Putin has signed a decree banning the supply of oil and petroleum products from Russia to countries which apply a price cap in contracts. Russia will no longer do ‘business as usual’, sorry not sorry.
— RT (@RT_com) December 28, 2022
Read: https://t.co/ikJvyG7UHK pic.twitter.com/pduT8lIGEK
Energy
The US has capitalized on the restrictions, selling LNG to Europe at lucrative prices, the Russian Finance Minister said
https://www.rt.com/russia/568898-us-benefits-russia-sanctions/
Dec 25, 2022
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov © Sputnik / Dmitry Astakhov
The sanctions the West has slapped on Russia over the Ukraine conflict are taking a heavy toll on the European economy, while the US is the only actor profiting from the restrictions, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov claimed on Saturday.
Speaking to Asharq News daily, the minister believes that Western sanctions had helped Washington achieve what its goal, saying “their supplies of oil and gas to the European market have increased.”
Energy shipments from the US, however, have proved costly for Europeans, resulting in skyrocketing inflation and decreased competitive power for European businesses, Siluanov said.
According to the minister, both Western sanctions and the blasts that ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in late September “were orchestrated to provide Europe with more expensive liquefied [natural] gas from America.”
Russia to divert gas away from West – official
“America benefits, Europe loses,” he explained.
Moscow has called the sabotage a terrorist attack, claiming that the US stood to benefit the most from the explosions. While Washington has denied any involvement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the incident as a “tremendous opportunity” for Europe to wean itself off of Russian energy.
Siluanov went on to admit that sanctions have affected the Russian economy. “But they inflicted on the West no less and perhaps even more pain,” he added, pointing to how sanctions rhetoric has now become routine.
The minister noted that the EU price cap on Russian oil “will certainly lead to price and market distortions,” reiterating Moscow’s position that it would not provide crude through contracts under Western-mandated restrictions.
Russian oil companies are rerouting their oil shipments from the West in other directions, the minister said. “We will be looking for new markets, looking for new logistics. It is possible that this would be more expensive,” he stated.
Earlier this month, the EU, G7 countries and Australia introduced a price limit on Russian seaborne oil, set at $60 per barrel. The measure also prohibits Western companies from providing insurance and other services to shipments of Russian crude, unless the cargo is purchased at or below the indicated price.
Following the move, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov warned that the restrictions would wreak havoc on global oil markets, while Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow was not planning to sell oil to nations supporting the price cap.
The estimated drain is reportedly just the start of the deepest energy crisis in decades
https://www.rt.com/business/568458-eu-trillion-energy-cost-crisis/
Dec 18, 2022
A state of emergency could linger for years, according to Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, as quoted by Bloomberg.
“Once you add everything up –bailouts, subsidies– it is a ridiculously large amount of money,” Martin Devenish, a director at consultancy S-RM, told the agency. “It’s going to be a lot harder for governments to manage this crisis next year.”
© Getty Images / Anna Tanukevic / EyeEm
EU member states have spent roughly a trillion dollars (€940 billion) in the face of the bloc’s worst energy crisis in decades, Bloomberg is reporting on Sunday, citing calculations based on market data.
Soaring energy prices have sent its economies plunging into recession as most member states opted to stop importing gas from Russia, facing the necessity to turn to more expensive supplies.
The agency highlighted that the total estimated losses mark just the beginning of a full-scale crisis, as a period of high prices for energy could last years, while aid is already becoming unaffordable.
The security of the energy supply is expected to remain an issue beyond next winter after the filled gas storage facilities across the region are emptied. The nations of the EU will have to refill their gas reserves for the next cold season with no deliveries from Russia, which also heats up competition for tankers.
READ MORE: Germans fail first gas-saving test – regulator
Even with more import terminals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) coming online, the crisis will reportedly loosen its grip only in 2026, when additional production capacity from the US or Qatar becomes available. At the same time, prices should remain high to attract LNG away from other buyers from energy-hungry Asian buyers.
A state of emergency could linger for years, according to Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, as quoted by Bloomberg.
“Once you add everything up –bailouts, subsidies– it is a ridiculously large amount of money,” Martin Devenish, a director at consultancy S-RM, told the agency. “It’s going to be a lot harder for governments to manage this crisis next year.”
A rush to fill storage during summer, despite all-time high prices, has softened the supply squeeze so far. However, freezing weather is expected to give the region’s energy system the real test this winter.
Last month, Germany’s energy regulator, the Federal Network Agency, warned that German households and small businesses have failed their first gas-saving tests. The regulator noted that a reduction in consumption of at least 20% was required to avoid a gas shortage in the coming months.
That’s it, this is the entire post. I’ll let you do the mental gymnastics on this one.
In the Norwegian capital of Oslo, they just increased the electric vehicle charging prices so much that it’s now more than twice as expensive to charge your EV than fill up a gasoline car.
Beijing is planning to further boost imports of LNG and piped natural gas from Russia, China’s ambassador to Moscow says
Natural gas supplies from Russia to China increased 173% in the first ten months of this year compared to the same period of 2021, according to the Chinese ambassador to Moscow.
https://www.rt.com/business/568347-china-russia-gas-supplies-soar/
Dec 16, 2022
© Global Look Press / Cao Jianxiong
Natural gas supplies from Russia to China increased 173% in the first ten months of this year compared to the same period of 2021, according to the Chinese ambassador to Moscow.
Zhang Hanhui said Beijing is ready to work with Moscow to ensure gas pumped via the eastern section of the Power of Siberia pipeline will reach its projected capacity as soon as possible.
He added that China also wants to see a more rapid implementation of the Russia-Mongolia-China gas pipeline project.
“Amid the current situation a new Russian-Chinese cooperation horizon is being demonstrated,” the diplomat said in his speech at the ‘Russian Gas 2022 – Turn to the East’ forum. “We are ready to strengthen integrated cooperation with the Russian side in the field of pipeline and liquefied gas.”
READ MORE: Russia boosts gas supplies to China
According to the envoy, China has already become the world’s biggest natural gas consumer and has vast potential to further increase imports of the fuel. He noted that natural gas consumption in China reached 372 billion cubic meters in 2021, marking a 12.7% annual surge.
“The East welcomes Russian gas. There is a sufficient market in the East to place Russian gas,” he said, stressing that Beijing would never allow outside forces to interfere in energy cooperation between China and Russia.
Last week, Russia’s state-run energy giant Gazprom reported that daily supplies via the Power of Siberia pipeline had reached a record high, while the company’s contractual obligations were exceeded by 16.4%.
The Chinese ambassador stressed that Beijing condemns the acts of sabotage in September against the two Nord Stream pipelines, linking Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea, as inadmissible.
“China opposes the bullying policy pursued by some countries in the energy sector,” Zhang said.
A senior European official speaking to Politico additionally blasted the White House policy of in effect using the Ukraine war to line the pockets of American defense contractors while at the same turning a deaf ear on European pleas for some relief to the no-win situation.
“America needs to realize that public opinion is shifting in many EU countries.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/eu-accuses-washington-making-fortune-ukraine-war
BY TYLER DURDEN
SUNDAY, NOV 27, 2022
“Nine months after invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is beginning to fracture the West,” Politico observes in a surprising admission which marks a stark reversal from prior mainstream media optimism and cheerleading of the White House’s blank check approach to supporting Ukraine. “Top European officials are furious with Joe Biden’s administration and now accuse the Americans of making a fortune from the war, while EU countries suffer.”
There’s clearly growing frustration among European officials over Washington’s refusal to push the Zelensky government to the negotiating table while an unprecedented billions worth of weaponry and defense aid pours in, risking unpredictable escalation between NATO and Russia. Meanwhile, European populations will continue being the first to pay the price amid frigid winter temperatures and a simultaneous severe energy supply crisis even as some leaders still spout abstract ideals of “sacrifice”.
And all the while Biden has continued rolling out his controversial green subsidies and taxes which are widely perceived as unfairly punishing European industries at this most sensitive juncture.
A senior European official speaking to Politico additionally blasted the White House policy of in effect using the Ukraine war to line the pockets of American defense contractors while at the same turning a deaf ear on European pleas for some relief to the no-win situation.
“The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons,” the senior official said.
The person acknowledged a large-scale shift in sentiment happening, largely driven by the intractable ‘win in Ukraine at all costs’ stance of the US administration:
The explosive comments — backed in public and private by officials, diplomats and ministers elsewhere — follow mounting anger in Europe over American subsidies that threaten to wreck European industry. The Kremlin is likely to welcome the poisoning of the atmosphere among Western allies.
“We are really at a historic juncture,” the senior EU official said, arguing that the double hit of trade disruption from U.S. subsidies and high energy prices risks turning public opinion against both the war effort and the transatlantic alliance. “America needs to realize that public opinion is shifting in many EU countries.”
But the US National Security Council has lately reiterated its position that the crisis is solely on Putin’s shoulders full-stop, while Washington is simply presenting ramped-up US liquefied natural gas delivery to Europe as fulfilling the need to “diversify away from Russia,” according to a NSC statement.
Even the typically compliant EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is now questioning and showing hints of losing faith in ‘united’ efforts to support Ukraine, acknowledging to Politico, “Americans — our friends — take decisions which have an economic impact on us.”
And for a more pointed breakdown of the problem as Brussels sees it…
“The United States sells us its gas with a multiplier effect of four when it crosses the Atlantic,” European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton said on French TV on Wednesday. “Of course the Americans are our allies… but when something goes wrong it is necessary also between allies to say it.”
Another EU diplomat cited in the Politico report described that Biden’s $369 billion industrial subsidy scheme to support green industries as part of the Inflation Reduction Act unleashed panic across European capitals.
“The Inflation Reduction Act has changed everything,” the EU diplomat said. “Is Washington still our ally or not?” This rising fury could spill into the streets as more European households are likely to experience shortages in electricity and heat this winter, further intensifying the pressure on EU politicians.
The announcement comes as many households in Canada are struggling to pay their energy bills
https://www.rt.com/business/567114-canada-pays-ukraine-gas/
Nov 25, 2022
Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau © Mateusz Wlodarczyk / NurPhoto via Getty Images
Ukraine has received nearly $350 million from Canada to fill up its underground storage facilities with gas for the winter, Ukrainian media reported on Wednesday, citing Prime Minister Denis Shmygal.
The government in Ottawa has transferred 12.7 billion hryvni (US$344 million) to Ukraine’s state-owned gas company Naftogaz he said, adding that “Ukraine earlier received this money from the government of Canada.” Shmygal also noted that the “procedure for using state budget funds for procuring gas in 2022-2023 was endorsed at today’s [government] meeting.”
This week, Kiev also received €200 million (US$208 million) from Norway for the same purpose and is awaiting another €300 million to be bankrolled by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development under the agreement reached earlier, the Ukrainian premier said.
The funding comes as citizens in Canada and the EU are facing unprecedented energy inflation and a cost-of-living crisis, with thousands of families struggling to pay their energy bills.
READ MORE: Ukraine halts Russian oil transit to EU – Transneft
Canadians have seen a dramatic surge in electricity and gas prices in recent months. Energy analysts warn that households in the country can expect their bills to rise by between 50% and 100% on average this winter.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/escobar-rewiring-eurasia-mr-patrushev-goes-tehran
BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, NOV 12, 2022
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,
The meeting this week between two Eurasian security bosses is a further step toward dusting away the west’s oversized Asian footprint…
Two guys are hanging out in a cozy room in Tehran with a tantalizing new map of the world in the background.
Nothing to see here? On the contrary. These two Eurasian security giants are no less than the – unusually relaxed – Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Ali Shamkhani, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
And why are they so relaxed? Because the future prospects revolving around the main theme of their conversation – the Russia-Iran strategic partnership – could not be more exciting.
This was a very serious business affair: an official visit, at the invitation of Shamkhani.
Patrushev was in Tehran on the exact same day that Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu – following a recommendation from General Sergey Surovikin, the overall commander of the Special Military Operation – ordered a Russian retreat from Kherson.
Patrushev knew it for days – so he had no problem stepping on a plane to take care of business in Tehran. After all, the Kherson drama is part of the Patrushev negotiations with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Ukraine, which have been going on for weeks, with Saudi Arabia as an eventual go-between.
Besides Ukraine, the two discussed “information security, as well as measures to counter interference in the internal affairs of both countries by western special services,” according to a report by Russia’s TASS news agency.
Both countries, as we know, are particular targets of western information warfare and sabotage, with Iran currently the focus of one of these no-holds-barred, foreign-backed, destabilization campaigns.
Patrushev was officially received by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who went straight to the point: “The cooperation of independent countries is the strongest response to the sanctions and destabilization policies of the US and its allies.”
Patrushev, for his part, assured Raisi that for the Russian Federation, strategic relations with Iran are essential for Russian national security.
So that goes way beyond Geranium-2 kamikaze drones – the Russian cousins of the Shahed-136 – wreaking havoc on the Ukrainian battlefield. This, by the way, elicited a direct mention later on by Shamkhani: “Iran welcomes a peaceful settlement in Ukraine and is in favor of peace based on dialogue between Moscow and Kiev.”
Patrushev and Shamkhani of course discussed security issues and the proverbial “cooperation in the international arena.” But what may be more significant is that the Russian delegation included officials from several key economic agencies.
There were no leaks – but that suggests serious economic connectivity remains at the heart of the strategic partnership between the two top-sanctioned nations in Eurasia.
Key in the discussions was the Iranian focus on the fast expansion of bilateral trade in national currencies – ruble and rial. That happens to be at the center of the drive by both the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS towards multipolarity. Iran is now a full SCO member – the only West Asian nation to be part of the Asian strategic behemoth – and will apply to become part of BRICS+.
Have swap, will travel
The Patrushev-Shamkhani get-together happened ahead of the signing, next month, of a whopping $40 billion energy deal with Gazprom, as previously announced by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mahdi Safari.
The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has already clinched an initial $6.5 billion deal. All that revolves around the development of two gas deposits and six oilfields; swaps in natural gas and oil products; LNG projects; and building more gas pipelines.
Last month, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak announced a swap of 5 million tons of oil and 10 billion cubic meters of gas, to be finished by the end of 2022. And he confirmed that “the amount of Russian investment in Iran’s oil fields will increase.”
Barter of course is ideal for Moscow and Tehran to jointly bypass interminably problematic sanctions and payment settlement issues – linked to the western financial system. On top of it, Russia and Iran are able to invest in direct trade links via the Caspian Sea.
At the recent Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, Raisi forcefully proposed that a successful “new Asia” must necessarily develop an endogenous model for independent states.
As an SCO member, and playing a very important role, alongside Russia and India, in the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), Raisi is positioning Iran in a key vector of multilateralism.
Since Tehran entered the SCO, cooperation with both Russia and China, predictably, is on overdrive. Patrushev’s visit is part of that process. Tehran is leaving behind decades of Iranophobia and every possible declination of American “maximum pressure” – from sanctions to attempts at color revolution – to dynamically connect across Eurasia.
BRI, SCO, INSTC
Iran is a key Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) partner for China’s grand infrastructure project to connect Eurasia via road, sea, and train. In parallel, the multimodal Russian-led INSTC is essential to promote trade between the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia – at the same time solidifying Russia’s presence in the South Caucasus and the Caspian Sea region.
Iran and India have committed to offer part of Chabahar port in Iran to Central Asian nations, complete with access to exclusive economic zones.
At the recent SCO summit in Samarkand, both Russia and China made it quite clear – especially for the collective west – that Iran is no longer going to be treated as a pariah state.
So it is no wonder Iran is entering a new business era with all members of the SCO under the sign of an emerging financial order being designed mostly by Russia, China and India. As far as strategic partnerships go, the ties between Russia and India (President Narendra Modi called it an unbreakable friendship) is as strong as those between Russia and China. And when it comes to Russia, that’s what Iran is aiming at.
The Patrushev-Shamkhani strategic meeting will hurl western hysteria to unseen levels – as it completely smashes Iranophobia and Russophobia in one fell swoop. Iran as a close ally is an unparalleled strategic asset for Russia in the drive towards multipolarity.
Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) are already negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in parallel to those swaps involving Russian oil. The west’s reliance on the SWIFT banking messaging system hardly makes any difference to Russia and Iran. The Global South is watching it closely, especially in Iran’s neighborhood where oil is commonly traded in US dollars.
It is starting to become clear to anyone in the west with an IQ above room temperature that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal), in the end, does not matter anymore. Iran’s future is directly connected to the success of three of the BRICS: Russia, China and India. Iran itself may soon become a BRICS+ member.
There’s more: Iran is even becoming a role model for the Persian Gulf: witness the lengthy queue of regional states aspiring toward gaining SCO membership. The Trumpian “Abraham Accords?” What’s that? BRICS/SCO/BRI is the only way to go in West Asia today.
The investments of just 125 billionaires emit 393 million tonnes of CO2e each year – the equivalent of France – at an individual annual average that is a million times higher than someone in the bottom 90 percent of humanity.
I’m so just as shocked as you are. A billionaire is responsible for a million times more greenhouse gas emissions than the average person… And now these same billionaires, CEOs, and politicians are currently discussing at GOP27 in Egypt, how they could tax us more to fund their CO2 diminution plans… How ironic, isn’t it? FY!
The below article shows that the richest are more toxic and destructive to the environment than regular people through their investments and oh-so-secret ways of life. Runaway capitalism is in full swing and the lifestyles, ways of life, and total debauchery will lead to the destruction of the Earth.
Oxfam has reported that the wealthiest people are responsible for about a million times more emissions than the world’s lowest earners when taking into account their investments. In other words the 125 wealthiest people-Musk, Walton, Buffet, and Gates included, have a combined carbon footprint that is equivalent to the entire country of France. The investments themselves continue dirty industries and lead to the creation of more emissions added to the existing whole.
Oxfam first pulled together a list of the world’s 220 people, and identified the corporations that they hold investments in, and currently have a 10% equity stake in. Naturally, it should be known that most of the research itself may not be accurate. The reason being there is an overall lack of transparency that has come from the world of billionaires.
The transparency comes down to the wealthiest actual investments and additionally a lack of transparency around corporate emissions, meaning that the numbers are likely way higher than reported by Oxfam. Based on the research this means 3.3 million tons for the richest people, followed by about 25.4 for an average person in the UK, and then followed by the world’s 10% poorest at around 3 tons per person.
The influence of the few and the wealthy continues to show the runaway effects of capitalism and continues to sow the world’s destruction. The numbers themselves reported here aren’t accurate and are way higher. It also isn’t a final list, with no mention of Bezos, etc.
According to the Oxfam website:
Billionaire investments in polluting industries such as fossil fuels and cement double the average for the S&P 500
The investments of just 125 billionaires emit 393 million tonnes of CO2e each year – the equivalent of France – at an individual annual average that is a million times higher than someone in the bottom 90 percent of humanity.
Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people, is a report published by Oxfam today based on a detailed analysis of the investments of 125 of the richest billionaires in some of the world’s biggest corporates and the carbon emissions of these investments. These billionaires have a collective $2.4 trillion stake in 183 companies.
The report finds that these billionaires’ investments produce an annual average of 3m tonnes of CO2e per person, which is a million times higher than the average for people living in the bottom 90 percent (2.76 tonnes of CO2e).
The actual figure is likely to be higher still, as published carbon emissions by corporates have been shown to systematically underestimate the true level of carbon impact. Further, billionaires and corporates who do not publicly reveal their emissions (and are therefore not included in the research), are likely to be those with a high climate impact.
“These few billionaires together have ‘investment emissions’ that equal the carbon footprints of entire countries like France, Egypt or Argentina,” said Nafkote Dabi, Climate Change Lead at Oxfam. “The major and growing responsibility of wealthy people for overall emissions is rarely discussed or considered in climate policy-making. This has to change. These billionaire investors at the top of the corporate pyramid have a huge responsibility for driving climate breakdown. They have escaped accountability for too long.”
“Emissions from billionaire lifestyles – due to their frequent use of private jets and yachts – are thousands of times the average person, which is already completely unacceptable,” said Dabi. “But if we look at emissions from their investments, then their carbon emissions are over a million times higher.” said.
Contrary to average people, studies show the world’s wealthiest individuals’ investments account for up to 70 percent of their emissions. Oxfam has used public data to calculate the “investment emissions” of billionaires with over 10 percent stakes in a corporation. The study allocates billionaires a share of the reported emissions of the corporates in which they are invested, in proportion to their stake.
The study also found billionaires had an average of 14 percent of their investments in polluting industries such as energy and materials like cement. This is twice the average for investments in the S&P 500. Only one billionaire in the sample had investments in a renewable energy company.
“We need COP27 to expose and change the role that big corporates and their rich investors are playing in driving the climate crisis by profiting from pollution,” said Dabi. “They can’t be allowed to hide or greenwash. We need governments to tackle this urgently by publishing emission figures for the richest people, regulating investors and corporates to slash carbon emissions and taxing wealth and polluting investments.”
The choice of investments billionaires make is shaping the future of our economy, for example, by backing high carbon infrastructure – locking in high emissions for decades to come. The study found that if the billionaires in the sample moved their investments to a fund with stronger environmental and social standards, it could reduce the intensity of their emissions by up to four times.
“The super-rich need to be taxed and regulated away from polluting investments that are destroying the planet. Governments must put also in place ambitious regulations and policies that compel corporations to be more accountable and transparent in reporting and radically reducing their emissions,” said Dabi.
Oxfam has estimated that a wealth tax on the world’s super-rich could raise $1.4 trillion a year, vital resources that could help developing countries – those worst hit by the climate crisis – to adapt, address loss and damage and carry out a just transition to renewable energy. According to the UNEP adaptation costs for developing countries could rise to $300 billion per year by 2030. Africa alone will require $600 billion between 2020 to 2030. Oxfam is also calling for steeply higher tax rates for investments in polluting industries to deter such investments.
The report says that many corporations are off track in setting their climate transition plans, including hiding behind unrealistic and unreliable decarbonization plans with the promise of attaining net zero targets only by 2050. Fewer than one in three of the 183 corporates reviewed by Oxfam are working with the Science Based Targets Initiative. Only 16 percent have set net-zero targets.
Ahead of the deliberations at COP27, Oxfam is calling for the following actions:
- Governments to put in place regulations and policies that compel corporations to track and report on scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3 GHG emissions, set science-based climate targets with a clear road map to reducing emissions, and while at it ensuring a just transition from the extractive, carbon-intensive economy by securing the future livelihoods of workers and the affected communities.
- Governments should implement a wealth tax on the richest people and an additional steep rate top-up on wealth invested in polluting industries. This will reduce the numbers and power of rich people in our society, and drastically reduce their emissions. It will also raise billions that can be used to help countries cope with the brutal impacts of climate breakdown and the loss and damage they incur and fund the global shift to renewable energy.
- Corporations must put in place ambitious and time-bound climate change action plans with short-to-medium term targets in line with global climate change objectives in a view to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
So if you think that things are bad now, just wait until war with China erupts.
Do you remember in early 2020 when they told us that the shortages that we were experiencing would just be temporary? Of course, some of them were, but then more shortages just kept on erupting. That wasn’t supposed to happen, and now it appears that our supply chain problems could potentially get a whole lot worse. In just a few short months, we will be three years away from the beginning of the pandemic in the United States. But instead of a “return to normal”, more shortages are on the way. And in some cases, they could even be life-threatening.
Let me give you an example. We need Amoxicillin to treat some of the most common infections that our children experience. Unfortunately, the FDA is warning us that we are now facing a very serious shortage of Amoxicillin…
Ear infections and strep throat.
Both are common childhood illnesses, for which the go-to prescription is in short supply, according to a recent nationwide alert from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The warning specifically involves the powder, which pharmacists use to mix liquid Amoxicillin for childhood infections.
This is a really big deal.
According to one recent survey, close to two-thirds of all pharmacies in the nation are having difficulty getting Amoxicillin right now, and the national shortage of Adderall is even worse…
Nearly 66% of pharmacies are having challenges obtaining amoxicillin, according to a new National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) survey of 8000 pharmacy owners and managers, whereas 89% are realizing a shortage of Adderall.
Of course, we are dealing with lots of other drug shortages at this moment as well.
In fact, according to the official FDA drug shortage list there are nationwide shortages of a whopping 183 different drugs in the United States right now.
We truly are in unprecedented territory.
Up in Canada, things are even worse.
If you can believe it, at this point the Canadians are facing “an acute shortage of basic painkillers”…
The Canadian healthcare system is experiencing an acute shortage of basic painkillers, particularly acetaminophen and ibuprofen, which are commonly used to relieve pain and fever in children during flu season.
Canada’s Association of Medical Assistance in Dying Assessors and Providers (CAMAP) chose this perhaps awkward moment to roll out a webinar for healthcare professionals that advised them to offer assisted suicide to their suffering patients.
So why don’t the Canadians have enough Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen right now?
Well, we are being told that the primary reason is “a lack of raw ingredients to make the drugs”…
CBC News quoted health officials who blamed “a lack of raw ingredients to make the drugs,” “an uptick in respiratory viruses fueled by the relaxed [Chinese coronavirus] measures,” and “panic buying” for the shortage of painkillers for children.
As I have covered in previous articles, most of the basic ingredients that go into our pharmaceutical drugs come from China.
So if you think that things are bad now, just wait until war with China erupts.
Once that happens, our pharmacies will get really empty and our entire healthcare system will experience a historic meltdown.
Switching gears, with Thanksgiving coming up I wanted to talk about the fact that we are now facing a nationwide shortage of turkeys…
As CNBC reports, the price of turkey is up 73% from last year, a pretty astonishing figure. Experts attribute it to the bird flu, which has devastated turkey stocks this year. Apparently, the disease normally doesn’t flourish during the summer as farmers get their holiday flocks together. But, you know, the 2020s haven’t been easy so naturally, the flu hit hard right in the middle of the year when it could do the most damage.
The good news, if you want to call it that, is that you will still probably be able to get a turkey if you are willing to pay enough.
The bad news is that supplies of turkey just keep getting tighter and tighter.
One business owner in San Francisco recently stated that it is “like pulling teeth trying to get turkeys from the companies” at this stage…
But it’s not just the Thanksgiving bird that’s at risk — it’s your lunchtime turkey sandwich, too. San Francisco delis and butchers are already feeling the effects of the shortage.
“It’s like pulling teeth trying to get turkeys from the companies,” said Sal Qaqundah, owner of Arguello Market, a San Francisco cult favorite for its “world famous” turkey sandwich.
Unfortunately, we are also facing a shortage of butter in the weeks ahead.
The USDA is urging consumers not to “panic buy” butter so that there will be enough to go around for everyone…
Butter is another area where the war and cost of dairy products has affected supply, as the price of the condiment and baking ingredient has gone up a dollar per pound since January of this year, per Eater. Fearing a full-blown butter shortage, the USDA has asked consumers not to rush or panic buy, but simply secure what they need at a given time, per Best Life.
Did you ever imagine that we would be talking about a butter shortage in late 2022?
Things just keep getting crazier and crazier.
And if the diesel fuel shortages eventually get as bad as some are projecting, we could soon be facing severe shortages of countless products.
Our ships, our trains, and our trucks run on diesel fuel.
So if there is not enough diesel fuel, we are going to have a real problem trying to fill up our stores with enough stuff for everybody.
Even now, supplies of diesel fuel are so tight that one big player in the industry just issued a major alert…
A major fuel supply and logistics company is raising a red flag on upcoming diesel fuel shortages.
Mansfield Energy issued the alert Friday stating there was a developing diesel fuel shortage in the southeastern region of the United States. The company speculated that the shortage could be generated from “poor pipeline shipping economies” and a historically low supply of diesel reserves.
“Poor pipeline shipping economics and historically low diesel inventories are combining to cause shortages in various markets throughout the Southeast,” the company said. “These have been occurring sporadically, with areas like Tennessee seeing particularly acute challenges.”
There are a number of reasons why supplies of diesel fuel have gotten so tight.
But the biggest is the fact that imports from Russia have been totally cut off…
But the primary reason is the cutoff of Russian imports. Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. was importing nearly 700,000 barrels per day (BPD) of petroleum and petroleum products. Most of those imports were finished products and refinery inputs that boosted distillate supplies in the U.S.
The loss of those Russian imports have caused problems for refineries as they struggle to fill holes in their product slates. Refineries do have a small amount of flexibility in shifting gasoline production to diesel production. But it’s a relatively small amount (e.g., ~5% in a refinery I once worked in). That also means that if refiners do shift production, that also potentially creates shortages in the gasoline market.
So why don’t we just produce more ourselves?
Well, thanks to our politicians, the number of refineries in the United States has actually been declining in recent years even as our population has grown.
At this point, we simply do not have enough refineries, and this is a problem that is not going away any time soon.
In the months ahead, we aren’t going to completely run out of diesel fuel as some people out there are suggesting.
But supplies may get so tight that it could potentially create widespread supply chain nightmares that are quite severe.
Let us hope that such a scenario does not materialize.
Because the American people are already angry enough about the economy. In fact, a brand new survey has found that it is the number one issue for U.S. voters at this moment…
The Washington Post and ABC gave Americans eight top issues they will be considering when making their decision in a poll that showed likely voters split between the Democrats and Republicans.
The economy was cited by 26 percent of likely voters as one of the most important factors, followed by abortion with 22 percent and inflation and threats to democracy each by 21 percent.
For decades, we have been able to rely on our supply chains to continuously fill our stores with mountains of cheap goods.
But now our supply chains are breaking down.
In fact, our entire economic system is breaking down and most people are completely and utterly unprepared for the difficult times that are coming.
I know that many of you have been patiently waiting for a long time for life to “return to normal”.
Sadly, that isn’t going to happen. The incredibly bad decisions that our leaders have been making are now catching up with us in a major way, and a great deal of pain is ahead.
“We absolutely do agree that everyone in Canada needs to pay their fair share,” Freeland said. “That’s how we afford to have the strong compassionate society and social safety net that is so much a part of Canada and being Canadian.”
“The windfall tax on financial institutions was based on a very specific set of events,” she said. “During COVID-19 lockdowns, the federal government undertook extraordinary emergency spending. We basically put a line, a net, underneath the Canadian economy.”
“It was the right thing to do,” she also said. “And it also really, really helped our financial institutions.”
Freeland instead mentioned the two per cent tax on share buybacks by large corporations, a new measure included in the economic statement, which she said is “the right measure to ensure fairness, but also crucially to create the right incentives for Canada’s biggest companies, very much including our oil and gas companies.”
Western sanctions against Russia have been considered a powerful foreign policy tool by the US and the EU to paralyze Moscow back to the ‘stone age.’ Though sanctions against Moscow have entirely backfired, sparking the worst cost-of-living crisis for Europeans in a generation.
In early September, we first noticed a wave of discontent sweeping across Europe as tens of thousands of people took to the city streets to protest soaring electricity bills and the worst inflation in decades. Some countries delivered relief packages to citizens to tame the anger, while other countries did not have the financial capacity to hand out checks.
Tens of thousands of people have marched across metro areas in France, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Germany — many of them are fed up with sanctions on Russia that have sparked economic ruins for many households and businesses — but also very surprising, support for NATO’s involvement in Ukraine is waning.
There has been increasing awareness and dissent among Europeans about their countries’ leaders prioritizing NATO’s ambitions in Ukraine over their own citizens. The prioritization has been in the form of sanctions against Moscow, sparking energy hyperinflation and supplying weapons to Ukraine, which has made Moscow displeased with any country that does so. Some Europeans are now demanding NATO negotiate with Moscow to end the war so that economic turmoil can abate.
Here are the latest protests across Europe of tens of thousands of people (if not more) frustrated with high inflation and crying out anti-NATO slogans.
Eurasia is about to get a whole lot larger as countries line up to join the Chinese and Russian-led BRICS and SCO, to the detriment of the west
The record shows that the US weaponizes Ukraine to the hilt against Russia. The Empire is a de facto war combatant via an array of “consultants,” advisers, trainers, mercenaries, heavy weapons, munitions, satellite intel, and electronic warfare. And yet imperial functionaries swear they are not part of the war. They are, once again, lying.
By Pepe Escobar
This article was originally published in The Cradle.
Global Research, October 28, 2022
Region: Asia, Middle East & North Africa, Russia and FSU
Theme: Global Economy
***
Let’s start with what is in fact a tale of Global South trade between two members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). At its heart is the already notorious Shahed-136 drone – or Geranium-2, in its Russian denomination: the AK-47 of postmodern aerial warfare.
The US, in yet another trademark hysteria fit rife with irony, accused Tehran of weaponizing the Russian Armed Forces. For both Tehran and Moscow, the superstar, value-for-money, and terribly efficient drone let loose in the Ukrainian battlefield is a state secret: its deployment prompted a flurry of denials from both sides. Whether these are made in Iran drones, or the design was bought and manufacturing takes place in Russia (the realistic option), is immaterial.
The record shows that the US weaponizes Ukraine to the hilt against Russia. The Empire is a de facto war combatant via an array of “consultants,” advisers, trainers, mercenaries, heavy weapons, munitions, satellite intel, and electronic warfare. And yet imperial functionaries swear they are not part of the war. They are, once again, lying.
Welcome to yet another graphic instance of the “rules-based international order” at work. The Hegemon always decides which rules apply, and when. Anyone opposing it is an enemy of “freedom,” “democracy,” or whatever platitude du jour, and should be – what else – punished by arbitrary sanctions.
In the case of sanctioned-to-oblivion Iran, for decades now, the result has been predictably another round of sanctions. That’s irrelevant. What matters is that, according to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), no less than 22 nations – and counting – are joining the queue because they also want to get into the Shahed groove.
Even the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gleefully joined the fray, commenting on how the Shahed-136 is no photoshop.
The race towards BRICS+
What the new sanctions package against Iran really “accomplished” is to deliver an additional blow to the increasingly problematic signing of the revived nuclear deal in Vienna. More Iranian oil on the market would actually relieve Washington’s predicament after the recent epic snub by OPEC+.
A categorical imperative though remains. Iranophobia – just like Russophobia – always prevails for the Straussians/neo-con war advocates in charge of US foreign policy and their European vassals.
So here we have yet another hostile escalation in both Iran-US and Iran-EU relations, as the unelected junta in Brussels also sanctioned manufacturer Shahed Aviation Industries and three Iranian generals.
Now compare this with the fate of the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone – which unlike the “flowers in the sky” (Russia’s Geraniums) has performed miserably in the battlefield.
Kiev tried to convince the Turks to use a Motor Sich weapons factory in Ukraine or come up with a new company in Transcarpathia/Lviv to build Bayraktars. Motor Sich’s oligarch President Vyacheslav Boguslayev, aged 84, has been charged with treason because of his links to Russia and may be exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners of war.
In the end, the deal fizzled out because of Ankara’s exceptional enthusiasm in working to establish a new gas hub in Turkey – a personal suggestion from Russian President Vladimir Putin to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
And that bring us to the advancing interconnection between BRICS and the 9-member SCO – to which this Russia-Iran instance of military trade is inextricably linked.
The SCO, led by China and Russia, is a pan-Eurasian institution originally focused on counter-terrorism but now increasingly geared towards geoeconomic – and geopolitical – cooperation. BRICS, led by the triad of Russia, India, and China overlaps with the SCO agenda geoeconomically and geopoliticallly, expanding it to Africa, Latin America, and beyond: that’s the concept of BRICS+, analyzed in detail in a recent Valdai Club report, and fully embraced by the Russia-China strategic partnership.
The report weighs the pros and cons of three scenarios involving possible, upcoming BRICS+ candidates:
First, nations that were invited by Beijing to be part of the 2017 BRICS summit (Egypt, Kenya, Mexico, Thailand, Tajikistan).
Second, nations that were part of the BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting in May this year (Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Thailand).
Third, key G20 economies (Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye).
And then there’s Iran, which has already shown interest in joining BRICS.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has recently confirmed that “several countries” are absolutely dying to join BRICS. Among them, is a crucial West Asia player: Saudi Arabia.
What makes it even more astonishing is that only three years ago, under former US President Donald Trump’s administration, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MbS) – the kingdom’s de facto ruler – was dead set on joining a sort of Arab NATO as a privileged imperial ally.
Diplomatic sources confirm that the day after the US pulled out of Afghanistan, MbS’s envoys started seriously negotiating with both Moscow and Beijing.
Assuming BRICS approves Riyadh’s candidacy in 2023 by the necessary consensus, one can barely imagine its earth-shattering consequences for the petrodollar. At the same time, it is important not to underestimate the capacity of US foreign policy controllers to wreak havoc.
The only reason Washington tolerates Riyadh’s regime is the petrodollar. The Saudis cannot be allowed to pursue an independent, truly sovereign foreign policy. If that happens, the geopolitical realignment will concern not only Saudi Arabia but the entire Persian Gulf.
Yet that’s increasingly likely after OPEC+ de facto chose the BRICS/SCO path led by Russia-China – in what can be interpreted as a “soft” preamble for the end of the petrodollar.
The Riyadh-Tehran-Ankara triad
Iran made known its interest to join BRICS even before Saudi Arabia. According to Persian Gulf diplomatic sources, they are already engaged in a somewhat secret channel via Iraq trying to get their act together. Turkey will soon follow – certainly on BRICS and possibly the SCO, where Ankara currently carries the status of an extremely interested observer.
Now imagine this triad – Riyadh, Tehran, Ankara – closely joined with Russia, India, China (the actual core of the BRICS), and eventually in the SCO, where Iran is as yet the only West Asian nation to be inducted as a full member.
The strategic blow to the Empire will go off the charts. The discussions leading to BRICS+ are focusing on the challenging path towards a commodity-backed global currency capable of bypassing US dollar primacy.
Several interconnected steps point towards increasing symbiosis between BRICS+ and SCO. The latter’s member states have already agreed on a road map for gradually increasing trade in national currencies in mutual settlements.
The State Bank of India – the nation’s top lender – is opening special rupee accounts for Russia-related trade.
Russian natural gas to Turkey will be paid 25 percent in rubles and Turkish lira, complete with a 25 percent discount Erdogan personally asked of Putin.
Russian bank VTB has launched money transfers to China in yuan, bypassing SWIFT, while Sberbank has started lending out money in yuan. Russian energy behemoth Gazprom agreed with China that gas supply payments should shift to rubles and yuan, split evenly.
Iran and Russia are unifying their banking systems for trade in rubles/rial.
Egypt’s Central Bank is moving to establish an index for the pound – through a group of currencies plus gold – to move the national currency away from the US dollar.
And then there’s the TurkStream saga.
That gas hub gift
Ankara for years has been trying to position itself as a privileged East-West gas hub. After the sabotage of the Nord Streams, Putin has handed it on a plate by offering Turkey the possibility to increase Russian gas supplies to the EU via such a hub. The Turkish Energy Ministry stated that Ankara and Moscow have already reached an agreement in principle.
This will mean in practice Turkey controlling the gas flow to Europe not only from Russia but also Azerbaijan and a great deal of West Asia, perhaps even including Iran, as well as Libya in northeast Africa. LNG terminals in Egypt, Greece and Turkiye itself may complete the network.
Russian gas travels via the TurkStream and Blue Stream pipelines. The total capacity of Russian pipelines is 39 billion cubic meters a year.
TurkStream was initially projected as a four-strand pipeline, with a nominal capacity of 63 million cubic meters a year. As it stands, only two strands – with a total capacity of 31,5 billion cubic meters – have been built.
So an extension in theory is more than feasible – with all the equipment made in Russia. The problem, once again, is laying the pipes. The necessary vessels belong to the Swiss Allseas Group – and Switzerland is part of the sanctions craze. In the Baltic Sea, Russian vessels were used to finish building Nord Stream 2. But for a TurkStream extension, they would need to operate much deeper in the ocean.
TurkStream would not be able to completely replace Nord Stream; it carries much smaller volumes. The upside for Russia is not being canceled from the EU market. Evidently, Gazprom would only tackle the substantial investment on an extension if there are ironclad guarantees about its security. And there’s the additional drawback that the extension would also carry gas from Russia’s competitors.
Whatever happens, the fact remains that the US-UK combo still exerts a lot of influence in Turkey – and BP, Exxon Mobil, and Shell, for instance, are actors in virtually every oil extraction project across West Asia. So they would certainly interfere on the way the Turkish gas hub functions, as well as determining the gas price. Moscow has to weigh all these variables before committing to such a project.
NATO, of course, will be livid. But never underestimate hedging bet specialist Sultan Erdogan. His love story with both the BRICS and the SCO is just beginning.
*
Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from The Cradle
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Pepe Escobar, Global Research, 2022
UK forces participated in an operation that damaged Europe’s energy security, Moscow claims
https://www.rt.com/russia/565577-nord-stream-uk-attack/
Oct 29, 2022
© Handout / SWEDISH COAST GUARD / AFP
Units of the British Navy were involved in a “terrorist attack”, which destroyed the key Nord Stream gas pipelines, the Russian Defence Ministry alleged on Saturday.
Writing on its official Telegram channel, the ministry alleged that Royal Navy operatives “took part in planning, supporting and implementing” the plot to blow up the infrastructure in September. It did not provide any direct evidence to support its assertion.
The accusation follows a Russian Foreign Ministry claim that NATO conducted a military exercise during the summer, close to the location where the undersea explosions occurred.
The September incident put the pipelines, connecting Germany to Russia, out of commission. Western countries have blocked a transparent international investigation.
NATO tested underwater ‘equipment’ close to Nord Stream – Moscow
The Defence Ministry further alleged that the same UK operatives trained Ukrainians involved in a drone offensive in Crimea earlier on Saturday.
In late September, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted that this summer, NATO conducted military drills not far from Bornholm, which featured intensive use of “deep-sea equipment.’’
While the officials stopped short of naming the culprit, they were said to be “working under the assumption that Russia was behind the blasts.” Moscow has repeatedly denied that it had anything to do with the incident.
Meanwhile, Sky News has cited a UK defense official as saying Nord Stream 1 and 2 could have been damaged by a remotely detonated underwater explosive device. At the time, the broadcaster said the pipelines might have been breached by mines lowered to the seabed, or explosives dropped from a boat or planted by an undersea drone.
Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that Xi and Putin met and coordinated strategy. Lou
Fears over a winter deficit have forced Beijing to cease LNG exports, media reports
https://www.rt.com/business/564808-china-halts-energy-exports-eu/
Oct 17, 2022
© Getty Images / CHUNYIP WONG
China has told its state-owned gas importers to stop reselling liquefied natural gas (LNG) to foreign buyers as the government aims to secure the nation’s own supply for the winter heating season, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
People with knowledge of the matter told the news outlet that the National Development and Reform Commission has asked PetroChina, Sinopec, and CNOOC to keep their winter supplies for domestic use. While the sales had offered some relief to European buyers, rapidly filling inventories and record-high shipping costs also reduced the appeal of reshipping the fuel, the sources reportedly said.
Domestic demand for energy had been falling in China in recent months, prompting Beijing to resell excess LNG in the global market. Europe, Japan, and South Korea were among its key buyers.
Data shows that after the EU heavily reduced Russian gas purchases, imports of LNG to the bloc have increased by 60% year-on-year, despite being much more expensive than pipeline deliveries.
READ MORE: China profits from sanctions on Russia – WSJ
However, current forecasts for a small deficit in the gas supply likely spurred the move by Beijing, which has pledged to keep houses warm this winter. On Sunday, President Xi Jinping addressed energy security concerns during his two-hour speech.
According to Bloomberg, the move by China to secure its own supply could drain shipments to Europe and exacerbate the region’s looming energy crunch this winter. “China holds large contracts to purchase LNG from exporters like the US, with the Asian nation’s traders diverting some of that supply to Europe this year amid lackluster demand at home,” the outlet reports.
Construction will begin as soon as possible, the Turkish leader says
https://www.rt.com/news/564665-russia-turkiye-gas-hub/
Oct 14, 2022
FILE PHOTO: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin. © Murat Kula / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has backed his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s idea of creating an international natural gas hub in Türkiye, to deliver Russian supplies to Europe. According to the Turkish leader, both he and Putin have now ordered their respective governments to present construction plans as soon as possible.
Erdogan said the two countries’ energy authorities will work together to designate the best spot to build the distribution center, which will most likely be in Türkiye’s northwest, in the Thrace region which borders Greece and Bulgaria.
“Together with Mr. Putin, we have instructed our Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources and the relevant institution on the Russian side to work together,” Erdogan told reporters on the presidential plane while returning from Kazakhstan on Thursday.
“They will conduct this study. Wherever the most appropriate place is, we will hopefully establish this distribution center there,” he added, noting that while Türkiye already has a national distribution center, the new infrastructure will be the country’s first international gas hub.
Saboteurs targeting pipeline to Türkiye captured – Kremlin
The decision comes after a closed-door meeting between Erdogan and Putin on the sidelines of a regional summit in Astana on Thursday. The Russian president offered to build a major gas hub in Türkiye to handle supplies which were previously directed to Europe through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline in the Baltic Sea. The pipeline, along with the as-yet unused Nord Stream 2, were severely damaged in a series of explosions in late September, which are widely considered to be the result of sabotage.
Praising Türkiye as one of “the most reliable” partners for the transit of Russian fuel to Europe, Putin noted that an international gas hub would serve not only as a distribution platform, but could also be used for determining gas prices and avoiding “politicization” of the issue.
The Kremlin had previously urged Ankara to consider further developing its gas infrastructure after several people were detained in Russia for allegedly plotting to sabotage the TurkStream pipeline. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov says the pipeline is now the only “fully functional, fully loaded and working as clockwork route” for Russian gas to reach Europe.
“Will anyone now dare claim that our country is behind this act of sabotage? I agree it’s hard to face the truth. But someday the EU countries will have to face up to the fact they were betrayed by their allies,” she said.
By Richard Abelson
Published October 6, 2022
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova
As the Biden Regime and its media proxies continue to blame Russia for blowing up the Nord Stream Pipeline with no evidence, the EU countries will have to face the truth and admit that they have been betrayed by their US ally, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel on Wednesday.
She pointed out Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak had said that Russia was ready to supply gas through the undamaged branch of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, TASS reported.
“Will anyone now dare claim that our country is behind this act of sabotage? I agree it’s hard to face the truth. But someday the EU countries will have to face up to the fact they were betrayed by their allies,” she said.
Russia and Germany must participate in the investigation into the incidents at the Nord Stream pipelines, said Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Vershinin Wednesday.
TRENDING: Lindsey Graham Threatens Elon Musk After He Calls for De-escalation in Ukraine-Russia War
“We are talking about sabotage,” the diplomat said. “An investigation is needed. Certainly, this should be an investigation with Russia’s participation, but it would probably be important to involve Germany in this investigation as well since gas was actually flowing to Germany in the first place,” Vershinin said.
Denmark and Sweden have announced they will launch an investigation into the suspected sabotage. Germany and the USA have been unusually silent.
Tucker Carlson: “Asking obvious questions is forbidden now.”
In his speech to the UN General Assembly, the Colombian president highlighted the necessity of ending the war on drugs and saving the environment
“You are only interested in my country to spray poisons on our jungles, to take our men to jail and put our women in exclusion. You are not interested in the education of the child, but in killing the jungle and extracting coal and oil from its entrails. The sponge that absorbs the poison [the rainforest] is useless, they prefer to throw more poisons into the atmosphere.”
They invaded in the name of oil and gas. They discovered in the 21st century the worst of their addictions: addiction to money and oil. Wars have served as an excuse not to act against the climate crisis. Wars have shown them how dependent they are on what will kill the human species.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/colombian-president-gustavo-petro-calls-end-war-drugs-historic-un-address/5794572
Global Research, September 26, 2022
Peoples Dispatch 20 September 2022
Region: Latin America & Caribbean
Theme: History, United Nations
***
On the first day of the United Nations General Assembly, Colombian President Gustavo Petro made his first address to the body. The speech sharply deviated from those of his conservative predecessors. Petro did not shy away from calling out global North countries for their role in the destruction of the environment and in the perpetuation of the War on Drugs, as a symptom of their capitalist greed. He accused
“You are only interested in my country to spray poisons on our jungles, to take our men to jail and put our women in exclusion. You are not interested in the education of the child, but in killing the jungle and extracting coal and oil from its entrails. The sponge that absorbs the poison [the rainforest] is useless, they prefer to throw more poisons into the atmosphere.”
This is Petro’s first trip to the United States since he was inaugurated in August. He was received on Sunday night September 18 by hundreds of supporters in Queens, NY who manifested their support for his administration’s commitment to working for peace and ensuring the wellbeing of the Colombian people.
Below is a full transcription of his speech on September 20, 2022 to the United Nations General Assembly.
I come from one of the three most beautiful countries on Earth.
There is an explosion of life there. Thousands of multicolored species in the seas, in the skies, in the lands…I come from the land of yellow butterflies and magic. There in the mountains and valleys of all greens, not only do the abundant waters flow down but also the torrents of blood. I come from a land of bloody beauty.
My country is not only beautiful, but it is also violent.
How can beauty be conjugated with death, how can the biodiversity of life erupt with the dances of death and horror? Who is guilty of breaking the enchantment with terror? Who or what is responsible for drowning life in the routine decisions of wealth and interest? Who is leading us to destruction as a nation and as a people?
My country is beautiful because it has the Amazon jungle, the ChocóWar jungle, the waters, the Andes mountain ranges, and the oceans. There, in those forests, planetary oxygen is emanated and atmospheric CO2 is absorbed. One of these CO2 absorbing plants, among millions of species, is one of the most persecuted on earth. At any cost, its destruction is sought: it is an Amazonian plant, the coca plant, sacred plant of the Incas. [It is in] a paradoxical crossroads.
The jungle that tries to save us, is at the same time, destroyed. To destroy the coca plant, they spray poisons, glyphosate in mass that runs through the waters, they arrest its growers and imprison them. For destroying or possessing the coca leaf, one million Latin Americans are killed and two million Afro-Americans are imprisoned in North America. Destroy the plant that kills, they shout from the North, but the plant is but one more of the millions that perish when they unleash the fire on the jungle. Destroying the jungle, the Amazon, has become the slogan followed by States and businessmen. The cry of scientists baptizing the rainforest as one of the great climatic pillars is unimportant.
For the world’s power relations, the jungle and its inhabitants are to blame for the plague that plagues them. The power relations are plagued by the addiction to money, to perpetuate themselves, to oil, to cocaine and to the hardest drugs to be able to anesthetize themselves more. Nothing is more hypocritical than the discourse to save the rainforest. The jungle is burning, gentlemen, while you make war and play with it. The rainforest, the climatic pillar of the world, disappears with all its life.
The great sponge that absorbs planetary CO2 evaporates. The savior forest is seen in my country as the enemy to be defeated, as the weed to be extinguished.
The Poison Peddlers: Doping the World for Fun and Profit
Coca and the peasants who grow it, because they have nothing else to grow, are demonized. You are only interested in my country to spray poisons on our jungles, to take our men to jail and put our women in exclusion. You are not interested in the education of the child, but in killing its jungle and extracting coal and oil from its entrails. The sponge that absorbs the poison is useless, they prefer to throw more poisons into the atmosphere.
We serve them only to fill the emptiness and loneliness of their own society that leads them to live in the midst of drug bubbles. We hide from them the problems that they refuse to reform. It is better to declare war on the jungle, on its plants, on its people. While they let the forests burn, while hypocrites chase the plants with poisons to hide the disasters of their own society, they ask us for more and more coal, more and more oil, to calm the other addiction: that of consumption, of power, of money.
What is more poisonous for humanity, cocaine, coal, or oil? The dictates of power have ordered that cocaine is the poison and must be pursued, even if it only causes minimal deaths by overdose, and even more by the mixtures necessitated by clandestinity, but coal and oil must be protected, even if their use could extinguish all of humanity.
These are the things of world power, things of injustice, and things of irrationality, because world power has become irrational. They see in the exuberance of the jungle, in its vitality, the lustful, the sinful; the guilty origin of the sadness of their societies, imbued with the unlimited compulsion to have and to consume. How to hide the loneliness of the heart, its dryness in the midst of societies without affection, competitive to the point of imprisoning the soul in solitude, if not by blaming the plant, the man who cultivates it, the libertarian secrets of the jungle.
According to the irrational power of the world, it is not the fault of the market that cuts back on existence, it is the fault of the jungle and those who inhabit it. The bank accounts have become unlimited, the money saved by the most powerful on the earth will not even be able to be spent in the time of the centuries. The sadness of existence produced by this artificial call to competition is filled with noise and drugs. The addiction to money and to having has another face: the addiction to drugs in people who lose the competition, in the losers of the artificial race in which they have transformed humanity.
The disease of loneliness will not be cured with glyphosate [sprayed] on the forests. It is not the rainforest that is to blame.
The culprit is their society educated in endless consumption, in the stupid confusion between consumption and happiness that allows the pockets of power to fill with money. The culprit of drug addiction is not the jungle, it is the irrationality of your world power. Try to give some reason to your power. Turn on the lights of the century again. The war on drugs has lasted 40 years, if we do not correct the course and it continues for another 40 years, the United States will see 2,800,000 young people die of overdose from fentanyl, which is not produced in Latin America. It will see millions of Afro-Americans imprisoned in its private jails.
The Afro-prisoner will become a business of prison companies, a million more Latin Americans will die murdered, our waters and our green fields will be filled with blood, and the dream of democracy will die in my America as well as in Anglo-Saxon America. Democracy will die where it was born, in the great western European Athens. By hiding the truth, they will see the jungle and democracies die. The war on drugs has failed.
The fight against the climate crisis has failed. There has been an increase in deadly consumption, from soft drugs to harder ones, genocide has taken place in my continent, and in my country, millions of people have been condemned to prison, and to hide their own social guilt they have blamed the rainforest and its plants. They have filled speeches and policies with nonsense. I demand from here, from my wounded Latin America, to put an end to the irrational war on drugs. To reduce drug consumption we do not need wars, for this, we need all of us to build a better society: a more caring society, more affectionate, where the intensity of life saves us from addictions and new slavery. Do you want less drugs? Think of less profit and more love. Think about a rational exercise of power.
Do not touch with your poisons the beauty of my homeland, help us without hypocrisy to save the Amazon Rainforest to save the life of humanity on the planet. You gathered the scientists, and they spoke with reason. With mathematics and climatological models, they said that the end of the human species was near, that its time is no longer of millennia, not even of centuries. Science set the alarm bells ringing and we stopped listening to it.
The war served as an excuse for not taking the necessary measures. When action was most needed, when speeches were no longer useful, when it was indispensable to deposit money in funds to save humanity, when it was necessary to move away from coal and oil as soon as possible, they invented war after war after war. They invaded Ukraine, but also Iraq, Libya, and Syria.
They invaded in the name of oil and gas. They discovered in the 21st century the worst of their addictions: addiction to money and oil. Wars have served as an excuse not to act against the climate crisis. Wars have shown them how dependent they are on what will kill the human species.
If you observe that the peoples are filling up with hunger and thirst and migrating by the millions towards the north, towards where the water is; then you enclose them, build walls, deploy machine guns, shoot at them. You expel them as if they were not human beings, you reproduce five times the mentality of those who politically created the gas chambers and the concentration camps, you reproduce on a planetary scale 1933.
The great triumph of the attack on reason. Do you not see that the solution to the great exodus unleashed on your countries is to return to water filling the rivers and the fields full of nutrients? The climate disaster fills us with viruses that swarm over us, but you do business with medicines and turn vaccines into commodities. You propose that the market will save us from what the market itself has created. The Frankenstein of humanity lies in letting the market and greed act without planning, surrendering the brain and reason. Kneeling human rationality to greed.
What is the use of war if what we need is to save the human species? What is the use of NATO and empires, if what is coming is the end of intelligence? The climate disaster will kill hundreds of millions of people and listen well, it is not produced by the planet, it is produced by capital.
The cause of the climate disaster is capital. The logic of coming together only to consume more and more, produce more and more, and for some to earn more and more produces the climate disaster. They applied the logic of extended accumulation to the energy engines of coal and oil and unleashed the hurricane: the ever deeper and deadlier chemical change of the atmosphere. Now in a parallel world, the expanded accumulation of capital is an expanded accumulation of death.
From the lands of jungle and beauty. There where they decided to make an Amazon rainforest plant an enemy, extradite and imprison its growers, I invite you to stop the war and to stop the climate disaster. Here, in this Amazon Rainforest, there is a failure of humanity.
Behind the bonfires that burn it, behind its poisoning, there is an integral, civilizational failure of humanity. Behind the addiction to cocaine and drugs, behind the addiction to oil and coal, there is the real addiction of this phase of human history: the addiction to irrational power, profit, and money. This is the enormous deadly machinery that can extinguish humanity.
I propose to you as president of one of the most beautiful countries on earth, and one of the most bloodied and violated, to end the war on drugs and allow our people to live in peace. I call on all of Latin America for this purpose. I summon the voice of Latin America to unite to defeat the irrational that martyrs our bodies. I call upon you to save the Amazon Rainforest integrally with the resources that can be allocated worldwide to life.
If you do not have the capacity to finance the fund for the revitalization of the forests, if it weighs more to allocate money to weapons than to life, then reduce the foreign debt to free our own budgetary spaces and with them, carry out the task of saving humanity and life on the planet. We can do it if you don’t want to. Just exchange debt for life, for nature. I propose, and I call upon Latin America to do so, to dialogue in order to end the war. Do not pressure us to align ourselves in the fields of war.
It is time for PEACE.
Let the Slavic peoples talk to each other, let the peoples of the world talk to each other. War is only a trap that brings the end of time closer in the great orgy of irrationality.
From Latin America, we call on Ukraine and Russia to make peace. Only in peace can we save life in this land of ours. There is no total peace without social, economic, and environmental justice. We are also at war with the planet. Without peace with the planet, there will be no peace among nations. Without social justice, there is no social peace.
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Featured image: Gustavo Petro addressed the UN General Assembly on September 20, 2022. Photo: UN
The original source of this article is Peoples Dispatch
Copyright © Peoples Dispatch, Peoples Dispatch, 2022
Spiraling energy and fertilizer costs are threatening vegetable and fruit production
https://www.rt.com/business/563314-eu-farmers-food-shortages-warning/
© Getty Images / deimagine
Vegetable producers across northern and western Europe are considering halting operations, thus further threatening food supplies, as a result of the energy crisis hitting the continent, Reuters reported this week.
According to the report, skyrocketing power and gas prices are the biggest cost facing vegetable farmers employing greenhouse cultivation. Two French farmers renewing their electricity contracts for 2023 told the media outlet they were being quoted prices more than ten times higher than in 2021.
“In the coming weeks I will plan the season but I don’t know what to do,” said Benjamin Simonot-De Vos, who grows cucumbers, tomatoes and strawberries south of Paris. “If it stays like this there’s no point starting another year. It’s not sustainable.”
Johannes Gross, deputy sales manager at the German cooperative Reichenau-Gemüse, told Reuters: “We face an overall increased production cost of around 30%. Some colleagues are thinking about leaving their greenhouses empty to keep the costs as low as possible. Nobody knows what will happen next year.”
The soaring costs of fertilizer, packaging and transport have also been adding to the pain. Even in countries with abundant sun, such as Spain, fruit and vegetable farmers are grappling with a 25% jump in fertilizer costs.
READ MORE: France to reap worst corn harvest in decades – Bloomberg
As farmers across the EU warn of shortages, supermarkets may switch to sourcing more goods from warmer countries such as Morocco, Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt, the report says.
The upshot of all this? Anyone living in Western Europe should prepare for an economic collapse, famine, and nuclear war.
by: Mike Adams
Friday, September 23, 2022
Tags: chaos, Collapse, fallout, insanity, NATO, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, risk, Russia, Ukraine, world war
This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author
World War III has already begun. You simply aren’t being told this because your government and dishonest media outlets are dedicated to keeping you in the dark. After all, they want to use the remaining time to stockpile food, ammunition, medical supplies, and precious metals for themselves, and this can only be accomplished by withholding the truth about the situation for as long as possible.
The Prime Minister of Serbia may be an exception to this, as he is now publicly warning that the world is about to experience a “great world conflict” that will likely begin in the next two months.
“Aleksandar Vucic made the alarming comments during the first day of the UN General Assembly session in New York,” reports Paul Joseph Watson at Summit.news. The full quote from Vucic is:
I assume that we’re leaving the phase of the special military operation and approaching a major armed conflict, and now the question becomes where is the line, and whether after a certain time – maybe a month or two, even – we will enter a great world conflict not seen since the Second World War.
NATO is already at war with Russia, and Putin is gearing up for a continental battle
What’s happening is that psychopathic western nations — the real aggressors in this war — have unleashed not just “suicide sanctions” against Russia, but are also running Ukraine’s military operations against Russia. This means NATO is already in the war, even if NATO won’t admit it yet. Worse yet, NATO leaders are openly demanding the complete destruction of Russia and the occupation/exploitation of Russia’s natural resources, which is of course the entire model of global exploitation and pillaging typically carried out by the west. (Disrupt, pillage, control. That’s the CIA model that has been unleashed against other nations for decades…)
Conditions are already long past the point of negotiation or de-escalation between Russia and the west. The psychopathic leaders of the west (Victoria Nuland comes to mind) are Russo-phobic Russia haters who are determined to carry out genocide against the Russian people, even if it means destroying their own economies and agricultural supply chains in the process. These psychopaths, Putin has come to realize, can’t be reasoned with or trusted to abide by any agreements whatsoever. Russia realizes it must fight or die. That’s where we are right now.
Unfortunately, the insanity of western nations has escalated this conflict to a condition where whoever launches nukes first has the advantage. This is a very dangerous dynamic, obviously, and it stems from the fact that the west has repeatedly signaled it will not allow the existence of Russia in its “New World Order” vision of planet Earth. With friends like Victoria Nuland calling the shots, who needs enemies?
Russia has a 30+ year advantage over the west in terms of nuclear weapons and anti-air defenses
An important realization in all this is that NATO’s nuclear arsenal is ancient — mostly running on designs originally engineered in the 1970s — while Russia’s nuclear capabilities are at least two generations ahead, modernized with hyperglide reentry vehicles, evasive maneuver capabilities for ICBMs, hypersonic cruise missiles which are nuclear-capable, and highly advanced anti-air defense systems that can even intercept and take down incoming ICBMs. In addition, Russia possesses secret “doomsday” weapons — far beyond their thermobaric bombs — that the world hasn’t even seen yet. On the current trajectory, those weapons are going to be introduced to the west without any warning whatsoever, resulting in the complete annihilation of Western European governments, currencies, and industry.
I have no doubt whatsoever that Russia has already designated the targets of its first strike, and that those targets include London, Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, US naval fleets, and virtually all military bases across Western Europe. We are now just one launch away from a civilization-ending event.
The USA and NATO have deluded themselves into thinking they can win a nuclear exchange with Russia, but this is just as delusional as thinking “men can get pregnant” or that money printing doesn’t cause inflation (notably, the brain-dead Biden regime insists that both of these absurdities are absolutely true). Over the past two decades — and more recently led by the insanity of wokeism — the west has become fully invested in delusional thinking and fairy tale narratives that have no connection with reality. While the west has been waging a propaganda narrative war, Russia has been engineering the world’s most advanced nuclear weapons. Once the nuclear exchange begins, there’s no question whatsoever about its outcome. Russia will lose a few million people — far less than what they lost in World War II — but they will annihilate Germany, Poland, France, and the United Kingdom. Western Europe will be plunged into a generation of despair and darkness, while the U.S. suffers a cascading financial collapse due to exposure to European banks, currencies, and debt markets.
Western journalists and kleptocrats are incapable of seeing this reality, and they are similarly incapable of acting to stop it. They are caught in their own delusional world of self-inflicted brainwashing and propaganda, believing (somehow) that they can bully Russia into capitulating to the west’s insane demands. But Russia is no Third World nation. Russia can’t be economically dismantled with western sanctions, and Russia has its own domestic supply chain for literally everything it needs to feed its people, build more weapons and earn a fortune in exports of energy and commodities to willing trade partners like India, China, Turkey, and Iran.
Finally, Putin will not back down, and Putin is far more intelligent than any of the cognitively-challenged lunatics running the USA, UK, or NATO countries. In a chess match between Putin and Biden, you’d probably see Joe Biden augmented with remote-controlled vibrating diapers to send him chess move signals through his rectum, and he still wouldn’t understand the meaning of chess notations anyway. The leaders of western nations are so utterly incompetent that they don’t even qualify as “clowns,” since good clowns are actually intelligent, capable communicators who can make people laugh. Biden, Blinken, and Nuland just make us all want to puke.
The West has already grossly miscalculated with “suicide sanctions” but still won’t admit to their catastrophic errors
As proof of the incompetence of western nations, consider the fact that their “suicide sanctions” against Russia — originally implemented to try to force Russia into a currency collapse — has had the opposite effect. The sanctions are destroying the Euro, not the Ruble, and now all of Western Europe faces a winter of darkness, famine, and freezing to death. That’s on top of the “permanent deindustrialization” of European industry that is already well under way, with about 70% of metals smelting and ammonia production already offline. Fertilizer production has ground to a halt, the Nord Stream 1 pipeline has been halted, and to add insult to injury, Belgium is proudly announcing the shutting down of a nuclear power plant, right as Belgium faces an energy scarcity catastrophe.
Germany, meanwhile, is putting another $8 billion into bailing out Uniper, a major natural gas provider, and that’s on top of $15 billion already spent trying to prevent Uniper’s collapse. Germany’s industrial base is being wiped out at astonishing speed, and nobody in the German government is telling the German people they won’t have jobs as industry collapses.
Putin must be astonished at the speed at which Western Europe — and Germany in particular — is destroying itself. Recall that Germany destroyed Western Europe twice already: World War I and World War II. Now, Germany (still largely run by Nazis) is leading the way to the total destruction of Europe yet again. At one level, Putin need not launch any nukes at all… he merely needs to wait for winter to kick in and for the laws of thermodynamics and economics to do the rest.
The greens must be proud: Entire forests are being clear cut for firewood
Yesterday I spoke with war correspondent Michael Yon who had just traveled through Germany (my interview with him will post tomorrow on Brighteon.com). He told me the forests were being clear-cut everywhere across Germany (at least that he could see) in a desperate effort by the people to stockpile firewood for the coming winter. This is the new “green” agenda on parade: Clear-cutting forests that will take decades to grow back. Will the greenies celebrate all the dead forests because at least Germany didn’t burn fossil fuels? Does anybody realize that a 19th-century economy can’t support a 21st-century population? Famine is a mathematical certainty.
To stop this crisis, all Germany has to do is apologize to Russia, drop the economic sanctions and beg Gazprom to turn the gas back on, but no, they won’t dare do that, even if hundreds of thousands of German citizens starve to death and die of exposure. In exactly the same way Adolf Hitler threw starving, freezing German soldiers into Russia’s defensive lines at Stalingrad in 1943, today’s German leaders are sacrificing the lives of their own citizens in a desperate bid to try to economically harm Russia … and it isn’t even accomplishing that! In the Battle of Stalingrad, the Soviet Union surrounded and defeated Germany’s Sixth Army, which surrendered more than 220,000 soldiers to the Russians. Today, Germany is willing to sacrifice millions of its own citizens if necessary, proving that Nazi-style suicide maneuvers remain alive and well in Berlin, even generations after the catastrophic outcome of World War II.
You can beat the Nazis out of Russia, but you can’t beat the Nazi tendencies out of the German political leaders.
Russia, meanwhile, is sitting on massive quantities of low-cost energy, minerals, steel manufacturing, fertilizer production, successful food crops, electronics manufacturing, and everything else needed to keep civilization on its feet. Yet to this very day, there isn’t one Western European politician who will admit the truth of where things stand. Too bad propaganda can’t heat homes, or the western media would be the ultimate renewable energy source for the entire planet.
The upshot of all this? Anyone living in Western Europe should prepare for an economic collapse, famine, and nuclear war.
Those living in North America should prepare for economic collapse and worldwide nuclear fallout that will disrupt crops for years to come.
Those who don’t store food will end up eating radioactive food if they can find any at all.
Prepare accordingly.
Tales from the Conspiratum 
