With the arrival of Peak Oil, the curtain has closed on Act 1 of the drama Petroleum Man. What will happen in Act 2? Chekhov said, "If there's a gun on the wall at the beginning of the play, by the end it must go off." In the world's nuclear arsenal are many guns on the wall. If life copies art, will there be an Act 3 in which the players, having learned their lesson the hard way, live sustainably? To explore these and other questions... FTW's Act 2 Blog. Read, comment, take heart! Orkin
While Dick Cheney was embarrassing us in the Caucasus, Sergie Lavros was cleverly in Istanbul talking to the Turks.
Turkey wants '"the option of remaining relatively neutral in this [Georgian} dispute, even if this was not to everyone's satisfaction in Washington." ..."The Kremlin promptly welcomed the Turkish proposal and agreed to have consultations on building up bilateral and multilateral dialogue on all aspects of the Caucasus problem."'
Lavrov said,'"We see the chief value in the Turkish initiative in that it rests on common sense and assumes that countries of any region and, first of all, countries belonging to this region should themselves decide how to conduct affairs there. And others should help, but not dictate their recipes."'
...'The Russian approach is to welcome an "entente cordiale" with Turkey in the Black Sea region, which frustrate US attempts to isolate Russia in its traditional backyard.'
...'The full import of Lavrov's statement needs careful analysis. Its ramifications are profound. It can be understood against the backdrop of the US's ideas in the past to use the eastern Black Sea coast as a staging post for its military operations in Iraq and a potential strike against Iran - which Ankara firmly rejected, to the great relief of Moscow. Suffice to say, Lavrov has done brilliantly by floating an idea to link Iraq and Iran with a Russo-Turkish regional framework on security and cooperation. '
For more, the link is: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JI12Ag01.html
Thanks for a great blog! The situation with Russia / Georgia is semi-worrying..
ReplyDeleteA handy new tool for following peak oil related news has (for me) in the past few weeks been Peak Oil Crisis News
It also shows crude price in real time, and has a peak oil chat (useless but chic!)
You have to like Sergei Lavrov...
ReplyDeleteWhile Dick Cheney was embarrassing us in the Caucasus, Sergie Lavros was cleverly in Istanbul talking to the Turks.
Turkey wants '"the option of remaining relatively neutral in this [Georgian} dispute, even if this was not to everyone's satisfaction in Washington." ..."The Kremlin promptly welcomed the Turkish proposal and agreed to have consultations on building up bilateral and multilateral dialogue on all aspects of the Caucasus problem."'
Lavrov said,'"We see the chief value in the Turkish initiative in that it rests on common sense and assumes that countries of any region and, first of all, countries belonging to this region should themselves decide how to conduct affairs there. And others should help, but not dictate their recipes."'
...'The Russian approach is to welcome an "entente cordiale" with Turkey in the Black Sea region, which frustrate US attempts to isolate Russia in its traditional backyard.'
...'The full import of Lavrov's statement needs careful analysis. Its ramifications are profound. It can be understood against the backdrop of the US's ideas in the past to use the eastern Black Sea coast as a staging post for its military operations in Iraq and a potential strike against Iran - which Ankara firmly rejected, to the great relief of Moscow. Suffice to say, Lavrov has done brilliantly by floating an idea to link Iraq and Iran with a Russo-Turkish regional framework on security and cooperation. '
For more, the link is: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JI12Ag01.html
Great!