The Common Good and Common Sense Say Refine it in Alberta, Capitalism Says No

The red line is an outline of the Alberta tarsands 54,000 square miles area. Please check out this hauntingly beautiful pictorial essay.

Common sense and the common good are meaningless concepts in our capitalist culture. As anyone whose read the book or seen the documentary knows, a corporation serves only one master - shareholder returns. If the board of directors or CEO of any corporation is found to be putting the common good ahead of shareholder profits they are sued and fired immediately. The tarsands are exploited under contractual conditions between the corporations and the governments. The only party responsible for protecting the common good in the tarsands, or anywhere else in a capitalist country, are the governments.

The governments of Alberta amd Canada have different jurisdictions, different rsponsibilities. But, for today, we'll stick to the corporate economics that determine why they won't be building any new refineries or upgraders in Alberta unless the governments provide huge compensation packages that guarantee profitability. Despite this reality every environmental group, all of the opposition parties in both Alberta and Canada and almost everyone else understands that refining or at least upgrading tarsands crud would eliminate the need for the highly toxic diluents from the inevitable equation. But that's not the deal our governments made with the corporations so...

Why aren't we building refineries or upgraders in Canada? According to most analysts, the precise cost of a new refinery is difficult to pinpoint, some put the initial capital outlay at more than $10 billion. As yesterday's post showed it's getting more profitable by the day for the corporations to send their over-capacity diluent to Alberta to thin out the crud then pipeline the resulting dilbit to their refineries. The upgraders and refinery expansions stateside tend to occur at refineries owned by the same U.S. corporations that are developing Canada’s tarsands. Most of our industry is American owned, and they've decided to build refining capacity elsewhere, rather than in Canada, because it's more profitable.

Official opposition NDP's energy critic Peter Julian says, "Canada’s failure to compete in the refining industry has been as much a result of government policy as economics." And he's right, but that failure has occurred not just under the current Harper-Redford watch, the tarsands have been being mined since 1967 so under successive administrations the situation has gone from bad to worse.

The Liberals, well they're the Liberals, when they were in charge they played kiss-ass with the corporations now they bitch about the situation they had a huge hand in creating. So IMO their opinion is worthless.

The Greens, as Elizabeth May says, "oppose moving bitumen out of Alberta.  It has to be (at least) upgraded to synthetic crude before shipping to refineries. We favour refineries in Alberta.  But this only makes sense in the larger context my article sets out -- a sensible energy policy, carbon reduction plan, and a stabilized planned oil sands production -- ending the crazed plan to triple output." But the politicans won't say how, they won't admit that only through massive subsides can that happen. That contracts have been signed so no government can simply order the corporations to be altruistic, only money talks now. Where that money would come from none of 'em, NDP, Liberal or Green, want to comment on because it'd have to come from either higher taxes on citizens or cutbacks in programs for citizens or by borrowing from future citizens.

Meanwhile, in Alberta, despite a public opinion poll that suggests that the overwhelming majority support government taking steps to increase the amount of oil sands crude that is processed in the province, the move does not appear likely. Premier Alison Redford made clear earlier this year that she intends to let market forces dictate future bitumen upgrading projects, calling the deal the province struck with North West Upgrading “a commitment made by the previous government .”

According to Andrew Leach, an associate professor at University of Alberta School of Business, in explaining the ‘economics’ of upgrading, the degree of government involvement in the NWU project that Redford refers to, means it should not be seen as evidence of the viability of new refineries and upgraders. “What this shows is that with the type of contracts the government is offering, you can get a private company to build a refinery," he said, "but the first part of that sentence is really crucial, because it doesn’t tell you that private companies can make money on refining.”

The 'refine it in Alberta' mantra is nothing more than wishful thinking according to industry analysts. Wonderfilled, moving, prose like in Elizabeth May's article 'Time to Put the Pieces of the Puzzle in Place' that says: "the cover of the box, a glorious sustainable energy roadmap, would depict where we want to be, with: a meaningful carbon reduction plan; phasing out coal across the land; bringing in energy conservation and efficiency standards; producing far more energy from renewable sources; applying cleantech solutions broadly; paying attention to energy security; and shifting from a strategy of rapid export of unprocessed product to managed production at a steady rate of upgraded and refined product, with value-added creating far more employment in oil production while energy efficiency targets create jobs everywhere in overhauling our built infrastructure." Is just that, "where we want to be", not where we are.

Tomorrow we'll focus on how governments of Alberta and Canada have deceitfully avoided their responsibility to protect the common good through their neo-conservative policies and contrast those policies to other jurisdictions like Saskatchewan and Norway.

Why The Economics of Dilbit Transport Make Moving Toxic Diluents Profitable and Dangerous

The dangers and politics of dilbit, diluted bitumen, discussed in the last two Mud Reports [here and here] are big parts of the dilbit issue, but there's more including the economics of the diluent, also called condensates when derived from natural gas, used to thin bitumen so it can be transported by pipeline or rail [rail needing only about 1/2 as much per barrel as pipelines require].

Although a small fraction of condensate is produced at the field level, production from natural gas drilling is the main source of condensate in Canada. Until recently almost all of the diluent used to move tar sands crud by both rail and pipeline was produced from conventional natural gas 'plays' in Canada. But condensate (C5+) production has been declining since ‘07/08 while the demand for it has risen. Now condensate must compete with many other sources of diluent for bitumen. Western Canada produces some quantities of those competitors, but nowhere near the amounts that would be required to move all the crud that the proposed pipelines and rail transport would demand.

Remembering that the proposed 'new' pipelines would move over 4Mb/d in addition to what is already moved, the tar sands would need at least 1.5Mb/d of diluent and Canada's most optimist projections come nowhere near that. For instance in 2012, over 260,000 b/d of imported condensates, diluents from upgraders, as well as quantities of butane were needed to supplement the condensate supply from natural gas wells in western Canada to keep the crud moving. Where will all the rest come from? Who stands to gain from getting it to Alberta? The answers are both important and unsurprising.

One website, 'Detailing The Future Projections Regarding The Supply And Demand For Condensate In Western Canada' is a great source of more detailed information that i'll try to summarize and comment. Currently the Enbridge Southern Lights pipeline to Edmonton, AB supplies the shortfall and has a capacity of 180,000 bpd, so will supply more as demand rises. Kinder Morgan Cochin's recently approved pipeline reversal will move about 100,000bpd of light condensate from Kankakee County, Ill., to existing
terminal facilities near Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. Still far from what 'Pipelineistan' would need. Conventional Canadian condensate supply will continue to drop but as more and more fracked gas comes online that will more than make up for it as time goes by but not immediately as existing fracked gas condensate capacity is already being fully utilized.

But in the US it's a different story. Stateside exploding tight oil and shale gas plays are beginning to flood the Southern US with condensates and super light oil at levels that are still unclear but considerably above forecasted demand in North America. Rapidly increasing volumes from the Bakken are adding to condensate supply but the main source of the over supply is coming from the Eagle Ford in West Texas. Current analysts' forecasts indicate that in 2014 there will be condensate production of over 500Mb/d in South Texas alone. In addition Permian Basin production is also adding to supply along with other plays like the Utica in the Michigan Basin and the Anadarko and Fort Worth Basins.

The fact is there is so much of the various diluents available the prices will plummet unless new outlets are found fast. Exporters are lining up for permits to ship condensates to Mexico, Venezula and Columbia who all have 'heavy' oils that require diluents to transport them. So the tarsands will have no trouble obtaining 1.5Mbd, or more, in the future if all the pipelines go ahead. And unsurprisingly the same fossil fuel gangsters will profit from it.

My last post naively assumed the industry would employ diluent recovery units (DRU) to recover the diluents and ship them back for reuse. Now i understand that not only aren't DRUs economical the supply that they'd add to the 'market would just further depress the price [making the gangsters less profit and depressing share prices]. In addition the condensate refines [distillates] right along with the bitumen just fine. It actually makes the end products more valuable because the combination thins out the sulphur content that the refineries have to eliminate in transportation fuels. Also the portion of  exceptionally chunky bitumen is used in the refinery process as heat feedstock whereas in an upgrader the chunky bits become an almost unusable by-product [petroleum coke].

These diluents-condensates are much more dangerous to transport in many ways than dilbit because they are highly toxic and explosive [see crudemonitor.ca]. If the proposed pipelines go ahead western Canada will have more of  this toxic diluent brew being transported through it to the tarsands than all of the existing pipelines containing dilbit and conventional oil combined. It's a formula for disaster. Be it pipelines or rail, no technology is foolproof, disaster will happen , it's only a matter of when.

Many folks, including many i usually agree with environmentally, say the solution lies in upgrading and refining the bitumen in Alberta so the diluent issue is minimized. Tomorrow The Mud Report will focus on the economics of and other reasons why those ideas make for better fantasy than reality.

The Politics of Canada's of Dilbit Pipelines are a Web of Deception, Special Interests and PR

A few days ago the Vancouver Observer, a leading progressive voice in left coast environmental politics, published 'Two giant oil pipelines proposed to speed "doubling" of tar sands' by Mychaylo Prystupa. Like i said yesterday, even the most progressive outlets have knuckled under to the deceptive propaganda by calling all of the pipelines 'oil' pipelines not the correct term 'dilbit' pipelines. Words matter, the mental pictures we frame information in are determined by the subconscious definition we assigned those words. Constructing acceptable frames is how PR operates.

Dilbit is not oil. You can even see the chunky nature of the dilbit,. Dilbit has special risks when transported in pipelines. For example, due to the high the viscosity and specific gravity of dilbit, shipping it in a pipeline requires higher pressure and higher heat than ordinary crude oil.  This makes dilbit pipelines especially subject to cavitation, friction, fluid hammer, and piezoelectric effects, which can produce vibrations, resonances, shock, explosions, weld failures and pipeline ruptures. Let’s hope the media starts reporting this correctly, but the Vegas odds are very long on that.

i'm not picking on the Vancouver Observer, i agree with their perspective by and large, using such a reknown progressive voice as an example gives it more clout IMO. Mychaylo Prystupa's article says, "If all five [proposed pipelines] are green-lighted - with help from speedier Harper government approval processes - more than 4.1 million barrels of oil per day will flow by 2018." Adding, "The $12-billion eastward line would pump a neck-breaking 1.1 million barrels of oil per day - a flow double what Northern Gateway proposes to bring to B.C.’s west coast."

Nowhere does Prystupa's article mention that, as Elizabeth May points out,  "All the controversial pipelines now under debate -Keystone XL, Enbridge’s Line 9, Line 3 replacement, Transmountain Twinning and Northern Gateway - are intended to carry a 70-30 mixture of bitumen and diluents – brilliantly described as “dilbit.” So that means those dilbit pipelines would be transporting 1.5 million barrels a day of dilbit too. No mention either of where all that crap will come from or how it'll get back to Alberta to be reused

Again from Elizabeth May, "According to Enbridge’s evidence in the NEB hearings, its twinned pipeline will carry imported diluents from Kitimat to Alberta to be mixed with the bitumen. And the diluents will be purchased from the Middle East, and put in tankers to Canada. So much for being a domestic source of oil." Then the combined crud would be tankered to China where, presumably, the diluent would be separated and sent back to Kitimat for another go around. The other 4 haven't even publicly announced where all this diluent would come from or how it would be recycled. [more on all that coming soon].

The politics Canada's of dilbit pipelines is an exercise in fuzzy logic:

The Conservative Government, to their credit, clearly do what they believe in. They believe that unimpeded market capitalism is the only solution. They are financed by the corporations and banks, none more so than the fossil fuel industry in Alberta. The Harperites believe, like all good fundamentalist Christians, that God created the earth's resources for human use and that nothing we do can cause any lasting real damage to God's creation.

The official opposition party - the NDP - which was once Canada's progressive party and still hold a few progressive positions on certain issues, is more and more a servant of the special interest group that pays their bills - the big unions. Consequently, especially since Jack Layton died and Thomas Mulcair took over the leadership, the NDP supports any and all projects that big unions support. And, as a friend of mine said the other day, big unions have never seen a mega-project they didn't love.

The Liberals, now led by Justin Trudeau, stand firmly for nothing, as they always have. They support all of the pipelines but have 'serious concerns' about dilbit which equals bullshit. To be fair the Liberals have ruled Canada for most of the last century by always trying to be the kings of the mushy middle. Prince Justin is just doing what comes with the territory. Justin has taken a few strong positions, his 'legaize maruijuana' position being one.

The Green Party, led by Elizabeth May, say they "oppose moving bitumen out of Alberta.  It has to be (at least) upgraded to synthetic crude before shipping to refineries. That eliminates the two way flow in toxic diluent and the creation of dilbit. We favour refineries in Alberta.  But this only makes sense in the larger context my article sets out - a sensible energy policy, carbon reduction plan, and a stabilized planned oil sands production - ending the crazed plan to triple output." The Greens and E. May are the only party that consistently call dilbit dilbit not oil. For that alone they deserve thanks.

More tomorrow on how the politics of pipelines trumps the science and economics of each party's position on the dilbit deception.

Do the MSM, Industry and Politicians in N. America Call dilbit 'crude oil' as a Deliberate Coverup?

The folks from Mayflower Arkansas have posted hundreds of their pictures documenting the dilbit disaster there.

Tar sands 'oil' is not oil, it is Bitumen. Quoting Elizabeth May, leader of Canada's Green Party and the only politician in North America who consistently calls Bitumen by it's real name, "Bitumen is thick and solid, described as being the consistency of peanut butter. Before mining, bitumen is 10 percent of the volume of soils." Dilbit is diluted Bitumen, Bitumen must be thinned by lighter hydrocarbon solvents before it can be shipped by truck, train or pipeline. Just as calling Bitumen 'oil' is wrong, so too is calling dilbit 'crude oil' is just as wrong.

To make Bitumen more viscous a naphtha-like fossil fuel substance, called a diluent, is added. The tar sands crud [Bitumen] is a long-term danger to aquatic life and water safety but the approximately 30% that is 'dilutent' posses and even greater immediate threat to every living thing as it evaporates. The silence about the ingredients of the diluent is no mystery. The oil industry says the formulas are a trade secret but sources, including crudemonitor.ca , offer a dangerous and deadly list of the most common components of every solvent the industry likes to not talk about. There's the aromatics toluene, benzene, xylenes, ethylbenzenecy, clohexane and other naphthenes all known carcenogens. There's hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and thiols, traditionally also called mercaptans, all very toxic as well. Benzene in particular is a known high-risk carcinogen, so benzene content is typically specified in the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) Plus others not publicly published by science researchers.

Remember the Mayflower Arkansas spill that occurred on March 29, 2013? The folks in Mayflower are still suffering. The Mud Report did a number articles about it then starting with 'Mayflower, Arkansas Knows Dilbit Doesn't Small Like Oil But the Industry PR Smells Like Bullshit'. While researching those posts i read what the folks there were saying, followed the media coverage and emailed with a couple of people in the area.

Within hours the media was already calling the disaster an 'oil' spill, now it's almost impossible to find a source that mentions dilbit. So complete is the PR spin that even the local folks who are still suffering from dizziness, headaches, and nausea now always call the crap 'oil'

Almost one year after ExxonMobil’s pipeline burst and caused a major dilbit spill near Mayflower, Arkansas, officials are saying the area is safe to live in. But locals, like former Mayflower resident Ann Jarrell say she “tried to stay here for as much as I could but like many other locals, she started having constant headaches and coughing after the spill." she added. “I have friends who still live here. They don’t have a place to go. They have small children… and they’re all sick and their homes aren’t selling. There are a lot of us who have been forgotten. We’re just collateral damage,” Ann said.

The folks in Mayflower know dilbit doesn't smell like oil and it definitely it doesn't clean up like oil. They know that twenty-two homes were immediately evacuated in the subdivision near Mayflower not because of the crud itself but because of the dangerous evaporating diluents in the air [immediately upon contact with air the solvents that dilute the bitumen -  diluents - evaporate leaving the heavy goo to sink]. Yet even on the Facebook page maintained by those local people the title is 'Mayflower Arkansas Oil Spill'.

It's not just the North American corporate media 'pressitutes', on February 11, 2014, RT's [Russian Television] headline read:: 'Exxon oil spill town 'deserted land', residents still getting sick, forced to abandon homes' RT is hardly a conscious American propaganda tool yet they too have succumbed to the corporate PR spin.

Is the media calling dilbit 'crude oil' a deliberate coverup designed to keep the public from understanding the unique hazards of dilbit pipelines?
A recent search of Google News about the Mayflower spill returns 11,400 results calling it crude or oil, whereas only 2 results call it dilbit.
Media reports about Michigan’s Kalamazoo River spill in 2010 were 'crude oil' over the correct 'dilbit' by a factor of 4:1.
The Yellowstone River July 2011 dilbit spill was called 'crude oil”'by industry and most media 15:1:
The Alberta Red Deer River dilbit spill in June 2012 widely reported to be “crude oil” over “dilbit” by 10:1
By March 28, 2013 the Minnesota train derailment had media reports calling the contents 'crude oil' over the correct 'dlbit' by 1,000:1
And the Mayflower Arkansas dilbit spill is called 'crude oil' by the industry, news and all levels of government over the correct term by 1:000 : 1.
Notice the trend. 4:1, 10:1, 1000:1. Is the media just getting it wrong more often? Or is this an intentional coverup? Betcha know what i think.

This isn't just in the U.S. and Russia, this deceitful PR campaign is even more aggressive and complete up here in Canada. Tomorrow The Mud Report will focus on Canada's media [where even the most progressive outlets avoid the dilbit devil] and on Canada's political parties where only one party - the Greens - and their leader Elizabeth May consistently calls the devil by its name. Thanks Elizabeth.

Context is Key to Understanding Ukraine's Current Chaos, Upholding Minority Rights the Solution

Victoria Nuland distributing cookies to riot policemen on the Independence Square in Kiev on December 10, 2013

Ukraine's current chaos, all its fast moving parts, are impossible to grasp without historic context. That's what The Mud Report has tried to provide in the last two weeks since publishing 'Why is Ukraine, Once Again, Where Continents, Cultures and Empires Collide? Follow the Money'. Today's article, 'Ukraine is About Oil. So Was World War I'  by Robert Freeman, is a bit simplistic but absolutely essential to understanding the broader long-term reasons why Ukraine is the current axis of weasels.

Another equally important piece, 'A Chronology of the Ukrainian Coup' by Renee Parsons a few days ago is also essential to contextual understanding of how we got here. In it Parsons concludes by nominating Secretary of State John Kerry for the Hypocrisy of the Year Award for saying, “you just don’t behave by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext” might just win .   Kerry, of course, famously supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq seeking weapons of mass destruction. And Obama as a close runner-up for the Award for his ongoing hypocrisy with comments like, “..countries have deep concerns and suspicions about this kind of meddling..” and that “…as long as none of us are inside Ukraine trying to meddle and intervene.. with decisions that properly belong to Ukrainian people…”

People everywhere know that blatant hypocrisy coming from America's 'politicians' and subservient MSM are 100% self serving lies. They may deceive the jingoistic mind numbed Americans and their 'me-too' allies like Canada's Harper regime, but nobody else. In fact the display of hubris does more than harm America's global image, it hands Putin and Russia the moral high-ground, a position they'd never have right now without America's stupid propaganda crusade.

Why do it? Certainy Obama, Kerry, Shillary Clinton et al don't believe all this crap. The only logic i see is that domestic US poli-ticks, where flapping of neo-con hawks is constant and the Democrats are in big trouble in the upcoming mi-term elections, has driven them into a fear filled frenzy. Anyone following the corporate controlled US media, "even the most diligent news junkie, would find it difficult to know that the U.S. State Department played not only a vital role in the violence and chaos underway in Ukraine but was also complicit in creating the coup that ousted democratically elected President Viktor Yanuyovch." - Renee Parsons 

Parson's entry for December 13, 2013 [3 days after her 'cookie' picture above]: "As if intent on providing incontrovertible evidence of US involvement in Ukraine, Assistant US Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Victoria Nuland proudly told a meeting of the International Business Conference sponsored by the US-Ukrainian Foundation that the US had ‘invested’ more than $5 billion and ‘five years worth of work and preparation” in achieving what she called Ukraine’s ‘European aspirations.” What Nuland did not reveal on December 13 was that her meetings with ‘key Ukrainian stakeholders’ included neo-Nazi Svoboda party leader Oleh Tyahnybok and  prime minister wannabe Arsenly Yatsenyuk of the Fatherland Party."

An article out today at The Voice of Russia provides some excellent context on Russia's long-term perspective through quotes by leading Russian analysts. Another from Russia's RT, 'Popular uprising looming in eastern Ukraine', talks about the widening chaos throughout eastern Ukraine's cities where rampaging pro-Kiev forces and armed mercenaries working for the notorious Academi (formerly known as Blackwater and Xe Services) are now on the scene as well as now being implicated in the sniper killings of demonstrators and police in Keiv. The people in America may not know all this but the people in Ukraine sure do. Every one of these ignorant moves by the US just digs the public relations hole they're in deeper and hands Russia more moral high ground to stand on.

My advice to Obama, Kerry and Shillary is to climb down, stick a sock in it.  Let the Europeans, led by Germany, do what they are behind the scenes screaming at the US to allow - calm mediation. Of course the American knuckleheads won't take my advice, or that of their western European allies.

Russians drink beer for breakfast, vodka for lunch, they adore power abhor weakness, they aren't going to back down. In fact they'll slowly move onto the next majority Russian province then the next. The Ukraine story will leave the headlines as soon as Beiber gets busted again or ? Russia will just slowly do what the want. The biggest problem Putin faces IMO is violence by the drunken Russian nationalists against minorities, especially the Tatars The Tatars have friends who know how to fight against a modern mechanized army. That's why the key to this all not going boom is a guarantee of minority rights by all sides in word and deed - including all the cops/military/mercenaries backing that up on the ground.

Ukrainian and Crimean Leaders Must Guarantee Minority Rights in Word and Deed Unconditionally

Today's biggest headline is the announcement, following a 78-0 vote with 8 abstentions in Crimea's Parliament, that Crimea will hold a succession referendum on March 16th - 10 days from now. My advice for Crimea's leaders is to  announce unconditional minority rights guarantees and to back those words up with deeds immediately by ordering the police, and whoever the masked military personnel are, to stop the rampaging ethnic Russian majority from all future violent displays like those we've seen toward minorities recently and like those against United Nations special envoy Robert Serry in Simferopol.

Since more than 50% of Crimeans are Russian, "it's easy to say more than 70% of Crimean citizens would say 'yes' " to going to Russia," Rustam Temirgaliyev, vice-premier of the Crimean government, said at a news conference when speaking about the referendum on March 16. Some Crimeans are elated, others wary. The demographics on that elated/wary metric would parallel those of Crimean ethnicity - Russians: 58.32%; Ukrainians: 24.32%; Crimean Tatars: 12.1%; Belarusians, 1.44%; Tatars: 0.54%; Armenians: 0.43%; Jews: 0.22%, Greeks: 0.15% and others.

"Since more than 50% of Crimeans are Russian, it's easy to say more than 70% of Crimean citizens would say 'yes' " to going to Russia," Rustam Temirgaliyev, vice-premier of the Crimean government, said at a news conference earlier today announcing the referendum. This announcement was predictably trashed by 'our man Yats', who hypocritically denounced the referendum. 'illegitamet'.

Yats is following the delusional logic of Obama and Kerry as Robert Parry explained today saying: "When Secretary of State John Kerry denounces Russia’s intervention in Crimea by declaring “It is not appropriate to invade a country and at the end of a barrel of gun dictate what you are trying to achieve. That is not Twenty-first Century, G-8, major-nation behavior,” you might expect that the next line in a serious newspaper would note Kerry’s 'breathtaking hypocrisy'. The article goes on to list and explain America's illegal foreign interventions since WWII. It's a worthwhile read for those with a strong stomach.

Yats and his unelected government should take the same advice given above and immediately move to stop the violence against minorities throughout Ukraine. In case you haven't heard about it that's because the west's MSM "presstitutes" never mention it: Fascist gangs now patrol the streets. The puppet politicians who Washington intended to put in charge of Ukraine have lost control to organized and armed neo-nazis, who are attacking Jews, Russians, and intimidating any Ukrainian politicians or media that dare oppose them.

But they are also in Kiev's corridors of power. The far right Svoboda party, whose leader has denounced the "criminal activities" of "organised Jewry" and which was condemned by the European parliament for its "racist and antisemitic views", has five ministerial posts in the new government, including deputy prime minister and prosecutor general. The leader of the even more extreme Right Sector, at the heart of the street violence, is now Ukraine's deputy national security chief.

On a positive note of things to come yesterday a delegation of leading Russian Tatars came over and met with Crimean Tatar leaders. The Russian Tatars told the Crimeans that they were treated well and fairly in Russia. This positive sign could be greatly amplified by a guarantee of minority rights in Crimea immediately.

Crimea's Tatars, who returned to Ukraine after the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s to reclaim lands lost when their people were exiled to faraway parts of Russia by Joseph Stalin, are understandably worried about the upcoming referendum. The Muslim Tatars are very important. If Crimea's political chaos results in anti-Tatar violence extremists and radicals who have fought insurgencies in Kazakhstan and many other countries in recent decades could flood into Crimea.

Sulaymanov Mukhamed Ali, a prominent Tartar in Simferopol, is worried about the future. "My personal mission is to keep my people from doing anything violent," Ali said today. He compared the Crimea to a keg of gunpowder "and someone is standing beside it playing with a lighter...We are a proud people. We are a bold people, but we don't want any war and are doing everything in our power to prevent it," he said.

Russia immediately hailed the referendum announcement. Of course, Russia has its own agendas including geo-political positioning and control of Crimea's offshore fossil fuel reserves. More tomorrow on the Tatars unique role in Russian history and, though a minority today, the powerful position they are in and have been across Eurasia for a very long time.

The IMF's 'Conditions' are a Noose Designed to Steal Ukraine's Huge Offshore Oil and Gas Reserves

Last week The Mud Report wrote about how Geology drives geography which in turn drives cultural adaptation. Researching that article taught me that geology also drives disaster capitalism especially offshore in the Black Sea area. Most of the maps and information i found came from petroleum geology reports. Much of it was confidential but not all of it. Turns out the offshore Black Sea energy landscape is going to change dramatically over the next few years, as the region's nations are working hard to unlock their offshore reserves.

The offshore shelf extending from Romania and Bulgaria past Ukraine and Crimea contain huge deposits of oil and gas. This information isn't broadly known yet, but the oil industry, the investors, bankers and politicians know it, now so do you. The oil and gas industry in the Ukraine is dominated by the state owned company NJSC Naftogaz of Ukraine. Naftogaz now controls more than 90% of the oil and gas production in the Ukraine. Industry analysts say that Ukraine is expected to produce a significant increase in the production of oil and gas in upcoming decades.

'Spring fails in Ukrainian plunderland', as the Asia times says and right on cue, the International Monetary Fund announced today they'd be offering Ukraine a 15 billion dollar package. The IMF is basically the banking division of US and EU imperialism. IMF packages don't require collateral, instead they require that the borrowers sign conditional structural adjustment agreements. As anybody who has read Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine understands, the IMF's conditions don't come with strings attached, they come with nooses.

As part of a proposed $15 billion IMF deal IMF bankers will make sure Ukraine will be required to undertake tough economic reforms which will hurt ordinary people. As global financial markets expert Patrick Young said today, "Of course we know that it’s the people, it’s the locals, who bear the brunt of all the austerity measures. Speaking about the domestic situation in Ukraine, and specifically about household and gas tariffs – other previous governments refused to increase gas in homes. Why would the new one adopt such unpopular measures? "

Why because the new government, headed by 'our man Yats' [above left], was installed to do just that. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was recorded as saying: “Yats is the guy. He’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the guy you know. … Yats will need all the help he can get to stave off collapse in the ex-Soviet state. He has warned there is an urgent need for unpopular cutting of subsidies and social payments before Ukraine can improve.” Good old Yats, he's our man now eh.

To obtain a loan from the IMF, Ukraine is going to have to sign on to all necessary reform conditions. Apart from changes to social policy, they include 40% gas, electricity and public utilities tariff raising. Wage freeze, pension cuts and public sector job cuts are also on the list. Such drastic measures can further destabilize the situation in the country, experts are warning. The IMF does not provide loans for nothing, it allocates money for specific purposes and in exchange for tough reforms of the whole economy. The main requirement of their financiers is to cut social spending, which will affect the most vulnerable and poor layers of the society. Gas prices may double or even triple.

Of course, the US-EU-IMF cabal know that these conditions will be so unpopular that Yats won't last long and that the results of the upcoming May 25th election will see someone who won't meet them elected. Which is the jolly good news the disaster capitalist vultures await because if/when Ukraine doesn't meet the conditions [think Greece etc.] they'll have already agreed to privatize [turn over to the vultures] the few remaining public assets they have. In my earlier articles on this topic i focused on real wealth of Ukraine's agriculture as being the public asset the IMF's noose capture, and it will be, but not the first.

The first thing the IMF vultures will confiscate is Ukraine's untapped offshore oil and gas reserves. The greatest part of those reserves that have been 'proven' so far sit off the coast of, guess where, Crimea.

Ukraine's Inconvenient Truth: Protesters and Police in Maidan Were Shot by the Same Provocateurs

Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet

This morning my inbox contained numerous links to the latest bombshell from Russia's media. Remember how 94 people were killed and another 900 injured during the standoff between police and protesters at Maidan Saquare in Kiev last month. Well overnight here, 12 time zones away, the Russian press, especially RT, was reporting that the Kiev snipers were hired by Maidan leaders and that they had proof.

Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet visited Kiev on February 25, following the peak of clashes between the pro-EU protesters and security forces in the Ukrainian capital. He met with and interviewed Olga Bogomolets who was the main doctor for the Maidan mobile clinic when protests turned violent in Kiev. Bogomolets told Paet that both protesters and police were shot at by the same people. She said, “ That as a medical doctor she can say that it is the same type of bullets, and it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened.”

As soon as Paet returned home to Estonia he called EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. The call was taped and the contents leaked to RT yesterday.  Within hours the Estonian foreign ministry had confirmed the recording of Paet's conversation with the EU's Ashton is authentic. Urmas Paet said that snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were hired by Maidan leaders. During the conversation, Paet stressed that “there is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition.”

Where is this stunning news in our western 'free press'? Nowhere i can find. Was this horrible mass murder the work of provocateurs? i don't know, but it's the same tactic the police and state 'security' forces use everywhere. Maybe things weren't moving fast enough for 'our man Yats'. Maybe the whole underhanded deal Victoria Nuland's previously leaked conversation outlined was unravelling. Our corporate owned western media was quick to whip out the titillating 'Fuck the EU' part but somehow overlooked the actual content of the conversation [here's a transcript]. In it, Nuland was recorded as saying: “Yats is the guy. He’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the guy you know. … Yats will need all the help he can get to stave off collapse in the ex-Soviet state. He has warned there is an urgent need for unpopular cutting of subsidies and social payments before Ukraine can improve.”

This story is rampaging around the globe right now, at least the parts where the US-UK-EU don't control the press. This isn't just from RT, there's many other journalists chasing the details right now and there's video footage out today to that's embedded below that corroborates Olga Bogomolets' observations.

Ray McGovern's article 4 days ago, 'Ukraine: One ‘Regime Change’ Too Many?' explains the context of how the US State Dept was and is behind the coup and why Nuland wanted 'our man Yats' installed as the new leader. In a little while The Mud Report will be publishing another piece on how today's IMF 'loan' fits into the Yatshisname story.

Putin's Live TV Response Proves That Obama is Playing Checkers Against a Chess Grand Master

President Putin in a live Russian TV insisted that the armed forces of Russia and Ukraine were "brothers in arms".

Russian takeover of Crimea will not descend into war, said Vladimir Putin in a live TV address from his home on Russian TV. During his address Putin talked about 'fraternal' ties with Ukraine and insisted soldiers occupying Crimean military sites are not Russian special forces. Putin's address was in response to the hot air being created by the US hawks taking flight over Ukraine, though he never mentioned them.

Putin himself didn't elaborate on exactly how, but he did say that the threats of 'costs' being paid would backfire if the west followed through with them. However, as the Guardian article about his address noted that "A Kremlin aide said on Tuesday that if the US were to impose sanctions, Moscow could be forced to drop the dollar as a reserve currency and refuse to pay off any loans to American banks." Sergei Glazyev, an adviser to the Kremlin – who is often used by the authorities to stake out a hard-line stance but does not make policy – added "that if Washington froze the accounts of Russian businesses and individuals, Moscow would recommend that all holders of US treasuries sell them."

Almost immediately there rush to the toilets as the US banksters suffered what is being described as strange unidentified gastrointestinal 'flu like symptoms' - more commonly called shitting one's pants. Apparently those symptoms spread instantaneously through EU headquarters in Brussels and the IMF offices in Washington DC. Geologists are warning of a potential tsunami in the North Atlantic caused by all those toilets being flushed in unison.

Why are the banksters and their wholly owned political class so stressed out? As Chris Hedges explained in 'The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies': Our financial system - like our participatory democracy - is a mirage. The Federal Reserve purchases $85 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds—much of it worthless subprime mortgages—each month. It has been artificially propping up the government and Wall Street like this for five years. It has loaned trillions of dollars at virtually no interest to banks and firms that make money - because wages are kept low - by lending it to us at staggering interest rates that can climb to as high as 30 percent. ... Or our corporate oligarchs hoard the money or gamble with it in an overinflated stock market. Estimates put the looting by banks and investment firms of the U.S. Treasury at between $15 trillion and $20 trillion. But none of us know. The figures are not public. And the reason this systematic looting will continue until collapse is that our economy [would] go into a tailspin without this giddy infusion of free cash.

This current bubble and the looting was being supported by China's purchase of U.S. Treasury Bonds [T-Bills] for years as a means to their ends of funneling the fiat created money into their coffers then using that imaginary money to slowly and quietly buy up the real wealth of the west.

The slimy process outlined by Hedges above and perfectly described by Ellen Brown, the founder of The Public Banking Institute, is what The US Federal Reserve calls 'Quantatative Easing' and what honest people call printing money. There's been two rounds of this bullshit, unsurprisingly named QEI and QEII, now, guess what, the pigs eagerly await the announcement of QEIII.

China is no longer buying T-Bills. That is what makes the QEs so dangerous to the future of America's oligarchs and kleptocrats. America is issuing T-Bills and then buying the vast majority of their own T-Bills back. The USA has not even started to curb it's QEII donations which are $80 billion dollars of welfare for the rich a month. 960 billion dollars of aid for Wall Street.

The only thing that allows the U.S. dollar to hold its strength is the U.S.'s hegemonic control of foreign exchange through it colonial domination of currency markets by forcing all the world's oil transactions to be done in US dollars through its gunboat diplomacy - when a country like Iraq or Iran or Venezuela tries to deal in another currency the US Warships show up in a day or two just off their coast. Consequently every country in the world must hold US dollars to purchase oil resulting in an unreal demand which keeps prices unnaturally high.

Putin knows all this, so does China so does the kleptocrats. Russia is a huge exporter of energy, Putin can not and will not be bullied by the US hawks. If the Russians do it the Chinese will too, ergo mass 'flu like symptoms' among the US-EU-IMF criminals and the widespread recognition that Obama is playing checkers against a chess grand master. My prediction: an almost immediate cooling of rhetoric by the Obama-bots and continued 'flu like symptoms' among the kleptocrats.

Is Uncle Sam a Saviour or a Criminal? How About Russia? Turns Out 'Believing is Seeing'

Ukraine has a bright future as i see it.

Believing is seeing in geo-politics just as it is in economics, climate science, and your baseball teams potential during spring training. Today, The Mud Report will focus on how the veil of our long cherished beliefs allow the information we agree with to pass through as 'truth' but filter out information that counters them.

Ukraine is an interesting example of the veil in geo-politics. From the mainstream western media, which surrounds me, this article 'Western leaders try to halt Russia's advance into Ukrainian territory' from The Guardian, considered to be the most progressive outlets in the west, is a perfect example. In it US Secretary of State Kerry says. "It is really a stunning, willful choice by President Putin to invade another country. Russia is in violation of the sovereignty of Ukraine. Russia is in violation of its international obligations." A view i've now heard echoed almost word for word, not just in the corporate media, but also from individuals who refuse to read anything not written from that perspective.

As this is the dominant paradigm here the west, it's the one that most needs challenging here.

What Kerry calls a "stunning, willful choice by President Putin to invade another country" stuns me. As Jack Matlok, the former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991 wrote today. "So far as violating sovereignty is concerned, Russia would point out that the U.S. invaded Panama to arrest Noriega, invaded Grenada to prevent American citizens from being taken hostage (even though they had not been taken hostage), invaded Iraq on spurious grounds that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, targets people in other countries with drones, etc., etc. In other words, for the U.S. to preach about respect for sovereignty and preservation of territorial integrity to a Russian president can seem a claim to special rights not allowed others." Of course, those who already agree with American exceptionalism see no contradiction in Kerry's position.

When Kerry says, "Russia is in violation of its international obligations." It makes me puke up in my mouth a little. In my adult life the US has invaded or overthrown countless countries, countries who presented no threat to US security, countries who's biggest mistake was to question the hubris of American exceptionalism.

If you follow the media in Russia, they can't get over Sec. Kerry saying to David Gregory that "you don't just invade a country on false pretenses", while on meet the press Sunday. But they also can't get over how Gregory didn't ask him, 'like the US did in Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Grenada, Panama, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Somilia, Afghanistan etc.'

Then there's drones, “According to Senator Lindsey Graham(R-S.C.), the Obama administration has killed 4,700 individuals in numerous countries, including Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia." wrote Karen J. Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University’s law school. Adding, Obama's "brand of warfare has helped lay the basis for a permanent state of global warfare via ‘low footprint’ drone campaigns and special forces operations aimed at an ever-morphing enemy usually identified as some form of Al Qaeda.”

What you won't read the western media is that while speaking at the the 25th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, "Russia wants to see the situation resolved through new talks. Any internal crises should be overcome by dialogue of all political forces, ethnic and confessional groups, in compliance with international obligations, first of all the obligations on international humanitarian law, the protection of human rights and ethnic minorities rights." Because it doesn't fit in the propaganda paradigm.

Another thing you won't read about is Lavrov explaining that he had discussed Ukraine with his Chinese counterpart and their views coincided on the situation there.

Believing is seeing. We start construction of our worldview with our first breath. Every sensual input must be triaged, each tagged with a value and accepted or rejected, made a bit player or a star in our movie. There are just too many inputs to deal with all at once as they arrive from our senses seeking our attention, we use our blinders defensively.

But those blinders not only protect us from overload they also stop us from learning. Instead of defending our interests, they put us in grave danger when new information must be assimilated quickly. Those cultural blinders are right now stopping many westerners from even considering the possibility that the corporate media is once again trumpeting the interests of their paymasters not those of the broad majority of the people.

Ukraine: Obama and the Propaganda Machine are Peddling Deception. Don't Drink the Koolaid

Today's article by ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern, 'Ukraine: One ‘Regime Change’ Too Many?', is a must read for all North Americans. In case you're unfamiliar with Ray, during his career as a CIA analyst, Ray prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This article is of utmost importance for North Americans because we are spun by a lying, deceitful, corporate owned media. In this case being ignorant of the facts could possibly result in...disaster.

Ray's article explains in detail how and why the latest neocon-approved 'regime change' is quickly spinning out of control. In it he says, "Unless Obama is completely bereft of advisers who know something about Russia, it should have been a “known-known” (pardon the Rumsfeldian mal mot) that the Russians would react this way to a putsch removing Yanukovich. It would have been a no-brainer that Russia would use military force, if necessary, to counter attempts to use economic enticement and subversive incitement to slide Ukraine into the orbit of the West and eventually NATO."

As Russia’s Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev said a few hours ago In a Facebook post where he accused the new government in Kiev of “seizing power”, He wrote, "While Viktor Yanukovich had practically no authority, he remained the legitimate head of state according the constitution. If he is guilty before Ukraine - hold an impeachment procedure ... and try him. Everything else is lawlessness. The seizure of power, and that means such order will be extremely unstable. It will end in a new revolution. New blood. Medvedev goes on to say that Russia is ready to develop ties with Ukraine, “but not with those who seized power through bloodshed”.

While i understand that what one side's press calls info, the other calls propaganda and that the names of the sides are interchangeable. The problem is that we in the west are getting only one side of that propaganda. In the last week The Mud Report has tried to take a broad historic perspective to inform as many folks as possible thinking that calm intelligent choices can only be made by well informed people. But now, as our ears are filled with the drums of intentionally one-sided mis-information the only way to balance that is to focus on the perspective we're not hearing before it's to late.

One example we don't hear about is that last night, the UN, on a request from Ukraine, convoked an extra meeting to discuss the situation in Ukraine. In his speech at the meeting, Russia’s permanent envoy in the UN Vitaly Churkin said that Russia insists that the crisis in Ukraine should be solved only by constitutional means. He also believes that another government should be formed in Ukraine, a government that would meet the interests of all the Ukrainian people.

What's that about? Remember how our media did wall to wall coverage of Victoria Nuand's "Fuck the EU" quote? What their sensationalism covered up was the real content of that conversation. In it Nuland was recorded as saying: “Yats is the guy. He’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the guy you know. … Yats will need all the help he can get to stave off collapse in the ex-Soviet state. He has warned there is an urgent need for unpopular cutting of subsidies and social payments before Ukraine can improve.”

And guess what. The unelected government formed after the coup designated Nuland’s guy Yats, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, prime minister. Who appointed Yats? Who are those in the power in Keiv now? They are those who were supported and promoted by the EU representatives and the US State Department. Representatives of the party of the overthrown government—the Party of Regions—were threatened into resigning.

"How", an American friend named Robert asks, "can we, of all the nations of the Earth, morally lecture any other country about the use of military force against other states?" Adding, "If we were four year olds, we would have our mouths washed out with soap and be made to sit in a corner."

Are we simply seeing the hubris of Obama, his administration, and the corporatocracy at large, or something much more frightening? Are we watching as the Armageddon scenario that the fundamentalist Christian fanatics have been trying to stir up so their imaginary being, their Savior will return and Rapture them? Are we watching the neo-con's final solution unfolding before our eyes?

Putin and hid government know all this. So does Obama, hopefully. But Obama is a puppet of the oligarchs. Putin isn't. Putin and the Russians have their own agenda. But it's becoming more apparent by the hour that our best hope may be that, as Robert says, "Putin is everything Obama was touted to be but is not - effective, intelligent, resourceful" And that those characteristics allow him the ability to remain calm.

Geology Drives Geography Which In Turn Drives Cultural Adaptation in Ukraine and Everywhere

Map of active tectonics in east Mediterranean

One article in this series about understanding the forces that have driven the cultural divisions within Ukraine that has drawn quite a few emails is 'How Ukraine's Geologic History Created Perfect Soils and a Target for Capitalism's Vultures'. One or two of the writers have asked big questions that it has taken me a couple days to find big enough answers for...so here goes.

One writer called my thesis in the article 'cultural geology'. Another thought geography was the better term saying, "the landscape a people live in affects the development of its culture". Adding, "If the land is fertile, as in the Ukraine there is agriculture, if there is a substantial river it'll be used as a trade-route, if there is flooding houses are built on stilts - that sort of thing."

While deep in rumination sitting on the deck it occurred me that geology drives geography which in turn drives cultural adaptation in the Ukraine and everywhere. The Dnieper River Valley, for instance, has played a starring role in Ukraine's history in many ways from being the frozen roadway The Golden Horde's armies used to approach, surround and destroy Kiev 1,000 years ago, to how by slowly draining the acid peat bogs at its headwaters and mixing them with the Carpathian Mountain's eroded limestone it created some of the world's most naturally balanced soils.

The valleys in Ukraine are where they are geographically because of geology. The Carpathians are too. They all share a common root in that they are effects created by the forces unleashed by Africa and Arabia's movement northward and consequent subduction under the Eurasian and Anatolian Plates. Africa started it's northern journey long ago when the mid-Atlantic rift opened and started pushing North and South America westward and Africa north-eastward. Africa's path soon-ish turned more north because in that direction there was an existing basin approximately where the Mediterranean now is that was occupied in the Triassic by the Tethys Sea whereas to it east the Arabian was 'block'-ing its path.

Together Africa-Arabia moved north, closing the former Tethys Sea, which formerly separated Africa/Arabia {A/A} from Eurasia/Anatoloia [E/A] and began subducting [A/A under E/A]. E/A reacted by folding and lifting parts into mountain ranges, one being the limestone Carpathians. As time worn on, Africa's journey created ranges and basins from Spain to Kazakstan including the uplifted faulted plains of eastern Europe. Those mountains ranges, as all ranges do, forced the the air to rise over them and, because of the temp gradient, created precipitation that had to get back to the sea somehow or hang around absorbing decaying lifeforms [peat bogs] until it could escape.

The Dnieper River Valley is one of those minor faults created by the massive tectonic subduction of A/A. Some geologists say it's actually a rift valley itself. As the huge ancient valley rifted, it sank in some areas. Those areas allowed the drainage of the acidic peat bogs to run over the eroded basic limestone. Voila, perfectly balanced soil widely distributed during the flood stages in particular.

Because of geology's tectonics Ukraine now possesses 30% of the world's richest black soil and abundant fresh water as part of its geography. That geography in turn created ideal conditions for our ancestor's cultures to evolve from hunter gatherers to pastoral nomads to agriculturalists. Agriculture remains the only major asset in Ukraine that has not been privatized and is a main target of the vulture capitalists who are using their fiat currencies to buy up as much as possible of the globe's limited agricultural land in one of the greatest examples of how disaster capitalism's criminals operate we've seen yet.

As the Tethyian sea closed the Atlantic rushed in through what's known as the straits of Gibraltar, then dried up, going through about 60 different cycles over millions of years until finally it had the new basin dredged enough to permanently become the Mediterranean Sea. The Tethyian didn't totally disappear, it's remnants are the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Due to the compressive forces in the Black Sea basin over time it developed a mostly under water ridge that at its norther terminus is the above water. We call it Crimea. As of today, and for a long time now the area we're calling western Ukraine has been slowly separating from eastern Ukraine along the Dnieper River Rift Valley. Crimea has always been it's own little world geologically too. This last week's dramatic political events have resulted from the long [in human time scales] cultural divisions. Those cultural divisions, if not caused by, at least correlate with, the geographic realities under foot. Those geographic realities are caused by the underlying geology itself.

"If physical geography is the house in which regional culture makes it home, then geology is its foundation, plumbing, and wiring." - Robert Thorson, Professor of Geology UConn. Being a longtime carpenter, i totally agree.

The Black Sea's Tributaries Connected the Ancient World, Crimea and Odessa Had the Biggest Ports

Ancient Black Sea connections

Today's headlines focus on Crimea's ethnic divisions and its potential to be the flashpoint for Russian military intervention into the quagmire of Ukrainian chaos. Once again, these articles lack any historic depth. Without some sense of Crimea's important pivotal position geographically and historically the shallow MSM articles read more like propaganda and in so doing, they create a false good/bad Hollywood type picture.

In ancient times, when the western world's trade was done by sailing ships and its Empires rose and fell through the control of trade goods and gold. The Black Sea and its tributaries connected Europe to the rest of the rest of the known world. Ancient European seafarer trader routes around the Black Sea were sailed by Hittites, Carians, Thracians, Greeks, Persians, Cimmerians, Scythians, Romans, Byzantines, Goths, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Slavs, Varangians, Crusaders, Venetians, Genoese, Lithuanians, Georgians, Poles, Tatars, Ottomans, and Russians.

Overland routes extended that range all the way to China via the Mongols, to India via the Persians and Arabs and almost all of Africa via the Nile and the Mediterranean Basin. Taurica, the name of Crimea in antiquity, had then and still has the best natural harbors on the Black Sea, as the Russian Navy well knows. Odessa, on the opposite side of the Dnieper River, also played a huge role.

Odessa was once occupied by an ancient Greek colony in pre-history. Archaeological artifacts confirm links between the Odessa area and the eastern Mediterranean. Other archaeological finds point much further back to The Dnieper River Valley as being the dividing line between the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnons [us] for thousands of years between 42,000BC and 25,000BC when inexplicably the Neanderthals seemed to disappear [though some theories say they just all inter-bred].

Throughout the centuries, Crimea was invaded or occupied successively by the Goths (AD 250), the Huns (376), the Bulgars (4th–8th century), the Khazars (8th century), the state of Kievan Rus' (10th–11th centuries), the Byzantine Empire (1016), the Kipchaks (Kumans) (1050), and the Mongols (1237). In the 13th century, the Republic of Genoa seized the settlements which their rivals, the Venetians, had built along the Crimean coast and gained control of the Crimean economy and the Black Sea commerce for two centuries

In the Middle Ages successive rulers of the Crimea-Odessa region [just love this Crimean castle on the left] included various nomadic tribes (Petchenegs, Cumans), the Golden Horde [Mongols], the Crimean Khanate, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans ruled for 250 yrs with the aid of the Mongols some of whom didn't go back - we now call them Tartars - until they lost it to the Russians and Cossacks just before 1800.

In 1905 Odessa was the site of a workers' uprising supported by the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin, the focus of Sergei Eisenstein's famous motion picture. Following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 during World War I, Odessa and Crimea were occupied by several groups, including the Ukrainian Tsentral'na Rada, the French Army, the Red Army and the White Army. In 1918, Odessa became the capital of the independent Odessa Soviet Republic.

Nowadays  61% of Odessa's residents are Ukrainian speakers, 29% Russian speakers the remainder self-identify as  Albanians, Armenians, Azeris, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Georgians, Greeks, Jews, Romanian sand Turks, among others. In Crimea today it's: Russians: 58.32%; Ukrainians: 24.32%; Crimean Tatars: 12.1%; Belarusians, 1.44%; Tatars: 0.54%; Armenians: 0.43%; Jews: 0.22%, Greeks: 0.15% and others.

My point here is that the borders of this region have moved around so often in recorded history that today's political borders are essentially meaningless other than perhaps as divisions for the tax collectors. Those folks being described as western Ukrainians are indistinguishable genetically from those we call Russians or from Poles, Bulgarians, Romanians, Belarusians etc. So, as the borders and genetic heritage seem equally meaningless about the only way all these people differ is language and as linguists know all of them are slight variations of a basic proto language. That leaves religion, i'm not going there as everybody is entitled to believe in whatever gets them through the night.

When the headlines shout, 'US tells Russia to keep troops out of Ukraine as Crimea flashpoint looms' who is that bellicose crap really aimed at? Certainly not Putin and his advisers, they know all this history and lots more. Do those in the US administration really believe this crap? Of course not, Obama and his advisers know all this history and more too. It's not aimed at the Russian people, most of them view Crimea as a Russian territory. Thi crap, this propaganda, this spin is aimed at us in the west who are, supposedly, the historically uninformed the receivers of it.

That, the importance of being informed is why The Mud Report is doing all these background articles on this issue. Only by being informed can we all calmly come to our own conclusions, just as, hopefully, the Ukrainians will. Tomorrow, it'll probably be more history, probably about the Mongols primarily, which i find fascinating. Then probably one last piece on how geography, driven by geology, almost always defines what our short-term focus sees as political and cultural divides.

Ukrainians Have a Bright, Independent, Future Ahead, Partitioned or Not, If They Choose Wisely

Kiev Square yesterday. The flames are gone
but the difficult choices remain.

It has taken Ukraine decades, if not centuries, to get into the trouble they're in now culturally, politically and financially. There is no quick, easy, 'Free Lunch' solution that will change all that. Only long-term thinking can solve the enormous challenges all Ukrainians face. Only Ukraine's people, not the outside powers, can choose the road ahead.

The greatest danger Ukraine faces, other than open warfare between the opposing fear-filled factions, is that their temporary leaders make the huge mistake of believing the kabuki theatre performance by the self-interested IMF-EU-US deceivers and sign onto an agreement that in the end will cost Ukraine their independence and their 'real' wealth. Ukraine is one of the naturally richest places on Earth. It was once called the breadbasket of the world, it could be again if the political leaders there act in the people's best interests not in the interests of their oligarchs and bankers.

If those leaders can just take a deep breath, remember what making a deal with the Empire's devils has cost Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland in this go around and what it has cost every country globally that has, when in trouble, agreed to the 'structural adjustment' noose demanded by the bankster devils they'll choose wisely, if not...Mephistopheles awaits.

Neither the US-EU-IMF cabal or the Kremlin is a being an altruistic actor in this Kabuki show. Putin's government also is acting to serve its own financial, political and geopolitical interests. But Ukraine's history is Russia's history. Kiev was for 500 years named Kievan Rus, it was the capital of what we now call Russia. It was overrun by the Mongols 1000 years ago because it was the most important trading center in that part of the world when Moscow was an insignificant village. Ukraine is still Russia's close neighbor and far, far away from the US. If Russia were to start meddling in Mexico's affairs what would the US reaction be?

As worldwide polls consistently show, the US is regarded as the greatest threat to world peace. IMO the US is not merely a threat to peace. It and its despicable European puppet states are a threat to the existence of life on the planet. US foreign policies are insane, and European 'leaders' are either paid off or threatened [or both] into to providing cover for that insanity.

i see a bright future ahead for Ukraine, either united or partitioned, if it chooses to be allied neither to Europe nor to Russia. As Katia Gerus, 39, a secretary from Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine, says: “I don’t think Ukraine should join the EU. We just need to consolidate the situation in the country and then we can move on as an ordinary, independent country open to cooperation with all countries. We have our own resources and can find our own path ahead. We have an opportunity to do things properly on our own.” Which is exactly what The Mud Report has been recommending.

Reading the mainstream media' propaganda spinning out these last few days, be it from the western or the eastern perspective, has been educational in that by reading each a person can see fairly clearly how opinions are manufactured. As Ukraine stands at this historic crossroads there's a lot of things for them to consider and discuss among themselves before they should choose which road to take.

Tomorrow, unless the events of the next 24hrs change my mind, The Mud Report will concentrate on Ukraine's long, long, history and attempt to use it as a canvas on which to paint the hopeful and viable landscape that could lie ahead of Ukraine if they wisely, not fearfully, choose which road can lead them there.

A Few Suggestions for Putin as the World Awaits His Response to the Ukraine's Unfolding Dilemma

The prominent S-shaped Dnieper River Valley almost perfectly corresponds to the cultural, religious and linguistic divisions in Ukraine

The world's mainstream media headlines are nearly identical - "What Will Putin Do? The articles that follow similarly mirror each other in both content and lack of depth. They all revolve around Ukraine's cultural, religious and linguistic divisions. They all agree with the obvious fact that west and north are predominantly Ukrainian-speaking, the east and south predominantly Russian-speaking. Facts that barely scratch the surface of, or explain the reasons why, for instance,  the Russian speakers refer to the Ukrainian speakers as fascists while the Ukrainian speakers refer to the Russian speakers as communists. 

The long standing east-west divide has bedeviled Ukraine since it first emerged as an independent state after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. In each election since, voters have split along a line running roughly along the Dnieper River Valley , unsurprisingly, almost exactly as the cultural, religious and linguistic ones with some bleed-out here and there that most fellow Canadians will recognize as similar to the French-English divide here.

The underlying depth of hatred and distrust in Ukraine is far more intense than here in fair Canuckistan though. For instance it was only in 1941 that Nazi Germany with its allies invaded the Soviet Union. Many Ukrainians and Polish people, particularly in the west of those countries, where they had experienced years of harsh Soviet rule, initially regarded the Wehrmacht soldiers as liberators. Not all of them, some western Ukrainians utterly resisted the Nazi onslaught from its start and a partisan movement immediately spread over the occupied territory. Some elements of the Ukrainian nationalist underground formed a Ukrainian Insurgent Army that fought both Soviet and Nazi forces. In some western regions of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army survived underground and continued the resistance against the Soviet authorities well into the 1950s.

Every present day Ukrainian on either side of the current divide have been told that story, from different perspectives, since they were babies. So it's not hard to understand the fascist/communist name calling and hatred still evident today. Without understanding the history behind the current headlines it's nearly impossible to see the situation from any perspective other than a false Hollywood style dichotomy.

Putin, of course, understands all this and much more. Putin, a long time KGB officer, understands that the US's approach to foreign policy hasn't changed much since WW11. He remembers how consistently the US has used internal cultural divisions in counties who have had the audacity to disagree with 'American exceptionalism' to undermine them. He remembers what happened in Iran when they nationalized their oil fields, what happened in Chile when they nationalized their Copper resources, what the US tried to do when Castro nationalized US's 'interests' there, he remembers Vietnam, Nicaragua, even tiny Granada...it's a long list. Putin sees what's happening right now in Venezuela and Ukraine, he knows they are basically the same story. Divide and conquer.

Putin understands why the Americans and their western allies do it too. He knows that after the conquer part comes the loans that will be so inviting as a quick fix to the huge long-term problems, though different in each case, underlying each situation. Putin knows a lot because Russia too has always faced internal nationalistic divides like it does right now in the Caucuses. Putin knows, because Russia and the Soviets were part of the problem, that most of these divisions were caused when at the end of WW1 'the winners' met in Malta and re-defined the globe's political boundaries in accordance with their own prerogatives and disregard for the the ethnic realities 'on the ground'.

The short-term security and political cohesion of Ukraine now depend on how Putin reacts in the next few days. If he does not act firmly Russia's much repressed opposition will be encouraged to emulate the Kiev street revolution. As it stands, what Moscow views as a western-backed 'coup' is a personal humiliation for Russia's pugnacious leader. He will not take it lightly.

So what will Putin do? He won't blink, that i'm sure of. As he already has said earlier today, he'll question the authority of the interim rulers. He'll make Ukraine another generous financial offer with little or no strings attached unlike the IMF-EU-US who will attach a noose to whatever they offer. He'll rattle his sword and if pushed by the US, who was embarrassed a few months ago by Putin in Syria, he'll move to 'protect' ethnic Russians and Russian speakers you've already petitioned him for protection. Russia used a similar appeal as a pretext for the land invasion of South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia, in 2008.  So i suspect the US cabal won't push very hard.

The closing ceremony of the Sochi Olympics is behind us, Putin has not yet commented publicly on the violence of the past week. But he will and whatever he says at first will be prompted by the fact that Russia will lose both prestige and big money if Ukraine defaults on its sovereign debt and as Interim President’ Oleksandr Turchynov said to the Ukrainian parliament, “There is no money in Ukraine’s Treasury account, the Ukrainian economy is in a catastrophic state."

Putin will play for time hoping that the coming May 25th elections will allow the steam to escape from the pressure cooker, that time will heal all the wounds. But the odds of that are slim. In the meantime Putin will be planning a post-partition strategy. IMO a 'velvet divorce', as it was in Czechoslovakia would be the best long-term outcome as it would avoid a bloody division like what happened in Yugoslavia where mixed towns became battlefields.

Default too, isn't such a terrible outcome for either of Ukraine's solitudes. Though for opposite reasons, i agree with Victoria Nuland - Fuck the EU. But i'd add Fuck the IMF and the US too. Current Russian bond holdings would be nearly worthless as well. But Putin's Russia, like Chavez did when he bought up Argentina's junk bonds, could buy more bonds for peanuts, then by helping both sides of the newly partitioned Ukraine with energy bartering deals, again like Chavez did with oil for Argentina, watch and wait while the 'market' value of both the pile of Ukraine bonds they now own and those he buys up as 'junk', to appreciate. Chavez made billions for Venezuela with his counter vulture capitalism strategy, Putin can and, i predict, will too.

Tomorrow, more on the long winding road that put Ukraine at their present historic crossroads, more on which turn i predict they'll take and why.