Pipelinistan: Is the Novichok Psyops an Effort to Shut Down Nord Stream 2?

Politics, Power and Pipelines – Europe and Natural Gas

DW (2018)

Film Review

This documentary concerns Russia’s controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, due for completion by the end of 2019. The EU, the UK and the US have been working hard to shut down Nord Stream 2, and various commentators believe the current Novichok psyops is an effort to pressure Germany to back out of their agreement with Gazprom.

The Nord Stream 2 project is a partnership between Russian state-owned Gazprom and five private energy companies from Britain, Germany, France and Netherlands. It will transport natural gas directly across the Baltic Sea to Germany. The existing Nord Stream 1  pipeline system transports Russian gas to western Europe mainly via Ukraine.

Since the 2014 US-sponsored coup in Ukraine, there has been considerable conflict between Russia and Ukraine over Nord Stream 1 – involving Ukraine’s non-payment of fuel charges, their failure to maintain the pipeline and illegal diversion of gas supplies. Russia totally shut down gas supplies to Ukraine in 2009 and 2014 for non-payment, resulting in very cold winters for Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary at the other end of the pipeline.*

Two prominent Germans are part of the Nord Stream 2 consortium, former German Chancellor and Social Democratic Party leader Gerhard Schroder and former Stasi member and Putin friend Mattias Warning. The latter serves as the company’s Managing Director.

Despite their determination to become more independent of Russian gas and oil, Poland and other Eastern European states are dismayed that Nord Stream 2 will bypass them. Ukraine is distraught because it stands to lose $2 billion annually in transit fees.

The EU is trying to stop Nord Stream 2 by claiming regulatory authority, **which Russia and German dispute, as both Nord Stream 1 and 2 are external pipelines.

The US also opposes the pipeline, as it prefers both EU countries to buy its more costly fracked LNG (liquified natural gas). They have threatened economic sanctions on countries that sign new energy agreements with Russia.

The US also opposed Nord Stream 1 (completed in 1973), fearing it might lead to a closer relationship between West Germany and Russia. Former German chancellor Willy Brandt strongly championed Nord Stream 1, over US objections. He believed trade and detente*** were a preferable strategy for bringing down the Iron Curtain. It now appears he was right.

The filmmakers raise legitimate concerns about Russia investing so heavily in yet more fossil fuel pipelines (Gazprom is also building a pipeline via Turkey to Italy and Greece) in a period when the planet urgently needs to end fossil fuel use altogether.

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*On March 3, 2018, Russia announced it was ending fossil fuel contracts with Ukraine altogether, raising grave concerns for countries at the other end of the pipeline. See Russia’s Gazprom to Terminate Gas Contracts with Ukraine

**Detente is a cold war term referring to the easing of strained relations.

 

The Yes Men: Culture Jammers Extraordinaire

The Yes Men are Revolting

Directed by Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos (2014)

Film Review

Culture Jamming (def) – a tactic used by anticorporate social movements to expose corporate “methods of domination” by disrupting or subverting corporate media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions.

The Yes Men are Revolting is the third full length documentary by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno (aka Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos). The Yes Men’s goal is to use satire and humor to underscore the total insanity of our present corporate-run society. For the first time, the 2014 film includes biographical material and frank discussion of Andy and Mike’s episodic despair over the difficulty of producing real change.

Most of their work relies on their elaborate impersonations of corporate oligarchs and government bureaucrats to portray the world as they believe it should be. The official and media reactions to the improbable causes their alter egos espouse are eye wateringly funny.

Among my favorites:

•  The one in which they impersonate a Chamber of Commerce (official oil industry lobby) at the National Press Club calling for a carbon tax.
• Their campaign to liberate Barbie and Ken from oppressive gender stereotypes.
• The time they impersonate Shell Oil officials and throw a lavish party to celebrate the immense profit potential of melting Arctic Sea ice.
• The time they pose as Gazprom officials presenting a kidnapped polar bear to the Amsterdam zoo.* This was after the US government revoked Shell’s Arctic drilling permit and the company partnered with Gazprom intending to drill the Russian side of the Arctic Circle.
• The Brokers and Police March they organized during Occupy Wall Street.
• Their promotion of a special NYPD program in which black males receive a free McDonald’s Happy Meal after their third stop and frisk.

The documentary climaxes with their best and most outrageous prank. First they they reserve a spot on behalf of General Colin Powell’s office at a Homeland Security conference. Then they impersonate a Department of Energy spokesperson and propose to replace all fossil fuels with solar panels and wind turbines to be owned and operated by Native American reservations. The segment culminates with all the defense contractors circling the room in a traditional indigenous dance.

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* Amsterdam is home to the corporate offices of Royal Dutch Shell.

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I must admit to being totally addicted to the Yes Men. Here are their earlier films if you haven’t seen them:

The Yes Men (2003)

The Yes Men Fix the World (2009)

Let Them Go, Mr Putin

When it suits their purposes, Russia seems to have the same propensity as the US to thumb their nose at international law. Two weeks ago, Putin acquired immense international stature and prestige by halting the imminent threat of US missile strikes in Syria. Now he seems to have squandered it all by illegally seizing a Greenpeace vessel in international waters.

On September 18, Russian FSB agents illegally boarded the Arctic Sunrise (by rappelling down from a helicopter) and seized, at gunpoint, the boat and all its occupants. The Greenpeace ship was in Arctic waters to protest hazardous oil drilling by the Russian company Gazprom. Earlier in the week two activists had boarded the Gazprom drill platform rig and were arrested and held without charge. However at the time the Greenpeace vessel was illegally boarded, it was in international waters. Seizing a civilian ship in international waters is piracy.

The Russian government reports the boat and activists (including two New Zealanders) are being towed to Murmansk, the nearest port. Ironically it’s the Russians accusing Greenpeace of piracy instead of the other way around. On Saturday, Russian Presidential Chief of Staff Sergei Ivanov told journalists that Greenpeace had “acted too radically” and compared its protest to “Somalian-style piracy.”

“One of the Most Reckless Oil Companies on Earth.”

According to a Greenpeace Media Briefing, Gazprom, the first oil company to commence Arctic drilling, is “one of the most reckless oil companies on earth.” Greenpeace forced them to halt drilling operations a year ago after taking them to court for having an expired oil spill response (OSR) plan. Their new OSR plan isn’t available to the public. Only a summary is available on their website. The full version of Gazprom’s OSR plan can only be viewed in the company’s offices under strict restrictions. Even so, the summary raises a number of serious concerns:

• It relies on conventional clean-up measures that don’t work in ice or icy water. For example the booms they refer to can only be used during ice-free periods (only four months of the year in the Prirazlomnaya oil field).
•   Much of the response equipment and personnel are based 1000 km away in Murmansk, which zmeans it would take Gazprom at least three days to mount an accident response.
• The summary plans for a worse case scenario of a 10,000 ton (73,000 barrel) spill. The Deepwater Horizon disaster spewed 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
• Gazprom confirmed in 2011 that it doesn’t have the financial resources to mount a satisfactory response to a major well blow-out. BP is currently facing a bill for the Deepwater Horizon disaster of $42 billion – which could be increased to $90 billion if the court awards maximum penalties.
• Respected mainstream environmental groups (Pew Environment Group and US Geological Survey) are on record that it’s virtually impossible, using existing technology, to clean up spilled oil in sea ice.
• There are major concerns about Gazprom’s safety record – in December 2011, 53 people died when the Kolskaya jack-up rig capsized during towing.
• As a country, Russia has an appalling oil spill record. Each year, an estimated 5 million tons of oil leak from cracked wellheads, pipes, and other equipment (six times the amount spilled in the Deepwater Horizon disaster).
• There are serious concerns about the safety of the Prirazlomnaya platform in harsh Polar conditions:

1.  According to an industry whistleblower, the Prirazlomnaya platform was “cobbled together” from rusting pieces of old rigs to meet a 2012 deadline, when new environmental legislation took effect banning this type of drilling rig.
2. Thus far Gazprom has refused to make public any of the platform’s safety documentation or its environmental impact assessment.

The Prirazlomnoye oil field is surrounded by national parks and wildlife sanctuaries like Nenetsky and Vaygach that are home to protected and endangered species such as the Atlantic walrus. Indigenous Peoples who rely on the Pechora Sea for fishing and hunting would also be profoundly affected by a Gazprom oil spill.

Please Sign Petition

Kiwis are asked to write to the Russian embassy in Wellington: Send a letter

Non-Kiwis should sign the petition at Release Greenpeace Activists demanding that Russia immediately release all 27 Greenpeace activists.

photo credit: World Economic Forum via photopin cc

Reprinted from Dissident Voice