Turkmen natural gas pipeline Tapi to cross Afghanistan

A deal has been struck on building a 1,700km (1,050m) pipeline to carry Turkmen natural gas across Afghanistan to Pakistan and India.

The Tapi project aims to feed energy-deprived South Asian markets and transit fees may benefit Afghanistan.

But details about security and funding were not addressed in the framework agreement reached by the four states.

The pipeline will have to cross Taliban-controlled regions and Pakistan’s troubled border region.

Turkmenistan has previously costed the project at $3.3bn (£2.1bn, 2.5bn euros) although other estimates are as high as $10bn.

Tapi, a project which dates back to the mid-1990s, is backed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The US has also encouraged the project as an alternative to a proposed Iranian pipeline to India and Pakistan.

The framework intergovernmental agreement was signed in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat by three presidents – Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan and Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan – and India’s energy minister, Murli Deora.

“This will not be an easy project to complete – it is mandatory that we guarantee the security of the pipeline and the quality of construction work,” ADP chief Haruhiko Kuroda told reporters in Ashgabat. …

via BBC News – Turkmen natural gas pipeline Tapi to cross Afghanistan.

Rabbit hole: Nine years ago, in 2002, I posted an interesting rumor, that “The 9-11 attacks were an inside job to create outrage and allow conquest of Afghanistan for a US pipeline”.

The story is that the Taliban came to Texas (BBC Dec 4, 1997) while George W. Bush was governor of that state. The Taliban’s negotiation with Unocal went poorly and Unocal went to congress and told them the pipeline would not happen unless there was regime change in Afghanistan. (more)

Before 9/11 there was supposedly a build up of US troops around Afghanistan months before 9/11. (more).  Condi, formerly of Chevron, who had an oil tanker named after her, and who supposedly warned Willie  Brown not to fly on 9/11,  also supposedly had the invasion of Afghanistan plans finalized and on her desk two days before 9/11.  (sources: msnbc | link )  Those plans supposedly just “HAPPENED to include the “turn over bin Laden or we attack” ultimatum. The plans were used in the attack following Sept. 11th 2001. It is also interesting to note that:

On August 10, 2005, Unocal merged with Chevron Corporation and became a wholly owned subsidiary.  – wiki

Is the current leader of Afghanistan a former Unocal consultant?

The original claim that Karzai worked for Unocal originates from a 6 December 2001 issue of the French newspaper Le Monde,^[92] Barry Lane UNOCAL’s manager for public relations states that, “He was never a consultant, never an employee.” -wiki

If there was a real government conspiracy around 9/11, wouldn’t Wikileaks have it by now? One could wildly and irresponsibly speculate that the truth about 9/11 is what’s in the “insurance” file that was released encrypted. It could be  the confiscated video, for example, of a missile and not a jet hitting the Pentagon on 9/11.  Proof that the US is run by corporations, that democracy is an illusion, that the presidential elections were rigged. That would rock some worlds, wouldn’t it? Scary thought: If the neocons of 2001 were shown without a doubt to have done 9/11, what would happen? Collapse of our government? World War III? Revolution? Martial law and media black out? Nothing much, just years of hearings?

Are we living on borrowed time in a house of cards on the edge of a global super storm?

The impulse is strong to put a nice big flat slab of metal over that possible rabbit hole, you know, the one that might not exist, to ridicule it and forget about it.  Perhaps it will go away. Enjoy every day. These may be the best of times.

The idea that there are big nuke missile launch tubes created by tunnel making machines under homes and businesses, ready  to open and eject the teeth of Armageddon, is absurd. This is not the reason for mechanical sounds and strange booms people hear underground.   Just a water leak. Or a Big rabbit. Really. Big. Rabbit.

Futuristic weapon undergoes Navy tests

… Inside a cavernous building at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va., on Friday, a gigantic pulse of electricity hurled a 20-pound slug of aluminum out the barrel of an experimental gun at seven times the speed of sound.

The slug trailed a pillar of fire as it left the weapon and the building, illuminating the surrounding woods like a giant flashbulb. It streaked down range, generating a small sonic boom, and traveled about 5,500 feet before tumbling to the ground harmlessly.

In an adjacent building, there was a round of applause from observing scientists.

It was the latest test of the Navy’s electromagnetic railgun – a futuristic weapon that is right out of the latest video war game and could one day change the face of Naval warfare.

Roger Ellis, the railgun program manager, said people “see these things in the video games, but this is real. This is what is very historical.”

The gun is fired with a huge jolt of electricity that can propel a round more than 100 miles and at such velocity that it does not need an explosive warhead.

Two tests were conducted Friday – the first of which the Navy said generated a world record 33 megajoules of force out of the barrel. The second shot, witnessed by reporters, produced 32 megajoules.

Forty-five minutes after the second shot, a part of the battered bullet that was retrieved from the range was still warm to the touch.

The Navy hopes the railgun might bring a sci-fi level of range and firepower to its fleets of the future. …

via Futuristic weapon undergoes Navy tests.

Wikileaks protests in Spain over Julian Assange arrest

Protests have taken place across Spain calling for the release of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is facing extradition from the UK to Sweden for alleged sexual offences.

Hundreds of people gathered outside the British embassy in Madrid calling for him to be freed.

Wikileaks is publishing insights from hundreds of thousands of sensitive US diplomatic and military documents.

The demonstrators believe Mr Assange’s detention is politically motivated.

The whistle-blowing website has angered and embarrassed governments around the world through its publication in recent weeks of classified US diplomatic cables.

Mr Assange was detained in London on Tuesday after Sweden secured an international warrant for his arrest.

Prosecutors in Sweden say they want to question him in connection with the sexual offence allegations. He was refused bail by a British court and has said he will fight extradition.

There have also been calls from some in the US for his arrest and prosecution on charges related directly to Wikileaks’ activity.

While supporters online have mounted cyber-protests against Mr Assange’s detention, Saturday’s protests were some of the first street demonstrations in support of Wikileaks.

Wearing face masks associated with the “Anonymous” group of hackers – which launched cyber attacks after Mr Assange’s arrest in the UK – the crowd in Madrid shouted for his freedom, outside the vast glass tower that houses the British embassy …

via BBC News – Wikileaks protests in Spain over Julian Assange arrest.

TSA Fail: Teen sneaks onto commercial jet wheel well, falls from it, dies, is run over by two cars

BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts prosecutor said Friday it’s likely that a North Carolina teen whose mutilated body was found in a Boston suburb fell from the sky after stowing away in an airplane’s wheel well. …

Investigators also discovered a handprint in grease inside the wheel well on the left side of a Boeing 737 that took off from Charlotte Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, N.C., on Nov. 15, the night his body was found, Keating said.

“We feel it’s important to inform federal transportation safety officials that it appears more likely than not that Mr. Tisdale was able to breach ariport security and hide in the wheel well of a commercial jet liner without being detected by airport security personnel,” Keating said. …

“But if that was someone with a different motive, if that was a terrorist, that could be a bomb planted on there undetected,” Keating said. …

Tisdale was a member of the Air Force ROTC program at Charlotte’s North Mecklenburg High School. His father, Anthony, said the family had moved from Greensboro to Charlotte in the summer just so the teen could join that program. Anthony Tisdale said his son was happy in Charlotte and stayed out of trouble. …

Laura Attikou, Delvonte’s aunt, said her brother’s son was well-behaved and had a good life.

“The biggest mystery to me is how did he get on that plane? Where was security?” she said from her home in Greensboro, N.C. “We’re still at a loss. We’re still in shock.”

Keating said Tisdale was last seen by a sibling at home in North Carolina at 1:30 a.m. The flight he’s believed to have boarded took off at about 7 p.m. that evening, and investigators confirmed flight times and paths with the Federal Aviation Administration, he said.

Just before 9 p.m., a someone who lived near the address where the body was found heard a loud crashing noise, Keating said. At 9:30 p.m., Tisdale’s body was discovered without shirt or shoes by a group of college students in Milton, an affluent Boston suburb.

Keating said his office first tried to determine if Tisdale was a crime victim. The body was found after apparently being run over by a Jeep and then an Audi, and investigators found blood and tissue on the undercarriage of both vehicles. But Keating said there was no proof of a hit-and-run, Keating said.

He said police also interviewed family members in North Carolina without finding a “scintilla” of evidence of foul play.

Last week, detectives visited the Charlotte airport to take samples of grease used in maintaining the planes, to see it matched grease found Tisdale’s pants. (Those tests are pending) That’s when they found scuff marks and the handprint in the wheel well, Keating said.

Keating acknowledged it initially seemed like a remote possibility that a teen could sneak onto a commercial jet. …

via DailyRecord

The corpse of Delvonte Tisdale, 16, was found in a quiet neighborhood in Milton, Mass., Nov. 15, below a flight path to Logan..  At the risk of pointing out what is very much apparent: all the TSA’s invasive body-scanning and crotch-groping failed to prevent this. What if this kid was a suicide bomber stowaway, strapped with explosives? How did this happen?

Comments:

…He would have most likely frozen to death as soon as the plane made cruising altitude as wheel wells are not pressurized…

…I have heard of of similar things happening to airplane wheel-well immigrant stowaways as well, but … those would usually be found frozen to death still in the well, due to the temperatures they’d get exposed to at the high trans-oceanic flight altitudes.

…Why in hell would anyone commit suicide by taking a bomb with them into a wheel well? It would be far easier to attach a bomb to the landing gear and go back the way they came.

…He’d pass out from anoxia long before he froze to death.

via BoingBoing

Strange way to go. Are there really people who believe you can get a free ride in a jet that way and survive? You’d freeze or suffocate to death before falling.  If the jet stays low, due to bad weather, it is possible to survive, however.

… A 20-year-old Romanian looking for work hid in the wheel well of a jet in Vienna and survived a 90-minute flight to London, police said Wednesday.The man told British authorities that he crawled “under the wire” of the Vienna airport’s perimeter fence and climbed into the undercarriage of a private Boeing 747 parked near a construction site for a new terminal, Schwechat police chief Leo Lauber said.

Lauber said the jet belonged to a high-ranking sheik from the United Arab Emirates and took off from the Austrian capital Sunday night without any passengers on board.

After landing at London’s Heathrow Airport, Lauber said the man – who claimed he was looking for a job – apparently fell out of the gear’s compartment and was apprehended by police.

A spokesman for London’s Metropolitan Police said the man was arrested and remains in custody at Heathrow. No information on his medical condition was released, but authorities said he was in a cell, not a medical facility.

Britain has restrictions on the number of Romanians working in the U.K., even though both nations are in the European Union.

Austria’s daily Kurier newspaper reported, without citing a source, that the stowaway may have survived because the aircraft flew “well below 10,000 meters (32,808 feet)” due to bad weather.

via HuffingtonPost