Ukraine halts Russian oil transit to EU – Transneft
RT | November 23, 2022
Kiev has stopped the operation of a section of the southern branch of the ‘Druzhba’ (Friendship) oil pipeline that transits Ukraine, RIA Novosti reported on Wednesday, citing Russian oil-exporting company Transneft.
According to the report, oil transmission has been suspended for an indefinite period.
“In Ukraine, the section [of Druzhba] has been stopped, from Brod to the Carpathians,” said Igor Demin, an adviser to the president of Transneft.
He added that deliveries via the Belarusian section of the pipeline were continuing.
Last week, Kiev stopped oil flows to Hungary through the Druzhba pipeline, explaining the suspension was linked to a Russian air strike that reportedly had hit a transformer station near the border with Belarus. It stated that the service was suspended due to a “drop in voltage.”
Kiev later announced plans to raise transit fees for Russian oil running through the pipeline to the EU, due to higher costs resulting from Russian air and missile attacks targeting the country’s energy infrastructure.
Ukrainian oil transit fees have already been raised twice this year. The last hike, in April, reportedly brought the total increase on an annualized basis to 51%.
Delay at Finland’s New Nuclear Reactor Imperils Country’s Power Supply
Samizdat – 23.11.2022
Finland’s new Olkiluoto 3 reactor will remain offline longer than expected, and full-scale electricity production will not commence before 2023.
Its owner Teollisuuden Voima announced that an investigation into damage at the already much-delayed reactor’s feedwater pumps will continue for a number of weeks, with a knock-on effect on the schedule of regular electricity production. Due to the ongoing investigation, the exact timeframe for the launch of the reactor remains unknown, but was estimated as the end of January 2022 at the earliest.
During the ongoing investigation, maintenance work will continue at the plant unit’s turbine.
Further delays to regular electricity production at Olkiluoto 3 will have a significant impact on Finland’s electricity self-sufficiency. Since the reactor won’t be operational by winter, energy prices, already elevated as a result of Europe’s energy pinch, are likely to rise even further.
The damage to the reactor is thus a major setback for the cold Nordic nation, whose authorities had already warned of an elevated risk of shortages and even blackouts unless the reactor provides a reliable supply of electricity.
The latest delay increases uncertainty over the country’s power supply this winter, especially in January, national grid operator Fingrid stressed. Earlier this autumn, it predicted a peak electricity consumption in Finland of 14,400 megawatts for this winter, whereas domestic production, even with Olkiluoto 3 included, would only cover 12,900 megawatts.
Olkiluoto 3, a 1,900-megawatt European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR), was granted a construction permit in 2005 and was originally scheduled for completion in 2009. The order made Finland the first Western European nation in 15 years to order a new nuclear reactor, following a protracted nuclear scare driven by the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986.
However, the project has faced a long stream of delays, technical issues, cost overruns and legal disputes. With a breathtaking price tag of $11 billion already in 2018. Olkiluoto-3 has long been touted as the “flagship of European nuclear energy,” but has taken more than 15 years to complete, cost the Nordic nation dearly and ranks among the world’s most expensive buildings.
Europe’s energy crisis has been aggravated by Brussels’ ill-conceived energy sanctions against Moscow over its special operation in Ukraine. The EU in general has been heavily reliant on Russian fossil fuels, with Moscow supplying some 40 percent of its natural gas and some 27 percent of its imported oil before the conflict.
Nevertheless, despite this substantial level of dependence, the EU issued a blank ‘no’ to Russian fossil fuels as part of its massive sanctions campaign in a bid to “punish” Russia. However, as trouble with finding alternative sources arose, numerous EU nations are now resorting to austerity measures to conserve energy, with authorities issuing grave warnings about rolling blackouts.
Xi to visit Saudi Arabia as Prince Salman seeks BRICS membership
By Ahmed Adel | November 23, 2022
The upcoming visit of Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Saudi Arabia, scheduled for December and prepared for a year, shows that the Gulf kingdom has sidelined American interests for its own and taken the first step towards de-dollarization. According to Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, strengthening trade ties and regional security will be prioritised during Xi’s upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia.
Jubeir emphasized that meetings between Chinese and Saudi leaders are “natural” and recalled that China is Saudi Arabia’s largest trade partner. Sources familiar with the organisation of Xi’s visit confirmed that it has been prepared for a year and that the Chinese leader will arrive in the second half of December to attend the China-Gulf Summit.
Xi’s visit to Saudi Arabia is a continuation of a wider process stimulated by BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), in which China and Russia are key countries. BRICS and the SCO are increasingly attractive organisations for many countries as a framework in which development and cooperation is possible without blackmail and pressure.
Saudi Arabia has fundamentally changed its policy from one of complete submission to the interests of the US to now putting its own national interests first. This does not mean that the Saudis will break relations with the US, but it is a huge difference when the country puts its own interests first compared to when it is subordinated to the interests of Washington.
Riyadh pursues much better and closer cooperation with China as it is a continuation of the process in becoming an independent state and not subservient to Washington. In these processes, by the nature of things, since they are complementary economies, avoiding the dollar as a means of payment is a completely logical plan as it removes the risk of great damage if American sanctions are ever imposed.
On the one hand, BRICS, independently of Saudi Arabia, is operationally working to create a concept that would reduce the importance and influence of the dollar in the world economy. More precisely, such an achievement would reduce the influence of the dollar, which is effectively the basis of US foreign policy.
It is also for this reason that Saudi Arabia is positioning itself as a potential new member of the BRICS bloc.
Within that, a whole series of countries in bilateral cooperation, which is now expected from China and Saudi Arabia, agree on payments in domestic currencies as the first step in the process of de-dollarizing the world economy. It is also for this reason why the visit of Xi to Saudi Arabia follows from everything that has already happened and should not be considered a surprise.
However, it is too early to say whether China will overtake the US as Saudi Arabia’s main partner, even despite the fiasco that was President Joe Biden’s visit to the Gulf kingdom. This is especially the case because Saudi Arabia has based its defence on American weapons and has immense financial ties with the US.
There will definitely be more significant Sino-Saudi cooperation and the Arab kingdom itself will attempt to detach from the dollar. However, the truth is that de-dollarization is a process that will take many years. None-the-less, the Saudi reduction in cooperation with the US will inevitably occur.
It is recalled that South African President Cyril Ramposa said during his visit to Riyadh in October that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman expressed Saudi Arabia’s desire to join BRICS. Discussions on the expansion of the BRICS bloc are scheduled to take place in South Africa when it takes over the presidency in 2023.
Saudi Arabia’s separation from the West has only accelerated under the Biden presidency. Biden described Saudi Arabia as a pariah state due to Prince Salman’s alleged involvement in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist. However, the US President changed his outlook and rhetoric towards the Arab country after coming to power.
As BRICS represents more than 40 percent of the global population and nearly a quarter of the world’s GDP, with the group set to have bolstered global influence if it expands, Saudi Arabia is interested in gaining further independence by joining the bloc. Joining the bloc also means closer relations with China, something that Saudi Arabia is now pursuing despite Western criticism.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
U.S. Lawyers Claim Ivermectin was never prohibited for treating COVID-19. FDA merely recommended not using it.
No legal prohibition authorized or justified hospitals to withhold the drug from dying patients. Let the lawsuits begin.
FDA tweet against using ivermectin. Not a prohibition, merely a recommendation.
By Dr. McCullough & John Leake · Courageous Discourse · November 22, 2022
The Epoch Times recently reported an astonishing statement by a U.S. government lawyer in a federal court in Texas, where the FDA is being sued by Dr. Paul Marik of Virginia, Dr. Mary Bowden of Texas, and Dr. Robert Apter of Arizona. The three plaintiffs claim the FDA illegally prohibited them from prescribing the drug to their patients. At a November 1 hearing, U.S. lawyer Isaac Belfer argued for the defendant:
The cited statements were not directives. They were not mandatory. They were recommendations. They said what parties should do. They said, for example, why you should not take ivermectin to treat COVID-19. They did not say you may not do it, you must not do it. They did not say it’s prohibited or it’s unlawful. They also did not say that doctors may not prescribe ivermectin.”
If Belfer’s assertion is true, it raises a very urgent question: On what legal grounds did hospitals all over the United States refuse to administer ivermectin to severely ill COVID-19 patients, even when patients and their family members begged for the drug to be administered?
If ivermectin was not prohibited by the FDA or any other U.S. medical authority for treating COVID-19, why did Dr. Paul Marik’s hospital prohibit him from administering the drug to his dying patients? Why was Dr. Mary Bowden reported to the Texas Medical Board for disciplinary action when she prescribed it? Why did many pharmacists fear losing their licenses if they filled ivermectin prescriptions for treating COVID-19?
In our book, The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, Dr. McCullough and I document numerous instances of hospitals flatly refusing to grant the wishes of dying patients and their family members for ivermectin.
All these patients asked for was to be allowed to try the drug (FDA-approved for River Blindness, Elephantiasis, and Scabies) for COVID-19. The patients and their kin gladly indemnified the hospitals and arranged to have their independent primary care doctors deliver and administer the drug. Nevertheless:
- Hospital administrators absolutely refused to grant this wish.
- Hospital attorneys fought tooth and nail against using ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients, doing everything in their power to challenge patient lawsuits and appeal court orders to administer the drug.
- Even when hospital doctors acknowledged that the patients were dying, they insisted it was better to let the disease take its natural course rather than allow patients to try ivermectin.
- Even when patients’ families succeeded in getting a court orders to administer the drug, many hospitals still refused, even at the risk of being held in contempt of court.
Several readers have told us that our chapters covering this shameful scandal— Chapters 38: Begging for the Wonder Drug and Chapter 40: Graduating into Eternity—are horrifying beyond belief.
Now we hear U.S. government lawyers arguing in court that the FDA never prohibited using ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients, but merely recommended not using it. This indicates that hospitals had no legal grounds for denying sick patients a drug that could have helped them. How is withholding medicine from a sick man any different from withholding a life ring from a man who has fallen overboard in high seas?
For families who watched their loved ones slip away after being denied the right to try ivermectin, U.S. attorney Isaac Belfer’s statement may be interpreted as declaring open season for lawsuits against hospital administrators and doctors.
Israel pushes US on military action against Iran
RT | November 23, 2022
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi has called on the United States to develop new “operational plans” to take on the Iranian military, urging top US defense and intelligence officials to “accelerate” joint efforts to counter the Islamic Republic.
Kochavi held a series of meetings with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and CIA Director William Burns, the IDF said in a press release on Tuesday, noting that he discussed the “Iranian threat” with each of the officials he spoke with since landing in the US on Sunday morning.
“We are at a critical point in time which requires the acceleration of the operational plans and the cooperation against Iran and its proxies in the region,” Kochavi said after the meetings. “On the one hand, Iran is under many economic, military and internal pressures, and on the other hand continues to advance the nuclear project.”
During his sit-down with General Milley, the two officials discussed “strengthening cooperation between the [US and Israeli] armies against threats in the region, chief among them the Iranian nuclear threat,” according to the IDF. Sullivan, too, said the White House would carry out its pledge to “prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”
While Israel has offered little evidence supporting the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, officials have claimed for decades that Tehran is on the cusp of developing its own bomb. The Islamic Republic has denied any plans to build nuclear weapons – with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issuing a fatwa (religious decree) against all weapons of mass destruction in 2003 – and passed numerous inspections by the UN’s nuclear watchdog under a major deal signed with world powers in 2015.
However, after Washington unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal under President Donald Trump, Tehran has steadily scaled back its compliance, boosting its enrichment of uranium and building new advanced centrifuges while demanding an end to US sanctions. Iran has nonetheless insisted that such steps do not indicate it is seeking a nuclear weapon, despite continued allegations from the United States and Israel.
Should Individualism be Medicated Away to be Replaced by “Welfarism?”
By Igor Chudov | November 21, 2022
Medical ethics is a large field of study. The Covid pandemic certainly brought many medical ethics issues to the forefront and produced rather amazing “ethicist” gems, such as this:
Be aware that “bioethics” has moved on to proposals that might seem crazy to you but are considered seriously and published in Bill Gates-funded publications and scientific journals. Important studies on this subject are conducted under the auspices of the World Economic Forum.
Forcibly giving people collectivism-promoting “Morality Pills” (archive link) is a popular suggestion among bioethicists. It was published in Bill Gates-funded The Conversation and is discussed widely in scientific literature. (The Conversation received 7 million dollars from Bill Gates but pretends to be an independent journalism publication)
What are these morality pills? You might think that morality, to them, means being a good husband or wife, an honest businessperson, fulfilling promises, and so on. Why not enhance that? What’s the problem?
The problem is that this is NOT how they define morality! To them, morality is a collectivist mindset, lack of critical thinking, and compliance. The article explains that some people lack “moral qualities” and refuse to wear masks or take Covid vaccines, or even deny climate change:
My research in bioethics focuses on questions like how to induce those who are noncooperative to get on board with doing what’s best for the public good. To me, it seems the problem of coronavirus defectors could be solved by moral enhancement: like receiving a vaccine to beef up your immune system, people could take a substance to boost their cooperative, pro-social behavior. Could a psychoactive pill be the solution to the pandemic?
They propose giving people pills to enhance “morality” and explain the climate change angle relevance:
But a strategy like this one could be a way out of this pandemic, a future outbreak or the suffering associated with climate change. That’s why we should be thinking of it now.
The proposed solution to give people morality pills is more than idle thinking. Several candidate psychoactive substances are identified and considered seriously: psilocybin and oxytocin, for example.
The obvious objection to all this morality pill talk is that skeptics would not take them! I would not take such a pill to enhance my collectivist mindset. At the risk of being presumptuous, I would say that you, my dear subscriber, would refuse them also. Right?
The ethicists have a solution: administer collectivist morality pills by force or surreptitiously.
As some have argued, a solution would be to make moral enhancement compulsory or administer it secretly, perhaps via the water supply. These actions require weighing other values. Does the good of covertly dosing the public with a drug that would change people’s behavior outweigh individuals’ autonomy to choose whether to participate? Does the good associated with wearing a mask outweigh an individual’s autonomy to not wear one?
Serious articles discuss how to do it:
A covert psychoactive substance administration to the masses must not be discussed publicly before its implementation, right? So the ethicists desire to bypass any democratic process or prior public discussion and scrutiny. These ethicists refuse to see an ethical problem with that!
World Economic Forum Sponsored Research into “Collectivist Bioenhancement”
Some of you, my dear readers, might think this is so batshit crazy that it is simply useless musings of fringe philosophers, not worth discussing.
Quite to the contrary, the famous and influential organization called the World Economic Forum sponsors such bioenhancement research.
Linda Fried, mentioned above, is the aunt of Sam Bankman-Fried. Sam stole billions of dollars from crypto-investors (in my opinion) and used that money to become the second largest Democratic party donor. So, Linda Fried is not exactly a nobody languishing in obscurity. By the way, a friend of this blog El Gato wrote a great post discussing Sam — check it out.
Linda explains in her article that her goal is “collective welfarism,” and she is part of the group convened by the World Economic Forum:
A stronger ethical approach, though, would be to abide by the principle, termed ‘collective easy rescue’, whereby small individual losses are justified in the name of collective well-being. Mass vaccination is a well-documented example of collective easy rescue.
Human “enhancement” to force mass vaccination? Sounds familiar?
Those “medical ethicists,” “world changers,” and “disinformation fighters” are so self-absorbed and self-righteous that they think their way of thinking is the only right way. They consider any deviation from their mindset to be antisocial, divisive, and subversive.
To them, freedom is dangerous. Truth is misinformation. Pursuing personal happiness and liberty instead of welfarism is selfish and immoral and needs to be dealt with through covert bioenhancement pills. Their opponents need to be silenced as “disinformation agents” or influenced via secretly applied substances to enhance compliance and lower critical thinking.
My post, discussing outlandish agenda developed under the auspices of the World Economic Forum, may sound like the perfect conspiracy theory. If someone approached me and told me that the WEF is sponsoring “bioenhancement research,” whose goal is to develop substances to impose “collective welfarism” and achieve compliance with mass vaccination, I would not take that person seriously!
Such is the problem with describing many WEF proposals. Some of their ideas are so crazy that they are difficult to accept as genuine when retold. Official papers, proposals, peer-reviewed studies, and agenda articles describe plans that are extremely strange to the uninitiated — and yet are pursued seriously. Other authors, such as Tessa Lena, also mentioned how difficult it is to describe these tendencies.
I have explained my difficulties with describing crazy but real proposals by world-leading unelected organizations such as the WEF.
I Do Not Spread Conspiracy Theories – I Report on Actual News
Their proposals, when understood properly, are highly disturbing and seem unreal — except that they are very serious.
The difficulty with their plans is that regular people cannot believe they are real. That happens for a good reason: nobody would expect such insanity to be seriously promulgated by important men and women. Even I have difficulty reconciling the plain text and the simple meaning of their anti-human theories with my idea of what our leaders should act like.
And yet, here we are — the welfarist pills are promulgated under the auspices of the WEF by no one but Linda Fried, the aunt of the second-largest Democrat donor and crypto thief (in my opinion) Sam Bankman-Fried.
In the future, you may need to be careful with your drinking water or the compulsory mystery “health enhancement pill” you must take for an unexplained reason!
Would you take such a welfarism bioenhancement pill?
European parliament severs ties with Iran over sanctions against EU
The Cradle | November 22, 2022
The EU parliament announced on 21 November its decision to sever ties with Iran. The announcement comes in response to the Islamic Republic’s recent decision to place sanctions on the European governing body, which has been slapping its own sanctions against Tehran throughout the ongoing unrest in the country.
“We will not look away from those who look to us from the streets of Iran. Iran must stop its oppression of legitimate protests. In response to Iran’s [sanctions] on members of the European Parliament, [it] will no longer engage with Iranian authorities,” President of the EU parliament, Roberta Metsola, said in a statement via Twitter with the popular Iranian protest slogan “Women, life, freedom” written in Persian at the end of the tweet.
At the opening of its November plenary session on the same day, Metsola said that there would be “no direct contact” between the parliament and Iranian officials “until further notice.”
As Iran continues to face large waves of violent riots – which have resulted in the deaths of several members of the security forces and the destruction of public property – western media has framed the response by authorities as nothing more than a brutal crackdown on peaceful protestors.
In addition to the propagation of misinformation by mainstream, western European media, the EU has repeatedly placed several rounds of sanctions against Iran.
Accusing European states of interventionist policies and “supporting terrorism and violence” on Iranian soil, Tehran on 26 October announced the implementation of its own sanctions against several individuals and institutions associated with the EU.
Earlier that month, the Islamic Republic had sent several letters to European diplomats warning them that the aggressive EU sanction policy against Tehran could result in a “rupture” of relations between them.
As European, Saudi, British, and US media outlets lead the misinformation campaign against Tehran, violent attacks against the country’s security personnel are on the rise, and internationally-backed armed separatists continue to push for the illegal overthrow of the Islamic Republic.
Iran retaliates against UN nuclear resolution – media
RT | November 22, 2022
Tehran has for the first time started enriching uranium to 60% fissile purity at the Fordow facility, Iranian media reported on Tuesday. Such a move would be seen as a response to a critical resolution adopted by the UN’s nuclear watchdog last week.
Iran is already enriching uranium at Natanz, its other major production site, to below weapons-grade 90% enrichment, but well above the 3.67% limit specified in the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, or JCPOA. The US abandoned the deal with Tehran during the administration of Donald Trump, leading to its erosion and effective collapse.
Other reported moves by Iran include upgrading cascade lines with more advanced gas centrifuges to boost production capacity at Fordow, as well as firing up additional chains at Natanz.
Tehran’s action was described as retaliation for a resolution passed last Thursday by the Board of Directors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The document, which was drafted by the US, Britain, France and Germany, decried “insufficient substantive cooperation by Iran” on the issue of uranium traces found in 2019 by inspectors at three undeclared sites. It demanded “credible explanations” and full cooperation from Tehran.
The four sponsoring nations are also signatories of the JCPOA. China and Russia, two other participants of the landmark deal, reportedly voted against the draft document during the closed-door session last week.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry rejected the resolution, calling it a form of political pressure by the US and its allies. Spokesman Nasser Kanaani said on Monday that the country had taken “initial measures” in response to it on Sunday night.
“The implementation of these measures was realized today in the presence of IAEA inspectors in the Natanz and Fordo enrichment complexes,” the diplomat added, without specifying what had happened.
The JCPOA was meant to exchange an Iranian commitment to limit its nuclear program for relief of economic sanctions imposed on the country. The goal was to prolong the time Tehran would need to create a nuclear weapon, an ambition that Iran officially denies fostering in the first place.
The Trump administration unilaterally pulled out of the Iran Nuclear Deal as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran. President Joe Biden has been negotiating a possible revival of the JCPOA, but no breakthrough has been achieved so far.
IAEA primary instrument of pre-aggression, sets scene for US, Israeli unilateral actions: Analyst
Press TV – November 22, 2022
works before a news conference attended by IAEA Director Rafael Grossi during an IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, September 13, 2021. (Photo by Reuters)
A political analyst has described the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as a primary “instrument of pre-aggression” which paves the way for Israel and the US to take unilateral actions against Iran.
“The IAEA has become a primary instrument of pre-aggression. In other words, they create a scenario, they make the false charges, they do not prove the charges, and then they use the false unproven charges, to stoke the fires of aggression against you,” John Bosnitch told Press TV on Monday while commenting on recent tensions between Iran and the IAEA following a resolution passed by the UN nuclear body’s Board of Governors.
The politically motivated draft resolution, ratified on Thursday, has criticized Iran for what it called a lack of cooperation with the agency. It was put forward by the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, in continuation of their political pressures on Iran.
Bosnitch added that the “trend” that has been going on for years against Iran is rooted in the Israeli lobby and its influence on the US government and American personnel inside the IAEA.
“It looks like yet another provocation to create false grounds for aggressive action against Iran,” he said.
The political analyst further pointed to the “invented” excuses and provocations against Iran, saying that the US uses the IAEA as a tool “to make it a little bit more believable to those naive people around the world who still hold trust in such institutions.”
Once the fires of aggression are lit, Bosnitch said, Israel and the US can act unilaterally and illegally based on the so-called reports by the IAEA.
“And that is the formula for aggression. And I have to say that Iran, as I’ve said, through all discussions on this topic, must be ready for the worst,” he cautioned.
‘IAEA a spying organization’
Bosnitch also called the IAEA a “spying organization” that only spies on enemies of the United States and Israel.
In order to ease concerns about its nuclear program, Iran has agreed to install surveillance cameras in its nuclear facilities and has provided the IAEA with physical monitoring and satellite images. According to Bosnitch, however, “nothing works because the lies perpetrated by the lying mainstream media are bigger to the common person’s eye than the truth.”
Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Mohammad Eslami said on Sunday that the Islamic Republic will give a “firm response” to the IAEA Board of Governors’ anti-Iran resolution.
“The nuclear programs of the Islamic Republic of Iran are moving forward according to the strategic action plan of the parliament, and the issuance of multiple resolutions against Iran will not cause any disruption in the progress of these programs,” the AEOI chief added.
According to a report published on Tuesday, Iran has started enriching uranium to the purity level of 60% at its Fordow nuclear facility. The country has also installed two new IR2M and IR4 cascades at the Natanz and Fordow facilities.
The report added that Iran has fitted and launched new centrifuges at two empty halls in Fordow and Natanz nuclear sites and replaced IR1 centrifuges at Fordow with IR6 which will increase enrichment at the site by 10 times.
Tehran informed the IAEA of that decision via a letter. It described the move as a strong message to the recent anti-Iran resolution passed by the IAEA’s Board of Governors.
‘US provoking protests in Iran’
Elsewhere in his remarks, Bosnitch mentioned the recent violent riots across Iran, warning that US agents are working inside Iran “right now” to provoke protests.
“Whatever grievance there might have been, it has been amplified by the US State Department and by the CIA inside your country already.”
He added that the US is not only attacking Iran on the IAEA side but also organizing protest expansion inside the country.
“They definitely try new tactics, and the only protection against American militarism and unilateralism is to tie up with other countries that are threatened by the same thing,” he concluded.
Riots have broken out in Iran since 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini died in hospital on September 16, three days after she collapsed in a police station. An investigation has attributed Amini’s death to her medical condition, dismissing allegations that she was beaten by police forces.
In the last two months, using the protests as a cover, rioters, and thugs — many of whom were later found to have links with foreign parties — went on a rampage, engaging in savage attacks on security officers, vandalism, desecration of sanctities, and false-flag killings of civilians to incriminate the Iranian police.
A Very Different Global State of Affairs Takes Hold
By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 21, 2022
How the world appears all depends on whether your gaze is firmly focussed on the hub of the wheel, or alternatively, were you to watch the wheel’s rotation around the hub – and the bearing it follows – you would see the world differently.
Looked at from a DC-centric perspective, all is still: Nothing (as it were), is moving geo-politically. Was there an election in the U.S.? Well, certainly there is no longer an ‘Election Day’ event as the new mechanics of ballots vs in-person voting, commencing up to 50 days earlier, and ploughing on, weeks after, has become far removed from the old notion of having ‘an election’, and an aggregate macro outcome.
From this ‘centric’ viewpoint, the Midterms change nothing – stasis.
So many of Biden’s policies were already in stone anyway – and beyond the ability of any Congress to change in the short run.
New legislation, if there were any, could be vetoed. And should the election ‘month’ end with the House controlled by Republicans and the Senate controlled by Democrats, there might not be any legislation at all, because of partisanship and an inability to compromise.
More to the point, Biden anyway can rule for the next 2 years through Executive Order and bureaucratic inertia – and not need the Congress at all. In other words, the composition of Congress may not matter that much.
But now, turn your gaze to the rotation around the ‘hub’, and what do you see? The rim spinning wildly. It seizes more and more traction on the ground and has clear directionality.
The biggest pivot around the hub? Well probably, President Xi of China travelling to Riyadh to meet Mohammad bin Salman (MbS). The wheel rim here digs deep for a firm grip on bedrock, as Saudi Arabia makes its pivot toward the BRICS. Xi likely is going to Riyadh to seal the details of Saudi’s accession to the BRICS and the terms of China’s future ‘Oil Accord’ with Saudi Arabia. And that may be the beginning to the end to the petrodollar system – as whatever is agreed in terms of the Chinese mode of payment for oil will mesh with Russo-Chinese plans eventually to move Eurasia onto a new trading currency (far away from the dollar).
Saudi Arabia gravitating BRICS-wards means other Gulf and Mid East – states such as Egypt – leaning BRICS-wards also.
Another pivot: The Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said after this week’s explosion in Istanbul: “We do not accept the condolence message of the U.S. Embassy. We understand the message that was given to us, we received the message that was given to us”. Soylu then dismissed the U.S. condolence as akin to “a killer being first to show up at a crime scene”.
Let’s be clear: The minister just told the U.S. to go sc**w itself. This unleashing of raw anger comes just as Turkey has agreed to join with Russia to establish a new gas hub in Turkey and is participating with Russia in a massive oil and gas investment and co-operation deal with Iran. Turkey too, is veering BRICS-wards.
And, as Turkey veers away from one ‘hub’, much of the Turkic sphere will take Turkey’s lead.
These two events – from Xi’s meeting with MbS’ thumbing his nose at the U.S., to Turkey’s fury at the terrorism in Istanbul – clearly dovetail together to mark a strategic Middle East pivot – both in terms of energy and monetary frameworks, towards the unfolding Eurasian free trade sphere.
Then comes the news from last Thursday: Iran says that it has developed a high-precision hypersonic missile. General Hajizadeh said the Iranian hypersonic ballistic missile can reach more than five times the speed of sound and, as such, it will be able to breach all present systems of anti-missile defence.
Simply put: Iran essentially already is a nuclear threshold state (but not a nuclear weapons state). The remarkable technical achievement of producing a hypersonic high-precision missile (which still eludes the U.S.), is a paradigm-changer.
Strategic nukes make no sense in a highly mix-populated, small Middle East – and now, there is no need for Iran to move towards becoming a weapons state. So, what would be the point to a complicated containment strategy (i.e. the JCPOA), oriented towards hindering an outcome that has become overtaken by new technology? A hypersonic ballistic missile capacity makes tactical nukes redundant. And hypersonic missiles are more effective; more easily deployed.
The problem for the U.S. and Israel is that Iran has done it – it has leaped beyond the JCPOA containment cage.
On top of that, a few days earlier, Iran also announced that it had launched a ballistic missile, carrying a satellite into space. If so, Iran now has ballistic missiles capable of reaching, not only Israel, but Europe too. Furthermore, Iran is reported to soon receive 60 SU-35 aircraft, as just one part to its rapidly evolving relationship with Russia, sealed last week with Nikolai Patrushev (Russia’s Security Council Secretary) in Tehran.
Again, to be clear, Russia has just acquired a highly potent kinetic force multiplier; access to Iran’s sanctions-busting rolodex of contacts and strategies, and a full partner to Moscow’s big play of Eurasia becoming a commodities super-oligopoly.
Simply put, as Iran enlists as a force multiplier to the Russia-China axis, so too will Iraq, Syria, Hizbullah and the Houthis slip along a somewhat similar trajectory.
Whilst the European ‘security architecture’ remains still frozen in a tight NATO, anti-Russian grip, West Asia’s security architecture is dissolving away from the old U.S. and Israeli-led hard polarisation of a Sunni sphere vs Shi’i Iran (i.e. the so-called Abraham Accords), and is re-forming around a new security architecture being shaped by Russia and China.
This makes sense. Turkey prizes its Turkic civilisational heritage. Iran clearly is a civilisational state, and MbS plainly wants his kingdom to be widely accepted as one, too (and not as just a U.S. dependency). The point of the SCO format is that it is ‘pro-autonomy’ and is opposed to any singularity of ideology. In fact, by being civilisational in concept, it becomes anti-ideological and opposed to tight binary (with us, or against us) alliances. Membership does not require endorsement of each other partner’s particular policies, provided they do not impinge on others’ sovereignty.
In effect, the whole of West Asia – to one degree or another – is being lifted up into this evolving Eurasian economic and security paradigm.
And, simply said, since Africa is already enlisted into the China camp, the African component to MENA is trending strongly Eurasia-wards, as well. The Global South’s affiliation too, largely can be taken for granted.
Where does this leave the old ‘hub’? It has Europe fully in its control. For now, yes…
However research published by France’s École de Guerre Economique suggests that whilst Europe has, since WW2, “lived in a state of the unspoken” in respect to its full-spectrum dependency on Washington, as Russia sanctions take their catastrophic effect on Europe, “a very different state of affairs takes hold”. Consequently, politicians, and the public alike, struggle to identify “who truly is their enemy”.
Well, the collective view, based on interviews with French intelligence experts (i.e. the French Deep State) is very clear: 97% percent consider the U.S. to be the foreign power that “most threatens” the “economic interests” of France. And they see it as a problem that must be resolved.
Of course, the U.S. will not easily let Europe go. Nonetheless, if parts of the Establishment can speak thus, then something is moving and afoot, beneath the surface. The report underlines naturally that the EU might have a trade surplus of 150 billion euros with the U.S., but the latter would never willingly allow this to translate into ‘strategic autonomy’. And any gain in autonomy is achieved against the constant backdrop of – and more than offset by – “strong geopolitical and military pressure” from the U.S. at all times.
Could the Nord Stream sabotage have been the straw that broke the camel’s back? In part, it was a trigger, but Europe hides its diverse old hatreds and long-nursed vindictiveness under ‘a Brussels lid of easy money’. But this pertains only so long as the EU remains a glorified ATM – states insert their debit-cards and withdraw cash. The concealed animosities are repressed, and monetarily lubricated into quiescence.
The ATM however, is in trouble (economic contraction, de-industrialisation and austerity cometh!); and as the ATM withdrawals’ window winnows down, so too the lid holding down the old animosities and tribal feelings will not hold for long. Indeed, the demons are rising – and are readily visible even now.
And finally, will the Washington ‘hub’ hold? Does it retain the resources to manage so many stress-test events – financial, systemic and political – all arriving synchronistically? We must wait to see.
In retrospect, the ‘Hub’ is not ‘on the move’. It has moved already. It is just that so many are stuck seeing an ‘empty space’ that once was occupied by something past, but which somehow still somehow lingers on, in visual memory, as a ‘shade’ of its earlier solidity.
Ukraine to hike transit fees for Russian oil to EU
RT | November 22, 2022
Ukraine has announced plans to raise transit fees for Russian oil running through the Druzhba pipeline to the EU, due to higher costs resulting from Russian air and missile strikes targeting the country’s energy infrastructure.
Ukrtransnafta, the operator of Ukraine’s oil pipeline network, is expected to increase tariffs for transporting crude to Hungary and Slovakia by €2.10 per ton to €13.60 ($13.90) starting on January 1, according to a letter from the company seen by Bloomberg. Its Russian counterpart Transneft confirmed to RIA Novosti that it has received a letter and is studying it.
“We are studying these proposals, preparing relevant reports to the Federal Antimonopoly Service and the Energy Ministry,” Transneft spokesman Igor Demin told the agency.
The Ukrainian company has attributed the price hike to the “continued destruction of Ukrainian energy infrastructure” which has resulted in “a significant shortage of electricity, an increase in its costs, a shortage of fuel, spare parts.”
Ukrainian oil transit fees have already been raised twice this year. The last hike in April reportedly brought the total increase on an annualized basis to 51%.
Druzhba, one of the longest pipeline networks in the world, carries crude some 4,000km from Russia to refineries in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
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From the Archives
A sample of vaccine and injectable medication tragedies during my lifetime
This is what happens when you demand speedy production in an era of politicized regulation
By Meryl Nass, MD | February 12, 2022
All these tragedies have been due to failures of testing or failures in manufacturing processes. Most occurred before vaccine manufacturers were given virtually complete protection from liability in 1987.
With the duration of patent exclusivity determining how much new products earn, products are rushed to market as quickly as possible, most using a shortened path for FDA review. Recalls and market removals of approved products are much more common than they used to be. We can only expect more of these disasters in the future, especially if the products are mandated for everyone. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Broke Princes: Saudi Arabia’s Powder Keg
- Albania’s Crisis: Rama, Israeli Investments and the Demand for Accountability
- Hezbollah Categorically Denies Syrian Accusations: We Aim at Confronting Israeli Enemy, Not Undermining Syria’s Stability
- Trump claims funding to Israel ending in 2026 as merger of Israeli–US armies looms
- Iran Weathering The Storm, But Saudi Arabia Is Sinking
- Sunk Ships Don’t Sail Home: Why Peace Won’t Save the Oil Market and War Will Wreck It
- No Cossacks at the gates, fix Italy instead – opposition leader to Meloni
- The Pits: Zelensky’s torture chamber network in the public eye
- Moscow mocks Kiev’s language hypocrisy exposed by ‘torture chamber’ scandal
- Military ‘torture chamber’ triggers new scandal in Kiev
- If Americans Knew
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- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Net Fossil Fuel Contribution To Rising Atmospheric CO2 Has Been Zero For 500 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
