Reuters reported, a week ago, that Russia’s Sberbank has begun trading in gold at the Shanghai exchange. This is both a retaliatory move against those who continue to wage an economic war through a broad, extended economic sanction against the federation, and as a long term measure against global terrorism, aka Khazarian Mafia.
Russia’s Sberbank begins physical gold trading on Shanghai exchange
MOSCOW, July 13 (Reuters) – Russia’s biggest bank Sberbank said on Thursday its Swiss subsidiary had begun trading physical gold on the Shanghai Gold Exchange.
Sberbank was granted international membership of the Shanghai exchange in September last year and in July completed a pilot transaction with 200 kg of gold kilobars sold to local financial institutions, the bank said.
Sberbank plans to expand its presence on the Chinese precious metals market and anticipates total delivery of 5-6 tonnes of gold to China in the remaining months of 2017.
Gold bars will be delivered directly to the official importers in China as well as through the exchange, Sberbank said.
Russia’s second-largest bank VTB is also a member of the Shanghai Gold Exchange. (Reporting by Alexander Winning; editing by David Evans)
A more detailed analysis is here courtesy of Andrew Brennan.
Petrodollar Faces Growing Threat from the East. Payments in Gold across Asia | Global Research
By Andrew Brennan | Global Research, May 01, 2017 | Asia Times 27 April 2017
While the recent raft of Sino-Saudi trade agreements benefited Chinese soft power in protecting Xinjiang, and the Saudis by diversifying their economy, China’s slow intertwining with Saudi Arabia complements the Sino-Russian alliance. Primarily, its benefits could lead to a realistic threat to the petrodollar.
The Persian rival who showed the way
In 2012/2013, the US Treasury Department, under the Obama administration, initiated a raft of sanctions in an amateurish fashion against the Central Bank of Iran. As we were told, it was done to tire and bleed Iranian economic and social life enough to draw Tehran into negotiations concerning its nuclear programme. The argument of were they/weren’t they pursuing a weaponized nuclear program isn’t important; how the Iranians circumvented these sanctions is.
The sanctions were meant to be stifling, but the Iranians loosened this problematic liquidity noose by using all their banks that weren’t sanctioned, and sold rich Iranian oil to India. Of course, the Indians couldn’t pay Tehran directly. Neither could they pay bilaterally in rupees due to sanctions and infrastructure needed to trade in a bilateral currency. Instead, Iran requested that India pay in gold so India paid Turkey, the Middle East’s gold market, and Turkey gave Turkish gold to Iranian banks, which then swapped with the Central Bank of Iran.
Turkey, for its part, may soon be the gold payment intermediator across Asia, and is already nationalizing the sector with a demand for private confiscation occurring to support the Turkish economy, but this has scarcely been reported.
This clever evasion was known as the Iran-India-Turkey triangle. Iran was escaping the dominance of the US dollar and trading in real money, not a hegemonic fiat currency that was being printed hot-off-the-press all day. They were dealing in gold; not something that could be strangled through SWIFT and electrons traded on a screen easily. A simple intermediator and precious metals could break Obama’s heralded “crippling” sanctions.
Iran ideologically, as well as practically, wants nothing to do with the US dollar but rather it wants to be free of monetary pressures by the US on its domestic policies. The effectiveness of this evasion was a preview to what countries like China, Russia, and to a lesser extent India and South Korea, have all been trying to do: increase their independence from the US dollar. The Iranian gold triangle showed successful independence from US dollar reliance.
The Chinese usurpers and their yellow metal
Fast forward to March 2017; the Russian Central Bank opened its first overseas office in Beijing as an early step in phasing in a gold-backed standard of trade. This would be done by finalizing the issuance of the first federal loan bonds denominated in Chinese yuan and to allow gold imports from Russia.
The Chinese government wishes to internationalize the yuan, and conduct trade in yuan as it has been doing, and is beginning to increase trade with Russia. They’ve been taking these steps with bilateral trading, native trading systems and so on. However, when Russia and China agreed on their bilateral US$400 billion pipeline deal, China wished to, and did, pay for the pipeline with yuan treasury bonds, and then later for Russian oil in yuan.
This evasion of, and unprecedented breakaway from, the reign of the US dollar monetary system is taking many forms, but one of the most threatening is the Russians trading Chinese yuan for gold. The Russians are already taking Chinese yuan, made from the sales of their oil to China, back to the Shanghai Gold Exchange to then buy gold with yuan-denominated gold futures contracts – basically a barter system or trade.
The Chinese are hoping that by starting to assimilate the yuan futures contract for oil, facilitating the payment of oil in yuan, the hedging of which will be done in Shanghai, it will allow the yuan to be perceived as a primary currency for trading oil. The world’s top importer (China) and exporter (Russia) are taking steps to convert payments into gold. This is known. So, who would be the greatest asset to lure into trading oil for yuan? The Saudis, of course.
All the Chinese need is for the Saudis to sell China oil in exchange for yuan. If the House of Saud decides to pursue that exchange, the Gulf petro-monarchies will follow suit, and then Nigeria, and so on. This will fundamentally threaten the petrodollar.
Now the argument is that if China does this it will put a slam on Chinese exports, but China is undergoing an intentional metamorphosis from a producer and exporter to a service and consumer economy of internal products. Look to China’s technology sector, e-commerce sector, and other domestic sectors that will provide a large market for sustainable service and growth.
A second argument against this train of thought is that maybe China doesn’t want the yuan to be a world reserve currency but just have a strong currency; a gold-backed yuan currency. Having a gold trade note may not hurt Chinese exports as it transforms its economy and its future exports.
Beijing may also have thought that if Saudi Arabia is persuaded to trade in yuan or gold-backed yuan, etc, South Korea and Japan may follow suit, as both have been looking to detach from the US dollar.
China and Iran were the first to initiate bypassing the dollar, followed by Russia circumventing the SWIFT system and then India beginning to move away from the US dollar and starting bilateral trade deals. China and Japan made moves to trade directly, as did Japan with India, bypassing the dollar.
The use of alternative payment systems like gold, yuan, rupees, rubles and other monies, fiat and not, to evade the potential of sanctions and seizures of the US dollar, or its decline, are seen as favorable.
What decline?
Well, we can look at the historic East-West cycle, the baby-boom demographic in the West, the growing inequality in the wealth distribution cycle, the ratio of household debt as a percentage of disposable income, and for you history buffs, the Kondratiev wave are all peaking and are descending into a deflationary wave.
Wait, what?
Okay, all of those mentioned cycles are economic swings of wealth. Everything is pointing towards a declining West and a rising East. But we can equally blame central bankers’ quantitative easing policies of printing to prosperity. The idea is a falsity that also has only benefited the wealthier classes, and can’t beat back cyclical pressure. A shift in world monetary systems is occurring.
The Chinese economy has begun an economic restructuring and focus on domestic production and services. The Trump administration thinks weakening the US dollar will help American exports and likewise respectfully grow the US economy (or “grow” within the confines of the current monetary system). However, the overvalued dollar has subsidized the cherished “American standard of living,” and any weakening will now have detrimental effects.
The US needs to also restructure its economy to one that is based on production. It can no longer continue to run a debt-serviced economy that imports all goods it doesn’t produce. It’s unsustainable, and the continuous mistake of many. The wealth of the world is shifting eastwards.
The petrodollar is the last vestige of that “American standard of living” middle America cherishes, and if the gold trade bonds fly and yuan changes hands as the oil flows, the US is going to get a shock when Saudi Arabia likes the look of red paper as much as green, or worse yet, yellow metal, a lot of which is moving east.
Andrew Brennan is a dual Irish/American citizen who was educated in Ireland. He holds two Master of Arts degrees from the National University of Ireland, Galway. Andrew has previous experience in radio, research, and domestic television, and also currently contributes to Forbes and The Global Times.
(ANTIMEDIA) Bastrop County, TX — A crude oil pipeline spill in Bastrop County, Texas, Thursday morning released an estimated 1,200 barrels of oil — over 50,000 gallons — prompting evacuations of residents closest to the rupture.
The Longhorn Pipeline is owned and operated by Magellan Midstream Partners and runs from Crane, Texas, to Houston, according to Reuters. It transports up to 250,000 barrels a day and was under routine maintenance when the spill occurred.
Residents who live within a two-mile radius of the leak have been advised to stay indoors, according to the sheriff’s department and local emergency officials, Reuters reports. Texas ABC affiliate KVUE-ABC and the Washington Post both reported that residents within one mile of the spill were asked to evacuate.
No injuries have been reported, and Reuters reports that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has dispatched an inspector to the site, located just south of Shiloh Road.
Texas outlet KVUE-ABC reported that FM 20, a road in the area, has been closed in both directions, and according to Reuters,
According to a statement issued by Magellan after the incident, as cited by KVUE:
“The pipeline was immediately and safely shut down and the line segment has been isolated. Efforts are in progress to contain the crude oil release to minimize environmental impact and to ensure public safety.”
Magellan also said “Local emergency responders, Magellan representatives, clean-up crews, and environmental crews are currently on site. All appropriate federal and state agencies have been notified. Clean-up activities will be underway this morning.”
According to general information about Longhorn on the company’s website:
“Longhorn is committed to constructing, operating, and maintaining its pipeline assets in a manner that ensures the long-term safety to the public and to its employees, and that minimizes the potential for negative environmental impacts.
“Longhorn, through its Longhorn Pipeline System Integrity Plan (LPSIP), is committed to the philosophy and proactive practice of the prevention of accidents.”
Despite the company’s stated commitments, it appears their policies and procedures are lacking considering the leak occurred during routine maintenance. A Spokesman for the company, Bruce Heine, said the rupture occurred when a contractor struck a fitting. In 2013, Longhorn leaked a smaller amount of oil, also during routine maintenance.
Earlier this year, the Magellan Pipeline Company, a subsidiary of Magellan Midstream Partners, paid a settlement over three alleged Clean Water Act violations related to spills of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel spills in Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska. The subsidiary “agreed to complete approximately $16 million of injunctive relief across its 11,000-mile pipeline system and pay a $2 million civil penalty,” according to a Department of Justice news release.
Despite multiple instances of poor handling and insufficient safety procedures, the company insists it “is committed to safe operations of our assets. We maintain the highest standards in safety to do so.”
As leaks continue to riddle communities across the country despite advocates’ suggestions that pipelines are the safest way to transport oil — in 1999, Longhorn advocates claimed it could be one of the safest lines in the country — the need for alternative forms of energy continues to become increasingly clear.
“The fact that the opposition is planning to boycott the election shows clearly, they are not interested in democracy. They have one goal only, to oust President Maduro and take power, privatize state assets, especially hydrocarbons (petroleum and gas) to hand them to international mainly US corporations to be exploited at no benefits for the Venezuelan people. This was precisely the case before President Chavez took the reins of the country. Foreign corporations, almost all North Americans, left not a dollar in tax revenues in Venezuela.”
The Venezuelan Economic Crisis: it’s easy to blame socialism or corruption, but find out what the real cause is – and how Venezuela is being subverted.
You may have heard that Venezuelan economic crisis
is being caused by the evils of socialism. Many articles in both the Alternative and Mainstream Media are quick to judge the Venezuelan economic crisis without a deeper investigation. Yes, here at The Freedom Articles we are opposed to socialism since it is a form of collectivism which places more value on the needs of the abstract group than the needs of the individual, and carries out the forced redistribution of wealth through taxation (which basically equates to the systemized theft of one part of society to, in theory, help another). However, many systems of government (not just socialism) do exactly the same thing, no matter whether they are “left” or “right”. Besides, the chief cause of Venezuela’s ills has little do with its economic system, which is not purely socialist but rather a mixture of 3 aspects (communal, state and private). The problem is that it continues to be targeted from the outside – by the USA, who is taking active steps on many fronts to subvert the existing government and install US-friendly puppets instead. It’s the same old game of regime change which the US has been orchestrating literally all over the world since the end of WWII.
Venezuela Sits Atop the Largest Oil Supply in the World – And the US Wants a Cut
Venezuela has over 298 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the largest recognized volume in the world. According to the 2016 figures from the US EIA (Energy Information Administration), the US imports 800,000 barrels of oil per day from Venezuela. Getting oil from a South or Central American nation is less risky and much faster for the US than transporting it from the dangerous and war-stricken Middle East. However, it does not sit well with the US that a nation in South America (the backyard of its Empire) like Venezuela can prosper as a sovereign socialist republic. The US and its multinational corporations want a big slice of the pie of the gasoline profits, which Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro have refused to give. As self-confessed economic hitman John Perkins described decades ago in books, presentations and interviews, when a “recalcitrant” nation fails to play ball with the US, it activates its various branches to rein them in – the intelligence agencies, the NGOs, the “jackals” (assassins) and, if all else fails, then the US military itself.
Funding the Venezuelan Opposition
I have covered in previous articles (such as NGOs: Choice Tool of Subversion for the New World Order) the dangers of the soft power complex of US NGOs, also called the non-profit industrial complex. Guess what? The NGO network is at it again when it comes to the Venezuelan economic crisis. This time, they are actively subverting the Maduro government by funding and arming the opposition. Peter Koenig writes the following in his article Why is Venezuela in the White House’s Crosshairs? Confronting The Neoliberal Propaganda Media Machine. Koenig actually heard firsthand the Venezuelan Ambassador to Switzerland speak to an audience:
“On 8 of June, I had the privilege to attend a press conference hosted by the Venezuelan Ambassador in Bern, Switzerland. The purpose of the press conference was to clarify the current highly misrepresented situation in Venezuela … The facts explained and demonstrated by the Ambassador showed clearly who was responsible for most of the 67 deaths and more than 1,200 injured within the last couple of months … This point of opposition violence, blackmail and more, is clearly demonstrated by a recent US journalist covering the riots for the pan-Latin American TeleSur TV. Ms. Abby Martin, the host of the Empire Files, an investigative program, told RT (Russia Today) that she received numerous death threats from opposition fighters during her work on the ground in Venezuela. She says protesters threatened to lynch and burn her alive if she tried to contradict their narrative.
…
The fact that the opposition is planning to boycott the election shows clearly, they are not interested in democracy. They have one goal only, to oust President Maduro and take power, privatize state assets, especially hydrocarbons (petroleum and gas) to hand them to international mainly US corporations to be exploited at no benefits for the Venezuelan people. This was precisely the case before President Chavez took the reins of the country. Foreign corporations, almost all North Americans, left not a dollar in tax revenues in Venezuela.”
Venezuelan Economic Crisis and Regime Change: Foretold by Brookings (NWO Think Tank) and Orchestrated by NED (Soros NGO)
The clues are there if you look with care. The Venezuelan economic crisis has been basically predicted and advocated by the Brookings Institute. As Tony Cartalucci points out in his article US Policymakers Openly Plot Against Venezuela, the Brookings website features an article Venezuela: A path out of crisis which recommends a 5-point destabilization plan:
“The United States could increase monetary assistance to credible civil society organizations and nongovernmental organizations able to deliver food and medicines to Venezuelans … The United States could support efforts by the opposition in Venezuela to build an “off-ramp” that would split moderate elements of the government away from hardliners, encouraging the former to acquiesce to a transition to democracy …”
If you run this through the Orwellian translation unit, it means use the soft power complex of NGOs to overthrow Maduro and orchestrate regime change.
“The United States could coordinate with international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to offer financial incentives for holding free and fair elections in 2018, and for the opposition to unify and compete in those elections. Such coordination would also involve developing and publicizing a credible plan to restart Venezuela’s economy.”
Enter the IMF – the institutional loan shark that economic hitman John Perkins exposed.
Also unsurprisingly, the NED (National Endowment for Democracy), a notorious George Soros-funded NGO, has been involved. The so-called Venezuelan opposition is made up of “US-backed political parties and US-funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) many of which are listed on the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) website“ as Cartalucci writes.
Formerly on RT, and current Empire Files host Abby Martin, returned from Venezuela in June 2017. She gave a firsthand account of how the Venezuelan opposition were attempting to intimidate reporters so as to control the narrative and give a false impression of what was happening.
Cyber and Currency Manipulation out of Miami Also a Factor in the Venezuelan Economic Crisis
Another aspect to the US attack on Venezuela is coming out of Miami, Florida, in the form of a website called DolarToday which, according to Venezuelan President Maduro, is an attempt to sabotage the Venezuelan bolivar:
“The DolarToday website has been denounced by the Venezuelan State for setting a parallel dollar artificial price marker (black market). It has also been the target of a lawsuit by the Central Bank of Venezuela for falsifying the country’s exchange rates. In 2013, President Maduro accused the website of “fueling an economic war against his government, and manipulating the exchange rate.”
“DolarToday is also promoting opposition protests in Venezuela. Its tweets are being boosted by automated accounts that exhibit repetitive, bot-like characteristics and are using a social media management tool called IFTTT (If This Then That) to automate their tweets”, says Erin Gallagher.
“What immediately caught my attention in the #TeamHDP hashtag data were the shared networks between the influencers (real persons of high credibility),” explained the specialist.”
In the video embedded above, Abby interviewed the Venezuelan Minister of Economic Planning, Ricardo Menéndez. He elaborates on the deliberate US attack on the Venezuelan currency:
“We are the victims of an attack to the Bolivar, the national currency. This charge against our currency has become evident on certain websites based outside Venezuela, where fictitiously, without any rationale or economic proof to back it up, they determine a political value of our currency. With this political value, they pretend to generate the cost structure … 70% of the inflation in Venezuela is related to the American dollar rating being effectively made both in Miami and Cucuta. Afterwards, the extraction of paperer currency. This means, actually taking Bolivars out of the borders of Venezuela, in order to generate a drought, affecting the ability of Venezuelans to pay in cash.”
He later remarks how food supplies and the state of the economy are used as a political weapon to disturb the Venezuelan psyche and unseat the government.
Knock knock Venezuela: guess who’s coming?
Conclusion: Venezuelan Economic Crisis is About Seeding Regime Change
The truth is that the Venezuelan economic crisis is all about regime change, which itself is all about the Anglo-American-Zionist New World Order expanding its economic and military empire to turn all other nations into vassal states. The most recent bill in Congress earmarks $9,500,000 for (cough cough) “democracy promoting activities” for Venezuela. If you don’t realize what that means by now, take a look at the US-installed Neo-Nazis in Ukraine who were brought into power with NGOs in line with the regime change agenda. Funny how this regime change agenda is always window dressed with the rhetoric of human rights and democracy promotion.
The US has a long history of regime change in South America, a famous example of which is the 1973 CIA coup in Chile which brought military dictator Pinochet to power. As Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers note, “there is a long-term ongoing coup campaign in Venezuela, with its most recent episode last week in which a helicopter attack on the Supreme Court was tied to the US DEA and CIA. The US has allied with oligarchs, supported violent protests and provided funds for the opposition, which has also worked to undermine the Venezuelan economy …”.
It’s time we went beyond blaming Venezuelan socialism or corruption for what is going on, and realized that US sanctions, economic sabotage and political subversion are the real reason for the Venezuelan economic crisis.
*****
Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative media / independent news siteThe Freedom Articles and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com, writing on many aspects of truth and freedom, from exposing aspects of the worldwide conspiracy to suggesting solutions for how humanity can create a new system of peace and abundance.
A DOCTOR has claimed the existence of aliens is covered up because they have brought new technologies to Earth which would ruin the fossil fuel industries.
Steven Greer’s documentary: Unacknowledged: An Expose
Corrupt world leaders are sitting on “alien technology” which could provide cost free renewable energy to the world, according to Dr Steven Greer.However, he claims the existence of the world-saving technology is suppressed to allow business moguls to cash in on the oil and fossil fuel industries until they run out.Dr Greer, a former emergency room doctor in the US, who gave it up to try to expose the truth about aliens, made the claims in an interview with uninterview.com.He is a leading voice in the so-called disclosure movement in the US – conspiracy theorists who believe aliens are here on earth.
However, they say it is covered up and are fighting to get an alleged truth embargo lifted.
He said: “If along with the disclosure of intelligent life, you’re going to have the most disruptive technology in all of history come out… this becomes a big macro-economic issue and that is what the secrecy is partially rooted in.
“I began to realise that there were people inside government that know about these projects and there are people inside who do not know, and it has nothing to do with your rank, it doesn’t matter if you are the president.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re the CIA director. It only matters if the bureaucracy feels like you are going to go along with the agenda and keeping this secret.”
YouTube
Free energy that could save the world is suppressed, claims Dr Steven Greer.
The fact is the House of Saud went amok, in a flash, going after Qatar and bombing from the inside that glorious Arab NATO project – call it NATOGCC — sworn with pomp over a glowing orb.An excited Trump tweeted three times his approval for Riyadh going after Doha.
Trump and NATOGCC had equaled Daesh and Iran as “terrorists”. The House of Saud went one up — and denounced Qatar for top terror financing, which equals Don Corleone hurling Mafioso accusations against Tony Soprano.
But then, in an unexpected plot twist, Daesh, handily, graphically, underlined the cosmic stupidity of the whole charade – staging, or at least claiming to stage a terror attack against the Parliament and the Imam Khomeini shrine in Tehran.
The current Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, now “guilty” for not blaming Iran as the root of all evils in the Arab peninsula, might even be following the steps of his own father, Hamad, who invented modern Qatar and deposed himself – under Saudi pressure – in favor of his son in 2013.We can’t forget that Bandar bin Sultan, a.k.a. Bandar Bush, notorious former top assembler/weaponizer of jihadis, and frustrated “liberator of Syria”, had famously described Qatar in the past as “300 people and a TV station”.
So what is really going on in this noxious petrodollar swamp?
The Israel-UAE connection
Let’s cut to the chase and establish that this nasty inter-GCC cannibalization has nothing to do with the Global War on Terror (GWOT).
Among massive disinformation crossfire, a trail of evidence points to a concerted strategy elaborated by the Israeli lobby (via the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, founded, among others, by nefarious casino schemer Sheldon Adelson, and very close to Bibi Netanyahu); US neocon/Ziocon/neoliberalcon elements; and the UAE ambassador in Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba.
Leaked emails have shown how Otaiba – widely idolized in the Beltway because of his “largesse” – and the neocon Foundation for Defense of Democracies have discussed means of teaching Qatar a lesson for its support of Hamas, and overall non-confrontational policies towards Iran. Otaiba also happens to be close to Jared Kushner – which would explain Trump’s reaction to the anti-Qatar blitzkrieg.
Unlike Qatar, the House of Saud and the UAE are one step away from establishing diplomatic relations with Israel – the sine qua non condition imposed by Washington to insert Israel in an anti-Iran Arab NATO guided by Riyadh.A previous row in 2014 offers additional background. Regional intel operatives confirm at the time there were military Emirati maneuvers not far from the Qatari border; London and Paris, for instance, knew all about it.
But the head of the House of Saud in charge at the time was the late King Abdullah, who was in fact an appeaser. The Head-Chopper-in-Chief now is Warrior Prince Mohamed bin Salman, a.k.a. MBS, an arrogant twat who’s already, miserably, losing a war on Yemen — conducted with billions of dollars in US and UK weapons — that has provoked a horrific humanitarian crisis in the poorest nation in the region. It is MBS who ordered the Saudi demonization of Qatar.
Let me out of the terror train
The “terra terra terra” shorthand, for the House of Saud, applies mostly to the accusation of Qatar supporting Shi’ite protest movements in eastern Saudi Arabia. That’s ridiculous; Doha is not involved.
And then there’s the accusation of Qatar supporting Islamists. That’s exactly what powerful Saudi donors – many linked to the monarchy – do.
Doha does support, big time, the Muslim Brotherhood – which has not much to do with al-Qaeda and/or Daesh, and is hated with a vengeance by Riyadh and its puppet al-Sisi in Cairo, who survives on Saudi handouts. What powerful Qatari donors did (up to $3 billion) was support al-Qaeda in Syria, a.k.a. Jabhat al-Nusra, which vast US neocon/neoliberalcon sectors brand as “moderate rebels”.
The Saudis, meanwhile, supported their own jihadis in Syria – and elsewhere. WikiLeaks has unequivocally proved how “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide”.
Apart from complex tribal rivalry issues, the key religious factor is that Qatar – unlike Saudi Arabia – is tolerant towards non-Salafis, or “revolutionary” Salafis like the Muslim Brotherhood, and does not try to globally export its version of Wahhabism. For all practical purposes, hardcore Saudi imams consider Qataris heretics. As if they’re almost as bad as “apostate” Shi’ites.
The schism has translated, in practice, into a proxy war in Libya for example. Doha supports Islamic militias in Misrata as well as those faithful to the “Mufti of Qatar” Sadiq al-Ghariani. The Emirates and Egypt support Gen. Khalifa Haftar, the chief of the self-styled Libya National Army (LNA).It’s a gas, gas, gas
Saudi intel disinformation agents are spreading that “Turkey and Qatar are the last two states run by the Muslim Brotherhood. Most probably Qatar will experience a change of regime and exit being the bankroller on behalf of Britain to support all kind of chaos in the region, and that include playing from behind the scenes with Teheran.”
Utter diversionist nonsense. The plain fact is the House of Saud is absolutely desperate. Oil price remains low, around $50 a barrel. The monster Saudi IPO on Aramco is only 12 months away. The House of Saud needs to move the markets towards a higher oil price by any means necessary – ultimatums and threats of war included.
A non-ideological US intel source goes further, stressing how “Turkey, Iran and Russia are moving closer together. The question remains who will control the Gulf States and the oil price — which was being manipulated so far to destroy Russia. The deal between Saudi Arabia and Russia is really just a minor improvement.”
So no wonder obfuscation remains the norm – with narratives taking attention away from the House of Saud and placing it on Iran, and now also Qatar.And then there’s the key Pipelineistan angle, mixed with how Qatar as a natural gas powerhouse is immensely annoying OPEC producers Saudi Arabia and UAE.
Qatar is the largest global exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). That’s what has allowed it to shape a foreign policy completely independent from the House of Saud. Add to it that Qatar’s fabulous gas wealth yields from the massive offshore North Field, shared with Iran (who controls what it calls South Pars).
There’s been speculation, obviously unconfirmed by Tehran and Doha, that Iran and Qatar may have reached an agreement on sharing the rights for a gas pipeline from North Dome/South Pars to the eastern Mediterranean in Syria, as long as Doha stops supporting al-Nusra.
Were that to happen, it would signal the spectacular closure of one of the key motives for the Syrian tragedy. The Obama administration had fully approved a Qatar to Turkey – via Saudi Arabia and Syria – gas pipeline as a means of trying to undermine Gazprom. It took a lot of dead bodies and horrific destruction for Doha to realize Moscow would never allow it.
Thus Qatar’s strategic pivot towards Russia – materialized, for instance, via Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund investing $2.7 billion in Rosneft. This may be spelling out, in the medium term, a Qatar way more amenable to the Russia-Iran-Syria connection. Considering that Qatar hosts CENTCOM and is home to Al-‘Udayd, the largest US military base in the Middle East, that certainly does not go down very well at the Pentagon. As far as the US game is concerned, it’s terminally naïve to believe Washington would not have provided a green light to its Saudi satrap to go after Doha.
Add to it Qatar opening the first yuan clearing center in the Middle East; that’s something that did not go down well with financial Masters of the Universe. In parallel, the much-lauded Trump $100 billion weapons deal announced in Riyadh may have been devised in exchange for the House of Saud delaying as long as possible Chinese oil payments in yuan that would bypass the petrodollar.
To weave conspiracy theories is an idle undertaking. “T.Rex” Tillerson, from his ExxonMobil days, knows the Qatari leadership quite well. And so does “Mad Dog” Mattis, former head of CENTCOM. Watch them; how they act in the follow-up will unveil at least some layers of the current shadow play – and whether the whole charade packs way more punch than mere House of Saud desperation.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.
Generally speaking, conspiracy theories form where there is a vacuum of verifiable facts associated with a controversial, usually tragic event. The concept has evolved over the years and is a part of our popular culture. There are legions of conspiracy theorists and “truthers” who have devoted their lives to certain theories, and there are legions of skeptics who have devoted their lives to debunking those theories. All the while, conspiracy theories of every stripe and variety festoon the footnotes of history. Even the origin of the phrase itself is subject to conspiracy theory, as some researchers have argued that the CIA invented and promulgated the term in order to marginalize fringe thinkers and neutralize investigations. The internet has obviously had a profound effect on conspiracy theories, simultaneously helping and hurting the cause. While a world of information is at people’s fingertips, so too are alternate worlds of manufactured propaganda. While the Internet may appear to be a democratized, unfiltered path toward facts and truth, it is easily manipulated. Powerful corporations pay a lot of money to have their dirty laundry buried in the search results underneath contrived puff pieces.With nearly the entire mainstream media apparatus at their disposal, the government is a maestro at this practice. As we learned from so-called Operation Mockingbird — a conspiracy theory fact discussed in my first post on the subject, “Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out to Be True,” — hundreds, if not thousands of news organizations have been conscripted into working with the CIA to support pro-government narratives. That was in the 1960s. One can only imagine how vast the network is now. Not to mention the fact that a single proprietary algorithm owned by Google dictates the vast majority of the population’s exposure to a subject. In Part 1, I noted that the list had been meticulously whittled down to focus only on conspiracies that have been irrefutably proven to be fact. There are hundreds of conspiracy theories I think are likely to be true that are not on this list because there simply isn’t enough hard evidence yet to confirm it 100%. I also aimed for a good mixture of old conspiracies and new conspiracies. With groups like Wikileaks and Anonymous out there, the last decade has witnessed a dam burst of new data and documents. Thanks to intrepid journalists, whistleblowers, hacktivists, and leakers, the human race continues to tear down the wall of lies erected by the corporatocracy.
Without further ado, let’s get to it….ten more conspiracy theories we can start calling conspiracy facts.
1. Operation Ajax, the CIA’s Iranian Coup
In Iran it was called 28 Mordad coup; the United Kingdom contributed under the name Operation Boot. However you refer to it, Operation Ajax was an Iranian coup that in 1953 deposed the democratically elected Muhammad Mossadeq and reinstalled the monarchical power of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. The primary cause of the coup was Mossadeq’s attempt to nationalize the Iran’s oil fields, which threatened the oil profits of Britain’s Anglo-Persian Oil Company (AIOC). The U.S. — in addition to protecting its ally’s petroleum monopoly — viewed Mossadeq’s move as communist aggression and therefore helped plan the return to power of one the world’s more insidious dictators, the shah. Operation Ajax resulted almost directly in 1979 Iranian revolution that created an anti-West Islamic republic led by the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Though it was long considered an open secret, the U.S. government kept the truth behind Operation Ajax concealed from the American people until very recently. The CIA declassified various documents on the 60th anniversary of the coup.
Because of the recent declassification, much information relevant to this CIA-sponsored coup is now available in the CIA’s archives.
In describing Operation Ajax, the CIA itself has become rather oddly self-reflective:
“The world has paid a heavy price for the lack of democracy in most of the Middle East. Operation Ajax taught tyrants and aspiring tyrants that the world’s most powerful governments were willing to tolerate limitless oppression as long as oppressive regimes were friendly to the West and to Western oil companies. That helped tilt the political balance in a vast region away from freedom and toward dictatorship.”
In a recent interview on Democracy Now, Bernie Sanders remarked to Amy Goodman that this seminal chapter in the history of U.S./Middle East relations is almost entirely ignored by mainstream media. “Have you seen many shows about that on NBC?” he asked the crowd.
2. “Nayirah,” the False Pretext for the first Gulf War
It’s now commonly believed that the second Iraq War was sold to the American people — and their congressional representatives — based on an elaborate web of lies and manipulated intelligence. What is less commonly known is that the first Iraq War came about in a very similar fashion. While, surprisingly, there is broad agreement that “Operation Desert Storm” was a worthwhile war, many people overlook the role of a fifteen-year-old girl named “Nayirah,” whose 1990 testimony to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus is credited with cementing the idea of Iraqi war crimes in the American popular consciousness. Nayirah testified to having witnessed Iraqi troops tearing babies from their incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals and leaving them to die on the floor. It’s a profoundly disturbing image….and one that was entirely fictitious.
After a lengthy investigation, Amnesty International and other independent watchdog groups discovered that the situation described by Nayirah was fabricated by a PR firm named Hill & Knowlton (the largest in the world at this time), which was hired by the group Citizens for a Free Kuwait in order to create propaganda that would galvanize pro-war sentiment. The man overseeing the campaign was Bush political confidante Craig Fuller. This was a massive project utilizing 119 H&K executives in 12 offices across the United States and even involved casting Nayirah, who turned out to be Nayirah al-Sabah, daughter of Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah, Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. The Justice Department, which could have investigated the entire effort under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, turned a blind eye, allowing the Bush administration to pull off a massive “Wag the Dog”-style ideological false flag. Others call it “atrocity propaganda,” a form of psyop (psychological operation).
The “Nayirah” story is just another example of the government falsifying a narrative in order to manipulate the public into supporting war. This kind of psychological propaganda continued all through the second Iraq War and the War on Terror. Just recently, it was revealed that the Pentagon paid PR firm Bell Pottinger $540 million to create fake terrorist videos in Iraq.
3. Operation Paperclip
Originally called Operation Overcast, Operation Paperclip was the codename of the secret American plan to conscript Nazi scientists into U.S. intelligence services at the end of World War II. This ushered in and shielded about 1,500 Germans, including some engineers and technicians. Ostensibly, the purpose of this redeployment by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) was to prevent Nazi scientific intelligence from helping reconstitute a new German government; it was also a tactic meant to ensure the Soviet Union didn’t acquire any new technology.
Whatever strategic mindset might have lived inside Operation Paperclip, at its core, the project gave American identities to some of the most ruthless war criminals the world has ever seen.
According to Ynet, the new Nazi CIA scientists helped develop chemical weapons for the U.S. and worked alongside American scientists to develop LSD, which the CIA viewed as a ‘truth serum.’
4. Operation Gladio: Anti-Communist False Flags in Italy
Operation Gladio was the post-World War II love-child of a CIA/NATO/M16 plot to battle communism in Italy. The operation lasted two decades and used CIA-created “stay behind” networks as part of a “Strategy of Tension” that coordinated multiple terrorist attacks from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Authorities blamed these attacks on Marxists and other left-wing political opponents in order to stigmatize and condemn communism. The operation involved multiple bombings that killed hundreds of innocent people, including children. The most notable attack was the August 2, 1980, bombing of the Bologna train station, which killed 85 people.
In an Anti-Media piece written about five confirmed false flag operations (which includes Operation Gladio, I wrote:
“How do we know about Operation Gladio in spite of its incredibly clandestine nature? There are two principle sources. One, the investigations of Italian judge Felice Casson, whose presentation was so compelling it forced Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti to confirm Gladio’s existence. The second source is testimony from an actual Gladio operative, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, who is serving a life sentence for murder. In a 1990 interview with the Guardian, Vincenzo stated that Gladio was designed to psychologically coerce the Italian public to rely on the state for security.”
Operation Gladio is a textbook modern “false flag.” It used terror and violence to discredit an ideology (communism). And to think, this came at a time before the internet when the CIA didn’t have a fully entrenched mainstream media to trumpet, echo, and build consensus around every little nuance (though they were working on it with COINTELPRO and Operation Mockingbird). Nowadays, the CIA has multinational propaganda machines — the news networks — to make sure all terrorist attacks fit into the carefully scripted narrative that manufactures consent around our wars for oil, natural gas, and other resources.
5. Government uses insect and rodent drones to spy
It’s somewhat of a cliche to jokingly refer to a surrounding insect or bird as a clandestine spy deployed by the government to watch you. While we lack certain specifics on the ubiquity of the technology, we know definitively that the government has the technology to surveil citizens using insects and other small animals, and they use this technology in military applications.
There is some evidence to suggest that insect drones are used domestically to spy on citizens. In 2007, this theory conspiracy theory took shape when anti-war protesters reported strange buzzing insects. Written off as tin foil material, officials dismissed the suggestion that the government used insect drones to spy. Multiple witnesses reported erratic dragonfly-type objects hovering in the sky. The very next year, the U.S. Air Force announced their intended use of insect-sized spies ‘as tiny as bumblebees’ to infiltrate buildings in order to ‘photograph, record, and even attack insurgents and terrorists.‘ The government has come clean about its use of drones to spy on American citizens, so it’s difficult to believe they wouldn’t have at least tried insect drones.
While we can’t say with 100% certainty that there are insect drones spying on American citizens, though it’s exceedingly likely, what is irrefutable is the use of micro air vehicles (MAVs) and “spy animals” as war-time tools. DARPA launched its Stealthy Insect Sensor Project in 1999 as an effort to deputize bees as bomb locators in war zones. This was just the first phase in an ongoing project. In her book The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top Secret Military Research Agency, journalist Annie Jacobsen revealed that the agency’s near-future trajectory is to introduce “biohybrids” — part animal, part machine cyborgs — into the United States’ military arsenal.
“DARPA has already succeeded in creating a rat that will be steered by remote control by implanting an electrode in its brain.
“And it’s done the same thing with a moth which is really remarkable because the scientists implanted the electrodes in the pupa stage of the moth when it was still a worm! And then it transformed into having wings, and those tiny little micro-sensors transformed with the moth and the DARPA scientists were able to steer that moth.”
6. CIA assassinations and coups in foreign countries
When operatives for the Democratic Party claim the 2016 United States presidential election was tampered with by a foreign entity, it’s hard not to cringe at the irony. Firstly, they’ve presented no evidence, except to claim that government intelligence agencies believe it to be true. Sorry, that’s not actually evidence. That’s like the police saying they have DNA evidence but never actually scientifically presenting it in court. It’s kind of unnerving that we even have to point that out. Secondly, our own government and intelligence agencies, namely the CIA, have actively and aggressively subverted countless foreign elections over the last century and, in some cases, have outright funded the assassinations of candidates.
This subject could easily fill a multi-volume book, and countless authors have worked over the years to uncover the role of the CIA in foreign coups. Using every tool in their arsenal — including white, grey, and black psychological operations, counterinsurgencies, and brutal coups aimed at repressing and destroying radically democratic candidates — the CIA has subverted the “will of the people” across the world.
The most commonly noted instances of the CIA meddling in foreign elections and governments include the following: South Korea (late-1940s); Italy (1948-mid-1970s); Guatemala (1954); Congo (1960), Dominican Republic (1961), South Vietnam (1963), Brazil (1964); Uruguay (1969); Bolivia (1971); Chile (1970-1973); Argentina (1976); Australia (1975); El Salvador (1980); Iran (late-1970s); Grenada (1983) Haiti (1986); Panama (1990) Nicaragua (1990); Czechoslovakia (1990); Peru (1990-2000) Yugoslavia (2000). This is but a small sampling of countries where even mainstream news outlets and, in many cases, the CIA itself, admits calamitous U.S. involvement. There are literally dozens more and, of course, this is restricting the conversation to soft coups — otherwise, we could certainly include the complete military decimation of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and other Middle Eastern countries during the War on Terror, as well as the myriad imperial wars against perceived communist threats.
‘A foreign government hacked and subverted our election!’
The irony is thick with this one. Payback’s a bitch…..which, of course, isn’t giving our intelligence agencies, who have proven themselves to be pathological liars, the benefit of the doubt regarding their claims of Russian collusion during the 2016 presidential election. It’s just to kind of say…..you reap the harvest you have sown. When you look at the track record of the United States government, it’s a wonder the average citizen is safe traveling abroad.
7. Mainstream media is the propaganda branch of the State Department
People have long accused the media of being a proxy branch of the State Department, a highly sophisticated and well-produced form of manufactured consensus and controlled opposition all rolled into one. In ostensibly democratic nations, a free and independent press is of paramount importance. But in the U.S., we find a cohesion of the state and corporate news networks that do not constitute ‘state-run media’ in the traditional sense — but it’s close.
Our first solid documentation that the media is an echo chamber for the government came with the disclosure of what has come to be called Operation Mockingbird. This nefarious and far-reaching conspiracy was documented in Part 1 and involved the CIA essentially conscripting journalists, American news agencies, and major broadcasters to become domestic propagandists and spies. Eventually, this CIA/media symbiosis included journalists from all the top news organizations. Literally, thousands of people were involved.
This infiltration of the American media and press took place during the 1950s, at the start of the Cold War, and was carried out under the auspices of fighting communism. The CIA began to restrict its use of journalists in the Operation Mockingbird program in 1976, but many people believe it has since transmogrified into something far more powerful, nefarious, and ubiquitous today. We’re still in the early stages of proving to the masses that mainstream media is little more than a mouthpiece and propaganda machine for the government and its various agencies, but the evidence is accumulating.
During the 2016 presidential election, Wikileaks exposed a number of disturbing revelations showing collusion between the media and political operatives. This included collusion between the media, the Democratic National Committee, and the Hillary Clinton campaign. But it wasn’t just about swaying the election. New revelations showed that the government actively infiltrates powerful media corporations in order to shape their content and narratives. One of the best examples of this was the State Department’s role in affecting a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Julian Assange.
A more comprehensive list of examples of the Orwellian symbiotic relationship between the press and the government can be found here.
Perhaps the most disturbing recent addition to this chapter was the “Countering Disinformation Act” that President Obama slipped into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Christmas Eve of last year. In the context of the still-festering narrative of foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election, the act’s putative goal was to fight “fake news,” which many believe is actually a campaign to silence and dismantle alternative media on the Internet.
In order to accomplish this, the government is establishing a Global Engagement Center for managing disinformation and propaganda. Since we already know our government routinely performs psychological operations (psyops, or as they’ve been recently rebranded, Military Information Support Operations [MISO]), it should come as no surprise that manipulating the civilian population is a permanent goal. In fact, in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, the government formally legalized the use of psyops on U.S. citizens. So how does this Global Engagement Center factor in?
The new law states:
“The Center is authorized to provide grants or contracts of financial support to civil society groups, media content providers, nongovernmental organizations, federally funded research and development centers, private companies, or academic institutions for the following purposes:
To support local independent media who are best placed to refute foreign disinformation and manipulation in their own communities.
To collect and store examples in print, online, and social media, disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda directed at the United States and its allies and partners.
To analyze and report on tactics, techniques, and procedures of foreign information warfare with respect to disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda.
To support efforts by the Center to counter efforts by foreign entities to use disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda to influence the policies and social and political stability of the United States and United States allies and partner nations.”
While it may not immediately strike one as sinister, this codification of repressing journalists and voices the government deems to be disinformation while creating an even more centralized infrastructure to control “fact-based narratives” in the media should be highly alarming to anyone who cares about a free press. It would seem that while the State already has a steel grip on corporate news networks, they are struggling to control the influence of online independent media. This new law may be the start of this century’s Operation Mockingbird — a new full-scale infiltration of the local news and a war against anti-establishment narratives on the Internet. This is already taking the form of algorithmic censorship through Facebook and Google, as well as a weaponization of the “fake news” narrative.
8. The Deep State (or the conspiracy theory formerly known as The New World Order)
“For decades, extreme ideologies on both the left and the right have clashed over the conspiratorial concept of a shadowy secret government often called the New World Order pulling the strings on the world’s heads of state and captains of industry.
“The phrase New World Order is largely derided as a sophomoric conspiracy theory entertained by minds that lack the sophistication necessary to understand the nuances of geopolitics. But it turns out the core idea — one of deep and overarching collusion between Wall Street and government with a globalist agenda — is operational in what a number of insiders call the “Deep State.”
In the wake of the 2016 election, the concept of the Deep State has grown into somewhat of a common phrase in the lexicon of alternative media theorists, crossing political boundaries and resonating across the ideological spectrum. Everyone from alt-left socialists to alt-righters now agrees there is an unelected cabal of elite neo-conservative corporatists and crony lawmakers running the geopolitical show.
Because it’s such a complex subject and permeates so many different academic, economic, and state apparatuses, it’s virtually impossible to issue a single, simple definition of the Deep State. If I were to hazard one, I would call it “the nexus of Wall Street and the national security state — a relationship where elected and unelected figures join forces to consolidate power and serve vested interests.” But even that is vague. We could also call it “the failure of our visible constitutional government and the cross-fertilization of corporatism with the globalist war on terror.”
Former Republican congressional aide Mike Lofgren gets more specific with who is involved:
“It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street.”
In his writing, Lofgren emphasized the role of FISA international surveillance courts. This was confirmed in a very interesting way when President Donald Trump accused former President Obama of tapping his phones, a charge Obama aides deflected by saying that if such a warrant had been issued, it would have been done through a FISA court. This shows how presidents are able to skirt the constitution by outsourcing surveillance requests. It also shows the interconnectedness of these agencies.
However you want to describe it, it’s the natural conclusion of Operation Mockingbird and most certainly a reality that the elites would have rather kept under the radar. Fortunately for the people of the Earth, revelations from Wikileaks and other whistleblowers have, over the last couple decades, made it abundantly clear that the Deep State (the New World Order) not only exists, but also that it’s far more sinister and powerful than early conspiracy theorists could have ever imagined.
9. CIA used psychics to infiltrate the Soviet Union during Cold War
It’s a plot in a science fiction movie or TV show we’ve all seen: a psychic being leveraged by a law enforcement agency to track down a criminal. The concept of a government psychic program was popularized by the film The Men Who Stare at Goats, which lampooned the mythical STARGATE program supposedly run by the CIA. Most people scoffed at the reality of this and considered it a wacky conspiracy theory, but a recently declassified trove of hundreds of thousands of CIA files finally confirmed not only that psychics are regularly used by police and other law enforcement agencies, but also that the government actually weaponized psychics during the Cold War to try to infiltrate the Soviet Union and gain information.
The documents, made publicly available thanks to the activist group Muckrock, confirm there were top-secret CIA and Defense Department programs to use remote viewing to infiltrate Soviet military installments. There were also programs developing ways to engage in “psychic warfare,” including the development of a “psychic shield” to block Soviet psychics.
10. CIA monitors U.S. citizens via their smart devices
Early in 2017, the organization Wikileaks began releasing their first post-2016 election cables with a series of explosive data dumps regarding the CIA’s cyber hacking abilities and exploits. It is called Vault 7. Updated serially in “Year Zero,” “Dark Matter,” “Marble,” “Grasshopper,” “HIVE,” “Weeping Angel,” and “Scribbles,” the documents show the unprecedented collection of cyber vulnerabilities, exploits, and hacking abilities consolidated within the agency that many believe constitute wide-ranging breaches of civil liberties.
Chief among these breaches is domestic surveillance and extrajudicial cyberhacking, which the Wikileaks documents confirm are taking place in an abundance of forms. The Vault 7 documents confirm that: The CIA can break into Android and iPhone handsets and all kinds of computers; the agency has the ability to hack into Apple iPhones and Android smartphones and actually assume full remote control of the device; the CIA can access consumer smart TVs to listen in on surrounding conversations; the agency looked into ways to hack into cars and crash them, allowing ‘nearly undetectable assassinations’ (an assertion that may be relevant to the Michael Hastings case); the CIA concealed vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers from other countries or governments.
This is just the beginning. Early in the release, Julian Assange said the documents released represented only a tiny fraction of the total data that was forthcoming. Wikileaks’ episodic data dumps on the CIA’s cyber hacking programs are nothing less than stunning. The establishment’s reaction to the ongoing releases verifies how big of a deal they are. One congressman went so far as to refer to Julian Assange and his whistleblowing outfit as a “foreign terrorist organization.” This isn’t new or unexpected, as the group’s slow but inexorable drips of revelations about government malfeasance continue to confound and disturb private citizens, consumer rights activists, tech companies, and international leaders alike.
Conclusion
Of course, not all conspiracy theories are true. In fact, there are hundreds, even thousands, that have been roundly debunked. Unfortunately, there are those who seek to lie and invent fictions for monetary gain and fame. Disinformation, propaganda, and dishonesty exist at all levels of society.
However, sometimes conspiracy theories turn out to be true. Therefore, it’s worth assessing them, even if their claims appear wholly outlandish. Especially if their claims appear wholly outlandish.
The conspiracy theory is a tool in a larger tool kit used by those who wish to decode the grossly imperfect and fluid narrative describing our world. When investigated responsibly, conspiracy theories function as part of a conceptual spectrum of analysis with which we can investigate government and corporate abuses of power and the manufacturing of ‘consensus reality.’ In the 21st century, when the very transmission of information can be considered criminal, being a responsible conspiracy theorist just means you practice due diligence and hunger for the truth.
“Over all, more than 18.4 million gallons of oils and chemicals spilled, leaked or misted into the air, soil and waters of North Dakota from 2006 through early October 2014.”
In just four days, North Dakota’s sweet, light crude from the Bakken Shale region will begin flowing through the sharply contentious Dakota Access Pipeline — the Black Snake, to Indigenous Americans of the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribes — despite over a year of efforts to quash the project by an immense opposition movement, who rightly term themselves ‘water protectors.’
They have a valid point.
Only days before the well is set to be fully operational, the DAPL is already leaking. In a report released this week by the South Dakota Department of Environmental and Natural Resources, a spill was documented on April 4 in Tulare Township in Spink County. The spill occurred just 100 miles from Lake Oahe, the Sioux tribes precious water source which became the impetus for the massive protests against the pipeline.
Camps of water protectors near the banks of the Missouri River’s Lake Oahe reservoir ultimately proved ineffective in quashing the Dakota Access project — but North Dakota’s horrendous record on pipeline safety more than proves their concerns Big Oil infrastructure will inevitably sully the state’s drinking water supply legitimate.
In just the past year, the North Dakota Department of Health recorded 745 oil spills — as analyzed by KCET Environment Editor Chris Clarke — a figure tragically substantiating fears of water protectors for the future of the state’s water supply.
For perspective, for the number of pipeline incidents for the year ending on May 1, 2017, North Dakota’s oil infrastructure experienced an average of one spill every 11 hours and 45 minutes — that’s one leak, contaminating the planet, two times per day, every day, over the last twelve months.
“And we’re not talking small leaks here. One event on the 18 May 2016 saw 400 barrels of oil (16,800 gallons) leak out in Bowman County, spreading more than 100 metres outside the refinery gates and into the surrounding environment,” Science Alert keenly notes.
“That same event saw an additional 2,500 barrels (1 million gallons) of brine leak outside the facility.”
Although leaks ranged tremendously in size, some comprising just 20-gallon dribbles, major spills managed considerable damage, when electronic alert systems — meant to notify a pipeline’s operator of unexpected changes in pressure and other factors which denote emergencies — failed or malfunctioned.
One notorious major accident occurred in Billings County, when oil spewed from the Belle Fourche Pipeline into Ash Coulee Creek in December, due to an alert system failing so miserably, five full days elapsed before the company was made aware of the leak — and only then, because a civilian happened upon the noxious spill and notified authorities.
At that point, escaping crude had snaked its way almost five-and-a-half miles from the source breach — contaminating the creek, delicate ecosystems, and pristine countryside as it belched forth without obstruction.
Now estimated to comprise some 530,000 gallons — more than threefold the original appraisal of 176,000 gallons — the Belle Fourche spill is believed one of the largest in North Dakota history.
But the state’s largest spill engulfs the aforementioned — and it, too, had been wildly underestimated on first assessment.
In December 2013, a farmer discovered crude bubbling six inches high in a remote corner of a wheat field from an underground six-inch pipeline, which had ruptured unbeknownst to operator Tesoro. Company estimates at first claimed a mere 750 barrels, or 31,499 gallons, of crude spilled from the rupture — but that had to be increased by orders of magnitude, and on readjustment, that spill comprised 20,600 barrels, or 865,199 gallons.
That embarrassing spill still isn’t entirely cleaned up, and both of those incidents — incidentally, each occurring within 200 miles of the now-vanished Dakota Access Pipeline opposition camps — poured from cracks in six-inch pipelines.
Dakota Access — again, slated to be operational Sunday — is a 30-inch pipeline. And it runs underneath Lake Oahe, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s sole source for drinking water, and the Missouri River — the drinking water supplier of some 18 million total people downstream from the pipeline’s crossing points.
Clarke explains the ramifications of such hefty spills from pipelines, which industry leaders claim to be far safer than rail or road transport of oil and gas, and why such deceptive marketing of safety concerns could be detrimental to North Dakota and the rest of the United States,
“Less than four months after the 2013 Tesoro spill on the Jensens’ farm, a train collision near Casselton dumped the contents of 16 tank cars full of crude oil onto the ground, where the oil flowed into a culvert and caught fire. Around 11,500 barrels [482,999 gallons] of oil were spilled in that incident.
“Shipping oil by rail is undeniably risky, and communities across the country are organizing in opposition to rail oil shipments through their neighborhoods. But it’s worth noting that the December 2013 derailment near Casselton, the worst railroad oil spill in North Dakota history, did considerably less damage than two pipeline spills that have happened since.”
Not only that, but train derailments aren’t exactly a frequent occurrence — not even approaching the frequency of pipeline leaks, breaches, and spills.
In a period of almost nine years, from the beginning of 2006 through October 2014, there were 1,327 reported pipeline spills — 638 of which included the release of at least one barrel of oil, the rest, other petroleum substances or byproducts of industry, like brine or wastewater.
“That’s a pipeline oil spill every five days, on average, over nearly nine years, and 41,672 barrels [1,750,223 gallons] of oil spilled onto the North Dakota landscape,” Clarke notes. “In other words, more than two gallons of oil for every resident of North Dakota. Does it really matter whether it hits the earth all at once, or just one or two barrels at a time?”
Affirming those telling figures — and a bleak future for North Dakotans concerned for the integrity of the state’s ecosystems — a New York Times article from 2014 added,
“Over all, more than 18.4 million gallons of oils and chemicals spilled, leaked or misted into the air, soil and waters of North Dakota from 2006 through early October 2014. (In addition, the oil industry reported spilling 5.2 million gallons of nontoxic substances, mostly fresh water, which can alter the environment and carry contaminants.)”
Water protectors who have carried on the fight to end this nation’s and planet’s reliance on fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy sources need look no further than the state where the fight exploded onto the world stage.
As shocking as these figures might be, they comprise the data from a single state — and a severely limited time period — while oil and gas spills happen every day around the planet.
One example is the 1989, 11 million-gallon Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Black crude from that spill — over 18 years ago, now — can still be found by digging an inch or two deep into the sandy shores of the sound.
But the raspberry for the worst oil accident in U.S. history must be reserved for the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, which began on April 20, 2010, when a failed well spewed crude into the Gulf of Mexico and continued, unhindered, despite attempts to halt it, until the breach was officially capped on September 19.
In total, it is believed the deadly and deleterious disaster comprised 4.9 million barrels of oil — some 210 million gallons — enough, some scientists have found upon studying resultant environmental impacts, to kill off or severely impinge most life in the albeit enormous Gulf.
Fossil fuels are a finite resource, and long overdue for replacement with tenable options — if for no other reason than that the companies hawking petroleum can’t manage to adhere to the most basic of safety standards.
