New Nord Stream Theory

ULYSSES - Superyacht Walkthrough
Fraser Yachts

There is a new suspect in the Nord Stream pipeline bombing. This time the Germans have arrested a Ukrainian in Italy. They suspect that he and his buddies rented the yacht Andromeda (formerly Ulysses, video above) to sail out into the Baltic and plant bombs on the pipeline. This story on RT is skeptical as the yacht was only 15 meters long. I think they have the wrong yacht. Or maybe I do. This one is perfectly capable to carrying a crew of nefarious scuba divers and their explosives anywhere in the Baltic.

I still blame Joe Biden, even if the CIA didn't do it - he encouraged that rat Zelensky, who encouraged his rat friends to do this.

Nord Stream

Another take on the whole Nord Stream debacle:

Merkel blows a hole in Washington’s Nord Stream narrative by Rachel Marsden

I like this bit:

“The United States argued that its security interests were affected by the building of the pipeline because its ally Germany would make itself too dependent on Russia. In truth, I felt that the United States was mobilizing its formidable economic and financial resources to prevent the business ventures of other countries, even their allies,” Merkel writes.

“The United States was chiefly interested in its own economic interests, as it wanted to export to Europe LNG obtained through fracking.”

This pretty much establishes that it was by premeditated design that Washington leveraged the Russian military operation in Ukraine as a convenient pretext to turn economic competitor Germany – and the EU more generally – into a vassal. But Merkel’s successor, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and the rest of the German and European establishment, acted like Joe Biden was just coming to their rescue out of benevolence when he offered to sell them LNG to replace Russian gas – which turned out to cost several times the price, to the ongoing detriment of German and European industry and citizenry.

While Trump and Biden are both promoting America, Biden is acting like a gangster and exploiting anyone he can get his claws in, while Trump promotes good business. 

Validated

Homesman Tommy Lee Jones final dance scene
Nicolas Närgrath
Zerohedge reports:

Nord Stream Sabotage Was CIA, US Navy Covert Op: Seymour Hersh Bombshell Prompts White House Response - Tyler Durden

If case you haven't heard FORMER New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh 

"has concluded the United States blew up the Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipeline as part of a covert operation under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise."

If he wasn't a former reporter before now, he definitely is one now.

I claimed the same thing five months ago. Nice to have someone confirm my feelings, even if Seymour has been cast out from Biden's mafia.

P. S. Hersh's story on Substack. 

Don't know who Hersh is? I didn't. He's been a gadfly since I was knee high to the proverbial grasshopper.

The Infrastructure War

Map of western portion of Nord Stream Pipeline

A week or so ago, somebody blew up the undersea pipeline that used to supply Germany with natural gas from Russia until Russia turned off the taps. So the pipeline wasn't actually piping anything at the time. Germany apparently thinks thinking positive thoughts are going to keep them warm this winter. Meanwhile, Germans are busy cutting down all the trees, digging up all the coal and burning all their trash to keep warm. And it's only October.

Satellite Image of Crimea Bridge

A couple of days some troglodyte set off a bomb on the Crimea Bridge causing some damage and some disruption to traffic. Also killed three people who were unlucky enough to be passing the truck when it blew up. No mention of the truck driver.

Ukraine War Hot Spots

Top to bottom: Dnipro Hydroelectric Power Plant, Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, Mariupol, Crimea Bridge, Sevastopol Naval Base

Yesterday, Russia attacked Zaporizhzhia with a bunch of missiles. Ukraine, naturally, complained that the missiles landed in a residential part of town and killed a dozen people. Thought that was a little odd. Why are they attacking this town which doesn't seem to be involved in the latest fighting? So I look and here's what I find.

Dnipro Hydroelectric Station

A giant freaking dam and power plant. The dam was built in the 1920's. Look what happened to it when the Nazi's tried to cross the Dniper river in 1942.

The dam at Zaporizhzhya after being blown up by Stalin's secret police in 1941. 

The Russian's blew it up. I suspect the Russian's were trying to repeat this event with their missiles. It might impact the water supply to Crimea which would be bad for Russia. Or maybe they were really trying to blow up apartment buildings and weren't trying to hit the dam.

Who's in charge?

Blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline was an act of war. As long as we can plausibly deny having blown it up, we may forestall a reprisal. Besides not knowing who did it, I also wonder who this blast was aimed at. You might say it was aimed at the Russians and was designed to cut off the supply of money that Germany was paying for the natural gas being pumped through this pipeline. But the Russia shut off the supply of gas to these pipelines some time ago, so there's no gas flowing west and likewise no money going east. Now it will make a difference in the future if Russia and Germany ever normalize relations again, but without the pipeline Germany has less reason to do this. Right now it's a hammer blow against Germany and the European Union.

We may not have any proof of who blew it up, but the most belligerent and capable actor is the USA. The standard method of criminal investigation is to identify who had the means, the motive and the opportunity, and all three of those point to the USA. 

All of which makes me wonder who is in charge here. There's been a lot of blather in the blog-o-sphere that President Joe Biden mental faculties are in serious decline. Some of the stories are rather persuasive. If those stories are true, then someone else must be running the show. Who would that be? The White House chief of staff, Ron Klain? He's leaving after the elections next month. The Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin? He denies that we blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. Or do we have a rogue faction operating under cover? The same rogue faction that panicked Pelosi into calling out the National Guard back in early 2021 (and I don't mean Trump and the 'insurrectionists')?

Or maybe Biden hasn't lost his marbles, he just doesn't care what the press or the public thinks anymore. After all he's the Imperial President of the Empire of America, nobody can touch him.

State Terror

I still don't understand why we blew up the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. Tom Luongo took a stab at it now Adam Piagott is giving us his take.

The attack on the Nord Stream pipelines is comparable to blowing up Bonneville dam or destroying an electrical power plant. So far no terrorist organization has stepped forward to claim responsibility, but then this isn't a typical terrorist attack. There were no immediate casualties, no bloody bodies being shown on the nightly news, nothing visceral that would project fear into the general population. 

But it was a terrorist act none-the-less. We aren't going to see the impact of this immediately, but fossil fuel and electrical power prices in Europe are already skyrocketing. Politicians are making mealy mouthed proclamations about how they are going to get more fuel from other places, but all that blather is just so much noise. It's like somebody blew up the only gas station in the town where you live and friendly Joe Biden has offered to send you a gallon of gas by bicycle courier from the next county over. Thanks a lot Joe, that's really going to help.

I expect Europe is going to suffer mightily and I fully expect more war. Can't say where, but there's going to be more of it.

Who are these guys?

"Who Are Those Guys?" - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Aaron B

These / those, whatever. I came up with the title which reminded me of this scene. The outlaws have the advantage of being able to see their enemy, so 'those' is appropriate. You can point to 'those' guys. These guys are a little more nebulous. I doubt you ever see them on the news. All we've got is some speculation that kind of narrows it down to some very large number.

In case you haven't heard somebody blew up the Nord Stream pipelines that transport Natural Gas from Russia to Germany thereby ensuring that Europe is not going to be getting any Natural Gas from Russia even if Russia turned on the taps. I think Europe can still get Russian gas from the pipeline across the Ukraine, but with the war going on I wouldn't count on it.

What I can't figure out is why anyone would do that. I suppose a couple of deranged fanatics in a fishing boat and a couple of boxes of dynamite could have done it, but it looks more like a state actor to me. CIA, I'm lookin' at you. Why do you want to destroy Europe? Was a Parisian waiter rude to you the last time you were there? Are you afraid the European Union is going to start throwing their weight around? Or maybe you despise everything about EU Socialism. Well, whatever your reason this is probably going to do it.

I suspect an American cartel is behind this. They look at the world and try to figure out ways they can gain more control of it. Why? Probably because they think they can run it better than anyone else. I mean, they already have more money than god. I think we have to move beyond that. Destroying Europe is going to destroy a great deal of wealth. Are our cartel members jealous of their position of power and anyone who threatens it must be destroyed?

Biden is probably part of it. He may have even originated the plan back before his brain turned to mush. The plan was probably begun around ten years ago when they started subverting Ukraine. Was destroying Europe part of that plan? Who knows, but they certainly took advantage of it when the opportunity presented itself.

Or maybe I'm all wet and it's all Russians all the time. The advantage of blaming the Russians is everyone knows the Russians are inscrutable, so they probably had double secret Russian reasons for blowing up the pipeline, reasons we could not comprehend even if we knew what they were.

Links

Read some good stuff on the web this morning.

The last days of Jeremy Corbyn is about left wing of politics in the UK. The link goes to Unherd which places a limit on free articles.

‘Amsterdam’ Review: Three Amigos Try to Save America in David O. Russell’s Ungainly Period Dramedy. The movie is about social unrest in America in the 1930's and the Business Plot.

14 Things We Know About The Mysterious “Explosions” That Severely Damaged The Nord Stream 1 And Nord Stream 2 Pipelines - I suspect the we (the USA) did it, though I can't comprehend why. I mean we have a knucklehead running the country, but surely there are people with brains in the White House. They can't all be incompetent psychopaths, can they?

Links

Hard to believe, I know, but stupid government energy policies are getting even stupider:

• Power Company Seizes Control of Thermostats in Colorado During Heatwave
• Filling Gasoline Cars Could Become Cheaper Than Charging EVs In The UK
• G7 unveils plan to enforce Russian oil price cap
• Nord Stream gas supply to EU stopped indefinitely – Russia's Gazprom

Meanwhile, Washington continues its descent into madness:

• Biden's hateful rhetoric against Americans presents the GOP with a sterling opportunity
• Washington refuses to grant visa to Russia’s interior minister to attend a UN summit

On the plus side, Greenpeace continues to tilt at windmills:

• Greenpeace drops boulders in UK sea against ‘destructive’ fishing

Conversion Calculations

Simple Conversion

I'm reading somebody's theory about how natural gas figures into the power struggles going on between Europe, the USA, Russia and Ukraine, and I come across this line:

The total US LNG output according to the EIA for 2022 is 11.5 bcf per day, which is 115 bcm per year, or roughly the capacities of Nord Stream 1 and 2 combined. 

I take bcf to mean billions of cubic feet and bcm to mean billions of cubic meters and I notice that  the number give for bcm per year is ten times the amount given for bcf per day, which makes me wonder if this could be right? So I haul out my trusty spreadsheet and check, and lo and behold it does. 

Of course a little mental arithmetic could assure you that the numbers are at least in the same ball park. A cubic yard holds 27 cubic feet and cubic meter is a little bigger than a cubic yard. Ten times 27 is 270 which is roughly the same size as 365, so yeah, it could be, but it still seems to be too much of a coincidence so I had to check.

Ukraine

Russian military engineers install a pontoon bridge over the Oka River

This photo is from a Russian military exercise on the Oka River. The closest it comes to Ukraine is about 200 miles when it goes through Volgograd on the way south to the Caspian sea. It looks cold. The photo accompanied a Defense Blog post about a similar bridge being setup on the the Pripyat river in Belarus. That river runs by the Chernobyl disaster zone which is only about 70 miles north of Kiev. Belarus and Russia are allies, so if you were a paranoid conspiracy theorist (or even just an amateur war gamer) you might take this as evidence that the Russians are indeed preparing to invade Ukraine.

For a while I was taking Putin at his word that he had no intention of invading Ukraine, but then I heard from California Bob who studied Russian in college and worked in Eastern Europe for a year or two. He says Russians are liars. Duh (smacks forhead). Of course they are. The ones we are hearing from are politicians and diplomats and you know the old saw about how to tell if a politician is lying? His lips are moving. Why should we expect eastern politicians to be any different than western ones? Of course he is lying.

This morning it finally struck me why Russia would want to invade Ukraine. Up till now it made no sense to me. Why would he want to start a war over this place? But now I realize that it is the continuous provocation by the USA that has prompted this response. They asked us to leave the Ukraine alone, but we keep pushing to align Ukraine with the west. You keep poking the bear and eventually the bear is going to come out of his cave swinging his big bear paws.

I don't quite understand why we (the USA) are pushing NATO on Ukraine, other that we want to pick a fight with Russia. It's kind of weird. Maybe somebody is thinking long-term strategic planning for world domination, but then I read other reports that say Russia is on the ropes with a falling population and GDP. I suspect there are some people who just can't bear the thought of having a competitor. Kind of reminds me of the mean old son-of-a-bitch from There Will Be Blood - "I have a competition in me. I want no-one else to succeed." It's not enough to just beat them, you have to stomp them into the ground.

Major Russian Gas Pipelines to Europe

Then there's the whole natural gas pipeline thing. Ukraine is getting roughly $3 billion in tariffs on the natural gas being piped from Russia, across Ukraine to Europe. Rumor has it that the younger Biden had something to do with that and that's why Ukraine paid him so much money. This is just nit compared to the $200 billion* that Europe pays for Russian natural gas. 

Ukraine, Chernobyl (red marker) and Volgograd (far right)
Black line shows 820 mile east-west distance across Ukraine
Click to embigenate

Russia built a new pipeline, Nord Stream 2, to supply western Europe with natural gas. The pipeline is complete but has not been 'certified', which, near as I can tell, is political doublespeak for Biden doesn't want his commissions from Ukraine impacted. Okay, the slightly better reason is that Ukraine depends on that gas tariff revenue and any reduction is going to have a negative effect on their economy which could lead to political instability. Maybe they ought to figure out how to do something useful besides sucking up Champagne, caviar and cocaine. Meanwhile winters in Europe are cold and natural gas prices are soaring, which, I dunno, might lead to political instability in western Europe. Nord Stream 2 might alleviate that, but hey, let's poke the bear with another stick. Maybe we can get him to come out of his cave and take a swipe at us. Frigging morons.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has squashed an Israeli proposal to build a natural gas pipeline across the Mediterranean Sea to supply Europe with natural gas. There is an existing natural gas pipeline from the Middle East to Europe that goes through Turkey. The proposed pipeline would probably have a negative impact on the tariffs Turkey is collecting. 

If Ukraine and Turkey could put their people to work in productive employment maybe they wouldn't be so desperate for these tariff revenues. But that's not how politicians work, especially pack animals. All they are looking for is a way to squeeze more money out of the masses. If the masses get squashed, well who cares? They were just peasants anyway.

If this goes the way it looks like it is going, Ukraine is liable to become another Syria. Won't that be just wonderful.

* that's my best guess. I did some calculations, but putting them into a coherent format would take time and I have other things I need to do. That's also why there is a shortage of links in the last half of this post.

Update January 2024 add distance caption to last map.

Russian Yamal-LNG project on the Arctic Ocean

This Cost $27 Billion Dollars to Build

I am really enjoying hearing how the US wants to employ economic sanctions against Russia, and how we are pressuring Germany to not certify the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, all supposedly to protect Ukraine, a probable hub of corruption and villainy. Or maybe we're just doing that to keep the zillion dollar commissions flowing into the Biden's pockets. Whatever. Europe gets 40% of their energy from natural gas from Russia. What do you think will happen to natural gas prices if Russia starts feeling squeezed? You will notice that Total, the French oil company, is a big investor in this project.

Qatar has a big LNG facility. It's quite a bit warmer there, so it is not as efficient at liquifying the gas as the Russian plant, but they don't have to contend with ice and transport would be shorter, so it might be a wash as to which plant is more efficient.

Aker Arctic, the company that designed the ice-breaking LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) carriers, has appeared here before. Note that while the Finnish company designed these ships, they are being built in China.

LNG carrier cargo tank cross section

The membrane in 'membrane tanks' is a thin sheet of fancy steel. One mm (millimeter) thick steel is pretty stout stuff for any everyday kind of application. The steel used to make automobile bodies is only 0.7 mm (1/32 of an inch). Ship's hulls are more like 3/4 of an inch (19 mm), so I can see how shipbuilders would consider something only 1 mm thick as a 'membrane'.

I guess the part that really bugs me about this project is that is makes us, the US, look like a bunch of gibbering fools in comparison. Putin might be a murderous thug, but I suspect he is not worse than any other powerful man and might be quite a bit better. Or maybe his PR (Public Relations) office just does a better job. I look at the crap our government continues to pull on a daily basis and I'm not sure we have any room to talk. All of which reminds me of this scene from The Godfather:

The Godfather (6/9) Movie CLIP - Working for My Father (1972) HD

Everyone in a position of power is a murderous thug. The only difference is whether they are murdering your friends or your enemies.

Kazakhstan

Mayor's office on fire in Almaty, Kazakhstan - Valery Sharifulin/TASS

You may have heard about the riots in Kazakhstan and how they were promptly squashed. You may have thought, like I did, that it was entirely an internal matter. The price of fuel shot up when the president stopped subsidizing it. That might trigger a protest that could turn into a riot. But now we have a story from Pepe Escobar telling us that the unrest was fomented by outside forces, namely the Brits and Turkey. If the Brits are involved can the CIA be far behind? What baffles me is what they hope to achieve. I suppose they could be trying to gain some temporary advantage in the petroleum marketplace that would allow them to make a couple extra zillion dollars. That seems foolish since there seems to be an insatiable demand for fuel. Given the CIA's history of shit stirring all over the world, I wouldn't be surprised to find out they were involved. And I wouldn't be surprised if Biden didn't know anything about it. Then again I wouldn't be surprised to find that he engineered the whole thing. I mean the whole US opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is to make sure that transit fees keep being paid to Ukraine. Wretched vultures.

Kazakhstan has appeared here before, mostly because of the spaceship launch facility in Baikonur.

Via ZeroHedge

Failing Conventionally

Chaos outside Kabul Airport as crowds of people try to leave Afghanistan
POLITICO

I'm skimming the news this morning and all I am seeing is the cluster-fuck in Afghanistan and the usual hash about COVID. The mess in Afghanistan makes me wonder if anyone had considered what would happen when the US pulled out, or whether whoever was in charge thought it was obvious what would happen and that anyone with a brain would have packed their bags and gotten out a long time ago. I mean WTF? Anyway, stupidity as usual, nothing of much interest.

Major Russian Gas Pipelines to Europe
Novy Urengoy is the dot in the upper right hand corner.

There was a story about how the flow of natural gas from Russia to Germany has dropped by half. This is through the existing pipeline that goes through the Ukraine, not the new Nord Stream pipeline that goes under the Baltic. I'm not sure that one is operational yet. The story was some kind of attempt to cast it as a political move. 

Firefighters spead water on a fire at a Gazprom gas condensate plant near the city of Novy Urengoy in Western Siberia, Russia, Aug. 6, 2021. (Photo by Russian Emergency Ministry via AFP)

However, there was a big fire at a processing plant in Russia recently. You don't suppose that could have anything to do with it, do you? Freaking morons dragging politics into the real world. Leave politics in the imaginary world where it belongs.

Anyway, I did find this bit. It reiterates things we already know, but it's nice to hear a voice of reason amidst all the flak.

Failing Conventionally by Michael Every of Rabobank

85 years ago, the economist Keynes noted cynically in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money that:

“It is the long-term investor, he who most promotes the public interest, who will in practice come in for most criticism, wherever investment funds are managed by committees or boards or banks. For it is in the essence of his behaviour that he should be eccentric, unconventional and rash in the eyes of average opinion. If he is successful, that will only confirm the general belief in his rashness; and if in the short run he is unsuccessful, which is very likely, he will not receive much mercy. Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”

In other words, it’s better not to deviate from the market consensus or benchmark, even if that consensus or benchmark is wrong, because even if everything then goes wrong, at least you can say that *you* were not to blame individually - “the market” was.

85 years later, with advances in technology, society, and political geography few would have believed possible, what has changed in that investment mentality? In an age that champions diversity, do we have any greater freedom to take strong off-benchmark/consensus views, or do we still herd towards them regardless of knowing that a series of exculpatory individual “Whocouldanooed?”s after a crash does not compensate for the damage done by everyone being collectively wrong?

He goes on at some length after this, but it's all about current events affecting the markets, and I just don't want to know.

Nord Stream 2

Nord Stream 2 pipelay vessel near the German island of Rügen. Photo: Axel Schmidt/NordStream2

Nord Stream 2 is a pipeline for transporting natural gas from Russia to Germany. It's been under construction for a while. The US is opposed to it for some reason. I read a story the other day that said this pipeline was the reason the US was pushing Ukraine to confront Russia. Note US warships in the Black Sea. RT has a story that explains what is going on. Yes, I know, RT used to be Russia Today and is almost certainly Putin's mouthpiece, but they seem to be fairly balanced unlike the stories that come from US press, which seem to be stuffed with inflammatory hyperbole.