Life Expectancy Continues To Fall In The EU
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | MAY 7, 2022
Life expectancy has taken a rare hit in the European Union during the Covid-19 pandemic.
As Statista’s Martin Armstrong shows in the infographic below (using Eurostat data), despite a blip in 2015, life expectancy in the EU had been growing every year since at least 2003.
In 2020, however, the average years of life somebody born in the 27 countries dropped from 81.3 to 80.4. In 2021, this fell again by another 0.3 years.
You will find more infographics at Statista
As reported by Eurostat,“life expectancy has risen, on average, by more than two years per decade since the 1960s. However, the latest available data suggest that life expectancy (has) stalled or even declined in several EU Member States.”adding:
“The Covid-19 pandemic has had a negative effect with life expectancy at birth declining in almost half the EU Member States in 2021. The largest decreases have been estimated in Slovakia and Bulgaria (-2.2 years compared with 2020), followed by Latvia (-2.1) and Estonia (-2.0). Compared with the pre-pandemic year of 2019, the overall effect on life expectancies is still negative in all EU Member States except Luxembourg (+0.1), Malta and Sweden (same level).”
African Governments to Western Eco-Imperialists Who Tell Them Not to Drill Their Own Oil and Gas – Get Lost
By Chris Morrison | The Daily Sceptic | May 5, 2022
It was never going to work. Telling African countries to stop developing their economies by banning cheap, reliable fossil fuel is little more than an eco-imperialist dream. Writing in Monday’s Daily Telegraph, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni lauded the discovery of oil in Lake Albert, but noted it was a battleground for the green NGOs and activists who claim that Armageddon is nigh at every opportunity.
“We are accustomed to these lectures, but we are tired of hearing them,” he added.
For the last decade, the West through the IMF and the World Bank has imposed a moratorium on support for African fossil fuel development – initially coal and more recently oil and gas as well. Museveni notes that in Africa the population is set to double by 2050, “and it is becoming increasingly clear that our energy needs cannot be met with a sudden shift to more expensive and less reliable solar and wind alone”.
Rich Western eco elites, of course, argue that the world must rid itself of fossil fuel as soon as possible. They believe the world is facing climate breakdown, although as articles in the Daily Sceptic show on a regular basis, that belief is backed by surprisingly few scientific facts. These Western elites effectively seek a command-and-control economy based on Net Zero, and a neo-pagan return to ancient Gaia goddess worship that elevates nature as sacred and denigrates humanity as destructive of it.
It might all play better in Africa if so-called global warming could be detected.
Atmospheric warming over the last 40 years has been more pronounced over the northern hemisphere, despite regular scare stories appearing about equatorial regions becoming uninhabitable. The GISS temperature database is run by NASA, and as with similar datasets it has been subject to considerable recent modifications, with the past cooled and later results warmed. Without these retrospective data adjustments, global recorded warming ran out of steam nearly two decades ago. Nevertheless, the contrast between the north, painted in fiery red, and most of Africa is clear from the GISS map (above).
The Lake Albert project is going ahead following a $10bn investment from the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and Total Energies of France. It includes the building of a 900 mile pipeline to the port of Tanga. According to Real Clear Energy, the project will provide $48.5m in annual payments to Ugandan employees living in one of the least developed countries in the world. But opposition is fierce. Writing in the New York Times the local green agitator Vanessa Nakate of StopEACOP said the project would bring “poverty and destruction to the people of Africa”. It is claimed by her activist group that building the East African crude oil pipeline would tip the world closer to “full blown climate catastrophe”.
It is comments such as these which mostly surface in mainstream media, rather than those of the President of Uganda. It might also be thought that most Africans are less impressed with other solutions advanced in the West to solve any problems caused by growing populations. Sir David Attenborough is on record as stating humans are a plague on the Earth, and it was “barmy” to send food to Ethiopia to solve the famine crisis. In Attenborough’s view, sending flour bags to under-developed countries was pointless.
In public in the West, many African politicians pay lip service to the aims of COP, not least because plenty of aid cash is on offer. Others take a more challenging and outspoken view. N.J. Ayuk is the Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber and he recently called the idea that you could develop Africa with handouts, “preposterous and sickening”.
He continued: “You cannot take people of any colour and exempt them from the requirements of civilisation – including work, free markets, behavioural standards, personal responsibility, fossil fuels, financial literacy and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain – without ruinous consequences to them and society at large.”
In his view, no country has ever been developed by fancy wind and green hydrogen. Africans see oil and gas as a path to success and a solution to their problems. “The demonisation of oil and gas companies will not work,” he added.
Writing in 2015, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson commented that something deep inside the human psyche makes it receptive to apocalyptic warnings. By a cruel irony, he said, too many climate scientists and their hangers-on have become the high priests of a new age of unreason. Asking developing countries to abandon the cheapest available sources of energy is, at the very least, asking them to delay the conquest of malnutrition, to perpetuate the incidence of preventable diseases and to increase the number of premature deaths.
“Global warming orthodoxy is not merely irrational. It is wicked,” he concluded.
Klaus Schwab’s daughter wants governments to use COVID policies for climate change
By Keean Bexte | The Counter Signal | April 29, 2022
Nicole Schwab, the daughter of World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab and current WEF Co-Director of the Platform to Accelerate Nature-Based Solutions, wants governments to take advantage of COVID infrastructure and policies to fight climate change.
“Clearly, the system… is not sustainable,” began Nicole Schwab, speaking at an InTent roundtable. “So, I see it as a tremendous opportunity to really have this Great Reset and to use these huge flows of money, to use the increased levers that policymakers have today in a way that was not possible before to create a change that is not incremental, but that we can look back and we can say, ‘This is the moment where we really started to position nature at the core of the economy.’”
Schwab continues, saying that politicians and businesses have the opportunity to redesign the economies of the world with nature and “regenerative agriculture” in mind before pivoting into a discussion about “engaging youth” with climate change propaganda to create a “restoration generation” (i.e., indoctrinating an entire generation).
“And one of the key reflection points here is also around engaging youth,” Schwab continues. “And, for me, again, I come back to this shift in mindset of the restoration generation. Can we conceive of ourselves as humans — I mean, you talked about a new humanity… Can we conceive of ourselves as a restoration generation?”
“I think that’s where we need to go. I’m also hopeful that it’s possible, but I think it will take a lot of will, both political will but also in terms of the business actors, to break with business as usual… And this is about risk, and it’s about risk, and it’s about resilience because the shocks coming are going to be even worse if we don’t do it now. “
It appears the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Nicole’s father, Klaus Schwab, has also spoken and written on redesigning society with climate policies at the fore.
In a WEF article entitled “Now is the time for a ‘great reset,’” Schwab senior lays out the three key components of the Great Reset, second of which is “equality and sustainability.”
“The second component of a Great Reset agenda would ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability… Rather than using these funds… to fill cracks in the old system, we should use them to create a new one that is 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,” writes Schwab.
The environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics that Schwab mentions sound benign but are truly radical.
As part of their ESG metrics and international dietary framework, the United Nations recommends that red meat consumption be reduced to 14 grams (one bite) per day per person in the name of sustainability and ‘saving the world.’
Climate change education, as mentioned by Nicole Schwab, is another crucial ESG metric in the overall agenda.
Another all-encompassing policy of the UN’s ESGs that’s become increasingly noticeable and disastrous in countries like Canada is a carbon tax on practically everything from food to gas to heating to private businesses that don’t conform to the new normal, which will lead to pricing the average person out of their ability to use private transportation and consumption of meat products.
If you want to read more on ESGs, digital IDs, and the Great Reset, you can do so by clicking here.
European Commission’s plan to ban Russian oil imports receives backlash
By Paul Antonopoulos | May 6, 2022
The European Union announced on May 4 their intention to ban Russian oil imports within six months and refined products by the end of the year as part of their latest round of economic sanctions against Moscow. According to Oil Price, a barrel surged to over $110 for Brent and $108 for West Texas Intermediate following the European Commission’s announcement. Therefore, banning Russian oil imports is not only a rather arduous task, but the cost of this decision will be high.
“In the short term it might leave Russian revenues high while implying negative consequences for the EU and the global economy in terms of higher prices – not to mention retaliation risks [by Russia] on natural gas supplies,” Brussels-based economic think tank Bruegel warned following the European Commission’s announcement. However, an EU diplomat told EURACTIV on condition of anonymity that “Politically, Europe cannot afford not adopting the sixth package [of economic sanctions].”
The EU will be once again be divided as its rare instance of geopolitical posturing is being challenged by the economic interests of individual member states. Hungary and Slovakia oppose the European Commission’s proposal despite being given until the end of 2023 to phase out Russian oil. At the same time, Bulgaria and Czechia have also asked to be given such an extension.
Sources have said Greece raised objections to another proposal to ban all shipping companies that are EU-owned or have European interests from transferring Russian oil into Europe or elsewhere, something of major importance since the Mediterranean country has the largest mercantile fleet in the world. Although Athens deeply supports all of the EU’s hostile actions against Russia, such as the expulsion of diplomats, imposition of sanctions and even the sending of weapons to Ukraine that could have ended up in the hands of the Azov Battalion that has persecuted the Greek minority, threatening the profits of Greek oligarchs provokes one of the rare instances of opposition from Greece’s ruling New Democracy party.
New Democracy is traditionally the pro-US/neo-liberal party of Greece that has served the interests of the country’s oligarchs, or softly known as magnates or tycoons, particularly the shipowners. Consider that 71% of Greeks in a poll said Greece’s position in the Ukraine War should be neutral, something that was categorically ignored by the Greek government as it strongly backed Ukraine instead. However, the moment that the profits of shipowners are threatened, and not over the past few months as citizens have dealt with rising energy and food costs, Athens voiced its first concern against the EU’s anti-Russia sanctions.
Theoretically, although Russian oil can be phased out of most of the EU within six months, it will none-the-less be a very difficult task, especially when taking into account the fact that there is currently an energy shortage. In addition, the imposition of such a policy could lead to a build-up of shocks in the EU economy.
The Russian economy will naturally be affected as it will be deprived of a major market. But of higher concern, for European citizens at least, is the realization of the effects that anti-Russia sanctions has even on their own daily lives. And whilst Europeans suffer from rising energy and food costs, Asia could very much become Gazprom’s main export market in five to seven years.
Although this does not offset the loss of the EU as an oil market, shifting most exports to much friendlier Asian markets will lessen the effects of Western sanctions, even if this shift could take several years. Although the problem is the supply price and the development of the corresponding gas transport infrastructure, including in countries like China, it is recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin made a directive to the government to submit a plan by June 1 on how to build related infrastructure. The directive requested a proposal for a large-scale development of a gas pipeline system in Eastern Siberia, aimed at directing the flow of gas exports to the Chinese market.
China currently consumes about 350 billion cubic meters of gas per year, while the majority of the energy balance (about 70%) remains coal. Demand for gas in China is expected to grow to 450-480 billion cubic meters by 2025 and in the next 10 years, as coal is phased out, perhaps even nearly one trillion cubic meters of gas per year.
Currently, Russian gas supplies to China arrive through the “Power of Siberia” pipeline. Deliveries along this route began at the end of 2019 and in 2020 reached 4.1 billion cubic meters. It is expected that the annual supply volume will gradually increase until it reaches its capacity of 38 billion cubic meters in 2025. Taking into account the new agreement signed in February, the total gas capacity supplied to China via the Far Eastern pipeline could reach 48 billion cubic meters per year.
In this way, although Russia will be hurt in the short term by losing the European market for its oil, this action will only propel the flow of Russian energy eastward to an Asia that is continuously increasing its demand. Equally of interest is that Europe persistently promises that sanctions against Russia cannot hurt European citizens in equal measure, but weaning off Russian oil within a six-month period will only increase the likelihood of such an outcome.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
Slovakia rejects Russian oil ban proposal
Samizdat | May 5, 2022
Slovakia warned on Wednesday that it will not be able to agree to the European Commission’s proposal for a ban on Russian oil, and has called for more time to find alternative fuel suppliers.
The proposed embargo is part of the latest Ukraine-related sanctions against Moscow that would see crude imports from Russia phased out within six months and refined products by the end of the year. An exemption was drafted for Slovakia and Hungary, which are heavily dependent on Russia, giving them until the end of 2023 to comply.
The proposed time frame “is unfortunately not enough,” Slovakia’s deputy economy minister in charge of energy policy told internet publication Politico on Wednesday. “We are expecting at least three years,” Karol Galek added, explaining that a key refinery in the country requires heavy Russian oil and that it’s impossible to secure alternative supplies within the proposed time frame. Last year Slovakia got 96% of its oil from Russia.
Galek stressed that the current proposal “will destroy our European economy,” as it will not only hurt energy supplies in his country, but also in Austria, the Czech Republic and Ukraine.
The current blueprint for a ban on Russian oil has to be unanimously approved by the bloc’s 27 member states to come into force. Hungary has expressed reservations, saying the European Union has so far failed to give Budapest guarantees regarding its energy security.
Nigerian Minister Says Russian Investors Interested in Financing African Gas Mega-Pipeline
Samizdat | May 4, 2022
The EU has been wooing Nigeria in recent weeks as one of the nations whose natural gas could help replace Russian supplies amid the bloc’s spat with Moscow over Ukraine. The charm offensive comes after years of efforts by the West to starve Sub-Saharan Africa of financing for gas projects.
Russian investors have expressed an interest in financing a massive gas pipeline from Nigeria to Morocco, Nigerian Minister of Petroleum Resources Timipre Sylva has announced.
“The Russians were with me in the office last week. They are very desirous to invest in this project and there are lots of other people who are also desirous to invest in the project,” Sylva said, speaking to reporters in Abuja, Nigeria on Monday.
The prospective 5,600 km+ long pipeline project, agreed to by Nigeria and Morocco in 2016, would run along the west coast of Africa, connecting to the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bassau, Gambia, Senegal, and Mauritania along the way and serve as a major potential catalyst for regional economic development. It could also be used to pipe Nigerian gas to Europe via Spain. Six years after being agreed, the project still lacks the necessary financing for implementation.
The infrastructure would extend an existing pipeline pumping gas from southern Nigeria to neighbouring Benin, Togo and Ghana. “We want to continue that same pipeline all the way to Morocco down the coast. Right now, we are still at the level of studies and of course, we are at the level of securing funding for this project and a lot of people are indicating interest,” the oil minister said.
Sylva did not provide any further details on the eager Russian investors, or the project’s total expected cost, but said Abuja has yet to identify the “investors that we want to go with” for the ambitious infrastructure scheme.
Russia’s reported interest in the gas mega-pipeline is unclear, given that it could theoretically provide the same European countries threatening to halt the purchase of Russian natural gas and oil with a cost-effective Sub-Saharan African alternate.
European officials have flocked to Nigeria – the world’s 12th largest producer of natural gas, and 15th largest producer of oil, in recent weeks to try to secure additional energy from the African nation amid unprecedented tensions with Moscow over Ukraine. Last month, ambassadors from the European Union, Portugal, Spain, Italy and France met with Nigerian National Petroleum Company officials to discuss a “strengthened partnership” in the energy sector. No agreements were announced at the conclusion of the meeting.
On Monday, Bloomberg reported on an EU energy plan document which mentioned Nigeria, Senegal and Angola as nations with ‘largely untapped potential for liquefied natural gas’.
Nigeria has over 206 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves valued at hundreds of trillions of dollars, but has long been starved of capital for developing these resources amid a raft of problems ranging from corruption and inter-ethnic strife to pipeline vandalism.
On top of that, before the Ukraine crisis began, Europe largely ignored Nigeria’s gas potential. Last year, Nigerian environment minister Mohammad Mahmood Abubakar blasted developed countries for what he said was their deliberate policy of defunding African national gas projects.
“Many [wealthier nations] are now limiting financing to gas projects for domestic use in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region responsible for 0.55% of global carbon emissions that still needs to industrialize and grow. The defunding of gas projects by most financing organizations is a threat to achieving a global energy transition that is equitable, inclusive, just, leaving no one behind,” Abubakar said, speaking at a virtual ministerial event hosted by the United Nations last June.
The European Investment Bank stopped financing fossil fuels projects at the end of 2021. The same year, the Western cash-dominated World Bank indicated that it would shift resources to “combating climate change,” and limit assistance for natural gas projects except for rare exceptions.
Despite its vast wealth in energy resources, about 43 percent of Nigeria itself still lacks access to grid electricity.
How Canada is ‘Cutting Costs’ by Euthanizing their Poor
By Mary Manley | Samizdat | May 2, 2022
Canada, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, is finding a new way to cut costs on disabled people by… euthanizing them?
In 2015 the case of Carter v Canada (Attorney General) prompted the Supreme Court to strike down a previous provision in the Criminal Code, thereby allowing Canadian adults the option of assisted suicide, or Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).
That ruling then spiraled into a law known as Bill C-7, an all-encompassing euthanasia law passed in 2021 which threw out the requirement that those seeking assisted suicide need to have a terminal illness whose death was reasonably foreseeable.
Although Bill C-7 states that “Parliament affirms the inherent and equal value of every person’s life and the importance of taking a human rights-based approach to disability inclusion”, disability justice organizations and even the UN’s watchdog on disability opposed the new bill based on their belief that it would worsen discriminatory practices within the healthcare system.
More than 300 disability groups in Canada opposed Bill C-7, citing that the removal of the “reasonably foreseeable natural death” requirement would target disabled persons. Instead of being offered medical assistance or support, the Canadian government now has the option of doing away with any ill person that sucks up taxpayer money.
“Rather than funding and making life a possible and viable choice for many people, we’re entertaining this option of asking them if they would like to die, and it’s very scary,” said Spring Hawes, a former Invermere city councilor and the co-founder of Dignity Denied, in 2020.
“There is the danger that it might be considered a favor to offer someone dying when really that person just needs to have access to better care, better supports or the things they need to live well,” added Hawes who has a spinal cord injury and uses a wheelchair.
And what some could argue sounds like fear-mongering by a group of people who- in their very right have a legitimate reason to be afraid- is bolstered by horrifying stories told by disabled people which demonstrate abuse and neglect at the hands of their government.
In April of this year a 51 year-old Ontario woman with multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) chose MAiD after two years of searching and failing to secure a bid for affordable housing free of cigarette smoke and chemical cleaners. “The government sees me as expendable trash, a complainer, useless and a pain in the a**,” she said in a video filmed on February 14, eight days before her assisted suicide.
One woman requested MAiD because she “simply [couldn’t] afford to keep on living”, after food banks became an inaccessible option. Another woman from Vancouver said she intended to use MAiD after COVID-19 left her with increased expenses and unmanageable pain. And in 2021, Chris Gladders chose to end his life via MAiD after experiencing “deplorable” living conditions at the retirement home called Greycliff Manor in Niagara Falls. When his family arrived to say goodbye to them they were horrified to find Chris in a room covered in urine and fecal matter.
“None of the floors were cleaned up or anything, you could see clearly where they changed his catheter bag,” said Shawn Gladders, Chris’s brother in January of 2021.
“There was urine on the floor, there were spots where there was feces on the floor… spots where your feet were just sticking. Like, if you stood at his bedside and when you went to walk away, your foot was literally stuck. It was very, very disturbing, for sure.”
Shawn said that on other occasions when he had visited his brother, Chris was taken outside of the room by a staff member, “I kick myself today, because I wish I would have walked in there before… I never would have left him there.” Shawn adds that Chris’ time at Greycliff Manor most likely contributed to his decision to end his own life.
In 2020, the Canadian government agreed to give a measly one-time payment of $600 to disabled persons who qualified, in response to the devastating economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. They estimated that just 1.67 million disabled persons would receive that assistance, compared to the 6 million disabled persons who live in Canada.
One disabled Canadian, who chose to remain anonymous, said that after asking her doctor to fill out a form for the credit he rejected her, saying, “You’re not disabled enough… You have to be sitting in the corner drooling to be able to get this.”
The fact is: the Canadian government has no interest in spending money on their disabled people. Instead, they see MAiD as a convenient option to cut costs on healthcare for persons with chronic conditions and other disabilities. Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer even published an exciting report on the savings assisted suicide would garner their taxpayers: MAiD before Bill C-7 generated a total saving of $86.9 million per year, and Bill C-7, the government was pleased to announced, would save an additional $62 million a year.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, Canada’s government appears to be fixed on including those with mental illnesses (such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and PTSD) to become eligible for assisted suicide, by as soon as next year. If that decision were to go through, Canada would become one of few nations allowing the use of MAiD in cases of mental illnesses.
Northern Ireland faces loss of 1 million sheep and cattle to meet climate targets
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | April 30, 2022
Not only does agriculture account for a large slice of NI’s emissions (and Ireland’s too), it also accounts for a lot of its GDP, directly and indirectly.
There is a reason why Ireland is dominated by pastoral rather than arable farming. It’s because most of the land is unsuitable for growing of crops, certainly to a profitable extent. Much of the land is rocky and the climate is far too wet. That was why Ireland was so reliant on potatoes at the time of the Great Famine.
Currently only 4% of N Ireland’s farmland is arable.
Although farm labour only accounts for 7% of the country’s labour force, many more depend on the rural economy. Altogether the rural population makes up about 40% of the total in N Ireland. Destroying a large part of farming sector there would be catastrophic for the rural sector. Replacing the meat and dairy sector with, for instance, potatoes would decimate incomes and lead to mass migration out of the countryside.
Perhaps the most shocking part of the Guardian’s report is the reaction of Chris Stark, who is more interested in his modelling than in people’s lives. It also raises the question of just how all of this will be enforced. Farmers certainly are not going to give up willingly.
Shades of the infamous Soviet Land Reforms?
The Aggressors Accuse Russia of ‘Blackmail’ for Defending its Currency, Energy Wealth, and Even Its Existential Security
Strategic Culture Foundation | April 29, 2022
The United States and its NATO and European Union allies have imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia that amount to economic warfare. This warfare has been going on, discernibly, since the CIA-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014 on the back of allegations of Russian wrongdoing, for example, the alleged annexation of Crimea. It’s the logic of a poacher posing as the gamekeeper.
For eight years, the U.S.-led economic war against Russia has been pursued without relent. The self-professed “exceptional nation” presumes the privileged, exclusive use of economic terrorism against others who do not bend the knee. In hock to its Washington master, the European Union has imposed round after round of restrictions on trade with Russia in full compliance with American orders. The European compliance to self-inflict damage is astounding especially given that the U.S. economy is not as reliant on Russia as the EU’s and therefore has not been impacted as badly, at least not directly. But the presumed American “free lunch” is beginning to change, as our columnist Declan Hayes cogently surveyed this week.
Now that the proxy war against Russia has escalated into “Total War” – the historically sinister phrase used by France’s economy minister Bruno Le Maire – the full nefarious scope of the Western objective has become even more explicit. The U.S. and its NATO partners want to achieve the complete collapse of the Russian economy leading to regime change in Moscow. The eruption of violence in Ukraine following Russia’s military intervention on February 24 is but the opportunity to ramp up the U.S.-led war campaign against Russia.
The explicitly stated objective of cutting off Russia’s vital energy trade and the theft of the country’s foreign monetary reserves can only be interpreted as part of a wider imperial plan to crush the Russian nation, subjugate it and conquer its vast natural wealth.
Eight years of NATO-backed military aggression by the Neo-fascist Kiev regime against Russian-speaking populations has gone hand-in-hand with the installation of U.S. strategic weapons across Europe, including Dark Eagle hypersonic missiles in Germany and biological weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine. The military threat to Russia has been in tandem with the relentless economic warfare from sanctions. In addition, there is the intransigence by the U.S. and its NATO partners to engage with Moscow in resolving security concerns through diplomacy. All of this culminated in the present war in Ukraine. The concerted and rapid imposition of further draconian sanctions on the Russian economy from the blockade on virtually its entire banking system as well as the extreme censorship of Russian international media – all of that indicates that the U.S. and its partners were already on a war footing and ready to escalate hostilities.
In this context, ominously, Ukraine is resembling Bosnia-Herzegovina and the pre-World War One assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as a fatal flashpoint.
The reckless flooding of weapons into Ukraine over recent weeks by the United States, NATO, and the European Union is also proof of a premeditated pent-up war agenda. This week, U.S. President Joe Biden is calling for his Congress to release $33 billion in “emergency aid” for Ukraine to “defend against Russian aggression”. This represents a tenfold increase in the record military support that the Biden administration has already plowed into the Kiev regime. This is tantamount to stoking a powder-keg.
The ludicrous, bitter laugh about this is that when Russia seeks to defend itself and Russian-speaking people, then Moscow is accused of “aggression”.
The latest twist in this Western duplicity and rank hypocrisy comes with the accusations that Russia is using “blackmail” by warning it will cut off its prodigious gas supplies to Europe. Moscow has simply and reasonably demanded that all European importers must henceforth pay for their gas supplies in the Russian currency, the ruble, as opposed to dollars or euros. The move was prompted in part because the Western countries had seized Russia’s foreign reserves and have banned most Russian banks from the international payment system. In other words, it is they who have politicized their currencies as weapons. So what is Russia supposed to do? Give away its vast natural gas wealth for free? To countries that are waging an economic war and increasingly a military proxy war against it?
This week, Russia’s state-owned energy industry Gazprom announced it was suspending the supply of gas to Poland and Bulgaria. The two EU and NATO member states had bluntly refused to pay for their vital energy needs in Russian currency. In that case, Russia has the right to withhold the selling of its commodity.
The move to mandate payment for gas in ruble was an essential counter-measure that has succeeded in defending the Russian currency and economy from collapse. That collapse was being deliberately orchestrated by Western sanctions aimed at strangling Russia. And yet when Russia acts to defend its vital existential interests it is accused of using “blackmail”. One of the shrill voices was that of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The former German defense minister is a rabid Russophobe. Her logic of accusing Russia of wrongdoing is like a Third Reich minister lambasting the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as an insolent insurrection.
Von der Leyen and her elite, unelected Brussels bureaucracy are calling for all EU members to refuse payments to Russia. They are effectively endorsing the theft of Russia’s wealth. Their arrogance is not surprising. But that arrogance is leading to rebellion across Europe from the economic damage and unbearable cost-of-living crisis hitting the majority of the EU’s 500 million population. Bulgarian and Polish workers are demanding their governments resume trade with Russia to prevent a crash to their livelihoods.
A further mockery in this absurd scenario is that anti-Russia hawks in the United States and Europe have been vociferously jeering for all energy and other trade with Russia to be cancelled. Of course, this mania is all about propping up U.S. capitalism, hegemony over Europe, the weapons industry, and the transatlantic feeding trough for effete European lackeys.
Then, when Russia cuts off the energy supplies because of non-payment, there is an uproar about Moscow “weaponizing trade”.
The Western accusations of economic blackmail are analogous to perverse claims of military blackmail. The criminally reckless aggression that the United States and its NATO partners have pursued against Russia has escalated into war in Ukraine. As a British government minister demonstrated this week, the NATO powers are now directing their proxy Kiev regime to launch attacks on Russian territory. Yet when Russia warns of the dangerous risks of world war veering into a nuclear conflagration, the Western powers and their dutiful media turn around and accuse Russia of using “nuclear blackmail”.
America and Europe’s dubious political “leadership” is exposing itself as delusional, duplicitous, and criminally insane. They are insanely willing to push the world into a catastrophic war. And when Russia stands up to their madness, it is accused of being a reprobate.
In a funny sort of way, such farcical Western leadership is good. For it only further exposes how utterly unhinged and corrupt the Western elite rulers are in the eyes of their increasingly restive, angry populations.
It is Western callous, sociopathic leaders who are the ones blackmailing their own citizens and indeed the rest of the world. Their ultimatum is: destroy Russia or we will destroy everything. This is the mindset of totalitarianism.
The Western public’s enemy is not Russia, and it’s not China nor Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, or some other designated foreign foe. All our enemy is the Western system of U.S.-led imperialism, its capitalist elite, and their political flunkies like Joe Biden and Ursula von der Leyen.
Bulgarians want Russian gas back – minister
Samizdat – April 28, 2022
Bulgarian businesses want Sofia “to make it possible to resume talks with Gazprom” after the Russian energy giant cut off gas supplies to the country, according to Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Kornelia Ninova.
“We propose that, by then, gas prices should be frozen or capped at their level in the contract with Gazprom and the difference with the higher prices of alternative supplies be paid for by the State,” she said at a press conference after meeting with the Bulgaria Professional Employer Organization (PEO).
The calls come a day after Gazprom ceased delivering gas to Bulgaria after the country refused to pay for energy supplies in rubles. Bulgaria relies on Russia for nearly 90% of its gas, with the remainder coming from Azerbaijan.
Earlier in the day, Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said that Bulgaria has enough gas supplies to last more than one month should nothing change, stressing that Sofia would not accept Russia’s terms on exports of gas.
“But we hope to complete the construction of a new interconnector with Greece by the end of June. And we also look forward to a common strategy for the procurement of liquefied gas by the European Commission,” Petkov said in an interview with Le Monde.
Lithuanian Railways plans to lay off about 2,000 employees
The Baltic Times | April 28, 2022
Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways, LTG) said on Thursday it is planning to lay off around 2,000 of its 9,000-plus employees, with around a quarter of the state-owned group’s managerial staff at various levels set to leave.
The company said in a press release that 6 million euros will be allocated for severance payments to employees.
The planned layoffs will affect around 1,200 workers in LTG Cargo, the group’s freight transportation subsidiary, about 500 in LTG Infra, the infrastructure subsidiary, and some 300 in LTG. The group currently has around 9,200 employees in total.
Both LTG and the Employment Service will provide assistance to the redundant workers, according to the press release.
The company has said earlier that it may lose some 150 million euros in revenue this year as freight volumes are forecast to halve, compared to last year, to around 26.5 million tons.
LTG has lost around 11 million tons in annual freight because of EU and US sanctions against Belarus’ potash giant Belaruskali, which will trim its annual revenue by 61 million euros.
The railway company is set to lose another 2.6 million tons of freight and 12.8 million euros in revenue due to EU sanctions on the [Russian] owner of Lithuania’s phosphate fertilizer producer Lifosa.
The EU’s sanctions on Russian coal and Poland’s refusal to buy it will result in a loss of 2.5 million tons of coal shipments and 12 million euros in revenue for LTG.
The railway group will lose another 1.4 million tons of freight and 17 million euros in revenue as a result of Belarus’ ban on the transit of oil and oil products and fertilizers from Lithuania. Ninety-five percent of these shipments were destined for Ukraine.
Lithuania’s draft revised 2022 budget, approved by the Cabinet, earmarks 155 million euros in additional financing for LTG.
Biden Cynically Uses Ukraine to Cover Food Sabotage
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern outlook -26.04.2022
It’s beginning to look like some bad actors are deliberately taking steps to guarantee a coming global food crisis. Every measure that the Biden Administration strategists have been making to “control energy inflation” is damaging the supply or inflating the price of natural gas, oil and coal to the global economy. This is having a huge impact on fertilizer prices and food production. That began well before Ukraine. Now reports are circulating that Biden’s people have intervened to block the freight rail shipping of fertilizer at the most critical time for spring planting. By this autumn the effects will be explosive.
With the crucial time for USA spring planting at its critical phase, CF Industries of Deerfield, Illinois, the largest US supplier of nitrogen fertilizers as well as a vital diesel engine additive, issued a press release stating that, “On Friday, April 8, 2022, Union Pacific informed CF Industries without advance notice that it was mandating certain shippers to reduce the volume of private cars on its railroad effective immediately.” Union Pacific is one of only four major rail companies that together carry some 80% of all US agriculture rail freight. The CF company CEO, Tony Will stated, “The timing of this action by Union Pacific could not come at a worse time for farmers. Not only will fertilizer be delayed by these shipping restrictions, but additional fertilizer needed to complete spring applications may be unable to reach farmers at all. By placing this arbitrary restriction on just a handful of shippers, Union Pacific is jeopardizing farmers’ harvests and increasing the cost of food for consumers.” CF has made urgent appeals to the Biden Administration for remedy, so far with no positive action.
Direct sabotage
CF Industries noted that they were one of only thirty companies subject to the severe measure, which is indefinite. They ship via Union Pacific rail lines primarily from its Donaldsonville Complex in Louisiana and its Port Neal Complex in Iowa, to serve key farm states including Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas and California. The ban will affect nitrogen fertilizers such as urea and urea ammonium nitrate (UAN), as well as diesel exhaust fluid, DEF (called AdBlue in Europe). DEF is an emissions control product required for diesel trucks today. Without it engines cannot run. It is made from urea. CF Industries is the largest producer of urea, UAN and DEF in North America, and its Donaldsonville Complex is the largest single production facility for the products in North America.
At the same time, the Biden gang has announced a fake remedy for record high gasoline pump prices. Washington announced the EPA will allow a 50% increase in corn-based biodiesel and ethanol fuel mix for the summer. On April 12 the Secretary of Agriculture announced a “bold” initiative by the US Administration to increase the use of domestically-grown corn-ethanol biofuels. Secretary Tom Vilsack claimed the measure would “reduce energy prices and tackle rising consumer prices caused by Putin’s Price Hike (sic) by tapping into a strong and bright future for the biofuel industry, in cars and trucks and the rail, marine, and aviation sectors and supporting use of E15 fuel this summer.”
Only the capitalized “Putin Price Hike” is not a result of Russian actions, but of Washington Green Energy decisions to phase out oil and gas. The energy price inflation is also about to go vastly higher in coming months owing to US and EU economic sanctions on export of Russian oil and likely gas. However the central point is that every acre of US farmland dedicated to growing corn for biofuels removes that food production from the food chain, to burn it as fuel. Since passage of the 2007 US Renewable Fuel Standards Act, which mandated annually rising targets for production of corn for ethanol fuel blends, biofuels have captured a huge part of total corn acreage, more than 40% in 2015. That shift, mandated by law, to burning corn as fuel had added a major price inflation for food well before the covid inflation crisis began. The USA is by far world’s largest corn producer and exporter. Now to mandate a significant increase in corn ethanol for fuel at a time of astronomical fertilizer prices, and fertilizer rail shipping are being blocked reportedly by White House orders, will send corn prices through the roof. Washington knows this very well. It is deliberate.
No wonder the price of US corn reached a 10-year high in mid-April, as exports from Russia and Ukraine, major sources, are now blocked by sanction and war. Aside from the energy-inefficient use of US corn for biodiesel supply, the latest Biden ethanol initiative will add to the growing food crisis while doing nothing to lower US gasoline prices. A major use for US feed corn is as animal feed for cattle, pigs and poultry as well as for human diets. This cynical biofuel order is not about US “energy independence.” Biden ended that in his first days in office by a series of bans on oil and gas drilling and pipelines as part of his Zero Carbon agenda.
In what is clearly becoming a US Administration war on food, the situation is being dramatically aggravated by USDA demands for chicken farmers to kill off millions of chickens in now 27 states, allegedly for signs of Bird Flu infection. The H5N1 Bird Flu “virus” was exposed in 2015 as a complete hoax. The tests used by the US government inspectors to determine bird flu now are the same unreliable PCR tests used for COVID in humans. The test is worthless for that. US Government officials estimate that since first cases were “tested” positive in February, at least 23 million chickens and turkeys have been culled to allegedly contain the spread of a disease whose cause could be the incredibly unsanitary cage confinement of mass industrial chicken CAFOs. The upshot is sharp rises in prices of egg by some 300% since November and severe loss of chicken protein sources for American consumers at a time when overall cost of living inflation is at a 40-year high.
To make matters worse, California and Oregon are again declaring water emergency amid a multi-year drought and are sharply reducing irrigation water to farmers in California, who produce the major share of US fresh vegetables and fruits. That drought has since spread to cover most agriculture land west of the Mississippi River, meaning much of US farmland.
US food security is under threat as never before since the 1930s Dust Bowl, and the Biden Administration “Green Agenda” is doing everything to make the impact worse for its citizens.
In recent comments US President Biden remarked without elaborating that the US food shortages are “going to be real.” His administration also is deaf to pleas of farmer organizations to allow cultivation of some 4 million acres of farmland ordered left out of cultivation for “environmental reasons. However this is not the only part of the world where crisis in food is developing.
Global Disaster
These deliberate Washington actions are taking place at a time a global series of food disasters create the worst food supply situation in decades, perhaps since the World War II end.
In the EU, which is significantly dependent on Russia, Belarus and Ukraine for feed grains, fertilizers and energy, sanctions are making the covid-induced food shortages dramatically worse. The EU uses its foolish Green Agenda as an excuse to forbid the Italian government from ignoring EU rules limiting state aid to farmers. In Germany, the new Green Party Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir, who wants to phase out traditional agriculture allegedly for its “greenhouse gas” emissions, has given farmers who want to grow more food a cold response. The EU faces many of the same disastrous threats to food security as the USA and even more dependence on Russian energy which is about to be suicidally sanctioned by the EU.
The major food producing countries in South America, especially Argentina and Paraguay, are in the midst of a severe drought attributed to a periodic La Niña Pacific anomaly that has crippled crops there. Sanctions on Belarus and Russia fertilizers are threatening Brazil crops, aggravated with bottlenecks in ocean transport.
China just announced that owing to severe rains in 2021, this year’s winter wheat crop could be the worst in its history. The CCP also has instituted severe measures to get farmers to expand cultivation to non-farm lands with little reported effect. According to a report by China watcher Erik Mertz, “In China’s Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Liaoning provinces, officials have reported one in three farmers lack sufficient seed and fertilizer supplies to begin planting for the optimum spring window… According to sources within these areas, they are stuck waiting on seed and fertilizer which have been imported to China from overseas – and which are stuck in the cargo ships sitting off the coast of Shanghai.” Shanghai, the world’s largest container port, has been under a bizarre “Zero Covid” total quarantine for more than four weeks with no end in sight. In a desperate bid by the CCP “ordering” increased food production, local CP officials throughout China have begun transforming basketball courts and even roads into cropland. The food situation in China is forcing the country to import far more at a time of global shortages, driving world grain and food prices even higher.
Africa is also severely impacted by the US-imposed sanctions and war ending food and fertilizer exports from Russia and Ukraine. Thirty five African countries get food from Russia and Ukraine. Twenty two African countries import fertilizer from there. Alternatives are seriously lacking as prices soar and supply collapses. Famine is predicted.
David M. Beasley, executive director of the UN World Food Program, declared recently on the global food outlook, “There is no precedent even close to this since World War II.”
Notably, it was the Biden Treasury Department that drew up a list of the most comprehensive economic sanctions against Russia and Belarus, pressuring a compliant EU to dutifully follow, sanctions whose impact on global grain and fertilizer and energy supply and prices was entirely predictable. It was in effect a sanction on the US and global economy.
These are but the latest examples of deliberate US Government sabotage of the food chain as part of the Biden Green Agenda, of Davos WEF, Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation, as part of their dystopian Great Reset eugenics agenda. Traditional agriculture is to be replaced by a synthetic lab grown diet of fake meats and protein from grasshoppers and worms, worldwide. All for the supposed glory of controlling global climate. This is truly mad.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University.
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By Thomas S. Harrington | CounterPunch | August 19, 2016
… What will almost never be talked about are the many very good reasons a person from the vast region stretching from Morrocco in the west, to Pakistan in the east, have to be very angry at, and to feel highly vengeful toward, the US, its strategic puppeteer Israel, and their slavishly loyal European compadres like France, Germany and Great Britain. … Read full article
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