Iran to establish ferry link to Russia’s Dagestan across Caspian Sea
Naryn-kala Citadel museum, part of Derbent State Historical, Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve in the city of Derbent, Republic of Dagestan, Russia. © Sputnik / Vladimir Vyatkin
RT | August 18, 2019
Tehran is in talks with Moscow over plans to establish a ferry service across the Caspian Sea that would link Iran with Russia’s Dagestan.
The Iranian ambassador to Russia, Mehdi Sanai, had earlier arrived in Derbent to discuss the development of relations between Iran and Russia’s Republic of Dagestan. During the visit, the two sides discussed the question of increasing cargo traffic through Makhachkala Commercial Sea Port, as well as the launch of direct passenger and cargo flights between Makhachkala and Tehran.
Among the issues discussed was a plan to set up a direct ferry service linking the two states, with the head of Dagestan’s republic, Vladimir Vasiliev, highly optimistic about the prospect.
“Derbent attracts Iran like a magnet and [the ferry service] will work. [Tehran] is ready to establish sea links with us, and we are ready to cooperate – and everything will work,” Vasilyev told journalists at a press briefing on Sunday.
He said that Iran’s business community had started to take an interest in Dagestan, in particular in Derbent, with a number of international projects already being implemented and set to transform the region.
“International projects are being implemented in Derbent, there are some very interesting solutions there. The city used to have a billion-plus [rubles] annual income, but now it is receiving four billion [rubles] more [from investors],” Vasilyev stated.
Earlier reports regarding cooperation between Dagestan and the Islamic Republic referred to plans to increase the sales turnover between the two sides, particularly to boost lamb exports to Iran from the current 4,000 tons to 6,000 tons by the end of the year. At present, the volume of trade between Iran and the republics of the North Caucasus is estimated at $54 million (€49 million), while the total Russian turnover is $1.7 billion (€1.49 billion).
Turkey, Iran resume train service after four years
Press TV – August 13, 2019
Turkey and Iran have restarted a train service between Ankara and Tehran after a four-year hiatus, in a further blow to US sanctions.
The Trans Asia Express, carrying passengers and freight, left Tehran railway station for the Turkish capital on Wednesday during a ceremony attended by senior officials.
Head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Railways (IRIR) Saeed Rasouli flagged off the first train service which will run on a weekly basis every Wednesday.
According to Mehr news agency, the five-car train carrying 200 passengers took about 60 hours to arrive in Ankara on Saturday.
The decision to resume the service came in May after meetings between Iranian and Turkish officials. Trains between the eastern Turkish city of Van near the Iranian border and Tehran resumed in late June.
The new service involves two train travel segments and a ferry journey. The IRIR train leaving Tehran will have a layover in the Iranian city of Tabriz before heading to Lake Van in eastern Turkey.
Passengers will then ride a ferry across the lake before taking a train operated by Turkey’s state railway agency to Ankara.
The service marks yet another milestone in burgeoning trade ties between Iran and Turkey whose leaders have dismissed unilateral American sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Washington has been tightening the screws on Tehran’s main source of income, aiming to cut Iran’s oil sales to zero, after President Donald Trump reimposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic in November.
According to data released by Tehran Chamber of Commerce Industries Mines and Agriculture on Monday, Turkey imported $2.2 billion worth of goods and services from Iran in the first quarter of the Iranian year which began in March.
The figure marked a five-fold jump compared to the similar period in 2018, it said.
Tehran and Ankara have repeatedly reiterated their resolve to increase annual trade to a target of 30 billion dollar, around triple current levels.
Earlier this year, Iranian deputy industry minister Mohsen Salehinia said Iran and Turkey were negotiating the possibility of setting up joint industrial parks.
“The Turks are demanding cheap Iranian energy for joint production and in case we manage to reach a conclusion with the ministry of energy, a joint town will be set up,” he told a news conference in Tehran.
On Sunday, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for expansion of cooperation in various areas in a phone conversation.
Iran is one of the biggest oil suppliers for Turkey, which is almost completely reliant on imports to meet its energy needs. It also imports natural gas from Iran, the country’s second largest supplier after Russia.
Turkey has said it is looking into establishing new trade mechanisms with Iran, like the Instex system set up by European countries to avoid US sanctions reimposed last year on exports of Iranian oil.
President Erdogan has previously slammed the sanctions, saying they are destabilizing for the region.
His country is also facing US sanctions over Ankara’s purchase of Russian S-400 missile defense systems, which has seriously strained relations between the NATO allies.
Why Would the Democrats Want to be “Tough” on Trade, as Opposed to Smart on Trade?
By Dean Baker | Beat the Press | August 11, 2019
The New York Times has created an absurd dilemma for Democrats, “how to be tougher on trade than Trump.” This framing of the trade issue is utterly bizarre and bears no resemblance to reality.
While Trump has often framed the trade issue as China, Mexico, and other trading partners gaining at the expense of the United States because of “stupid” trade negotiators, this has little to do with trade policy over the last three decades. The United States negotiated trade deals to benefit U.S. corporations. The point of deals like NAFTA was to facilitate outsourcing, so U.S. corporations could take advantage of lower cost labor in Mexico.
The same was true with admitting China to the W.T.O.. This both allowed U.S. corporations to move operations to China and also made it possible for retailers like Walmart to set up low-cost supply chains to undercut their competitors. The job loss and trade deficits that resulted from these deals were not accidental outcomes, they were the point of these deals.
U.S. negotiators have also made longer and stronger patent and related protections (which are 180 degrees at odds with “free trade”) central components of recent trade deals. While these provisions mean larger profits for drug companies and the software and entertainment industries, they do not help ordinary workers. In fact, by forcing our trading partners to pay more money for the products from these sectors, they leave them with less money for other exports.
Anyhow, given the reality of our trade policy over the last three decades it is hard to know what being “tough on trade” means. In the Trumpian universe (and apparently at the NYT ) this could make sense, but not in the real world. The question is whether our trade policy is designed to help ordinary workers or to increase corporate profits, “tough” is beside the point.
Amazon Plant In China Accused Of Forcing High School Interns To Work 60 Hour Weeks
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 09/2019
In addition to not paying taxes and putting the entire brick and mortar retail industry out of business single-handedly, Amazon has now opened itself up to even more criticism. The company is being accused of using a Chinese assembly plant that relies on temporary workers, including high school interns, and overtime limits set beyond law, according to Bloomberg.
In fact, Foxconn fired two executives from the plant, which assembles Echo speakers and Kindle e-readers, in response to a labor group’s allegation that it cut wages and broke labor laws. This marks the second time that Amazon and its Taiwanese peer have been under scrutiny for the treatment of workers at the Hengyang plant.
The plant’s chief and head of human resources were fired, while managers at the plant who were responsible for using interns were “punished”, according to Foxconn.
China Labor Watch said:
“Amazon and Foxconn responded that they would make improvements to the factory’s working conditions. However, CLW’s 2019 investigation found that Foxconn’s working conditions did not improve, and instead deteriorated.”
The labor group deemed the factory’s wages too low to support a “decent standard of living last year”. Since then, they’ve been slashed another 16% in 2019.
The poor salary hasn’t been enough to fill the company’s 58 assembly lines, which require 7,000 people to operate during peak production, which begins in July. To fill the void, Foxconn instead tapped interns as young as 16 from vocational schools, some of which were forced to work overtime.
One 17 year old computing major at a vocational school, who was responsible for putting protective film over Amazon Echo Dots, said she worked 40 hour work weeks. She was then asked to start working overtime and put in 60 hour work weeks. When she complained to the manager, she reportedly was warned by her teacher that turning down the work could jeopardize her graduation.
Foxconn admits that its proportion of contract workers and student interns had “on occasion exceeded legal thresholds and that some interns had been allowed to work overtime or nights”.
“We were not in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulation,” Foxconn said. The company continued, in a statement:
“Effective immediately, the percentage of interns assigned to that facility will be brought into full compliance with the relevant labor law.”
The specific allegations made by the China Labor Watch report included:
- Interns from local vocational schools accounted for more than 20% of the plant’s current workforce, double the levels permitted by law
- Such student workers were forced to work night shifts and overtime, in violation of the law, and that some interns were physically and verbally abused by teachers overseeing their work
- The factory used “dispatch workers” — similar to temporary staff in the U.S. — for around one in three positions at the plant, in excess of the 10% permitted by law
- Some 375 workers had been asked to work overtime on Sunday without receiving makeup days off, contrary to labor rules that stipulate at least one scheduled day off per week
Foxconn has battled criticism of how it has treated its workers for over a decade now. Those critiques came to a head in 2010 when a rash of suicides by workers at the company forced it to make a major overhaul of how it treated workers.
A report from China Labor Watch last year once again shone a spotlight on the company, as well as on Amazon. Amazon claims that it asked Foxconn to make changes in 2018 after a labor audit of the Hengyang facility showed similar overtime violations. Amazon’s investigators arrived on site Wednesday and the company says it has started doing “weekly audits” of the labor issue. Let’s see how long that lasts.
Amazon commented: “We are urgently investigating these allegations and addressing this issue with Foxconn at the most senior level.”
Thoughts on China’s Currency
By Dean Baker | Beat the Press | August 9, 2019
There is a conventional wisdom on China’s currency that gets repeated almost everywhere and never seems to be challenged in the media. The basic story is that in the bad old days China ‘manipulated” its currency, but that stopped years ago. At present, its currency controls are actually keeping the value of its currency up, not down. As much as I hate to differ with the conventional wisdom, there are a few issues here that deserve closer examination.
First, it’s great see that everyone now agrees that China managed its currency in the last decade. (I prefer the term “manage” to “manipulate,” since the latter implies something sneaky and hidden. There was nothing sneaky about China’s undervalued currency. It had an official exchange rate that it bought trillions of dollars of foreign reserves to maintain.) Unfortunately, almost none of these people acknowledged China’s actions at the time, when the under-valuation of China’s currency was costing the United States millions of manufacturing jobs. Oh well, it wasn’t like the Wall Street bankers were losing their jobs.
The second point is that there is a common assertion that only the buying, not the holding, of reserves affects currency prices. It is easy to show that China is not currently buying large amounts of reserves. In fact, it has been selling some in recent years to keep its currency from falling.
Okay, let’s take a step back. The Federal Reserve Board bought more than $3 trillion in assets to try to boost the economy following the Great Recession. This was done to directly reduce long-term interest rates by increasing the demand for bonds. While it stopped buying assets several years ago, it still holds more than $3 trillion in assets.
Virtually all economists agree that by holding these assets, the Fed is keeping down long-term interest rates. If this additional $3 trillion in assets were on the market, then long-term interest rates would be higher. (The size of the impact is debated, but not the direction.)
If the holding (not buying) of assets has an impact on interest rates, why does China’s holding of more than $3 trillion in foreign reserves not have an impact on the price of the dollar and other reserve currencies relative to the RMB? (It would actually be well over $4 trillion if we add in the trillion plus dollars held in China’s sovereign wealth fund.)
In the magical world of make it up as you go along conventional wisdom economics there can be peaceful coexistence of this logical conflict, but those of us who are not part of the club need not accept it.
It’s also worth adding that the Fed has raised interest rates several times in the last three years, just as China has occasionally sold reserves. Would anyone say that this means that the net effect of the Fed’s actions at the moment is to raise interest rates above the level they would be at if the Fed were not holding assets?
Finally, we get the story that if China were to remove all capital controls then the value of the RMB would fall, as Chinese sought to diversify their holdings. While this is true, it is at best half of the story as every fan of I.M.F. policies knows. The I.M.F. always tells countries to eliminate capital controls because it will increase the amount of capital that flows into the country. Investors are more likely to put their money into a country where they can freely withdraw it than one where they can’t.
While the capital inflow story needs some qualifications, there is a basic logic to it. Obviously, foreign investors will feel more comfortable putting money into a country where they can get back their investment quickly than in one where they can’t. In spite of the fact that this logic is imposed on developing countries all the time, it is virtually invisible in discussions of China’s currency.
As a practical matter we continually see stories about how European retirees are unhappy with the negative interest rates they get on the bonds of countries like Germany and France. Getting an interest rate of more than 3.0 percent on long-term bonds issued by the Chinese government would look pretty good in comparison. Furthermore, with China’s purchasing power parity GDP almost twice its GDP measured by exchange rates, most people would probably expect the general direction of its currency over the long-term to be upward, as it has been in the past. This would further increase the potential gains from holding Chinese government debt relative to the debt of European countries or the United States.
It seems as though the conventionally wise people never thought about this issue, or at least if they have, they don’t mention it in public discussions. Anyhow, it is not surprising that the conventional wisdom is missing much of the story here. After all, the conventional wisdom in economics could not see the $8 trillion housing bubble ($12 trillion in today’s economy), the collapse of which sank the U.S. economy and gave us the Great Recession. The conventional wisdom doesn’t seem any wiser today.
The Unanswerable Case
By Craig Murray | August 9, 2019
Simon Jenkins gets it with this simple and unanswerable argument.
Scots are now very significantly poorer than the Irish, the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Danes, the Icelanders or any of their obvious comparators. Every one of those nations is in the top 10 of the UN Human Development Index. The UK is not, and Scotland is below the mean for the UK. It is not because Scots are stupid or feckless, it not because of climate and it is certainly not a lack of natural resources. It is because of the draining away of human and physical resource by London over centuries.
Against that fundamental fact, the cloud of stupid obfuscation around the minutiae of transition is a mere distraction, and a deliberate one at that. Countries which are far poorer than Scotland successfully run on their own currencies – scores of them. Why would people believe Scotland is unique among nations in being incapable of having a currency? Yet such pathetic shibboleths are pounded out by the media, and particularly the BBC, on a daily basis to make a significant number of Scots believe that what is possible for every nation that has tried it, is uniquely impossible to them.
It is particularly galling to see those that have made us poor tell us we cannot be independent because we are poor. Particularly when the entire system of government accounting has been manipulated over decades to ascribe Scotland’s revenue to the wider UK, to ascribe a portion of infrastructure projects in SE England such as Crossrail as Scottish expenditure, and to present an entirely distorted picture of the Scottish fiscal position.
I am entirely at the end of my patience. It really is time that we claimed our Independence and stopped this slavish adherence to the laws of the Imperial state which seeks to continue its leeching out of our resources.
Food Shipment Destined For Venezuela Seized Due to US Blockade
teleSUR | August 7, 2019
Venezuela’s Vicepresident Delcy Rodriguez denounced Wednesday that a ship containing 25 thousand tonnes of Soya has been seized in the Panama Canal due to the U.S. blockade while calling on the United Nations to take action against the “serious aggression” that impede Venezuela “right to food”.
“Venezuela denounces before the world that a boat that holds 25 thousand tons of Soya, for food production in our country, has been seized in the Panama Canal, due to the criminal blockade imposed by Donald Trump,” the vice president said in a tweet.
“Venezuela calls on the UN to stop this serious aggression by Donald Trump’s govt against our country, which constitutes a massive violation of the human rights of the entire Venezuelan people, by attempting to impede their right to food.”
In a subsequent tweet, the Venezuelan senior official explained that the owner of the vessel carrying the merchandise of food was informed by the insurance company that it was prevented from moving that cargo to Venezuela.
The shipment seizure comes just days after Trump signed an executive order Monday that imposes a near-total blockade on government assets in that country, which includes an embargo against food suppliers, among other basic inputs. This is the first time in 30 years that Washington has taken such an action against a sovereign country.
Iran’s electrification rate at %99.9, villages connected at rapid pace: Official
Press TV – August 7, 2019
Iran is nearing a full electrification rate as people are gaining access to power in villages and remote areas on a rapid pace, says a government official.
The top contractor for rural electrification in Iran’s energy ministry said on Wednesday that only 80,000 people from Iran’s current population of over 83 million had no access to electricity, adding that plans were in pace to complete the coverage for all villages across the country in the upcoming years.
Ali Chehel Amirani said Iran is currently enjoying an electrification rate of more than 99.9 percent, adding that some 4.5 million families in 57,300 villages had full access to electricity.
The official said nearly 250,000 kilometers of power lines had been installed across Iran for the sole purpose of rural electrification, adding that more than a third of the grid’s capacity in the country was dedicated to feeding power to villages.
Chehel Amirani said the pace of the electrification of villages in Iran had slowed down over the past years mainly because the government was concerned about the stability of the network in rural areas where some installations need urgent maintenance after some 25 years of providing service.
He said, however, that nearly 600 more villages will be electrified in two years time when the current administrative government leaves office.
Iran has more than 62,000 villages, according to the last census carried out by the government in 2016, with around a third of them home to less than 50 residents.
The census shows that a total of 21 million people, around 26 percent of Iran’s population, live in rural areas across the country.
It Doesn’t Matter At All That Oil is Priced in Dollars #43,656
By Dean Baker | Beat the Press | August 5, 2019
The New York Times ran a piece on China’s devaluation of its currency, which warned that the move could hurt China because commodities like oil, which are priced in dollars, will become more expensive for companies in China. While it is true that the devaluation will make imported goods more expensive, the fact that some are priced in dollars is irrelevant.
Suppose oil was priced in yen. Other things equal, the decision to devalue against the dollar would also mean that Chinese yuan is devalued against the yen. This would lead to the same increase in the price of oil as if oil were priced in dollars. The pricing in dollars is simply a convention, there is special importance to it in international trade.
The piece also raises the prospect that the drop in the value of the yuan, “could spur wealthy Chinese to take their money out of the country.” While it could have this effect, it may also have the opposite effect. Once the yuan has dropped in value the question is whether it is likely to fall further. This drop may lead many investors to believe that a further decline is unlikely, just as if the stock market fell by 20 percent, investors may come to believe that further decline is unlikely and therefore may be anxious to buy into the market.
It is also important to put the drop of the yuan in some context. The devaluation reduced the value of the yuan by less than 1.5 percent against the dollar. This is a large single day movement, but it is not that unusual for currencies to move around by this amount against each other even without government intervention. Also, a 1.5 percent reduction in the value of the yuan will not have large effects on the price in China of oil or other commodities.
Light oil set to flood global market
RT | August 3, 2019
According to the report, the US accounted for 88 percent of this growth in global oil production, while OPEC recorded a production decline overall, on the back of US sanctions against Iran and Venezuela, which took off a combined 800,000 bpd from the cartel’s production in 2018.
While the US became the world’s largest oil producer last year thanks to shale and found a place among the top ten oil exporters in the world, it changed the blend mix on global markets, Eni said in its report. Thanks to shale, the portion of light sweet crudes on international markets increased to more than 20 percent. At the same time, because of sanctions against Venezuela and declining production in Mexico, the portion of medium sour crudes fell below 40 percent of the total for the first time ever.
This change in crude oil grade availability is changing the dynamics in prices, too. Earlier this year, the prices of some heavy crude grades touched a premium to lighter grades on concerns about a heavy crude supply crunch resulting from sanctions and OPEC cuts: most OPEC members reduced their heavier crude production in favor of light and sweet grades used to produce gasoline.
This supply crunch helped US exports: in early June, Reuters reported that as many as six Very Large Crude Carriers were waiting to load medium sour crude from the Gulf of Mexico for export markets. At the same time, Gulf Coast refiners struggled with an excess of light crude produced from the shale plays nearby: the Permian and the Eagle Ford.
Interestingly enough, despite the looming new emissions rules of the International Maritime Organization that will go into effect next January, Eni reported that the global production of medium sour crude, which has a higher sulfur content than light sweet crudes, increased last year to come to account for 11.8 percent of the total from 9.9 percent a year earlier. At the same time, total sweet crude production inched down to 35.6 percent of the total from 36.3 percent in 2017.
Amid these changing patterns of production, demand for crude oil last year continued to grow despite the flurry of climate emergency declarations prompted by protests and demands by environmental organizations for governments to do more about climate change. According to Eni, global oil demand rose by 1.4 million barrels daily, with Asia—and specifically China and India—unsurprisingly leading the way. The two largest economies on the continent accounted for half of that demand growth. At the same time, in increasingly renewable Europe, oil demand remained virtually unchanged from a year earlier.
Refining capacity also increased last year, with Asia once again leading the way: as much as 75 percent of the new global refining capacity of 1 million bpd was built there, the Italian supermajor said. This year, more new refining capacity is expected, especially in China: new additions of almost 900,000 bpd are expected this year from the current 15 million bpd.
Russia wades into oily waters of East Mediterranean
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | July 29, 2019
The cold war brewing in the East Mediterranean over the vast hydrocarbon reserves in the region is already ‘multipolar’. Egypt, Israel, Cyprus, Greece, the United States and Turkey figure as the main protagonists. Then, in mid-July, the European Union grew out of its observer status and joined as active participant. Furthermore, as July ends, Russia is tiptoeing toward the theatre — not quite an actor yet but willing to be one if a role becomes available.
Last weekend, in a seemingly innocuous remark, the Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak dropped the hint that Russian oil companies can roll out exploration in offshore Mediterranean energy fields in cooperation with Turkey. As he put it, “Russian companies have successfully implemented energy projects in the Mediterranean Sea. For example, Rosneft is working at Zohr [gas field in Egypt]. If these projects benefit all the parties from the commercial point of view, Russian companies can decide on cooperation with Turkey in the East Mediterranean.”
Novak saw it as a business proposition but is certainly savvy enough to know, being an influential Kremlin politician, that the geopolitics of oil and gas, be it in the Arctic or the Black Sea or the Persian Gulf and East Mediterranean, is integral to his country’s foreign policy. What made Novak’s remark particularly significant is not only that he singled out Turkey as Russia’s potential partner in East Mediterranean, but also that he made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Turkish official news agency Anadolu, which the Russian state news agency Tass promptly featured as a news report.
Russia’s locus standii is not in doubt, being an energy superpower and Turkey’s number one energy supplier. Surely, a partnership in the East Mediterranean can only further consolidate the entente between Russia and Turkey, which only recently acquired a new template of defence cooperation following Turkey’s bold decision to press ahead with the purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defence system despite the threat of US sanctions and notwithstanding Turkey’s NATO membership.
Interestingly, Novak’s remark comes at a time when the multi-vectored regional rivalries in the East Mediterranean pit Turkey against Cyprus (which is backed by Greece and Israel and enjoys US support.) The fierce rivalries spawned by the discovery of massive offshore hydrocarbon reserves in the East Mediterranean by Israel and Cyprus are hopelessly intertwined today with Turkey’s traditionally adversarial relationships with Greece and Cyprus.
The unresolved Cyprus question lurks just below the surface, dating back to 1974 when the then military junta in Athens orchestrated a coup’ d’etat in Nicosia in a bid to unify the two countries and Turkey subsequently intervened in Cyrus militarily and occupied one-third of the island in the north inhabited by the ethnic Turkish Cypriots, which has since become a de facto Turkish protectorate.
In sum, Turkey has a very serious territorial dispute with Cyprus and will not brook the latter’s unilateral moves to appropriate the massive hydrocarbon reserves in East Mediterranean in waters Ankara regards either belonging to the Turkish Cypriots as well or as falling within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
Suffice to say, a Cyprus settlement is the core issue here, but the Greek Cypriot opinion is disinterested in re-unification of the island. (The EU granted Cyprus full membership shortly after the ethnic Greek population voted against reunification, rejecting the settlement plan of then UN secretary general Kofi Annan.)
What complicates matters further is that Turkey has poor relations with Israel, which has banded together with Greece and Cyprus in a sort of tripartite alliance against Turkey lately (with Washington’s blessings.) The US resents Turkey’s independent foreign policies and American oil majors (ExxonMobil) are involved in prospecting / exploiting East Mediterranean’s oil and gas in the seas claimed by Cyprus.
ExxonMobil announced in February that it has made the world’s third-biggest natural gas discovery in two years off the coast of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean at the Glaucus-1 well. The region is already known for some of the world’s largest such discoveries. The discovery could represent a natural gas resource of approximately 5 trillion to 8 trillion cubic feet.
Besides, the US geo-strategic objective is to market the energy supplies from East Mediterranean in Europe, which would erode Russia’s dominance as energy supplier while also enabling Israel to tap a big source of income.
Turkey is pretty much isolated today in the East Mediterranean rivalries, as Ankara intensifies its own exploration for natural gas in the region. After Cyprus after began its exploration (ExxonMobil) with the US ships providing security, Ankara despatched two drill ships to the seas and Turkey’s Naval Forces Command is providing “full and continuous protection” to the drilling vessels, with the help of unmanned aerial vehicles, watercraft, assault boats and submarines.
Turkey held a big naval exercise in in the eastern Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Sea in May asserting its rights not only in Cyprus, but also in Greece. Turkey claims its continental shelf not only takes in portions of Cyprus’s EEZ, but extends westwards to Crete in Greece’s EEZ. This in effect means that Turkey seeks to share the coastal energy resources of both Cyprus and Greece.
A time-bomb is ticking. Washington has repeatedly warned Turkey. In mid-July the EU foreign ministers also came down hard on Ankara, calling its actions “illegal”, punishing it by reducing EU’s assistance to Turkey for 2020 by €145.8 million, inviting European Investment Bank to review its lending activities in Turkey (€358.8 million last year) and threatening to “continue to work on options for targeted measures” (read sanctions.)
Turkey has defiantly rejected the EU intervention, but will feel its isolation mitigated if Russia stretches a helping hand at this juncture. The point is, the storm clouds gathering in East Mediterranean could have serious geopolitical ramifications. In a developing scenario of the West versus Turkey, which is already there, Moscow will be making a profound statement if Russian oil companies join hands with Turkey.
Any such Turkish-Russian collaboration will be a game changer for regional politics — in Syria, Levant, the Black Sea, etc. It coincides with a moment when the Pentagon just caricatured Russia in a strategy report last month as a “revitalised malign actor”, which, in league with China, “frequently jointly oppose US-sponsored measures at the United Nations Security Council” and works for a multipolar world order in which the US is “weaker and less influential.”
Indeed, any Turkish-Russian cooperation in the East Mediterranean will dovetail with global politics. Read a Xinhua report from the weekend titled China, Russia vow to strengthen cooperation, promote world stability.
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Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
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- Pirates of Mediterranean: Israel does as it pleases in the Sea of Three Continents
- Minab children massacre not ‘unfortunate situation’ but ‘heinous war crime’: Tehran
- OPCW Forced To Pay Damages To Whistleblower Who Found Evidence Of False Flag In Syria
- Iran can thrive under blockade, the US and its allies cannot
- Iran slams US leadership, debunking fabrications, false war costs
- Here’s why Iran is sovereign and Germany is not
- Israel pours $730m into global propaganda machine as reputation collapses
- If Americans Knew
- Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 32 Across S Lebanon, Including Children – Amid “Ceasefire”
- Israel to pour $730m into propaganda arm amid reputational crisis
- Real Cost of Iran War Likely Double the $25 Billion Figure the Pentagon Gave to Congress
- Israel conducts farthest-ever strike in long history of attacks on Gaza humanitarian aid flotillas
- In Gaza, Israel commits 10+ ceasefire violations a day – Daily Update
- US ships 6,500 tons of munitions, equipment to Israel in 24 hours
- A New Library in Gaza Rises From the Ashes of Destruction
- Israel’s top Jewish religious body ‘refuses to condemn’ smashing of Jesus statue
- Nun assaulted in Jerusalem amid ‘pattern’ of anti-Christian attacks by Israelis
- Former Tik Tok official describes massive pressure from Israel lobby
- No Tricks Zone
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
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