[china] the scope of the threat [part 2]

Alliances

China pursues alliances with other countries for obvious reasons. At present, it feels it must avoid being dragged into local conflicts about spheres of influence, or struggles over natural resources. Thus some more recent examples include:

China - Australia

China – Pakistan

China – Russia - India

China – India

China – Taiwan

China – Africa

China – Iran

Meanwhile, China concludes energy alliances and expressions of mutual friendship with the US, assuring the latter that all is well. The reasoning is fairly obvious.

Dr. Yan Xuetong, Director of the Centre for Foreign Policy at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), China's largest international research institute, warned in an article in 1997 that the probability of China's avoiding war for at least 10 more years will increase the more it also avoids any confrontation with at least two of the other major powers and as long as certain policy goals are maximized:

· annually increase in exports up to 9 %
· avoiding simultaneous confrontation.
When the U.S. leadership finally realizes that China's power is about to surpass hers, it will form a coalition to strangle to death the rising power.

President Jiang Zemin advocated that China's military programs be focused on the potential Revolution in Military Affairs which will not "mature" until at least 2030, rather than improving current weapons; by which time China, or possibly Japan, would score highest in the world in CNP and would be well positioned, as General Mi Zhenyu has written, to "get ahead of all the others".

China's well-connected ultranationalist author, He Xin, advocates on the other hand, that China should align with every currently anti-American nation in the world. He Xin's critics, however, project a sharp decline in the global role of the US, asserting that in two decades or so:

· The US will inevitably decline to one of five powers - Japan, the European Union, Russia, and China [each equal to the United States], with the United States, Russia, and China having nuclear equivalence.

· Within two or three decades, the problem will solve itself. And so patience and caution are wiser than aggressive coalition building.

Liu Jinghua, of CASS, warns that by 2020, the policy of "concealing abilities and biding time" will not be sufficient and "once the flood begins, we must have a Great Wall which cannot collapse."

One part of this Great Wall must be a partnership with Russia, to defeat Western containment, aimed at restricting access to capital markets and technology, promoting Western values and using military power " as the core" against China. China just needs not to provoke the current hegemony until the Great Wall can be ready.

Zhang Wenmu, of the CICIR, says that because of America's desperate need for new oil and gas resources, especially in Central Asia, it has interfered in the Tibet issue, as part of a larger scheme involving the enlargement of NATO and the redefinition of the US-Japan Defence Guidelines.

An example of this is NATO presence in Afghanistan, ostensibly to fight the Taliban but also strategically placing it so that it can hedge China in on its western frontier.

According to Zhang, US strategy was always to "follow the oil". In World War II, it did not intervene until Japan moved toward oil. Similarly, before the Gulf War, the United States ignored Iraqi expansion towards the North and West but when Saudi and Kuwait oil was threatened, the US went to war.

Zhang writes that, in 1998, the United States had a "two arms" strategy to contain both Russia (with NATO enlargement) and China (with the new Japan Defense Guidelines and promoting the China Threat Theory).

In addition, Zhang predicts that the United States wants to screen off both Chinese and Russian access to Central Asian oil and gas.

If there is internal turmoil in Tibet or further north in Muslim Xinjiang, Zhang predicts that the United States will try to set up an international no-fly zone, as it did after the Gulf War, thus "dismembering" Tibet and Xinjiang, the hub of China's geopolitical position and causing the loss of the high plateau, which provides natural protection to the west.

Therefore the development of its western regions is paramount and concentration on numerical superiority in land forces will prevail and act to make the US think twice.

China must also develop sea lanes and control them, thus circumventing any blockage on its land routes. The essential problem here is that it has never really been a maritime nation, it’s vast land forces its main strength.

Another aspect China feels it must look at is the “strategic misdirection” of the US which has won it victories before.

More on that in Part 3.

[china] the scope of the threat [part 1]

China continued…

As I learnt some Cantonese expressions and showed myself to be favourably oriented towards them, the hierarchy slowly thawed towards me and I was invited to the pub to play snooker with their top brass.

You might immediately scorn me for going along, rather than ‘shopping’ the four of them. After all, I was technically the under-boss, in my own country and running my own section of which they were a part.

I went along and their hierarchical nature was immediately apparent as well as their respect for my position. Not a drop of alcohol passed their lips to compromise me [never mind that my position there was, in itself, a compromise]. They played me at snooker and two allowed themselves to lose and two won. These were clearly of a higher rank.

Then in came one I’d only seen at a distance. He didn’t live in, he was about 22 years old and was allowed to stay on to complete his studies which strangely, he never seemed to do in all my time there. He wore a navy jacket, as distinct from their dark olive and we were introduced. He opened a cue case and took out two halves of a fine cue stick which one of the others screwed together for him. Nodding for one of the lower two to set up the balls, I went to help but he fixed me with a glare.

Naturally he wiped the floor with me and that got me invited to a meal with them. The surprise was that it was in the school kitchen to which blue jacket had a key and the bigger surprise was that he did the actual cooking, with the others buzzing around, assisting. It was lean cuisine but still a great meal. Then he left.

The whole thing was like a novel, except that it happened but an even bigger surprise came over the next few days. I’d been fed and drilled in some Cantonese expressions until I had them almost right and one of them, I was told, would get immediate silence.

The opportunity arose with an incident where one of them had been subject to some sort of humiliation, according to Lee, so I went to investigate. My colleague [the one who had stood on his rights] was shouting at some insolent beefy boy whose arms were folded across his chest and all the others were stamping the floor in unison.

I’ll tell you the words: “Sow lon pai”. The effect was instant. The stamping ceased, the arms went down from the chest, the line was resumed, my colleague stalked off in disgust and I didn’t have the least clue what to follow up that line with. Lee appeared and they filed into the hall in silence.

One day it went wrong. There was one mongrel of a young man who couldn’t possibly have been under 20 and he was throwing his weight about with some of the other ‘cultures’. I asked him to desist and he turned, picked up a rock from the garden and just stood, immovable, eyes trained on mine. Then he walked off.

I mentioned it to Lee and around seven that evening, there was a knock on my door and in came this young fella who towered over me and behind him, Lee and blue jacket filed into the room near the door. The young fella half bowed, muttered: “I verra sorry” and went to leave.

I hadn’t heard any word, hadn’t seen any gesture from the door but he scowled, turned around and spoke to the floor. “I never do it again.” The ones at the door nodded and the incident was over.

Weeks later, the police visited and he was arrested for helping blow up a restaurant in China town, along with two of the snooker players and one whom I’d met in town one day at a café.

I remember at the time this one, who had a winning smile and was clearly a hit with the Chinese girls, started telling me things about some city I couldn’t pronounce and how someone had had his heart cut out who’d offended the local head honcho. I’d put it down to too many horror films.

One last incident. One night someone tapped at my door and told me I’d better come quickly. I did and found, in one of the log rooms, an interesting scene. Kneeling in a circle around the room were about twenty boys and in the middle of the oval, also kneeling and head bowed, was one of the younger boys who’d clearly transgressed in some way.

By the far wall, seated on a chair, was blue jacket and when I came in, there was no mad scurrying and apology but a simple, quizzical gaze from blue jacket, as if to ask: “So, what’s next?” I made not reaction but stood there and looked at him. He gave the word, the assembly broke up and people went back to bed. They probably did it the next day, when I wasn’t on duty.

So, enough reminiscences. All those experiences did was confirm to me that the Chinese might have been polite but they were hierarchical, they obeyed without question, they could turn perfect harmony into perfect chaos in an instant and vice-versa and then it struck me that that was what the British were also like. The independent school tradition, the army, the navy and the kite fliers. It was an imperial mindset, still alive at certain echelons.

To return to the Chinese military, according to interviews with the current Chinese forces, the stories of ancient warcraft are embedded in Chinese culture, just as the West has its own history and its own literature.

The military calls the future multipolar world "amazingly similar" to the Warring States era and declares that China's future security environment resembles the era in several ways.

General Gao Rui, former Vice President of the Academy of Military Science (AMS), writes that the era is "extremely distant from modern times, but still shines with the glory of truth" and "the splendid military legacy created through the bloody struggles of our ancient ancestors and today has a radiance even more resplendent."

Part 2 will follow.

[glacier adrift] do you understand what's happening

Sunlight and warming …

"The data also reveal that from 2000 to now the clouds have changed so that the Earth may continue warming, even with declining sunlight," said study leader Philip R. Goode of the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

"These large and peculiar variabilities of the clouds, coupled with a resulting increasing albedo, presents a fundamental, unmet challenge for all scientists who wish to understand and predict the Earth's climate."

Earth's albedo is measured by noting how much reflected sunlight in turn bounces off the Moon, something scientists call earthshine. The observations were made at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in California.

On any given day, about half of Earth is covered by clouds, which reflect more sunlight than land and water. Clouds keep Earth cool by reflecting sunlight, but they can also serve as blankets to trap warmth. High thin clouds are better blankets, while low thick clouds make better coolers.

Separately, satellite data recently showed that while the difference between high and low clouds had long been steady at 7-8 percent, in the past five years, for some unknown reason, the difference has jumped to 13 percent. High, warming clouds have increased while low clouds have decreased.

Earth's albedo appears to have experienced a similar reversal during a period running from the 1960s to the mid-1980s.

How do the findings play into arguments about global warming and the apparent contribution by industrial emissions? That's entirely unclear. "No doubt greenhouse gases are increasing," Goode said in a telephone interview. "No doubt that will cause a warming. The question is, 'Are there other things going on?'"

What is clear is that scientists don't understand clouds very well, as a trio of studies last year also showed. "Clouds are even more uncertain than we thought," Goode said.

So, after all that, where does it leave us, the ordinary mortals? On the Ayles Ice Shelf, drifting out to sea it seems.

[Blogger wouldn't accept this link and wiped out most of the text when it was used: http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/060124_earth_albedo.html ]

[scotland and england] the new feudalism

Devolution continued …

Hence the constant scathing CFR and financier comments, e.g.:

July 1948 - Sir Harold Butler, in the CFR's "Foreign Affairs," sees "a New World Order" taking shape: "How far can the life of nations, which for centuries have thought of themselves as distinct and unique, be merged with the life of other nations? How far are they prepared to sacrifice a part of their sovereignty without which there can be no effective economic or political union?"

Feb. 7, 1950 - International financier and CFR member James Warburg tells a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee: "We shall have world government whether or not you like it - by conquest or consent."

In Britain, the battle is raging, with the Eurosceptics firmly opposed to the government acquiescence to EU control whilst at the same time hell bent on fragmenting the nation and removing the last remaining obstacle to globalization and the new feudalism [which Euro-Serf’s pseudonym refers to]:

From the other side of the Atlantic:

Then the dropped penny: the feudal barons of today are the big corporations. There are clear parallels; primarily that the corporations, like the barons, control the majority of the economic activity of the country other than that involved with the bureaucracy/church. Wealth in the 13th century was generated from land, and that was controlled by the barons. Wealth in the present day is generated from capital and the control of physical and intellectual property - which is controlled by the corporations.

And yet we’re hell-bent on fragmenting with Britannia a fading and less than respectable memory to be cast aside in favour of some sort of regional brave new world.

First to the English view:

Today's Telegraph poll HERE on Scottish and English devolution [shows that] sixty eight per cent of English voters are now in favour of a Parliament for England. This is up from 41% only a few months ago. Fifty two per cent of Scottish voters want full independence and 59% of English voters want them to have it. As we build up to the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union there's going to be a lot more debate on this issue.

I find it odd - and very disappointing - that when David Cameron says he wants to make devolution work, he immediately rules out an English Parliament even before Ken Clarke's Democracy Task Force has reported. At least let us have the debate. I agree with Cameron that we don't want more bureaucracy, more politicians and more spending but an English Parliament would cause none of those to happen if it is planned and implemented correctly.

It comes to something when SNP leader Alex Salmond sums it up best... "In England, people quite rightly resent Scottish Labour MPs bossing them about on English domestic legislation. England has as much right to self government as Scotland does."

Another Scot, David Farrer, said this:

I noticed this post over on Serf's site: Why is it that Scottish & Welsh nationalists are Pro EU. How can it be better to be ruled from Brussels than from Westminster. If the Welsh and Scots feel that their voice is not heard in the UK how can it be heard in the EU with 7-8 times the population?

One commenter's explanation is this: The nationalist movements are statists and the EU represents statist nirvana. They're not looking for a voice, they're looking for a handout. I don't think that's it. The estimable James Higham writes: I think you answered your own question. Anything is better than being ruled from Westminster, according to them. Mr Higham is correct, but why?

Almost all Scots, nationalist or otherwise, get extremely upset about what I call The Presumption of the English Norm. For example, there are apparently several countries in which one can look up "British Embassy" in the local phone book (and in the local language) and find no entry. It's under "English Embassy", even when the language in question has a word for "British". I don't believe that our southern friends have any idea how annoying this kind of thing is, but imagine how they would feel if the rest of the world used the word "French" to mean "English".

Well then, why does this happen? I think that it's all to do with the language of Britain - the UK actually - being called "English" rather than "British". The UK is a very unusual country - one that is a multinational state. (Confusingly, the US is a multi-state nation.) But for many Scots this issue is all consuming, and more than anything else in politics they want to live in a "normal" country. It doesn't matter to them if it all leads to a federal superstate - or worse, a non-federal superstate - as long as Scotland has the same status as everywhere else.

David Farrer puts The Freedom and Whisky Constitutional Plan:

# Withdraw from the EU;

# Devolve all powers - except defence and foreign affairs - to the various national parliaments;

# Each parliament to be fiscally independent with contributions being made to the federal government in proportion to population;

# The federal government should be situated on the Isle of Man, which is not in any of the home countries but is equidistant from all four of them;

# The Irish Republic should be invited to unite with the North and rejoin the UK with Dublin taking its rightful place in the Anglosphere alongside Cardiff, Edinburgh and London.

As a northerner, familiar with Lindisfarne, Newcastle, Berwick etc., I realize it's not historically obvious but I see a continuum. I'm not explaining well. Here’s an example:

Once there were three people besides myself watching Rab C. Nesbitt somewhere in the North. A lady from Arbroath, not Glaswegian of course, understood virtually all of it. The Geordie understood much of it. The Londoner understood none of it. I understood about half of it, being a very strange person.

There is no clear distinction between Scotland and the North and both have suffered terribly at the hands of the Southerners [Culloden and Henry VIII]. Complete separation lumps Northerners in with one country when they often have more affinity further north. I don't like to see this mutual antagonism and feel caught in the middle.

Wikipedia also adds something to this:

A definite problem in defining the boundary between the North and South is the tendency of those living in the far South to include too much of the country in their definition of the North, while those from the far North invariably include too much of the country in their definition of the South.

In particular there is much confusion over the status of central parts of England, for example a county such as Derbyshire would almost certainly be considered Northern by a Londoner, while someone from Newcastle Upon Tyne may consider it Southern.

And:

A 'Cambridge Econometrics' report of March, 2006, found that economic growth above the UK average was occurring only in the South and South East of England, whilst Scotland and North East England showed the slowest growth.

What I’m suggesting is that once this process of devolution gathers pace, it won’t be too long before the North tries to break from the South, then Cornwall from England and so on. Advocates of the English Parliament see only the stateliness of Westminster and the economic advantages of getting the hangers on off their backs but they singularly fail to see that once this process begins, there’s little stopping it going the whole hog.

Then, step in the European government, itself a departmental division of the projected world government and the dream of Wilhelmsbad is on the way to being fulfilled. For that reason, if you must break up the UK, at least replace it with Britain. Ditto the USA.

This blog reminds one and all of Lincoln’s maxim about a house divided against itself. It shall not stand. This blog therefore stands firmly behind the integrity and indivisibility of Britain, of the United States of America and of Canada and may it never be torn asunder.

[taliban] almost ready for spring offensive

Taliban continues here …

The fact remains, though, that while Taliban and NATO forces have confronted each other in various districts, there has been no serious Taliban move for a mass mobilization - as stated, all of the top Taliban commanders are tucked away in the border area with Pakistan, or even in that country.

The Taliban are pledging to share everything with the tribes, including land, power and resources. This process is still ongoing and, according to people close to the Taliban, once it is completed the Taliban will call for a full mobilization of troops and Mullah Omar will go to Baghran to command them personally in the push to Kandahar and ultimately Kabul.

Legendary former Afghan premier and mujahideen Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who operates near the Pakistani side of the Afghan Kunar Valley, has become involved in his own agenda, causing a bone of contention between the Taliban and Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA). Hekmatyar has been considered an important player in the Taliban-led insurgency.

In these circumstances, once an uprising began, Hekmatyar would be in a straight race with Mullah Omar to reach Kabul and seize control of it. Baghran has always been an important hub for the Taliban, serving as a rallying point to mend differences between Tajik commanders and pro-Taliban Pashtun commanders.

After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Baghran remained one of the few strongholds of the Taliban and all top commanders, including Mullah Omar, took refuge in its mountains. Local lore has it that the Taliban leader escaped to the region on a 50cc motorbike. (This correspondent can vouch for the fact that traveling on such a vehicle would be a challenge, given the precipitous passes and rough tracks.)

The Taliban claimed to have killed hundreds of British troops in this engagement, while sustaining minimal casualties themselves. However, NATO's Laity dismissed this as "ridiculous", saying that the International Security Assistance Force acknowledged all deaths. "I think you can readily see that if such an incident did happen, then it could not possibly be hidden in the UK and would have massive political repercussions."

During the 10-year Soviet occupation of Afghanistan starting in 1979, Soviet troops withdrew from Baghran in the early days and never regained a foothold there, and it became the headquarters of the mujahideen. Its isolated and inhospitable terrain makes it a perfect base, and it has many escape routes through the mountain passes.

The grassroots Taliban control is spreading. "Previously, the Americans used to attack us from Ghor province, but now that we have successfully re-established pockets in Ghor, we do not have any threat of attack by land, though the possibility of aerial attacks is still there," said Moulvi Hamidullah, a member of the Taliban shura and a military commander.

The Taliban talk of a new kingdom on Earth. There is a long way to go in villages where people mix earth with their bread to make it go further, don't have schools or hospitals, and have no running water and only mud huts to protect themselves from the numbing cold and stifling heat. Add to this the threat of kidnapping or worse from warlords, the harsh justice of the Taliban, or bombs falling from the sky, and the kingdom is a long way off.

But the battle for the "kingdom" has already begun. Come spring, and Baghran could emerge as the epicenter of a defining struggle in yet another bloody chapter of the country's tortuous history.

[brave new world] tony’s not to blame

Tony Blair

His biographer Rentoul records that, according to his lawyer friends, Blair was much less concerned about which party he was affiliated with than about his aim of becoming prime minister … Although the [later] transformation [to New Labour] aroused much criticism (its alleged superficiality drawing fire both from political opponents and traditionalists within the "rank and file" of his own party), it was nevertheless successful in changing public perception.

Tony Blair was bereft of policies and weak but what he had was charm and a visionary manner of speaking and so he swept all before him. He was selected for such traits as being either 1] a buffoon 2] intergenerational with the ‘right stuff’ 3] malleable. Ditto Dan Quayle, Gerry Ford, Al Gore. Jim Hacker is no more than a spoof on the type. In turn, Blair was swept along into things which made him blanch.

Blair, as with the others, had to have his atrocity. Bush had had 911, Howard had had Bali and Port Arthur, Putin had had Beslan, Jacques had had his Paris riots. Only Mr. Blair had held out but that was fixed on 7/7. Bush probably wins the prize though for the greatest loss of life.

These men, as Tin Drummer says, are not actually guilty. They are so far in and being swept along, as Woodrow Wilson said, “They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."

Who is this group? It’s not a group – it’s a many-headed hydra, the heads springing from the same body.

Since the Congress of Wilhelmsbad in 1782, the principles of the abolition of all ordered governments, private property, inheritance patriotism, the family and religion and the creation of a world government have been followed more or less continuously by the old money and only the Andrew Jackson blip temporarily inconvenienced the inexorable progress of the process.

Why would the old money concern itself with world issues? They don’t. They just fund it. It’s the power behind them who is concerned with it all and this manifests itself through various organizations.

On December 15, 1922 the CFR endorsed World Government in its magazine "Foreign Affairs." Author Philip Kerr stated: "Obviously there is going to be no peace or prosperity for mankind as long as the earth remains divided into 50 or 60 independent states, until some kind of international system is created. The real problem today is that of world government."

July 1948 - Sir Harold Butler, in the CFR's "Foreign Affairs," sees "a New World Order" taking shape: "How far can the life of nations, which for centuries have thought of themselves as distinct and unique, be merged with the life of other nations? How far are they prepared to sacrifice a part of their sovereignty without which there can be no effective economic or political union?"

On Feb. 7, 1950, International financier and CFR member James Warburg told a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee: "We shall have world government whether or not you like it - by conquest or consent." It was just the division of the spoils which was not agreed upon. The map on the homepage here shows the divisions into which the world would be divided by the World Association of Parliamentarians for World Government. The map was released by the National Economic Council Inc. and is now outdated.

So the North American Union and the dissolution of the United Kingdom have less to do with a Prime Minister and a President than to do with those behind them. If you look at the trend itself and leave aside my take on it, you’d have to agree it’s a strange agenda at a time of peace and better living standards – it’s not a revolutionary time such as in the great depression. And yet it is clearly an agenda, for it’s simultaneously occurring in the US, Canada, Australia and the rest of the West, while other major movements are taking place in the Middle-East and in China.

In other words, it’s not just Britain and it’s not just Tony Blair behind this thing.

[royal family] glastonbury, roslyn and the grail

Various snippets

The author of Perlesvaus refers to his source: 'The Latin from whence this history was drawn into Romance was taken in the Isle of Avalon, in a holy house of religion that standeth at the head of the Moors Adventurous, there where King Arthur and Queen Guenievre lie, according to the witness of the good men religious that are therein, that have the whole story thereof, true from the beginning even to the end.'

In the Vulgate cycle especially l’ Estoire del Saint Graal, which would become one of John of Glastonbury's main sources in his description of the evangelization of Britain, the accounts of Joseph's missionary activities are presented in terms very similar to those used in the vitae of recognized saints.

Gildas' Concerning the Ruin and Conquest of Britain was perhaps written around 540. Gildas refers to the Battle of Mount Badon but he never alludes specifically to King Arthur. Gildas became the most renowned preacher in Britain and then he travelled over to Ireland where he converted much of the population to Christianity.

After Melwas had wickedly abducted Guenevere, the wife of King Arthur, and had brought her to his fortress at Glastonbury Tor, Arthur discovered where his wife was hidden and gathered together his forces in Cornwall and Devon to lay siege to Glastonbury. Thereupon Gildas and the abbot of Glastonbury approached Melwas and persuaded him to return Guenevere to Arthur; peace was thus restored.

The otherworldly aspect of Glastonbury - hinted at in the Melwas episode of the Life of St Gildas - is made even more explicit in the Life of St Collen which links Glastonbury Tor and Annwfn, the Celtic Otherworld, the region so lyrically described in the story of 'Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed' in The Mabinogion.

In the mid- to late thirteenth century William of Malmesbury's The Early History of Glastonbury has a search for a vessel called there the holy grail, almost the same thing is recorded where a white knight explains to Galahad, son of Lancelot, the mystery of a certain miraculous shield which he entrusts to him to bear because no one else could carry it, even for a day, except at great cost.'

Soon after this insertion, John of Glastonbury composed his chronicle expunging the Grail and replacing it with justification for Glastonbury's status as the most senior church in England. [The Holy House at the Head of the Moors James P Carley]

Belief in the Grail, and interest in its potential whereabouts, has never ceased. Ownership has been attributed to various groups [including the Knights Templar]. Some believe the grial is in the Chalice Well in Glastonbury - put there by Joseph of Arimathea. The search for the vessel became the principal quest of King Arthur and his Knights of the Roundtable - the Sword in the Stone - Excalibur - and the magic of Merlin.

For the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, who assert that their research ultimately reveals that Jesus may not have died on the cross, but lived to marry Mary Magdalene and father children, whose Merovingian bloodline continues today, the Grail is a mere sideshow. [Crystallinks]

Rosslyn Chapel, originally named the Collegiate Chapel of St. Matthew, is a 15th century church in the village of Roslin, Midlothian, Scotland. The chapel was designed by William Sinclair (also spelled "St. Clair") of the St. Clair family, a Scottish noble family descended from Norman knights and, according to legend, linked to the Scottish Knights Templar. Construction of the chapel began in 1440, and the chapel was officially founded in 1446, with construction lasting for forty years. [Wilipedia]

The Chapel is famous for two of its pillars: the Apprentice Pillar and the Master Pillar which stand either side of the Journeyman's pillar and have distinctly different carving. Masonic Architects believe these structures could signify the pillars of Boaz and Jachin.

The chapel has long been famous for its possible connections to Freemasonry and its attendant rituals. William St Clair in 1736 was the first Grand Master of Scottish Freemasonry and Freemasonic parties were held in Rosslyn Chapel and surrounding area on a number of occasions in the following decades.

Because of its rumoured connections with the Knights Templar, the chapel has inevitably become part of modern lore as one of the possible final resting places of the Holy Grail. Proponents say that this is a possibility based upon legends of 'Secret Vaults' and the possibility that the similarities between Rosslyn Chapel and Herod's Temple might be more than cosmetic.

On June 2nd 1953, with the knights of the garter carrying and holding the canopy over her head, Elizabeth II was anointed and crowned as "Queen of Thy people Israel". Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth II claim to be of the bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. Jesus is claimed to have married Mary Magdalene and fathered a number of children. This bloodline is referred to as the "Holy Grail", with those possessing it believing themselves the rightful heirs to the throne of Jerusalem. They believe that a new king of "the holy seed of David" will preside over the Israel and the world.

The first kings of France were the Merovingians (c. 500 - 751 AD), a Frankish dynasty started by the chieftain Meroveg, said to be descended from the union of a sea creature and a French queen and following the pagan cult of Diana.

In "The Illustrious Lineage of the Royal House Of Britain" (First Published in 1902 by The Covenant Publishing Co., Ltd., London, England), the authors trace Prince Charles' lineage back to David and beyond. The College of Heralds (London) has also traced Prince Charles to be the 145th direct descendant of King David. This claim was also made, in May of 2000, in a documentary on Israeli television.

Charles also claims descent from Islam's prophet Mohammed.

Prince Charles' Coat of Arms and Crest was designed for him by the British College of Heraldry, using a system of guidelines over 500 years old. It has a dog supported by a roaring lion and a unicorn. On Charles' Coat of Arms are representations of the Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. These are the animal symbols for France, the leopard; Germany, the Bear; and England, the lion. These nations represented the western arm of the Holy Roman Empire. His Coat of Arms contains ten heraldic beasts, which is a first for the British Monarchy.

Prince Charles has a red dragon on his coat of arms from the flag of Wales. At his coronation (investiture as Prince of Wales) in 1969, he sat on a chair with a large red dragon emblazoned on it. During the ceremony, his mother, Queen Elizabeth II said: "This dragon gives you your power, your throne and your own authority." His response to her was: "I am now your Liege-man, and worthy of your earthly worship."

Another symbol on Prince Charles' Coat of Arms is that of The Order of the Garter, the parent organization over Free Masonry. When a man becomes a 33rd Degree Mason, he swears allegiance to that organization.

On June 26th 1994, Charles announced that when he becomes king he will relinquish the monarch's role as head of the Church of England. He said he would rather be seen as "defender of the faiths," rather than "defender of the faith."

Prince Charles' link is through the Merovingian Kings of France. He is allegedly descended from the Merovingian Hildegarde. Princess Diana's Bloodline can also be traced back to the Merovingians.

In 1992 just before the full unification in 1993) Charles applied to the EU (European Union) to be made King of Europe. He was turned down by the European parliament.

[CNN] March 6 1996: "Twelve year old Prince William of Great Britain was one of the first human recipients to be implanted with a high frequency microchip in his right hand.

The BBC science program, "Tomorrow's World", aired in September 1995, revealed that people in the UK were already being microchipped with their medical records. The microchip allegedly recharges itself by harnessing the changes in body temperature to generate electrical energy.

Prince William was born in London, England, at 9:03 pm, on June 21, 1982 at St Mary's Hospital in London. His birth took place just after a solar eclipse at the Summer Solstice.

On June 3 1991, Prince William himself, at the age of 9, received a near fatal head wound, when struck on the head by a golf club and was close to death.

The Pont de l'Alma site in Paris is ancient and dates back to the Merovingian kings and before. In pre-Christian times, the Pont de l'Alma was an underground chamber and was used as a pagan sacrificial site. In Middle English, "soul" has, as its etymology, "descended from the sea."

"Pont" has as a Latin root "pontifex", meaning a Roman high priest. "Alma" also is Spanish for "Soul or spirit". One translation of Pont del' Alma would be "Bridge of the Soul." It was believed that those who died at the sacrificial site became saintly and went directly to heaven.

In 1118 A.D., nineteen years after the first successful Crusade, the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ, as they had termed themselves, were officially recognized and sanctioned and were given for their headquarters a building on Mount Moriah, the site of the former Temple of King Solomon. Consequently, they became known as the Knights of the Temple, or Knights Templar.

What of the Templars? "in turn lions of war and lambs at the hearth; rough knights on the battlefield, pious monks in the chapel; formidable to the enemies of Christ, gentleness itself towards His friends." -Jacques de Vitry. The Grand Master Philip of Nablus (1167 A.D.) was a Syrian and in time, various non-European and non-Christian ideas entered the brotherhood.

Pope Innocent II issued a Papal Bull in 1139 granting the Templars diplomatic immunity throughout Europe; they were exempt from taxation, and were bound only by the Church. The resultant wealth gave them control over Europe's emerging capitalist system. They were, in effect, the world's first international financiers. No one else had the power to transfer investment and capital from one state to another tax-free.

With their network of preceptories throughout Europe and the Middle East, they were able to organize, at moderate rates of interest, loans to merchant traders, who increasingly depended on borrowed capital to trade in goods.

Philip the Fair, with Pope Clement, arranged for the Convocation of the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques DeMolay and his officers in Paris. In 1314, on a Friday the 13th, Jacques De Molay was slowly cooked at the stake for alleged heresy.

The Templars in Portugal, for example, simply changed their name to the Knights of Christ and went on to gain fame in their explorations of Africa and the West Indies with such names as King Henry the Navigator, (who was a Grand Master), Vasco da Gama, and Christopher Columbus' father-in-law, who inspired Columbus to emblazon the red cross of the Templars on his three famous ships.

The financial centre of London known as Temple Bar is built on the foundations of the Templar preceptory from which it descends. The power today wielded by Temple Bar in international finance should not be underestimated.

Another interesting snippet from the Pirates’ site: the skull and bones flag was first used by a French order of militant monks known as the "Poor Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon" - commonly known as the Knights Templar.

“Note - last month, HMS Turbulent, a nuclear-power submarine, slipped back to Plymouth, [from Iraq] flying the Jolly Roger, the pirates' emblem.”
- J Pilger, 3 Jun 2003

Hugues de Payns the first Grand Master of the Templars was married to a Sinclair. The Sinclairs (or Saint-Clairs) castle near Edinburgh, was situated next to Rosslyn chapel, which was constructed by the Sinclairs according to the floorplan of Solomon's original temple.

Another recurrent symbol with the Templars is the two crosses side by side, or double-cross, such as are highlighted in the original logo of the company Exxon.

So, all interesting stuff, isn’t it? It goes on and on and on and there’s no time to start on the Freemasons. If you detect any factual error in the above text, please draw my attention to it.

[blair’s apology] ten things about british slavery

7 more things about British slavery here …

4. The campaign to end slavery was dominated by women. With no vote, the anti-slavery crusade was one of the ways that women were able to get involved in politics.

5. Thousands of black slaves were brought to Britain by slave ships. In the 18th Century it was the height of fashion for rich ladies to have a black child servant.

6. Slave-produced sugar transformed our national cuisine. Much of what we today think of as the most traditional British food, is in fact only a couple of centuries old. Biscuits, cakes, sweets, toffee, rum and the resulting British sweet tooth - all products of that revolution in the kitchen brought about by sugar. Slave sugar was the missing ingredient that transformed tea from a strange novelty from India into an enduring national obsession.

7. Slavery was the world's first global industry but before globalism and corporations it was actually run by a few hundred families. Today many of the great aristocratic families of Britain have a hidden past in the slave trade.

8. Slavery in the British Empire came to an end after a rebellion led by the Jamaican slave Sam Sharpe. He was the Martin Luther King of the 19th Century.

9. The abolitionists' were pioneers who helped invent the methods of political campaigning that we have today. They collected mass petitions, organised hundreds of local societies , created a campaign logo and even organised consumer boycotts.

10. Not all black people in the Caribbean were slaves. Not only were there free blacks, there was also an army of escaped slaves called the Maroons who fought against the British Army for years.

BBC, Wednesday, August 3, 2005

[the big three] shift in the hegemony

Russia

Russia, possessing unequalled energy-based leverage, has taken the leadership among the world's producers and the rising powerhouse economies of the East to promote a vast worldwide web of alliances and ties prominently featuring rigid bilateral, private long-term supply contracts.

This model runs counter to and increasingly circumvents the established liberal US-backed global oil market denominated in US dollars. The West relies on the current order for its energy security. It cannot function without it, and therefore the order is its single point of weakness. And Russia is acting as the "point man" to locate and exploit, with the help of its partners, this Achilles' heel of the West.

A conspicuous feature of global developments over the past several years is Russia's distinctive leadership role in fueling global transition in three key spheres - energy, economic and geopolitical.

Within six months of taking office as Russia's new president, Vladimir Putin was by the summer of 2000 already moving hard against the capitalist-inspired oligarchs who were fleecing Russia of its natural resources and industry with, at a bare minimum, the full complicity of the West.

Western institutions operating within Russia and those exercising what the Kremlin saw as undue influence from without, most notably the West's oil majors and their closely related financial institutions, certain non-governmental organizations and the media, have eventually either been pushed out or brought to heel.

Russia's strategic resources have been brought firmly under de facto Kremlin control in direct opposition to the West's loudly proclaimed liberal democratic principles of private ownership and control. Russia's example and success in such endeavors have instigated a global wave of nationalization and consolidation of state control over energy resources, with an accompanying loss of leverage and control by the West's oil majors. That wave is accelerating.

The rise of a powerful and wealthy resources-based corporate state in Russia ("sovereign democracy"), its rapidly expanding control over global strategic resources, and the resultant loss of leadership and control of the global oil market by the West's oil majors are developments that move directly against the very foundations of the US-led oil-market order and the wider US-centric global economic order. This is because Russia is quite literally fueling the rise of the powerhouse economies of the East and helping to achieve a new global center of economic power in the East.

It was also Russia that fundamentally led, along with its key partner China, the opposition to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. It has been Russia first and foremost that has taken leadership among its strategic partners since then to continue to stand firm inside and outside the United Nations in a hugely successful strategy to force the full and mounting geopolitical, economic and military burdens of Iraq on to US and British shoulders alone.

Thereby, Russia has taken the lead in proving that the US-dominated geopolitical order can be successfully opposed. Consequently, it has clearly been primarily under Russia's leadership that the US-dominated global oil-market, global economic and geopolitical orders are being transformed, circumvented and opposed by growing numbers of the world's nations.

Against this backdrop, an impending, forcible shift of the US colossus out of its position of global dominance can be clearly seen, less as merely random and uncoordinated events, and more as a progressive coalescing of a coherent global strategy.

The new model
As indicated above, in a throwback to the 1970s, the comparatively more rigid bilateral long-term supply contract is making a significant comeback on oil markets. As Putin explained at the July Group of Eight summit: "We want to form a stable system of legal, political and economic relations that ensures a reliable demand and stable offer of energy resources on the international market."

Putin later complained at the Valdai Club meeting outside Moscow on September 9 that consuming nations in the West too strongly focussed on their own energy interests and security while simultaneously slighting the interests and security of producers. He noted that consuming nations wanted suppliers to pledge continuity of supplies for the long term, "so customers should not be able to turn around and say, 'We don't need it now.' Security works both ways. We need assurances, too."

Putin explicitly stated that Russia and other suppliers wanted bilateral long-term supply contracts with consuming nations so that suppliers would know there would be a stable demand for their exports.

The underlying, impending risk to the liquidity of the current oil order posed by such a throwback to the rigid bilateral long-term supply contract was highlighted recently in the testimony of David Goldwyn before the US House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform's Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations and the Subcommittee on Energy and Resources on May 16.

Goldwyn is senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a prestigious Washington, DC, think-tank, and president of Goldwyn International Strategies, a leading provider of political and business intelligence, energy-sector analysis and Washington strategy advice to Fortune 100 companies and investment advisers.

Goldwyn stated: "The United States is more energy-insecure today than it has been in nearly 30 years. We are insecure because the global oil market is more fragile, more competitive and more volatile than it has been in decades."

Goldwyn referred to the fact that "the growing [energy] dependence of rising powers such as China and India is rapidly eroding US global power and influence around the world" as those rising powers increasingly enter bilateral long-term contracts with suppliers, ever greater numbers of which do not allow free market access by the West's oil majors to production and exploration acreage and which are creating a strategically tight market for the rest of the world.

Goldwyn observed: "This 'tight' market is undermining the fluidity and fairness of the market for available oil supplies and exploration acreage. New competitors like China and India are trying to negotiate long-term supply contracts (at market prices) to ensure that they have supplies in the event of a crisis or supply disruption ... the trend is counter to the market system that operates so efficiently ... the trend of long-term contracts runs counter to the modern liquid global market which operates efficiently in rapidly moving supplies to meet market demand ... China has not yet developed faith in these market mechanisms."

While Goldwyn presented such concerns in the context of a rising but not yet imminent threat to the current order, in testimony before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations nearly a year earlier, on July 26, 2005, Mikkal Herberg of the National Bureau of Asian Research in Seattle, Senator Richard Lugar, the committee chairman, heard the following facts:

For China and India both, as well as the other Asian powers, energy is becoming a matter of "high politics" of national security and no longer just the "low politics" of domestic energy policy. Governments in both countries have decided that energy security is too important to be left entirely to the [US-led liberal] markets as their economic prosperity increasingly is exposed to the risks of global supply disruptions, chronic instability in energy exporting regions, and the vagaries of global energy geopolitics.

Both governments are responding to their growing sense of insecurity with a broad range of similar strategies regionally and globally to try to guarantee greater supply security and reduce their vulnerability to potential supply and price shocks. These efforts are growing in scale and scope and they range from largely cooperative and market oriented strategies to those that are deeply neo-mercantilist and competitive.

Both China and India are accelerating their efforts to gain more secure national control of overseas oil and gas supplies by taking equity stakes in overseas oil and gas fields, promoting development of new oil and gas pipelines to feed their booming markets, developing broader trade and energy ties, and following up with diplomatic ties to cement relations with the major oil and gas exporting countries.

And both governments sense they are excluded from the major institutions that govern global oil cooperation, such as the IEA [International Energy Agency], and feel largely excluded from the global oil industry they feel is dominated by the large oil companies from the industrial countries. Both feel they are playing "catch-up". For China's leaders, energy security clearly is too important to be left to the markets and so far its approach has been decidedly neo-mercantilist and competitive.

The term "neo-mercantilist" refers to the economic strategy and ideology pursued by the European colonial powers, wherein the natural resources and other wealth of the colonies that had been established by each colonial empire were rigidly dedicated exclusively to the sustenance of the mother empire.

In application to India, China and the other rising powers of the East, the term refers to the somewhat comparable strategy of concluding rigid, private bilateral long-term supply contracts between themselves individually and producers they each target around the globe. This has the net effect of securing oil and gas exclusively for the individual consumer state at the expense of the liquidity of the global oil market, and hence at the expense of oil's fungibility.

Herberg went on to make the case that China's three main state-owned oil companies (National Petroleum Corp, China Petroleum and Chemical Corp and China National Offshore Oil Corp) alone, by the latest data and estimates available more than a year ago, "have managed to establish control over about 300 mb/d [million barrels a day] of crude production, which could reach up to 600 mb/d by 2008".

Herberg went on to make the case that both China and India strengthen and solidify the exclusivity of such rigid long-term supply contracts with multiple layers of cross-investment and commercial ties between themselves and their producer partners, and with deepening diplomatic ties as well. The net effect is to shut out the free markets and Western oil majors and place rapidly growing portions of global supply under private lock and key. As Herberg noted:

China now [as of July 2005] has signed some form of "strategic energy partnership" with nine countries, including Russia, Sudan, Iran, Venezuela, Brazil, Angola and Kazakhstan. Beijing's leadership has followed up with a long list of high-level diplomatic visits to cement stronger diplomatic, energy and trade ties. China has also used state diplomacy to secure future LNG [liquefied natural gas] supplies in contracts with Australia, Indonesia and Iran.

China's leadership sees the development of broader diplomatic and trade ties and alliances as a key element in securing its access to future oil and gas supplies. This also includes military sales and cooperation, sales of nuclear equipment and other potentially problematic trade ties.

None of this includes the profoundly important strategic partnership agreement China signed with Saudi Arabia in January, nor its ever more wide-ranging energy-based agreements with the other Persian Gulf oil-and-gas-exporting states of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and others around the globe. India also is pursuing a global strategy very similar to that of China. In July 2005, Herberg noted:

Currently, nearly two-thirds of the Gulf's oil exports go to Asia, and this will grow sharply in the future. The growing nexus of diplomatic, trade and military ties with China and India appeals to the Gulf producers who are looking to diversify their economic and geopolitical base beyond traditional dependence on the US and European markets and diplomatic relationships.

Herberg concluded with this assessment of the negative effects on the dynamism and liquidity of the US-led oil market:

Another area of concern involves a range of impacts of China and India's booming oil demand as well as the impact of their implied strategy of "locking up" national control of certain oil supplies to fuel their own economies, in effect, "taking oil off the market". Both countries clearly aim to lock up their own national oil supplies with many of their investments in places like Sudan and this practice is likely to contribute to higher oil prices and price volatility by reducing global market flexibility to handle tight markets, shortages and supply disruptions.

Exploiting the Achilles' heel

The economic (and consequently also the geopolitical) single point of failure for the highly industrialized nations of the West irrefutably is its continued unwavering global adherence to the liberal oil market that created and sustains oil-market supply fairness, liquidity, and oil's currently high level of fungibility.

The net effect of the (now former) global dominance and control of the West's oil majors over the lion's share of global energy resources was to ensure that those resources were irreversibly captured into the US-led market, thereby perpetuating the global dominance of that very order.

As such, the hemorrhaging of the dominance of West's oil majors to the current pitiful state that only 9% or 10% of global reserves are controlled by them represents a sea change. Where, that is, into which model, the lion's share of global energy resources will now be captured is no longer up to the West. That determination has already been forfeited to the rising East and the increasingly East-friendly producing regimes around the world, led by Russia. And nowadays the US depends on the market for nearly 60% of its energy needs.

In effect, the world is seeing the globe's energy resources increasingly divided between two rival, incompatible energy markets, one suffering loss of global support and becoming ever more slanted toward serving the energy needs only of the West, and the other enjoying mounting global support and fully serving the energy needs of all the rest.

Decisions of state-owned or state-controlled oil and gas companies such as that made known on October 9 respecting Russia's Gazprom, which has decided to exclude all foreign (notably Western) energy majors from its giant Shtokman gas project, or the recent decisions to threaten to revoke permanently the operating licenses of Western oil majors in the Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2 projects, are representative of the wave of consolidation of control of global resources by state-owned and state-controlled energy companies around the world.

Such producing regimes, which display an ever greater self-assertiveness and an ever deepening political affinity with Russia and the East, are deciding to place a growing amount of their production into the Russian-led energy-market model rather than unwaveringly adhering to the US-led one.

The lucrative economic, financial, political and diplomatic package of enticements being offered to producers around the globe by China, India and the other economies of the East far outweigh what the US can offer - the US simply cannot compete. It cannot prevent, nor turn back, the steadily advancing global trend of the locking up of oil and gas by virtue of private, bilateral long-term supply contracts, and the mounting strategic control of oil and gas by state-owned enterprises. Its global leverage (and that of its oil majors) in the energy-rich regions of the world is severely contracting as a result.

The tentative decision announced recently by Putin to redirect from the US to Europe the gas production from the giant Shtokman project illustrates how such state-owned (or controlled) enterprises can turn on a dime. Today, they may sell their products on the established New York and London exchanges, but tomorrow they can switch away from this order to a growing number of alternatives, including the security of rigid bilateral long-term supply contracts.

Russia, China, India and the rest of the world outside the West have little fundamental attraction or loyalty to the US-supported global oil market or the governing institutions from which (such as the IEA and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) they have largely been excluded. They do not feel an integral part of the global system they see as greedily and inordinately dominated by the multinational oil companies of the West, with which their relations are growing ever more tense. As such, they certainly cannot be expected to bolster the US-led model, and they are not doing so.

As the new Russian-led model locks up increasing amounts of oil and gas away from the global pool, that one virtual global pool of oil is increasingly being transformed from being a truly global one into a Western one. This revives the possibility of a targeted embargo because producers can decide to place less oil in the US-led system in favor of locking up more of their production into bilateral contracts with consumers in the East, and they can move rapidly to accelerate in that direction.

Professor Peter Odell, quoted in Part 1 of this report, alluded to this danger when he warned that Russia's oil grab presented an impending threat to the energy supplies of the West. The issue here is control of the production of oil and gas fields, and therefore where and to whom that production will be offered - within the open, liberal US-led model or within the rival, more rigid and private Russian-led one.

The global production and profits of the West's international oil majors are still very high. However, behind that facade of apparent market control and dominance lurks the specter of an impending, perhaps precipitous, collapse of the role and leverage of those oil majors the West relies on for its energy security.

In The Observer of London on October 29, in an article titled "Big oil may have to get even bigger to survive", the author notes that the West's international oil majors are in real trouble as regards the collapsing of their control over global energy reserves and face a global wave of nationalization, forced renegotiation of existing agreements, inability to get access to new exploration and production acreage and rising taxes. It is a caustic mix that is dissolving the glue that holds together the US-backed oil order.

As the oil majors produce oil for the market, they must replace their reserves. In 1997 they were able to replace 140% of their reserves, but in 2005 they were able to replace far less - only 75%. Consequently, they are rapidly shrinking while the state-owned companies around the globe are rapidly expanding as respects market dominance as measured by the crucial parameter of control of reserves.

Furthermore, the mounting global wave of oil-sector nationalization that is pushing international oil majors on to the sidelines as respects control of reserves could easily and quickly take an even more ominous turn - cutting significantly into the current production capabilities of the oil majors and placing the energy security of the US in acute jeopardy.

Assumptions that such a scenario deserves little worry and attention are not valid or safe in the environment of ever more nationalistic leanings on the part of the oil-producing regimes around the globe and the specter of forced renegotiations of PSAs (production sharing agreements) and cancellations of operating licenses.

What applies to production acreage also applies to exploration acreage, and access to and control over both are being massively forfeited by the West and its oil majors. Foreign investment in energy-producing enterprises and acreage is being severely restricted as a result, and this ensures strategically tight global supply, further exacerbating the mounting energy security misfortunes of the West. This is because in the absence of abundant global supply the West has no viable means to counteract the locking up of increasing amounts of the global supply by Russia's new model.

Attack on dollar dominance
As if these developments were not bad enough for Western strategic energy security, another key development has arisen, one that gravely threatens not only to diminish further the energy security of the West, but also in effect to put an end to its global economic and geopolitical dominance by credibly threatening to crash the US dollar.

This additional key development is the planned and actual proliferation of new oil/gas market exchanges denominated in currencies other than US dollars.

The new Russian-led concept of "international" energy security and its new model for the global market do not consist merely of long-term supply contracts alone. Planned oil- and gas-market exchanges are being set up not to bolster the current London and New York exchanges, but to stand separate and distinct from, to compete with, them to rival the US-led order.

The new exchanges are either being originally set up to settle transactions in currencies other than the US dollar, or they are being created with the sophistication and autonomy to enable them to switch from US dollars to virtually any other desired currency (or to multiple currencies) when developments might warrant such a switch.

That fact implies the draining of significant portions of the one global dollar-denominated pool of oil to fill the new pools denominated in other currencies, thereby fragmenting from the current global pool (and from the US-led order itself) significant portions of the global supply to fill the new pools. Such fragmentation will in effect put an end to the current order, which has dominated for barely two decades.

The new Shanghai Petroleum Exchange settles transactions in the Chinese currency, the yuan. Russia's new St Petersburg exchange, slated to come online next year, will settle transactions in the ruble. According to Russian Economy Minister German Gref, Russian products will be offered on the New York exchange until the St Petersburg exchange is operational, at which time Russian products will be shifted out of the New York exchange to the Russian exchange.

Qatar's new Energy City concept with its integrated IMEX (International Mercantile Exchange), which India has recently joined with the planned creation of a satellite Energy City/IMEX complex in Mumbai, will apparently settle transactions initially in the US dollar, with the capability to switch to other currencies. The IMEX is a fully autonomous system predominantly designed and intended to capture the rising energy markets in the East.

Prudently, Arab oil and gas exporters are leveraging IMEX to work to achieve full autonomy as respects market and exchange operations and product pricing and delivery, foreseeing the day when having their operations constrained almost completely under the aegis of the Anglo-US market arrangement and the US dollar no longer serves their strategic interests.

The logical question at this juncture is whether these new exchanges can successfully compete any time soon with those in New York and London. Assuming those creating the new exchanges do not lose their nerve and back down from establishing them as working, autonomous entities, as Iran apparently has backed down from its planned oil bourse denominated in the euro, the answer to that question is fundamentally the same as asking whether there exists enough global supply margin for importing nations to be able to ignore the new exchanges.

In the very tight global supply situation we find ourselves locked into, importing nations will have little choice but to go wherever oil and gas are available to fill their needs. If the new exchanges rob significant portions of oil from the current one global pool as is planned, then the new exchanges will not need to be concerned about adequate consumer interest, support and devotion.

And global producers are assuredly going to do all that is needed to keep the global supply tight and the price of oil elevated to avoid a global oil glut and a price collapse. Continued tight supply will help to ensure the success of the new exchanges.

Furthermore, the fact that the West's oil majors have lost control of all but 9% or 10% of reserves means that state-controlled oil companies can reroute any amount of product they wish from the New York-London exchanges to any of the new exchanges. This will provide a more than sufficient supply to guarantee the success of the new exchanges, and the US can do nothing to stop it.

As this happens, the prospect of a targeted embargo of the West is revived. Producers will be able to restrict the amount of oil they sell on the London-New York exchanges, or cease selling there altogether, because they will have viable, even preferred, alternative exchanges. That will seriously endanger the amount of supplies accessible to the West and will radically drive up the price of oil on the dollar-denominated exchanges. But because all of the new and planned exchanges will have their own non-dollar pricing mechanisms, the undesirable price volatility will tend to be confined to the dollar-denominated exchanges.

What happens to the US dollar as the new exchanges become operational and begin to be successful? The exit from the dollar as the international currency will have begun in earnest. But that exit will not be to one currency, but simultaneously to the several currencies that are the denomination currencies of all the successful new oil and gas market exchanges.

The dollar will begin to weaken as its international support and devotion wanes, or even sinks. As the dollar weakens, the price in dollars for everything the US imports will skyrocket, adding a powerful inflationary hit to the US economy. Along with the impending US recession, that will further weaken the dollar and likely its decline, or outright collapse, will feed on itself.

As the dollar weakens and energy price volatility increases on the New York-London exchanges, producers will have further powerful incentive to switch their product offering to the non-dollar-denominated exchanges, where there will be greater stability and where they will not be forced to take payment for their products in the increasingly undesirable weakened dollar.

The profound risks to the West as respects its ability then to secure access to sufficient energy resources should be self-evident. Left with a severely shrunken dollar-denominated pool of oil and gas, a pool that virtually only the West draws from, the viability of a potential targeted embargo will have increased exponentially.

The globe's producers will be fully able to "throttle" the economies of the West by virtue of controlling how much of their oil and gas they sell into the dollar-denominated pool. This represents the nightmare scenario for the US.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this analysis is the fact that it is not based on any hypothetical conspiracy theory, but rather on solid economic and market principles and the increasingly ominous warnings of experts and informed leaders.

Additionally, the key developments that are already pushing the world order to the eventuality described here, that of a full exploitation of the West's Achilles' heel by Russia and its global partners leading to a loss of the US global position of economic and geopolitical dominance, are already well established.

Russia, in conceiving the new model of "international" energy security and a new global energy order, and in winning increasing numbers of key converts and adherents to its model, thereby defines and draws the circle of international energy security. Those inside the circle will achieve Russia's definition of "energy security", but those left outside will be left with little if any energy security by any definition.

2006

W Joseph Stroupe is author of the new book Russian Rubicon: Impending Checkmate of the West and editor of Global Events Magazine, online at www.GeoStrategyMap.com.