by Ann Garrison, August 10, 2022
Greetings. Thank you for inviting me and imagining that I might have something to say. I had the great pleasure of visiting Eritrea in April and I love it. I’m going to say more about why later.
US Threatens Ethiopia and Eritrea with “Genocide Designation”
Tag: Gas
Moscow’s New Found Independence + More
Moscow’s New Found Independence
Hudson noted, however, that “the biggest beneficiary” of Russia having been laden with sanctions is Washington. This is because Europe, which is heavily reliant on Russian energy, is faced with simultaneous energy and food crises, thus leaving it with little ability to pay attention to other matters.
“Basically, Washington doesn’t care if Russia wins the war [in Ukraine], because the US has succeeded in eliminating its competition in Europe, especially Germany.”
Related:
The agency added that the European Union’s commitment to reduce member states’ gas consumption by 15 percent from August 2022 to March 2023 will continue to increase oil demand by about 300,000 barrels per day for the next six quarters.
The Aframax vessels are optimally-sized to dock at European docks, which often cannot fit supertankers, an analyst from E.A. Gibson Shipbrokers told Bloomberg, and the current sky-high rates should remain heightened in the months ahead so long as sanctions against Russia remain.
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“The market consensus was too pessimistic about Russia’s capability to re-route volumes to other buyers,” IEA analysts said. “Russia’s exports adjusted towards other buyers without a serious disruption to its production.”
How Ukraine Lost Its Riches
If the ‘west’ really wants to deprive Russia of money it must immediately lift the sanctions and restart importing oil, gas and coal from Russia at then much lower prices.
Russia will not lack money to finance the rebuilding of Novorossiya’s great industries. Once that is done those areas are evidently able to support themselves and to guarantee a high standard of living. They will also have enough money to militarily defend themselves against anything the poor rest of Ukraine will be able to finance.
At the end of March, after negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey, there was nearly an agreement on a ceasefire and on the end of the war. Joe Biden then tasked Boris Johnson with telling Zelensky to continue the war. The ‘west’ would otherwise stop paying him. Zelensky did as he was told and stopped all negotiations with Russia.
An agreement with Russia at that time would have kept the Ukraine mostly as one state with only minor losses in the Donbas. But the decision to continue the hopeless war also ended all chances for Ukraine to keep its riches.
It will be poor and helpless while its ‘western’ neighbors will feast on it.
U.S. to send Ukraine $5.5 billion in new fiscal, military aid
U.S. to send Ukraine $5.5 billion in new fiscal, military aid
The $4.5 billion budgetary grant will fund urgent government needs including payments for pensions, social welfare and healthcare costs, bringing total U.S. fiscal aid for Ukraine to $8.5 billion since Russia’s February invasion, the U.S. Agency for International Development said.
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The $1 billion arms package announced by the Pentagon is the largest single military package under President Joe Biden’s drawdown authority, including long-range rocket munitions and armored medical transport vehicles.
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The fiscal and military aid packages – both first reported by Reuters on Monday – are drawn from a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine approved by Congress in May.
Overall, the United States has contributed more than $18 billion to Ukraine this year.
Biden and the U.S.-Israel-GCC axis: It’s not the oil, it’s the money
Joe Biden didn’t go to Arabia in July to beg for oil. That’s not the nature of the U.S.-Saudi relationship.
He didn’t go to Palestine to promote peace. The U.S.-Israeli relationship is based on endless war. And war is what Biden’s trip was about.
Biden and the U.S.-Israel-GCC axis: It’s not the oil, it’s the money
MEP Clare Daly responds after Ukraine puts her on list of people who allegedly promote Russian propaganda
Ms Daly continued: “The list contains a diverse group of people who have next to nothing in common politically, except that all are critical of NATO and Western policy on Ukraine. That’s what democracy is: having the right to express an opinion and have a different view. That Ukraine is attempting to shut that down and narrow the range of ideas expressed in our societies is a mirror image of the behaviour we rightly criticise Russia for.
“The purpose of this list and the consequences of being put on it are not specified but it certainly belies any notion of Ukraine’s government being committed democrats.”
Former Bolivian President Evo Morales Calls For a Global Campaign to Eliminate NATO
In interview with a British journalist, Morales says the U.S. uses NATO to provoke wars and sell weapons. U.S./UK-backed coup against him in 2019 was undertaken for lithium and because his government advanced an alternative economic model to the neoliberal “Washington Consensus”
Former Bolivian President Evo Morales Calls For a Global Campaign to Eliminate NATO
Shouldn’t Biden be talking directly to Putin?
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JULY 30, 2022
No sooner than Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov returned to Moscow after the SCO ministerial in Tashkent, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s pending request for a conversation was scheduled late Friday evening. This has been their first conversation since the war began in Ukraine in February.
Shouldn’t Biden be talking directly to Putin?
Manchin’s Climate Reversal Comes With Major Caveat: Expanding Oil and Gas
Conservative coal baron Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) announced on Wednesday that he has come to an agreement with Democratic leaders for a reconciliation bill with key climate, prescription drug price and tax reforms — with a major caveat to expand oil and gas exploration.
Manchin’s Climate Reversal Comes With Major Caveat: Expanding Oil and Gas
Related:
Senate Dems reach draft deal to extend ACA premiums, lower drug costs
Also included in the Inflation Reduction Act — a bid to lower drug prices. Medicare will be allowed to negotiate the prices of some 10 pharmaceutical drugs in 2026, 15 more drugs in 2027 and 2028 and 20 more in 2029. In addition to price negotiation, the bill also imposes penalizing rebates on pharmaceutical manufacturers who hike drug costs above the rate of inflation starting next year.
Lavrov is on Blinken’s list of people to call
Lavrov is on Blinken’s list of people to call
Blinken also added a second topic he’d like to discuss with Lavrov —implementation of the recent “grain deal”. Washington played no role in negotiating the deal and is presumably hoping to make a lateral entry into the matrix now. Blinken claimed he is “seeing and hearing around the world a desperate need for food, a desperate need for prices to decrease. And if we can help through our direct diplomacy encourage the Russians to make good on the commitments they’ve made, that will help people around the world, and I’m determined to do it.”
Interestingly, in a veiled reference to the US, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavuсoglu stated Wednesday on broadcaster Tv100 that there were countries who “wanted to block” the grain deal between Russia and Turkey, who want the Ukraine conflict “to prolong”, as they think the longer Moscow’s special military operation continues, “the weaker Russia will be.”
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Indeed, the war has spun out of US algorithm. As Hungarian PM Orban pointed out last week, anti-Russian sanctions “have not shaken Moscow,” but Europe has already lost four governments and is in an economic and political crisis.
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The spectre of the collapse of EU economies is rattling the Biden Administration. A CNN report yesterday was titled US officials say ‘biggest fear’ has come true as Russia cuts gas supplies to Europe. It said the Biden administration “is working furiously behind the scenes to keep European allies united” as the blowback from the sanctions against Russia hits them and the “impact on Europe could boomerang back onto the US, spiking natural gas and electricity prices.”
The report quoted an unnamed US official saying Russia’s retaliation for western sanctions has put the West in “unchartered territory.” Suffice to say, Blinken’s call underscores the desperate urgency in Washington to open a line of communication to Moscow at the political level.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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