Jul 302022
 
 July 30, 2022  Posted by at 8:27 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  54 Responses »


Claude Monet Impression, sunrise 1872

 

Europe Hypnotized Into War Economy (Vilches)
Russia Claims Ukraine Had A Reason To Kill Its Own POWs (RT)
Russia and Ukraine Trade Blame Over Prison Blast (BBC)
Ukraine and Russia Trade Blame For Attack Killing Mariupol Prisoners (WaPo)
Ukraine Is ‘Shooting Blind’ – Top Official (RT)
A Panicking Biden Administration Seeks Talks With Russia (MoA)
West Prepares To Plunder Post-war Ukraine (MP)
Gazprom Explains Gas Flow Reduction To EU (RT)
American Diplomacy as a Tragic Drama (Michael Hudson)
Playing Chicken with the Fates (Kunstler)
David Lynch Tells ‘Zelensky’ To Have A Beer With Putin (RT)
Trump Warns Something Worse Than Recession Is Coming (ET)
Health Care Workers Settle COVID Shot Mandate for $10.3 Million (Bridle)
Triathlete, 27, Becomes 5th Toronto Area Doctor To Die In July (TSun)
Meta from 5th Most Valuable Stock to 11th In 10 Months. $647 Billion Lost (WS)

 

 

Read at least twice.

 

 

Winter is coming
https://twitter.com/i/status/1552787710187917312

 

 

Share of countries with 6%+ CPI

 

 

Bro Bridle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1552918465312342017

 

 

CannoneerMarine thread

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jorge Vilches has it exactly right. Europe is shedding infrastructure and deals for which they have zero replacement: “without which Europe as we know it will cease to exist.”

Europe Hypnotized Into War Economy (Vilches)

Thirty two years ago Germans enthusiastically took down the Berlin wall. Now, captured by cunning Anglo-Saxon global elites, Germans are helping other European “useful idiots” to erect a much higher and thicker wall to cut themselves off from Russia leading them into a war economy. But as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has warned… “the approach has clearly failed — sanctions have backfired — and our car now has 4 four flat tires” … Question: vehicles don´t carry more than 2 spare tires on them, do they? So, one quick and innocent way to explain such unfathomable European miscalculation is to assume the EU leadership is immersed in a deep hypnotic trance and just blindly following US-UK instructions under Stoltenberg-Johnson war-mongering policies.

The supply lines that up to 2022 successfully linked Europe and Russia took decades of very hard work to develop. This now means that almost all of such over-abundant contracts necessarily have no effective substitute because (a) no other vendors have such high quality at low price plus decades of vetting and proven experience + (b) the un-replaceable short freight distance and shipping time from nearby Russia. So, by definition, both (a) + (b) mean that today no equivalent supply lines could ever be found no matter how much Europe tried simply because it would be either too soon or too far …and always too hard and too pricey. So short cuts will be taken and corners rounded-off…. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

The impact of the above cannot be overstated though as the now-broken Euro-Russian supply lines were essential for the Just-In-Time strategy that Europe and world markets still require and cannot wait years to develop and iron out. Logistics 101: proven experience and performance with excellent price plus quick delivery from nearby sources cannot be substituted fast enough, or possibly ever. On purpose, Europe´s worst enemies couldn´t have inflicted worse harm than what a US-UK mesmerized Europe (what else ?) is doing to itself. So EU sanctions are now cutting off dozens of key and highly varied Russian produce without which Europe as we know it will cease to exist. This involves foodstuffs, minerals of every sort, energy re oil & gas & coal & refined products thereof, etc., etc., plus key technologies and products from space rocket engines to nuclear fuels.

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It’s quite simple. If the attack was done with HIMARS, it’s the Ukraine. WaPo fantasizes that Russians transported HIMARS pieces from elsewhere to the crime scene, but Ukraine was shelling this site for months. Only now, they have the HIMARS to do it with.

• Elena Evdokimova @elenaevdokimov7· May 17!!
Ukrainian artillery has been shelling the DPR village of Elenovka with BM-21 Grad. It is the settlement, where the prisoners have been transported from Azovstal. Looks like the deliberate attempt to destroy their own surrendered units.

• Azov POWs are extremely high value assets to Kremlin propagandists. Capturing Azov neo-Nazis & putting them on trial to justify Russia’s invasion has been a top propaganda priority from start. It’d be bizarre for RU to bomb & eliminate their prized pr assets before show trials.

• So they’re really going with the theory that Russia shelled a prison on DPR territory to kill Azov militants whom they could have just as easily publicly hanged to the thunderous applause of virtually everyone in Russia & half of Ukraine?!

Russia Claims Ukraine Had A Reason To Kill Its Own POWs (RT)

Kiev’s forces shelled a detention center holding Ukrainian POWs early Friday morning to “threaten” their own troops who may want to surrender, the Russian Defense Ministry has claimed. “A large number of Ukrainian servicemen are voluntarily laying down their arms, and know about the humane treatment of prisoners by the Russian side,” the ministry said, calling the attack “outrageous.” Authorities in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) said that the death toll in the missile strike has grown to 53, while 75 were wounded. DPR Deputy Information Minister Daniil Bezsonov posted a graphic video on his Telegram channel, which shows multiple mutilated and charred bodies inside the destroyed building. According to Russia’s Defense Ministry and local authorities, Ukrainian troops used US-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers to strike the detention center near the village of Yelenovka.


The ministry said the facility held members of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, whose fighters surrendered to Russian and Donbass forces during the siege of the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol. The battalion is notorious because it includes fighters with nationalist and neo-Nazi views. Speaking to Russia’s TV Channel One, DPR head Denis Pushilin claimed that the Ukrainians “deliberately” targeted the detention center in order to kill Azov members who had been providing testimonies about possible war crimes by their commanders. The Ukrainian military released a statement on Friday, accusing Russian troops of shelling Yelenovka. Moscow destroyed the prison in order to pin the blame on Kiev, as well as to “hide the torture of prisoners and executions,”the statement alleged.

HIMARS
https://twitter.com/i/status/1552948606214225920

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“Russia accuses Ukraine of being willing to massacre its own prisoners of war, saying Kyiv insisted that prisoners from the Azov Battalion be housed in this particular warehouse.

Russia and Ukraine Trade Blame Over Prison Blast (BBC)

Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for a rocket attack that killed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war in the occupied part of Donetsk region. Ukraine says the prison was targeted by Russia in an effort to destroy evidence of torture and killing. For its part, Russia said the prison camp in Olenivka was hit by Ukrainian precision rockets. Unverified Russian video footage of the aftermath shows a tangle of wrecked bunk beds and badly charred bodies. An adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky said the scene looked like arson, and that a missile strike would have scattered the bodies. Those detained are said to have included members of the Azov battalion, who were the last defenders of Mariupol and whom Russia has sought to depict as neo-Nazis and war criminals.


Ukraine’s new Prosecutor-General Andriy Kostin said he had opened a war crimes investigation into the blast. His office added that it believed about 40 people were killed in the strike and 130 were injured. Daniil Bezsonov, a spokesperson for the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, said the strike had been a “direct hit on a barracks holding prisoners” and the number killed might increase. Russia’s defence ministry said the strike had been carried out with US-made Himars artillery and it accused Ukraine of a “deliberately perpetrated” provocation. The ministry produced fragments of what it said were rockets fired by the Himars system.

HIMARS
https://twitter.com/i/status/1552992046402658311

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I include the BBC and WaPo takes mostly to illustrate how they have manipulated the perceived views.

The neo-nazis are now “the famed Azov Regiment”“whom Russia has sought to depict as neo-Nazis and war criminals.” , and the HIMARS systems “are helping shift the tide of the war in Ukraine’s favor”.

Ukraine and Russia Trade Blame For Attack Killing Mariupol Prisoners (WaPo)

Dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war from the famed Azov Regiment were killed Friday in a strike against their detention center in the Russian-occupied eastern region of Donbas, but it was unclear how the attack happened or who carried it out. At least 53 POWs were killed and 75 injured in the strike, according to Darya Morozova, an official for the Donetsk People’s Republic, the pro-Russian breakaway region where the prison is located. Ukraine and Russia traded blame for the strike, with each saying the other had carried it out to silence the prisoners. All or most of the POWs were members of the Azov Regiment who had surrendered when Russian troops captured the city of Mariupol in May after a two-month siege. Their fate had been the focus of fraught prisoner-exchange negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv.

Russia’s Defense Ministry accused Ukraine of carrying out the attack using U.S.-supplied HIMARS — High Mobility Artillery Rocket System — launchers, which are helping shift the tide of the war in Ukraine’s favor. The ministry framed the incident as “a bloody provocation” intended to discourage Ukrainian soldiers from surrendering. Russian media commentators suggested that Ukraine hit the detention center to stop the prisoners from providing testimony to interrogators about war crimes committed by Ukrainian forces. Ukraine denied any involvement and accused Russian forces of carrying out the attack, which it called a war crime. Ukraine did not conduct any shelling or artillery strikes Friday in the vicinity of Olenivka, the town where the detention center is located, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a post on its Facebook page.

Rather, the General Staff said, it was Russia that staged the attack and used it “to accuse Ukraine of committing war crimes as well as to cover up the torture and execution of prisoners.” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, in a posting on his Twitter account, called on the world to condemn what he called a “petrifying war crime” and a “brutal violation of international humanitarian law.” Ukrainian officials also questioned whether the incident had been caused by an artillery strike at all. Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, tweeted that explosives specialists who had examined images of the burned-out detention center believe that the destruction may have been caused by an explosion or fire “inside the building itself, rather than the result of shelling.”

Videos of the aftermath of the blast broadcast by Russian media outlets show a tangle of twisted, burned metal bunks inside a blackened warehouse-like structure with a large hole in its roof. Charred bodies and body parts are strewn around the wreckage Russian media outlets also posted photos showing what they claimed were fragments of HIMARS rockets found at the scene. It wasn’t immediately possible to verify that the shards had been fired by HIMARS launchers, but a senior Defense Department official in Washington pointed out that Russia could have gathered them from attacks elsewhere. “The Russians have a lot of pieces of HIMARS. The Ukrainians have been sending a lot of HIMARS their way,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to brief the media. He cautioned against reaching any conclusions on the limited information available.

Yelenovka

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“..Kiev needed about 50 HIMARS for effective defense, and a least 100 for “an effective counteroffensive.”

Ukraine Is ‘Shooting Blind’ – Top Official (RT)

US-made HIMARS are “a good first step,” but Kiev needs the means to take accurate shots, a senior Ukrainian official has said The deliveries of US-made HIMARS rocket systems are “a good first step”, but the West did not provide Kiev with the necessary technologies to accurately hit targets, a high-ranking Ukrainian official complained in an interview published on Thursday. “HIMARS and heavy artillery are a good first step, but if we do not have the technology to find and correct targets for artillery strikes, then we’re just shooting blind,” Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser at the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, told Newsweek magazine.

Earlier this month, Vadim Skibitskiy, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Directorate of Intelligence at the Ministry of Defense, claimed that Kiev views the Crimean Peninsula as a legitimate target for long-range weaponry, including US-made M142 HIMARS and M270 MLRS, supplied by Western powers. His words were echoed by Alexey Arestovich, a top aide to President Vladimir Zelensky, who said that the Ukrainian military would target the Crimean Bridge as soon as Kiev obtains the capability to carry out such a strike. Russia pushed back on these threats, with Mikhail Sheremet, an MP who represents the region in the Russian parliament, warning Kiev that retaliation will be so harsh that Ukraine will never be able to recover from it. In his telling, the would-be strike will be followed by “a crushing blow to decision-making centers in Kiev, military infrastructure and arms-supply logistics channels.”

[..] On Friday, Russia’s Ministry of Defense and DPR authorities accused Kiev of having used HIMARS to target a prison holding POWs, killing 53 and wounding scores more. Ukraine rejected the claim and pinned the blame on Russian troops. According to the Pentagon, as of July 22, the US has provided Ukraine with 16 M142 HIMARS systems, while the UK has provided another three launchers capable of firing the same munitions. Earlier this month, Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov said that Kiev needed about 50 HIMARS for effective defense, and a least 100 for “an effective counteroffensive.”

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“..Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov was too busy to talk with Mr. Blinken now.”

They did talk yesterday. But Blinken is not very important.

A Panicking Biden Administration Seeks Talks With Russia (MoA)

The New York Times reports of a potential prisoner swap between the U.S. and Russia: “[T]he Biden administration has proposed trading the merchant of death for the imprisoned basketball player as well as a former marine held in Russia on what are considered trumped-up espionage charges. In the harsh and cynical world of international diplomacy, prisoner exchanges are rarely pretty, but unpalatable choices are often the only choices on the table. Whether the swap would go through remained unclear. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken made the offer public in part to reassure the families of Brittney Griner, the basketball player, and Paul N. Whelan, the former marine, that the administration is doing all it can to free them. Russian officials, who have long sought the release of the arms trafficker Viktor Bout, confirmed the discussion on Thursday but said Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov was too busy to talk with Mr. Blinken now.”

Typically prisoner swaps are not talked about publicly before they happen: “Some veteran hostage negotiators were perplexed that Mr. Blinken made the offer public. “It is baffling why the U.S. would announce this proposal in the midst of the negotiations,” said Rob Saale, the former head of the F.B.I.-led Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell. “If you’re in sensitive negotiations why would you want to air this out publicly? It makes me wonder if the Russians haven’t already declined the deal.” Mr. Saale suspicion was justified as the Washington Post now reports:

“The Biden administration disclosed publicly that the United States had made “a substantial offer” to Russia to secure the release of two American prisoners because closed-door negotiations had stalled, an administration official said Thursday. The administration hopes public pressure will lead Moscow to engage in negotiations resulting in basketball star Brittney Griner and security consultant Paul Whelan being released from Russian prison, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations. U.S. officials say they have tried for weeks to broker the releases of Griner and Whelan. But the lack of progress, and the prospect of Griner soon facing conviction and sentencing on drug charges, prompted the administration this week to make the negotiations public.”

I do not understand why the administration had started such negotiations even before the Griner court case has been closed. In general such prisoners will only be pardoned and released to the other side after they have been sentenced. Anything else would raise accusations of executive interference in the judicial process. The Brittney Griner case, over admitted smuggling of cannabis oil, is still in court. The Russian government will obviously refrain from doing anything about her before the judicial process has ended. One suspects that the prisoner exchange is much more about Paul Whelan, who likely is a CIA asset.

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They’ll have to settle for what Russia leaves them. And that’s not what they counted on.

West Prepares To Plunder Post-war Ukraine (MP)

While the United States and Europe flood Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars of weapons, using it as an anti-Russian proxy and pouring fuel on the fire of a brutal war that is devastating the country, they are also making plans to essentially plunder its post-war economy. Representatives of Western governments and corporations met in Switzerland this July to plan a series of harsh neoliberal policies to impose on post-war Ukraine, calling to cut labor laws, “open markets,” drop tariffs, deregulate industries, and “sell state-owned enterprises to private investors.” Ukraine has been destabilized by violence since 2014, when a US-sponsored coup d’etat overthrew its democratically elected government, setting off a civil war. That conflict dragged on until February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded the country, escalating into a new, even deadlier phase of the war.

The United States and European Union have sought to erase the history of foreign-sponsored civil war in Ukraine from 2014 to early 2022, acting as though the conflict began on February 24. But Washington had sent large sums of weapons to Ukraine and provided extensive military training and support over several years before Russia invaded. Meanwhile, starting in 2017, representatives of Western governments and corporations quietly held annual conferences in which they discussed ways to profit from the civil war they were fueling in Ukraine. In these meetings, Western political and business leaders outlined a series of aggressive right-wing reforms they hoped to impose on Ukraine, including widespread privatization of state-owned industries and deregulation of the economy.

On July 4 and 5, 2022, top officials from the US, EU, Britain, Japan, and South Korea met in Switzerland for a so-called “Ukraine Recovery Conference.” There, they planned Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction and performatively announced aid commitments – while salivating over a bonanza of potential contracts. New NATO candidates Finland and Sweden committed to assure reconstruction in Lugansk, roughly 48 hours after Russia and separatist forces announced the region had fallen fully under their control. But the Ukraine Recovery Conference was not new. It had been renamed to save the expense of a new acronym. In the previous five years, the group and its annual meetings were instead referred to as the “Ukraine Reform Conference” (URC).

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Siemens has eliminated no more than a quarter of the identified malfunctions at the Nord Stream turbines. Correspondence regarding the repair of engines will be made public via media.
– Deputy Chairman of Gazprom Markelov

Gazprom Explains Gas Flow Reduction To EU (RT)

Gazprom has published some of its correspondence with Siemens as it blames the German company for a reduction in gas flow Russia had to reduce its gas flow to Europe through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline due to turbine malfunctions, Gazprom Deputy Chief Executive Vitaly Markelov said on Friday. The issues are due to Germany’s Siemens company – which produces the turbines – failing to fulfill its commitments, he told the Rossiya 24 TV Channel.
Siemens has so far eliminated only one-fourth of the total number of discovered malfunctions affecting its turbines, Markelov said. On Wednesday, the Nord Stream 1 operator Gascade reported that gas flow through the pipeline had been reduced to one-fifth of its maximum capacity. A day before that, Gazprom warned that it would have to stop the operation of its second Siemens turbine for an overhaul.

After the switch-off, gas flow through Nord Stream 1 was not expected to exceed 33 million cubic meters per day. The move came as the energy giant was still waiting for another turbine for the pipeline that was due to arrive from Germany after undergoing maintenance in Canada. “Our European partners accuse us of reducing gas supply to Europe without sufficient reasons. Yet, nothing can be further from the truth,”Markelov said, adding that it was the company’s Western partners who “fail to fulfill their obligations – contractual obligations – for the compressor station maintenance.” According to an earlier report by business daily Kommersant, several turbines at the Portovaya compressor station located on Russia’s Baltic coast are in need of servicing.

The current licensing agreement allows Siemens Energy to accept five more turbines for maintenance work before the end of 2024. “We call on our partners to resolve their own issues as soon as possible,” the deputy CEO said, adding that the gas supply to Europe would then “go back to normal in no time.”Markelov added that his company planned to release part of its correspondence with its Western partners to the public. Some documents were published hours later. The reduction of supply from Russia has led to a spike in gas prices in Europe, which rose by more than 20% to over $2,500 per thousand cubic meters on Wednesday. European leaders then blamed Russia for the gas price hikes.

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“What is euphemized as U.S.-style democracy is a financial oligarchy privatizing basic infrastructure, health and education.”

American Diplomacy as a Tragic Drama (Michael Hudson)

As in a Greek tragedy whose protagonist brings about precisely the fate that he has sought to avoid, the US/NATO confrontation with Russia in Ukraine is achieving just the opposite of America’s aim of preventing China, Russia and their allies from acting independently of U.S. control over their trade and investment policy. Naming China as America’s main long-term adversary, the Biden Administration’s plan was to split Russia away from China and then cripple China’s own military and economic viability. But the effect of American diplomacy has been to drive Russia and China together, joining with Iran, India and other allies. For the first time since the Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in 1955, a critical mass is able to be mutually self-sufficient to start the process of achieving independence from Dollar Diplomacy.

Confronted with China’s industrial prosperity based on self-financed public investment in socialized markets, U.S. officials acknowledge that resolving this fight will take a number of decades to play out. Arming a proxy Ukrainian regime is merely an opening move in turning Cold War 2 (and potentially/or indeed World War III) into a fight to divide the world into allies and enemies with regard to whether governments or the financial sector will plan the world economy and society. What is euphemized as U.S.-style democracy is a financial oligarchy privatizing basic infrastructure, health and education. The alternative is what President Biden calls autocracy, a hostile label for governments strong enough to block a global rent-seeking oligarchy from taking control. China is deemed autocratic for providing basic needs at subsidized prices instead of charging whatever the market can bear.

Making its mixed economy lower-cost is called “market manipulation,” as if that is a bad thing that was not done by the United States, Germany and every other industrial nation during their economic takeoff in the 19th and early 20th century. Clausewitz popularized the axiom that war is an extension of national interests – mainly economic. The United States views its economic interest to lie in seeking to spread its neoliberal ideology globally. The evangelistic aim is to financialize and privatize economies by shifting planning away from national governments to a cosmopolitan financial sector. There would be little need for politics in such a world. Economic planning would shift from political capitals to financial centers, from Washington to Wall Street, with satellites in the City of London, the Paris Bourse, Frankfurt and Tokyo.

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“Turns out that Agent Brian Auten was also involved in favorably vetting the Steele Dossier when it was used to justify FISA court warrant..”

Playing Chicken with the Fates (Kunstler)

How is it that the Hunter Biden laptop, stuffed with incriminating memoranda of bribery, treason, and diverse felonies, and in the FBI’s possession for two-and-a-half years now, just sat gathering dust in some sub-sub-basement cubby-hole — while “Joe Biden,” the putative president (or, more likely, the enigmatic claque behind him) was allowed to carry out a demolition of America’s economy and culture? The answer is one Brian Auten, FBI Senior Analyst, who engineered a scheme to label Hunter’s laptop “Russian disinformation,” which allowed FBI Director Christopher Wray to throw a switch that turned off any further inquiry in the matter beginning in August before the 2020 presidential election.


In turn, other senior FBI officials had all the documents pertaining to the decision process on that matter locked up in a special file that would never see the light of day. Auten’s action led to the release of a letter signed by “fifty former intelligence officials” labeling the laptop as a Russian disinfo op — which became the basis for social media to conspire to censor any discussion of the laptop and its contents. And so it was that a political puppet deeply in the pay of foreign interests got shoehorned into the White House. Well, that and widespread election fraud. Turns out that Agent Brian Auten was also involved in favorably vetting the Steele Dossier when it was used to justify FISA court warrants against figures in Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, part of the RussiaGate operation that disordered and disabled President Trump’s entire four-year term. Well now you know. Perhaps Special Counsel John Durham knows this, too. (If he didn’t before, he must now.)

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Lynch is not as crazy as Stephen King.

David Lynch Tells ‘Zelensky’ To Have A Beer With Putin (RT)

Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky should have a beer with his Russian counterpart Putin and talk peace, American filmmaker David Lynch insisted in an “interview” with Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus. The first fragment of the interview was published on the Russian video hosting website RuTube on Thursday, while the full-length version is expected to be released in the coming days.= Speaking to whom he thought was the Ukrainian leader, the Twin Peaks director insisted that the only way to end the ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine was through peace. Lynch said it was his “job”to inform Zelensky about “technologies” that exist for achieving a lasting peace and that these methods were far more effective than “war and murder,” referring to letters he had previously sent to the Ukrainian president.

“Now is the time for peace, and the technology to achieve true peace exists. You need to use them and form such groups of experts on a peaceful settlement in the interests of Ukraine,”he noted. Vovan and Lexus, posing as Zelensky, asked the filmmaker whether he thought there should be direct talks with Putin in the interest of reaching peace, to which Lynch emphatically replied “Yes!”, stressing that there were a number of ways to do so, such as an ordinary telephone call or a virtual dinner with a couple of beers. Lynch insisted that during the conversation over beer and dinner the two presidents could come to a mutual realization that they are both human beings and would be able to discuss the problems between their countries.

“Think peace, think friendship” urged the filmmaker, calling on Zelensky to “stop” the current crisis, talk to Putin, and think about how to get along and help each other. The conversation with Lynch comes a week after the duo’s prank with American horror writer Stephen King, whom they also tricked into believing he was talking with Zelensky. During the call, King praised WWII-era Nazi collaborator and war criminal Stepan Bandera as a “great man” and compared him to US founding fathers Washington and Jefferson. The writer later admitted that he was pranked and claimed that he didn’t actually know who Bandera was or what he had done.

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Depression.

Trump Warns Something Worse Than Recession Is Coming (ET)

Former President Donald Trump has warned that America’s economy is on track for a bigger disaster than a recession, with his remarks coming shortly before government statistics showed GDP printing negative for the second consecutive quarter, which is a rule-of-thumb definition for a recession. “Where we’re going now could be a very bad place,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona last week. “We got to get this act in order, we have to get this country going, or we’re going to have a serious problem.” The former president singled out the collapse in Americans’ real wages, a historically depressed labor force participation rate, and the Democrat push for the Green New Deal that he said would crush economic growth.

“Not recession. Recession’s a nice word. We’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession. We’ll have a depression,” the former president said. Trump’s remarks came several days before the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released data showing that real U.S. GDP fell by an annualized 0.9 percent in the second quarter after contracting 1.6 percent in the first quarter. Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth are a common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession, although recessions in the United States are officially declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) using a broader definition than the two-quarter rule.

[..] In his remarks, Trump also took aim at President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy, blaming him for soaring inflation. “Biden created the worst inflation in 47 years. We’re at 9.1 percent, but the actual number is much, much higher than that,” Trump said. While the former president didn’t provide his own estimate for the true rate of inflation, an alternative CPI inflation gauge developed by economist John Williams, calculated according to the same methodology used by the U.S. government in the 1980s, puts the figure at 17.3 percent, a 75-year high. Trump also said that persistently high inflation combined with an economic slowdown has put the country “on the verge of a devastating” spell of stagflation, which is a combination of accelerating prices and slowing economic growth.

Inflation is “going higher and higher all the time,” Trump said, adding that it’s “costing families nearly $6,000 a year, bigger than any tax increase ever proposed other than the tax increase that they want to propose right now.” In Trump’s first full month in office in February 2017, the headline Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation gauge came in at 2.8 percent in annual terms. While the CPI measure fluctuated during his tenure, the highest it ever reached was 2.9 percent in July 2018, while in his final month in office, January 2021, inflation clocked in at 1.4 percent. Under Biden, inflation has climbed steadily, soaring 9.1 percent year-over-year in June 2022, a figure not seen in more than 40 years.

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$25,000 each. Hmm. Still, this may spread like wildfirre.

Health Care Workers Settle COVID Shot Mandate for $10.3 Million (Bridle)

Today, Liberty Counsel settled the nation’s first classwide lawsuit for health care workers over a COVID shot mandate, for more than $10.3 million. The class action settlement against NorthShore University HealthSystem is on behalf of more than 500 current and former health care workers who were unlawfully discriminated against and denied religious exemptions from the COVID shot mandate. The agreed upon settlement was filed today in the federal Northern District Court of Illinois. As a result of the settlement, NorthShore will pay $10,337,500 to compensate these health care employees who were victims of religious discrimination, and who were punished for their religious beliefs against taking an injection associated with aborted fetal cells.

This is a historic, first-of-its-kind class action settlement against a private employer who unlawfully denied hundreds of religious exemption requests to COVID-19 shots. The settlement must be approved by the federal District Court. Employees of NorthShore who were denied religious exemptions will receive notice of the settlement, and will have an opportunity to comment, object, request to opt out, or submit a claim form for payment out of the settlement fund, all in accordance with deadlines that will be set by the court. As part of the settlement agreement, NorthShore will also change its unlawful “no religious accommodations” policy to make it consistent with the law, and to provide religious accommodations in every position across its numerous facilities. No position in any NorthShore facility will be considered off limits to unvaccinated employees with approved religious exemptions.

In addition, employees who were terminated because of their religious refusal of the COVID shots will be eligible for rehire if they apply within 90 days of final settlement approval by the court, and they will retain their previous seniority level. The amount of individual payments from the settlement fund will depend on how many valid and timely claim forms are submitted during the claims process. If the settlement is approved by the court and all or nearly all of the affected employees file valid and timely claims, it is estimated that employees who were terminated or resigned because of their religious refusal of a COVID shot will receive approximately $25,000 each, and employees to were forced to accept a COVID shot against their religious beliefs to keep their jobs will receive approximately $3,000 each.

The 13 health care workers who are lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit will receive an additional approximate payment of $20,000 each for their important role in bringing this lawsuit and representing the class of NorthShore health care workers. Liberty Counsel will receive 20 percent of the settlement sum, which equals $2,061,500, as payment for the significant attorney’s fees and costs it has required to undertake to sue NorthShore and hold it accountable for its actions. This amount is far less than the typical 33 percent usually requested by attorneys in class action litigation.

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Not sure if No. 6 is also from Toronto.

“In all four cases, their hospitals made it clear their deaths “were not related to the COVID-19 vaccine.” Made it clear how? Where are the autopsies?

Triathlete, 27, Becomes 5th Toronto Area Doctor To Die In July (TSun)

The fifth GTA doctor to die in July “radiated positivity” and “lived a vibrant and active life.” But what the world lost in the sudden and tragic death of Dr. Candace Nayman was a woman who had dedicated her life to the health of children. The 27-year-old, who was a resident doctor at McMaster Children Hospital in Hamilton, collapsed while swimming as she competed in a triathlon on Sunday. She subsequently died on Thursday. Friends kept an around-the-clock prayer vigil for the much-loved Nayman who lost her fight and, at her request, had her organs donated to help others.She was “the loving daughter of Nicole and Gary, and the sister of Lauren, her twin, and Maurice, as well as partner to Seth Kadish,” reads an obituary on the Benjamin’s Park Memorial Chapel.

A triathlete, Dr. Nayman routinely commented on social media about her love of training and racing. “Candace Brooke Nayman passed away Thursday, July 28, 2022 competing and doing what she loved,” her obituary states. Family, friends and peers gathered Thursday for her funeral, which has not only shaken her family but rocked the already shaken medicine fraternity. “Everyone in the pediatrics department here at McMaster University and McMaster Children’s Hospital is devastated by the loss of Dr. Candace Nayman.” said Dr. Angelo Mikrogianakis, the chief of pediatrics at Hamilton Health Sciences’ McMaster Children’s Hospital and St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. “Candace was an aspiring pediatrician who exemplified hard work, radiated positivity, lived a vibrant and active life, and had a positive impact on her fellow residents, colleagues, faculty and patients.”


[..] Four other local doctors have died this summer. Trillium Partners staff physicians Dr. Jakub Sawicki, Dr. Stephen McKenzie and Dr. Lorne Segall died last week, just days after the tragic death of North York General Hospital’s Dr. Paul Hannam, an Olympian who died during a run at 50 years old. In all four cases, their hospitals made it clear their deaths “were not related to the COVID-19 vaccine.”

6 Canadian doctors

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Zuckerbucks.

Meta from 5th Most Valuable Stock to 11th In 10 Months. $647 Billion Lost (WS)

Despite the rally on Friday, the shares of Meta Platforms lost more ground, falling 1.0% to $159.10 at the close, and more after-hours, same price where the shares had first been on July 13, 2017. Five years of nothing, with an exciting roller-coaster-ride in between. Four years and two months up, 10 months down. Since the peak in September 2021, the shares have plunged 59%. Meta still doesn’t qualify for my growing list of Imploded Stocks, for which the minimum requirement is a 70% plunge from the peak, but it’s working hard to get there (data via YCharts):

The market value plunged from $1.077 trillion in September to $431 billion today. So, $647 billion have vanished in 10 months. This is no biggie obviously because people who bought the shares at the IPO for $38, and thereby participated in the biggest tech IPO in US history at the time, still made 318% at today’s price, and the shares could fall another 50%, and they’d still make a ton of money. Those who bought in 2021, OK, win some, lose some. And this dump in market cap caused something else to happen over the past two days: While other stocks surged, Meta fell out of the top 10 most valuable companies in the US, into 11th place, behind Visa (data via YCharts):

Back in September 2021, Meta, with a market cap of $1.077 trillion, was the fifth most valuable stock by market cap in the US. Easy come, easy go (data via YCharts):

Despite the summer rally, the Nasdaq composite is still down 23.6% from the peak in November, and lots of stocks slid, skidded, and plunged, and this re-arranged the deck a little among the top 11, but left the top four in the same position. There are a host of reasons for Meta’s plunge, including that the shares should have never shot up in this crazy manner in the first place. But hey, this was the pandemic, the Fed was printing money hand over fist, the Fed’s interest rates were near 0% even as inflation had begun to rage, and nothing mattered, everything shot higher. To the moon!

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Tamara Lich

 

 

Dutch farmer

 

 

Holland

 

 

It would be good if the farmers, or someone else, can keep the WEF forum out of Holland.

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

Jul 262022
 
 July 26, 2022  Posted by at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Gustave Moreau Orpheus at the Tomb of Eurydice 1891

 

Ukraine Government Issues Blacklist Of ‘Russian Propagandists’ (Unherd)
Needless Death and Misery (Rickards)
Gazprom Halts Another Nord Stream Turbine Cutting Flows In Half (ZH)
Russia’s Gazprom To Make Drastic Cut To Europe’s Gas Supply From Wednesday (G.)
Gazprom Receives Documents On Nord Stream Turbine Return (RT)
Germany Now ‘Hostage’ To Putin After US Poured Billions Into Defending It (DC)
Implications of the UN’s Ukraine Grain and Russia Fertilizer/Food Deals (NC)
Moscow Says It Aims To Overthrow Zelensky And His Government (AP)
No Farmers, No Food, No Life (Peeters)
The Wrecking Crew Will Be Overcome (Kunstler)
Russia Accuses Ukrainian Troops Of War Crimes (RT)
Greek Electricity Subsidy In Excess Of 1.1 Bln Euros In August (K.)
Hunter Biden Evidence Falsely Labeled Disinformation By FBI: Whistleblower

 

 

 

 

 

 

MLK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Senator Rand Paul, Glenn Greenwald, Tulsi Gabbard, John Mearsheimer and Col Douglas McGregor. Blacklisted.

Zelensky starts censoring America. What a world.

Ukraine Government Issues Blacklist Of ‘Russian Propagandists’ (Unherd)

The Government of Ukraine has issued a blacklist of individuals who they judge to be “promoting Russian propaganda” — including a number of prominent Western intellectuals. The “Center for Countering Disinformation,” established in 2021 under Volodymyr Zelensky and headed by former lawyer Polina Lysenko, sits within the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine. Its Its stated aim is to detect and counter “propaganda” and “destructive disinformation” and to prevent the “manipulation of public opinion.” On July 14th it published on its website a list of politicians, academics, activists that are “promoting Russian propaganda” — including several high-profile Western intellectuals and politicians.

Republican Senator Rand Paul, former Democrat Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, military and geopolitical analyst Edward N. Luttwak, realist political scientist John Mearsheimer and heterodox journalist Glenn Greenwald were all included on the list. The list does not explain what the consequences are for anyone mentioned. The exact criteria for inclusion are also unclear, although next to each name the report lists the “pro Russian” opinions the individual promotes. For example, Edward Luttwak’s breach was to suggest that “referendums should be held in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions”; Mearsheimer’s breach is recorded as him saying that “NATO has been in Ukraine since 2014” and that “NATO provoked Putin.”

[..] American political scientist and expert in international relations John Mearsheimer also told UnHerd how disappointed he was to be labelled in this way: “When I was a young boy, my mother taught me that when others can’t beat your arguments with facts and logic, they smear you. That is what is going on here. “I argue that it is clear from the available evidence that Russia invaded Ukraine because the United States and its European allies were determined to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border, which Moscow saw as an existential threat. Ukrainians of all persuasions reject my argument and instead blame Vladimir Putin, who is said to have been bent on conquering Ukraine and making it part of a greater Russia. “But there is no evidence in the public record to support that claim, which creates real problems for both Kyiv and the West. So how do they deal with me? The answer of course is to label me a Russian propagandist, which I am not.”

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“Russia will take somewhere between a third and half the country and keep it. The parts that Russia is taking control of include the industrial nexus, the largest natural resource deposits and the most fertile land.”

Needless Death and Misery (Rickards)

Almost everything you heard about the war in Ukraine from U.S. media over the course of March, April and May was a lie. You heard that Putin was losing the war. You heard that Russians had poor training and low morale and were deserting in droves. You heard that Ukrainians were destroying Russian armor in large numbers to blunt the Russian advance. None of this was true. In fact, Russian troops have achieved major victories in Mariupol, Kherson, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk and other key targets that control rivers, ports and junctions in Ukraine. This article isn’t about strategy and I don’t want to get too deeply into the weeds, but Russia’s next targets are Slovyansk and Bakhmut, which will consolidate Russia’s control over the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

[..] What we know right now is the economic damage to the U.S. economy will get much worse before the economy gets better. Biden won’t stop the sanctions soon. That means the trashing of the U.S. economy will continue. Meanwhile, Russia is “temporarily” shutting down the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline to Germany for repairs. Of course, the temporary shutdown may become permanent. It’s just more proof that U.S.-led sanctions only hurt the U.S. and Europe, not Russia. Here’s another potentially dangerous side effect of the failed sanctions campaign against Russia: Economic sanctions may now facilitate war instead of preventing or stopping it. Why? Because U.S. sanctions on Russia are a complete failure.

Nations considering invasions that might have been deterred because of sanctions threats may now feel emboldened and that they can proceed with confidence. How this new dynamic plays out in hotspots like the Taiwan Strait remains to be seen. But it would be deeply ironic if sanctions actually encouraged China to move against Taiwan. These are the sorts of issues that should be thoroughly thought through before action is taken. But our political leaders are incapable of thinking even one move ahead. The U.S. has already committed about $56 billion to assist Ukraine, which will likely turn out to be a very poor investment. But American taxpayers might be fleeced even more… The prime minister of Ukraine has calmly asked an international conference for $750 billion of assistance to rebuild Ukraine after the war. Nice try.

There are a few problems with this. First of all, there will be no Ukraine to rebuild, at least not in its current form. Russia will take somewhere between a third and half the country and keep it. The parts that Russia is taking control of include the industrial nexus, the largest natural resource deposits and the most fertile land. Russia will be able to finance the reconstruction of their conquests using the very industrial capacity, mining and agricultural output they have captured. Russia will also control the ports and major rivers and will be able to tax the remainder of Ukraine for access. The gradual result will be a prosperous part of Ukraine controlled by Russia and a desperately poor part of Ukraine left to the corrupt oligarchs under Zelenskyy.

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The whole system needs repair, not just one turbine.

Gazprom Halts Another Nord Stream Turbine Cutting Flows In Half (ZH)

Europeans, and especially Germans, breathed a sigh of relief last Thursday when amid fears that Moscow would not restart flows along the Nord Stream 1 pipeline after its 10 day maintenance period, Putin turned the gas back on, if just to its pre-maintenance peak level of about 40% of maximum capacity Alas Europe’s muted celebration were not meant to last, and with many speculating that Russia was just waiting for the right opportunity to turn the screws on Germany, both literally and metaphorically, that’s precisely what happened moments ago when shortly after Siemens finally delivered transport documents for the controversial Nord Stream turbine that had been stuck in Canada for weeks, Gazprom unexpectedly announced it would halt one more Nord Stream turbine at its Portovaya compressor station from July 27, “taking into account the technical conditions of the engine,” the Russian company says in a statement.

This means that as had been whispered much of last week, gas flows from Portovaya will drop to as much as 33 million cubic meters per day from 7am Moscow time on July 27, which means flows along NS1 will decline by half, from 40% of capacity to just 20%. According to Bloomberg energy expert Javier Blas, with “Nord Stream 1 flowing at just 20% of capacity from July 27, Germany will NOT have enough natural gas to make it throughout the whole winter **unless big demand reductions are implemented**. Berlin will need to activate stage 3 of its gas.” Translation: unless Putin changes his mind, Germany is facing not just a freezing winter, but a bitter recession. Needless to say, Germany was not happy with the latest reminder who holds all the cards in Europe:

“GERMAN ECONOMY MINISTRY, ON ANNOUNCED REDUCTION IN NORD STREAM 1 GAS FLOWS, SAYS THERE IS NO TECHNICAL REASON FOR A REDUCTION IN SUPPLIES.” GERMAN ECONOMY MINISTRY, ON ANNOUNCED REDUCTION IN NORD STREAM 1 GAS FLOWS, SAYS THE SANCTIONS-RELATED CONDITIONS FOR APPROVAL OF DELIVERY OF THE TURBINE HAVE BEEN MET. Bloomberg’s Vanessa Dezem adds that while it is positive that Germany’s gas stock levels rose again – at least heading into today’s Gazprom news – the country is still far from a comfortable situation to cope with the winter. Levels are back on a “proper path,” according to Klaus Mueller, head of the agency known as BNetzA. But if Russian gas flows through the Nord Stream pipeline remain low, Germany will not be able to fill the reservoirs to 95% in November, as targeted by the government, the agency said in a statement. Without the necessary buffer, Germany’s energy security remains at risk and prices remain volatile, and sure enough, in kneejerk response, European (TTF) nat gas prices spiked 10% and are likely to keep rising…

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All EU countries have allegedly agreed to a voluntary 15% gas usage cut.

Russia’s Gazprom To Make Drastic Cut To Europe’s Gas Supply From Wednesday (G.)

The Russian state-controlled energy company Gazprom has announced a drastic cut to gas deliveries through its main pipeline to Europe from Wednesday, prompting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to accuse Moscow of waging a “gas war”. The Russian gas export monopoly said it was halting the operation of one of the last two operating turbines due to the “technical condition of the engine”, cutting daily gas deliveries via the Nord Stream pipeline to 33m cubic metres a day – about 20% of the pipeline’s capacity. “We are monitoring the situation very closely in close exchange with the federal network agency and the gas crisis team,” the German economy ministry said in a statement on Monday after Gazprom’s announcement. “According to our information, there is no technical reason for a reduction in deliveries.”

Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address on Monday, said the move was deliberate and urged the European Union to agree tougher sanctions against Russia. “All this is done by Russia on purpose to make it as difficult as possible for Europeans to prepare for winter. And this is an open gas war that Russia is waging against a united Europe,” he said. Moscow’s “gas blackmail of Europe” represented “an incentive for the EU’s eighth sanctions package to be significantly stronger,” he said. The Nord Stream 1 pipeline resumed pumping last week, after a 10-day maintenance break, but the European Commission has warned that a complete gas shut down by Russia is likely The announcement came as EU governments sparred over a plan for a 15% gas savings target intended to avoid a winter crisis if the Kremlin turns off the taps to Europe. The EU’s goal is to use less gas now to build storage for winter.

The EU executive last week accused Moscow of using energy as a “weapon” and called on 27 member states to accept a voluntary 15% gas savings target, which could become mandatory if Brussels declares a supply emergency. [..] Spain’s deputy prime minister Teresa Ribera said last week her country was being asked to make a “disproportionate sacrifice”, as she pointed to investments her country had made on liquefied natural gas infrastructure, costs that had fallen on Spanish companies and consumers, she said. “Unlike other countries, we Spaniards have not lived beyond our means from an energy point of view,” Ribera said in unusually pointed comments. Portugal was “totally against” the proposals its energy minister, João Galamba, told local media last week, saying they did not address the needs of Spain or Portugal, which have little gas interconnection with the rest of Europe.

The Iberian countries are also using more gas to generate electricity because a fierce drought has reduced hydropower production. Greece also opposes the 15% EU-wide target, which it argues overburdens its economy and consumers. Meanwhile, Poland has raised concerns about its energy security. A Polish official said Warsaw would “not agree to any solutions that may lead to the use of Polish natural gas reserves for the needs of other member states”. France, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands and Poland were among the countries that opposed giving the commission the power to declare a supply emergency. Instead it is proposed that EU member states make that critical decision.

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“..the return of the equipment may not help Gazprom increase export volumes to their former level, as several more turbines at the Nord Stream pumping station are in need of repairs.”

Gazprom Receives Documents On Nord Stream Turbine Return (RT)

Russian state energy major Gazprom has received documentation from German industrial giant Siemens, allowing the return of a turbine for the Nord Stream 1 natural gas pipeline, business daily Kommersant reported on Sunday. The paperwork will first need to be amended, due to sanctions-related changes in the original agreement between Gazprom and Canada, the business daily writes. According to the existing contract, Gazprom was supposed to collect the item from Canada after repairs, but when Ottawa imposed sanctions on the Russian company, this became impossible. Siemens then agreed to ship the turbine to Russia via Germany, but the export documentation was not adjusted accordingly, Kommersant explains, adding that it was unable to obtain comments on the matter from either company.

Paperwork discrepancies already led to the turbine, which is currently in Germany, to miss a planned ferry trip to Russia via Finland on Saturday. According to Kommersant, the equipment can be sent to Russia in the middle of this week, if Gazprom provides the necessary customs declarations. Gazprom blamed the turbine’s delayed return for a 60% reduction in its gas supplies to the EU last month. According to Kommersant, however, the return of the equipment may not help Gazprom increase export volumes to their former level, as several more turbines at the Nord Stream pumping station are in need of repairs. The current license allows Siemens Energy to accept five more turbines before the end of 2024.

Gazprom resumed its gas deliveries to Germany at 40% of capacity last week after the completion of annual maintenance on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, despite widespread fears in the EU that gas the flow would not be resumed, for political reasons. Russia has repeatedly insisted that it honors all its obligations to customers.

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“Germany’s energy transition to green energy has been an incredibly expensive disaster.”

Germany Now ‘Hostage’ To Putin After US Poured Billions Into Defending It (DC)

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s temporary shutdown of the NordStream 1 pipeline in July sent gas prices soaring and Germany bracing for permanent energy insecurity. While the U.S. has invested heavily in Europe’s defenses as a counter to Russia, Germany could still lose out to Russia on economic terms. The U.S. made Germany a cornerstone of its European defense, investing billions of dollars and thousands of troops to man the front lines of the Cold War against Russia over previous decades, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. But Germany’s botched transition to renewable energy sources has given Russia, which controls a third of Germany’s gas imports according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the power to cripple Germany’s economy and expose it to a brutal winter.

“Foolish decisions by the German government have made the country hostage to Russia,” Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, told the DCNF. “Germany’s energy transition to green energy has been an incredibly expensive disaster.” After Germany joined its Western allies in levying sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, Putin cut gas flows to Europe. Germany’s economy crumbled from the lack of access to cheap energy, sending it scrambling for alternatives, like coal and nuclear, it previously spurned. If Russian gas flows stop, Germany could lose up to 5% of its GDP in 2022, with losses deepening in 2023 and 2024, according to the IMF. Failure to find a substitute for Russian gas could lead to “people freezing to death next winter, as well as industrial collapse,” Ebell said.

Germany has been reliant on Russian energy for decades, since the West German government shared its knowledge of industrial production with the former USSR in exchange for natural gas, Peter Earle, an economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, explained to the DCNF. Former U.S. President Donald Trump had warned Germany against overreliance on Russian energy at a UN General Assembly meeting in 2018. The German delegation present mocked him. Former chancellor Angela Merkel, known as the “climate chancellor” for her focus on reducing emissions, decided to shift away from nuclear energy in 2021, Reuters reported. Critics said this would sabotage Germany’s efforts to transition away from natural gas from Russia.

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“They believed they could break Russia’s economy and use the resulting chaos to resume 1990s-style looting, either by splitting up the country or installing Yeltsin 2.0.”

Implications of the UN’s Ukraine Grain and Russia Fertilizer/Food Deals (NC)

Since the battlefield action in Ukraine has slowed down a tad as Russia has been rotating troops and allegedly moving in more materiel, the big news story has been the UN success in consummating two deals. The one much talked about is coming up with a process for getting grain supposedly stuck in the Ukraine ports shipped out. The text for “Initiative for the Safe Transportation of Grain and Food Products from Ukrainian Ports” is embedded at the end of this post. The second agreement, which has gotten very little attention, is that of the UN committing to “facilitate the unimpeded exports to world markets of Russian food and fertilizer.” This goes well beyond the process established for transport of grain out of Ukraine. To work, several elements of the current sanctions against Russia and Belarus would need to be unwound.

Since as we will explain, we doubt this will happen to the degree needed. If so, Russia will have succeeded in firmly establishing that blame for hunger resulting from reduced shipments of its fertilizer and food will lay squarely with the so-called Collective West. More generally, these two agreements illustrate the fix that the US, Europe, and their Asian allies have gotten themselves into, by throwing massive economic sanctions at a country that is a major player in way too many commodities they can’t live without, from oil and gas to aluminum, titanium, neon, wheat…to nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilizers. They believed they could break Russia’s economy and use the resulting chaos to resume 1990s-style looting, either by splitting up the country or installing Yeltsin 2.0.

Instead, Russia is recovering from the sanctions body blow, although some sectors like auto parts are still in a great deal of pain, while the difficulties the West is experiencing, particularly politically destabilizing inflation in food and fuel, and potentially even shortages, are set to get worse. So far, the sanctions bosses have been unwilling to roll back their programs, no matter how clear it becomes that they are hurting the US and its allies more than Russia. Instead, the West remains firmly committed to trying to increase the Russia punishments, even when they’ve run out of measures that have any teeth, as the EU’s new, seventh round of sanctions shows. And the sanctions cheating they’ve allowed hasn’t done much to mitigate the damage. For instance, Europe playing along with Poland’s posturing that it isn’t buying Russian gas has just hurt Europe. Poland is buying Russian gas, laundered through Germany, backflowed through the Yamal-Europe pipeline.

But Russia reduced Europe’s supply to reflect Poland no longer making direct purchases, so Europe is having to make do with less gas. Similarly, who is kidding whom with Russia selling discounted oil to India, which then makes its way back to buyers in Europe that pretend they are on a Russian oil fast? One of the big issues is that the US and its allies have made the anti-Russia programming so loud and pervasive that they are now caught in their own narrative. They would perceive it as too much of a loss of face to roll back sanctions, even counterproductive ones. And they’ve made companies correctly afraid of being seen as giving succor to the enemy. They worry that they are exposed not just to secondary sanctions but also to reputational damage. That is why, for instance, so many Western companies pulled out of Russia right after the special military operation started even though most weren’t required by sanctions to do so.

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“..propaganda intended to ensure that Ukraine “becomes the eternal enemy of Russia.”

Moscow Says It Aims To Overthrow Zelensky And His Government (AP)

Russia appears to have reversed course, with the country’s top diplomat now saying that Moscow’s overarching goal is to topple the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as Russian artillery barrages and air strikes continue to pummel cities across Ukraine. The remark from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov comes amid Ukraine’s efforts to resume grain exports from its Black Sea ports, something that would help ease global food shortages, under a new deal tested by a Russian strike on Odesa over the weekend. Speaking to envoys at an Arab League summit in Cairo late Sunday, Lavrov said Moscow is determined to help Ukrainians “liberate themselves from the burden of this absolutely unacceptable regime.”

Lavrov accused Kiev and “its Western allies” of spouting propaganda intended to ensure that Ukraine “becomes the eternal enemy of Russia.” “Russian and Ukrainian people would continue to live together, we will certainly help Ukrainian people to get rid of the regime, which is absolutely anti-people and anti-historical,” he said. Lavrov’s remarks contrasted sharply with the Kremlin’s line early in the war, when Russian officials repeatedly emphasized that they weren’t seeking to overthrow Zelensky’s government. Lavrov argued that Russia was ready to negotiate a deal to end hostilities in March when Kyiv changed tack and declared its intention to rout Russia on the battlefield, adding that the West has encouraged Ukraine to keep fighting. “The West insists that Ukraine must not start negotiations until Russia is defeated on the battlefield,” Lavrov said.

It was not yet clear when grain shipments would resume following Russia and Ukraine signing identical agreements with the United Nations and Turkey on Friday in Istanbul. The deals are aimed at clearing the way for the shipment of millions of tons of desperately needed Ukrainian grain, as well as the export of Russian grain and fertilizer. The Kremlin insisted Monday that the attack on the port of Odesa over the weekend targeted military assets and would not affect grain shipping. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the strike had to do “exclusively with the military infrastructure.” “This is in no way related to the infrastructure involved in fulfilling the agreements and exporting grain. So this can’t and shouldn’t affect the start of the shipment process in any way,” Peskov said.

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“Many will be forced to shutter, including people whose families have been farming for up to eight generations.”

No Farmers, No Food, No Life (Peeters)

Throughout history many times natural or manmade disasters led to food insecurities for longer periods of time, resulting in hunger, malnutrition (undernourishment) and mortality. The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the situation. Since the global pandemic began, access to food estimates show that food insecurity has likely doubled, if not tripled in some places around the world. Moreover, during the pandemic, global hunger rose to 150 million and is now affecting 828 million people, with 46 million at the brink of starvation facing emergency levels of hunger or worse. In the hardest hit places, this means famine or famine-like conditions. At least 45 million children are suffering from wasting, which is the most visible and severe form of malnutrition, and potentially life-threatening.

With global prices of food and fertilizers already reaching worrying highs, the continuing impacts of the pandemic, the political forces to realize climate change goals and the Russia-Ukraine war raise serious concerns for food security both in the short and the long term. The world is facing a further spike in food shortages, pushing more families worldwide at risk for severe malnutrition. Those communities which survived former crises are left more vulnerable to a new shock than before and will accumulate the effects, diving into famine (acute starvation and a sharp increase in mortality). Furthermore, growth of economies and development of nations are currently slowing down due to a lack of workforce due to a sharp decrease in well-being and higher mortality rates.

In the wake of new nitrogen limits that require farmers to radically curb their nitrogen emissions by up to 70 percent in the next eight years, tens of thousands of Dutch farmers have risen in protest against the government. Farmers will be forced to use less fertilizer and even to reduce the number of their livestock, in some cases up to 95%. For smaller family-owned farms it will be impossible to reach these goals. Many will be forced to shutter, including people whose families have been farming for up to eight generations. Moreover, a significant decrease and limitations of Dutch farmers will have huge repercussions for the global food supply chain. The Netherlands is the world’s second largest agricultural exporter after the United States. Still, the Dutch government pursues their agenda on Climate Change while there is currently no law to support the implementation, while they will not change much in the planet’s major air pollution.

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“..this time the Left will be pro-war and the Party of Chaos will send out its ragtag army of Antifa trannies to make the street protests bloodier. It will be seen for what it is: the ruling regime’s war on its own people. And it will be overcome.”

The Wrecking Crew Will Be Overcome (Kunstler)

In keeping with the principles of mass formation psychosis, the maliciously insane people in charge of our nation’s affairs will expect you to swallow ever-greater absurdities to maintain their control (and protect themselves). But we’re way beyond the “women-with-penises” stage of the mind-fuckery program. Nobody with a functioning brain believes that bullshit anymore — except the people who run the California prison system. Next up, apparently, is a hot little war with Russia or China, a useful distraction from the systematic self-dismantling of Western Civ.

“Joe Biden” has sent troops from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions to Europe, supposedly to “train” the NATO forces of Euroland. Is this some kind of bluff? Or does “Joe Biden” and Company imagine that they’ll pull off some blitzkrieg counter-offensive on-the-ground in Ukraine and recapture territory secured by Russia painfully since February? If we send troops into Ukraine proper, it would amount to a deliberate sacrifice of our supposedly best soldiers in a meat-grinder. Maybe the purpose is simply to further weaken the US military, humiliate NATO, and hasten the death of the West.

Of course, we have no real strategic national interest in Ukraine. We had no quarrel all the years that the Russian Soviets owned and operated it. We set in motion the current conflict by cooking up the 2014 color revolution. (There followed the fat years for Hunter Biden converting US aid money into revenue for his many shell corporations.) I doubt that a plurality of Americans will fall for another such stupid Hate Russia ploy. We’ve had enough pointless and costly foreign misadventures. This would be a war exceeding the unpopularity of Vietnam and could easily unleash widespread street protests. Only this time the Left will be pro-war and the Party of Chaos will send out its ragtag army of Antifa trannies to make the street protests bloodier. It will be seen for what it is: the ruling regime’s war on its own people. And it will be overcome.

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“Criminal cases have also been launched against citizens of the UK, the US, Canada, Georgia and the Netherlands..”

Russia Accuses Ukrainian Troops Of War Crimes (RT)

Preliminary probes have found that more than 200 members of the Ukrainian military have been involved in “crimes against the peace and security of mankind,” the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee said on Monday. A total of 92 commanders and subordinates have already been charged with the offenses, he revealed. More than 1,300 criminal cases, involving over 400 individuals, have been launched over violations committed by the Ukrainian side since the start of Russia’s military operation on February 24, Alexander Bastrykin told newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

According to the Investigative Committee chief, it had already been established that more than 220 suspects, “including representatives of the high command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and commanders of military units which fired at civilians, had been involved in crimes against the peace and security of mankind, which don’t have a statute of limitations.” Charges have been filed against 92 Ukrainian commanders and subordinates to date, with 96 suspects being placed on the wanted list, he added. “There can be no justification for the use of force by the Ukrainian nationalists,” Bastrykin insisted. “They are intensively shelling the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. They brutally and cynically target peaceful citizens, civilian infrastructure, including children’s institutions.”

He also accused the Ukrainian forces of having struck their own territory “in order to blame the Russian military for this.” During the conflict, Moscow has insisted that its troops never target civilians, only striking Ukrainian forces and military infrastructure. More than 7,000 civilian facilities have been destroyed in attacks by the Ukrainian side, including homes, schools and kindergartens, with over 91,000 people being designated as victims, the Investigative Committee chief said. Criminal cases have also been launched against citizens of the UK, the US, Canada, Georgia and the Netherlands for their involvement in the conflict as mercenaries, while Ukrainian nationalist units have been accused of torturing Russian POWs, attacking Russian embassies in foreign countries, and other acts, he said.

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Thank you sanctions. But where does the money come from?

Greek Electricity Subsidy In Excess Of 1.1 Bln Euros In August (K.)

Greece will extend subsidies to power bills at a cost of more than 1.1 billion euros in August to support households and businesses amid a spike in energy prices, Energy Minister Kostas Skrekas said on Monday. Final consumer prices for electricity are expected to be set at 15-17 cents per kilowatt-hour in August, according to the minister’s announcements. The subsidy for household tariffs will be without any income criteria, concern all consumption and all residences (main and secondary) and amount to €337 per megawatt-hour (or €0.337/KWh).


The total amount of subsidies reaches €1.136 billion next month and absorbs up to 90% of the increase for all residential consumers for the total monthly consumption and for main and secondary residences, 100% of the increase for beneficiaries of the Social Rates, 80% of the increase for small and medium-sized professionals with power supply up to 35 kVa and 82-99% of the increase for farmers. For industrial consumers, the subsidy will be €250 euros/MWh to absorb up to 67% of the increase. For natural gas and for commercial consumers, the subsidy amounts to €30 euros per thermal MWh.

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How does one investigate the FBI? The President?

Hunter Biden Evidence Falsely Labeled Disinformation By FBI: Whistleblower

The FBI’s investigation into Hunter Biden wrongly labeled verified evidence as “disinformation,” agency whistleblowers claimed. Agents investigating President Joe Biden’s son “opened an assessment which was used by an FBI headquarters team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease,” according to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). Grassley revealed the claim after his office received “a significant number of protected communications from highly credible whistleblowers” about the investigation. The Republican claimed one of the communications shows “verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation.”

FBI supervisory intelligence agent Brian Auten opened in August 2020 the assessment that was later used by the agency, according to the disclosures. One of the whistleblowers claimed the FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office, Timothy Thibault, shut down a line of inquiry into Hunter Biden in October 2020 despite some of the details being known to be true at the time. A whistleblower also said Thibault “ordered closed” an “avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting,” according to Grassley, even though “all of the reporting was either verified or verifiable via criminal search warrants.” The senator said Thibault “ordered the matter closed without providing a valid reason as required” and that FBI officials “subsequently attempted to improperly mark the matter in FBI systems so that it could not be opened in the future,” according to the disclosures.

Whistleblowers alleged investigators from an FBI headquarters team “were in communication with FBI agents responsible for the Hunter Biden information targeted by Mr. Auten’s assessment” and that their findings on whether the claims were true or disinformation were placed “in a restricted access sub-file” in September 2020, according to the senator. The whistleblower disclosures “appear to indicate that there was a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation,” Grassley said. The new allegations, summarized by Grassley in a Monday letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, were previously unknown.

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Drumming
https://twitter.com/i/status/1550911126287929346

 

 

 

 

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Jul 192022
 
 July 19, 2022  Posted by at 7:36 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  35 Responses »


Piet Mondriaan Trafalgar Square 1939-43

 

Operation Z – Don’t Interrupt (Larry Johnson)
Gazprom Declares Force Majeure, To Halt Gas Flows To Germany Indefinitely (ZH)
Russian Economy Expected To Thrive By Year’s End (RT)
Germany’s Energy Crisis About To Get Worse As Rhine Water Levels Plummet (ZH)
Staged Incidents As The Western Approach To Doing Politics (Lavrov)
Germany and France ‘Killed’ Minsk Agreements – Lavrov (RT)
Ukraine Treated Donbass People As Sub-humans, Making Peace Impossible (Ugolny)
Canadian Energy Firm Declares Force Majeure On Keystone Pipeline (ZH)
The Recession May Already Be Here (Lacalle)
House Democrats Push Bill To Add Four Seats To Supreme Court (JTN)
Novak Djokovic US Open Row Escalates (Exp.)
The Last Days of “Joe Biden” (Kunstler)

 

 

 

 

Makary

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..you should never interrupt your enemies when they are making a mistake..”

Operation Z – Don’t Interrupt (Larry Johnson)

One of Napoleon’s observations is that you should never interrupt your enemies when they are making a mistake. Russians know this, not least because they were careful not to interrupt Napoleon himself in 1812. Putin and his team have had plenty of opportunities to meet NATO’s leaders, observe them, negotiate with them and assess them. It’s unlikely they’re very impressed. But when they started their “special military operation” in Ukraine they could never have dreamed how self-destructive NATO would be. What mistakes? First, the West has not shot itself in the foot with its economic sanctions – Hungary’s Viktor Orban is right when he observes that it has put a slug into its lungs.

One can still limp along with a broken foot, but a shot to the lungs is pretty serious. Second, who in Moscow could have imagined that NATO would shovel its ammunition and weapons stockpiles into the Ukrainian black hole in the expectation that if they can get the latest wonderwaffe to General Steiner they’ll be in Moscow by Christmas. A good reason for Moscow to take it slowly – let the mistakes develop, compound and metastasize. It’s happening by itself. Naturally, inevitably, logically. No outside effort required. An unexpected bonus. Don’t interrupt.

Consider Germany, “the engine of Europe“. It stands on one thing – the reputation of German engineering and quality – Mercedes/Miele/Bosch, they may cost more but they’re cheaper in the long run because they’re so well made. No Western country manufactures much these days but Germany still does. In fact, only South Korea and China have a bigger share of their economies in manufacturing. (America, the colossus of former times, is half Germany!) But manufacturing needs energy. German energy comes from Russia – not all of it – about 20%. But coal is 40% and nuclear 10% and they have to reduce these because Greta wants them to which means they need more gas which is cheaper and “cleaner” and which mostly comes from Russia which requires another pipeline to be built. But then they decide that Ukraine is The Big Moral Issue and close the pipeline and step up coal which they’re going to get rid of altogether in 2030 thanks to more wind energy.

And what about the nukes? Unicorn wings flapping. Hard to be green and hate Russia too. And let’s ban potash from Russia and Belarus. That’s about a third of world production. Ban Russian wheat (it is the number 1 exporter) and oil (it is the number 2 exporter). Oh, and by confiscating Russian assets they’ve shown the whole world that only an idiot would keep his wealth in NATO currency in a NATO bank. And all this for a country they lied to about NATO membership. Don’t interrupt.

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The turbine is on its way.

Gazprom Declares Force Majeure, To Halt Gas Flows To Germany Indefinitely (ZH)

Already days before the July 22 European “Doomsday” when the scheduled Russian 10-day maintenance of the crucial Nord Stream pipeline to Germany is slated to end – but which was thrown into deep doubt given Gazprom recently said it can no longer guarantee its “good functioning” due to crucial turbines being previously held up in Canada related to sanctions – the Russian energy giant has declared Force Majeure to one major European customer. Simply put, Gazprom declared extraordinary and extreme circumstances to void itself from all contractual obligations to this customer, thus the gas will stop flowing indefinitely, as Reuters reports in a breaking development Monday, “Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom has declared force majeure on gas supplies to Europe to at least one major customer starting June 14, according to the letter seen by Reuters.”

The letter is dated July 14. “It said the force majeure measure, a clause invoked when a business is hit by something beyond its control, was effective from deliveries starting from June 14,” writes Reuters. As we’ve been detailing, German authorities have of late taken unprecedented steps in anticipation of an enduring Russian gas halt, essentially dimming the lights across the country – which has included everything from limiting hot water, to shutting down swimming pools, to quite literally dimming city street lights as it entered “alarm” stage over dwindling supply.

And as demonstrated in the Monday morning oil price spike, the bid for oil will remain strong the longer the force majeure holds, given utility companies and the manufacturing sector are likely to seek transition to oil from gas… It seems this letter declaring its legal release from supply obligations going back to June 14 is in preparation for definitive action on July 22, namely that the pipeline’s operations are likely to remain suspended past the scheduled reboot/supply back online designated date. In an analysis from earlier this month (available to pro subscribers), UBS economists laid out a detailed vision of what they see happening if Russia halts gas deliveries to Europe: It would reduce corporate earnings by more than 15%.

The market selloff would exceed 20% in the Stoxx 600 and the euro would drop to 90 cents. The rush for safe assets would drive benchmark German bund yields to 0%, they wrote. “We stress that these projections should be seen as rough approximations and by no means as a worse-case scenario,” wrote Arend Kapteyn, chief economist at UBS. “We could easily conceive economic disruptions that lead to more negative growth outcomes.” To be sure, markets are already pricing in some of the damage beginning with the euro which starting this month traded at a fresh two-decade low and touched parity with the dollar, something it hasn’t done since 2002.

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The only one.

Russian Economy Expected To Thrive By Year’s End (RT)

The Russian economy is expected to show positive developments by the end of the year, Maksim Oreshkin, economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said during a speech at a youth forum on Saturday. “The wheels of our economy are building momentum step by step, lending volumes are increasing, and interest rates are falling. We see that the loan portfolios of banks are already growing, while during the most difficult periods in April-May, they were declining. All this indicates that the wheels of the economy have started to work. And by the end of the year, we should see positive developments,” Oreshkin said. The presidential aide noted that the situation is improving in retail sales, which are showing growth compared to last year, boosting business revenue.

Oreshkin also said Russia’s key task is to build a “sovereign economy” which would be “confident in its abilities, working with any partners, but at the same time does not depend on them and is invulnerable.” His remarks echo the view of the Russian Minister of Industry and Trade, Denis Manturov, who said earlier this week that Russia should strive to reach “technological sovereignty” and focus the economy on prioritizing domestic needs, while continuing to increase export potential. In early June, President Vladimir Putin said Russia would not close off its economy, despite Ukraine-related Western sanctions. Speaking at the SPIEF forum, the president called openness one of the key principles of Russia’s new economic policy, and said the country has no wish to retreat behind an iron curtain comparable to the Soviet era.

The Russian economy has been put under intense pressure by Western sanctions, introduced in response to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. Moscow has been prevented from conducting many international transactions, with businesses and individuals sanctioned, while half of Russia’s foreign currency reserves have been frozen abroad, and many international companies have quit the Russian market. Nevertheless, Moscow says Western policies have failed to destabilize the country’s economy.

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When it rains…

Germany’s Energy Crisis About To Get Worse As Rhine Water Levels Plummet (ZH)

What has already been a year from hell for Germany, which is suffering energy hyperinflation as a result of Europe’s sanctions on Russia, and which is “facing the biggest crisis the country has every had” according to the president of the German employers association, is about to get even worse as the declining water level of the Rhine river, which has historically been a key infrastructure transit artery across Germany, continues to fall and as it does, the flow of commodities to inland Europe is starting to buckle threatening to make an already historic crisis even worse. The alarming lack of water is contributing to oil product supply problems in Switzerland and preventing at least two power plants in Germany from getting all the coal they need, and what’s more, the continent’s sizzling summer temperatures are forecast to climb even higher in the coming week, leading to even lower water levels.

The 800-mile (1,288-kilometer) Rhine river runs from Switzerland all the way to the North Sea and is used to transport tens of millions of tons of commodities through inland Europe. But with water levels at their lowest for the time of year in 15 years, there is a limit how much fuel, coal and other vital cargo that barges can carry up and down the river. Low water levels on the Rhine River mean that barges hauling middle distillate-type oil products – typically gasoil/diesel – past Kaub in Germany, are limited to loading about 30% of capacity, according to maritime brokerage services firm Riverlake.

A barge loading in the energy hub of Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (or ARA), which can haul 2.5k tons when fully laden, is restricted to taking on about 800 tons if sailing to destinations beyond Kaub. As shown below, the water level at Kaub has fallen in recent days and is at its lowest on a seasonal basis since at least 2007. According to Riverlake, further decreases in loading volumes for barges hauling middle distillates from ARA to inland destinations beyond Kaub are expected in coming days.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s op-ed in Izvestia.

Staged Incidents As The Western Approach To Doing Politics (Lavrov)

February 2014, Ukraine – the West, represented by the German, French, and Polish foreign ministers, de facto forced President Viktor Yanukovich into signing an agreement with the opposition to end the confrontation and promote a peaceful resolution of the intra-Ukrainian crisis by establishing a transitional national unity government and calling a snap election, to be held within a few months. This too turned out to be a fraud: the next morning, the opposition staged a coup guided as it was by anti-Russia, racist slogans. However, the Western guarantors did not even try to bring the opposition back to its senses. Furthermore, they switched immediately to encouraging the coup perpetrators in their policies against Russia and everything Russian, unleashing the war against their own people and bombing entire cities in the Donbass region just because people there refused to recognise the unconstitutional coup. For that, they labelled the people in Donbass terrorists, and once again the West was there to encourage them.

At this point, it is worth noting that, as it was soon revealed, the killing of protestors on the Maidan was also a staged incident, which the West blamed either on the Ukrainian security forces loyal to Viktor Yanukovich, or on the Russian special services. However, the radical members of the opposition were the ones who were behind this provocation, while working closely with the Western intelligence services. Once again, exposing these facts did not take long, but by that time they already did their job. Efforts by Russia, Germany, and France paved the way to stopping the war between Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk in February 2015 with the signing of the Minsk Agreements. Berlin and Paris played a proactive role here as well, proudly calling themselves as the guarantor countries.

However, during the seven long years that followed, they did absolutely nothing to force Kiev to launch a direct dialogue with Donbass representatives for agreeing on matters including the special status, amnesty, restoring economic ties, and holding elections, as required by the Minsk Agreements which were approved unanimously by the UN Security Council. The Western leaders remained silent when Kiev took steps which directly violated the Minsk Agreements under both Petr Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky. Moreover, the German and the French leaders kept saying that Kiev cannot enter direct dialogue with the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, and blamed everything on Russia, although Russia is not mentioned in the Minsk agreements even once, while remaining basically the only country that kept pushing for the agreements to be implemented.

If anyone doubted that the Minsk Package was anything but yet another fake, Petr Poroshenko dispelled this myth by saying on June 17, 2022: “The Minsk Agreements did not mean anything to us, and we had no intention to carry them out… our goal was to remove the threat we faced… and win time in order to restore economic growth and rebuild the armed forces. We achieved this goal. Mission accomplished for the Minsk Agreements.”

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“Zelensky’s presidency gave an initial boost to the peace process, but stalled after a series of protests by right-wing radicals..”

Germany and France ‘Killed’ Minsk Agreements – Lavrov (RT)

Germany is demanding that Russia guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity, but such a deal was previously signed, only to be “killed” by Berlin and Paris, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. “When [German Chancellor] Olaf Scholz demands that Russia should be compelled to sign an agreement granting Ukraine guarantees of territorial integrity and sovereignty, all his attempts are in vain. There was already such a deal – the Minsk agreements – which was killed by Berlin and Paris. They were shielding Kiev, which openly refused to comply,” he wrote in an op-ed for the Russian newspaper Izvestia. Russia, Germany and France brokered the 2015 Minsk agreements between Ukraine and Donbass, which were designed to put an end to hostilities. But according to Lavrov, Berlin and Paris failed to ensure Kiev’s compliance.

[..] The Minsk agreements included a series of measures designed to rein in hostilities in Donbass and reconcile the warring parties. The first steps were a ceasefire and an OSCE-monitored pullout of heavy weapons from the frontline, which were fulfilled to some degree. Kiev was then supposed to grant a general amnesty to the rebels and extensive autonomy for the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Ukrainian troops were supposed to take control of the rebel-held areas after Kiev granted them representation, and otherwise reintegrate them as part of Ukraine. Poroshenko’s government refused to implement these portions of the deal, claiming it could not proceed unless it fully secured the border between the breakaway republics and Russia.

He instead endorsed an economic blockade of the rebel regions, initiated by Ukrainian nationalist forces. Zelensky’s presidency gave an initial boost to the peace process, but stalled after a series of protests by right-wing radicals, who threatened to depose the new Ukrainian president if he tried to deliver on his campaign promises. Kiev’s failure to implement the roadmap, and the continued hostilities with rebels, were among the primary reasons cited by Russia when it attacked Ukraine in late February. Days before launching the offensive, Moscow recognized the breakaway Ukrainian republics as sovereign states, offering them security guarantees and demanding that Kiev pull back its troops. Zelensky refused to comply.

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Vladislav Ugolny is a Russian journalist based in Donetsk

Ukraine Treated Donbass People As Sub-humans, Making Peace Impossible (Ugolny)

No Ukrainian politicians were saints, and neither were the people of Donbass – not that anyone had asked them to be, though. The fact of the matter is that every escalation of violence was aimed at them. It was the Ukrainians who kept upping the ante, and nobody cared. The miners have always died, you know. Why should anyone feel sorry for them? They’re ‘dumb slaves’, they wear no balaclavas. Back then, in 2014, balaclavas were seen as a symbol of superior people, while the ‘stupid miners’ from Donbass (led by Valery Bolotov) and their volunteer supporters from Russia (led by Igor Strelkov) deliberately spurned them. The lives of the residents of impoverished mining towns cost less than the lives of those living in prosperous towns near the Carpathian Mountains. The air in Donbass stinks of soot and is full of coal dust and industrial emissions, so people die of cancer there, whereas the mountain air in Galicia is fresh and fragrant, and the wind of freedom blows in from Poland.

Children were killed in Donbass. Nobody gave a damn, except Russia and the repressed Russians in the rest of Ukraine. It was rather amusing for the other side – people scraping their dead children off the asphalt and saying: ‘We’re being bombed, we’re scared, our children are dying!’ Ukrainians thought it was funny, a just punishment for those dehumanized earth-diggers. They called their children ‘Colorado beetle larvae’, because the stripes of the Colorado potato beetle resemble the St. George’s ribbon, which became the symbol of the uprising in Novorossiya.

All of this convinced Donbass it had the moral high ground, which allowed it to stand tall and weather eight years of incredible hardship. The Ukrainians were granted the chance to reach a political settlement with the Minsk agreements, if they agreed to treat Donbass as a sovereign region within Ukraine. Had they done this, Donbass would have lost interest in politics, returned to its industrial roots, and left policymaking in the hands of western Ukraine again in a few years’ time. But they wouldn’t do this, even for the sake of stopping the war. Recognizing the sovereignty of Donbass was a red line for Ukraine, and so was dialogue with Donbass.

The Ukrainian leadership stuck to those red lines even after Russia said it was going to put an end to the ongoing slaughter at its doorstep. So, what we now have is a new season of war, which has been going on for Donbass since 2014. The two people’s republics’ armies are storming Ukrainian fortifications as the Ukrainian military continues to bomb residential areas in Donetsk. People in Donbass stopped wondering “what they are capable of.” Now they know that the Ukrainian army and government are capable of anything – bombing cities, torturing people, and trying to pass off Donetsk people that they killed for Kiev residents, supposedly killed by Russian missile strikes. The only thing they can’t do is admit that the citizens of Donbass are people just like them, people who have their own interests and are prepared to fight for them until they win or die in battle.

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Force majeure is popular…

Canadian Energy Firm Declares Force Majeure On Keystone Pipeline (ZH)

Just hours after Gazprom declared force majuere with a number of its European clients – implicitly cutting off NatGas supply to the continent; Canadian energy firm TC Energy has declared force majeure on some crude shipments on the Keystone pipeline after a power failure at a pump station in South Dakota. The power failure was reportedly driven by the extreme temperatures spreading across the US (it was reportedly around 20 degrees above normal at around 100 degrees). The pipeline “is operating at a reduced rate due to damage to the third-party power utility,” according to a statement by the company. Notably this is affecting shipments from Canada to the United States, according to the company.

As a reminder, the pipeline runs from Hardisty, Alberta into North Dakota, through South Dakota to Steele City, Nebraska, where it splits – one arm running east through Missouri for deliveries into Wood River and Patoka, Illinois and the other running south through Oklahoma to Cushing and onward to Port Arthur and Houston, Texas Bloomberg reports that the discount at which Cold Lake crude for August delivery trades to benchmark futures along the Gulf Coast narrowed by more than 8% to $8 a barrel, according to Link Data Services. Perhaps most notably, Cold Lake crude is a type of heavy oil mined from the oil-sands region of northern Alberta and favored by some Texas and Louisiana refiners equipped to turn it into gasoline, diesel and other products. For now there is no reaction in RBOB prices.

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“Negative real wage growth, weakening consumption, decade-low consumer confidence and collapsing investment..”

The Recession May Already Be Here (Lacalle)

The debate about recession risk is pointless. We are already in a recession. Real GDP in the United States declined at an annual rate of 1.6% in the first quarter. The Atlanta Fed Nowcast shows a 1.5% contraction in the second quarter. But the underlying figures are scarier. According to the Atlanta Fed, “the GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2022 is -1.5% on July 15, down from -1.2% on July 8”. That is an enormous negative change, -0.3% of GDP, in one week. They go on to say that “the nowcast of second quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth and real gross private domestic investment growth decreased from 1.9% and -13.7%, respectively, to 1.5% and -13.8%, respectively”.

Investment is collapsing, consumption is barely kept alive and if we look at other components, imports are soaring while exports rise less than expected. This is the backlash of massive stimulus packages. An artificial boost to GDP in one year from two trillion US dollars of excessive spending generated a non-structural rise in GDP that immediately leads to a contraction. However, the debt increase remains, and the structural problems are evident. The labor market is only strong in headlines. In June, the number of long-term unemployed was unchanged at 1.3 million. This is 215,000 higher than in February 2020. Labor force participation rate was 62.2%, employment-population ratio 59.9%. Both remain below February 2020 levels (63.4% and 61.2%) according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Meanwhile, inflation eats any wage rise and real median wage increase is negative in 2022. Real average hourly earnings decreased 3.6 percent, seasonally adjusted, from June 2021 to June 2022, the BLS reports. Negative real wage growth, weakening consumption, decade-low consumer confidence and collapsing investment means we are already in recession and the massive stimulus plans have created nothing but debt.


s
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Won’t fly.

House Democrats Push Bill To Add Four Seats To Supreme Court (JTN)

House Democrats on Monday demanded legislation to add four seats to the Supreme Court in hopes of moving the judicial body away from its current conservative slant. The lawmakers made their push at a press conference hosted by the Take Back the Court Action Fund on Monday. Their demands follow rulings from the high court handing conservatives major wins on both abortion and gun rights. The court in late June overturned the landmark abortion precedent in Roe v. Wade, returning the right to regulate the procedure to the states. One day prior, it struck down a New York law restricting the issuance of concealed carry permits
The Supreme Court is “making decisions that usurp the power of the legislative and executive branches,” said Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., according to The Hill.


Some preemptively addressed detractors who would call the effort “court-packing” saying the Republicans did so first. “The nightmare scenario of GOP court-packing is already upon us,” said Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.). “That’s how they got this far-right 6-3 majority in the first place.” The Court’s 6-3 conservative slant is in part due to President Donald Trump’s appointment of three associate justices to the bench. Neil Gorsuch replaced Antonin Scalia, while Brett Kavanaugh replaced Anthony Kennedy, and Amy Coney Barrett replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Congress has previously changed the number of justices on the court seven times, The Hill noted. The measure is unlikely to become law as Democrats will likely be unable to clear the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold in the Senate in the face of stiff Republican opposition.

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“How many jabs did Fauci get? Banning Djokovic would be equally stupid.”

Novak Djokovic US Open Row Escalates (Exp.)

Two more political figures have thrown support behind Novak Djokovic as he remains unable to play the US Open as an unvaccinated traveller. The United States currently bans any unvaccinated foreign nationals from entering the country but one of Donald Trump’s former aides has become the latest to criticise the rules and put pressure on Joe Biden, with a Senator echoing his calls. Djokovic is still in doubt to play the final Grand Slam tournament of the year with unvaccinated travellers unable to enter the United States. The world No 7 has already confirmed he does not intend to get vaccinated just to compete and will find himself banned from the country unless the rules change.

Several American politicians have condemned the ban already and called for the Serb to be allowed into the country to compete, and now two more have ridiculed the policy of stopping unjabbed visitors from entering the United States. “Let @DjokerNole play in the @usopen! The U.S. Open cheapens itself when it bans one of the best players in the world,” Richard Grenell tweeted. The former politician was picked by Donald Trump to be the U.S. Ambassador to Germany in 2017 and the U.S. Acting Director of National Intelligence in 2020. He was also the Special Presidential Envoy for Serbia and Kosovo Peace Negotiations for 15 months from October 2019, linking him to the Serb’s home country. And current Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has now echoed Grenell’s words, slamming the idea of keeping Djokovic out of the country as “stupid”.

He tweeted: “RichardGrenelli is 100% correct on this. “Has anyone noticed the vaccines are NOT preventing infection and transmission? The mandates are idiotic, pointless and destructive. How many jabs did Fauci get? Banning Djokovic would be equally stupid.” Johnson and Grenell’s tweets come after two other US politicians criticised the ban on Djokovic and other unvaccinated travellers. Texas State Senator Drew Springer and Senator for Kentucky, Rand Paul pressured Biden over the issue last week. “Biden is banning Novak Djokovic from coming to USA to play the US Open but allows millions of unvaccinated illegals to flood across the border. Hey Joe, what’s one more unvaxed person?!?! Springer tweeted last Sunday, before Paul said: “Hooray for heroic stances for medical freedom by Wimbledon champ Novak Djokovic. Boo for unscientific policy of banning visitors to US that already have natural immunity.”

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“The Russians end up with control of the Black Sea and probably the Ukraine bread-basket as well. So, now, Europe will starve and freeze.”

The Last Days of “Joe Biden” (Kunstler)

It’s like our country is trapped on one of those swirling carnival rides beloved of the county fairs… only, the felonious mutt who runs the ride has nodded off in a fentanyl delirium with the motor running at maximum speed… and the children-of-all-ages locked in the pods of this infernal machine shriek and vomit with each sickening rotation… as the half-century-old swing arms groan and wobble from metal fatigue on their squealing pivots… and suddenly comes a deafening crunch of gnashed gears, the smell of burning oil, and the pathetic whimpering of the nearly dead. That’s us. Some terrible midsummer accident-of-state has befallen the USA Carnival, and most are too dazed to know it. Whose idea was it to send the wind-up doll president called “Joe Biden” to Saudi Arabia?

I can just imagine what went on in the chamber in private with “JB” and MBS (Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman), virtual autocrat of the oil-soaked desert land. The American visitor muttered something about wanting an ice-cream cone before dropping into a catatonic thousand-yard stare. “How does this thing work?” MBS asks his chief vizier, the foreign minister (in Arabic, of course), gesticulating disdainfully at the ghostly figure sunk in the plush camel-hair armchair yards away. “Joe Biden” sits motionless. Someone has forgotten to rewind him, some “aide” who carries the president’s Adderall. Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud tells the boss, “We’ll make up some camel-dung for release to CNN and friends. They’ll fall for anything.” It’s like a crime scene where the forensic experts have entered. The Saudi leader and his entourage only hang around the room for three minutes until the US State Department shoots enough photos to prove that “JB” was there and not stuffed in the basement of his Delaware beach house for the weekend, as usual.

The American news media gets briefed: Saudi Arabia graciously agrees to bump up its oil production somewhere in the 2025-2027 time-frame — a triumph for US diplomacy, the networks are informed. Air Force One wings home through clouds of despair. The White House team members spend the flight updating their resumés. I think we have witnessed “Joe Biden’s” final appearance at any world-stage event. He can do no more for the Party of Chaos. It has done what it can to wreck the joint with him as the pretend head-of-state. The Ukraine gambit is a bust, a foolish miscalculation that was obvious from the start. All it accomplished was to reveal the pitiful dependence of our European allies on Russian oil and gas, leaving their economies good and truly scuppered without it. The Russians end up with control of the Black Sea and probably the Ukraine bread-basket as well. So, now, Europe will starve and freeze.

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Emmanuel Todd Lopez
https://twitter.com/i/status/1548832312741208071

 

 

 

 

Kung fu

 

 

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Jul 172022
 
 July 17, 2022  Posted by at 8:58 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  41 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Guernica 1937

 

Germany Is Facing The Biggest Crisis The Country Has Ever Had (Cody)
Berlin’s Quit Decades Of Courting Both Moscow And Washington (Davydov)
The War Of Economic Corridors Is In Full Swing (Escobar)
Republicans Wince As Their Ukrainian-born Colleague Thrashes Zelensky (Pol.)
In Search of Enemies (Femi Akomolafe)
Italy May Soon Be Unable To Arm Ukraine – Foreign Minister (RT)
To Hell or Not to Hell? (Batiushka)
‘Experts’ Broke The World. But They’re Rapidly Losing Power… (Black)
Gazprom Requests Documents On Nord Stream Turbine Return (RT)
Saudi Arabia Outlines What It Will Do For Oil Output (RT)
Biden Visits Saudi Arabia, Returns with an Empty Tin Cup (CTH)
China Issues Phosphate Quotas To Rein In Fertiliser Exports (R.)
Dr. Birx Praises Herself While Revealing Ignorance, Treachery, and Deceit (BI)
Judge Questions FBI’s Aggressive Arrest Of Peter Navarro (ZH)
Ankara Not Likely To Accept F-16 Strings (K.)

 

 

 

 

Emmanuel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1548256134020022273

 

 

 

 

 

 

And it will export that crisis.

Germany Is Facing The Biggest Crisis The Country Has Ever Had (Cody)

Germany is facing an unprecedented crisis due to a potential Russian gas cut that will erase the prosperity Germans have grown accustomed to, warned Rainer Dulger, head of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations. “We are facing the biggest crisis the country has ever had. We have to be honest and say: First of all, we will lose the prosperity that we have had for years,” Dulger told the Süddeutsche Zeitung regarding the consequences of a gas shortage to everyone. While many are urging more government intervention to help prop up the German economy, Dulger argues that in general, the fewer the interventions, the better. He says that when it comes to the economy, private businesses always do better than the government.

However, he does believe certain measures need to be implemented to provide support for people in increasingly stressed economic situations. “More net earnings from the gross amount must now arrive into every citizen’s account,” he claimed, emphasizing the importance of not reducing the net income of the citizens and ensuring the fair redistribution of profits generated during the crisis. Dulger is not the only one warning of a crisis in Germany. Economy Minister Robert Habeck warns of a “catastrophic winter” ahead over Russian gas cut fears. According to him, Germany will face a “crucial test that we haven’t faced for a long time.” Other experts are predicting mass bankruptcies, inflation, and energy rationing that will send “shockwaves” through the German economy.

The Bavarian Business Association (VBW) warned that as many as 5.6 million jobs across Germany could be lost in the case of a gas supply stoppage from Russia. According to the association’s calculations, a German boycott of Russian gas could also reduce the country’s economic output by 12.7 percent, with immediate abandonment of the raw material hitting the glass, iron, and steel industries particularly hard; losses in these sectors would be almost 50 percent. Dulger sees the significant cause of the current situation as the lack of ability to be self-sufficient. For too long, Germany had disregarded something that former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt warned about in the 1970s. When deliveries of gas to Russia began at the time, Schmidt said: “We can do it, but we must not depend on Russian gas for more than 30 percent.”

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Post-WWII took a lot of diplomacy. That is now gone.

Berlin’s Quit Decades Of Courting Both Moscow And Washington (Davydov)

Germany’s new leadership has gone “all in” on its alliance with the US, overturning a strategy that had underpinned its success What was known as the “memory culture” was an essential element of the foreign policy strategy of post-war Germany. Wise leaders were able to gradually restore the importance of the country on the international stage and achieve strategic goals. A prime example was Chancellor Willy Brandt’s ‘Ostpolitik,’ based on ideas of repentance and overcoming post-war enmity. The historical reconciliation between Bonn and the USSR became the basis for the future unification of Germany – solving the main task of the country’s political elites after the end of World War II.

However, less gifted politicians find historical memory a handicap and a hardship. For neighbours, the ambitions of German leadership in Europe bring back painful memories. Indeed, historical documents such as the Treaty of German Unification, limit the military capabilities of the state – which is a direct obstacle to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s dream for the creation of “the strongest army in Europe.” Today, the image of a peace-loving nation that has re-educated itself after the tragedy of two world wars does not fit well with active arms deliveries to Ukraine. “This war must end,” Scholz recently warned, while in Kiev. Meanwhile, his government’s website is regularly updated with information on weapons already delivered and planned to be delivered to the Ukrainians. This is what you might call a paradox.

Let’s look at some of the rhetoric coming out of Berlin. On June 21, on the eve of Russia’s Day of Remembrance and Sorrow, Economy Minister Robert Habeck called the reduction of Russian gas supplies “an attack on Germany.”Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has claimed that “Russia deliberately uses hunger as a weapon.” By the way, behind the unfounded lies are real historical data – more than four million Soviet citizens were starved to death during the Nazi occupation. At the G7 summit last month, Scholz called on participants to prepare a new “Marshall Plan”for Ukraine, twisting the meaning of the programme that helped Western Europe recover from the horrors of fascism. It feels like a policy of remembrance is being replaced by a policy of deliberate amnesia.

[..] Scholz’s approach is the opposite of what Willy Brandt and his followers worked on. Berlin has finally narrowed the once dynamic and multifaceted eastern policy solely in support of Kiev. In international relations, however, simplification rarely reduces contradictions. This sort of primitivization does not add credibility to the German leadership, but it does raise doubts about its competence. The granting of EU candidate status to Ukraine, actively supported by Berlin, could also turn out to be an embarrassment. And it is not just about the five other official members of the waiting list and several potential contenders, who have been waiting or are still waiting years for this decision, all the while trying to fulfil the EU’s strict requirements. In Germany’s foreign policy approach, showmanship and symbolism are gradually replacing order and consistency.

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“..all five Caspian Sea littoral states agreed that no NATO warships or bases will be allowed on site…”

The War Of Economic Corridors Is In Full Swing (Escobar)

The War of Economic Corridors is now proceeding full speed ahead, with the game-changing first cargo flow of goods from Russia to India via the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) already in effect. Very few, both in the east and west, are aware of how this actually has long been in the making: the Russia-Iran-India agreement for implementing a shorter and cheaper Eurasian trade route via the Caspian Sea (compared to the Suez Canal), was first signed in 2000, in the pre-9/11 era. The INSTC in full operational mode signals a powerful hallmark of Eurasian integration – alongside the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and last but not least, what I described as “Pipelineistan” two decades ago.

Let’s have a first look on how these vectors are interacting. The genesis of the current acceleration lies in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan’s capital, for the 6th Caspian Summit. This event not only brought the evolving Russia-Iran strategic partnership to a deeper level, but crucially, all five Caspian Sea littoral states agreed that no NATO warships or bases will be allowed on site. That essentially configures the Caspian as a virtual Russian lake, and in a minor sense, Iranian – without compromising the interests of the three “stans,” Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. For all practical purposes, Moscow has tightened its grip on Central Asia a notch.

As the Caspian Sea is connected to the Black Sea by canals off the Volga built by the former USSR, Moscow can always count on a reserve navy of small vessels – invariably equipped with powerful missiles – that may be transferred to the Black Sea in no time if necessary. Stronger trade and financial links with Iran now proceed in tandem with binding the three “stans” to the Russian matrix. Gas-rich republic Turkmenistan for its part has been historically idiosyncratic – apart from committing most of its exports to China. Under an arguably more pragmatic young new leader, President Serdar Berdimuhamedow, Ashgabat may eventually opt to become a member of the SCO and/or the EAEU. Caspian littoral state Azerbaijan on the other hand presents a complex case: an oil and gas producer eyed by the European Union (EU) to become an alternative energy supplier to Russia – although this is not happening anytime soon.

Iran’s foreign policy under President Ebrahim Raisi is clearly on a Eurasian and Global South trajectory. Tehran will be formally incorporated into the SCO as a full member in the upcoming summit in Samarkand in September, while its formal application to join the BRICS has been filed. Purnima Anand, head of the BRICS International Forum, has stated that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are also very much keen on joining BRICS. Should that happen, by 2024 we could be on our way to a powerful West Asia, North Africa hub firmly installed inside one of the key institutions of the multipolar world. As Putin heads to Tehran next week for trilateral Russia, Iran, Turkey talks, ostensibly about Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is bound to bring up the subject of BRICS.

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Ukraine corruption is on the list of things we can’t talk about.

Republicans Wince As Their Ukrainian-born Colleague Thrashes Zelensky (Pol.)

House Republicans gave Ukraine-born Rep. Victoria Spartz a coveted platform to speak out against Russia’s war. They’re coming to regret that. Spartz (R-Ind.), who has traveled to Ukraine a half-dozen times since the war began and spoken passionately about the conflict, shocked lawmakers in both parties recently with her intense criticisms of the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and his confidants. She drew a rare rebuke last weekend from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, which accused her of “trying to earn extra political capital on baseless speculation.” Inside the House GOP Conference, there’s a widespread fear that her posture is damaging U.S.-Ukraine relations at the worst possible time — and that she’s being played by forces that aim to weaken the Western alliance.

GOP national-security hawks also worry that the MAGA wing of their party, where there’s already resistance to supporting Ukraine, will point to Spartz’s comments as justification.They’re concerned that Spartz’s public break from Zelenskyy — and her corruption accusations about his closest aides — could portend future cracks in U.S. support for Ukraine, especially as the midterm elections approach. “Her naiveness is hurting our own people,” said a GOP lawmaker who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, granted anonymity to speak candidly about a colleague. “It is not helpful to what we’re trying to do and I’m not sure her facts are accurate … We have vetted these guys.” The Republican warned that Spartz’s comments could “hurt” the war effort.

Asked for comment on Spartz’s remarks, one senior House Republican who was granted anonymity for the same reason offered a blunt reply: “What the fuck.” A third House Republican granted anonymity to speak candidly about Spartz said she has a reputation for elbowing her way into briefings and meetings for committees she doesn’t belong to, like the Foreign Affairs panel, where multiple members have tried to address her comments behind closed doors. The Biden administration is even getting involved — another sign of growing worries that Spartz’s comments may damage cohesion among the Western coalition in defense of Kyiv. A Foreign Affairs Committee aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. intelligence community is planning to brief Spartz about her claims in a classified setting Friday morning.

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“It’s the wrong game for a great nation. And the players we’ve got are losers.”

In Search of Enemies (Femi Akomolafe)

We are in July and while the Russians are not letting up on the grinding of the Ukrainian forces, the West has already lost interest in its latest misadventure. Many Western countries have already announced that they have no more weapons to spare, and the EU’s powerhouse, Germany, has been reduced to dusting off ancient mothballed tanks to send off to battle against an already defeated Russians! That’s when German officials are not too busy trying to placate an irascible and ungrateful Ukrainian officials with an obscene and gratuitous sense of entitlement. Or maybe the Ukrainians should feel perfectly entitled since they were foolish enough to sell off their country for whatever pieces of silver they got!

The question here is: Why are Westerners so dumb that they cannot ask where their leaders who can’t find the money to repair their shattered economies, suddenly find the money to provide weapons to Nazis in Ukraine? Another question: After the war is settled – in Russia’s favor (my bet), do Westerners expect the Russians to forgive them for providing support to Nazis 2.0? For a people without enough resources to cater for themselves, and one that proclaims its rationality all the time, it is beyond belief that Westerners keep on searching for enemies! Besotted with their self-generated image of superiority, Westerners appear to live in a bubble, unaware of what goes on outside their self-created cocoon.

The Russians made it plain what they felt about the West’s insane push to their borders. From President V Putin to FM Lavrov to the inimitable Spokeswoman for the Russian FM, Maria Zakharova, the Russians told whoever would listen that there were bound to be severe repercussions if their core security concerns were ignored. Ignored them, the West did. Last year, the Russians emphasized the urgency of their concerns by dispatching drafts of Treaties to both Washington and Brussels. The West rather haughtily brushed them aside. The Russians openly warned about taking “technical and military” means if the West persists in its folly. The West arrogantly ignored the warnings.

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Arming Ukraine is not biggest problem here: “If the government falls on Wednesday, we won’t have the power to sign any new energy contracts and this is serious because we are headed into winter..”

Italy May Soon Be Unable To Arm Ukraine – Foreign Minister (RT)

Political turmoil in Italy could soon see Rome unable to continue supporting Ukraine with weapons deliveries, the country’s foreign minister has warned. According to Luigi Di Maio, this would be the case should the incumbent government not survive a no-confidence vote next week. In a phone interview with US media outlet Politico on Friday, Di Maio said that those in Italy who want the collapse of Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s government are playing into the hands of the Kremlin. “The Russians are right now celebrating having made another Western government fall,” the minister argued. Di Maio went on to express doubt as to whether Italy will be able to keep supplying arms to Ukraine under these circumstances, adding that “it is one of the many serious problems.”

The official explained that, should the government collapse, it would still remain in power for some time in a caretaker capacity. However, in this case, its powers would be reduced, meaning, among other things, that the government wouldn’t be able to continue weapons deliveries to Ukraine. “If the government falls on Wednesday, we won’t have the power to sign any new energy contracts and this is serious because we are headed into winter,” the minister added. According to Di Maio, Italy could also end up without a 2023 budget as the document is normally passed by parliament between July and December. Should there be elections in September or October, however, it could take months before a new coalition government is formed, meaning that the budget would be postponed, the minister explained.

He added that it took 100 days to form a government the last time. On Thursday, the Five Star Movement, which is part of Prime Minister Draghi’s coalition government, boycotted a no-confidence vote, with the premier offering to resign in response. However, Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella refused to accept his resignation, with Draghi’s government facing another no-confidence vote on Wednesday. Di Maio, who had been one of the Five Star Movement’s leaders but left the party last month over a row concerning arms deliveries to Ukraine, laid into his former allies, accusing them of “helping Putin’s propaganda and autocracy over democracy.”

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“..the world that started on 12 October 1492 died on 24 February 2022..”

To Hell or Not to Hell? (Batiushka)

In recent months, here and there in various Western European countries, I have seen two or three flags being flown together, the EU One Ring ‘to rule them all’, sometimes the local national flag, and beneath it the Ukrainian one. This represents Western supremacism, the Nazi ideology which proclaims the long-desired Westernisation of the Ukraine. It says that any who do not accept ‘Western values’ are to be destroyed or, as they say now, ’cancelled’ – with Western fake news, Western arms and Western death. Who are today’s aristocratic warlords, today’s Franks, Lombards, Goths, Vandals and Vikings? They are Stoltenberg, Biden, Johnson, von der Leyen, Blinken, Nuland, Kagan, Scholz, Macron and all the other knowing and unknowing neocons who fly these flags together.

The barbarians were there sacking civilisation in August 476 and in August 1914, they were there sacking civilisation in late 1492 and in early 2022. However, the world that started on 12 October 1492 died on 24 February 2022 and a new era has begun. On 14 July 2022 the Serbian President Vucic said: ‘Now the whole Western world is at war with Russia through Ukrainian intermediaries and today’s armed conflict can almost be called a world war’. ‘I know what awaits us. As soon as Vladimir Putin has finished his work in Seversk, Bakhmut and Soledar and then reaches the second line in Slaviansk-Kramatorsk-Avdeevka, he will make an offer. And if they (the West) don’t accept – and they don’t intend to – we shall take the road to hell’.

So what happens if the Western world chooses not to go to hell? What happens after the barbarians, after the final demise of the myths of ‘The West and the Rest’ and ‘The West is Best’? At the moment, the alternative is an alphabet soup of BRI, BRICS, EAEU, SCO etc. BRICS itself is becoming old-fashioned, as it may well soon be joined by Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and maybe Argentina and then, who knows? Does that make BRICSITESAA? An alternative name like ‘The Anti-West’ is purely reactive, negative and refers to the 530 years before 24 February 2022. It is especially inappropriate since the EU is clearly collapsing and it is obvious that, at the very least, countries like Serbia, Hungary (whom the EU elite wishes to expel from the EU) and Germany, if it is to survive, will be joining the to-be-renamed BRICS.

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“..there are a lot of solutions and technologies on the horizon that could make this all go away relatively quickly… just as soon as they get out of the way.”

‘Experts’ Broke The World. But They’re Rapidly Losing Power… (Black)

It’s rare to find someone, anyone, who has yet to witness, hear about, or directly experience the devastating consequences of the supposed leadership that ‘experts’ have unleashed on us over the past few years. They have engineered and mishandled crisis after crisis after crisis… The world over, from California to Sri Lanka, people everywhere are suffering from their incompetence. Western Europe is on the verge of a major energy crisis; the 4th-largest economy in the world (Germany) is dimming its street lights lights and thinking about firing up its coal power plants (previously considered UNTHINKABLE!) because they’re running out of energy. Even in Texas, which could be considered the world’s 10th-largest economy by GDP, the independent energy grid is so fragile that power companies are remotely turning down people’s home thermostats to save on energy supply.


We have also just seen a leaked hour+ video showing the ‘authorities’ in Uvalde, Texas– fully armed law enforcement professionals– ignoring the literal screams of dying children only a few dozen feet away. Instead they texted on their phones and sanitized their hands. You know, because of Covid. I guess that was the priority. All of this is an utter indictment of how pitifully our experts and authorities have betrayed us. In short, the people in charge broke the world. But the good news is that their reign of ineptitude is rapidly coming to an end.. That much is obvious. And even better, there are a lot of solutions and technologies on the horizon that could make this all go away relatively quickly… just as soon as they get out of the way.

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It’s still not moving.

Gazprom Requests Documents On Nord Stream Turbine Return (RT)

Russian state energy major Gazprom has officially asked German industrial giant Siemens to provide documents allowing the return of a crucial gas turbine, which had been stuck at the firm’s Canada factory due to sanctions. “On July 15, Gazprom officially requested Siemens to provide documents that, in spite of the current sanctions regimes of Canada and the European Union, would allow the export of a gas turbine engine for the Portovaya compressor station, a critically important facility for the [Nord Stream] gas pipeline, to Russia, and the fulfillment by the Siemens group of companies of its obligations regarding the repair and maintenance of gas turbine engines,” the statement by Gazprom read, as cited by Interfax news agency.

Gazprom warned that failure to return the turbine would jeopardise the functioning of the Nord Stream pipeline, linking Russia to Germany, and the supply of natural gas to European consumers. The Nord Stream pipeline, one of the main routes for Russian gas exports to Europe, is currently out of action due to a scheduled 10-day maintenance period. However, prior to the shutdown it had been operating at just 40% of capacity for several weeks, due to a turbine from the pipeline’s Portovaya compressor station being stuck at the Siemens facility in Montreal, where it had undergone repairs.

Canada initially refused to return the device, due to sanctions arising from the Ukraine conflict. However, after negotiations with Berlin, Ottawa earlier this week decided to allow the turbine to be shipped back. It will first travel to Germany, and from there to Russia, allowing Canada to avoid violating its own sanctions by using an indirect delivery route. The documents requested by Gazprom are necessary to facilitate the final trip of the turbine from Germany to Russia.

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Very little.

Saudi Arabia Outlines What It Will Do For Oil Output (RT)

Saudi Arabia is ready to increase oil production to its maximum of 13 million barrels per day but does not have the capacity to pump out more, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said during his address at the US-Arab summit in Jeddah on Saturday. “The kingdom has announced an increase in its production capacity level to 13 million barrels per day, after which the kingdom will not have any additional capacity to increase production,” he was quoted as saying by UAE’s newspaper The National. The crown prince also said that the global community should join forces to support the global economy, but noted that unrealistic policies regarding energy sources would only worsen the situation.

“Adopting unrealistic policies to reduce emissions by excluding main sources of energy will lead in coming years to unprecedented inflation and an increase in energy prices and rising unemployment, and a worsening of serious social and security problems,” he stated. Mohammed bin Salman’s words come a day after his talks with Joe Biden, who was in Saudi Arabia on his first visit as US president, and urged the kingdom to increase oil production in order to reduce global reliance on supplies from Russia. Commenting on his trip to the kingdom, Biden said Saudi Arabia’s “energy resources are vital for mitigating the impact on global supplies of Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

Saudi Arabia, one of the globe’s largest oil exporters and the leading producer within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), currently pumps out more than 12 million barrels of oil per day. The kingdom previously said it plans to reach production capacity of 13 million barrels per day by 2027. The Crown Prince did not reveal whether the timeframe for the boost in capacity has changed

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“Is it any surprise that Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador want’s nothing to do with the other two knuckleheaded leaders of North America..?”

Biden Visits Saudi Arabia, Returns with an Empty Tin Cup (CTH)

Joe Biden is heading back from an embarrassing trip to Saudi Arabia and the middle east. Putting aside the fact that physically and mentally Biden looked weak, foolish, and generally incoherent, in an odd way he was appropriately representative of the current of U.S. influence on the global stage. Before getting to detail, first it is important to emphasize a point that doesn’t get attention domestically. Democrats are exceptionally weak on all aspects of foreign policy, specifically because their modern ideology is based on hypocrisy of a stunning magnitude. Domestically, the U.S. media protect democrats by spinning everything into the best light possible. However, on the world stage the non-western leaders like Putin, Xi and MbS use that hypocrisy like geopolitical ammunition.

Examples… Domestically the U.S. media do not bring up the Joe Biden Afghanistan mess, the rise -and current legitimacy- of the terrorist Taliban; or the brutal mess Barack and Hillary created in Libya; or the unauthorized intervention into Syria that created ISIS; or the complete fubar that was an illegitimate invasion of Iraq; or Hillary’s insufferable “reset” in Russia; or their inability to deal with China’s proxy province of North Korea, because they pretend it’s not; or the current circus célebrè in Ukraine. Each region, and there are many more, a typical example of how modern democrats are fundamentally weak on foreign policy. It is not just Joe Biden either; just about every leftist head of state within the alliance of “western democracies” are also pathetically impotent when it comes to influence on a global stage.

The U.K’s Boris Johnson, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern and France’s Emmanuel Macron are collectively as pathetic as Biden when it comes to leadership and influence. Once they step out of their ‘liberal democracy‘ bubble, and head into a nation that doesn’t have state run media like CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, Politico and/or The New York Times, those leaders look like the pathetic fools they are. Biden and the rest of the leftist heads of state decry “autocracy,” and wax philosophically about “western democratic values”, while standing atop two years of their authoritarian pandemic rules, regulations, mandates and unilateral fiats. Consider their chase for their beloved climate change energy policy and contrast it against their political pearl-clutching over the energy inflation they created.

Is it any surprise that Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador want’s nothing to do with the other two knuckleheaded leaders of North America who are selling windmills while regulating traditional oil, coal and natural gas out of existence? At a certain point, a good neighbor has to look at the duct-taped landscaping and say this is ridiculous. I digress.

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“..a 45% drop from China’s shipments of 5.5 million tonnes in the same period a year ago.”

China Issues Phosphate Quotas To Rein In Fertiliser Exports (R.)

China is rolling out a quota system to limit exports of phosphates, a key fertiliser ingredient, in the second half of this year, analysts said, citing information from the country’s major phosphate producers. The quotas, set well below year-ago export levels, would expand China’s intervention in the market to keep a lid on domestic prices and protect food security while global fertiliser prices are hovering near record highs. Last October, China also moved to curb exports by introducing a new requirement for inspection certificates to ship fertiliser and related materials, contributing to tight global supply. Fertiliser prices have been buoyed by sanctions on major producers Belarus and Russia, while surging grain prices are boosting demand for phosphate and other crop nutrients from farmers around the world.


China is the world’s biggest phosphates exporter, shipping 10 million tonnes last year, or about 30% of total world trade. Its top buyers were India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, according to Chinese customs data. China appears to have issued export quotas for just over 3 million tonnes of phosphates to producers for the second half of this year, said Gavin Ju, China fertiliser analyst at CRU Group, citing information from about a dozen producers who have been informed by local governments since late June. That would mark a 45% drop from China’s shipments of 5.5 million tonnes in the same period a year ago. [..] Other major producers of phosphates, such as widely used diammonium phosphate (DAP), include Morocco, the United States, Russia and Saudia Arabia. The surge in prices over the last year has raised concerns for Beijing, which needs to guarantee food security for its 1.4 billion people even as all farm input costs surge.

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” So it was all a sleight-of-hand: she was staying home; it’s just that she has several homes! This is how the power elite comply, one supposes..”

Dr. Birx Praises Herself While Revealing Ignorance, Treachery, and Deceit (BI)

The December 2020 resignation of Dr. Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under Trump, revealed predictable hypocrisy. Like so many other government officials around the world, she was caught violating her own stay-at-home order. Therefore she finally left her post following nine months of causing unfathomable amounts of damage to life, liberty, property, and the very idea of hope for the future. Even if Anthony Fauci had been the front man for the media, it was Birx who was the main influence in the White House behind the nationwide lockdowns that did not stop or control the pathogen but have caused immense suffering and continue to roil and wreck the world. So it was significant that she would not and could not comply with her own dictates, even as her fellow citizens were being hunted down for the same infractions against “public health.”

In the days before Thanksgiving 2020, she had warned Americans to “assume you’re infected” and to restrict gatherings to “your immediate household.” Then she packed her bags and headed to Fenwick Island in Delaware where she met with four generations for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, as if she were free to make normal choices and live a normal life while everyone else had to shelter in place. The Associated Press was first out with the report on December 20, 2020. “Birx acknowledged in a statement that she went to her Delaware property. She declined to be interviewed. She insisted the purpose of the roughly 50-hour visit was to deal with the winterization of the property before a potential sale — something she says she previously hadn’t had time to do because of her busy schedule.

“I did not go to Delaware for the purpose of celebrating Thanksgiving,” Birx said in her statement, adding that her family shared a meal together while in Delaware. Birx said that everyone on her Delaware trip belongs to her “immediate household,” even as she acknowledged they live in two different homes. She initially called the Potomac home a “3 generation household (formerly 4 generations).” White House officials later said it continues to be a four-generation household, a distinction that would include Birx as part of the home.” So it was all a sleight-of-hand: she was staying home; it’s just that she has several homes! This is how the power elite comply, one supposes. The BBC then quoted her defense, which echo the pain experienced by hundreds of millions:

“My daughter hasn’t left that house in 10 months, my parents have been isolated for 10 months. They’ve become deeply depressed as I’m sure many elderly have as they’ve not been able to see their sons, their granddaughters. My parents have not been able to see their surviving son for over a year. These are all very difficult things.” Indeed. However, she was the major voice for the better part of 2020 for requiring exactly that. No one should blame her for wanting to get together with family; that she worked so hard for so long to prevent others from doing so is what is at issue.

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“..Navarro rejected a plea deal offered by prosecutors in the case, proposing to drop one of the two charges and not seek more than the minimum 30-day jail time.”

Judge Questions FBI’s Aggressive Arrest Of Peter Navarro (ZH)

A federal judge has questioned why the FBI made a public spectacle out of arresting former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro at Reagan National Airport last month, rather than simply summoning him for a court appearance. Navarro was handcuffed, denied food and water, and denied a request to phone his lawyer, as he was on his way to a speaking engagement in Nashville, Tennessee. He faces two misdemeanor contempt of Congress charges for doing exactly what Obama AG Eric Holder did (with zero consequences) – ignore a Congressional subpoena, according to Politico. Of course, Holder was held in contempt for concealing documents related to the “fast & furious” scandal, which was tied to the death of an estimated 150 Mexican civilians – while Navarro is refusing to answer House Democrats’ questions surrounding the 2020 election and the January 6th riot.

“It is curious…at a minimum why the government treated Mr. Navarro’s arrest in the way it did,” US District Court Judge Amit Mehta said during a Friday hearing on Navarro’s case. “It is a federal crime, but it is not a violent crime.” Mehta, a former federal defender, said it was puzzling that prosecutors didn’t just tell Navarro he was going to be charged and allow him to walk into an FBI office, as some white-collar defendants are permitted to do. “It is a surprise to me that self-surrender was not offered,” the judge said. However, he proposed no particular response and did not demand any explanation from prosecutors”. -Politico. The FBI has accused Navarro of making “numerous false statements” about his arrest, and said that his first request to use the phone that day was for a lawyer – rather, a TV producer about a scheduled interview.

One of his lawyers, John Rowley, suggested that the FBI’s treatment suggested “animus” toward Navarro, considering that two other Trump White House aides who similarly ignored subpoenas – Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino – were not charged (much less arrested at an airport). “Rowley also suggested Navarro had been placed in leg irons by the FBI when he was arrested, but his client clarified after the hearing that the shackles were used by deputy U.S. Marshals when he arrived at the courthouse for his initial appearance last month. The FBI agents “are responsible for those leg irons,” Navarro told reporters. It also emerged at the hearing Friday that Navarro rejected a plea deal offered by prosecutors in the case, proposing to drop one of the two charges and not seek more than the minimum 30-day jail time.” -Politico

“This is the first time in our nation’s 250-year history that a senior adviser to a president has been criminally charged for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena,” said Rowley. “The Justice Department…has longstanding policies about not prosecuting someone criminally for this kind of situation, so I wonder, what changed?….and we intend to find out,” said defense attorney John Irving.

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“..the discussion has even opened up about a possible expulsion of Turkey from the Alliance.”

Ankara Not Likely To Accept F-16 Strings (K.)

The approval this week of a relevant amendment by the US Congress which is seen as a first step to stop the sale of new F-16 aircraft to Turkey and the upgrading of its existing ones has caused optimism in Greece that its positions are being heeded. But there are also several opposing forces at play, which are making the situation complicated. According to Dr Triantafyllos Karatrantos, an analyst at the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) think tank, a clearly positive development would be that any agreement to sell or upgrade aircraft to Turkey is accompanied by a strict framework stipulating good neighborly relations and avoiding provocations, disputes or engagement with third countries.

However, he expressed reservations as to whether Ankara would agree to such a restrictive framework at the current juncture. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he said, is in pre-election mode and with the issue of nationalism high on the agenda would not accept such an agreement. He added that it is no coincidence that Ankara, in an attempt to exert pressure on the US administration, is signaling that, just as it did not hesitate to go ahead with the Russian S-400 deal, it will not hesitate to seek another solution for the purchase of fighter jets if the prospect of buying the F-16s does not come to fruition. Meanwhile, in light of Turkey’s stance on Sweden and Finland’s NATO accession process, the discussion has even opened up about a possible expulsion of Turkey from the Alliance.

This position was put forward in a letter to the Financial Times by Mark Wallace, former US ambassador to the United Nations, and Madeleine Joelson, executive director of the NGO Turkish Democracy Project. Karatrantos points out that there is practically no mechanism for expelling a member from NATO, only a voluntary withdrawal procedure.

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China population set to be cut in half…. Nigeria, DR Congo to quadruple

 

 

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Jun 172022
 


Albrecht Dürer Praying hands 1508

 

Lavrov to Boris Johnson: Just Try to Bring Russia to Its Knees (Celente)
Fauci Admits ‘Not Enough Data’ On Boosters For 5-Year-olds (Fox)
Gazprom Defends Gas Cuts As Prices In Europe Soar (AFP)
German Official Warns Of Gas Shortages, Bankruptcies, Massive Price Hikes (RMX) s
Tesco Sales Fall Amid ‘Unprecedented Increases In Cost Of Living’ (G.)
US Energy Chief To Discuss Record Pump Prices With Refiners Next Week (R.)
MBS and Putin: Why Talk to One and Not the Other? (Warner)
Elon Musk To Make Twitter Inclusive, User-Friendly & Profitable (TMS)
New CNN Boss: Stop Calling Trump’s Election Fraud Claims ‘The Big Lie’ (DM)
Trump Demands Equal Time On TV Networks To Counter Jan. 6 Hearings (JTN)
COVID Dr. Simone Gold Sentenced To Prison For Jan. 6 Riot (JTN)

 

 

 

 

 

 

“When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither will go from the trail,
Lie down till the leaders have spoken — it may be fair words shall prevail.”

– Rudyard Kipling, “The Jungle Book”

 

 

 

 

Lavrov did a BBC interview yesterday.

Lavrov to Boris Johnson: Just Try to Bring Russia to Its Knees (Celente)

Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s top diplomat, said in an interview Thursday that the Kremlin was forced to carry out a “special military operation” in Ukraine because there was “no other way of explaining to the West that dragging Ukraine into NATO was a criminal act.” Lavrov spoke with the BBC about the fallout from the war, and how Russia has been largely ostracized from the West. He pointed the the UK in particular. “I don’t think there’s even room for manoeuvre any more,” Lavrov said. He said both Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss have both said openly that “we should defeat Russia, we should force Russia to its knees.” “Go on, then, do it!” Lavrov said.


Truss and Johnson have been two of the most outspoken critics of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Lavrov may have been referencing Truss’ comment in February when she said she wanted to “degrade” the Russian economy. “We’ve now imposed the most severe sanctions that Russia has ever seen, stopping access to vast swathes of the Russian economy, and stopping them build up their armed forces, cutting the Russian economy off at the knees,” she said. Johnson in May called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “crocodile” chewing on Ukraine’s leg. “How can you deal with a crocodile when it’s in the middle of eating your left leg?,” Johnson said. “The guy’s completely not to be trusted.”

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“That’s not science. That’s conjecture. And we should not be making public policy on it..”

Fauci Admits ‘Not Enough Data’ On Boosters For 5-Year-olds (Fox)

Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted Thursday that even though the Biden administration recommends that everyone over the age of 5 gets a booster dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, there is currently insufficient evidence to prove that the boosters actually lower rates of hospitalization or death in children. During a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., asked Fauci if he was aware of any studies that showed a reduction in deaths or hospitalizations for children who had received boosters. “Right now, there’s not enough data that has been accumulated, Senator Paul, to indicate that that’s the case,” Fauci stated.

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases began to explain that he thinks the basis for the recommendation had to do with looking at morbidity and mortality of children in different age groups, when the senator cut him off. “So there are no studies. And Americans should all know this. There are no studies on children showing a reduction in hospitalization or death with taking a booster,” Paul said. Paul, who is also a doctor, noted that the only studies that had been done were antibody studies, which he argued were not enough to prove a vaccine’s efficacy. He claimed that just because a vaccine produces antibodies, that does not mean it is necessary. To illustrate his point, he argued that a person could get 10 boosters and get antibodies from all of them, but that does not mean a person needs to get 10 booster shots.

Fauci, who testified virtually because he currently has COVID-19, called Paul’s hypothetical “somewhat of an absurd exaggeration,” but Paul claimed that this is basically what the government is doing. “That’s not science. That’s conjecture. And we should not be making public policy on it,” he said.

Rand Paul Fauci

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The “pumping turbines” in Nordstream I need repair. German company Siemens sent them all the way to Montreal to be fixed. Because of Canada and German sanctions, they cannot be brought back to the pipeline. Unless both countries circumvent their own sanctions. They will.

Gazprom Defends Gas Cuts As Prices In Europe Soar (AFP)

Russian energy giant Gazprom on Thursday defended gas cuts to Europe as prices soared and tensions raged between Russia and the West over Ukraine. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said that Moscow will play by its own rules after cutting daily gas supplies to Germany and Italy. “Our product, our rules. We don’t play by rules we didn’t create,” Miller said during a panel discussion at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum in Russia’s second city. Earlier this week, Gazprom slashed its natural gas deliveries via the Nord Stream pipeline, after saying Germany’s Siemens had delayed the repair work of compressor units at the Portovaya compression station. “For now, there is no way to solve the problem that arose with the compressor station,” Miller said.

“Siemens is still silent, trying to find a solution.” Italian energy giant Eni also reported problems, saying it will receive only 65 percent of the gas requested Thursday from Gazprom. Gazprom has said exports to countries that did not belong to the former Soviet Union were down 28.9 percent between January 1 and June 15 compared to the same period last year. “Of course, Gazprom is reducing the volume of gas supplies to Europe,” Miller said, pointing out that the prices have increased several-fold. [..] Moscow has lost several European gas clients after it demanded that all “unfriendly” countries pay for Russian natural gas in rubles in response to a barrage of Western sanctions over Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.

Poland, Bulgaria, Finland and the Netherlands have had their natural gas deliveries suspended over refusing to pay in rubles. The Nord Stream pipeline was commissioned in 2012 and delivers gas from northwestern Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea. The launch of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that was set to double Russian gas deliveries to Germany was halted in response to Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine. “Nord Stream 2 is under pressure and gas could be supplied to Germany even today via it. But it has not been put in operation because it is not certified,” Miller said.

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Your governments volunteer to do this to you.

German Official Warns Of Gas Shortages, Bankruptcies, Massive Price Hikes (RMX)

A gas shortage and high prices will send “shockwaves through the country,” leading to landlords cutting the heat for tenants and widespread company bankruptcies, warned Klaus Müller, the head of Germany’s Federal Network Agency, which is the regulatory office for electricity, gas, telecommunications, postal services, and railway markets. Müller paints a bleak picture about the crisis in an interview with German newspaper Rheinische Post, saying it will “send shockwaves throughout the country. Banks will ramp up their business with installment loans, and ailing companies will fall into insolvency.”

Müller’s office, which is a federal agency within the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, has a bird’s eye view of the economic situation in Germany and also special insight into how economic conditions will develop into the future. Müller says he expects gas prices to continue to climb, resulting in increased inflation that goes far beyond energy. He also warns that there will be a dramatic lack of gas in the winter, which could lead to landlords turning down the heat to save on energy. In turn, Germans may have to grapple with colder apartments. [..] The government has already pushed businesses and citizens to reduce their energy consumption, but that pressure may come in the form of new laws and regulations in the future, with Müller calling for more pressure to be applied to save gas.

Although Germany has pushed for a general ban on Russian oil imports, the country is highly reliant on natural gas from Russia. If Russia were to cut gas in the critical winter months or even restrict supplies, it could lead to critical damage to the German economy, a scenario energy experts have already warned about. Germans will not only be colder in their apartments, but companies will also face mass bankruptcies, said Müller. However, he said government policies could help mitigate financial losses and preserve critical gas supplies. He said he wants to encourage companies to save gas with a bonus scheme.

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Bigger market share, less income.

Tesco Sales Fall Amid ‘Unprecedented Increases In Cost Of Living’ (G.)

Tesco said sales have fallen at its UK stores in recent weeks as its customers face “unprecedented increases in the cost of living”. The UK’s largest supermarket said it had gained market share but sales in the three months to 28 May fell 1.5% on the same period last year when the UK was in lockdown. Ken Murphy, the chief executive of Tesco, said: “The market environment remains incredibly challenging.” He said it was difficult to separate the significant impact of last year’s coronavirus lockdowns from other influences on shoppers but said Tesco was seeing “some early indications of changing customer behaviour as a result of the inflationary environment”.


He said: “Customers are facing unprecedented increases in the cost of living and it is therefore even more important that we work with our supplier partners to mitigate as much inflation as possible.” Tesco said sales of clothing and general merchandise, such as homewares and toys, were most affected, while online sales were also affected as shoppers returned to supermarkets. It said the decline in the volume of goods sold was partly offset by inflation. Sales in the Republic of Ireland were down 2.4% but were up 2% overall because of strong growth in central Europe and at its Booker wholesale chain. The retailer’s comments come after more than one in five (22%) of those who took part in a recent survey said they skipped a meal or reduced the size of meals because they could not afford to buy food.

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Looking for a scapegoat.

US Energy Chief To Discuss Record Pump Prices With Refiners Next Week (R.)

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is expected to meet with refining executives on June 23 as tensions between the White House and the oil industry mount over soaring gasoline prices, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The planned talks come as President Joe Biden, under pressure over high gasoline prices, has demanded that oil refining companies explain why they are not putting more fuel on the market as they reap windfall profits. read more The Energy Department had no comment, but referred to a letter Biden sent on Wednesday to executives from companies, including Marathon Petroleum , Valero Energy and Exxon Mobil, that said he had directed Granholm to hold an emergency meeting and engage the National Petroleum Council in coming days.


The NPC is a privately-funded panel that makes recommendations to the energy secretary and executive branch. The U.S. oil industry’s main trade groups pushed back on the Biden administration on Wednesday in a letter to Biden, pointing out that the nation’s oil refineries are already running at close to full capacity. “Any suggestion that U.S. refiners are not doing our part to bring stability to the market is false,” said Chet Thompson, the head of the American Fuel and Petrochemicals Manufacturers. Energy companies are enjoying bumper profits since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as punitive U.S. sanctions against Moscow add to a global supply squeeze driving crude prices above $100 a barrel and U.S. gasoline prices to records over $5 a gallon. U.S. refiners, meanwhile, are running at near-peak levels to process fuel – currently at 94% of capacity, according to government data.

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OPEC+ has brought Putin and MBS closer than you may think.

MBS and Putin: Why Talk to One and Not the Other? (Warner)

The administration’s argument for a Biden-MBS meeting is that it is in the greatest interest for Middle East peace and peace “around the world” that the two should talk. Overall peace as well as increased oil production override the horrendous human rights record of the Saudi leader, according to the Biden team. If “pariah” was the term Biden used to describe MBS during his campaign and then changed his mind, what about the president’s views on Vladimir Putin? If the Biden team sees meeting MBS face-to-face as a positive step to increase oil production and reduce tensions in the Middle East, surely there is a more pressing need to have another Biden-Putin summit to stop the carnage in Ukraine and increase grain delivery.

But the last and only summit between the two, in Geneva on June 16, 2022, led to no concrete results. On the contrary; eight months later Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Putin was obviously not impressed enough with Biden to alter his plans for attacking Ukraine. For the moment, no mention is being made of a follow-up meeting. If Biden can’t talk to Putin, who can? The most promising candidate is French President Emmanuel Macron. According to reports, Macron has had a hundred hours of telephone conversations with the Russian president since December. To what avail? While the conversations may have solidified Macron’s self-image as a big league international leader, the war continues to rage in Ukraine. So President Biden is planning to meet MBS in the interest of Middle East peace and peace “around the world,” but no mention is being made of a follow-up to the Geneva summit in the interest of peace in Ukraine.

Biden is also to meet MBS for increased oil supplies but he is not willing to meet Putin for increased grain. The problems of peace and oil override (I avoid the use of trump even with a small t) human rights violations while a direct discussion with Putin for peace and grain has no possibility. The fundamental question is the value of talking. Any proposal to have Biden meet again with Putin brings back memories of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain 1938 talks with Hitler. The appeasement agreed upon in Munich had no positive effect in stopping World War II. Macron is being criticized along these lines. Biden would certainly be rebuked for even proposing a second summit.

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“it’s essential to have free speech and for people to be able to communicate freely.”

Elon Musk To Make Twitter Inclusive, User-Friendly & Profitable (TMS)

Elon Musk is aiming to significantly transform Twitter, according to him during a meeting with the platform’s employees on Thursday. He plans to purge it of bot/fake accounts, increase the number of real users, and allow free speech to flourish while boosting profitability. Employees who do their job responsibly will not be fired. Elon Musk met with Twitter employees on Thursday to answer their questions, clarifying the future of the platform that will become his if the purchase will be completed. He spoke about some plans, and also explained his views on remote work and layoffs, which employees are afraid of.

Musk Veritas

During the meeting, Musk made it clear that freedom of speech is a priority for him. Speaking about his stance on content moderation, he said, “We should allow people to say what they want.” Musk emphasized that “it’s essential to have free speech and for people to be able to communicate freely.” To be very clear, he said that Twitter should work to prevent the spread of potentially harmful or offensive content in order for users to feel comfortable using the platform. “There’s freedom of speech and freedom of reach,” Musk said. He explained that anyone can go to Times Square and say whatever they want, but this does not mean that it needs to be advertised to millions of people.

Therefore, Musk believes that people should be allowed to say whatever they want that is within the law, but they should not be amplified and widely spread. “Anyone could just go into the middle of Times Square right now and say anything they want. They can just walk into the middle of Times Square and deny the Holocaust … but that doesn’t mean that needs to be promoted to millions of people. So I think people should be allowed to say pretty outrageous things that are in the bounds of the law but that don’t get amplified and don’t get a ton of reach.” In addition, Musk said that he has a plan to attract hundreds of thousands of new users to the platform, bringing their total to a billion or more. To date, the platform has just over 200 million accounts, although it is difficult to say for sure how many of them are bots/fake.

Employees

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CNN is losing too much money.

New CNN Boss: Stop Calling Trump’s Election Fraud Claims ‘The Big Lie’ (DM)

CNN’s new boss Chris Licht has ordered staff to stop using the phrase ‘the big lie’ to describe Donald Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims, as it’s a Democrat slogan. The wording is a popular one for the network. According to Mediaite, the phrase has been said 168 times in the first half of June alone. Hosts like Reliable Sources’ Brian Stelter are often fond of the phrase to the point where they use it prominently in graphic packages and chyrons. But Licht has ordered Stelter and other journalists to stop, and has suggested ‘Trump’s election lie’ or ‘election lie’ as possible replacements. He issued the edict days after warning staff over their incessant use of ‘BREAKING NEWS’ graphics on stories, which he said was melodramatic, and ultimately diluted the power of big stories when they did break.

Licht was asked to opine on the term during a conference call Tuesday with the network’s management and the producers of various shows. He allegedly said that he preferred staff avoid it, though was clear in saying that this was not mandatory. A source said that Licht believes the specific phrasing of ‘the big lie’ – a reference to Hitler’s Nazi propaganda efforts during the Third Reich – is a Democratic Party talking point. CNN has come under fire for moving away from its well-respected news coverage towards dreary opinion programming, where hosts on seven and eight-figure salaries parrot woke talking points. Licht is also said to be keen to move the well-resourced network back towards neutral news coverage, with CNN hailed over its coverage of the Ukraine war and other big international news stories.

[..] Licht, as part of his efforts to revamp the outlet, has been evaluating news personalities and programs that became polarizing during Donald Trump’s presidency. Those who fail to get on board with the network’s new priority to become ‘less partisan’ could be terminated, CNN insiders told Axios. Licht isn’t reportedly looking to get rid of primetime personality programming, but he does want CNN’s news staff to present information in a way that upholds the network’s apparent values of unbiased reporting. Analysts allege this could prove problematic for network correspondents Jim Acosta and Brian Stelter, among others, who have ‘become the face of the network’s liberal shift.’

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“Trump’s statement appeared to appeal to the Federal Communications Commission’s equal time provision that mandates that U.S. radio and television broadcast stations must provide an equivalent opportunity to any opposing political candidates..”

Trump Demands Equal Time On TV Networks To Counter Jan. 6 Hearings (JTN)

Kept by congressional Democrats from putting on a defense, former President Donald Trump demanded Thursday that television networks airing the Jan. committee hearings provide him equal time to provide his side of the case. “I DEMAND EQUAL TIME!!!” Trump said in a midday statement posted on his Truth Social media site just hours before the Democrat-led panel began a new hearing on the Capitol riots. “The Fake News Networks are perpetuating lies, falsehoods, and Russia, Russia, Russia-type disinformation (same sick people, here we go again!) by allowing the low rated but nevertheless one sided and slanderous Unselect Committee hearings to go endlessly and aimlessly on (and on and on!),” the 45th president added.


Democrats holding the Jan. 6 hearings have refused to let House Republicans to put their own members on the committee and have openly talked about the hearings being a vehicle to keep Trump from running again. “The point is that the constitutional purpose is clear, to keep people exactly like Donald Trump and other traitors to the union from holding public office,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told ABC News earlier this year. Trump’s statement appeared to appeal to the Federal Communications Commission’s equal time provision that mandates that U.S. radio and television broadcast stations must provide an equivalent opportunity to any opposing political candidates who request it if their opponents has gotten it. Trump called the Jan. 6 hearings “a one-sided, highly partisan Witch Hunt, the likes of which has never been seen in Congress before and that he deserved time on national TV to present his side of the case, including election irregularities and Democrat failures to secure Capitol.

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Simone Gold was at the Capitol not to riot, but to talk about and protest the vaccine rollout. And she did.

COVID Dr. Simone Gold Sentenced To Prison For Jan. 6 Riot (JTN)

Founder of America’s Frontline Doctors, Dr. Simone Gold, was sentenced to 60 days in prison for her role in the Jan. 6 riot. Gold, who rose to fame during the COVID pandemic for pointing out the vaccine’s unknown factors, will have one year of supervised release following the prison sentence, Department of Justice records show. She must also pay $500 in restitution and the maximum fine of $9,500. Gold pleaded guilty in December to entering and remaining in the Capitol building. On the afternoon of Jan. 6, Gold spoke in Statuary Hall about her opposition to vaccine mandates and government lockdowns, the DOJ’s Statement of Offense claims. She was arrested by FBI agents 12 days later. She made headlines in 2021 for telling the “Mad Truth with Dr. Gina” podcast that it is illegal “to mandate an experimental medication or treatment for anything” and advocating for those who are less vulnerable to abstain from vaccination.

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Gonzalo Lira: “Oh boy. So one of the Americans captured in Ukraine, Robert Drueke, is not a trained combat soldier—he’s a chemical weapons specialist.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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May 312022
 
 May 31, 2022  Posted by at 8:32 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  34 Responses »


James McNeill Whistler Symphony in White, No. 3 1867

 

Ukraine Bits: Russian Artillery – Counter Attacks – New Missile Systems (MoA)
Biden Administration in No Rush to Help Ukraine Negotiate End to War (Jacobin)
US Won’t Send Ukraine Rocket Systems That Strike Into Russia (JTN)
Germany Is Failing Ukraine (Hoyer)
Why “Cancel” Russians? (Milacic)
Azov Battalion Drops Neo-nazi Symbol Exploited By Russian Propagandists (Times)
Putin Ready To Facilitate Export Of Grains From Ukraine (AlJ)
Gazprom Shuts Gas Deliveries to Dutch Trader GasTerra (WSJ)
EU Leaders Agree On Partial Embargo On Russian Oil (AP)
The Age of Exterminations VIII – How to Destroy Western Europe (Ugo Bardi)
Fauci’s Recent, $10M Monkeypox Grant (NP)
Almost 500,000 UK Small Businesses ‘At Risk Of Going Bust Within Weeks’ (G.)

 

 

 

 

Lara Logan

 

 

 

 

WHO Treaty

 

 

“To prolong it by supplying more money and weapons is criminal and should be punished.”

Ukraine Bits: Russian Artillery – Counter Attacks – New Missile Systems (MoA)

Former Lieutenant Colonel of the U.S. Army Daniel Davis has written some realistic pieces on Ukraine. His latest though are a bit of fantasy. He describes in three parts “How Ukraine Can Drive Russia Out”.First Ukraine would have to hold onto Donbas and with the help of raids and counterattacks unbalance the Russian forces. It would then perform a delaying retreat under fire to several new defense lines created in its rear. This delay action should allow for time to build a new force of 100,000 new troops in west Ukraine who would be equipped with a huge amount of new ‘western’ systems. It would take twelve to eighteen months to build and train that counterattack force.


Davis knows of course that each of those steps is completely unrealistic. His real advice is to negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible. But the writeup of what would really be necessary for the Ukraine to have at least a chance to win against Russia is helpful as it demonstrates the futility of such an effort. There is no way for the Ukraine to turn the situation around or to win the war. The Ukrainian government has to give up. To stop the dying and the extensive amount of damage the war causes it must end now. To prolong it by supplying more money and weapons is criminal and should be punished.

Media Is Far Too Late In Admitting Ukraine’s Severe War Losses

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Not as long as there are still Ukrainians alive.

Biden Administration in No Rush to Help Ukraine Negotiate End to War (Jacobin)

“Russians believe the US calls the shots,” says Chas Freeman, longtime US diplomat under successive presidents and assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs under Bill Clinton. “Therefore, talking to those who take direction from the US is unlikely to yield anything useful.” “You’ve got the issue of whether Ukraine will join NATO, and the sanctions,” says John B. Quigley, an expert in international law who led talks on the status of the Donbas and Crimea after the Cold War. “So I think the major powers do need to be involved.” But if the diplomatic line between Kiev and Moscow has gone cold in recent weeks, the one between Moscow and Washington is buried under an ice shelf.

While the United States and Russia have engaged in a prisoner swap and seen contacts between military officials, secretary of state Tony Blinken — the top US diplomat — and his Russian counterpart haven’t spoken once since before the start of the war. US officials have justified this lack of engagement in a variety of ways, arguing that Putin isn’t serious about negotiating, and that whether or not to negotiate “are decisions for [Ukrainians] to make.” But it’s been harder to wave off as US involvement in the war has deepened. “The idea is that we don’t negotiate with him, the Ukrainians decide,” says Rajan Menon, director of the Grand Strategy program at Defense Priorities. “But we are deeply implicated in this war — we can’t pretend we aren’t.”

Washington has begun sending heavy weaponry that was considered too escalatory only weeks earlier, and has boasted of its role in helping Ukraine kill a series of Russian generals and sink the flagship of its Black Sea fleet. Multiple US officials have now openly described the conflict as a proxy war with Russia, while Steny Hoyer, the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the House, declared that “we’re at war.” The feeling is mutual over on the Russian side. The stakes of not reaching a settlement are high. For the world, there’s the hovering specter of nuclear escalation that could quickly envelop all of Europe and North America in the devastation, along with the government-toppling economic instability being fueled by the war’s resulting supply shocks. For Ukrainians, it means more death, destruction, and economic chaos, with the World Bank predicting the invasion will shrink its economy 45 percent this year.

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We only kill Ukrainians.

US Won’t Send Ukraine Rocket Systems That Strike Into Russia (JTN)

President Joe Biden told reporters at the White House on Monday that the U.S. won’t send Ukraine rocket systems that could possibly reach Russia. It was previously reported that the Biden administration was considering sending such systems to the Ukrainian government during the ongoing invasion of its country by Russia. “We are not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that strike into Russia,” Biden said on Monday. He also addressed potential gun control measures that could be put into place after the mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas. Biden was asked if there’s an area he sees agreement on with Republicans in terms of gun policy, such as a potential red flag bill.


“That’s hard to say because I have not been negotiating with any of the Republicans yet,” he said. In terms of a possible ban on semi-automatic weapons, Biden said, “The Constitution, the Second Amendment, was never absolute,” according to a White House press pool report. Biden also reportedly told the press that “there’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of self-protection, hunting.”

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“..the Bundeswehr currently only has 50 modern tanks..”

Germany Is Failing Ukraine (Hoyer)

A giant step for German and European security,’ is how Chancellor Olaf Scholz described his government’s €100 billion cash injection for the country’s depleted military. But while Germany’s newfound commitment to its own defence is welcome, its commitment to Ukraine’s is still questionable at best. Over the weekend, the German newspaper Die Welt reported that it had seen documents showing that Berlin had reduced military support for Ukraine to ‘a minimum’. According to inside sources, only two German weapon deliveries have reached Ukraine since the end of March. Both contained light equipment such as mines, hand grenades and spare parts for machine guns. The last delivery of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry dates back to 25 March.

This reality is strangely at odds with Scholz’s combative rhetoric. Last week, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Chancellor condemned Putin’s ‘imperialism’. He said that the invasion had led to a fundamental change in German foreign policy: ‘For the first time ever, Germany is delivering weapons into such a war zone, including heavy gear.’ He added: ‘Putin will only seriously engage in peace negotiations when he realises that he cannot break Ukraine’s defences.’ So why has Germany been so poor at shoring up those Ukrainian defences? The reluctance to support Kyiv persists out of a misguided sense of historical legacy. As the historian Timothy Snyder argued: ‘the confusion of responsibility and guilt has become a Russian weapon’. It’s clear that Germany could have delivered more weapons earlier, even if it might have taken longer than its better-funded American and British allies.

Others have argued that Berlin has now overcome its reluctance and wants to deliver but can’t because of its depleted military supplies. Look to the deal struck with Poland, these people arguer. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki confirmed that his country had sent over 240 Soviet-era T-72 tanks to Ukraine and hoped, in return, that western allies might help replenish Poland’s stock. In return, Germany was asked to send a set of Leopard 2 tanks to its neighbour. Yet the Polish President Andrzej Duda claimed last week Germany had agreed to send the tanks but then broke its promise. Berlin responded with surprise and indignation at the accusations. Spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said the German government was ‘baffled’ by the allegations and said no promise had been made, adding that the Bundeswehr currently only has 50 modern tanks.

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“It turned out that picturing Russia as a wild Cossack riding a bear, a ruthless Asian “enemy” at Europe’s border was more desirable than integration with Russia.”

Why “Cancel” Russians? (Milacic)

There is a persistent belief in both Europe and the United States that the “Western” economies are the most developed around, just as the “Western” culture and democracy, with its culture of abolition and total tolerance, is the only correct and advanced system. Russia, which is a bridge connecting Europe with Asia since Tsar Peter, has apparently chosen the European path. With all its exotic image and totalitarian regimes that oppressed the Russian people, deep down, the latter considered themselves Europeans. Their jokes and humor are easily understood in both North America and in Europe, and the Russians’ values in life are in many ways similar to European ones. And still, they were not accepted into the European family.

During the 18th and 19th centuries Russia accepted and completely assimilated tens of thousands of Polish, Dutch, German settlers, but was never recognized in Europe as one of their own. It turned out that picturing Russia as a wild Cossack riding a bear, a ruthless Asian “enemy” at Europe’s border was more desirable than integration with Russia. The notion of the “Russian threat” has been exploited since the 18th century by politicians, from Louis XV to Barack Obama. After all, nothing brings small European countries closer together than the image of a common enemy. The Russians sincerely did not understand why they were not accepted into the European family. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow even asked to join NATO.

The only thing that politicians in Moscow asked their Western partners for was not to offend the Russian-speaking residents of the Baltic countries and Ukraine, who, in the wake of the Soviet collapse, had became second-class people there. Let us be honest, however. Russia was purposefully being nurtured as an enemy. The Russophobic policy of the Baltic republics led to a break with Russia and forced Moscow to urgently start building, due to logistical security concerns, new ports in the Baltic. Two color revolutions in Ukraine, orchestrated by Western “democracies” brought local nationalists to power and eventually sparking a conflict in Donbass, where 95 percent of people were not native speakers of the “state” Ukrainian language.

Even then, the Russians tried to demonstrate their friendliness to Europe. In the spring of 2021, when Italy’s medical system was paralyzed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russians sent there several planes with doctors and medicines, along with a team of military personnel from the chemical defense forces, who helped the Italians disinfect quarantine zones in hospitals. Following the November 2015 terrorist attacks in France, the Russian military, which had previously suffered from radical Islamists itself, wrote on the missiles, which they used against terrorist groups in Syria “For Paris.” Russia’s opposition-minded intellectuals sincerely believed that Russian liberals would be dear guests in Europe. It seems that until February 2022, pro-government circles in Russia sincerely believed that the West could force Kiev to start implementing the Minsk agreements on Donbass.

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Speechless. How dare you publish this?

Azov Battalion Drops Neo-nazi Symbol Exploited By Russian Propagandists (Times)

The Azov Battalion has removed a neo-Nazi symbol from its insignia that has helped perpetuate Russian propaganda about Ukraine being in the grip of far-right nationalism. At the unveiling of a new special forces unit in Kharkiv, patches handed to soldiers did not feature the wolfsangel, a medieval German symbol that was adopted by the Nazis and which has been used by the battalion since 2014. Instead, they featured a golden trident, the Ukrainian national symbol worn by other regiments. “On the same principles and ideological basis as the legendary Azov regiment, we form new divisions. Every day they become more numerous and professional,” Maksym Zhorin, an Azov commander, said at the ceremony on Sunday.

Created in 2014 as a paramilitary organisation to fight pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbas region, the Azov Battalion first attracted far-right volunteers harbouring anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish views. This background has been used by the Kremlin to justify its assertion that Ukraine needed “de-nazifying”. Now incorporated into the national guard, the regiment has attracted fighters from a diverse range of backgrounds. It has played a decisive role in key battles in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Mariupol as part of the nationwide resistance effort. In March, President Zelensky, who is Jewish, awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine to an Azov commander.

The Kremlin’s use of the Azov Battalion as a pretext for invasion is undermined by the presence of neo-Nazi divisions within its own ranks. Rusich, whose fighters have been photographed in Ukraine, is a mercenary group that uses in its insignia the valknut, an old Norse symbol appropriated by white supremacists.

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“..in case sanctions against Moscow are lifted..”

Putin Ready To Facilitate Export Of Grains From Ukraine (AlJ)

President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia is ready to facilitate the unhindered export of grain from Ukrainian ports in coordination with Turkey, according to a Kremlin readout of talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Russia and Ukraine together account for 29 percent of global wheat exports, mainly via the Black Sea, and for 80 percent of global exports of sunflower oil. Ukraine is also a major corn exporter. In a call with Erdogan on Monday, Putin said that global food shortages were the result of “short-sighted” Western policies, adding that Russia was ready to export significant volumes of fertilisers and food in case sanctions against Moscow are lifted, according to the Kremlin readout of the talks.


“During the discussion of the situation in Ukraine, emphasis was placed on ensuring safe navigation in the Black and Azov seas and eliminating the mine threat in their waters,” the Kremlin said. “Vladimir Putin noted the readiness of the Russian side to facilitate the unhindered sea transit of goods in coordination with Turkish partners. This also applies to the export of grain from Ukrainian ports.” It was not immediately clear which Ukrainian ports Putin was speaking of. Ukraine’s main grain export ports include Chornomorsk, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Kherson and Yuzhny. Erdogan told Putin that peace needed to be established as soon as possible and that Turkey was ready to take on a role in an “observation mechanism” between Moscow, Kyiv and the United Nations, if an agreement is reached.

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The increase in the cost of living has only begun.

Gazprom Shuts Gas Deliveries to Dutch Trader GasTerra (WSJ)

Gazprom PJSC will stop supplying gas to Dutch wholesaler GasTerra from Tuesday due to the latter’s refusal to make payments in rubles. Gas trader GasTerra said Monday that it has decided not to comply with Gazprom’s payment requirements because doing so risks breaching European Union sanctions. The cessation means that around 2 billion cubic meters of contracted gas won’t be delivered between now and Oct. 1, when the deal was due to end, it said. “GasTerra has repeatedly urged Gazprom to respect the contractually agreed payment structure and supply obligations, but to no avail,” the trading company said.


GasTerra warned that it is impossible to predict whether the European market can absorb this loss of supply without serious consequences. In 2021 the EU imported 155 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia, around 40% of its total gas consumption, according to the International Energy Agency. GasTerra is 50%-owned by the Dutch government–partially through its gas company Energie Beheer Nederland B.V. The remaining shareholding is owned by Shell PLC and Exxon Mobil Corp., with each holding a 25% stake.

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Shoot Slo-mo Foot.

EU Leaders Agree On Partial Embargo On Russian Oil (AP)

European Union leaders reached a compromise Monday to impose a partial oil embargo on Russia at a summit focused on helping Ukraine with a long-delayed package of sanctions that was blocked by Hungary. The watered-down embargo covers only Russian oil brought in by sea, allowing a temporary exemption for imports delivered by pipeline. EU Council President Charles Michel said on Twitter the agreement covers more than two-thirds of oil imports from Russia, “cutting a huge source of financing for its war machine. Maximum pressure on Russia to end the war.” The EU had already imposed five previous rounds of sanctions on Russia over its war. It has targeted more than 1,000 people individually, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and top government officials as well as pro-Kremlin oligarchs, banks, the coal sector and more.

But the sixth package of measures announced May 4 had been held up by concerns over oil supplies. Hungarian Prime minister Viktor Orban had made clear he could support the new sanctions only if his country’s oil supply security was guaranteed. The landlocked country gets more than 60% of its oil from Russia and depends on crude that comes through the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline. Ursula Von der Leyen, the head of the EU’s executive branch, had played down the chances of a breakthrough at the summit. But leaders reached a compromise after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged them to end “internal arguments that only prompt Russia to put more and more pressure on the whole of Europe.”

Von der Leyen said the punitive move will “effectively cut around 90% of oil imports from Russia to the EU by the end of the year.” The EU gets about 40% of its natural gas and 25% of its oil from Russia, and divisions over the issue exposed the limits of the 27-nation trading bloc’s ambitions.

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“For the time being, Russian gas keeps flowing into Europe and the lights are still on in Europe, although it cannot be said for how long.”

The Age of Exterminations VIII – How to Destroy Western Europe (Ugo Bardi)

In 1944, Henry Morgenthau Jr., Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, had proposed the plan that would take his name, the “Morgenthau Plan.” The plan called for the complete destruction of Germany’s industrial infrastructure and the transformation of Germany into a purely agricultural society at a nearly medieval technology level. As a consequence, Germany wouldn’t have been able to import food from abroad and that would have resulted in the death of tens of millions of Germans. The Morgenthau Plan was initially approved by President Roosevelt, and it was even publicly diffused in the press. Fortunately for the Germans, it was then abandoned by President Truman, but it remained active as a practical set of guidelines for the allied policies in Germany until 1948.

As a result, untold numbers of Germans died as the consequence of starvation. Some people speak of at least one million victims (or several million) of famine during the period from 1945 to 1948, but we’ll never know the exact number. As we all know, the Germans were far from being innocent in this worldwide extermination game. In addition to the Shoah and the extermination of other ethnic groups, including German citizens judged to be a burden for society, in 1942 the German government had developed the “Generalplan Ost” (General Plan for the East) that foresaw the extermination of tens of millions of Slavs in Eastern Europe. The survivors would be used as servants and laborers for the German “master race” (Herrenvolk).

It is impressive for us to remember how, less than a century ago, there were Western governments happily engaged in planning exterminations involving tens of millions of Europeans. Could these dark times return? It is said that civilization is just three hot meals away from barbarism, and we could rephrase this old saying as “society is just one defeat away from extermination.” Indeed, the events of the past few months saw Western Europe close to inflicting a terminal defeat on itself by abandoning its main source of energy: Russian oil and gas. Fortunately, it seems that, after all, Europe won’t commit economic suicide as it seemed to be intentioned to do. For the time being, Russian gas keeps flowing into Europe and the lights are still on in Europe, although it cannot be said for how long.

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Why am I not surprised?

Fauci’s Recent, $10M Monkeypox Grant (NP)

Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health agency was funding research to identify treatments for monkeypox shortly before the virus began spreading in a global outbreak. Fauci’s agency, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has previously come under scrutiny for funding bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which many public health experts and intelligence officials believe to be the source of COVID-19. NIAID has also funded research into potential cures for monkeypox, shortly before the viral disease began spreading in a global outbreak. The curious timing of the NIAID grant comes amidst pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer and Johson & Johnson making record-level profits due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The grant supports a “randomized, placebo-controlled trial of the safety and efficacy of tecovirimat for the treatment of patients with monkeypox virus disease.” “The funding supports a clinical trial to identify effective treatments for monkeypox virus disease,” explains a summary of the research, which, despite beginning in September 2020, has not generated any publicly available studies, papers, or patents. “The similarity between monkeypox and the variola virus, coupled with concerns about the potential of the variola virus as a potential bioterrorism agent, have placed monkeypox treatments at the forefront of public health and scientific research agendas in many countries,” adds the grant summary.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant database shows that $9,824,009 was sent to Leidos Biomedical Research, which partners with the NIH’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) to operate Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, in 2021. The grant, which is set to conclude on September 27th, 2025, was distributed to Lori Dodd, who serves as a Mathematical Statistician in the Biostatistics Research Branch of the NIAID. Dodd was previously exposed for her involvement in the NIAID’s efforts to cover up the agency reportedly altering the endpoint in a trial testing the effects of remdesivir against COVID-19 to make it look more effective.

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” They don’t have any way they can tackle this problem.”

Almost 500,000 UK Small Businesses ‘At Risk Of Going Bust Within Weeks’ (G.)

Rising costs have created a “ticking timebomb” for UK small business owners, the chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has warned, with almost half a million firms at risk of going bust within weeks without a fresh wave of government support. While the FSB chairman, Martin McTague, applauded the chancellor Rishi Sunak’s latest support for consumers through the £15bn cost of living package announced last week, he said some of those recipients could lose their jobs unless the government rolled out targeted measures for their employers. “We don’t have any problem with the way the chancellor dealt with consumer needs,” McTague told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “But there is still a massive problem with small businesses.


“They are facing something like twice the rate of inflation for their production prices, and it’s a ticking timebomb. They have got literally weeks left before they run out of cash and that will mean hundreds of thousands of businesses, and lots of people losing their jobs.” McTague pointed to figures from the Office for National Statistics, which showed that 40%, or 2m, of the UK’s small businesses had less than three months’ worth of cash left to support their operations. Of those 2m, the FSB chairman said about 10% – or 200,000 – were in “serious trouble”, and that another 300,000 “have only got weeks left”. He said: “It is a very real possibility because … they don’t have the cash reserves. They don’t have any way they can tackle this problem.”

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Julian Assange: ‘This generation is the last free generation’

 

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

Apr 272022
 


Raphael The miraculous draught of fishes 1515

 

A Recap Of The War In Ukraine (Gonzalo Lira)
Possible Romanian-Ukrainian Joint Offensive On Transnistria (T.)
Gazprom Cutting Off Gas Supplies To Poland, Bulgaria (Fox)
Ukraine Is Using Elon Musk’s Starlink For Drone Strikes (DW)
Elon Musk Slams Twitter’s Top Lawyer (DM)
Audio From Internal Twitter Meeting Leaked By Project Veritas (PM)
Durham To Call Former FBI General Counsel James Baker (Fox)
Text Message Makes Case ‘Materially’ Worse For Michael Sussmann (Hill)
Glenn Greenwald on Elon Musk Motives and Purchase of Twitter (CTH)
Denmark Suspends Covid Vaccination Campaign (IP)
Pfizer Seeks Authorization of COVID-19 Booster Shot for Ages 5 to 11 (R.)
Wimbledon Will Allow Unvaccinated Players To Compete – But Not Russians (GBN)
Alfa Bank Hoax Researchers Also Worked For Robert Mueller (Fed.)
Soros-funded Group Works Behind The Scenes With Biden Admin On Policy (Fox)
Financial Records Reveal Joe Biden Had $5.2 Million In Unexplained Income (DM)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alex Jones reinstated
https://twitter.com/i/status/1519022153043218436

 

 

 

 

Twitter thread turned into an article by MoA.

A Recap Of The War In Ukraine (Gonzalo Lira)

Quick recap for those who haven’t followed what’s been going on in Ukraine but want to understand: 02/24: The Russians invaded from the south, south-east, east and north, in a lightning campaign. The Russians invaded with 190K troops—against 250K combat troops from Ukraine. The RF put 30K troops near Kiev—nowhere near enough to capture the city—but enough to pin down some 100K AFU defenders. The RF also launched several axes of attack, with reinforcements on standby (including a famed 40km long tank column), to see where they might be needed. Crucially—the Russian’s blitz on several axes pre-empted an imminent UKRAINIAN blitzkrieg. The AFU had been about to invade the Donbas. This was the immediate motivation for Russia’s invasion: To beat them to the punch and scuttle Ukraine’s imminent invasion—which they did.

Also, by attacking from the north and south, the Russians disrupted weapons supply chain from NATO. Had the RF only attacked in the east to prevent the AFU invasion of Donbas, there would have been an open corridor for resupply from the West. Threatening Kiev stopped that. So the main AFU army was left stranded in east Ukraine, with the rest of the Ukr. forces isolated and pinned down—with no easy resupply from the West. The RF then went about hitting AFU command/control and resupply links, further isolating and immobilizing Ukrainian forces. The Russians soon nominally controlled land the size of the UK in Ukraine—but it was a tenuous control. The south of Ukraine was more fully in Russia’s grip. The AFU around Kherson simply scattered. Mariupol became a clear battleground, as did the Donbas proper.

What the Russians initially wanted was to: • Short-circuit the imminent Donbas invasion – which they did. • Scare the Zelensky regime into negotiating a political settlement – which they failed to do. Kiev had no intention of negotiating a ceasefire because of orders given to them from Washington: “Fight Russia to the last Ukrainian!” Also, the Neo-Nazi goons around Zelensky threatened him if he negotiated and surrendered because they are terrified of the Russians. So Zelensky launched a massive PR and propaganda campaign, primarily to motivate AFU forces to fight to the death. Myths were created (Ghost of Kiev), false flags were carried out (Bucha, Kramatorsk) and relentless media stories were flogged relentlessly.

The Russians kept negotiating and trying to NOT destroy Ukraine infrastructure. In fact at first they were even trying to minimize AFU casualties. The evidence for this is overwhelming: The RF did not hit civilian infrastructure – water, electric, phone, transportation. They did not hit AFU barracks, command centers, government buildings, etc. The Russians’ initial priority was for a *negotiated settlement*. But by late March, they realized this was impossible. This is why the RF withdrew from Kiev. There was no sense putting men near the city when they were not doing what they were supposed to do – putting political pressure on the Zelensky regime to negotiate. This withdrawal was claimed as a “victory” in the “Battle of Kiev”! lmao

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A Telegram entry. Transnistria is “pro-Russian”. Romania is a NATO member.

Possible Romanian-Ukrainian Joint Offensive On Transnistria (T.)

I’ve already posted the translation of Igor Strelkov’s message on the possible Romanian-Ukrainian joint offensive on Transnistrian (“Pridnestrovian”) Moldavian Republic here – https://t.me/ZradaXXII/1898
Yesterday he posted additional info: Information about the joint preparation of the Romanian-Ukrainian coalition for the “cleansing” of Transnistria received additional confirmation. In addition to the units of the Moldovan army that are equipped with Romanian personnel as mentioned in my previous report on this topic, there is information about the training of entire military units on the territory of Romania proper and already disguised as Moldovan military. There is also information about the concentration of Ukrainian units on the border with Transnistria.

The “interest” of the Ukrainian military command is not only to give Kremlin a “political click on the nose”, but also has quite applied goals: the capture of the ammunition depots in Kolbasnaya, where a fairly large amount of ammunition for Soviet-made artillery systems is still being stored. The Moldovan authorities and military are openly afraid of war and do not even really hide their fears. But if (or rather, when) the order is given, absolutely no one will ask them. The Transnistrian army has zero chance to counter the offensive for any significant period of time without external support in the event of an attack from both sides (and this is exactly what is being planned, as the Nazi governor of the Odessa region Marchenko has already hinted).

And the Russian Armed Forces are currently unable to help Transnistria with anything but a certain number of missile strikes at infrastructure facilities. Our sources estimate the probability of the enemy attack on Tiraspol in April-early May already as “high”. https://t.me/strelkovii/2481

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“..deliveries through the Yamal-Europe pipeline would stop Wednesday morning. The Yamal pipeline carries natural gas from Russia to Poland and Germany through Belarus.”

Gas prices in Europe are rising fast as we speak.

Gazprom Cutting Off Gas Supplies To Poland, Bulgaria (Fox)

Polish and Bulgarian officials said Tuesday that Russian energy company Gazprom informed them it was suspending natural gas supplies to the two countries for their refusal to pay in Russian rubles. The suspensions, which would take effect Wednesday, would be the first since Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month that “unfriendly” foreign buyers would have to pay the state-owned Gazprom in rubles instead of dollars and euros. European leaders said they would not comply with the rubles requirement, arguing that it violated the terms of contracts and their sanctions against Russia over its military aggression against Ukraine. Only Hungary has agreed to Putin’s demands.


Around 60% of imports are paid in euros, and the rest in dollars. Putin’s demand was apparently intended to help bolster the Russian currency amid the Western sanctions imposed over the war. Poland’s state gas company, PGNiG, said it was informed by Gazprom that its deliveries through the Yamal-Europe pipeline would stop Wednesday morning. The Yamal pipeline carries natural gas from Russia to Poland and Germany through Belarus. Poland has been receiving some 9 billion cubic meters of Russian gas annually, fulfilling some 45% of the country’s needs. The Bulgarian Energy Ministry said it was also notified that Bulgaria’s supplies of Russian gas via the TurkStream pipeline would cease on Wednesday.

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Unintended consequences?

Ukraine Is Using Elon Musk’s Starlink For Drone Strikes (DW)

Just after Russia’s invasion began in late February, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov took to Twitter to ask US billionaire Elon Musk to activate his Starlink satellites for use in Ukraine. Musk swiftly tweeted his response: “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.” Soon after, a number of terminals and powerful batteries arrived in Ukraine. Others soon followed. Fedorov took to Twitter again to express his gratitude: “Starlink — here. Thanks, @elonmusk.” No secret dispatches, no long debates, no governmental or parliamentary controls: just a very public deal between a politician whose country has been attacked and an enigmatic billionaire who went on to challenge the aggressor, Russian President Vladimir Putin, to “single combat.”

What at first looked like a PR coup now seems to be playing a significant role in Ukraine’s defense. British media have reported that Ukraine’s army is making very successful use of Starlink for drone attacks on Russian tanks and positions. The Telegraph reported that Starlink is of particular military significance in areas where the infrastructure is weak and there is no internet connection. According to The Telegraph, the aerial reconnaissance unit Aerorozvidka is using Starlink to monitor and coordinate unmanned aerial vehicles, enabling soldiers to fire anti-tank weapons with targeted precision.

Only the system’s high data rates can provide the stable communication required, The Telegraph reported. An officer with the Aerorozvidka unit described the system to The Times: “We use Starlink equipment and connect the drone team with our artillery team,” he said. “If we use a drone with thermal vision at night, the drone must connect through Starlink to the artillery guy and create target acquisition.” The Times reported that the Aerorozvidka team runs about 300 information-gathering missions each day. Attacks are then carried out at night, according to the newspaper, because the drones, some of which are equipped with thermal cameras, are almost impossible to see in the dark.

Starlink satellites are intended to provide internet to undersupplied regions far from urban centers. The potential for using satellites to get information to people in regions where the internet is censored had been discussed. Few, however, had imagined that its initial use would be in a European war zone in which one of the aggressor’s first acts at the start of the invasion was to target and destroy power supplies and internet connections. Ukrainians have — or have regained — access to information. According to The Telegraph, Starlink is one of the most popular app downloads in Ukraine, enabling more than 100,000 people to stay updated about what is happening in the war, and to keep in touch with the outside world.

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There’s a story here, or actually more than one. Vijaya Gadde is Twitter’s top lawyer, “Trust & Safety lead”, and ‘moral authority’. But deputy counsel is…. (see below)

Elon Musk Slams Twitter’s Top Lawyer (DM)

Elon Musk has taken aim at Twitter’s top lawyer for censoring stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop after it was reported she’d sobbed at news he’d bought the firm. The tycoon – whose $44bn purchase of Twitter was confirmed Monday – issued a scathing tweet in response to reports Vijaya Gadde, 48, had been crying at news of the deal. He wrote: ‘Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.’ Musk was referring to the suspension of the New York Post’s account for its exclusive about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the run-up to the 2020 election. Initially dismissed as ‘misinformation’ by liberal outlets and social media networks, the laptop and its contents have since been verified by many of the same publications.

Gadde – who’s described as Twitter’s ‘moral authority’ – broke down in tears on Monday, Politico reported. She did so while briefing her team via videolink on the future of the company under Musk, following his $44 billion deal to takeover the company. Her future at the firm now looks shaky after her latest behavior was brought to the attention of the notoriously ruthless Musk. He is likely to slash Twitter’s policies on hate speech and misinformation, having previously branded himself a free-speech absolutist. Twitter staff have been told their jobs are safe for the six months the transfer of ownership is expected to take. But after that, workers like Gadde are likely to be among the first to get the boot.

She was pivotal in the decision to ban Donald Trump from the platform for inciting unrest, and also played a key role in the decision to remove The New York Post’s account when they tweeted their reporting into Hunter Biden’s laptop. Twitter initially froze the New York Post’s main account after it published the story and demanded it delete tweets linking to the Biden articles. It justified the ban by citing a prohibition of distributing hacked material, before backing down when the story was proven to be legitimate.

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What a culture.

“Twitter locked down the ability of its employees to make changes to the platform after it was revealed that @elonmusk has reached a deal to buy the company. The lockdown is to prevent activist employees from sabotaging the platform as revenge for the deal”

Audio From Internal Twitter Meeting Leaked By Project Veritas (PM)

Internal audio of Monday’s Twitter meeting leaked to Project Veritas reveals that leadership is fully cognizant of the free speech agenda that new owner Elon Musk wants to bring to the table. Project Veritas obtained a 45 minute recording of a company-wide call during which Twitter employees questioned board member, Bret Taylor, and CEO, Parag Agrawal, about the company’s direction following Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media platform. Taylor began by saying, “I also just want to acknowledge all the emotions of today. It is an emotional day. I want to acknowledge it. By law, we are required to act in the best interest of our shareholders.”

Agrawal echoed the sentiments and said, “It’s important to acknowledge that all of you have many different feelings about what is happening. He continued, “Many of you are concerned, some of you excited, many people here are waiting to understand how this goes and have an open mind.” Agrawal added that the company’s current “content moderation” policies are “fundamental to keeping Twitter safe and growing.” “We’ll be finding a way to have Elon talk with all of you at the soonest possible opportunity…As you’ve heard from all of us, we don’t have all the answers.”

[..] Elsewhere Tuesday, it was reported that Twitter Trust & Safety lead Vijaya Gadde got emotional with company staff in a reaction speech where she said the future of policies on the platform are currently unclear given the change in ownership. It’s unclear which insiders at the company leaked the audio to Project Veritas. But when it comes to company culture, according to a new New York Times piece, that some “employees have argued in internal messages seen by The Times that their co-workers have shifted too far to the left side of the political spectrum, making employees who support Mr. Musk’s plans too uncomfortable to speak up.”

All hands Twitter call

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Yes, Twitter deputy counsel, behind Vijaya Gadde, is James Baker…

The story goes that Sussmann “lied” to Baker. Who would then be whitewashed. Bit covenient? Baker had NO IDEA that Sussman was lying?

Durham To Call Former FBI General Counsel James Baker (Fox)

Special Counsel John Durham plans to call former FBI General Counsel James Baker to testify in the case against former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann, who was recently indicted for making false statements to the FBI. During a virtual status hearing Tuesday, government prosecutors on Durham’s team signaled their intention to call Baker to testify as part of the Sussmann case. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty to one count of making a false statement to a federal agent. Durham’s indictment alleges that Sussmann told then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in September 2016 that he was not doing work “for any client” when he requested and held a meeting in which he presented data and evidence of a purported secret communications channel between then-candidate Donald Trump and Alfa Bank, which has ties to the Kremlin.

The indictment against Sussmann says he lied to Baker when he presented data linking the Trump Organization to a secret server that communicated with Alfa Bank. The indictment indicates Durham may be expanding his investigation to bring separate charges again Sussmann or additional defendants. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper on Tuesday asked both the government and Sussmann’s defense to continue moving forward in their discovery process, which could take months, due to the thousands of pages of classified material involved. During the hearing, government prosecutors said, at this point, that they had provided Sussmann’s attorneys with 6,000 documents – amounting to up to some 80,000 pages.

Earlier this month, in a court filing dated Oct. 20, Durham and his team outlined its first production of discovery to the defense, which included the thousands of documents, and documents received “in response to grand jury subpoenas issued to fifteen separate individuals, entities and organizations–including, among others, political organizations, a university, university researchers, an investigative firm, and numerous companies.” Cooper said he understood that the process would be cumbersome but urged both the prosecution and the defense to come up with a target date for a trial later this year or early next. Both the prosecution and the defense signaled they are aiming for a trial to begin in the spring of 2022. The next court date in the matter is set for a status hearing on Dec. 8 at 2 p.m. Baker, who serves as deputy counsel at Twitter, left the FBI in May 2018 after serving as a top lawyer at the FBI. Baker was also a confidante of former FBI Director James Comey.

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3 weeks ago.

Text Message Makes Case ‘Materially’ Worse For Michael Sussmann (Hill)

On a Sunday night just weeks before the 2016 presidential election, top Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann allegedly texted his old friend, the FBI’s then-general counsel James Baker, to say that he urgently needed to convey “sensitive” information to the Bureau — “not on behalf of a client or company,” but just because he was a good citizen who wanted to help the government. The information, it turns out, was sculpted to portray Donald Trump, then the Republican nominee for president, as if he were in cahoots with the Kremlin. I say “sculpted” advisedly. In reality, according to the false-statements indictment against him, Sussmann was actually representing two clients: Rodney Joffe, an information technology expert, and the Democratic campaign of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Joffe, to whom the Sussmann indictment refers as “Tech Executive-1” and describes as angling for a job in the anticipated Clinton administration, was then working with a team of IT pros to curate records of internet communications. His objective, according to the indictment, was to project the appearance of a communications back-channel between Trump Tower in New York City and Alfa Bank, an important Russian financial institution with ties to Vladimir Putin’s regime. The Clinton campaign reportedly wanted to depict the allegation as so serious that the FBI was investigating it. Sussmann, the Washington insider who was billing his time on the Trump/Russia matter to the Clinton campaign, was the perfect messenger to get the FBI’s attention.

The existence of the critical text message was revealed [3 weeks ago] by prosecutor John Durham, the Justice Department special counsel who is investigating the origins of “Russiagate” — as the FBI’s probe of former President Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia is popularly known. Russiagate appears to have been ignited by bogus opposition research manufactured by the Clinton campaign, whose operatives hyped it to media outlets and government officials.

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Sort of what I said yesterday: he can’t make it any worse.

Glenn Greenwald on Elon Musk Motives and Purchase of Twitter (CTH)

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson previewed a discussion with Glenn Greenwald that will appear in full tomorrow on Fox Nation. In this segment {Direct Rumble Link Here} Greenwald gives his perspective on the motives of Elon Musk purchasing Twitter. Greenwald does a good job encapsulating the essential support most feel for the Musk effort. There are many people still uncertain about how this will all roll out, and Musk has been favorable to Big Govt in his two most famous endeavors, Tesla and SpaceX. Elon Musk’s phase of pushing back against speech and internet control is more recent, and as a result has left many people wondering about it.


As Greenwald notes, there really isn’t a downside for people who are trying to break the totalitarian and monopoly control systems on the internet. The upside benefits to on-line freedom, debate, discussion and the first real effort to stop internet censorship are well worth supporting. Greenwald eloquently puts an appropriate context to the battle.

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May many follow…

Denmark Suspends Covid Vaccination Campaign (IP)

Denmark, which in February lifted all curbs related to the coronavirus pandemic, said Tuesday it was suspending its widespread Covid-19 vaccination campaign. Noting that the epidemic was under control and that vaccination levels were high, the Danish Health Authority said the country was in a “good position.” “Therefore, we are winding down the mass vaccination program against Covid-19,” said Bolette Soborg, director of the authority’s department of infectious diseases. Around 81 percent of Denmark’s 5.8 million inhabitants have received two doses of the vaccine and 61.6 percent have also received a booster.


Denmark noted a drop in the number of new infections and stable hospitalization rates. While invitations for vaccinations would no longer be issued after May 15, health officials anticipate that vaccinations would resume after the summer. “We plan to reopen the vaccination program in the autumn. This will be preceded by a thorough professional assessment of who and when to vaccinate and with which vaccines,” Soberg said. As a wave of the omicron variant hit the country last November, Denmark intensified its immunization campaign, accelerating access to booster shots and offering a fourth dose from mid-January to the most vulnerable.

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Criminal.

Pfizer Seeks Authorization of COVID-19 Booster Shot for Ages 5 to 11 (R.)

Pfizer Inc and its partner BioNTech SE said on Tuesday that they had submitted an application to the U.S. health regulator for the authorization of a booster dose of their COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 years. The companies earlier this month reported data from a mid-to-late stage study showing a third dose of their shot increased protection against the original coronavirus version and the omicron variant among children in the age group. It is unclear how much demand there is for a third vaccine dose in the age group. Just 28% of children aged 5 to 11 years – around 8.2 million – are fully vaccinated, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There has also been some skepticism on the need for boosters in younger children given the reduced risk of severe infection and hospitalization in the age group. Pfizer and BioNTech have filed for the clearance of a 10-microgram booster dose for children 5 to 11 years. Adults receive a 30-microgram dose of the vaccine. The primary two-dose COVID-19 shot from Pfizer and BioNTech was authorized in the United States for children 5 to 11 years in October. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in January authorized the use of a third dose of the companies’ COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 12 to 15. The agency has also authorized a booster shot for children aged 5 through 11 years who are immunocompromised.

Rival Moderna Inc is still waiting for a decision from U.S. regulators on the use of its primary COVID-19 series among age groups under 18 years. It plans to submit an application to the FDA for the authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine among kids six months to five years by the end of April.

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You don’t count anymore if you don’t ban some people.

Wimbledon Will Allow Unvaccinated Players To Compete – But Not Russians (GBN)

Tennis players who are unvaccinated against Covid-19 will be allowed to participate at this year’s Wimbledon Championships, organisers have said. This clears the way for Novak Djokovic to compete, after the Serb was denied entry to the Australian Open earlier in the year due to his vaccination status. Djokovic said earlier this year he would be willing to skip tournaments if he requires vaccination, however officials have confirmed that he will not need to do so in order to compete at the grand slam. The UK Government left Wimbledon with “no viable alternative” but to ban Russian and Belarusian players from this year’s Championships, chairman Ian Hewitt told the All England Club’s spring briefing.

Expanding on last week’s announcement that Wimbledon and the preceding grass-court events would be the first individual tennis tournaments to bar players from the two countries, Hewitt said the club was left with only two options – an outright ban or forcing players to sign declarations condemning the invasion of Ukraine. He said: “The UK Government has set out directional guidance for sporting bodies and events in the UK with the specific aim of limiting Russia’s influence. “After lengthy and careful consideration, we came to two firm conclusions. First, even if we were to accept entries from Russian and Belarusian players with written declarations, we would risk their success or participation being used to benefit the propaganda machine of the Russian regime, which we could not accept.

“Second, we have a duty to ensure no actions we take should put players or their families at risk. We understand and deeply regret the impact this decision will have on all the people affected. “But we believe we have made the most responsible decision possible in the circumstances, and there is no viable alternative within the framework of the government’s position to the decision we have taken in this truly exceptional and tragic situation”.

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What a cesspool.

Alfa Bank Hoax Researchers Also Worked For Robert Mueller (Fed.)

The U.S. Department of Defense and private individuals pumping the Alfa Bank hoax also assisted former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump for supposed collusion with Russia, newly discovered documents suggest. The Georgia Tech researchers embroiled in the Alfa Bank hoax prepared white papers for the U.S. Department of Defense about the Democratic National Committee hack and created a “Mueller List” on the Russian intelligence agency hackers, the newly obtained documents indicate. The white papers were prepared for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a section of the U.S. Department of Defense. A recent dump of documents from Georgia Tech reveals that explosive detail and several other facts connected to the continuing special counsel investigation into Spygate. Here’s a rundown.

Last month, The Federalist first reported that Special Counsel John Durham’s team asked lead Georgia Tech researcher Manos Antonakakis: “‘Do you believe that DARPA should be instructing you to investigate the origins of a hacker (Guccifer_2.0) that hacked a political entity (DNC)?’” Antonakakis responded that that was a question for the DARPA director, an implied acknowledgment that yes, DARPA had asked him to investigate the hack. In response, DARPA’s chief of communications denied any involvement “in efforts to attribute the DNC hack.” “Dr. Antonakakis worked on DARPA’s Enhanced Attribution program, which did not involve analysis of the DNC hack,” DARPA spokesman Jared Adams told the Washington Examiner.

Adams further told the Washington Examiner that “DARPA was not involved in efforts to attribute the Guccifer 2.0 persona, nor any involvement in efforts to attribute the origin of leaked emails provided to Wikileaks.” But now an email obtained by The Federalist indicates Georgia Tech researchers drafted a series of white papers for DARPA, including on the “DNC attack attribution,” and on what they called a “Mueller List” of “domains and indicators related” to DNC hackers. The email dated July 23, 2021 followed Durham dropping a second subpoena on Georgia Tech for more documents related to its investigation of the Alfa Bank hoax and other related issues. (More on that subpoena below). In that email, a lawyer representing David Dagon, the second Georgia Tech researcher involved in the Alfa Bank hoax who also worked on the DARPA Enhanced Attribution program, shared a list of “documents/data sources” Dagon believed would be responsive to the subpoena of Georgia Tech documents.

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Soros keeps shaping the world he’ll never live in.

Soros-funded Group Works Behind The Scenes With Biden Admin On Policy (Fox)

A secretive group backed by millions of dollars from liberal billionaire George Soros is working behind the scenes with President Biden’s administration to shape policy, documents reviewed by Fox News show. Governing for Impact (GFI), the veiled group, boasts in internal memos of implementing more than 20 of its regulatory agenda items as it works to reverse Trump-era deregulations by zeroing in on education, environmental, health care, housing and labor issues. “Open Society is proud to support Governing for Impact’s efforts to protect American workers, consumers, patients, students and the environment through policy reform,” Tom Perriello, executive director of Soros’ Open Society Foundations, told Fox News Digital.

“Their work gives voice to people often overlooked in a regulatory environment too often dominated by corporate interests,” he continued. “Our support for Governing for Impact’s work is publicly available on our website and we are transparent about our enthusiasm for their victories for American workers and families.” GFI, however, works to remain secretive. It is invisible to internet search engines like Google (an unrelated “Govern for Impact” is the only group that appears in a search). No news reports or press releases appear on its existence outside of a mention of its related action fund in a previous Fox News article on the $1.6 billion Arabella Advisors-managed dark money network, to which it is attached. But as the group attempted to conceal its operations, it sought talent on Harvard Law School’s website, which was discoverable. The posting, which no longer appears on the site, was for legal policy internships.

The Harvard advert said the group was established to prepare the Biden administration for a “transformative governance” and that it had produced “more than 60 in-depth, shovel-ready regulatory recommendations” for dozens of federal agencies. The listing also contained an email address ending in “@governingforimpact.org,” which is the group’s website that can only be accessed by those who know the URL. According to its website, Rachael Klarman, a Harvard Law School grad, steers the group. Her father, Michael Klarman, is a professor at Harvard Law and also has ties to progressive advocacy groups. He is an advisory board member of the left-wing dark money judicial group Take Back the Court. Last year, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI, invited him to testify before Congress on dark money’s “assault” on the judiciary system.

“Governing for Impact is the perfect example of the Left’s fake outrage over ‘dark money’ in politics,” said the Capital Research Center’s Parker Thayer, who discovered the group and alerted Fox News. “As a ‘fiscally sponsored’ dark money project that writes and pushes regulations from the shadows, hidden from the public and funded by one billionaire foundation, GFI embodies everything the Left pretends to abhor.” “Governing for Impact conducts and shares research designed to help ensure that the federal government works more effectively for everyday working Americans, not just for members of industry groups that have long devoted vast resources to pursuing their own policy agendas,” Rachael Klarman told Fox News. “We were founded in 2019 and have developed detailed regulatory recommendations for multiple federal agencies, which are published on our website,” she said.

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“Joe Biden agreed to pay son Hunter’s legal fees for his deal with a Chinese government-controlled company..”

Financial Records Reveal Joe Biden Had $5.2 Million In Unexplained Income (DM)

Joe Biden agreed to pay son Hunter’s legal fees for his deal with a Chinese government-controlled company, emails reveal. The revelation ties the president even closer to Hunter’s overseas business dealings – and makes his previous claims that he never discussed them with his son, even less plausible. Joe was able to pay the bills after earning millions of dollars through his and his wife’s companies after he left office as vice president. Some of the wave of cash came from their book deals and speaking engagements. But the president’s financial filings reveal that he declared almost $7million more income on his tax returns than he did on his government transparency reports, an analysis by DailyMail.com of the president’s financial records shows.

Some of that difference can be accounted for with salaries earned by First Lady Jill Biden and other sums not required on his reports – but still leaves $5.2million earned by Joe’s company and not listed on his transparency reports. The ‘missing millions’ – combined with emails on Hunter’s abandoned laptop suggesting Joe would have a 10% share in Hunter’s blockbuster deal with the Chinese – raise a troubling question: did Joe Biden receive money from the foreign venture? In January 2019, Hunter’s assistant Katie Dodge wrote an email to book-keeper Linda Shapero and Biden aide Richard Ruffner, saying Joe had agreed to pay his hundreds of thousands of dollars of bills. ‘I spoke with Hunter today regarding his bills. It is my understanding that Hunt’s dad will cover these bills in the short-term as Hunter transitions in his career,’ Dodge said.

The assistant attached a spreadsheet of bills with the email, totaling $737,130.61. One of the last items was $28,000 in legal fees for the ‘restructuring’ of Hunter’s joint venture with the government-controlled Bank of China. The spreadsheet listed the bill as ‘Faegre Baker Daniels: BHR Restructuring’ costing $28,382 and due ‘ASAP’. BHR (‘Bohai Harvest RST’) is a private equity firm and one of Hunter’s two major Chinese business ventures. The joint venture was co-owned by the state-controlled Bank of China. Hunter’s personal attorney, George Mesires, is a partner at Faegre Baker Daniels, now called Faegre Drinker. A separate October 2018 invoice from the law firm shows Hunter spent a total $68,933.41 on the ‘restructuring’ beginning in September 2016.

The same year Joe took on these bills from Hunter, he promised that ‘No one in my family will have an office in the White House, will sit in on meetings as if they are a cabinet member, will, in fact, have any business relationship with anyone that relates to a foreign corporation or a foreign country.’ Yet not only did Hunter hold on to his 10% share of BHR through 2021, confirmed by White House press secretary Jen Psaki last February, the emails also indicate Joe knew about it, and even agreed to pay Hunter’s legal fees for the firm. The bills also include $412,309.23 in unpaid taxes dating back to 2015.

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Getting paid to destroy crops
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Aug 092015
 
 August 9, 2015  Posted by at 11:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  1 Response »


Lewis Wickes Hine Drift Mouth, Sand Lick Mine, near Grafton, West Virginia 1908

China Producer Price Index Falls For 40th Straight Month (Reuters)
Peak Insanity: Chinese Brokers Now Selling Margin Loan-Backed Securities (ZH)
China Cancels $17.6 Billion Construction Projects ‘To Protect Environment’ (RT)
China’s Stock Crash Is Spurring a Shakeout in Shadow Banks (Bloomberg)
Stocks Are A ‘Disaster Waiting To Happen’: Stockman (CNBC)
The Widening Vortex Of Global Finance (Sampath)
Greece’s Collapse Was a Reversion to the Mean… Who’s Next? (Phoenix)
Greek Shipping Industry Extends Its Dominance (WSJ)
German Trade Surplus To Rise To New Record In 2015 (Reuters)
Finland Could Stay Out Of New Greek Bailout, Says Foreign Minister (Reuters)
How England’s Social Care System Fails The Most Vulnerable (Observer)
Oz FinMin Orders Sale Of Residential Properties Owned By Foreign Nationals (AAP)
Why Europe And The US Are Locked In A Food Fight Over TTIP (Bonadio)
Be Afraid: Japan Is About To Do Something That’s Never Been Done Before (ZH)
Petrobras Oil Scandal Leaves Brazilians Lamenting a Lost Dream (NY Times)
How Russian Energy Giant Gazprom Lost $300 Billion (Eurasia.net)
The Huge Hidden Costs Of Our Fossil-Fueled Economy (Shiller)
Antibiotic Resistance: Zoology To The Rescue (Economist)

“China’s corporate debt stands at 160% of gross domestic product, twice that of the United States..”

China Producer Price Index Falls For 40th Straight Month (Reuters)

China is under growing pressure to further stimulate its economy after disappointing data over the weekend showed another heavy fall in factory-gate prices and a surprise slump in exports. Producer prices in July hit their lowest point since late 2009, during the aftermath of the global financial crisis, and have been sliding continuously for more than three years. Exports tumbled 8.3% in the same month, their biggest fall in four months, as weaker global demand for Chinese goods and a strong yuan policy hurt manufacturers. “Policy focus is definitely the (producer) deflation at this stage,” said Zhou Hao at Commerzbank. He said China’s central bank would likely need to further cut interest rates again, having already cut four times since November in the most aggressive easing in nearly seven years.

The gloom may only deepen in the coming week with a raft of economic data forecast to show renewed weakness in factories, investment and domestic spending. The world’s second-largest economy is officially targeted to grow at 7% this year, still strong by global standards, but some economists believe it is growing at a much slower pace. Economists expect the central bank to cut rates by another 25 basis points this year, and further reduce the amount of deposits banks must hold as reserves by another 100 basis points, according to a Reuters poll last month. The producer price index fell 5.4% from a year earlier, the National Statistics Bureau said on Sunday, compared with an expected 5.0% drop. It was the worst reading since October 2009 and the 40th straight month of price decline.

Falling producer prices are worrying because they eat into the profits of miners and manufacturers and raise the burden of their debts. China’s corporate debt stands at 160% of gross domestic product, twice that of the United States, according to a Thomson Reuters study of over 1,400 firms. In line with the sluggish economy, annual consumer inflation remained muted at 1.6% despite surging pork prices, in line with forecasts and slightly higher than June’s 1.4%.

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It’s like one of those layered cakes..

Peak Insanity: Chinese Brokers Now Selling Margin Loan-Backed Securities (ZH)

One of the reasons why the Chinese dragon quite often appears to be chasing its own tail is that the country is trying to re-leverage and deleverage at the same time. Take China’s local government debt refi effort for instance. Years of off-balance sheet borrowing left China’s provincial governments to labor under a debt pile that amounts to around 35% of GDP and thanks to the fact that much of the borrowing was done via LGFVs, interest rates average between 7% and 8%, making the debt service payments especially burdensome. In an effort to solve the problem, Beijing decided to allow local governments to issue muni bonds and swap them for the LGFV debt, saving around 400 bps in interest expense in the process.

Of course banks had no incentive to make the swap (especially considering NIM may come under increased pressure as it stands), and so, the PBoC decided to allow the banks to pledge the new muni bonds for central bank cash which could then be re-lent into the real economy. So, China is deleveraging (the local government refi effort) and re-leveraging (banks pledge the newly-issued munis for cash which they then use to make more loans) simultaneously. We can see similar contradictions elsewhere in China’s financial markets. For instance, Beijing has shown a willingness to tolerate defaults – even among state-affiliated companies. This is an effort (if a feeble one so far) to let the invisible hand of the market purge bad debt and flush out failed enterprises.

Meanwhile, Beijing is enacting new policies designed to encourage risky lending. In April for instance, the PBoC indicated it was set to remove a bureaucratic hurdle from the ABS issuance process, which means that suddenly, trillions in loans which had previously sat idle on banks’ books, will now be sliced, packaged, and sold. Specifically, the PBoC said regulatory approval would no longer be required to issue ABS (hilariously, successive RRR cuts have served to reduce banks’ incentive to package loans, but we’ll leave that aside for now). Once again, deleveraging (tolerating defaults) and re-leveraging (making it easier for banks to get balance sheet relief via ABS issuance), all at once.

There’s a parallel between this dynamic and what’s taking place in China’s equity markets. That is, a dramatic unwind in the half dozen or so backdoor margin lending channels (a swift deleveraging) has been met with a government-backed effort to prop up the market via China Securities Finance Corp., which has been transformed into a state-controlled margin lending Frankenstein that could ultimately end up with some CNY5 trillion in dry power (a mammoth attempt at re-leveraging). Now, the PBoC will look to supercharge efforts to re-engineer a stock market bubble via leverage by pushing brokerages to issue ABS backed by margin loans.

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“Even with last year’s 4.5% drop in housing prices, more than 60 million apartments in China remain empty. ”

China Cancels $17.6 Billion Construction Projects ‘To Protect Environment’ (RT)

China has rejected 17 construction projects with a total investment of $17.6 billion, attempting to bolster environmental protection strategies and fight corruption. The projects were among 92 examined by the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), involving a total of more than 700 billion yuan ($112.6 billion) in investment, the Xinhua news agency reported on Friday. The projects’ rejection was said to improve the environmental impact assessment system and fix loopholes that allow corruption. The protection ministry has ordered all the environmental impact assessment agencies cut their links to government at all levels by the end of 2016. It has also launched random inspections of agencies and disqualified dozens of agencies and engineers, according to Xinhua.

MEP has speeded up approval of major projects such as railways and irrigation. Construction of major projects in China has been the main tool for boosting investment and sustaining growth since the beginning of 2015. Investment in the railways rose 22.6% year on year by the end of April. Beijing said in the next two years it would boost investment to foster technological progress in six manufacturing industries, including railway equipment, new-energy vehicles and medical equipment. The country is trying to upgrade its manufacturing sector and stimulate sluggish economic growth. China’s real economy cooling and a 30% stock market slump since the middle of June make it a tough task for Beijing to reach the aimed seven-percent growth in 2015.

Another key factor behind the project’s cancelation may be the real estate market, which has to stay healthy for the country’s targeted growth level. The Chinese government has engineered a property boom during the financial crisis to compensate for the weakness in overseas demand. Later it implemented tightening measures to cool the heated property market. Even with last year’s 4.5% drop in housing prices, more than 60 million apartments in China remain empty. While the real estate sector accounts for about 25-30% of China’s GDP, it’s impossible for the country to prop up the economy without reviving this vital industry.

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Something tells me these analysts have as little overview of the shadow banks as Beijing has.

China’s Stock Crash Is Spurring a Shakeout in Shadow Banks (Bloomberg)

China has been struggling to tame its shadow banks for years. Now, a stock market crash has hamstrung some of the fastest growing ones in a matter of weeks. Loans from sources such as online lenders for equity purchases have plunged by at least 700 billion yuan ($113 billion), a drop of 61% from this year’s peak, after authorities banned them from funding stock buying in July, according to a Bloomberg survey conducted last month. Peer-to-peer Internet lending for the purchases had more than tripled to 8 billion yuan in the second quarter, data from research firm Yingcan Group show. The reversal has helped cull riskier lenders in China’s online market, which was surging before the equity rout wiped out more than $4 trillion.

President Xi Jinping has already curbed traditional forms of unregulated funding – such as trust loans – as part of his effort to wean the economy from debt-fueled growth after corporate defaults mounted. “The new regulations are making the industry more disciplined and transparent,” said Wei Hou at Sanford C. Bernstein. “There may be short-term pain of a number of small players closing down. But it’s good for the industry in the long term.” Peer-to-peer lending was pioneered in the U.S. by companies such as LendingClub Corp., but China is where it’s really taking off. Origination of such loans totaled the equivalent of $41 billion in 2014 and will exceed $332 billion by 2017, according to Maybank Kim Eng. That compares with only $6 billion in the U.S. last year.

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“The point that I’m making is that it’s over.”

Stocks Are A ‘Disaster Waiting To Happen’: Stockman (CNBC)

David Stockman has long warned that the stock market is on the verge of a massive collapse, and the recent price action has him even more convinced than ever that the bottom is about to fall out. “I think it’s pretty obvious that the top is in,” the Reagan administration’s OMB director said Thursday on CNBC’s “Futures Now.” The S&P 500 has traded in a historically narrow range for the better part of 2015, having moved just 1% higher year to date. “It’s just waiting for the knee-jerk bulls, robo traders and dip buyers to finally capitulate.”

Stockman, whose past claims have yet to come to fruition, still believes that the excessive monetary policy from central banks around the world has created a “debt supernova,” and all the signs point to “the end of the central bank enabled bubble,” which could cause a worldwide recession. “The larger picture has nothing to do with the jobs report [Friday] or even the September decision by the Fed,” said Stockman. “It has to do with the the fact that the world economy, including the U.S., is heading into what is clearly going to be an epochal deflation to the likes of what we have never experienced in modern time.” According to Stockman, it’s only a matter of time before the collapse in China trickles down to other markets.

“The whole global economy since 2008 has been driven forward by this massive investment and construction and borrowing spree in China,” said Stockman. “The point that I’m making is that it’s over.” For Stockman, there’s no reversing the artificially inflated bubbles created by the Federal Reserve. “I think what we are seeing is the beginning evidence that the central bank-driven credit economy is over and we are in a new era,” said Stockman. “It’s a huge disaster waiting to happen.”

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How risk got financialized.

The Widening Vortex Of Global Finance (Sampath)

[..] .. rising inequality and sky-rocketing financial profits have paralleled the rise of neo-liberalism — a term used to refer to a cluster of economic policies that includes privatisation, cuts in welfare spending, loosening of labour laws, and deregulation of finance. If there is one common factor that undergirds all these economic policies — it is the rise of global finance, or “financialization”, which also denotes the growing penetration of real economic activity (to do with generating surplus value) by finance capital. In his book, The Everyday Life of Global Finance, the economic geographer, Paul Langley, explains how the common view of global finance as something “out there somewhere” — timeless, spaceless, identified with 24X7 global markets — is fallacious.

It is simply not true that finance operates primarily in a rarefied realm of super-specialists far removed from the world of everyday economic activity such as earning, saving and borrowing. On the contrary, Langley argues, global finance has fundamentally reengineered the ordinary ways we think about and manage money. Till the generation say right up to the 1980s, the future was conceived as a realm of uncertainty, one that held possible harm, for which one provisioned through thrift — specifically, savings and insurance. Financialisation is born when uncertainty is quantified into risk. How we frame risk, calculate it, and manage it, decides what we do with our money. In Langley’s formulation, if risk is calculated and managed as a future harm that requires prudence in the present, it makes for an approach of thrift and savings.

But if it is framed as an opportunity that holds the possibility of immense rewards, it mandates an approach where the most rational form of saving becomes investment. Therefore, at the ideological level, financialisation entails two basic manoeuvres: one, the transformation of nebulous uncertainty into quantifiable risk, which is then managed through an array of calculative technologies; two, a shift in the common sense understanding of risk as something potentially harmful, to something potentially rewarding. Given that risk is essentially a financial category, the current civilisational obsession with data is another testament to the growing supremacy of finance capital (in alliance with technology), which wants every piece of the world’s data on anything and everything in order to be able to manage risk optimally for maximum returns.

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Lest we forget… We must, however, be careful where we put the blame for this.

Greece’s Collapse Was a Reversion to the Mean… Who’s Next? (Phoenix)

Because of the rampant fraud and money printing in the financial system, the real “bottom” or level of “price discovery” is far lower than anyone expects due to the fact that the run up to 2008 was so rife with accounting gimmicks and fraud. The Greek debt crisis, like all crises in the financial system today, can be traced to derivatives via the large investment banks. Indeed, we now know that Greece actually used derivatives (via Goldman Sachs) to hide the true state of its debt problems in order to join the Euro. Spiegel:

Creative accounting took priority when it came to totting up government debt. Since 1999, the Maastricht rules threaten to slap hefty fines on euro member countries that exceed the budget deficit limit of three% of gross domestic product. Total government debt mustn’t exceed 60%. The Greeks have never managed to stick to the 60% debt limit, and they only adhered to the three% deficit ceiling with the help of blatant balance sheet cosmetics… “Around 2002 in particular, various investment banks offered complex financial products with which governments could push part of their liabilities into the future,” one insider recalled, adding that Mediterranean countries had snapped up such products.

Greece’s debt managers agreed a huge deal with the savvy bankers of US investment bank Goldman Sachs at the start of 2002. The deal involved so-called cross-currency swaps in which government debt issued in dollars and yen was swapped for euro debt for a certain period – to be exchanged back into the original currencies at a later date.

The above story for Greece is illustrative of the story for all “emerging markets” starting in 2003: tons of easy money, rampant use of derivatives for accounting gimmick, and the inevitable collapse. From a big picture scenario, in 2003, the global Central Banks abandoned a focus on inflation and began to pump trillions in loose money into the economy. Because large banks could loan well in excess of $10 for every $1 in capital on their balance sheets, global credit went exponential. The effect was sharply elevated asset prices that greatly benefitted tourism-centric economies such as Greece. As I stated in our issue Price Discovery:

If the foundation of the financial system is debt… and that debt is backstopped by assets that the Big Banks can value well above their true values (remember, the banks want their collateral to maintain or increase in value)… then the “pricing” of the financial system will be elevated significantly above reality. Put simply, a false “floor” was put under asset prices via fraud and funny money. Take a look at the impact this had on Greece’s economy. Below is Greek GDP dating back to the 1960s. Having maintained a long-term trendline of growth the country suddenly saw its GDP MORE THAN DOUBLE in less than 10 years after joining the EU?

In many regards, this “growth” was just a credit binge, much like housing prices, stock prices, etc. By joining the Euro, Greece was able to borrow money at much lower rates (2%-3% vs. 10%-20%). Rather than using these lower rates to pay off its substantial debts, Greece funneled as much money as possible towards Government employees (nearly one in three Greek workers). As a result, Government wages nearly doubled to the point that your typical Government employee was paid 150% more than his or her private sector counterpart. Add to this a pension system in which retirees are paid 92% of their former salaries and you have a debt bomb of epic proportions.

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Yes, there are still rich Greeks.

Greek Shipping Industry Extends Its Dominance (WSJ)

Greece’s shipping magnates, having emerged largely unscathed from both the country’s ravaging financial crisis and one the industry’s longest-ever downturns, are now extending their dominance by snapping up vessels from competitors who haven’t fared as well. The Greek owners, who operate almost 20% of the global fleet of merchant ships, are paying rock-bottom prices because assets once owned by bankrupt shipping lines are now in the hands of creditors, including German banks, who want to clear nonperforming loans from their portfolios. For years, Greece and Germany have been Europe’s shipping powerhouses.

But while the Greeks stuck to a hands-on approach in which the owner arranged everything from financing to chartering and operations, the so-called German KG system largely depended on scores of investors ranging from banks to the country’s wealthy middle class. Many of them put their money into shipping at the peak of the market, before the 2008 economic downturn. “As the global financial crisis took hold and the freight market gradually collapsed, the Greeks stayed above water as they were not overly leveraged and stood on cash generated during the boom years before 2008,” said Basil Karatzas, a New York-based maritime adviser. In Germany, by contrast, a single vessel often had up to 1,000 investors and the system wasn’t strong enough to absorb the market stress, Mr. Karatzas said.

“There were too many conflicts of interest, lopsided market concentration on container ships—which were among the hardest hit—and scores of loans by German banks, which poured billions into new vessels believing that demand will continue to grow,” he said. Analysts say that at the end of 2012, German lenders including HSH Nordbank, Commerzbank and Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale controlled about a third of the $475 billion global ship-finance market. In the past four years, the three banks have set aside more than €3.6 billion in provisions for nonperforming shipping loans as they desperately try to sell vessels once owned by bankrupt shipping lines.

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Illegal under EU treaties.

German Trade Surplus To Rise To New Record In 2015 (Reuters)

Germany’s trade surplus is expected to rise to a new record in 2015 thanks to falls in the prices of imported oil and gas, Der Spiegel reported on Saturday. The Finance Ministry is estimating a trade surplus of 8.1% of economic output after 7.6% last year, the magazine said, citing an internal ministry document. The lower cost of imports of oil and gas is expected to boost the trade balance by around 1.2% alone, the document said. Without the decline in oil and gas prices, the trade surplus would have fallen compared with the previous year. Germany has come under international pressure to reduce its trade surplus, which critics say contributes to imbalances in the world economy.

In a report published last month, the IMF said Berlin should focus on bolstering medium–term growth and reducing external imbalances. The European Commission considers trade surpluses that are repeatedly over 6% of economic output as dangerous for stability and has urged Germany to undertake more investment to stimulate imports. Despite a fall in exports in June, the larger net balance between exports and imports meant that the trade surplus widened to a record €24.0 billion, data published on Friday showed.

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Let Finland be the one to blow up the edifice.

Finland Could Stay Out Of New Greek Bailout, Says Foreign Minister (Reuters)

Finland could stay out of a planned third bailout deal for Greece, the Nordic country’s Eurosceptic foreign minister said on Saturday, amid calls from his nationalist party, The Finns, for a more critical stance toward the EU. Finland has taken one of the hardest lines against bailouts among euro zone members, and got even tougher in May when The Finns joined a new center-right coalition. “Of course we can stay out of (the third bailout), that is possible,” Timo Soini told Reuters on the sidelines of his party’s congress. “We’re really out of patience … Our government has a very tight policy on this. We will not accept increasing Finland’s liabilities, or cuts in Greece’s debts.”

Athens is racing to wrap up agreement on a bailout worth up to €86 billion within days, hoping to receive a first disbursement in time to make a debt repayment to the European Central Bank. Finland has said it could accept a deal under which the EU’s bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, would be used only within its current capacity. At a meeting of euro zone finance ministers last month, Finland supported the idea of a temporary ‘Grexit’ – Greece leaving the bloc – but eventually accepted that new loan talks could begin. “If we vote against a deal, it goes to the emergency procedure, and a package is implemented regardless of us,” Soini said, referring to a clause in the fund that allows measures to be passed without unanimous approval if stability is deemed to be at risk.

“I don’t believe that this (bailout) policy will provide solutions, and I think that, in the longer term, ‘Grexit’ is the most likely scenario.” Soini’s party, formerly known as True Finns, has risen from obscurity within just a few years to become the second-biggest parliament group in an election last April. Its criticisms of the EU and its calls for tougher restrictions on immigration have resonated among many citizens as Finland struggles with recession and rising unemployment. But the party had to make compromises as it agreed for the first time to enter government, teaming up with millionaire prime minister Juha Sipila’s Centre party and the pro-EU National Coalition party.

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All care systems do.

How England’s Social Care System Fails The Most Vulnerable (Observer)

It is written in the dry language of the bureaucrat. But an inspector’s report published just last week into the red-brick Birdsgrove Nursing Home, near Bracknell in Berkshire, accommodating the elderly and frail, as well as people stricken by dementia still makes for uncomfortable reading. “We spoke with a person who was still in bed in night clothes,” the Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspector writes. “It was mid-morning and the person told the inspector they had been awake since 7am and were waiting for two staff to help move them from their bed to their chair, wash them and help them get dressed. The person said they were unsure if they were going to be washed today as they had not been told. They said: ‘You have to get used to it here, it’s a routine.’

“We left the person’s room and shortly afterwards heard them shouting for help. They were shouting: ‘Please help me’ and ‘Help me, please’. The person was in very obvious distress and their shouts for help were loud enough for any staff nearby to hear them. No staff responded to the person’s calls for help. “We went into their room and reassured the person and they became calm. We said we would get a member of staff to come and help them. One inspector spoke with a care worker on the corridor outside the person’s room and told them the person needed help. The care worker said they were helping another person adding: ‘I’m doing her, I don’t want this one wandering off as well.’

“We left the room as the person remained calm. Shortly after we left the room they began shouting for help again in the same manner. A registered nurse was observed standing in the corridor near to the person’s room not reacting to their cries for help. We had to find another member of staff and ask them to come to help the person. A few minutes later a care worker arrived to assist the person. The person’s cries for help were repeatedly ignored.”

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New Zealand and Canada next?

Oz FinMin Orders Sale Of Residential Properties Owned By Foreign Nationals (AAP)

Joe Hockey has ordered the sale of six residential properties owned by foreign nationals. The owners live in four countries, with one investor having two in a Perth suburb, the treasurer told reporters in Sydney on Saturday. Some purchased the properties with Foreign Investment Review Board approval but their circumstances have changed, while others have simply broken the rules, he said. Hockey said the purchase price of the properties – in Sydney, on the outskirts of Brisbane and in Perth – ranged from $152,000 to $1.86 million. The investors voluntarily came forward following the amnesty the federal government announced in May. “They now have 12 months to sell the properties, rather than the normal three-month period, and they will not be referred for criminal prosecution,” he said.

There are 462 other cases under investigation, with the treasurer predicting more divestment orders being made in the future. “I expect more divestment orders will be announced in the not too distant future,” he said. The treasurer urged others to come forward before the November 30 cut off, saying he will introduce tighter rules into parliament during the next two weeks. They will include tougher civil penalties, which will see investors lose the capital gain made on the property, 25% of the purchase price or 25% of the market value of the property. “Australia’s foreign investment policy for residential real estate is designed to increase our housing stock, but those who break the rules and purchase established property illegally are doing so to the detriment of all Australians,” he said.

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TPP looks dead, TTIP up next?!

Why Europe And The US Are Locked In A Food Fight Over TTIP (Bonadio)

Black Forest ham, Asiago, Gorgonzola, Gouda, and many other European geographical indications for foodstuffs are at the centre of a TTIP food fight. They are all protected from imitation by other companies in many countries of the world. Not in the US though. And as the details of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership are negotiated, the EU wants to stop American manufacturers from being able to falsely label their products with their protected names. Part of the EU’s legal framework for protecting regional food products is that they have acquired a strong reputation among consumers the world over. Favourable climates and centuries-old manufacturing techniques rooted in their protected areas have contributed to build up this renown. They are intellectual property rights that identify “products with a story”.

The US plays by different rules, however. There are numerous American companies that use European geographical and traditional names (including Parmesan, Asiago and feta for cheese) to identify products that have not been produced in the relevant European locations – and often do not have the same quality as the originals. This lack of protection – European negotiators stress – allows an unacceptable exploitation of Europe’s cultural heritage, as well as costing EU manufacturers large amounts of revenue. The US is, however, resisting these claims. Its negotiators maintain that their food producers have been using and trademarking European geographical names for many decades, and it would now be unfair to ask them to stop.

The US also claims that many of the geographical terms, such as Parmesan, Fontina, feta, Gouda and Edam, have become the generic names of the relevant products, and cannot be monopolised by anyone, including the European producers located in those areas. Indeed, most US consumers don’t even know that these terms are actually geographical names. To them they just describe the characteristics of a product. EU-style legal protection – the US argument goes – would basically allow rent-seeking by European food producers. It would amount to a trade barrier, which would force many US producers to go through an expensive re-brand, and would increase final prices for consumers. It would take a heavy toll on the US cheese market in light of the US$21 billion in US cheese production that uses European-origin names.

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How fitting. In the week that we remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Be Afraid: Japan Is About To Do Something That’s Never Been Done Before (ZH)

When the words “mothballed”, “nuclear”, and “never been done before” are seen together with Japan in a sentence, the world should be paying attention… As TEPCO officials face criminal charges over the lack of preparedness with regard Fukushima, and The IAEA Report assigns considerable blame to the Japanese culture of “over-confidence & complacency,” Bloomberg reports,

Japan is about to do something that’s never been done before: Restart a fleet of mothballed nuclear reactors. The first reactor to meet new safety standards could come online as early as next week. Japan is reviving its nuclear industry four years after all its plants were shut for safety checks following the earthquake and tsunami that wrecked the Fukushima Dai-Ichi station north of Tokyo, causing radiation leaks that forced the evacuation of 160,000 people.

Mothballed reactors have been turned back on in other parts of the world, though not on this scale – 25 of Japan’s 43 reactors have applied for restart permits. One lesson learned elsewhere is that the process rarely goes smoothly. Of 14 reactors that resumed operations after four years offline, all had emergency shutdowns and technical failures, according to data from the World Nuclear Association, an industry group. “If reactors have been offline for a long time, there can be issues with long-dormant equipment and with ‘rusty’ operators,” Allison Macfarlane, a former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said by e-mail.

In case you are not worried enough yet…

As problems can arise with long-dormant reactors, the NRA “should be testing all the equipment as well as the operator beforehand in preparation,” Macfarlane of the U.S. said by e-mail. Although the NRA “is a new agency, many of the staff there have long experience in nuclear issues,” she said. Kyushu Electric has performed regular checks since the reactor was shut to ensure it restarts and operates safely, said a company spokesman, who asked not to be identified because of company policy.

“If a car isn’t used for a while, and you suddenly use it, then there is usually a problem. There is definitely this type of worry with Sendai,” said Ken Nakajima, a professor at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute. “Kyushu Electric is probably thinking about this as well and preparing for it.”

It’s not the first time a nation has tried this..

In Sweden, E.ON Sverige AB closed the No. 1 unit at its Oskarshamn plant in 1992 and restarted it in 1996. It had six emergency shutdowns in the following year and a refueling that should have taken 38 days lasted more than four months after cracks were found in equipment.

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“..if I speak, the republic is going to fall.” They could triple the health care budget if they get rid of corruption.

Petrobras Oil Scandal Leaves Brazilians Lamenting a Lost Dream (NY Times)

Alberto Youssef, a convicted money launderer and former bon vivant, sat in a Brazilian jail cell in March of last year, getting ready to tell his lawyers a story. It was about an elaborate bribery scheme involving Petrobras, the government-controlled oil giant. He opened with a dire prediction. “Guys,” Mr. Youssef said, “if I speak, the republic is going to fall.” To those lawyers, Tracy Reinaldet and Adriano Bretas, who recently recounted the conversation, this sounded a tad melodramatic. But then Mr. Youssef took a piece of paper and started writing the names of participants in what would soon become known as the Petrobras scandal. Mr. Reinaldet looked at the names and asked, not for the last time that day, “Are you serious?”

[..] Oil was central to Brazil’s strategy, and that gave Petrobras a leading role in the nation’s growing influence — and pride of place. At one time it was the sixth-largest company in the world by market capitalization and accounted for roughly 10% of Brazil’s gross domestic product. For perspective, Apple, which has twice Petrobras’s peak market cap, represents 0.5% of the United States’ gross domestic product. The company has lost more than half its value in the last year, about $70 billion in market cap. Part of that stems from the worldwide decline in oil prices, but none of the company’s rivals have been punished as severely. That plunge has had repercussions for investors worldwide. Petrobras had been a favorite investment for big emerging-market bond funds sold to United States investors, for instance.

In Brazil, Petrobras’s plunge is so cataclysmic, according to analysts, that it is a major reason the economy is expected to contract by more than one%age point this year. Unemployment is up, and Standard & Poor’s has cut the nation’s long-term debt rating to one notch above junk status. All of this has provoked something that transcends outrage. Brazilians are in the midst of an identity crisis. Much of Brazil’s recently acquired cachet looks as if it was the product of fraud, and for an added touch of humiliation, a fraud cooked up at a company long regarded as an emblem of Brazil’s success and aspirations. “I’ve never seen my countrymen so angry,” said Maurício Santoro, a political science professor at Rio de Janeiro State University. “We have this sense that the dream is over.”

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As always when western media address Russia: beware of hidden political themes.

How Russian Energy Giant Gazprom Lost $300 Billion (Eurasia.net)

It was not too long ago that Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled energy conglomerate, was one of the Kremlin’s most powerful weapons. But those days now seem like a distant memory. Today, Gazprom is a financial shadow of its former self. The speed of Gazprom’s decline is breathtaking. At its peak in May 2008, the company’s market capitalisation reached $367bn, making it one of world’s most valuable companies, according to a survey compiled by the Financial Times. Only fellow Exxonmobile and PetroChina were worth more. Gazprom’s deputy chair Alexander Medvedev repeatedly predicted that within a decade the Russian energy giant could be worth $1 trillion.

That prediction now seems foolhardy. Since 2008, Gazprom’s value has plummeted. In early August it had a market capitalisation of $51bn – losing more than $300bn. No company among the world’s top 5,000 has suffered a bigger collapse, Bloomberg Business News reported in April 2014, and by the end of the year net income had fallen by an astonishing 86%. Though share prices have rallied slightly since, indicators suggest Gazprom has further to fall. Lingering uncertainty raises questions about whether it can survive, with production continuing to tumble downward. So what happened? Why is a company with the world’s largest gas reserves, operating in a country bordering China and the European Union – two of the world’s top energy consumers, performing so badly?

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“..costs of the coal companies range mostly from about $40 to $100 for every dollar in profit”

The Huge Hidden Costs Of Our Fossil-Fueled Economy (Shiller)

Extracting fossil fuels is a lucrative business. Last year, ExxonMobil made $32.5 billion in profits. But, arguably, it’s a business built on shaky foundations. If we were to account for the full cost of fossil fuels to the environment, it might completely wipe out the industry’s profitability. That’s the conclusion of a new analysis from the University of Cambridge that tallies up the social cost of producing oil, gas and coal products. Across 20 leading companies, it finds “hidden economic costs” that is, costs that aren’t currently paid of $755 billion in 2008, and $883 billion in 2012. Which is several times what the companies reported in earned income in those years. “The 20 companies as a group are highly profitable, with after tax profits of about 8.2 % of revenues in 2008 and 8.6 % in 2012.

However this does not take account of the hidden economic cost to society that is caused when their products are burned and CO2 is emitted to the atmosphere,” says the paper by Chris Hope, Paul Gilding, and Jimena Alvarez. The researchers studied the accounts of major oil and gas groups like BP, Shell, Statoil, and Petrobras as well as several coal producers like Peabody and Coal India. The calculations are based on a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency model that says each ton of CO2 costs society $105 (in 2008 dollars). That’s higher than the working EPA figure of $37 per ton, but below what some other researchers have calculated it should be. The analysis doesn’t include some major state-owned producers such as Saudi Aramco, which don’t publish open public accounts.

Most of the oil and gas companies have hidden costs of $1.5 to $3 for every dollar is post-tax profit, while costs of the coal companies range mostly from about $40 to $100 for every dollar in profit, the paper says. The coal companies are also the most “unprofitable” with economic costs ranging from two to nine times annual revenues (let alone their profits). The point of the paper is to warn investors that they face risks if society ever wants to account for its losses (which doesn’t look likely at the moment, but still). “These results will be a useful starting point for investors seeking to manage their exposure to climate change risk, and for policy makers interested in fossil fuel companies net contribution to society,” the authors say.

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Love this sort of thinking.

Antibiotic Resistance: Zoology To The Rescue (Economist)

Much is made, in academic circles, of the virtues of interdisciplinary research. Its practice is somewhat rarer. But fresh thinking and an outsider’s perspective often do work wonders, and that may just have happened in the field of antibiotic resistance. Adin Ross-Gillespie of Zurich University is a zoologist, not a physician. But his study of co-operative animals such as meerkats and naked mole rats has led him to think about the behaviour of another highly collaborative group, bacteria. He and his colleagues have just presented, at a conference on evolutionary medicine in Zurich, a way of subverting this collaboration to create a new class of drug that seems immune to the processes which cause resistance to evolve.

Antibiotic resistance happens because, when a population of bacteria is attacked with those drugs, the few bugs that, by chance, have a genetic protection against their effects survive and multiply. As in most cases of natural selection, it is the survival of these, the fittest individuals, that spurs the process on. But Dr Ross-Gillespie realised that, in the case of bacteria, there are circumstances when the survival of the fittest cannot easily occur. One of these is related to the way many bacteria scavenge a crucial nutrient, iron, from the environment. They do it by releasing molecules called siderophores that pick up iron ions and are then, themselves, picked up by bacterial cells. In a colony of bacteria, siderophore production and use is necessarily communal, since the molecule works outside the boundaries of individual cells.

All colony members contribute and all benefit. In theory, that should encourage free riders—bacteria which use siderophores made by others without contributing their own. In practice, perhaps because the bacteria in a colony are close kin, this does not seem to happen. But inverting free riding’s logic makes the system vulnerable to attack, for a bug that contributes more than its share does not prosper. Following this line of thought Dr Ross-Gillespie turned to gallium, ions of which behave a lot like those of iron and can substitute for them in a siderophore, making it useless to a bacterium. In fact, siderophores bind more effectively with gallium than with iron, hijacking the whole process. A judicious dose of gallium nitrate can thus take out an entire bacterial colony, by depriving it of the iron it needs to thrive.

The crucial point is that, because siderophores are a resource in common, a mutated siderophore that did not bind preferentially to gallium would be swamped by the others, would fail to benefit the bug that produced it, and therefore would not be selected for and spread. At least, that was Dr Ross-Gillespie’s theory.

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Mar 012015
 
 March 1, 2015  Posted by at 12:58 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  4 Responses »


NPC K & W Tire Co. Rainier truck, Washington, DC 1919

Forget All Our Other Troubles – The Russians Are Coming! (Neil Clark)
What Is Money And How Is It Created? (Steve Keen)
Humiliated Greece Eyes Byzantine Pivot As Crisis Deepens (AEP)
Poll Surge For Alexis Tsipras’ Syriza As Greeks Learn To Smile Again (Guardian)
Greece’s Lenders Skeptical On New Bills But Focus On Funding Needs (Kathimerini)
Greece To Prioritize IMF Repayments But Wants Talks On ECB-held Bonds (AP)
Schäuble Softens Tone On Greece and Varoufakis (AFP)
Greek PM Accuses Spain, Portugal of Anti-Athens ‘Axis’ (Reuters)
Eurozone Negative-Yield Bond Universe Expands to $1.9 Trillion (Bloomberg)
US Cuts Off Student-Loan Collectors for Misleading Debtors (Bloomberg)
Shadow Banking Shrinks to Least Since 2000 as Liquidity Declines (Bloomberg)
Fed Independence Is A Joke, So Why Not Audit? (Freedomworks)
China Factory Sector Still Shrinking, Official PMI Shows (Reuters)
Crude Price Shock Sends Canadian Oil Service Companies Into Whirlwind (RT)
Ukraine Pays Gazprom $15 Million For 24 Hours Worth Of Gas (RT)
Mass Anti-Immigration Rally In Rome (BBC)
Uruguay Bids Farewell To Jose Mujica, Its Pauper President (BBC)
Why Iceland Banned Beer 100 Years Ago (BBC)

“..the BBC News website ran an article entitled “How to spot a Russian bomber.” I printed the guide out and thanks to it I was able to rule out the possibility that the plane flying over my local playing fields was a Tupolev Tu-22M3 and was able to sleep easily in my bed that night..”

Forget All Our Other Troubles – The Russians Are Coming! (Neil Clark)

The gap between the rich and the poor continues to grow. Train and bus fares continue to rise. Twice as many people are living in poverty than 30 years ago. And our National Health Service is being privatized before our very eyes. But hey – we Brits must forget about all those things – because there’s something far more important to worry about. The Russians are coming! That “sinister tyrant” Vladimir Putin, doesn’t’ just threaten the whole of Ukraine – and the Baltic States – but even poses a “threat” to Britain too! This simply must be true (says author, tongue firmly in cheek), because the claims are being made by prominent members of the British political and media establishment – you know the same bunch who in 2003 told us Iraq had WMDs, who in 2011 told us that toppling Gaddafi was a great idea, and who in 2013 wanted us to bomb Syria and topple a secular government that was fighting ISIS.

UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon (who voted for the Iraq war in 2003), raised the specter last week of Putin targeting the Baltic States. “I’m worried about Putin. I’m worried about his pressure on the Baltics, the way he is testing NATO,” Fallon said. “It’s a very real and present danger,” the Minister went on, just in case we still didn’t appreciate the Russian ‘threat’. “He (Putin) flew two Russian bombers down the English Channel two weeks ago. We had to scramble jets very quickly to see them off. It’s the first time since the height of the Cold War; it’s the first time that’s happened.” Sir Adrian Bradshaw, the NATO Deputy Supreme Commander in Europe, went even further than Fallon, saying that “the threat from Russia” represented “an existential threat to our whole being.”

Meanwhile, the former Air Chief Marshall Lord Jock Stirrup raised the horrifying prospect that civilian planes containing holidaymakers could be brought down by Russian jets. In case these warnings weren’t enough to give us palpitations the so-called Russophobic hack pack – the group of mutually-adoring propagandists who obsess about Russia – weighed in to reinforce the message that we all ought to be jolly scared about Putin. [One] commenter provided useful advice on “How to stop Putin nuking us all” (which includes blocking RT). While ordinary people in Britain struggle to make ends meet, for theelite, the big burning question of the day is not “What can we do to reduce bus and train fares?” but “How can we can deal with the Russian ‘threat?’”.

“Can the UK handle the Bear threat from Russia? “asked the Independent. “With bad guys about, you can’t ignore defense” was the title of one comment piece in Rupert Murdoch’s Times. “Putin’s war on the West” was the cover story of the Economist. “As Ukraine suffers, it is time to recognize the gravity of the Russian threat – and to counter it.. The EU and NATO are Mr. Putin’s ultimate targets.” Very helpfully, amid all these concerns, the BBC News website ran an article entitled “How to spot a Russian bomber.” I printed the guide out and thanks to it I was able to rule out the possibility that the plane flying over my local playing fields was a Tupolev Tu-22M3 and was able to sleep easily in my bed that night.

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And now you know!

What Is Money And How Is It Created? (Steve Keen)

[..] Only one person ever really did work out what money really is.—and no, it wasn’t Ayn Rand. It was Augusto Graziani, an Italian Professor of Economics, who died early last year. He understood what money is because he posed and correctly answered a simple question: how does a monetary economy differ from one in which trade occurs by barter? This ruled out gold being money, since gold is a commodity that anyone can produce for themselves with a bit of mining (and a lot of luck). So even though gold is really special and incredibly rare, it is in the end, a commodity: an economy using gold for trade is really a barter economy, not a monetary one. As Graziani put it:

a true monetary economy is inconsistent with the presence of a commodity money. A commodity money is by definition a kind of money that any producer can produce for himself. But an economy using as money a commodity coming out of a regular process of production, cannot be distinguished from a barter economy. A true monetary economy must therefore be using a token money, which is nowadays a paper currency. [He wrote this in 1989, before our modern electronic money system had developed]

That doesn’t rule out a world in which gold is used as the basis for commerce of course: it just says that that’s not a monetary economy. Those who say we’d be better off “going back to gold” are really saying that they don’t like a monetary economy, and reckon we would be better off in a barter economy instead. Identifying money as a paper token wasn’t enough, however, since there are some paper tokens—such as a “bill of exchange”—which are used in transactions, but leave a debt obligation between the buyer and the seller. An economy using bills of exchange was not a monetary economy, Graziani argued, but a credit economy:

If in a credit economy at the end of the period some agents still owe money to other ones, a final payment is needed, which means that no money has been used.

So to be money, the token given in exchange for a good must be accepted as a final payment—but this carried the danger that whoever produced the token might be able to “get something for nothing”. In an ideal system, this had to be ruled out as well.

This gave Graziani three basic conditions that had to be met for something to be called “money”:

a) money has to be a token currency (otherwise it would give rise to barter and not to monetary exchanges);

b) money has to be accepted as a means of final settlement of the transaction (otherwise it would be credit and not money);

c) money must not grant privileges of seignorage to any agent making a payment.

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“The euro is more than just money. It is talismatic for the Greeks. It was only when we joined the euro that we felt truly European. There was always a nagging doubt before.. ”

Humiliated Greece Eyes Byzantine Pivot As Crisis Deepens (AEP)

Greece’s new currency designs are ready. The green 50 drachma note features Cornelius Castoriadis, the Marxisant philosopher and sworn enemy of privatisation. The Nobel poet Odysseus Elytis – voice of Eastward-looking Hellenism – honours the 200 note. The bills rise to 10,000 drachma, a wise precaution lest there is a hyperinflationary shock as Greece breaks out of its debt-deflation trap at high velocity. The amateur blueprints are a minor sensation in Greek artistic circles. They are only half in jest. Greece’s Syriza radicals have signed a fragile ceasefire with the eurozone’s creditor powers. Few think this can last as escalating deadlines reach their kairotic moment in June. Each side has agreed to a deception with equal cynicism, knowing that the interim deal evades the true nature of Greece’s crisis and cannot bridge the immense political divide.

They have bought time, but not much. “I am the finance minister of a bankrupt country,” says Yanis Varoufakis, the rap-artist Keynesian with a mission to correct all of Europe’s economic ills. First he has to deal with his own liquidity crisis. Tax arrears have reached €74bn, rising by €1.1bn a month. “This isn’t tax evasion. These are normal people who can’t pay because they are in distress,” he told the Telegraph. The Greek Orthodox Church is struggling to pick up the pieces. “The local councils can’t cope, so people come to us for food,” said Father Nicolaos of St Panourios parish in a working-class district of West Athens. “We’re feeding 270 people and it is getting worse every day. Today we discovered three young children going through rubbish bins for food. They are living in a derelict building and we have no idea who they are,” he said, sitting in a cramped office packed with bags of bread and supplies.

“We rely on donations from the local bakery. If we run out of beans or lentils, I put out a call, and everybody brings in what they can. There is this spirit of solidarity because nobody feels immune,” he said. His poor parish in Drapetsova was built by refugees from Smyrna and Pontus, victims of the “Catastrophe” in 1922, when ethnic cleansing extinguished the ancient Greek communities of Asia Minor. He lovingly showed me the historic icons and prayer books they hauled with them in wagons, now in the church basement. The utility companies have been cutting off the electricity as arrears rise – and sometimes the water too – leaving 300,000 Greeks in the dark. “They come and ask for candles. They can’t use their fridge. They can’t cook. Their children can’t do their homework,” he said. It is almost a description of a failed state.

Restoring electricity is the first order of business in Syriza’s “Thessaloniki programme”, along with food stamps, a halt to property foreclosures, and a month’s extra pension for the less affluent. Father Nicolaos urged Syriza to stand its ground. “Yes, we Greeks played our own part in our downfall, but Europe played its part too. We must not sell out at any cost, or sell our monuments to pay our debts. We must fight,” he said. Syriza has a peculiar mandate. The Greeks voted for defiance, and also to stay in the euro, two objectives that are hard to reconcile. Views are divided over which emotion runs deeper, therefore which way the inscrutable Alexis Tsipras will pivot. The boyish prime minister has yet to show his hand. “When it comes to the choice, I fear Tsipras will abandon our programme rather than give up the euro,” said one Syriza MP, glancing cautiously around in case anybody was listening as we drank coffee in the “conspiracy” canteen of the Greek parliament.

“The euro is more than just money. It is talismatic for the Greeks. It was only when we joined the euro that we felt truly European. There was always a nagging doubt before,” he said. “But you can’t fight austerity without confronting the eurozone directly. You have to be willing to leave. It is going to take a long time for the party to accept this bitter reality. I think the euro was a tremendous historic mistake, and the sooner they get rid of it, the better for all the peoples of Europe, but that is not the party view,” he said.

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“They’ve given us our voice back,” “For the first time there’s a feeling that we have a government that is defending our interests.”

Poll Surge For Alexis Tsipras’ Syriza As Greeks Learn To Smile Again (Guardian)

Alexis Tsipras’ left-led government may be the bane of Europe’s political establishment, but in Greece support is soaring as Athens’ new political class negotiates the country’s economic plight. One month and three days after the tough-talking firebrand assumed power, Greeks of all political persuasions appear to like what they see. A Metron Analysis poll published on Saturday showed popularity ratings for the prime minister’s radical left Syriza party at an all-time high: from the almost 36% it won in snap polls on 25 January, support for Syriza has jumped to 47.6%, a record for a movement that only three years ago was on margins of Greek politics. In a triumphant address Tsipras attributed the surge to restored pride after five rollercoaster years of being humbled and humiliated by the debt-stricken nation’s worst economic crisis in modern times.

“The Greek people feels it is regaining the dignity that it has been doubted and denied,” the leader told Syriza’s central committee at the weekend. “From the very first day of the new [coalition] government, Greece stopped being a pariah, executing orders and enforcing memorandums,” he said, referring to the EU- and IMF-sponsored bailout accords Athens signed to keep afloat. On the street, optimism has returned. People worn down by gruelling austerity, on the back of unprecedented recession, are smiling. Government officials have taken to walking through central Athens, instead of ducking into chauffeur-driven cars to avoid protesters. Last week, finance minister Yanis Varoufakis – a maverick to many of his counterparts – was mobbed by appreciative voters as he ambled across Syntagma square.

“They’ve given us our voice back,” said Dimitris Stathokostopoulos, a prominent entrepreneur. “For the first time there’s a feeling that we have a government that is defending our interests. Germany needs to calm down. Austerity hasn’t worked. Wherever it has been applied it has spawned poverty, unemployment, absolute catastrophe.” The approval is all the more extraordinary, given the policy U-turns the anti-austerity government has been forced to make – concessions that have sparked fierce opposition within the ranks of Syriza. Faced with the reality of governing, Tsipras has dropped demands for a reduction of the country’s monumental debt; agreed to continued supervision by auditors at the EU, ECB and IMF (now named “the institutions” rather than the maligned “troika”); and abandoned pre-election pledges by promising not to take “unilateral” steps that might throw the budget off-balance.

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“We have not discussed anything with the Greek side,” a European official told Sunday’s Kathimerini..”

Greece’s Lenders Skeptical On New Bills But Focus On Funding Needs (Kathimerini)

European officials have expressed concern that the Greek government has not consulted with its partners over its plans to bring new legislation to Parliament this week but the greatest focus appears to be on how Athens will cover its immediate funding needs. “We have not discussed anything with the Greek side,” a European official told Sunday’s Kathimerini after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced on Friday night that four bills would be tabled in the House this week. In a televised address to his cabinet, Tsipras said that four draft laws would be unveiled this week in order to tackle the social impact of the crisis, to introduce a new payment scheme for overdue debts to the state, to protect primary residences from foreclosures and to reopen public broadcaster ERT.

At the Eurogroup on February 20, Greece and its lenders agreed that the government would not adopt any measures unilaterally that “would negatively impact fiscal targets, economic recovery or financial stability, as assessed by the institutions.” It is not clear if Greece’s creditors believe that the bills due to be submitted to Parliament this week fall into this category but sources suggested that there is concern about the lack of of communication between Athens and its partners. However, the immediate problem that must be overcome is ensuring that the government can meet its funding needs over the next few months, starting with a €1.6 billion payment to the IMF in March.

On Saturday, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis went as far saying that Athens would try to negotiate the summer payment of €6.7 billion worth of Greek bonds held by the ECB. “Shouldn’t we negotiate this? We will fight it,” he told Skai TV. “If we had the money we would pay… They know we don’t have it.” Greece’s lenders, however, believe that they may be able to use this inability to pay to their advantage and pressure the government to carry out reforms before the country’s funding needs become less significant. “Now is the time that we can exercise pressure on the Greek government,” a European official told Kathimerini.

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“.. the ECB repayments are in a different league and we shall have to determine this in association with our partners and the institutions.”

Greece To Prioritize IMF Repayments But Wants Talks On ECB-held Bonds (AP)

Greece will prioritize debt repayments to the International Monetary Fund, some of which come due in March, but repayments to the European Central Bank are «in a different league» and will need discussion with Greece’s creditors, the country’s finance minister said Saturday. In an interview with The Associated Press, Yanis Varoufakis also said Athens intends to start discussions with its creditors on debt rescheduling in order to make the country’s massive debt sustainable, at the same time as working on reform measures that need to be cemented by April, the finance minister said Saturday.

“The IMF repayments of course we are going to prioritize, we are not going to be the first country not to meet our obligations to the IMF,» the 53-year-old said, speaking in his office in the finance ministry overlooking Athens’ central square and the country’s parliament. “We shall squeeze blood out of stone if we need to do this on our own, and we shall do it.” However, “the ECB repayments are in a different league and we shall have to determine this in association with our partners and the institutions.” The ECB has always insisted on full repayment and it’s not clear they would accept a rescheduling.

Greece faces IMF repayments in March of about €1.5 billion, and about €6.7 billion to the ECB in the summer. But it is facing a cash crunch and will struggle with scheduled repayment of its debts. Athens wouldn’t ask for a delay in repayment in its ECB obligations, the minister noted, but rather something that would make the repayments easier to achieve. “I do not believe the ECB would accept a delay, but what we can do is we can package a deal that makes these repayments palatable and reasonably doable as part of our overall negotiation regarding the Greek debt, and the next … contract for growth for the Greek economy between us and the partners.”

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Almost kissed him.

Schäuble Softens Tone On Greece and Varoufakis (AFP)

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Sunday Greece’s new government needs «a bit of time» but is committed to implementing necessary reforms to resolve its debt crisis. “The new Greek government has strong public support,» Schaeuble said in an interview with German newspaper Bild am Sonntag. “I am confident that it will put in place the necessary measures, set up a more efficient tax system and in the end honour its commitments. “You have to give a little bit of time to a newly elected government,» he told the Sunday paper. «To govern is to face reality.”

Schaeuble also insisted that his Greek counterpart Yanis Varoufakis, despite their policy differences, had «behaved most properly with me» and had «the right to as much respect as everyone else». mIt was a marked change in tone for the strait-laced Schaeuble, who has repeatedly exchanged barbs with Varoufakis, his virtual opposite in both style and politics, since January’s watershed Greek elections brought in an anti-austerity government. Schaeuble last week sternly warned that Greece would not receive «a single euro» until it meets the pledges of its existing €240 billion bailout programme.

But he put his weight behind a four-month extension, to the end of June, approved overwhelmingly by the German parliament on Friday after a complex compromise reached between eurozone finance ministers and Athens. In exchange, Greece has pledged to implement reforms and savings. Schaeuble reiterated the ground rules for the aid programme extension, stressing that «Greece must meet its commitments. Only then will it receive the promised aid payments.” Asked about repeated comments from the new Greek government against austerity measures and for a debt haircut, Schaeuble said that «contracts are more important than statements».

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Technocrats are sore losers.

Greek PM Accuses Spain, Portugal of Anti-Athens ‘Axis’ (Reuters)

Greece’s leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras accused Spain and Portugal on Saturday of leading a conservative conspiracy to topple his anti-austerity government, saying they feared their own radical forces before elections this year. Tsipras also rejected criticism that Athens had staged a climbdown to secure an extension of its financial lifeline from the euro zone, saying anger among German conservatives showed that his government had won concessions. Greeks have directed much of their fury about years of austerity dictated by international creditors at Germany, the biggest contributor to their country’s €240 billion bailout.

But in a speech to his Syriza party, Tsipras turned on Madrid and Lisbon, accusing them of taking a hard line in negotiations which led to the euro zone extending the bailout program last week for four months. “We found opposing us an axis of powers … led by the governments of Spain and Portugal which for obvious political reasons attempted to lead the entire negotiations to the brink,” said Tsipras, who won an election on Jan. 25. “Their plan was and is to wear down, topple or bring our government to unconditional surrender before our work begins to bear fruit and before the Greek example affects other countries,” he said, adding: “And mainly before the elections in Spain.”

Spain’s new anti-establishment Podemos movement has topped some opinion polls, making it a serious threat to the conservative People’s Party of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in an election which must be held by the end of this year. Rajoy went to Athens less than a fortnight before the Greek election to warn voters against believing the “impossible” promises of Syriza. His appeal fell on deaf ears and voters swept the previous conservative premier from power. Portugal will also have elections after the summer but no anti-austerity force as potent as Syriza or Podemos has so far emerged there.

In an interview published before Tsipras made his speech, Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho denied that Portugal had taken a hard line in negotiations on the Greek deal at the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers. “There may have been a political intention to create this idea, but it is not true,” he told the Expresso weekly newspaper. Passos Coelho aligned himself with euro zone governments which have called for policies to promote economic growth but without trying to walk away from austerity as in Greece. “We were on the same side as the French government, with the Italian and Irish governments. I think it’s bad to stigmatize southern European countries,” he said.

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“It sounds very awkward in a sense, but if you look at it more, the central bank has a deposit rate in negative territory, and there’s a huge bond-buying program coming.”

Eurozone Negative-Yield Bond Universe Expands to $1.9 Trillion (Bloomberg)

The European Central Bank’s imminent bond-buying plan has left $1.9 trillion of the euro region’s government securities with negative yields. Germany sold five-year notes at an average yield of minus 0.08% on Wednesday, a euro-area record, meaning investors buying the securities will get less back than they paid when the debt matures in April 2020. By the next day, German notes with a maturity out to seven years had sub-zero yields, while rates on seven other euro-area nations’ debt were also negative. While some bonds had such yields as far back as 2012, the phenomenon has gathered pace since the ECB’s decision to cut its deposit rate to below zero last year. Even when investors extend maturities, and move away from the region’s core markets, returns are becoming increasingly meager.

Ireland’s 10-year yield slid below 1% for the first time this week, Portugal’s dropped below 2%, while Spanish and Italian rates also tumbled to records. “It is something that many would not have pictured a year ago,” said Jan von Gerich at Nordea Bank in Helsinki. “It sounds very awkward in a sense, but if you look at it more, the central bank has a deposit rate in negative territory, and there’s a huge bond-buying program coming. People are holding on to these bonds and so you don’t have many willing sellers.” 88 of the 346 securities in the Bloomberg Eurozone Sovereign Bond Index have negative yields, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Euro-area bonds make up about 80% of the $2.35 trillion of negative-yielding assets in the Bloomberg Global Developed Sovereign Bond Index, the data show.

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Huge disgrace. But since when would the US government take that as an insult?

US Cuts Off Student-Loan Collectors for Misleading Debtors (Bloomberg)

The U.S. Education Department, citing “inaccurate representations” to student-loan borrowers, will end debt-collection contracts with Navient and four other companies. Representatives of these companies, which pursue students who default on their loans, made misleading statements about programs that help borrowers get back on track, the agency said in a statement late Friday. The companies include Pioneer Credit Recovery, a unit of Navient, which was split off last year from SLM, commonly known as Sallie Mae, the largest U.S. education finance company. “Federal Student Aid borrowers are entitled to accurate information as they make critical choices to manage their debt,” Under Secretary Ted Mitchell said in a statement. “Every company that works for the Department must keep consumers’ best interests at the heart of their business practices by giving borrowers clear and accurate guidance.”

The government turns to 22 debt-collection companies to put the squeeze on borrowers who are defaulting on their loans. In 2012, Bloomberg News reported that the private contractors chasing these debts collected about $1 billion annually in commissions and faced growing complaints that they were insisting on stiff payments, even when borrowers’ incomes make them eligible for leniency. Pioneer said in a statement that the Education Department has conducted 17 exams since the beginning of 2014, listening to 600 phone calls, and had not raised concerns about the company’s rates of inaccurate or misleading information to borrowers. In April, it received written confirmation from the agency that its policies complied with regulation.

“We were blindsided by the Department of Education’s actions,” Pioneer said. Navient’s revenue from collecting for the Education Department totaled $65 million last year. The agency said it will “wind down” its contracts with the five companies and transfer their business to other agencies with contracts. The four other companies losing contracts are Coast Professional, Enterprise Recovery Systems, National Recoveries and West Asset Management, according to the statement. Those companies couldn’t be reached for comment after business hours. “This is a huge step forward for student loan borrowers who are too often the victims of dishonest debt-collection practices,” Maggie Thompson, campaign manager for Higher Ed, Not Debt, said in a statement. “We are happy the Department of Education protected borrowers by ending the contracts of some of the most abusive debt collectors in the business.”

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End of the Ponzi.

Shadow Banking Shrinks to Least Since 2000 as Liquidity Declines (Bloomberg)

The financing markets that grease the wheels of most debt trading have contracted to the smallest in 15 years as liquidity declines, adding to concern U.S. economic stability is at risk. The amount, known as shadow banking, was $4.13 trillion last month, down from a peak of $7.61 trillion in March 2008, according to data compiled by the Center for Financial Stability, a nonpartisan research group. The CFS measure, which includes money-market funds, repurchase agreements and commercial paper, all adjusted for the impact of inflation, is at the lowest since January 2000.

“Market finance is suffering, and it has been inextricably linked to growth in the economy and financial stability,” Lawrence Goodman, president of CFS and author of the report, said. “The fact that we are seeing bumps in varying asset classes suggests that cracks are evident in the financial system. In part, this is a direct function of limited liquidity.” Global regulators have focused on reducing the footprint of shadow banking, which was viewed as a catalyst for the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008 that shook markets worldwide, accelerating the financial crisis. In the process, market finance has contracted to an “excessively steep” degree that “starves financial markets from needed liquidity and is detrimental to future growth,” according to a Feb. 25 report from the CFS.

Repurchase agreements, or repos, are a source of short-term finance for banks, allowing them to use securities as collateral for short-term loans from investors such as other banks or money-market mutual funds. The amount of securities financed through a part of the market known as tri-party repo fell to an average $1.58 trillion as of Jan. 12, from $1.96 trillion in December 2012, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve. Tighter market liquidity and a resulting surge in volatility were both on display Oct. 15, when Treasuries suddenly careened through the biggest yield fluctuations in a quarter-century without being spurred by any concrete news. While that extreme loss of liquidity in Treasuries has faded, the day-to-day dealings in 10-year Treasuries have worsened this year, according to analysis by Deutsche Bank.

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“The people – those plain people who think economics is about supply and demand rather than complicated math formulas – deserve some level of sway over the Fed’s operations..”

Fed Independence Is A Joke, So Why Not Audit? (Freedomworks)

If Janet Yellen didn’t resemble a bookwormish teetotaler, perhaps she’d join her colleagues in a toast to suppressing democratic accountability. For now, she’ll order a club soda while working vigorously to keep Congress, and thus the people, out of her business of running the country’s central bank. Yellen has only been Chair of the Federal Reserve for one year, but she’s already facing pressure to open the books from the new Congress. Leading the charge are two statesmen from Kentucky: Representative Thomas Massie and Senator Rand Paul. Both have introduced audit the Fed legislation in their respective chambers. Wall Street’s cadre of financial oligarchs are predictably up in arms over an audit of their free money machine.

Think tankers are antagonizing the campaign, with Jim Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute asserting that Sen. Paul has “a poor understanding of what’s actually on the Fed balance sheet and how the bank operates.” It’s expected President Obama would veto an audit the Fed bill. Even local bankers are scaremongering over the prospect of the Fed losing autonomy. Yellen, for her part, isn’t about to let the nosy wolves in her henhouse. In a recent interview, she said she would stand “forcefully” against any audit measures. She justified her intransigence by citing the importance of “central bank independence” and being able to act without interference. Nothing says limited government and separation of powers like a bureaucracy unaccountable to the voice of the people! Then again, Yellen doesn’t care much for democratic oversight.

She’s a caricature of Randian libertarianism: someone who wants to do whatever, whenever, without rulers. The problem is Yellen isn’t operating a private railroad company. She’s the figurehead for a government institution created by Congress. If democracy means anything, it’s that voters have some measure of control over political bureaucracies. So apologies Janet, you don’t operate in a bubble (insert Fed pun here). The people – those plain people who think economics is about supply and demand rather than complicated math formulas – deserve some level of sway over the Fed’s operations. So why not an audit by the Government Accountability Office? Last I heard, President Obama was all about accountability. Yellen and company aren’t buying it. They don’t want anyone butting in on their micromanagement of the money supply. Outside observers would interfere with the Fed’s independence, which is a sacrament of the central bank.

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Bub. Ble.

China Factory Sector Still Shrinking, Official PMI Shows (Reuters)

Activity in China’s factory sector contracted for a second straight month in February on unsteady exports and slowing investment, an official survey showed on Sunday, reinforcing bets that more policy loosening is needed to lift the economy. The official Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) inched up to 49.9 in February from January’s 49.8, a whisker below the 50-point level that separates growth from contraction on a monthly basis. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a weaker reading of 49.7. A separate official services PMI, also released on Sunday, showed growth in the sector accelerated to 53.9, up from 53.7 in January. Accounting for 48% of China’s $10.2 trillion economy last year, the services sector has weathered the growth downturn better than factories, partly because it depends less on foreign demand.

The official PMIs were released shortly after China’s central bank cut interest rates late on Saturday, the latest effort to support the world’s second-largest economy as its momentum slows and deflation risks rise. The PMIs are the last official Chinese data to come out before the opening this week of the annual session of China’s legislature, where leaders will announce a growth target for 2015. The final February reading for the HSBC manufacturing PMI survey will be announced on Monday. The flash estimate showed factory growth edged up to a four-month high in February, but export orders shrank at their fastest rate in 20 months. To boost a sagging economy, China’s central bank lowered the reserve requirement – the ratio of cash that banks must set aside as reserves – in February for the first time in over two years.

That was after it had cut interest rates in November, also for the first time in more than two years. Despite the raft of stimulus moves, a newspaper owned by the central bank warned on Wednesday that China is dangerously close to slipping into deflation, highlighting the nervousness among policymakers about a sputtering economy that is not gaining speed. A housing slump, erratic growth in exports and a state-led slowdown in investment to help restructure China’s economy dragged growth to 7.4% last year – a level not seen since 1990. Reflecting China’s “new normal” of slower but better-quality growth, economists at state think-tanks with knowledge of policy discussions said the government is likely to lower its 2015 economic growth target to around 7%, from last year’s 7.5%.

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Ha. Ha.: “Customers are taking a cautious approach until there is more certainty as to when oil prices will recover..”

Crude Price Shock Sends Canadian Oil Service Companies Into Whirlwind (RT)

The crude oil price collapse has forced some Canadian oil service companies to cut their workforces, budgets, and salaries, as their energy-producing customers have been struggling with their own budget cuts and market uncertainty. Calfrac Well Services and Trican Well Service, both based out of Calgary, are two of the most recent examples of companies showing signs of a struggle amid a slowdown in drilling activity across North America. Oilfield services and hydraulic fracturing company Calfrac announced on Wednesday that it will cut over $25 million from its general and administrative costs, as it released its fourth quarter revenue report. The firm will be slashing executive salaries by around 10% and directors’ pay by 20% starting in April. Calfrac was also forced to shut down its operations in Colombia.

“As a result of the decline in crude oil prices, the company’s customers in Canada and the United States have lowered their 2015 capital budgets in the order of 20 to 40 per cent from 2014,” Calfrac’s president and chief executive, Fernando Aguilar, told analysts. The biggest concern is how cheaper crude will impact equipment utilization and pricing in 2015. “Customers are taking a cautious approach until there is more certainty as to when oil prices will recover,” Aguilar added. One of Calfrac’s biggest competitors, Trican, announced similar cuts – including slashing salaries and costs – after cutting 600 positions. All Canadian and US employees will receive a 10% cut in average compensation, according to the firm’s press release.

Oil prices have plummeted by at least 50% since the summer. The situation was made worse when OPEC opted not to cut its daily output levels in November. In reaction to new oil price projections, the Bank of Canada (BoC) unexpectedly cut its interest rate to 0.75% in January, with markets pricing in another rate cut in March. The central bank also lowered its economic growth and inflation forecasts, warning of widespread negative effects of lower oil prices on the Canadian economy. Just last week, BoC Deputy Governor Agathe Cote stressed the significance of the oil-price shock. “This shock will delay the economy’s return to full capacity by undermining both investment in the oil sector and gross domestic income,” she said, noting that personal wealth is likely to be reduced and interprovincial trade affected.

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And counting.

Ukraine Pays Gazprom $15 Million For 24 Hours Worth Of Gas (RT)

Ukraine’s Naftogaz has paid Gazprom $15 million for gas delivery. At current levels, the prepayment covers one day’s gas consumption and will be spent by Tuesday, Gazprom spokesperson Sergey Kupriyanov said. “Today at 9:20am MSK Gazprom received a payment from Ukraine’s Naftogaz in the amount of $15 million. At the current level of supply this sum will be enough roughly for one day,” he said. “If Naftogaz paid for another 24 hours, it means the resources would last through Monday till Tuesday,” he said. The relatively small prepayment suggests Kiev is buying time before trilateral talks in Brussels on march 2nd. Russian energy minister Alexander Novak had warned Kiev’s failure to pre-pay would mean a cut-off.

In a letter sent to Gazprom late Wednesday, Naftogaz said it had a total of 206 million cubic meters of Russian gas pre-paid. “The concerns and worries are caused first of all by the fact that not much prepaid gas is left. If there is no money the supplies will stop starting from Tuesday,” Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said. “The payment should be completed Friday so that the gas is supplied starting from Tuesday,” Novak said. “If there is no payment there will be a break in gas supplies to Ukraine. The European consumers will fully receive gas.” “We are worried about the situation with the problem of prepayment for the gas delivery. On Friday morning, the rest of the gas, prepaid by Ukraine, accounted for 123.8 mln cubic meters.

Taking into consideration the fact that on the average we supply [Ukraine] with 42 mln cubic meters, without DPR and LPR [Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic], in fact, the remains of the gas will be enough only for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday,” Novak said, according to RIA-Novosti. In a new gas standoff, deliveries to the conflict-plagued Donbass region have become a new bone of contention between Russian and Ukraine. Last week Kiev suspended deliveries to the area, citing damage to the pipeline. Russia then launched a separate gas supply to Donbass, with President Vladimir Putin saying that cutting the war zone off gas “smells like genocide.” Gazprom said Thursday it was ready to separate gas supplies to Ukraine and Donbass.

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Europe better watch out.

Mass Anti-Immigration Rally In Rome (BBC)

Thousands of supporters of Italy’s Northern League have poured into one of Rome’s biggest squares for a rally against immigration, the EU and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s government. League leader Matteo Salvini accused Mr Renzi of substituting the country’s interests to those of the EU. He also criticised the government’s record in dealing with Romanian truck drivers, tax, banks and big business. A large counter-demonstration against Mr Salvini was also held in Rome. Opinion polls suggest that Mr Salvini is rapidly gaining in popularity. They show him as being second only to Mr Renzi, prompting some to dub him as “the other Matteo”.

The Northern League was once a strong ally of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, but it has sought to find new allies as he struggles to shake off a tax fraud conviction that forced him out of parliament. Mr Salvini’s fiery rhetoric against the European Union, immigration and austerity politics had led to comparisons being drawn between him and French National Front leader Marine Le Pen. The counter-demonstration staged by an alliance of leftist parties, anti-racism campaigners and gay rights groups was held only a few hundred metres from the Northern League rally. Many protested under the banner “Never with Salvini”.

“The problem isn’t Renzi, Renzi is a pawn, Renzi is a dumb slave, at the disposal of some nameless person who wants to control all our lives from Brussels,” Mr Salvini told the rally at the Piazza del Popolo. He told his supporters that the prime minister was the “foolish servant” of Brussels. Mr Salvini spoke of a “different Europe, where banks count for less, and citizens and small businessmen count for more”. “I want to change Italy. I want the Italian economy to be able to move forward again, something that is obstructed by Brussels and mad European policies,” he said, describing the government’s immigration policies as “a disaster”.

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A fine man.

Uruguay Bids Farewell To Jose Mujica, Its Pauper President (BBC)

Whatever your own particular “shade” of politics, it’s impossible not to be impressed or beguiled by Jose “Pepe” Mujica. There are idealistic, hard-working and honest politicians the world over – although cynics might argue they’re a small minority – but none of them surely comes anywhere close to the outgoing Uruguayan president when it comes to living by one’s principles. It’s not just for show. Mujica’s beat-up old VW Beetle is probably one of the most famous cars in the world and his decision to forego the luxury of the Presidential Palace is not unique – his successor, Tabare Vasquez, will also probably elect to live at home. But when you visit “Pepe” at his tiny, one-storey home on the outskirts of Montevideo you realise that the man is as good as his word.

Wearing what could best be described as “casual” clothes – I don’t think he’s ever been seen wearing a tie – Mujica seats himself down on a simple wooden stool in front of a bookshelf that seems on the verge of collapsing under the weight of biographies and mementoes from his political adversaries and allies. Books are important to the former guerrilla fighter who spent a total of 13 years in jail, two of them lying at the bottom of an old horse trough. It was an experience that almost broke him mentally and which shaped his transformation from fighter to politician. “I was imprisoned in solitary [confinement] so the day they put me on a sofa I felt comfortable!” Mujica jokes. “I’ve no doubt that had I not lived through that I would not be who I am today. Prison, solitary confinement had a huge influence on me. I had to find an inner strength. I couldn’t even read a book for seven, eight years – imagine that!”

Given his past, it’s perhaps understandable why Mujica gives away about 90% of his salary to charity, simply because he “has no need for it”. A little bit grumpy to begin with, Mujcia warms to his task as he describes being perplexed by those who question his lifestyle. “This world is crazy, crazy! People are amazed by normal things and that obsession worries me!” Not afraid to take a swipe at his fellow leaders, he adds: “All I do is live like the majority of my people, not the minority. I’m living a normal life and Italian, Spanish leaders should also live as their people do. They shouldn’t be aspiring to or copying a rich minority.”

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If only Al Capone had known.

Why Iceland Banned Beer 100 Years Ago (BBC)

.. for much of the 20th Century it was unpatriotic – and illegal – to drink beer. When full prohibition became law 100 years ago, alcohol in general was frowned upon, and beer was especially out of favour – for political reasons. Iceland was engaged in a struggle for independence from Denmark at the time, and Icelanders strongly associated beer with Danish lifestyles. “The Danes were drinking eight times as much alcohol per person on a yearly basis at the time,” says historian Stefan Palsson, author of Beer: Around the World in 120 Pints. As a result, beer was “not the patriotic drink of choice”. The independence and temperance movements reinforced each other, and in 1908, four years after gaining home rule, Iceland held a referendum on a proposal to outlaw all alcohol from 1915. About 60% voted in favour. Women, who still didn’t have the vote, were vocal in their support.

“Prohibition was seen as progressive, like smoking [bans] today,” says Palsson. It didn’t take long for Prohibition to be undermined. Smuggling, home-brew and ambassadors lobbying for alcohol to oil the wheels of diplomacy all played a part. “Doctors started prescribed alcohol as medicine and they did so in huge quantities, for more or less everything. Wine if you had bad nerves, and for the heart, cognac,” says Palsson. But beer was never “what the doctor ordered”, despite the argument some put forward that it was a good treatment for malnourishment. “The head doctor put his foot down and said beer did not qualify as a medicine under any circumstances,” Palsson says.

There were other leaks in the Prohibition armour too. “Prohibition supporters complained that painters who never used to use spirits to clean their brushes were now getting litres and litres each year,” says Palsson. “So alcohol was flowing in from all directions.” Then the Spanish threatened to stop importing salted cod – Iceland’s most profitable export at the time – if Iceland did not buy its wine. Politicians bowed to the pressure and legalised red and rose wines from Spain and Portugal in 1921. Over time, support for prohibition dwindled. It had already been repealed by all the other European nations that had experimented with it (apart from the Faroe Islands) when in 1933 Icelanders voted to reverse course.

But even then the ban remained in force for beer containing more than 2.25% alcohol (about half the strength of an average-strength beer). As beer was cheaper than wines or spirits, the fear was that legalising it would lead to a big rise in alcohol abuse. The association of beer with Denmark also continued to tarnish its image in a country that only achieved full independence in 1944. However, beer remained accessible, just about, to those who really wanted it. “If you knew a fisherman, he may have had a few cases stashed in his garage – usually the cheapest and strongest beer available, often stored too long,” says Palsson Also popular, according to Ingvarsson, was tipping brennivin (burning wine), a potato-based vodka, into non-alcoholic beer – which tasted, as he puts it, “interesting and totally disgusting”.

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Feb 252015
 
 February 25, 2015  Posted by at 10:09 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  5 Responses »


Wyland Stanley “J.A. Herzog Pontiac, 17th & Valencia Sts., San Francisco.” 1936

Yellen Removes Another Obstacle To An Eventual Rate Hike (MarketWatch)
US Government’s ‘New Rule’ Allows Banks To Completely Make Sh#t Up (Simon Black)
Greek Finance Chief: We Want To Regain EU’s Trust (CNBC)
Greek Finance Minister’s Full Letter To The Eurogroup (Kathimerini)
Greece Has Lost The Gamble But Can Still Come Up Trumps (Guardian)
How Addiction To Debt Came Even To China (Martin Wolf)
China Readies Measures to Counter Housing Market Slump (Bloomberg)
Britain To Send Military Advisers To Ukraine, Announces Cameron (Guardian)
UK Military Training In Ukraine: Symbolic Move That Risks Russian Ire (Guardian)
IMF Package for Ukraine: Some Pesky Macros (Constantin Gurdgiev)
Kiev Cash-For-Gas Fail Could Cost EU Its Supply In 2 Days – Gazprom (RT)
East Ukraine Artillery Withdrawal In Focus – As Poroshenko Buys UAE Weapons (RT)
Lure of Wall Street Cash Said to Skew Credit Ratings (Bloomberg)
Militants, Migrants And The Med: Europe’s Libya Problem (BBC)
Lester Brown: ‘Vast Dust Bowls Threaten Tens Of Millions With Hunger’ (Guardian)
The Amherst Cauldron: The Donbass in New England (Albert Bates at ClubOrlov)
Kick-The-Can Has Morphed Into A Blatant Farce (David Stockman)
“Remove From Governments The Ability To Interfere With [Our] Rights” (Snowden)
London: A Set Of Improbable Sex Toys Poking Gormlessly Into The Air (Guardian)

All these financne guys don’t think she’ll do it without letting them know well in advance. But that would defeat the very purpose.

Yellen Removes Another Obstacle To An Eventual Rate Hike (MarketWatch)

Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen on Tuesday took another step closer to the first rate hike since 2006. In testimony to the Senate, Yellen signaled to financial markets the Fed would soon drop the word “patient” from its forward guidance. She softened the blow with several dovish comments that suggest no hurry about actually moving. Markets had expected that when the Fed dropped “patient” from its policy statement that it would mean the a rate hike would follow in the next couple of meetings. That interpretation came from signals Yellen had sent in December. Now, however, Yellen stressed that the Fed wasn’t on automatic pilot and only wanted the flexibility to move “on a meeting-by-meeting basis.”

Several analysts said a June rate hike remained on the table if the Fed decides to drop the word “patient” from its policy statement on March 17-18. Several Fed officials have said they want to drop “patient” from the Fed’s next policy meeting scheduled in mid-March. Minutes of the January meeting released last week showed Fed officials were concerned with how the market might react if “patient” was dropped. Tom Simons, an economist at Jefferies in New York, said Yellen had effectively neutered the word so it no longer even matters whether the word stays or goes in the Fed’s next policy statement. “Now ‘patient’ doesn’t mean a whole lot,” Simons said.

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No end to insanity.

US Government’s ‘New Rule’ Allows Banks To Completely Make Sh#t Up (Simon Black)

Banks still use accounting tricks to hide their true condition. Bloomberg showcased one such technique last year, exposing the way that many US banks are rebooking their assets from “available for sale (AFS)” to the “held-to-maturity (HTM)” designation. This is a very subtle move that means nothing to most people. But to banks, it’s a highly effective way of concealing losses they’ve suffered in their investment portfolios. Banks ordinarily buy bonds and other securities with the purpose of generating a return on that money until they have to, you know, give it back to their depositors. That’s why they’re called “available for sale,” because the bank has to sell these assets to pay their depositors back. But here’s the problem– many of these investments have either lost money, or they soon will be. And banks don’t want to disclose those losses.

So instead, they simply redesignate assets as HTM. It’s like saying “I don’t care that these bonds aren’t worth as much money as when I bought them because I intend to hold them forever.” Thing is, this simply isn’t true. Banks don’t have the luxury of holding some government bond for the next 30-years. This is money they might have to repay their customers tomorrow, which makes the entire charade intellectually dishonest. That doesn’t stop them. JP Morgan alone boosted its HTM mortgage bonds from less than $10 million to nearly $17 billion (1700x higher) in just one year. This is a huge shift. Nearly every big bank is doing this, and is doing it deliberately. This is no accident. And there’s only one reason to do it—to use accounting minutia to conceal losses. But the accounting tricks don’t stop there. And in many cases they’re fueled by the government.

One recent example is how federal regulators created a new ‘rule’ which allows banks to consciously reduce the risk-weighting they assigns their assets. The Federal Financial Institution Examination Council recently told banks that, “if a particular asset . . . has features that could place it in more than one risk category, it is assigned to the category that has the lowest risk weight.” This gives banks extraordinary latitude to underreport the risk levels of their investments. Bankers can now arbitrarily decide that a risky asset ‘has features’ of a lower risk asset, and thus they can completely misrepresent their investments. Bottom line, it’s becoming extremely difficult to have confidence in western banks’ financial health. They employ every trick in the book to overstate their capital ratios and understate their risk levels. This, backed by a central bank that is borderline insolvent and a federal government that is entirely insolvent.

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All the right words.

Greek Finance Chief: We Want To Regain EU’s Trust (CNBC)

Greece’s new government wants to re-establish trust with the rest of Europe, the country’s finance minister told CNBC, as Athens obtained a four-month extension of its bailout program. “The reason why we have this four-month period is to re-establish bonds of trust between us and our European partners as well as the IMF in order to build a new contract between us and our partners so as to put an end to this debt inflationary spiral,” Yanis Varoufakis said in an interview in Athens. On Tuesday, euro zone finance ministers accepted a list of Greek reform proposals, but warned that the reforms must be expanded in detail before new bailout funding would be released. IMF managing director Christine Lagarde called the proposals “sufficiently comprehensive to be a valid starting point” but said they lacked “clear assurances.”

Varoufakis said implementing new legislation concerning corruption and tax evasion is his top priority. As to whether European officials will approve each and every measure passed in parliament, he said “there is going to be a great deal of toing and froing between us and the institutions and our partners.” The trained economist was also critical of the tense negotiation process with euro zone finance ministers, saying they were dominated by “legalisms.” “You know what I think the main problem is, European finance ministerial meetings are seldom about finance, they’re more about process and rules…and I’m not good at that. I think that when we’re talking about macroeconomics, when we’re talking about Greece’s recovery, I don’t think we have the moral right to talk as if this is applying rules.”

Leftist political party Syrzia’s principal task of reducing Greece’s $366 billion debt has been flatly rejected. Several Greeks, noticeably senior politician Manolis Glezos, claim the party has bent too much to European creditors, making it no different from the previous administration. But Varoufakis rejected the notion that Syrzia has been unfaithful to Greeks: “We got elected to renegotiate Greece’s deal with our partners. What is a negotiation; it’s an attempt to find a compromise. The fact that we compromised is not a U-turn. A U-turn would have been to have led this negotiation to an impasse, and we didn’t do that because we’re interested in a mutually beneficial agreement.”

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Click the link to see all the specific proposals for Syriza to comply with EU demands, while keeping its promises to voters. It will undergo a thousand changes, but at least everyone can see now what has been put on the table.

Greek Finance Minister’s Full Letter To The Eurogroup (Kathimerini)

Dear President of the Eurogroup: In the Eurogroup of 20 February 2015 the Greek government was invited to present to the institutions, by Monday 23rd February 2015, a first comprehensive list of reform measures it is envisaging, to be further specified and agreed by the end of April 2015. In addition to codifying its reform agenda, in accordance with PM Tsipras’ programmatic statement to Greece’s Parliament, the Greek government also committed to working in close agreement with European partners and institutions, as well as with the International Monetary Fund, and take actions that strengthen fiscal sustainability, guarantee financial stability and promote economic recovery. The first comprehensive list of reform measures follows below, as envisaged by the Greek government. It is our intention to implement them while drawing upon available technical assistance and financing from the European Structural and Investment Funds.

Truly Yanis Varoufakis, Minister of Finance, Hellenic Republic=

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No broad vision at the Guardian.

Greece Has Lost The Gamble But Can Still Come Up Trumps (Guardian)

Tsipras and finance minister Yanis Varoufakis have been criticised for sending out mixed messages, referencing Nazi Germany, longingly gazing towards Russia, and even their untucked shirts. But Greece’s liquidity weaknesses were clear long before Syriza won the elections, and were exploited to the fullest by its lenders. The country’s fragility lies in the fact that it cannot fund itself and is shut out of international bond markets. Between this and the absence of a credible plan to exit the euro, even for use as a negotiating tool, Tsipras and Varoufakis were left with very few options. Whether they blundered into a deal or secured it with clever cajoling is a trivial matter at the moment.

Athens’ diplomatic indiscretions and a helter-skelter approach to negotiations have been matched by stubbornness and contempt in other European capitals. In this environment, everyone can shirk their responsibilities. Greek leaders can substitute progressive policymaking with populist bluster, while their European counterparts can continue to peddle the myth that Greeks have received European solidarity but given nothing in return. If all sides withdraw to these positions over the coming months the Greek people, who have experienced the worst economic downturn since the 1930s and the sharpest fiscal adjustment western Europe has ever seen, will pay an even heavier price than they have over the past five years. There is a great historical responsibility on all those involved to ensure that punishment on one side and retribution on the other are not the main policy drivers over the months to come.

There remains a small window of opportunity in which Syriza can change the narrative. One of the most important concessions it gained in Brussels was to be the main author of its own reform programme – previous governments were merely handed a checklist of changes from its lenders. Of course, the creditor nations will still push for some unpopular measures. But Tsipras and Varoufakis will have a unique chance to show if they are truly committed to tackling Greece’s chronic problems brought about by its decaying institutions, including the public administration and judicial system. These changes could have broad appeal among Greeks, and may also help alter the sour mood that has emerged between Greece and the eurozone over the past few weeks.

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Worse for the others than it is for China.

How Addiction To Debt Came Even To China (Martin Wolf)

Balance sheets matter. This is the biggest lesson of the financial crises that have rolled across the world economy. Changes in balance sheets shape the performance of economies, as credit moves in self-fulfilling cycles of optimism and pessimism. The world economy has become credit addicted. China could well be the next victim. If we think about balance sheets in the world economy of today, four questions arise. First, what determines vulnerability? Second, where are vulnerabilities now appearing? Third, how are countries coping with the legacy of old debt crises? Finally, can the world economy cope with the new vulnerabilities? Start with the sources of vulnerability. In economies with liberalized financial sectors, the driver towards disaster is far more often private than public imprudence.

Rising property prices and expanded mortgage lending drive many credit booms. A deterioration in the public sector’s balance sheets usually then follows crises. Failure to recognize this link between private excess and public borrowing is wilful blindness. In an update of work on debt and deleveraging, McKinsey notes that between 2000 and 2007, household debt rose as a proportion of income by one-third or more in the US, the UK, Spain, Ireland and Portugal. All of these countries subsequently experienced financial crises. Indeed, huge increases in private sector credit preceded many other crises: Chile in 1982 was an important example of this connection. Ruchir Sharma of Morgan Stanley argues that the 30 most explosive credit booms all led to a slowdown, often a crisis.

A rapid change in the ratio of credit to gross domestic product is more important than its level. That is partly because some societies are able to manage more debt than others; it is partly because a sudden burst in lending is likely to be associated with a sudden collapse in lending standards. Thus, in seeking new vulnerabilities, we need to look for economies that have had sharp rises in private debt. China leads the pack, with a rise of 70 percentage points in the ratio of corporate and household debt to GDP between 2007 and 2014 . If we add financial sector debt, the rise in gross private indebtedness is 111 percentage points. With government debt included, it is 124 percentage points.

China’s huge credit boom has several disquieting features. Much of the rise in debt is concentrated in the property sector; “shadow banking” — that is lending outside the balance sheets of the formal financial institutions — accounts for 30% of outstanding debt, according to McKinsey; much of the borrowing has been put on off-balance-sheet vehicles of local governments; and, above all, the surge in debt was not linked to a matching rise in trend growth, but rather to the opposite. This does not mean China is likely to experience an unmanageable financial crisis. On the contrary, the Chinese government has all the tools it needs to contain a crisis. It does mean, however, that an engine of growth in demand is about to be switched off. As the economy slows, many investment plans will have to be reconsidered. That may start in the property sector. But it will not end there. In an economy in which investment is close to 50% of GDP, the downturn in demand (and so output) might be far more severe than expected.

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More bigger bubble.

China Readies Measures to Counter Housing Market Slump (Bloomberg)

China is preparing measures to counter a housing market slump and will roll them out if the economy needs support, people with knowledge of the matter said. The government could reduce down-payment requirements for second-home purchases, the people said, declining to be identified as the information isn’t public. Another possible step would be to let homeowners sell properties without paying sales tax after two years, down from five years. China’s new-home prices posted a record year-on-year decline in January, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysis of government data tracking 70 cities.

Implementation of the new easing policies will depend on whether an economic downturn continues or worsens, the people said. An interest-rate cut in November and the removal of some curbs have failed to revive the property industry. In September, the central bank allowed lower down payments and mortgage rates for some people applying for loans for second homes. As a result of past efforts to curb property speculation and rein in price gains, minimum down payments for second homes are now at least 60%.

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On course for dying British boys and girls.

Britain To Send Military Advisers To Ukraine, Announces Cameron (Guardian)

Britain was pulled closer towards a renewed cold war with Russia when David Cameron announced UK military trainers are to be deployed to help Ukraine forces stave off further Russian backed incursions into sovereign Ukraine territory. The decision – announced on Tuesday but under consideration by the UK national security council since before Christmas – represents the first deployment of British troops to the country since the near civil war in eastern Ukraine began more than a year ago. Downing Street said the deployment was not just a practical bilateral response to a request for support, but a signal to the Russians that Britain will not countenance further large scale annexations of towns in Ukraine.

The prime minister said Britain would be “the strongest pole in the tent”, and argued for tougher sanctions against Moscow if Russian-backed militias in eastern Ukraine failed to observe the provisions of a ceasefire agreement reached this month with the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko. Downing Street said some personnel would be leaving this week as part of the training mission. Initially 30 trainers will be despatched to Kiev with 25 providing advice on medical training, logistics, intelligence analysis and infantry training. A bigger programme of infantry training is expected to follow soon after taking the total number of trainers to 75. They will not be sent to the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine. Personnel involved in the training elements could spend one or two months in the country, with a command and control deployment lasting up to six months. [..]

He said there was no doubt about Russian support for the rebels. “What we are seeing is Russian-backed aggression, often these are Russian troops, they are Russian tanks, they are Russian Grad missiles. You can’t buy these things on eBay, they are coming from Russia, people shouldn’t be in any doubt about that. “We have got the intelligence, we have got the pictures and the world knows that. Sometimes people don’t want to see that but that is the fact.” He added: “If there was major further incursion by Russian-backed forces and effectively Russian forces into Ukraine, we should be clear about what that is. That is trying to dismember a democracy, a member of the United Nations, a sovereign state on the continent of Europe, and it’s not acceptable.”

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The level of dumb-f#cked-ness is deafening.

UK Military Training In Ukraine: Symbolic Move That Risks Russian Ire (Guardian)

Britain’s decision to dip its toe into the Ukraine crisis is hardly likely to have a decisive impact on the outgunned and struggling Ukrainian army, but it serves the symbolic purpose of taking a stake in the country’s defence. The 75 British trainers bound for Ukraine in the coming days will provide instruction in command procedures, tactical intelligence, battlefield first aidand logistics, and assess the national army’s infantry training needs. The overall aim, said UK defence sources, was to “improve the survivability” of Ukrainian troops who have been pummelled by heavy artillery, reportedly from weapons such as self-propelled howitzers supplied by Russia in support of the separatists, some of which appear to have been being fired from Russian soil.

The British trainers will be deployed well away from the frontlines, in western Ukraine, to eliminate the risk of British and Russian soldiers inflicting casualties on each other. But it is likely the move will be seized on in Moscow as proof of President Vladimir Putin’s claims that the Russian-backed separatists are fighting a Nato ‘foreign legion’. American advisers will be arriving in spring to train four companies of the Ukrainian National Guard at the Yavoriv training area near the Polish border. The British effort appears to be coordinated with that mission, and by getting its soldiers on the ground first, David Cameron’s coalition government will seek to counter recent criticism that it has been marginalised in the international diplomacy aimed at stopping the war.

It was a Franco-German initiative that led to the latest ceasefire agreement in Minsk between Putin, Angela Merkel and François Hollande earlier this month. That truce shows little sign of taking hold, and sanctions so far do not seem to have dissuaded Putin from intervention in eastern Ukraine, leaving western capitals struggling to come up with other methods of demonstrating their resolve to resist Russian encroachment. For now, training is seen as being of more long-term value than supplying arms to Ukrainian troops, and less directly confrontational with Moscow. “I think it’s obvious that the prime minister was seriously stung by the domestic political response to his absence from the Minsk diplomacy, and therefore feels compelled to take a strong position,” said Shashank Joshi, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. “I also think it reflects a not-unreasonable judgment that the Minsk agreement is breaking down, and that further coercive diplomacy is inevitable.

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Debt prison. The entire nation.

IMF Package for Ukraine: Some Pesky Macros (Constantin Gurdgiev)

Ukraine package of funding from the IMF and other lenders remains still largely unspecified, but it is worth recapping what we do know and what we don’t.Total package is USD40 billion. Of which, USD17.5 billion will come from the IMF and USD22.5 billion will come from the EU. The US seemed to have avoided being drawn into the financial singularity they helped (directly or not) to create. We have no idea as to the distribution of the USD22.5 billion across the individual EU states, but it is pretty safe to assume that countries like Greece won’t be too keen contributing. Cyprus probably as well. Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy – all struggling with debts of their own also need this new ‘commitment’ like a hole in the head.

Belgium might cheerfully pony up (with distinctly Belgian cheer that is genuinely overwhelming to those in Belgium). But what about the countries like the Baltics and those of the Southern EU? Does Bulgaria have spare hundreds of million floating around? Hungary clearly can’t expect much of good will from Kiev, given its tango with Moscow, so it is not exactly likely to cheer on the funding plans… Who will? Austria and Germany and France, though France is never too keen on parting with cash, unless it gets more cash in return through some other doors. In Poland, farmers are protesting about EUR100 million that the country lent to Ukraine. Wait till they get the bill for their share of the USD22.5 billion coming due.

Recall that in April 2014, IMF has already provided USD17 billion to Ukraine and has paid up USD4.5 billion to-date. In addition, Ukraine received USD2 billion in credit guarantees (not even funds) from the US, EUR1.8 billion in funding from the EU and another EUR1.6 billion in pre-April loans from the same source. Germany sent bilateral EUR500 million and Poland sent EUR100 million, with Japan lending USD300 million. Here’s a kicker. With all this ‘help’ Ukrainian debt/GDP ratio is racing beyond sustainability bounds. Under pre-February ‘deal’ scenario, IMF expected Ukrainian debt to peak at USD109 billion in 2017. Now, with the new ‘deal’ we are looking at debt (assuming no write down in a major restructuring) reaching for USD149 billion through 2018 and continuing to head North from there.

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Maybe the Russians will just do it and have the charade over with.

Kiev Cash-For-Gas Fail Could Cost EU Its Supply In 2 Days – Gazprom (RT)

Russia will completely cut Ukraine off gas supplies in two days if Kiev fails to pay for deliveries, which will create transit risks for Europe, Gazprom has said. Ukraine has not paid for March deliveries and is extracting all it can from the current paid supply, seriously risking an early termination of the advance settlement and a supply cutoff, Gazprom’s CEO Alexey Miller told journalists. The prepaid gas volumes now stand at 219 million cubic meters. “It takes about two days to get payment from Naftogaz deposited to a Gazprom account. That’s why a delivery to Ukraine of 114 million cubic meters will lead to a complete termination of Russian gas supplies as early as in two days, which creates serious risks for the transit to Europe,” Miller said.

Earlier this month, Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak estimated Ukraine’s debt to Russian energy giant Gazprom at $2.3 billion. In the end of 2014, Kiev’s massive gas debt that stood above $5 billion, forced Moscow to suspend gas deliveries to Ukraine for nearly six months. On December 9, Russia resumed its supplies under the so-called winter package deal, which expires on April 1, 2015. [..] On Monday, Ukrainian state energy company Naftogaz accused Gazprom of failing to deliver gas that Kiev had paid for in advance. Naftogaz says Russia has broken an agreement to deliver 114 million of cubic meters of natural gas to Ukraine by delivering only 47 million cubic meters.

During a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on February 20, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev expressed concern about an increase in daily applications by Ukraine for the supply of gas, TASS reports. He noted that “Ukraine’s consumers have requested a larger supply; the volume has increased by 2.5 times. This means that the prepaid volumes left are enough for no more than two to three days.”

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Kiev is not capable of saying anything true.

East Ukraine Artillery Withdrawal In Focus – As Poroshenko Buys UAE Weapons (RT)

While the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine were meeting in Paris to talk about the Eastern Ukraine peace settlement, it was revealed that the Ukrainian president has struck a deal on arms supplies from the UAE. The four ministers agreed on the need for the ceasefire to be respected, as well as on the need to extend the OSCE mission in Eastern Ukraine, reinforcing it with more funding, personnel and equipment. It’s important for Kiev troops and the rebels to start withdrawing heavy weapons right now, without waiting for the time “when not a single shot is fired,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after the meeting.

He added that his German and French counterparts thought it a positive development that the Donetsk and the Lugansk rebels had started to pull their artillery back. “The situation has significantly improved, that was acknowledged by my partners,” Lavrov said. “However, sporadic violations are being registered by the OSCE observers.” The withdrawal of heavy weaponry by Kiev troops and the rebels is part of the ceasefire deal struck in Minsk earlier in February. The Donetsk militia has announced it is complying. “Today at 9 am our units continued the pullback of heavy weaponry from the separation line,” said Eduard Basurin, spokesman for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Tass news agency reported. [..]

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has meanwhile reached an agreement on weapons supplies from the United Arab Emirates. That’s according to a Facebook post by advisor to Ukrainian Interior Minister, Anton Gerashchenko. The deal was struck with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and deputy supreme commander of the UAE Armed Forces, Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. “It’s worth emphasizing that unlike Europeans and Americans, the Arabs aren’t afraid of Putin’s threats of a third world war starting in case of arms and ammunition supplies to Ukraine,” Gerashchenko wrote. He also said he believed the UAE blamed Russia for the drop in oil prices. “So, this is going to be their little revenge,” the adviser said.

Gerashchenko said the types of weapons to be delivered and the volume of the supplies could not be disclosed. The UAE supplying weapons to Ukraine could be part of a US covert operation, former US diplomat James Jatras told RT. “This discussion in Washington about supplying weapons has been going on for some time. Usually that indicates that some kind of a covert program is already in operation and that we already are supplying some weapons directly,” he said. Jatras added that it is hard to believe that UAE would sell these weapons to Ukraine “without a green light from Washington.”

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Nobody expects anything other than a stink on Wall Street anymore. Pecunia DOES olet.

Lure of Wall Street Cash Said to Skew Credit Ratings (Bloomberg)

Michelle Choi, an analyst for Moody’s Investors Service, gave a credit rating to bonds issued by a New Jersey town in September. In October, she switched sides and started working for the town’s underwriter, Morgan Stanley. Choi is one of hundreds of employees at Moody’s and other credit-rating companies, including Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings, who’ve gone to work for Wall Street since the 2008 financial crisis exposed the conflicts at the heart of the ratings business. While there’s no evidence that Choi’s job-hunting influenced the grade she gave Evesham Township’s debt, the rising number of job changes in the industry raises a question: can credit analysts be impartial about grading bonds while looking for employment at banks that underwrite them? The ratings companies say the answer is yes.

An academic study by longtime industry observers suggests otherwise. “The fact that analysts can get employed by the issuers is a problem and the SEC should be doing something about it,” said Marcus Stanley, policy director at Americans for Financial Reform, a Washington-based coalition of 200 advocacy groups. Ratings analysts can work for issuers immediately because there’s no rule about a waiting period like there is in other industries. Accountants, in some cases, must wait one year before working for a company they audited. Choi’s new job at Morgan Stanley is “an internal risk function and is not part of the underwriting group,” said Mary Claire Delaney, a Morgan Stanley spokeswoman. Since 2008, more than 300 analysts have left the major ratings companies for jobs at banks and other debt issuers, according to U.S. SEC data.

Last year alone, more than 80 people made the switch, the most since the SEC began compiling such data in 2006. That’s out of a total of about 4,000 analysts employed by the ratings firms, according to SEC data. The migration shows that the credit graders and Wall Street banks are as close as ever. Their symbiotic relationship first came to widespread attention in the aftermath of the 2008 credit bust, when Moody’s and S&P were accused of inflating the rankings of mortgage bonds in order to win and keep business from underwriters. The U.S. Justice Department has been investigating the role the two played in the fiasco, and this month S&P agreed to pay $1.5 billion, without admitting guilt, to settle cases with state and federal authorities. The investigation into Moody’s continues.

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More threats.

Militants, Migrants And The Med: Europe’s Libya Problem (BBC)

Islamic State militants in Libya have vowed to attack Europe. Meanwhile, boatloads of migrants flee the collapsing state for European shores. Could the Mediterranean migration mask an influx of militants? Italy and Egypt have warned that Islamic State (IS) militants could hide among thousands of migrants rescued by European patrols. Both countries are troubled by the situation in Libya and have an interest in influencing it. However, neither has given any evidence to support its warnings. The migrants are mostly from Syria and sub-Saharan Africa. The idea that they pose a threat evokes a vicious logic at odds with humanitarian imperatives: refugees bring conflict, as conflict breeds refugees. What threat do the migrant boats pose? And what – if anything – can be done about it? Last week, Libyan militants allied to IS released a video that appeared to show the beheading of 21 Egyptian prisoners. The choreography echoed videos shot in Iraq and Syria.

However, instead of desert, the prisoners were positioned on a beach, against the grey Mediterranean Sea. Addressing the camera, a masked man promised attacks in Europe. “And now we are south of Rome, on the land of Islam, Libya,” he said, “sending you another message.” The video is thought to have been filmed near Sirte, a Libyan coastal town where Islamic State has gained a foothold. A few miles off that coast last week, an Italian operation rescued some 2,000 migrants from stormy waters. As one of the empty vessels that had carried the migrants was being towed away, a speedboat swept off the Libyan shore. The men aboard it were armed with assault rifles and, according to Italian officials, they wanted their boat back. The confrontation was the latest sign that some of the armed groups thriving in the Libyan chaos are also involved in human-trafficking.

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Kudos to the man. A giant.

Lester Brown: ‘Vast Dust Bowls Threaten Tens Of Millions With Hunger’ (Guardian)

Vast tracts of Africa and of China are turning into dust bowls on a scale that dwarves the one that devastated the US in the 1930s, one of the world’s pre-eminent environmental thinkers has warned. Over 50 years, the writer Lester Brown has gained a reputation for anticipating global trends. Now as Brown, 80, enters retirement, he fears the world may be on the verge of a greater hunger than he has ever seen in his professional lifetime. For the first time, he said tens of millions of poor people in countries like Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Peru could afford to eat only five days a week. Most of the world was exhausting its ground water because of overpumping. Yields were flatlining in Japan. And in northern and western China, and the Sahel region of Africa – an area already wracked by insurgency and conflict – people were running out of land to grow food.

Millions of acres of were turning into wasteland because of over-farming and over-grazing. “We are pushing against the limits of land that can be ploughed and the land available for grazing and there are two areas of the world in which we are serious trouble now,” Brown said. “One is the Sahel region of Africa, from Senegal to Somalia. There is a huge dust bowl forming now that is actually stretching right across the continent and that dust bowl is removing a lot of top soil, so eventually they will be in serious trouble,” he said. In areas of China, villagers were abandoning the countryside because the land was too depleted to raise flocks or grow food. “At some point there will be a reckoning,” he said.

“They will be abandoning so much land, both for farming and for grazing, that it will restrict their efforts to expand food production.” The result would be far worse than anything America saw in the 1930s. “Our dust bowl was serious, but it was confined and within a matter of years we had it under control … these two areas don’t have that capacity.” Brown has previously used his broad vision and his fluency with data to identify and explain major developments in the global food system and environment – as a junior analyst for the US Department of Agriculture, founder of the first US environmental thinktank, the Worldwatch Institute, and now as founder and president at the Earth Policy Institute. This latest warning – that demand for food is fast outstripping supply – may be one of his last as an institutional insider.

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Great piece by Albert the Über-Hippie. I finally get to post something by him.

The Amherst Cauldron (Albert Bates at ClubOrlov)

Wall Street Bankers watch warily from their penthouse eyries the power that populist movements like Occupy is gaining, especially in Albany but also in the New England States. Determined to thwart them, lest a revolt gather momentum against their interests, they decide to funnel millions of dollars to right wing rabble, to cause massive trouble… and to then wrest order out of the ensuing chaos (this part of their plan was always a bit sketchy, but they couldn’t think of anything better). Unfortunately, the only psychologically normal right-wing rabble they can find wouldn’t pass the physical due to weight issues and is permanently glued to giant plasma TV screens with their mouths stuffed full of cheese doodles, and so they have to go with the rejects: skinheads, neo-Nazis, gun freaks and prepper wing-nuts.

A State Department official is tasked with feeding and herding these rejects together. After a sudden and severe downturn in the stock market, the economy goes into free-fall and events spin out of control. Anarchist rallies take place throughout New England. A prominent Goldman Sachs broker’s Connecticut estate is overrun and videos posted to YouTube show pearled chandeliers and gold faucets. Throughout New England, grassroots efforts drive legislators to enact sweeping reforms. A new “uniform code” of banking reforms, designed to break finance cartels and prosecute fraud, takes hold among the states, snatching the initiative away from the bureaucratic heel-draggers at the federal level.

Then comes the great day that changes everything. It starts as a small protest march in Albany, to which the State Police predictably overreact. But then a group of snipers, of unknown provenance, kill a hundred or so people, both protesters and police among them. After that incident, a group of rioters, some secretly in the pay of Wall Street and coordinated by the US State Department, seize the Capitol in Albany. Much to everyone’s surprise, the New York National Guard defects to the rebel side. Despite impassioned pleas from the Canadian Premier, Washington does not send in troops to restore order. In the anarchy that is Albany, a slate of fresh faces wins a statewide referendum and forms a new state government.

It is quickly endorsed by other parts of the emergent “New England Federation” of states, all of which want to push back against the Wall Street bankers and their corruption by enlarging the scope of the uniform code. But the federally-funded wing-nuts also move quickly to consolidate their power, pushing through a wide-reaching agenda of oppressive laws. Some states in New England try to distance themselves, while others serve as apologists. Maine surprises everyone when it decides that it wants nothing to do with any of this and votes to secede and join Canada. Washington vows to take Maine back but it is trying to walk a narrow line with Canada, whose fossil fuel resources it views as indispensable.

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David is right of course, but not everyone can afford his lack of patience.

Kick-The-Can Has Morphed Into A Blatant Farce (David Stockman)

Kick-the-can has morphed into a blatant farce. Everywhere in the world central banks and financial officialdom are engaging in desperate, juvenile maneuvers to buy time – amounting to hardly a few weeks at a go. Never before has the debt-saturated, speculation-ridden global casino rested upon such a precarious foundation. This week, for instance, Janet Yellen will again waste two days of Congressional hearings in forked-tongue equivocations about an absolutely stupid issue. Namely, the exact date when money market interest rates will be permitted to blip upward from the zero bound by even 25 basis points. But this “lift-off” drama is flat-out surreal.

How could it possibly matter whether ZIRP will have been in place by 80 months or 83 months from its inception point way back in December 2008? There is not a single household or business on main street America which will change its behavior in the slightest during the next year regardless of whether the federal funds rate is 5 bps, 30 bps or 130 bps. The whole Kabuki dance in the Eccles Building is about hand signals to Wall Street carry traders; its a reflection of the desperate fear of our monetary politburo that having inflated for the third time this century the mother of all financial bubbles, they must now keep it going literally one meeting at a time—lest it splatter again and destroy the illusion that an egregious spree of money printing has saved the main street economy.

Likewise, it now transpires that the bruising political war of words between the Germans and the “radical” Greek government has been suspended for another few weeks. And the reason is a pathetic fear that unites the parties despite their irreconcilable substantive policy differences. Namely, that the markets will crater upon even a hint that a real solution is on the table, and that the way to keep the beast at bay is to cover their eyes, kick-the-can and hope something turns up to avert the next crisis a few weeks down the road. Still, this is getting beyond juvenile. If there were any adults in the room they would focus on quickly shaping a workable Greek default and exist—-not on perpetuating the lie that Greece can ever recover from its debt servitude to the EU superstate and IMF.

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“We will remove from …”

“Remove From Governments The Ability To Interfere With [Our] Rights” (Snowden)

If people lose their willingness to recognize that there are times in our history when legality becomes distinct from morality, we aren’t just ceding control of our rights to government, but our agency in determing our futures. How does this relate to politics? Well, I suspect that governments today are more concerned with the loss of their ability to control and regulate the behavior of their citizens than they are with their citizens’ discontent. How do we make that work for us? We can devise means, through the application and sophistication of science, to remind governments that if they will not be responsible stewards of our rights, we the people will implement systems that provide for a means of not just enforcing our rights, but removing from governments the ability to interfere with those rights.

You can see the beginnings of this dynamic today in the statements of government officials complaining about the adoption of encryption by major technology providers. The idea here isn’t to fling ourselves into anarchy and do away with government, but to remind the government that there must always be a balance of power between the governing and the governed, and that as the progress of science increasingly empowers communities and individuals, there will be more and more areas of our lives where—if government insists on behaving poorly and with a callous disregard for the citizen—we can find ways to reduce or remove their powers on a new—and permanent—basis. Our rights are not granted by governments. They are inherent to our nature. But it’s entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy.

We haven’t had to think about that much in the last few decades because quality of life has been increasing across almost all measures in a significant way, and that has led to a comfortable complacency. But here and there throughout history, we’ll occasionally come across these periods where governments think more about what they “can” do rather than what they “should” do, and what is lawful will become increasingly distinct from what is moral. In such times, we’d do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn’t defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends.

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Brilliant article by Ian Martin.

London: A Set Of Improbable Sex Toys Poking Gormlessly Into The Air (Guardian)

I wonder what in 100 years from now it will be, London. The city that privatised itself to death. Abandoned to nature, maybe, the whole place a massive, feral version of that mimsy garden bridge over the Thames currently being planned by the giggling classes. Poor London, the ancient and forgotten metropolis, crumbling slowly into an enchanted urban forest. Imagine. In 2115, all the lab-conjured animals in Regent’s Park Jurassic Zoo are free to roam, reliving their evolution. A diplodocus there, grazing in the jungled Mall. Look, a stegosaurus asleep in the ruins of Buckingham Palace. High above the forest canopy, a lone archaeopteryx soars, where once hundreds of drones glided through YouTubed firework displays.

Perhaps eminent historians will study London in the early 21st century, see how its poorer inhabitants were driven out, observe how its built environment was slowly boiled to death by privatisation. And they will wonder why people tolerated this transfer of collective wealth from taxpayers to shareholders. And they will perhaps turn their attention to Eduardo Paolozzi’s fabled mosaics at Tottenham Court Road underground station. Back in 2015, a debate has bubbled briefly, after some of these lovely, publicly owned mosaic murals were quietly dismantled as part of the station’s thorough £400m Crossrail seeing-to. I say “debate”; it was really only that polarised quackbait thing we have now: Click If You Think The Mosaics Are Great, We Should Save What’s Left Of Them v Smash Them Up They’re Ugly, Anyway Who Cares It’s Just Patterns On A Wall.

Arguments about the aesthetics of Paolozzi’s mosaics missed the point, it seemed to me, which has less to do with the merit of the art itself and more to do with what, in the long run, it turned out the art was for. Paolozzi’s legacy had stood intact for three decades. Not just as 1,000 sq m of charming, optimistic art, but as 1,000 sq m of commercial retardant. You can’t paste an ad on to a wallful of public art. You can’t fix one of those irritating micromovies over it, telling a vacuous five-second story about investments or vitamins or hair. The Paolozzi mosaics went up as decorative art, just as privatisation was about to explode like a dirty bomb all over the public realm. What survives at Tottenham Court Road station is a brave, forlorn little seawall set against a stormtide of corporate advertising.

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