TEHRAN – Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki may have captured all the headlines when he announced that Iran would not use the oil weapon in the event it was slapped with sanctions by the UN Security Council. But in the world of Pipelineistan, the nuclear row waged by the US, the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany), the United Nations and Iran is just a detail.

The heart of Pipelineistan itself has been transposed to Tehran for the International Conference on Energy and Security: Asian
Vision, organized by the Institute of International Energy Studies and the Institute for Political and International Studies. There could not be a better place to meet and discuss oil-and-gas geopolitics with an array of scholars and executives from Iran, China, Pakistan, India, Russia, Egypt, Indonesia, Georgia, Venezuela and Germany.

And their overall message is unmistakable: the interdependence of Asia and “Persian Gulf geo-ecopolitics”, as an Iranian analyst put it, is now total; the nuclear row should be solved diplomatically in the next few months; and Asian integration has everything to gain from Pipelineistan linking the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, South Asia and China.

It’s a gas, gas, gas
The heart of Iran’s gas strategy lies in the gigantic South Pars field, responsible in itself for 50% of Iran’s and 8% of the world’s natural-gas reserves. South Pars is strategically located between Bushehr to the west (where Russia is helping Iran to build its first civilian nuclear power station) and the Persian Gulf port of Bandar Abbas to the east.
atimes.com

TEHRAN (AFP) – Talks between India, Iran and Pakistan on building a new gas pipeline to Southeast Asia ended without any agreement and a new round of negotiations scheduled for late April.

“Iran made a proposal on the price (of gas) that we must examine,” India’s Petroleum Secretary M.S. Srinivasan told reporters in televised remarks on Thursday.

Iran’s state news agency confirmed Tehran had proposed a price for gas, but India and Pakistan said they needed time for consultations.

The next round of talks are scheduled for Islamabad on April 30, state television reported.

The sides had hoped to settle on the framework for the project that would see Iranian gas travel by pipeline through Pakistan to India. They have yet to sign a memorandum to set the long- stalled project in motion.
news.yahoo.com

ALMATY, Kazakhstan — China, which for more than a century turned its back on Central Asia, has reached out to Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s biggest country, for one major reason: oil.

In 2005, the China National Petroleum Corporation bought Petrokazakhstan, a Canadian-run company that was the former Soviet Union’s largest independent oil company, for $4.18 billion and spent another $700 million on a pipeline that will take the oil to the Chinese border.

Petrokazakhstan was the largest foreign purchase ever by a Chinese company, in this case a state-owned one. Chinese oil producers were already operating four smaller oil fields in Kazakhstan.

“China is being increasingly dependent on Middle East oil and it wants a supply that would be blockade-proof in case of a conflict over Taiwan,” said Thierry Kellner, a specialist in China’s relations with Central Asia at the Free University of Brussels.

But the Chinese are paying a high price.

Shortly after the sale, Kazakhstan forced the Chinese company to resell a third of its new acquisition to KazMunaiGaz, the state oil company and industry regulator — and be paid in future revenue. A spokesman for KazMunaiGaz, Mikhail Dorofeyev, has said the deal is expected to be completed by the end of March.

Kazakhstan authorities are also believed to be easing the way for Lukoil of Russia to acquire the other half of Turgai Petroleum, which it now jointly owns with Petrokazakhstan. In addition, a local court recently awarded Lukoil a $200 million judgment against Petrokazakhstan in a dispute over how to share the oil in a common deposit. Both developments are unmistakable signals that Chinese ownership is no guarantee of a smooth ride.
nytimes.com

With a population of more than 20 million people, and dwindling water supplies, the Mexican capital is a stark example of the severe water supply issues facing many of the world’s rapidly developing mega-cities.

The parched ground crunches beneath your feet as you walk through the Texcoco area on the outskirts of the city. The bleached, cracked terrain stretches out in all directions. Nothing can grow here.

It is very difficult to imagine that, just 70 years ago, this area was filled with water. This was one of five lakes that used to enrich the Mexico City valley.

Today, in a prime example of what more than a century of water mismanagement can do, they have all but disappeared.

Population growth, the over-exploitation of subterranean aquifers, and a failure to recycle limited water supplies have turned a once-fertile region into a barren desert.

Many of Mexico City’s inhabitants get by on just one hour of running water per week.

And, most people consider the city’s tap water to be undrinkable – though water officials say it is now safe to drink – so Mexico has become the second-highest consumer of bottled drinking water in the world.
bbc.co.uk

The world’s water hotspots

Today our government celebrates its first month, the first 30 days of the democratic and cultural revolution that we are heading, with the overwhelming popular mandate of December 18, 2005, when Bolivians from the countryside and cities decided to turn the page on a history full of injustice and discrimination.

We have named a cabinet that is representative of the social movements, business owners, the middle classes, indigenous peoples, intellectuals and women. We are dealing with a cabinet never before seen in Bolivian history that tries to fully express a multicultural, dignified, sovereign Bolivia. I want to say, with a lot of pride, that this is the first cabinet formed as a result of an autonomous decision, without pressure from international bodies.

We have named a military high command that is a break with the past of the subordination of our armed forces to external interests. Instead, it privileges professionalism, discipline and the respect of our sovereignty as a country. We need to recuperate our sovereignty in the heart of the state, in the security bodies, in the military institutions and in the policing bodies.

For some it has been novel that this president begins work at 5am — like the majority of Bolivian workers and campesinos [peasants] — and that he has renounced 57% of his wage. However this measure has been a marker defining the spirit of our government: I am president, not to win more money, but to work more for the homeland. With this measure [which reduced the wages of other elected officials, who cannot be paid more than the president] the executive power has saved 13.9 million bolivianos [US$1.7 million], which will be our contribution towards obtaining 3500 new items in the education area, a sector that received for the first time in years a 7% increase in salaries, without marches, blockades nor other acts of pressure.
axisoflogic.com

Recently released data from the Federal Reserve provide a stark reminder of the extent of racial and ethnic economic gaps in our economy, particularly regarding wealth.

The Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances allows us to compare both income and net worth (assets minus debts) between white (non-Hispanic) and non-white families (the sample sizes are too small to break non-whites into component groups). The data in the report reveal that in 2004, minority incomes were about 56% that of whites. However, a far larger gap exists when we compare net worth: minorities’ net worth was about 27% of whites, about half the size of the income ratio .
counterpunch.org

QUITO, Ecuador, March 15 (Reuters) – Ecuador struggled to contain growing protests by Indians demanding the government abandon U.S. free-trade talks and accused protest leaders of trying to oust President Alfredo Palacio on Wednesday.

Thousands of Indians have blocked roads with burning tires and rubble in nine central provinces since Monday to demand the government end free-trade talks with the United States. The protests have crimped the Andean nation’s economy.

“Their demands are not possible to address, so it appears that what they want is to destabilize democracy,” presidential spokesman Enrique Proano told reporters.
alertnet.org

Indigenous revolution in Ecuador?
It appears that Ecuadorians are about to explode again against their government’s renewed involvement in the U.S.-spawned, “Free Trade Agreement”. All of the central mountain chain running through Ecuador and all Ecuadorian Amazonia are paralyzed by the mobilizations of indigenous people against the Free Trade Agreement. The capital city of Quito has been brought to a standstill. The Interior Minister has already resigned in the face of social protest, destabilization and repression currently ruling throughout the country.

President Palacio wants to sign the Free Trade Agreement with the US instead of calling for a Constituent Assembly as he promised a year ago. The indigenous peoples have paralyzed 11 or 22 provinces and are marching on Quito. Teachers and public employees are on strike. They all want Occidental Petroleum (OXY) out of the country. The President of the Congress indicated that the government could fall, stating that the country is approaching a “true convulsion”. The powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, CONAIE is heading this movement, refusing to compromise on the government’s negotiations with the United States. President Alfredo Palacio has threatened to meet the protests with “maximum authority”

Rebelión reports that new provinces and students added their weight to the indigenous protests with blockades of the highways. These same tactics were used to overthrow the government of Bolivia last summer, leading to the election of Evo Morales as the first indigenous president of that Latin American nation. Wilfrido Lucero, President of the Congress stated that the country is facing a ‘true convulsion’. In the Amazon province of Pastaza, television news shows strong clashes between soldiers and demonstrators when they tried to block petroleum exploitation of the foreign company Agip Oil and occupy it by the force. The protest in Pastaza is primarily motivated by the demand for the government to deliver economic resources to the people.

…Then your eye falls on a barely-noticed article in a local Southern California newspaper. You call the reporter, and he guides you to his reputable source. And the stomach-tickling fears start all over again, especially when–coincidentally–a Germanophile friend researching in the archives digs up the following from a Munich newspaper dated 1933.

First, the American news item:

The federal government has awarded a $385 million contract for the construction of ‘temporary detention facilities’ inside the United States as part of the Immigration Service’s Detention and Removal Program. The contract was given to Kellogg, Root & Brown, a subsidiary of Halliburton. The camps would be used in the event of an “emergency”, said Jamie Zuieback, an Immigration service official.

The following article appeared in a Munich newspaper in 1933 to mark the “grand opening” of Dachau, Germany’s first concentration camp. This month marks the 73d anniversary:

Münchner Neueste Nachrichten,

Tuesday, March 21, 1933

A Concentration Camp for Political Prisoners in the Dachau Area

In a statement to the press, Himmler, Munich’s Chief of Police announced:

On Wednesday the first concentration camp will be opened near Dachau. It has a capacity of 5000 people. Here, all communist and-so far as is necessary- Reichsbanner and Marxist officials, who endanger the security of the state, will be assembled. In the long run, if government administration is not to be very burdened, it is not possible to allow individual communist officials to remain in court custody. On the other hand, it is also not possible to allow these officials their freedom again. Each time we have attempted this, the result was that they again tried to agitate and organize. We have taken these measures without concern for each pedantic objection encountered, in the conviction that we act to calm the concerns of the nation’s people, and in accordance with their aims.

Himmler gave assurance that in each individual case, preventive custody will not be maintained longer than necessary. It is obvious, however, that the astonishingly large quantity of material evidence seized will take a long time to be examined. This police will only be delayed, if they are continually asked when this or that person in preventive custody will be released. The incorrectness of rumors frequently spread regarding the treatment of prisoners is shown by the fact that for those prisoners who requested it, for example, Dr. Gerlich and Frhr. v. Aretin, counseling by priests is supported and approved without hesitation.
counterpunch.org

A Cell for Kissinger and Haig
…Of course, if one listens to Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger–two architects of the last major US foreign disaster in Vietnam–they might think that the only way to get out of Iraq is by blowing the country and its inhabitants to hell. Indeed, Mr. Haig, who was a general, Secretary of State under Reagan, and an advisor to Richard Nixon (even serving as his Chief of Staff during the final months of Nixon’s presidency), told an audience of a conference on the Vietnam War at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, “Every asset of the nation must be applied to the conflict to bring about a quick and successful outcome, or don’t do it.” This is from a man, who helped engineer (among other things) the Christmas bombings of 1972, the mining of Haiphong harbor and the bombing of Hanoi and the dikes of northern Vietnam, and the invasion of Cambodia. What does he suggest the US do in Iraq? Break out some tactical nuclear weapons? The mindset that Haig represents seriously believes that the US military was restrained in Vietnam and that a similar situation exists in Iraq. This is despite the fact that more ordnance has been dropped on those two countries than on any other country in history.

His fellow panel member, Henry Kissinger, would probably like that idea. After all, it was Mr. Kissinger who considered the use of nuclear weapons against northern Vietnam in 1969, but was convinced such an idea might be a bad move after hundreds of thousands of US residents filled the streets of DC and several other cities on November 15, 1969 in a national mobilization to end the war in Vietnam.

Both of these men should be in adjoining cells in the Hague. Instead, they are guests of honor at the JFK Library. It’s not that they were besmirching Kennedy’s legacy by being there. Indeed, Mr. Kissinger said he admired the Kennedys–a statement that should not surprise any serious student of US history given Kissinger’s tenure as a consultant on security matters to various U.S. agencies from 1955 to 1968. Indeed, Kissinger’s treatise on nuclear weapons and foreign policy was a major influence on the strategic policies of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Given that treatise’s emphasis on the use of tactical nuclear weapons together with conventional forces and the current discussion of just such a policy, one could say that Kissinger’s influence continues to steer US war policy.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) – Fighting for a death penalty in a 9/11 case, prosecutors are beseeching a federal judge to reconsider her decision to exclude half the government’s case against confessed al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

They acknowledge their only hope of obtaining the death penalty for the 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent is to persuade U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema she punished the government too harshly for tampering with trial witnesses and lying to defense attorneys.

Brinkema did not immediately respond to the motion for reconsideration that prosecutors filed Wednesday evening. But she had indicated earlier she had time available Thursday to hear such a motion if it were filed.

The jury has been sent home until Monday to give prosecutors time for their next step.

Brinkema barred prosecutors from submitting any witnesses or exhibits about aviation security. Prosecutors responded in their motion that this evidence “goes to the very core of our theory of the case.”

At the very least, the prosecutors argued, they should be allowed to present a newly designated aviation security witness who had no contact with Carla J. Martin, the Transportation Security Administration lawyer responsible for the government’s misconduct. This would “allow us to present our complete theory of the case, albeit in imperfect form.”

“The public has a strong interest in seeing and hearing it (aviation security evidence), and the court should not eliminate it from the case, particularly not … where other remedies are available,” they wrote Brinkema.

Brinkema ruled Tuesday that Martin violated federal rules when she sent trial transcripts to seven aviation witnesses, coached them on how to deflect defense attacks and lied to defense lawyers to prevent them from interviewing witnesses they wanted to call. The judge said Martin’s actions and other government missteps had left the aviation evidence “irremediably contaminated.”
guardian.co.uk

The US will not shy away from attacking regimes it considers hostile, or groups it believes have nuclear or chemical weapons, the White House has confirmed.
In the first restatement of national security strategy since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US singles out Iran as the greatest single current danger.

The new policy backs the policy of pre-emptive war first issued in 2002, and criticised since the Iraq war.

But it stresses that the US aims to spread democracy through diplomacy.

The new strategy also highlights a string of other global issues of concern to the US, such as the spread of Aids, the threat of pandemic flu and the prospect of natural and environmental disasters.

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley is due to make a speech launching the new strategy on Thursday.

Other key points include:

-Stressing US preference for “transformational diplomacy” and coalition building, but not necessarily within United Nations or Nato frameworks

-Criticising the lack of democratic freedoms in Russia and China

-Branding Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a “demagogue” aiming to destabilise the region

-Urging Palestinian radical group Hamas to recognise Israel, renounce violence and disarm.

The substance of the revised strategy focuses on the challenges facing the cUS in the wake of the Iraq war.

In a nod to previous high-level foreign policy statements, which singled out individual countries as potential enemies of the US, the new document highlights seven “despotic” states.

They are: North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Belarus, Burma and Zimbabwe.

The policy of the US, according to the opening words of the 49-page document, is “to seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world”.
bbc.co.uk