EU unveils plan to reduce Russia’s grip on energy

The European Commission on Thursday proposed building new pipelines to the Caspian region as the centrepiece of an energy security plan that seeks to reduce member states’ reliance on Russia.
The proposals, released on the eve of Friday’s EU-Russia summit in France, envisage a corridor of pipelines that would carry gas from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan into the EU, and the possible creation of a European consortium to purchase gas from the region.

Joshua Chaffin - FT.com

In defence of CDS

Huh??

According to the Economist, that bastion of perennial impartiality and nameless journalism:

'Some of the criticism heaped on credit-default swaps is misguided. The market needs sorting out nonetheless..'

Read on, if you can be bothered. It begs the question, who are these people and what world do they live in?

Trick or Treat!

Anarchism

They talked much of the State—the State.
I had never seen the State, and I asked them to picture it to me, as my gross mind could not follow their subtle language when they spake of it.
Then they told me to think of it as of a beautiful goddess, enthroned and sceptred, benignly caring for her children.
But for some reason I was not satisfied.
And once upon a time, as I was lying awake at night and thinking, I had as it were a vision,
And I seemed to see a barren ridge of sand beneath a lurid sky;
And lo, against the sky stood out in bold relief a black scaffold and gallows-tree, and from the end of its gaunt arm hung, limp and motionless, a shadowy, empty noose.
And a Voice whispered in my ear, “Behold the State incarnate!”

Ernest Crosby

From the New Pentagruel - by Bill Kauffman

Silence is Golden - or for at least one day of the year it is

Author, prankster and founder of the KLF Bill Drummond explains why he won't be listening to any music at all on 21 November - and why you might want to try it too..

from the Guardian

Lenin was a Mushroom

Russian intellectual Sergey Kurehin relates his fascinating hypothesis about the October Revolution.

Divine Styler - Ain't Sayin' Nothin'

Critics alarmed as Medvedev reveals plan to extend Russian presidential term to six years

With Medvedev's predecessor, Vladimir Putin, looking on, sometimes nodding approvingly but mostly inscrutable, the Russian president told his audience in the Kremlin that "we have no problem with the American people". He said he hoped that "our partners, the US administration", would choose to have "full-fledged relations with Russia".

At the same time he said Moscow had to respond to the security challenges posed by the US and Nato's expansion right up to Russia's borders. "These are forced measures," he said, referring to Russia's new nuclear deployment, adding: "We have told our partners more than once that we want positive cooperation ... but unfortunately, they don't want to listen."

Luke Harding - The Guardian

The Containment of the Technological Project

In a world where all matter is, however quantifiably vast, finite, that there should operate a finance mechanism based on a limitless expansion of credit currency is not only contra naturum but certifiably suicidal. It is, even as the front page headlines of newspapers around the world are saying, A GLOBAL CRISIS DRIVEN BY GREED of unconscionable speculators and gamblers who, having lost their investor’s money (while all of the top directors and CEOs of the major lending and insurance companies that have declared bankruptcy had the visionary foresight to sell their stocks as early as 2006), have thrown the affair back into the hands of the ignominious politicians to provide a tax-payer bailout of the very Market they so emphatically insisted that government must stay out of to let business run.

By Robert Luongo for Globalia Magazine

Union Med to be based in Barcelona

More than 40 countries from the European Union, the Balkans, north Africa and the Middle East agreed on Tuesday to base a new Union for the Mediterranean in Barcelona, ending a dispute that had held up the project for four months.

By Tony Barber - FT.com

The Medium is the... Massage?

Actually, the title was a mistake. When the book came back from the typesetter's, it had on the cover "Massage" as it still does. The title was supposed to have read "The Medium is the Message" but the typesetter had made an error. When Marshall McLuhan saw the typo he exclaimed, "Leave it alone! It's great, and right on target!" Now there are possible four readings for the last word of the title, all of them accurate: "Message" and "Mess Age," "Massage" and "Mass Age."

FAQs on Marshall McLuhan - from marshallmcluhan.com

The truth about South Ossetia

After the west heaped blame on Russia for the conflict, it ignores new evidence of Georgia's crimes of aggression.

Seumas Milne - Guardian, Comment is Free