#OPEC President

[larryhappiday]

Tragicomedy of Diezani Madueke and Her Rear Admiral Husband

In this article, Pastor Ngozi Hippolytus Asoya takes a critical look at the the arguments for and against name change and concludes that both parents should be conscious of the damage they are doing to the mental health of their offsprings. Divorcing a spouse is considered the end of a relationship but the case of Diezani Madueke and her former husband, Alison Madueke, a retired chief of naval…

[hezigler]

How Joe Biden 'broke OPEC' and rewrote the rules for oil trading.

[head-post]

Vladimir Putin to visit Saudi Arabia and the UAE on Wednesday

Russian President Vladimir Putin will make a one-day trip to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on the war between Israel and Hamas, the presidential administration said on Tuesday.

Putin will pay working visits to both countries on Wednesday, as well as an example in Moscow of Iran’s president this week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The talks will focus on the two countries’ relations, the military conflict between Israel and Hamas, and will also focus on the OPEC+ oil price cap.

Putin’s trip was first announced on Monday by his foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov, who did not give a date for the visit when speaking to Russian news agency Life. He said:

 “I hope that these will be very useful negotiations, which we consider extremely important.”

Read more HERE

[glamnessaaumisc]

FUN AMERICA FACTS!

The US invented the Navy. The first boat was invented by Massachusetts native John Boat, who made boats so he could bring Christopher Columbus over.

The first Pilgrim to arrive at Plymouth Rock was Scott Pilgrim, who was famous for fighting the world. This fight is commonly known as World War I.

People know about the Lincoln and the Jefferson memorials, but few know about the 42 other memorials hidden all around the United States. Can you find them all?

Oil is grown on American soil and then exported around the world so other countries can dig it up themselves. This is known as OPEC, which stands for Oil Places Everywhere, Crazy! (Huh?)

Atlanta native Joey Steele was the second President of the Soviet Union. The Russians, humiliated that they elected a capitalist pig from the West, posthumously changed his name to Joseph Stalin, but do not deny he was born in Georgia.

Hurricane, Utah is technically the only state due to a legal loophole. The only reason we recognize 50 states is because that is how it has always been.

The least populous state in America is West Dakota.

Slavery was only banned in 2015 because they discovered the 13th Amendment had a typo all that time and "slavery" was misspelled as "slovery," thus invalidating the document. You can sue the government for making you think you weren't allowed to own slaves. Try it!

Few people know about the Understates. Go there.

There is a document hidden in an abandoned steel mill in North Carolina. Find it and you will legally own Mississippi.

[misfitwashere]

We thank you, Joe

Tonight is for you

Robert Reich

Aug 19, 2024

Friends,

Tonight’s opening of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago will be an opportunity for the Democratic Party and the nation to take stock of Joe Biden’s term of office and thank him for his service.

He still has five months to go as president, of course, but the baton has been passed.

Biden’s singular achievement has been to change the economic paradigm that reigned since Reagan and return to one that dominated public life between 1933 and 1980 — and is far superior to the one that has prevailed since.

Biden’s democratic capitalism is neither socialism nor “big government.” It is, rather, a return to an era when government organized the market for the greater good.

The Great Crash of 1929 followed by the Great Depression taught the nation a crucial lesson that we forgot after Reagan’s presidency: markets are human creations. The economy that collapsed in 1929 was the consequence of allowing nearly unlimited borrowing, encouraging people to gamble on Wall Street, and permitting the Street to take huge risks with other people’s money.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration reversed this. They stopped the looting of America. They also gave Americans a modicum of economic security. During World War II, they put almost every American to work.

Subsequent Democratic and Republican administrations enlarged and extended democratic capitalism. Wall Street was regulated, as were television networks, airlines, railroads, and other common carriers. CEO pay was modest. Taxes on the highest earners financed public investments in infrastructure (such as the national highway system) and higher education.

America’s postwar industrial policy spurred innovation. The Department of Defense and its Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration developed satellite communications, container ships, and the internet. The National Institutes of Health did trailblazing basic research in biochemistry, DNA, and infectious diseases.

Public spending rose during economic downturns to encourage hiring. Antitrust enforcers broke up AT&T and other monopolies. Small businesses were protected from giant chain stores. Labor unions thrived. By the 1960s, a third of all private-sector workers were unionized. Large corporations sought to be responsive to all their stakeholders.

But then America took a giant U-turn. The OPEC oil embargo of the 1970s brought double-digit inflation followed by Fed Chair Paul Volcker’s effort to “break the back” of it by raising interest rates so high that the economy fell into deep recession.

All of which prepared the ground for Reagan’s war on democratic capitalism. From 1981 onward, a new bipartisan orthodoxy emerged that markets functioned well only if the government got out of the way.

The goal of economic policy thereby shifted from the common good to economic growth, even though Americans already well-off gained most from that growth. And the means shifted from public oversight of the market to deregulation, free trade, privatization, “trickle-down” tax cuts, and deficit reduction — all of which helped the monied interests make even more money.

The economy grew for the next 40 years, but median wages stagnated, and inequalities of income and wealth surged. In sum, after Reagan’s presidency, democratic capitalism — organized to serve public purposes — all but disappeared. It was replaced by corporate capitalism, organized to serve the monied interests.

**

Joe Biden revived democratic capitalism. He learned from the Obama administration’s mistake of spending too little to pull the economy out of the Great Recession that the pandemic required substantially greater spending, which would also give working families a cushion against adversity. So he pushed for and got the giant $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.

This was followed by a $550 billion initiative to rebuild the nation’s bridges, roads, public transit, broadband, water, and energy systems. He championed the biggest investment in clean energy sources in American history — expanding wind and solar power, electric vehicles, carbon capture and sequestration, and hydrogen and small nuclear reactors. He then led the largest public investment ever made in semiconductors, the building blocks of the next economy. Notably, these initiatives were targeted to companies that employ American workers.

Biden also embarked on altering the balance of power between capital and labor, as had FDR. Biden put trustbusters at the head of the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. And he remade the National Labor Relations Board into a strong advocate for labor unions.

Unlike his Democratic predecessors Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Biden did not reduce all trade barriers. He targeted them to industries that were crucial to America’s future — semiconductors, electric batteries, electric vehicles. Unlike Trump, Biden did not give a huge tax cut to corporations and the wealthy.

It’s also worth noting that, in contrast with every president since Reagan, Biden did not fill his White House with former Wall Street executives. Not one of his economic advisers — not even his treasury secretary — is from the Street.

The one large blot on Biden’s record is Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden should have been tougher on him — refusing to provide him offensive weapons unless Netanyahu stopped his massacre in Gaza. Yes, I know: Hamas began the bloodbath. But that is no excuse for Netanyahu’s disproportionate response, which has made Israel a pariah and endangered its future. Nor an excuse for our complicity.

***

One more thing needs to be said in praise of Joe Biden. He did something Donald Trump could never do: He put his country over ego, ambition, and pride. He bowed out with grace and dignity. He gave us Kamala Harris.

Presidents don’t want to bow out. Both Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson had to be shoved out of office. Biden was not forced out. He did nothing wrong. His problem is that he was old and losing some of the capacities that dwindle with old age.

Even among people who are not president, old age inevitably triggers denial. How many elderly people do you know who accept that they can’t do the things they used to do or think they should be able to do? How many willingly give up the keys to their car? It’s not surprising he resisted.

Yet Biden cares about America and was aware of the damage a second Trump administration could do to this nation, and to the world. Biden’s patriotism won out over any denial or wounded pride or false sense of infallibility or paranoia.

For this and much else, we thank you, Joe.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:

President Joe Biden is no longer a candidate for 2024. However, no one should be less than incredibly enthusiastic—and grateful—when it comes to his accomplishments during his term. Biden is simply the greatest progressive president of our lifetimes. Full stop. Biden pulled America from the death, despair, and economic hardships generated by Donald Trump's criminal mismanagement of the pandemic that was killing 20,000 Americans per week when he took office. He steered the nation around a recession that economists considered inevitable, generated a surge in manufacturing that is still just getting started, brought new business creation to record levels, broke records on creating jobs and reducing unemployment, and shored up the importance of unions as the heart of the middle class. 

He restored faith in America around the world, healed the rift Trump created with our allies by strengthening and expanding NATO, and kept faith with Ukraine as it struggled against an illegal and unprovoked invasion by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. He put America back into the fight against the climate crisis, oversaw record levels of new renewable energy, took serious steps to address long-festering environmental issues, steered U.S. auto manufacturing toward the future, and did it all while reaching record levels of oil production and destroying OPEC’s hold over the United States. He demonstrated compassion and took action to protect society's most vulnerable members in the face of rising Republican hate. He ushered in an era of declining crime, declining gun sales, and rising opportunity. 

[...] People are going to be driving on better roads, crossing safe bridges, and enjoying improved public facilities for years thanks to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The American Rescue Plan not only provided the vaccine that pulled the nation through the worst of the pandemic, but kept money in people’s pockets, kept families in their homes, and kept businesses in business at a time when other economies around the world were suffering. Technology jobs and factories that had been bleeding away from the United States for decades came racing back thanks to the CHIPS and Science Act, and that same bill is stimulating basic research whose benefit will be felt for decades. The Inflation Reduction Act not only helped address its namesake issue, but provided funds for electric vehicles, renewable energy, and the protection of both farmlands and wild spaces. 

This is a far from exhaustive list. Biden accomplished more in the last three and a half years than any other president has done in two terms. He did it while never sinking into treating his political opponents as any less than his fellow Americans. He never surrendered his boundless faith in American institutions and our founding principles. And he did it while attending church each Sunday before visiting the graves of his first wife and two of his children, all lost to tragedy.

Joe Biden in his one term as President did a lot of good for America, as he helped get America out of the mess as a result of COVID and got several influential bills passed.

[nostalgicamerica]

I want the Billionaires to pay more in taxes. The money they hoard does not go back into the economy. Trickle Down Economics never worked. If Hunter Biden can get called on the carpet for his taxes then Trump should too. The President doesn't have control over the price of oil. OPEC does. Supply and demand dictate prices here and if OPEC chooses to cut production, that's where the blame lies. I want a meaningful Border Bill. Republicans voted against a Bill and Trump told them not to vote yes on that Bill saying that he will fix it when he gets into office. I don't want wars either but Trump says he'll let Putin do what he wants if he wants to invade a country. The Hunter Biden trial proved that the Justice System isn't rigged.

There is a lot to unpack here.

I want the Billionaires to pay more in taxes. The money they hoard does not go back into the economy. - Then change the tax code.

Trickle Down Economics never worked. - So what

If Hunter Biden can get called on the carpet for his taxes then Trump should too. - I don't even know what this f*cking means.

The President doesn't have control over the price of oil. OPEC does. - Under the last president we were energy independent and on Jan 20, 2020 the price of gas in my neck of the woods was $1.97. It is not that now.

I want a meaningful Border Bill. Republicans voted against a Bill and Trump told them not to vote yes on that Bill saying that he will fix it when he gets into office. - Republicans want illegals here, too. Just for different reasons. And republicans suck almost as much as democrats.

I don't want wars either but Trump says he'll let Putin do what he wants if he wants to invade a country. - Why is it our business what Vladimir does anywhere? I frankly don't care if Macron wants to invade Estonia. Not my concern. And, by the way, under the last president, there were no major wars.

The Hunter Biden trial proved that the Justice System isn't rigged. - This is how to say, "I'm a fucking retard" without using the words, 'I'm,' 'retard,' 'a,' or 'fucking.' If you can say that with a straight face you truly are a fucking retard and I pray you don't breed.

[foreverlogical]

We have been seeing numerous stories in the media about how people support Donald Trump because he did such a great job with the economy. Obviously, people can believe whatever they want about the world, but it is worth reminding people what the world actually looked like when Trump left office (kicking and screaming) and Biden stepped into the White House.

Trump’s Legacy: Mass Unemployment

The economy had largely shut down in the spring of 2020 because of the pandemic. It was still very far from fully reopening at the point of the transition.

In January of 2021, the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent, up from 3.5 percent before the pandemic hit at the start of the year. A more striking figure than the unemployment rate was the employment rate, the percentage of the population that was working. This had fallen from 61.1 percent to 57.4 percent, a level that was lower than the low point of the Great Recession.

The number of people employed in January of 2021 was nearly 8 million people below what it had been before the pandemic. We see the same story if we look at the measure of jobs in the Bureau of Labor Statistics establishment survey. The number of jobs was down by more than 9.4 million from the pre-pandemic level.

We were also not on a clear path toward regaining these jobs rapidly. The economy actually lost 268,000 jobs in December of 2020. The average rate of job creation in the last three months of the Trump administration was just 163,000.

What the World Looked Like When Donald Trump Left Office

In the fourth quarter of 2020 the economy was still being shaped in a very big way by the pandemic. Most of the closures mandated at the start of the pandemic had been lifted, but most people were not conducting their lives as if the pandemic had gone away. We can see this very clearly in the consumption data.

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis and author’s calculations.

The figure above shows the falloff in consumption between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the fourth quarter of 2020 in some of the areas hardest hit by the pandemic. While overall consumption was down just 0.8 percent, there has been an enormous shift from services to goods.

Inflation-adjusted spending at restaurants was down by 21.5 percent, and much of this spending went for picking up food rather than sit-down meals. Spending at bars was down 47.7 percent. Spending at hotels and motels was down by 43.8 percent as people had hugely cut back travel. Air travel was down 52.4 percent.

Spending on football games, baseball games, and sports events was down by 68.3 percent. Spending on live concerts and other entertainment was down a bit less, at 67.4 percent. And movie going was down 92.7 percent.

The Story of Cheap Gas

Donald Trump and his supporters have often boasted about the cheap gas we had when he was in office. This is true. Gas prices did fall below $2.00 a gallon in the spring of 2020 when the economy was largely shut down, although they had risen above $2.30 a gallon by the time Trump left office. The cause of low prices was hardly a secret, demand in the U.S. and around the world had collapsed. In the fourth quarter of 2020 gas consumption was still 12.5 percent below where it had been before the pandemic.

In fact, gas prices likely would have been even lower in this period if not for Trump’s actions, which he boasted about at the time. Trump claimed to have worked a deal with Russia and OPEC to slash production and keep gas prices from falling further. The sharp cutbacks in production were a major factor in the high prices when the economy began to normalize after President Biden came into office since oil production cannot be instantly restarted.

The End of the Trump Economy Was a Sad Story

Donald Trump handed President Biden an incredibly damaged economy at the start of 2021. People can rightfully say that the problems were due to the pandemic, not Trump’s mismanagement, but the impact of the pandemic did not end on January 21. The problems associated with the pandemic were the main reason the United States, like every other wealthy country, suffered a major bout of inflation in 2021 and 2022.

It is often said that people don’t care about causes, they just care about results. This is entirely plausible, but the results in the last year of the Trump administration were truly horrible by almost any measure.

It may be the case that people are more willing to forgive Trump for the damage the pandemic did to the economy than Biden, but that is not an explanation based on the reality in people’s lives, or “lived experience” to use the fashionable term.

That would mean that for some reason people recognize and forgive Trump for the difficult circumstances he faced as a result of the pandemic, but they don’t with Biden. It would be worth asking why that could be the case.    

[mariacallous]

In an online conversation with Elon Musk on Monday,former PresidentDonald Trump said he’d swiftly reopen the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling if he’s elected again.

Trump also suggested that the refuge in northeast Alaska could become one of the world’s top oil producers, even rivaling Saudi Arabia.

But the oil potential in the 19-million-acre refuge is not at all comparable to Saudi Arabia, though an official with the U.S. Geological Survey said Tuesday the Arctic Refuge coastal plain does contain significant pools of oil.

Trump, in the conversation on X, also blasted President Joe Biden’s administration for halting oil activity in the refuge, after the Trump administration issued exploration leases there in a lease sale in 2021 — though that sale generated few bids, including zero from major oil companies.

Before that, Alaska leaders and congressional Republicans long dreamed of seeing oil development in the refuge’s coastal plain, but conservation groups and many Democratic leaders successfully fended off those efforts for decades.

In the conversation with Musk, Trump said the refuge “could be bigger than Saudi Arabia. But they went in and they terminated it.”

“And I’ll get it going very quickly,” he said. “Because not only is it big for Alaska. I mean, you talk about economic development. That for the United States, I mean, that is, they say, bigger than Saudi Arabia or the same size, and pure, really good stuff.”

However, OPEC estimates put Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves at well over 200 billion barrels of oil. It has produced well over 150 billion barrels of oil over time, OPEC figures show.

The refuge’s coastal plain, where the lease sale was held, contains an estimated fraction of that amount, or 10.4 billion barrels of “technically recoverable oil” on average, the Congressional Research Service reported this summer.

Dave Houseknecht, senior research geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey and a leading expert on the topic, said ANWR’s oil potential is nowhere near Saudi Arabia’s.

“There’s no way,” Houseknecht said in an interview on Tuesday. “Not by any imagination.”

The Arctic refuge coastal plain estimates are based on a 1998 USGS report that Houseknecht helped develop. The USGS report was based on old 1980s seismic data that has not been updated by the federal government, he said.

Though it’s no Saudi Arabia, the report estimates that the refuge contains pools of oil that are comparable to large discoveries made in recent years in Alaska, far west of the refuge, Houseknecht said.

Some pools of oil could hold between 500 million to 750 million barrels of oil, Houseknecht said.

That puts them about the size of Willow, the controversial ConocoPhillips oil development that the Biden administration approved last year, and that climate activists called a “climate bomb.”

The biggest pools in the refuge might hold about 2 billion to 4 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, Houseknecht said.

That’s about the size of a pool of oil associated with the Pikka field, which is largely located on state land, he said. The Pikka discovery hasn’t generated the same national attention as Willow.

Oil production in the refuge would nonetheless face economic hurdles, Houseknecht said.

While some of the oil accumulations there are big, they’re not all connected, he said.

“The simplest way to think about it is it’s not all one big pool (in the refuge) that can be readily developed from a single location,” he said. “So that would ding the economic aspects.”

“But it’s still economically viable because the 1002 area is not a big area. It’s 1.5 million acres,” he said, referring to the refuge’s coastal plain that’s often called the 1002 area.

Trump in 2017 took a major step toward potential drilling in the refuge.

He signed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act after Alaska’s Republican delegation managed to add a provision for at least two lease sales in the refuge, a first.

But the federal government’s first-ever lease sale in 2021 indicated that — at least at the time — the oil industry had little interest in exploring the controversial area.

It came during a time of low oil prices, with many major banks saying they would not finance new Arctic oil and gas projects. And Joe Biden, the president-elect at the time, had said he opposed drilling in the refuge, another obstacle.

The sale produced a paltry $14.4 million in bids. That was a poor start to the federal government’s estimate that the two lease sales could generate $1.8 billion in revenue.

Only two small private companies submitted bids and later relinquished their leases under the Biden administration.

That left the main bidder, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority. The state agency is suing after the Biden administration canceled its leases last year, saying the federal government did not properly conduct an environmental review before the lease sale.

Under the 2017 law, a second lease sale must be held before Dec. 22 of this year.

The Biden administration has said it will determine by the end of September how the refuge oil program will proceed.

Will the administration hold a lease sale in time?

“We will follow the law,” said Melissa Schwartz, a spokesperson with the Interior Department, in an email on Tuesday.

[zvaigzdelasas]

[SPGlobal is US-Based Finance Industry Media]

Five months after seizing power in a coup, Gabon's new government is tapping up trading houses to help it finance a $1.3 billion deal for Carlyle's oil company Assala, thwarting a bid accepted last year from France's Maurel & Prom (M&P).

While some investors say the first oil sector intervention since August's coup is doomed financially, politically driven and injurious to the OPEC member's investment climate, others say it reflects a restructuring of the industry amid an exodus of IOCs, with African governments demanding more control over their resources.

"You are looking around and saying, who do I trust? Who will really unlock that value? And if I don't have that trust, I'm going to try to do it myself," a Western oil executive familiar with the industry in Gabon told S&P Global Commodity Insights, summing up a mindset increasingly taking hold on the continent.[...]

At the end of November, however, state-owned Gabon Oil Company (GOC) announced it would use its pre-emption rights to acquire Assala itself, giving it 80 days to come up with the funds. In a New Year address, President Brice Oligui Nguema said the action would "demonstrate [Gabon's] sovereignty in the oil sector, which is at the heart of the economy."[...]

Oil provides most of the Gabonese government's revenue, but output has slipped from 365,000 b/d in 1996 to 210,000 b/d last year, according to the Platts OPEC Survey from S&P Global, due largely to underinvestment. Gabon's medium-sweet Rabi Light and Rabi Blend crude grades are popular in Europe, Israel and Asia.

Analysts say Nguema -- who ousted Ali Bongo to end the Bongo family's six-decade rule -- is hoping to boost his popularity ahead of elections in 2025 or 2026. And energy sovereignty is a potential vote-winner.[...]

[S]ome West Africa oil players said the episode reflected new realities of operating in the region's petrostates, amid growing demands for energy security. Chad last year nationalized ExxonMobil's oil assets, while Equatorial Guinea is preparing to operate the US supermajor's Zafiro field from 2025.

29 Jan 24

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

For Lula to be a climate leader, he must phase out oil

At COP28, the Brazilian president has sent mixed messages by aligning with OPEC. If he really wants to tackle the growing threat of droughts and floods, he must set a clear fossil-free, pro-nature direction for the UN climate summit he will host in Belém in 2025

The biggest-ever UN climate summit is well underway in Dubai with eighty thousand participants discussing hundreds of agenda items to avert the climate crisis, but ultimately there is only one goal that matters: reducing carbon emissions as quickly as possible by phasing out fossil fuels and eradicating deforestation.

By comparison, everything else is hot air. Delegates can talk all they want about green technology, net zero pledges, compensation payments, scientific studies and other well-intentioned initiatives, but none of that will be effective unless the world halts the build up of carbon dioxide and other planet-heating gases in the atmosphere. That existential challenge, upon which all life on Earth depends, can only be achieved by phasing out coal, oil and gas and restoring the health of the world’s climate infrastructure: the forests, oceans, wetlands and other centres of natural vitality.

If anyone was still in any doubt about the urgency of the climate crisis, this horrendously destructive year has surely made them realise we cannot wait a second longer: 2023 is already confirmed as  the hottest year on record. July was the warmest month in more than 120,000 years. This has brought devastating drought to the Amazon, floods to southern Brazil, heatwaves to the Andean mountains, fires to Canada and death and destruction across many parts of the planet. This is just the start. If emissions from fossil fuels and forests continue to increase, then temperatures will continue to rise for decades. We will look back on 2023 as one of the coolest years of our lives. Soon, it won’t just be dolphins and fish that suffer mass mortalities, it will be people. “We are terrified,” a group of 1,447 scientists said in an open letter released at Cop28. “If we are to create a liveable future, climate action must move from being something that others do to something that we all do.”

The first week of Cop28 shows the desperate need for a new perspective. The process has been captured by the very people who profit most from increasing carbon emissions. The president of this climate conference is Sultan Al Jaber, who is the CEO of the biggest oil and gas company in the United Arab Emirates. As many climate campaigners have joked, this is like putting a fox in charge of a henhouse or asking Dracula to run a bloodbank. But it is not funny when the man in charge of addressing the most difficult and important challenge in human history goes on record to deny that eradicating fossil fuels is the only way to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or that a life without oil would send humanity back into caves. These comments, which have been thoroughly rebutted by scientists, reveal the true face of the fossil fuel industry, which has been holding up progress for more than three decades.

All of which makes Brazil’s decision to align itself more closely with the world’s biggest oil cartel Opec, more disappointing. Announced at the start of the climate summit, the timing of this move could not have been more of a kick in the teeth to international efforts to tackle global heating. It is brutally pragmatic. Brazil aims to expand oil production in defiance of advice from the International Energy Agency that 1.5C is impossible if countries open new fields. The day after Cop28 finishes, Brazil will hold an auction of dozens of new oil development blocs. All of these steps will mean more drought, more suffering, more death in the years to come.

Continue reading.

[blackpilledkremlintsarina5294]

April 16, 2008

Russian President Vladimir Putin writes on the guestbook at Libyan leader Moamer Gadhafi's destroyed residence in Tripoli. The house was destroyed by a US-led air raid in 1986. Putin arrived in Libya for a 24-hour visit expected to be dominated by talks over energy contracts and arms sales. Putin was immediately taken to Bab Azizia Palace, a sprawling complex where Kadhafi usually pitches his tent when in Tripoli. Putin is visiting the country at Gadhafi's invitation -- one of the Russian leader's final formal trips before he steps down on May 7. Arms sales to Tripoli and the clearing of Soviet-era debt may also be touched on during their talks, according to Russian government sources. The visit comes as Russia is trying to coordinate policy with other gas producing states, notably Algeria, and is promoting plans for an organization of gas producers similar to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), of which Libya is a member.

[libertariantaoist]

News Roundup 12/4/2023 | The Libertarian Institute

Here is your daily roundup of today's news:

News Roundup 12/4/2023

by Kyle Anzalone

US News

Sen. Wyden Threatens to Block Vote on NSA, US Cyber Command Nominee. The Hill

Ukraine

Secretary of State Antony Blinken dismissed reports that the US was pushing Ukraine towards negotiating an end to the war with Russia during a meeting of NATO foreign ministers. At the summit, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Ukraine had a “de facto” NATO military. The Institute 

Ukraine Military Eye Proposal to Expand Conscript 100,000 New Soldiers. Boston Globe

US Official Says Washington Aims to Cut Russian Energy Exports By 50% By 2030. FT

Russia to Add 170,000 Soldiers to Armed Forces. TASS

Zelensky: Counteroffensive “Did Not Achieve the Desired Results.” Kyiv Indpendent

NATO Chief Stoltenberg: We Should Be Prepared for Bad News About Ukraine. Politico AWC

Ukrainian officials speaking to media outlets on Friday claimed that the CIA-backed Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) blew up trains on railways deep inside eastern Russia. AWC

China

Washington Will Expand AUKUS Accord to Include AI, Electronic Warfare and Quantum Technology. The Hill

China Says US War Ship Illegally Entered Chinese Waters. Yahoo

OPEC

Brazil Plans to Join OPEC+ Next Year. Yahoo

Korea

South Korea Scraps F-35 Damaged By Bird Strike. Yonhap

North Korea: Interference with Satellite Is a Declaration of War. The HillThe Institute

Israel

Washington Is Profoundly Concerned About Turkish Ties to Hamas. FT

IDF Chief Tells Blinken Military Operations in Gaza Will Take More Than a Few Weeks. AxiosAWC

Gallup Poll Finds Only 32% of Americans Support Biden’s Handling of Israeli War in Gaza. UPI

A report from +972 Magazine published on Thursday detailed how Israel is intentionally targeting civilians in Gaza as part of its war strategy even when Israeli forces know strikes will kill young children. AWC

NYT: Israel Knew About Hamas Attack a Year Before October 7. NYT

Israel Has Arrested More Than 270 Palestinians in Crackdown on Free Speech. Chicago Tribune

Tel Aviv has been relying on an AI Program dubbed the Gospel to select targets in Gaza at a rapid pace. In past operations in Gaza, the IDF ran out of targets to strike in the besieged enclave. AWC

The Financial Times reported speaking with sources who said that Israel plans to wage war on Gaza for over a year. In a little less than two months, Israel has killed at least 15,000 people, damaged 100,000 buildings, displaced 1.7 million Palestinians, and destroyed most of Gaza’s medical facilities. AWC

Israel Abuses Justice System to Target Minors and Break Up Families. LA Times

The Wall Street Journal published details about the White House’s secretive arms transfers to Israel since October 7. The US has provided Israel with 57,000 artillery shells and 15,000 bombs, including over 5,000 with 2,000-pound warheads. AWC

Doctors Without Borders Says Israel Responsible for Attack on Medical Convoy that Killed 2. DWB

Babies at Gaza Children’s Hospital Left to Die and Decompose After Israel Froced Hospital Staff to Evacuate. NBC News

Blinken Told Netanyahu the White House Will Begin Banning Violent Israeli Settlers from Entering US. Reuters 

Israel Withdraws Negotiators From Hostage Release Talks. AJ

Limited Number of Aid Trucks Reach Gaza After Israel Resumes Bombing. AJ

Sec Def Austin Says Israel Risks “Strategic Defeat” By Mass Civlian Killing in Gaza. VOA

Israeli Forces Operating Throughout Gaza: IDF. The Guardian 

Iran

The House on Thursday passed a bill that would force the president to permanently freeze $6 billion in Iranian funds that were briefly made available to Tehran as part of a prisoner swap deal. AWC

Syria

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said two of its members stationed in Syria as advisors were killed by Israeli airstrikes, The Associated Press reported Saturday, citing the IRGC’s website. AWC

US Official Says Single Rocket Fired at Base in Syria. VOAAWC

US Strike in Syria Kills Five Iraqi Fighters. MEEAWC

Yemen

Houthis Launch Missiles and Drones at US War Ship and Commerical Vessels in Red Sea. Politico AWC

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[voskhozhdeniye]

Global economic contours are shifting inexorably towards the countries of global south. The U.S. and EU markets are less important to China, relatively speaking, than are the growth markets of the developing world. And for the developing world, China is a more important partner than most others. Trade and investment flows have been trending in this direction for some time already, aided by initiatives such as the BRI as well as the recently launched Asian free trade zone - the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. The growing interlinking of Chinese capital markets with those of Saudi Arabia and the UAE are creating the new pipelines for capital flow between China and West Asia. The consolidation of a Eurasian economic sphere, including the energy-rich nations of West Asia, is creating new opportunities for value growth and flow. Trade growth is being complemented by capital circulation by way of investment flows denominated in national currencies. The ability to trade OPEC oil with national currencies is enabling these nations to evolve away from dependence on the USD. Economic decentering is one feature of the collective west’s displacement anxiety. The reality that its claimed military preponderance is more rhetoric than real brings a “hard power” edge to these anxieties.   These material factors are buttressed by deep rooted Manichaean frames in which racialised exceptionalism is ever-present. This is most pronounced in the Millenarian zealotry that underlies American exceptionalism. The idea of decentering is bad enough; it’s made all the worse as the new centres are found in the Orientals of the “near- and far east”.   Against this backdrop, we can expect the transatlantic neocons to intensify their attempts to hang on to what’s left of western colonial hegemony and American primacy. The neocon playbook has been to generate regional instability whenever and wherever it feels threatened. This “divide and conquer” strategy has played out in numerous “colour revolutions” and “coups” over the decades; in short, regime change operations aimed at installing pliable regimes.   Colour revolution risks across Eurasia are likely to intensify over the next few years. China’s President Xi was prescient last year when he warned Shanghai Cooperation Organisation members of these risks.   Additionally, preparations for proxy wars in Asia, borrowing from the Ukraine 2014-2022 playbook, are also likely to continue, as I have previously described. The Philippines is being groomed, as is Taiwan. As the US and NATO face defeat on the steppes of Ukraine, NATO has set its sights on becoming a global military force; and that means it will continue to seek ways of asserting a presence in Asia. Its attempt to secure a foothold in Japan was rebuffed by the French, but this is unlikely to be its last attempt to turn the “A” in NATO from meaning “Atlantic” to meaning “Asia”. The transatlantic neocons have been decentred, economically and geopolitically. Five centuries of colonial dominance, coupled with seven decades of American Primacy are coming to an end. This is doubtless a discomforting experience. Antonio Gramsci once observed: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” Today, the monsters Gramsci spoke of are those that torment the collective west and its neocon political elite as they confront their anxieties of being displaced by a Multipolarity that is struggling its way forward. This is why the 2020s is the “decade of living dangerously”.

[klbmsw]

Why don’t the Democrats know what Trump accomplished?

Because the media did a terrible job of reporting it.

I’m amazed at how few people realize the records he set:

-First President in history to serve a full term and increase the deficit every year he was in office.

-First President in history to maintain a debt to GDP ratio over 100% for his entire term

-Highest annual budget deficit

-Most added to the national debt in a single term

-Most new unemployment claims

-Largest single day point drop in the history of the Dow

-First President in almost a century to lose jobs in his first term.

-First major party candidate in half a century to lose the popular vote- twice!

-Longest government shutdown in history (and he did that while his own party controlled both chambers of Congress)

-First President in the history of approval ratings to maintain a net negative approval rating for his entire term

-First President to be impeached twice

-First President to have bipartisan support for his conviction after impeachment (which happened both times)

-Most indictments, guilty pleas, and criminal convictions of members of an administration

And again, that’s just a few of the records!

There are so many more things he accomplished!

-He flatlined a strong economy even before the pandemic.

-He wasted millions on golfing (with much of that going back to into his own pockets).

-He wasted millions more rebranding part of the Air Force to look like Star Trek cosplayers.

-He wasted billions more on an idiotic vanity wall that’s already falling over.

-He told tens of thousands of lies.

-He violated the Emoluments Clause and the Hatch Act more times than I can remember.

-Plus he sabotaged our operations in Afghanistan, sabotaged gas prices with an idiotic deal with OPEC to create a global oil shortage, forgot what country he bombed at least once, tweeted a classified a photo, and he committed a war crime by ordering the assassination of an Iranian general in violation of international treaties.

Then there were all of his brilliant ideas that were never realized.

-Like preventing wildfires by raking the forests, nuking hurricanes, and treating Covid by cutting open people’s lungs and wiping them down with Lysol and letting them dry in the sun.

Just think how much more he could have accomplished if those godless liberals hadn’t stopped him from suspending the Constitution and declaring himself President for life!

[theculturedmarxist]

At the Richard Nixon Foundation’s Grand Strategy Summit last month, former US national security adviser Ambassador Robert O’Brien suggested that the US might destroy Taiwan’s semiconductor factories in the event of a Chinese invasion, as reported by Army Technology. 

“If China takes Taiwan and takes those factories intact – which I don’t think we would ever allow – they have a monopoly over chips the way OPEC has a monopoly or even more than the way OPEC has a monopoly over oil,” O’Brien said. 

In addition, as reported by Bloomberg in October, the US may be planning to evacuate the island’s semiconductor engineers in the event of a Chinese invasion. The source says unnamed US officials said that accelerated preparations had been made for an action plan to evacuate such skilled personnel to the US in the worst-case scenario.

China’s satellite coverage in the Western Pacific has doubled since 2018, the Pentagon reported last week in its annual assessment of the Chinese military. That gives China the ability to detect American surface ships with an array of sensors that can guide its 2,000 land-based missiles to moving targets, including US aircraft carriers.

The Defense Department’s November 29 report “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China” reflects a grimly realistic rethinking of China’s military capacity in its home theater.

China hawk Elbridge Colby, a prominent advocate of a Western Pacific military buildup to deny China access to its adjacent seas, tweeted on November 6, “Senior flag officers are saying we’re on a trajectory to get crushed in a war with China, which would likely be the most important war since WWII, God forbid.”

The strategic takeaway is that the United States cannot win a firefight close to China’s coast, and can’t defend Taiwan whether it wants to or not. That view in the Joe Biden administration’s Department of Defense (DOD) persuaded the president to discuss “guardrails” against military confrontation in his November summit with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

Republican hawks appear to have come to the same conclusion. The United States will enact a scorched-earth policy in Taiwan, destroying its semiconductor industry, if the PRC seizes the island, former Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien told a conference at the Richard Nixon Foundation on November 10, reports army-technology.com. 

“If China takes Taiwan and takes those factories intact – which I don’t think we would ever allow – they have a monopoly over chips the way OPEC has a monopoly, or even more than the way OPEC has a monopoly over oil,” O’Brien said. 

A much-read paper by two Army War College professors published this year proposes that “the United States and Taiwan should lay plans for a targeted scorched-earth strategy that would render Taiwan not just unattractive if ever seized by force, but positively costly to maintain.”

[A bunch of technical information about Chinese satellite coverage and the development and deployment of its electronic arms and other military capabilities]

A noteworthy observation in the new Pentagon report is that China now has only 30,000 marines, compared with a US Marine Corps of about 200,000 including reserves. Only 200 Chinese marines are deployed outside the country, at China’s sole overseas base in Djibouti. China has about 14,000 special forces versus an American count of about 75,000. This isn’t consistent with the report’s claim that China wants to “project power globally.”