Russia, China, Iran redraw energy map.

[Andronex]

The inauguration of the Dauletabad-Sarakhs-Khangiran pipeline on Wednesday connecting Iran's northern Caspian region with Turkmenistan's vast gas field may go unnoticed amid the Western media cacophony that it is "apocalypse now" for the Islamic regime in Tehran.

The event sends strong messages for regional security. Within the space of three weeks, Turkmenistan has committed its entire gas exports to China, Russia and Iran. It has no urgent need of the pipelines that the United States and the European Union have been advancing. Are we hearing the faint notes of a Russia-China-Iran symphony?

<snip>

We are witnessing a new pattern of energy cooperation at the regional level that dispenses with Big Oil. Russia traditionally takes the lead. China and Iran follow the example. Russia, Iran and Turkmenistan hold respectively the world's largest, second-largest and fourth-largest gas reserves. And China will be consumer par excellence in this century. The matter is of profound consequence to the US global strategy.

The Turkmen-Iranian pipeline mocks the US's Iran policy. The US is threatening Iran with new sanctions and claims Tehran is "increasingly isolated". But Mahmud Ahmadinejad's presidential jet winds its way through a Central Asian tour and lands in Ashgabat for a red-carpet welcome by his Turkmen counterpart, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, and a new economic axis emerges. Washington's coercive diplomacy hasn't worked. Turkmenistan, with a gross domestic product of US$18.3 billion, defied the sole superpower (GDP of $14.2 trillion) - and, worse still, made it look routine.

Much more here... <http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/LA08Ag01.html>

[leveymg]

1. Beyond the Sturm & Drang of nuclear threats is the hard reality that the US no longer controls

the world. Time we grow up and get over it.

[roamer65]

2. It's the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at work.

SCO for short.

http://www.sectsco.org

It is something how American media fails to mention this alliance between Russia, the former Soviet republics and China. Iran is an observer in this organization.

[Goldstein1984]

3. That distant thunder is the sound of...

an empire making an all-or-nothing last stand.

We're 5% of the worlds population; we're doing 50% of the world's military spending. It's a Hail Mary attempt to preserve hegemony.

The Global Elite are competing with a new Eastern Faction. The proxy wars of the Cold War have been replaced by the proxy War on Terror.

[AdHocSolver]

5. The real U.S. leadership: All muscle, no brains.

Back in 2003, the U.S. could have bought Iraq for $50 billion dollars. We could have purchased Afghanistan for even less.

However, the corporate mentality doesn't abide honest dealings with "adversaries". The corporate mentality is happier leveraging other people's money and, if necessary, sacrifice other people's lives in order to exercise extreme power.

Therefore, the U.S. has blown a trillion dollars on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, caused tens of thousands of unnecessary casualties, incurred the hostility of millions of people, and brought the U.S. economy to the brink of collapse.

In short, the real power in America is held by a bunch of incompetent psychopaths.

[Igel]

4. There must be a contingent here happy.

They didn't like one through Georgia. They deeply resent the one that they still think is being built in Afghanistan (which the one through Georgia replaced).

Now the Afghanistan one is pretty much precluded. Victory is theirs, and Russia-Iran-China's who they either consciously or accidentally are the supporters of. Then again, their oil and gas companies dwarf the US oil and gas companies, so I guess they make an odd sort of sense. :think: