Many thanks to Petri Krohn for the material.
HOW
BIDEN'S SON
HUNTER ALMOST STARTED
WORLD WAR 3
From
Petri Krohn (Finland), via Facebook)
For
the last 75 years Eastern Europe and much of Western Europe has
relied on a constant flow of cheap hydrocarbon fuel from Russia.
Russia has made huge efforts to guarantee the reliability of this
supply. For most of the time Eastern Europe received this energy
practically for free. In Western Europe reliable Russian natural gas
supplies have enabled the phasing out of high-CO2 coal and even of
nuclear energy. In Ukraine and the rest of the Soviet Union gas
replaced firewood. This enabled urbanization and turning most land
over to agriculture.
The
United States has done everything possible to try to disrupt or stop
this energy flow. In the early 1980s sanctions were imposed on West
European companies involved in the construction of the Trans-Siberian
Pipeline that now passes through Ukraine. Recent achievements include
blocking SouthStream and delaying NordStream2. Modern propaganda
speaks of "European energy dependence on Russia" and
"Gazprom’s gas monopoly". The alternative demanded by the
US: build enormously expensive LNG terminals and import bottled LNG
from USA. This American surplus gas would be produced by fracking.
The
main geopolitical aim of the Maidan coup was to disrupt the gas flow
on the trans-Ukrainian pipelines. Simply blowing up the pipelines was
not possible, as Ukraine was dependent on Russian gas imports. By
making Ukraine self-sufficient on energy, even temporarily, would
enable the US to dismantle the gas pipelines. The solution to fast
but unstable gas supplies is fracking. Fracked oil and gas wells
produce most of their output in the first year and quickly run out,
but leave permanent damage to the environment.
Burisma
was the gas company chosen for the implementation of the fracking
plan. Biden's son Hunter was placed on the board, not as a form of
bribery but because of the importance of this geopolitical project.
The largest gas reserves in Ukraine for fracking are in the east, in
the fully Russian parts of the Ukraine. A central point of the
fracking operation was to be Slavyansk on the former Donetsk Oblast.
Fear
of fracking played a major part in the opposition to the Maidan coup
in Kiev. The armed uprising against the new rulers started in
Slavyansk on April 8, 2014. By May 2014 the Donetsk People's Republic
had been established in a referendum.
Quotes
from three articles:
A
visitor to the Donbass in February or March wouldn’t have heard
fear of war but fear of fracking, with residents fearful their land
would be destroyed.
“If
you asked me last month, I would tell you right away that gas was the
real reason for our hate for Kiev and for this war,’’ said Ivan
Vailyevich, a pensioner from the building on Bulvarnaya Avenue when
recalled how he participated in mass street protests in February and
March.
“We’d
kill and die but never allow production of shale gas here,” he
said. “That would poison our land.” Now he doesn’t know what to
say. “After our house was bombed this month, we realized that shale
gas was not as scary as shells.”
Oksana,
a young shop assistant selling swimsuits at a department store on a
corner of Lenin Avenue, said that she and her family became scared of
“foreigners coming” to drill for shale gas in Slovyansk after
then-President Viktor Yanukovych signed an agreement with Royal Dutch
Shell in January 2013.
***
According
to Russia’s TASS, the residents of Slavyansk, which is the centre
of the Yuzivska deposit, organised several protests against
development of the deposit. They even planned to have a referendum on
the issue.
Another
TASS report even allegedly cited Pavel Gubarev, the self-proclaimed
leader of pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, admitting in an
interview with Russian television Rossiya 24 on 19 May that one of
the key reasons for the fighting is Kyiv’s push to “continue
development of shale gas on the territory of Ukraine”.
It
is hard to miss the massive American interest in Europe’s desire to
cut dependency of Russia and simultaneously Ukraine’s promising
shale gas prospects. Besides the obvious profit-oriented business
interests of American companies in tapping the shale gas of Ukraine,
as usually, politics and strategic foreign political interests are
also at play in the war for Ukraine’s new gas potential.
In
fact, the Biden family was so interested in Ukraine, that his son
Hunter was appointed to the board of directors of Ukraine’s largest
private gas producer, Burisma Holdings. This has put Ukraine’s
shale gas question into a new perspective – at least from the
American viewpoint.
Burisma
holds licenses covering the Dnieper-Donets basin in the eastern
Ukraine and Biden Jr. is not the only American with political ties to
have recently joined the company’s board. Devon Archer, a former
senior advisor to current Secretary of State John Kerry’s 2004
presidential campaign and a college roommate of Kerry’s stepson,
signed up with Burisma in April 2014.
***
Following
the Crimea crisis, the Obama administration has also been pressing
Eastern European countries to fast-track their fracking initiatives
so as to be less dependent on Russia. During an April visit to
Ukraine, which has granted concessions to Chevron and Royal Dutch
Shell, Vice President Joe Biden announced that the United States
would bring in technical experts to speed up its shale gas
development. “We stand ready to assist you,” promised Biden,
whose son Hunter has since joined the board of a Ukrainian energy
company.
“Imagine where you’d be today if you were able to tell
Russia: ‘Keep your gas.’ It would be a very different world.”
Before
the fear of war, fear
of fracking in Ukraine
People
in the embattled Donbass know the shale beneath their feet could be
the real reason for conflict in their towns
Anna
Nemtsova
In a small village in the Donbass, Alexander, a former soldier, and Tatiana say they can’t afford gas, even though a gas line runs right by their home. Stanley Greene / Noor
10
August, 2014
SLOVYANSK,
Ukraine — A hot July day, and the neighbors and children of a
half-ruined five-story building on Bulvarnaya Avenue gathered around
a bench for a long discussion of their daily fears.
Locals
seemed to have consensus on who’s at war: the U.S. and Russia over
control of Ukraine, they all agreed. But even now, three months past
the day the first shell fell on Slovyansk, they still had trouble
comprehending why their green, sleepy hometown still was trapped in
this conflict.
Residents
of the bombed building remembered how in April, local and
Russian-
The
people of the Donbass, the country’s gritty industrial region in
the east, were not naive. They realized that gas pipelines crossing
the border with Russia and the shale gas fields near Slovyansk —
with a potential reserve of about 3 trillion cubic meters of gas —
were the cause of constant tension between Russia and Ukraine.
But
with pipes in their backyards or running right next to their homes,
with their feet firmly on ground that stands over a vast shale
deposit, they knew the struggle was not really over Ukraine itself.
They were in the middle of a war about energy.
Depending
on the political winds blowing between Kiev and Moscow, the Russian
gas giant Gazprom cut off natural gas to Ukraine or turned it on
again. The shale gas is an important potential source for Ukraine and
possibly southeastern Europe. If it proves possible to tap, Ukraine
hopes this supply would undercut Gazprom’s monopoly, a move that
could change Europe’s energy map and its political contours as
well.
That’s
how, in this region, shale gas became a political and nationalistic
issue as well as an economic one. A visitor to the Donbass in
February or March wouldn’t have heard fear of war but fear of
fracking, with residents fearful their land would be destroyed.
Something
worse than fracking
Some
experts speculate that Gazprom could have fanned those fears.
“Since
recently, Gazprom bosses have been worried about shale gas production
in Europe and financed propaganda campaigns against the evil of shale
gas,” said Mikhail Krutikhin, a senior energy expert at RusEnergy,
a Moscow-based consulting firm.
The
campaign was effective.
In
Slovyansk workers dismantle what’s left of a building destroyed in
the conflict between Kiev forces and pro-Moscow separatists. Genya
Savilov / AFP / Getty Images
But
after Flight MH17 fell from the sky packed with innocent passengers
from around the world, the fear of something bigger than a local
Russian-Ukrainian conflict gripped many hearts.
“If
you asked me last month, I would tell you right away that gas was the
real reason for our hate for Kiev and for this war,’’ said Ivan
Vailyevich, a pensioner from the building on Bulvarnaya Avenue when
recalled how he participated in mass street protests in February and
March.
“We’d
kill and die but never allow production of shale gas here,” he
said. “That would poison our land.” Now he doesn’t know what to
say. “After our house was bombed this month, we realized that shale
gas was not as scary as shells.”
Oksana,
a young shop assistant selling swimsuits at a department store on a
corner of Lenin Avenue, said that she and her family became scared of
“foreigners coming” to drill for shale gas in Slovyansk after
then-President Viktor Yanukovych signed an agreement with Royal Dutch
Shell in January 2013.
Kiev’s
plan was to set up a joint venture with Shell and drill for shale gas
around Slovyansk to eventually produce 8 billion to 11 billion cubic
meters of gas yearly — nearly 20 percent of what Ukrainian
consumers need. (Later that year, a similar $10 billion deal was
reached with Chevron for exploration in western Ukraine.)
For
activists of the self-proclaimed Donestk People’s Republic, any
potential Western presence in the Donbass could be used to spark
anger, such as when Hunter Biden, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s
son, joined the board of Ukraine’s largest private gas company.
Videos
of the “natural catastrophe” caused by shale production in
Pennsylvania gave birth to increasing concerns among the Internet
users in the Donbass. In one of the most popular horror videos, an
Italian politician, Giulietto Chiesa, predicted that Shell and
Chevron shale drilling would eventually cause the expulsion of
Slovyansk’s population of about 116,000. The rumor was passed
along, increasing people’s anger with Kiev.
On
top of the “fascist junta” and the “Russia haters” in Kiev,
people in the Donbass now dreaded the contracts signed with Shell and
Chevron for producing shale gas. At the time, they appeared to be one
of the best shale bets in Europe.
Gas
paranoia?
Even
after Yanukovych was ousted and the new government promised to
revisit all his business deals, many people in the Donbass believed
the shale exploration would go ahead. The same people also believed
that Europe didn’t care about potentially destructive shale
production in Ukraine or whether the people in a region so opposed to
Kiev would have water that stinks or gas bursting out their taps.
Denis
Pushilin, a onetime leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, in
Donetsk, June 7, 2014. He vowed never to allow fracking in the
Donbass.Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
On
June 20, Denis Pushilin, then an official in the Donestk People’s
Republic, declared that the “USA unfolded significant activity”
in Slovyansk to make money on shale gas and promised that under his
authority, nobody would ever allow “dangerous for the ecology”
shale gas development in the Donbass.
With
the republic often changing its leaders and agendas, Pushilin soon
vanished, and anti-shale-gas demonstrations stopped.
“Gas
paranoia stopped as soon as Pushilin left the Donetsk People’s
Republic. It must have been a well-organized campaign that
manipulated with people’s minds,” a Donetsk entrepreneur and
civil society organizer, Enrike Menendes, said in an interview about
the causes of the war and the future of eastern Ukraine.
Gas
pipes, locals believed, were a reason behind the daily fighting over
Amvrosyevka, since a Gazprom main line from Siberia to Europe that
runs right outside the home of the Ivanovs, 16 kilometers from the
border with Russia, passes around the corner from a Ukrainian
checkpoint that is attacked by rebels continually.
The
Ivanovs were torn by fear and ideologies. The father, Igor, is
Russian but sympathized with the Maidan revolution. The mother,
Tatyana, is Ukrainian and loved Putin. She felt especially proud of
Russia on Victory Day, May 9.
The
war caught them in the middle of the strawberry harvest and a
redecoration project at their daughter Yulia’s house. By the
beginning of July, constant fighting pushed the family to move to the
basement.
“We
don’t support anybody. All we want is to stay alive. Please make
the world understand that,” Igor said.
Back
on the avenue
Shale
gas stopped being the talk of Slovyansk, but the fear of war did not.
Even after Ukrainian military forces pushed rebels and their
commander, a former senior officer of the Russian Federal Security
Service, Igor Strelkov, out of Slovyansk in July, many people
continued to talk of Kiev officials’ going after everybody involved
with the separatists.
“They
could easily deport the population of Slovyansk, poison the drinking
water and our natural resorts on the lakes. We’ll fight for as long
as we live to free our Slovyansk of Ukrainian occupants,” Denis
Shpakovsky promised in an interview in Donetsk earlier this month.
After
retreating from Slovyansk, Shpakovsky, 31, served in Strelkov’s
security force at a prison in Donetsk. On the day Ukrainian troops
moved on Slovyansk, he had to evacuate eight members of his family,
including his 10-year-old daughter, Dasha, to the Russian city of
Rostov.
Even
several days after losing Slovyansk to “enemies, Americans and
Ukrainians” he had tears in his eyes as he described how his family
lived in the basement of his garage, hiding from shelling.
Almost
every resident of the Donbass now has a war story to tell. On
Bulvarnaya Avenue, it was almost dark. The noise of a heavy military
airplane made everybody in the yard pause and look up at the sky. A
round-faced woman, Anna, said she was still afraid of the war. She
wondered how soon Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama could agree to make
peace. Neighbors questioned whether they should fix the broken glass
in their windows or wait, in case more bombs and shells fall on their
town.
https://theduran.com/hunter-bidens-oil-fracking-dream-not-looking-good-chevron-pulls-ukraine-energy-project/
https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2016/02/27/fracking-slavyansk-and-war/?fbclid=IwAR2Uz7KI-Tjg9QOP4ObowgJsyh9ycjew3MEFZUsvCdOqYKSNH_EHfva1IqA
One
icy morning in February 2012, Hillary Clinton’s plane touched down
in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, which was just digging out from a
fierce blizzard. Wrapped in a thick coat, the secretary of state
descended the stairs to the snow-covered tarmac, where she and her
aides piled into a motorcade bound for the presidential palace. That
afternoon, they huddled with Bulgarian leaders, including Prime
Minister Boyko Borissov, discussing everything from Syria’s bloody
civil war to their joint search for loose nukes. But the focus of the
talks was fracking. The previous year, Bulgaria had signed a
five-year, $68 million deal, granting US oil giant Chevron millions
of acres in shale gas concessions. Bulgarians were outraged. Shortly
before Clinton arrived, tens of thousands of protesters poured into
the streets carrying placards that read “Stop fracking with our
water” and “Chevron go home.” Bulgaria’s parliament responded
by voting overwhelmingly for a fracking moratorium…..
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/hillary-clinton-fracking-shale-state-department-chevron/?fbclid=IwAR18_-5jXTabsoOn1YXns6OamG3ZQdv8P1F8awy8w3QJOIiRYvILpa9sWVs
Impeachment
Inquiry a Shield to Protect US Intelligence Agencies?
On
today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou
are joined by Daniel Lazare, a journalist and author of three books--
“The Frozen Republic,” “The Velvet Coup,” and “America's
Undeclared War.”
Listen to podcast HERE
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