He knows that European greens can help further his dreams of conquest.
Vadimir Putin, the ruler of Russia, wants to ban fracking in other countries. He is very concerned about their environments. If you frack, Putin told a global economic conference last year, “black stuff comes out of the tap.”
Alexey Miller — a longtime Putin crony going back to the early 1990s, when they stole the money that was supposed to buy food for the starving city of Leningrad, who now oversees the Russian state-owned gas company Gazprom — strongly supports his friend on this issue. He would like to see an EU-wide ban on fracking, and the Gazprom board is with him 100 percent. “The production of shale gas is associated with significant environmental risks, in particular the hazard of surface and underground water contamination with chemicals applied in the production process,” they warned the world in 2011. “This fact has already caused the prohibition of the shale gas development and production in France.”
Alexandr Medvedev, the general director of Gazprom Export, is also very supportive of efforts to ban fracking in Europe. “I would like to quote the president of France, who said that as long as he’s president, he will not allow the production of shale gas in France,” Medvedev said in a television interview last August. “The cost of production of shale gas in Europe is incomparably higher than in the U.S. and also the situation with the environment is different, because in the U.S. its main production is in unpopulated areas, which are quite available in the U.S., but in Europe we can’t find such big unpopulated areas with reach to the water.”The fact that Kremlin opposition to European fracking has nothing to do with environmental concerns should be clear even to the dullest among us, because Russia has massive fracking projects of its own underway in Siberia. The real goal is to keep Europe dependent upon Russia for its fuel supply. Natural-gas prices in Europe are quadruple those prevailing in the United States, and by maintaining a near-monopoly on overpriced European natural-gas imports, the Putin regime assures itself of a vast source of revenue. This allows it to rule and rearm Russia without permitting the freedom necessary to develop the country’s human potential. Furthermore, so long as Europe is kept critically dependent upon Russia for fuel, Moscow can paralyze and render ineffective any Western response to its plans for conquest, whose initial steps are currently being demonstrated in Ukraine. More, and much worse, is certain to follow so long as Europe remains helpless.
In a recent four-hour television appearance in Moscow, Putin explicitly embraced Kremlin fascist ideologue Alexander Dugin’s grand design of creating a united totalitarian Eurasia, “from Lisbon to Vladivostok.” If he can maintain control of Europe’s critical fuel supplies, he just might be able to pull it off.
So it should come as no surprise that the Putin regime is pulling out all the stops in fomenting the global anti-fracking movement, with Europe as its central target. Leading the propaganda campaign has been RT News, Russia’s state-owned television network, which broadcasts around the world in English and other languages.
Here is a small sample of RT’s incessant anti-fracking drumbeat:
Wrecking the Earth: Fracking has grave radiation risks few talk about, August 28, 2013
Fracking fluid linked to fish die-off, August 29, 2013
US fracking wells annually produce 280bn gallons of toxic waste water destroying environment – report, October 4, 2013
Chevron halts search for shale gas in Romania following public outrage, October 17, 2013
“We say no to shale gas”: World unites against fracking, October 20, 2013
Money & influence: Oil & gas co’s hush threats of fracking,November 21, 2013
Fracking dilemma: Fresh water or cheap gas? The latter “is not likely to happen,” November 25, 2013
Fracking nightmare: “Like living in a very heavy industrial zone,”November 29, 2013
Massachusetts seeks 10-yr ban on gas fracking after series of Texas quakes, November 30, 2011
City of Dallas effectively bans fracking, December 13, 2013
Hazardous fracking waste: Activists alarm at proposal to move it by river, December 16, 2013
Fracking chemicals disrupt human hormone functions, study claims, December 17, 2013