US Gets 14 Straight Months of Roaring Inflation Since Biden Regime Dubbed Issue ‘Transitory’
Samizdat – 15.07.2022
Data put out by the Labor Department this week showed that the Consumer Price Index hit 9.1 percent in June, its sharpest monthly increase since 1981 and the height of the ‘malaise days’ of the late Carter and early Reagan years. On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted that inflation was “unacceptably high,” but blamed Russia.
The United States has lived through 14 straight months of higher and higher inflation since President Biden and his economic advisors deemed the issue a “temporary” and “transitory” issue that would quickly be brought under control.
“I really doubt that we’re going to see an inflationary cycle, although I will say that all the economists in the administration are watching that very closely. As my colleagues have said… we expect somewhat higher inflation over the next several months for a variety of essentially technical reasons… but that’s a transitory thing, not something that’s associated with a buildup in wage pressures,” Yellen said in a press conference on May 7, 2021.
Two months later, in mid-July 2021, President Biden assured Americans that recent price increases were “temporary,” and not connected in any way, shape or form to his administration’s spending plans. “As our economy has come roaring back, we’ve seen some price increases. Some folks have raised worries that this could be a sign of persistent inflation, but that’s not our view. Our experts believe and the data shows that most of the price increases we’ve seen were expected and are expected to be temporary,” Biden insisted.
What followed has been a steady ladder-shaped month-by-month increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) – the national inflation measure based on the price of a weighted basket of consumer goods and services purchased by households. Inflation crept up 5.4 percent year-on-year (YOY) in July of 2021, 6.2 percent YOY in October, 7.5 percent YOY in January, 8.3 percent YOY in April and YOY 9.1 percent in June.
source: tradingeconomics.com
On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen expressed support for the Federal Reserve’s decision to double interest rates to bring down the “unacceptably high” level of inflation, and assured that the issue was the administration’s “top priority.”
Yellen echoed Mr. Biden’s claims that America’s economic problems were partly Russia’s fault, calling the inflation rate one of the “spillover effects” caused by “Putin’s war” in Ukraine. Yellen added that broken supply chains were part of the problem, and called on G20 economies to “make our economies and our supply chains stronger and more resilient and avoid the sort of costly disruptions that have driven up inflation in America and globally.”
Last month, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell broke with the Biden administration’s “Putin’s price hike” talking point, telling lawmakers at a Senate Banking Committee hearing that “inflation was high before – certainly before the war in Ukraine broke out,” and that the phenomenon is caused by a number of factors, including supply chain disruptions, regulations that constrain supply, and “excessive fiscal spending.”
June’s inflation rate hike constituted the sharpest jump since 1981 – the height of the ‘malaise days’ of raging inflation, low growth, and soaring energy costs. The problem was ultimately resolved by temporarily increasing the interest rate to double digits, easing restrictions on adding to the federal debt, steep government spending cuts and a consumer credit boom.
Record US defence spending approved
Samizdat | July 15, 2022
The US House of Representatives has authorized $840 billion in defense spending in 2023, boosting President Joe Biden’s proposed record military budget by $37 billion.
The annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which sets military expenditure, was passed on Thursday by a vote of 329-101.
The bill offers $1 billion in aid to Ukraine, including a program to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-15, F-16 and other US aircraft. The Ukrainians should familiarize themselves with US-made planes “while the administration continues to consider sending such equipment,” said a statement on Congressman Adam Kinzinger’s website last month.
The bill also bans the supply of the F-16s to Turkey unless the US president guarantees to Congress that Ankara has not “violated the sovereignty of Greece, including through territorial overflights” for 120 days prior to the transfer.
Last month, the Senate Armed Services Committee proposed its own version of the budget, attaching an additional $45 billion to Biden’s original plan.
Both chambers will vote for a compromise budget later this year. Jack Reed, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Politico magazine on Wednesday that he expects the debate on the matter in September.
The boost to defense spending comes during Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, and continuing tensions with China over Taiwan and the larger Asia-Pacific.
The US has committed around $5.6 billion in security aid to Kiev after Russia launched its military campaign in late February. The heavy weapons delivered by Washington include M142 HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, M777 howitzers. It has also supplied radars, helicopters, and drones.
The Kremlin has stated that “flooding” Ukraine with foreign weapons would only exacerbate the conflict.
Moscow and Kiev agree to create a “coordination center” on grain exports in Istanbul
Samizdat | July 13, 2022
Russia and Ukraine have agreed to establish a joint coordination center on grain exports in Istanbul that will include representatives from all parties, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar told local media following the four-way talks that also involved Turkey and the UN.
On Wednesday, negotiators from Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the UN met in the Turkish city to discuss the situation regarding the held-up Ukrainian exports.
Ahead of the meeting, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said that Kiev and Moscow had been close to breaking the impasse on the issue.
“An agreement has been reached on technical issues such as joint controls at the destination points and … the safety of navigation on the transfer routes,” Akar told journalists. Russian and Ukrainian delegations “should meet again in Turkey next week,” he said, adding that the parties would “review all the details once again” during that meeting.
Ukraine is one of the world’s leading grain exporters. Yet, it has been unable to export its grain by sea due to the ongoing conflict with Russia. Kiev and Western nations have accused Moscow of preventing Ukrainian grain shipments from leaving the nation’s Black Sea ports. Russia has denied such accusations and, in turn, blamed Kiev for the crisis, arguing that its forces mined the Black Sea waters, thus creating a threat to the cargo ships.
The West has also accused Moscow of attempting to cause a global food crisis by supposedly blocking shipments of Ukrainian grain and “using hunger as a weapon.”
Last month, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia was not impeding exports and criticized the West for its “cynical attitude” towards the food supply of developing nations, which have been the most affected by the soaring prices. Moscow is ready to provide free passage to international waters for ships carrying grain, he added.
Russia’s oil earnings continue to soar – IEA
Samizdat | July 13, 2022
Russia’s oil export revenue surged above $20 billion in June thanks to rising energy prices and despite lower shipments abroad, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its monthly oil market report on Wednesday.
The agency’s statistics showed an increase of $700 million in June from the previous month, even as Russia’s daily exports of crude oil and products fell by 250,000 barrels to 7.4 million barrels, the lowest since August.
The country’s drop in exports last month was led by crude oil, which fell to just above 5 million barrels per day, according to the IEA. Daily flows to the EU fell below 3 million barrels, which is the lowest since November.
Meanwhile, global oil prices have been surging on strong demand and tight supply. The Brent benchmark averaged more than $117 a barrel last month, while Russia’s Urals rose 10.7% from May to average $87.25 a barrel.
Oil and gas revenue accounted for nearly half of Russia’s federal budget in 2021, according to IEA estimates.
Moscow said earlier it expects up to 1 trillion rubles (over $17 billion) in additional oil and gas revenues this year.
Asia Won’t Reject Russia’s Hydrocarbons or China’s Rare Earths Despite US Pressure
By Ekaterina Blunova – Samizdat – July 12, 2022
The International Energy Agency (IEA) and the United State have called upon Asian countries to reduce reliance on Russia and China in terms of both fossil fuels, solar power technology, and critical minerals needed for electric vehicles and batteries.
“Given that energy is the lifeline of modern economies, modern economic growth patterns, there are not that many alternatives available and there are only a few countries that are players in the global energy market. Russia certainly cannot be counted out and Russia cannot be marginalized in the global energy landscape,” says Harsh V. Pant, professor of international relations at the King’s College London India Institute and director of the strategic studies program at the Observer Research Foundation.
International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol and US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on 12 July urged Indo-Pacific countries at the Sydney Energy Forum to diversify their supply chains for energy and critical minerals to reduce “dependency” on Russia over its special operation in Ukraine, as well as on China.
“At a time when the energy prices are going up and affecting some of the poorest and most vulnerable countries around the world very significantly, I think Asian countries will continue to cooperate with Russia in order to support their economies and their domestic requirements,” says Pant.
He explains that dealing with Russia has become an economic imperative at a time of energy crunch given that Moscow is offering discounted oil to a number of countries. Furthermore, maintaining economic relations with Russia is a question of survival and the people’s well-being for some Asian nations and countries of the Global South, according to the professor. Under these circumstances it’s highly unlikely that they will succumb to the pressure from Washington and sever ties with Russia, he says.
“For political leaders across the world, at a time when economies are just beginning to grow after the long COVID pandemic, they can [not] afford a lack of energy and higher energy prices,” Pant stresses.
Anti-Russia Sanctions: India and EU Approaches
To illustrate his point, the professor cites India’s approach to Russia’s affairs and the Ukraine crisis. New Delhi continues to import energy from Russia despite the US and Europe urging India to join sweeping anti-Russia sanctions.
“What we have seen in the last two months is a gradual, significant increase in what India is buying from Russia when it comes to oil,” the professor says. “This is particularly relevant again because Russia has offered India discounted oil and India’s economic requirements demand that India continues buying this oil. The challenges facing India’s population mean that the Indian leadership has an incentive in continuing to engage with Russia on this question.”
At the same time, the European Union’s decision to slap sanctions on Russia and slash energy supplies from the country have backfired on Europe’s economy, sending fuel prices up and accelerating inflation.
“We have seen how Europe is struggling to reduce its dependence and the kind of costs that it is imposing on Europeans,” says Pant. “Most Asian countries would be reluctant to go down that route.”
The disruptions in the supply of crude after the imposition of ban on imports from Russia have given a dramatic boost to energy prices and inflation, echoes Suranjali Tandon, assistant professor at the Delhi-based National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
“The current inflationary trends are the most serious challenge for policy makers,” she says. “Central banks around the world have begun the process of unwinding loose monetary policy… The current inflation rates have led to internal economic strains and as seen in Sri Lanka, a political upheaval. The cooperation between Russia and Asian countries may be economically prudent.”
Moreover, major Asian economies – India and China – are ready to absorb crude supplies from Russia rejected by the West, according to her.
At the same time, Washington’s plan to force Asian states to join anti-Russia sanctions is fraught with severe risks for the global economy, Tandon warns.
“The ban, if carried out by other Asian economies, will further cut off supplies of refined petroleum and related products,” she says. “This could lead to an unmanageable inflationary spiral while depressing global growth.”
Are There Alternatives to Russia & China?
According to Tandon, India sets an important precedent for other Asian states by withstanding the US pressure when it comes to energy sanctions against Russia. By doing this, India is defending its internal interests in the first place, the professor underscores.
She hails the idea that single technology or fuel dependence should be avoided. This principle could be applied to Russia, China, or Western countries in a similar way. However, when the West is calling upon Asian nations to shift to wind, solar, and even nuclear power and abandon fossil fuels, it’s clear that this shift cannot be done immediately, the professor emphasizes.
Sri Lankan president caught fleeing country
Samizdat | July 12, 2022
Airport staff refused to stamp the passport of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Monday, preventing the soon-to-be ex-president from leaving the country for Dubai, AFP reported. Driven from office by mass protests, Rajapaksa is reportedly looking for other means of escape.
Immigration officers refused to enter the VIP suite at Bandaranaike International Airport to stamp Rajapaksa’s passport for exit, AFP’s sources said. Declining to queue with the general public for fear of reprisals, Rajapaksa and his wife spent Monday night at a nearby military base after missing four flights to the United Arab Emirates.
A similar attempt at escape was made by Rajapaksa’s younger brother, Basil, who served as his older sibling’s finance minister until April. According to AFP’s sources, Basil Rajapaksa was prevented from using the airport’s fast-track boarding lane, and left the airport after passengers began protesting.
President Rajapaksa announced on Saturday that he would resign this Wednesday, and is immune from arrest until that point. He is believed to be fleeing to avoid the possibility of being detained once his resignation becomes effective. Officials said that he is considering taking a Sri Lankan Navy vessel to either India or the Maldives.
Rajapaksa’s resignation came after months of protests. Under his leadership, Sri Lanka has been driven to bankruptcy, defaulting on its foreign loan debts in May and introducing fuel rationing earlier this month. The economic turmoil has been blamed on a loss of tourism revenue due to the coronavirus pandemic, and a climate-motivated ban on chemical fertilizers that halved the country’s agricultural output in a matter of months.
Rajapaksa’s government responded to rising costs by printing more money, further accelerating inflation. Concurrently, tax cuts deprived Sri Lanka of vital revenue needed to import food, fuel, and medicine.
As protesters forced their way into Rajapaksa’s presidential palace on Saturday, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told opposition party leaders that he too would step down after just two months in office. According to Sri Lankan law, Wickremesinghe will automatically take over as president should Rajapaksa resign as planned on Wednesday, until parliament elects a replacement and an interim all-party government takes over until new elections are called.
Critical Norwegian gas platform and transportation hub forced to shut down
Samizdat | July 12, 2022
A Norwegian gas platform and the transportation hub Sleipner Riser at the same field were shut down on Tuesday after separate gas leaks occurred, operator Equinor said, according to Reuters. The company indicated it was unclear when operations would resume.
“A gas leak at the Sleipner A {platform} occurred yesterday morning,” an Equinor spokesperson stated, adding “No person was injured and production was shut. When we tried to restart, a new gas leak occurred, late Monday night … this time at Sleipner Riser.”
Sleipner Riser is a key hub for the transport of North Sea gas to Britain and Belgium.
“We don’t know when we will back in normal production. The facility is shut,” the spokesperson added.
The incident comes at a time when Europe is facing constrained gas supply as scheduled maintenance halted flows from Russia via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Monday. The repairs are expected to take 10 days.
Norway is Europe’s second largest gas supplier and currently meets around 25% of gas demand on the continent, according to S&P global. Its role has come into sharper focus since Russia moved to reduce gas deliveries to Europe.
This month, the Norwegian government ended a strike by the country’s offshore oil and gas workers, who had been demanding wage increases to compensate for rising inflation. The strike, which resulted in the closure of three fields, threatened to exacerbate Europe’s energy crisis.
India to boost Sakhalin-1 oil output
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JULY 10, 2022
After Sakhalin-2, Moscow also plans to nationalise Sakhalin-1 oil and gas development project by ousting US and Japanese shareholders. But Moscow will make an exception for India so that OVL which holds 20% stake will remain & continue to work. Moscow grapevine is that while Rosneft will continue to hold controlling share, more Indian companies may be inducted to replace US & Japan and thereby also ensure a sales market in India.
The Sakhalin-1 is located off the coast of Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East. It comprises three offshore fields — namely, Chayvo, Odoptu, and Arkutun-Dagi. Until recently, the Sakhalin-1 project was operated by a Russian subsidiary of the American major ExxonMobil known as Exxon Neftegaz, which owns 30% of the shares. In addition, 20% is owned by the Russian state, 30% by the Japanese company Sodeco, and 20% by the Indian ONGC Videsh. Whereas Sakhalin-2 specialises in the export of liquefied natural gas, Sakhalin-1 is in the export of Sokol oil.
The capacity of Sakhalin-1 is quite impressive. There was a time before OPEC+ set limits on production level, when Russia extracted as much as 400,000 barrels per day, but the recent production level has been about 220,000 barrels per day. The abrupt departure of the Americans following the US sanctions against Russia has caused the production to plummet to just 10,000 barrels. Russians hope that with the replacement by more Indian companies, the production level can be restored to the previous level. Indeed, the hope is that Indian ONGC Videsh will pull up the production level of Sakhalin-1 project relatively quickly by bringing in own technologies.
The overall trend of nationalising the holdings of American, British, Japanese and European capital in Russia’s strategic sectors of economy is crystallising as the new policy — the Russian version of India’s AatmaNirbhar Bharat (“Self-reliant India” campaign.) Cleansing of the Russian economy, freed of Western capital, is expected to accelerate in the period ahead. India has seamless opportunities here to make investments and reap windfall profits. In strategic terms, India’s energy security will also be guaranteed for decades to come.
Moscow was well aware of the predatory character of Western capital in Russia’s oil sector — a legacy of the Boris Yeltsin era — but had to live with the exploitation as it didn’t want to antagonise other potential western investors. But that is history now. The souring of relations with the West to almost breaking point rids Moscow of such archaic inhibitions.
Indeed, the new policy to replace western capital from the commanding heights of Russian economy is not without risks, but Moscow is confident that it is on the right track and must do what it takes. Also, the decrease in production in the Sakhalin-1, unless addressed soon, may negatively affect the very characteristics of the oil fields in the Russian Far East, if the oil recovery factor decreases over time and a lot of oil is left to remain in the reservoirs.
The development of the fields had depended on Western equipment and technologies. Now Russia has lost both. On the other hand, the departure of the Americans will leave Russia with no easy route but to have its own technologies.
On balance, however, Americans stand to lose heavily too, as the production sharing arrangements dating back to the Yeltsin era had been forced out of the Russian government when it was in dire economic straits during the transition from the Soviet period and was in no position to negotiate optimal deals. Come to think of it, something like 262 such so-called production sharing agreements (PSAs) were squeezed out of the Russian government by western oil companies by the time Yeltsin retired.
After coming to power in 1999, President Vladimir Putin set about the mammoth task of cleaning up the Aegean stables of Russia’s foreign collaboration in the oil sector. The “decolonisation” process was excruciatingly difficult, but Putin pulled through it and got rid of as many as 260 (out of 262) PSAs. In fact, Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2 are the very last remaining two PSAs harking back to post-Soviet Russia’s decade of humiliation under Yeltsin.
Any surprises why the Biden Administration hates Putin so much and wants him out of power in Moscow?
Legend is that when the Soviet Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev paid his pathbreaking visit to India in 1955, then Prime Minister Nehru, amongst other “talking points”, referred to Soviet Union’s great reservoir of expertise in the oil sector, while complaining that the West refused help for anything in India’s state sector.
The folklore is that Khrushchev instinctively reacted in positive terms to Nehru’s request for help and no sooner than his return to Moscow, deputed a famous Soviet expert / geologist to India to prospect for oil — whose fame was such that he could apparently smell oil lying untapped deep in the bowels of the earth! Thus was born the ONGC in 1956, which is now heading for Sakhalin Island on a similar mission!
‘Developing world to face wave of defaults’
Samizdat – July 10, 2022
Emerging nations, including El Salvador, Ghana, Egypt, Tunisia and Pakistan, will be challenged with a historic cascade of defaults as a quarter-trillion-dollar pile of distressed debts keeps exerting downward pressure on economies, Bloomberg is reporting.
“With the low-income countries, debt risks and debt crises are not hypothetical,” the World Bank’s Chief Economist Carmen Reinhart told the agency on Saturday. “We’re pretty much already there.”
Over the past six months, there’s reportedly been a doubling in the number of emerging markets with sovereign debt that trades at highly distressed levels, meaning yields that indicate investors believe default is a real possibility.
Another cause for major concern reportedly arises from a potential “domino effect” that commonly occurs when scared investors begin yanking money out of countries with economic problems similar to those defaulting nations had previously gone through.
In June, traders reportedly pulled $4 billion out of emerging-market bonds and stocks, marking a fourth straight month of outflows.
Probable defaults may be followed by political instability. Earlier this year, Sri Lanka was the first nation to stop paying its foreign bondholders, burdened by unwieldy food and fuel costs that fueled protests and political chaos.
“Populations suffering from high food prices and shortages of supplies can be a tinderbox for political instability,” Barclays has said, as quoted by Bloomberg.
Biden is Right… Inflation Crisis Is Not Inevitable, So End the Reckless U.S.-Led Warmongering
Strategic Culture Foundation | July 8, 2022
It’s rare for Strategic Culture Foundation to find itself in agreement with pronouncements made by American President Joe Biden. This week, Biden asserted once again that economic inflation and recession hitting the American economy are “not inevitable”. He is correct – at least in part. Although not for reasons that he would ever admit.
Of course, Biden is trying to obscure the grim reality of economic crisis that is afflicting not just the American economy but also the European Union. Inflation of living costs for ordinary citizens in the U.S. and EU are at record highs not seen in decades. There is a sense of calamity in social conditions from mass poverty amid grotesque super-rich inequality. A major input to the general inflation is the soaring price of energy.
The global impact is causing food prices to escalate putting millions of people at risk of hunger, especially in Africa and other low-income nations.
The impending crisis is on an unprecedented scale. Yet, it is not inevitable. But what is making it unavoidable is the warmongering policy of the U.S. and its European NATO allies towards Russia and China. This week saw outlandish American and British efforts to label China along with Russia as an existential threat to “global peace”. The bitter irony of these two rogue Western states casting aspersions on any other nation is too much for words.
The world is being thrown into chaos, insecurity and uncertainty by reckless stoking of war in Ukraine by the Western powers who are funneling tens of billions of dollars-worth of military weapons to that country. This week saw US-supplied HIMARS artillery hitting cities in the Donbass breakaway republics. Where are the Western efforts to mediate a diplomatic end to that war? There are none. Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated this week that Moscow would like to find a long-term peaceful settlement. The harsh and despicable truth is that the U.S. and its Western allies are incapable of seeking a political solution. They are willing to fight to the last Ukrainian.
Blaming Russia for that conflict is a fallacy. The war has been deliberately stoked by the United States and its NATO accomplices as part of their geopolitical objective of subjugating Russia and China to their hegemonic agenda.
Western sanctions against Russia have created a global energy crisis that is boomeranging on the economies of the United States and Europe as well as the wider world. Biden is trying to scapegoat Moscow for imposing price hikes and taxes on his nation. The reality is it is his administration and its European lackeys who are imposing hardships on their own citizens from a madcap policy of warmongering.
There is a straightforward way out of the abysmal situation. The U.S. and its NATO allies should halt all weapons supplies to the Nazi regime in Kiev. They should also reverse the draconian economic sanctions on Russia. They should pursue diplomatic relations to end the conflict in Ukraine that they have instigated. They should normalize relations with Russia and China instead of relentlessly pushing Cold War-style confrontation.
But that is unlikely to happen under prevailing circumstances. Because the United States and its NATO minions have locked themselves into a deceptive paradigm of hostility. This, in turn, is because of futile ambitions for hegemonic dominance and intrinsic opposition to the emergence of a multipolar world.
Demonizing and antagonizing Russia and China is the real agenda for U.S.-led global imperialism. That criminal policy is covered up with cynical and absurd claims about defending “rules-based order” and democracy in Ukraine, Taiwan and elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the Empire of Lies is running out of credibility and false pretexts. What is becoming more and more evident is the awful reality. The U.S.-led collective West is one predicated on warmongering to preserve its waning global power and privileges.
Russia and China have repeatedly appealed for the existence of a multilateral global order that is consistent with the vision of the United Nations that was set up in the aftermath of World War Two. The United States and its imperial surrogates have continually attacked and undermined that vision with unilateral violations of international law and the sovereignty of countless nations. The U.S. avowed “rules-based order” is synonymous with war, war, war. Decades of relentless U.S.-driven wars – albeit under specious guises and pretenses – prove that.
Today we are witnessing the historic endgame playing out. The current war in Ukraine is but one malignant manifestation.
When asked how long Americans (and presumably Europeans) will have to endure economic pain, Biden retorted, “As long as it takes”. As long as it takes for what? To defeat Russia, China and whomever other nation the U.S.-led imperial axis deems necessary to be subjugated? That’s not going to happen. Those days are over.
Russia and China are too strong militarily and economically for the U.S.-led axis to vanquish. The world is being driven to war, potentially a catastrophic one, by American death throes in the face of reality. In the meantime, American, European and other peoples are being assailed with economic misery as a result of this criminal warmongering for the sake of empire. That is, the crumbling, bankrupt empire of U.S.-dominated Western capitalism and its imperial roguery.
The appalling state of world affairs is not inevitable. But due to the depraved and implacable pursuit of hostility towards Russia and China by the U.S. and its servile European elite, the world is – for now at least – held hostage by these psychopathic Western politicians and their corporate paymasters. That, however, is changing as people realize more and more the real nature and perpetrators of their captive condition.
The giant Western charade is no longer sustainable. From European colonialism to American imperialism, the charade has indeed had a long run. Now, though, it is in tatters from its own inherent corruption and lies. The ignominious downfall this week of Boris Johnson, Britain’s clown prime minister, is just a bit-part of the collapsing Western axis of evil. That collapse is inevitable.
‘Energy crisis hitting US industrial complex’
Samizdat | July 9, 2022
Operational challenges arising from soaring energy bills have put the entire US industrial complex at risk of partial shutdown, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.
The country’s second-biggest aluminum mill, which accounts for 20% of the national supply, reportedly laid off 600 workers in late June after its electricity bill tripled. Century Aluminum announced plans to leave its Hawesville mill idle for as long as a year, taking out the biggest of its three sites in the US. Meanwhile, the country’s largest aluminum producer Alcoa said it was cutting its production by a third at a mill in Indiana.
At least two steel mills have started to halt some operations in a bid to minimize energy costs, an unnamed industry executive told the agency. In May, a group of factories across the US Midwest warned the country’s energy regulators that some enterprises were on the brink of shutdown for the summer months or longer due to “unjust and unreasonable” electricity costs.
In June, natural gas prices tripled compared to the same period a year ago, sending bills for households and businesses soaring to previously unseen levels. Meanwhile, electricity rates for industrial customers are projected to hit an all-time high this summer.
Soaring costs have forced some businesses to put millions of dollars of credit on the line to secure power and gas contracts, according to Michael Harris, whose firm Unified Energy Services purchases fuel for industrial clients.
“That can be devastating for a corporation,’’ Harris told the agency. “I don’t see any scenario, absent explosions at US LNG facilities’’ that trap supplies at home, in which gas prices are headed lower in the long term.
OPEC keeps refusing G7 requests to increase oil production as ‘Russian oil cap’ reverie falls apart
By Drago Bosnic | July 8, 2022
One of the two central topics of the most recent G7 summit was limiting Russia’s oil sale profits. The initial suggestion of capping the price to just above the production costs hit a little snag when reality kicked in and it turned out to be impossible without, ironically, pushing the oil prices exponentially higher, despite the fact that current prices have already pushed economies to a breaking point. In order to tackle the “unexpected” issue, Japan gave a “more reasonable” suggestion to “only cut Russian oil prices in half”. Naturally, Moscow took neither of the suggestions too kindly. Deputy head of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev warned that Japan’s proposal would lead to a significantly lower supply of oil on the market, which could push the price to around $300-400 per barrel or higher.
“Japan will have neither oil nor gas from Russia, nor will it be able to continue participation in the Sakhalin-2 LNG (liquefied natural gas) project,” Medvedev commented on reports about the proposal presented by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
The other central topic was yet another request by the political West for OPEC+ countries to increase oil production. And once again, OPEC+ refused, insisting that Russia’s oil production share cannot be replaced. The association of 23 oil-producing countries keeps insisting on its earlier decision to collectively increase daily production by 648,000 barrels in July and August, but nothing more than that. Worse yet, how OPEC+ will fulfill even that remains to be seen after recent reports that some members are struggling to meet even their own internal demand, as OPEC’s leading countries are already at maximum production capacity. French President Macron himself revealed to his G7 partners that in a conversation with top Saudi and UAE representatives he was told that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are already producing oil “almost at maximum capacity”.
Faced with the first signs of coming oil shortages at the peak of the summer season in the Northern Hemisphere, the political West could not figure out where to expect an increased inflow of oil during July and August. If the sanctions on Russia, the world’s key oil exporter, are kept or, worse yet, intensified, where could the “requested barrels” come from? The lifting of sanctions against Venezuela and Iran isn’t just “problematic” for the political West, but it’s also questionable whether they are able (or willing) to increase production. In addition, any production increase by US shale oil companies seems equally unlikely this summer.
Non-OPEC oil producers such as Brazil and Canada cannot hope to make up for the deficit of Russian oil. The political West is now sending conflicting economic signals as it’s faced with the very real possibility of a recession, which would inevitably result in a drop in demand. The prospect of this is discouraging the OPEC+ to increase production, as it could leave them with excess oil. To make matters for Western stock markets even worse, OPEC+ did not give any statements on its intentions regarding further production from September 1, when the current agreement on the gradual increase in production is set to expire.
The oil price in the US is already moving towards the “astronomical” six dollars per gallon, which will almost certainly lead America into another recession, according to the Wall Street Journal’s estimate. US President Joe Biden recently pointed out that “Washington DC has no way to quickly stop the rise in the prices of gas and food in the United States at this time”. The US is even considering measures in case oil soon reaches the price of $200 per barrel. It is in this atmosphere of uncertainty on a global level that the political West is trying to limit Russian oil revenues, obviously without considering the simple fact that Russia could just cut its oil supplies to anyone trying to impose this illegal price cap, which would make the $200 per barrel prediction “incredibly optimistic”, as oil prices could be pushed to more than double of that.
Additionally, there’s a looming uncertainty over Russian natural gas deliveries to the European Union, particularly Germany, which is now effectively begging Canada to return the Nord Stream turbines it has seized. The German industry, by far the largest and most important in the EU, is struggling to make any plans for the foreseeable future as natural gas deliveries, its lifeblood, hang in the balance. There are even warnings of a complete industrial collapse in Germany if this issue is not tackled as soon as possible, to say nothing of the natural gas demand for heating and energy production, which is now under tremendous pressure to meet even basic demand.
Despite all this, the political West keeps fantasizing about the Russian oil price cap. Although we’re still powering through an extremely hot summer, we are only several months away from winter. Maybe the political West can try capping the temperature and prevent it from falling below the freezing level. After all, their chances of doing that are much higher than capping Russian oil prices.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
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UAE tortured, killed journalist for opposing Israel normalization
The Cradle | October 31, 2026
UAE security officers detained, tortured, and killed Emirati poet and news editor Habib al-Sayegh in August 2019, shortly after he published a column opposing UAE normalization with Israel, according to a newly published book.
“Princes and Thieves,” a book by investigative journalist Matthew Cole published on 25 October, alleges that UAE security officers raided Sayegh’s Abu Dhabi home shortly after the publication of the column, hooded him in front of his wife and took him to a detention facility where he was tortured to death.
His interrogators reportedly pulled out several of his teeth with pliers and beat him repeatedly with a sharp metal object.
On 11 August 2019, Sayegh criticized the UAE’s plan to normalize relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords in his weekly column for Khaleej newspaper. The column was titled “Israel Is Our Real Enemy and A Dangerous Project.”
Sayegh described Israel as “a real and natural enemy” while questioning “who authorized the normalizers to speak on behalf of everyone?”
Nine days after the column was published, Emirati state media announced his death, without stating a cause. … continue
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