#russian oil export

[irhabiya]

i honest to God think yemenis have every right to gut any saudi, emirati or usamerican if they so please

[just2bruce]

Dark fleets and Sanctions

We now have two worlds of international commerce, as a result of trade wars and the Ukraine-Russia conflict. As the Western world, principally the EU, UK and related countries and the US look to tighten sanctions on Russian oil exports, some shipowners are finding creative ways to get around the rules set by the West. One important escape hatch is to flag ships with a Flag State that doesn’t…

[head-post]

EU countries want assessment on potential sanctions against Russian LNG

European countries request an assessment of a possible restriction on imports of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) as part of the next package of sanctions.

EU diplomats stated that countries, such as Belgium, Germany, and France, addressed the European Commission. They asked to assess whether a ban on LNG transshipment at European ports would hit the EU economy harder than Russia’s, according to Reuters.

There’s broad support but mainly questions. This package is just stitches – we’ve never done anything like this before.

Diplomats argue that they are seeking to iron out the 14th package before Hungary takes over the EU presidency in July. Earlier, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán tried to block aid to Ukraine and restrictions on Moscow, they recalled.

That could thwart EU plans to impose sanctions, as their adoption requires unanimity. However, as the war drags on, the EU is running out of options to cut Russian revenues.

We were truly surprised at the resilience of the Russian economy but it has been hurt … Russia is turning into a kind of war economy.

Last month, the Russian government stated that it would seek ways to overcome what it considered to be illegal sanctions that the EU was imposing on LNG operations. Officials said any measures would have unpleasant consequences for European industry.

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.

[mightyflamethrower]

“Name me a single objective we’ve ever set out to accomplish that we’ve failed on. Name me one, in all of our history. Not one!”

-President Joe Biden, August 16, 2023 

Joe Biden in one of his now accustomed angry “get off my grass” moods dared the press to find just one of his policies/objectives that has not worked. Silence followed.

Perhaps it was polite to say nothing, given even the media knows almost every enacted Biden policy has failed.

Here is a summation of what he should instead apologize for.

Biden in late summer 2021 sought a 20th anniversary celebration of 9/11 and the 2001 subsequent invasion of Afghanistan. He wished to be the landmark president that yanked everyone out of Afghanistan after 20 years in country. But the result was the greatest military humiliation of the United States since the flight from Vietnam in 1975.

Consider the ripples of Biden’s disaster. U.S. deterrence was crippled worldwide. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea almost immediately began to bluster or return to their chronic harassment of U.S. and allied ships and planes. We left thousands of allied Afghans to face Taliban retribution, along with some Western contractors.

Biden abandoned a $1 billion embassy, and a $300 million remodeled Bagram airbase strategically located not far from China and Russia, and easily defensible. Perhaps $50 billion in U.S. weaponry and supplies were abandoned and now find their way into the international terrorist mart.

All our pride flags, our multimillion gender studies programs at Kabul University, and our George Floyd murals did not just come to naught, but were replaced by the Taliban’s anti-homosexual campaigns, burkas, and detestation of any trace of American popular culture.

Vladimir Putin sized up the skedaddle. He collated it with Biden’s unhinged quip that he would not get too excited if Putin just staged a “minor” invasion of Ukraine. He remembered Biden’s earlier request to Putin to modulate Russian hacking to exempt a few humanitarian American institutions. Then Russia concluded of our shaky Commander-in-Chief that he either did not care or could do nothing about another Russian invasion.

The result so far is more than 500,000 dead and wounded in the war, a Verdun-stand-off along with fortified lines, the steady depletion of our munitions and weapon stocks, and a new China/Russia/Iran/North Korean axis, with wink and nod assistance from NATO Turkey.

Biden blew up the Abraham accords, nudged Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States over to the dark side of Iran, China, and Russia. He humiliated the U.S. on the eve of the midterms by callously begging the likes of Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and Saudi Arabia to pump more oil that he had damned as unclean at home and cut back its production. In Bidenomics, instead of producing oil, the president begs autocracies to export it to us at high prices while he drains the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve for short-term political advantage.

Biden deliberately alienated Israel by openly interfering in its domestic politics. He pursued the crackpot Iran Deal while his special Iranian envoy was removed for disclosing classified information.

No one can explain why Biden ignored the Chinese balloon espionage caper, kept mum about the engineered Covid virus that escaped the Wuhan lab, said not a word about a Chinese biolab discovered in rural California, and had his envoys either bow before Chinese leaders or take their insults in silence—other than he is either cognitively challenged or leveraged by his decade-long grifting partnership with his son Hunter.

Yet another Biden’s legacy will be erasing the southern border and with it, U.S. immigration law. Over seven million aliens simply crossed into the U.S. illegally with Biden’s tacit sanction—without audits, background checks, vaccinations, and COVID testing, much less English fluency, skills, or high-school diplomas.

Biden’s only immigration accomplishment was to render the entire illegal sanctuary city movement a cruel joke. Given the flood, mostly rich urban and vacation home dwellers made it very clear that while they fully support millions swarming into poor Latino communities of southern Texas and Arizona, they do not want any illegal aliens fouling their carefully cultivated nests.

Biden is mum about the 100,000 fentanyl deaths from cartel-imported and Chinese-supplied drugs across his open border. He seems to like the idea that Mexican President Obrador periodically mouths off, ordering his vast expatriate community to vote Democratic and against Trump.

Despite all the pseudo-blue collar dissimulation about Old Joe Biden from Scranton, he has little empathy for the working classes. Indeed, he derides them as chumps and dregs, urges miners to learn coding as the world covets their coal, and studiously avoids getting anywhere near the toxic mess in East Palestine, Ohio, or so far the moonscape on Maui.

Bidenomics is a synonym for printing up to $6 billion dollars at precisely the time post-Covid consumer demand was soaring, while previously dormant supply chains were months behind rebooting production and transportation. Biden is on track to increase the national debt more than any one-term president.

In Biden’s weird logic, if he raised the price of energy, gasoline, and key food staples 20-30 percent since his inauguration without a commensurate rise in wages, and then saw the worst inflation in 40 years occasionally decline from record highs one month to the next, then he “beat inflation.”

But the reason why more than 60 percent of the nation has no confidence in Bidenomics is because it destroyed their household budgets. Gas is nearly twice what it was in January 2021. Interest rates have about tripled. Key staple foods are often twice as costly—meat, vegetables, and fruits especially.

Biden has ended through his weaponized Attorney General Merrick Garland the age-old American commitment to equal justice under the law. The FBI, DOJ, CIA, and IRS are hopelessly politically compromised. Many of their bureaucrats serve as retrieval agents for lost Biden family incriminating laptops, diaries, and guns. In sum, Biden criminalized opposing political views.

Biden has unleashed the administrative state for the first time in history to destroy the Republican primary front runner and his likely opponent. His legacy will be the corruption of U.S. jurisprudence and the obliteration of the American reputation for transparent permanent government that should be always above politics, bribery, and corruption.

If in the future, an on-the-make conservative prosecutor in West Virginia, Utah, or Mississippi wishes to make a national name, then he has ample precedent to indict a Democrat President for receiving bad legal advice, questioning the integrity of an election, or using social media to express doubt that the new non-Election-Day balloting was on the up-and-up, or supposedly overvaluing his real estate.

The Biden family’s decade-long family grifting will likely expose Joe Biden as the first president in U.S. history who fitted precisely the Constitution’s definition of impeachment and removal—given his “high crimes and misdemeanors” appear “bribery”-related. If further evidence shows he altered U.S. foreign policy in accordance with the wishes from his benefactors in Ukraine, China, or Romania, then he committed constitutionally-defined “treason” as well.

Defunding the police, and pandemics of exempted looting, shoplifting, smashing, and grabbing, and carjacking merit no administrative attention. Nor does the ongoing systematic destruction of our blue bicoastal cities, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. All that, along with the disasters in East Palestine or Maui are out of sight, out of mind from a day at the beach at Biden’s mysteriously purchased nearly 6,000 square-foot beachfront mansion.

Biden ran on Barack Obama-like 2004 rhetoric (“Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America).”

And like Obama, he used that ecumenical sophistry to gain office only to divide further the U.S. No sooner than he was elected, we began hearing from the great unifier eerie screaming harangues about “semi-fascists” and “ultra-MAGA” dangerous zealots, replete with red-and black Phantom of the Opera backdrops.

What followed the unifying rhetoric was often amnesties and exemptions for violent offenders during the 120 days of rioting, looting, killing, and attacks on police officers in summer 2020.  In contrast, his administration lied when it alleged that numerous officers had died at the hands of the January 6 rioters. In addition, the Biden administration mandated long-term incarceration of many who committed no illegal act other than acting like buffoons and “illegally parading.”

The message was exemptions for torching a federal courthouse, a police precinct, or historic church or attempting to break into the White House grounds to get a president and his family—but long prison terms for wearing cow horns, a fur vest, and trespassing peacefully like a lost fool in the Capitol.

Finally, Biden’s most glaring failure was simply being unpresidential. He snaps at reporters, and shouts at importune times. He can no longer read off a big-print teleprompter. Even before a global audience, he cannot kick his lifelong creepy habit of turkey-gobbling on children necks, blowing into their ears and hair of young girls, and squeezing women far too long and far too hard.

His frailty redefined American presidential campaigning as basement seclusion and outsourcing propaganda to the media. And his disabilities only intensified during his presidency. Biden begins his day late and quits early. He has recalibrated the presidency as a 5-hour, 3-day a week job.

If Trump was the great exaggerator, Biden is our foremost liar. Little in his biography can be fully believed. He lies about everything from his train rides to the death of his son to his relationship with Biden-family foreign collaborators, to vaccinations to the economy. Anytime Biden mentions places visited, miles flown, or rails ridden, he is likely lying.

Biden continues with impunity because the media feels that a mentally challenged fabulist is preferable to Donald Trump and so contextualizes or ignores his falsehoods. Never has a U.S. president fallen and stumbled or gotten lost on stage so frequently—or been a single small trip away from incapacity.

So, yes, Biden’s initiatives have succeeded only in the sense of becoming successfully enacted—and therefore nearly destroying the country.

[suratan-zir]

Morning in Ukraine. Russia delivers its rich culture to us every single night.

Meanwhile, new Western-made components are found in russian-north korean missiles.

Sanctions are working as intended. Russia exports its oil and uses this money to buy western tech to use in their missiles to bomb our houses :)

I hate this stupid fucking world.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Oil is on track to be the largest export item for the United States this year for the first time in history, highlighting the growing influence of U.S. oil production and exports on the global oil market. Rising U.S. crude oil production in recent years and growing exports after the ban was lifted in 2015 have made U.S. oil an increasingly important commodity on the market, especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ban and sanctions on Russian crude in the West.

U.S. oil supply offset some of the OPEC+ cuts in the first half of this year as it is set for record-high production in 2023 and 2024.

16 Oct 23

[misfitwashere]

November 12, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

NOV 13

The backdrop for today’s news is that Republicans in the Senate will vote by secret ballot tomorrow for a new Senate majority leader. That person will control the Senate calendar, deciding what measures will be taken up by the Senate for consideration and thus wielding power over Trump’s legislative plans. 

Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk, along with MAGA leaders and influencers, are backing Florida senator Rick Scott, who has signaled a willingness to do whatever Trump wants. Senators John Thune (R-SD) and John Cornyn (R-TX) are also staunch party members but are not as closely associated with the MAGA faction of the party.

MAGA control of the Senate is at stake, and Trump and his team are pushing their extremist agenda so aggressively it will be impossible for Senate Republicans to pretend they didn’t know what was at stake if they vote to empower the MAGAs. 

Today the Trump transition team floated the idea that Trump could sign an executive order creating a board of retired senior military personnel that would review high-ranking officers and recommend removing any they deemed unfit for leadership. Vivian Salama, Nancy A. Youssef, and Lara Seligman reported in the Wall Street Journal that such a board would enable Trump to purge the military of the generals whom he considers insufficiently loyal to him. Generals who refused to carry out what they considered unconstitutional orders—including using the military against U.S. civilians—infuriated Trump during his first term.

The chairman of VoteVets, retired major general Paul Eaton, warned that such a plan would turn the U.S. military into Trump loyalists. Eaton also warned military personnel what that would mean for the troops, suggesting that folks should “take a look at Stalin’s officer purges in early WWII that resulted in the Soviet, now-Russian Army, enduring incompetence and the use of its rank-and-file troops as cannon meat. The American military is the envy of the world’s militaries, given its efficiency for military effect and stunningly low casualty count. Probably a good model to keep.”

Transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, “[T]he American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.” But Trump’s claims of a mandate are wrong. As vote counts continue to come in, it appears that Trump’s margin of victory was actually quite slim. 

Trump has also vowed to eliminate the Biden administration’s policies to address climate change, promising to “drill, baby, drill” and make the U.S. energy independent by increasing production of fossil fuels. In fact, the production of oil and gas hit an all-time high during the Biden administration and the U.S. exports those products, but so long as the U.S is tied to fossil fuels, it will likely always import them because the oil it exports is a different kind than it uses. 

It is not clear that even MAGA Republicans want to kill the green energy initiatives in the Inflation Reduction Act that have brought new factories and good jobs to more Republican-dominated states than Democratic-dominated states.

Today, chair and chief executive officer of ExxonMobil Darren Woods asked the incoming administration not to change Biden’s climate policy dramatically, saying that the lack of consistency on climate change is bad for the economy. “I don’t think the challenge or the need to address global emissions is going to go away,” he said. “Anything that happens in the short term would just make the longer term that much more challenging.”

Exxon has invested heavily in the carbon capture industry. In 2023, Woods predicted that the company’s low-carbon business could generate more money than its traditional oil and gas products in as little as a decade, telling investors he expects carbon capture to be a multitrillion-dollar business.

Trump and his team, apparently led by Elon Musk, have begun to float names for different administration posts, all of whom appear to be picked to replace nonpartisan federal experts with right-wing culture warriors.

For secretary of homeland security, Trump has proposed loyalist Kristi Noem, currently governor of South Dakota. Noem had been under consideration for vice president, but fell out of the running after boasting that she had shot her dog for misbehaving. Earlier this year, Noem appeared to suggest that Texas, which became a state in 1845, was one of the original signatories to the Constitution. She has been a Trump loyalist focusing on the border.

For U.S. ambassador to Israel, Trump has picked former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian who denies Palestinian rights to the West Bank, instead supporting Israeli settlements in that land and saying that “Israel has title deed” there, calling the area by the biblical name “Judea and Samaria.”  

For secretary of defense, Trump has tapped Fox News Channel host Pete Hegseth, a combat veteran and host of the weekend edition of Fox & Friends, a show Trump reportedly enjoys. As national security expert Tom Nichols points out, the Secretary of Defense has access to the nuclear command-and-control procedure. The secretary oversees about 1.3 million active-duty troops and another 1.4 million in the National Guard and employed in Reserves and civilian positions, as well as a budget of more than $800 billion.

Hegseth lobbied Trump to intervene in the cases of service members accused of war crimes, and he cheered on Trump’s January 6, 2021, rally. He became popularly known after accidentally hitting a man with an ax on the Fox & Friends show in 2015. Then, in 2019, he regained notoriety when he volunteered that he had not washed his hands in ten years because he does not believe germs are real. Hegseth has said women do not belong in combat and has been vocal about his opposition to the equity and inclusion measures in the military that he calls “woke.”

Lolita C. Baldor and Tara Copp of the Associated Press reported that the news that Trump has tapped the inexperienced Hegseth to run the world’s largest and most powerful military “stunned the Pentagon and the broader defense world.” While some Republicans say they look forward to getting to know him better, others appear to share the Pentagon’s concerns. 

But the news that Trump wants a Fox News Channel host in one of the most important positions in the United States government got overtaken quickly by Trump’s announcement that “the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy,” an entrepreneur who challenged Trump for the presidential nomination, will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” under his administration. Their advice will, Trump announced, “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” 

Their project is nicknamed “DOGE,” an apparent reference to Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency and meme coin, known as “Dogecoin.” That cryptocurrency surged after the announcement of the new DOGE under Trump, adding to the gains of 153% since Election Day. 

By law, a president does not have the power to create a new department or agency, and participating in one would require Musk and Ramaswamy to get rid of their conflicts of interest.

Trump’s announcement said that Musk and Ramaswamy would “work together to liberate our Economy, and make the U.S. Government accountable to ‘WE THE PEOPLE.’ Their work will conclude no later than July 4, 2026—a smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I am confident they will succeed!” 

Trump appears to see himself as the founder of a new United States of America while, ironically, the real winners of the chaos he is ushering into the government will be Russia, China, and the other autocratic states eager to dismantle American democracy.

Trump’s demonstration of his plans just before Senate Republicans have to choose their leader seems an attempt to jam those who might stand against him into his camp. And yet, the Framers of the Constitution believed that the Senate would be the key guardrail to stop the rise of an autocrat who would destroy democracy and install himself as a king. They expected that the determination of senators to guard their own power would protect the nation. 

Almost two hundred and fifty years into their experiment, we’re about to find out if they were right.  

—

[theculturedmarxist]

The contradictions of China-bashing in the United States begin with how often it is flat-out untrue.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the “Chinese spy” balloon that President Joe Biden shot down with immense patriotic fanfare in February did not in fact transmit pictures or anything else to China.

White House economists have been trying to excuse persistent US inflation saying it is a global problem and inflation is worse elsewhere in the world. China’s inflation rate is 0.7% year on year.

Financial media outlets stress how China’s GDP growth rate is lower than it used to be. China now estimates that its 2023 GDP growth will be 5-5.5%. Estimates for the US GDP growth rate in 2023, meanwhile, vacillate around 1-2%.

China-bashing has intensified into denial and self-delusion – it is akin to pretending that the United States did not lose wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and more.

The BRICS coalition (China and its allies) now has a significantly larger global economic footprint (higher total GDP) than the Group of Seven (the United States and its allies).

China is outgrowing the rest of the world in research and development expenditures.

The American empire (like its foundation, American capitalism) is not the dominating global force it once was right after World War II. The empire and the economy have shrunk in size, power and influence considerably since then. And they continue to do so.

Putting that genie back into the bottle is a battle against history that the United States is not likely to win.

The Russia delusion

Denial and self-delusion about the changing world economy have led to major strategic mistakes. US leaders predicted before and shortly after February 2022, when the Ukraine war began, for example, that Russia’s economy would crash from the effects of the “greatest of all sanctions,” led by the United States. Some US leaders still believe that the crash will take place (publicly, if not privately) despite there being no such indication.

Such predictions badly miscalculated the economic strength and potential of Russia’s allies in the BRICS. Led by China and India, the BRICS nations responded to Russia’s need for buyers of its oil and gas.

The United States made its European allies cut off purchasing Russian oil and gas as part of the sanctions war against the Kremlin over Ukraine. However, US pressure tactics used on China, India, and many other nations (inside and outside BRICS) likewise to stop buying Russian exports failed. They not only purchased oil and gas from Russia but then also re-exported some of it to European nations.

World power configurations had followed the changes in the world economy at the expense of the US position.

The military delusion

War games with allies, threats from US officials, and US warships off China’s coast may delude some to imagine that these moves intimidate China. The reality is that the military disparity between China and the United States is smaller now than it has ever been in modern China’s history.

China’s military alliances are the strongest they have ever been. Intimidation that did not work from the time of the Korean War and since then will certainly not be effective now.

Former president Donald Trump’s tariff and trade wars were meang, US officials said, to persuade China to change its “authoritarian” economic system. If so, that aim was not achieved. The United States simply lacks the power to force the matter.

American polls suggest that media outlets have been successful in a) portraying China’s advances economically and technologically as a threat, and b) using that threat to lobby against regulations of US high-tech industries.

The tech delusion

Of course, business opposition to government regulation predates China’s emergence. However, encouraging hostility toward China provides convenient additional cover for all sorts of business interests.

China’s technological challenge flows from and depends on a massive educational effort based on training far more STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students than the United States does. Yet US business does not support paying taxes to fund education equivalently.

The reporting by the media on this issue rarely covers that obvious contradiction and politicians mostly avoid it as dangerous to their electoral prospects.

Scapegoating China joins with scapegoating immigrants, BIPOCs (black and Indigenous people of color), and many of the other usual targets.

The broader decline of the US empire and capitalist economic system confronts the nation with the stark question: Whose standard of living will bear the burden of the impact of this decline? The answer to that question has been crystal clear: The US government will pursue austerity policies (cut vital public services) and will allow price inflation and then rising interest rates that reduce living standards and jobs.

Coming on top of 2020’s combined economic crash and Covid-19 pandemic, the middle- and-lower-income majority have so far borne most of the cost of the United States’ decline. That has been the pattern followed by declining empires throughout human history: Those who control wealth and power are best positioned to offload the costs of decline on to the general population.

The real sufferings of that population cause vulnerability to the political agendas of demagogues. They offer scapegoats to offset popular upset, bitterness and anger.

Leading capitalists and the politicians they own welcome or tolerate scapegoating as a distraction from those leaders’ responsibilities for mass suffering. Demagogic leaders scapegoat old and new targets: immigrants, BIPOCs, women, socialists, liberals, minorities of various kinds, and foreign threats.

The scapegoating usually does little more than hurt its intended victims. Its failure to solve any real problem keeps that problem alive and available for demagogues to exploit at a later stage (at least until scapegoating’s victims resist enough to end it).

The contradictions of scapegoating include the dangerous risk that it overflows its original purposes and causes capitalism more problems than it relieves.

If anti-immigrant agitation actually slows or stops immigration (as has happened recently in the United States), domestic labor shortages may appear or worsen, which may drive up wages, and thereby hurt profits.

If racism similarly leads to disruptive civil disturbances (as has happened recently in France), profits may be depressed.

If China-bashing leads the United States and Beijing to move further against US businesses investing in and trading with China, that could prove very costly to the US economy. That this may happen now is a dangerous consequence of China-bashing.

Working together (briefly)

Because they believed it would be in the US interest, then-president Richard Nixon resumed diplomatic and other relations with Beijing during his 1972 trip to the country. Chinese chairman Mao Zedong, premier Zhou Enlai, and Nixon started a period of economic growth, trade, investment and prosperity for both China and the United States.

The success of that period prompted China to seek to continue it. That same success prompted the United States in recent years to change its attitude and policies. More accurately, that success prompted US political leaders like Trump and Biden to now perceive China as the enemy whose economic development represents a threat. They demonize the Beijing leadership accordingly.

The majority of US mega-corporations disagree. They profited mightily from their access to the Chinese labor force and the rapidly growing Chinese market since the 1980s. That was a large part of what they meant when they celebrated “neoliberal globalization.” A significant part of the US business community, however, wants continued access to China.

The fight inside the United States now pits major parts of the US business community against Biden and his equally “neoconservative” foreign-policy advisers. The outcome of that fight depends on domestic economic conditions, the presidential election campaign, and the political fallout of the Ukraine war as well the ongoing twists and turns of the China-US relations.

The outcome also depends on how the masses of Chinese and US people understand and intervene in relations between these two countries. Will they see through the contradictions of China-bashing to prevent war, seek mutual accommodation, and thereby rebuild a new version of the joint prosperity that existed before Trump and Biden?

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute, which provided it to Asia Times.

[mariacallous]

At the end of 2022, Dmitry Medvedev—Russia’s former prime minister and the current deputy chairman of its Security Council—offered his predictions for the coming year. He warned that Europeans would suffer badly from Russia’s decision to curb natural gas exports to the European Union, suggesting that gas prices would jump to $5,000 per thousand cubic meters in 2023—around 50 times their prewar average. He probably assumed that that sky-high prices would translate into a windfall for Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom, which was still supplying several European countries via pipeline, ramping up exports of liquefied natural gas, and eyeing new deals with China. Perhaps Medvedev also hoped that Europeans would beg the Kremlin to send the gas flowing again.

It turns out that Medvedev might want to polish his crystal ball: Last year, European gas prices averaged a mere one-tenth of his number. And just this month, Gazprom posted a massive $6.8 billion loss for 2023, the first since 1999.

Gazprom’s losses demonstrate the extent to which the Kremlin’s decision to turn off the gas tap to Europe in 2022 has backfired. In 2023, European Union imports of Russian gas were at their lowest level since the early 1970s, with Russian supplies making up only 8 percent of EU gas imports, down from 40 percent in 2021. This has translated into vertiginous losses for Gazprom, with the firm’s revenues from foreign sales plunging by two-thirds in 2023.

Gazprom’s woes are very likely setting off alarm bells in Moscow: With no good options for the company to revive flagging gas sales, its losses could weigh on Russia’s ability to finance the war in Ukraine. This is especially ironic given the fact that EU sanctions do not target Russian gas exports; the damage to the Kremlin and its war effort is entirely self-inflicted.

The most immediate impact of Gazprom’s losses will be on Russian government revenues, a crucial metric to gauge Moscow’s ability to sustain its war against Ukraine. Poring over Gazprom’s latest financials paints a striking picture. Excluding dividends, Gazprom transferred at least $40 billion into Russian state coffers in 2022, either to the general government budget or the National Welfare Fund (NWF), Moscow’s sovereign wealth fund.

This is no small feat. Until last year, Gazprom alone provided about 10 percent of Russian federal budget revenues through customs and excise duties as well as profit taxes. (Oil receipts usually account for an additional 30 percent of budget revenues.) This flood of money now looks like distant history. In 2023, the company’s contribution to state coffers through customs and excise duties was slashed by four-fifths, and like many money-losing firms, it is due a tax refund from the Russian treasury.

For Moscow, this is bad news on several fronts. Because of rising military expenses, the country’s fiscal balance swung into deficit when Moscow invaded Ukraine. To help plug the gap, the Kremlin ordered Gazprom to pay a $500 million monthly levy to the state until 2025. Now that the company is posting losses, it is unclear how it will be able to afford this transfer. In addition, Gazprom’s contribution to the NWF will probably have to shrink. For the Kremlin, this could not come at a worst time: The NWF’s liquid holdings have already dropped by nearly $60 billion, around half of its prewar total, as Moscow drains its rainy-day fund to finance the war. Finally, Gazprom’s woes could prompt the firm to shrink its planned investments in gas fields and pipelines—a decision that would, in turn, hit Russian GDP growth.

As if this was not enough, a closer look at Gazprom’s newly released financials suggests that the worst may be yet to come, with three telltale signs that 2024 could be even more difficult than 2023.

First, Gazprom’s accounts receivable—a measure of money due to be paid by customers—are in free fall, suggesting that the firm’s revenue inflow is drying up. Second, accounts payable shot up by around 50 percent in 2023, hinting that Gazprom is struggling to pay its own bills to various suppliers. Finally, short-term borrowing nearly doubled last year as Russian state-owned banks were enlisted to support the former gas giant.

Whereas these figures come from Gazprom’s English-language financials, the company’s latest Russian-language update yields two additional surprises—both of which show that the firm’s situation has worsened even further since the beginning of the year.

First, short-term borrowing during the first three months of 2024 roughly doubled compared to the previous quarter. If Russian state-owned banks continue to cover Gazprom’s losses, the Russian financial sector could soon find itself in trouble. This begs a tricky question: With the NWF’s reserves dwindling and Moscow’s access to international capital markets shut down, who would pay a bailout bill? Second, Gazprom’s losses were almost five times greater in the first quarter of 2024 than in the same period of 2023, hinting that the firm may post an even bigger loss this year than it did in 2023.

Looking ahead, 2025 will be an especially tough year for Gazprom. The transit deal that protects gas shipments through Ukraine via pipeline to Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia will probably expire at the end of this year, further curbing what’s left of Gazprom’s exports to Europe. A quick glance at a map makes it clear that China is now the only remaining option for Russian pipeline gas.

Yet Beijing is not that interested: Last year, it bought just 23 billion cubic meters of Russian gas, a mere fraction of the 180 billion cubic meters that Moscow used to ship to Europe. Negotiations to build the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, which would boost gas shipments to China, have stalled. And in truth, China is not a like-for-like replacement for Gazprom’s lost European consumers. Beijing pays 20 percent less for Russian gas than the remaining EU customers, and the gap is predicted to widen to 28 percent through 2027.

Without pipelines, raising exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) is the only remaining option for Moscow. However, Western policies make this easier said than done. Western export controls curb Russia’s access to the complex machinery needed to develop LNG terminals, such as equipment to chill the gas to negative160 degrees Celsius so that it can be shipped on specialized vessels. And Washington has recently imposed sanctions on a Singapore-based firm and two ships working on a Russian LNG project, signaling that it will similarly designate any entity willing to work in the sector. Finally, U.S. sanctions make it much harder for Russian firms to finance the development of new liquefaction facilities and the gas field designed to supply them. In December, Japanese firm Mitsui announced that it was pulling staff and reviewing options for its participation to Russia’s flagship Arctic LNG 2 project. As a result, the Russian operator announced last month that it was suspending operations of the project, which was originally slated to launch LNG shipments early this year.

Gazprom’s cheesy corporate slogan—“Dreams come true!”—does not ring so true anymore as Moscow’s former cash cow becomes a loss-making drain. Data from the International Energy Agency confirms the extent of the Kremlin’s miscalculation when it turned off the gas tap to Europe: The agency predicts that Russia’s share of global gas exports will fall to 15 percent by 2030—down from 30 percent before Moscow’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine.

This was probably predictable. It is hard to imagine how a gas exporter configured to serve European customers and reliant on Western technology could thrive after refusing to serve its main client—signaling to every other potential customer, including China, that it is an unreliable supplier. Corporate empires tend to rise and fall, and it looks like Gazprom will be no exception to the rule.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Behold! :: David Rowe

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 12, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

The backdrop for today’s news is that Republicans in the Senate will vote by secret ballot tomorrow for a new Senate majority leader. That person will control the Senate calendar, deciding what measures will be taken up by the Senate for consideration and thus wielding power over Trump’s legislative plans. 

Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk, along with MAGA leaders and influencers, are backing Florida senator Rick Scott, who has signaled a willingness to do whatever Trump wants. Senators John Thune (R-SD) and John Cornyn (R-TX) are also staunch party members but are not as closely associated with the MAGA faction of the party.

MAGA control of the Senate is at stake, and Trump and his team are pushing their extremist agenda so aggressively it will be impossible for Senate Republicans to pretend they didn’t know what was at stake if they vote to empower the MAGAs. 

Today the Trump transition team floated the idea that Trump could sign an executive order creating a board of retired senior military personnel that would review high-ranking officers and recommend removing any they deemed unfit for leadership. Vivian Salama, Nancy A. Youssef, and Lara Seligman reported in the Wall Street Journal that such a board would enable Trump to purge the military of the generals whom he considers insufficiently loyal to him. Generals who refused to carry out what they considered unconstitutional orders—including using the military against U.S. civilians—infuriated Trump during his first term.

The chairman of VoteVets, retired major general Paul Eaton, warned that such a plan would turn the U.S. military into Trump loyalists. Eaton also warned military personnel what that would mean for the troops, suggesting that folks should “take a look at Stalin’s officer purges in early WWII that resulted in the Soviet, now-Russian Army, enduring incompetence and the use of its rank-and-file troops as cannon meat. The American military is the envy of the world’s militaries, given its efficiency for military effect and stunningly low casualty count. Probably a good model to keep.”

Transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, “[T]he American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.” But Trump’s claims of a mandate are wrong. As vote counts continue to come in, it appears that Trump’s margin of victory was actually quite slim. 

Trump has also vowed to eliminate the Biden administration’s policies to address climate change, promising to “drill, baby, drill” and make the U.S. energy independent by increasing production of fossil fuels. In fact, the production of oil and gas hit an all-time high during the Biden administration and the U.S. exports those products, but so long as the U.S is tied to fossil fuels, it will likely always import them because the oil it exports is a different kind than it uses. 

It is not clear that even MAGA Republicans want to kill the green energy initiatives in the Inflation Reduction Act that have brought new factories and good jobs to more Republican-dominated states than Democratic-dominated states.

Today, chair and chief executive officer of ExxonMobil Darren Woods asked the incoming administration not to change Biden’s climate policy dramatically, saying that the lack of consistency on climate change is bad for the economy. “I don’t think the challenge or the need to address global emissions is going to go away,” he said. “Anything that happens in the short term would just make the longer term that much more challenging.”

Exxon has invested heavily in the carbon capture industry. In 2023, Woods predicted that the company’s low-carbon business could generate more money than its traditional oil and gas products in as little as a decade, telling investors he expects carbon capture to be a multitrillion-dollar business.

Trump and his team, apparently led by Elon Musk, have begun to float names for different administration posts, all of whom appear to be picked to replace nonpartisan federal experts with right-wing culture warriors.

For secretary of homeland security, Trump has proposed loyalist Kristi Noem, currently governor of South Dakota. Noem had been under consideration for vice president, but fell out of the running after boasting that she had shot her dog for misbehaving. Earlier this year, Noem appeared to suggest that Texas, which became a state in 1845, was one of the original signatories to the Constitution. She has been a Trump loyalist focusing on the border.

For U.S. ambassador to Israel, Trump has picked former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian who denies Palestinian rights to the West Bank, instead supporting Israeli settlements in that land and saying that “Israel has title deed” there, calling the area by the biblical name “Judea and Samaria.”  

For secretary of defense, Trump has tapped Fox News Channel host Pete Hegseth, a combat veteran and host of the weekend edition of Fox & Friends, a show Trump reportedly enjoys. As national security expert Tom Nichols points out, the Secretary of Defense has access to the nuclear command-and-control procedure. The secretary oversees about 1.3 million active-duty troops and another 1.4 million in the National Guard and employed in Reserves and civilian positions, as well as a budget of more than $800 billion.

Hegseth lobbied Trump to intervene in the cases of service members accused of war crimes, and he cheered on Trump’s January 6, 2021, rally. He became popularly known after accidentally hitting a man with an ax on the Fox & Friends show in 2015. Then, in 2019, he regained notoriety when he volunteered that he had not washed his hands in ten years because he does not believe germs are real. Hegseth has said women do not belong in combat and has been vocal about his opposition to the equity and inclusion measures in the military that he calls “woke.”

Lolita C. Baldor and Tara Copp of the Associated Press reported that the news that Trump has tapped the inexperienced Hegseth to run the world’s largest and most powerful military “stunned the Pentagon and the broader defense world.” While some Republicans say they look forward to getting to know him better, others appear to share the Pentagon’s concerns. 

But the news that Trump wants a Fox News Channel host in one of the most important positions in the United States government got overtaken quickly by Trump’s announcement that “the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy,” an entrepreneur who challenged Trump for the presidential nomination, will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” under his administration. Their advice will, Trump announced, “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” 

Their project is nicknamed “DOGE,” an apparent reference to Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency and meme coin, known as “Dogecoin.” That cryptocurrency surged after the announcement of the new DOGE under Trump, adding to the gains of 153% since Election Day. 

By law, a president does not have the power to create a new department or agency, and participating in one would require Musk and Ramaswamy to get rid of their conflicts of interest.

Trump’s announcement said that Musk and Ramaswamy would “work together to liberate our Economy, and make the U.S. Government accountable to ‘WE THE PEOPLE.’ Their work will conclude no later than July 4, 2026—a smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I am confident they will succeed!” 

Trump appears to see himself as the founder of a new United States of America while, ironically, the real winners of the chaos he is ushering into the government will be Russia, China, and the other autocratic states eager to dismantle American democracy.

Trump’s demonstration of his plans just before Senate Republicans have to choose their leader seems an attempt to jam those who might stand against him into his camp. And yet, the Framers of the Constitution believed that the Senate would be the key guardrail to stop the rise of an autocrat who would destroy democracy and install himself as a king. They expected that the determination of senators to guard their own power would protect the nation. 

Almost two hundred and fifty years into their experiment, we’re about to find out if they were right.  

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[irhabiya]

gotta say the us and uk teaming up to bomb yemen to defend israel and their precious cargo ships also didnt help their defense

don't think it affects their defense that much tbf that's business as usual for the us

[northwest-by-a-train]

When Russia went to war with Ukraine, there were dozens of takes on here about how Europe & America had "snubbed" Russia. Despite Germany shooting themselves in the foot by hooking their economy to Russian oil & gas, despite the high prestige Russian culture still enjoys among the western bourgeoisie, despite the "appease & profit" attitudes of European political, business & education leaders. Despite all that and more, you could find people saying Russia was constantly mistreated, humiliated and belittled by the western world, and was left with nothing but bad choices. I saw people on here argue that the EU should've made Russia a member in the 90s, that western powers should've done everything to preserve its social safety net, and encouraged friendship initiatives with its neighbors. The war in Ukraine was regrettable, yes, and many were against it. But ultimately, the onus of it fell on foreign powers essentially being filthy russophobes.

Now, American libs use the same logic to promote Kamala Harris. "You have to vote for us, or we'll genocide Palestine even harder. We don't want the guy who will genocide harder than this one to be in power. We want to have the one that keeps genocide at around the same level, and who could maybe be amenable to lower that level." And if you say that's irrational or disgusting or predatory blackmail, they turn around and say "Well, if you don't appease our empire, and you don't give us the appropriate level of respect and approval, and treat us as a reliable and trustworthy partner, of course this country will turn around and char the earth. Of course we will commit genocide, and ethnic cleansing, and bomb civilian buildings 24/7. Of course if we don't win on every trade deal and don't get to live better lives than the rest of the world and we don't get to racially segregate our country and export that segregation, we will cause a series of mounting international crises drawing us ever closer to nuclear war. Of course. That's obvious. Everyone is supposed to know that. Now get to appeasing us, and making us comfortable, and making us loved and beautiful. Or else you leave us with no choice."

And now the onus of this genocide is on Palestinians not being nice enough and Lebanon and Yemen not being nice enough and on the third world not being nice enough and college kids not being nice enough and on the international community not being nice enough and on Israel not being respectful enough of its western protectors and people on here will yell at you that you're not being nice enough to Kamala and that it's making things worse for everyone everywhere on earth and that the correct way for this crisis to be solved is people being nice to Kamala, which in turn will make Israel nicer and more respectful towards Kamala, which in turn will make the middle East nicer and more respectful towards Kamala, which in turn will make us all nicer and more respectful towards Kamala and solve all problems for all time.

So the only way out of this is to play nice 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂 and nothing bad will ever happen again 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂 and if everyone plays nice you'll eventually stop seeing the mangled corpses of children 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂

[head-post]

European Commission wants to cut LNG purchases from Russia after halting gas transit through Ukraine

The European Commission intends to reduce purchases of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) after Russia’s pipeline gas transit through Ukraine stops on 31 December 2024.

European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson told reporters at an EU Council meeting:

We have to discuss the extension of measures to limit gas consumption and we will discuss the consequences of stopping the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine. I am also sure that we will have a good discussion on how we can further reduce the supply [to EU countries] of Russian liquefied natural gas.

Simson also emphasised that under the European Commission’s RePowerEU plan, EU countries are obliged to “completely phase out Russian gas by 2027”. The directive to ban Russian LNG supplies is planned to be introduced in April.

Read more HERE

[learnukrainian]

23 August - Day of the National Flag of Ukraine

Day of the National/State Flag of Ukraine - День державного прапора України

What is the meaning behind the National Flag?

It is comprised of two colours - blue and yellow, which represent the clear blue sky and the golden wheat field underneath. Why so? Well, generally speaking, it is a very typical scenery for Ukraine, as Ukrainians have had a strong connection with nature and agriculture for centuries. Moreover, even nowadays (at least, prior to the full-scale russian invasion in 2022) the majority of produced goods are grains, in particular wheat, corn, and sunflower seeds/oil (for this reason some people even referred to Ukraine as 'the bread basket of Europe').

Just to give you some infographics

In 2021, Ukraine was

• one of the top 5 world wheat exporters (5th place) (The World’s Top Wheat Exporters In 2021 (rferl.org)

• one of the top 3 world corn exporters (3rd place) Corn | OEC - The Observatory of Economic Complexity

• and the biggest sunflower oil exporter in the world (1st place) quote: "Since 2012, Ukraine has been the world's leading exporter of sunflower oil with a 47% share of global sunflower oil exports in 2021." (Ukraine: Sunflower oil production (October 2022) - Ukraine | ReliefWeb)

Vocabulary:

День - den - day

Прапор - prapor - flag

Національний - natseeonalny - national (masculine form of the adjective)

Державний - derzhavny - state (masculine form of the adjective)

Україна - Oo-kra-yee-na - Ukraine

Серпень - serpen - August