Russia-China Alliance Growing At 'Shocking Speed'

Russia Turns East At Shocking Speed With China Mega Energy Deals

While Western mainstream media concentrates attention on the emissions agreement signed by US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi at the recent APEC Beijing Summit, Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi quietly signed major new energy agreements that will have enormous geopolitical significance in bringing about the very nightmare that US strategists such as Zbigniew Brzezinski warned about way back in 1997 when America seemed indomitable as sole Superpower.

The impetus, ironically, to the array of strategic Russia-China deals are the very economic and financial sanctions the rather stupid strategists at the US Treasury and National Security Council devised to “punish” Putin beginning last May for allegedly “invading” Crimea.

On November 9 in meetings on the periphery of the Beijing APEC summit, Putin and Xi signed 10 agreements. Far the most significant is the one for the so-called West Route gas pipeline that will connect gas fields in western Siberia with northwest China through the Altai area of Xinjiang Autonomous Region. They also agreed on provisions for possible second and third sections to be added later that would bring capacity to a staggering 100 billion cubic meters a year. West Route is designated a priority and to be finished in six years. Initially it will give China another 30 billion cubic meters of gas annually over 30 years.

The West Route is in addition to the so-called Russian East Route pipeline deal signed between Putin and Xi in May. That deal, a $400 billion agreement over 30 years will begin sending gas in 2018 for another 38 billion cubic meters annually from Russia to China. When both East and West Route pipelines are operational, Russia will supply some 40% of the current Chinese annual natural gas consumption, replacing the EU as Russia’s largest gas export market. Today China consumes 169 billion cubic meters annually.

Tragically, today the United States has managed to transform itself into the world’s largest virtual economy. The main item produced today is virtual money by the Federal Reserve to give paper steroids to the mega banks of Wall Street so they can continue their criminal enterprises with increasingly worthless paper dollars.

America’s industrial excellence is mostly a relic of the past. Factory work has been outsourced to…the Peoples’ Republic of China. Domestically, American democracy, or at least its earlier traces, has given way to a rule by power-addicted loveless American Oligarchs. Now those loveless oligarchs see their world, their power, threatened by a growing cooperation between the great nations of Eurasia, led by China and Russia with Iran also playing a significant role.

Ironically their very stupid attempts to initiate global dis-order and a new world war, in order to retain their failing grip on power, is having the opposite effect. It is driving China, Russia, the entire BRICS countries and other nations into closer ties on all levels to build a defense against that attempt. The oligarchs and their war machine are stupid precisely because they seem incapable of thinking in comprehensive terms of how interconnected everything in our universe is. They seem blinded by their addiction

China Counters

‘Biased US won’t affect construction’: China counters criticism of artificial island project

China has cautioned that US warnings to halt construction of a massive artificial island and airfield will not deter it from completing the project in disputed waters of the South China Sea. This is the fourth such undertaking in the last 12-18 months.

China’s top general has defended the construction of the 3,000-meter island as “justifiable” in a scornful response to swift American criticism that followed evidence of large-scale military construction on the Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands area.

China currently claims almost all of the South China Sea, with some claims being leveled by Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Taiwan and the Philippines. However, its land reclamation projects have been causing the West and its strategic partners in the area a headache, owing to the already-tense political situation in the region.

Despite this, of all the claimants in the South China Sea, China is the only one currently not occupying an island with an airfield.

"The US is obviously biased considering that the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam have already set up military facilities," People's Liberation Army Major General Luo Yuan told the state-run Global Times newspaper, as cited by AFP.

Although China said on Monday that its construction is aimed "mainly to improve the living standards of the reef-stationed soldiers," a report by IHS Jane’s Defence says that a harbor has been dug on the eastern side of the reef, which appears to be large enough to take in tankers and warships.

US criticism followed just days after the report.

"We urge China to stop its land reclamation program, and engage in diplomatic initiatives to encourage all sides to restrain themselves in these sorts of activities," US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Pool told reporters.

To this China replied that the US is “not a claimant” in the South China Sea, with a later editorial in the Global Times adding that it has been behaving “selfishly” in the region.

"China's construction on the Yongshu Reef will not be affected by US words," the editorial added.

Other similar Chinese projects include artificial islands at three other reefs, but none were large enough to include an airstrip, which put China at a great disadvantage to its neighbors.

Cyber Attack Warnings

Top cybersecurity experts echoed a dire warning from a top intelligence chief on the vulnerability of the U.S. power grid, with one telling FoxNews.com that state-sponsored hackers could send America’s nerve centers on an “uncontrollable, downward spiral.”

Admiral Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, told lawmakers Thursday that adversaries of the U.S. conduct regular electronic reconnaissance to reveal weaknesses in America’s industrial control systems, ranging from power plants to sewage facilities. The nation's entire power infrastructure could prove vulnerable to a crippling assault, should China or any of the other nations who sponsor such efforts find an Achilles' heel and move to exploit it, he said.

“Unlike the recent headline attacks, which result in significant loss of data, attacking a nation state’s critical infrastructure requires persistence and long term discipline of not being detected. The scale and techniques required to do this exist in the military and intelligence functions of various world governments,” said Ron Gula, CEO of Columbia, Md.,-based Tenable Network Security.

Rogers told members of the House Intelligence Committee China along with “one or two” other countries have the capability to mount devastating cyber-attacks, and merely remaining on the defensive is a “losing strategy.” The possibility of such cyberattacks by U.S. adversaries has been widely known, but never confirmed publicly by the nation's top cyber official.

Brian Ingram, cyber security investigator and owner of Consulting Investigation Services, headquartered in Dallas, called the assessment “dead on accurate.”

“China has, for years, participated in massive electronic probing of networks in the U.S.,” Ingram said. “The ability to conduct these network scans is not new, the sophistication of the newer methodologies is growing exponentially and our defenses, from the little made public or known to those in the industry, has not kept pace.”

There is a "huge risk" that America's own power utilities could be turned into a weapon used against U.S. citizens and controlled from another land, said Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute.