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Iran ready to play leading role in Syria reconstruction/ Shalamcheh-Basra-Latakia railway; The most important economic joint project

Mideast Discourse | November 6, 2020

Steven Sahiounie, a Syrian-American journalist, believes that while Western and European sanctions prevent the import of replacement parts needed by Syria in infrastructure projects, the ability of Iranian industrial engineers to build what is needed could be a vital path around and behind Western sanctions.

Sahiounie tells the Bazaar in an exclusive interview that the prospects for continuing bilateral relations between Iran and Syria are good.

“They both share the same dedication to peaceful relations with countries in the Middle East region while holding firmly to the ideal of resistance to the occupation of Palestine, and demanding that the rights of the Palestinian people be restored without delay”, he said.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist, and chief editor of MidEastDiscourse. He has appeared on RT, PressTV, Syrian News, as well as international TV and radio programs. As a Syrian-American journalist and political commentator, he is often sought out concerning currents events facing Syria and the region.

Following is the text of the interview:

Bazaar: How do you predict the prospects for bilateral relations between Iran and Syria?

Sahiounie: The prospects for continuing bilateral relations between Iran and Syria are good.  They both share the same dedication to peaceful relations with countries in the Middle East region while holding firmly to the ideal of resistance to the occupation of Palestine, and demanding that the rights of the Palestinian people be restored without delay.

Bazaar: What are the current economic relations and volume of trade between Iran and Syria?

Sahiounie: The trade officials of both Syria and Iran have worked toward establishing industrial and economic free trade zones jointly, with an emphasis on the private sector.
Iran and Syria are slated to boost bilateral trade volume from $500 million to $1 billion within the next year.

Bazaar: What is the major part of Syrian exports?

Sahiounie: The top exports of Syria are Pure Olive Oil, Spice Seeds, Other Nuts, Apples, Pears, and Calcium Phosphates.

Syria shipped an estimated $462 million worth of goods around the globe in 2019. That amount reflects a -46% decrease since 2015 and a -36.2% drop from 2018 to 2019.

The US-NATO attack on Syria beginning in 2011 has devastated lives, the infrastructure, and the economy. The continuing sanctions by the US and EU are designed to keep the war against the Syrian people going, even though the battlefields are silent, except for Idlib, which is under the military occupation of Al Qaeda.

The data from 2010 shows that 81.1% of products exported from Syria were bought by importers in Iraq, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, France, Lebanon, Jordan, United States, Netherlands, Egypt, and Spain. Due to the US-EU sanctions against Syria and the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf region boycotts, the markets for Syrian goods were closed due to political ideology. Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan have maintained some trade with Syria in defiance of the western bullies.

The Syrian government is working with a comprehensive plan for agricultural development and expansion of agricultural and food industries to enhance the Syrian economy in the face of the sanctions and the unfair siege on the livelihood of the Syrian people.

Bazaar: What is the most important economic project of the two countries at this present?

Sahiounie: The project to build a railroad connecting Iran’s Shalamcheh border crossing, to the Iraqi port of Basra, and finally to reach Syria’s Mediterranean port city of Latakia is the most important economic project between Syria and Iran.

The project has been on the drawing board for years and is now in the beginning stages. The mammoth railroad line will be linked to the New Silk Road, also known as China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which in turn is also linked to the Russian railroad system.  Once completed, western sanctions on Syria and Iran will be thwarted.

Bazaar: What is the most important tool to protect the continuation of bilateral economic relations?

Sahiounie: The most important tool for Iran and Syria to use to protect their continuing bilateral economic relations is in supporting the two countries’ private sectors, both in trade and industry, for the benefit of investment opportunities in the free zones. The bartering system of exchanging goods and services without the use of currency is another tool that can be effective.

Bazaar: The trade between the two countries is set to reach $ 1 billion by next year. What are the plans for expanding bilateral trade? What ?is your opinion?

Sahiounie: Plans to expand bilateral trade include mechanisms to enhance commercial exchange and develop cooperation in the field of research laboratories and medical equipment and infrastructure projects, development, and investment.

The agreement is known as “long-term strategic economic cooperation”, which includes industrial, trade, and agricultural cooperation. Education, housing, public works, railroads, and investments are covered in other agreements.

An important banking agreement between Iran and Syria has been reached, which sends a message to the international community about the depth of Syrian-Iranian cooperation and will benefit Iranian companies wishing to invest in Syria and participate in reconstruction.

Syria and Iran signed several agreements worth $142.5 million, involving Iranian companies involved in the restoration of more than 2,000 MegaWatts of power production capacity, and additional projects by the dozens in the oil and agricultural sectors.

Bazaar: What is your opinion about the impact of Caesar’s law and resulting US sanctions on Iran-Syria trade?

Sahiounie: The impact of Caesar’s sanctions is psychological. To instill fear into the minds of all Syrian people, as well as all countries which would conduct business with Syria.

Layer, after layer of sanctions, has been applied to Syria, to destroy the Syrian government, and installing a US puppet to be the ultimate ‘yes-man’ to Washington.

As Syria and the entire world grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, the imposition of such inhumane sanctions has increased the suffering of the Syrian people.  Instead of coming to the aid of people inside Syria with medical supplies to cope with the pandemic, the sanctions prevent medical companies abroad from doing business with merchants in Syria in the medical supplies industry, for fear of being tracked down and fined by the US Treasury Department.

Horror stories have been heard of companies in Europe who sent medicines and supplies to Syria, only to be tracked down in their own offices in Europe by US authorities enforcing the sanctions against anyone who would dare to throw a lifeline to anyone in Syria.

Bazaar: What is your assessment about Iran’s role in Syria`s reconstruction?

Sahiounie: Since 2017, Iranian companies have participated in rebuilding expos in Syria, and in 2019, the Syrian–Iranian Joint Chamber of Commerce held its first meeting. Iran is poised to play a leading role in the reconstruction of Syria.  Projects include residential buildings, power stations, agriculture, telecommunications, oil, and mining.

In 2018, Iran signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Syria to construct 200,000 housing units near Damascus alongside other large projects. Iranian companies are participating in several major projects in Syria’s energy industry, including a gas-fired power plant project in Aleppo. Iran’s largest energy construction company, MAPNA Group, is engaged in the construction of the 540-MegaWatt combined-cycle power plant in Latakia.

Over 95 percent of the power plant equipment and much of the equipment in the Iranian electricity and water industry are domestically manufactured and can repair steam, natural gas, combined-cycle, incineration, and turbines of generators, as well as make strategic parts for power plants.

While the US-EU sanctions prevent Syria from importing much-needed replacement parts for infrastructure projects, the ability of the Iranian industrial engineers to manufacture what is needed can be a vital path around and behind the back of the western sanctions.

November 6, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

Iran finally brings desalinated Persian Gulf water to its arid desert

Press TV | November 5, 2020

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has opened a mega project for transferring desalinated sea water to arid deserts in the Iranian Plateau, the first in the history of a country where water shortage has always been a major impediment to economic development.

Rouhani used a video conference call on Thursday to supervise the start of water transfer from desalination facilities off the Persian Gulf in southern Hormozgan province to water-intensive industries in southeastern province of Kerman.

The transfer line, which includes dozens of tunnels, pumping stations and storage facilities, takes desalinated water some 305 kilometers to one of Iran’s largest mining and metals plants in Sirjan.

The first phase of the project has cost nearly 165 trillion rials (over $600 million). The Iranian Energy Ministry said that around a third of the total water desalinated in the project, some 150 million m3 per year from a total of 450 million m3 of sea water, would be purchased on a guaranteed basis for household consumption in two coastal cities.

The transfer line is planned to continue another 500 kilometers in the next phases of the project to take water to copper smelters in Sarcheshmeh, in north of Kerman, and further into the heart of the Iranian desert in Yazd province where the sprawling Chadormalu mining complex, the largest iron ore producer in the Middle East, is located.

The desalinated water will also be consumed for irrigation, said Rouhani during the inauguration ceremony, as he insisted that the project would relieve a huge burden from underground water resources and would boost environmental conditions in the Iranian Plateau and along the Persian Gulf coast.

“This project had been deemed unimaginable and it materialized in the Government of Discretion and Hope,” Rouhani said making a reference to a phrase routinely used to distinguish his two four-year terms in office that began 2013.

The Iranian president hailed the launch of key infrastructure projects in recent years in Iran as a sign that a series of unprecedented sanctions imposed by the United States have failed to dent the country’s resolve for development.

“We have managed to take these big steps despite sanctions, despite the pressure and despite the fact that a terrorist government was in office in America” he said.

November 5, 2020 Posted by | Economics | | Leave a comment

Sorry, Google and World Bank, but Middle Eastern Crops Keep Thriving

By H. Sterling Burnett | ClimateRealism | November 4, 2020

Google News today is promoting articles (see the Google-promoted PhysOrg article here, for example) about a speculative World Bank “study” claiming climate change is threatening crop production in the Middle East. The World Bank study is full of speculation but short on facts. Real-world data show crop yields per acre and total crop production are consistently and dramatically rising in each of the Middle East countries examined by the World Bank study.

In its study, titled “Water in the Balance,” the World Bank says, “[w]hile information about water scarcity at present and in the future is available there is little knowledge of what this increasing scarcity means for Middle Eastern … food security. Agriculture will suffer because of climate change and water scarcity….”

In particular the World Bank asserts water scarcity caused by climate change will reduce farm production in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. The available evidence strongly suggests that will not happen.

Had the study’s authors examined real-world data concerning crop production in the Middle Eastern countries, they would have found, even amidst substantial strife in the region, crop yields and overall production have increased dramatically. More food is being produced even as thousands of acres of agricultural lands have been abandoned during regional conflicts.

Data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization show during the period of modest warming since 1989:

It is clearly good news – and not a climate crisis – that Middle Eastern countries have increased crop production despite the fact that many of them have been embroiled in internal political strife, outright civil warfare, and external conflicts. That good news is ignored in the World Bank’s doom-and-gloom report.

Global warming lengthens growing seasons, reduces frost events, and makes more land suitable for crop production. Also, carbon dioxide is an aerial fertilizer for plant life. In addition, crops also use water more efficiently under conditions of higher carbon dioxide, losing less water to transpiration. The latter fact should have allayed the World Bank’s concern about climate change induced water shortages leading to crop failure.

The benefits of more atmospheric carbon dioxide and a modestly warming world have resulted in 17 percent more food being available per person today than there was 30 years ago, even as the number of people has grown by billions. Indeed, the last 20 years have seen the largest decline in hunger, malnutrition, and starvation in human history.

Sorry, World Bank, Google, and PhysOrg, but that does not equate to a climate crisis.

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. is managing editor of Environment & Climate News and a research fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute. Burnett worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis for 18 years, most recently as a senior fellow in charge of NCPA’s environmental policy program. He has held various positions in professional and public policy organizations, including serving as a member of the Environment and Natural Resources Task Force in the Texas Comptroller’s e-Texas commission.

November 5, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How a Wise Decoupling May Be a Good Thing for Both China and the West

By Matthew Ehret | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 5, 2020

Imagine a bird was led to believe that it was a fish. For a while it might get used to living under water, but it wouldn’t take long before it could sense that something was wrong. If the bird didn’t realize that its nature is to fly and breath the air in time, then its fate would be bleak indeed.

Since the world was taken off the gold reserve system way back in 1971, a new age of “post-industrialism” was unleashed onto a globalized world. Humanity was given a new type of system which presumed that both our nature and the cause of value itself were located in the act of consuming. The old idea that our nature was creative, and that our wealth was tied to producing, was assumed to be an obsolete thing of the past… a relic of a dirty old industrial age.

Under the new post-1971 operating system, we were told that the world would now be divided among producers and consumers.

The “have-not producers” would provide the cheap labor which first world consumers would increasingly rely on for the creation of goods they used to make for themselves. “First world” nations were told that according to the new post-industrial rules of de-regulation and market economics, that they should export their heavy industry, machine tools and other productive sectors abroad as they transitioned into “white collar” post-industrial consumer societies. The longer this outsourcing of industries went on, the less western nations found themselves capable of sustaining their own citizenries, building their own infrastructure or determining their own economic destinies.

In place of full spectrum economies that once saw over 40% of North America’s labor force employed in manufacturing, a new addiction to “buying cheap stuff” began, and a “service economy” took over like a cancer.

To make matters worse, the many newly independent nations struggling to liberate themselves from colonialism were told that they would have to abandon their dreams of development since those goals would render the formula of a producer-consumer stratified society impossible to create. Those leaders resisting this edict would face assassination or CIA overthrow. Those leaders who adapted to the new rules would become peons of the new age of “Economic Hitmen”.

As the great president William McKinley had observed long ago (1), nations who develop full spectrum economies also have higher quality, educated citizens using advanced technology which causes more costly goods… meaning no dollar stores and no sweat shops.

The Case of China: Producer for the World

When Henry Kissinger negotiated the opening up of China in the 1970s, the intention was much less benevolent than the story projected.

By the time Deng Xiaoping announced the “opening up” of China in 1978, Kissinger had already managed the economic paradigm shift of 1971, the artificial “oil shock therapy” of 1973 and authored his 1974 NSSM 200 Report which transformed U.S. Foreign Policy from a pro-development orientation towards a new policy of depopulation targeting the poor nations of the global south under the logic that the resources under their soil were the lawful possession of the USA.

Kissinger, and the hives of Trilateral Commission/CFR operatives to which he was beholden never looked on China as a true ally, but merely as a zone of abundant cheap labor which would feed cheap goods to the now post-industrial west under their new dystopic producer-consumer world order. It was in that same year that Kissinger’s fellow Trilateral Commission cohort Paul Volcker announced a “controlled disintegration of western society” which was begun in full with the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes to 20% that ensured a vast destruction of small and medium businesses across the board.

Believing China (then still largely an impoverished third world country) to be desperate enough to accept money and short-term salvation after years of trauma induced by the Cultural Revolution. Under Kissinger’s logic, China would receive just enough money to sustain a static existence but would never be able to stand on its own two feet.

Unbeknownst to Kissinger, China’s leaders under the direction of Zhou Enlai, and his disciple Deng Xiaoping had a much longer-term strategic perspective than their western partners imagined.

Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai in 1962

While receiving much needed revenue from foreign exports, China began to slowly create the foundations for a genuine renaissance which would be made possible by slowly learning the skills, leapfrogging technologies and acquiring means of production which the west had once pioneered. Zhou Enlai had first enunciated this visionary program as early as 1963 under his Four Modernizations mandate (Industrial, agricultural, national defense and science and technology) and then restated this program in January 1976 weeks before his death.

This program manifested itself in the July 6, 1978 State Council Forum on the “Principles to Guide the Four Modernizations” informed by the findings of international exploratory missions conducted by economist Gu Mu’s delegations around various advanced world economies (Japan, Hong Kong, Western Europe). The findings of Gu Mu’s reports laid out the concrete pathways for full spectrum economic sovereignty with a focus on cultivating the cognitive creative powers of a new generation of scientists that would drive the non linear breakthroughs needed for China to ultimately break free of the rules of closed-system economics which technocrats like Kissinger wished the world adhere to.

Deng Xiaoping broke from the radical Marxism prevalent among the intelligentsia by redefining “labor” from purely material constraints and elevating the concept rightfully to the higher domain of mind saying:

“We should select several thousand of our most qualified personnel within the scientific and technological establishment and create conditions that will allow them to devote their undivided attention to research. Those who have financial difficulties should be given allowances and subsidies… we must create within the party an atmosphere of respect for knowledge and respect for trained personnel. The erroneous attitude of not respecting intellectuals must be opposed. All work. Be it mental or manual, is labor.”

Over the course of the coming decades, China learned, and like any student, copied, reverse engineered and reconstructed western techniques as it slowly generated capacities that ultimately allowed them press on the limits of human knowledge outpacing all western models.

Scientific and technological progress became the driving force of its entire economy and by 1986, the “863 Project for Research and Development” was announced which focused on areas of space, lasers, energy, biotechnology, new materials, automation and information technology. This project became the driver for creative innovation guided by the National Science Foundation and was upgraded to the 973 Basic Research Program in 2009 to: “1) support multidisciplinary and fundamental research of relevance to national development; 2) Promote frontline basic research; 3) Support the cultivation of scientific talent capable of original research; and 4) Build high-quality interdisciplinary research centers.”

Although China is often accused of intellectual theft, the reality is that it has begun to clearly outpace western nations becoming a pioneer on every level of science and technology. China now registers more patents than the USA, has become the cutting edge leader of high speed rail engineering with over 30 000 km, bridge building, tunneling, as well as water management, quantum computing, AI, 5G telecommunications, and even space science becoming the first nation to ever land on the far side of the moon with an intent to mine Helium 3 and develop permanent bases on the Moon in the coming decade.

All of these cutting edge fields of science and engineering are being organized by the ever-growing Belt and Road Initiative which has taken on global proportions and integrated itself into a deep alliance with Russia, Iran and over 135 nations who have signed onto the BRI Framework stretching from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, Asia, and Europe.

This is the system which the USA and other western nations could have joined on multiple occasions, but which has instead been targeted as a global threat to western hegemony. According to the logic of those western utopians who refuse to let go of their old outdated 1971 script for a new world order, China’s New Silk Road must be subverted at all costs since it is very well understood that it would become the basis for a new world system as the old globalized paradigm comes crashing down faster than the Hindenburg.

So what can be done?

Amidst this anti-China war policy has emerged another policy which began as a “Trade War” and escalated to a potential “decoupling” of the USA from China under President Trump.

This decoupling would involve cutting off reliance on using China as a cheap labor exporter, and even industrial production source as well. Obviously, friendship and collaboration between the USA and China is vitally important for the long-term survival of civilization, but is this decoupling an intrinsically bad thing in the short term?

Maybe not.

If the USA is to survive the oncoming collapse and break free of its apocalyptic war agenda, then certain realities WILL have to occur. These realities include (but are not limited to):

1) Regaining its lost industrial potential, with an emphasis on the machine tool sector which the west once enjoyed as a world leader

2) Regaining the lost scientific and technological capacities which the USA once had when it still valued productive thinking under the days of JFK and NASA

3) Regaining a grasp of education which values productive citizens over consumer subjects

4) Regaining control over national credit under federal banking, dirigisme and other long-term investment practices that rely on regulating Wall Street speculation and other unproductive forms of banking.

How might these vital capacities be regained?

For one thing, protectionism will be necessary. China has used protectionist measures to a great effect, and every nation has the right, if not the duty, to apply protective tariffs in the defense of their economic sovereignty in order to ensure that it is more profitable to purchase locally than abroad. In fact, it was only by employing protective tariffs in the pre-Globalized past that the USA (or any other nation for that matter) built up their industrial capacities in the first place while these capacities were always lost whenever free trade, de-regulation policies were imposed.

Parity Pricing is vital if the USA is to rebuild the small and medium agro-industrial enterprises that once generated the vitality of society decades ago. Parity pricing was a common practice among western governments between 1945-1970 which imposed certain constraints on price variability of certain goods to ensure that prices never dropped so low that the manufacturers could afford to stay in business or rise so high that consumers cannot afford to buy said goods. Today’s agricultural crisis in the USA could only be reversed were such policies implemented quickly (2).

National banking is another vital pre-condition to a recovery. Under the period of 1791-1836, during the 1862-1869 greenback system, or during FDR’s 1933-45 use of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, national credit was generated by acts of purchasing bonds via the Treasury and emitting loans directly to companies which would be mandated to carry out the jobs needed to build great infrastructure megaprojects (Erie Canal, transcontinental railway, or Tennessee Valley authority). Similar practices have been revived under China’s state banking system today which provides the majority of the loans to companies building the New Silk Road either in China itself or abroad.

While detractors call these sorts of policies “trade war” or “offenses to the laws of the World Trade Organization”, as I laid out in a 2018 lecture, they are exactly what is needed for any sort of recovery to occur.

Before the USA could ever possibly work as a reliable partner on the Belt and Road Initiative or any nation of the emerging multipolar alliance, it must learn to stand once again on its own two feet.

This transitionary process may have painful aspects to it, much like a drug addict trying to wean themselves off of heroine, but if the intent is genuine, and the means lawful, then it is certainly possible, even at this late date.

As the USA weans itself off of its addiction to China’s cheap goods, China will be better prepared to produce ever more high quality goods on a “fair trade basis” for markets which are also committed to full spectrum economic goals whether in Asia, Africa, or beyond.

Everything hinges on the upcoming U.S. elections

President Trump has outlined a series of measures that reflect a pro-industrial orientation which the mainstream media has worked very hard to cover up.

Over his first term, Trump not only rejected the precepts of laissez faire economics by cancelling the anti-China Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) but renegotiated the nation-killing NAFTA giving nation states of North America the right to intervene into their economic destinies for the first time since 1994. He also broke with a 50 year anti-space tradition by giving full backing to a renewal of the space program with the Artemis Program and outlined a global cooperative space platform with the Artemis Accords. Just as JFK’s Apollo program generated over $10 for ever $1 invested in non-linear ways, so too will the current goal of creating a permanent lunar base and launch pad to Mars generate similar effects as new discoveries and inventions with immense industrial applications will come online. This was renewed in a GOP policy tweet of Oct. 23:

Trump has also called for a national re-industrialization program designed to bring back vital heavy industries to rust belt dead zones of America that have fallen into dark age conditions over the past 4 decades and in his current platform has called for a continental high speed rail system. For the Arctic, Trump has given federal endorsement to the Alaska-Canada railway which itself brings the long-overdue Bering Strait rail tunnel endorsed by both Russia and China ever closer to reality. This policy represents a total break from the Pentagon’s Arctic war policy also active in Alaska.

On economic diplomacy, Trump has broken from the anti-growth program launched by Obama’s technocrats by ending the moratorium on nuclear power investments by green lighting the International Development Finance Corporation’s investment into 2500 mW of nuclear energy for South Africa and another nuclear plant for Poland (which currently relies on 70% coal power and wants 9 GW of nuclear by 2040). This change in policy brings the USA into harmony with the modus operandi of both Russia and China who are the only other nations seriously investing in nuclear power within their own nations or Africa.

Similarly, Trump has won the ire of many regime changers by defunding CIA-front democracy movements like NED in Hong Kong, Ukraine and Belarus while introducing economic win-win diplomacy in helping to resolve the Serbia-Kosovo crisis via investments into rail, roads and infrastructure. This approach also complements the restoration of a non-interventionist defense strategy that began with Trump’s collaboration with Russia in Syria and continues with his withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria over recent months.

In every category economic, military, diplomatic, space and beyond, two obvious paradigms are clashing represented by two opposing Americas.

If Trump is able to maintain control of the presidency over the coming weeks and months of storms (don’t fool yourself. It is unlikely that the results of the election will be finalized in November or even December) then there is a chance that the USA may find the moral fitness to survive by regenerating its lost industrial base and changing its behaviour in conformity with natural law.

Should this be done, then the USA will be able to re-acquire its claim of “independence” for the first time in decades. With that independence, will come the slow reconstruction of its decrepit infrastructure, intellectual and cultural decay and achieve the basis for a full spectrum sovereign economy. This hoped-for USA would be a very different creature from the one the world has known since the murder of JFK in 1963 and this would be a nation that could be trusted to act in its own true self interest as a partner to other like minded nations working for their own true self interests under the umbrella of international projects that benefit all participants.

The author can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

November 5, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

China Looks To Boost Oil Exploration, Expand Oil & Gas Storage

By Charles Kennedy | Oilprice.com | November 3, 2020

China plans to further increase oil and gas exploration and accelerate the construction of more oil and gas storage infrastructure, state news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday.

Last week, China’s Communist Party adopted the principles of the five-year development plan 2021-2025.

China will also aim to build more oil and gas pipelines, according to its authorities.

China has been looking to increase its energy security in recent years, including by increasing domestic oil and gas production and expanding its storage facilities.

Over the past decade, China’s oil production has been falling while its oil demand has been soaring, increasing Beijing’s dependence on sourcing oil from abroad.

China’s dependence on crude oil imports has been growing in recent years as its domestic production has faltered, and the world’s top oil importer covered 73.4 percent of its oil demand with imported oil in the first half of 2020.

In the first half of 2020, China’s crude oil production did increase, by 1.7 percent year on year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China. The growth in production between January and June, however, was 0.7 percentage point slower than that of the first quarter, the bureau said.

Higher domestic production, however, will not be able to cover the rise in China’s oil and gas demand, so China will continue to be a key player on the global oil and gas markets and a critical gauge of oil and gas demand growth.

Meanwhile, China is set to increase its natural gas imports from Russia as Russian gas giant Gazprom has started constructing the extension of its gas pipeline to China, Upstream reported on Tuesday. The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2022 and is estimated to cost US$3.5 billion (280 billion Russian rubles), according to the Russian gas giant.

November 5, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

UAE to Import Israeli Fruit and Vegetables

Palestine Chronicle | November 2, 2020

The UAE is expected to begin importing Israeli fruit and vegetables this month, Israel’s Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry has announced.

Official authorization is said to have been granted last Thursday following a series of meetings and coordination between Minister Alon Schuster, ministry employees and the UAE’s Ministry for Climate Change and the Environment.

“This is wonderful news for Israel’s farmers,” Schuster is reported as saying by the Jerusalem Post. “The agreement that we signed with the UAE is moving us forward and into a joint future in the field of agriculture.”

With UAE agricultural imports valued at around $10 billion a year, this latest agreement — which is a result of the normalisation deal signed in August — is highly lucrative for the occupation state.

At the moment, the UAE does not appear to be taking any measures to ensure that fruit and vegetables imported from Israel are not produced in the illegal settlements across the occupied Palestinian territories.

Last week it was reported that Israeli wine produced in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is to be sold in the Emirates.

November 2, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Reality Check On The Electric Car

By Richard Fowler | Watts Up With That? | October 30, 2020

First of all, I like the idea of an electric car. I like “all-electric”. I’ve got an electric power washer, an electric weed eater, an electric riding lawnmower, an electric robot lawnmower, an electric toothbrush, and electric air pump just to name a few. I’ve driven an electric car, and it was fun to drive. Now they’ve got the range up to 250 miles, for an extra $9,000 you can get the range up to 300 miles. If you use your car to commute to work you can charge it between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., which is ideal for Howard Electric’s off peak rates. At our current off peak rates you could travel 250 miles for under $2.50.

Believe me, I and most other cooperative managers in the country would love to see an abundance of electric cars. If every member of our cooperative were to go out and buy an electric car tomorrow, slow charge their cars on our off peak hours, we could probably lower our electric rates 15%. Why is that? Because we wouldn’t have to upgrade our power lines. Those power lines have been designed and engineered for peak times (in Howard’s case 6 to 8 a.m. & 4 to 8 p.m.) and by charging your car in off peak hours you would be using those power lines during non-peak times. We would not have to upgrade your transformer because it too was engineered for your peak usage. The same is true for your substation, your transmission lines, and the coal and gas power plants – all designed for your “peak” usage. So using power during off peak times should be the cheapest power there is, and with our demand time of day rates, it is.

So yes, I want electric cars to be successful. But sometimes what we want, requires a reality check. So whether it’s electric cars, which I want, or a carbonless world, which those espousing the green new deal wants, both groups need a reality check. I will write about a reality check for the green new deal later, but today…. let’s talk about a reality check for electric cars. I don’t believe, for the most part, that electric cars will be more than commuter cars. Here’s why.

We’ve tried hard to educate you on a KW charge vs. a kWh charge and you now have both on your bills. A car charger that’s a slow trickle charge overnight doesn’t present a problem, but when you’re traveling you’re not going to want to wait 8 hours to get your car charged. You’re going to want a fast charger. Well the fastest charger so far is a 500 KW charger and it will charge a car in 10 minutes. Tesla is working on a 550 KW charger. When you trickle charge an electric car the batteries should last about 10 years, but if you fast charge an electric car the battery life goes down significantly, and at $6,500 a pop, these batteries aren’t cheap.

Imagine a charging station, instead of a gas station, that has eight of these 500 KW chargers. That’s a four megawatt load, which is more than all our large power accounts added together. You’re going to need a substation for this charging station which will cost $1,000,000 not counting the upgrading of the transmission lines to feed the substation. That too will cost hundreds of thousands and this extra load is the equivalent of a new power plant which costs millions – and no – solar and wind for the most part do not provide reliable peak power, they provide unreliable intermittent power.

And it’s even worse for electric 18-wheelers. An ongoing study in California, Oregon, and Washington has projected a 10 MW charging station for electric 18-wheelers. How many gas stations exist across our country now for 18-wheelers? Well convert sixty of those to electric 10 MW loads and you’ve got the equivalent of our biggest coal fired power plant, and this will require more million dollar substations, more transmission line upgrades which will be very, very expensive. Now, on the positive side these 18-wheelers will go 500 miles on a battery pack, but these battery packs do weigh 5 tons which, along with their normal loads could test the highway legal “heavy haul” limits in several states. I really do hope they are successful, but the electric infrastructure to make this happen is a very big hill to climb and will likely require more carbon based coal or natural gas power plants (unless we’re willing to go nuclear).

Some have theoretically argued that by reversing the electricity flow from tens of thousands of cars to the grid at peak times, you could levelize the grid and avoid adding more peak power plants. In other words, the grid would use the charge from the car batteries, leaving the owner needing to recharge before driving. The problem with that theory is people probably aren’t going to spend $40,000 – $80,000 on an electric car so they can levelize the grid. If they spend that kind of money, it will be to drive the car.

System peaks are on the hottest and coldest days of the year. If on those days you’re using your car to drive and using your heater or air conditioner, how much excess battery energy do you expect to have to charge the grid? It is these hottest and coldest days that determine how many power plants we need. I don’t believe reverse flow is a reasonable solution to avoid those higher peaks that will be caused by cross country cars and trucks who will be fast charging their vehicles during peak times.

Unless somebody (either our members or taxpayers) has money to allocate to these fast chargers, substations, transmission upgrades and power plants they’re not likely to become a reality.

So, for discussion sake for cars, let’s tone down the chargers from a 500 KW charger to a more reasonable 50 KW charger (which is 8 times the peak of the average house). These are the fastest chargers Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) is installing in Kansas City.

These 50 KW chargers will charge a car in 93 minutes. So you pull into this charging station and there’s three people ahead of you, each taking 93 minutes. That’s a 4 ½ hour wait plus 1 ½ hours to charge your car. Many of KCP&L’s chargers are level 2 chargers. Those take four hours to add 200 miles of drive time. Not a bad wait if you’re on the golf course.

So how far can I go on a charge? Like I said earlier, these newer electric cars can now go up to 250 miles on a charge……. unless you turn on the heater. Heaven forbid you turn on your heater. The miles go down 25% if you need heat. Northern states may struggle with this issue. Slow charging workplace charging stations could make longer commutes more reliable and would work with existing infrastructure, but if you are going to rely on a slow charger to get home, it would need to be dedicated to you.

Electric cars are estimated to cost six to ten thousand more than a gas car. These cars need 70% less parts than gas engines and need 30% fewer workers to put them together, so lost jobs and a more expensive car. On the positive side, the cost to charge an electric car at home is much cheaper than gas… if… you don’t use a fast charger. Most of the cobalt in lithium batteries comes from the Congo. The Congo continues to raise the price of cobalt and the Congo is considered an unstable country.

In 2012, the CAFÉ standards required cars to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. President Trump has reduced that requirement to 37 miles per gallon. Apparently General Motors and other car manufacturers believe that either by 2020 or by 2024 politics will return that standard to 54.5 miles per gallon, so they are moving forward with that target. The only way to achieve that goal is to blend in a significant amount of electric cars. General Motors expects that 20% of their car sales by 2023 will be electric.

The Green New Deal would make all vehicles electric by 2030 and the proposed “OFF Act” would make all vehicles electric by 2035. If that happens, traveling across the country could be a circus. An electric car makes sense for a commuter car, but for traveling across country, if you don’t want the long charging wait, you’re going to want a gas vehicle, if you can find one.

October 31, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Trump is really a 3rd Party candidate, taking the first axe to the two-party US dictatorship in 170 years

By Robert Bridge | RT | October 29, 2020

Washington despises Trump because he’s an outsider – a third-party gatecrasher – who has upset the duopoly that has had a stranglehold on American politics, and they’re doing everything they can to stop him doing it again.

The meteoric rise of Donald Trump defies the law of US political gravity in that he has elevated himself inside of a rigidly controlled two-party system while going against the interests of the establishment. That is a remarkable accomplishment, and no other modern politician – aside from perhaps John F. Kennedy – has made it this far in Washington by promising to drain the very swamp it sits upon. The Manhattan real estate magnate has essentially become a third-party tour de force, the ultimate bugbear of the powers that be.

Trump is no fool and understood early in the game that there is a veritable army of burly gatekeepers in Washington, standing guard against the threat of third-party provocateurs. In fact, one of the largest gatekeepers is none other than the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a non-profit third-party terminator that is actually sponsored by the Democratic and Republican parties. So when people complain that the Democrats and Republicans are two heads of the same poisonous snake, they are right. This organization is so powerful that it barred the highly popular Ross Perot from appearing on the debate stage in the 1996 presidential campaign alongside Democratic incumbent Bill Clinton and Republican Bob Dole.

A buried footnote with regards to Trump’s political career is that he made his first serious foray into the swamp as the presidential nominee in Ross Perot’s Reform Party in the 2000 elections. When those efforts fizzled out, Trump, aware that the road to the White House via a third-party platform was largely inaccessible, began to weigh his chances at running for the presidency on the Republican ticket. Not a bad idea considering that the last time a president was elected in the US who did not identify as either a Democrat or Republican was in 1848, with the election of Whig candidate Zachary Taylor. At the time, however, much of Washington wrote off the tycoon’s dream as a bad joke; the egoistic yearnings of a billionaire who thinks the White House is just another real estate venture.

But Capitol Hill seriously underestimated both the dark mood that had descended upon the nation, as well as Trump’s ability to capitalize on it. With an uncanny gift for electrifying audiences wherever he went, people no longer laughed at his political ambitions. Eventually, Trump went on to do what the polls said was virtually impossible – he defeated the veteran Washington insider, Hillary Clinton, becoming the 45th president of the US. At this point, Trump the ultimate interloper began to use the Republican Party as his own personal Trojan horse to enact radical changes that could not have been achieved otherwise.

For example, despite Washington’s bipartisan love affair with overseas entanglements, Trump held back the dogs of war. He has given the US military arguably its longest break from the battlefield in living memory. That’s not to say that Uncle Sam has suddenly morphed into a marijuana-smoking peacenik under Trump, not at all. In fact, future historians may ultimately blame Trump, the consummate businessman, for selling massive amounts of military hardware to foreign states – like Saudi Arabia, and former Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe – that lead to some catastrophic conflict down the road. And who could forget Trump’s crass “we’re keeping the oil” comment with regards to America’s so-called withdrawal from Syria, or the harmful sanctions that have been slapped against Iran?

Meanwhile, Trump has carried out other controversial initiatives, like plugging the gaping hole in the US-Mexico border. Republicans were always content to ignore the massive influx of illegal migrants from South America, so long as it meant cheap labor, while the Democrats found it a great way to capture future voters. Not until a ‘third-party’ solution came along, courtesy of Donald Trump, did the gates begin to close on the “invasion.”

Perhaps Trump’s most ambitious ‘third-party’ project to date has been to take America’s long-ailing industrial sector off of life support. Unfortunately, this program, built around Trump’s pledge to ‘Make America Great Again’, has taken relations with China to the brink. Accusing the People’s Republic of engaging in “unfair trade practices,” the Republican leader took a protectionist position by imposing a number of tariffs and trade barriers, which has naturally triggered a tough response from Beijing. While opinion is split on the matter, a number of analysts agree that the US had been at a severe disadvantage in trade with China and the change Trump fought for was necessary.

Whether or not people agree with Trump’s actions isn’t really the point. The point is that issues that were being ignored by the Democrats and the Republicans, and rarely discussed by the mainstream media, only got attention after a Washington outsider bulldozed his way onto the political scene on behalf of millions of voters. And for all of his efforts, Donald Trump has been one of the most harassed US presidents, suffering a three-year ‘Russiagate’ investigation, as well as impeachment, while still holding onto office with new elections just days away.

In some ways Trump’s political rise was a fluke, unlikely to be duplicated anytime soon. The mainstream media and Big Tech are doing absolutely everything in their power to prevent a second term for the populist. They have even taken the unprecedented step of blocking explosive news on his competitor, Joe Biden, from being seen or shared by the public.‘Once bitten twice shy’, as the expression goes, and the Washington gatekeepers will do everything to block any Donald Trumps and their third-party ideas from storming the scene in the future.

That is very bad news for the US political system, which will continue to be held hostage by the same two parties, with little chance for any winds of change reaching the inner sanctum of power. Trump may very well be the last blast of fresh air in Washington for a long time, and Americans should enjoy the change while they can.

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream. @Robert_Bridge

October 29, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | | Leave a comment

Spain: Study Shows 80% COVID Patients Deficient in Vitamin D

21st Century Wire | October 28, 2020

A new study has all but confirmed the link between COVID sufferers and Vitamin D deficiency. This latest study lends additional support to the argument that cheap therapeutics are already readily available to the public – a key point which further demolishes the US, UK government and Big Pharma narrative that “only a vaccine” can save the population from a rapidly waning ‘novel’ coronavirus which is still being used by politicians and the World Economic Forum to justify the continuation of highly damaging lockdown policies.

Results of new research done by the Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital in Spain shows that a large number of COVID-19 patients – 82% of them, were found to have low levels of vitamin D, according to this new peer reviewed study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

Evidence seems to suggest that out of the 216 tested, more men were affected by this condition than women.

Conversely, a control group showed that only 47% of people who didn’t have the virus were Vitamin D deficient.

Vitamin D is a hormone produced in the kidneys which aids in the regulation of calcium in the bloodstream.

According to researchers, one possible mechanism for the high risk to serious illness in low Vitamin D sufferers could be a clear increase in serum levels of inflammatory markers like D-dimer and ferritin used by the body to fight off an infection.

One specific note: researchers did not find a clear association with the levels of vitamin D and the severity of COVID, or a need to be sent to intensive care, or placed on a ventilator, or death.

According to researcher Dr Jose Hernandez, from the University of Cantabria, “One approach is to identify and treat vitamin D deficiency, especially in high-risk individuals such as the elderly, patients with comorbidities, and nursing home residents, who are the main target population for the COVID-19.”

Regarding the issue of treatment, Dr Hernandez added that, “Vitamin D treatment should be recommended in COVID-19 patients with low levels of vitamin D circulating in the blood since this approach might have beneficial effects in both the musculoskeletal and the immune system.”

October 28, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Pompeo will not have his way in Sri Lanka

By P.K.Balachandran | Daily Express | October 25, 2020

Colombo – The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who will be here on October 28, is expected to ask Sri Lankan leaders, point blank, to review relations with China; consider the options US is offering; and accept American advice on domestic and foreign policy.

A top foreign ministry official told Daily Express on Sunday, that Lankan leaders, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, will politely tell Pompeo that Sri Lanka’s decisions and policies will be guided by election mandates, the law and the constitution of the country, and its interests, while maintaining good relations with all countries in the region and the world.

“All the three leaders will tell the ranking US official politely that it is not for outsiders to tell Sri Lankans how to run their country,” the top Lankan official, who spoke on anonymity, said.

Pompeo is expected to press the government not to go in for Chinese-funded projects anymore but choose other countries and international organizations to fund projects mutually agreed upon.

The US Secretary of State will also press for the acceptance of the US$ 480 million Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact (MCC) which a Lankan Presidential Commission wanted to be either rejected in toto, or re-negotiated to accord with Lankan law, constitution and socio-political and economic realities.

The Lankan official said that the controversial issue of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) will not come up for discussion because the government has made it clear that SOFA is against the Sri Lankan constitution and laws.

On the US bid to draw Sri Lanka into an anti-China alliance like Quad, the official said: “We would tell Pompeo that Sri Lanka, which has only recently emerged from a thirty-year war, does not want to be a theater of international conflict in any way. But it is interested in ensuring free navigation in the Indian and other oceans. Pompeo would be reminded that in 1971 Sri Lanka had pioneered the idea of turning the Indian Ocean into a Zone of Peace.”

On the American demand that Sri Lanka abjure Chinese investments, the leaders would say that Sri Lanka needs investments from all countries as it is keen on developing the country, especially in the infrastructure sector.

“All countries, including the US, are welcome to invest in Sri Lanka. If the US and others match China, their offers would be considered,” another foreign ministry official said.

However, given the fact that the US is primarily interested in geopolitical and military matters with a focus on isolating and weakening China in these spheres, it would not make any economic investment proposals. Pompeo would find it difficult to proceed further on this matter in his discussions here, it is felt.

“Debt Trap” Issue

“If he raises the debt trap issue, we have facts and figures to show that the debt to China is only 5.6 billion USD out of a total external debt of 55 billion USD (which is 10%). The US owes China much more – USD 1 trillion,” the official said.

Arm-Twisting

However, Pompeo could indulge in arm-twisting by threatening further sanctions against Chinese companies involved in Sri Lankan development projects. Some subsidiaries of the China Communications and Construction Company (one of which is executing the Colombo US$ 1.4 billion Colombo Port City) are already “listed” for alleged “predatory practices and lack of transparency”.

However, the Sri Lankans do not appear to be perturbed by such a possibility because listing has to be on solid grounds. And even if security issues are cited, it has to stand legal scrutiny in the US itself, the officials explained.

But the shoe might pinch if the US stops or lessens its imports of apparels from the island. The US buys about US$ 2.5 billion worth of Lankan apparels annually. This is 3% of the Lanka’s DGP and the US is the single largest market. But even stopping this is unlikely given the fact Lankan apparels enter the US market without GSP duty concessions.

Ethnic Reconciliation

As for Pompeo’s prescriptions on ethnic reconciliation, the Sri Lankan leaders will cite the mandates they got through the November 2019 Presidential and August 2020 parliamentary elections, which is that any solution to the ethnic question will have to be acceptable to the majority community in Sri Lanka and that reconciliation should be brought about by measures to develop the country economically in a way which benefits all communities equitably.

American Intentions Not A Secret

American intentions were made clear on October 22 by Dean Thompson, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs at a press briefing. Thompson said that Pompeo will “encourage Sri Lanka to review the options we offer for transparent and sustainable economic development in contrast to discriminatory and opaque practices.”

“We urge Sri Lanka to make difficult but necessary decisions to secure its economic independence for long-term prosperity, and we stand ready to partner with Sri Lanka for its economic development and growth. The Secretary will also emphasize the ties between our people, our shared commitment to democracy, and the importance of our ongoing regional maritime security cooperation. We’ll continue to urge Sri Lanka to advance democratic governance, human rights, reconciliation, religious freedom, and justice, which promote the country’s long-term stability and prosperity and ensure the dignity and equality of all Sri Lanka’s diverse communities.”

With regard to China’s increasing influence in Sri Lanka, Thompson said: “I think we’re looking to frame a discussion with them about a more positive trajectory, as I mentioned in my opening remarks. So definitely we’ll be discussing where they’re headed and looking for ways to strengthen their commitment to human rights rule of law and democracy.”

October 26, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Pompeo’s ‘Tokyo Kick’ Cannot Start the QUAD

By  Salman Rafi Sheikh | New Eastern Outlook | October 26, 2020

Mike Pompeo lashed out at China in his latest visit to Tokyo where he met his counterparts from India, Australia and Japan as part of his efforts to revive the QUAD, a US-centered anti-China alliance of the four countries. Speaking to his counterparts, Pompeo said that there was an urgent need to counter China, adding that “As partners in this Quad, it is more critical now than ever that we collaborate to protect our people and partners from the CCP’s exploitation, corruption, and coercion.” In an interview given to a Japanese news outlet, Pompeo also said that the grouping was a “fabric” that could “counter the challenge that the Chinese Communist Party presents to all of us.” “Once we’ve institutionalized what we’re doing – the four of us together – we can begin to build out a true security framework”, he added further. Mike Pompeo, who was clearly on a mission to persuade his allies to join the military alliance, was obviously trying to make US allies sell the same anti-China discourse that the Trump administration has used at home to start a ‘trade war’ with China. The US, now aiming to expand the war, is recruiting allies; hence, Pompeo’s high-pitched speeches against China.

While Pompeo said what he had to say, prospects of the QUAD’s rise as a powerful military alliance or an ‘Asian NATO’ remain bleak. Its most important reason is the fact that none of the countries—India, Japan and Australia—are interested in picking a military fight with China, while the US has no real allies against China.

While there is no gainsaying that all of these countries—India, Japan and Australia—have tense and uneasy relations with China, they appear not in the least interested in formalizing a US led anti-China military alliance, thus making PRC their official enemy.

It explains why these countries have so far chosen to manage their relations with China on their own and continue to shy away from exacerbating the fault lines by joining the US bandwagon of a ‘global anti-China coalition.’

Consider this: while Japan has its economic ties with China and there is no will in Tokyo to ‘de-couple’, following the US in its footsteps, it, with an eye on China, still is increasing its military strength. Whereas it is already converting two of its existing ships into aircraft carriers, it is going to make a record increase in its defense spending as well. Japan’s Defence Ministry has asked for an 8.3 per cent increase in the defense budget, which is by far the country’s largest rise in last two decades. Interestingly enough, one crucial reason why Japan has decided to increase the budget is the pressure that the Trump administration has been putting on the Japanese to manage their own national security. If Japan is anyway going to spend more and more on defense, increasing its military capability to position itself better in the region, not requiring extensive US military support, and it still wants to continue to have strong economic ties with China, there is no reason why it would want to permanently destabilize its relations with China by joining the ‘Asian NATO.’ Although this was prime minister Abe’s dream, his absence from the government will leave a further dampening impact on the alliance’s future prospects and Japan’s standing therein.

Australia’s government has announced a raft of legislation to curb foreign influence that is clearly (though unofficially) targeted at China. And India is actively engaged in a high-altitude, high-stakes game of chicken with China in the Himalayas—a hot-and-cold conflict in which India is no longer acting passively.

The fact that all of these countries have their specific problems with China and yet they have not been able to fully activate the QUAD shows there is no active and strong desire for a US-led military alliance. As such, the QUAD summit failed yet again to issue a joint statement or a communique.

Notwithstanding the US belligerence, the main focus of Japan, Australia and India remains a politically, economically and militarily balanced relationship with China.

This is the crucial reason that explains why, despite Pompeo’s hype and upbeat assessment of the ‘China threat’, none of the countries’ mentioned China directly in their statements issued after the meeting.

Unlike Pompeo, Japan’s Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi notably did not mention China in his remarks, and the Japanese government was quick to clarify that the talks were not directed at any one country. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar noted the fact that the meeting was happening at all, given the coronavirus pandemic, was “testimony to the importance” of the alliance. Accordingly, while India like Japan, did endorse the agenda of “free pacific region” and “rule-based system”, it did not mention China either. Certainly, Indian policy makers were not looking to further destabilize the situation in and around the Ladakh region. For Australian foreign minister, who also did not mention China, the essence of the QUAD was to “promote strategic balance” in the Indo-pacific (and not start an Indo-pacific military alliance).

Starting a military alliance against China does not make sense. If the US is these countries’ biggest military and security ally, China is by far one of the largest trading partners, which makes the summit more symbolic than substantive. Accordingly, while Pompeo was talking of creating a ‘security network’, Japanese officials confirmed to local media that the subject was not even raised in the meeting; for, such a venture is unlikely to gain traction in the wake of these countries’ main thrust for balanced ties with China.

In the absence of a clear will and desire for building up military pressure on China, the ‘Asian NATO’ will remain an engine-less rail car, one that even persistent kicks wouldn’t be able to ignite.

Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.

October 26, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Insisting on insult, Macron opens floodgates for Muslim backlash

Press TV | October 26, 2020

Numerous Muslim states and peoples have denounced French President Emanuel Macron’s persisting support for blasphemy in his country against Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

“We will not give in, ever,” Macron tweeted on Sunday. The tweet served to back up his earlier support for a French teacher’s displaying of cartoons insulting of the Prophet of Islam in his class under the pretext of “freedom of speech.”

“France will never renounce caricatures,” Macron had declared on Wednesday, defending the teacher for “promoting freedom.”

The teacher Samuel Paty was murdered by an 18-year-old Chechen assailant. Commenting on the attack, Macron described Islam as a religion “in crisis” worldwide, trying to suggest that the assailant had been motivated to kill the teacher by the faith rather than radicalism.

The comments have raised controversy and provoked a wave of criticism from the Muslim world.

On Sunday, the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) described Macron’s position as “irresponsible,” and said it was aimed at spreading a culture of hatred among peoples.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had called on Macron to have his mental status examined for defending blasphemy, repeated the call on Sunday. Macron “is a case and therefore he really needs to have [mental] checks,” Erdogan said.

In a statement, Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry warned that attempts at linking Islam to terrorism “represents a falsification of reality, insults the teachings of Islam, and offends the feelings of Muslims around the world.”

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan also hit out at Macron for “attacking Islam clearly without having any understanding of it.”

He urged the French president to rather address the marginalization and polarization that is being committed against minorities in France that “inevitably leads to radicalization.”

The Pakistani head of state also wrote to Facebook, asking the social media network to clamp down on Islamophobic content in the same way that it purges content aimed at skewing or denying the Holocaust.

He warned about a “growing” trend of Islamophobia throughout the platform among elsewhere, pleading with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, “I would ask you to place a similar ban on Islamophobia and hate against Islam for Facebook that you have put in place for the Holocaust.”

“One cannot send a message that while hate messages against some are unacceptable, these are acceptable against others,” Khan said, adding that this attitude was “reflective of prejudice and bias….”

Pakistan also summoned France’s ambassador and notified him about Islamabad’s protest at “systematic Islamophobic campaign under the garb of freedom of expression.”

Jordan’s Islamic Affairs Minister Mohammed al-Khalayleh said “insulting” prophets is “not an issue of personal freedom but a crime…,” and Morocco’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said continuing publication of such “offensive” is an act of provocation.

Hamas and Hezbollah, respectively Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements, have also condemned Macron’s position.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said on Saturday that publishing the cartoons was “provocative to the feelings of the Islamic nation and an aggression on its religion and beliefs,” while Hezbollah said blasphemy did not categorize as “freedom of speech.”

Protests were, meanwhile, reported in the Gaza Strip, Syria, and Libya as well as elsewhere throughout the Muslim world.

Boycott spree

Many Muslim companies and associations, meanwhile, have stopped handling or serving French items in protest.

These have included the Al-Naeem Cooperative Society and the Dahiyat al-Thuhr association in Kuwait as well as the Wajbah Dairy firm and Al Meera Consumer Goods Company in Qatar. The Qatar University has also postponed a French cultural week.

Hashtags such as the #BoycottFrenchProducts in English and the Arabic #ExceptGodsMessenger trended across many countries, including Kuwait, Qatar, Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

The French Foreign Ministry, however, reacted angrily to the bans.

“The calls for a boycott are groundless and must be stopped immediately, like all attacks against our country committed by a radical minority,” it alleged, trying to associate the protests with “radicalism.”

October 26, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Islamophobia | , | Leave a comment

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