Trump Praises US Energy Independence After Saudi Attack: “We Don’t Need Middle Eastern Oil”
With international oil prices soaring following this weekend’s attack in Saudi Arabia, which reportedly crippled half of its oil-production capacity, President Trump sent a tweet Monday morning to try and reassure markets that the US is now energy independent and doesn’t need crude from the Middle East in what looks like an attempt to send prices lower.
“Because we have done so well with Energy over the last few years (thank you, Mr. President!), we are a net Energy Exporter, & now the Number One Energy Producer in the World. We don’t need Middle Eastern Oil & Gas, & in fact have very few tankers there, but will help our Allies!
Because we have done so well with Energy over the last few years (thank you, Mr. President!), we are a net Energy Exporter, & now the Number One Energy Producer in the World. We don’t need Middle Eastern Oil & Gas, & in fact have very few tankers there, but will help our Allies!
The takeaway from the tweet is that Trump’s threatening posture toward Iran, which Washington has blamed from the attack, is simply an example of the US standing up for Saudi Arabia since its a critical regional ally. The US’s energy supplies are not being threatened.
Trump has a point about his policies helping to bolster the US energy industry. Democrats, particularly those who have embraced AOC’s ‘Green New Deal’ are much more hostile to the US energy industry. Among the candidates seeking the 2020 nomination, Elizabeth Warren has promised to shut down US shale drilling on her first day as president, something that would irreparably damage the US energy industry and kill any hopes of continued energy independence.
The IRGC, which was responsible for seizing the vessel, accused it of smuggling diesel. The ship was reportedly carrying 250,000 liters of diesel when it was captured, along with 30 handheld flares, which are sometimes used for facilitating clandestine transfers at sea.
The decision to release the UK tanker comes a few weeks after Britain released the Iranian-flagged Grace 1/Adrian Darya 1 tanker, a decision that the UK swiftly came to regret after the tanker appeared to violate assurances that it wouldn’t deliver its cargo of oil to Syria (violating EU sanctions in the process).
Washington has blamed Iran for this weekend’s attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil production facilities, which are expected to cut Saudi oil output in half until repairs can be completed. The attack was purportedly carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have a long history of launching attacks on Saudi soil. But President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have placed blame for the attacks squarely on the Iranians. As we noted over the weekend, the timing of the attack is suspicious, coming as the kingdom renews its push to float 5% of Aramco in what’s expected to be the largest-ever IPO. The offering would benefit from higher oil prices. Many have questioned why Saudi Arabia’s missile defense capabilities failed to stop the attack.
Iran has denied any responsibility for the attack.
This weekend’s attack wiped out 5% of the world’s oil supplies. The Kingdom believes it can restore one-third of the lost production capacity by the end of this week.
The UK tanker, the Stena Impero, will be released “in days,” according to Abbas Mousavi, spokesman at the foreign ministry in Tehran. The judicial process to clear the ship for release is nearly finished, and once it’s done, the ship can leave Iran.
Iran seized the ship on July 19 in retaliation for the UK’s seizure of the Adrian Darya 1.
Of course, the administration still has other options for punishing Iran short of instigating a military conflict, including cracking down on countries, including US allies, who are still buying Iranian oil in violation of US sanctions.
US Energy Secretary Rick Perry
Speaking Monday at the IAEA, US Energy Secretary Rick Perry said he believes the oil market will react “positively” to this weekend’s attack in Saudi Arabia, Reuters reports.
“Despite Iran’s malign efforts, we are very confident that the market is resilient and will respond positively,” he said in a speech.
Perry also slammed Iran, and urged Washington’s allies to do what they can to hold Tehran accountable.
“The United States wholeheartedly condemns Iran’s attack on Saudi Arabia and we call on other nations to do the same. This behavior is unacceptable.It’s unacceptable and they must be held responsible. Make no mistake about it. This was an attack on the global economy and the global energy market.”
To put this in context, international oil prices surged as much as 19% before coming off their highs, the biggest intraday jump since the 1991 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
Purdue Pharma Files For Bankruptcy As Dozens Of States Decline Proposed Settlement
Just hours after the company’s board signed off on a proposed settlement with more than 2,000 litigants, including dozens of US states, the embattled US drugmaker Purdue Pharma filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a long-anticipated move aimed at shielding the company and its owners, the Sackler family, from financial ruin as they shoulder the brunt of the blame for igniting the opioid crisis with their aggressive marketing tactics of OxyContin.
At a time when some 130 Americans are dying every day from opioid-related overdoses, Purdue is hoping that its settlement will placate most of these plaintiffs, allowing the company to restructure and emerge from bankruptcy, likely under new ownership. Though many litigants agreed to the company’s settlement proposal last week, a number of holdouts, including two dozen states, refused, insisting on more onerous terms for Purdue,the New York Times reports.
The company was the first to introduce fast-acting OxyContin to market in the 1990s, the drug that more than any other pharmaceutical has been blamed for jump-starting the opioid crisis.
Purdue faces lawsuits from nearly every state, as well as some 2,600 cities, counties, Native American tribes, hospitals and other entities seeking compensation for the costs of the opioid epidemic, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But last week, the Attorney General of New York uncovered wire transfers from Purdue to Swiss bank accounts controlled by the Sacklers, which revived critics’ anger at the Sacklers, who have maintained that they did nothing wrong in the marketing of OxyContin.
According to a series of leaks, terms of the proposal include: The Sacklers surrendering ownership of the company and paying $3 billion in cash to the plaintiffs over seven years, and selling their UK-based drug company, Mundipharma. The proceeds from that sale would add “substantial further monetary contributions” to the settlement pot.
Purdue has assessed the value of the settlement at $10 billion, while the 26 states that are opposing the settlement insist that Purdue’s numbers are bogus, and rely on overly optimistic projections.
Rumors of a bankruptcy filing have been circulating since the summer of 2018, when Purdue named restructuring specialist Steve Miller as chairman and hired law firm Davis, Polk & Wardwell.
Trade between Asia and Europe has dimmed considerably. We know that from the fact Germany and China are the two countries out of the majors struggling the most right now. As a consequence of the slowing, shipping companies have had to make adjustments to their fleet schedules over and above normal seasonal variances.
It was reported last week that Maersk and MPC would “temporarily suspend” their sailings on one of the biggest routes between Europe and Asia.
Weakening demand and plummeting freight rates have so far obliged Asia-North Europe carriers to blank two-thirds more sailings than during the same period of last year, and now the 2M alliance is to suspend the loop for the second consecutive year.
This followed a material downgrade in Mexico, of all places, another economic system highly dependent at the margins on the whims of global trade. At the end of August, Banxico, the colloquial name for the country’s central bank, joined the growing chorus of global policymakers shifting into active “accommodation.” It was Mexico’s first rate cut since 2014.
Mexico’s central bank slashed its growth forecast for this year, predicting the weakest expansion since the 2009 financial crisis amid a slowdown in demand and global and domestic uncertainty.
Everywhere you turn, there are references to global demand while at the same time, by my own unscientific count, fewer and less emphatic protests over trade wars.
The latter is still being talked about, of course, but the idea of trade war “sentiment” being the cause of these worldwide woes may be losing steam if only because it just doesn’t add up.
Something else has to be restraining trade well beyond any Chinese goods heading toward the United States waiting to be further tariffed. This is widespread, very close to universal.
That’s why US exports, for example, are struggling. By conventional terms, that should be the case – the dollar began rising in the middle of last year making US goods less attractive meaning relatively more expensive on world markets. There is a reason why US Presidents claim a strong dollar policy (as if there could be one) in public and in private (and sometimes public) cheer whenever it falls in exchange value.
But as the struggles in the rest of the world show, the American loss is no one’s gain. That’s the part none of them ever get – this isn’t the losing end of beggar-thy-neighbor. The rising dollar leaves no winners in its wake. None.
Rather than redistribute stable purchasing power and reflect strong demand toward relative changes in costs, what’s left is only weakening demand in all cases. Europe, Asia, Central and South America, even the United States.
According to estimates released by the Census Bureau this week, US exports are now routinely falling. Unadjusted, exports to the rest of the world have contracted in each of the last five months (through July 2019). Not by huge amounts, though in June it was just about -5%, more importantly the 6-month average has reached -1.2%.
Seasonally-adjusted, the Census Bureau leaves no doubt as to the cause. The peak in the reflation export cycle was unsurprisingly May 2018 (29th). The dollar goes up, and collateral draws tight, global trade suffers not because of trade wars or the cost of US goods relative to alternatives but because the lack of sufficient dollar availability slowly squeezes the life out of global demand.
Trade suffers first because the global reserve currency is its first requirement, the ability to fluently, efficiently translate economic factors from one system to another. There’s almost no appreciation for the functions – and what those actually are – of a global reserve.
We give almost no consideration to what a reserve currency is today. It is almost always thought of in terms of something like oil, the US dollar means people in the United States get to price the vital commodity in their own currency. Some like to talk about a petrodollar as if that actually means something…
A reserve currency is an intermediator, more than a buffer between national systems often with very little in common. Starting with currency denomination and monetary terms. The example I often use is an export firm in Sweden obtaining goods in that country to be shipped to Japan for final use. The trade can certainly happen without a global reserve, but not efficiently…
If, however, both sides can use a currency that is common in both areas it then obviates the need for either of their national denominations. Should Japanese as well as Swedish banks both hold balances of this middle currency as a regular part of their business, no special concessions required, then trade becomes easy and (very nearly) free.
The downside is that this requires a whole lot of that middle currency to be made available practically everywhere.
You can then see why global trade downshifted in and around the Great “Recession” and never really came back – though it was predicted to, and everyone especially in the EM’s was counting on it. Before the Global Financial Crisis in that eurodollar system, the middle currency was freely available for use anywhere. Nowadays, it’s so much harder to source and maintain funding.
It doesn’t shut off trade completely, but it does slowly squeeze the life out of it over time. The global regime is starved of its monetary oxygen. That’s why there are no winners; the dollar shortage isn’t a redistribution of demand, it is the slow erosion and even destruction of it (as it infiltrates the supply side, like in China).
We see these same effects on the other side of the US merchandise ledger, too. While American importers are bringing in fewer Chinese goods because they are being marked up by levies, they aren’t making up for them by buying extra anywhere else. Imports into the US are falling as inventory builds up across the domestic supply chain.
The global slowdown is a global slowdown. The monetary squeeze is not entirely fixated on global trade, that’s just where it is most visible and easily discernible. It therefore proposes a far different set of solutions (from a US perspective) than kill the dollar.
BMW Targeting 1 Million Plug-In Vehicles On The Road By 2021
As if Elon Musk wasn’t having enough of a breakdown over the release of the Porsche Taycan this month, it now looks like he’s going to have BMW to deal with – in relatively short order.
BMW is now targeting having over 1 million plug-in electric vehicles on the road by 2021, according to InsideEVs. The company is currently approaching 500,000 PHEV and BEVs sold and should surpass that number over the next several months.
Its new goal of 1 million EVs sold was announced by the company’s CEO, Oliver Zipse, at the 2019 Frankfurt Motor Show. At the show, he claimed that BMW is already the top plug-in company in Germany and that 3/4 of the company’s sales in Norway are plug-ins.
Zipse stated:
“By the end of 2021, we aim to have a total of one million electrified vehicles on the roads. We are already right at the forefront of electromobility. No manufacturer has delivered more electrified cars to customers in Germany so far this year than the BMW Group. In Norway, three out of every four new BMW Group vehicles sold have an electrified drive train.”
The company plans on reaching its target by refreshing its entire EV lineup and introducing several new EV models. The company plans for a total of 25 EV models to be available by 2023. Speaking of which, has the Model Y production line been built yet? Is Tesla still selling that same old Model S?
BMW is forecasting that over 50% of new premium car sales in China will be BEVs in 2030 and that, in Europe and the U.S., BEV share of total vehicles will come in around 25%.
Zipse continued:
“Looking ahead to the next decade, Zipse expects electromobility to develop at different rates around the world – due to the differences in infrastructure, customer driving profiles and political frameworks. According to BMW Group forecasts, customer demand should ensure that over 50 percent of new vehicle registrations in China’s premium segment will be pure battery-electric vehicles (BEV) in 2030. The figure for Europe will be only about half that number. The US, the world’s second largest vehicle market, will be at about the same level as Europe.”
The company is also looking at hydrogen fuel as an option. It presented the BMW i Hydrogen NEXT development car and has made allusions to potentially testing these vehicles around 2022.
Zipse concluded:
“Hydrogen fuel cell technology could be a real solution, especially for long distances. The BMW Group expects demand for this technology to increase in the second half of the next decade and will be launching a test fleet of fuel cell vehicles in 2022. The company will present the BMW i Hydrogen NEXT development vehicle at this year’s IAA.”
I don’t know whether the supposedly Chinese curse really comes from China, but whether it does or not, we most certainly are cursed with living in some truly interesting times: Iran won the first phase of the “tanker battle” against the AngloZionists, Putin offered to sell Russian hypersonic missiles to Trump (Putin has been trolling western leaders a lot lately) while Alexander Lukashenko took the extreme measure of completely shutting down the border between the Ukraine and Belarus due to the huge influx of weapons and nationalist extremists from the Ukraine. As he put it himself “if weapons fall into the hands of ordinary people and especially nationalist-minded people, wait for terrorism“. He is quite right, of course. Still, there is a sweet irony here, or call it karma if you prefer, but for the Ukronazis who promised their people a visa-free entrance into the EU (for tourism only, and if you have money to spend, but still…), and yet 5 years into that obscene experiment of creating a rabidly russophobic Ukraine and 100 days (or so) into Zelenskii’s presidency, we have the Ukraine’s closest and most supportive neighbor forced to totally shut down its border due to the truly phenomenal toxicity of the Ukrainian society! But, then again, the Ukraine is such a basket-case that we can count on “most interesting” things (in the sense of the Chinese curse, of course) happening there too.
[Sidebar: interestingly, one of the people the Ukrainians gave up in this exchange was Vladimir Tsemakh, a native of the Donbass who was kidnapped by the Ukie SBU in Novorussia (our noble “Europeans” did not object to such methods!) and declared the “star witness” against Russia in the MH-17 (pseudo-)investigation. Even more pathetic is that the Dutch apparently fully endorsed this load of crapola. Finally, and just for a good laugh, check out how the infamous’ Bellincat presented Tsemakh. And then, suddenly, everybody seem to “forget” that “star witness” and now the Ukies have sent him to Russia. Amazing how fast stuff gets lost in the collective western memory hole…]
Right now there seems to be a tug of war taking place between the more mentally sane elements of the Zelenskii administration and the various nationalist extremists in the SBU, deathsquads and even regular armed forces. Thus we see these apparently contradictory developments taking place: on on hand, the Ukraine finally agreed to a prisoner swap with Russia (a painful one for Russia as Russia mostly traded real criminals, including a least twobona fide Ukie terrorist, against what are mostly civilian hostages, but Putin decided – correctly I think – that freeing Russian nationalists from Ukie jails was more important in this case) while on the other hand, the Ukronazi armed forces increased their shelling, even with 152mm howitzers which fire 50kg high explosive fragmentation shells, against the Donbass. Whatever may be the case, this prisoner swap, no matter how one-sided and unfair, is a positive development which might mark the beginning of a pragmatic and less ideological attitude in Kiev.
Urkoterrorists Sentsov and Kol’chenko
Some very cautious beginnings of a little hint of optimism might be in order following that exchange, but the big stuff seems to be scheduled for the meeting of the Normandy Group (NG), probably in France. So far, the Russians have made it very clear that they will not meet just for the hell of meeting, and that the only circumstance in which the Russians will agree to a NG meeting would be if it has good chances of yielding meaningful results which, translated from Russian diplomatic language simply means “if/when Kiev stops stonewalling and sabotaging everything”. Specifically, the Russians are demanding that Zelenskii commit in writing to the so-called “Steinmeier formula” and that the Ukrainian forces withdraw from the line of contact. Will that happen? Maybe. We shall soon find out.
But the single most amazing event of the past couple of weeks was the absolutely astonishing speech French President Emmanuel Macron made in front of an assembly of ambassadors. I could not find the full speech translated into English (I may have missed it somewhere), so I will post the crucial excerpts in French and translate them myself. If I find a full, official, translation I will post it under this column ASAP. For the time being, this is the link to the full speech transcript in French:
Let’s immediately begin with some of the most incredible excerpts, emphasis added by me: (sorry for the long quote but, truly, each word counts!)
L’ordre international est bousculé de manière inédite mais surtout avec, si je puis dire, un grand bouleversement qui se fait sans doute pour la première fois dans notre histoire à peu près dans tous les domaines, avec une magnitude profondément historique. C’est d’abord une transformation, une recomposition géopolitique et stratégique. Nous sommes sans doute en train de vivre la fin de l’hégémonie occidentale sur le monde. Nous nous étions habitués à un ordre international qui depuis le 18ème siècle reposait sur une hégémonie occidentale, vraisemblablement française au 18ème siècle, par l’inspiration des Lumières ; sans doute britannique au 19ème grâce à la révolution industrielle et raisonnablement américaine au 20ème grâce aux 2 grands conflits et à la domination économique et politique de cette puissance. Les choses changent. Et elles sont profondément bousculées par les erreurs des Occidentaux dans certaines crises, par les choix aussi américains depuis plusieurs années et qui n’ont pas commencé avec cette administration mais qui conduisent à revisiter certaines implications dans des conflits au Proche et Moyen-Orient et ailleurs, et à repenser une stratégie profonde, diplomatique et militaire, et parfois des éléments de solidarité dont nous pensions qu’ils étaient des intangibles pour l’éternité même si nous avions constitué ensemble dans des moments géopolitiques qui pourtant aujourd’hui ont changé. Et puis c’est aussi l’émergence de nouvelles puissances dont nous avons sans doute longtemps sous-estimé l’impact. La Chine au premier rang mais également la stratégie russe menée, il faut bien le dire, depuis quelques années avec plus de succès. J’y reviendrai. L’Inde qui émerge, ces nouvelles économies qui deviennent aussi des puissances pas seulement économiques mais politiques et qui se pensent comme certains ont pu l’écrire, comme de véritables États civilisations et qui viennent non seulement bousculer notre ordre international, qui viennent peser dans l’ordre économique mais qui viennent aussi repenser l’ordre politique et l’imaginaire politique qui va avec, avec beaucoup de force et beaucoup plus d’inspiration que nous n’en avons. Regardons l’Inde, la Russie et la Chine. Elles ont une inspiration politique beaucoup plus forte que les Européens aujourd’hui. Elles pensent le monde avec une vraie logique, une vraie philosophie, un imaginaire que nous avons un peu perdu
Here is my informal translation of these words:
The international order is being shaken in an unprecedented manner, above all with, if I may say so, by the great upheaval that is undoubtedly taking place for the first time in our history, in almost every field and with a profoundly historic magnitude. The first thing we observe is a major transformation, a geopolitical and strategic re-composition. We are undoubtedly experiencing the end of Western hegemony over the world. We were accustomed to an international order which, since the 18th century, rested on a Western hegemony, mostly French in the 18th century, by the inspiration of the Enlightenment; then mostly British in the 19th century thanks to the Industrial Revolution and, finally, mostly American in the 20th century thanks to the 2 great conflicts and the economic and political domination of this power. Things change. And they are now deeply shaken by the mistakes of Westerners in certain crises, by the choices that have been made by Americans for several years which did not start with this administration, but which lead to revisiting certain implications in conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to rethinking a deep, diplomatic and military strategy, and sometimes elements of solidarity that we thought were intangible for eternity, even if we had constituted together in geopolitical moments that have changed. And then there is the emergence of new powers whose impact we have probably underestimated for a long time. China is at the forefront, but also the Russian strategy, which has, it must be said, been pursued more successfully in recent years. I will come back to that. India that is emerging, these new economies that are also becoming powers not only economic but political and that think themselves, as some have written, as real “civilizational states” which now come not only to shake up our international order but who also come to weigh in on the economic order and to rethink the political order and the political imagination that goes with it, with much dynamism and much more inspiration than we have. Look at India, Russia and China. They have a much stronger political inspiration than Europeans today. They think about our planet with a true logic, a true philosophy, an imagination that we’ve lost a little bit.
Now let’s unpack these key statements one by one:
1) “ great upheaval that is undoubtedly taking place for the first time in our history in almost every field and with a profoundly historic magnitude”
Here Macron sets the stage for some truly momentous observations: what will be discussed next is not only a major event, but one without precedent in history (whether French or European). Furthermore, what will be discussed next, affects “almost every field” and with huge historical implications.
2) “We are undoubtedly experiencing the end of Western hegemony over the world”
When I read that, my first and rather infantile reaction was to exclaim “really?! No kiddin’?! Who would have thought!?” After all, some of us have been saying that for a long, long while, but never-mind that. What is important is that even a Rothschild-puppet like Macron had to finally speak these words. Oh sure, he probably felt as happy as the Captain of the Titanic when he had to (finally!) order a general evacuation of this putatively unsinkable ship, but nonetheless – he did do it. From now on, the notion of the end of the western hegemony on the planet is no more relegated to what the leaders of the Empire and their propaganda machine like to call “fringe extremists” and has now fully entered the (supposedly) “respectable” and “mainstream” public discourse. This is a huge victory for all of us who have been saying the same things for years already.
3) “by the mistakes of Westerners in certain crises, by the choices that have been made by Americans for several years”
Here, again, I feel like engaging in some petty self-congratulation and want to say “I told you that too!”, but that would really be infantile, would it not? But yeah, while the internal contradictions of western materialism in general, and of AngloZionist Capitalism specifically, have been catching up with the Western World and while an eventual catastrophic crisis was inevitable, it also sure is true that western leaders mostly did it to themselves; at the very least, they dramatically accelerated these processes. In this context, I would single out the following politicians for a nomination to a medal for exceptional service in the destruction of the western hegemony over our long-suffering planet: Donald Trump and Barak Obama, of course, but also François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron (yes, he too even if he now changes his tune!), Angela Merkel, of course, and then last but not least, every single British Prime Minister since Margaret Thatcher (maybe with special commendation for Teresa May). Who knows, maybe they were all KGB/GRU/SVR agents after all? (just kiddin’!)
4) “ the emergence of new powers whose impact we have probably underestimated for a long time. China is at the forefront, but also the Russian strategy, which has, it must be said, been pursued more successfully in recent years”
Next, it’s not only China. Russia too is a major competitor, and a very successful one at that, hence the admission that in spite of all the efforts of the AngloZionist elites not only did the Empire not succeed in breaking Russia, but Russia has been very successful in defeating the western efforts. To those interested, I highly recommend this article by Jon Hellevig on the true state of the Russian economy. Finally, in military terms, Russia has achieved more than parity. In fact, I would argue that at least in terms of quality the Russian armed forces are ahead in several crucial technologies (hypersonic missiles, air defenses, electronic warfare etc.) even while she still lags behind in other technologies (mostly truly obsolete things like aircraft carriers). But most crucial is the political victory of Russia: five years after the Euromaidan and the liberation of Crimea from the Nazi yoke, the USA is far more isolated than Russia. It’s comical, really!
5) “real “civilizational states” which now come not only to shake up our international order”
I have been speaking about a unique, and very distinct, “Russian civilizational realm” in many of my writings and I am quite happy to see Macron using almost the same words. Of course, Macron did not only mean Russia here, but also India and China. Still, and although the Russian nation is much younger than the one of China or, even more so India, 1000 years of Russian civilization does deserve to be listed next to these two other giants of world history. And what is absolutely certain is that China and India could never build the new international order they want without Russia, at least for the foreseeable future. In spite of all the very real progress made recently by the Chinese armed forces (and, to a lesser degree, also the Indian ones), Russia still remains a much stronger military power than China. What Russia, China and India are, is that they are all former empires which have given up on imperialism and who know only aspire to be powerful, but nevertheless “normal” nations. Just by their size and geography, these are “un-invadable” countries who all present a distinct model of development and who want a multi-polar international order which would allow them to safely achieve their goals. In other words, Macron understands that the future international order will be dictated by China, Russia and India and not by any combination of western powers. Quite an admission indeed!
6) “ Look at India, Russia and China. They have a much stronger political inspiration than Europeans today. They think about our planet with a true logic, a true philosophy, an imagination that we’ve lost a little bit.”
This is the “core BRICS” challenge to the Empire: China and Russia have already established what the Chinese call a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Coordination for the New Era”. If they can now extend this kind of informal but extremely profound partnership (I think of it as “symbiotic”) to India next, then the BRICS will have a formidable future (especially after the Brazilian people give the boot to Bolsonaro and his US patrons). Should that fail and should India chose to remain outside this unique relationship, then the SCO will become the main game in town. And yes, Macron is spot on: China and, especially, Russia have a fundamentally different worldview and, unlike the western one, theirs does have “much stronger political” goals (Macron used the word “aspirations”), “a real philosophy and imagination” which the West has lost, and not just a “little bit” but, I would argue, completely. But one way or the other, and for the first time in 1000 years, the future of our planet will not be decided anywhere in the West, not in Europe (old or “new”), but in Asia, primarily by the Russian-Chinese alliance. As I explained here, the AngloZionist Empire is probably the last one in history, definitely the last western one.
Now we should not be naïve here, Macron did not suddenly find religion, grow a conscience or suddenly become an expert on international relations. There is, of course, a cynical reason why he is changing his tune. In fact, there are several such reasons.
First, it appears that the on and off bromance between Macron and Trump is over.
Second, all of Europe is in free fall socially, economically and, of course, politically. And with a total nutcase in power in London dealing with Brexit and with Angela Merkel’s apparently never-ending political agony, it is only logical for a French head of state to try to step in.
Furthermore, while I have always said that Russia is not part of Europe culturally and spiritually, Russia is very much part of Europe geographically, economically and politically and there is simply no way for any imaginable alliance of European states to save Europe from its current predicament without Russian help. Like it or not, that is a fact, irrespective of whether politician or commentator X, Y or Z realizes this or not. Macron probably figured out that the so-called “East Europeans” are nothing but cheap prostitutes doing whatever Uncle Shmuel wants them to do, Germany is collapsing under the weight of Merkel’s “brilliant” immigration policy while the UK under BoJo is busy trying to self-destruct at least as fast as the USA under Trump. Macron is right. If united, Russia and France could build a much safer Europe than the one we see slowly and painfully dying before our eyes today. But he is also wrong if he thinks that Russia can be “re-invited” back into the AngloZionist sphere of influence. In that context, Putin’s reply to the question of whether Russia was willing to return to the G8 is very telling: first he said that if the G7 wants to come back to Russia, Putin would welcome that, but then he also added that the G7/8 is useless without, yes, you guessed it, China and India.
It will be interesting to see if the current G7 will ever agree to mutate into a new G10 which would make Russia, China and India the most powerful block (or voting group) of this new forum. I personally doubt it very much, but then they are becoming desperate and Macron’s words seem to be indicating that this option is at least being discussed behind closed doors. Frankly, considering how quickly the G7 is becoming utterly irrelevant, I expect it to be gradually phased out and replaced by the (objectively much more relevant) G20.
Finally, there are Trump’s efforts into getting Russia back into the G8 which are very transparently linked to the current trade war and geostrategic competition between the US and China. The offer is useless to Russia, just like the return to PACE, but Russia does not want to needlessly offend anybody and that is why Putin did not publicly rebuff Trump or directly refuse to come to Miami: instead, he approved of the general concept, but offered a better way to go about it. Typical Putin.
Conclusion: Macron reads the writing on the wall
Whatever his political motives to say what he said, Macron is no idiot and neither are his advisors. Neither is this a “one off” thing. The French meant every word Macron spoke and they are putting everybody on notice (including the Ukrainians, the US, the EU and the Russians, of course). In fact, Macron has already invited Putin to participate in a Normandy Format meeting in Paris in the very near future. If that meeting eventually does take place, this will mean that the organizers gave Putin guarantees that this will not just be the usual kaffeeklatsch and that some serious results will finally be obtained. That, in turn, means that somebody – probably the French – will have the unpleasant task of telling the Ukrainians that the party is over and that they now need to get their act together and start implementing the Minsk Agreements, something which Zelenskii might or might not try to do, but which the real gun-toting Ukronazis will never accept. Thus, if the West is really serious about forcing Kiev to abide by the Mink Agreements, then the West has to finally give-up its self-defeating russophobic hysteria and substantially change their tone about the Ukraine. To invite Putin to Paris just to tell him again that Russia (which is not even a party to the Minsk Agreements) “must do more” makes zero sense. Therefore, all the other parties will have to come to terms with reality before inviting Putin. Apparently, this might be happening in Paris. As for Trump, he just offered to mediate (if asked to do so) between Russia and the Ukraine.
It shall be extremely interesting to see if this Normandy Format meeting does actually take place and what role, if any, Trump and the USA will play behind the scenes. We shall then know if Macron’s epiphany was just a one-time fluke or not.
Heathrow could be set for a turbulent week after environmental protesters vowed to shut the airport down by flying drones within its 5km exclusion zone to highlight climate change.
Even though they say nobody will be put at risk, the police disagree and stated they will take any opportunity to pre-emptively stop the protest from taking taking place.
As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, drones caused 36 hours of chaos at Gatwick in December. The airport was shut down by drone sightings and around 110,000 passengers were impacted by the disruption in just one day. In the UK, it is illegal to fly a drone within 1 kilometre of an airport boundary and 5 kilometres of a runway threshhold.
Data from the UK Airprox Board reveals that the number of near-misses between drones and civil and military air traffic has climbed dramatically in recent years.
We are now just one week away from the end of Julian Assange’s uniquely lengthy imprisonment for bail violation. He will receive parole from the rest of that sentence, but will continued to be imprisoned on remand awaiting his hearing on extradition to the USA – a process which could last several years.
At that point, all the excuses for Assange’s imprisonment which so-called leftists and liberals in the UK have hidden behind will evaporate. There are no charges and no active investigation in Sweden, where the “evidence” disintegrated at the first whiff of critical scrutiny. He is no longer imprisoned for “jumping bail”. The sole reason for his incarceration will be the publishing of the Afghan and Iraq war logs leaked by Chelsea Manning, with their evidence of wrongdoing and multiple war crimes.
In imprisoning Assange for bail violation, the UK was in clear defiance of the judgement of the UN Working Group on arbitrary Detention, which stated
Under international law, pre-trial detention must be only imposed in limited instances. Detention during investigations must be even more limited, especially in the absence of any charge. The Swedish investigations have been closed for over 18 months now, and the only ground remaining for Mr. Assange’s continued deprivation of liberty is a bail violation in the UK, which is, objectively, a minor offense that cannot post facto justify the more than 6 years confinement that he has been subjected to since he sought asylum in the Embassy of Ecuador. Mr. Assange should be able to exercise his right to freedom of movement in an unhindered manner, in accordance with the human rights conventions the UK has ratified,
In repudiating the UNWGAD the UK has undermined an important pillar of international law, and one it had always supported in hundreds of other decisions. The mainstream media has entirely failed to note that the UNWGAD called for the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe – a source of potentially valuable international pressure on Iran which the UK has made worthless by its own refusal to comply with the UN over the Assange case. Iran simply replies “if you do not respect the UNWGAD then why should we?”
It is in fact a key indication of media/government collusion that the British media, which reports regularly at every pretext on the Zaghari-Ratcliffe case to further its anti-Iranian government agenda, failed to report at all the UNWGAD call for her release – because of the desire to deny the UN body credibility in the case of Julian Assange.
In applying for political asylum, Assange was entering a different and higher legal process which is an internationally recognised right. A very high percentage of dissident political prisoners worldwide are imprisoned on ostensibly unrelated criminal charges with which the authorities fit them up. Many a dissident has been given asylum in these circumstances. Assange did not go into hiding – his whereabouts were extremely well known. The simple characterisation of this as “absconding” by district judge Vanessa Baraitser is a farce of justice – and like the UK’s repudiation of the UNWGAD report, is an attitude that authoritarian regimes will be delighted to repeat towards dissidents worldwide
Her decision to commit Assange to continuing jail pending his extradition hearing was excessively cruel given the serious health problems he has encountered in Belmarsh.
It is worth noting that Baraitser’s claim that Assange had a “history of absconding in these proceedings” – and I have already disposed of “absconding” as wildly inappropriate – is inaccurate in that “these proceedings” are entirely new and relate to the US extradition request and nothing but the US extradition request. Assange has been imprisoned throughout the period of “these proceedings” and has certainly not absconded. The government and media have an interest in conflating “these proceedings” with the previous risible allegations from Sweden and the subsequent conviction for bail violation, but we need to untangle this malicious conflation. We have to make plain that Assange is now held for publishing and only for publishing. That a judge should conflate them is disgusting. Vanessa Baraitser is a disgrace.
Assange has been demonised by the media as a dangerous, insanitary and crazed criminal, which could not be further from the truth. It is worth reminding ourselves that Assange has never been convicted of anything but missing police bail.
So now we have a right wing government in the UK with scant concern for democracy, and in particular we have the most far right extremist as Home Secretary of modern times. Assange is now, plainly and without argument, a political prisoner. He is not in jail for bail-jumping. He is not in jail for sexual allegations. He is in jail for publishing official secrets, and for nothing else. The UK now has the world’s most famous political prisoner, and there are no rational grounds to deny that fact. Who will take a stand against authoritarianism and for the freedom to publish?
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After the cancelled talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and the Taliban, it is most likely that U.S. troops currently deployed in the country will remain there without a set time for return for now. Currently, it is estimated that around 14,000 U.S. troops, among them active duty personnel, members of the National Guard and Reserve as well as Civilians (contractors, DOD employees), remain in Afghanistan.
As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, between 2013 and 2015, the bulk of the personnel stationed in the Central Asian country was pulled out, as our graphic shows. Since then numbers have been fluctuating reflecting the uncertainty around the U.S. military’s prolonged mission to the country. In 2018, the Trump administration stopped publishing detailed accounts of the troops in Afghanistan through Department of Defense records, but it is likely that the Army still makes up the majority of forces deployed to the country.
The U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan is America’s longest war. The current NATO-led operation in Afghanistan is called “Resolute Support” and aims to train and advise the Afghan security forces.
