COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Shell Oil Getting a Russian Hair Cut.

Gazprom grabs Sakhalin gas stake
Russia's state-owned energy giant Gazprom has wrested control of a massive gas field from Anglo-Dutch rival Shell. Comment: They stole it.

Gazprom will pay $7.5bn (£3.8bn) for a 50%-plus-one-share stake in the Sakhalin 2 field after Shell was accused of damaging the environment. Comment: The excuse for why they stole it.

The deal was signed by President Vladimir Putin and top executives from Royal Dutch Shell and Gazprom. Comment: The thief and the sheep.

Officials from the project's Japanese partners were also present. Comment: Witnesses to Western idiocy in dealing with GWB's soul brother.

34 comments:

  1. Since no link was provided, I tried to find one, myself. I found this which is interesting.

    From the article:
    ACCORDING to the scuttle-butt, Vladimir Putin has a plan for when his second and—as Russia's constitution requires—last presidential term expires in 2008. Rather than changing the constitutional rules or becoming prime minister, Mr Putin may become boss of Gazprom, Russia's state-controlled gas monopoly.

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  2. You tell 'em Rufus. Putin's move is like becoming the Buggy Whip Baron in 1906.

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  3. Russia's return to Soviet style tactics is a surprise to who? One KGB officer after another is in charge of various "Russian" departments and their old style of "fuck with us and you're dead" is back.
    We could learn something from them on that score.
    Russia has now got Europe frimly shackled, with 40% of all Euopean oil coming from Russia. On the demographic side "old" Europe is being outbirthed by the Islams and will soon be Muslim nations..UNLESS they act to throw out the Muslims now. Some are beginning to awaken to this very clear insight.
    But those of you with children who long to go to the Montparnasse of Hemmingway Waugh, and other expatriots would already only see a host of Chinese pizzarias and the like. Paris is a shell, Londonstan an occupied city, Brussels,Denmark,Norway all dying the slow Muslim death and now Russia can turn off the spigot any time she wants something.
    It will be interesting to see if Representative elect Keith Ellison, a Muslim is allowed to take the Constitutional oath while using the Qu'ran which dictates no other allegiance is allowed.

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  4. Rufus,
    I'm 100% behind all the biomass,alt energies we can develop,but I do not believe for a minute it will reduce Islams desire for the return of the Caliphate.
    Nor do I believe that if the demographic trends hold and Europe is Muslim by democratic process with a generation that they will continue the march of science in the biomass/alt fuels development.
    They will still be motivated to kill all Jews and viola we're back in Hitlerian mode.

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  5. "All of which gets us back to Keith Ellison and his originally stated intention to take the oath of office relying solely on his Koran. Although there is often a vast chasm between theory and practice, theory, as I understand it, says that a true Muslim cannot simultaneously believe in the Koran's dictates and swear an oath to protect a Western legal document such as the Constitution. The two documents (the Koran and the Constitution) envision entirely antithetical laws and the Koran mandates that its believers, as part of their faith, bend every effort to ensuring the Koran's ascendancy over all other forms of government and faith"
    AmericanThinker

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  6. Rufus,
    I've grown bored with waiting to kill them in onezees and twozees.

    Let's follow the two track approach.
    Continue to support all the biomass/alt fuel development AND wipe out al Sadr,Sadr City,Syria, and do some assassinations down in South America.

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  7. Habu1 said, "Continue to support all the biomass/alt fuel development AND wipe out al Sadr,Sadr City,Syria, and do some assassinations down in South America."

    Somebody tell Habu that Pat Robertson is using his logon again.

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  8. Ahh, a few moments of habu and then, as always, reality sticks it's nose back into the tent.

    CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. -- A Marine Corps squad leader was charged Thursday with 13 counts of murder in the killings of 24 civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha last year, his attorney said, and other Marines are expected to be charged.

    Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich was charged with 12 counts of murdering individuals, plus one count of murdering six people by ordering Marines under his charge to "shoot first and ask questions later" when they entered a house, according to charging sheets released by defense attorney Neal Puckett.

    Puckett said his client is not guilty and acted lawfully. ..."

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  9. LAGOS, Nigeria -- Armed men attacked two foreign oil facilities in southern Nigeria on Thursday, and both shut down production as security worsened in the restive, oil-rich region. Royal Dutch Shell PLC, which came under attack earlier this week, began evacuating families of foreign workers.

    Before dawn Thursday, about a dozen gunmen attacked a Total SA pumping station, killing three security guards. The company shut the 40,000-barrel-a-day facility to "ensure the total protection of the site," spokesman Paul Floren said by phone from Paris.

    Gunmen later occupied a facility owned by Eni SpA. In a statement on its Web site, Eni said no injuries or damages were reported at the Tebidaba oil-pumping station, which shut down production. Eighteen local workers were in the facility when the attack occurred.

    The station was still occupied Thursday evening, Eni said. The company said the Tebidaba station usually produces about 40,000 barrels a day.

    Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer and the fifth-largest U.S. supplier, has seen its typical oil production of 2.5 million barrels per day cut by a quarter this year by a series of attacks and hostage-takings by militants _ some seeking ransoms and others political influence.

    Militants say attacking the oil infrastructure is their only way to get a share of the country's oil wealth.

    Floren said Thursday's attack was not political.

    "They were looking to steal," he said ... "

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  10. "... The Cold War had the strategy of Containment. For a while Washington talked up other strategies, "Brinkmanship" and "Roll Back." The demands of history change. The Cold War was not as dominated by instant gratification as the present. The mentality of many Americans and the enormous capacity for destruction of our military can be wedded for a very effective and exciting strategic doctrine. "Bust the place up and be gone" -- that can be the slogan for the Strategy of the Bar Room Brawler. After a few beers surely Senator Kennedy will see the sense of it. ..."


    R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is the founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun

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  11. "Ahh, a few moments of habu and then, as always, reality sticks it's nose back into the tent."

    Nice shot rat.It missed however.
    Anyway I thought you eschewed the ad hominem not matter it's clever form that by implication I was somehow not working with reality..so be it, rat. We can all listen to you correct poster after poster with your famous, NO, Rufus, or NO Peter Pan. You haven't liked it since I informed you that you hadn't sent you son to Iraq, the marine Corps did. Which was of course the absolute truth, unless your the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Your not Commandant of the Marine Corps are you? Didn't think so, just the arbiter of what is credible or not at the EB.

    There are always more than a few who choose to gum an issue to death instead of taking action. So far that's what we've done with al Sadr and golly aren't the benefits enormous. Another factor in a complicated equation that need not be. Then there are the RINO's and pretend conservatives who wanted and got the big tent only to find out that big tents dilute the message.
    Oh well let's all sit back and enjoy the wit and wisdom of DR as he sheppards us toward ....what..does anybody know where this guy stands on issues beside not with the President?

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  12. Brinkmanship" and "Roll Back." The demands of history change.

    Yeah those were discussed for about five minutes. Then the "Long Telegram" arrived.
    Long Telegram"

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  13. What makes you say I do not stand with the President, habu?

    Since the way forward is up in the air, awaiting Mr Gates and his report from Iraq. I hope he determines a Way to Win.
    I wish for the Iraqi to stand on their own. That is Mr Bush's stated goal, as well.

    The idea that the US is about to level Sadr City or Ramadi or Tehran or Mecca for that matter is just that, an idea. A pleasent fantasy.
    The reality is that a Staff Sergent has been charged with multiple counts of murder.
    The murder of Iraqi civilians, the same civilians that you wish to kill by the millions.
    So there is the scene in balance.
    Habu's "total war", a fantastical idea vs the reality of the prosecution of a Marine Squad for murder and excessive use of force, killing Iraqi that did not "deserve" it, then lying about it.

    Perhaps these Marines will be found "NOT GUILTY" but the System favors prosecution of "excessive" killing, not its expanded emulation as policy.

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  14. "In my upcoming book, “I Was Wrong”, I detail the many experiences we had firsthand.

    The first type was what I call the “good guys”! If Americans have one major fault it is that they are so positive and forward looking and good that they have a hard time understanding how evil Evil really is!

    That was the lesson I learned under Saddam. Yes, he was really that evil and yes, in the 21st century there is such evil!

    The good guys, were the “aw shucks” Americans that came into Iraq and did their best to organize, fix and restore Iraq. They could not imagine that anyone would purposely try to work against what clearly the Iraqis wanted."

    Read at The Gates of Vienna" a man's story of Iraq and how wrong he was.
    Article

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  15. It is entitled "Shades of Rwanda, Only With More Factions"

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  16. WC,
    I don't listen to Pat Robertson. I like to read the histories of those who have fought wars and won them.

    There is little I advocate that isn't THE definitive path to victory. As we proved with the Marshall Plan you can rebuild civilizations AFTER you have TOTALLY subdued them. No country on earth can do both simultaneously.

    So we are left to the realization that we must conquer via military might, not negotiation, our enemies who do not possess the MAD capability. That is what we have currently in the ME..no MAD yet, but if we vassilate, greater harm will come our way than if we crush them now.

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  17. bobalharb,
    Needless to say I agree with you.

    Our Constitution is amendable and our freedoms non negotiable which is a conundrum, but we are not obligated to make a Faustian pact with Islam to avoid amending the constitution to deny an antithetical ideology from out birthing us and then applying shiara dictates to dhimmis, or worse just killing all non believers.
    And I do not think it irrational in the least that if it is not done by law then it will be done by "law breakers" in the dark of night.

    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -
    -- Thomas Jefferson

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  18. Allen recently had some very illuminating information on the JAG situation in the AF....and it was in my opinion something to be outraged about...

    But someone tell me why Sandy Burger is not doing hard time? It is that type of special treatment that unravels the compact between the citizenry and the ruling class in Washington ,DC.

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  19. The Dying Dollar
    In which we sell and lease even the roads we drive on to other countries.
    ---
    Hope some of you Econ Geniuses comments on his Debt Figure, as that strikes me as a little more frightening than I've read here.

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  20. Sandy made an honest mistake doing everything he could to present the 9-11 Commission what the Clinton/Gorelick wanted presented.
    ...as he was authorized to do.
    ---
    Ashcroft, who brought the truth, is gone, Libby spends millions defending himself.
    Wilson is at ease smoking dope.

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  21. Clintonistas continue to dominate Justice, CIA Leaks, DOD Leaks, and etc.
    New Tone,
    Just what we needed to clean up in a War after a Criminal Administration.

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  22. bobalharb,
    this may fill in some gaps on what the intelligensia have planned for us.

    Toward a North American Union

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  23. Bobalharb

    Map of the superhighway corridor

    MAP

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  24. Bobalharb,

    A great resouce for info on NAU.

    EagleForum on NAU

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  25. Rufus,
    You keep mak'n sense outa money an economics and the powers that be are gonna declare you "too smart" to live in Mississippi.
    You'll be forced to move to Arkansas.

    But by George you've sure gotta handle on a range of issues that are timely and informative..thanks

    The other day when I heard the President talk and he mentioned biofuels etc..bingo you hit my brain. Hell they may force you to move to DC..

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  26. This thread began with a presentation of what can be expected from the new Russia. Let’s call it Stalinist-ultralite. That can change.

    For those who don’t think about such things, the collapse of the CCCP didn’t cause Russia to fire its moles and close down its espionage shop. There are now Russian agents working within America’s elite institutions. Putin’s flawless execution of his “Plan” over the past few years relies in part on information coming to him from those agents. Not even Putin is good enough to bat 1000 without stimulus.

    When habu_1 referenced JAGAF, “Colonel” Murphy earlier, I shook my head in amusement. This morning before leaving for Atlanta I reviewed the blogs. Sandy Berger was the lead thread of the day. Granted, Sandy Berger is a criminal who should spend the rest of his natural life scrubbing the floors of the National Archive on his hands and knees. But, compared to the potential mischief of which “Colonel” Murphy was capable, Berger is a pimple on the rump of the Republic.

    But, partisanship is all. Therefore, we will worry ourselves to death treating a pimple, while we ignore the cancer consuming the United States. “Colonel” Murphy is a symptom of that cancer.

    Try saying JAGAF five times fast.

    Try saying JAGAFs five times fast.

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  27. Rufus,
    There were some interesting comments below that article and two good links the the Telegraph.
    Upshot:
    France is threatening to abandon the Euro, and in ten years it may well not exist.

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  28. rufus,

    TigerHawk posted about France a couple days ago. He thanked France for being the repository of much of the greatest examples of Western culture. I agree. But how do you make an entire country a theme park?

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  29. doug,

    re: abandonment of Euro

    This why the Dutch detest the EU and the Euro so thoroughly. They believe, quite rightly in my opinion, that France manipulated the introduction of the Euro to cost the Dutch about a 30% devaluation, to the sole benefit of France. Essentially, the Dutch believe there savings and treasury were rifled by the France.

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  30. Allen,
    How do you say take the money and run in French?

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  31. Doug said, "France is threatening to abandon the Euro, and in ten years it may well not exist."

    I hope they do it after Chavez and Putin and Ineedanewjob irrevokably market their oil exports for Euros.

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