much trou­ble imple­ment­ing a “desta­bi­lize Asia” phase of their plans. That phase is already run­ning on auto-pilot. It’s the post-desta­bi­liza­tion phase that’s going to be par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing, in part because the desta­bi­liza­tion phase does­n’t appear to have an ‘off’ switch.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 17, 2017, 3:16 pm

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