Many western analysts have described the post-Soviet tussle for Caspain and Central Asian energy reserves as the new "Great Game, except this time around, Russia is facing the U.S. rather than the British empire.

To a dispassionate outside observer however, what is most striking about the prolonged wrangle between Moscow and Washington for hydrocarbons, military bases and influence is the emergence of an understated sly newcomer who has managed to bag many of the region's assets - China.

There are many reasons for this, despite the fact that both Russia and the U.S. both seemed to hold winning hands.

For Moscow, quite aside from its colonialist legacy was the fact that it controlled the Truboprovodnaiia sistema Sredniaia Aziia-Tsentr (the Central Asia-Center, or SATS, pipeline system.) Russia's natural gas monopoly Gazprom controls the SATS complex of pipelines, which run from Turkmenistan via Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to Russia. The SATS eastern branch consists of SATS-1, 2, 4 and 5 pipelines, which were built between 1960 and 1988. Construction began after the discovery of Turkmenistan's Dzharkak field, with the first SATS section coming online in 1960, while SATS-4 was commissioned in 1973. Simply put, after the 1991 collapse of the USSR, Central Asia's only opportunity for energy exports was controlled by Russia, which was determined to obey its new-found capitalist mantra of "buy cheap and sell dear."

And where did Gazprom sell its Central Asian natural gas?

Europe, or course.

In 2008 Gazprom's sales to the European Union were nearly 170 billion cubic meters (bcm) out of a production of 550 bcm. Gazprom's share in the global and Russian natural gas production is 17.3 percent and 85 percent, respectively. Turkmen exports represent a quarter of Gazprom's EU exports, but the company also buys 15 bcm of Kazakh gas and 7 bcm of Uzbek gas.

The boulder in Gazprom's shoe is that the Russian domestic market, which is heavily subsidized, now accounts for about 70 percent of the company's production, with domestic consumption rising by more than 3 bcm a year. Accordingly, to free up as much indigenous production as possible for export, one-third of Russian internal gas usage has to be supplied from non-Gazprom sources.

And the Americans?

Well, after 1991 they showed up, checkbooks and democracy and human rights lectures in hand, determined as much as Moscow to buy local assets at fire-sale prices. Unlike oil, natural gas can only be pipelined or, in an expensive procedure, liquefied for transport.

Which left the Central Asians irritated at both parties.

Enter Beijing - cash to hand and no annoying lectures about political systems or human rights.

On 14 December 2009 China and Turkmenistan formally opened the first section of a 1,139 mile-long, 40 bcm per year natural gas pipeline, financed by China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China's largest oil and gas producer and supplier. The Turkmenistan-China pipeline has since been expanded to carry Uzbek and Kazakh natural gas.

More pipelines flowing eastwards from Central Asia are under construction.

The moral of this story seems clear - those who simply show up with cash and sign mutually beneficial contracts are likely to prevail over Kremlin denizens expecting gratitude for a century of servitude, much less Yankee Wall St wizards seeking to screw the locals whilst prattling on about free markets and democracy. The final race for Central Asian energy is far from over, but at the moment, Beijing's mandarins are winning.

Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/China-Winning-the-Race-for-Central-Asias-Energy-Riches.html

By. Dr. John C.K. Daly for OilPrice.com. For more information on oil prices and other commodity related topics please visit www.oilprice.com

Free Money

by Tucker Scofield

An acquaintance of mine had an opportunity this week to make as much as $25,000.00…she turned it down.

She is a property owner on the Gulf and she received a phone call from a friend regarding BP. They are settling damage claims with anyone who may have been affected by last summer’s oil spill and the caller, who knew others affected by the spill, was passing along the fact that the money was available and ripe for the picking.

There it was…free money. Was BP really going to audit every claim before paying it out of their $20 billion slush fund? Not in a million years. All she would’ve had to do was exaggerate the facts, maybe tell a little white lie or two and POOF, the Oil Fairy would grant a wish that could make the struggles of the past two years disappear. One small bit of paperwork and it would be dead presidents raining down from Heaven! Get that money, dollar-dollar bill, y’all!  But she wouldn’t do it. For her, this was a matter of principle.

I asked why she turned it down. “It’s not right,” she said. She didn’t feel as though she’d been negatively affected by the spill at all, despite having received numerous phone calls from concerned renters regarding conditions on the beach. Her rental income was pretty much unchanged from the previous year and she felt as though filing a claim would have been fraudulent.

Not too many people could have turned down such a temptation. Right or wrong, money talks and everything else walks, at least for most. Obviously, our politicians are very aware of this and use their powers to pass various entitlement programs – “free money” – in return for votes. For the moment, put aside your opinions regarding the necessity of such programs and focus instead on this: A large percentage of our population now depends, to some degree, upon entitlement programs and the money to fund those programs is rapidly disappearing. The recipients of entitlement programs don’t want the free money to stop so they continue to vote for the whores – sorry, I meant to say politicians – who gave it to them in the first place. That is, of course, unless someone else promises them more free money.

Margaret Thatcher was right – eventually, you run out of other people’s money, and that is precisely the position in which we now find ourselves. So how do we escape this death spiral of ever-increasing entitlement programs?

Fiscal responsibility. Somebody – or more accurately, a group of somebodies – has to grab a clue, wake the hell up, and smell what the dog just plopped down...we are in trouble and our current path is unsustainable! Any other assessment is just pure and total nonsense. The electorate recognized this and made a statement, loud and clear, on November 2^nd; fiscal responsibility is the mandate given the 112^th Congress and I’m relieved to see them following through, at least for the moment.

In your personal household you have two options when faced with “deficit spending” (spending more than you make, as with running up your credit cards) and/or budget crunches (not having enough money to pay the bills): You either make radical adjustments to your lifestyle by curtailing most of your activities and watching every single penny, or you file bankruptcy. You cannot bring your budget under control by spending your way out of it, and borrowing only delays and exacerbates inevitable financial collapse.

Since filing bankruptcy is not a national option, our only recourse is to buckle down and make the hard choices necessary to save our country. That means cutting spending with a chain saw and ridding ourselves of many of these entitlements.  It won’t be fun and it’ll make a lot of people mad but that’s just the way it needs to be.

Oh sure, there will be those who blame conservatives for being a bunch of racist bigots who believe that entitlement recipients are lazy and they just need to get a job. Whatever. I hate entitlement programs, I really do. And frankly, I can’t stand the bleeding hearts that continually whine in their support. But it may shock you as to why I hate them.

Entitlement programs, in my opinion, reduce human beings to little more than government pets. Like a dog eagerly snatching up whatever crumbs may fall from the table, recipients of entitlements surrender control over their own destiny and become subservient to the system established to “help” them. The acceptance of entitlements robs the individual of a chance at exceptionalism and turns them into slaves of the system. Think I’m being unreasonable?

Riddle me this, Batman: Cite me just one success story out of the millions of success stories this country has incubated since our inception in which a person has succeeded without countless trials and tribulations. I’ll wait. Thought of any? You won’t, either. It is the trials that tempered the individual’s desire to succeed; without the trials, there IS NO SUCCESS STORY.

Entitlements blunt the pain of trials; recipients accept mediocrity and are never forced to find the best in themselves. Right now, the ghettos, the housing projects, and the trailer parks are filled with potential Oprah Winfrey’s and Warren Buffetts who will instead remain John and Jane Does because they are receiving just enough to prevent them from channeling their exceptional potential. And that’s a damned shame.

Turn off the free money. Obviously it can’t be done overnight but create a deadline and then stick to it. Let people feel the pain, let them discover their own potential, let them recover their dignity. It’ll be good for the country but it’ll be better for the individual.

And that “acquaintance” who chose not to file the claim with BP? That was my wife. I’m proud of her.

Tucker Scofield’s writing is shaped by his extensive business travels in the manufacturing sector. He is also a musician, a daddy, and a husband. His articles appear weekly at www.TheDCPost.com.
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Tucker Scofield



Today there is headline after headline in the mainstream media about how dangerous "climate change" is and about how the world as we know it is going to end if we don't take dramatic steps to fight global warming.  But what they don't tell you in the mainstream media is what the "final solution" for the problem of "climate change" that the global elite have come up with actually is.  You see, for the global elite the math is simple.  They believe that human overpopulation is causing climate change, and so the solution to climate change is population control.  As bizarre as that sounds, that is what they actually believe.  The truth is that they are convinced that climate change is going to literally destroy the earth and that the best way to fight climate change is to get rid of a whole bunch of us.

In fact, it is the official policy of the United Nations to fight climate change by promoting population control measures.  They don't even try to camouflage it anymore.  Last year the UNFPA (the United Nations Population Fund) released its annual State of the World Population Report entitled "Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate", and in that document it was made clear that the official position of the UN is that the only way to avoid a major climate disaster is to dramatically increase "family planning" services around the globe and to do whatever is necessary to reduce worldwide fertility rates. 

Check out just a few of the quotes about the link between overpopulation and climate change contained in the UNFPA report....

*"The importance of the speed and magnitude of recent population growth in boosting future greenhouse-gas emissions is well recognized among scientists, including the authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's reports."

*"Still, calculations of the contribution of population growth to emissions growth globally produce a consistent finding that most of past population growth has been responsible for between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of emissions growth."

*"Each birth results not only in the emissions attributable to that person in his or her lifetime, but also the emissions of all his or her descendents. Hence, the emissions savings from intended or planned births multiply with time."

*"No human is genuinely "carbon neutral," especially when all greenhouse gases are figured into the equation. Therefore, everyone is part of the problem, so everyone must be part of the solution in some way."

*"Strong family planning programmes are in the interests of all countries for greenhouse-gas concerns as well as for broader welfare concerns."

No human is genuinely carbon neutral?

That means by being alive, we are all part of the problem.

To the elite, we are viewed as "useless eaters" that have multiplied to the point where we are now wildly out of control and are threatening to destroy the earth with our toxic carbon emissions.

And don't think for a moment that the United Nations Population Fund is not a big time international organization.

They are active in virtually ever corner of the planet, they have the full backing of the United Nations, and thanks to Barack Obama they have 50 million U.S. taxpayer dollars with which to advance their eugenics agenda.

But it is not just the United Nations that is preoccupied with population control as a solution to global warming.

Bill Gates is absolutely obsessed with it.

In the video posted below, Bill Gates explains his belief that carbon emissions from humans are causing climate change, and that the only way to stop climate change is to reduce those carbon emissions to zero.

That is right. 

While you watch the clip, notice how many times he emphasizes the need to bring these carbon emissions down to zero.

So how does he propose to do this?

Well, one of his suggestions is to slow the growth of the population.

And how will that be accomplished?

In the video Bill Gates tells us exactly what his solution is....

"The world today has 6.8 billion people. That's heading up to about nine billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent."

Now wait a minute - aren't vaccines supposed to keep people alive?

Wouldn't more vaccines actually increase the population?

Or does Bill Gates know something that we don't?

What Bill Gates has to say in this video is absolutely jaw dropping....

But of course Bill Gates is not the only one who is obsessed with climate change and population control.

In this next video, David Rockefeller explains how we are on the verge of a massive ecological disaster because there are too many people on the planet....

The truth is that while you and I may not give much thought to "overpopulation", the global elite are truly obsessed with it. 

In fact, they even hold gatherings where they all get together and talk about it.  Just over one year ago Bill Gates, David Rockefeller, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey and a number of other incredibly wealthy individuals held a secret meeting in New York.

So what was the topic of this secret meeting?

Population control.

One anonymous attendee of the meeting was quoted in a major U.K. newspaper as saying that overpopulation "is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers."

Apparently they are the big brains that are going to figure out the best ways to make sure that there are fewer of the rest of us running around.

So the next time you hear about the incredible "threat" of climate change in the mainstream media, keep in mind what the global elite believe the ultimate solution to that threat is.

As Bill Gates said, they are not going to be satisfied until they get carbon emissions by humans down to zero.

And considering the fact that you have been breathing out carbon dioxide the whole time that you have been reading this article, that is not good news for you.

As absolutely brutal winter weather hammers the United States, Europe and Asia, many people are wondering where all of that "global warming" is supposed to be.  After all, if climate change is about to cause absolute devastation to the earth, shouldn't we all at least be able to enjoy some mild winters in the meanwhile?  The truth is that this winter is making an absolute mockery out of the climate change crowd.  It simply does not make sense that the earth is massively heating up when we are experiencing record cold temperatures and record-setting snow storms all over the globe. 

So just what is going on with the weather?  Well, it is actually the sun the drives global warming and cooling, and right now we are in a cooling cycle.  To learn more about the science behind this, just check out this article. 

In any event, the truth is that even the common man or woman on the street can put 2 and 2 together this winter and realize that this whole "global warming" thing is not all that it is cracked up to be.  The following are just 8 reasons why this winter is making a mockery out of the climate change crowd....

#1) Global warming?  Record-setting cold temperatures and brutal winter weather have been sweeping North America, Europe and Asia with no end in sight.

#2) Global warming?  877 snowfall records were set or tied in the United States in just one week in December.

#3) Global warming? A massive storm barreling into the Upper Midwest just before Christmas stirred up a blizzard that some meteorologists said was stronger than just about any storm seen in South Dakota in the past 40 years.

#4) Global warming?  Winter has only just begun and 50 percent of the U.S. was already covered in snow at one point in December.

#5) Global warming?  The death toll from winter storms across Europe has risen to at least 80 people, as arctic temperatures and heavy snow continue to plague the continent.

#6) Global warming? More than 30 people died in cold-weather related incidents in Northern India recently in just one 24 hour period.

#7) Global warming? Even Barack Obama has been impacted by this winter weather.  In fact, Obama had to leave the United Nations Copenhagen summit on global warming because of a record setting snow storm back home in Washington D.C.

#8) Global warming? In the wake of the Copenhagen climate change summit, many delegates returned home only to find record-setting subfreezing weather hammering their home nations throughout Europe.  Sometimes it seems like someone up there has a beautiful sense of humor.

Most Americans seem to think that the world leaders gathered at the U.N. Copenhagen climate change summit are simply discussing ways to help improve the environment. Unfortunately that is not anywhere close to the truth. The draft of the Copenhagen climate change treaty now circulating would represent a giant step towards a "world government", it would establish brutal new world taxes which would transfer massive amounts of wealth from the United States to other nations, and it would create 700 new bureaucracies to enforce this new treaty. Not only that, but according to the provisions of the treaty, the United States would never be able to get out of it. The wording of the treaty makes it crystal clear that no future president, no future Congress and no future U.S. court would be able to extricate the United States from this horrific agreement.

An earlier version of the Copenhagen climate change treaty can be found here.  However, the version of the treaty now being circulated in Copenhagen is not available to the public at this point. 

Fortunately, there are some officials who have seen the latest version and who are willing to speak out.  One of them is Lord Christopher Monckton - a former official in the Thatcher administration.

We already knew that the Copenhagen Treaty was going to be incredibly bad, but according to Lord Monckton it is going to be even worse than we anticipated.

So just what is this horrific treaty going to do?

#1) A World Government

The Copenhagen Treaty is going to be a gigantic step towards world government.  Lord Monckton recently said the following about what the drafters of this treaty are trying to do.....

"Once again they are desperately trying to conceal from everybody here the magnitude of what they’re attempting to do – they really are attempting to set up a world government."

The wording of the treaty creates governmental bodies with a vast array of power over environmental affairs.  The treaty gives these new governmental bodies tremendous power over the lives of every man, woman and child on earth.  It even grants these new governmental authorities authority over the U.S. government and the U.S. Constitution.

When you have world governmental authorities that can micromanage the smallest details of our lives and that can trump the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Constitution, what do you have?

World government.

#2) Brutal New World Taxes

The Copenhagen Treaty will also establish crushing new taxes which will further devastate the economy of the United States and which will transfer massive amounts of wealth to developing nations.

This is what Lord Monckton had to say about the taxes in the Copenhagen Treaty.....  

"Tax the American economy to the extent of 2 percent GDP, to impose a further tax of 2 percent on every financial transaction….and to close down effectively the economies of the west, transfer your jobs to third world countries – all of that is still in the treaty draft."

To illustrate just how massive these new taxes would be, he pointed out that they would amount to at least half of the entire U.S. defense budget.

That is huge.

So where would all of this money go?

It would be transferred to third world nations to help them build "green" economies and it would go towards running the new socialist world governmental bodies.

This would be a blow that the U.S. economy may never recover from.  Already the U.S. economy is coming apart like a house of cards.

What would these new taxes do to it?

#3) Creation Of 700 New Bureaucracies To Enforce The Treaty

According to Lord Monckton, the Copenhagen Treaty will create 700 new bureaucracies to enforce the provisions of the agreement.....

"We’re looking at a grab for absolute power and absolute financial control worldwide by the UN and its associated bureaucracies and 700 new bureaucratic bodies."

This would not mean 700 new officials.

This would mean 700 new bureaucracies.

700 new organizations that would be crawling all over the world micromanaging the lives of every man, woman and child - making sure that they are adhering to the edicts of the new environmental world laws.

Lastly, perhaps the most ominous provision of this treaty is that it states that once a nation has signed on to it, it may not ever cancel its membership without the approval of all the other member nations.

Do you understand what that means?

It means that unless every single other nation agrees, the United States can never, ever get out of it.

Ever.

No future president would be able to do anything.

No future Congress would be able to do anything.

The United States of America would be under the thumb of this treaty forever.

We would be obligated to pay their world taxes forever.

We would be obligated to transfer our wealth to other nations forever.

We would be obligated to submit to the extremist regulations of world environmental bodies forever.

Are you starting to get the picture?

As the U.N. Copenhagen climate change summit begins today, prostitutes in that city are looking forward to doing a brisk business with government officials who are flying in from all over the world.  However, things are not looking so great for anyone who would dare to protest the climate change summit.  Authorities have prepared small metal cages for the "extended detention" of protestors.  By publicizing the severe security measures being implemented ahead of time, summit organizers appear to be attempting to send this message to opponents: "Don't mess with us!" 

Denmark is one of the growing number of countries where prostitution is actually legal.  Instead of being called "prostitutes", they are known as "sex workers".  You can almost hear thousands of world officials salivating as they arrive in Copenhagen anticipating a very productive and stimulating time away from their home countries. 

But not everyone is thrilled.  Copenhagen's mayor actually sent out postcards to 160 Copenhagen hotels urging summit delegates to "be sustainable - don't buy sex".

But since prostitution is legal in Denmark, there is not much the mayor can do to stop it.  In fact, many of Copenhagen's "sex care workers" are reportedly offering free sex to anyone who can produce one of the mayor's postcards.  They are furious that the mayor would try to disrupt the busiest time that they will see this entire year.

In fact, a spokeswoman for the Sex Workers Interest Group said that Mayor Bjerregaard is "abusing her position as Lord Mayor in using her power to prevent us carrying out our perfectly legal job".

On another note, law enforcement officials in Copenhagen have constructed a "holding facility" that contains approximately three dozen small steel cages which they say can accommodate more than 350 protesters.

While some observers have criticized these steel cages as being inhumane, the reality is that law enforcement authorities now see these kinds of "security measures" as routine whenever globalist leaders assemble around the globe.

The New York Times quotes Per Larsen, the top coordinating officer for the Copenhagen police force as saying that this "is surely the biggest police action we have ever had in Danish history".

In addition to the new holding facility with the steel cages, Denmark also rushed new laws through Parliament that allow for stiffer fines and "extended detention" for protestors.  Law enforcement authorities have also made it a point to have public displays of newly acquired antiriot equipment - in hopes that potential protesters would "get the message".

So why would protesters be so upset?

Is it because they don't have anything better to do?

No, it is because a group of mostly unelected world leaders is poised to take a gigantic step towards world government.  An elaborate web of rules and regulations is expected to be agreed to in Copenhagen that will have fundamental consequences for every man, woman and child on earth.  The global agenda of the ruling elite of the world is about to be ruthlessly pushed forward at the expense of the middle class and the poor - all in the name of "saving the earth" from carbon dioxide. 

But anyone who dares to protest this will be jammed into a small steel cage while the global elitists run around Copenhagen cavorting with prostitutes.