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A merger that was supposed to create a “European champion” with the strength to counter the growing economic clout of China has been killed by the European Union’s top competition official, Margrethe Vestager.

On Wednesday, Brussels blocked the proposed merger between Siemens and Alstom that would have created a pan-European rail giant, a move that France Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire denounced as “an economic mistake” and a “political mistake” according to the Financial Times.

However, despite these criticisms, Vestager is pressing ahead with an internal recommendation to veto the tie-up after last-ditch concessions from the German and French train manufacturers failed to address her concerns. Her official decision to veto the merger is expected to be announced later on Wednesday.

During an interview on French television, Le Maire, who had previously championed the deal, criticized Vestager for using the wrong criteria to evaluate the deal.

“The criteria chosen by the Commission are not the right ones,” he said, suggesting that “the pertinent market for analysing competition is the world market and not the European market.” Le Maire added: “It is a political mistake: the role of the Commission is to defend the economic interests of Europe.”

The merger, first proposed in September 2017, was backed by both the French and German governments to create a company with enough clout to fend off foreign competitors. Both Le Maire and Peter Altmaier, the German economy minister, warned that cancelling the merger would benefit China while hurting European companies.

“The rejection of the Alstom-Siemens merger will serve China’s economic and industrial interests,” said Mr Le Maire on Wednesday. “This decision prevents Alstom and Siemens from having the same weight as its Chinese competitor.”

His sentiments echo those of Peter Altmaier, Germany’s economy minister, who yesterday called for changes to EU competition rules to big M&A deals easier. Mr Altmaier said European companies in sectors such as civil aviation, railways, plant construction and banks could only compete on an equal footing with rivals from China and the US “if you allow mergers, so the companies we have in these industries can achieve the [necessary] scale.”

Meanwhile, Vestager said the merger had been cancelled because the companies “were not willing to address our serious competition concerns.”

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GdDBgq Tyler Durden

It appears CNN has finally caught up to what many of us have for years documented: US weapons shipments to Middle East “allies” have often gone straight into the hands of al-Qaeda and other hardline jihadists. A new CNN “exclusive” finds that throughout the Saudi war in Yemen, the Pentagon has been arming an array of dangerous groups through the Saudis and Emiratis, which further includes the very Iran-backed Shia rebels the US-Saudi coalition is aiming to defeat. The CNN report begins:

Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners have transferred American-made weapons to al Qaeda-linked fighters, hardline Salafi militias, and other factions waging war in Yemen, in violation of their agreements with the United States, a CNN investigation has found.

The weapons have also made their way into the hands of Iranian-backed rebels battling the coalition for control of the country, exposing some of America’s sensitive military technology to Tehran and potentially endangering the lives of US troops in other conflict zones.

For those who have long watched US “train-and-equip” campaigns in places like Libya, Syria, and Yemen, the CNN “bombshell” is absolutely nothing new, but a long established pattern. In these places the US weapons pipeline was set up to give American military and intelligence officers plausible deniability as they were handed out on the Syrian and Libyan battlefields often by third parties, which formed a jihadi one-stop shop Walmart of sorts. 

US arms are so profuse they’ve become a local currency of sorts used by the Saudis and Emiratis to buy loyalties: 

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, its main partner in the war, have used the US-manufactured weapons as a form of currency to buy the loyalties of militias or tribes, bolster chosen armed actors, and influence the complex political landscape, according to local commanders on the ground and analysts who spoke to CNN.

But perhaps what’s new in the CNN report is that Tehran-backed groups are also enjoying the largesse at a time the Trump administration is ramping up war rhetoric with Iran. And likely the report never would have seen the light of day prior to the grizzly Saudi-sponsored murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which CNN actually seems to acknowledge in its report. 

Now CNN wonders if the US has “lost control” over its key ally the Saudis (ironically CNN asks this question years after even then Vice President Biden admitted that “our allies” were arming ISIS in 2014).

CNN continues:

The revelations raise fresh questions about whether the US has lost control over a key ally presiding over one of the most horrific wars of the past decade, and whether Saudi Arabia is responsible enough to be allowed to continue buying the sophisticated arms and fighting hardware.  Previous CNN investigations established that US-made weapons were used in a series of deadly Saudi coalition attacks that killed dozens of civilians, many of them children.

As part of their investigation, CNN took cameras into local Yemeni arms markets in the country’s southwest, were American-made weapons were purchased alongside candy and household goods:

In one arms market, sweets were displayed among the ammunition. “Do you have American guns here?” CNN asked. “The American guns are expensive and sought after,” the weapons trader replied, in an exchange captured by undercover CNN cameras.

The report documents instances of groups like al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) being in possession of sophisticated US military hardware such as armored vehicles:

Amid the chaos of the broader war, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) made its way to the frontlines in Taiz in 2015, forging advantageous alliances with the pro-Saudi militias they fought alongside.

One of those militias linked to AQAP, the Abu Abbas brigade, now possesses US-made Oshkosh armored vehicles, paraded in a 2015 show of force through the city.

Another jihadist group operating in Yemen even had armored vehicles with visible labels showing they’d been made in Beaumont, Texas. 

New report adds even more evidence that American weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE have gone to Al Qaeda and its friends in Yemen. https://t.co/OsjmjF4Fdl

— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) February 5, 2019

According to CNN:

Nearly half a dozen Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles sit side by side, most bearing stickers with the insignia of the Giants Brigade.

One even has the export label on it showing it was sent from Beaumont, Texas to Abu Dhabi, in the UAE, before ending up in the hands of the militia. The serial number of another MRAP reveals it was manufactured by Navistar, the largest provider of armored vehicles for the US military.

And in some instances the very “enemy” the Saudi-UAE-US coalition is at war with was in possession of major American-made hardware:

CNN obtained an image showing the serial numbers of a second American MRAP in the hands of another senior Houthi official last year in Hodeidah.

The vehicle was part of a $2.5 billion sale to the UAE in 2014. The sale document, seen by CNN, certifies that “a determination has been made that the recipient country can provide the same degree of protection for the sensitive technology” as the United States.

CNN notes that Tehran is “assessing US military technology closely” and that the weapons proliferation seen in the Yemen war is making this task easier. 

The Pentagon meanwhile, when pressed on its weapons going to the Saudi coalition, where it then appears to end up in the hands of any and all players on the Yemeni battlefield, simply responded this has not been “authorized”.

“The United States has not authorized the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates to re-transfer any equipment to parties inside Yemen,” Pentagon spokesman Johnny Michael said in a statement to CNN. “The US government cannot comment on any pending investigations of claims of end-use violations of defense articles and services transferred to our allies and partners.”

So apparently, there’s at least an ongoing investigation, however, we don’t expect that investigation to run too deep, and it certainly won’t venture into probing the even more egregious arming of al-Qaeda and ISIS factions in places like Libya and Syria. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2SakXMF Tyler Durden

Authored by Harrison Stetler via TheNation.com,

At its first “Assembly of Assemblies” in late January, this grassroots democratic revolt brought together many people who had never participated in politics.

Yellow Vest protesters take part in a demonstration holding a banner that reads: “Angry but not fascist” in Paris, France on January 26, 2019.

“The danger,” Yanis warned, “is that the constant stream of information becomes its own type of ignorance. It’s very easy to forget the human need to educate oneself, and to forge one’s own opinion. What we need is for speech and debate to free themselves everywhere, that they fill every part of daily life, that everyone express themselves, respectfully of course.”

What Yanis was recalling was his own initial reaction to the eruption of France’s Yellow Vest revolt in late November 2018.

“At the beginning, there was this fear,” he continued.

“The movement had been covered in media as a ploy of the far right and the fascist movement. I hesitated to go at first just because of that. But I finally decided that it was all the more important to go if that was actually the case, in order to not abandon the battle to them.”

When people in his hometown of Montceau-les-Mines, in central France, began to organize town meetings at the beginning of December, Yanis decided to go and scope things out. Yanis was amazed to see that more than 1,000 attended the earliest assemblies in late November and early December. People were thinking and talking about politics in ways they had never done before. For too long, democratic life was little more than the habitual cycle of elections, with citizenship reduced to the occasional vote.

The assemblies continued on a weekly basis. “I realized that something was growing,” Yanis remembers. People were organizing themselves and staying in contact, occupying critical road junctions and protesting. Now, almost two months later, on January 26, Yanis found himself making the roughly 200-mile trip to a village just outside of Commercy, a town in a rural, working-class region in eastern France. Currently unemployed after several stints working in cafeterias in local public schools, the 22-year-old Yanis had been selected by his town’s local committee to attend the inaugural “Assembly of Assemblies” of France’s nascent Yellow Vest movement.

As he would no doubt attest, before this historic convention in Commercy, the Yellow Vests had fallen victim to a familiar trap. Like many other spontaneous and largely leaderless mass movements, the Yellow Vests have been defined and labeled by others.

At first, they were taken to be a manifestation of the inchoate and inarticulate rage of the French middle class. This anger, which had long provided fertile ground for the likes of Marine Le Pen, finally boiled over into street violence and open revolt when Emmanuel Macron’s government announced tax increases on gasoline. Macron had already made a name for himself by pushing through unpopular reforms in the name of “necessity.” Was this just another occasion of the French being unable to take the bitter medicine, this time in order to reduce carbon-fuel emissions?

The dismissal of the Yellow Vests was made all the more easy because some of the worst elements in French society have tried to capitalize on the climate of disenchantment and anger. Some Yellow Vest social-media groups have contained unmistakable echoes of anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic conspiracies. Likewise, bands of skinheads have infiltrated some street marches, attacking most recently a group of left-wing activists in Paris during the January 26 day of protest. All of this has given credence to smug talking heads—no doubt with an eye on their checkbooks—who wish to sign the entire movement off as yet another worrisome sign of France’s slide into right-wing populism.

To any honest observer, however, the Yellow Vests’ dynamism and staying power, now going on their 13th weekend of protests at the time of writing, suggested that something deeper was happening. Weekend after weekend, the marches continued and the occupations of roundabouts in rural and suburban areas stood their ground. General assemblies organized on a weekly basis in every corner of France continued to attract people who for years had stood on the sidelines of political life. Teachers and students started to organize and unions began discussing strikes—culminating in a round of work stoppages set to begin on February 5, bringing together Yellow Vests, several unions, and left-wing parties, including Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise.

France’s battered social movements, fatigued after many retreats before Macron’s steamroller of reforms, started to show new signs of life. Polls in late January still showed that a majority of the population continue to support the movement, even after Macron canceled the planned tax increases and granted other concessions in December before launching a highly choreographed “national debate,” consisting of staged town-hall meetings and the pro forma taking of grievances in localities, as a means to regain legitimacy. Over the weekend of February 2-3, speculation even began to mount as to a possible national referendum to be held in May, the structure and outlines of which remain vague.

Whatever or whoever they were, the Yellow Vests had clearly managed to give voice to a general feeling of anger and political disenchantment. More and more people were coming to the conclusion that a distant and arrogant elite was to blame. This elite had overseen the steady erosion of public services, from hospitals and schools to public transportation, stewarding rising inequality while abstaining from paying taxes, and stood by as working- and middle-class job security gave way to the precarious fluidity of the contemporary labor market. What’s more, people were realizing that something should be done about all of this. And this was a reflex that could not be dismissed as the machinations of a few fascist gangs or Internet trolls—or, even worse, abandoned to them.

If you have to pick your battles, then the most enduring revolt of Macron’s presidency and the first that successfully brought his forced-march of pro-business reforms to a halt was a fight not to be missed. A political space had opened up and many concerned citizens, including thousands of activists, workers, and teachers, mobilized to fill it. Just what were the real contours of this “peripheral France,” whose anger and resentment against elites has boiled over in weeks of protests and occupations? What would it take to bring under the same banner not only the struggling white working and middle classes, but also France’s perennially abandoned immigrant communities, who for decades have borne the brunt of austerity, exclusion, and police repression? Does a healthy democracy require more than top-down parties and bureaucratized unions? How can we confront climate change in a just way? Might a broad and horizontal movement, organized around participatory democracy on the local level, finally breathe energy into a public life that for too long has been abandoned to professionals?

These were the questions that made for two days of lively debate and democratic experimentation among the roughly 300 delegates at Commercy on January 26-27. Representing more than 75 Yellow Vest groups from every corner of the country, the assembly marked a significant departure in the history of a movement that had up to this point been characterized by its centrifugal structure.

“Twenty-six billionaires possess as much wealth as half of humanity; this is unacceptable. Share wealth and not misery!” The declaration that emerged is simply a product of democratic common sense. With a vociferous denunciation of inequality and police violence, calls for the restoration of free public services, a radical response to climate change that targets the greatest polluters in society, and a celebration of the cultural differences in France and among the movement, the declaration cuts against the common narrative about the Yellow Vests.

That the group of people at Commercy did in part reflect the many fractures in French society makes the text all the more significant. Sabrina, a schoolteacher from a historically immigrant neighborhood in northeast Paris, has long been an activist in groups opposing police violence and fighting for immigrant rights. She was at Commercy representing her neighborhood’s Yellow Vest group, which holds weekly meetings in Paris’s Belleville Park. By a bizarre twist of fate, she found herself and her delegation carpooling from the Paris area with a middle-aged man who has supported Marine Le Pen in the past. Unemployed for nearly 10 years, he lives in a lower-middle-class suburb west of Paris, surviving with his 13-year-old daughter on unemployment checks and infrequent part-time jobs, including yearly trips to southern France to work during wine-harvest season.

Sabrina no doubt expected that she would come into contact with people whom she would normally never encounter. “This is the first time the cities are going to the countryside,” one delegate rejoiced during the introductory remarks on January 26. “For me, this is actually the chance to see other people from throughout France,” Sabrina told me. And if the last two months of nationwide protests had given birth to a nationwide grassroots political energy not seen in years, then this was a turning point not to be missed. There are red lines, of course, and that energy needed to take a positive form. Make no mistake, Sabrina maintains, “there needs to be a clear anti-fascist, anti-racist line in the movement. The next step is to include people from our neighborhoods and to get them implicated. This will also require the Yellow Vests to hear their demands and to learn about their problems.”

To be sure, I saw no odd encounters at Commercy, and it could be that certain people chose to leave their past political affiliations at the door. Nor were the delegates brought together by the rigorous niceties of academic radicalism. Rather, what prevailed was the common, innate sense of justice that most people unsurprisingly possess. Christophe, who works at a construction company in Nantes, described his own experience as “years of bitterness, years of seeing political elites destroy working people’s lives. Little by little, we’ve seen our social protections dismantled and our salaries dwindle. I came to the point where I said, ‘stop.’”

Nothing was more absurd, delegate after delegate told me, than the common refrain according to which the Yellow Vests were ignorant of the scale of the environmental crisis and of the need to make drastic reforms. Rather, people abhorred the gasoline tax because it was seen as a backhanded measure to make up for a hole in government revenues following an estate-tax cut for France’s wealthiest. Aurélia, also from Nantes, thinks that we should see the Yellow Vests as “the first social and environmental revolt in France. By taxing car gasoline, the state taxes people who have no other choice. These are people who have no access to public transportation. This is the first revolt of the energy-precarious.”

Torya and Adel know first-hand the ravages being inflicted on French public services. Torya works for the French national railroad company (SNCF) and participated in the fight against Macron’s SNCF reforms in the spring of 2018, which slashed union benefits for rail workers and paved the way for the full privatization of the French rail network. “I joined the Yellow Vests to protest against the hypocrisy of the government,” she said. “If the gasoline tax were really an environmentalist measure, the government would not be in the process of closing down 9,000 kilometers of train lines, but would be investing in renovating train lines, buying more cars, and hiring more workers.”

Adel, her co-delegate, knows what the future holds for workers in a deregulated transportation system. Unlike Torya, he works for one of the already privatized rail subcontractors and has seen his working conditions degrade considerably since his last job as a conductor in the Paris metro system. It is Adel’s job to regulate traffic coming in and out of stations. But he now finds himself covering two or sometimes three different roles, with bosses extending their workers to the limit. He was once even sanctioned with five days of unpaid leave when he refused to follow orders from a superior, which would have forced Adel to rush train traffic to a point he deemed extremely dangerous. It would be hard to put the changes being enacted in better form: “Before, it was the worker on the job, who knew the machinery, that had the final say, and the manager listened. Today, it’s the opposite.”

Torya sees the grassroots structure of the Yellow Vests as a much-needed supplement to the often cautious and incremental French unions that lost the fight over the SNCF reforms last spring. “When I first saw the Yellow Vest movement back in November,” she said, “and realized that everyday people were taking things into their own hand, from the ground up, I saw that there was an opportunity. People were again demanding things that we were calling for back in March and April.”

Many of the protesters have for the first time in their lives been on the receiving end of a state armed to the teeth, with no reluctance to use force as it sees fit. Under the pretext of defending public order, police have preemptively detained and strip-searched protesters simply for wearing a pair of swim-goggles at a protest (a common defense against tear gas). But legal trickery as a mean to dissuade protesters pales in comparison with the raw force being deployed on the streets of French cities: exploding tear-gas canisters, which cause numerous injuries; rubber bullets that have destroyed eyes and genitals and disabled limbs; the up-close and personal truncheon.

A new anti-rioting law has been widely condemned by free-speech and civil-liberties organizations, who see the measure as yet another sign of the government’s intolerance of opposition. In a telling example of doublespeak, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner claims that the law will ensure that people can protest and publicly express their opinions “in full security.” But the list of measures that have been proposed paints a far darker picture: the creation of a new crime for masking one’s face at a protest, and authorization given to police prefectures allowing them to forbid certain people from attending protests, punishable by prison time or a fine. The anti-rioting law was denounced by organizations such as Amnesty International, and one centrist deputy—not a committed anti-Macronist—put it best when he warned his parliamentary colleagues of its Vichy-like resonances.

If the proposed law is a reminder of the commonalities between Macron and his “illiberal” counterparts in eastern and southern Europe, for a large portion of the French population, the idea of a repressive and hostile state is not new. For the problem of police violence to truly cease being a taboo, the debate cannot only be restricted to the occasional protest in city centers and the no-doubt disproportionate level of police impunity. Groups opposing police violence, such as the Comité Adama, named for a black man killed by police in 2016, have participated in Yellow Vest marches for just that reason: to bring the daily repression exerted on France’s immigrant communities out from the shadows where it has been relegated for years by the gatekeepers of respectable opinion. Adel, whose father moved to France from Algeria in 1969, grew up in the isolated suburbs north of Paris.

“The things I could tell you,” he said. “It was worse than going through customs and immigration. For us, police violence is part of everyday life. Everytime we in the banlieues have protested or revolted, we’ve been stigmatized, abandoned, and have faced even more police repression. ‘They’re just riffraff,’ the French say. Whenever something happens in our neighborhoods, they ignore us.”

A wave of cathartic frustration—the product of decades of economic reaction, police violence, and elite disdain—has coalesced in a spontaneous, decentralized grassroots mass movement bringing together many people who have never participated in political life. Groups and ideas are combining in ways that seemed unlikely a few months ago. Some are seeking to accentuate the chaos, using it as a chance to spread conspiracies and lies. This is not new. Many more are demanding more democracy everywhere: before the state, at work, at school, and in their hometowns. Those who are fighting and organizing to ensure that this movement truly represents all of France are model citizens, engaged in the hard, painstaking work of building a genuine democratic majority.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2TBxyoM Tyler Durden

A left-wing French politician is suing six women, two witnesses and four journalists involved in a 2016 #MeToo sexual misconduct scandal that ruined his career, yet resulted in no charges after a nine-month judicial investigation. 

Former Paris city official and prominent Green Party member Denis Baupin filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday after he was accused in May 2016 of sexually harassing 14 women who said he groped, “sexted,” or otherwise harassed them over a multi-year period between 1998 and 2013, according to The Independent. Four of the women filed criminal complaints for sexual harassment.  

Most of the women were also members of the Green Party, which was led by Baupin’s wife at the time, Emmanuelle Cosse. 

Baupin – who has denied the charges, resigned as vice president of the lower house of parliament in May 2016 after the claims were published by news website Mediapart and broadcast on radio station France Inter. His lawyer, Emmanuel Pierrat, said his client did not break the law and wants to “fully clear his name” by proving that the news publications committed journalistic misconduct and were not fair in their coverage. 

According to Pierrat, Baupin’s “reputation, his family, his life were broken” by the allegations. 

“My client has said all he has to say to investigators. He was never [legally] pursued, he has been destroyed by this affair. We are attacking the media who lacked any kind of caution and who published false information with contempt for the presumption of innocence,” added Pierrat. 

Police interviewed 50 people during the nine-month investigation which ended with prosecutors declining to press charges – citing the expiration of a three-year statute of limitations. That said, the women gave “measured, consistent statements,” according to investigators, who added that witness corroborations created a fact pattern that supported allegations which “may for some of them be classified as criminal.” 

Journalists and individuals need to show they acted in good faith or prove they told the truth as a defence against defamation under French law. A conviction is punishable by a maximum fine of €45,000 (£39,000).

Media reports are also assessed by the additional criteria of the legitimacy of journalists’ goals in producing a story, whether they demonstrate an absence of personal animosity, prudence and balance, and the quality of the investigation.

Mr Pierrat said “none of them is fulfilled” in the Mediapart and France Inter pieces on Mr Baupin. –The Independent

Three of the defendants in Baupin’s defamation case say they plan to speak for other women who requested anonymity or have yet to share their #MeToo stories.

Former Green Party spokeswoman Sandrine Rousseau, who accused Baupin of grabbing her breast during a 2011 meeting, said: “The question is: will justice send the message that women must remain silent?” 

“It’s an important message, a message saying that women can speak out – or not.”

Another member of the Green Party who serves on the Paris regional council, Annie Lahmer, said it’s her “duty” to speak out. Lahmer says that in 1999 Baupin chased her around an office desk while she attempted to escape his clutches. At the time, Baupin was the national party spokesman, while Lahmer was a staffer. Lahmer says Baupin threatened her career if she rebuffed his advances. 

“In court, I’m going to say it’s inadmissible that some men who hold power consider that kind of behaviour as normal. It is not,” said Lahmer. 

Former politician Isabelle Attard said Baupin sexually harassed her with dozens of inappropriate text messages in 2012 and 2013. 

“I was just an activist who then became a lawmaker facing someone very prominent in the party,” said Attard, adding: “I did not feel on an equal footing with him.”

France pushes back against #MeToo

Unlike in America, the French have actively pushed back against women who claim to have been sexually harassed. 

Following the rise of #MeToo, a group of high-profile women, including the French actor Catherine Deneuve, wrote an open letter complaining the movement was a “witch-hunt” and infringed men’s “right to bother” women. –The Guardian

Hitting back was France’s secretary of state for women’s rights, Marlène Schiappa, who commented on the “enormous backlash” to the #MeToo movement. 

“What I deplore is that in a general way, whenever a woman talks about sexual or sexist assault, you start to dig into the woman’s life and put this woman into a position of being accused,” said Schiappa, who refused to comment on the Baupin case because it is going to court. 

France passed a law in 2018 which doubles the three-year statute of limitations on sexual harassment claims to six years, while last month a report found that over a million French women were forced to endure sexist comments in 2017 – with just four convictions for violating sexual harassment laws. 

The report by France’s High Council for Gender Equality was the major first investigation into sexism to be carried out in France.

Sexist insults are described in the research as “daily violence” faced by women. The most frequently reported insults were salope (slut), pute (whore) and connasse (bitch).

Last year politicians approved legislation which introduced fines of up to €750 for wolf-whistling or sexual harassment on the street. –The Independent

Under French law, journalists being sued for defamation must prove they told the truth or acted in good faith – as well as show that they had a legitimate goal by publishing the story, and were fair and balanced in their reporting. The accused face a maximum fine €12,000 ($13,600 US). 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WJh1B0 Tyler Durden

A new report from Rystad Energy identifies five vital themes that will shape global gas markets in 2019.

Significant LNG production growth, the rise of US gas to challenge Russian dominance in Europe, insatiable demand in Asia, price pressure in selected regions, and a need for final investment decisions on planned liquefaction plants are the key market-movers identified in the report.

“The global market for liquefied natural gas (LNG) is geared for substantial supply growth this year, mirroring a major increase in US liquefaction capacity. Asia’s appetite for LNG – while vast – is not likely to consume all of the additional volumes,” said Rystad Energy head of gas market research Carlos Torres Diaz.

“With increasing export capacity, US LNG might be in a position to pose a serious challenge to Russian gas on the European market this year. Prices will come under pressure due to the healthy supply situation but the market is expected to tighten again after 2022, meaning that investment decisions for new liquefaction projects are needed this year in order to satiate future demand,” Torres-Diaz added.

Theme 1: Ramp up in US and Australian LNG production

Global LNG production is expected to rise 11% and reach 350 million tonnes per annum (tpa) this year, as fresh liquefaction capacity is added, leading to a looser market. Total liquefaction capacity is set to increase to 434 million tpa in 2019, up almost 10% from 2018.

“This is mostly driven by the commissioning of US projects. The US is expected to see capacity more than double in 2019, thereby making it the country with the third-largest exporting capacity and pushing Malaysia into fourth place. Australia could also overtake Qatar as the world’s largest LNG exporter this year,” Torres-Diaz remarked.

 

(Click to enlarge)

Theme 2: Russia vs US in Europe

One of the key outstanding questions for 2019 is how much LNG Europe will import, and whether Russia will cut back on gas exports in response or rather try to maintain its market share despite the risk of undercutting prices.

Russian gas delivered to Europe has a low breakeven price of around $5 per million Btu. This compares to a long run marginal cost of between $6.00 and $7.70 per MMBtu for US LNG.Related: Venezuelan Oil Exports Plunge On ‘Harsher’ Sanctions

“Given the fast increase in supply, US sellers might be willing to sell spot volumes at a short run marginal cost level, which is closer to $5 per MMBtu, if they are unable to find enough demand in Asia. Such a scenario could see US volumes compete quite closely with piped imports this year,” Diaz said.

Theme 3: Continued surge in demand in China and rest of Asia

Total Asian natural gas demand is forecasted to increase to 884 Bcm by 2019, driven by higher consumption in China and selected other countries. China, already the world’s largest gas importer, is expected to import around 87 Bcm of LNG this year, an increase of 21% from last year.

“South East Asian demand tends to be more sensitive to prices, but could be supported by a low-price environment helping absorb some of the new supply. As for Japan and South Korea, declining demand due to some nuclear restarts and milder weather may lead to lower LNG imports this year, which would compensate for the overall Asian increase,” Torres-Diaz added.

(Click to enlarge)

Theme 4: Will prices in Asia and Europe drop?

Market players have been expecting an oversupply of LNG over the past couple of years, but firming Asian demand has helped to balance the market.

“With the surge in US supply in 2019, LNG prices should come down compared to the levels seen over the past two years, especially since this has been a relatively mild winter and prices are already experiencing a counter-seasonal drop,” Torres-Diaz said.

 

(Click to enlarge)

Theme 5: Need for new LNG plants

The LNG market is poised to tighten again after 2022, and new liquefaction capacity is therefore needed to keep the market balanced. Projects that reach final investment decision (FID) in 2019 can be operational in 2024 at the earliest, emphasizing the importance of investment decisions being made during the course of this year. The market could tighten substantially in 2023 as rising Asian demand catches up with supplies, posing an upside risk for prices in this period.

“Projects developed by large E&P companies will have an advantage since they are not overly dependent on financing and long term agreements. Therefore, we see potential for Qatargas’ huge North Field Expansion project to be one of the first LNG developments to reach FID this year. Other projects closer to the Asian market, like Mozambique LNG, also have a competitive advantage that could help them reach FID earlier than some of the projects on the US Gulf Coast,” Torres-Diaz concluded.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2MT3C4O Tyler Durden

While the neo-socialist ideas of AOC, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have taken America’s left by storm in recent days, not everyone seems enamored with the idea of wealth redistribution in general, and its founding father, Karl Marx, in particular.

The tomb of iconic German philosopher/genocidal demagogue (depending on one’s point of view) Karl Marx, located at London’s Highgate cemetery, will “never be the same again” after it was vandalized in a hammer attack, the Guardian reports. The vandal damaged a marble plaque which was taken from Marx’s original 1883 gravestone and incorporated into the 1954 monument.

Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust published a twitter image showing the damaged marble plaque which honors Marx and some of his family members, including his wife. The damage to the lettering of Marx’s name can be clearly seen.

Karl Marx’s memorial has been vandalised! It looks like someone has had a go at it with a hammer. It’s a Grade I-listed monument; this is no way to treat our heritage. @MarxLibrary @HeritageCrime We will repair as far as possible. pic.twitter.com/6nY2TJOjw7

— Highgate Cemetery (@HighgateCemeter) February 5, 2019

Trust CEO, Ian Dungavell, lashed out at the unidentified grave assailants, describing the attack as “an appalling thing to do” and warning that the tomb would be permanently scarred.

Dungavell told the Guardian  that no matter what people thought of Marx’s philosophy, the hammer attack was an act of inhumanity, as “this is a grave of his wife, his own grave and other members of his family.” He also condemned the attack as a “particularly selfish act,” and said that it was not a random attack, insisting it was “deliberately targeted against Karl Marx”, as if that wasn’t obvious.

It is unclear when the incident occurred. The damage was first noticed on Monday afternoon, but Dungavell said images posted on social media suggest it could have occurred early last week or before. “Just looking at social media posts from people who have visited, if you squint you can see that the damage was visible in some of those photographs,” he said.

The cost of the damage has yet to be estimated. Dungavell said: “I’m hoping we will be able to get a specialist stone conservator to consolidate the white marble and then if we can get the lead lettering back it might be that you don’t notice it.”

The destruction of the grave sparked outrage on Twitter, with supporters of the communist legend calling for an appeal to be set up. As RT notes, Europeans took the assaults especially hard, with left-wing Guardian journalist Owen Jones and children’s author and Corbynista, Michael Rosen, asking people to donate money to help with the costs of potential repair work.

Absolutely horrendous. If they set up an appeal, let’s donate. https://t.co/J52ydtJsr0

— Owen Jones🌹 (@OwenJones84) February 5, 2019

@Bookmarks_books I’ve asked the Cemetery if they are doing an appeal. If they do, perhaps that’s something you might be interested in??? I would!

— Michael Rosen (@MichaelRosenYes) February 5, 2019

The police were notified and are expected to begin an investigation.

The cemetery will be discussing repairing the uninsured memorial with its owners the Marx Grave Trust. It will also talk to the trust about the possibility of installing CCTV around the monument.

Dungavell said: “We might do a security review with the Marx Grave Trust and speak to the police about what should happen about any recommendations they may have.” He pointed out that the Marx memorial has been repeatedly damaged since it was installed.

“It has attracted great controversy over the years. It has had paint daubed all over it. It has had people chanting at it, the bronze bust on the top has been dragged off with ropes, and there was even a pipe bomb set off in January 1970 that damaged the front face of it.”

He added: “That’s the only consolation – he hasn’t been forgotten about.”

All the hammers in the world could never erase the ideas.

— The 2nd Baron Quibell Groucho Marx (@GrouchoMarx79) February 5, 2019

Of course, cynics would note that if there ever was an opportunity to share the repair costs among the broader population, this is it.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Gvqjea Tyler Durden

Authored by Giulio Meotti via The Gatestone Institute,

• Unfortunately, Pope Francis’s stance on Islam seems to be coming from a fantasy world.

• “Authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence”, the Pope claimed, not quite accurately. It is as if all of the Pope’s efforts have been directed to exonerating Islam from any of its responsibilities. He seems to have been doing this even more than observant Muslims — such as Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, American author and physician M. Zuhdi Jasser, former Kuwaiti Information Minister Sami Abdullatif Al-Nesf, French-Algerian author Razika Adnani, Paris-based Tunisian philosopher Youssef Seddik, Jordanian journalist Yosef Alawnah, and Moroccan author Rachid Aylal, among many others — have been doing.

• “Pope Francis could in no way be ignorant of the heavy problems caused by the expansion… at the very heart of the Christian domain… Let us note this again… the last religion that arrived in Europe has an intrinsic impediment to integrating into the European framework that is fundamentally Judeo-Christian…” – Boualem Sansal, Algerian author, in his best-selling book “2084.”

• Pope Francis now faces the potential risk of a Christian world physically swallowed by the Muslim crescent — as on the Vatican logo chosen for the Pope’s upcoming trip to Morocco. It is time the appeasement is replaced.

The persecution of Christians is now an international crisis. Unfortunately, Pope Francis’s stance on Islam seems to be coming from a fantasy world. (Photo by Giulio Origlia/Getty Images)

4,305 Christians were killed simply because their Christian faith in 2018. This is the dramatic number contained in the new “World Watch List 2019” just compiled by the non-governmental organization Open Doors. It reveals that in 2018, there were 1,000 more Christian victims — 25% more — than the year before, when there were 3,066.

These days, 245 million Christians in the world are apparently persecuted simply for their faith. Last November, The organization Aid to the Church in Need released its “Religious Freedom Report” for 2018 and reached the a similar conclusion: 300 million Christians were subjected to violence. Christianity, despite stiff competition, has been called “the most persecuted religion in the world“.

In March 2019, Pope Francis will travel to Morocco, a country also listed in the Open Doors’ watch list. Unfortunately, Pope Francis’s stance on Islam seems to be coming from a fantasy world. The persecution of Christians is now an international crisis. Consider what happened to Christians in the Muslim world during just the last couple of months. A policeman was killed trying to defuse a bomb outside a Coptic church in Egypt. Before that, seven Christians were murdered by religious extremists during a pilgrimage. Then a mass grave was discovered in Libya containing the remains of 34 Ethiopian Christians killed by jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State. The Iranian regime, in severe new crackdowns, arrested more than 109 Christians. The Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi, three months after being exonerated for “blasphemy”and released from death row, still lives as a “prisoner“: her former neighbors still want to put her to death. In Mosul, which was Iraq’s center for Christians, there was a “Christmas without Christians“, and in Iraq in general, 80% of the Christians have disappeared.

Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans and head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, recently provided some numbers for the persecution of Christians in Iraq: “61 churches have been bombed, 1,224 Christians were killed, 23.000 houses and real estate of the Christians have been seized”. The patriarch reminded the world of the policy of the Islamic State, which gave “three options to Christians”: conversion to Islam, payment of a special tax or the forced and immediate abandonment of their land. “Otherwise they would have been killed.” In this way, 120,000 Christians were expelled.

“The stubborn silence of European leaders on the question of religions, Islam in particular, astonishes and disappoints”, wrote the Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal recently.

“Their attitude is simply irresponsible, suicidal, and even criminal…in the current context marked by [a] dizzying expansion… It’s like living at the foot of an angry volcano and not understanding that it is preparing to erupt”.

Sansal, who has been threatened with death by Islamists in France, as in Algeria, wrote “2084“, a best-seller. In it, he writes that Pope Francis’s stance on the Muslim world is similar to that of the Western leaders:

“Pope Francis could in no way be ignorant of the heavy problems caused by the expansion of radical Islam in the world and at the very heart of the Christian domain… Let us note this again… the last religion that arrived in Europe, has an intrinsic impediment to integrating into the European fundamentally Judeo-Christian framework, even if this referent, over the past centuries, has eroded.”

Pope Francis did manage to explain that the “idea of conquest” is integral to Islam as a religion, but quickly added that one might interpret Christianity the same way. “Authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence”, the Pope claimed, not quite accurately. He also not quite accurately remarked that “Islam is a religion of peace, one which is compatible with respect for human rights and peaceful coexistence.” It is as if all of the Pope’s efforts have been directed to exonerating Islam from any of its responsibilities. He seems to have been doing this even more than observant Muslims — such as Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, American author and physician M. Zuhdi Jasser, former Kuwaiti Information Minister Sami Abdullatif Al-Nesf, French-Algerian author Razika Adnani, Paris-based Tunisian philosopher Youssef Seddik, Jordanian journalist Yosef Alawnah and Moroccan author Rachid Aylal, among many others — have been doing.

The dramatic persecution of Christians in the Islamic world highlights a Western paradox: “Since their victory in the Second World War, Westerners have brought great benefits to all of humanity”, wrote Renaud Girard in Le Figaro.

“Scientifically, they shared their great inventions, such as penicillin or the Internet. Human rights and democracy are far from being applied everywhere in the world, but they are the only reference for governance that exists internationally. It is undeniable that, under the impulse of Westerners, vast political, technical, health and social successes have been achieved in two generations. But there is one area where the planet has undeniably regressed since 1945 and where Western responsibility is obvious. It is the freedom of conscience and religion… By refraining from defending Christians in the East, the West made a twofold strategic error: it gave a signal of weakness by abandoning its ideological friends; it has renounced its creed”.

“In the eyes of Western governments and the media”, noted another report on persecution of Christians compiled by Aid to the Church in Need. “religious freedom is slipping down the human rights priority rankings, being eclipsed by issues of gender, sexuality and race”.

“Political correctness does not want to know anything about the ongoing persecution and suppression of Christianity and so it is being ignored in an almost sinister way”, Bishop Manfred Scheuer of Linz, in Upper Austria, recently said.

This eclipse is even more dramatic, as everybody knows that Christianity is at the risk of “extinction” in the Middle East, noted the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby:

“Hundreds of thousands have been forced from their homes. Many have been killed, enslaved and persecuted or forcibly converted. Even those who remain ask the question, ‘Why stay?’ The Christian population of Iraq, for instance, is less than half what it was in 2003 and their churches, houses and businesses have been damaged or destroyed. The Syrian Christian population has halved since 2010. As a result, across the region Christian communities that were the foundation of the universal Church now face the threat of imminent extinction.”

The West has betrayed its Christians friends in the East (such as here and here). The West might well ask: What are the Vatican and the Pope doing to fight this new religious persecution?

Criticism has already come from the Catholic world. “Just as he has little anxiety about the wave of church closings, Francis seems to have little anxiety about the Islamization of Europe“, wrote the US Catholic columnist William Kilpatrick.

“Indeed, as evidenced by his encouragement of mass migration, he seems to have no objection to Islamization. Either because he truly believes the false narrative that Islam is a religion of peace, or because he believes that the self-fulfilling prophecy strategy will create a more moderate Islam, Francis seems to be at peace with the fact that Islam is spreading rapidly. Whether Francis has been misinformed about Islam or whether he has adopted a strategy of misinformation, he is taking a huge gamble—not only with his own life, but with the lives of millions”.

There are now entire areas in Syria cleansed of their historical Christians. Pope Francis recently received a letter from a Franciscan priest in Syria, Father Hanna Jallouf, the Patriarch of Knayeh, a village close to Idlib, the stronghold of anti-Assad Islamist rebels. “Christians in this land are like lambs among the wolves”, Jallouf wrote.

“The fundamentalists have devastated our cemeteries, they have prevented us from celebrating liturgies outside the church, stripping us of the external signs of our faith: crosses, bells, statues as well as our religious habit.”

If the Pope does not want to receive more letters like that, he will need show courage and tackle one of the most urgent persecutions of our time.

Pope Benedict XVI, in his address at Regensburg, said what no Pope had ever dared to say before — that there is a specific link between violence and Islam. To illustrate his case, Benedict cited a 14th-century dialogue between a Byzantine Christian emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, and a Persian scholar, about the concept of violence in Islam: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things.. .such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”, Benedict quoted the emperor as saying to his Muslim interlocutor.

Another Pope, John Paul II, also expressed concerns. During a meeting in 1992, Mgr Mauro Longhi, who, while still a student, often accompanied the late Pope on hiking trips says, John Paul II told of an “Islamist invasion” of Europe.

“The Pope told me: ‘Tell this to those whom you will meet in the Church of the third millennium. I see the Church afflicted by a mortal wound. More profound, more painful than those of this millennium,’ referring to Communism and Nazi totalitarianism. ‘It is called Islamism. They will invade Europe. I have seen the hordes come from the West to the East,’ and then told to me each country one by one: from Morocco to Libya to Egypt, and so on till the East.

“The Holy Father added: ‘They will invade Europe, Europe will be like a basement, old relics, shadows, cobwebs. Family heirlooms. You, the Church of the third millennium, must contain the invasion. Not with armies, armies will not be enough, but with your faith, lived with integrity.”

John Paul II’s vision resembles a continuation of Islam’s historic campaign in the Christian lands: “In 637, the Islamic army seized Jerusalem, twice holy, then the heart of the entire Middle East, the historic center of Christianity”, wrote the Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal. He went on to describe “the irresistible progression of Islam to the West: the Judeo-Christian North Africa, which immediately converted; Catholic Spain, which was annexed at the beginning of the VIII century; Byzantium, which they took in 1453; [then] to Vienna, which they besieged in 1529…”.

Pope Francis now faces the potential risk of a Christian world physically swallowed by the Muslim crescent — as on the Vatican logo chosen for the Pope’s upcoming trip to Morocco. It is time the appeasement is replaced.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2SzgbYg Tyler Durden

The Chinese New Year begins today, and the year of the dog will cede its place to the pig, a zodiac sign that is supposed to attract luck and success.

Chinese New Year is one of the largest holidays for travel. During the New Year, hundreds of millions of people take planes, trains, and automobiles to celebrate the event with their friends and families.

This year, more than 400 million people celebrating Chinese New Year are expected to travel, including nearly 7 million abroad mainly in Thailand, Japan and Indonesia, according to Ctrip estimates.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The second largest celebratory migration is for Purna Kumbh Mela, where in 2013 over 120 million Hindu people travelled to Allahabad for the two-month long holy festival. By comparison, only about 54 million people traveled for Thanksgiving in 2018.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Sv5WnP Tyler Durden