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Lebanon PM says coup attempt fell apart after violent riots

Press TV – June 14, 2020

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Hassan Diab has condemned the recent violent street protests, saying they were an attempt by opponents to overthrow his government and deepen a currency crisis in the debt-ridden country.

Diab made the remarks in a televised address late Saturday after demonstrations rocked the cities of Beirut, Tripoli and Sidon on Thursday, with participants calling for the government’s resignation.

Diab said his political opponents were stirring unrest in a bid to thwart the government’s fight against corruption.

The unrest was “a programmed campaign organized by parties known by name and method of thinking that are not deterred from using any method to shatter the image of others,” Diab said.

However, the Lebanese administration enjoys “a high percentage of citizens’ confidence, which has disturbed many of those who bet on its failure” and try to pump “lies and rumors to prevent the government from removing the rubble under which the secrets of corruption disappear,” he added.

Diab took office in January with Hezbollah’s backing, putting an end to a nine-month political deadlock amid an economic crisis and nationwide protests against the nation’s ruling class.

In his televised address Saturday, the Lebanese premier censured efforts to mount a “coup” against the government and manipulate the value of the Lebanese pound.

“The state and the people are being subjected to blackmail,” Diab said as he vowed to defeat graft in the cash-strapped country.

“The coup attempt fell apart and all secret and public meetings and orders of internal and joint operations to stop discovering of corruption failed as well,” he added.

Anti-government protests broke out in Lebanon on Thursday after a rapid devaluation of the national currency against the US dollar. The Lebanese pound has lost some 70 percent of its value over the past several months.

The crash in the Lebanese pound’s value and subsequent unrest coincided with the unveiling of the biggest-ever US sanctions package against Iran, which also targets Lebanon.

The 115-page strategy document put together by the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest Republican caucus in Congress, called for a halt of all US security assistance to Beirut, claiming that millions of dollars given to Lebanon were being used to aid Hezbollah.

The US gives about $160 million to the Lebanese armed forces each year.

The Republican document specifically calls for sanctions against Hezbollah allies, mentioning former foreign minister Gibran Bassil and incumbent Parliament speaker Nabih Berri by name.

Back in 2016, Saudi Arabia also declared that it was canceling $4 billion in aid to Beirut, $3 billion of which was earmarked for the Lebanese army.

Latest street rallies resembled those that broke out in Lebanon on October 17, 2019, when the government introduced a set of economic austerity measures.

Then prime minister Saad al-Hariri resigned almost two weeks later under pressure from protesters, touching off a period of political turmoil at a time of acute economic crisis.

In December 2019, Diab was tasked with forming the new administration and the following month, he managed to form a government after Hezbollah and its allies agreed on the new cabinet.

The downward political spiral for Hariri followed his humiliating saga in Saudi Arabia where he announced his surprise resignation in November 2017, apparently under the orders of Saudi rulers.

Hariri rescinded his withdrawal after returning to Lebanon, apparently putting himself on a collision course with his Saudi mentors, which culminated in his resignation amid violent riots.

According to a UN report, Hariri was verbally humiliated and beaten after being summoned to Riyadh in 2017. He was reportedly abducted and taken to the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton hotel where he was interrogated and subjected to “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment.

June 14, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Reality Is Gradually Catching Up To Green Energy

By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | June 8, 2020

If you dutifully read your U.S. mainstream media, you undoubtedly have the impression that “clean” and “green” energy is rapidly sweeping all before it, and soon will supplant fossil fuels in powering our economy. After all, many major states, including California and New York, have mandated some form of “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, or in some cases even earlier. That’s only 30 years away. And reports are everywhere that investment in “renewables,” particularly wind and solar energy, continues to soar. For example, from Reuters in January we have “U.S. clean energy investment hits new record despite Trump administration views.” In the New York Times on May 13 it’s “In a First, Renewable Energy Is Poised to Eclipse Coal in U.S.” The final victory of wind and solar over the evil fossil fuels must then be right around the corner.

Actually, that’s all a myth. The inherent high cost and unreliability of wind and solar energy mean that they are highly unlikely ever to be more than niche players in the overall energy picture. Politicians claim progressive virtue by commissioning vast farms of wind turbines and solar panels, at taxpayer or ratepayer expense, without anyone ever figuring out — or even addressing — how these things can run a fully functioning electrical grid without complete fossil fuel backup. And the electrical grid is the easy part. How about airplanes? How about steel mills? I’m looking for someone to demonstrate that this “net zero” thing is something more than a ridiculous fantasy, but I can’t find it.

To stay grounded in reality, there is no better source than the multiple-times-weekly email from the Global Warming Policy Foundation. If you do not already receive these emails, you can go here to subscribe. As is typical, today’s email searches out back pages and specialized sources to bring us multiple pieces showing green energy running into its inevitable wall, with no known way to get past. (Full disclosure: I am on the Board of the GWPF’s American affiliate.)

We go first to green energy champion Germany, where Bloomberg reports on June 5 that “Germany’s Green Power Finance Is Becoming Unaffordable.” Excerpt:

The German program that’s spurred the nation’s switch to green power is buckling under the weight of surging costs and needs an urgent fix. That’s the assessment of one of the scheme’s chief designers, Hans Josef Fell. . . . Yet the system’s increasing costs have become glaring during the coronavirus pandemic, the veteran Green Party lawmaker said. High and guaranteed payments made to investors in clean power plants are the problem Fell said in an interview.

It seems that to get its wind and solar facilities built, Germany put in place guaranteed payments to producers that would kick in if market prices for power were insufficient. The guaranteed payments are divvied up and added to consumer electricity bills. This year, with prices for alternative fossil fuels plummeting, the guaranteed payments are projected to come in at some 26 billion euros — which is around $100 per month for every German household, on top of electricity prices that were already about triple the U.S. average. Of course, Chancellor Merkel is proposing a “fix,” which is a government bailout as part of a supposed coronavirus relief package. That may work for a little while. Then what?

Also from Germany, we have a piece from the Financial Times of June 8 with the headline “Environmentalists on back foot as Germany’s newest coal plant opens.” What?? — Opening a new coal power plant right in the midst of a transition away from fossil fuels?? What happened here is that they are closing all their nuclear plants, and they need something that works all the time, unlike the wind and the solar. Just in January, Germany enacted legislation to completely phase out coal power generation by 2038; and then in May, they went right ahead and opened this new Dateln 4 coal plant. The Financial Times piece quotes Greenpeace activist Lisa Göldner as calling the new plant a “climate crime.” Meanwhile, the crew members of a barge bringing coal to the plant are described as “whooping and whistling in mockery” at environmental protesters seeking to block the opening of the plant.

The fact is that Germany has nowhere further to go by building more wind and solar facilities. When the wind blows on a sunny day, they already have more power than they can use, and they are forced to give it away to Poland (or even pay the Poles to take it). On a calm night, no matter how much wind and solar they build, it all produces nothing. Without the coal plant, the lights go out. Talk about climate virtue all they want, but no one has yet even begun to work on a solution to get past this hurdle.

Which brings me to the most important piece in the GWPF email, from Cambridge Professor Michael Kelly, appearing in something called CapX on June 8, with the headline “Until we get a proper roadmap, Net Zero is a goal without a plan.” Kelly makes the point that seems to me obvious, but that somehow has slipped past the New York Times and all the rest of the MSM, which is that if wind and solar energy are ever going to surpass niche status, there is a gigantic engineering problem to solve. Somebody has to engineer an electrical system based on the intermittent sources that works 24/7/365. But in fact, even as major states and countries have piously proclaimed commitment to “net zero” energy, nobody has even started the engineering project. And as soon as you start to consider the question, you quickly realize that the whole endeavor is almost certainly impossible. As an example, Kelly addresses batteries:

Take batteries. It is estimated that current battery manufacturing capabilities will need to be in the order of 500-700 times bigger than now to support an all-electric global transport system. The materials needed just to allow the UK to transition to all electric transport involve amounts of materials equal to 200% the annual global production of cobalt, 75% of lithium carbonate, 100% of neodymium and 50% of copper. Scaling by a factor of 50 for the world transport, and you see what is now a showstopper. The materials demands just for batteries are beyond known reserves. Would one be prepared to dredge the ocean floor at very large scale for some of the material? Should securing the reserves not be a first priority?

And that’s just one of the issues. Others include vast costs constituting a multiple of current energy costs; the environmental impact of mining and transporting huge amounts of materials; need for vast amounts of rare elements, far beyond known world reserves; incredibly huge amounts of material to recycle when facilities wear out; and on and on.

Read enough of this stuff and you gradually realize that almost everything you read about supposed solutions to climate change is completely delusional.

June 13, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Environmentalism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

‘It’s their war, not ours’: Russian space agency boss says not upset by manned SpaceX launch, but BOEING should be

RT | June 10, 2020

The US finally getting a crewed spaceship in no way means the end of Russia’s space program, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said, insisting that the Soyuz still remains the most cost-efficient way to get people to the ISS.

After SpaceX’s Crew Dragon delivered two astronauts to the International Space Station – the first US spaceship to do so for nine years – at the end of May, US media not only praised Elon Musk’s company, but also piled scorn on the Russian space program.

It was “strange” when some in the US, including NASA officials, “started making wreaths for the ‘funeral’ of Russian Soyuz,” Rogozin wrote in an opinion piece for Forbes magazine, published on Monday. While the Russian space chief’s social media rivalry with Musk and his past quotes played a role in the reaction, he made a stand for the iconic Russian spacecraft that has ferried US astronauts to orbit for all those years since the Space Shuttle program shut down.

Rogozin rejected the claim that the manned launches by SpaceX – which said it would charge anything from $55 million per seat for transporting the astronauts – would be so cheap that Russia would start reserving Crew Dragon seats for its cosmonauts.

The US officials who repeated that claim “just got bedeviled in a mass of figures,” he said. While Russia did charge the US $90 million a seat for Soyuz launches, Rogozin maintains that the Russian-crewed rocket launches still remain more cost-efficient than those of SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

While SpaceX has made the partial reusability of the Falcon a key marketing point, both Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner – which is only expected to carry out its first mission next year – are launched to orbit by heavy rockets, while Soyuz requires a cheaper, medium-class booster, he said.

“Therefore, our space launches cost much less than the American ones,” making Soyuz “unparalleled” when it comes to delivering people to the ISS, Rogozin wrote.

He even compared the spaceship to the AK-47 rifle, saying that both Soviet designs were not only extremely reliable, but also continuously improved all the time. Soyuz is such a workhorse that it will continue to fly even after Russia’s next-generation ‘Orel’ (Eagle) spaceship is introduced.

It’s not our mood that Elon Musk spoiled on May 30, but that of his countrymen from Boeing, by starting flight tests ahead of them. It’s their war, not ours. Our space transport system has been operational for a long time and without interruptions.

He did point out that SpaceX could hardly argue to be the “first private company” to launch humans into space, given that NASA had subsidized both SpaceX and Boeing to the tune of $8 billion to develop rival spaceships. Musk’s company was the first to complete testing and perform its launch.

Roscosmos decided to maintain cooperation with NASA even in the face of sanctions introduced by Washington against Moscow – including Rogozin personally – and continued delivering Americans to the ISS for years at the expense of Russia’s own crews, Rogozin reminded.

It’s only because of Russia that NASA “didn’t have to use a trampoline” to launch astronauts to space, Rogozin wrote, referencing his notorious joke from six years ago.

June 10, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Now Comes the Davos ‘Great Reset’

By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 09.06.2020

For those wondering what will come after the Covid-19 pandemic has successfully all but shut down the entire world economy, spreading the worst depression since the 1930s, the leaders of the premier globalization NGO, Davos World Economic Forum, have just unveiled the outlines of what we can expect next. These people have decided to use this crisis as an opportunity.

On June 3 via their website, the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) unveiled the outlines of their upcoming January 2021 forum. They call it “The Great Reset.” It entails taking advantage of the staggering impact of the coronavirus to advance a very specific agenda. Notably enough, that agenda dovetails perfectly with another specific agenda, namely the 2015 UN Agenda 2030. The irony of the world’s leading big business forum, the one that has advanced the corporate globalization agenda since the 1990s, now embracing what they call sustainable development, is huge. That gives us a hint that this agenda is not quite about what WEF and partners claim.

The Great Reset

On June 3 WEF chairman Klaus Schwab released a video announcing the annual theme for 2021, The Great Reset. It seems to be nothing less than promoting a global agenda of restructuring the world economy along very specific lines, not surprisingly much like that advocated by the IPCC, by Greta from Sweden and her corporate friends such as Al Gore or Blackwater’s Larry Fink.

Interesting is that WEF spokespeople frame the “reset” of the world economy in the context of the coronavirus and the ensuing collapse of the world industrial economy. The WEF website states, “There are many reasons to pursue a Great Reset, but the most urgent is COVID-19.” So the Great Reset of the global economy flows from covid19 and the “opportunity” it presents.

In announcing the 2021 theme, WEF founder Schwab then said, cleverly shifting the agenda: “We only have one planet and we know that climate change could be the next global disaster with even more dramatic consequences for humankind.” The implication is that climate change is the underlying reason for the coronavirus pandemic catastrophe.

To underscore their green “sustainable” agenda, WEF then has an appearance by the would-be King of England, Prince Charles. Referring to the global covid19 catastrophe, the Prince of Wales says, “If there is one critical lesson to learn from this crisis, it is that we need to put nature at the heart of how we operate. We simply can’t waste more time.” On board with Schwab and the Prince is the Secretary-General of the UN, Antonio Guterres. He states, “We must build more equal, inclusive and sustainable economies and societies that are more resilient in the face of pandemics, climate change and the many other global changes we face.” Note his talk of “sustainable economies and societies”—more on that later. The new head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, also endorsed The Great Reset. Other WEF resetters included Ma Jun, the chairman of the Green Finance Committee at the China Society for Finance and Banking and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China; Bernard Looney, CEO of BP; Ajay Banga, CEO of Mastercard; Bradford Smith, president of Microsoft.

Make no mistake, the Great Reset is no spur-of-the moment idea of Schwab and friends. The WEF website states, “COVID-19 lockdowns may be gradually easing, but anxiety about the world’s social and economic prospects is only intensifying. There is good reason to worry: a sharp economic downturn has already begun, and we could be facing the worst depression since the 1930s. But, while this outcome is likely, it is not unavoidable.” The WEF sponsors have big plans: ”… the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a “Great Reset” of capitalism.” This is big stuff.

Radical changes

Schwab reveals more of the coming agenda: “… one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles. Almost instantly, the crisis forced businesses and individuals to abandon practices long claimed to be essential, from frequent air travel to working in an office.” These are supposed to be silver linings?

He suggests that those radical changes be extended: “The Great Reset agenda would have three main components. The first would steer the market toward fairer outcomes. To this end, governments should improve coordination… and create the conditions for a “stakeholder economy…” It would include “changes to wealth taxes, the withdrawal of fossil-fuel subsidies, and new rules governing intellectual property, trade, and competition.”

The second component of the Great Reset agenda would ensure that, “investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability.” Here the WEF head states that the recent huge economic stimulus budgets from the EU, USA, China and elsewhere be used to create a new economy, “more resilient, equitable, and sustainable in the long run. This means, for example, building ‘green’ urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.”

Finally the third leg of this Great Reset will be implementing one of Schwab’s pet projects, the Fourth Industrial Revolution: “The third and final priority of a Great Reset agenda is to harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good, especially by addressing health and social challenges. During the COVID-19 crisis, companies, universities, and others have joined forces to develop diagnostics, therapeutics, and possible vaccines; establish testing centers; create mechanisms for tracing infections; and deliver telemedicine. Imagine what could be possible if similar concerted efforts were made in every sector.” The Fourth Industrial Revolution includes gene-editing biotech, 5G telecommunications, Artificial Intelligence and the like.

UN Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset

If we compare the details of the 2015 UN Agenda 2030 with the WEF Great Reset we find both dovetail very neatly. The theme of Agenda 2030 is a “sustainable world” which is defined as one with income equality, gender equality, vaccines for all under the WHO and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) which was launched in 2017 by the WEF along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2015 the UN issued a document, “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” The Obama Administration never submitted it to the Senate for ratification knowing it would fail. Yet it is being advanced globally. It includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals, extending an earlier Agenda 21. The 17 include “to end poverty and hunger, in all their forms and dimensions… to protect the planet from degradation, including through sustainable consumption and production, sustainably managing its natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change…“ It calls for sustainable economic growth, sustainable agriculture (GMO), sustainable and modern energy (wind, solar), sustainable cities, sustainable industrialization… The word sustainable is the key word. If we dig deeper it is clear it is code-word for a reorganization of world wealth via means such as punitive carbon taxes that will dramatically reduce air and vehicle travel. The less-developed world will not rise to the developed, rather the other way, the advanced civilizations must go down in their living standards to become “sustainable.”

Maurice Strong

To understand the double-speak use of sustainable, we need to go back to Maurice Strong, a billionaire Canadian oilman and close friend of David Rockefeller, the man who played a central role back in the 1970s for the idea that man-made CO2 emissions were making the world unsustainable. Strong created the UN Environment Program, and in 1988, the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) to exclusively study manmade CO2.

In 1992 Strong stated, “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” At the Rio Earth Summit Strong that same year he added, “Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”

The decision to demonize CO2, one of the most essential compounds to sustain all life, human and plant, is not random. As Prof. Richard Lindzen an MIT atmospheric physicist puts it, “CO2 for different people has different attractions. After all, what is it? – it’s not a pollutant, it’s a product of every living creature’s breathing, it’s the product of all plant respiration, it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis, it’s a product of all industrial burning, it’s a product of driving – I mean, if you ever wanted a leverage point to control everything from exhalation to driving, this would be a dream. So it has a kind of fundamental attractiveness to bureaucratic mentality.”

Lest we forget, the curiously well-timed New York pandemic exercise, Event 201 on October 18, 2019 was co-sponsored by the World Economic Forum and the Gates Foundation. It was based on the idea that, ”it is only a matter of time before one of these epidemics becomes global—a pandemic with potentially catastrophic consequences. A severe pandemic, which becomes “Event 201,” would require reliable cooperation among several industries, national governments, and key international institutions.” The Event 201 Scenario posited, “outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people that eventually becomes efficiently transmissible from person to person, leading to a severe pandemic. The pathogen and the disease it causes are modeled largely on SARS, but it is more transmissible in the community setting by people with mild symptoms.”

The declaration by the World Economic Forum to make a Great Reset is to all indications a thinly-veiled attempt to advance the Agenda 2030 “sustainable” dystopian model, a global “Green New Deal” in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic measures. Their close ties with Gates Foundation projects, with the WHO, and with the UN suggest we may soon face a far more sinister world after the Covid19 pandemic fades.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University.

June 9, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , | Leave a comment

AfD Lawmaker: Anti-Nord Stream 2 Sanctions Are Form of Economic Imperialism by US Fracking Industry

Sputnik – 08.06.2020

Washington’s desire to levy further sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline constitutes a form of economic imperialism designed to support the US fracking industry, Heiko Hessenkemper, a member of the Bundestag Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, said.

“So the political pressure is understandable, because America, the American economy, and the American financial industry, are up to their necks in the fracking industry … They use illegal transnational sanctions to protect their interests. In summary, this is nothing more than economic imperialism,” Hessenkemper stated.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline will be vital to ensure Europe’s energy security, the lawmaker said, citing the Dutch government’s decision to wind down the country’s production of natural gas and Germany’s plans to close down many coal and nuclear power plants.

Consequently, Washington’s decision to levy sanctions on the pipeline is both illegal and threatens the energy security of the entire European continent, Hessenkemper added.

“The American argument that Europe is too dependent on Russia and is open to blackmail is, of course, nonsensical because there are enough liquefied gas terminals in Europe that could be refilled from global sources in the event of a supply shortfall. From all these points of view, America’s sanctions are not only illegal, but they are also not in Europe’s interest,” the lawmaker stated.

According to Hessenkemper, the US fracking industry, which is capital-intensive and has high production costs, has been severely impacted by the global fall in oil and gas demand during the ongoing coronavirus disease outbreak. These factors have forced Washington to look abroad and impose sanctions on the fracking industry’s competitors, the lawmaker stated.

US senators on Thursday introduced a bill that would extend the scope of sanctions levied against Nord Stream 2 to include all companies that provide certification, insurance, and port facilities for pipe-laying vessels that are working on the project.

Swiss pipelaying firm Allseas quit the project in December as a result of US sanctions.

The German government has opposed all extraterritorial sanctions imposed by Washington on the pipeline.

See also:

Berlin May Retaliate to Sanctions Against Nord Stream 2 With Duties on US Gas, Senior Lawmaker Warns

June 8, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Russia to buy $1.5 billion worth of pipes to develop Arctic projects & pump gas to China

RT | June 7, 2020

Russia’s energy major Gazprom has announced a record tender to purchase almost 100 billion rubles worth of pipes ($1.5 billion) for its natural gas projects, including the Power of Siberia mega pipeline.

Deliveries are expected to start this year and continue till the end of 2022, according to the data published on state trading platforms. They will be overseen by Gazprom Invest, the company arm in charge of its largest investment projects.

Around 1.3 million tons of pipes are meant to be used for both domestic gas routes and supplies to Russia’s trading partners. According to Russian media, some deliveries are meant for the Power of Siberia pipeline, the largest gas transmission system in Russia’s East. While the project, meant to annually deliver 38 billion cubic meters of gas to China, has been operational since the end of last year, Gazprom plans to connect one more gas field to the pipeline by the end of 2022.


© gazprom.com

While it is not clear how much of the purchases are meant for the Russian-Chinese project, part of the supplies will go to the Ukhta–Torzhok and the Bovanenkovo–Ukhta gas trunklines. The two lines are connected, with the latter conveying gas from Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula into Russia’s Unified Gas Supply System. From Torzhok, gas is delivered to northwestern Russia to cover domestic demand and further into Europe.

June 7, 2020 Posted by | Economics | | Leave a comment

Why would Australia Want to Worsen its Relationship with China?

By Vladimir Terehov – New Eastern Outlook – 05.06.2020

The following explanation framed as a question could be added to the headline of this article to make it even more informative: “Why would a prosperous country, which has managed to stay above the fray during global political squabbles and to handle the current COVID-19 pandemic wreaking havoc worldwide much better than other nations, voluntarily look for trouble?”

It really has no reason to at present. Why is Canberra all of a sudden so concerned about the origins of the Coronavirus? And what practical value is there in finding out the answer? Once the battle against COVID-19 has been won in all parts of the globe, enough information will have been gathered in order to have a fruitful discussion on the aforementioned topic. At present, there is no reason to make any kind of allegations against China either openly or less directly.

So why would a country, such as Australia with its current standing, wish to get involved in a global conflict (and the COVID-19 pandemic is its focus at present), whose main participants are two world powers, and decide to support one of them? In fact, Canberra chose to back the nation whose actions, in response to the pandemic, are almost completely motivated by its worsening domestic problems. Recently, a possible answer to the aforementioned question was published in the New Eastern Outlook.

And in this report, the author simply wishes to point out that Australian Prime Minister’s very constructive telephone conversation with Mr Trump, followed by discussions with a number of European leaders towards the end of April all seemed to indicate Canberra’s support for the US stance. One of the key issues talked about had to do with an independent investigation into the origins of the Coronavirus and its subsequent spread. And although it would appear that China was not mentioned directly, other phrases, such as “unregulated wet markets”, pointing in the direction of the PRC were.

However, since the end of April, Australia’s stance on the issue has changed. The current view essentially avoids laying blame at China’s door a priori. And in the end, Canberra decided to support a draft resolution prepared by the EU and presented at the 73rd Session of the World Health Organization’s (WHO, a UN agency) World Health Assembly (WHA), held in Geneva from 18 to 21 May.

Over 120 WHO member states (out of the total of 194) backed the more neutrally worded motion, which does not mention China by name, calling for an investigation into the global response to the Coronavirus pandemic. None of the countries voted against the resolution, including the United States.

Still, the previous actions taken by the Australian government, headed by Scott Morrison, in connection with the issue of COVID-19 origins had, of course, not gone unnoticed in Beijing, which, at this stage, decided to apply a bit of pressure on Australia’s “weak spot”. In order to point out what it is, the author will once again need to describe the position Australia has found itself in, resembling a “split”, on the chess board of the Indo-Pacific region.

Overall, it seems quite natural that Australia is drawn to the United States and the Anglosphere in general when it comes to culture, politics and even the defense and security sector. However, its economy, which relies on exports of natural resources and agricultural products, is very much oriented towards China’s market.

Australia’s total export sales for 2019 (with figures typical for the entire decade) can be used to illustrate the aforementioned point. Sales to China accounted for 32.7% of all Australian exports in 2019. Japan ended up in second place, with a 24.7% share, and the United States in 5th position, with a 3.7% one. In addition, exports to China grew by 20 % during 2019. Since trade between Great Britain and Australia started from almost nothing, there was a record growth (of 192%) in sales to the UK that year. Fossil fuels and mineral resources accounted for two thirds of all the exports, while animal products and grains for 5.5%.

In 2019, about 85% “of Australia’s exports by value were delivered to Asian countries”. The figures mentioned thus far should have prompted Canberra to follow foreign policies that would, in general, encourage stability in the region and, in particular, foster good relations with the most powerful country in this part of the world, i.e. the PRC.

However, since 2013, when the center-right Coalition essentially headed by the Liberal Party of Australia won the regularly scheduled federal election and then did it again in 2016 and 2019 thus asserting its dominance, the importance of the role played by the extremity (forming the “split”) directed towards the United States has grown noticeably. As a result, there was an increased focus on opposing China (USA’s key rival) as part of Australia’s foreign policy.

Canberra has grown more and more concerned with territorial disputes in the South China Sea involving the PRC and a number of Southeast Asian nations. And although the United States is situated on the other side of the planet, it is becoming increasingly involved in these conflicts. In the most evident display of solidarity with Washington to date, a squadron of Australian naval ships sailed to the South China Sea (to clearly send a message to Beijing) in autumn of 2017. Australian media outlets gave the group of vessels a tongue-in-cheek name of “small armada”.

Still, during bilateral negotiations conducted at various levels, Canberra has always managed to convince the Chinese leadership that there is nothing better than Australian coal, iron ore, crude oil, liquefied natural gas, barley and beef on the global markets. A visit to Beijing by an unusually numerous delegation, headed by the Prime Minister at the time, Malcolm Turnbull, in spring 2016 proved to be a milestone for both nations.

Incidentally, the then Treasurer and now Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison turned out to be the most “convincing” member of this delegation. And two months after he had taken on the current role in August 2018, Scott Morrison sent Foreign Minister Marise Payne to Beijing with an essentially conciliatory message.

Something tells the author that, after a while, once the current highly politicized Coronavirus crisis is (hopefully) somehow dealt with and as the next federal election (in spring 2022) draws near, we could expect a visit to Beijing (for “an edict from on high”) by a no less impressive delegation than the one in 2016 from the government, headed by the Liberal Party of Australia.

After all, farmers and miner have already started showing their discontent about the consequences of the (clearly poorly thought through) “fight for the truth”, which their own government has been a part of in recent months. During that period, seemingly coincidentally, China’s food safety inspectors began to identify “issues” with the quality of Australian meat and prices on coal, ore and barley imported by China from Australia noticeably decreased.

And even if one does not take into account the effect Scott Morrison’s efforts to find those responsible for the outbreak have had, the Coronavirus crisis has already resulted in the increase in Australia’s unemployment rate to over 6%, in addition, according to current estimates, the nation’s economy will need approximately 2 years to recover from all the COVID-19-related consequences. In fact, in his address to the nation, the Prime Minister said that the rise in unemployment had been “just the beginning of the economic fallout of COVID-19”.

Another important factor, which makes the overall situation in Australia even tougher, worth noting is the fact that the PRC leadership is clearly losing its patience (a quality China is famous for) with Canberra. Beijing is also fed up with listening to criticism about its supposed human rights violations in XUAR (the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region), Tibet and Hong Kong, directed at it by Canberra’s “big brother”.

Hence, tougher times are ahead for Australia, which for now is still prospering.

Vladimir Terekhov is an expert on the issues of the Asia-Pacific Region.

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

Does Germany blame Russia for cyberattacks to appease Washington?

By Paul Antonopoulos | June 5, 2020

Berlin is insistent on maintaining problematic relations with Moscow by making claims against Russia. Long-time German Chancellor Angela Merkel accused Russia in the Bundestag that she was the target of Russian hackers, adding that she had concrete proof of the “outrageous” spying attempts, without actually providing any evidence. She even went on to suggest that sanctions could be placed against Russia.

The German Foreign Ministry said in a statement on May 28 that “The Russian ambassador was informed that on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by the federal prosecutor’s office on May 5 against Russian national Dmitry Badin, that the German government will seek in Brussels to use the EU cyber sanctions regime against those responsible for the attack on the German Bundestag, including Mr Badin.”

The alleged cyberattack occurred in 2015 and brings to question why Berlin is now resurrecting a 5-year-old issue that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov highlighted there was no evidence for Russian involvement. EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, shared Lavrov’s sentiment and said he also did not have data on a cyberattack on the Bundestag and could not comment on this issue despite Berlin’s threat that it will use the EU to place sanctions on Russia.

“As for Russian hacker attacks, I don’t have any information that I can provide you at this stage,” said Borrel, answering a question from journalists about the possible imposition of sanctions on this case against Russians.

Perhaps as the U.S. continues to threaten companies involved in NordStream 2, Berlin is giving the appearance that it is still anti-Russia, despite being almost entirely reliant on Russia for its energy needs. Also, as Berlin has not provided evidence that Russia was behind the cyberattacks, why has it also not considered the U.S. could have orchestrated the attack?

In October 2013, Steffen Seibert, an official spokesman for the German government, reported that former CIA officer Edward Snowden had warned Germany that U.S. intelligence agencies could track Merkel’s mobile phone. Despite numerous demands from the public to conduct a full investigation and prosecute those responsible for this incident, in June 2015 the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office announced that the case was closed due to the inability to prove it in court.

Although the case allegedly could not be prosecuted, it does call to question why Merkel through a spokesperson told U.S. officials that they “view such practices [like spying] … as completely unacceptable.” White House spokesman Jay Carney said in response that “the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of the chancellor.”

In a statement, the German government said that “Among close friends and partners, as the Federal Republic of Germany and the U.S. have been for decades, there should be no such monitoring of the communications of a head of government.” The statement also said that Merkel had told Obama that “such practices must be prevented immediately.”

However, this is an incident that took place seven years ago and under a different U.S. administration and political party. None-the-less, in February 2019, a scandal erupted around Swiss company Crypto AG which was developing equipment used to encrypt sensitive information, and was working closely with the CIA and the BND (German intelligence). It was revealed that for more than half a century this practise was going on, demonstrating that U.S. spying on its own allies is not a new phenomenon.

Investigators from the German television station ZDF and The Washington Post found that the illegal actions by U.S. and German intelligence services affected more than 120 countries. The Swiss company supplied products as far back as the Second World War with encryption weaknesses so U.S. and German intelligence agencies could spy on many countries, including their own allies. Though the BND stopped participating in this Rubicon operation, as it came to be known, in 1993, the U.S. continued to spy until 2018.

After such cooperation with the U.S., information about the wiretap of the German Chancellor, which remained without a harsh reaction, is presented in a completely different light. Berlin probably had to quietly take the insult in order to avoid major and public problems because the NATO allies have likely gathered a lot of damaging information about each other over the years in their joint work in the Rubicon operation. It is worth to mention that Germany is not an ordinary European state, but the power engine of the European Union and an important member of NATO.

Now Germany decisively accuses Russia of cyberattacks and threatens sanctions, despite not providing any evidence for their claims. Although Russia, unlike the U.S., did not wiretap the German government, it is much safer to blame Russian citizens for cyberattacks. It does bring into question however why Germany is even possibly discussing sanctions while it fully supports the NordStream 2 pipeline project to secure its energy interests with Russia.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

June 5, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

The Media Has Conveniently Forgotten George W. Bush’s Many Atrocities

By James Bovard | Mises Wire | June 4, 2020

Former president George W. Bush has returned to the spotlight to give moral guidance to America in these troubled times. In a statement released on Tuesday, Bush announced that he was “anguished” by the “brutal suffocation” of George Floyd and declared that “lasting peace in our communities requires truly equal justice. The rule of law ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system. And achieving justice for all is the duty of all.”

Bush’s declaration was greeted with thunderous applause by the usual suspects who portray him as the virtuous Republican in contrast to Trump. While the media portrays Bush’s pious piffle as a visionary triumph of principle, Americans need to vividly recall the lies and atrocities that permeated his eight years as president.

In an October 2017 speech in a “national forum on liberty” at the George W. Bush Institute in New York City, Bush bemoaned that “Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.” Coming from Bush, this had as much credibility as former president Bill Clinton bewailing the decline of chastity.

Most media coverage of Bush nowadays either ignores the falsehoods he used to take America to war in Iraq or portrays him as a good man who received incorrect information. But Bush was lying from the get-go on Iraq and was determined to drag the nation into another Middle East war. From January 2003 onward, Bush constantly portrayed the US as an innocent victim of Saddam Hussein’s imminent aggression and repeatedly claimed that war was being “forced upon us.” That was never the case. As the Center for Public Integrity reported, Bush made “232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda.” As the lies by which he sold the Iraq War unraveled, Bush resorted to vilifying critics as traitors in a 2006 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Bush’s lies led to the killing of more than four thousand American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. But since those folks are dead and gone anyhow, the media instead lauds Bush’s selection to be in a Kennedy Center art show displaying his borderline primitive oil paintings.

In February 2018, Bush was paid lavishly to give a pro-democracy speech in the United Arab Emirates, ruled by a notorious Arab dictatorship. He proclaimed: “Our democracy is only as good as people trust the results.” He openly fretted about Russian “meddling” in the 2016 US election.

But when he was president, Bush acted as if the United States were entitled to intervene in any foreign election he pleased. He boasted in 2005 that his administration had budgeted almost $5 billion “for programs to support democratic change around the world,” much of which was spent on tampering with foreign vote totals. When Iraq held elections in 2005, Bush approved a massive covert aid program for pro-American Iraqi parties. The Bush administration spent over $65 million to boost their favored candidate in the 2004 Ukraine election. Yet, with boundless hypocrisy, Bush proclaimed that “any (Ukrainian) election… ought to be free from any foreign influence.” US government-financed organizations helped spur coups in Venezuela in 2002 and Haiti in 2004. Both of those nations, along with Ukraine, remain political train wrecks.

In that October 2017 New York speech, Bush proclaimed: “No democracy pretends to be a tyranny.” But ravaging the Constitution was apparently part of his job description when he was president. Shortly after 9-11, Bush turned back the clock to before 1215 (when the Magna Carta was signed), formally suspending habeas corpus and claiming a prerogative to imprison indefinitely anyone he labeled a terrorist suspect. In 2002, Justice Department lawyers informed Bush that the president was entitled to violate the law during wartime—and the war on terror was expected to continue indefinitely. In 2004, Bush White House counsel Alberto Gonzales formally asserted a “commander-in-chief override power” entitling presidents to ignore the Bill of Rights.

Under Bush, the US government embraced barbaric practices which did more to destroy America’s moral credibility than all of Trump’s tweets combined. Bush’s “enhanced interrogation” regime included endless high-volume repetition of a Meow Mix cat food commercial at Guantanamo, head slapping, waterboarding, exposure to frigid temperatures, and manacling for many hours in stress positions. After the Supreme Court rebuffed some of Bush’s power grabs in 2006, he pushed through Congress a bill that retroactively legalized torture—one of the worst legislative disgraces since the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. During his years in the White House, Bush perennially denied that he had approved torture. But in 2010, during an author tour to promote his new memoir, he bragged about approving waterboarding for terrorist suspects.

Is Bush nominating himself to be the nation’s racial healer? When he was president, Bush inflicted more financial ruin on blacks than any president since Woodrow Wilson (who brought Jim Crow barbarities to the federal government). Bush trumpeted his plans to close the gap between black and white homeownership rates and promised in 2002 to “use the mighty muscle of the federal government” to solve the problem. Bush was determined to end the bias against people who wanted to buy a home but had no money. Congress passed Bush’s American Dream Downpayment Act in 2003, authorizing federal handouts to first-time homebuyers of up to $10,000 or 6 percent of the home’s purchase price. Bush also swayed Congress to permit the Federal Housing Administration to make no–down payment loans to low-income Americans. Bush proclaimed: “Core American values of individuality, thrift, responsibility, and self-reliance are embodied in homeownership.” In Bush’s eyes, self-reliance was so wonderful that the government should subsidize it. And it didn’t matter whether recipients were creditworthy, because politicians meant well. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign trumpeted his down payment giveaways, a shining example of “compassionate conservatism.”

Thanks in large part to his policies, minority households saw the fastest growth in homeownership leading up to the 2007 recession. The housing collapse ravaged the net worth of black and Hispanic households. “The implosion of the subprime lending market has left a scar on the finances of black Americans—one that not only has wiped out a generation of economic progress but could leave them at a financial disadvantage for decades,” the Washington Post reported in 2012. The median net worth for Hispanic households declined by 66 percent between 2005 and 2009. That devastation was aptly described in a 2017 federal appeals court dissenting opinion as “wrecking ball benevolence” (quoting a 2004 Barron’s op-ed I wrote). But almost none of the media coverage of the ex-president reminds people of the economic carnage of this Bush vote-buying binge.

It is possible to condemn police brutality and, even more importantly, the evil laws and judicial doctrines that enable police to tyrannize other Americans without any help from a demagogic ex-president who ravaged our rights, liberties, and peace. As I commented in an August 2003 USA Today op-ed, “Whether Bush and his appointees will be held personally liable for their [Iraq War] falsehoods is a grave test for American democracy.” The revival of Bush’s reputation vivifies how our political media system failed that test. As long as George Bush doesn’t turn himself in for committing war crimes, all of his talk about “achieving justice for all” is rubbish.

James Bovard is the author of ten books, including 2012’s Public Policy Hooligan, and 2006’s Attention Deficit Democracy. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and many other publications.

June 4, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Rush to trash hydroxychloroquine exposes fundamental flaws in profit-based medical ‘science’

By Helen Buyniski | RT | June 4, 2020

As the WHO and prestigious medical journal the Lancet back away from questionable data provided by healthcare analytics firm Surgisphere, ulterior motives for the rush to demonize hydroxychloroquine become clear.

The World Health Organization (WHO) sheepishly resumed testing the off-patent malaria drug hydroxychloroquine on coronavirus patients on Wednesday after pausing that arm of its ‘Solidarity’ clinical trial based on data that appeared to show the drug contributed to higher death rates among test subjects. That data, it turned out, came from a tiny US healthcare analytics firm called Surgisphere, and calling it faulty would be excessively charitable.

Not only is Surgisphere a company lacking in medical expertise – its employees included an “adult” entertainer and a science-fiction writer – but its CEO Sapan Desai co-authored two of the damning studies that used the firm’s data to smear hydroxychloroquine, already thoroughly demonized in the media thanks to its promotion by US President Donald Trump, as a killer. All data is sourced to a proprietary database supposedly containing a veritable ocean of real-time, detailed patient information yet curiously absent from existing medical literature.

The Surgisphere-tainted study appeared to show increased risk of in-hospital deaths and heart problems with no disease-fighting benefits, confirming the suspicions of medical-industry naysayers already inclined to hate the off-patent drug due to the lack of profit potential and Trump’s incessant boosterism. Italy, France, and Germany rushed to ban hydroxychloroquine, citing “an increased risk for adverse reactions with little or no benefit.”

But such a shameless character assassination performed against a potentially-lifesaving drug – especially one with a decades-long track record of safety in malaria, lupus, and arthritis patients that came highly recommended by some of the world’s most eminent disease experts, including France’s Didier Raoult – could only be accomplished with help from industry prejudice. It required ignoring numerous existing studies showing hydroxychloroquine was beneficial in treating early-stage Covid-19 patients, as well as anecdotal reports from thousands of doctors who’d successfully used it.

It also required trusting a fly-by-night company with next to no internet or media presence to make decisions that could affect the lives of millions of people. It’s not like there weren’t warning signs Surgisphere was something other than the top-notch medical analytics firm it presented itself as. The company began life as a textbook publisher in 2008 and hired most of its 11 employees two month ago, according to an investigation by the Guardian, yet it claimed ownership of a massive international database of 96,000 patients in 1,200 hospitals worldwide. One expert interviewed by the outlet said it would be difficult for even a national statistics agency to do in years what Surgisphere had supposedly done in weeks, calling the database “almost certainly a scam.” Yet no one at the Lancet or WHO thought to look a gift horse in the mouth – not when that gift drove a stake through the heart of hydroxychloroquine as Covid-19 treatment.

And while Australian researchers found flaws in the Surgisphere data just days after the May 22 publication of the Lancet study, noting that the number of Covid-19 deaths cited by the study as coming from five hospitals exceeded the entirety of Covid-19 deaths recorded in Australia at that time, the Lancet – instead of investigating just who this Surgisphere company really was, and why it had made such a glaring mistake – merely published a minor retraction related to the Australian data and put the controversy to bed.

The full-frontal assault on hydroxychloroquine was instead allowed to continue unchecked in the media, as mainstream outlets focused their energies on fluffing up remdesivir – a costly, untested drug manufactured by drug maker Gilead that has so far produced lackluster results in clinical trials – and stumping for an eventual vaccine. Hydroxychloroquine’s off-patent status meant it was a dead end as far as profits were concerned, while remdesivir and whatever vaccine is ultimately green-lighted will make a lot of people very rich. Perhaps hoping to throw their audiences off the real reason for their hydroxychloroquine hatred, several outlets hinted that Trump stood to make money off the drug (which costs about 60 cents per pill) – but even Snopes, no fan of the ‘Bad Orange Man’, had to pour cold water on that speculation.

The Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine have – belatedly – published “expressions of concern” about the Surgisphere hydroxychloroquine study, and an independent audit is being conducted. But the problem of biased health authorities selectively embracing some trial results while rejecting others is unlikely to stop there.

The Lancet study is hardly the only one to show hydroxychloroquine lacks efficacy in treating Covid-19. Multiple studies conducted by the US National Institutes of Health on hospitalized (i.e. severely-ill) coronavirus patients have yielded poor results, but even the drug’s most ardent evangelists acknowledge it doesn’t help end-stage or very sick patients. Raoult has even claimed France banned the drug’s use in all but the most severely ill patients in order to discredit it as a treatment. The US National Institutes of Health was publishing studies in its journal Virology touting chloroquine as “a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection” as far back as 2005, yet ‘coronavirus czar’ Anthony Fauci throws shade at the drug whenever he gets a chance.

As long as deadly diseases like Covid-19 are seen as profit sources first and human rights issues second (or third, or tenth…), treatments that aren’t profitable will always be marginalized in favor of costly and frequently less-effective pharmaceuticals. Drug industry profiteering has already killed hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of people in the US alone. Taking the profit motive out of healthcare can help ensure its body count stays as low as possible.

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23

June 4, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

UK battery electric car strategy is ‘doomed to failure’

By Andrew Forster | Transport Xtra | June 1, 2020

The Government’s push to electrify road transport is based on naivety, the undue influence of the Committee on Climate Change, and a lack of engineering expertise within Government, an academic has said.

Professor Michael Kelly, the former chief scientific adviser to the Department for Communities and Local Government, issues the warning in a paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

He warns the Government’s ambitions for EVs and electric heating in buildings will end in damaging failure.

“When the penny drops and the progress towards all-electric UK is halted, we will be reminded of Ozymandias [two poems that describe how even the greatest men and the empires they forge are impermanent, their legacies fated to decay into oblivion – Ed].

“The rest of the world can look at Britain and choose whether to laugh or weep.”

On battery electric vehicles, he says: “Consider Dinorwig power station, the biggest hydropower energy storage plant in the UK. If all UK cars were battery powered, the nine gigawatts of energy stored behind the dam would be capable of recharging about 60,000 of them, or about 0.25 per cent of the UK fleet.”

If all vehicles have to be electric, “something of the order of 70 per cent of Britain’s entire existing electricity supply capacity will be needed”.

“When we get coded messages from the Climate Change Committee, implying that we will have to rethink the extent to which we are going to be able to travel in future, it is the implausibility of meeting that vast gulf in energy sources that is motivating them to question our lifestyles.”

Kelly points out that the Government’s net zero greenhouse gas target will also require the heating of buildings to be electrified using heat pumps. This will place huge additional demands on electricity supply, particularly in the winter.

Charging battery cars at night, when electricity demand from other sources is low, is only a “partial solution” to the problems, he says. “The current day-night variation in electricity demand is of itself too small to handle the extra load.

“Another suggestion is that we can charge cars during the day, when solar power is high. But in the absence of storage, this would mean charging them from mid-morning to mid-afternoon on sunny days. This is implausible too, and would be unreliable [even] if we could make it happen.”

Turning to local electricity supply issues, he says “we will be adding electric vehicle chargers and heat pumps to almost every home”.

“A fast EV charger for a car draws 7kW, perhaps for six hours, and a heat pump needs 3kW, potentially for much of the day. But the cabling and substations in most suburbs were sized and installed before these technologies were even thought of. So while there is sufficient headroom for electrification of a few households, the whole distribution system will need to be up- graded if demand grows.

“This work will be extraordinarily expensive, but without it there will either be regular ‘brownouts’, or drivers will have to be told where and when they can charge their batteries.”

Kelly dismisses battery storage as a major part of the solution. “The £45m battery installed by Elon Musk outside Adelaide, South Australia, can power that city for 30 minutes. If you wanted to be able to cover a week’s power outage after a major storm, it would cost around 1,300 times as much using batteries as it would with diesel generators. The idea is ludicrous.”

Turning to the raw materials needed to produce batteries, Kelly claims: “If we replace all of the UK vehicle fleet with EVs, and assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation batteries, we would need the following materials:

  • 207,900 tonnes of cobalt – just under twice the annual global production;
  • 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate – three-quarters of the world’s production;
  • at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium – nearly the entire world production of neodymium; and
  • 2,362,500 tonnes of copper – more than half the world’s production in 2018.

“Put simply, we lack the ability to provide the infrastructure required to deliver electric cars and electric heating on the scale required by 2050.”

Kelly asks why we are trying to do so anyway and pins the blame on the Committee on Climate Change.

“An unelected body, the Committee displays many of the worst features of the administrative state. It has been grossly negligent in turning a blind eye to the complexity of electric vehicles and the related issue of the enforced switch to electricity for domestic heating.

“Committee members don’t have to face the consequences of their policies from voters; politicians, who do have to face the voters, hide behind the Committee in order to duck accountability.

“It is this failure of the UK’s political machinery that I believe is to blame for the situation in which we find ourselves.

“We have set out to decarbonise the economy without anyone having thought through all the engineering issues, let alone put a cost on the exercise.”

Kelly says that, with Covid-19, “it is clear that we will not be able to afford the costs of the net zero transition for decades, if ever”.

“To attempt to plough on would be madness; indeed, it would directly sabotage the UK economy, and without any measurable effect in terms of actually averting any climate change.”

“Surely now is the time for a root and branch cost-benefit review by independent engineers who have no skin in the game of electrifying the UK economy.”

June 4, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Two U.S. senators determined to stop Nord Stream 2 by imposing extra sanctions

By Paul Antonopoulos | June 4, 2020

The Nord Stream 2 project involves the construction of two gas pipelines with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea. The gas pipeline will run through the territorial waters or exclusive economic zones of Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. However, this gas pipeline is strengthening Russia’s relations with European states, making the U.S. desperate to end the project.

As reported by Bloomberg on Wednesday, U.S. senators are planning to extend sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 project. Sanctions are expected to target insurance companies associated with the project.

Senator Ted Cruz led the charge against Moscow and said the Russian pipeline is “a critical threat to America’s national security and must not be completed.” He added that Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to circumvent the sanctions passed by Congress last year. He of course did not explain how a Russian pipeline a continent away from the U.S. and in northern Europe could impact their security.

Cruz, a Republican, was joined by Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, who said that the pipeline “threatens Ukraine, Europe’s energy independence and gives Russia an opening to exploit our allies” and that “Congress must once again take decisive action and stand in this pipeline’s path.” He, just like Cruz, did not explain exactly how the pipeline is a threat or security concern, especially against Ukraine.

The pipeline does not threaten Europe’s energy independence, and rather, as is enshrined in a free market economy that the U.S. says it ardently defends, allows Europe to have another option for gas. Although Russian gas already reaches Europe, it goes via Ukraine that is volatile and a high risk for Russia. The Director General of the Ukrainian gas transportation system Sergei Makogon said earlier this year that Ukraine “will make every effort to prevent the completion of Nord Stream 2, as this project has a clear political character and runs counter to European principles of solidarity.”

With Russian gas to Europe at risk, the Nord Stream 2 project ensures Russia’s gas can reach European markets so it can compete with gas from Qatar, the U.S. and other sources. And here is where the problem lays for Washington. It is obviously absurd to suggest that Russian gas “threatens Ukraine” or is a “critical threat to America’s national security.” The proposed sanctions, that also have backing from Republican Senators John Barrasso of Wyoming and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, are just part of the “gas wars” initiated by the U.S. to force countries to buy American liquefied natural gas.

Last week, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, who resigned on June 2, said that new sanctions against Nord Stream 2 could be adopted by the U.S. Congress in an operational mode. Their purpose is to prevent commissioning of the gas pipeline.

At that time, media also swept on the news that an alleged dispute broke out between U.S. President Donald Trump and long-time German Chancellor Angela Merkel because of differences of opinion on the Nord Stream 2 project. However, neither Berlin nor Washington officially confirmed this rumour. Also, at the end of last year, the U.S. adopted a defense budget providing for sanctions on companies involved in laying the gas pipeline. As a result, the Swiss company Allseas stopped work and withdrew its ships. The head of the Ministry of Energy Alexander Nowak said after that Russia is able to complete the project itself however.

The Nord Stream 2 subsidiary, Gazprom Nord Stream 2, is building the gas pipeline. The annual meeting of Gazprom’s board of directors is scheduled for June 11 and it is expected the main topic of talks to be about the impact of Western sanctions on Gazprom and response measures. This is more crucial as now Poland has joined the U.S. in anti-Nord Stream 2 sanctions.

The Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection initiated a new proceeding against Gazprom regarding the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, threatening the Russian company with a fine of €50 million. The Polish office demanded that Gazprom provide documents regarding the project, namely contracts concluded between Gazprom’s subsidiary and other companies financing the construction of the gas pipeline. These were primarily contracts for the transmission, distribution, sale, supply and storage of gas fuels. Gazprom did not provide this information, and now Poland aims to fine the company.

Despite these pressures, in which Poland has a very minor part, Russia will unlikely be deterred by threats of sanctions. Russia has already learned long ago how to operate while under sanction and will continue to pursue projects that serve their state interests and integrate Russia closer to Europe. This is especially important as the European countries are more interested in convenient gas that is not only logistically easier, but cheaper than many other alternatives.

It is for this reason that Russian Ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, said that the U.S. will not be able to stop the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

June 4, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

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