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TechnoratiBlood and Oil in Central Asia
In the past month, two seemingly unrelated events have turned Central Asia into a potential flashpoint: an aggressively expanding North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a nascent strategic alliance between Russia and China.
At stake is nothing less than who holds the future high ground in the competition for the world's energy resources.
Increasing Competition
Early this summer, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicted a sharp drop in world oil reserves. According to energy expert Michael Klare, the "era of cheap and plentiful oil is drawing to a close," and is likely to result in "a new era of cutthroat energy competition."
In early July, after a full-court press by Washington and an agreement to increase its yearly rent, Kyrgyzstan reversed a decision to close the U.S. base at Manas, thus giving the United States a powerful toehold in the countries bordering the oil- and gas-rich Caspian Basin.
While Manas is portrayed as a critical base in the ongoing campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the war in Central Asia is less over "terrorism" than it is over energy. "Never reading the words 'Afghanistan" and 'oil' in the same sentence is still a source of endless amusement," says the Asia Times' Pepe Escobar.
Escobar, who has coined the term "Pipelineistan" to describe the vast network of oil and gas pipelines that "crisscross the potential imperial battlefields of the planet," sees Afghanistan "at the core of Pipelineistan," strategically placed between the Middle East, Central and South Asia."
As Escobar points out, "It's no coincidence that the map of terror in the Middle East and Central Asia is practically interchangeable with the map of oil."
The Role of NATO
For most Americans and Europeans, Afghanistan appeared on their radar screens shortly after the 9/11 assaults on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon. But according to Escobar, three months before the 2001 attack U.S., Iranian, German, and Italian officials met in Geneva to discuss toppling the Taliban because it was "the proverbial fly in the ointment" in a scheme to run a $2 billion, 800-mile natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via southern Afghanistan.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO moved aggressively to fill the vacuum left by the demise of the Warsaw Pact, quickly recruiting former Soviet allies and provinces.
According to Escobar, one of NATO's first forays in the energy war was the Balkans, which NATO represented as a fight to liberate the Albanians in Kosovo. Moscow and Beijing, however, viewed it as an opportunity for the Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation (AMBO) to build a $1.1 billion pipeline to bring Caspian Basin oil to the West, thus bypassing Iran and Russia. The AMBO pipeline - due to open in 2011 - will transport Caspian Basin oil via Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania.
"How could Russia, China, and Iran not interpret the war in Kosovo, then the invasion of Afghanistan (where Washington had previously tried to pair with the Taliban and encourage the building of another of those avoid-Iran, avoid-Russia pipelines), and finally Georgia (that critical energy transportation junction) as straightforward wars for Pipelineistan?" Escobar asks.
For every action, however, there is an opposite and equal reaction.
Competition Increasing
In 2001, Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan founded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which now has observer status from Iran, Pakistan, and India.
Unlike NATO, the SCO is a regional organization, not a military alliance. Counting observers, it embraces the bulk of humanity, much of the world's energy resources, and a growing section of its GNP.
However, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), made up of all of the SCO members, plus Belarus and Armenia, is a military alliance. Last February, CSTO created a collective rapid reaction force which, according to Russian expert Ilya Kramnik, "will give CSTO a quick tool, leaving no time for third parties to intervene."
The only "third party" capable of intervening in Central Asia is NATO.
Chinese Linchpin
In many ways, Beijing is the linchpin in this 21st-century "great game," because China is weathering the current worldwide depression better than most countries. While its exports have taken a beating, the Chinese have successfully fallen back on their enormous internal market to take up some of the slack. As a result, China recently opened the aid spigots to nations in the region.
In June, China loaned Turkmenistan $3 billion, which will give it a stake in the Turkmen's enormous Yolotan Osman gas field, rumored to be the world's largest. The Turkmenistan loan also benefits Moscow by underwriting the Russian oil company Roseneft, and the pipeline builder, Transneft. Kazakhstan got a $15 billion loan, giving China a 22% share in Kazakh oil production.
According to former Indian diplomat and current Asia Times commentator M.K. Bhadrakumar, after years of tension between Moscow and Beijing, the two countries are burying that past and "steering their relationship" in the direction of a "strategic partnership in the overall international situation," rather than competing over energy resources.
This past April, Russia and China signed a $25 billion oil agreement that will supply Beijing with 4% of its needs through 2034. The two countries are currently negotiating a natural gas deal.
Beijing is planning an almost 4,000 mile, $26 billion Turkmen-Kazakh-China pipeline to run from the Caspian Basin to Guangdong Province in China. Included in the deal is a proviso to keep "third parties" - NATO bases - out of Turkmenistan.
In the meantime, Russia is paying premium prices to lock up Kazakh, Uzbek, and Turkman gas. It's also negotiating to buy more Azerbaijani oil which, if successful, could end up bankrupting the western-controlled BTC pipeline that runs through Georgia.
Writing in BusinessWeek, S. Adam Cardais, former editor of the Prague Post, says that Russia is "doing its damnedest to keep Europe out of Central Asia," and that Russia and China "may have already outmaneuvered Europe."
U.S. Still in Game
But Washington is hardly throwing in the towel. The Manas coup is a case in point, and the Obama administration is increasing aid to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
In short, the Central Asian chessboard is enormous, the pieces are numerous, and the stakes are high.
Pipelineistan isn't limited to the Middle East and Central Asia. It exists wherever gas and oil flow, from the steamy depths of Venezuela's Oronoco Basin to the depths of the South Atlantic off the coast of Brazil.
"Oil and gas by themselves are not the U.S.'s ultimate aim," argues Escobar, "It's all about control." And if "the U.S. controls the sources of energy of its rivals - Europe, Japan, China, and other nations aspiring to be more independent - they win."
The U.S. has enormous military power. But as Iraq, and now Afghanistan, makes clear, the old days of cornering a market by engineering a coup or sending in the Marines are fast receding. The old imperial nations are fading, and the up-and-comers are more likely to be speaking Portuguese, Chinese, and Hindi than English. The trick over the next several decades will be how to keep the competition for energy from sparking off brush fire wars or a catastrophic clash of the great powers.
27 Comments so far
Show AllIT'S STILL ALL ABOUT BLOOD FOR OIL ....OUR GOVERNMENT IS NOT TRYING TO "SOLVE" ANY PROBLEMS .....RATHER KEEP THE OLD PROBLEMS ALIVE
Peak Oil is just a scare tactic. So many times it was said that oil would run out and yet it never does. I'm still enjoying my Hummer because it's cool. Oil reserves are not dropping. We just gotta get government off our backs and keep drilling for more oil.
who cares? don't you have anything intelligent to say about the content of the article? Did you even read it? Or is it too complicated for you?
I posit this to extol the extremely savy
comments I read, especially those with regard to
use of media apparatus to distract or obscure;
real purpose of foreign policy to prevent accountability
for principal perpetrators and eliminate media that enables socio-cultural bonding (the progression from
musical influences of the 60's and its elimination
by neutralizing artists and besmirching their influence
(dirty, drug using, liberal, sexually liberated...etc)
The capstone of cointelpro, the establishment of a center-right majority....if only APPARENTLY.
Hallinan and Escobar have written some of the best articles on this subject, this one is no exception.
What a shame not a hint of this is seen or heard of in the corporate oligopoly propaganda machine (the msm)
Thought experiment:
12 to 15 of the well informed and so inclined
meet to strategize outreach and education of the
masses who don't weblog. First requirement; figure
out which attendee is the cia informant OR strategize
with the participation of unknown informant.
Historically, whether you are union labor or
simply quaker anti-war, meeting without infiltrattion
is highly unlikely, if not impossile.
Pipelines through foreign countries cannot be controlled completely, even by the world's biggest military. Sabotage is too easy, even if it requires a missile strike.
In the end, countries with petro resources and sufficient military merely to prevent usurpation will dominate.
The mindless zombie that is the US imperial brain recognizes this at some dim level of residual intellect, but operations planned decades ago are still running.
These wars are about Oil, but not only that. They're also for expansion of U.S. empire, globally.
Many people say that all empires of the past have fallen, have come to their end. Well, I'm looking forward to this one coming to a 4th of July ending; fireworks, to complement the occasion.
I think you're right. I can't remember where I read it, but someone wrote that they visited Macedonia and found not one single product on any store shelf that wasn't made by a US multinational, including toothpaste, socks, batteries, everything.
I have never been to Macedonia but the two largest food product corps in the world, Unilever and Nestle (both european based multinationals) are likely there as well.
I don't know enough about the situation in Macedonia, but wouldn't be surprised if what you say is true. It's more credible than not.
Was what you describe true before the 1999 war on Kosovo, or only since, though? If it was like this before, then it might still have been due to some US and/or NATO actions of military, war kind out that way, for this has been going on since the early 1990s. We'd need a longer history on this western or US merchandise in places like Macedonia, and what was replaced when this stuff was imported, to be able to understand sufficiently enough.
"curmudgeon99 July 16th, 2009 10:56 am
...
After all Cheney's energy meetings were spent poring over maps of the future alignment of Iraq's oilfields."
From what I recall having learned of true history, Cheney made it clear during the Pres. GHW Bush adminstration years, or maybe it was during a year or two afterwards, how strategically important the oil reserves of Iraq were; but, at that time, when asked about war on Iraq, he said it was not advisable, for, he argued, it'd turn into a 'quagmire' situation. Nevertheless, he seriously or strongly stated the strategic importance or value of Iraq's oil reserves at least a couple or few times before 2000.
BUT, the war of today in Iraq did not happen only because of him, or the whole Bush Jr administration. The U.S. "elites" have been using both parties, Dem. and Repub., to work on the project of acquiring control over Iraq's reserves. Major Doug Rokke, in the video presentation he provided and which is linked in my post just before this one stated that the Clinton administration began planning for removing Saddam Hussein as of 1995; and this was not because Bill Clinton thought of this himself. Again he worked for the real "elites" ruling the government of the USA, what John Perkins calls the "corporate oligarchy" in the U.S., and what others have variably referred to as the "invisible government" and the "invisible hand" manipulating, ... the government of the USA.
My post that has links to articles by Jason Leopold and Dahr Jamail provide some historical background that includes Cheney's Eenrgy Task Force and that that "team" began planning for war on Iraq in January 2001. Cheney's been planning in this for longer, but the Clinton administration, according to Major Rokke, began in 1995, and I doubt that Major Rokke is fibbing about this. There's cause to believe that everything he said in that video-recorded presentation was truthful on his part, but also true, simply.
"curmudgeon99 July 16th, 2009 10:56 am
Don't forget that in summer 2001, The UnoCal rep flew Taliban leaders to Houston and wined and dined them trying to get permission for the pipeline across Afghanistan.
They refused and several weeks later 9/11 happened, followed by attack on Afganistan. Just a coincidence I'm sure. "
I've read of that before, years ago, but recently viewed a presentation by Major Doug Rokke and he says the Taliban terminated the secret talks with Unocal, while members of Congress and of the Clinton administration were also involved; well, the Taliban would've terminated talks back in 1998. That would be the point at which the U.S. "elites" began to consider overthrowing the Taliban; at first, anyway.
"9-11.. Hello!: Major Doug Rokke" (10:35), Aug 19 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGVSHGWZ3JM
If that history is true, and it's also true that they again refused in 2001, then the U.S. "elites" evidently would have succeeded in bringing the Taliban back into these "talks", which is certainly possible. It'd be far less costly than war would or could be, so the "elites" surely would have thought of overthrowing the Taliban as of their backing out of the talks in 1998, but while also realising that it'd be less costly and more than adequately profitable to work on bringing them back to the talks, again.
It's been reported that the Bush administration began to fully consider launching war on Afghanistan (the Taliban, first, of course) as of June or July 2001 and that there were plans on the presidential desk on Sept. 9, 2001, for this war; actual plans.
What's true and not true in all of this is not something I can personally know about, because I'm certainly not witness to any of these things. I only know what I recall from what I've read, while certainly knowing that the war was not justifiable and that this was true before it was launched. And we can add the fact that has become obvious enough starting ... years ago and which is that the Bush administration never really intended to track down and capture Usama Bin Ladin, et al. They really never did. If they had, then we'd have some real evidence for this and there is [none]. Sure, sure, sure; we have the words of Bush, Cheney, etcetera. Sure. Well, their words, we should have realised years ago, cannot be trusted; unless, of course, you are trusting them to be lying. If you trust that they lie, then your trust is accurate; but it's not a trust that I'm comfortable with, at all. I am really not comforted, at all.
"9/11: Press for Truth", a documentary that everyone can [thank] the families of 9-11 victims, hence 9-11 Families, for, because their work, efforts, passion for real truth and justice, is how this documentary film came to be made.
At around 50 to 53 minutes into the documentary we get to learn about the U.S. having evidently deliberately allowed, or helped, Usama bin Ladin and other Al Qa'ida leaders escape from Tora Bora, Afghanistan, to flee to Pakistan, when US forces were right there, at Tora Bora. On three sides there were the US forces, and out the unsecured side fled UBL et alia. The documentary shows very interesting footage about this event.
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=3979568779414136481
That copy is 1:24:23 for duration and posted by Banded Artists Production, which is the production company for the documentary.
Like Major Doug Rokke says, the war on Afghanistan is, has always been, for the oil pipeline to be constructed through Afghanistan, to pipe the oil to Pakistan, where western Big Oil cies can ship the petrol. from. Plenty of people have been saying this for years, but he added that this is also why the U.S. wants to control Pakistan; for once the oil is piped to that country, the U.S. "elites" will want to make sure that they have as much security as they strategically need to protect their oil operations, there.
The video with Doug Rokke is from a couple or few years ago, but we can see what he said about the strategic "need" to secure Pakistan for the interests of the U.S. ruling "elites" is what's going on today. The war of the Obama administration in northern Pakistan, their plan for constructing a huge embassy there costing ... a hell of a lot of US taxpayer dollars, other US ops that have been going on in the country, but which we don't read about through western msm "news" media; these things are for control, so conquest and domination, "empire building", that is, [expansion].
The major embassy projected for Afghanistan, and the major militarisation with the U.S. and possibly NATO military bases there; it's all about expanding U.S. empire. John Perkins, author of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" and his more recent book, "The Secret History of the American Empire", explains it well enough that the U.S., since WW II, has become [empire]; one laying its tentacles across the globe, worldwide. And as he also stated, the U.S. involvement in other countries is always for the "interests" of the corporatocracy, the "corporate oligarchy", which runs the government of the USA; they're always seeking to capture dominance over the resources of other countries.
I would not be at all suprised that the Taliban first pulled back or out in 1998, the U.S. "elites" then worked on getting the Taliban back to the talks, and then the Taliban refused, again, later on, turning out to be 2001, in this case; for I doubt that Major Rokke is mistaken, and have read, years ago, that the Bush administration told the Taliban in 2001 that they had a choice about what to receive, either "carpets of gold", or else "carpets of bombs"; and I'm pretty sure that that really is something Bush told them.
Anyway, with respect to Iraq, its oil, the war for oil, albeit also for establishing U.S. military power in the Middle East, the following are important articles.
"Eager to Tap Iraq's Vast Oil Reserves, Industry Execs Suggested Invasion",
by Jason Leopold, The Public Record, PubRecord.org, Jul 1 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14322
"Iraq unions fight foreign oil players",
by Upstream staff, upstreamOnline.com, July 14, 2009
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=56005
QUOTE:
Unions are lobbying against Iraq's new oil contract with BP and China's CNPC, but the weakened labour movement may have a hard time thwarting deals desperately needed to revive a struggling oil sector.
The Federation of Oil Unions of Iraq and the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq have condemned the Oil Ministry's decision to award a foreign consortium the contract to develop Rumaila, the country's largest producing oilfield.
"We have written a letter to BP and the British consul in Basra, warning them against entering Basra as it will be illegal ... If they do, we will protest and strike," said Faleh Aboud Amara, a top official with the Federation of Oil Unions.
Unions were one of the opponents of the ministry's plan to award foreign company contracts to develop as many as eight oil and gas fields in Iraq's first major energy auction last month, a centrepiece of government efforts to more than double output of around 2.5 million barrels per day.
Just one field was awarded in the 30 June auction. Bidding revealed a big gap between what the government thought should be paid for the work and what companies considered fair.
But Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani is likely to pull out all the stops to make sure the Rumaila deal, in which BP and CNPC promise to increase the field's output to 2.85 million bpd, almost three times its current capacity, goes ahead.
BP had no comment and no one at the British embassy could be reached for comment.
Ali Abbas Khafif, head of the Worker Councils and Unions' branch in Basra, Iraq's southern oil hub, said the Rumaila deal would violate Iraqi law because it was brokered in the absence of new national energy legislation, whose passage has been held up for years by a bitter feud between Arabs and minority Kurds.
He also complained about the terms of the fixed-fee contract, which he said would over compensate companies, and said such deals might lead to greater unemployment in the oil sector.
The union strategy centers around efforts to scare off companies thinking about coming to Iraq, where sectarian bloodshed has ebbed but violence still poses a major threat, Khafif said.
"We have the ability to halt their work entirely. We can mobilise people against them. We will use sit-ins and strikes."
Yet union clout in Iraq is not strong. Saddam Hussein effectively banned them in 1987 and they have scant legal protection today.
"Unions don't have enough power to stop these contracts. The labour movement in Iraq is not organised enough to give it influence over political decisions," said Saad Saloum, a professor and political analyst at Baghdad University.
Abboud said the oil union has 10,000 active members in Basra, against an estimated 46,000 oil workers there.
Parliamentarian Nassir al-Esawi said unions had no special protections under Iraqi law, on the same legal footing as civil societies like aid groups. Some in the labour movement accuse the Maliki government of trying to weaken them even further.
Iraqi lawmakers also insist foreign oil deals they have not approved are invalid, and some within the state oil industry also oppose auctioning off fields in production.
The minister has also come in for criticism from foreign companies, who prefer more lucrative production sharing deals and who complained of his exacting terms in last month's auction.
The conflicting critiques may, in the end, signal that Shahristani has struck the right balance between nationalism and pragmatism, but the firestorm he faces is not likely to go away.
There is less opposition to ministry plans for a second round at the end of the year for 11 fields yet undeveloped.
Ali Hussain Balou, the head of parliament's oil and gas committee and a vocal opponent of Shahristani, acknowledged that union influence was limited but said that it would grow.
"Iraq is on a democratic course. If these unions are not powerful today, they will be tomorrow," he said.
END QUOTE
"The Dirty War", by Dahr Jamail, Truthout.org, Jul 12 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14330
"U.S. Occupation of Iraq Continues Unabated",
by Dahr Jamail, Truthout.org, Jul 7 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14259
"The Oil Factor in the Iraq Study Group (Interview)
Interview with Dori Smith on Talk Nation Radio, December 13, 2006",
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/the-oil-factor-in-the-iraq-study-group-interview
In that interview, he refers to the Iraqi Study Group's report seriously referring to the need to "secure" Iraq's oil reserves 63 times. And he provides important related information.
"The Oil Factor ..." interview is also provided with an AUDIO file linked just below the title in the Web page, btw.
"Horrified July 16th, 2009 11:00 am
And everyone still thinks these wars are about spreading democracy and exterminating terrorism....most americans are dupes...."
Are [most] Americans in the belief that these wars about "spreading democracy"? That seems, to me, to be an exaggeration and I certainly hope that it is. Perhaps most still think these wars are about "exterminating terrorism", and people who do believe this should realise that the greatest terrorist and sponsor of terrorism in the world is the government of the USA, along with its NATO allies, and the ruling "elites" of the government of the USA. I'll grant that they're not terrorists in the "conventional" sense, the one we find referred to by counterterrorism people; for they refer to terrorism as an act that's political and for demanding justice. My view, however, is that both are forms terrorism, but only one is for seeking justice, while committing injustices, yes, but the basis nevertheless being for demanding justice, just corrections. The U.S. and NATO have nothing to do with demanding and providing justice. Nothing! They do the very opposite.
But as for most Americans believing these wars are about "spreading democracy", this is something I find difficult to believe. We don't even have a true democracy, so how and why would such a government care to spread democracy? It would not make sense.
Thank you CD for printing this article and referencing the work of Pepe Escobar from Asia Times. The sooner people understand the real reason for this war in Afghanistan the better.
Russia, China, India & Iran are going to attack the US Dollar. Stop trading in it, call in loans. Go to the yuan.
It was nice to see Asiatimes cited.
But this is not just about pipelines.
It is about the NeoCons desire to decimate, destabilize, the ME & Cental Asia, this is their patron's command after all. Rahm wants it so. Tel-Aviv wants it so. And so it is. With Iran in the cross-hairs, next on the agenda, false-flag time. In the Gulf of Oman.
Until the Yuan is freely floated, the Euro, Swiss francs, British Pounds, & Yen are all better bets for those whom are in a position & desire to ditch US$.
Hi Nate, understood. I was hearkening to a meeting in Russia few weeks ago with the leaders of the PRC, India, Russia & Iran. The US was denied entry. I read they were discussing this dollar thing. I don't understand it too well. But the yuan was mentioned in the article as a potential currency.
I understand what the US is doing in central Asia, the ME a bit, but this is arcane to me now. And I defer to your awareness.
One other thing I know of though, is the dynamics of Revolution as described by karl Marx, and I attest we are on the path he described.
The US will be the 1st industrialized-capitalist country to undergo a Revolution.
Let the Nightingales Sing.
As Conn Hallinan adroitly points out at the end of his piece, the real danger from history is that the world is now entering into a multi-polar world not unlike what existed between the Congress of Vienna & World War One. One hopes that enough people in the right places have actually learned from history.
Plenty of articles about SCO and the CSTO can be found at www.globalresearch.ca and people who'd like to check for these can use the fitting index or subindex at the website and linked in the homepage, or do a Web search, Google, say, using "globalresearch.ca SCO CSTO" for search terms, minus the quotes. There's a lot of information there on these two topics, which have some relationship to each other, but not wholly.
The following may possibly not mention either SCO or CSTO, but is very much about China's work and investments to get oil and natural gas from Kazahkstan or Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, respectively. It's an important article because of the crisis in the "Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region" of China, but also says much regarding China's progression for oil and gas from the other countries I just named.
"Washington is Playing a Deeper Game with China",
by F. William Engdahl, July 11, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14327
And everyone still thinks these wars are about spreading democracy and exterminating terrorism....most americans are dupes....
Don't forget that in summer 2001, The UnoCal rep flew Taliban leaders to Houston and wined and dined them trying to get permission for the pipeline across Afghanistan.
They refused and several weeks later 9/11 happened, followed by attack on Afganistan. Just a coincidence I'm sure.
After all Cheney's energy meetings were spent poring over maps of the future alignment of Iraq's oilfields.
UnoCal rep - Karzai.
But I could be wrong !
Brings you back to the question who gained from the 9/11 incident......and what PNAC meant by "another pearl harbor"....
Protecting pipelines requires total control of a region. Simply bribing governments is not enough. There will be war and chaos until the oil and gas runs out. There is something you can do, however: Put and end to the auto and sprawl. Join the movement for free public transit.
http://freepublictransit.org
One eighth of Arizona, put into solar thermal collectors, collects enough energy to power the entire United States (no other power source required). This is BASE power, since power is stored in the molten salt solution that such a plant uses. Solar thermal is 19th century technology, very simple. The energy cost, however, would probably be 6-12 cents/kWh, more than coal (3 cents/kWhr), and less than nuclear (12 cents/kWhr).
Its time to move in these directions.
"The trick over the next several decades will be how to keep the competition for energy from sparking off brush fire wars or a catastrophic clash of the great powers."
Given the paradigm that the US military-industrial complex has utlitized for the past fifty years, it's pretty clear that global and possibly even nuclear conflagration is inevitable. The selfish and wasteful lifestyles to which American and to a lesser extent European populations have become addicted will result, directly or indirectly, in the deaths of literally billions of people.
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