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( Oct 02, 2017 , nationalinterest.org )
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Dec 30, 2017 | russia-insider.com
After 2014, Ukraine claimed that it was being overcharged, and therefore Naftogaz refused to pay Gazprom their contracted price for gas. Instead, it paid unilaterally a different amount that it subjectively considered "fair."
Gazprom, in keeping with mutually contracted terms and conditions, could only issue an invoice for the resulting underpayment, and after Naftogaz still refused to pay (a debt of approx. $2 billion), made any further deliveries of gas contingent on prepayment.
The arbitration additionally upheld Gazprom's position and denied Naftogaz any right to a refund for gas priced between May 2011 and April 2014 or collect any of the claimed "overcharged gas" totaling approximately $14 billion for that period. In sum, the price Kiev claimed was "inflated" was judged as in Stockholm as baseless.
Therefore, the question of who is accountable and responsible for settling debt has been clarified in Stockholm. Naftogaz must pay Gazprom $2 billion plus a fine calculated at 0.03% per day for each day this debt remains unpaid. This fine has already reached $3 million since the court decision on December 22nd, and if it not paid can reach an annualized figure of $216 million and still keep growing daily.
Like any political and economic story, there is quite a bit that does not make the flashy headlines, but plays a role in contributing to the noise surrounding an issue. Naftogaz takes satisfaction in that the settlement allowed that the gas price for the second quarter of 2014 was to be reduced from $485 to $352 per 1000 cubic meters, or 27%, thereby "saving" Ukraine about $ 1.8 billion for 2014-2015. The price of $485 was in fact fixed for that one quarter, and it was higher than the market price. The reason was that the March referendum and subsequent reunification of Crimea within the Russian Federation happened then. Up until that time, Russia had given Ukraine a discount of $100 per one thousand cubic meters of gas as payment for renting the Crimean base for the Black Sea fleet. The Kharkov treaty with Ukraine which dealt with the naval base was therefore canceled, as Crimea was once again Russia. Without this discount, the price increased by that same discounted $100 in the contracted quarterly price fix.
Key is Stockholm's recognition that the Russian gas price for Ukraine in 2011-2014 was fair, which is much more important than the price fixed in that second quarter in question. It is worth noting in the next third quarter of 2014 Gazprom was prepared to provide Ukraine with a market price for gas again. However, as we all know today, since June 2014 Naftogaz has refused to buy gas from Russia for political reasons and calling it an "aggressor nation."
A more far-reaching result from the Stockholm proceedings was the intention to void the traditional (Gazprom) formula for gas prices which is based on a linkage to the price of oil. Instead, the price of gas will be tied directly to the spot gas market such as the European hub. Should this occur, then the future gas price for Ukraine will be linked to the cost of fuel in the European hub. This would be a major departure from the traditional pricing Gazprom has used for decades, and might set a precedent for other buyers of Russian gas, who might also want to change their price formulation. In traditional Gazprom contracts, the price of gas depends on the price of oil, and only up to 15% of the price is a spot gas component. For decades, this contractual linkage of the price of gas to oil was largely accepted as being open and fair.
Since 2014, Ukraine has been buying reverse gas from Europe at such European spot hub prices, and it has so far been more expensive than the traditional Gazprom contract. It is also worth noting that spot prices are far more volatile, are seasonally demand-affected, and as winter is a peak consumption season the prices can and do increase dramatically.
Why did Gazprom take their initial large claims to court knowing beforehand that it would be impossible to get the tens of billions of dollars from Naftogaz or Ukraine without ruining both through default? The first reason is that a "take or pay" clause was a key and mutually agreed covenant of the contractual relationship, not a point to be discarded unilaterally by any single party. The second reason was as a response to Naftogaz multi-billion lawsuit on the transit of gas from Russia through Ukraine to Europe. The Ukrainian side believes that Gazprom should pay them extra for not sending 110 billion cubic meters of gas through pipelines annually across Ukraine. In the transit contract, there is no obligation for any such volumes to be transited through Ukraine's pipelines.
To sum up this drama, the Stockholm arbitration declared that Naftogaz must honor their contract, and buy from Gazprom 5 billion cubic meters of gas annually. As it turns out the "take or pay" clause remains in force, but the volume has been significantly reduced. How this volume of 5 billion cubic meters was arrived at remains a mystery, but one which will surely become clear over time. The political spin, however, will be interesting to observe since Ukraine must now buy (and pay for) this Russian gas. How will Kiev explain now having to buy Russian gas when since 2014 it stridently proclaimed it shall never buy fuel from "that aggressor nation."
The irony is that while this is a loss of face for Kiev politically, economically it benefits the Ukrainian consumer. To date, Ukraine's purchases of "reverse gas" from Europe has been far more expensive than that which was contracted reliably over the years by Gazprom. Now Kiev will have to find the funds to pay for Gazprom's gas, settle their debt and ever-growing fines, plus meet the rest of their energy needs by purchasing expensive reverse gas from Europe. It will take spin that is a lot more imaginative from Kiev to package this settlement into a believable political victory, and very creative accounting to get the money to pay for it.
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Dec 30, 2017 | russia-insider.com
After 2014, Ukraine claimed that it was being overcharged, and therefore Naftogaz refused to pay Gazprom their contracted price for gas. Instead, it paid unilaterally a different amount that it subjectively considered "fair."
Gazprom, in keeping with mutually contracted terms and conditions, could only issue an invoice for the resulting underpayment, and after Naftogaz still refused to pay (a debt of approx. $2 billion), made any further deliveries of gas contingent on prepayment.
The arbitration additionally upheld Gazprom's position and denied Naftogaz any right to a refund for gas priced between May 2011 and April 2014 or collect any of the claimed "overcharged gas" totaling approximately $14 billion for that period. In sum, the price Kiev claimed was "inflated" was judged as in Stockholm as baseless.
Therefore, the question of who is accountable and responsible for settling debt has been clarified in Stockholm. Naftogaz must pay Gazprom $2 billion plus a fine calculated at 0.03% per day for each day this debt remains unpaid. This fine has already reached $3 million since the court decision on December 22nd, and if it not paid can reach an annualized figure of $216 million and still keep growing daily.
Like any political and economic story, there is quite a bit that does not make the flashy headlines, but plays a role in contributing to the noise surrounding an issue. Naftogaz takes satisfaction in that the settlement allowed that the gas price for the second quarter of 2014 was to be reduced from $485 to $352 per 1000 cubic meters, or 27%, thereby "saving" Ukraine about $ 1.8 billion for 2014-2015. The price of $485 was in fact fixed for that one quarter, and it was higher than the market price. The reason was that the March referendum and subsequent reunification of Crimea within the Russian Federation happened then. Up until that time, Russia had given Ukraine a discount of $100 per one thousand cubic meters of gas as payment for renting the Crimean base for the Black Sea fleet. The Kharkov treaty with Ukraine which dealt with the naval base was therefore canceled, as Crimea was once again Russia. Without this discount, the price increased by that same discounted $100 in the contracted quarterly price fix.
Key is Stockholm's recognition that the Russian gas price for Ukraine in 2011-2014 was fair, which is much more important than the price fixed in that second quarter in question. It is worth noting in the next third quarter of 2014 Gazprom was prepared to provide Ukraine with a market price for gas again. However, as we all know today, since June 2014 Naftogaz has refused to buy gas from Russia for political reasons and calling it an "aggressor nation."
A more far-reaching result from the Stockholm proceedings was the intention to void the traditional (Gazprom) formula for gas prices which is based on a linkage to the price of oil. Instead, the price of gas will be tied directly to the spot gas market such as the European hub. Should this occur, then the future gas price for Ukraine will be linked to the cost of fuel in the European hub. This would be a major departure from the traditional pricing Gazprom has used for decades, and might set a precedent for other buyers of Russian gas, who might also want to change their price formulation. In traditional Gazprom contracts, the price of gas depends on the price of oil, and only up to 15% of the price is a spot gas component. For decades, this contractual linkage of the price of gas to oil was largely accepted as being open and fair.
Since 2014, Ukraine has been buying reverse gas from Europe at such European spot hub prices, and it has so far been more expensive than the traditional Gazprom contract. It is also worth noting that spot prices are far more volatile, are seasonally demand-affected, and as winter is a peak consumption season the prices can and do increase dramatically.
Why did Gazprom take their initial large claims to court knowing beforehand that it would be impossible to get the tens of billions of dollars from Naftogaz or Ukraine without ruining both through default? The first reason is that a "take or pay" clause was a key and mutually agreed covenant of the contractual relationship, not a point to be discarded unilaterally by any single party. The second reason was as a response to Naftogaz multi-billion lawsuit on the transit of gas from Russia through Ukraine to Europe. The Ukrainian side believes that Gazprom should pay them extra for not sending 110 billion cubic meters of gas through pipelines annually across Ukraine. In the transit contract, there is no obligation for any such volumes to be transited through Ukraine's pipelines.
To sum up this drama, the Stockholm arbitration declared that Naftogaz must honor their contract, and buy from Gazprom 5 billion cubic meters of gas annually. As it turns out the "take or pay" clause remains in force, but the volume has been significantly reduced. How this volume of 5 billion cubic meters was arrived at remains a mystery, but one which will surely become clear over time. The political spin, however, will be interesting to observe since Ukraine must now buy (and pay for) this Russian gas. How will Kiev explain now having to buy Russian gas when since 2014 it stridently proclaimed it shall never buy fuel from "that aggressor nation."
The irony is that while this is a loss of face for Kiev politically, economically it benefits the Ukrainian consumer. To date, Ukraine's purchases of "reverse gas" from Europe has been far more expensive than that which was contracted reliably over the years by Gazprom. Now Kiev will have to find the funds to pay for Gazprom's gas, settle their debt and ever-growing fines, plus meet the rest of their energy needs by purchasing expensive reverse gas from Europe. It will take spin that is a lot more imaginative from Kiev to package this settlement into a believable political victory, and very creative accounting to get the money to pay for it.
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Dec 25, 2017 | russia-insider.com
"Russia and China ... have concluded that pumping the US military budget by buying US bonds ... is an unsustainable proposition ..." Pepe Escobar 12,072 198
The new 55-page "America First" National Security Strategy (NSS), drafted over the course of 2017, defines Russia and China as "revisionist" powers, "rivals," and for all practical purposes strategic competitors of the United States.
The NSS stops short of defining Russia and China as enemies, allowing for an "attempt to build a great partnership with those and other countries." Still, Beijing qualified it as "reckless" and "irrational." The Kremlin noted its "imperialist character" and "disregard for a multipolar world." Iran, predictably, is described by the NSS as "the world's most significant state sponsor of terrorism."
Russia, China and Iran happen to be the three key movers and shakers in the ongoing geopolitical and geo-economic process of Eurasia integration.
The NSS can certainly be regarded as a response to what happened at the BRICS summit in Xiamen last September. Then, Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted on "the BRIC countries' concerns over the unfairness of the global financial and economic architecture which does not give due regard to the growing weight of the emerging economies," and stressed the need to "overcome the excessive domination of a limited number of reserve currencies."
That was a clear reference to the US dollar, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of total reserve currency around the world and remains the benchmark determining the price of energy and strategic raw materials.
And that brings us to the unnamed secret at the heart of the NSS; the Russia-China "threat" to the US dollar.
The CIPS/SWIFT face-off
The website of the China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS) recently announced the establishment of a yuan-ruble payment system, hinting that similar systems regarding other currencies participating in the New Silk Roads, a.k.a. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will also be in place in the near future.
Crucially, this is not about reducing currency risk; after all Russia and China have increasingly traded bilaterally in their own currencies since the 2014 US-imposed sanctions on Russia. This is about the implementation of a huge, new alternative reserve currency zone, bypassing the US dollar.
The decision follows the establishment by Beijing, in October 2015, of the China International Payments System (CIPS). CIPS has a cooperation agreement with the private, Belgium-based SWIFT international bank clearing system, through which virtually every global transaction must transit.
What matters, in this case, is that Beijing – as well as Moscow – clearly read the writing on the wall when, in 2012, Washington applied pressure on SWIFT; blocked international clearing for every Iranian bank; and froze $100 billion in Iranian assets overseas as well as Tehran's potential to export oil. In the event that Washington might decide to slap sanctions on China, bank clearing though CIPS works as a de facto sanctions-evading mechanism.
Last March, Russia's central bank opened its first office in Beijing. Moscow is launching its first $1 billion yuan-denominated government bond sale. Moscow has made it very clear it is committed to a long-term strategy to stop using the US dollar as their primary currency in global trade, moving alongside Beijing towards what could be dubbed a post-Bretton Woods exchange system.
Gold is essential in this strategy. Russia, China, India, Brazil & South Africa are all either large producers or consumers of gold – or both. Following what has been extensively discussed in their summits since the early 2010s, the BRICS countries are bound to focus on trading physical gold .
Markets such as COMEX actually trade derivatives on gold, and are backed by an insignificant amount of physical gold. Major BRICS gold producers – especially the Russia-China partnership – plan to be able to exercise extra influence in setting up global gold prices.
The ultimate politically charged dossier
Intractable questions referring to the US dollar as the top reserve currency have been discussed at the highest levels of JP Morgan for at least five years now. There cannot be a more politically charged dossier. The NSS duly sidestepped it.
The current state of play is still all about the petrodollar system; since last year, what used to be a key, "secret" informal deal between the US and the House of Saud, is firmly in the public domain .
Even warriors in the Hindu Kush may now be aware of how oil and virtually all commodities must be traded in US dollars, and how these petrodollars are recycled into US Treasuries. Through this mechanism, Washington has accumulated an astonishing $20 trillion in debt – and counting.
Vast populations all across MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) also learned what happened when Iraq's Saddam Hussein decided to sell oil in euros, or when Muammar Gaddafi planned to issue a pan-African gold dinar.
But now it's China who's entering the fray, following through on plans set up way back in 2012. And the name of the game is oil-futures trading priced in yuan, with the yuan fully convertible into gold on the Shanghai and Hong Kong foreign exchange markets.
The Shanghai Futures Exchange and its subsidiary, the Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE) have already run four production environment tests for crude oil futures. Operations were supposed to start at the end of 2017, but even if they start sometime in early 2018, the fundamentals are clear: this triple win (oil/yuan/gold) completely bypasses the US dollar. The era of the petro-yuan is at hand.
Of course, there are questions on how Beijing will technically manage to set up a rival mark to Brent and WTI, or whether China's capital controls will influence it. Beijing has been quite discreet on the triple win; the petro-yuan was not even mentioned in National Development and Reform Commission documents following the 19th CCP Congress last October.
What's certain is that the BRICS countries supported the petro-yuan move at their summit in Xiamen, as diplomats confirmed to Asia Times . Venezuela is also on board. It's crucial to remember that Russia is number two and Venezuela is number seven among the world's Top Ten oil producers. Considering the pull of China's economy, they may soon be joined by other producers.
Yao Wei, chief China economist at Societe Generale in Paris, goes straight to the point, remarking how "this contract has the potential to greatly help China's push for yuan internationalization."
The hidden riches of "belt" and "road"
An extensive report by DBS in Singapore hits most of the right notes linking the internationalization of the yuan with the expansion of BRI.
In 2018, six major BRI projects will be on overdrive; the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway, the China-Laos railway, the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway, the Hungary-Serbia railway, the Melaka Gateway project in Malaysia, and the upgrading of Gwadar port in Pakistan.
HSBC estimates that BRI as a whole will generate no less than an additional, game-changing $2.5 trillion worth of new trade a year.
It's important to keep in mind that the "belt" in BRI should be seen as a series of corridors connecting Eastern China with oil/gas-rich regions in Central Asia and the Middle East, while the "roads" soon to be plied by high-speed rail traverse regions filled with – what else - un-mined gold.
A key determinant of the future of the petro-yuan is what the House of Saud will do about it. Should Crown Prince – and inevitable future king – MBS opt to follow Russia's lead, to dub it as a paradigm shift would be the understatement of the century.
Yuan-denominated gold contracts will be traded not only in Shanghai and Hong Kong but also in Dubai. Saudi Arabia is also considering to issue so-called Panda bonds, after the Emirate of Sharjah is set to take the lead in the Middle East for Chinese interbank bonds.
Of course, the prelude to D-Day will be when the House of Saud officially announces it accepts yuan for at least part of its exports to China.
A follower of the Austrian school of economics correctly asserts that for oil-producing nations, higher oil price in US dollars is not as important as market share: "They are increasingly able to choose in which currencies they want to trade."
What's clear is that the House of Saud simply cannot alienate China as one of its top customers; it's Beijing who will dictate future terms. That may include extra pressure for Chinese participation in Aramco's IPO. In parallel, Washington would see Riyadh embracing the petro-yuan as the ultimate red line.
An independent European report points to what may be the Chinese trump card: "an authorization to issue treasury bills in yuan by Saudi Arabia," the creation of a Saudi investment fund, and the acquisition of a 5% share of Aramco.
Nations under US sanctions, such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela, will be among the first to embrace the petro-yuan. Smaller producers such as Angola and Nigeria are already selling oil/gas to China in yuan.
And if you don't export oil but are part of BRI, such as Pakistan, the least you can do is replace the US dollar in bilateral trade, as Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal is currently evaluating.
A key feature of the geoeconomic heart of the world moving from the West towards Asia is that by the start of the next decade the petro-yuan and trade bypassing the US dollar will be certified facts on the ground across Eurasia.
The NSS for its part promises to preserve "peace through strength." As Washington currently deploys no less than 291,000 troops in 183 countries and has sent Special Ops to no less than 149 nations in 2017 alone, it's hard to argue the US is at "peace" – especially when the NSS seeks to channel even more resources to the industrial-military complex.
"Revisionist" Russia and China have committed an unpardonable sin; they have concluded that pumping the US military budget by buying US bonds that allow the US Treasury to finance a multi-trillion dollar deficit without raising interest rates is an unsustainable proposition for the Global South. Their "threat" – under the framework of BRICS as well as the SCO, which includes prospective members Iran and Turkey – is to increasingly settle bilateral and multilateral trade bypassing the US dollar.
It ain't over till the fat (golden) lady sings. When the beginning of the end of the petrodollar system – established by Kissinger in tandem with the House of Saud way back in 1974 – becomes a fact on the ground, all eyes will be focused on the NSS counterpunch.
John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 10:11 AM
Tommy Jensen John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 11:26 AMChina and Russia been dumping US bonds for a good while.
They just have to do it slowly, so they can get as much cash, to buy stolen discounted gold with from the British Anglo Zionist Empire, as possible without tanking the market.The Federal reserve, prints currency, "loans" it to USA corporation, at USURY rates, gives this currency to other "sovereign" puppet states such as Belgium, who then act like they are buying the bonds for themselves.
It is a scam. Those who trust the USA/British Empire, will wind up with worthless paper, while the Usury bankers, their bosses, China and Russia, will wind up with gold.
All you USA worshipers should understand something.
He who has the gold, makes the rules.
Guess the western sheep are going to be the bitc#s of China and Russia for the next century or so.Cliff Aleksandar Tomić , December 23, 2017 6:20 PMI believe America will win. Therefore I sold my gold and bought dollares. The bad guys always win.............LOL.
Mychal Arnold Tommy Jensen , December 24, 2017 4:49 AM" Treason doth never prosper
What be the reason?
For when it prosper,
None dare call it treason" -William ShakespereRichard Burton Mychal Arnold , December 24, 2017 11:11 AMHey Tim or whatever. Yep you always win huh? Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Sudan, .ring any bells I could go on but you have been embarrassed enough with your msm drivel. Always the weak and defenseless you lily livered chicken's. You better avoid war with the two most powerful countries in the world. Can you guess? and neither are you pedos and babykillers. You make me sick and disgusted. Voted again the most threat to world peace. Ussa, ussa, ussa. Proud are ya all. The time is coming where you reap what you have sown and on that day I shall dance my happy dance that you feel what you and your evil countrymen have wrought in the world in the name of democracy and freedom hope it is on cable! You rotten to the core people!
zorbatheturk Richard Burton , December 25, 2017 2:11 AMHere here, the US Holocaust, countless millions killed all over the globe as the USA plunders, wars and props-up evil, despot regimes. Bin Laden, Taleban, just two of the US former best allies, how long can a 200 year old, degenerate country like the USA keep sponging-off/ using exploiting the worlds billions to enrich itself? USA... infested with drugs, crime, rust belts, slums, homeless, street bums VAST inequality.
Mychal Arnold Richard Burton , December 24, 2017 12:01 PMIt's still a million miles better than a craphole like RuSSia!
Le Ruse Tommy Jensen , December 25, 2017 2:32 AMYep! As Rome burns and eaten from within!
Peter Jennings John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 11:09 AMYes Tommy.. Good move !!
Buy US$ !! US$ is backed by US government !! Gold is not backed by anything !!wilmers13 John C Carleton , December 24, 2017 12:43 AMRemember the Belgium Bulge a few years back? the process must also work in reverse.
John C Carleton wilmers13 , December 24, 2017 8:39 AMYou cannot buy gold from the Empire, have you not read the book Gold Warriors.
Security is a propaganda term now, stands for war preparations.
Trauma2000 John C Carleton , December 24, 2017 1:11 PMThe Empire sells other peoples gold to China and Russia everyday, having stole and sold Americans gold long since.
Works like this.
The not Federal, and no Reserve(s) dollar, is worth about 1 cent, of a 1913, pre Usury criminal banker scam "dollar".
That 1 % is swiftly loosing it's value.
To keep the American people, from realizing, the USA, is using them for cattle, stealing their labor, through planned hyperinflation,:
Israhell/Washington crime cabal, dumps massive amounts of "paper gold and silver", on the market, each and every damn day the rigged market is open, in order to artificially keep the price of gold and silver way the hell below where it should be priced in federal reserve currency.
This hide s the true inflation rate of the not federal and no reserves private Usury Banker Currency, falsely identified as the "US Dollar".
Israhell/Washington DC, does not have the physical gold and silver to cover what they sell.
It is a criminal scam.
Those who buy this paper gold and silver, small guy, will never be given physical for the paper.
Small guy, traded green paper for white paper. Either will be worthless soon.
Sovereigns, can buy enough of it, to demand delivery of physical.
The day the British Anglo zionist Empire defaults delivering physical gold, to China and Russia, for the paper gold, is the day the curtain comes down on the illusion of the USA financial empire.
Washington DC knows this, China knows this, Russia knows this.
In order to buy time, Israhell/Washington DC, has stolen, sold at hugely discounted prices, to keep the dollar scam alive, just a while longer, all the gold they were supposably storing for safe keeping, of other sovereigns.
They have stolen privately held gold, which was stored in commercial banks and vaults for "safe keeping.
They stole the gold which went missing from the basement vaults in the world trade centers, before they set off the demolition charges.
Then they sold it.
They stole and sold Ukraines gold.
They stole and sold, Libya's gold.
They had intended to have already stole and sold Syria's gold.
They are fast running out of other peoples gold, to deliver to China and Russia at huge discounts, to prop up the scam, just a while longer.
The day there is no more stolen gold to deliver to China and Russia, the music stops, all the chairs are removed, this game of musical chars is over. Starving Americans will eat their pets, rats, and each other.
Thanks Israhell!
Thanks Washington DC/USA.John C Carleton Trauma2000 , December 24, 2017 2:02 PMI want more information on this. Isabella said a similar thing. I want to know more... So the U$T's that are in actual fact worthless, Russia is using to buy gold at a huge discount to what should be the true market rate; and then Russia is storing this. I understand the storing thing. I'm a straight forward kind-of-a-guy. But its the U.$.T.'s to Physical Gold I can't get my head around.
Why is the U.$. honouring what is a knife-to-its-throat deal that is very soon going to result in the collapse of the U.$. dollar? And according to this forum fully 20% of Russia's reserves are still held in fiat U.$.T's..?
Why would Russia hold such a large percentage if its reserves in what will be worthless U.$.T.'s when it knows that the U.$. is going to try and scam Russia and default..?
I want to know more.
Bd-prince Pramanik Trauma2000 , December 24, 2017 8:28 PMPicture a crime family.
Some branches are pure evil.
Some not so evil.
Some are very open about their evil.
Some are sneaky hypocrites who use the news media to white wash their crimes, and vilify their victims.BUT! And this is one huge BUT, they all know too much on each other to start talking too damn much.
Also, their criminal Empire, (shearing/raping/murdering the sheep for fun and profit) is all tied together. Common banks, common/interchangeable fiat currencies, Usury debt practices.
Take part of it down, the other part will suffer great losses, if not go down with them.
Russia, and China, has gotten tired of the British Anglo zionist Empire lording it over them and treating them like red headed step children.
Russia and China, have not seen the Light, are not operating for the sake of their people, but to keep themselves in power, by returning to the people, some of the wealth they stole from the people to begin with
British Anglo zionist pig fkers Empire, is too greedy to return any of the stolen loot.
The BAzE, have a let them eat grass like the animals they are elitist attitude.
China and Russia, are trying to position themselves to come out on top when the economic reset happens.
They both were FORCED, by Empire, to both buy and hold, huge stashes of both Federal reserve fiat currency, and bonds, to do business in the rest of the world.
The USA military is the enforcement arm for the BAzE.
USA military is corrupted, demoralized, veterans fked over royally, weapons do not work as their purpose, was to steal the labor of the American working man and women, not to produce weapons which worked as advertised.
Russia and China, will continue to buy gold, buy time, to get in a better position to give Uncle Sugar's pedophilic ass both middle fingers.
It is in their interest to do so.
The owners of the British Anglo zionist Empire, have their personal vaults filled with stolen gold.
The politicians you see, the Rothschild's even, are window dressing to hide the true owners, and to protect the true owners asses during slave revolts, by offering, kings, queens, politicians, bankers, heads to get chopped.
These owners have no loyalty to any other person, or country in the world. They see themselves as the chess players, humanity as the pieces, the earth as their personal chess board.
They do not give a FF about America, the American people, or the hand puppet political whore of DC/USA.
The hand puppet whores, are too stupid, and corrupt anyway, to understand whats coming, or to have the power, intelligence, or balls to stop it
There are all kinds of fun and wealth created, for deviant sick bastards, in creating, and tearing down empires.
Besides, all the death and destruction gets them sexually excited
Takes years of study, experience with, and intuition, to begin to understand their evil, and the way the world really works.
Whether someone started years back, educating themselves, preparing for whats coming, will determine if they will enter the kill zone as a sheep or not.
The only protection sheep have, is the hope, the jackals will rape and murder some other sheep, not them. That is why they will not stand up or speak up.
That is why they violently attack anyone wants to leave the herd mentality, everyone else forced to be in the same sheep state as them,
They are afraid the jackal will notice them individually.
Herd numbers and hiding in the herd, are the cowards only protectionMychal Arnold John C Carleton , December 24, 2017 12:41 PMyour answer is in your question!
John C Carleton Mychal Arnold , December 24, 2017 12:46 PMJohn I firmly believe they will get what is coming to them just a matter of time nothing endures forever. But mostly not in our life time, though!
Trauma2000 John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 3:15 PMAny day now, any week, not very many months, can the scam go on.
In other words, Americans might want to bone up on delicious recipes for Rats, cats, and their neighbors.BobValdez Trauma2000 , December 23, 2017 3:48 PMre: "China and Russia been dumping US bonds for a good while.
They just have to do it slowly, so they can get as much cash, to buy stolen discounted gold with from the British Anglo Zionist Empire, as possible without tanking the market."I have been reading this for a while. But I've yet to see it in practice. Rosneft is still accepting U.$. dollars for oil/gas transactions, the most recent of which I believe was the gas shipment from St Petersburg to Poland..? https://tomluongo.me/2017/1...
I need to read more on this subject.
Paw Trauma2000 , December 23, 2017 9:48 PMRussia acceps dollars for oil, and uses them to buy physical gold. No need to hold useless dollars, just convert them to gold.
Richard Burton Paw , December 24, 2017 11:18 AMWhat you buy by petrodollars ?
Saudi .Arabia buys arms. But SA has got millions of unemployed people , because they studied Islamic religion , wahabist fanaticism ... Further SA employs millions of workers from other countries. And owns US assets in value over 1 trillion dollars. So what else to buy , where to spend their petrodollars? Only get billions dollars arms ,that are in couple years useless...Population hate the fully corrupt royal family in numbers approximately 40 thousands princess as they have to get about 500 thousands yearly salaries...For doing nothing , only to spend it everywhere...
Populations hate US presence in SA. Very much.Isabella Jones Trauma2000 , December 24, 2017 11:54 AMBut the Great Satan~USA adore such scum as the vile Crooked Saudi royal family, the snakehead USA ignore all their anti-democracy, anti- human rights their beheading, their evil ways, they worship money the US swine, its all they see and lap-up, plus they have Russia/ China /Iran to pick on and blame not their evil Saudi- swine arms buyers. View Hide
Mychal Arnold Isabella Jones , December 24, 2017 12:32 PMAt the moment, because the US is illegally holding gold prices down using uncovered shorts on paper gold, and at the same time has used sanctions to devalue the rouble, Russia is producing oil at reduced - rouble - rates, selling it on the international market for U$, [artificially inflated] and buying massive amounts of cheap gold with the huge profits she is making.
Russia is singing all the way to the bank right now. The US backed itself into a corner on this one it cannot get out from - short of waging war on Russia !!!Tony B. Isabella Jones , December 24, 2017 11:31 PM10% of GDP goes out where is the ussa 100 as are many others in the west. All western country have huge debts funny how that is or is it?
Isabella Jones Tony B. , December 25, 2017 5:41 AMWhy should anyone who is in love with gold be upset if someone is holding the price down? It should be a wonderful time to buy.
Russia is MINING gold, its own gold.John C Carleton Trauma2000 , December 23, 2017 3:41 PMIt is a great time to buy, if you have some spare cash to store, I agree. It's just a poor time if you need to realise your gold - you wont get the price for it you should. But indeed, it's a buyers market. Yes, Russia has a fair bit of gold "reserves" just sitting in the ground.
Nathan Dunning John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 4:36 PMThere is the face the beast lets you see, and the real face of the beast.
You do not think the beast is stupid enough to show it's real face to all the sheep?
Really?
The sheep who are given personal attention in private places, see the real face of the beast, because it sexually excites the beast for the chosen sheep to die bleating in terror.John C Carleton Nathan Dunning , December 24, 2017 9:44 AMYou're a tool for the left I bet you're American Liberal.
John C Carleton Nathan Dunning , December 24, 2017 9:49 AMYou are a sheep.
i Am a wolf.
You are lucky i lost my taste for mutton.
i prefer goat and jackal. View HideMychal Arnold Nathan Dunning , December 24, 2017 12:45 PMalexwest11 John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 11:25 AMGuess you just got here you friggin troll. You know nothing you shill. Go back to the basement mom has brought you dinner and cookies n milk and let the grown men talk, now that is a good boy bye. Sorry John I have disappointed my Mom said be nice but idiots bother me. Say hi to your lovely Mom for me and God bless. Merry Christmas everyone! Got your back as always.
John C Carleton alexwest11 , December 23, 2017 12:18 PMJohn C Carleton • an hour ago China and Russia been dumping US bond
-------
no they don't! Russians reserves are about 100+ bln in USTand WHOLLY 20 % OF RUSSIAN assets in Russian banks are kept mostly $$$ and some euro
oncefiredbrass John C Carleton , December 24, 2017 2:44 AMGlad you are so confident in the currency, which has lost 99% of it's buying power since 1913, when the not Federal and no Reserve(s) was forced on the American people by the Usury Banker ancestors of the owners of the 'Fed", buying USA politicians.
Where did that 99% value go?
To the I%ters. You know, the pedophile elite.
They want it all, they are coming for the other 1% of the "dollar's" value.
They are coming for Social security, government pensions, private pensions, checking accounts, any thing with any value.Oh by the way, just cause you are ignorant of how things work, don't mean they don't work that way, just means you are ignorant.
Have a wonderful day now!
See mother, i was nice to the bad person who was trying to run interference for pedophile baby rapers.John C Carleton oncefiredbrass , December 24, 2017 8:22 AMGood to see someone else Awake! A good portion of the Sheep are still sleeping, they think the National Debt and Zero Interest Rates mean nothing (in the Eurozone Interest is Negative). The US Dollar is soon to be Toilet Paper! Our Military can only overthrow small countries that defy the PetroDollar system. Now with so many doing it, John Carleton is right, the National Debt and Retirements Accounts are basically equal. That is why Obutthead set the start of grabbing them by creating the MYRA, the Theory is the Sheep are to stupid to manage their own retirement accounts, so the Government would grab them and put them in a so called safe investment called "Treasury's". Unfortunately the SS Trust Fund has been raided and is broke, but they do have drawers full of Treasuries. Trump has to immediately open public lands for Mining & Drilling! A normalization of Interest Rates to 5-6% would consume Government Revenues just to pay Interest on the Debt!
Ron John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 11:11 PMWill work like this, they may already be doing it quietly.
Take private pensions.
They are already in trouble, having stocks, bonds, commercial real estate holdings.
All of these will become worthless, or close to it.
Anything with value, currency, decimal dollars, will be taken by the Washington thieves, and worthless US bonds which will probably never be redeemed, or redeemed for chump change, will be put in their place by Washington, as they "protect" the retirement accounts.
Old people will eat rats, each other, dog and cats, die without medical care and meds which they can not afford.
Some will eat their pistols.
Not going to be nice or orderly.alexwest11 John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 11:25 PMDude, your postings are good and has an element of humor, thanks.
John C Carleton alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 8:58 AMpedophile baby rapers.
------
people who associate everything w/ pedophile baby rapers.
USUALLY ARE pedophile baby rapers.!!!!!YES, $ lost about 97 %, but rest of even worse
russian ruble of 1913 - worthless
german mark -worthless
japanese yen - worthless
etc!Aurora alexwest11 , December 23, 2017 1:19 PMOpen mouth in ignorance, insert foot.
Don't worry about a foot in the other end, i will do that verbally with my Texas cowboy boot.Dispora Pedophiles increasingly Use Israel as 'haven,' activist charge.'
https://www.timesofisrael.c...'Advocacy group: Israel is a pedophiles paridise-Haaetz-Israel News'
https://www.haaretz.com/adv...'Nachlaot, where pedophiles roam free,--the Times of Israel
https://www.haaretz.com/adv...'Israel Found to be Safe For Pedophiles'
http://yournewswire.com/isr...'Jewish Pedophiles Increasingly use Israel as a haven, activist charge'
https://freespeechtwentyfir...'Power, Pedophilia and the US Government'
http://www.whale.to/c/power...'Frankland Coverup Sex Scandal,
(pedophile prostitution ring being run out of Reagan's White House)
http://www.johnccarleton.or...All pedo's, should be given a fair trial, and a fair hanging. A pedophile which was given a fair trial, and a fair hanging, never again, raped a child.
Amazing how that works.How you like them Texas cowboy boots?
alexwest11 Aurora , December 24, 2017 12:43 AMCorrect and very easy at any given moment to be converted in a GOLD.Just follow dynamic Russia and China buying GOLD on a world market and everything will be clear to you
AM Hants alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 7:25 AMdynamic Russia and China buying GOLD on a world market
-----btw . moron
Russia/ china don't buy gold on world market. they are 2 /3 gold producers in the world
WHAT IS YOU LEVEL OF FORMAL EDUCATION ??
it seems you are uneducated moron !
Aurora alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 1:19 PMMychal Arnold alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 12:50 PMWhile all eyes are on the oil price and the ruble to dollar rate, the Central Bank of Russia has quietly been buying huge volumes of gold over the past year. In January, 2016, the latest data available, the Russian Central Bank again bought 22 tons of gold, around $800 million at current exchange rates, that, amidst US and EU financial sanctions and low oil prices. It was the eleventh month in a row they bought large gold volumes. For 2015 Russia added a record 208 tons of gold to her reserves compared with 172 tons for 2014. Russia now has 1,437 tonnes of gold in reserve, the sixth largest of any nation according to the World Gold Council in London. Only USA, Germany, Italy, France and China central banks hold a larger tonnage of gold reserves.
Notably also, the Russian central bank has been selling its holdings of US Treasury debt to buy the gold, de facto de-dollarizing, a sensible move as the dollar is waging de facto currency war against the ruble. As of December, 2015, Russia held $92 billion in US Treasury Bonds down from $132 billion in January 2014.China bought another 17 tons of gold in January and will buy a total of another 215 tons this year, approximately equal to that of Russia. From August to January 2016 China added 101 tonnes of gold to its reserves. Annual purchases of more than 200 tons by the PBOC would exceed the entire gold holdings of all but about 20 countries, according to the World Gold Council. China's central bank reserves of gold have risen 57% since 2009 acording to data the PBOC revealed in July, 2015. Market watchers believe even that amount of gold in China's central bank vaults is being politically vastly understated so as not to cause alarm bells to ring too loud in Washington and London.Le Ruse Mychal Arnold , December 25, 2017 2:37 AMDude stop your only making yourself look stupid by opening your gob and proving or in this case writing. Merry Christmas or is it happy Hanukkah? Troll boy.
alexwest11 Aurora , December 23, 2017 11:29 PMMaybe Happy "Kwanza" whatever is that ??
Bd-prince Pramanik alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 8:51 PMany given moment to be converted in a GOLD.J
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???????? converted what ?in Russia, in gold ? you are not Russian, don't live, know nothing
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most Russians are stupid and uneducated in finance, savings do not existaverage Russian rather buy car , or flat than save money for something.
it is USSR mentality plagued by memory of deficits
Tony B. Bd-prince Pramanik , December 24, 2017 11:36 PMalexwest11 You are stupid ! a flat or house is real money you know ! They are uneducated in Rothschild finance! are you a russlanddeutsche! or jew from holy ukraine like poroschenko ?
Le Ruse Tony B. , December 25, 2017 2:39 AMRothschild finance can be described in a single word: THEFT.
The world's sole economic problem.AM Hants alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 7:38 AMHumm...
the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away ??oncefiredbrass alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 2:52 AMYou confuse me. If Russians are so stupid and uneducated in finance, then why is their President a Dr in Economics?
Why are they in control of their vast wealth of natural resources?
Why do they have virtually enough gold to back the ruble and decent currency reserves, that rise monthly?
Also, how come they have free healthcare and education, including university level, if they are so stupid and uneducated?
Why does the US require Russian engines to make it into space?
Like I said, you confuse me, as I assumed you were talking about another super-nation, that has seriously lost it's way.
PUTIN'S PHD THESIS ESSENTIAL READING FOR OFFICIALS
http://slavija.proboards.co...Russia National Debt: $194,545,062,334
Interest per Year $12,805,556,000
Interest per Second $406
Debt per Citizen $1,330
Debt as % of GDP 19.32%
GDP $1,007,000,000,000
Population 146,300,000Russia Foreign Exchange Reserves
View Hidealexwest11 oncefiredbrass , December 24, 2017 3:19 AMRussia is one of the largest Countries by land mass with a sparse population after the breakup of the Soviet Union. They run very low deficits and their National Debt is very low, they are one of the Countries that is best prepared for a major economic crash.
oncefiredbrass alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 3:27 AMoncefiredbrass alexwest11 • 28 minutes ago Russia
is one of the largest Countries by land mass with a sparse population
after the breakup of the Soviet Union. They run very low defic
--------
but facts say quite opposite!!!!!!!!during oil selloff of 2008*9 Russian ruble fall 50%, from 23 to 37 per$
during oil selloff of 2014*15 Russian ruble fall 250 %, from 33 to almost 90 per$
right now its about 60 per $ , still 100% devaluation from 2014
-------i don't remember $ fall against euro or yen during 2000 or/and 2008 crises in USA
more than 20 %
alexwest11 JIMI JAMES , December 24, 2017 6:23 AMThe fall of the Ruble was an attack or sanction by the Obama Regime over Ukraine. Why not trying to look up the Debt to GDP ratio for Russia and then the US and then ask yourself what economy is actually in a better position to withstand a Depression. Russia almost has enough Gold to back all their currency. How much gold would it take to back all the Treasuries and Dollars that the US has spread all over the world?
Mychal Arnold alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 12:59 PMbecause in the end only the strong will survive and russia just like china
-------
!!sure moron.avg salary in Russia about 500 $
avg pension 200 $that is why idiotic Russians twice in 20 century totally annihilated own country!!!!!! 1917 and 1991
-----
and for china!!!!!!! it just show how moronic you are
we will see how china is good in 100 or 200 years!!!cause history showed china always being overrun by someone else;
mongols, Manchurians, etclearn a history western moron!!!!!!!!
Why , December 23, 2017 9:42 AMHey let the grown men talk baby boy! You are spouting msm talking points you're trying to debate the choir about hymns. Your not going to make anyone here see the light because you have no truths behind or in front. Msm drivel. One simple question! Who took Berlin? In ww2 of course!
Craig A. Mouldey Why , December 23, 2017 10:51 AMI hope Russia will survive UKUSA's onslaught.
Me too. The U.S. has become the evil empire. The bully on the world stage stealing everyone's lunch money. I know it will devastate us in Canada, but I would still rather see the U.S. economy crumble if it would cripple their war machine, than to see this situation go on. Ron Paul was right: Instead of war, why not pursue peaceful trade? But the U.S. controllers want everyone else under their thumb as obedient serfs. It is evil. And as Smedley Butler so bluntly put it "War is a Racket"! He said this because he was sent to war with Guatemala on behalf of the United Fruit Company, aka Chiquita Brands International. This time, they are trying to steal the lunch money from those who can defend themselves. We aren't going to sit on our couch watching this war on TV, because we will watch it out our front windows.
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Dec 25, 2017 | theduran.com
On Friday 21st December 2017 the Stockholm Arbitration Court made a ruling in the legal dispute between Ukraine's state owned gas monopoly Naftogaz and Russia's largely state owned gas monopoly Gazprom.
In the hours after the decision – which like all decisions of the Stockholm Arbitration Court – is not published, Naftogaz claimed victory in a short statement. However over the course of the hours which followed Gazprom provided details of the decision which suggests that the truth is the diametric opposite.
The Duran recommends using WP Engine >>Here is how the Financial Times reports the competing claims
Both Ukraine's Naftogaz and Russia's Gazprom both on Friday claimed victory as a Stockholm arbitration tribunal issued the final award ruling in the first of two cases in a three-year legal battle between the state-controlled energy companies, where total claims stand at some $80bn.
An emailed statement from the Ukrainian company was titled:
"Naftogaz wins the gas sales arbitration case against Gazprom on all issues in dispute."
Start your own website here >>The Stockholm arbitration tribunal -- in its final award ruling in a dispute over gas supplies from prior years -- had, according to Naftogaz, struck down Gazprom's claim to receive $56bn for gas contracted but not supplied through controversial "take-or-pay" clauses. They were included in a supply contract Ukraine signed in 2009 after Gazprom dented supplies to the EU by cutting all flow amid a price dispute -- including transit through the country's vast pipeline systems. In a tweet Ukraine's foreign minister
Pavlo Klimkin wrote: "The victory of Naftogaz in the Stockholm arbitration: It's not a knockout, but three knockdowns with obvious advantage."
But later Gazprom countered that arbitors "acknowledged the main points of the contract were in effect and upheld the majority of Gazprom's demands for payment for gas supplies", worth over $2bn. A Naftogaz official responded that the company never refused to pay for gas supplied, but challenged price and conditions.
Given the tribunal does not make its decisions public, doubt loomed over which side was the ultimate winner. Anticipation also grew over the second and final tribunal award expected early next year over disputes both have concerning past gas transit obligations.
Friday's final Stockholm arbitration ruling follows a preliminary decision from last May after which both sides were given time to settle monetary claims outside of the tribunal but failed to reach agreement.
Here is the full Naftogaz statement:
"Today, the Tribunal at the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce has completely rejected Gazprom take-or-pay claims to Naftogaz amounting to USD 56 billion for 2009-2017.
- – Naftogaz succeeded at reducing future contract volume obligations by more than 10 times and made them relevant to its actual import needs.
- – Price for gas off-taken by Naftogaz in 2Q 2014 reduced 27% from USD 485/tcm to USD 352/tcm. – Naftogaz saved USD 1.8 billion on gas purchased in 2014-2015 due to revision of the contract price.
- – Destination clause and other discriminatory provisions were declared invalid to bring the contract in line with current European market standards.
- – Naftogaz estimates the total positive financial effect of the arbitration over the lifetime of the supply contract at over USD 75 billion.
- – Naftogaz claims up to USD 16 billion in transit contract arbitration against Gazprom; decision expected on 28 February 2018."
Gazprom said that in a separate decision on May 31 of this year, the tribunal denied Naftogaz's application to review prices from May 2011 to April 2014, ordered it to pay $14bn for gas supplies during that period, and said that the take-or-pay conditions applied for the duration of the contract. Gazprom claimed that Naftogaz would have to pay it $2.18bn plus interest of 0.03 per cent for every day the payments were late, and then pay for 5bn cm of gas annually starting next year.
When the different sides give opposite accounts of the same decision it obviously becomes difficult to say what the real decision actually is. However Gazprom says that the court upheld (1) the main provisions of the contract; (2) the contract's take-or-pay provisions, these being a particularly contentious issue in the contract; and (3) that Naftogaz has been ordered to pay Gazprom $2 billion, presumably immediately, with interest for every day the amount is unpaid.
By contrast the reduction in the gas price Naftogaz refers to from $485/tcm to $352 tcm which Naftogaz makes much of in its statement appears to apply only to gas supplied to Ukraine by Gazprom in the second quarter of 2014 and still sets the price of gas supplied to Ukraine by Gazprom higher than was demanded by Ukraine during this period.
The key point here is that Russia agreed to reduce the price of gas supplied to Ukraine by an agreement Russia's President Putin reached with Ukraine's President Yanukovich in December 2013. After the Maidan coup the new Ukrainian government went back on the agreement causing the Russians to demand payment of the original price. However over the course of 2014, as energy prices began first to slide and then crashed, and as it became clear that Ukraine was simply not paying for its gas, Russia again reduced the price of the gas Ukraine had to pay.
What seems to have happened is that the Stockholm Arbitration Court decided to smooth out the price of gas payable by Ukraine throughout 2014, which is the sort of thing arbitration tribunals are regularly known to do, whilst leaving the essentials of the contract unchanged.
If so then this is not a victory by Ukraine but a clearcut defeat, which Naftogaz and the Ukrainian government have tried to spin into a victory by citing the reduction in the gas price in the second quarter of 2014 and the reduction in future gas import volumes, neither of which were contentious issues. By contrast it is clear that Ukraine and Naftogaz must pay the full contractual price and abide by the contract's take-or-pay provisions for the whole of the period of the contract prior to the second quarter of 2014.
What this means in terms of hard cash is that Ukraine must now pay Russia a further $2 billion on top of the $3 billion it was recently ordered to pay by the High Court in London. Just as it is holding back on paying the $3 billion it was ordered to pay by the High Court until the appeal process in London is finished, so it will try to hold off paying the $2 billion it has just been ordered to pay to Gazprom until the final decision of the Stockholm Arbitration Court (thus the brave talk of Naftogaz's claims of "up to $16 billion transit contract arbitration against Gazprom") but thereafter payment of the $2 billion will fall due. I say this because the claim Gazprom owes Naftogaz "up to" $16 billion in transit fees looks like it has been plucked out of the air.
What this means is that over the course of 2018 Ukraine will have to pay Russia $5 billion ($3 billion awarded by the High Court in London and $2 billion awarded by the Stockholm Arbitration Court). Since the $2 billion awarded by the Stockholm Arbitration Court is technically an arbitration award, Gazprom will need to convert it into a court Judgment before it can enforce it, but that is merely a formality. At that point this debt will become not merely due but legally enforceable as well.
Ukraine recently borrowed $3 billion on the international financial markets at very high interest almost certainly in order to pay the $3 billion the High Court in London has ordered it to pay Russia. Whilst the $2 billion is technically a debt owed by Naftogaz not Ukraine and its non-payment would does not place Ukraine in a state of sovereign default, Gazprom is in a position to enforce the debt against Naftogaz's assets (including gas it buys) in the European Economic Area. It is difficult to see how Naftogaz and Ukraine can avoid payment of this debt.
Has Ukraine actually gained anything from its long running gas dispute with Russia?
Naftogaz brags that Ukraine has saved up to $75 billion because it is no longer buying gas from Russia. However this begs the question of whether the gas Ukraine is now importing from Europe really is significantly cheaper than the gas Ukraine was buying from Russia? This is debatable and with energy prices rising it is likely to become even less likely over time.
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Dec 23, 2017 | rusnewstoday24.ru
As reported by the permanent representative of the International Monetary Fund in the Ukraine, Jost Longman, the Kiev authorities should increase Ukrainian gas tariffs to the level of import parity. Longman argues that an increase in gas prices will have a positive effect on the development of the free market and will teach the Ukrainians to use natural gas economically. "In the end, the final goal is the implementation of a free gas market. On the way to this, it is important to continue to adjust the price of gas in accordance with the price of imports", said Longman. "One price for all types of consumer also eliminates the space for corruptio," he added.
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Dec 23, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Moscow Exile , December 21, 2017 at 8:41 pmCourt stopped supply of gas from Slovakia to Ukraine
22 Dec 2017, 00:56On 20 Dec., a court in Slovakia stopped gas supplies to "Naftogaz of Ukraine". The decision was made pursuant to the decision of the Stockholm arbitration over a claim made by the Italian company IUGas that its Ukrainian consumer owed it money.
The total amount of the claim, including interest and penalties, is approximately $21 million. An arbitration ruling was accepted on 19 December 2012 and relates to unpaid 2007 transactions .
Under international law, if the defendant has not fulfilled the resolution of the arbitration, the plaintiff may apply to the courts of other states with a request that the ruling be executed.
"Naftogaz of Ukraine" is analyzing the situation to determine its next steps, according to the Ukrainian edition "Mirror of the Week".
For 11 months of 2017, "Naftogaz of Ukraine" had bought in Eastern Europe 20.9 billion cubic metres of gas. Most of the supplies -- more than 8 billion cubic metres -- are in Slovakia.
As written in iz.ru, arbitration is under consideration in Stockholm as regards the lawsuit made by "Gazprom" against "Naftogaz", the decision on which will be issued by the court no later than February next year. The adjusted amount of the claims made by the Russian company was more than $ 37 billion.
All this is the Aggressor State's doing!
For the sake of freedom and democracy, the Ukraine must be supported!
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Dec 23, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Moscow Exile , December 22, 2017 at 7:24 am
https://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/5a3d01ed9a79471d28355203Moscow Exile , December 22, 2017 at 7:30 am Moscow Exile , December 22, 2017 at 7:35 amGazprom has responded to Naftogaz's statements about victory in court
The Stockholm arbitration has satisfied most of Gazprom's claims made against Naftogaz Ukraine regarding payment for supplied gas, the company has said in a statement. In Moscow. They stressed that the main demands of the Ukrainian side by the court had been rejected.
The court did not recognize the right of Naftogaz to review the price of gas, the deliveries of which were carried out from May 2011 to April 2014. Also, the Ukrainian side was denied recovery of overpayment. Gazprom noted that the court found it necessary to apply the "take or pay" principle (annual payment of a minimum amount of gas) before the expiry of the contract.
"Naftogaz" has to pay back $2 billion in arrears and interest for late payment to Gazprom. The Ukrainian side is also obliged from next year to take 5 billion cubic metres from Russia annually.
Earlier on Friday, Naftogaz said that the court had awarded the victory to the Ukrainian side. In Kiev, they stressed that Gazprom's "take-or-pay" requirements had been "completely" rejected by the court, and the gas price for the second quarter of 2014 had been lowered to $ 352 per thousand cubic metres.
The court considered contracts for the supply of gas from Russia to the Ukraine, as well as gas transit through the Ukraine. They were signed back in 2009. The Ukraine, insisted "Gazprom", did not get any gas 2012-2014, and also in individual quarters of 2015 and 2016. "Naftogaz" asked the court to review the gas prices, and that overpayment be reimbursed and that the ban on further resale of gas be cancelled.
Kremlin propaganda from a "Kremlin controlled" newspaper?
Reuters reports the Ukrainian "victory", of course:Moscow Exile , December 22, 2017 at 7:43 amUkraine's Naftogaz: court win over Gazprom worth over $75 bln
Reuters:Moscow Exile , December 22, 2017 at 11:23 amBoth Ukraine and Russia claim victory in gas dispute
"Naftogaz won the gas sales arbitration case against Gazprom on all issues in dispute," Naftogaz said in an emailed statement.
It said the ruling was worth around $75 billion to Naftogaz in the long term, but did not give a breakdown on how it reached the estimate. [My stress -- ME]
Meanwhile Gazprom said the court had satisfied most of Gazprom's claims and ruled that the main terms of the contract between Naftogaz and Gazprom were valid.
Gazprom said the Stockholm court had ordered Naftogaz to pay more than $2 billion to Gazprom for gas supply arrears and that it had also ordered Naftogaz to buy 5 bcm of gas from Gazprom annually from 2018.
Estimated $75 billion in the "long term"?
Have to pay $2 billion to Gazprom in arrears now (not mention interest).
From 2018 (i.e. in just over a week's time) have to buy annually 5 bcm of gas off the "aggressor state".
Western media, e.g. Deutsche Welle, is now all singing of a Naftogaz victory.marknesop , December 22, 2017 at 4:50 pmOf course; that's what Klimkin told them. Why should they check? Klimkin is always reliable, and I'm sure he tweeted a press statement directly to them. Let them hold a Naftogaz victory party if that's what they feel like doing. Just don't spend Russia's money on it. Because I notice Ukraine has to pay Russia. I did not see anything in there about Russia having to pay Ukraine. And so Ukraine can have all of that kind of victories it wants.Cortes , December 22, 2017 at 2:01 pmIs the 5 bcm a year for the domestic market? Asking because I thought the cutoff for transit for gas to Europe was 2019.Moscow Exile , December 22, 2017 at 2:55 pmUltimately, the court greatly reduced the amount of gas that Ukraine is contractually obligated to buy from Russia. From 2018, "Naftogaz" should annually take and pay for up to 5 billion cubic metres instead of the original 52 billion cubic metres in any case it means the resumption of gas purchases in Russia, which stopped in 2015, since when "Naftogaz" has been buying all its fuel through reverse flow from Europe.... ... ...
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Dec 23, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al , December 22, 2017 at 2:06 pm
EUObserver.com: Interview: Russia pipeline is investment risk, EU commissioner warns https://euobserver.com/energy/140404Investors should "think twice" about putting money into Nord Stream 2 due to "uncertainties" around the Russian pipeline, the EU energy commissioner told EUobserver.
"I would really think twice, or many more times, simply because there are a lot of uncertainties," Maros Sefcovic said in an interview.
"It's the decision of the project promoters if they want to proceed in this atmosphere which might lead to legal disputes down the line," he said
"Nord Stream 2 is supported by five major western European energy companies that have each committed up to almost €1 billion to the implementation of the pipeline," the consortium's Sebastian Sass said.
"It shows that there is both market demand and great confidence in Nord Stream 2," he added.
Stefan Meister, an expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank in Berlin, also said Russia had little to worry about from the EU.
"In Germany the overall impression is, that the project will come Merkel is not against it. That means she supports it," he said.
Meister said the fact Gazprom was prepared to dig into its own pockets meant "the investment risks are limited". He added that energy companies were used to working "in an even more risky environment" in other parts of the world.
"Except the US sanctions, there are no real risks to stop the project," he said
####Plenty more of Sefcovic blowing hot air out of every orifice at the link. Did someone slip him some cocaine instead of sugar in his coffee before the interview? All mouth and no trousers.
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Dec 16, 2017 | www.unz.com
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) of Saudi Arabia is the undoubted Middle East man of the year, but his great impact stems more from his failures than his successes. He is accused of being Machiavellian in clearing his way to the throne by the elimination of opponents inside and outside the royal family. But, when it comes to Saudi Arabia's position in the world, his miscalculations remind one less of the cunning manoeuvres of Machiavelli and more of the pratfalls of Inspector Clouseau.
Again and again, the impulsive and mercurial young prince has embarked on ventures abroad that achieve the exact opposite of what he intended. When his father became king in early 2015, he gave support to a rebel offensive in Syria that achieved some success but provoked full-scale Russian military intervention, which in turn led to the victory of President Bashar al-Assad. At about the same time, MbS launched Saudi armed intervention, mostly through airstrikes, in the civil war in Yemen. The action was code-named Operation Decisive Storm, but two and a half years later the war is still going on, has killed 10,000 people and brought at least seven million Yemenis close to starvation.
The Crown Prince is focusing Saudi foreign policy on aggressive opposition to Iran and its regional allies, but the effect of his policies has been to increase Iranian influence. The feud with Qatar, in which Saudi Arabia and the UAE play the leading role, led to a blockade being imposed five months ago which is still going on. The offence of the Qataris was to have given support to al-Qaeda type movements – an accusation that was true enough but could be levelled equally at Saudi Arabia – and to having links with Iran. The net result of the anti-Qatari campaign has been to drive the small but fabulously wealthy state further into the Iranian embrace.
Saudi relations with other countries used to be cautious, conservative and aimed at preserving the status quo. But today its behaviour is zany, unpredictable and often counterproductive: witness the bizarre episode in November when the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri was summoned to Riyadh, not allowed to depart and forced to resign his position. The objective of this ill-considered action on the part of Saudi Arabia was apparently to weaken Hezbollah and Iran in Lebanon, but has in practice empowered both of them.
What all these Saudi actions have in common is that they are based on a naïve presumption that "a best-case scenario" will inevitably be achieved. There is no "Plan B" and not much of a "Plan A": Saudi Arabia is simply plugging into conflicts and confrontations it has no idea how to bring to an end.
MbS and his advisers may imagine that it does not matter what Yemenis, Qataris or Lebanese think because President Donald Trump and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and chief Middle East adviser, are firmly in their corner. "I have great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they know exactly what they are doing," tweeted Trump in early November after the round up and confinement of some 200 members of the Saudi elite. "Some of those they are harshly treating have been 'milking' their country for years!" Earlier he had tweeted support for the attempt to isolate Qatar as a supporter of "terrorism".
But Saudi Arabia is learning that support from the White House these days brings fewer advantages than in the past. The attention span of Donald Trump is notoriously short, and his preoccupation is with domestic US politics: his approval does not necessarily mean the approval of other parts of the US government. The State Department and the Pentagon may disapprove of the latest Trump tweet and seek to ignore or circumvent it. Despite his positive tweet, the US did not back the Saudi confrontation with Qatar or the attempt to get Mr Hariri to resign as prime minister of Lebanon.
For its part, the White House is finding out the limitations of Saudi power. MbS was not able to get the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to agree to a US-sponsored peace plan that would have given Israel very much and the Palestinians very little. The idea of a Saudi-Israeli covert alliance against Iran may sound attractive to some Washington think tanks, but does not make much sense on the ground. The assumption that Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the promise to move the US embassy there, would have no long-term effects on attitudes in the Middle East is beginning to look shaky.
It is Saudi Arabia – and not its rivals – that is becoming isolated. The political balance of power in the region changed to its disadvantage over the last two years. Some of this predates the elevation of MbS: by 2015 it was becoming clear that a combination of Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey was failing to carry out regime change in Damascus. This powerful grouping has fragmented, with Turkey and Qatar moving closer to the Russian-backed Iranian-led axis, which is the dominant power in the northern tier of the Middle East between Afghanistan and the Mediterranean.
If the US and Saudi Arabia wanted to do anything about this new alignment, they have left it too late. Other states in the Middle East are coming to recognise that there are winners and losers, and have no wish to be on the losing side. When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called a meeting this week in Istanbul of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, to which 57 Muslim states belong, to reject and condemn the US decision on Jerusalem, Saudi Arabia only sent a junior representative to this normally moribund organisation. But other state leaders like Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, King Abdullah of Jordan and the emirs of Kuwait and Qatar, among many others, were present. They recognised East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital and demanded the US reverse its decision.
MbS is in the tradition of leaders all over the world who show Machiavellian skills in securing power within their own countries. But their success domestically gives them an exaggerated sense of their own capacity in dealing with foreign affairs, and this can have calamitous consequences. Saddam Hussein was very acute in seizing power in Iraq but ruined his country by starting two wars he could not win.
Mistakes made by powerful leaders are often explained by their own egomania and ignorance, supplemented by flattering but misleading advice from their senior lieutenants. The first steps in foreign intervention are often alluring because a leader can present himself as a national standard bearer, justifying his monopoly of power at home. Such a patriotic posture is a shortcut to popularity, but there is always a political bill to pay if confrontations and wars end in frustration and defeat. MbS has unwisely decided that Saudi Arabia should play a more active and aggressive role at the very moment that its real political and economic strength is ebbing. He is overplaying his hand and making too many enemies.
Svigor , December 16, 2017 at 6:24 am GMTThe only hope someone as cloistered as a Saudi crown prince can have of being an effective ruler is either by being an extraordinary person (very curious, love learning for its own sake, etc), or be at least moderately intelligent, and listen to consensus.Avery , December 16, 2017 at 6:28 am GMTFor its part, the White House is finding out the limitations of Saudi power. MbS was not able to get the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to agree to a US-sponsored peace plan that would have given Israel very much and the Palestinians very little.
Lies and Jew-hatred. Everyone knows that despite their infamous sharpness in business dealings, the world's longest history of legalism, a completely self-centered and ethnocentric culture, and their longstanding abuse of the Palestinians, every single deal the Jews try to sign with the Palestinians heavily favors the Palestinians, and the only reason the Palestinians won't sign is because they're psychotic Jew-haters.
The idea of a Saudi-Israeli covert alliance against Iran may sound attractive to some Washington think tanks, but does not make much sense on the ground. The assumption that Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the promise to move the US embassy there, would have no long-term effects on attitudes in the Middle East is beginning to look shaky.
Hey, you skipped the part where you did anything to support the idea that a Zionist-Saudi alliance doesn't make sense.
K, let's all wait for Art Deco to come in and spew some Hasbara then tell us he's not a Zhid.
{Mohammed Bin Salman's Ill-Advised Ventures Have Weakened Saudi Arabia}Tammy , December 16, 2017 at 9:51 am GMTGREAT news. Hopefully the evil, cannibalistic terrorism spreading so-called 'kingdom' of desert nomads will continue on its path of self destruction, and disappear as a functioning state.
Once more a Saudi Firster was detained in KSA. This time the owner of Arab Bank, a Jordanian with dual Jordan and KSA citizenship. Saad Hariri a Lebanese was the first one who was dual Lebanon and KSA citizens and who lost his diplomatic immunity in KSA.Jake , December 16, 2017 at 12:31 pm GMTI wonder if the Israel Firster who are dual citizens are now sweating? Wonder, if Netanyahu is still an USA citizen? Happy days are coming back .
"Saudi relations with other countries used to be cautious, conservative and aimed at preserving the status quo. But today its behaviour is zany, unpredictable and often counterproductive:"cbrown , December 16, 2017 at 1:07 pm GMTSaudis allied with Israelis, backed by the wealth and might of the US? Guaranteed to bring out the worst in Saudis (which is bad enough at base) and Israelis and Americans.
Machiavellian skills really ? I'd see 6 months ahead if this was true. MBS just made a show that they are a de facto Mafia not a businessman to the whole world. I'd bet he just quashed a lot of efforts and money spent on raising the racing horses of the saud monarch and in turn destroyed some serious connection that were vital but aren't readily available to them. Just how potent money they thought it would be ? Sure all is businesses and it will work so long you can pay the right person. The problem is where to find the right person.Joe Hide , December 16, 2017 at 1:53 pm GMTCome on Cockburn, look at the Big Picture, not the little one. This the old fallacy of looking at the trees and not seeing the forest. What is happening in Saudi Arabia is a piece of the much bigger puzzle being put together over years, decades, and maybe generations.EliteCommInc. , December 16, 2017 at 2:25 pm GMTThe psychopaths at the top of the power pyramid have been engaged in this hidden global game for generations, it's always been part of their longterm strategy.
Very recently Highly intelligent, realistic, morally and ethically centered, and practically oriented individuals, have also formed secret powerful groups to arrive at beneficial goals for humanity. These truly Good Guys have learned that the criminal, murderous, lecherous, degenerate, deviate, psychopaths in positions of great power are irredeemable and should be eliminated where possible. What you see in Saudi Arabia is merely a tree, not the forest. Just the same, to the author, keep writing but research the subject much much more before you put pen to paper, as you do have apersuasive and talented style.
I am going to come to the defence here.DESERT FOX , December 16, 2017 at 2:39 pm GMT1. We have been screaming about the unintended consequences of Saudi giving to charities since 2004.
2. We removed the buffer of Iraq from Iranian ambitions (as unclear as it may be debated) creating issues not only for Saudi Arabia, but others in the region as well.
3. We are the ones who have been fomenting destabilization all throughout the region some of whom would have been allies of the Saudis in some common cause.
4. No one is escaping the negative consequences of our Iraq invasion.
5. We have been complaining about rogue and irresponsible wealthy Muslims ad naseum.
Now when someone steps up the plate to meet the challenges many caused by the US – our first complaint is not astute counsel but rather a series of articles highlighting failure. I would not contend that I support every choice. But I think we should at least take a wait and see perspective. He is operating in a region rife with intrigue and ambitions, not to mention -- Muslims bent on spreading Islam as one would expect a muslim to do. Frankly I am not sure how one governs in the arena of the middle east – especially now – it's a region in major shift.
I think there are more effective choices concerning Yemen and Qatar. But figuring out what the choices are is not going to be easy. And harder still perhaps is implementing them. As for backfire -- we are just not in a position to judge, at the moment. Anyone hoping that another major state collapses in that region is probably miscalculating the value of instability.
The Saudis are the U.S. and ISISRAELS puppet, they do what the Zionist neocons tell them to do, which is to be the Zionist agent provocateur in the Mideast.Anon , Disclaimer December 16, 2017 at 4:55 pm GMTThe Saudis have helped the U.S. and ISISRAEL create and finance ISIS aka AL CIADA and for this the Saudis can rot in hell, and by the way the reason for the attack on Yemen is that the Saudis oil reserves are diminishing and so the Saudis figured they would take Yemens oil.
The main creators of ISIS aka AL CIADA are the U.S. and ISISRAEL and BRITAIN ie the CIA and the MOSSAD and MI6.
The irony is that Saudis, before MbS and during his dominance, are making exactly the same suicidal blunders as the US. No enemy could have damaged the US and its positions in the world more than its Presidents and the Congress in the last 17 years. The same is true for KSA, with the same mistakes being made: undermining the financial system of the country, global over-reach that forces all opposition to unite, crazy military expenses, etc.Art , December 16, 2017 at 5:57 pm GMTSorry, but these people dressed in 14 century robes and garb, cannot be taken seriously. They look like play-people feigning a furious grandeur. Without their petrochemicals – they would be laughed at by everyone – including their own kind. They should not be respected because they are religious – they are old world tribalist thugs hiding behind a religion. They use and abuse their people – holding them back from modernity.Anon , Disclaimer December 16, 2017 at 6:17 pm GMTThink Peace -- Art
@Z-manneutral , December 16, 2017 at 6:31 pm GMTThing is, Saudi regime was rotten through and through before MbS, remains rotten under his rule, and will remain rotten when some other jerk kicks him out and establishes himself at the helm.
It does not matter how smart Saudi Arabia is with their foreign policy now, they became allies with Israel, that means Saudi Arabia can never claim to be a power working for the interests of Islam. MBS is a marked man, no matter how many purges he undertakes in his army, or even if he just hires Pakistani soldiers, if he has Muslims fighting in his army he will always be carrying the risk of being assassinated by somebody who has seen him cross the red line and become pro jewish.Svigor , December 16, 2017 at 6:51 pm GMTI don't really understand the constant hopes that the Saudi regime will fall. How is that any different from cheering Bush's disastrous regime change in Iraq? How will the fallout be any better in Arabia than it was in Iraq, Libya, etc?cbrown , December 16, 2017 at 7:43 pm GMT@Svigorneutral , December 16, 2017 at 8:14 pm GMTIt's not that there's a constant hope it's just they'd fall in the near future and fortunately it will balance the geopolitical power in the future. Their fallout aren't going to be as bad unless the people pulling their string persistent in keeping them in power.
@Svigorsomeone , December 17, 2017 at 12:14 am GMTIt will be better because it means Israel loses an ally, also with the Saudis gone Egypt will also be unable to keep their population in check. The fall of the Saudis means that Israel will be surrounded by regimes that oppose it...
Another Junior Gaddafi that is going to ruin his entire nation while intoxicated with NYT or other Western media coverage. He talks of corruption after spending 1.1 Billion dollars on a yacht and a painting.anon , Disclaimer December 17, 2017 at 12:33 am GMT
Netenyahu is much the same. He has weakened Israel immensely by playing the scary wolf.@neutralSouth Africa was never in danger from their hostile neighbors . They committed suicide. Egypt cannot control its own territory let alone start wars , ditto for Syria and Lebanon. Jordan is a client state of Israel and lacks a functioning army. ...
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Dec 09, 2017 | www.jpost.com
Simultaneously, it has managed to develop fairly profitable, albeit at times tense relationships with other major or rising world powers. Those include Russia, China and Turkey. At the same time it is engaging a large number of European countries, South Korea, India, and others in assorted trade agreements. Iran has managed to place itself front and center – not only as a bad actor bent on colonization of the "Shi'a Crescent" and possibly beyond – it has also gained increasing political and economic legitimacy among its former adversaries.
Iran has even managed to get the United States under the Trump administration to wage limited war against ISIS, first in Iraq and Syria and to a lesser extent in Afghanistan, despite conflicts and occasional confrontations between US forces and the terrorist group's own militias. While Iran's various financial deals are to some extent being tracked, what remains noteworthy is the issue of energy control in the region, a factor that fuels the numerous conflicts, or at least finances them.
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The US has miscalculated by believing other countries are incapable of pursuing independent interests without its involvement, or by thinking such nations cannot use energy markets effectively to marginalize any state that is not already in an active leadership position. The US should take stock of the way the energy assets are being played by various states. It should either separate the authoritarian regimes which only grow stronger with the greater access and interconnections such valuable assets provide, or by outplaying those states at their own game.
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Dec 08, 2017 | www.rt.com
Russia has opened a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in the country's northern region of Yamal. The first tanker with LNG was launched on Friday by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The ice-breaking tanker is named after the former CEO of Total Christophe de Margerie who died in a plane crash in Russia. The tanker can carry up to 173,000 cubic meters of LNG. Russia plans to build 15 tankers as big as the 'Christophe de Margerie'.
"Russia must accelerate work on development capacity to produce liquefied natural gas," Putin said at the ceremony.
The controlling stake in the enterprise belongs to Russian energy major Novatek. Twenty percent each is owned by Total, and China's CNPC, and the remaining 9.9 percent belongs to the China-based Silk Road Fund. Costing $27 billion, the plant will have three production lines and a total capacity of 16.5 million tons of LNG per year.
Almost 96 percent of the Yamal LNG plant's production has already been contracted. The main customers will be the countries of the Asia-Pacific region, Novatek reported. Shareholders of the Novatek project - Total and CNPC - will purchase LNG on a long-term basis.
The ceremony was also attended by a member of Saudi Aramco's board of directors. The kingdom is considering taking part in Novatek's new project, Arctic LNG 2, according to Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak.
Read more Russian LNG unfazed by US sanctions
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Dec 03, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
11/29/2017 Notice: Please limit your comments below to the subject matter of this post only. There is a petroleum post above this one for all petroleum and natural gas posts and a non-petroleum post below this one for comments on all other matters.
First, let us define carrying capacity and overshoot. And none has done that better than Paul Chefurka .
Carrying Capacity : Carrying capacity is a well-known ecological term that has an obvious and fairly intuitive meaning: "the maximum population size of a species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment". Unfortunately, that definition becomes more nebulous the closer you look at it – especially when we start talking about the planetary carrying capacity for humans. Ecologists claim that our numbers have already surpassed the carrying capacity of the planet, while others (notably economists and politicians ) claim we are nowhere near it yet!
Overshoot : When a population surpasses its carrying capacity it enters a condition known as overshoot. Because carrying capacity is defined as the maximum population that an environment can maintain indefinitely, overshoot must by definition be temporary. Populations always decline to (or below) the carrying capacity. How long they stay in overshoot depends on how many stored resources there are to support their inflated numbers. Resources may be food, but they may also be any resource that helps maintain their numbers. For humans one of the primary resources is energy, whether it is tapped as flows (sunlight, wind, biomass) or stocks (coal, oil, gas, uranium etc.). A species usually enters overshoot when it taps a particularly rich but exhaustible stock of a resource. Like oil, for instance
When we talk about carrying capacity we need to define exactly who or what we are carrying. Are we talking about humans, all animals or what? Well, let's just talk about terrestrial vertebrate biomass.
Okay, Vaclav Smil and Paul Chefurka (and the estimates of most earth biologists) are correct, the long-term carrying capacity of terrestrial vertebrate biomass is a little over 200,000,000 tons. But how do we know that amount is correct? Easily, because that is what it was for millions of years before the advent of agriculture and other things brought about by modern day Homo sapiens.
Plant and animal species all struggle to survive. In doing so they have evolved to fill every available niche on earth. If a plant can grow in an area, any area, it will do so. If an animal can find a habitat in any area on earth, it will do so. At least since the mid-Triassic, about 225 million years ago, plants and animals have occupied every available niche on earth. If any animal overshot its habitat, dieoff would soon correct that situation. So for many millions of years, the terrestrial vertebrate biomass remained at about two hundred million tons, give or take. I say that because climate change, sea levels rising and falling, continental drift would cause the long-term carrying capacity to wax or wane. Also, the estimate is just that, an estimate. It could be slightly higher or lower. But the long-term carrying capacity of the earth always remained at one hundred percent of what it was possible to carry.
Then about 10,000 years ago man invented agriculture. At first, this only enabled a slight increase in population. Soon only plants that produced the most grain, fruit or tuber per plant, or per area of ground, was selected for replanting. Genetic engineering goes back thousands of years.
Then they discovered fertilizer. Animal and human waste could greatly increase plant production. Animals were domesticated and the plow was invented. More food per area of ground could be produced. Then chemical fertilizers were invented and the population floodgates were opened. At first phosphates from bird guano dramatically increased agricultural production but around the middle of the last century nitrate fertilizers from the Haber Bosch process enabled the green revolution and enabled the population to expand three fold.
It's mostly cows, then humans, then pigs then chickens then Interesting that the biomass of chickens is ovwe three times that of all the wild animals combined. If this chart does not shock you then you are totally unable to be shocked by anything concerning the earth's biosphere.
The world population is still expanding at an alarming rate. By 1989 the population was expanding by about 88 million people per year. Then by the year 2000 population growth had slowed to about 77 million per year. Then the slowdown stopped and started to increase again. it stands at about 79 million per year according to the US Census Bureau.
Now they are saying it will start to slow. But that slowdown has not yet started. True, the fertility rate has been dropping but that has been offset by the increase in population. The fertility rate is dropping but on more and more people.
Notice the U.S. Census Bureau starts the slowdown at almost the exact date this chart was drawn, August 2017. If they had drawn this chart in 1995, then no doubt they would have started their prediction of constant decline in 1995.
But I have no doubt that the population will start to decline. It must, it must because we are destroying the ability of the planet to feed all its people.
Paul Chefurka created the above graph in May 2011. I think he was a little off. He has the world population hitting almost 8 billion then starting to drop around 2030.
I am more inclined to agree with the U.S. Census Bureau who thinks the world population will hit 9.4 billion around 2050. Then I believe the population will start to fall. The rate of population decline and how far it will fall is hard to predict. That will depend on many things but primarily on if and when globalization collapses. The collapse of globalization will bring about civil strife, border wars, and famine around the world.
I want to call your attention to the green, wild animal, portion of the second graph at the top of this post. Notice the wild animal portion of the terrestrial vertebrate biomass, by 1900, had dropped to about 20% of its historical value. Then by 2000, it had dropped to half that amount. Then by 2050, we expect that 2000 value to be cut in half again.
By 2100, it will very likely all be gone. Well, almost all gone. There will still be plenty of rats and mice and perhaps a few other small vertebrates will still survive, but all the large megafauna, except humans, will be gone. Gone forever or at least for the next million years or so. It will take that long for new megafauna to evolve after the human population has been greatly reduced to a billion or even a few million people.
But the far distant future is of little concern to us now. The sad fact of the matter is your descendants will live in a world completely free of wild megafauna. There is no way to avoid that fact now, it is already too late to stop the destruction.
WHY?
Yes, why? Why are we destroying the earth's ecosystem? Why are we driving most all wild animals into extinction? Why have we dramatically overpopulated the planet with human beings? Why did all this happen? However, when you ask why, you are implying that all this had a cause, that someone or some group of people are to blame for this damn mess we have gotten ourselves into.
Was it the early farmers who invented agriculture. Or was it the early industrialists like James Watt or Thomas Edison? Or was it Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, are they the villains that got us into such a damn mess? No, it was none of these people. It was no one person or no group of people. It was not even any revolution like the industrial revolution, the medical revolution or the green revolution. There is no one to blame and there is nothing to blame.
Agriculture enabled the very small early population to expand. The industrial revolution and later the green revolution enabled more people to be fed. The medical revolution enabled more babies to survive and people to live much longer. Our population has exploded simply because it could. We have always lived to the limit of our existence and we always will. It was just human nature pure and simple.
Now many will say that we are now controlling our population, that we have learned how to limit our fertility rate. Well, yes and no. Reference the below chart and table that were produced by the Population Reference Bureau in 2012.
In the developed world, where most of the world's energy is consumed, we almost have zero population growth. But in the less developed world, the population is still growing.
Here is the perfect example of what is happening, what is still happening , in much of the world. Notice the difference in the infant mortality rate and the annual infant deaths. Most of the world's people are still living at the very limit of their existence.
<sarc>But not to worry. The death rate is rising, babies are dying, the population will soon start to fall in the undeveloped world. </sarc>
Note: The Paul Chefurka graphs in this post were created, primarily, with data from the research of Vaclav Smil and is published in this 24 page PDF file: Harvesting the Biosphere: The Human Impact . The file includes over 2 pages of notes and 4 pages of references where Smil sources and documents every stat he quotes. Below are a table and some text from the paper.
The zoomass of wild vertebrates is now vanishingly small compared to the biomass of domestic animals. In 1900 there were some 1.6 billion large domesticated animals, including about 450 million head of cattle and water buffalo (HYDE 2011); a century later the count of large domestic animals had surpassed 4.3 billion, including 1.65 billion head of cattle and water buffalo and 900 million pigs (FAO 2011). Calculations using these head counts and average body weights (they have increased everywhere since 1900, but the differences between larger body masses in North America and Europe and lower weights elsewhere persist) yield estimates of at least 35 Mt C of domesticated zoomass in 1900 (more than three times the total of all wild land mammals) and at least 120 Mt C in the year 2000, a 3.5-fold increase in 100 years (and 25 times the total of wild mammalian zoomass). And cattle zoomass alone is now at least 250 times greater than the zoomass of all surviving African elephants, which in turn is less than 2 percent of the zoomass of Africa's nearly 300 million bovines (Table 2).
Please comment below but only on the subject matter of this post.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged Megafauna Extinction , Overpopulation , Overshoot , Peak Oil , Population Explosion , Species Extinction . Bookmark the permalink . 295 Responses to Carrying Capacity, Overshoot and Species Extinction
George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 8:23 am
Great summary. Mainly so I don't have to think about all the depressing aspects: do you not think if humans disappeared but even a few of our larger domesticated animals survived that evolution could go bonkers and we'd have new familes and species springing up all over in far less than a million years. After all homo sapiens are only a few hundred thousand years, and dogs (admittedly still technically wolves) only a few thousand. It would depend a bit whether we left much of the planet that was actually habitable of course – i.e. there'd need to be plenty of evolution pressure, but not too much. I guess your point would be we'd get new species but not the mega fauna, but I think there's evidence that isolated small islands can lead to either pygmy species or giants depending on the exact environment.Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 9:28 amGeorge, I would have to start by saying that humans are not going to disappear. Other than extinction via natural disaster, like a giant meteorite hitting the earth, species are driven into extinction. That is they are outcompeted for territory and resources. Humans are the drivers of extinction, no species will drive us into extinction. We occupy every habitable niche on earth and will likely continue to do so even after our numbers have been dramatically reduced.The Cunning Linguist says: 11/29/2017 at 10:18 amIf we have a collapse of globalization, and I believe that is inevitable and will happen within the next one hundred years, then the human population will be devastated by civil strife, border wars, and famine. Seven to nine billion hungry people will be a disaster for all other animal life, domestic as well as wild. So I do not believe there will be enough domestic animal life to kick-start evolution of new wild species of megafauna. As I have said before, we will eat the songbirds out of the trees. So there sure as hell will not be any cows left.
Okay, so perhaps it will not take a million years for other large megafauna to evolve. Perhaps it will only be in the hundreds of thousands of years.
So, after we eat the songbirds from the trees, what the hell will we eat then?Ghung says: 11/29/2017 at 10:44 amIs it not possible that the human species will drive itself to extinction because we are so successful at destroying the natural environment which we depend upon for our survival?
After industrial civilization collapses, the great human die-off will rapidly reduce human numbers by more than 90%. Life for the remaining humans will be extraordinarily hard. If the overall stress level is high enough, it will be very difficult for humans to raise enough offspring to reproductive age to maintain the species over time. Biologists call this pre-extinction phase die out. Once a species numbers fall below replacement level, they go extinct.
And what the hell do you mean: "If we have a collapse of globalization, and I believe that is inevitable and will happen within the next one hundred years "? Within the next 100 years? You are dreaming! We are in the early stages of apocalypse right now! Rapid die-off will begin within the next few years. 100 years from now, there will be no one alive who will remember it.
Cunning said; "After industrial civilization collapses, the great human die-off will rapidly reduce human numbers by more than 90%." ..Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 10:59 am..while what is left of nature will rapidly move into the niches vacated by species humans have wiped out. If (big if, maybe) there are remaining reproductively viable human populations, they will exploit those recovering niches at rates which will be far below the astounding rates of exploitation during the industrial age. Where humans have abandoned their schemes of destroying the natural world for their own purposes, nature, in some form, recovers quite quickly.
On the other hand, if global warming goes off the scale (ala Guy McPherson, et al), all bets are off. Everything larger than a shrew will be toast.
Once a species numbers fall below replacement level, they go extinct.The Cunning Linguist says: 11/29/2017 at 12:01 pmThe replacement level for animals in the wild and the replacement level for domestic animals are two different things entirely. For animals in the wild, the replacement level may be several hundred to several thousand. Animals in the wild have to find each other in order to reproduce. For domestic animals, the replacement level is two.
In this regard, we Homo sapiens are far more like domestic animals than wild animals. An example would be the Polynesians who migrated to distant islands in sailing outrigger canoes. Their numbers, in those canoes, likely numbered only a dozen or so. Yet huge numbers eventually sprang from tiny numbers.
Yes, stress during periods of great strife and famine will be great. Stress will likely take a great toll. But there will always be survivors. Everyone is not equally affected by stress. Some can overcome, some cannot. It is a little like a plague or disease. There are always some who are immune or otherwise escape the problem.
As for rapid die-off coming within a few years, yes that may happen but I doubt it. Humans societies are far more resilient than you might expect. For instance, look at Somalia, or Venezuela. Somalia, a failed state, has been in turmoil for decades yet no massive die-off has occurred. Venezuela is in a state of almost total anarchy, yet no massive die-off as of yet.
I believe the die-off will start within the next hundred years. Next week is within the next hundred years. But I doubt it will happen by then, or even within the next few years or so. In my opinion, it will take several decades for things to really fall apart.
Ron,Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 12:27 pmYou said:
"But I doubt it will happen by then, or even within the next few years or so. In my opinion, it will take several decades for things to really fall apart."What about Limits to Growth? That study forecast that real problems would begin in the first or second decade of the 21st century, in other words, now. Why is Limits to Growth wrong? How do we avoid sudden, catastrophic collapse once world economic growth comes to an end?
What about the fragile, debt ridden financial/credit/monetary system? Have you read the Korowicz paper? How will industrial civilization gradually unwind over many decades when the world economy freezes very suddenly and food stops arriving at the grocery stores? That should lead to a very rapid die-off as every city suddenly becomes uninhabitable.
What about Limits to Growth? That study forecast that real problems would begin in the first or second decade of the 21st century, in other words, now. Why is Limits to Growth wrong?Ghung says: 11/29/2017 at 12:37 pmHey, I have a copy of Limits to Growth right here in my hand. On what page do they predict catastrophic collapse before 2050. Help me out here but I just can't seem to find it.
As to real problems, hell yes, we are having real problems right now. We have been having real problems in Venezuela and a lot of other places. But there is a tremendous difference between real problems and catastrophic collapse.
And what about all the other terrible things you are say are happening right now. Hell yes, they are happening and they are terrible. But they have not yet led to catastrophic collapse. But it is very likely they will lead to collapse in three or four decades from now.
The LTG graphs appear to show economic and industrial peaks @2025-2030, if not sooner, dropping off quickly.Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 12:59 pmGhung, what page is this on?Ghung says: 11/29/2017 at 1:17 pmIt's actually from a Guardian article, taken from Bardi's "The Limits to Growth Revisited". I don't know what page the original graph was on, but I have a copy of the original 1972 graph which shows the same curves, without the more recent data curves.George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 1:17 pmGuardian article "Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse" :
Ron – that graph is from the Graham Turner LtG update: http://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdfRon Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 1:32 pmShit? Is this real? I had no idea that we might be this close to collapse.George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 1:43 pmNevertheless, I just can't believe we are that close. I think it will be at least 20 to 30 years from now.
It depends on what you call collapse. The UK and USA are both following the curve such that life expectancy is starting to decline. I think industrial productivity might be going the same way in UK, and definitely our health and old age care systems (which is one of the measures he uses for "services") are in decline (though the government always finds a way to massage the numbers so far). One of the authors of LtG has said that once one of the main curves is definitely through an extrema then the models probably don't work any more – which I took to mean possible accelerating chaos, but might mean something else.Hightrekker says: 11/29/2017 at 7:37 pmShit? Is this real? I had no idea that we might be this close to collapse.Alice Friedemann says: 11/29/2017 at 8:02 pmYep -- -
Population overshoot, ecocide, environmental destruction, deforestation, ocean acidification, mass loss of pollinators–
I could go on --It doesn't take a weather man to tell which way the wind blows.
This a unique, one-time only collapse because we never relied on fossil fuels in the past, and we certainly won't in the future. If you look at energyskeptic/3) Fast Crash, you'll see the many reasons I think collapse will unfold quickly. Turchin, who has looked at the patterns of collapse in civilizations going back to Mesopotamia, says it takes about 20 years on average. That is in line with Hook's estimate of a 6% exponential decline, which is the rate at which the 500 giant oil fields decline on average after peaking (something like 270 of them last I checked), all others (offshore, shale, smaller, and so on) decline much faster, hence Hooks estimate of an exponential increase of .0015 a year as non-giants increasingly contribute to what's left of production (giants are now 60% of world oil production). If Hook (2009) is right, that means we'll be down to 10% of what we produce after global peak production in 16 years. At that point, even if governments are rationing oil wisely to grow and distribute food, you're reaching the breaking point. Oil makes all other resources possible, so although many resources reaching their limits, the decline of oil will be the true beginning of the end. No more pumping water from the Ogallala 1,000 feet down, going 10,000 miles on factory farm fishing boats, and so on. Oil is masking how incredibly far we are over overshoot. Above all, 99% of the supply chain transport – trucks, rail, ships – depends on oil. 80% of communities in the U.S. depend entirely on oil, by far the least efficient mode of transportation of the three. Well, it is too big a topic to cover in a comment. I have a lot more to say in my book "When Trucks Stop Running".OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 7:14 amOh, and when I heard Dennis Meadows speak at the 2006 Pisa Italy ASPO conference, he said that if anything Limits to growth was head of schedule, with collapse starting as early as 2020. We'll see, too many factors. Also in the past, nations avoided collapse way past their carrying capacity by trading or conquering other nations, like the Roman Empire, which had to import food from Carthage and Egypt, no way to grow enough food in Italy.
Hook, M., Hirsch, R., Aleklett, K. June 2009. Giant oil field decline rates and their influence on world oil production. Energy Policy 37(6): 2262-2272
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:225443/FULLTEXT01.pdfHi Alice,Survivalist says: 12/02/2017 at 8:22 pmI'm hoping to see more comments from you in the future, and not just in this one thread, lol.
It's very common for experts in any given field to presume there are none in other fields that are capable of solving the problems they see as civilization killers.
There are no guarantees of success, but success is possible when it comes to finding and implementing solutions to problems such as the eventual depletion of oil.
Once the shit starts hitting the fan pretty hard and fast in terms of declining oil supplies, both good and bad things will happen on a scale that will take the breath away.
The bad will unquestionably include economic collapse across large swathes of some and maybe most societies.
The good will come in the form of action on the part of awakened LEVIATHAN, the nation state. Those of us who cannot see that once LEVIATHAN stirs and focuses on such problems as we FORCED to deal with soon have little understanding of history , human nature, and technology.
Now WHETHER , or NOT, Leviathan, Uncle Sam, John BULL, the Russian BEAR, et al, can do enough to keep the wheels on and turning, instead of falling off, is an open question.
I believe they can, depending on how far gone things are once they begin to come to grips with the various troubles that will threaten their existence.
People CAN AND DO come together, and work together, sometimes. Consider the case of the USA. We were mostly all isolationists the day before Pearl Harbor, but within a couple of days after, we were all ready to to go flat out to murder our enemies on the grand scale, and DID.
Neither I nor anybody else can prove either way whether we WILL work together well enough to prevent outright collapse meaning we die hard deaths by the tens of millions even here in a country such as the USA.
There's no question that we CAN work together, once we realize we must. Whether we get started soon enough is probably going to determine just how bad things will get in economic terms.
But between what scientists and engineers can do for us, by way of providing us with better tools, and what we can collectively do for ourselves by way of collective action, there's a real possibility that some countries will pull thru ok, no longer sleek and lazy and fat and wasteful, but at least still functional, and with most of their populations still alive and leading a reasonably dignified life style.
I will have more to say about what Leviathan awakened, scared and enraged can do later on, way down thread someplace within the next few days, by relating some historical examples.
I too feel that one day the trucks will stop running. It will be a very interesting transition to observe. I imagine it will have a progression that goes something like this:George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 12:57 pm
-trucks running will increase in cost as will the things that they are running about with inside them.
– trucks will run to less and less places.
-trucks will run to less and less places less frequently.
-trucks will run only very rarely and only for high priority reasons.
-trucks will stop running altogether.As this process takes place I imagine there will be measures taken to fill some of the void, where and when it is possible to do so.
Ron – do you think humans will still be around in a million years or even a hundred thousand? If they are I think it will only be because they have made themselves irrelevant to the environment (i.e. small in numbers and having found a way to live sustainably) and other species will be evolving without too much human involvement.Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 1:59 pmYes, George, I think humans will be around in a million years. Not nearly as many as are around today however. If I had to guess, and I do have to guess, then I would guess around 10 to 15 million humans would be around a million years from now. That would be one person alive then for every 500 alive today.George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 2:26 pmOf course, all fossil fuel would be gone and everyone would live off the land.
But if you doubt human survival, then just what do you think will wipe everyone out? What will bring the human population to zero?
That sounds as good a guess as any. Part of my point was that they could only survive if they were not intrusive, and therefore would not be an impediment to evolution of other mega fauna. I think average species life time is estimated at around 1 to 2 million years, homo is a family rather than a species so the sapiens could go and something else come along, like we took out the Neanderthals. On the other hand if the bottlenecks get small enough in different locations we could just be whittled away by different causes.Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 2:52 pmI think average species life time is estimated at around 1 to 2 million years,George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 2:59 pmThe point is George, Homo sapiens is not an average species. If we were an average species we would still be competing with other species for food and territory, losing some of those battles and winning others. But our numbers would be kept in check by our success and failure of that struggle, just like every other average species.
Our dominance has overwhelmed all other species. Like a plague, we are killing them all off. There is nothing average about us as a species.
Ok, but our numbers were kept in check and we were competing like that for almost all of our history, until the Holocene interglacial came along and we decided agriculture was a good idea, or maybe we had a go before and it never took in a less stable climate. But before that there is evidence of some pretty tight bottlenecks when we were almost gone either locally (e.g. in India) or globally. And things like the Roman empire collapse suggest we can forget any kind of technological advantages in a couple of generations.Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 3:11 pmYou lost me. I don't understand your point.George Kaplan says: 11/30/2017 at 11:23 amBut since our brains to a degree where we could create stone tools and use fire, our population has been on a slow increase, bottlenecks notwithstanding.
What has made us not average is our brains, our mental ability. That is the one thing that has given us a huge advantage over all other species.
We are smart enough to wrestle all the world from every other species that stood in our way. If another species had something that we wanted, including even their flesh, we got it. We are smart enough to dominate the world, but not smart enough to see that we are destroying it.
My point is that unless we find a niche in which we can exist sustainably despite our intelligence and ability to get whatever we want and dominate the world, then we won't survive very long, and may not even then.Dennis Coyne says: 11/30/2017 at 12:31 pmHi Ron,Des Carne says: 11/30/2017 at 1:02 pmI think some (you for example) are smart enough to see that we are destroying our World.
It may not be a majority view, though I think the numbers are increasing.
I would agree that we so far have not demonstrated that we are smart enough to change what we are doing (reduce the rate that we destroy the planet as rapidly as possible to zero (or negative, by which I mean restore the planet closer to a natural or sustainable state).
This may never be accomplished, but we cam move in that direction while reducing our numbers and our impact.
What it is about our brains that makes us not average is our capacity to deny reality. The mind over reality transition (Varki &Brower) is arguably what gave "sapiens" the advantage, successful but apparently impossible risk taking, to do away with neanderthalensis. In small scale hunter bands surrounded by magafaunal predators, denial of reality is a decided advantage, but in mass societies with the capacity to produce mass belief in non-realityy, it is the disadvantage that could do us in. Although not experimentally demonstrable, the idea that this mind over reality transition was an evolutionary event in the hominid genus 100-200 thousand years ago is a plausible explanation for sapiens' dramatic cortical development and the development or consolidation of female sexual selection, not present in our forebears or current great apes.OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 7:26 amIn a future world scratching a living as we did for most of our history as hunter-gatherer bands, but from a depleted world absent of any predators, we might evolve the ability to believe reality, without sacrificing cortical development. The first inhabitants of my country (Australia) managed to get by fot 60,000 years by killing off the megafauna. They were helped by climate change which dessicated the continent, but hung in there making it an extremely attractive aquisition by my ancestors when they came along.
Hi Ron,Ron Patterson says: 11/30/2017 at 7:38 amIn broad terms, I agree with what you are saying here.
"Our dominance has overwhelmed all other species. Like a plague, we are killing them all off. There is nothing average about us as a species."
But we aren't doing any better than rats or fire ants, lol.
You're dead on about humanity not being an average species. We will be around at least until some other species capable of wiping us out evolves, and it's unlikely that we will ALLOW such a species to exist, unless it's a microbe and we can't wipe it out.
If chimps were to evolve just a little further along the lines of using tools and being able to communicate and work together, and started attacking humans, numerous humans armed only with primitive weapons such as fire and bows and arrows would kill every last chimp, and they wouldn't lose any time in doing so.
This brings up an interesting question. We know chimps use stone tools as hammers to break nuts, etc, , and that they fight ORGANIZED fights to the death sometimes.
Is there any evidence they are using stones as weapons . YET?
No, chimps do not use stones as weapons but they do use sticks to flail another chimp with.Survivalist says: 12/02/2017 at 8:27 pmChimps will not evolve much further if any. Their numbers are dropping like a rock. They will all be gone in 20 or 30 years.
I once heard an interesting story about chimps. Might have been in one of Pinker's books, I can't recall.Dennis Coyne says: 11/30/2017 at 12:46 pmIf you hang a bunch of bananas from the ceiling that a chimp cannot reach and you leave an A-frame ladder laying on the ground the chimp will set the ladder upright and get the bananas.
If you do the same thing with 2 chimps and a ladder so heavy that one chimp alone cannot set it upright, but 2 chimps working together could set it upright, they'll never get on the same page, so to speak, and cooperate in setting up the ladder. They will both try individually and fail. The bananas will never be reached.Hi Ron,Fred Magyar says: 11/29/2017 at 3:47 pmThe charts in your post suggest about 1 billion might work, I would say 500 million would be my guess, not sure where you come up with 10 to 15 million.
Note that 500 million is roughly the World population in 1550 CE.
Just a different guess as I think a sustainable society could be reached by 2300 at these lower population levels, though perhaps fertility levels will remain below replacement over the long term so population will continually decline eventually some optimum will be determined and fewer than two children will not be encouraged.
Humans, that is Homo Sapiens per se, maybe not. Don't forget Cro-Magnons probably caused the extinction of Homo Neandertalis in about 40,000 years or so ago. Some other future species of the Genus Homo, very likely will be around for another million or so years. This is what I think they might look like. Maybe they will be called Homo technoligicus implantabilis, feel free to call them whatever you want. In any case resistance will be futile and you will be assimilated.robert wilson says: 12/01/2017 at 12:23 am
Cheers!
.
http://www.eindtijdinbeeld.nl/EiB-Bibliotheek/Boeken/The_Next_Million_Years__how_to_kill_off_excess_population___1953_.pdfNathanael says: 11/29/2017 at 4:18 pmFirst of all, Ron, a species which destroys its own food supply or its own habitat *does* go extinct. They're currently referred to as "superpredators" -- it's happened repeatedly throughout history.Dennis Coyne says: 11/29/2017 at 5:15 pmSecond, regarding population growth, my primary charity for 20 years has promoted sex ed, access to contraceptions, and education of women worldwide. We know how to halt and reverse population growth in the "underdeveloped world". It's not difficult except for the religious groups which oppose contraception and oppose women's liberation.
Often the same religious groups who promote burning of fossil fuels. And deforestation.
Basically, whether humans survive depends on whether we defeat those groups, IMO.
Countries like Cuba which are very underdeveloped but essentially *lack* those religious groups (thank you Godless Communism!) they're doing OK on population stabilization.
Hi Nathaneal,OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 7:46 amThere are countries that are religious such as Iran that have seen rapid demographic transition (15 years for TFR to go from over 5 to under 2). Also non-communist nations such as South Korea saw rapid transitions.
I agree education and gender equality as well as access to modern contraception are helpful.
Electrification will also help.
Thank you Dennis,Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 5:41 pmReligion has it's points, as Twain used to put it, both good and bad. Preachers and priests have a way of figuring out what is in their own best interests, short term, medium term, and long term.
There are some religions or cultures, which are not necessarily one and the same thing , that do encourage or more or less actually force women to bear lots of children.
I come from a culture that is very often ridiculed here in this forum, which doesn't bother me at all personally. It's ridiculed on such a broad scale that it's hard to find a public forum peopled with technically well educated people where ridicule isn't the NORM.
As religion goes, my own personal extended family is about as religious as they come in the USA. My nieces and nephews and third cousins, the children of my FIRST cousins, are having kids at less than the necessary 2.1 rate needed to maintain our blood lines, lol. My informal seat of the pants estimate is that the extended family birth rate is down to somewhere around one point five.
It's well known that the birth rate in some countries that are supposedly Catholic has fallen like a rock over the last couple of decades.
And while I can't prove it, it's my firm opinion that once the priesthood in any country comes to understand that it's own long term interests are best served by encouraging small families, small families WILL BE ENCOURAGED. That may not happen for another generation or so, and it may not happen at all in some countries, if there is no top down control of the culture and religion.
Priests and preachers don't exist to serve GOD, or any combinations of gods, etc. They exist because they have found a way to provide a secure and relatively easy way of living largely off the work of their followers.
This is not to say their followers don't get back as much or more as they contribute. Every society has to have leaders, and priests and preachers can be and have often been very effective leaders. Some of them are effective leaders today.
First of all, Ron, a species which destroys its own food supply or its own habitat *does* go extinct. They're currently referred to as "superpredators" -- it's happened repeatedly throughout history.Survivalist says: 12/02/2017 at 8:31 pmReally, I have never heard of that. The only superpredator I ever heard of are human beings. But if you can give an example of a species destroying its own food supply and habitat, please enlighten me.
Humans on Easter island is the only thing that comes to my mind when thinking of such an example. I'm no expert on Easter island, however I understand people there did not go extinct, and that there was a small group living there when the island was found by Europeans. Again, not terribly well informed about that particular bit of history.Kathy C says: 12/02/2017 at 5:20 amWhen things begin to collapse the grid infrastructure will collapse. Coal factories in China and elsewhere will shut down and dimming will end. James Hansen estimated that warming may be held back by 50% by dimming, so we can expect warming to shoot up. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130329_FaustianBargain.pdfSurvivalist says: 12/02/2017 at 8:34 pmWhen the grid collapses the nuclear power plants will no longer be able to be cooled. We know what happens then. This article addresses that happening from solar flares or emp attack but of course the failure of the grid from civilization collapse would do the same thing http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/7301-400-chernobyls-solar-flares-electromagnetic-pulses-and-nuclear-armageddon
With collapses of civilization their will be no remediation of forest fires. Chemical and Nuclear Dumps will burn as well as the nuclear power plants that have gone Fukushima.
A very underappreciated study is that of decaying leaves around Chernobyl While horses and other wildlife might now roam around Chernobyl the implications of leaves not decaying is enormous. "However, there are even more fundamental issues going on in the environment. According to a new study published in Oecologia, decomposers -- organisms such as microbes, fungi and some types of insects that drive the process of decay -- have also suffered from the contamination. These creatures are responsible for an essential component of any ecosystem: recycling organic matter back into the soil. Issues with such a basic-level process, the authors of the study think, could have compounding effects for the entire ecosystem."
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/forests-around-chernobyl-arent-decaying-properly-180950075/To just state that humans wouldn't disappear is nothing more than an assertion, as is stating that they would certainly disappear. However what faces humans is much more daunting than just the chaos of civilization collapse. Those who survive everything else will have a hard time reproducing with all that radiation around https://chernobylguide.com/chernobyl_mutations/
Of course long before civilization collapses the countries of the world may well play out the scenario that Richard Heinberg describes – Last Man Standing. Sound like politics today?
I suspect someone will bulldoze the nuclear power plants into the ocean before they let them melt down on land. Just a WAG.Fred Magyar says: 11/29/2017 at 9:13 amI posted this as a reply to a comment by GF a few threads back.Tom Welsh says: 11/29/2017 at 9:38 amI highly recommend the following three ASU Origins Project debates and panel discussions to get a good feel for the big picture. It might take up a good four hours or so of your time. This isn't something suitable for sound bites. It involves a lot of in depth cross disciplinary knowledge.
https://origins.asu.edu/events/great-debate-transcending-our-origins-violence-humanity-and-future
Great Debate: Transcending Our Origins – Violence, Humanity, and the Futurehttps://origins.asu.edu/events/great-debate-extinctions-tragedy-opportunity
Great Debate: Extinctions – Tragedy to Opportunityhttps://origins.asu.edu/events/conversation-inconvenient-truths-love-extinctions
Conversation: Inconvenient Truths – From Love to ExtinctionsMaybe we are all royally fucked already but I also recommend E.O. Wilson's book 'Half Earth'.
Cheers!
"Why did all this happen? However, when you ask why, you are implying that all this had a cause, that someone or some group of people are to blame for this damn mess we have gotten ourselves into".Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 10:34 amI would like to suggest, respectfully, that this wording is the wrong way around. The essence of the problem is that no one has been in charge, no one has taken responsibility – and that is hardly changing at all.
The world is teeming with governments, corporations, NGOs, and "leaders" of all kinds. But what are all those leaders, and their estimable organizations, really trying to do? Some are aiming to earn as much money as possible. Others are trying amass as much power as possible. Most of their programmes have a lot to do with gaining more money and power – which become interchangeable at a certain point (as can be seen from a study of the US Congress, for example).
An intelligent alien visitor to our planet would reasonably conclude that, although individual humans are intelligent to various degrees, the human species as a whole is profoundly unintelligent. It has ample means of diagnosing what has happened, is happening, and will happen. Yet, because it has never developed any organ comparable to the individual's conscious brain, it does nothing about the obvious threats it faces.
Tom, I think my wording was correct, you just did not quote all of my explanation. You wrote:Joe Clarkson says: 11/29/2017 at 1:20 pmThe essence of the problem is that no one has been in charge, no one has taken responsibility
No one can take responsibility because no one is in charge of the human race. And as far as being "profoundly unintelligent", I think that is an unfair charge. Having a blind spot in our DNA does not imply that we are unintelligent. The human race has never been faced with such a dilemma before. Our brains evolved to its present state during our hunter-gatherer days. We are molded by evolution to do everything possible to survive and reproduce. There is nothing in our DNA that tells us to protect the biosphere because the lives of our grandchildren depend upon it. So we don't.
What is happening is just human nature. That's all.
What is happening is just human nature.Dennis Coyne says: 11/29/2017 at 5:10 pmEvolution has resulted in all species, including humans, having a biotic potential that is greater than the carrying capacity of the niches in which they live. Populations are limited by resource limits and predation, not by self restraint or mutual agreement.
It would have been very unusual, perhaps unique in evolutionary history, for humans to have deliberately limited our population, even though it might have been theoretically possible due to our 'intelligent' ability to foresee our probable future. Despite Malthus, Limits to Growth and many other warnings, no realistic attempt has been made to remain below carrying capacity.
As you note, a massive die-off is inevitable, the only real question is when. Like The Cunning Linguist, I personally think it will be whenever people lose confidence in the global monetary system, as in Korowicz's "Trade Off: Financial system supply-chain cross contagion – a study in global systemic collapse". Once money stops flowing so does the food supply.
Hi Joe,Joe Clarkson says: 11/29/2017 at 9:29 pmWhat would cause this rejection of the monetary system? I don't follow the argument. Everyone decides at once that money is no longer a reasonable medium of exchange. Didn't happen during any financial crisis so far, people couldn't access their money at Banks after the 1929 crash, but this was less of a problem in OECD nations during the GFC.
The ETP nonsense is just that, anyone who knows their thermodynamics knows that theory is full of holes.
Didn't happen during any financial crisis so farDennis Coyne says: 11/30/2017 at 12:07 pmNo, but we did come close in 2008. All sorts of debt instruments including commercial paper, CDOs (the root of the problem), many derivatives and letters of credit all froze up. Without prompt dramatic action by the central banks and the US Treasury, the financial system could have collapsed. Nobody knew who was solvent or insolvent, so the central banks had to backstop every financial institution. All this over some mortgage securities based on the US housing market.
Now imagine that growth has turned to continuous worldwide economic recession, the inevitable fate of the global market economy in the face of energy and resource depletion ( it will happen despite the stupidity of the Hill's Group). Unemployment increases year after year and tax revenues continuously fall. Every kind of debt instrument, from sovereign debt to mortgages, to municipal and corporate bonds is more and more likely never to be repaid. Defaults are increasing with greater and greater frequency. The equities of every company become suspect as more and more companies go under.
Sooner or later, a critical mass of people are going to realize that most debts can never be repaid and are therefore worthless as assets. Since almost all money is created from debt, almost all money becomes worthless.
The only thing that makes money work is confidence in its value. When confidence in money (debt repayment) fails, the monetary system fails and without a monetary system, the global market fails.
Billions of lives are dependent on that market functioning smoothly every day. When it fails to function, people will die. I fully expect to lose every financial asset I own at some point, that's why I am preparing to live without money. Unfortunately, most people in the developed world can't do that, though they should be trying to do so with utmost urgency.
I admit that if there were a concerted international effort to declare a debt jubilee and start all over with a new world currency, some form of monetary system might continue after the present one collapses, but I really doubt that creditor countries and debtor countries are going to cooperate with the rapidity and solidarity needed to manage such a transition.
And even though all the productive assets in the world would still continue to exist after a financial collapse, without a market to mediate their interconnected function, everything would grind to a halt. I don't see an international command economy taking over either. That would be harder than creating a whole new monetary system.
The global market economy is very complicated and very fragile. I certainly wouldn't trust my family's life to something that could collapse virtually overnight and neither should you.
Hi Joe,Joe Clarkson says: 11/30/2017 at 6:32 pmThere are a lot of if's in your scenario, any of which if broken makes the conclusion invalid.
I suppose it is possible that all of those things could happen, just as it is possible that a large asteroid will strike the planet.
I choose not to concern myself with very low probability events.
Pretty sure neither of us will convince the other. If you are convinced buy some good farm land and maybe gold, guns, lead, and gun powder.
Probably even better, find a nice community somewhere.
Note that as long as governments are willing to intervene in the economy when necessary, the system is much more resilient than you believe.
The biggest risk to the Global financial system would be free market fundamentalism where government intervention is never invoked.
I cannot imagine a continuous world wide economic recession, this is a fundamental flaw in your argument.
This assumes what you are trying to prove.
I cannot imagine a continuous world wide economic recession, this is a fundamental flaw in your argument.Dennis Coyne says: 12/02/2017 at 1:14 pmWell, I can't imagine how the global market economy and industrial civilization are going to have a steady state economy forever at present levels of production and affluence. Overshoot means eventual retrenchment and die-off.
Up-thread you estimated the carrying capacity of the earth at around 500 million people. You obviously expect to gracefully reach that level (in 2300!) through birth control while still maintaining current standards of living.
I expect that we will reach that population, or fewer, due to complications from resource-depletion-caused economic failure (famine, war, pandemic). There simply isn't enough energy available to make the transition you desire without also destroying the climate, even if there were the political will to do so, which there isn't.
I suggest looking at the history of the last 100 years to decide which future is more probable. Humanity has had the ability to create a high technology, steady-state civilization with sustainable population levels for over a century, but has failed to do so. There is still no evidence that we are serious about making the attempt now. I wonder why you can believe that such a thing will happen at a time when the resources to make it happen will be declining rapidly. Continuous world-wide recession is a certainty and unless you are very old, you will live to see it.
And as far as your suggestions for prepping go, my family has already got it's lifeboat ready in a rural tropical community. I've got the productive land, the community and the guns. I don't expect to rely on gold at all. To my mind, the best durable trade items are ammo, fishing equipment and livestock.
If raising my own food and living without money is necessary, I can do it. If your eco-modernist utopia magically appears, I won't be disappointed, or regret one iota of the 'unnecessary' preparations I will have made, but I prefer to err on the side of prudence.
Hi Joe,OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 7:51 amI don't expect to live forever and as I said don't plan ahead for scenarios I believe have a very low probability of occurring. As fossil fuel resources become scarce they will become more expensive and we will use them more carefully (or efficiently). There has been no need to do so for the past 100 years as they have been relatively cheap and abundant. There will be enough energy from Wind, solar, hydro, and perhaps nuclear to make the transition, as fossil fuel becomes expensive these will be produced as they will become cheaper alternatives. Much of freight traffic can be moved to rail, which can be electrified, moving goods from rail to factory or store can be done on overhead wires on main roads with EV used for the last few miles.
Also keep in mind that fossil fuels by nature are quite inefficient in producing electricity with about 60% of the energy wasted, for heating systems compared to heat pumps there is also higher energy use. The transition to non-fossil fuels will result in about one third the energy use for the same exergy (or work and useful heat) provided.
I make no assumptions about living standards being maintained, perhaps the transition will be very difficult and living standards in the OECD will decrease while living standards in less developed nations increase. Note that declining population will reduce resource pressure and realization of resource limits (as will be clear from fossil fuel scarcity) by the majority of citizens may lead to changes in social behavior.
Also note that we have only been aware of the climate problem for about 38 years (using Charney report in 1979 as the starting point).
If fossil fuels are very limited (say 1200 Pg C emissions from 1800-2100) then climate change might be less of a problem, but this will still be adequate for a transition to non-fossil fuels. Even 1000 Pg of total carbon emissions from all anthropogenic sources (including fossil fuel, cement and land use change) may be adequate for an energy transition, though it will need to begin in earnest in the next 5 to 10 years, the sooner we begin the easier it will be to accomplish.
"What is happening is just human nature. That's all."alimbiquated says: 12/01/2017 at 6:07 pmEXACTLY.
I posted a long rant down thread trying to get this across to people who somehow think we are DEFECTIVE because we don't collectively behave more rationally, hoping to get it across in terms that are intelligible to those of us who have HEARD of evolution, but never actually studied it for more than an hour or two at the most.
Nonsense, this is just Libertarian propaganda, which is actually a fake religion invented by real estate investors in the fifties in a political catfight to avoid rent control legislation. It has now widen to some kind of pseudo-Darwinistic hocus pocus, but it ignores the obvious fact that we became the world's dominant species be collaboration and long term thinking.Hickory says: 12/02/2017 at 12:02 amWe're doomed if we don't get along with each other, and lots of propaganda is pushing you to believe we never have or could, and never can or will. But that doesn't make it true.
aren't all religions fake (fabrications)?Survivalist says: 12/02/2017 at 8:42 pmThat's a pretty narrow view of libertarianism.Phil Stevens says: 12/02/2017 at 2:56 pm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
What you say is perhaps relevant to contemporary versions of libertarianism in USA, however it goes back a bit further than the 50's.
It's worth noting there are left wing libertarian models also.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianismI'd like to question the assertion that no one is in charge of the human race. In "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States" (Yale, 2017), James C. Scott demonstrates fairly convincingly that humans actively avoided adopting grain-based agriculture because the labor:reward tradeoff was far less satisfactory than what could be obtained through hunting and gathering. The accumulation of surplus, and presumably the insurance a surplus would provide against yearly fluctuations in food supply, in other words, was an insufficient motivation for humans to give up hunting and gathering. As Scott documents quite clearly, this refusal to adopt agriculture as the basis of the human economy persisted for more than 5,000 years in Mesopotamia, and much longer elsewhere.Ron Patterson says: 12/02/2017 at 5:00 pmSo what caused the shift? Alas, Scott fails to explore this in any detail. (Just one of the many weaknesses of the book, which nevertheless manages to make its central argument very well.)
I will speculate that what caused the change was the coming-together of a sufficiently large number (five? a dozen? who knows?) of individuals who lacked the ability to feel remorse, shame, or compassion, and who were motivated purely by a desire to enrich and empower themselves. Modern psychology calls these types psychopaths. I suggest that it was these individuals who, likely with help from others with the related disorder of sadism (see recent research on "the dark tetrad"), were first able to subjugate (Scott uses the very apposite term "domesticate") human communities and force them to labor on the land to produce a surplus, which of course then could be appropriated by the psychopaths and their henchmen.
I am not aware of anyone else who has advanced the notion that civilization was founded by psychopaths and sadists. But recent psychological research (popularized in books such as Babiak and Hare, "Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work") suggest that psychopaths are four times more commonly represented in upper management than in the population as a whole, so it seems plausible to me, at least, that the project of civilization and its attendant destruction of the ecosphere has been, from its inception, forced upon humanity by a small minority.
Phil, thanks for a great post. I have no doubt that psychopaths have had a great influence on civilization. Many great leaders were no doubt psychopaths. Hitler and Stalin come to mind. However, not all of them were psychopaths. Rosevelt, Washington, Jefferson, and many other U.S. presidents were not psychopaths. Neither was Churchill or Gandhi.Phil Stevens says: 12/03/2017 at 4:56 pmHowever, your original sentence was: I'd like to question the assertion that no one is in charge of the human race. So I kept reading, waiting for you to tell us just who was in charge of the human race. Of course you did not do that.
Fair enough, Ron.Fred Magyar says: 11/29/2017 at 12:24 pmMy short answer to your question would be to ask "Cui bono?" Doubtless not everyone who reaps the most benefit from the biocidal trajectory of late capitalism is dominated by one or more of the traits of the Dark Tetrad, of course. Some of us might even be able to argue plausibly that we were unaware of the consequences of our actions. But even though late capitalist society is sufficiently robust that it continues to work out its internal logic without a lot of direct guidance by the dark few, I doubt it would last long without their presence among the wealthy and powerful classes. If their interventions on behalf of the killing machine could be eliminated, my guess is that dismantling the machine would be a much easier project.
Ultimately, it's the ones in positions of power who manifest the traits of the Dark Tetrad whose interventions are critical to maintaining the status quo. If anyone can be said to rule the earth, it's them.
An intelligent alien visitor to our planet would reasonably conclude that, although individual humans are intelligent to various degrees, the human species as a whole is profoundly unintelligent. It has ample means of diagnosing what has happened, is happening, and will happen. Yet, because it has never developed any organ comparable to the individual's conscious brain, it does nothing about the obvious threats it faces.OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 8:04 amThat is my view as well! Though some like E.O. Wilson argue that we have evolved into an eusocial species and can at least in theory function as a hive or termite mound. Where the collective intelligence emerges and even though the individual ants or bees are stupid the anthill is an entity unto itself is smart and knows how to defend itself. See also Douglas Hofstader and Daniel Dennett's book, 'The Mind's I', Chapter 11 titled Prelude Ant Fugue.
http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-ant-fugue.htmlAlso check out Curtis Marean's talk at the end of Inconvenient Truths – From Love to Extinctions from the link I provided above from the ASU origins debates. He specifically makes that analogy about aliens, in his talk.
Marean is a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change and the associate director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. He is interested in the relation between climate and environmental change and human evolution, both for its significance as a force driving past human evolution, and as a challenge to be faced in the near future. Curtis has focused his career on developing field and laboratory teams and methods that tap the synergy between the disciplines to bring new insights to old scientific problems. He has spent over 20 years doing fieldwork in Africa, and conducting laboratory work on the field-collected materials, with the goal of illuminating the final stages of human evolution – how modern humans became modern.
" Yet, because it has never developed any organ comparable to the individual's conscious brain, it does nothing about the obvious threats it faces."George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 1:04 pmSuch an organ would be very costly, in terms of depriving humanity of the energy and resources devoted to it, depriving us of the use of these resources for other purposes.
Evolution doesn't create organs that will be useful in dealing with new circumstances, by plan, ahead of time, except by accident. It's just a "lucky accident" FOR US TODAY that our own ancestors evolved hands capable of grasping things such as branches .. which set the stage for us to be able later on to grasp a stone and use it as a hammer or weapon.
No planning is involved. NONE. Various deists who accept the reality of evolution but still believe in higher powers disagree of course.
I can't prove they are wrong. I don't believe anybody else can. All we can do is demonstrate that they have no evidence that such higher powers exist.
An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, lol.
I doubt if "intelligent" aliens are any different than we are – and therefore probably have a very short life expectancy should they ever get to an industrial age – evolution can only work from one generation to the next and is therefore incompatible with longer term planning for species longevity.Steve says: 11/29/2017 at 2:25 pm"It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on the Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only." – Sir Fred HoyleRon Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 3:19 pmThanks for posting this Hoyle quote Steve. I have read it before, many times. And the truth of it is so obvious. All the things that have enabled this wonderful abundant life will soon be gone. Then what?Dennis Coyne says: 11/29/2017 at 5:02 pmHi Ron,Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 5:58 pmWe recycle what we can, we use less of scarce resources as prices rise and we try to find substitutes for resources as they become scarce. Also population will fall as TFR falls (with a time lag due to population momentum) putting less pressure on resources.
None of this will be easy, and perhaps not possible, hard to predict the future.
Dennis, Hoyle here, is talking about long-term. Recycle or not, we will run out of all fossil fuels and eventually all metals. However, recyclig will help, in the short term anyway.Caelan MacIntyre says: 11/29/2017 at 6:27 pmNo, we cannot really predict the future. All we can do is look at what is happening right now and say: "If this continues ." And Dennis, it will continue. Human nature may be changed by evolution. But that will take many generations and tremendous evolutionary pressure. So right now, human nature being what it is, we can predict that collapse is just down the road. Just how far down the road is what we are trying to figure out right now.
Ron, if we look at the apparent numbers, say of many species, collapse appears already here, just that the shockwave hasn't hit yet. Remember, if you see an explosion in the distance, it takes awhile to hit.Dennis Coyne says: 11/30/2017 at 11:51 amHi Ron,Ron Patterson says: 11/30/2017 at 12:10 pmYes some things will continue and others will not.
For example fossil fuel output has grown pretty steadily in absolute terms (about 163 million tonnes of oil equivalent per year from 1981 to 2016) and I expect that will change (it will not continue).
The total fertility ratio has decreased at about 1.38% per year from 1965 to 2015, but I expect this will continue until the World TFR approaches the high income nation average of about 1.75 (which would be reached in 2040 if the 1965-2015 rate of decrease continues).
There may be more fossil fuels available than either of us think, but if my medium scenarios are correct there may be enough fossil fuel to enable a transition to non-fossil fuel, then we just need to deal with other depleting resources.
Note that the fact that fossil fuels have peaked and declined (which should be apparent by 2035 at the latest), may enable people to realize that this will be true for every scarce resource and perhaps we will plan ahead and recycle, and use resources more efficiently.
Much of this is a matter of education.
Perhaps the meaning of soon we use differently.
When you say "will soon be gone." Can you define soon in years.
The sun will eventually destroy all life on Earth, but not "soon", as I define it.
Well, perhaps I should not have said "gone". There will always be trace amounts of everything left. And nothing will suddenly disappear. There will be a decline curve for everything. But let's deal with the one with the least future abundance, oil. I believe we are at peak oil right, or very near it anyway. The bumpy plateau may last from 5 to 10 years. Then the decline curve will be much steeper than the ascent.Dennis Coyne says: 12/02/2017 at 1:26 pmThat's about the best answer I can ive you.
Hi Ron,Ron Patterson says: 12/02/2017 at 3:01 pmLet's assume for the moment you are correct and the peak is either now or next month and we remain on plateau for a year or two.
What happens to the price of oil?
Let's assume that you agree that unless there is a severe World recession in the next year or two that oil prices are likely to rise.
What happens it oil output if oil prices rise to say $100/b or more?
Eventually I expect output will reach a peak no matter how high oil prices rise, I just disagree it will be at the current level of output.
Can you define your limits for the "bumpy plateau" (high and low 12 month average output level)?
If the limits were 80 to 85 Mb/d, then we would agree and I would say we may be on a bumpy plateau between 80 and 85 Mb/d for 10 years or so.
I suspect you may expect output to remain below 81 or 82 Mb/d (World 12 month average C+C output).
Dennis, you must be familiar with the phrase "You cannot get blood from a turnip". High prices will not create more oil in the ground. We will most definitely have higher prices but they will be high because we have reached the peak. So, $100 oil will not create a higher peak.Dennis Coyne says: 12/03/2017 at 10:37 amJust my guess but I believe the plateau will average less than 82 million bpd.
Hi Ron,Ron Patterson says: 12/03/2017 at 2:49 pmSo could you define your "bumpy plateau"?
Is it a trailing 12 month average of between 80 and 82 Mb/d?
I imagine we will break above 82 Mb/d in 2018 if oil prices are over $65/b (Brent in 2016$) for the annual average in 2016.
For the most recent 12 months (EIA data) ending August 2017 we are at 80.93 Mb/d.
In the low price environment since 2015 the trend in World output is an annual increase of 280 kb/d. This rate of increase is likely to double (at minimum) with oil prices over $80/b, which would bring us to 82 Mb/d by 2019 or 2020, perhaps this will be as high a output rises, but my guess is that there is a 50% probability that output will continue to rise above this and perhaps a 25% probability it may reach 85 Mb/d around 2025.
I thought I did that Dennis. I the bumpy plateau will average about 82 million barrels per day or less. There could be spikes and dips and it will last from 2 to as much as 10 years. But when it heads down, it will do so with a vengeance.alimbiquated says: 12/01/2017 at 6:11 pmBlah, nobody needs coal or oil in the long run, and metal is never "gone" unless you shoot into space or a fission reactor.Ron Patterson says: 12/01/2017 at 7:03 pmFor every obvious problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
-H. L- Mencken
Jesus H. Fucking Christ, how fucking stupid can one person be?OFM says: 11/29/2017 at 6:17 pmHi Steve,Caelan MacIntyre says: 11/29/2017 at 6:47 pmI will have a lot to say later on tonight.
For now, all I have to say is that while Sir Fred forgot more about astronomy than I have or ever have even DREAMED of knowing, he didn't know shit from apple butter about biological evolution . not even as much as a good student in a good public high school after finishing one high school level course in biology.
"The chance that higher life forms might have emerged through evolutionary processes is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein."
It's very common for people who are great experts, sometimes even renowned experts at the very peak of their professions, to make fools of themselves talking about subjects of which they know less than nothing.
Hoyle is the best single example I know of and the one I use most often to point out this very common shortcoming.
For what it's worth, he would be RIGHT if the problem were the one of having a gazillion monkeys typing at random and one of them eventually turning out Romeo and Juliet, correct to the last letter.
That involves getting every letter right in one try.
Evolution doesn't work that way. It's more like a poker game, in which you can discard cards you don't want, and keep the ones you do, until you have a GREAT hand.
In a real poker game, discarding is usually limited to two rounds, but in real life and evolution, the number of rounds is literally unlimited, the same as the number of generations. If you have two pairs, you can keep on discarding until EVENTUALLY , assuming all the discards go back into the deck, you have a full house. And given time enough, you could discard your pair, and eventually have four of a kind.
YOU DON'T usually throw away a pair of aces, lol, even in a game that allows you to ask for a redeal if you have no more than a pair.
Evolution is a blind, and runs on random chance, at the individual level and generational level, but at the species level, it's a blind BUILDER, one that generally retains what works from one generation to the next, and builds on it. Over time .. lots of time, usually.
But significant evolutionary change can happen in very quickly, in terms of evolutionary time. House flies evolved resistance to DDT within the space of a single generation of humans, lol.
Biologists work with time on roughly the same scale as geologists and astronomers, counting in billions of years. It's quite possible that life originated not too long after the first stars evolved to the point that the heavier elements were first created from lighter ones.
Hightrekker says: 11/29/2017 at 7:41 pm"I will have a lot to say later on tonight." ~ OFM
LOL
Hoyle, IMHO, is a closet Cabbage for Christ.Caelan MacIntyre says: 11/29/2017 at 8:30 pmHightrekker's Alpine Garden of Eden RestaurantHightrekker says: 11/30/2017 at 10:26 am~ Menu ~
• Talking Snake Au Jus (So fresh, you can almost hear it hissing!)
• BBQ Rib-Woman's Ribs
• Stuffed Cabbages for Christ
• Wing Pawn Garlic PrawnsDessert:
• Apple Pie A La Mode (So sinful, one bite and you will be cast out of Eden, after you pay your bill.)
• Tree of Knowledge Crepe Flambé (Ask about our Summer Forest Fire special!)
• Adam's Fruit CobblerDrinks:
• The Blood of Christ
• Holy Water Cider
• Milk of Holy CowYum!Caelan MacIntyre says: 11/30/2017 at 8:10 pmStop the presses! I forgot theSurvivalist says: 12/01/2017 at 10:19 pm• Cider-Marinated Free Range Chicken Wing Pawn Platter for Two
BTW, I just began my first ever apple cider home brew, Nov 30th . (I actually tried making sauerkraut ages ago.)
What I did was buy half a liter of fresh-pressed raw organic apple juice, and then added the peel of an organic apple to it for a wild yeast innoculation, and closed up top with a simple cellophane wrap and elastic with a toothpick-prick hole on top for ventilationI used these instructions and accompanying YouTube video, Eat The Weeds, episode 9.
So now the bottle is just hanging out in one of my lower kitchen cupboards, and we'll see what happens. (Does it need light?)
I'll try to let POB know if it works and I get a good batch or if it throws a bad one and I have to start over. I am unsure what a good or bad batch is supposed to taste like, but I guess if it's tasty, then it's good.
My fav post that you made was a link to some great riot porn! Oh man that made my dayCaelan MacIntyre says: 12/02/2017 at 8:30 pmHi Survivalist, glad you enjoyed it.Survivalist says: 12/02/2017 at 8:52 pm
Frank Lopez's Sub.Media channel, (which is probably where I sourced the riot-porn-in-question from), its videos, have been picked up by PeakOil.com, incidentally.
I'll admit that some of the riot porn was a bit dubious with regard to its 'methodical randomness', but it could be from the younger 'anarchists' who may be still learning. That's perhaps also why some of the Antifa members have sometimes gotten criticized for their (apparent misplaced or misapplied) 'violence' tactics.The image is of the cider in question– about one litre. With the unwashed organic apple peel in it as the only yeast 'starter', it's supposed to take 2 to 3 weeks to start bubbling. The pin you see is to pop the hole in the plastic when it starts doing so.
If it throws a good flavour, I intend on keeping the yeast, and innoculating some more juice but also some kind of straight-up water-and-honey or sugar mixture and see if I can get pure alcohol or 'mead' or something like that from it, using freeze distillation (a 'jack'). (And yes, I am aware of the methanol issue, but apparently, it is not a big deal at this scale/amount, although I'll recheck it to be sure.) (You can of course select the image for a larger image popup.)
If, when or as the 'trucks stop running', we may want– and have– to look into more local/home-brewing and other locally-/homemade things of course. So we might as well start sooner rather than later.
Once upon a time I provided health services to inmates in a prison. Generally speaking I liked the inmates better than the guards, who for the most part were men who had wanted to become cops but were too stupid to pass selection. I met some real brewmasters (inmates) working that gig. Good luck with the brew.Caelan MacIntyre says: 12/03/2017 at 10:00 pmInteresting line of work, Survivalist, and thanks, fingers crossedPaulo says: 11/29/2017 at 10:36 amUp early today and lit the shop woodstove; just waiting for light to get on with my day which always starts (after chores) with my dog and I going for a walk.Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 11:10 amRon, I do not disagree with your post or comments, with the exception of when population will peak and the aspect/timing of social disruption?
On this morning wait for daylight I have been reading various blog sites with CNN ticking over in the background. Maybe it is the speed of the news cycle and my being used to the insanity of what is being reported, but today, after seeing the Trump tweets on Muslim Violence (film clips), the so-called tax plan, sexual misconducts, the recent reports on KSA, Yemen, Syria, and what is ramping up concerning North Korea, I think we are at a crux right now. I think there will be a Market collapse and war; perhaps global in scale. Further to that I don't see any desire or mechanism for defusing tensions or a way to recall the situation.
I am 62 and was a kid during a recent/last big social reset. I had older sibs and parents who moved us north to Canada in '68 because they had had enough. My WW2 veteran parents proclaimed they had seen enough to be afraid, and sold out to start over and build new lives. While I was thinking about it, and your post, I realized that in today's situation there are no simple answers and not really any places to run to. It seems different because of the population numbers and armaments, plus the willingness of people to pretend it's just 'tribal/crooked politics as usual'. Then, I thought about photographs and how a few catapulted us into rapid change last century. Certainly, the haunted faces of the Dust Bowl sparked a move towards reform. Images from the south and the stories of the KKK perhaps Rosa Parks herself helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement. For me, the image of the young lady holding the dead student at Kent State, (her anguish), the burning Monk and young girl coated with napalm coupled with the lie about the Gulf of Tonkin incident pushed me into cynicism; so much that I was not surprised about the non-existent WMD of Iraq.
Perhaps it won't be an image, or story that we look back to as a turning point. Maybe it will be a tweet. Maybe it will be the Market collapse or a premptive attack on North Korea that sets everything in motion. I just think we are loaded and tamped down like a pipe bomb ready to blow.
I do not think we will continue to grow in population until 2050. I think it could start to unravel pretty fast and any day. I don't see any step back from war(s) in either the ME, or Korea.
From Wiki: (just one event that pales alongside today's triggers)
Kent State
"Just five days after the shootings, 100,000 people demonstrated in Washington, D.C., against the war and the killing of unarmed student protesters. Ray Price, Nixon's chief speechwriter from 1969 to 1974, recalled the Washington demonstrations saying, "The city was an armed camp. The mobs were smashing windows, slashing tires, dragging parked cars into intersections, even throwing bedsprings off overpasses into the traffic down below. This was the quote, student protest. That's not student protest, that's civil war."[10] Not only was Nixon taken to Camp David for two days for his own protection, but Charles Colson (Counsel to President Nixon from 1969 to 1973) stated that the military was called up to protect the administration from the angry students; he recalled that "The 82nd Airborne was in the basement of the executive office building, so I went down just to talk to some of the guys and walk among them, and they're lying on the floor leaning on their packs and their helmets and their cartridge belts and their rifles cocked and you're thinking, 'This can't be the United States of America. This is not the greatest free democracy in the world. This is a nation at war with itself.'"I apologize if this seems North American centric; and in blinders. I wish to reiterate that our population numbers, plus increasing divide and disparity, proliferation of weapons and intolerance, coupled with environmental degradation and Climate Change, makes this much much worse. It's a gun waiting for a trigger, imho.
Yes, things are pretty bad. But things were bad during the Kent State/Nixon era. Yet we survived.Ghung says: 11/29/2017 at 11:34 amIt has been my experience, following this biosphere destruction for many years now, that people who see and understand the destruction, almost always expect things to fall apart real soon. They never do.
I once spent several months as a stockbroker. One thing I learned during that period was a truth about insider traders. That is traders who trade the stock of the company they work for. They see things happening inside their company and expect it to cause great trouble or great profit. They are almost always right and almost always way too early with their predictions. Things just never seem to happen as fast as they expected.
We, you and I and a few others, are insiders to this problem that I have described in my above post. We know something terrible is going to happen. But most of us expect it to happen way before it actually will happen.
An example is "The Population Bomb" by Paul Ehrlich. I think he was spot on, but things just did not happen as fast as he expected. I hope to avoid his mistake.
Yep, Ron, and we need to be careful about saying "this time is different". Perhaps we need a list of things that really are different this time.Dennis Coyne says: 11/29/2017 at 1:16 pmOne that should be obvious to anyone paying attention is that, in the late 60s, US debt to GDP was in the mid 30% range. It is now over 100% according to a number of sources. As Gail T. is wont to say, unservicable debt will likely be the trigger that results in a cascading failure of financial systems, and everything else is likely to follow. In short, our financial house of cards has grown three-fold in 50 years, as the global reserve currency is tagged to nothing.
Hi Ghung,Ghung says: 11/29/2017 at 1:28 pmI think the debt problem is a little overblown.
Now people use debt differently sometimes implying "total debt" and sometimes "public debt" and sometimes "central government debt".
Which one are you talking about?
I don't read Tverberg's stuff.
Looking at your numbers and the link below
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S
it seems you are talking about total US federal government debt.
Consider Japan
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/QJPGAN770A
They have been over 100% debt to GDP since 1999 and have been around 200% since 2014.
If Japan has collapsed, I missed it.
Note that I agree with the idea that when the US economy is doing well (which at present is the case), that paying down debt is a better idea than reducing taxes. I would raise taxes if anything ( a carbon tax would be ideal) and reduce the deficit to less than zero and pay down the debt.
Or just balance the budget and let economic growth reduce the debt to GDP ratio.
The figures I posted only include US government (National) debt. Total US debt (public+private) is, of course, much higher.Dennis Coyne says: 11/29/2017 at 4:49 pmUS National debt currently around $20.5 trillion.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/US GDP for 2016 per the World Bank was $18,569,100.00
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CDAs for Japan, most of what they owe is to themselves while they own a lot of that US debt, above. Japan also uses the carry trade to stay afloat.
I only posted this as being one of the things that is different about our situation ~50 years ago. People can make of it what they will. I personally think it is significant since the world runs on credit. No credit, no growth.
Hi Ghung,OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 8:17 amHard to imagine no credit.
Also in the 1960s there was less borrowing by the government (so less credit) and higher growth rates (at least in the US) than today.
In the old days there was concern the government would "crowd out" private debt, as if there was some fixed amount of debt the system could sustain and the system always remained at this maximum debt level.
Instead it seems the system had room for higher levels of debt as government debt as increased, but there is little evidence of "crowding out". There may be some maximum debt level that an economy can sustain and Japan may be there. Also note that 50 years ago debt was at fairly low levels, but in 1946 Debt to GDP was 118% of GDP, rapid economic growth from 1946 to 1974 reduced this debt to GDP to 31%, by 1992 it was at 61%, and in 2016 it was 105%.
Strange that the Republicans want to raise the debt higher by cutting taxes, this made sense when the economy was doing poorly during the Obama years and the aftermath of the GFC.
I agree debt could become a problem and would be worried if central government debt to GDP was 200% (as in Japan).
I also don't buy into the unfunded liabilities argument, laws change and governments don't always fulfill their promises, that is just a fact of life.
Personally I believe Tverberg is a person who has discovered a niche she can exploit and is making a living out of it. I had the pleasure of seeing her make her canned presentation at a conference once, where all the presentations were repeated several times over for three days so the entire attending crowd could see them all.Hightrekker says: 11/30/2017 at 10:25 amIf you ask her a real question, she seizes up like a deer in headlights. She knows some elementary level stuff that is worth some thought, in the case of people who know little or nothing about the overall economy and environment.
Her answer in the case of a real question is the same answer you get from a politician who doesn't WANT to answer. She just pretends you asked a DIFFERENT question, and provides a stock answer to THAT question.
She doesn't have anything to say worth listening to , in terms of the level of understanding of the contributing members of this forum.
Being a Cabbage for Christ and a AGW Denier doesn't exactly lend credibility to her work.Caelan MacIntyre says: 11/30/2017 at 9:06 pmShe denies AGW?doomphd says: 12/03/2017 at 4:18 amShe does not deny AGW. She just doesn't think the effects of AGW are going to be our biggest problem going forward, especially if we run low on fossil fuel flows in the near future.Caelan MacIntyre says: 12/03/2017 at 10:02 pmOk, thanks for the clarification.Nathanael says: 11/29/2017 at 4:22 pmUK government debt to GDP was well over 400% for decades running; it was never a problem. Don't worry about it. Government debt is not really debt, it's actually money.Dennis Coyne says: 11/29/2017 at 4:54 pmHi Nathanael,Paulo says: 11/29/2017 at 1:39 pmWhen was that?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DEBTTLGBA188A
Oh I see high debt but not 400%
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSDOTUKA
It was over 160% from 1925 to 1952, maybe that's what you mean.
Good point on the rate. I remember my grade 11 Social Studies teacher talking to me after class in 1972. One of our class texts was The Population Bomb. He expected to see, in his lifetime, a collapse of sorts. When I asked him to expand further he described small scale gardens/farms of no more the 2 acres. The primary machinery used would be walk-behind tractors.George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 1:49 pmI smiled at the memory when I bought my BCS walk-behind ten years ago. I smile every spring when I till the gardens. I still think he was right, just off on the timing (just like I was when I got out of stocks several years ago and put my money in term deposits.)
The older I get, the less I understand. I take comfort in knowing my Dad wouldn't get it, either.
I thought Ehrlich's book "The Dominant Animal"was fairly well measured, and generally in line with the post above (I haven't read the population bomb).Hightrekker says: 11/29/2017 at 7:44 pmEhrlich underestimated the Green Revolution and Haber/Bosch factor that was really upping food production at the time.OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 8:39 am
Ultimately, he will be proven right.I met Ehrlich personally when he visited Va Tech sometime around 1972. Visiting scholars often have smaller seminar meetings after making their presentation to the larger U community, which he did. Not many people attended the particular seminar I participated in , probably less than a couple of dozen. I was taking some ag courses there at the time, and enjoyed a long conversation with him.Dennis Coyne says: 11/30/2017 at 10:54 amYou're dead on. He badly underestimated what we farmers could do, and are still doing, given the necessary industrial support system that keeps industrial level agriculture humming.
Sooner or later . We are going to have to deal with the Population Bomb. The resources we are devoting to industrial ag aren't going to last forever. Neither are nature's one time gifts of soil and water so long as we are in overshoot.
I was head over heels in love with a milk and corn fed girl from Ohio and we were about ready to join the Peace Corp or something along that line, and go someplace and save the people in some backwards community by teaching them how to farm the American way all day and enjoy each other all night of course.
But one of my crusty and profane old professors took me aside and asked me if I really wanted to go to XXXXX and teach starving people how to produce twice as much food so that twice as many of them would starve a generation down the road.
HE was right about the increase in production just resulting in more mouths to feed . back then. Since then, things have changed dramatically . in SOME countries.
There are good reasons to believe that birth rates may fall dramatically within the next decade or two in at least some of the countries that still have exploding populations. Maybe a few of them will manage to avoid starvation on the grand scale long enough for their populations to stabilize and decline.
It's too late for falling birth rates to prevent famine on the grand scale in a hell of a lot of places.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 2:51 pmLet's assume Ron's prediction of 2050 for a peak in World population at around 9 Billion is correct (this seems a very reasonable guess to me).
Also assume for the moment the grain is freely traded throughout the World with few barriers to trade (tariffs and outright bans).
Are you suggesting that it is likely that World food output will not be adequate to feed the World under this scenario?
Typically famine results from war and food supply not being able to be safely transported to those in need, at least in the past 50 years or so.
Do you expect this to change before 2070?
Hi Dennis,Dennis Coyne says: 11/30/2017 at 11:25 amI'm going to answer twice, lol.
First off, do I think it's technically possible that we can feed a population that peaks around nine billion a few decades down the road?
This answer depends on how well energy supplies and the overall world economy holds up, with some wild cards thrown in relating to climate, depletion of certain critical resources such as fresh water and minerals such as easily mined phosphate rock, etc.
New technology and the reactions of the people to it will also play a big role.The role played by governments local to national to international will be critical, and huge, because only governments will have power enough to FORCE some changes that may and probably will be necessary.
Here are a few examples.
It may be necessary to force well to do people aka the middle classes, to give up eating red meat for the most part, so that grain ordinarily fed to cattle and hogs can be diverted to human consumption.
(I expect rich people will still be able to get a ribeye or pork chop any time by buying up ration tickets, or buying on the black market, or paying an exorbitant consumption tax, or any combination of these strategies.)
Fuels, especially motor fuels, may be tightly rationed, so that enough will be available to run farms and food processing and distribution industries.
Large numbers of people may be paid or coerced into going to work on farms or in community gardens or greenhouses.
A substantial fraction of the resources currently devoted to other needs or wants may have to be diverted to building sewage treatment infrastructure designed to capture and recycle the nutrients in human sewage.
I could go on all day.
Bottom line, I think that barring bad luck, it is technically possible that we can feed that many people that long, and for a while afterwards, as the population hopefully starts trending down.
As a practical matter, I don't think there WILL BE food enough for nine billion.
It's more likely in my opinion that some countries are going to come up desperately short of food, and be unable to beg, buy or steal it from other countries. Some people, and some countries, are likely to resort to taking food, and other resources of course by force from weaker neighbors .. maybe even "neighbors" on the far side of oceans.
I may be too pessimistic, but I'm one of the regulars here who think that climate change for the worse, much worse, is in the cards, and I spend a few hours every week reading history. Humans have always been ready to go to war, even without good reasons. A lot of people in desperate situations are going to see war as their best option, in my opinion, over the next half century.
Maybe my fellow Yankees will be willing to give up their burgers for beans so that kids in some far off country can eat. I'm not so sure we are compassionate enough to do so on the grand scale.
Hi Hightrekker,Hightrekker says: 11/30/2017 at 1:01 pmIf total fertility ratios continue to fall (for the World they fell from 5 in 1965 to 2.5 in 2015) about a 1.38% per year, there may be no catastrophic collapse.
If that average rate should continue for 16 years then World TFR would be at 2 (below replacement level) by 2031. If the rate of decrease in TFR experienced from 1965 to 2015 continues for 35 years (to 2050), the TFR for the World would be 1.54 in 2050.
Based on UN data from 2015, 65% of the World's population had a weighted average TFR (weighted by population) of 2.05, but a more sophisticated calculation using estimates of the population of Women of child bearing age I have not done, I simply used total population to weight the TFR from each nation which implicitly assumes the age structure of each nation is identical which is clearly false.
Dennis-Ron Patterson says: 11/30/2017 at 1:17 pm
We are adding 83 million per year to a already population in drastic overshoot.
The barn door is already open, and the horses are gone.Exactly! That's been my point from the very beginning. It is already way too late to fix things.Hightrekker says: 11/30/2017 at 7:41 pmWe have a predicament that must be dealt with, not a problem that can be solved.
Bingo --alimbiquated says: 11/29/2017 at 3:09 pm
We have a winner!Yeah, they shot white people. Can't have that. Nowadays the cops shoot three people on average every day in America. Nobody cares, life is cheap in America. Gun deaths are the price of freedom. Native Americans run about three times the risk of white folks, and black folks run about twice the risk.GoneFishing says: 11/29/2017 at 11:03 amIt is obvious that humans are the major drivers of extinction on the planet. We are in the Sixth Extinction event and we cause it directly and indirectly through our actions. the why is quite obvious, all species live to propagate and expand to their limits, our limits are global at this point and so are our effects. I don't see energy as much of a problem as there is plenty of it in various forms and we can obtain it if we want it. That however means continuing the high tech industrial form of civilization which we have embarked upon. Can that be made sustainable and much less harmful, even helpful? Of course it can, it's all about wise choices and thinking before we act instead of just going for profit.SRSrocco says: 11/29/2017 at 11:17 amThe loss of vertebrates is just horrible but the loss of invertebrates will be the undoing of our farming and food production and much of the other life that depends upon them. The loss of insect life due to global human generated poisoning of the environment, especially food production areas, will unwind much of the food production.
As collapse starts, the chaos of riots and crime will rise sharply. All those mentally ill and drug addicted people will no longer have their chemicals, causing a trigger point of violence and chaotic actions.
However the major fast cause of loss of human life will be disease. People forget how it was just a few generations ago before antibiotics. Diseases will spread rapidly among the weak and starving, public sanitation will fail causing more disease to spread. Clean water supplies will become absent, compromised or even purposely wrecked. Hospitals will fail because of both being overrun and the power will fail plus supplies will fail. Disease will grow and spread among both people and their animals. It could take less than a generation to drastically reduce the population of the species, with the resulting loss of knowledge, technical ability and industrial ability the cascade will go further.
In the bad case scenarios much of the infrastructure will burn putting up a cloud of aerosols and GHG's as well as causing a large toxic pulse to the environment.But on the other side humans are very inventive and determined to continue the system that supports a huge population. So we may expand this time forward for quite a while, but only through smart choices and changing how we do things such as agriculture, industry and technology. Smart choices, not choices just for profit.
Just one example of our innovative and creative ability.
From sand to soil in 7 hours
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stc5MUIloP0NOT TO WORRY .Doug Leighton says: 11/29/2017 at 11:21 amHumans need not worry about the Falling EROI, the Falling Carrying Capacity or the degradation of the environment. Those no longer matter now that BITCOIN is now trading over $11,000.
Technology will solve all our problems and Bitcoin will make us all wealthy once again.
steve
Ron -- The full text of this paper in SCIENCE will cost you 15 bucks but in my opinion, is well worth it; below is the Abstract. Commenters are welcome to talk about educating women, etc. but its too late for Africa for the balance of this century. I have personally observed the situation in Central Africa where you can see a school each containing about 1,000 kids located at roughly one-kilometer intervals along all significant roads -- a lot of kids. Virtually all schools in Africa are run by churches (of all types), and you can guess what these guys are teaching about birth control: I've asked, and the answer is NOTHING. AFRICANS LOVE KIDS. And, health care has improved greatly over the past few decades meaning general health has been upgraded and infant mortality has been reduced greatly. In fact, I would say the bulk of the UN's efforts in Africa are directed towards improving general health at which they have been successful.Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 11:39 amSorry for the inarticulate ramble but this is a rather personal interest of mine partly because our family is supporting a young girl in Uganda who will soon become a medical doctor. I had promised to stop commenting on the Blog but the African over population crisis issue is one dear to my heart.
WORLD POPULATION STABILIZATION UNLIKELY THIS CENTURY
"The United Nations recently released population projections based on data until 2012 and a Bayesian probabilistic methodology. Analysis of these data reveals that, contrary to previous literature, the world population is unlikely to stop growing this century. There is an 80% probability that world population, now 7.2 billion people, will increase to between 9.6 billion and 12.3 billion in 2100. This uncertainty is much smaller than the range from the traditional UN high and low variants. Much of the increase is expected to happen in Africa, in part due to higher fertility rates and a recent slowdown in the pace of fertility decline. Also, the ratio of working-age people to older people is likely to decline substantially in all countries, even those that currently have young populations."
There is an 80% probability that world population, now 7.2 billion people, will increase to between 9.6 billion and 12.3 billion in 2100.alimbiquated says: 11/29/2017 at 3:11 pmI think you are about 237,500,000 too low with your estimate of world population. Well, that was as of a few minutes ago. It was 7,437,500,000 last time I checked.
World Population ClockHowever, I think the UN is way off on their population projection. I believe that world population will reach 9 billion by 2050, just about a billion and a half above where it is now. However, I doubt it will ever go much above that. The UN, of course, is predicting no catastrophes. After all, that's not their job.
The UN systematically underestimates the fall in birth rate associated with better education for women and their access to health care and contraceptives.GoneFishing says: 11/29/2017 at 11:43 amHere is the free pdf version of the paper"World population stabilizationDoug Leighton says: 11/29/2017 at 11:57 am
unlikely this century".
https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aldous/157/Papers/gerland.pdfThanks Fish!Dennis Coyne says: 11/29/2017 at 12:49 pmHi Doug and Gonefishing,David Archibald says: 11/30/2017 at 2:06 amThe article inked below is also of interest (chart from the PDF).
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378014001095?via%3Dihub
My work suggests that the world runs out of more land that can be put under grain by 2035. This is mainly Brazil and Russia. Just about every country in Africa is importing grain now. Therefore most of their population growth has to be fed on imported grain. Most of the costs in producing grain are in energy so a rising oil price will have a leveraged effect on food prices.Dennis Coyne says: 11/29/2017 at 12:31 pmHi Doug,George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 1:10 pmGlad you decided to comment.
Yes Africa is indeed a problem as far as population growth. With education and improved access to health care and internet access on smart phones, African women may become empowered and decide to control their fertility using modern birth control. The transition to lower fertility can happen in a generation.
As an anecdotal example, my family and my wife's averaged a Total fertility ratio (TFR) of 5.5 for the two families (close to the average sub-Saharan TFR), the next generation of 11 children in total had a total of 6 children for a TFR of about 1.1.
Unscientific and likely too optimistic, but not that different from what occurred in the upper middle income nations of the World (population about 2.4 billion in 2015) where TFR decreased from 4.93 in 1975 to 1.93 in 2000 a period of 25 years.
It is the low income nations that have lagged in reducing TFR, economic development is a key ingredient to getting population under control. Easier to say than to accomplish.
The article below is hopeful
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/26/the-race-to-solar-power-africa
I saw something similar on PBS
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/in-remote-kenyan-villages-solar-startups-bring-light
Dennis – I guess this site is rightfully energy-centric but what's your view on the other limits that are showing up like potable water, top soil, phosphorus?Dennis Coyne says: 11/29/2017 at 1:40 pmHi George,Ghung says: 11/29/2017 at 5:44 pmI think recycling human waste might help with top soil and phosphorus, though a Farmer would know more than me. I think recycling water from sewers can also be done and eventually the expansion of solar power may allow desalination of sea water.
In short, I think there are solutions to these issues, especially as we move to more sustainability (less beef production would help) and a peak in population as education levels improve would also help.
Some nations such as Iran have made amazing progress on their TFR, from 1990 to 2005 (15 years) the TFR fell from 5.62 to 1.97 and by 2015 it had fallen to 1.75.
African nations should find out what happened in Iran over that period and import some of the lessons learned.
Note that there are many examples of a rapid demographic transition, another is South Korea where total fertility ratio (TFR) decreased from 5.63 to 1.60 from 1965 to 1990 and in 2015 had fallen to 1.26.
Using South Korea as an example of increased sustainability (the point here?) is not helping your case much Dennis. As their TFR decreased, their consumption grew exponentially. Just since 1991:Dennis Coyne says: 11/30/2017 at 10:40 amhttps://i0.wp.com/www.eurasiareview.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/petroleum_consumption.png
Seems their per-capita energy use has skyrocketed in the last 60 years or so, and they now import most of their energy sources. They became 9th in CO2 emissions as of 2005. Looks like increased standards-of-living and declining birth rates are not much of a solution for reducing planetary impacts.
Hi Ghung,Dennis Coyne says: 11/30/2017 at 10:41 amI agree. The point was that population growth can be reduced.
We need two things to happen, reduced use of fossil fuels (which peak fossil fuels will take care of by 2030) and reduced population (which peak population in 2050 to 2070 will take care of).
https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol28/39/28-39.pdf
Figure below is from page 1153 of the article linked above.
Note that in 2015 the TFR for South Korea was 1.26, if average life expectancy does not rise above 90 years and World TFR falls to 1.25 by 2100, then World Population falls from 8 billion to 2 billion in about 100 years. This reduces the use of resources and the pressure on other species.
Transition to wind and solar with pumped hydro, wind gas, and thermal storage backup can reduce carbon emissions and reforestation as population falls will help to absorb some of the carbon in the atmosphere. Carbon capture and storage of burned biofuels and cement that absorbs CO2 would be other options for reducing atmospheric CO2.
As fossil fuel peaks prices will rise and the transition to non-fossil fuel will speed up.
The process will be messy, but we are likely to muddle through as there is not much alternative (or not a better one as I see it.)
Forgot chart sorryGeorge Kaplan says: 11/30/2017 at 3:54 am
I think a common factor in all countries seeing large falls in birth rates is that they are preceded by large falls in death rates. This typically takes a couple of generations, which is one of the biggest causes of population overshoot. In Iran it was maybe a bit faster but not much – from above 20 per 1000 in the 50s and 12 in the eighties to around 4 now.yvesT says: 11/30/2017 at 8:39 amRegarding fertilizers, when you realize that there was a "human bones" market in the 19th century, and that for instance England "emptied" the catacombs in Sicily for that, or took back the soldiers bones from Waterloo, you get a sense of the urgency for fertilizer without phosphorus or natural gas based ones.yvesT says: 11/30/2017 at 10:21 am
See for instance below :
"England is robbing all other countries of their fertility. Already in her eagerness for bones, she has turned up the battlefields of Leipsic, and Waterloo, and of Crimea; already from the catacombs of Sicily she has carried away skeletons of many successive generations. Annually she removes from the shores of other countries to her own the manorial equivalent of three million and a half of men Like a vampire she hangs from the neck of Europe."
https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe40s/crops_04.html
Or below :
https://medium.com/study-of-history/the-bones-of-waterloo-a3beb35254a3I had a better link regarding the bones from Sicily catacombs (many due to the plague epidemia I think), but cannot find it back.
Note : the above quotation is in fact from Justus Von Liebig (German chemist/agronomist), it also appears in below books :Nathanael says: 11/29/2017 at 4:24 pm
https://books.google.fr/books?id=bnXXES5-LRcC&pg=PA175&lpg=PA175&dq=fertilizer+sicily+catacombs&source=bl&ots=uWrEC04pcf&sig=zf_RNhU0HfM_aetTy6AkyHSpp3Q&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi7m_v-uebXAhXF0aQKHR1ABOkQ6AEIXjAK#v=onepage&q=fertilizer%20sicily%20catacombs&f=false
or :
https://books.google.fr/books?id=VugoemP2th0C&pg=PA178&lpg=PA178&dq=justus+von+liebig+bones+sicily&source=bl&ots=M808Tc41C4&sig=D-NkZ4zpKOekifQQs-eJt4P7LsI&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwia1eiczObXAhUJF-wKHRITBM0Q6AEIRTAI#v=onepage&q=justus%20von%20liebig%20bones%20sicily&f=falseAnd this page above (from "Justus Von Liebig : the chemical gatekeeper" p 178) is also interesting on other aspects, suggesting Liebig would today address energy ..
The churches which promote childbearing must be destroyed. They are basically the enemies of humanity. Since they're losing in North America, Europe, South America, and most of Asia, they are targeting Africa.islandboy says: 11/29/2017 at 5:00 pm(And *targeting* is the correct word -- they are deliberately sending missionaries to spread their sick, twisted doctrines and spending lots of money to do so.)
If you read my story below, Food for the Poor is a religious group. In Jamaica I believe it is affiliated with Missionaries for the Poor , an international Catholic organisation. So while they are doing yeoman service in providing shelter for poor folks, they are doing diddly squat to encourage poor folks to stop creating more mouths to feed and bodies to clothe and shelter. Isn't that just dandy?Hightrekker says: 11/29/2017 at 7:49 pmIncidentally here's a recent newspaper article from my neck of the woods:
Crime strangling growth – Youth unemployment in Caribbean highest in world, fuelling criminality
Youth unemployment in the Caribbean is said to be the highest in the world, and crime, partly fuelled by this high rate of joblessness, is a major obstacle to economic growth in the region, according to Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The IMF boss, who addressed the sixth High Level Caribbean Forum, held yesterday at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in Kingston, said that crime imposed several economic costs such as public spending on security and the criminal justice system, as well as private spending on security. She also highlighted social costs arising from the loss of income owing to victimisation and incarceration.
Can anybody spot my comment? Hint: I used a pseudonym that should be familiar with everybody here.
Can we be so unpolitical correct to call for "A Pope onA Rope?"Survivalist says: 11/30/2017 at 10:57 pm
Someone must draw a line in the sand- or should we all be under a religious spell?
Or do we want to break that spell?"would you like to see the pope on the end of a rope do you think he's a fool"GoneFishing says: 11/29/2017 at 7:54 pmThis was discussed just this morning on NYC NPR, concerning homelessness and the housing provided for low income people. The gist of it was that although there were programs to help the people with food and housing, very little was really being done to solve the problems.Fred Magyar says: 12/02/2017 at 8:20 pm"This uncertainty is much smaller than the range from the traditional UN high and low variants. Much of the increase is expected to happen in Africa, in part due to higher fertility rates and a recent slowdown in the pace of fertility decline. Also, the ratio of working-age people to older people is likely to decline substantially in all countries, even those that currently have young populations."islandboy says: 11/29/2017 at 1:49 pmI have the impression that many of us myself included have an outdated and still colonialist view of African societies. I think changes happening in many parts of Africa will surprise us and technologically leapfrog over much of the built infrastructure of the OECD countries. I have seen it happen first hand in previously underprivileged parts of Brazil.
How we're using drones to deliver blood and save lives
Keller Rinaudo wants everyone on earth to have access to basic health care, no matter how hard it is to reach them. With his start-up Zipline, he has created the world's first drone delivery system to operate at national scale, transporting blood and plasma to remote clinics in East Africa with a fleet of electric autonomous aircraft. Find out how Rinaudo and his team are working to transform health care logistics throughout the world -- and inspiring the next generation of engineers along the way.
BTW, I have a serious question! Does this kind of technology make the population crisis in Africa better or worse? Would like to hear some thoughts on the matter.
It is uncanny how this lead post has come about just when I have been thinking about this subject recently. I am currently very depressed, to the point I suspect it may be clouding my better judgment with respect to various matters. This depression is partly caused by my views of the future of my little island in particular and the world in general. Let me try and illustrate how my thoughts have been brought into focus recently.alimbiquated says: 11/29/2017 at 4:07 pmI travel around the city I live in, passing through all the different types of communities from time to time. We have pockets of extreme wealth as evidenced by palatial homes with swimming pools, tennis courts and all the creature comforts you would expect in the home of a wealthy first world resident. Leaving these pockets of extreme wealth, one doesn't have to drive for more than five minutes to reach pockets of extreme poverty, people who are so poor, they cannot pay rent and cannot envision ever buying a plot of land or a house, so they build structures on any piece of land that they can get away with. This type of activity extends across the island and there is no area that does not experience informal settlement (aka squatting). There is a political aspect to this, in that in an effort to garner the votes of the large voting block that poor people make up succesive governments have not discouraged squatting, to the point of encouraging it. See yesterday's cartoon in one of the local rags for a satirical perspective of the situation but, I digress.
I try to avoid too much contact with people outside my socioeconomic and educational class because it inevitably leads me to being depressed but, sometimes I end up in that exact situation. This past Monday night was one such case and it was my observations from Monday night that got me thinking about Peak Oil and carrying capacity and overshoot. I was invited to visit a gathering and told to bring drinks and that they were going to cook so, I decided not to eat a meal before leaving the city. It was a forty five minute drive, including a drive through late evening heavy traffic heading westward out of the city, past a big highway construction project being carried out by a Chinese (honest to God, from China) construction firm that has been active in the island for a number of years. On arriving at my destination I was told by my host that the gathering was at another house less than half a mile away.
This particular house was one of 39 houses made possible by the efforts of a couple from Grand Junction, Colorado (with pics) along with the local branch of Food For The Poor . I estimate that, these "houses" measure about 13ft. by 15 ft. inside and are supposed to include a kitchen, a bathroom and two bedrooms. The sister of my host was the recipient of this house, being qualified for the charity as a result of being unemployed with four children, one of whom was either newborn or yet to be born at the time the house was handed over to her. She was not yet thirty years old when her last child was born. Does anybody see where I am going with this yet?
Back to the gathering. On arriving at the house my host informed that no food had been cooked. By this time I was hungry and asked where was the nearest cook-shop where I could purchase a meal. I traveled with my host to Old Harbour, the nearest town apart from Spanish Town. I can only describe Spanish Town as an overpopulated, crime infested, thug controlled mess, that becomes a ghost town by midnight even though it is surprisingly busy by day. I asked my host if I should buy a meal for them also and they declined but, by the time we got back to the house, they declared that they were hungry and needed to get something to cook to go with the rice they had. So off we went to try and find a local shop that had what they wanted and was still open. First one was a 24 hour joint, built using an old cargo truck body but it didn't have all they wanted so it was off to another one that we managed to catch just as they were closing. We came away with a small packet of "veggie chunks" and some cooking oil. The little propane stove had been fired up and the rice was almost done so in less than fifteen minutes a meal of rice and veggie chunks was being served to four or five adults, one of whom had an infant, less than a year old, sharing the meal with her.
So let me weave together how all of this ties in with the subject of the lead post. First the "house" was only possible through the generosity of citizens of a first world, developed country. The materials that made the house (lumber corrugated, galvanized steel) are the products of extractive industries that rely heavily of FF, petroleum in particular. The soft drinks and alcohol that I brought to the gathering were manufactured, distributed and retailed in a system, heavily dependent on external energy. My vehicle runs of diesel. The rice for the meal I ate and the one at the house was imported from outside the island, again produced and delivered with lots of help from petroleum. The chicken I ate was locally produced with imported grain, a product of industrial scale agriculture, probably in the USA. Thankfully many of the chicken farmers are involved in a project that started with 15 kW systems at about 40 chicken farms and seems to be expanding. The veggie chunks are a meat substitute protein made from soy meal, again a product of industrial scale agriculture.
The cooking oil was probably one of soy, palm, canola, corn or coconut oil, produced at an industrial scale and imported to the island. Jamaica was once an exporter of coconut oil before the industry was decimated by a disease called lethal yellowing back in the early 70s. Virtually the entire population of coconut palms on the island was wiped out by this disease and even though efforts have been made to resuscitate the industry using disease resistant varieties, more than forty years on, the manufacture of coconut oil in Jamaica is a tiny cottage industry.
So here we have five or adults, two males and three females, one of which had four children with the other two having one each. There were other people at the gathering but as far as I am aware only two had jobs, the brother of my host who left before the meal and the woman with the infant who has a part time job selling lotto tickets. All of these people are living on the edge, heavily dependent on a system that is in danger of collapse for their very survival and they are far from alone. there are thousands of them if not hundreds of thousands on this island alone.
If for whatever reason industrial scale agriculture fails, the songbirds are going to be eaten out of the trees. I used to dissect rats in my sixth form (12 and 13th grade) biology classes and there ain't much meat on them but, if we get hungry enough maybe we'll turn on the rats. Without affordable propane, every tree and shrub will end up as firewood. This is the reason why I have an almost obsessive focus on renewable energy, solar in particular. It is my hope that the deployment of renewable energy can stay ahead of FF depletion long enough for global civilization to transition away from FF. It is my hope that our civilization, seeing itself on a real time, renewable energy budget, will begin to recognize the fragility of our situation. I have to ask Ron and others to forgive me as I continue to bring attention to the hopeful stories. It is the only way I can keep myself from sliding into depression and despair. It is the only way I can cope.
The Green Revolution in the 60s was supposed to solve all our problems, and it solved a lot of them, especially in Europe and Asia. It works well when you have a lot of water and farm intensively, but is destructive in semi-arid conditions and when used in extensive agriculture, like the American Midwest.Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 4:22 pmAfter the Green Revolution, Asia boomed and Africa fell behind, prompting racist theories. Geography and climate are more likely explanations. In India, for example, the more arid north did less well than the wetter south. The Chinese were the first to realize the problem, and started a new generation of re-greening projects to boost agricultural production.
Meanwhile bad farming practices continues to rapidly degrade wide stretches of North America and South America. I was reading recently about a county in SD that lost 19 inches (not feet!) of topsoil between 1960 and 2014. Many places in America simply abandoned farming, like New England and Appalachia. People blame red dirt and the crick risin' in Appalachia and glacial rocks in New England, but that wasn't a problem before soil degradation set in.
The Green Revolution focused on genetics and chemistry, which makes sense if applied correctly. Development economists were puzzled that Kenyan farmers were uninterested in high yield seeds, but the explanation as simple: They need a regular water supply, not better seeds. A lot of places in the world get 3-4 weeks of rain a years, and good seeds don't solve this problem. Pumping the water out of the aquifier isn't the solution either, just ask anyone in Antelope Valley CA, a former grassland turned desert by the alfalfa farmers.
My mother warned my to watch out for flash floods when camping in the desert. It took me decades to understand why flash floods are a particular problem in the desert: More or less by definition, deserts are places where there are flash floods. The flash floods are both cause and symptom of soil degradation. Deserts aren't places where there isn't enough water -- they are places where rainwater runs off the surface instead of seeping into the soil. Degraded soil can't absorb water fast enough, surface runoff degrades soil.
The problem with industrial agriculture is that it treats the great outdoors like a hydroponic farm -- it ignores soil ecology and just assumes the hydrology will work itself out.
A more modern approach starts with water and soil. It's spreading rapidly in Africa, for example with the sand dams in Kenya, the terracing in Ethiopia and Kenya, and the various planting pit (like zai and demi-lunes) in the Sahel and agroforestry (planting trees in fields, or crops in orchards) in a lot of arid places.
It's true that mankind is pushing the limits of what the current ecosystem can carry, but it's also true that the ecosystem could be much bigger than it currently is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtOBSmIBx1A
Meanwhile bad farming practices continues to rapidly degrade wide stretches of North America and South America. I was reading recently about a county in SD that lost 19 feet of topsoil between 1960 and 2014.alimbiquated says: 11/29/2017 at 4:30 pmThere is a serious problem with that statement. No place on earth has 19 feet of topsoil, not even 19 inches over an entire county.
Topsoil Wikipedia
Topsoil is the upper, outermost layer of soil, usually the top 2 inches (5.1 cm) to 8 inches (20 cm). It has the highest concentration of organic matter and microorganisms and is where most of the Earth's biological soil activity occurs.Inches I mean, not feet obviously.Ulenspiegel says: 11/30/2017 at 5:07 amEDIT: Here's a shot from Kalkriese, Germany where they are digging out a Roman-German battlefield. The artifacts are all found at or just below the border between the black topsoil and the red dirt underneath it -- that was 7 BC
https://www.landkreis-osnabrueck.de/sites/default/files/bildergalerie/k1600_grabung1016_1.jpg
The archaeologists there told me the topsoil is about 1.5-2m deep, and was formed after the Romans left by later farming practices.
In the Kalkriese area, the farmers used sod planting ("Plaggendüngung"), i.e. they removed the top soil on large areas to improve the soil on their fields.alimbiquated says: 11/30/2017 at 5:35 amTherefore, Kalkriese is an example how NOT to do it.
I think the thickness of the topsoil in the area speaks for itself.Ron Patterson says: 11/30/2017 at 11:57 amMy point is that as Ron points out, there is a limited carrying capacity for the planet, but I don't really think we are there yet, because there are relatively simple methods available to make huge areas of the Earth's surface. Of course, even if it's possible, it isn't clear it will happen.
there are relatively simple methods available to make huge areas of the Earth's surface.alimbiquated says: 11/30/2017 at 12:50 pmThat seems to be an incomplete sentence. Make huge areas of the Earth's surface what ? Desert? We sure can do that. We are doing more of that every year. Scrubland? We are doing that also by cutting down the forest and trying to make farmland out of it. After a few years the land will row nothing of value. That's happening in the Amazon right now.
There is nothing we can do to increase human habitual area without reducing the wild habitual area. That is what my post is all about. We are destroying every wild thing by destroying their habitat, by taking their habitat for ourselves.
productive.alimbiquated says: 11/29/2017 at 4:22 pmYour last paragraph is not correct. Much of the world is desert, and that desert could be much more productive than it is, given the right agriculture methods.
Whether that will actually happen is another question of course.
Just a line of rocks on contour works too.GoneFishing says: 11/29/2017 at 4:11 pmhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCSYqUiI41w
The chinese are a lot farther down ths road.
http://www.topguilintravel.com/images/longsheng-travel-bg.jpg
But the Ehtiopians are doing their best to imitate the chinese
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVSiR0mWsAAxhqi.jpg
The Kenyns too.
This would be great in East Tennessee, but they get their corn in a jar, as the old song goes.
That very same first world country that donated the materials has plenty of homeless and large amounts of poor. It also has large amounts of empty buildings and huge amounts of food waste, yet they do not take care of their own. That is even a sadder situation as people freeze to death, starve, and die of simple preventable health problems in one of the richest countries in the world. Basic needs are not met and the governing bodies are constantly fighting to reduce the paltry benefits that are given. It's a country full of hate for their own people and hate back at the haters.TonyMax says: 11/29/2017 at 4:42 pmThere's no inherent evolutionary advantage to caring for people you have no relation to. That's the real reason why all of these 'safety net' programs you describe are hated in the general sense and under attack as time marches on.GoneFishing says: 11/29/2017 at 9:06 pmNow Tony, we all know the public programs are under attack because of the greed and selfishness of people who already have too much money and stuff.Fred Magyar says: 11/30/2017 at 2:51 pm
We all know it is the greed and the overconsumption that is causing the destruction of our environment and possibly the whole human race. That is a huge evolutionary disadvantage.
Helping, sharing and cooperating is the advantage. The selfish and greedy are like ticks sucking the world dry for their own personal benefit.There's no inherent evolutionary advantage to caring for people you have no relation to.Survivalist says: 11/30/2017 at 10:53 pmThat is absolute Bullshit!
Dr. Sarah Mathew
I study the evolution of human ultra-sociality and the role of culture in enabling it. I am especially interested in how humans evolved the capacity to cooperate with millions of genetically unrelated individuals, and how this links to the origins of moral sentiments, prosocial behavior, norms, and large-scale warfare. To address these issues, I combine formal modeling of the evolution of cooperation with fieldwork among the Turkana. The Turkana are an egalitarian pastoral society in East Africa who cooperate, including in costly inter-ethnic raids, with hundreds of other Turkana who are not kin nor close friends. Through systematic empirical studies in this unique ethnographic context, my research project here aims to provide a detailed understanding of the mechanisms underpinning cooperation and moral origins.
evolutionary advantage of caring for othersCaelan MacIntyre says: 11/29/2017 at 5:20 pm
About 232,000,000 results (0.58 seconds)
https://tinyurl.com/y7wv5sezThis information is not exactly carved in a stone tablet and hidden on the dark side of the moon.
Hi Ron,islandboy says: 11/29/2017 at 6:46 pmI haven't read your good article just yet (although it is doubtful any of it will surprise me or add to what is already more or less understood), but just to mention that I recently listened to a podcast from Chris Martenson's site, Peak Prosperity, featuring William Rees from the University of BC
Two things about the podcast that stood out was that William was in fine form (articulate, clear, concise, passionate, 'deathly' serious, etc.); and the second was his mention of possibly fundamentally changing the natural system of Atlantic cod (fisheries), so that they may never recover. Not everything can simply reverse, and quickly enough, if they can, such as, say, with the depletion of the ozone layer, and when it involves all kinds of living systems– much, and the intricacies/complex interconnections, of which we are blissfully unaware of, despite some of our arrogant pretensions to the contrary (such as with regard to the avocation of most if not all forms of geoengineering)– it is very serious.
What concerns me also is how some people, such as on this site, can ostensibly claim a required greenwashed BAU from out of one side of their mouths, while on the other side, express grave concerns for the ecosystem. We cannot have it both ways.
To me, much greenwashed BAU is just swapping out different forms of rampant resource extraction, pollution and inequability for other forms.
The system, along with its 'power-politics', is still intact.
IOW, there is no real change.
Loren, assuming that's you, I am certain that radical decline, if not outright collapse, is already well underway, despite the obstinate mindlessness of some people. Just because some don't see something or want to see something doesn't mean it is not there.
My simple recommendation, especially for certain people WRT this deathwish-for-a-culture is to let go/ get out (and in the process, learn things like permaculture and local community resilience, and how our ancestors did some of it). Your comforts are much of an illusion (and predicated, for example, on natural draw-down).
I knew you'd show up sooner or later and since you've always been critical of my support for renewables and EVs, let's bite.Caelan MacIntyre says: 11/29/2017 at 7:59 pm"To me, much greenwashed BAU is just swapping out different forms of rampant resource extraction, pollution and inequability for other forms.
The system, along with its 'power-politics', is still intact.
IOW, there is no real change."
Are you saying that "there is no real change" going from corporate owned, centrally located, large scale, FF fired generators to small scale, individually or community owned, distributed renewable generators? If so, that's not what the FF and corporate generator class in Australia thinks. They have captured the Australian federal government and are fighting renewables as hard as they can.
Are you saying "there is no real change" going from ICE powered vehicles to EVs that, are perfectly happy to suck electrons from any source including renewable sources individually owned or owned by a co-op of which the vehicle owner is invested? That's not an opinion shared by the Koch brothers who are spending millions of dollars to try and paint EVs in a bad light in the eyes of the public.
Surely you realize that an individual with solar on their roof and an EV is giving a big middle finger to the status quo, including FF corporations and utilities who will no longer be able to feed at that individual's trough. In case you don't realize it, that is a very big disruption of "system, along with its 'power-politics'" and no, in case you haven't been listening, "The system, along with its 'power-politics'", will not be "still intact."
Now if you read my fairly long narrative further up, I hope the point I am trying to make does not escape you. That point is that there are millions, no lets make that billions of poor poorly educated folks who depend on things like industrial agriculture and the current status quo for the basic necessities of life, food, clothing and shelter. If the status quo collapses they are dead, let me say that again, dead! I'm all for dismantling the status quo and replacing it with something that is much kinder to all life on this pale blue dot we call home but, I shudder at the thought of millions or billions of human beings starving to death, just as I shudder at what we are doing to the biosphere. Can you see why I'm depressed right now?
Alan,islandboy says: 11/29/2017 at 10:31 pm
This is my cameo appearance. LOLThere is no real change if we are still relying on the monstrosity that is the crony-capitalist plutarchy/government-big-biz symbiosis, such as for solar panels, etc. and/or what some misleadingly refer to as 'renewable'.
If you are in the biz– and I think you wrote hereon that you indeed are– then some might suggest, maybe even me, that you are, say, 'soft-shilling' and/or rationalizing for your product using POB as your platform, and maybe problematically skewing the narrative a little more towards a dystopic system that we should be getting the hell out of, while making preparations to do so, like learning how to do the basics in a local, resilient context so that we do not need industrial agro. The longer we rely on industrial anything– and as if it's somehow morally/ethically neutral– the harder/faster we will likely fall, maybe along something of a seneca curve.
We cannot eat solar panels and electricity is not a necessity, except to for the brainwashed and the brainwashers.
Attempting to play on people's heartstrings, such as about poor people in so-called undeveloped locales to sell a product they don't need and that would risk locking them– and others– into a certain ('Western') lifestyle, in some contexts, approaches contemptible, by the way.You should already know how sociogeopoliticultural ideologies like Westernisation is foisted upon the global masses through physical, cultural, mental and intellectual colonialism, with the result often being wars and deaths to people and traditional ways of life. Just consider the Middle East right now. In the name of what? Oil and oligarchy?
You've said it yourself hereon that you have some kind of slavery in your family, yes? Well, many people are still slaves anyway, if with coats of white paint. Libya was in the news recently about that– slavery– incidentally.If we want to do solar panels etc. the right, ethical ways, we need sea changes, such as that avoid slavery and privilege-by-gun, but I highly doubt we will manage them in time, and suspect that we are already long past that time.
That said, how do you feel now?
I am not yet in the business of doing anything with solar PV so, as of right now I have no product that I am shilling for, soft or hard. I am in a business connected to entertainment if you must know. The entertainment business can by no means be classified as non-discretionary and recent technology has allowed far more people to compete with me so it will be necessary to get out of that at some point. How about viewing this as something I see as as worthwhile pursuit for the future of mankind, given my skill set and thus my advocating it as a worthwhile area for me to pursue a vocation in? I am not only advocating for solar PV because it's a field I can participate in but, because I think it can contribute a great deal to reductions in carbon emissions among other noble aspirations.Hightrekker says: 11/29/2017 at 10:40 pmAre you going to start suggesting that I want to get into the business of manufacturing and selling EVs just because I am suggesting that large scale EV adoption would be a good thing? I ain't no Elon Musk if that's what your thinking. Now, if the shit hits the fan and motor fuels became really unobtainium, I might take a stab at an EV conversion business, a la Jack Rickard but, right now even Jack seems disillusioned with that pursuit, having posted only one new video since the middle of August and only two new blog posts since the last week of July. At any rate the necessary preconditions for such a business to be successful in an age of factory made EVs, do not exist.
I am with OFM on the point that some of your ideas for agriculture cannot adequately serve the needs of a rapidly growing population of 7.5 billion people. My dad who was a descendant of rebel runaway slaves, known in Jamaica as Maroons , was into agriculture and left me and my surviving sister a six acre homestead when he died. I can tell you agriculture ain't a walk in the park. It's damned hard work and carries all sorts of risks not faced by other pursuits (droughts, thieves, diseases pests etc.) . You seem to have some romantic view of agriculture that I do not share.
As for locking people in to a western lifestyle, that doesn't apply to Jamaica. The western lifestyle came with colonization and slavery. Do you think that people outside of the developed word should forgo electricity, computers, cell phones, the internet and other modern conveniences?
Despite all of that, the Caribbean has been bucking western culture for centuries. Trinidad and Tobago has their carnival and it's music and Jamaica has had as big an impact on western culture with our music (reggae and ska) as western culture has had on us. Even this past weekend, a dark skinned Jamaican woman sporting a huge afro, placed third in the Miss Universe pageant. The girl that won was from South Africa and could pass for Caucasian whether she is or not and I didn't see any other black women in the contest sporting an afro hairstyle (not that I watched it).
When it comes to some things, that train has already left the station. No point in romanticizing about what could have been. I'd rather focus on what small steps we can take to improve things in the here and now, while moving us to a more sustainable future. I will probably remain depressed until the new year. Probably more to with not having any immediate family around for "the festive season" than anything else. Maybe the new year will bring some good news on the renewable/sustainability front! That would cheer me up!
Islandboy–islandboy says: 11/30/2017 at 3:17 am
After being in Central America for quite a while, and that heavy Catholic noose around everyones neck, it was so liberating to get out to the islands.
Lets Party Mon!Now you're talking! We in the Caribbean know how to party! I wouldn't be surprised if we woke up the morning after the collapse and said, "Collapse? What collapse? We were too busy partying to notice"GoneFishing says: 11/30/2017 at 8:22 amHaving said that, Trinidad is heavily influenced by catholicism, their carnival being associated with the catholic observance of Lent. I don't see any evidence of the Trinis (as they are known in the islands) taking the admonitions of their various religious leaders too seriously. Hell! I've never been to Trinidad carnival but, I hear it's one wild party!
On the other hand, Trinidad should have some long term concerns about what they are going to do after Oil and Gas production fall below consumption and they have to start importing hydrocarbons. What if either prices are too high or supplies are limited? What if prices collapse due to lack of demand as Seba suggests will happen after EVS and solar begin to dominate transport and electricity generation?
So how is that wind farm coming along?islandboy says: 11/30/2017 at 9:04 amWay too early to say. The article dated October 4, 2017 says this:GoneFishing says: 11/30/2017 at 11:01 am"The feasibility study will evaluate the viability of installing the wind farm, which would represent one of the first offshore wind installations in Jamaica and the greater Caribbean region."
I expect the feasibility study is going to take months and I would expect them to do some detailed analysis of the offshore wind resource in the process. It is good that this study is being done so soon after two devastating hurricanes have hit the region. Should keep hurricanes very much in the picture.
Dated
Looking at some Caribbean buoy data it looks like wind would be a good source of power for the islands.islandboy says: 11/30/2017 at 4:26 pm
Beside the wind, the island has about 54 billion kwh/day of sunlight falling on it. That is more than ten times the total energy production per year for the island. Energy is not a problem, how the energy is generated is the problem.
Cover less than 0.1 percent of the island with solar panels and make up the difference with wind power.I have done some numbers in terms of what it would take to power the island entirely with renewables, mostly solar. Not impossible but the technocrats, one of whom is a college classmate of mine, cannot wrap their head around 100% renewable electricity!GoneFishing says: 11/30/2017 at 4:36 pmIncidentally, I came across a video presentation on Youtube (with a really annoying backing track) that at about 3 minutes in contains the following text:
"Seba's forecasts are predicated on the assumption that the cost of generating and storing electricity will continue to fall – to the point where just about all generation will be solar by 2030. But electricity production would only have to increase by 18 percent in the US to cope with a complete switch to EVs, he said"
That 18% figure squares quite nicely with some back of the envelope calculations I have done.
The choice is to transistion or fail.OFM says: 12/01/2017 at 12:14 pmI've made good friends with a couple of guys from Jamaica who have friends and family here that have managed to get their permanent paperwork taken care of.Hightrekker says: 11/29/2017 at 10:31 pmUnfortunately it doesn't look as if they will ever be able to get permanent resident status. They're older guys, and about as mellow and fun people to be around as I have ever met. They come up for an extended family visit every fall, which just HAPPENS to be the time of year local farmers need a lot of extra help, lol.
As soon as I'm finished with family duties, I'm going down to spend a month with them.
Will be spending some money on food and utilities and a few new nice things for them of course, because while they're friends, they're not well off.
Bottom line:GoneFishing says: 11/30/2017 at 8:31 am
It is really hard to face the extinction of your species, no matter what reality presents to you.What has been highly disturbing is watching the natural world be run over and steadily destroyed.Fred Magyar says: 11/30/2017 at 9:52 amWe cannot eat solar panels and electricity is not a necessity, except to for the brainwashed and the brainwashers.Caelan MacIntyre says: 11/30/2017 at 9:48 pmThan do the world a favor and unplug yourself from all sources of electricity! At least we here won't have to read your fantasies!
BTW there are plenty of people who understand that the current capitalist system is not the answer, read Kate Raeworth's, Donut Economics for starters.
Modern humans could no more live without electricity in the 21st century than they could live without food and water. Try living without refrigeration in any city in the world. You would cause massive starvation in a few days. Try providing medical care to an urban population without electricity.
You have to be completely delusional to suggest that electricity is not a necessity!
That's all irrelevant to my point which still stands– especially when the system is destroying our planet. We have lived with electricity for a relative split second of our existence as a species on this planet.Hightrekker says: 11/29/2017 at 7:53 pm
Besides, if we're not treating the planet properly, do we even deserve electricity and its conveniences? I think not.And then there are assorted uses for electricity, some being more questionable as priorities than others.
Electric car versus fridge?
FWIW, I have personally lived without refrigeration for months in a major city, at least at home after shopping at the grocery store LOL, but also in the country– more hard-core.
If your local community especially is growing and processing its own food, then it's easy.
There's pickling, drying, fermenting, spicing/salting, alcohol, etc., and natural cool-storage, such as root cellars and simple cooling-by-evaporation systems.
There's also 'eating as you go'. Other animals do that, and I've never heard of an animal that needs a fridge or electricity, have you? Maybe your cat at home, but even Meow Mix can last outside the fridge, yes?
But some of us have to actually help make the changes, such as to the narrative, and limit the cling to some kinds of BAU narratives and fantasies.
Do it for Mother Earth, Fred. Or me. Or Harvey Weinstein or whoever/whatever motivates you. Coral.
Obviously, we can't just turn off the lights and fridges overnight, but there are plenty of ways to manage, maintain and consume food that don't require a fridge. So if we can't just turn off the lights and fridges overnight, maybe we should start talking more about how to live without them and/or with greater resilience.
But even if the juice stays on forevermore, some juiceless skills and knowledge are great to learn, have and apply.
BTW, I just watched this documentary on rare earths– the apparently highly-polluting stuff that's supposed to help power, until they run out, all these new and relatively-useless electrical gadgets now and in the future to get off of those other pollutants.
but just to mention that I recently listened to a podcast from Chris Martenson's site, Peak Prosperity, featuring William Rees from the University of BCCaelan MacIntyre says: 11/29/2017 at 8:09 pmHighly recommended.
And I'm not a fan of some of Martenson's guests.I came across the podcast indirectly via another site, but do sometimes run into Chris' material. He seems good at interviewing and is easy to follow in videos.OFM says: 11/29/2017 at 7:59 pmThis post is going to be a gold mine for me, because it relates directly to so much of what I'm working on for publication in book form if I ever manage to finish it to my satisfaction. Here's hoping it attracts over a thousand comments, lol! I'm especially interested in comments that dispute my own, because those are the ones enable me to understand my own blind spots.GoneFishing says: 11/29/2017 at 9:17 pmNow so far, nobody has said anything about what I will refer to as the SECOND key fact that one must understand to understand evolution. Hoyle missed the first one altogether, making a total fool of himself, although he was a brilliant scientist, one of the top men in HIS field, his mistake being that he failed to understand that evolution BUILDS on it's PAST " accomplishments".
The second key fact I am hereby pointing out is that while evolution creates new life forms that reproduce to fill any and all available niches, there's no GUIDANCE involved, no overall PLAN, no GOD in charge, if you wish to put it that way.
Evolution is characterized in large part by parsimony, by being conservative in the use of resources. Animals that don't have use for claws don't have claws like tigers, lol, and animals that don't eat grass out in the fields don't have digestive systems like COWS. Evolution creates organisms that are "good at" taking advantage of whatever resources are available, WITHOUT REGARD ANY FUTURE CONSEQUENCES because there is NO LONG TERM PLAN. Behavioral BRAKES that aren't needed don't evolve, lol, and countless things that would be extremely useful, like eyes in the back of our heads, which would keep us from being attacked from the rear, don't often evolve either, because .. well because of more factors than I have any inclination to cover at this minute. Half of the SHORT answer is that eyes in the back of our heads would cost us more in terms of sacrificing something else than they would gain for us. The other half of the SHORT answer is that since pure chance plays such a big role . the odds are astronomically high against it happening anyway.
This a comment/ rant, not a BOOK. The BOOK is in the works, and will be available free to member of this forum who may want to read it and point out shortcomings in it before I publish it, most likely for free on the net. I'm not so arrogant as to think anybody will PAY for it, lol.
Dead ends, blind alleys, and death, at the individual level, and or at the species level, means absolutely NOTHING to "Mother Nature" because she is not sentient, she's not moral, she's not even ALIVE in the usual sense. She's just an artifact, a tool, that we naked apes have invented in our efforts to understand reality.
What I'm getting at, since She IS parsimonious, is that She does not provide brakes where none are needed.
Sometimes things do evolve that prove to be useful under new circumstances, but when this happens, it's just a lucky accident for the creature involved. If for instance a creature evolves a forelimb capable of grasping a branch, so that it can climb better, lol, later on the ability to GRASP something MAY come in very handy, because it sets the stage for that creature being able to grasp a stone which can be used as a tool or weapon. This does NOT mean the creature WILL eventually discover the use of tools and weapons. It DOES mean the probability of such evolution is vastly enhanced. There's NO PLANNING INVOLVED . except in the minds of deists who accept the reality of evolution while also retaining the concept of a God or gods or some guiding force of some sort.IF the need arises for BRAKES, well then, die off, or even extinction, takes care of the problem. If a given species eats only a given plant, and that plant goes extinct, Mother Nature does not grieve for either the plant, nor the species that feeds exclusively upon it,which very likely also goes extinct. She doesn't even consciously keep score, as indifferently as a hired bookkeeper keeps books for a client he has never met and will never meet. She does however inadvertently create a RECORD of historical "scores" , which we can read. It's the fossil record.
It's rather amusing that professional biologists go around talking about human stupidity as if there is something inherently WRONG with people, as if we are collectively DEFECTIVE. We are what we are because we are final product ( up until today ) of our own evolutionary history. We're as " good " or "well designed "as we are evolved to be, like all other living creatures.
Engineers build in safety margins, and add features that may be useful, under certain circumstances, when they design things, because they DO work with and from PRECONCEIVED PLANS. Mother Nature doesn't make plans, she just deals and redeals the cards, over and over, and will continue to do so until all life on this planet perishes which won't be until the sun expands sufficiently to destroy the last vestiges of life on it.
We are NOT something different from the rest of biological creation, we do NOT operate under different rules, we aren't on some sort of fucking pedestal, separate from the rest of the biosphere. THAT whole crock of shit sort of thinking is one of the cornerstones of kinds of the thinking that some of the regulars here like to make fun of, such as religion, nationalism, racism, etc.
A biologist who talks about humanity as if humanity SHOULD BE EXPECTED to display a hive like consciousness has his head up his ass. NO. NO. No.
We have succeeded,basically for no other reason that accident in the last analysis, to the point we compete mostly with each other, rather than other species.
The evolved PROGRAMS hard wired into our brains that drive our behavior DO NOT include much in the way of built in brakes, because BRAKES HAVE COSTS. If we over populate, if we use up critical resources on which we depend for our survival, and perish, there's NOBODY who gives a shit.. other than some of us who are aware of the fact that we ARE in overshoot. Mother Nature is INCAPABLE of giving a shit.
The whole fucking idea that we are SOMETHING SPECIAL was probably originated by the first priests and their allies. It's an idea that has little to do with any discussion based on real SCIENCE within the context of understanding our own overshoot .
Now none of this rant should be interpreted as indicating I don't know and understand that humans are tribal creatures, that we are social creatures, and that we survive and thrive because we DO live and work cooperatively. The thing is , we survive and thrive as COMPETING communities, tribes, and nations, rather than as a SINGLE global community. Wolf packs compete. Prides of lions compete. Bands of chimps compete. We humans compete with each other. Talking as if we are DEFECTIVE because we behave this way is a waste of time.
When the shit hits the fan hard enough and fast enough, we do sometimes cooperate with our former enemies, at least temporarily.Old enemies can be new allies.
It's at least THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE that we can cooperate as a SPECIES, at the global level, in order to solve some or maybe even most of the problems associated with our own overshoot. We have cooperated before at levels up to and including the global level. In WWII, most of the developed countries of the world were involved as partisans on one or the other side. We cooperate to some extent at the global level now, in economic terms, and in terms of our physical security, as for instance in arms control agreements.
But just because it's theoretically possible that we can cooperate at the species level globally doesn't mean it's going to happen. I don't think there's any real likelihood of it happening, although alliances consisting of the various major economic and military powers do exist and will continue to exist and some of these alliances will prove to be critically important in determining the course of future history.
"A biologist who talks about humanity as if humanity SHOULD BE EXPECTED to display a hive like consciousness has his head up his ass. NO. NO. No." Do you mean E. O. Wilson has his head up his ass?Fred Magyar says: 11/30/2017 at 6:17 amDo you mean E. O. Wilson has his head up his ass?GoneFishing says: 11/30/2017 at 8:16 amEdward O. Wilson's New Take on Human Nature
The eminent biologist argues in a controversial new book that our Stone Age emotions are still at war with our high-tech sophistication
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/edward-o-wilsons-new-take-on-human-nature-
In his newly published The Social Conquest of the Earth -- the 27th book from this two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize -- Wilson argues the nest is central to understanding the ecological dominance not only of ants, but of human beings, too. Ants rule the microhabitats they occupy, consigning other insects and small animals to life at the margins; humans own the macroworld, Wilson says, which we have transformed so radically and rapidly that we now qualify as a kind of geological force. How did we and the ants gain our superpowers? By being super-cooperators, groupies of the group, willing to set aside our small, selfish desires and I-minded drive to join forces and seize opportunity as a self-sacrificing, hive-minded tribe. There are plenty of social animals in the world, animals that benefit by living in groups of greater or lesser cohesiveness. Very few species, however, have made the leap from merely social to eusocial, "eu-" meaning true. To qualify as eusocial, in Wilson's definition, animals must live in multigenerational communities, practice division of labor and behave altruistically, ready to sacrifice "at least some of their personal interests to that of the group." It's tough to be a eusocialist. Wouldn't you rather just grab, gulp and go? Yet the payoffs of sustained cooperation can be huge. Eusociality, Wilson writes, "was one of the major innovations in the history of life," comparable to the conquest of land by aquatic animals, or the invention of wings or flowers. Eusociality, he argues, "created superorganisms, the next level of biological complexity above that of organisms." The spur to that exalted state, he says, was always a patch of prized real estate, a focal point luring group members back each day and pulling them closer together until finally they called it home. "All animal species that have achieved eusociality, without exception, at first built nests that they defended from enemies," Wilson writes. An anthill. A beehive. A crackling campfire around which the cave kids could play, the cave elders stay and the buffalo strips blacken all day. Trespassers, of course, would be stoned on sight.
As is evident by some of the comments on this thread, while the hive may be able to display collective intelligence, the individual ants can still be pretty dumb! Do check out the link I posted to 'The Mind's I' chapter 11 Prelude to Ant Fugue.
If we can't cooperate globally then the idea of Half-Earth is a farce.Fred Magyar says: 11/30/2017 at 9:18 amThe idea is still sound! If humans have not yet evolved to the point that they are able to include the whole globe as a part of their hive Well, that's a separate issue and may indeed mean that we are collectively fucked! Because not enough of us have reached that particular point in our evolution.GoneFishing says: 11/30/2017 at 12:18 pmAs George Carlin once said: "The Planet is fine, it's the people that are fucked"
An idea is sound only if it can be implemented, otherwise it is just a bunch of sugars turned to heat and in this case trees turned to wastepaper.Fred Magyar says: 11/30/2017 at 2:40 pmMy point was not that E.O. Wilson is wrong, but that he would not have presented such a point if he did not think it possible or even probable. It was OFM that was the one saying it was not possible, which is a rather narrow view of humanity. Humanity cooperates on large scale right now.
Looking at the update of Limits to Growth I get the feeling that the flattening out of some of the parameters (energy, industrial output) may be misinterpreted. The same thing would happen if an energy and industrial transistion were occurring.
The key question is what does a transistion look like initially?A field to a forest transistion looks a lot like field, then some bushes with a few small trees, then eventually almost all trees. Originally the trees are hardly there at all and don't seem to be having much effect as their leaves smoother a lot of plant life around them and they take up more and more of the solar energy that used to reach the ground. It starts small then spreads to complete takeover.
An energy and industrial transistion goes hand in hand with a social/governmental transistion. It looks small and scattered at first but steadily fills in even despite the resistance of the legacy systems. Key to the fast takeover is the weakening of the previous growth and it's demise leaving easy space for the takeover.
For example, I have a kitchen ceiling light fixture. It has three bulb positions. I had replaced the three 60 watt incandescent bulbs years ago with a 100 watt CFL (running actual 25 watts).
Last night the CFL started flickering so I pulled it and it had burn marks on the base of the bulb. The CFL bulb has now been replaced by two 60 watt equivalent LED bulbs which together use only 16 watts and provide more light than the CFL.
Also the LED bulbs may never have to be replaced in my lifetime. 180 watts to 16 watts and no more replacement, that is high ground transistion! Now $4 replaces over $500 on the user end and eliminates large amounts of pollution.The power cost and economics have overshadowed the legacy instrument in an inexorable way. The death of an individual instrument allowed the replacement by a superior one.
I think that effect has been happening all across the world in many areas of energy use and industrial process for decades. This effect may have been interpreted as a reduction in energy and industrial output while it is really mostly a transistion in process.So how do we get a fast takeover? Strand and remove the old legacy assets and systems plus do not replace dead systems with the same system. The action is harsh, but that is how it is done.
I will know we are on the right course when I see those large glass buildings being stripped of their components, their glass re-used, their steel reused and recycled, their wiring removed as they are removed. Why and how do we put up R2 buildings that soak up huge amounts of energy for heating and cooling? They need to go now. Passenger vehicles that get less than 150 pMPG need to go now and no passenger vehicle that gets below 400 pMPG should be built ever again. There are many inefficient, harmful and problematical systems that could be removed and changed.
Trash the old ways now and insert better ways, ones that work longer with less harm. Make new systems that heal soil and nature in general. The collapse is occurring now, take advantage of it by putting in superior systems that allow E.O. Wilson's Half-Earth idea to flourish, not finish.
Personally, until a lot of the old stupid harmful systems are put aside we can't see clearly if a fast collapse is at hand or not. Maybe if we just stop following bad and stupid we can ease off our consumption of the planet and reverse some of the major problems we face. There may be no real need to go through a grand scale collapse and huge loss of species.
Yeah, I have to agree with most of what you said.OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 6:20 pm"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."― R. Buckminster Fuller
""It was OFM that was the one saying it was not possible, which is a rather narrow view of humanity. "OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 3:40 pmBULLSHIT.
Here's what I actually said in a comment upthread. It was posted a day previous to your comment, lol.
"It's at least THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE that we can cooperate as a SPECIES, at the global level, in order to solve some or maybe even most of the problems associated with our own overshoot. We have cooperated before at levels up to and including the global level. In WWII, most of the developed countries of the world were involved as partisans on one or the other side. We cooperate to some extent at the global level now, in economic terms, and in terms of our physical security, as for instance in arms control agreements. "
Perhaps I ought to lecture you a little on the meaning of the word EXPECT within the context I used it, which I think is obvious enough to anybody who WANTS to understand. In this context, expect means (or not ) that cooperation will happen spontaneously, or with only moderate incentives.
I don't think global level cooperation will happen, IF it happens, until the incentives to cooperate are OBVIOUS and overwhelming, when it comes to really changing the way we do things. I don't think any competent biologist will argue with this position, speaking in the broadest terms, painting with the so called broad brush.
We do after all have a few thousand years of known history that indicates that we are as apt to fight as cooperate, lol.
When the shit hits the fan hard enough, id it also hits slowly enough for us wake up , I EXPECT ( PREDICT ) that WE WILL COOPERATE on the grand scale, at least up to the nation state level, in most nations, and frequently at the international level, and MAYBE even at the global level.
Hi GF,GoneFishing says: 11/30/2017 at 4:51 pmI must admit I'm a little behind in reading E O Wilson, who is as capable a scientist as any in his field, and head and shoulders above almost all the rest, in my opinion. He's also one of the best writers ever in his field, probably THE best writer in biology in my personal opinion.
But so far as a I know, and I have read all of his older books, unless I'm mistaken, he would basically agree with me, because I am, as I interpret his work, AGREEING WITH HIM.
There's a HELL OF DIFFERENCE between EXPECTING people to cooperate on the grand scale, and believing they are capable of doing so.I believe we are capable of cooperating on the grand scale, given sufficient motivation to do so, and have said so already in this thread. I don't EXPECT us to cooperate with people we see as outsiders and enemies, but given new circumstances, new conditions, new problems, new fears, we can and sometimes do find new common ground, and make friends with former enemies.
I'm ready to bet the farm that I'm WITH E O WILSON, rather than AGAINST HIM.
Nuance matters.
To me at least, lol.
A couple of days back in another thread, you lectured me, telling me to THINK GLOBALLY, as if to imply I 'm unaware that most of the people in the world are still desperately poor. I have never said that most of humanity is well off. I have never IMPLIED that most of humanity is well off.
What I DID say, is that FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH, quoting myself, that there is a sound case to be made for the trickle down effect, and that a substantial number of even very poor people humanity HAVE ALREADY benefited greatly from economic and technological progress.
Hundreds of millions of desperately poor people are benefiting today from progress made in fields ranging from public health to industrial agriculture to renewable energy , etc. Hundreds of millions of very poor people are making relatively fast economic progress by some measures, for instance in the rate at which they are able to make use of at least some electricity, even if it's only a single light powered by a battery recharged by a small solar panel.
The less you have, the greater the marginal value of anything new you are able to get.
Just one rechargeable light is worth a LOT to a person who has no other option than perhaps a candle or kerosene lamp or a home made torch.
Incidentally I can remember being told by my grand parents that back when they were kids, it wasn't at all usual to literally light a ( corn ) shuck to provide some light so as to make a quick run to the outdoor privy or take care of some other after dark chore. They had kerosene, but it was considered wasteful to use it unnecessarily.
Things can and do get better sometimes, even on the global scale, lol.
E.O. Wilson would not have written the book Half Earth if he did not think that people could and would cooperate on a grand scale. I don't think he was just blowing wind. Your statement was a direct affront to him and many others.OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 6:57 pmI have not read his latest book yet " The Social Conquest of Earth" which relates to this subject.
See mine and Fred's comments above.
" Your statement was a direct affront to him and many others."GoneFishing says: 11/30/2017 at 7:11 pmBullshit again. You're deliberately twisting my words into something I didn't say.
You brought up his name, and you have put words in his mouth, as well as mine, in a manner of speaking.
I will say it again. There's a DIFFERENCE between EXPECTING or PREDICTING cooperation between large and diverse groups of people EXCEPT when circumstances leave the various groups little or no choice, and they have COME TO UNDERSTAND that the only real option they have IS to cooperate.
ONCE various competing groups or societies come to understand that they have little or nothing in the way of viable choice other than cooperation, well then I PREDICT OR EXPECT them to cooperate.
I believe my position is entirely consistent with E O Wilson's thinking and beliefs, speaking in general terms.
If you want to play word games,I'm ready, because it's TRAINING as well as entertainment for me. I need all the practice I can get when it comes to making my arguments clear before I go out on my own with my own book and web site .. EVENTUALLY.
The audience here is sophisticated enough to understand nuance, lol.
Well, MOST of the audience here , anyway.
You ask for opposing opinions then you get nasty and personal and show no sign of wanting to learn or discuss anything, just shove your ideas. Since you apparently are not capable of dealing with opinions or thoughts other than your own, I will cease interacting with you. Plus you are always yelling in your comments, very rude.OFM says: 12/01/2017 at 11:06 amHere is what you actually said ""A biologist who talks about humanity as if humanity SHOULD BE EXPECTED to display a hive like consciousness has his head up his ass. NO. NO. No."
I want opposing opinions , and I'm always on the lookout for new facts. I do NOT want my words twisted into pretzels so that they appear to mean something diametrically opposite to what I actually said, by taking them out of context.OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 7:00 pmI think you are more interested in finding personal fault with me than you are in actually discussing facts, possibilities, and ideas.
I use a lot of caps, but seldom more than five or six words at a time, because caps are a lot quicker for me than taking time to use italics or bold.
I'm not presenting a paper for publication here, lol. I'm just participating in a conversation. If you want to take offense, feel free, it's still somewhat of a free country.
I
" Your statement was a direct affront to him and many others."alimbiquated says: 12/01/2017 at 4:15 pmBullshit again. You're deliberately twisting my words into something I didn't say.
You brought up Wilson , and you have put words in his mouth, as well as mine, in a manner of speaking.
I will say it again.
There's a DIFFERENCE between EXPECTING or PREDICTING cooperation between large and diverse groups of people under ordinary circumstances versus under new and compelling circumstances.
IF AND WHEN circumstances leave various groups little or no choice other than cooperation, , and they have COME TO UNDERSTAND that the only real option they have IS cooperation , well then .
I expect or predict that such groups WILL cooperate, sometimes, maybe even almost every time.
I believe my position is entirely consistent with E O Wilson's thinking and beliefs, speaking in general terms.
The audience here is sophisticated enough to understand nuance, lol.
Well, MOST of the audience here , anyway.
Understanding is tough for those who prefer NOT to understand.
This is pretty much nonsense. People are very different than other animals because they get ideas in their head and follow them. That's the secret to our success -- we change our game plan all the time instead of being stuck in a single niche like most species. It's always hard to guess which ideas are going to work out, but societies choose -- so to speak -- whether to destroy themselves or not.Hightrekker says: 11/29/2017 at 10:29 pmAmerica has been choosing self destruction for several decades, and the eschatology our wacky creed planted in our minds seems very attractive, especially to old farts -- the alternative is to try something different.
Many societies have shown themselves to be resilient an sustainable. America has a colonial mentality that doesn't support that, even when it's obvious. My grandmother was born in Kansas and when she talked about the Dust Bowl she would shake her head and say, "I always told them not to cut down those cottonwoods -- they were the only thing keeping the farm from being blown away". Now they're depleting the aquifier in Kansas by planting maize for diesel. So the desert will continue to spread.
But the Japanese aren't like that at all. They've been planting trees for centuries. They don't have much choice, because the hills aren't very stable there. They'll get through.
And the Sahel Zone, the world's worst and poorest place, is changing as well. They've started replanting. A lot of them will survive.
Crazy hippies like this may do better than you think. Civilizations come and go, the species won't die for a while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FHMNke5ppE
Root hog or die, as my father used to say. You can't imagine a world without Walmart, but it isn't the end of the world.
Another thought -- The Tasmanians. They were probably the wolrd's most primitive culture. They were cut off from the very old Australian mainland after the Ice Ages, and seems to have even forgotten fishhooks one of mankind's oldest technologies. But they had their ways, and they survived.
A panda who was "really, really, ridiculously good at sex" brought the species back from the brink of extinction, but things are still weirdHickory says: 11/29/2017 at 11:32 pmthank you Ron for this posting. I am in complete agreement with you on this.Gene Orleans says: 11/29/2017 at 11:55 pm
nothing more important. it is a bizarre and tragic spectacle to behold, and to participate in.
what a poor use of such an incredible biosphere.Many people from the looks of it here try to deal with the crises we face as a species and civilization the same way as myself. I spend much time here in front of modern electronic gadgetry. It's useful in distracting the mind from a diseased dying world along with a way to pass the time while waiting on my Lord and Savior to return to cleanse all the wickedness Satan has saturated humans with. Yes this is truly a sick sad world we live in now. Matthew 13:38-40.Ron Patterson says: 11/30/2017 at 7:51 amIt's useful in distracting the mind from a diseased dying world along with a way to pass the time while waiting on my Lord and Savior to return to cleanse all the wickedness Satan has saturated humans with.Watcher says: 11/29/2017 at 11:55 pmYou are likely to be waiting a very long time. Religious stupidity makes the problem worse, never better.
Didn't know this was here.Dennis Coyne says: 11/30/2017 at 9:57 am1. Any quotes of someone's book on collapse and how collapse happens based on history . . . all worthless. There is no history.
2) There is no history because there has never been 7 billion before. There has never been collapse with nuclear weapons involved before. There has never been collapse with the maggot and fly total in the atmosphere from 6.5 billion corpses before.
3) Chinese oil consumption lags US per capita and they are striving mightily to correct that, as they should. When per capita consumption growth becomes difficult, they HAVE to take oil from someone else. That someone else's population starts to starve for lack of food production or transport. They object to the theft of "their" oil. War. They must. War or starve.
4) Consider Japan. Consider the relations between China and Japan. Japan cries out . . . you're taking this oil to improve your country's standard of living and you are starving our country to death to do this. How can you find morality in this? China will have no trouble whatsoever contriving morality in this.
5) Simply that. When there isn't enough to go around, no one will quietly accept inadequate amounts. Nor should they. All other stuff about global warming and debt and sacrificing lifestyle for someone else is just so much bizarre delusion. You got too little to live, you kill whoever took it.
Hi Watcher,Watcher says: 11/30/2017 at 11:18 amIf you were correct there would be constant World War, most humans realize that conflict does not always lead to a positive outcome.
In an anarchic world things might play out as you imagine, we don't live in such a World.
Most people will do all they can to prevent anarchy.
Ahh so only evil people resort to war.Survivalist says: 12/01/2017 at 8:33 amHaven't you noticed only good guys win?
'Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning' by Timothy Snyder is quite good. If you're not into the minutia of east European history circa WW2 then just cut to the conclusion. 'Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin' is good too.Hightrekker says: 11/30/2017 at 11:35 amHere's an interview with Timothy Snyder if you want to get a taste.
Will this be the catalyst for the next Holocaust?
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/12/09/what-will-cause-the-next-holocaust/Almost anyone, I suppose, can call himself or herself an anarchist, if he or she believed that the society could be managed without the state. And by the state -- I don't mean the absence of any institutions, the absence of any form of social organisation -- the state really refers to a professional apparatus of people who are set aside to manage society, to preëmpt the control of society from the people. So that would include the military, judges, politicians, representatives who are paid for the express purpose of legislating, and then an executive body that is also set aside from society. So anarchists generally believe that, whether as groups or individuals, people should directly run society.Dennis Coyne says: 12/02/2017 at 2:09 pm
-Murray BookchinAnarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
-Edward AbbeyHi Hightrekker,Caelan MacIntyre says: 12/02/2017 at 8:50 pmI define anarchy as without government.
Let's assume for a moment a World without any governments at all.
Let's also assume there at 7.4 billion people in the World.
I just don't see how that works. The World is not a perfect place, but it is far from clear that a World without any government(s) would be an improvement.
When some one comes up with a plan that is appealing to the majority of citizens in some nation, perhaps such a form of non-government will be instituted.
Collapse Dynamics: Initial Conditions, Media Manipulation and The Short-Circuiting of ConsensualityDennis Coyne says: 12/03/2017 at 10:48 amHi Dennis,
I see anarchy, if it is understood correctly, as potentially having government if it is optional/consensual/legitimate.
For example, if I want you to represent me until which time as I say otherwise , then you can if you wish .
I also see anarchy as potentially 'hierarchical', or at least pseudohierarchical, if it is chosen freely.
So, for example, if I want you to tie me to a bed and have your way with me as your 'slave' if you wish , until which time as I or you opt out , then that is still ok. (fans face with hand)
It is about consensuality and a large part of the whole idea behind media manipulation of the masses is to 'short-circuit' consensuality– IOW, to make the masses consent to what they might not have normally consented to.
At the moment, I do not consent, for example, to what we call 'government' to take my money, or 'skim my labor', such as in the form of taxation. It is an 'initial condition' (think the butterfly effect) that can cascade, and seems to have cascaded, over time into dangerous, 'hurricane', territory. I mention this angle also to hopefully appeal to your apparent understanding and appreciation of physics and physical dynamics over time.
Right now, there is software available, ostensibly to support government governing consensually, called Loomio . There are likely others as well.
Hi Caelan,Caelan MacIntyre says: 12/03/2017 at 10:42 pmSee free rider problem. If taxes are not required, then very little is collected. So essentially, not taxes is roughly equal to no government.
How do legal agreements work in this no coercion society?
When there are disagreements how are they settled?
Come up with a system which works in a World with 7.5 billion and maybe someone will pay attention.
Hi Dennis,islandboy says: 11/30/2017 at 5:08 amYour assertion does not necessarily stand to reason and is just an assertion without support. I could flip/modify it this way:
If taxes were consensual, then people would likely feel a greater sense of belonging to their locales and how they are shaped and so give them freely and as they see fit.
Consensual tax collection could be viewed as part of the modus operandi of actual government, rather than as a kind of large-scale centralized armed coercive mob, such that it appears.See also here . I'll paraphrase some of it for you (again)
" if economics is to become an instrument of freedom and prosperity instead of an instrument of statism, then there are certain fundamental fallacies that must be continually challenged and discredited. Chief among these is the persistent non sequitur from externality to coercion -- that is, the bogus conclusion that coercion is a proper means to solve problems involving economic externalities.
One of the most blatant examples of this non sequitur occurs in discussions of the 'free rider problem' and the alleged solution of government provision of so-called 'public goods'. This is a particularly insidious economic theory that bears a great deal of the responsibility of derailing economics into the ditch of statism." ~ Ben O'Neill
A system that works for many more people, rather than a handful of elites, would appear to be a system that truly echoes what the people actually want, rather than what they are forced to.
On the matter of carrying capacity, I have a minor quibble with some of the ideas presented here. Let me start by outlining my understanding of what is being said about carrying capacity.Ron Patterson says: 11/30/2017 at 7:59 am"So for many millions of years, the terrestrial vertebrate biomass remained at about two hundred million tons, give or take"
So that lays a base line for carrying capacity but, unnatural selection, the selection of higher output varieties of crops or genetic engineering of crops would have raised the carrying capacity and I suggest, that increased carrying capacity would be sustainable indefinitely. The use of fertilizer, primarily organic types, if done in a sustainable way and by that I mean, returning animal and human waste streams to the soil, would also result in a more or less permanent increase in carrying capacity. So far, I've outlined two methods that humans could have used to positively influence carrying capacity more or less permanently.
The big change in carrying capacity comes with the FF age and the industrial revolution, first with the advent of mechanization and then with the Haber-Bosch process. A quick Internet search to refresh my memory of what the Haber-Bosch process entails, reveals that it is the chemical synthesis of ammonia (NH3) from nitrogen and hydrogen. Herein lies the basis for the connection between the petroleum industry and fertilizer industries and by extension carrying capacity. However, if we have enough excess energy we can easily get nitrogen from the atmosphere and hydrogen from water though I'm not sure how well that would work at a industrial scale at a global level.
So between the manufacture of fertilizers and the use of diesel powered machinery in farming, we have seen a huge increase in the ability to produce food. Ostensibly this ability can only last as long as the NG used to obtain hydrogen at an industrial scale and the petroleum to fuel the farm machines. However, the University of Minnesota has a Wind to Nitrogen Fertilizer project that aims to use excess wind power to manufacture ammonia so, it may well be that, if sufficient amounts of renewable energy can be harnessed, the manufacture of nitrogen fertilizers could be extended way beyond the end of the petroleum age.
That is the basis for my minor quibble. Obviously, fossil hydrocarbons have allowed us to increase the carrying capacity of the planet in a way that can only last as long as the finite hydrocarbon reserves do. Might it not be the case that, a transition to renewable energy on a massive scale would allow a more or less sustainable increase in the carrying capacity of the planet above and beyond the 200 million tons of terrestrial vertebrate biomass that existed 10,000 years ago? I would argue that, from the standpoint of energy, renewable energy has the potential to yield a far more sustainable increase in carrying capacity than fossil energy has. What the level of that carrying capacity is would require a fair amount of academic research.
I fully concede that there are all sorts of other resource limits that will negatively affect carrying capacity. Maybe I'm just bargaining.
Islandboy, there is no doubt that the carrying capacity of human beings can be increased somewhat by the use of organic fertilizers. But it is chemical fertilizers that have very dramatically and very temporally increased our carrying capacity.HuntingtonBeach says: 12/01/2017 at 2:58 amOf course when the carrying capacity of humans is increased the carrying capacity of wild species, especially megafauna is decreased.
That is one thing that just drives me up the wall. Everyone is concerned about the welfare of human beings. No one seems to give a rats ass about the welfare of all other species.
Hi Ron, I hope your doing well. Thank you for a great post. It sure explains why Costco was so F'n busy last weekend.James says: 11/30/2017 at 8:47 am"No one seems to give a rats ass about the welfare of all other species"
That's just not all true. I'm pretty sure GoneFishing cares about his dog a lot more than myself.
"the selection of higher output varieties of crops or genetic engineering of crops would have raised the carrying capacity and I suggest, that increased carrying capacity would be sustainable indefinitely"
I think you could include the knowledge of harvesting water and controlled irrigation also increasing sustainable capacity
Humans evolved to become the equivalent of RNA in cells. We use tools and information, primarily in technological cells and use them with ATP equivalent fossil fuels to do work. Like organisms or cells in the ecosystem, human organizations seek to grow, profit and take market share – to further their existence.Dennis Coyne says: 11/30/2017 at 10:06 amThe human brain is primarily a reward seeking organ as is most neural tissue in the ecosystem. Since humans are dissipative structures, not seeking rewards is the greatest threat they face. Most other threats, short of being chased by a pack of wild dogs, can be watered down and ignored since the brain must concentrate on getting resources and energy. Even though a human can think about things, it does not substitute for being greedy and gathering as much wealth as possible and reproducing prolifically. We're selected for doing that.
The natural greed which evolved because of natural scarcity in the ecosystem, did not wane as we evolved into a technological setting. There is no limit on our desires to be "rich" because we perceive associated advantages in survival and reproduction. Civilization is an explosive cancer that emerged from the ecosystem to consume and destroy the ecological body. Humans are the RNA that can't stop reproducing and stimulate the growth of new cells and distribution systems until the entire consumable earth is covered and the ecosystem dies or at least becomes much less complex.
Hi James,James says: 11/30/2017 at 11:29 amIn many wealthy nations total fertility has fallen below the replacement level, in fact for about half the World's population TFR is below replacement (dividing things up by nation state). Generally it is higher income nations where this is the case and correlation between education level and total fertility is very strong.
These facts and the trend in Global education levels for women don't square very well with your theory.
As Ron has suggested, homo sapiens sapiens is not your average species.
Even the education occurs in schools, the cellular equivalent of the nucleolus. Instead of pursuing the rewards of children, women are pursuing "wealth" created by the technological system. I'm not sure which one is most damaging.Fred Magyar says: 11/30/2017 at 10:30 amThe natural greed which evolved because of natural scarcity in the ecosystem, did not wane as we evolved into a technological setting. There is no limit on our desires to be "rich" because we perceive associated advantages in survival and reproduction.Hightrekker says: 11/30/2017 at 10:49 amAnd out of which orifice did you pull all that BS out of?! Let me guess, you are of the Neo-Liberal Economist school of though, right? Try cracking a few tomes on human evolution and anthropology instead of failed 20th century memes about the nature of man and rationality of markets.
Speaking of the rationality of markets:James says: 11/30/2017 at 11:34 amWhitefish is halting Puerto Rico power repairs, claiming it's owed $83 million
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/20/us/puerto-rico-power-whitefish-halts-work/index.html
You don't see any greed? None in the ecosystem? Why is everyone trying to accumulate more wealth? Why do all organisms struggle to eat and reproduce to the maximum? Look in the cell, it's all happened before, but mostly with sunshine at the base.Cats@Home says: 11/30/2017 at 1:25 pmWhy do we worship the likes of Warren Buffett?
Cooperation exists, but only to enhance competition against a similarly cooperating group.
Warren Buffett seems like a good man but Jeff Bezos is the businessman I admire most right now.Survivalist says: 11/30/2017 at 11:07 pmThe Creepy Religion That Explains All Of Trump's Actions.Hightrekker says: 12/01/2017 at 3:22 pm
"The Prosperity Gospel is quintessentially American. One journalist described it as the "religion of winning," so we have to assume Charlie Sheen is onboard too."
http://www.cracked.com/blog/trumps-bizarre-religion-weirder-than-scientology/Blowing Up the TerritorySurvivalist says: 11/30/2017 at 10:40 pm
Trump's biggest break came from the Democratic party. Booking Hillary Clinton as the good guy in this match was a colossal error, especially when the most improbable thing in all of politics was waiting in the wings: a legit babyface.Bernie Sanders came off like Paddington Bear next to Hillary Clinton. Bernie was a nice old Jewish man from Vermont who legitimately meant well, and he got a real pop from his fans. He drew like crazy. Hell, even I sent him money, the first time I have ever contributed to a political campaign -- every time he got on TV and started shooting about marijuana smokers going to jail while Wall Street hoodlums were walking, I Paypaled him five bucks. I had waited my whole life to hear a politician cut a promo like that -- I think he eventually ended up with a Jackson from me, straight from my personal pot budget.
As a face, Clinton just had too much baggage, a lot of it achingly familiar: A partner known for predatory sexual behavior, wicked family ties to big business, an entitled daughter, a family charity fund loaded with foreign money, lies, flip flops. . . . What was good for the goose might have been tolerable for the gander, but all she really got was a cheap pop, and if she had any moral high ground at all, she lost it when former Democratic operative Donna Brazile, while working for CNN, leaked potential questions to the Clinton campaign before a debate with Sanders. That was cheating, behavior clearly unbecoming to a babyface. But more important was that she failed to deliver on the only thing that matters: she didn't draw. For a while it looked like there might be a "Dusty finish," a gimmick ending (named for Dusty Rhodes, the legendary wrestler and booker who invented it) in which one wrestler is declared the winner, only to have the decision reversed on a technicality -- for instance, interference from Russian hackers. This was a finish guaranteed to drive crowds insane, but Hillary couldn't put it over.
So who's the best worker? If we are using the Hulk Hogan index, it is indisputably Donald Trump. He won the election. He's the president.
But when it all comes tumbling down, be ready for a fresh wave of Trump-brand kayfabe -- transparently flawed in both conception and execution, except that he actually believes it. He'll ride off in his helicopter claiming that Washington was too dirty to clean up, that he tried but he couldn't drain the swamp, that they wouldn't accept the One Honest Man. He'll blame obstructionist Democrats for staging a witch hunt, and the Republicans for not having the guts to back him. In wrestling parlance this is called "blowing up the territory."
Pundits will argue: How much of it was real, how much reality show? How much was a put-on, how much of it was a guy legit skating at the edges of madness and dementia? Was it a work, a shoot, or a worked shoot? The only thing we can be sure of is that the secular writers will get it wrong. And, existentially, at least, Trump will still wear spandex when he mows the lawn. He can't help himself, that's just the kind of jerk he is.
Organisms evolved a bias to maximize fitness by maximizing power. With greater power, there is greater opportunity to allocate energy to reproduction and survival, and therefore, an organism that captures and utilizes more energy than another organism in a population will have a fitness advantage.Hightrekker says: 11/30/2017 at 10:50 pm
Individual organisms cooperate to form social groups and generate more power. Differential power generation and accumulation result in a hierarchical group structure.
"Politics" is power used by social organisms to control others. Not only are human groups never alone, they cannot control their neighbors' behavior. Each group must confront the real possibility that its neighbors will grow its numbers and attempt to take resources from them. Therefore, the best political tactic for groups to survive in such a milieu is not to live in ecological balance with slow growth, but to grow rapidly and be able to fend off and take resources from others[5].
The inevitable "overshoot" eventually leads to decreasing power attainable for the group with lower-ranking members suffering first. Low-rank members will form subgroups and coalitions to demand a greater share of power from higher-ranking individuals who will resist by forming their own coalitions to maintain it. Meanwhile, social conflict will intensify as available power continues to fall.
Eventually, members of the weakest group (high or low rank) are forced to "disperse."[6] Those members of the weak group who do not disperse are killed,[7] enslaved, or in modern times imprisoned. By most estimates, 10 to 20 percent of all the people who lived in Stone-Age societies died at the hands of other humans.[8] The process of overshoot, followed by forced dispersal, may be seen as a sort of repetitive pumping action -- a collective behavioral loop -- that drove humans into every inhabitable niche of our planet.
Here is a synopsis of the behavioral loop described above:
Step 1. Individuals and groups evolved a bias to maximize fitness by maximizing power, which requires over-reproduction and/or over-consumption of natural resources (overshoot), whenever systemic constraints allow it. Differential power generation and accumulation result in a hierarchical group structure.
Step 2. Energy is always limited, and overshoot eventually leads to decreasing power available to some members of the group, with lower-ranking members suffering first.
Step 3. Diminishing power availability creates divisive subgroups within the original group. Low-rank members will form subgroups and coalitions to demand a greater share of power from higher-ranking individuals, who will resist by forming their own coalitions to maintain power.
Step 4. Violent social strife eventually occurs among subgroups who demand a greater share of the remaining power.
Step 5. The weakest subgroups (high or low rank) are either forced to disperse to a new territory, are killed, enslaved, or imprisoned.
Step 6. Go back to step 1.
The above loop was repeated countless thousands of times during the millions of years that we were evolving[9]. This behavior is inherent in the architecture of our minds -- is entrained in our biological material -- and will be repeated until we go extinct. Carrying capacity will decline[10] with each future iteration of the overshoot loop, and this will cause human numbers to decline until they reach levels not seen since the Pleistocene.
http://www.dieoff.orgwill cause human numbers to decline until they reach levels not seen since the Pleistocene.Hightrekker says: 11/30/2017 at 10:38 amSuch a optimist!
Megacancer?Hightrekker says: 11/30/2017 at 10:28 am"There's no indication that we're going to do anything philosophically different," said Jim Blackburn, an environmental law professor at Rice University. "With a few modifications, it's business as usual."Hightrekker says: 11/30/2017 at 10:37 amAs Houston rebuilds from the most expensive hurricane in U.S. history, local officials plan to dredge waterways, build new reservoirs and a coastal barrier to protect against storms that experts say are growing in intensity due to a warming climate. They have asked Washington for $61 billion to pay for it all.
"Half the inhabitants of Melbourne have probably never seen something like this," Mr Williams said.George Kaplan says: 11/30/2017 at 11:40 am"This is a vast, intense, high impact event for this state."
Apart from our own actions there may be random events that can take us out. There's a report in the Times today of research into super-eruptions. The Toba explosion, 75,000 years ago, almost took out Homo sapiens. The latest research indicates such events (maybe not quite as bad) happen on average every 17,000 years instead of every few hundred thousand as previously thought, and we are currently in an unusually long hiatus from these.Doug Leighton says: 11/30/2017 at 12:57 pmThe biggest explosion since "civilization" started was probably Krakatoa in the 6th century, which has been proposed as the beggining of the dark ages in Europe and the end of a couple of other civilizations, though there's a bit of controversy about that theory, but it was much milder than an explosion from one of the major calderas would be.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-volcanic-doom-is-closer-than-we-think-90c8d56gr
(paywall – but there might be some free articles per month available and the research is to be published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters)
Sorry – probably the wrong thread.
Continuing from above (this mirrors my own experience in Central Africa where families currently seem to be averaging about four kids each):GoneFishing says: 11/30/2017 at 5:08 pmPOPULATION GROWTH IN AFRICA: GRASPING THE SCALE OF THE CHALLENGE
"In the past year (2016) the population of the African continent grew by 30 million. By the year 2050, annual increases will exceed 42 million people per year and total population will have doubled to 2.4 billion, according to the UN. This comes to 3.5 million more people per month, or 80 additional people per minute since the early 1990s, family planning programmes in Africa have not had the same attention (as Asia and Latin America), RESULTING IN SLOW, SOMETIMES NEGLIGIBLE, FERTILITY DECLINES. IN A HANDFUL OF COUNTRIES, PREVIOUS DECLINES HAVE STALLED ALTOGETHER AND ARE REVERSING."
Also,
WHY HAVE FOUR CHILDREN WHEN YOU COULD HAVE SEVEN? FAMILY PLANNING IN NIGER
" but Hamani is unusual in that three babies are enough for her. Despite having the highest fertility rate in the world, women and men alike in Niger say they want more children than they actually have – women want an average of nine, while men say they want 11."
Sounds like an explosion that will lead to implosion and migration. Families used to be fairly large in the European and American regions not long ago. Some still are.Doug Leighton says: 11/30/2017 at 6:02 pm
There are 27.7 million people in Uganda. But by 2025 the population will almost double to 56 million, close to that of Britain, which has a similar land mass. In 44 years its population will have grown by nearly as much as China's.
"You look at these numbers and think 'that's impossible'," said Carl Haub, senior demographer at the US-based Population Reference Bureau, whose latest global projections show Uganda as the fastest-growing country in the world. Midway through the 21st century, if current birthrates persist, Uganda will be the world's 12th most populous country with 130 million people – more than Russia or Japan.
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2006/sep/01/guardianweekly.guardianweekly1"There are 27.7 million people in Uganda."Survivalist says: 11/30/2017 at 10:36 pmThat sounds about right and from personal observation almost all 27.7 million of them are school kids who (currently) are quite well nourished and with decent health care. A big problem, as I see it, is that virtually all schools in Uganda are run by "Western" churches who seen determined to increase the size of their flock by NOT teaching their students about contraception and the benefits thereof: sound familiar?
"In 2015, the median age of the population in Uganda was 15.8 years."George Kaplan says: 12/01/2017 at 1:48 am
https://www.statista.com/statistics/447643/average-age-of-the-population-in-uganda/Doug – like you I have some sponsorship in Africa – a general women's group rather than an individual. From their letters what they want is education (both formal for the children and also just tips on farming and running a business), enough money (very little) to start a business so they can feed their children, a way to manage HIV if they are infected (many still are) and peace and quiet. What they don't want is more children, forced marriage through kidnap, the return of their husbands to beat them up, interference from the elders (all men) in their business. Often they only realise these options are even possible after they have had contact with the groups set up by the charity.Doug Leighton says: 12/01/2017 at 9:35 amGeorge – My African experiences are mainly restricted to Uganda (the pearl of Africa) where my family visit annually and have done so for almost 20 years; we love the country, the people, the wildlife. Its been a joy watching the girl we assisted progress from kindergarten to medical school; to meet and relate to her extended family who've become our close friends. The country (Uganda) and the people are currently doing well, very well indeed (unless you happen to be gay). Wildlife parks flourish and are well managed. My concerns relate to the future. There are too many kids. In my opinion, without reigning in population growth the country will face immense over-population problems in the future. I hope I'm wrong. Having said that, I agree with your comments -- all of them. And its true, woman's business groups are in many respects the future of Africa.Rob Mielcarski says: 11/30/2017 at 4:00 pmCheers,
For anyone seeking a plausible scientific explanation for why:George Kaplan says: 11/30/2017 at 4:08 pm
– one species has a uniquely powerful brain
– why the brain of that species is capable of visiting the moon but incapable of understanding or acting on it's own overshoot
– why one small group of hominids exploded about 100,000 to take over the planet
– why religion emerged simultaneous with the behaviorally modern mind about 100,000 years ago
– and more big questions: https://un-denial.com/2017/06/25/why-my-interest-in-denial/I find this theory by Ajit Varki and Danny Brower very satisfying.
That's a smart site you have there. I read that book some time ago, it's interesting but I thought a bit of a just-so story, but that's maybe becasue the ideas woud be so hard to prove one way or the other. It's a pity Brower died before his ideas got out to more discussion.Rob Mielcarski says: 12/01/2017 at 1:13 amYour initial reaction to the theory is perfectly reasonable and common.George Kaplan says: 12/01/2017 at 2:08 amIf you dig deeper and start connecting dots I think you may find it is the best available explanation for many big unanswered questions. The theory may not be correct but there are no known facts that slay it, nor any other equally elegant theories that fit the data better.
Varki acknowledges the difficulty of testing the theory, but does point to some promising avenues of research. Unfortunately Varki's speciality and day job is in a different domain so his theory is likely to sit on the shelf until some young scientist with a defective denial gene picks up the baton.
I did find it neat and convincing as you say, but that's the point of just-so stories, plus it's difficult to know where to go if it is correct, but I'm going to be visiting your site without question.Doug Leighton says: 11/30/2017 at 7:39 pmI suppose this 2014 piece is apropos,Hightrekker says: 11/30/2017 at 7:50 pmWILL OVERPOPULATION LEAD TO PUBLIC HEALTH CATASTROPHE?
"Our new projections are probabilistic, and we find that there will probably be between 9.6 and 12.3 billion people in 2100," Prof. Raftery told Medical News Today. "This projection is based on a statistical model that uses all available past data on fertility and mortality from all countries in a systematic way, unlike previous projections that were based on expert assumptions."
"A key finding of the study is that the fertility rate in Africa is declining much more slowly than has been previously estimated, which Prof. Raftery tells us "has major long-term implications for population."
Spain's water crisis deepens as Rio Tajo dries upHightrekker says: 11/30/2017 at 9:30 pm(haven't had a wing pawn global cooling update for a while)
http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/sahara-moving-north/43959
Declining uncertainty in transient climate response as CO2 forcing dominates future climate changeFred Magyar says: 12/01/2017 at 5:09 amhttps://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2371
( Nature Geoscience , not Watt Is My Head Doing Up My Ass?
No discussion about human evolution or even biological evolution across all species can be considered complete without at least a basic understanding of the biochemical and molecular biological basis of CRIPR-Cas9 gene editing technology and gene drives.Ron Patterson says: 12/01/2017 at 8:56 amSam Harris' latest podcast has a discussion of this technology with Jennifer Doudna.
https://www.samharris.org/podcast
In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Jennifer Doudna about the gene-editing technology CRISPR/Cas9. They talk about the biology of gene editing, how specific tissues in the body can be targeted, the ethical implications of changing the human genome, the importance of curiosity-driven science, and other topics.
E.O. WilsonOFM says: 12/01/2017 at 10:49 am
I have always been a great admirer of E.O Wilson. I have followed his work for years. I especially liked "Sociobiology" and "Consilience". I have followed his feud with Stephen J. Gould, Steven Rose, R.C. Lewontin, and Leon Kamin, (as reported by Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins). (I always came down on the side of Wilson et al.) And I am very proud to say he is a fellow Alabamian.That being said, there are areas where I must disagree with him. For instance:
From Kirkus Reviews of "Half Earth":
In this final volume of his trilogy, Wilson (The Meaning of Human Existence, 2014, etc.) opens with a compelling proposal on how to slow current species extinction rates: set aside half of the planet (noncontiguously) as wilderness preserves free from human encroachment, a measure that the author claims would stabilize more than 80 percent of species.Fred Magyar, above, quotes from Edward O. Wilson's New Take on Human Nature:
Wilson argues the nest is central to understanding the ecological dominance not only of ants, but of human beings, too ..By being super-cooperators, groupies of the group, willing to set aside our small, selfish desires and I-minded drive to join forces and seize opportunity as a self-sacrificing, hive-minded tribe ..
To qualify as eusocial, in Wilson's definition, animals must live in multigenerational communities, practice division of labor and behave altruistically, ready to sacrifice "at least some of their personal interests to that of the group." It's tough to be a eusocialist.
First, the idea that we would or could set aside half the earth for wildlife is preposterous. Which parts of the U.S. would we set aside, parts that make half the land area? Could we convince every African nation to do the same? Or Russia? Or China, South Korea or Japan?
Second, as much as I admire Wilson, I think he is just flat wrong on his new take on human nature. And I think Pinker and Dawkins would agree with that opinion. If you had read Pinker's " The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature ," and I have, you would know exactly what I mean. Our minds are not blank slates to be molded by society, to be made to behave like ants in a colony, like a self-sacrificing, hive-minded tribe. All those traits that Wilson says we must give up are in our genes, human nature.
I will not deny that humans can be ruled. An Iron Fist could compel us to behave in such a matter. But all such Iron Fists carry within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It's just human nature.
Hi Ron,Ron Patterson says: 12/01/2017 at 11:09 amAfter reading your eight fifty six am, I'm telling ya straight .. Between your ears, where you live intellectually, you are a TRUE conservative.
The people who we refer to today as conservatives, meaning those who inhabit the right wing politically, are not REAL conservatives, not according to my definition.
Don't forget that I am a follower of the Humpty Dumpty School of Linguistics. Words mean exactly what I intend them to mean, when I use them, rotfl.
To my way of thinking, the first and single most important qualification of a TRUE conservative is that he must have a sound grasp of human nature. You have it. You understand that we cooperate with friends, family, known community, and compete with outsiders .. and that when circumstances compel us to do so, we make friends or at least ally ourselves with former enemies or strangers, and work together .. but mostly only when we have little or no choice but to do so.
I'm just teasing you a little, not making fun of you.
Decent people, left or right wing, want the same things, when you get down to the basics. Peace, dignified life, freedom from unnecessary worries, etc.
I haven't yet read Wilson's latest books. Hoping to get around to it, this winter.
We need to keep it in mind that just because somebody presents a grand plan in a book, and writes as if it might be possible to implement it, he does not necessarily believe there's a snowball's chance on a red hot stove that his plan will ever actually be implemented.
Such books are sometimes intended as sources of inspiration for a new generation of people following along in his footsteps .. and such a plan MIGHT be implemented . a few centuries down the road, lol. Stranger things have happened, historically.
Such a book can be the result of an old man's dreams being put in libraries so as to achieve a sort of immortality . Wilson had that already of course.
I reckon you're even older than I am, and here's wishing you the best at the personal level.
To my way of thinking, the first and single most important qualification of a TRUE conservative is that he must have a sound grasp of human nature. You have it. You understand that we cooperate with friends, family, known community, and compete with outsiders .. and that when circumstances compel us to do so, we make friends or at least ally ourselves with former enemies or strangers, and work together .. but mostly only when we have little or no choice but to do so.OFM says: 12/01/2017 at 11:01 pmSorry Mac, but I just don't get the connection. The definition you pen here could just as well be the definition of a True Liberal.
I am a conservative when it comes to conserving the environment, saving animal habitat and saving species from extinction. But those are qualities held by most liberals and not held by so-called conservatives. Right-wing Republicans call themselves conservatives.
So I just have to accept the lexicon as it exist today. I am a liberal, not a conservative.
"Sorry Mac, but I just don't get the connection. The definition you pen here could just as well be the definition of a True Liberal."Ron Patterson says: 12/01/2017 at 11:12 pmYou DO GET IT, Ron, except you haven't yet quite got around to thinking of labels as jokes or weapons . Labels are for partisans. Labels are clubs we use to pound each other into submission.
People with real working brains generally come to the same basic conclusions, regardless of the way they're labeled by themselves or others. There's usually more than one route by which we can travel and arrive at the truth.
You're a man willing to tell it like it is, as for instance when you have pointed out the realities of the way things work in some countries where you worked yourself. A partisan D just won't repeat that sort of stuff, true or not.
When you say you're a liberal, you're just labeling yourself. What you ARE is something else. You're a man with a working brain, a man who understands reality, a man who tells it like it is, as you perceive it to be.
You're a man with a working brain, a man who understands reality, a man who tells it like it is, as you perceive it to be.OFM says: 12/02/2017 at 2:40 pmYou are a goddamn right man, and that means I am a liberal.
Ah yes, but liberal is still just a label.OFM says: 12/03/2017 at 5:49 pmIt is however true that the so called liberals are more often right by a substantial margin than the so called conservatives in terms of having objective facts on their side when considering issues such as the environment, public health, and many others.
But they're not always right. Sometimes the liberal camp seems to have it's head as far up its backside as the conservative camp.
The leaders of both camps seem to be more interested in having plenty of foot soldiers to serve as cannon fodder than they are in the actual welfare of the country.
I can provide as good arguments for any sort of truly sound public policy from a conservative pov as you can from a liberal pov.
To me this proves we both have working brains, and are capable of looking the truth in the eye, and publicly agreeing on what IS true, and what is not.
If we could free ourselves of goddamned infernal partisan politics and identity politics , based on our community cultures, we could make things happen politically.
If for instance we could put the question of subsidizing wind and solar power to a referendum, I could easily convince most of the so called conservatives I know that voting in favor of subsidies would be a GREAT BARGAIN for them, long term. Well, the ones with brains enough that they know a little about the business world anyway. That's at least half of them, and more than enough.
They won't ordinarily support subsidizing renewable energy as part of a package deal because they perceive the PACKAGE to be weighted in favor of their political and cultural enemies. Supporting renewable energy subsidies would mean voting for D's and they don't like the overall D agenda.
Back to you one more time Ron,Hightrekker says: 12/01/2017 at 11:04 amI'm not sure WHERE this comment will appear, but hopefully it will be below my two forty pm.
Allow me to approach this liberal/ conservative label thing from a different direction.
Suppose you meet a new person, and get to talking about oh let us say water pollution, and fishing, and having to spend your local tax money on a sophisticated water treatment plant, because there's too much of this or that and the other as well in the river that passes your town to drink the water, without spending a lot of money. .
If you NEVER MENTION anything that LABELS you as a liberal or conservative, you can talk meaningfully to just about anybody about this issue.
Identify yourself as a liberal, or a conservative, you more or less automatically blow your opportunity to say anything to your new POTENTIAL friend who thinks of himself as your opposite and enemy, politically, other than something he already knows and believes, even if what that something is factually incorrect.
Label yourself as a liberal, and the typical serious Christian voter in the state of Alabama automatically thinks of you as a murderer of yet to be born children. Forget labeling yourself, avoid it to the extent you can, and you have an EXCELLENT shot at talking to that voter about supporting only candidates who have a decent record of being respectful to women, immigrants, minorities, etc.
If I label myself as a conservative, I've automatically blown my chance to have a serious conversation with a liberal about the possibility of having some real choice in education . meaning breaking the teacher's unions and government's de facto monopoly control of our educational system.
You may not like this idea, but think about this how much better are your options NOW, given that we have email, fax, UPS, Fed Ex , etc, when it comes to getting a letter or package where it needs to go FOR SURE and RIGHT AWAY?
I have heard lots of liberals say that allowing any real choice in the schools would mean the end of any real opportunity for poor kids, inner city kids, etc, to get a decent education. Sometimes, in the same breath almost, I hear those same liberals admit that the public schools in lots of communities large and small are literal disaster areas, where hardly any of the kids learn anything. I used to know quite a few of this sort , back in my younger days, when I was living in the Fan and hanging out with the older ( grad students mostly ) kids at VCU having a good time, taking a course or two per semester to keep my grad student ID up to date. I spent about ten years there off and on.
Ya know WHAT? EVERY LAST COUPLE I knew among them moved out of town when their OWN kids got old enough to go to school.
Quite a few of them spent their careers as teachers, lol. And my guess is that not more than one out of ten of those couples ever moved to a place where the schools were the sort of hell holes we read about so often these days .. and that tenth couple of course had NO KIDS, lol.
Yet they almost universally believe in the de facto teacher / government educational monopoly as it exists today, as it totally ruins the prospects of millions of kids denying them, or more accurately, their parents, any real choice in the schools their kids attend. If liberal versus conservative comes into the conversation, it's OVER. The liberals aren't going to listen, any more than conservatives listen.
How many members of this forum think Roy Moore ought to be tarred and feathered ? How many have ever had the intellectual integrity to say the same thing about Bill Clinton?
Liberals are liberals, and conservatives are conservatives, and the gulf between can be as vast as the gulf between East and West. Communication is tough to impossible.
But if we avoid the labels . communication can happen.
Incidentally this rant does NOT mean I am a supporter of the Trump administration in general, or the Trump education department in particular. Nothing I know of concerning the Trump administration seems to be about the good of the COUNTRY or of the majority of the people of this country.
First, the idea that we would or could set aside half the earth for wildlife is preposterous.Fred Magyar says: 12/01/2017 at 11:19 amEven stopping the rape and scrape accelerating is highly unlikely.
This is total fantasy.
At best, the survivors (if any) on the other side of the wall we are about to crash into, will have enough wisdom and intelligence to embrace the condition they are in.First, the idea that we would or could set aside half the earth for wildlife is preposterous.GoneFishing says: 12/01/2017 at 12:01 pmThat isn't what he proposes even though it is the title of his book. May I suggest you read it! What he is really arguing for is more along the lines of a network of ecological corridors that might connect already existing nature preserves, parks and private property and therefore allow isolated pockets of natural ecosystems to be connected with others.
To be very clear, E.O. Wilson is not in any way naive about our predicament and says so.
That's not to say he has thrown in the towel, especially given that he is now in the later portion of his 80's. He apparently doesn't want to go down without a fight.I have read his book twice already and have the Kindle version on my laptop. To be honest I'm not what anyone might call overly optimistic about the prospects of his proposals coming to pass. Having said that, I do admire his deep knowledge base about the natural world and have the greatest admiration for the man! More power to him for trying!
Cheers!
Fred, I read Half Earth and have to agree with E.O. Wilson. I think my personal bias is toward nature, but that aside, humans can do what is needed. All the gadgetry in the world cannot replace a functioning ecosystem. Those functions are mandatory for the preservation of life on earth. We need to preserve, expand and enhance (if we get smart enough) natural ecosystems around the world.Ron Patterson says: 12/01/2017 at 12:24 pm
Why not build armies? Armies called the United Conservation and Environmental Protection Corp, whose job is to protect and expand natural areas around the world. It would increase employment and be funded by monies that otherwise go to military purposes. This and other organizations could be doing things that make the people proud to be human, rather than just wheels and cogs in basically destructive system.This is not naïve, this is just choices. Humans make choices, that is one of our inherent abilities. Our current state and appearance is due to a set of previous choices that have not quite worked out. We get stuck in old choices, time to make new ones.
I think my personal bias is toward nature, but that aside, humans can do what is needed.Doug Leighton says: 12/01/2017 at 12:38 pmReally now? If humans can do what is needed then why the hell are they not doing it. Species are going extinct at a rate as fast as the last great extinction 65 million years ago. And the extinction rate is accelerating. If humans can do what is needed it is goddamn time they got started.
Our current state and appearance is due to a set of previous choices that have not quite worked out. We get stuck in old choices, time to make new ones.
Those choices were made, and are being made, by 7 billion people. And yes, it is time those 7 billion people changed the way they are behaving, it is time they made different choices. But don't hold your breath.
I am sorry Fishing, but I just don't share your optimism.
Yup, reminds me of China, driving to a restaurant half way across Beijing with a car full of Chinese because they knew about a hot spot where some endangered species or other was on the menu: get it before you're too late. Life in the real world!GoneFishing says: 12/01/2017 at 2:06 pm"Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural "background" rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we're now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day. It could be a scary future indeed, with as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species possibly heading toward extinction by mid-century."
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/
"If humans can do what is needed then why the hell are they not doing it. "Ron Patterson says: 12/01/2017 at 3:21 pm
"I am sorry Fishing, but I just don't share your optimism."By destroying the environment we destroy ourselves. I think that will soon become quite apparent and then those who are already on track can leverage that.
As Charlie Brown would say: Good Grief!Fred Magyar says: 12/01/2017 at 8:44 pmReally now? If humans can do what is needed then why the hell are they not doing it. Species are going extinct at a rate as fast as the last great extinction 65 million years ago. And the extinction rate is accelerating. If humans can do what is needed it is goddamn time they got started.Ron Patterson says: 12/01/2017 at 11:06 pmOk, let's assume for a moment using round numbers that there are currently 7.5 billion humans living on this tiny planet as I type these words. How many of those humans do you suppose are actually aware of the fact that we are probably in the midst of the sixth mass extinction? I'm going to go way out on a limb here and guess about a couple hundred thousand.
Now most of those couple hundred thousand are in shock and denial of reality. So there are maybe 100,000 humans who are aware and are actually starting to do something.
While that may sound like a minuscule amount I can cite data and research that shows that may be enough to really start to change the current paradigm in a big way.
As I quoted Charlie Brown above: Good Grief!Fred Magyar says: 12/02/2017 at 7:15 amLOL!Hightrekker says: 12/01/2017 at 12:22 pm
.
Yea, the feud between Gould/Lewontin/Rose VS Wilson/Dawkins/Dennett has been interesting.Fred Magyar says: 12/01/2017 at 8:59 pm
Being somewhat Marxist in my orientation, I was kinda presupposed to the Gould camp, but the Wilson/Dawkins have proven to ring much truer.
The Blank Slate puts the nails in the coffin for Marxist view of human nature, as Marx viewed it as totally a function of environment. Pinker buried that view.
Orr was always Gould and Lewontin's go to guy with media, as he had power in the NYT's and Boston Globe, and could often control reviews and and coverage.
It has been interesting.http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/earth/pale-blue-dot.htmlGoneFishing says: 12/01/2017 at 10:03 pmI'm sure most here are familiar with what Carl Sagan said about our Pale Blue Dot
This excerpt from Sagan's book Pale Blue Dot was inspired by an image taken, at Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size.
Now guess what?!
At present, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is 21 billion kilometers from Earth, or about 141 times the distance between the Earth and Sun. It has, in fact, moved beyond our Solar System into interstellar space. However, we can still communicate with Voyager across that distance.
This week, the scientists and engineers on the Voyager team did something very special. They commanded the spacecraft to fire a set of four trajectory thrusters for the first time in 37 years to determine their ability to orient the spacecraft using 10-millisecond pulses.
FURTHER READING
The Voyagers have reached an anniversary worth celebrating
After sending the commands on Tuesday, it took 19 hours and 35 minutes for the signal to reach Voyager. Then, the Earth-bound spacecraft team had to wait another 19 hours and 35 minutes to see if the spacecraft responded. It did. After nearly four decades of dormancy, the Aerojet Rocketdyne manufactured thrusters fired perfectly."The Voyager team got more excited each time with each milestone in the thruster test. The mood was one of relief, joy, and incredulity after witnessing these well-rested thrusters pick up the baton as if no time had passed at all," said Todd Barber, a propulsion engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Humans can do some pretty incredible things!
Cheers!
Yes, they can even teach their young to love the life of the planet and help keep it safe.HuntingtonBeach says: 12/01/2017 at 10:59 pmNot if your born in the South and damaged by religionFred Magyar says: 12/02/2017 at 7:14 amWell, E.O. Wilson was born in Alabama into an evangelical family.Ron Patterson says: 12/02/2017 at 11:14 amSo was I. Well, sort of. My dad was a Deacon in the Primitive Baptist Church but he was not a crusading evangelical.HuntingtonBeach says: 12/02/2017 at 6:01 pmI have told this story before but I will do it again here.
I was about 17 or so when I sidled up to my dad who was sitting in his easy chair. I asked: "Dad, how did them kangaroos get from Australia to over there where Noah's Ark was? And how did they get back?" Dad jumped up from his chair, stuck his finger right in my face and yelled: "Son, that is the word of God and that is not for you to question."
I never questioned my Dad again about religion.
It takes character and courage not act like sheep. My hat goes off to you. Ron, I'm sure you understood exactly what I meant by my earlier comment.Hickory says: 12/02/2017 at 12:15 amWhen countries begin to hit the wall economically ( as happened in Germany in the 1930's for example), the populace will often out of desperation (and ignorance of course) enable a dictator to come to power. This is with the false hope that grandiose promises of prosperity will be fulfilled.George Kaplan says: 12/02/2017 at 2:59 amThis explains why Trump was elected, even though the American has yet to be tested by disruption, much.
As the world hits the wall of growth limits, the risk is for more and more leadership failures, the rise of warlords, the failure of functioning democracies.
Violent choices and dysfunctional government will serve to be a mechanism of population decline, ugly population decline. Current events can be seen through this lens as time unfolds.
Hard to watch.
May be better to have no TV.
The de-evolution will be televised, will be televised, will be televisedThe general population in Germany did not really enable Hitler to come to power. He was appointed as a compomise by the two leading parties in an election who had split the main vote. They both thought he would make such a mess of it that they would sweep the board at the next election. As soon as he was appointed he started killing or imprisoning these smart opposition leaders, and there wasn't another clean election. It was more like an extended coupe, admittedly with a large number of supporters, often ex WW-I soldier thugs, in the general population.OFM says: 12/02/2017 at 2:23 pmGeorge is in the bullseye about how Hitler came to power, considering he was painting fast with a broad brush in such a short comment. I have devoted many a long evening to reading the history of war in the twentieth century, so as to better understand the history of my time.Hickory says: 12/03/2017 at 1:17 amWars are usually the result of politicians either wanting them, or being boxed into situations where they either can't avoid them or consider them the best of an assortment of bad options.
Point taken George. Despite that the general notion that as crunch time develops, there will be a trend towards extremist and totalitarian regimes throughout the world. Along with pockets of failed states, anarchy and warlords. 'Have nots' will take big risks.GoneFishing says: 12/02/2017 at 8:25 amNo devolution involved. Just human nature.Hightrekker says: 12/02/2017 at 9:43 am
The loose knit groups with similar hates, anger and dislikes were temporarily brought together. It was an inverse election that utilized the negative and more volatile side of human nature. it only hangs together with constant stirring and occasional negative results (pound the enemy). Finger pointing and passing the buck is not enough, the groups start fracturing.Lose the Tee Vee -- -HuntingtonBeach says: 12/02/2017 at 8:18 pm
The more you watch, the less you know.The difference between the "Tee Vee" and the Internet is exposing your ignorance to the worldRon Patterson says: 12/02/2017 at 1:36 pmA question for Dennis Coyne, or any other cornucopian who believes renewable energy will save the world from economic collapse, at least for the next 200 years or so.islandboy says: 12/02/2017 at 2:36 pmDennis, I understand your very optimistic outlook for the welfare of future human populations. I don't agree with it but I understand your argument. But as I understand it, and please correct me if I am wrong, your entire argument deals with the human population of the earth. I don't remember reading your predicted outlook for the rest of the animal kingdom? Perhaps you did make one and I just missed it.
That being said, you have read my outlook many times. And it was all repeated in my post above. Do you agree or disagree? Just where do you see the large wild animal population in the year 2100? Please elaborate.
Edit: Dennis, I know you do not consider yourself a cornucopian, however, I was just comparing your outlook for the future of civilization to mine. And using that comparison?
Nice! I was just thinking about a response to a comment following one of mine further up and this pops up, which dovetails nicely into what I've been thinking. In my comment I mention using wind power to make ammonia as a foundation for chemical nitrogen fertilizer and you (Ron) in you reply stated that, " But it is chemical fertilizers that have very dramatically and very temporally increased our carrying capacity." I don't know if you realized this but, that sort of was my point in that, the manufacture of ammonia and the resulting chemical fertilizer using excess wind (and/or solar) power might well result in a much extended (permanent) increase in carrying capacity by allowing us to continue the manufacture of chemical nitrogen fertilizer (ammonium nitrate if memory serves me right) in the absence of oil and NG.Ron Patterson says: 12/02/2017 at 3:18 pmThis can be viewed as a downside to the ongoing exponential increasing capacity of renewable electricity generation. If renewables grow big enough fast enough, there will be incentives to use any excess to do things like manufacture fertilizer allowing mankind's expansion into wild habitats to continue. I think it is important that the existing population of the planet continues to have more or less adequate food supplies in order to avoid the sort of situation that exist in Haiti but, the real problem as I see it, is to get poor people in less developed countries to believe that they would be better off not having as many children. Based on utterances I have heard in my neck of the woods, as recently as last night, many of these people do not see any problem with having lots of kids. There seems to be an attitude abroad that there is a great big world out there, just ready for the taking. No limits. I wonder whatever gives people that idea?
I wanted to post some pictures of garbage, sitting in open storm water channels, just waiting for the next big shower of rain to be washed out of existence. At least that must be what the people who dump this stuff into the drains think. I have to wonder if they ever bother to think about where it's going to end up but, it seems to be a simple case of out of sight, out of mind. I guess some readers will have figured out that if you visit any area of the Jamaican coastline that does not have a regular, structured clean up crew, you will see where the trash ends up. I have seen it and it is depressing.
I don't know if you realized this but, that sort of was my point in that, the manufacture of ammonia and the resulting chemical fertilizer using excess wind (and/or solar) power might well result in a much extended (permanent) increase in carrying capacity by allowing us to continue the manufacture of chemical nitrogen fertilizer (ammonium nitrate if memory serves me right) in the absence of oil and NG.islandboy says: 12/02/2017 at 3:45 pmErrr . I don't know if you realize it but you cannot make nitrogen fertilizer without natural gas . or some other source of hydrogen. Of course, you might get the hydrogen from water via electrolysis but that would be super expensive.
Fertilizer Made with Natural Gas Is Lifting Our World
Referred to by some as the most important technological advance of the 20th century .Between 3 and 5 percent of the world's annual natural gas production – roughly 1 to 2 percent of the world's annual energy supply – is converted using the process to produce more than 500 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer, which is believed to sustain about 40 percent of the world's 7 billion people. Approximately half of the protein in today's humans originated with nitrogen fixed through the Haber-Bosch process."Of course, you might get the hydrogen from water via electrolysis but that would be super expensive."Dennis Coyne says: 12/02/2017 at 2:59 pmNot if you are experiencing negative electricity prices as has happened when there's lots of wind and no demand or transmission capacity for the electricity being generated. I think OFM has alluded to this a few times in his ramblings, suggesting that hydrogen production via electrolysis or desalination might be useful ways of avoiding otherwise wasted electricity when the resource is available but, there is limited demand or transmission capacity.
If we ever get to the point where wind and solar generators are ubiquitous and abundant this could be a distinct possibility. In case you missed it in my earlier post here's The University of Minnesota's Wind to Nitrogen Fertilizer project :
We are pursuing a Grand Challenge – the challenge to feed the world while sustaining the environment. In the spirit of this grand challenge, a team of researchers across the University are pursuing an elegant concept in which wind energy, water, and air are used to produce nitrogen fertilizer.
WCROC energy from the windEnergy generated from the wind is used to separate hydrogen from water. Nitrogen is pulled from air. The hydrogen and nitrogen are then combined to form nitrogen fertilizer that nourishes the plants surrounding the farmer.
Next to water, nitrogen fertilizer is the most limiting nutrient for food production. Minnesota farmers import over $400 million of nitrogen fertilizer each year and are subjected to volatile price swings. Furthermore, nitrogen fertilizer is currently produced using fossil energy which contributes significantly to the carbon footprint of agricultural commodities.
"Green" ammonia demonstration programme:
Siemens is participating in an all electric ammonia synthesis and energy storage system demonstration programme at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Oxford. The demonstrator, which will run until December 2017, is supported by Innovate UK. Collaborators include the University of Oxford, Cardiff University and the Science & Technology Facilities Council.
Hi Ron,Ron Patterson says: 12/02/2017 at 3:53 pmI do not know much about the subject so I should probably not offer an opinion, but because you asked
I agree that humans are the problem and believe that fewer humans (as in reduced population) will improve the situation. Will humans choose to protect some of the mega fauna, until population falls to a more sustainable level? I have no idea.
Is it possible? I would say yes.
High probability? My guess would be no (less than a 66% probability).So I do not have a prediction for the Earth's megafauna in 2100, except to say I doubt your prediction that we will be reduced to rats and mice, etc. is correct. This is no doubt because I believe there will be a gradual transition to a more sustainable society. I believe some of the mega fauna might be preserved until human population falls to 1 billion or so (by 2150 to 2200). Most likely in North America, Scandanavia, and Siberia, and perhaps in the Himalaya and parts of South America. The rapid expansion of population in Africa makes it less likely the megafauna will survive there.
I am using the 40 kg cutoff for megafauna, though there are many definitions.
Note that some would consider cornucopian an insult.
Certainly I do not think fossil fuels are as abundant as those who believe scenarios such as the RCP8.5 scenario (with about 5000 Pg of carbon emissions) are plausible.
I also do not believe resources are unlimited or infinitely substitutable, which tends to be the cornucopian viewpoint. There is great need to utilize resources more efficiently and to recycle as much as possible (cradle to grave manufacturing should be required by law).
Now if you define cornucopian as someone who is less pessimistic than you, then I am by that definition a cornucopian.
I am certainly more optimistic than you, but if we all agreed there would be little to discuss.
Clearly the future is unclear.
The outlook for the wild megafauna is tragic and we should do what we can to preserve species diversity. Getting human population to peak and decline would improve the situation of other species, but I share your pessimism that this will be enough, I am just less pessimistic than you.
I believe some of the mega fauna might be preserved until human population falls to 1 billion or so (by 2150 to 2200).GoneFishing says: 12/02/2017 at 4:19 pmOkay, let's do the math. It looks like the world will reach 9 billion people by 2050. Then if it were to fall to 1 billion by 2150, that would be a decline of 80,000,000 per year or 219,178 per day. That is deaths above births. That would be a catastrophic collapse by any stretch of the imagination. And of course, most of those deaths would be by starvation. And for sure, as I said before, we would eat the songbirds out of the trees.
Hell, if that scenario takes place, there will likely be no rats left. No, no, no, Dennis, please forgive me. You are definitely not a cornucopian. Oh God, how could I have been so wrong?
The most rapid population decreases have been from disease. A few bouts of virulent diseases in a world with little medical help and control could dramatically reduce population.Dennis Coyne says: 12/02/2017 at 5:14 pmPopulation Collapse in Mexico (Down to about 5% in a century)
Hi Ron,Doug Leighton says: 12/02/2017 at 6:27 pmSee chart below. If total fertility ratio (TFR) falls to 1.5 by 2050 then population can fall from 9 billion to 4.5 billion by 2125 and to 2.25 billion by 2200 and to 1 billion by 2300, a fall in TFR to 1.25 (South Korea is about 1.26) would result in more rapid population decline. It is not clear how low TFR can go for the World, it was cut in half in 40 years, whether that can continue so that 1.27 is reached in 2055 is unknown. This scenario assumes life expectancy rises to no higher than 90 for the World.
Deaths would be natural rather than from starvation, this is just a matter of people choosing to have fewer children as is the case today in many East Asian countries such as South Korea and Japan and in many European nations as well.
Education for women and access to birth control and electrification (watch tv, instead of other forms of entertainment leading to increased family size), and empowerment of women in general will reduce population growth. Higher income also helps.
Chart from paper linked below
http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/10438/1/28-39.pdf
Keeping things in perspective, why not go with the experts until they're proven wrong?Doug Leighton says: 12/02/2017 at 6:36 pmWORLD POPULATION LIKELY TO SURPASS 11 BILLION IN 2100
"American Statistical Association. "World population likely to surpass 11 billion in 2100: US population projected to grow by 40 percent over next 85 years."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150810110634.htm
THERE'S A STRONG CHANCE THAT ONE-THIRD OF ALL PEOPLE WILL BE AFRICAN BY 2100Hightrekker says: 12/02/2017 at 7:52 pmThe combination of declining mortality and relatively high fertility is the driver of rapid population growth in Africa. Even if fertility would continue to decline, as assumed by the UN medium scenario, it will not bring down the growth rate in the near future, let alone halt population growth. This is because of "demographic inertia". And this is because Africa has a high proportion of young adults of reproductive age. Even if each one had very few children, the number of births would remain high.
We are all African– it's just some of us have been gone for a while.Synapsid says: 12/03/2017 at 12:24 pm
(well if you are east of the Wallace Line, you are part Denisovan, and west, part Neanderthal and a species we haven't discovered yet)Hightrekker,Doug Leighton says: 12/03/2017 at 12:47 pmThe Neanderthals and Denisovans are of African descent too, so African we are.
It's turtles all the way down.
"It's turtles all the way down." LOL Exactly!GoneFishing says: 12/02/2017 at 9:22 pmHere is how the year 2000 looked like to the people of 1900.Ron Patterson says: 12/02/2017 at 6:32 pmhttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-boston-globe-of-1900-imagines-the-year-2000-97021464/
Dennis, you are assuming that the population will alter their fertility rates to a lower value. Yes, that has already happened in developed countries. The fertility rates in undeveloped countries are still controlled by what their economy and environment will bear.Doug Leighton says: 12/02/2017 at 6:38 pmThe vast majority of the human population lives in undeveloped countries. They will continue to push, push, push against the very limits of their existence. And that will still be the case 50 years from now, and 100 years from now, and 150 years from now.
There are reasons the fertility rate is dropping in developed countries. Female empowerment, contraception, and so on. There are entirely different reasons the fertility rate is dropping in undeveloped countries. Poor nutrition, almost no prenatal care and so on. Also, much higher infant death rate helps keep the population in check. Please check my chart above from the Population Reference Bureau.
I think that if you could just live just one year in Bangladesh, or the Congo, or Zimbabwe, or . you would have an entirely different outlook. You would be forced to take off those rose-colored glasses.
Again, check the Population Reference Bureau chart above.
" if you could just live just one year in Bangladesh, or the Congo, or Zimbabwe, or . you would have an entirely different outlook. You would be forced to take off those rose-colored glasses."Survivalist says: 12/02/2017 at 9:07 pmWouldn't take a year, one week would do it: even keeping the rose-colored glasses on.
I spent a bit of time on leave in "Liberated Burma"/Karen State shortly after the fall of Manerplaw. A week would do it, however I was there for about 3 months. I haven't had a bad day since.Hightrekker says: 12/02/2017 at 10:03 pmGot chased out of Myanmar by someone with a AK, lucky I wasn't a captive. Walked across from Masi.Survivalist says: 12/02/2017 at 10:44 pm
It wasn't the best idea I've ever had.I linked up with some folks in Mae Sot on the Thai side. It was well planned before hand. There's was a lot of back and forth across the border in those days. Did some long range mobile medical patrols in Karen and Karenni State. Got chased around by Tatmadaw/SLORC a bit. When I was 25 that was my idea of a good time. Yeah, kinda fucked I know.Hightrekker says: 12/02/2017 at 10:58 pmYea --Dennis Coyne says: 12/03/2017 at 11:09 am
I was the only Farang around in Masi, and everyone else was going back and forth.
Very interesting place.
That was a long time ago, in a land far, far away.
It would be impossible in the homogeneous police state we are currently inhabiting.Hi Doug and Ron,GoneFishing says: 12/03/2017 at 2:32 pmI spent about 5 months hitchhiking through North and West Africa in 1981-2. Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Gabon, Republic of Congo, and Zaire (as it was known in 1982).
The TFR of half the World's population as of 2015 is less than 2. The World TFR decreased from 5.02 in 1965 to 2.51 in 2015.
Different experts have different opinions
https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2014/11/population-paradigm-wolfgang-lutz-education-effect/
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Lutz
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/researchPrograms/WorldPopulation/News/170109-GSDR.html
The problem I see with fertility rates is the same problem I see with planting trees. Even though I support a foundation to plant trees I realize that future changes could allow people to wipe out those and other trees very quickly, thus rendering the effort useless. I also realize the preserved areas of nature and wilderness could quickly disappear or be irreparably harmed by government decree, war and material/food pressures.Fred Magyar says: 12/03/2017 at 2:51 pm
The same goes with lower fertility rates. Since they are only based on decisions and not biological, the lower rates could reverse quite quickly. Just stress the population and see how fast it will change.
Once people realize that technological progress is an empty dead system that moves us to an empty dead world, birth rates will climb quickly.Rather than adding to our knowledge, Tompkins argues computers and smartphones represent "deskilling devices; they make us dumber. We're immersed in a system that now requires the use of a cell phone just to get around, just to function and so the logic of that cell phone has been imposed on us.
"The computer is a mechanism for acceleration, it accelerates economic activity and this is eating up the world. It's eating up resources, it's processing, it's manufacturing, it's distributing, it's consuming. That's what the computer's real work does and it does that 24/7, 365 days a year, non-stop just to satisfy our own narrow needs."
Tompkins foresees a dark future dominated as he puts it by more ugliness, damaged landscapes, extinct species, extreme poverty, and lack of equity and says humanity faces a stark choice; either to transition now to a different system or face a painful collapse.
"The extinction crisis is the mother of all crises. There will be no society, there will be no economy, there will be no art and culture on a dead planet basically. We've stopped evolution."
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/technology-stopped-evolution-destroying-world
Rather than adding to our knowledge, Tompkins argues computers and smartphones represent "deskilling devices; they make us dumber. We're immersed in a system that now requires the use of a cell phone just to get around, just to function and so the logic of that cell phone has been imposed on us.GoneFishing says: 12/03/2017 at 3:35 pmSo put the damn cell phones to better use. They can also make us smarter They can be used to track illegal logging in endangered rain forests. The fact that I have a device in my pocket that gives me access to all of human knowledge and access to GPS does not make me dumber.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=5Fju_wOaV3Y
When a tree calls for help | Topher White | TEDxCERN
Really? You have cell service in the rain forests? I barely have cell service where I live and it disappears totally between the mountains near me. I don't need electronic mapping and GPS to get around so no problem for me.Fred Magyar says: 12/03/2017 at 5:26 pm
Let the rest feel nervous as they get out of touch. For many it's a disaster if they lose their phones, fully dependent.I don't need electronic mapping and GPS to get around so no problem for me.GoneFishing says: 12/03/2017 at 8:44 pmI actually learned how to use a sextant and a compass but GPS is available so I admit that I do use it upon occasion.
In any case my point was that it is possible to use technology for purposes other than tweeting or posting selfies of oneself to Facebook every ten minutes.
Fred, they are highly capable machines but just machines. How they are used is determined by the machine and the operator interface.Fred Magyar says: 12/03/2017 at 8:57 pm
I could go on for hours how they have had very bad effects on personal time and personal interactions. For many people life is a series of texts and phone calls with real time life being the background now. Interruptions are the norm now. Sacrilege is when they have to turn them off.You won't fix stupid no matter how hard you trynotanoilman says: 12/03/2017 at 9:56 pmhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cznepJAbyg
Texting and walking fails compilation
@FredFred Magyar says: 12/02/2017 at 3:13 pm
I come close to nailing a textwalker or walkytalky nearly every time I am out on my bike. SOP, watch out for the buggers. It amazes me that people are unable to move about (foot, moto, car, bus, truck) without a phone in their hand.NAOM
A question for Dennis Coyne, or any other cornucopian who believes renewable energy will save the world from economic collapse, at least for the next 200 years or so.david higham says: 12/03/2017 at 7:28 pmOk, I'll take a nibble!
First of all, why do we have to accept the current definition of what the economy has to be? All of nature has existed on renewable energy since the beginning of life on this planet 3.8 billion years ago, so obviously the problem isn't renewable energy. If it were, life wouldn't even exist. The extractive, linear growth based neo liberal idea of the economy that we have come to accept as normal, is a relatively recent construct that was created by a small group of people at the beginning of the 20th century and it certainly is an aberration! Personally I don't think it is worth saving.
That economy will certainly collapse and no energy source can ever make it sustainable. Therefore it will by definition collapse. However there is nothing that says we need to continue on that path. There are indeed choices that people and societies can make. Even to the point of something that is considered radical and taboo like limiting population growth. (that is a separate dissertation from my point here)
With regards alternative economic thinking maybe start with Kate Raeworth. Not everyone in the world who has ideas that are out of the box are automatically naive cornucopians.
How to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. 45:00 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR1Wy7ZAgY0
What is the goal of economics? Does GDP really tell us all we need to know about a country's wealth and well-being? Our guest in this show argues that our economic system should be designed to meet everyone's needs, while living within the means of the planet.
Kate Raworth is the author of the acclaimed book 'Doughnut Economics', and she will join us in the studio for an exploration of a new 21st century economic model and why she believes so many economists have got it wrong for so long.
The implications of her Doughnut Economics are profound and and can be read and embraced as a roadmap for change not just by experts or economists, but by everyone! This is a chance to challenge her with your questions and critiques.
If you want to think a bit more about how ideas like E.O. Wilson's Half Earth might look here's a TED talk that touches on it.
Nature is everywhere -- we just need to learn to see it 16:00 minutes
https://www.ted.com/talks/emma_marris_nature_is_everywhere_we_just_need_to_learn_to_see_it#t-779393
How do you define "nature?" If we define it as that which is untouched by humans, then we won't have any left, says environmental writer Emma Marris. She urges us to consider a new definition of nature -- one that includes not only pristine wilderness but also the untended patches of plants growing in urban spaces -- and encourages us to bring our children out to touch and tinker with it, so that one day they might love and protect it.
Emma Marris is a writer focusing on environmental science, policy and culture, with an approach that she paints as being "more interested in finding and describing solutions than delineating problems, and more interested in joy than despair."
I agree with Gone Fishing, we do have choices! There are people all over the world who are making them.
Regarding the first paragraph of your reply. Conflating the functioning of ecosystemsnotanoilman says: 12/03/2017 at 8:49 pm
using the renewable energy from the sun with the 'Renewable Energy' required by industrial civilisation is a common mistake. The energy from the sun is renewable.
The infrastructure required to collect and store that energy requires the mining of the
requisite minerals,transportation,smelting,manufacturing,installation. The energy
required for all of that is supplied by fossil fuels. All of that infrastructure,and all of the
rest of the human-constructed industrial world,has to be rebuilt. Solar panels last
about 25-30 years. Wind Turbines about 50 years. Our industrial constructed world
has an immense amount of embedded fossil fuel energy. The mineral density of many ores are declining now,which means that the energy required to extract a given amount of mineral is increasing. I haven't done much reading on this site. No doubt someone has posted this link before. It gives a good idea of the scale of the construction required.
Natural ecosystems are quite different. The energy collection occurs using biodegradable
and recyclable materials,without the energy input of fossil fuels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oilYou don't seem to have come across the concept of recycling.GoneFishing says: 12/03/2017 at 9:20 pmNAOM
This is just the typical FF anti-renewable blurb slightly rewritten. It has more holes in than Swiss cheese.david higham says: 12/03/2017 at 9:50 pmHave a read of the numbers in the link. All recycling requires energy. I don't know if anyone has done an analysis of the amount of energynotanoilman says: 12/03/2017 at 11:03 pm
required,but it would be very large. It is also worth remembering that some of the minerals in that infrastructure are difficult to separate and
recycle.Plenty of people have investigated recycling and are doing it. You obviously haven't. Even the Giga-Factory is building a recycling facility.Hightrekker says: 12/02/2017 at 11:04 pmOn the personal level, I have just replaced my washing machine and stove as the old ones were falling apart – literally. The stove is ready to go to the local recycler where it will be separated and then sent to be melted back to new steel. The washer will be checked over by a refurbisher who will decide if he can use it or it's parts and what is left will go to the recycler. Simple. All my waste metal goes to the recycler but, unfortunately, we have no glass recycling so that just has to go to land fill.
NAOM
Diet pills?Hillary says: 12/03/2017 at 12:44 am
Kinda makes sense.Elton John blares so loudly on Donald Trump's campaign plane that staffers can't hear themselves think. Press secretary Hope Hicks uses a steamer to press Trump's pants -- while he is still wearing them. Trump screams at his top aides, who are subjected to expletive-filled tirades in which they get their "face ripped off."
And Trump's appetite seems to know no bounds when it comes to McDonald's, with a dinner order consisting of "two Big Macs, two Fillet-O-Fish, and a chocolate malted."
[ ]In another episode, Lewandowski describes how staffer Sam Nunberg was purposely left behind at a McDonald's because Nunberg's special-order burger was taking too long. "Leave him," Trump said. "Let's go." And they did.
Trump's fast-food diet is a theme. "On Trump Force One there were four major food groups: McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza and Diet Coke," the authors write.
The plane's cupboards were stacked with Vienna Fingers, potato chips, pretzels and many packages of Oreos because Trump, a renowned germaphobe, would not eat from a previously opened package.
The book notes that "the orchestrating and timing of Mr. Trump's meals was as important as any other aspect of his march to the presidency," and describes the elaborate efforts that Lewandowski and other top aides went through to carefully time their delivery of hot fast food to Trump's plane as he was departing his rallies.
https://digbysblog.blogspot.de/2017/12/hes-got-to-be-on-diet-pills.html
"two Big Macs, two Fillet-O-Fish, and a chocolate malted."GoneFishing says: 12/03/2017 at 11:01 amOh let there be a god
One of the biggest problems we face as population and industry grows is obtaining enough fresh water. Sure there is a lot of water on the planet, but it is mostly salty.Fred Magyar says: 12/03/2017 at 11:36 amMarcia Barbosa talks about the many anomalies of water and how exploiting them with nano-tubes could help address the problem of freshwater shortages.
Marcia Barbosa has a PhD in physics from Brazil's Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, where she is now the director of its Physics Institute. She studies the complex structure of the water molecule, and has developed a series of models of its properties which may contribute to our understanding of how earthquakes occur, how proteins fold, and could play an important role in generating cleaner energy and treating diseases. She is actively involved in promoting Women in Physics and was named the 2013 L'Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science Awards Laureate for Latin America.
Tks, GF!Doug Leighton says: 12/03/2017 at 4:36 pm
LOL! I'm head over heels in love with her!
I kept imagining her giving her talk to this sound track
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wunq6YlcSX0
Can you see all the dancers dressed as raindrops on a Samba Float in a Carnival Parade?Fred – As you know my bag is astrophysics, with climate change denial being merely irritating BUT when I see science news headlines like the following then I really get pissed off, or feel sick. Who gives a shit if Earth can "carry" 7 or 9 or 11 billion people when dolphins & elephants are relegated to "bush meat" and when species are disappearing at increasingly alarming rates. You're probably the only one here qualified to assess this issue so please give us your thoughts.Fred Magyar says: 12/03/2017 at 5:37 pmCURRENT EXTINCTION RATE 10 TIMES WORSE THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT
"Life on earth is remarkably diverse. Globally, it is estimated that there are 8.7 million species living on our planet, excluding bacteria. Unfortunately, human activities are wiping out many species and it's been known for some time that we are increasing the rate of species extinction. But just how dire is the situation? According to a new study, it's 10 times worse than scientists previously thought with current extinction rates 1,000 times higher than natural background rates."
Doug, if you get a chance, watch the ASU Origins project debates to which I have posted links recently addressing the topic of extinction. This is a very serious cross disciplinary discussion and can't really be done justice in a quick response here. It probably necessitates a full post of similar length to Ron's.GoneFishing says: 12/03/2017 at 7:53 pmHere is a very short teaser.
Origins Project Highlight: Elizabeth Kolbert on Climate Change & Mars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLusJDXY5SZhWUbALfqiDpk9NGmIoT4n48&v=zTXHcNNiPk4Link to ASU Origins Project home page:
https://origins.asu.edu/I look on space habitats as being trapped inside a giant iron lung. Exploration is one thing, but actually thinking of Mars as a possible home for humans is just sad.Fred Magyar says: 12/03/2017 at 8:19 pmCouldn't agree more! And that's from someone who lived and worked in a hyperbaric chamber as a saturation diver on oil rigs. I'd say that is pretty close to living in an iron lung as wellGoneFishing says: 12/03/2017 at 9:17 pmThe part about going to Mars that has always bothered me is the radiation exposure.
Plenty of dangerous and exciting exploring, work and research to do right here on Earth.
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Nov 28, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
President Trump is attempting to calm down the U.S. conflict with Turkey . The military junta in the White House has different plans. It now attempts to circumvent the decision the president communicated to his Turkish counterpart. The result will be more Turkish-U.S. acrimony.
Yesterday the Turkish foreign minister surprisingly announced a phone call President Trump had held with President Erdogan of Turkey.
United States President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke on the phone on Nov. 24 only days after a Russia-Turkey-Iran summit on Syria, with Ankara saying that Washington has pledged not to send weapons to the People's Protection Units (YPG) any more ."President Trump instructed [his generals] in a very open way that the YPG will no longer be given weapons. He openly said that this absurdity should have ended much earlier ," Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told reporters after the phone call.
Trump had announced the call:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrumpWill be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited in the Middle East. I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!
12:04 PM - 24 Nov 2017During the phone call Trump must have escaped his minders for a moment and promptly tried to make, as announced, peace with Erdogan. The issue of arming the YPG is really difficult for Turkey to swallow. Ending that would probably make up for the recent NATO blunder of presenting the founder of modern Turkey Kemal Atatürk and Erdogan himself as enemies.
The YPG is the Syrian sister organization of the Turkish-Kurdish terror group PKK. Some weapons the U.S. had delivered to the YPK in Syria to fight the Islamic State have been recovered from PKK fighters in Turkey who were out to kill Turkish security personal. Despite that, supply for the YPG continued. In total over 3,500 truckloads were provided to it by the U.S. military. Only recently the YPK received some 120 armored Humvees , mine clearance vehicles and other equipment.
The generals in the White House and other parts of the administration were caught flat-footed by the promise Trump has made. The Washington Post writes : "Initially, the administration's national security team appeared surprised by the Turks' announcement and uncertain what to say about it. The State Department referred questions to the White House, and hours passed with no confirmation from the National Security Council."
The White House finally released what the Associated Press called :
a cryptic statement about the phone call that said Trump had informed the Turk of "pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria."Neither a read-out of the call nor the statement AP refers to are currently available on the White House website.
The U.S. military uses the YPG as proxy power in Syria to justify and support its occupation of north-east Syria, The intent of the occupation is , for now, to press the Syrian government into agreeing to a U.S. controlled "regime change":
U.S. officials have said they plan to keep American troops in northern Syria -- and continue working with Kurdish fighters -- to pressure Assad to make concessions during peace talks brokered by the United Nations in Geneva, stalemated for three years now. "We're not going to just walk away right now," Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said last week.To solidify its position the U.S. needs to further build up and strengthen its YPG mercenary forces.
When in 2014 the U.S. started to use Kurds in Syria as its foot-soldiers, it put the YPG under the mantle of the so called Syrian Democratic Forces and paid some Syrian Arabs to join and keep up the subterfuge. This helped to counter the Turkish argument that the U.S. was arming and supporting terrorists. But in May 2017 the U.S. announced to arm the YPG directly without the cover of the SDF. The alleged purpose was to eliminate the Islamic State from the city of Raqqa.
The YPG had been unwilling to fight for the Arab city unless the U.S. would provide it with more money, military supplies and support. All were provided. The U.S. special forces, who control the YPG fighters, directed an immense amount of aerial and artillery ammunition against the city. Any potential enemy position was destroyed by large ammunition and intense bombing before the YPG infantry proceeded. In the end few YPG fighters died in the fight. The Islamic State was let go or eliminated from the city but so was the city of Raqqa . The intensity of the bombardment of the medium size city was at times ten times greater than the bombing in all of Afghanistan. Airwars reported :
Since June, an estimated 20,000 munitions were fired in support of Coalition operations at Raqqa . Images captured by journalists in the final days of the assault show a city in ruinsSeveral thousand civilians were killed in the indiscriminate onslaught.
The Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is defeated. It no longer holds any ground. There is no longer any justification to further arm and supply the YPG or the dummy organization SDF.
But the generals want to continue to do so to further their larger plans. They are laying grounds to circumvent their president's promise. The Wall Street Journal seems to be the only outlet to pick up on the subterfuge:
President Donald Trump's administration is preparing to stop sending weapons directly to Kurdish militants battling Islamic State in Syria, dealing a political blow to the U.S.'s most reliable ally in the civil war, officials said Friday....
The Turkish announcement came as a surprise in Washington, where military and political officials in Mr. Trump's administration appeared to be caught off-guard. U.S. military officials said they had received no new guidance about supplying weapons to the Kurdish forces. But they said there were no immediate plans to deliver any new weapons to the group. And the U.S. can continue to provide the Kurdish forces with arms via the umbrella Syrian militant coalition
The "military officials" talking to the WSJ have found a way to negate Trump's promise. A spokesperson of the SDF, the ethnic Turkman Talaf Silo, recently defected and went over to the Turkish side. The Turkish government is certainly well informed about the SDF and knows that its political and command structure is dominated by the YPK. The whole concept is a sham.
But the U.S. needs the YPG to keep control of north-east Syria. It has to continue to provide whatever the YPG demands, or it will have to give up its larger scheme against Syria.
The Turkish government will soon find out that the U.S. again tried to pull wool over its eyes. Erdogan will be furious when he discovers that the U.S. continues to supply war material to the YPG, even when those deliveries are covered up as supplies for the SDF.
The Turkish government released a photograph showing Erdogan and five of his aids taking Trump's phonecall. Such a release and the announcement of the call by the Turkish foreign minister are very unusual. Erdogan is taking prestige from the call and the public announcement is to make sure that Trump sticks to his promise.
This wide publication will also increase Erdogan's wrath when he finds out that he was again deceived.
Posted by b on November 25, 2017 at 12:14 PM | Permalink
WorldBLee | Nov 25, 2017 12:48:12 PM | 1
Sometimes it's hard to see if Trump actually believed what he was saying about foreign policy on the campaign trail -- but either way it doesn't matter much as he seems incapable of navigating the labyrinth of the Deep State even if he had in independent thought in his head. I don't expect US weapons to stop making their way into Kurdish hands as they try to extend their mini-Israel-with-oil foothold in Syria. But it would certainly be a welcome sight if the US left Syria alone for once!Red Ryder | Nov 25, 2017 12:49:33 PM | 2Trump personally sent General Flynn to recruit back Erdogan and the Turks right before the election. Flynn wrote his now infamous editorial "Our ally Turkey is in crisis and needs our support" and published in "The Hill". http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/305021-our-ally-turkey-is-in-crisis-and-needs-our-supportHarry | Nov 25, 2017 1:18:07 PM | 3Some interpret this act on Election eve as a pecuniary fulfillment by Flynn of a lobbying contract (which existed).
But if you know the role he played for Trump in the campaign and then the post-election role as soon to be NSC advisor, you will see that Trump was sending him to bring Turkey back into the fold after the coup attempt by CIA, Gulen and Turkey's AF and US State Dept failed.
Flynn understood the crucial need for US and NATO to hold Turkey and prevent the Russians from getting Erdogan as an ally for Syria and the Black Sea, the Balkans and Mediterranean as well as Iran, Qatar and Eurasia. Look at what has transpired between Turkey and Russia since. Gas will be flowing through the Turkish Stream and Erdogan conforms to Putin's wishes.
Trump wanted to prevent the Turkish Stream. It was a huge rival to his LNG strategy. All these are why Flynn did what he did for Trump. Now Trump has to battle CIA and State, as well as the CENTCOM-Israeli plans for insurgencies in Syria. It's not just the Kurd issue or the other needs of NATO to hold the bases in Turkey. It's the whole southwest containment of Russian gas and Russian naval power, and the reality of sharing the Mediterranean as well as MENA with the Bear.
Flynn was on it for Trump. And the IC and State want him prosecuted for defying their efforts to replace Erdogan with a stooge like Gulen. It looks like Mueller is pursuing that against the General.
Its not a problem for US to drop Kurds if they are no longer needed, BUT for now they are essential for US/Israel/Saudi goals, therefore you can bet 100% Kurds support will continue. Trump's order (he hasn't made it official either) will be easily circumvented.alabaster | Nov 25, 2017 1:19:42 PM | 4The real question is, what Resistance will do with the backstabbing Kurds? It wont be easy to make a deal while Kurds maintain absurd demands and as long as they have full Axis of Terror support.
Go Iraq's way like they reclaimed Kirkuk? US might have sitten out that one, I doubt they'll allow this to happen in Syria as well, unless they get something in return.
While America's standard duplicity of saying one thing while doing the opposite has been known for decades, they have been able to play games mainly because of the weakness of the other actors in the region.Jean | Nov 25, 2017 1:35:55 PM | 5
The tables have turned now, but America still thinks it holds top dog position.
Wordplay, semantics and legal loopholes wont be tolerated for very long, and when hundreds of US boots return home in body bags a choice will have to be made - escalate, or run away.
Previous behavior dictates run away, but times have changed.
A cornered enemy is the most dangerous, and the USA has painted itself into a very small corner...Gee. While reading B's article what got to my mind is: "Turkey is testing the ground". Whatever Trump said to Erdogan on the phone, it seems to me that the Turks are playing a card to see how the different actors in the US that seems to follow different agendas will react. If Turkey concludes that the US will continue to back YPG, it's split from the US and will be definitive.Peter AU 1 | Nov 25, 2017 1:36:09 PM | 6Erdogan is shifting away from US/NATO. He even hinted today that he might talk to Assad. That's huge! I wouldn't be surprised if Turkey leaves NATO sooner than later. And if it's the case, it will be a major move of a tectonic amplitude.
Trump.. "Will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited in the Middle East. I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!"Jen | Nov 25, 2017 2:36:10 PM | 7General Wesley Clark - seven countries in five years with Iran last on the list = "Get it all done"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_SwSurely by now Erdogan must realise that whatever the US President says and promises will be circumvented by the State Department, the Pentagon, the 17 US intel agencies (including the CIA and the NSA) and rogue individuals in these and other US government departments and agencies, and in Congress as well (Insane McCain comes to mind)? Not to mention the fact that the Israeli government and the pro-Israeli lobby on Capitol Hill exercise huge influence over sections of the US government.Hausmeister | Nov 25, 2017 3:37:06 PM | 8If Erdogan hasn't figured out the schizoid behaviour of the US from past Turkish experience and the recent experience of Turkey's neighbours (and the Ukraine is one such neighbour), he must not be receiving good information.
Though as Jean says, perhaps Erdogan is giving the US one last chance to demonstrate that it has a coherent and reliable policy towards the Middle East.
Jen | Nov 25, 2017 2:36:10 PM | 6stonebird | Nov 25, 2017 3:44:32 PM | 9Well, the US policy has been coherent and reliable in the last years. It enhanced local conflicts, supported both sides at the same time but with different intensities. Whoever wins would be "our man". Old stuff since the Byzantine period. It always takes a lot of time to prove the single actions that were done. In most cases we learn about it years later. The delay is so big and unpleasant that quite a number of folks escapes to stupid narratives that explain everything in one step, and therefore nothing. By the way: is the interest of Kurds to remain under the umbrella of the Syrian state but not be governed by Baath type of Arabic nationalism illegitimate?
How can Trump have his cake and eat it?james | Nov 25, 2017 4:00:51 PM | 10The Kurds (PKK basically) are only necessary to give a "face" to the force the US is trying to align in E. Syria. The "fighting" against ISIS (if there really was any) is coming to a close. The Chiefs of ISIS have been airlifted to somewhere nearby, and the foreign mercenary forces sent elsewhere by convoy. ALL the valuable personnel have now become "HTS2" with reversible vests. These, plus the US special forces are the basis of a new armed anti-Syrian force. (Note that one general let slip that there are 5'000 US forces in E-Syria - not the 500 spoken of in the MSM).
So Trump may well be correct in saying that the Kurds (specifically) will not get any more arms - because they have other demands and might make peace with the Syrian Government, to keep at least some part of their territorial gains. The ISIS "bretheren" and foreign mercenaries do not want any peaceful solution because it would mean their elimination.. So The CIA and Pentagon will probably continue arms supplies to "HTS2" - but not the Kurds.(ex-ISIS members; Some are from Saudi Arabia, Qatar - the EU and the US, as well as parts of Russia and China. They are not farming types but will find themselves with some of the best arable land in Syria. Which belonged to Syrian-arabs-christians-Druzes-Yadzis etc. Who wil want their properties back.)
Note that the US forces at Tanf are deliberately not letting humanitarian help reach the nearby refugee camp. Starvation and deprivation will force many of the younger members to become US paid terrorists.
thanks b.. i tend to agree with @4 jean and @5 jen... the way i see it, there is either a real disconnect inside the usa where the president gets to say one thing, but another part of the establishment can do another, or trump has made his last lie to turkey here and turkey is going to say good bye to it's involvement with the usa in any way that can be trusted.. seems like some kind of internal usa conflict to me at this point, but maybe it is all smoke and mirrors to continue on with the same charade.. i mostly think internal usa conflict at this point..A P | Nov 25, 2017 4:34:19 PM | 11Odd that no one has mentioned the fact the US was behind the attempted coup, where Erdogan was on a plane with two rogue Syrian jets that stood down rather than execute the kill shot. I have read opinion that the fighter pilots were "lit up" by Russian missile batteries and informed by radio they would not survive unless they shut down their weapons targeting immediately. This is probably a favour Putin reminds Erdogan of on a regular basis, whenever Erdo tries to play Sultan. The attempted coup/asassination also shows Erdogan exactly how much he can trust the US/Zionists at any level.Virgile | Nov 25, 2017 5:09:38 PM | 12And Edrogan must also know Syria was once at least partly in the US-orbit, as Syria was the destination for many well-documented US-ordered rendition/torture cases. It is probable Mossad (or their proxy thugs) killed Assad's father and older brother, so Erdo knows he's better relying on Putin than Trumpty Dumbdy.
Erdogan is about to make a u-turn toward Syria. He is furious at Saudi Arabia for boycotting its ally Qatar, for talking about owning Sunni Islam and by the continuous support of Islamists and Sunni Kurds in Syria.dirtyoilandgas | Nov 25, 2017 6:13:37 PM | 13
Erdogan is preparing the turkish public opinion to a shift away from the USA-Israeli axis. This may get him many points in the 2019 election if the war in Syria is stopped, most Syrian refugees are back, Turkish companies are involved in the reconstruction and the YPG neutralized. Erdogan has 1 year and half to make this to happen. For that he badly needs Bashar al Assad and his army on his side.Therefore he is evaluating what is the next move and he needs to know where the USA is standing about Turkey and Syria. Until now the messages from the USA are contradictory yet Erdogan keeps telling his supporters that the USA is plotting against Turkey and against Islam. Erdogan's reputation also is been threatened by the outcome of Reza Zarrab's trial in the US where the corruption of his party may be exposed.
That is why Erdogan is making another check about the US intentions before Erdogan he starts the irreversible shift toward the Iran-Russia (+Qatar and Syria) axis.
missing in this analysis is oil gas ... producers, refiners, slavers, middle crooks, and the LNG crowd :Israel, Fracking, LNG and wall street... these are the underlying directing forces that will ultimately dictate when the outsiders have had enough fight against Assad over Assad's oil and Assad's refusal to allow outsiders to install their pipelines. Until then, gangland intelligence agencies will continue the divide, destroy and conquer strategies sufficient to keep the profits flowing. The politicians cannot move until the underlying corruptions resolve..les7 | Nov 25, 2017 6:59:27 PM | 14The word 'byzantine' has been used for centuries to describe the intricate and multi-leveled forms of agreement, betrayal, treachery and achievement among the shifting power brokers in the region. The US alone has three major and another three minor players at work - often fighting each other. If however, it thinks it can outplay people whose lives are steeped in such a living tradition, it is sadly deluded and will one day be in for a very rude surprise. Even the Russians have had difficulty navigating that maze.flankerbandit | Nov 25, 2017 7:53:29 PM | 15When confronted with such a 'Gordian knot' of treachery and shifting alliances, Alexander the Great drew his sword and cut through it with a vision informed by the sage Socrates as taught by Aristotle.
Despite claiming to represent such a western heritage, the US has no such Socratic wisdom, no Aristotelian logic, and no visionary leadership that could enable it to do what Alexander did. Lacking this, it is destined to get lost in its' own hubris, and be consumed by our current version of that region's gordian knot.
'Hausmaus' @7 says...Daniel | Nov 25, 2017 7:55:00 PM | 16'...By the way: is the interest of Kurds to remain under the umbrella of the Syrian state but not be governed by Baath type of Arabic nationalism illegitimate?..'...showing that he either knows only the crap spouted by wikipedia...or nothing at all about the Baath party...
...which happens to be a socialist and secular party interested in pan-Arab unity...not nationalism...[an obvious oxymoron to be pan-national and 'nationalist' at the same time...]
Of course there is always a 'better way'...right Hausmaus...?
The Baath socialism under Saddam in Iraq was no good for anyone we recall...especially women, students, sick people etc...
A 'better way' has since been installed and it is working beautifully...all can agree...
Same thing in Libya...where the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya was no good for anyone...
Of course everyone wanted the 'Better Way'...all those doctoral graduates with free education and guaranteed jobs...a standard of living better than some European countries...etc...
Again...removing the 'socialist' Kadafi has worked out wonderfully...
We now have black African slaves sold in open air markets...where before they did all the broom pushing that was beneath the dignity of the Libyan Arabs...
...and were quite happy to stay there and have a job and paycheck...instead of now flooding the shores of Italy in anything that can float...
Oh yes...why would anyone in Syria want to be governed by the socialist Baath party...?
...especially the Kurds...who just over the border in Turkey are not even recognized as humans...never mind speaking their own language...
Oh yes yes yes...we all want the 'Better Way'...
It's a question of legitimacy you see...
I'd really hoped that Donald Trump® would be the "outsider" that both the MSM and he have been insisting he is for the past couple of years. Other than the Reality TV Show faux conflicts with which the MSM entertains us nightly, I see no such "rogue" Administration.flankerbandit | Nov 25, 2017 8:16:50 PM | 17This say one thing, and do the other has been US foreign policy forever.
Recall, for instance that on February 21, 2014, Obama's State Department issued a statement hailing Ukrainian President Yanukovych for signing an agreement with the "pro-democracy Maidan Protest" leaders in which he acquiesced to all of their demands.
Then, on February 22, 2014, the US State Department cheered the "peaceful and Constitutional" coup after neo-nazis stormed the Parliament.
A few months later, Secretary of State Kerry hailed the Minsk Treaty to end the war in Ukraine. Later that day, Vickie Nuland said there was no way her Ukies would stop shelling civilians, and sure enough they didn't (until they'd been on the retreat for weeks, and came whimpering back to the negotiations table).
A couple years later, Kerry announced that the US and Russia would coordinate aerial assaults in Syria. The next day, "Defense" Secretary Carter said, "no way," and within a week or so, we "accidentally" bombed Syrian forces at Deir ez Zoir for over an hour.
From my perspective, they keep us chasing the next squirrel, while bickering amongst each other about each squirrel. But the wolves are still devouring the lambs, with only the Bear preventing a complete extinction.
Some good comments here with food for thought...Yeah, Right | Nov 25, 2017 9:44:37 PM | 18What we know with at least some level of confidence...
Dump is not the 'decider'...the junta is...he's just a cardboard cutout sitting behind the oval office desk...
And he's got no one to blame but himself...he came in talking a big game about cleaning house and got himself cleaned out of being an actual president...
This was inevitable from the moment he caved on Flynn...the only person he didn't need to vet with the senate...and a position that wields a lot of power...
This was his undoing on many levels...not only because he faced a hostile deep state and even his own party in congress with no one by his side [other than Flynn]...
...but because it showed that he had no balls and would not stand by his man...
This is not the stuff leaders are made of...
The same BS we see with Turkey is playing out with Russia on the Ukraine issue...
Now the junta and their enablers in congress want to start sending offensive arms to Ukraine...Dump and his platitudes to Putin...no matter how much he may mean it...mean nothing...he's not in charge...
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/410942-trump-putin-friendly-words/
I think that Jean @4 has the best take on this: Erdoğan went very public on Trump's "promise" in a classic put-up-or-shut-up challenge to the USA.ritzl | Nov 25, 2017 11:08:38 PM | 19Either the word of a POTUS means something or it doesn't, and if it doesn't then Turkey is going to join Russia in concluding that the USA as simply not-agreement-capable.
Erdoğan will then say "enough!!!", give the USA the two-finger-salute, and then take Turkey out of NATO.
And the best thing about it will be that McMaster, Kelly and Mathis will be so obsessed with playing their petty little games that they won't see it coming.
It's hard to tell what Erdoğan is doing or intending other than that he is navigating something - objective TBD. It'll be interesting to see if he constrains the use of Incirlik airbase should the US keep arming the YPG/PKK forces. Airpower is the enabler (sole enabler, IMO) of the/any Kurdish overreach inside Syria. Seems like Erdoğan holds the ace card in this muddle but has yet to play it.Grieved | Nov 25, 2017 11:32:17 PM | 20@18 ritzlJackrabbit | Nov 25, 2017 11:42:26 PM | 21Seems like Turkey has more than one card to play. A commenter on another site mentioned recently that the US really doesn't want Erdogan to have that S-400 system from Russia. Got me thinking, could Russia have deliberately loaded Erdogan's hand with that additional card to help him negotiate with the US?
Turkey may well leave NATO and as others have pointed out, this would be a game changer far beyond the matter of the US's illegal presence in NE Syria. This possibility brings immense existential gravitas to Erdogan's position right now. He could ask for many concessions at this point, not to leave. And from the Eurasian point of view, it doesn't matter if he leaves or stays, while from the western view, it matters greatly.
Would the US give up Syria, in order to keep Turkey in NATO? It's a western dichotomy, not one that affects Asia. It would be simple to throw S-400 at that dynamic to watch it squirm.
Seby | Nov 26, 2017 12:25:05 AM | 22The plays the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.- Hamlet
As the endgame plays out, Erdogan's conscience may be revealed.
b has made the point that the partition that US-led proxy forces have carved out is unsustainable. But it would be sustainable if Erdogan can be convinced to allow trade via Turkey.
For that reason, I thought Trump's ceasing direct military aid to the Kurds made sense as it provided Erdogan with an excuse to allow land routes for trade/supply. Erdogan can argue that he wants to encourage such good behavior and doesn't want to make US an enemy (Turkey is still a NATO country).
Furthermore, I've always been suspicious of Erdogan's 'turn' toward Russia. Many have suspected that the attempted coup was staged by Erdogan (with CIA help?) so as to enable Erdogan to remain in office. IMO Erdogan joined the 'Assad must go!' effort not just because he benefited from the oil trade but because he leans toward Sunnis (Surely he was aware of the thinking that: the road to Tehran runs through Damascus .)
Hasn't Erdogan's vehement anti-Kurdish stance done R+6 a disservice? It seems to me that it has helped USA to convince Kurds to fight for them and has also been a convenient excuse for Erdogan to hold onto Idlib where al Queda forces have refuge. If Erdogan was really soooo angry with Washington, and soooo dependent on Moscow, then why not relax his anti-Kurdish stance so as to bring Kurds back into the Syrian orbit?
tRump just wants to hide the truth that he is castrated and with a tiny penis, like his hands.Ian | Nov 26, 2017 12:29:05 AM | 23Also just cares about money and soothing his narcissism. So f***'in American, in the worst sense!
Jackrabbit @20:Fernando Arauxo | Nov 26, 2017 1:45:51 AM | 24
Erdogan may feel that if he relaxed his stance against the Syrian Kurds, it could embolden Turkish Kurds to further pursue their agenda. It would also make him appear weak towards his supporters.Erdogan is NOT going to leave NATO. Why should he? It would be the stupidest chess move ever? He's in the club and they can't kick him out. He can cause all the trouble he wants and hobble that huge machine that is the western alliance. He will not get EU membership, but he has his NATO ID CARD and that ain't bad. Erdo now knows that the poor bastard Trumps is WORTHLESS that he is a toothless executive in name only. This is a wake up call, if I were Erdo, I would be very afraid of the USA and it's Syria, MENA policy. It is being run by LUNATICS and is a slow moving train wreak. So for now, Erdo must be looking at Moscow, admiring Putin for this is a man who has his shit together and truly knows how to run a country. Maybe even a sense of admiration and more respect for Putin is even present. If I were Erdo, I'd double down in my support for Russia's Syria policy.Hausmeister | Nov 26, 2017 3:46:55 AM | 25@ flankerbandit | Nov 25, 2017 7:53:29 PM | 14Anon | Nov 26, 2017 5:11:53 AM | 26You do not get it:
„...which happens to be a socialist and secular party interested in pan-Arab unity...not nationalism..."
According to this ideology the coherence of a society comes from where? And who is excluded if one applies it?
So your contribution is just a rant using rancidic rhetoric tools. But I will not call you „flunkerbandit". My advice is to move to this area and have a look into such a society from a more close position. Armchair type of vocal leadership does not help.
In the Obama years there was a:Jen | Nov 26, 2017 6:38:32 AM | 27
- Whitehouse policy
- Army Policy
- CIA policy
- State department policy.
Which policy is Trump really up against?
Anon @ 25: Tempted to say Trump is up against all of them plus NSA policy, FBI policy, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) policy and the policies of, what, 12 other intel agencies?Yeah, Right | Nov 26, 2017 7:27:43 AM | 28
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/17-agencies-of-the-us-intelligence-community-2013-5?r=US&IR=T@23 "Erdogan is NOT going to leave NATO. Why should he?"arbetet | Nov 26, 2017 10:14:56 AM | 29I guess one possible reason would be this: as long as Turkey remains in NATO then he is obliged to allow a US military presence in his country, and that's just asking for another attempt at a military coup.
After all, wasn't Incirlik airbase a hotbed of coup-plotters during the last coup attempt?
This came up:Harry | Nov 26, 2017 10:33:01 AM | 30@ arbetet | 29dan of steele | Nov 26, 2017 11:00:06 AM | 31"when the Syrian settlement is achieved, Syria's democratic forces will join the Syrian army."
"When the Syrian state stabilizes, we can say that the Americans did what they said, then withdraw as they did in Iraq and set a date for their departure and leave."Nothing new here, nothing good either. Kurds so far are keeping up their demands of de-facto independence under fig-leaf of "we are part of federalised Syria" with weak central government and autonomous Kurds. Thats how US plan to castrate Syria. Russia offered cultural autonomy, Kurds rejected.
As for Americans "withdrawing" willfully, it never happened. Iraq had to kick them out, and then US used ISIS and Kurds to get back in.
As for Syria's stabilization part, US is doing everything in its power to prevent it.
@Yeah Right #26Yeah, Right | Nov 26, 2017 5:18:37 PM | 32
Turkey is not obliged to keep foreign troops in their country to remain in NATO. De Gaulle invited the US to leave France in 1967 but is still a member of NATO@31 France actually withdrew from NATO in 1966. It remained "committed" to the collective defence of western Europe, without being, you know, "committed" to it.fast freddy | Nov 26, 2017 6:21:33 PM | 33So, yeah, France kicked all the foreign troops out of France in 1967, precisely because its withdrawal from NATO's Integrated Military Command meant that the French were no longer under any obligation to allow NATO troops on its soil.
But France had to formally withdraw from that Command first, and the reason that de Gaulle gave for withdrawing were exactly that: remaining meant ceding sovereignty to a supra-national organization i.e. NATO Integrated Military Command.
That France retained "membership" of NATO's political organizations even after that withdrawal was little more than a fig-leaf.
After all, NATO's purpose isn't "political", it is "military".
"The Decider" is Trump's apparent self image. He can't be enjoying the Presidency and the controls exerted upon him by others among the "Deep State" (whom I suppose have effectively cowed him into behaving via serious threats).psychohistorian | Nov 26, 2017 11:30:16 PM | 34If he already had money and power, as it appears that he had, he gained little by taking the crown. He has less power because he is now controlled by a number of forces (CIA, NSA, Media, MIC and etc.) as he remains under constant assault by his natural opposition.
Big mistake dumping Flynn.
Now you take another kind of asshole in the person of Obama - a guy that had nothing - you have a malleable character who enjoys the pomp and circumstance. Really didn't need any persuading to do anything required of him.
Here is a recent report from the Turkish Prime Minister supporting Trump's "lie" about ending support for the Kurds....what will history show occured?Julian | Nov 27, 2017 12:47:45 AM | 35ISTANBUL, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Sunday that his country is expecting the United States to end its partnership with the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its military wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG).
"Since the very beginning, we have said that it is wrong for the U.S. to partner with PKK's cousin PYD and YPG in the fight against Daesh (Islamic State) terrorist group," Yildirim told the press in Istanbul prior to his departure for Britain.
Ankara sees the Kurdish groups as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighting against the Turkish government for over 30 years, while Washington regards them as a reliable ground force against the Islamic State (IS), also known as Daesh.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday spoke to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the phone, pledging not to provide weapons to the YPG any more, an irritant that has hurt bilateral ties, according to the Turkish side.
Yildirim noted that Washington has described it as an obligation rather than an option to support the Kurdish groups on the ground. "But since Daesh (IS) is now eliminated then this obligation has disappeared," he added.
It would be nice if Erdogan when withdrawing from NATO (Assuming he does this in the next 12-18 months) would say something like.Quentin | Nov 27, 2017 8:48:51 AM | 36"We really like President Trump - and we trust his word implicitly. The problem is, although we trust his word, we know he is not in control so his word is useless and best ignored. Though of course - we still trust he means well."That would be a nice backhander to hear from Erdopig.
Speculation about Turkey leaving NATO seems farfetched. Turkey has NATO over a barrel. It has been a member for decades and what would it gain by leaving? Nothing. By staying it continues to influence and needle at the same time. Turkey will only leave when NATO throws it out, which isn't going to happen.Willy2 | Nov 27, 2017 11:53:09 AM | 37- According to Sibel Edmonds there're 2 coups being prepared. One against Trump and one against Erdogan.
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Nov 22, 2017 | www.unz.com
Tsar Nicholas , November 20, 2017 at 3:07 am GMT
An attack on Iran would probably result in the oil supplies through the Persian Gulf being blocked.That wouldn't just affect the ability of westerners to drive. Their holidays would be wrecked, industry would go on short time, food supplies would be disrupted. We live in a very complex world with most businesses reliant on just-in-time delivery. This is not 1917 or 1940.
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Nov 18, 2017 | russia-insider.com
The 942-kilometer pipeline will become operational in January when the flow of Russian pipeline oil to China will double from 15 to 30 million tons
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Nov 16, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
Revealed - Saudis Plan To Give Up Palestine - For War On Iran
The tyrants of Saudi Arabia developed a plan that sells away Palestine. They see this as necessary to get U.S. support for their fanatic campaign against their perceived enemy Iran.
An internal Saudi memorandum, leaked to the Lebanese paper Al-Akhbar , reveals its major elements. (Note: The genuineness of the memo has not been confirmed. In theory it could be a "plant" by some other party. But Al-Akhbar has so far an excellent record of publishing genuine leaks and I trust its editors' judgement.)
According to the memo the Saudis are ready to give up on the Palestinian right of return. They forfeit Palestinian sovereignty over Jerusalem and no longer insist of the status of a full state for the Palestinians. In return they ask for a U.S.-Saudi-Israeli (military) alliance against their perceived enemy on the eastern side of the Persian Gulf.
Negotiations on the issue were held between the Saudis and the Zionist under the aegis of the United States. Netanyahu and Trump's "shared personal assistant, wunderkind Jared Kushner", is the point men in these negotiations. He made at least three trips to Saudi Arabia this year, the last one very recently.
The Saudi operations over the last month, against the internal opposition to the Salman clan as well as against Hizbullah in Lebanon, have to be seen in the context and as preparation of the larger plan. To recap:
- Last week the current front-man of the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas, was ordered to Riyadh. There he was told to accept whatever will be presented as U.S. peace plan or to resign. He was urged to cut all Palestinian ties with Iran and Hizbullah:
Since the warnings, which could threaten the new Palestinian unity agreement signed by Fatah and the Iranian-backed Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian media displayed a rare degree of unity in recent days by coming out against Iran.
- On November 6 a letter by the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahoo to Israeli embassies was intentionally " leaked ". In it Netanyahoo urges his diplomats to press for full support for the Saudi plans in Lebanon, Yemen and beyond. On the same day Trump tweeted :
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump - 3:03 PM - 6 Nov 2017
I have great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they know exactly what they are doing....(The tweet was heavily promoted by Saudi Twitter bots .)
- The Saudi tyrant abducted the Prime Minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri, and declared war on the country. The purpose of this move is to remove or isolate Hizbullah, the Shia resistance of Lebanon which is allied with Iran and opposes the Saudi plans for Palestine.
- On November 11 the New York Times reported on the U.S. drafting of a "peace plan" but provided little detail. The chance for such a plan to succeed was described as low.
The left-wing Lebanese paper Al-Akhbar has obtained a copy of the plan (Arabic) in form of a memorandum by the Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir to the Saudi clown prince Mohammed Bin Salman ( English machine translation ):
The document, which is being unveiled for the first time, proves all that has been leaked since President Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia last May on the launch of US efforts to sign a peace treaty between Saudi Arabia and Israel. This was followed by information on the exchange of visits between Riyadh and Tel Aviv, the most important being the visit of the Saudi Crown Prince to the Zionist entity.The document reveals the size of concessions that Riyadh intends to present in the context of the liquidation of the Palestinian issue, and its concern to get in return the elements of power against Iran and the resistance, led by Hezbollah.
The Saudi foreign ministry memo starts by laying out its strategic perspective:
To face Iran by increasing sanctions on ballistic missiles and reconsidering the nuclear deal, the Kingdom has pledged in the strategic partnership agreement with US President Donald Trump that any US-Saudi effort is the key to success.
...
Saudi Arabia's rapprochement with Israel involves a risk to the Muslim peoples of the Kingdom, because the Palestinian cause represents a spiritual and historical and religious heritage. The Kingdom will not take this risk unless it feels the United States' sincere approach to Iran, which is destabilizing the region by sponsoring terrorism, its sectarian policies and interfering in the affairs of others.The Saudi paper describes the issues and process steps towards a deal in five points:
First : The Saudis demand a " parity of the relationship " between Israel and Saudi Arabia. On the military level they demand that either Israel gives up on its nuclear weapons or Saudi Arabia is itself allowed to acquire such
Second : In exchange Saudi Arabia will use its diplomatic and economic power to push through a 'peace plan' between Israel, the Palestinians and Arab countries along the lines that the U.S. will lay out. Within such a peace plan the Saudis, according to the memo, are willing to make extraordinary concessions:
- The city of Jerusalem would not become capital of a Palestinian state but be subjected to a special international regime administered by the United Nations.
- The right of return for Palestinian refugees, who were violently expelled by the Zionists, would be given up on. The refugees would be integrated as citizens of those countries where they currently reside.
- (No demand for full sovereignty of a Palestinian state is mentioned.)
Third : After reaching an agreement of the "main principles of the final solution" for Palestine between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. (Israel), a meeting of all foreign ministers of the region would be convened to back these up. Final negotiations would follow.
Fourth : In coordination and cooperation with Israel Saudi Arabia would use its economic power to convince the Arab public of the plan. The point correctly notes "At the beginning of normalizing relations with Israel, normalization will not be acceptable to public opinion in the Arab world ." The plan is thus to essentially bribe the Arab public into accepting it.
Fifth : The Palestinian conflict distracts from the real issue the Saudi rulers have in the region which is Iran: "Therefore, the Saudi and Israeli sides agree on the following:
- Contribute to counter any activities that serve Iran's aggressive policies in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia's affinity with Israel must be matched by a sincere American approach against Iran.
- Increase US and international sanctions related to Iranian ballistic missiles.
- Increase sanctions on Iran's sponsorship of terrorism around the world.
- Re-examination of the group (five + 1) in the nuclear agreement with Iran to ensure the implementation of its terms literally and strictly.
- Limiting Iran's access to its frozen assets and exploiting Iran's deteriorating economic situation and marketing it to increase pressure on the Iranian regime from within.
- Intensive intelligence cooperation in the fight against organized crime and drug trafficking supported by Iran and Hezbollah."
The memo is signed by Adel al-Jubeir. (But who were the 'advisors' who dictated it to him?)
The U.S. plan for peace in Palestine is to press the Palestinians and Arabs into anything Israel demands. The Saudis will agree to that, with minor conditions, if only the U.S. and Israel help them to get rid of their nemesis Iran. But that is impossible. Neither Israel nor the U.S. will agree to a "parity of relationship" for Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia lacks all elements to become a supreme state in the Arab Middle East. Iran can not be defeated.
Iran is the at the core of the Shia constituency and at the core of resistance to "western" imperialism. Shia and Sunni aligned populations in the Middle East (ex Egypt) are of roughly equal size. Iran has about four times the number of citizens the Saudis have. It is much older and cultured than Saudi Arabia. It has an educated population and well developed industrial capabilities. Iran is a nation, not a conglomerate of desert tribes like the desert peninsula under al-Saud. Its geographic position and resources make it unconquerable.
To defeat Iran the Saudis started proxy-wars in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and now Lebanon. They needed foot soldiers to win these wars. The Saudis hired and sent the only significant infantry they ever had at their disposal. Their hordes of al-Qaeda and ISIS fanatics were defeated. Tens of thousands of them have been killed on the battle fields in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Despite a global mobilization campaign nearly all the potentially available forces have been defeated by the local resistances on the ground. Neither the colonial settler state nor the U.S. are willing to send their soldiers into battle for Saudi supremacy.
The grant plan of the Trump administration to achieve peace in the Middle East is high on hopes but lacks all the necessary details. The Saudi's promise to support the U.S. plan if the Trump administration is willing to fight their nemesis Iran. Both leaderships are hapless and impulsive and both of their plans have little chance of final success. They will be pursued anyway and will continue to create an enormous amount of collateral damage. The Zionist entity feels no real pressure to make peace. It is already dragging its feet on these plans and will try to use them to its sole advantage.
Posted by b on November 14, 2017 at 05:42 AM | Permalink
x | Nov 14, 2017 5:59:54 AM | 1
"... I have great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they know exactly what they are doing...."arbetet | Nov 14, 2017 6:02:31 AM | 2Yes, exactly what they are told to do by the usual suspects. Stay on script, ... or else!
Donald Trump on Twitter (5 h ago):Lea | Nov 14, 2017 6:13:23 AM | 3
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrumpI will be making a major statement from the @WhiteHouse upon my return to D.C. Time and date to be set.https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/930320191699017730
This reeks of despair. How long should one give to the clown prince MBS before he achieves the final collapse of Saudi Arabia is the only question I have.somebody | Nov 14, 2017 6:29:53 AM | 4This did not need a leak, it was clear. The "leak" might as well have been invented from what has transpired anyway.Eugene | Nov 14, 2017 7:29:28 AM | 5There is an Arab peace plan from 2002 which Israelis find unacceptable.
Israelis will find this new peace plan unacceptable, too, as it would mean a one state solution - Palestinian struggle for a state would be changed to an equal rights campaign Israelis would find very difficult to counter.
The 'new' plan is too late anyway, Israel cannot directly engage in any war without being existentially threatened themselves, last time proved in Gaza. Hamas might have been forced to allow the Palestinian authority back but they did not give up their weapons.
And neither the US nor Israel can politically afford to lose many soldiers in a ground war. So if Saudi wants to fight against Iran, they have to do it themselves.
Never ceases to amaze the repeated rhetoric about how Iran is the bogyman, when Saudi Arabia financed the destruction in Syria. Israel fermenting discourse, has been going on for so long, to where the world looks upon it as being the "boy who cried wolf". Israel give up its Nukes? Parity, if you believe in the tooth fairy. Exactly who meddles in others foreign affairs there in the MENA?stonebird | Nov 14, 2017 7:45:36 AM | 6Seems like this could be a "deliberate pre-emptive leak" - to see what the reactions will be.Mina | Nov 14, 2017 7:50:31 AM | 7The alternative is a potential turn of Saudi Arabia - towards China and Russia. https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/113426/if-saudi-arabia-situation-doesnt-worry-youre-not-paying-attention
Either way, the new "owner" of Saudi Arabia will have to make several choices if he wants to do anything at all without running out of cash. Wars are expensive (particulrly if you have to pay mercenaries) and the recent asset seizures will only go so far.
...The actual "plot" mentioned by b seems to have included too many "wish-list" items for the Israelis, for it to be accurate. Although there is definitely a possibility of Saudi and Israeli collusion, Israel for one would prefer the US AND the Saudis to attack Iran. Note that overflying by Israel to attack Iran would probably be over Saudi which makes it into a direct target. The "other" route via Greece would be used on the return (or outward first). Which is why the inclusion of foreign airforces in familiarisation drills in Soutern Israel, actually lends credence to the leak - in spite of what I said earlier.On RT Arabic, article saying that Aoun's aid has been informed that they indeed a war on Lebanon is coming.Mina | Nov 14, 2017 7:51:54 AM | 8
In exchange for letting humanitarian business-help reach the Yemenis, they need to kill ppl elsewhere?
But what if the 350,OOO Lebanese leave KSA (and why don't they already do it?)
I believe KSA will suffer of that much more than Lebanon.Ppl can get organized from now on: "not in my name"somebody | Nov 14, 2017 7:55:05 AM | 9
Withdraw all money from banks, stop consuming. That's the only war they know.4) To clarify the situation Israel is in - from tiny Gaza strip -virgile | Nov 14, 2017 8:05:33 AM | 10The incident increased tensions along the southern sector and threatened to disturb the calm that has prevailed there since the end of the traumatic summer of 2014, which left Gaza in ruins and Israel licking its wounds. As of the writing of this article, silence has been maintained. None of the parties are lashing out, despite the casualties from Islamic Jihad and Hamas.Ever since the tunnel was destroyed, senior Egyptian intelligence officials have set off on a long round of mediation between the parties in an effort to prevent a conflagration from erupting. Both sides are well-aware that the previous round of violence, in 2014, was not planned. Rather, it was the result of a deteriorating situation and the loss of control on both sides. Neither of the parties needs another round of violence like that right now. The IDF has clarified that it did not know that there were excavators or fighters in the tunnel at the time, and that it did not plan to launch a "targeted killing." It simply wanted to destroy the tunnel.
I have been wondering about the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation. Saudi does not want it - if Hamas keeps contact with Iran .
So why it is happening? Israel?
There is no certainty Israel is not interested in a deal with Iran. It might be the safest bet.
I have been saying that for the last year.Jackrabbit | Nov 14, 2017 8:07:28 AM | 11As Obama will be remembered for the Iran nuclear deal, Trump wants to be remembered as the maker of the Arab-Israeli deal to end the state of wear.
Since Trump came to power he has been following a clear strategy of weakening all the parties involved, including Saudi Arabia and Israel!
Syria, Lebanon, Hamas, Fatah, Turkey and Iran are been thrown into deep crisis while Saudi Arabia and Israel are been brought to panic by agitating the "Iran and Shia threat'. Regional leaders reluctant to make concessions are coerced, bribed or quietly removed in all these countries. Local allies such as the Kurds and ISIS have been pampered to move against the reluctant leaders.
Jared is the architect of that strategy. He is in charge of manipulating the Saudis and Israel into a deal that will be then be imposed on the other countries.
Russia is NOT opposed to such a deal, provided it keeps its influence in the region. Therefore Trump is cozying up with Putin to get his collaboration in convincing his allies of the benefits of such a deal.
The hard to break Arabs are Bashar al Assad's Syrians, and the Moslem Brotherhood (Hamas) .
Qatar and Turkey are been blackmailed to put pressure on the Moslem Brotherhood and any opponent to a 'forced' peace deal.The Saudis are the key to the deal as they will be asked to contribute to the financial compensation Palestinians will ask for to accept the deal. They are also the most eager to humiliate Iran and Turkey.
The train is on track, despite failure to tame Syria that remains a nut hard to crack.I'm not convinced that this document is genuine because:somebody | Nov 14, 2017 8:13:57 AM | 12>> as b notes, 'parity' on nukes is a non-starter;>> discussions with Israel about the Palestinians are unlikely to be phrased as a "final solution" with the severe negative historical connotations of that phrase;
>> this wording is also odd: "rapprochement with Israel involves a risk to the Muslim peoples of the Kingdom" because there is no need to make special reference to "Muslim peoples" when 99.9% of KSA is Muslim.
>> Does KSA really have the wherewithal to bribe the Muslim world?
>> The accusation that Iran engages in "organized crime and drug trafficking" seems planted. I haven't seen such a charge before. The standard accusation (in the US) has been that Iran supports terrorism (meaning Hezbollah) and "destabilizes the region" (meaning they don't bow to US-Israeli-Saudi masters).
10 There will be no deal without Iran.virgile | Nov 14, 2017 8:26:56 AM | 13Israel is not stupid. The outcome of the war in Syria is an Iranian base on its border .
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday that a recently announced agreement on the terms of a ceasefire in Syria did not include a Russian commitment to ensure Iran-linked militias would be pulled out of the country.Lavrov said Iran maintained a "legitimate" presence in Syria, according to the Interfax news agency.
Trump's Middle East peace initiative still on holdcatface | Nov 14, 2017 8:29:52 AM | 14"What will the initiative include? According to various sources, it will consist of regional negotiations along three channels: Israeli-Palestinian with American mediation, Israeli-regional and international (rehabilitation of the refugee camps and mobilization of the world for a regional agreement). It is possible that the initiative will redefine the concept of "sovereignty" in a way that allows the Israelis and Palestinians to share territory creatively. The initiative may even resuscitate the Palestinian-Jordanian confederation idea. Perhaps even a Palestinian-Jordanian-Israeli configuration is possible."
Excellent article, thanks. yet I am left somewhat confused, Harir just talk on TV saying: He was running for a fear for his life (hezbollah wants him dead, like they did with his father), he added that Hezbollah is the danger to Lebanon, he added that he is not held by force and will return to Lebanon.somebody | Nov 14, 2017 8:36:31 AM | 15Something feels wrong, don't you have this feeling as well regarding this story?
13 Yes, that is the Israeli dream - Jordan to take over the rest of the West-Bank and Egypt take over Gaza.nudge | Nov 14, 2017 8:48:55 AM | 16Russia says US providing cover for ISIS - add to the BBC article.
@11...Jackrabbit:Yul | Nov 14, 2017 8:51:06 AM | 17
How convenient that you forget the phrase, "...by deception thou shalt do war", when you rationalize Israeli motivations/sensibilities.Interesting thread from the former US Amb to Israel under Obama:Jackrabbit | Nov 14, 2017 8:56:09 AM | 18
https://twitter.com/DanielBShapiro/status/930425842555027457and then we have this:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-delegation-headed-to-israel-to-discuss-syria-border-deal/
In addition to the Syria agreement, the officials are likely to discuss Iran's alleged construction of a military base less than 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Israel's Golan border.
and from Mattis:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-usa-syria/u-s-to-fight-islamic-state-in-syria-as-long-as-they-want-to-fight-mattis-idUSKBN1DE037"We're not just going to walk away right now before the Geneva process has traction," he added.
@11 follow-upsomebody | Nov 14, 2017 9:14:05 AM | 19The leaking of a secret Israeli cable and publishing by an Israeli news organization also seems suspicious.
The past, such blatant Israeli support for an Arab State/Monarch would be the kiss of death, wouldn't it?
The best explanation I can muster for these leaks is this: to further the notion that an attack on Lebanon is imminent so as to distract from the real target of an attack: Qatar.
17Anonymous | Nov 14, 2017 9:24:45 AM | 20
Yep. The last sentence of the Reuters article is ominousOne key aim for Washington is to limit Iranian influence in Syria and Iraq, which expanded during the war with Islamic State.So the US military now works for Saudi?
So lets see:Anonymous | Nov 14, 2017 9:27:30 AM | 21Israel gets the Palestinians dumped.
Israel gets somebody else to attack Iran who will be destroyed in return.Israel: +++ (Palestine, Iran, Saudi)
Saudi: +- (Iran, Saudi)Only the Saudis could come up with a plan like this /sarc.
So lets see: (Updated as I forgot the Hezbollah angle)Don Bacon | Nov 14, 2017 9:43:39 AM | 22Israel gets the Palestinians dumped.
Israel gets somebody else to attack Iran who will be destroyed in return.
Israel gets Hezbollah weakened, allowing takeover of Lebanese oil interests / access for its planned Israel-Cyprus energy route therough Lebanese territorial waters.Israel: ++++ (Palestine, Iran, Saudi, Lebanon)
Saudi: +- (Iran, Saudi)Only the Saudis could come up with a plan like this /sarc.
Palestine is a dead duck anyhow, and there won't be any war on Iran because of the extensive US presence (missile targets) in the Gulf. So IMO the idea that Israel would give up its nukes might be the main issue here.Yul | Nov 14, 2017 9:44:11 AM | 23
Meanwhile Iran will be working behind the scenes to weaken both Israel and Saudi Arabia, especially in the key KSA Eastern Province where Shi'as predominate and ARAMCO will have new owners. The Persians have been around for centuries and they know how to deal with these matters, as evidenced recently.@ 19virgile | Nov 14, 2017 10:00:17 AM | 24Yep, get the Saudis to plonk down billions in weapons that they won't , can't use and take part of that cash to help the Israelis to bomb their Arab brethren.
The US politicians appear as dummies compared to Iranians, Russians and Chinese.somebody | Nov 14, 2017 10:07:03 AM | 25
One may have serious doubts about these expensive and famous US universities that seem to breed political morons.
They all look like vicious children playing dirty and cruel games in a kindergarten20/21never mind | Nov 14, 2017 10:11:56 AM | 26Israel will not attack Hezbollah (never mind Iran) without the US leading .
Saudi cannot get full support from the US for Yemen, never mind Iran .
Last/not least - whilst Trump has fully bought into Saudi and Israeli aims (they might not be the same), his presidency might end in three years. US (and Russian) interest is to balance the interests of Middle East actors not to become a proxy for one of them.
This here is James Mattis from 2013
"I paid a military security price every day as the commander of CentCom because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel, and that moderates all the moderate Arabs who want to be with us, because they can't come out publicly in support of people who don't show respect for the Arab Palestinians," he said Saturday at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado in response to a question about the peace process.....
He called the current situation in Israel "unsustainable" and blamed the settlements for harming prospects for peace. The chances for an accord between Israel and the Palestinians, said Mattis, "are starting to ebb because the settlements and where they're at are going to make it impossible to maintain the two state solution."
Mattis then described a hypothetical in which 500 Jewish settlers live among 10,000 Arabs, and the implications of where Israel draws the border. He called it a choice between giving up the idea of a Jewish state or becoming an apartheid state.
Saudi is desperate. Israel is not far behind. Whatever they did since 2006 worsened their strategic position.
Jack | Nov 14, 2017 10:29:12 AM | 27The Zionist entity feels no real pressure to make peace.Making peace, in any shape or form, with the palestinians is antithesis to the zionist mission. Israel's survival, as a jewish state, hinges on this.
The same could also be said about the first point; Israel would never accept a technologically advanced state in the region that could threaten its hegemony. A nuclear Saudi Arabia will never see the light of day.
Great article; well researched and documented.CarlD | Nov 14, 2017 10:33:23 AM | 28I have a theory and I can't back it up but here goes...
I believe that The Donald gave Saudi two choices; go forward with his plan for the new Middle East or he throws his weight and support in with the 9/11 families in their lawsuit against Saud.
The Saudis have so seldom been out front on foreign policy and certainly never played on the front line solo prior to the past couple of years.
I believe that the Donald's plan is to emerge with the 3 strong actors of the US, Israel and SA and everyone else aligned with them and against Iran. It may actually work.
26,dh | Nov 14, 2017 10:49:15 AM | 29Of course Israel might appear to be in line with the Saudis
in order to weaken Iran and the pro palestinians.
Then after Iran were vanquished, it would take on the Saudis.Dear B,Grieved | Nov 14, 2017 10:59:15 AM | 30Excellent reporting.
I view the agreement, not as a threat to Iran, but as an alliance agreement between three weak actors, Trump, bin Salman and Netanyahu, who need all the friends that they can get. The rhetoric against Iran looks like their traditional positions.
Both Trump and bin Salman are each already in a war for survival with the Globalists (the clique of global elitists, whose members include Soros, Clinton, Tony Blair, Bandar Bush, etc. and who own the U.S. Deep State, the European Union structures, and Western media). Both Trump and bin Salman came to power after the Globalists fight against Russia (for example via the orchestrated drop in oil prices) did serious harm to their respective countries. Both are undoing the Globalist policies. The Globalists will continue to do everything possible to remove them from power.
Netenyahu is also no friend of the Globalists after they tried to rehabilitate Iran with the nuclear deal in order to draw Iran away from Russia. He has also been weakened by the disastrous outcome, for him, in Syria. (Are the Globalists behind the allegations of corruption against him?)
In this context I have difficulty to see that any of these three are in a position, or would be willing to take the risks involved, to launch a war with Iran.
It was on October 1st that Sayed Nasrallah made his attention-getting statement that the Zionist occupiers should go back to the countries they came from, because if the US-Israeli command launched a war on Lebanon there would be no time for the settlers to flee. It was a pretty dramatic escalation of warning, and almost seemed to come out of the blue, but perhaps not, if crazy ideas like the ones in this memorandum were swirling around the region. And they are crazy ideas, all highly dubious propositions.Fernando Arauxo | Nov 14, 2017 11:13:11 AM | 31Jackrabbit @18 makes a point if all this is smoke for the real attack, which is against Qatar. This seems much more plausible. Beirut-based Paul Cochrane laid out this possibility: Behind the Saudi Troublemaking
"... the global powers would vocally oppose such a move but likely not exercise military intervention a la 1991 when Iraq invaded Kuwait. The U.S. troops based in Qatar would just stay in their base; the Trump administration has signaled it has sided with Riyadh, even though the State Department has been more nuanced towards Doha. As for the Turks and the Iranians, they would not want to be brought into a conflagration with Riyadh and the ATQ. That really would tear the MENA apart.Ultimately, there's not much to stop a Saudi gas grab. There's not much desire internationally for yet another Middle Eastern military "adventure" following the debacles in Iraq and Libya, while nobody's lifted a finger against Saudi Arabia for its war against Yemen. As long as Qatari gas exports remain uninterrupted, the global powers might readily accept a change of management.
Mercouris at the Duran picked this up too, and makes a decent case that Saudi could actually get away with this. It seems to make much more sense than the appalling logistics of trying to attack either Hezbollah or Iran. And by grabbing the Qatari half of the massive gas field shared with Iran, Saudi would have achieved an ironic taste of "parity" with its true enemy.
The question is, how possible is such a move for Saudi Arabia?
HAHAHA the jews consider the Al Sauds a joke and they want parity with them? HAHAHAHA Allowed to have nuclear weapons? HAHAHAHA!!! Too funnyPnyx | Nov 14, 2017 11:16:44 AM | 32
Israel's government would be foolish if it were to engage in a deal that promises them what they already have de facto and demands that they abandon the greatest strategic advantage Israel has; the exclusive regional possession of nuclear weapons.Piotr Berman | Nov 14, 2017 11:39:51 AM | 33The most dubious part of the "Saudi plan" is that it may be good for Saudis, in some deluded princely perspective, but there is really nothing of value for USA. Goodies for USA -- Palestinians giving up on the right of return? USA does not consider that right seriously, so value is zero, numerically speaking (zero shows a the result if you are not using exponential notation, 10^-50). Goodies for KSA: the status of "Grand Prince" in Golden Horde.Anna | Nov 14, 2017 11:47:18 AM | 34Golden Horde was a successor state of Mongolian empire that had supremacy over Rus among its various holdings. Rus was split into a number of principalities ruled by princes but one of them was given the function of Grand Prince, and he collected the taxes from all other princes and passing them to the Khan of the Horde. While the power of Grand Prince was considerable, he could be recalled (one way ticket to the capital of the Horde).
KSA imagines having that position in the Arab (or Muslim??) words, of course without the last detail -- obligatory invitation to D.C. with a dinner that may be wholesome, but then again, it may be poisoned. But it is much better to USA to deal with a number of small states that do not cooperate with each other. What if a single change of power in the Kingdom is followed by a request to close all bases? This is a type of bother that is better to prevent from even being contemplated. Mind you, Americans were disinvited from the Kingdom in the past. Trump may trust MbS, but Pentagon does not KSA.
You forgot to mention Macron's recent surprise visit. For some reason, Macron may be on the hook to them. He was awarded with a military contract (navy vessels) from UAE, KSA ally.Piotr Berman | Nov 14, 2017 11:51:12 AM | 35Macron on the hook? Like a hooker? But that lady has no intention to be restricted in the choice of customers. Over time, she will have a kind word (not just words) for everyone.karlof1 | Nov 14, 2017 11:53:39 AM | 36Grieved @30--fastfreddy | Nov 14, 2017 12:03:27 PM | 37It would seem Nasrallah's/Hezbollah's intel reach is quite deep. As someone commented, the plan reeks of desperation; since it's founded on numerous falsehoods, it has no chance of success. I expect the Umma to denounce Saudi's betrayal of Palestine regardless of what their governments say.
An array of unrealistic, unobtainable goals and a leak. Football analogy: It's a pump fake. Look for the hand off and a running play.J Swift | Nov 14, 2017 12:07:23 PM | 38Also see a limited hangout: Warm the Arab public to the concept of totally screwing the Palestinians in Palestine's stolen land (Israel).
I wrote a couple weeks ago that because of several years of weak chief executive, the power blocks in the US were pursuing their respective interests more independently and openly than ever (which they are); and in Arabia MbS is a power hungry Machiavellian prince who is also naive and thus hard to predict, but who must understand that he will need allies, and those allies will likely have an influence on him, for better or worse (which is also true). I was naturally hoping that his daddy's trip to Russia, as his last state visit, might indicate that the king was trying to open an option for MbS to turn to Russia for support against the CIA/State sponsored factions within SA, which might in turn lead to at least the opportunity for Russia to exert some calming influence on the region over time.Temporarily Sane | Nov 14, 2017 12:16:56 PM | 39Well, that may have been the king's thought, but obviously his son has been getting his advice from elsewhere. In the US, a most unlikely alliance appears to have formed (at least with respect to the ME). Because of the vitriol existing between the neocons and Trump, and the fact that the office of the president has largely been taken over by the Pentagon (which often but does not always see eye-to-eye with the Zionist/Neocons), it was easy to overlook the growing power and influence of the Zionist worm in the White House, Kushner.
I think Trump never had a strong foreign policy concept in his own mind--mostly boiled down to a quasi-isolationist, so he hasn't fought hard against turning things over to the Pentagon and Kushner. It is now clear that Kushner, the US's own power hungry prince who is eager to prove his chops in an area he has no clue in--international politics--has fallen completely into the loving arms of Israel. It is clear now that the Trump/Kushner plans for SA are entirely a Nuttyahoo wet dream. The visit to SA, where they were persuaded to spend $110B of money they don't really have mostly on huge numbers of THAAD and other missile defense systems and front-line fighters. Next MbS was persuaded to confront Qatar, as any breaks in a united front against Iran must be spanked (notice how all these events keep happening a couple days after a visit from Kushner, who is usually hot off a meeting with his masters in Israel). Then MbS is apparently advised to go all in to remove opposition within the kingdom, which gives Trump glee because it also punishes Hillary's friends, but also commits MbS to the path, and makes him totally reliant on Israel/Kushner for protection (cutting RF's increasing attraction). Now the crude attempt to boil the pot in Lebanon.
So in short order there will be far more missile defenses than Riyadh needs (but exactly what Israel desires). Israel doesn't want to be first in on a direct attack on Iran, but if there is a whole air force worth of planes with Saudi markings just waiting for Israeli/US/Wahabi pilots to take first blood--once it's a regional war on, who will notice who's planes are attacking Iran after that? And MbS (under careful direction) has now set up trigger points from Yemen to Qatar to Lebanon, just waiting until the preparations are done and an event to be blamed on Iran, and away we go. Israel finally gets its wish. The good news is that MbS has likely bitten off more than he can chew by taking on all of his internal opposition at the same time as Iran, and done so in such a heavy handed manner that I doubt he can buy a life insurance policy. And Russia and Iran have maintained a steady and "back seat" approach to their assistance of everyone who seems to need it--and the US and Israel have been so brazen in their duplicity and untrustworthiness--most countries in the area (and the world) don't seem so eager to follow the US lead any more (plus, the Pentagon is still very strong in the US executive, and I don't think they're quite so anxious to tear into Iran). So there is hope this latest Israeli plan to drag the world into war against Iran will melt down just like it did in Syria, but who knows how much damage will be done before it does.
@4 somebodyWilliam | Nov 14, 2017 12:19:44 PM | 40And neither the US nor Israel can politically afford to lose many soldiers in a ground war. So if Saudi wants to fight against Iran, they have to do it themselves.MBS would have to be absolutely deranged to fight Iran directly. The KSA's regular troops are mostly foreigners from Pakistan and other poorer nations. They are well-equipped but poorly trained. In addition, fighting wars for a country one has no stake in makes for poor morale. They are getting their asses handed to them on a regular basis by the relatively poorly-equipped (but highly motivated) Houthi rebels in Yemen.
It is possible that MBS is wildly deluded but I can't see him facing Iran alone. What is more likely is covert and indirect warfare from the US and Israel with special forces and proxies (like the MEK terrorist group inside Iran and perhaps some Wahhabi fanatics) providing boots on the ground and the whole thing backed up by USAF air power and bankrolled by MBS.
Someone mentioned that 'parity on nukes is a non-starter. That is bullshit. SA already has 85 American B-61 nukes that were delivered to them by Israel at the time when it appeared that McStain's plan of raising an Arab Army out of Turkey would eventually defeat Syria.PeacefulProsperity | Nov 14, 2017 12:25:14 PM | 41No on has ever accounted for those nukes, and I seriously doubt, that once they got their hands on them, that SA would give them back. Matter of fact, video exists somewhere out in the ether of a SA attack on Yemenn in which one of the B-61 nukes was used, it just happens to have 'disappeared'.
I'd say this is a non-starter. The Palestinians though may take a page out of the Zionist playbook, take the money and then just keep fighting, after all, most of world opinion in now firmly with them.
From b's report:Ghostship | Nov 14, 2017 12:27:17 PM | 42"The Saudi tyrant abducted the Prime Minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri, and declared war on the country. The purpose of this move is to remove or isolate Hizbullah, the Shia resistance of Lebanon which is allied with Iran and opposes the Saudi plans for Palestine."
That's absurd, ridculoous, doesn't make sense at all.
Hariri is a mortal enemy of Hizb, even accused them of assassinations attempts. Saudis keeping Hariri in house arrest gives the control of all Lebanon over to Hizb - a dream come true for them.
Add arresting plotters of 9/11 ponce Talal (also a major sponsor of Clinton/Bush criminal enterprise, CNN lies and Twitter censorship) and ponce Bandar (a butcher of Syria) to the picture and you can see that this all turns conveniently into Russia's advantage. Plus:
Russia, Saudi Arabia sign air defense contracts
And Turkey is already in the fold:
Putin says relations between Russia and Turkey may be considered as fully restored
>>>> stonebird | Nov 14, 2017 7:45:36 AM | 6PeacefulProsperity | Nov 14, 2017 12:31:24 PM | 43The "other" route via Greece would be used.Which one is that? Over the Caspian Sea, through the Caucasus(Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey or Russia), across the Black Sea, through Bulgarian or Turkish airspace to Greece. That would be available one time only and the fuel loads the aircraft would have to carry would severely restrict the bomb load they could carry. Also, going by previous experience the first time any Iranian SAM batteries locked their radar onto the Israeli aircraft, they'd dump their drop tanks and bomb loads to head out of Iranian airspace ASAP.
Any attempt by Israel to attack Iran would be a disaster for Israel which is why the conspiracy is aimed at getting Hezbollah to launch missiles at Israel and Iran to launch missiles at Saudi Arabia in response to a Saudi attack on Hezbollah. Then the United States could argue that it's intervention against Hezbollah and Iran was legitimate, well at least legitimate enough satisfy the American public and the poodles.
Everything has been going well according to the Putin-Trump plan:PeacefulProsperity | Nov 14, 2017 12:35:43 PM | 44Trump: 'Time to Get Back to Healing a World That is Shattered and Broken'
McCain and the rest of war-mongers (e.g. Lynn de Rothshild) are scared to death by this:
US Senator McCain Slams Donald Trump Over 'Believing in Sincerity' - Sputnik International
Peace is coming to the ME Lebanon's Maronite Patriarch arrives in Riyadh on first visit
Remaining terror state is in the cross-hairs: US breaks ground for new permanent base in Israel
FWIW interesting info-crumbs Arrested: Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. His Ties to Las Vegasdognuke | Nov 14, 2017 12:43:17 PM | 45
This is the same Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal who, together with Bill Gates, owns the Four Seasons Hotel that is located within the 5 top floors of the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas.That would be the same Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas that was the sight of the deadliest mass shooting in our nation's history.
The Four Seasons Hotel-within-a-hotel boasts its own private elevators and separate entrance.
His arrest may or may not reveal more ties to the Las Vegas Massacre. But it does reveal that he's a pretty shady character.Prince Alaweed's arrest was the result of King Salman's decree to create an anti-corruption committee chaired by his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
King Salman decreed late on Saturday the creation of an anti-corruption committee chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman "
"The allegations against Prince Alwaleed include money laundering, bribery and extorting officials, one official told Reuters, while Prince Miteb is accused of embezzlement, hiring ghost employees and awarding contracts to his own companies including a $10 billion deal for walkie talkies and bulletproof military gear worth billions of Saudi royals."
Prince Alaweed bin Talal is also Twitter's second largest shareholder. That would be the same Twitter that allows ISIS, Antifa and anyone who threatens to assassinate our President free reign on their platform but blocks conservative American patriots' accounts.
Speaking of information flow-the Prince's investment company, Kingdom Holding Company, is a major shareholder in Time Warner Cable. The same Time Warner cable that owns CNN. Oh- and they also own a major chunk of AOL that owns the Liberal multi-author blogging platform posing as a news source-Huffpost.
Jim Murren, CEO of MGM dumped millions of dollars worth of his stocks in the weeks leading up to the massacre.That would be the same MGM that owns the Mandalay Bay Hotel. How fortunate that he dumped his stocks before the mass shooting.
MGM Stock Selloff and Saudi Connections to Mandalay Bay Hotel.
CEO Jim Murren circulated an internal memo that stated that he would match donations to CAIR ( a terrorist organization) and the ADL-a very anti-Trump, pro-Islamic organization. He must like Twitter.
The Saudis partnered with the MGMReuters reported that back in '07 Dubai World became partners with MGM.
"Dubai World, the investment holding firm of the Dubai government, will acquire a 9.5 percent stake in MGM Mirage and 50 percent of the casino operator's CityCenter development project for $5 billion."
Dubai World referred to the deal as a "long term strategic partnership."
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal hails from Saudi Arabia.
That would be the same country as the Saudi Royal Air Force-that just happened to be doing some "realistic combat training" in Las Vegas.
From a previous post,
It may or may not be "routine," but during the month of August, from the 5th to the 28th, the Saudi Air Force booked an entire tower of "SLS," a beleaguered Las Vegas hotel. They didn't stay there to ogle scantily clad Las Vegas women. Arrangements were made to keep all female staff away from them. Some areas were closed to the public and pictures of females were yanked from the walls.
The purpose was for "realistic combat training" and they're planning on making a habit of it. The Las Vegas Review Journal reported,
"Saudi Arabia's 10th Squadron Royal Saudi Air Force will be taking part in Red Flag 17-4 at Nellis Air Force Base, according to airwingspotter.com, a site dedicated to military aviation photography and spotting. Red Flag, combat training involving the air, space and cyberforces of the United States and its allies, will be held Aug. 14-25.
"Depending on the year, the Royal Saudi Air Force will bring 175-210 members to these realistic combat exercises," S&K said in the 2014 post."
Who needs a military base when you can rent a hotel? Food's better too.
Caught up in King Salman's sweep was the Commander of the Saudi Navy as well as the Minister of the National Guards. No mention yet of the Royal Saudi Air Force.
Ghostship | Nov 14, 2017 1:04:26 PM | 46
Nuclear strike by proxy, Saudi Arabia purchased(or given) nuclear bomb(s). Temporary nuke parity.
The clown prince MbS is the perfect proxy to strike Iran.
>>>> Jackrabbit | Nov 14, 2017 8:07:28 AM | 11Yul | Nov 14, 2017 1:06:55 PM | 47I'm not convinced that this document is genuine because:>> discussions with Israel about the Palestinians are unlikely to be phrased as a "final solution" with the severe negative historical connotations of that phrase;
>> this wording is also odd: "rapprochement with Israel involves a risk to the Muslim peoples of the Kingdom" because there is no need to make special reference to "Muslim peoples" when 99.9% of KSA is Muslim.
You are aware this is a machine translation? So unless you are fluent in Arabic and can translate the original article, your comment has little value just like Liz Sly's and Anne Barnard's reporting from Beirut.
As for "final solution" why would an Arab be concerned since beyond the Mufti of Jerusalem, Arabs played little or no part is the Holocaust. And the position and role of the Mufti of Jerusalem is heavily overstated by Zionists.
>> this wording is also odd: "rapprochement with Israel involves a risk to the Muslim peoples of the Kingdom" because there is no need to make special reference to "Muslim peoples" when 99.9% of KSA is Muslim.Firstly this could again be down to machine translation but it's more likely to be that 30% of the population of Saudi Arabia are migrant workers so 99.9% of the population are not necessarily Muslims. If you'd bothered to check the CIA World Fact Book, the only honest publication that the CIA produces, you would have known this.
>> The accusation that Iran engages in "organized crime and drug trafficking" seems planted. I haven't seen such a charge before. The standard accusation (in the US) has been that Iran supports terrorism (meaning Hezbollah) and "destabilizes the region" (meaning they don't bow to US-Israeli-Saudi masters).You obviously haven't be paying attention to the bilge about the Tri-border region in South America. I would guess that this is Kushner's contibution to the ploy - most Americans are deeply infected with a disease known as projection and thus assume their enemies would act as they do because being the exceptional country everybody wants to do what Americans do. In this case with the CIA funding their illegal activities prior to about 2001 with money raised from drug smuggling, Americans assume that is what the Iranians are also doing which is ironic when you understand that the Iranians are fighting an existential war against drugs.
https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5042362,00.htmlGhostship | Nov 14, 2017 1:15:39 PM | 48
Greenblatt: no resumption of Israel-Palestinian talks in sightFor sure: Abu Mazen must have told the Saudi Pretender and his senile father: Go and take a hike !
>>>> PeacefulProsperity | Nov 14, 2017 12:25:14 PM | 41Ghostship | Nov 14, 2017 1:17:35 PM | 49Oh, a Zionist troll talking bullshit as usual.
>>>> William | Nov 14, 2017 12:19:44 PM | 40james | Nov 14, 2017 1:17:41 PM | 50You could include a link or two to justify your staggering claim.
thanks b!Laguerre | Nov 14, 2017 1:21:30 PM | 51i agree with @20/21 anonymous.. this isn't a saudi plan! (The memo is signed by Adel al-Jubeir. (But who were the 'advisors' who dictated it to him?) )
this is a memo thought up in some neo cons head - whether they are located in israel, or some washington stink tank..
@29 dh.. i agree with much of what you say, but don't you think israel/saudi/usa trio are batshit crazy enough to do something stupid? witness their war on syria.. plenty of stupidity to continue on in the same fashion.
@18/30 jr and grieved... yes - qatar is a thorn in the side of the terrorist state saudi arabia.. nothing like another terrorist state calling you out, lol.. one of them has to be silenced... i doubt the attack is going to be on qatar myself..
@38 j swift.. thanks.. makes sense..
@45 dognuke.. unfortunately that is true and a possibility.. the clown prince is a really unstable dude..
It should be born in mind, of course, that this is only MbS plotting. It can't be spoken of publicly in Saudi Arabia, because the Saudi population is strongly pro-Palestinian. But all the media are owned by members of the royal family, so the population is kept in ignorance and quiet. I don't know whether that number of al-Akhbar has been suppressed in Saudi, but this news has sort of got out anyway, as it will be on the social media, which Saudis are dedicated to.Ghostship | Nov 14, 2017 1:22:54 PM | 52The fourth point is to bribe the public into accepting the plan. That'll cost a lot. And I don't think it will work. Another risk for MbS's power.
>>>> Anna | Nov 14, 2017 11:47:18 AM | 34Jackrabbit | Nov 14, 2017 1:27:18 PM | 53Airbus Industries also just received a large order for A-380s from Dubai (Emirates) - since Abu Dhabi pretty much owns Dubai after there financial troubles a few years back. it wouldn't surprise me if this was an MbZ bribe to various European countries to look the other way when things kick off.
Ghostship @46Ghostship | Nov 14, 2017 1:29:32 PM | 54Military usually want some measure of surprise. If only for this reason, signaling an attack on Lebanon would seem foolish. Unless it was a distraction.
Anyway, we then see a "leaking" of a secret Israeli cable (happens all the time, right?) that supports KSA's anti-Lebanon stance. Hmm... K.
Now we have another leak(!) that implicitly explains Israel's support of KSA as part of a larger "peace deal" (really a "war deal", isn't it?) that includes a betrayal of the Palestinians. Yeah that betrayal makes it totally believable, sure/sarc - but parity on nukes?!?
Posted by: Don Bacon | Nov 14, 2017 9:43:39 AM | 22Jackrabbit | Nov 14, 2017 1:35:27 PM | 55Palestine is a dead duck anyhow...That's what the western MSM with support from Israel, Gulf governments and some Islamists want you to believe. Elsewhere it's still an important issue but US pressure means that many are reluctant to speak out but not Celtic supporters
Tomorrow's leak:CarlD | Nov 14, 2017 1:36:09 PM | 56From Lebanese Government affirming Iran's support for Hezb and willingness to arm them with nuclear missiles.
Oh, and they will do the same for the Houthi in Yemen.
And they killed Kennedy.
/sarc
Re: 40CarlD | Nov 14, 2017 1:37:20 PM | 57Video evidence of tactical weapons used in Yemen and other
conflicts:
https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=neKIaVGj-9Yre 40:james | Nov 14, 2017 1:53:48 PM | 58please add missing slash
related...Alastair Crooke - gambling all on black at the roulette wheel..Peter AU 1 | Nov 14, 2017 2:08:32 PM | 59"This US-Israeli-Saudi-UAE project is, at bottom, an attempt to overturn reality, no less – it is rooted in a denial of the setback suffered by these states by their multiple failures to shape a New Middle East in the western mode. Now, in the wake of their failure in Syria – in which they went to the limits in search of victory – they seek another spin of the roulette wheel – in the hope of recouping all their earlier losses. It is, to say the least, a capricious hope."
It is hard to see how they would go about attackiung Iran unless it is just a quick strike/raid and then they all go home again. For the US, military cargo planes with backloads of US boots neatly packaged in body bags is not acceptable.dh | Nov 14, 2017 2:16:59 PM | 60
Trump wants US to be a major energy exporter, but oil prices must go up to get fracking viable in a big way. A play to bump up oil prices? Another option is Trump and Kushner playing MBS to get Aramco listed in the US and prevent China from puchasing the full offering.@50 Thank you james for agreeing with my thoughtful and erudite post but unfortunately it was written by one of the other dh s. I've pretty much retired.frances | Nov 14, 2017 2:52:32 PM | 61To answer your question....yes I think Israel and Saudis are crazy but maybe not crazy enough to strike Iran without a green light from Washington.
Given the first demand: "First: The Saudis demand a "parity of the relationship" between Israel and Saudi Arabia. On the military level they demand that either Israel gives up on its nuclear weapons or Saudi Arabia is itself allowed to acquire such." This entire plan/proposal IMO is a nonstarter because of this initial and presumably most important (it is #1)requirement and whoever wrote it/approved it knew it.james | Nov 14, 2017 3:00:33 PM | 62@dh... that is interesting as i was surprised at the longer post by you.. now it makes sense!dh | Nov 14, 2017 3:20:38 PM | 63i guess they will have to work on a false flag before they get the green light from washington... iran won't do something stupid.. that is reserved for the clown prince/nutjob duo at this point..
@62 A false flag will require a substantial number of US fatalities. Thinking back to the US boat that 'strayed' into Iranian waters some time ago wonder how Donald would handle something similar. Those sailors or whatever they were got soundly humiliated but released unhurt. Hardly a casus belli.Mina | Nov 14, 2017 3:28:41 PM | 64so The Guardians' journalists don't watch the BBCpantaraxia | Nov 14, 2017 3:28:56 PM | 65
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/14/russia-us-isis-syria-video-game-still@30 GrievedRed Ryder | Nov 14, 2017 3:31:25 PM | 66The problem with this idea is that Turkey has already instituted a blocking action by placing Turkish forces in Qatar in response to the original Saudi threat. While the contingent was small, approximately one thousand men, the message was quite clear - hands off. Any move by the Saudis or their allies risks Turkish retaliation. it's a no-go zone.
Regarding the Saudi military, as pointed out, they are out of troops.CarlD | Nov 14, 2017 4:06:21 PM | 67
They could not get Egyptians to fight in Yemen or Syria, nor could they get the Pakistanis to fight on their side in either war.They are desperate.
A war on Qatar would be to ignite Turkey and Iran's support for Qatar, and thus the Israeli-US coalition could punish both those nations, a goal the US would enjoy doing.
The aim is to regain Hegemony over the ME. The Russia-Iran-Turkey alliance has pushed the US aside, if not away. Whatever allows the US to hurt Russia by striking Turkey and Iran would be the goal, and Israel would benefit along with the US.
It would be an air war and the US and Israel would win it.
It isn't about Saudi goals and needs. It's about the Hegemon and Jr. Hegemon in Tel Aviv.
66stonebird | Nov 14, 2017 4:16:23 PM | 68If it remains an air war, the probability is that US/Israel would overwhelm
at the beginning of a combined attack unless defenses are upgraded.However, if in view of the probability of war, Russia were to rush AA
systems to Syria and Iran, the probability that substantial air forces
would be decimated is high. The US forces would certainly be pummeled
in their bases around the Gulf and their naval forces in the Gulf sunk
with the numerous Iran assets in the region.Without resorting to nukes, the US is probably not going to win because
it cannot field sufficient boots on the ground in Iran. And remember, the
stakes are high for China to get its fuel from somewhere and the US will
have to take this into account. Depriving China of its needed fuel is no
laughing matter.They are in Djibouti for a reason.
I believe Israel is trying to chew too big a bone. It will choke.
@42 ghostship@29 dh | Nov 14, 2017 4:16:52 PM | 69This was originally proposed as a "one-off" bombing route. ie. via the Med to cross (at that time Turkey) Now could cross Greek airspace (would need NATO laisser-passer"). Caspian to Azerbaijan. (Has close links with Israel and just tried out an Israeli suicide drone on Armenia for a "client"). From there a short hop to Iran. Fueling over greek airspace.
Return route, nowadays, would be via Saudi Arabia (plus refueling and no need to go any further). It's actually easier than a few years ago.The second para I agree with.
.....
General opinion.
Palestine. The single state AND the two state solution have probably been junked by Israel. Neither of the alternatives gives an ethnically pure "Jewish" state. So what to do with them? At the moment the Palestinians are being dispossesed (of land, houses), forcibly displaced (at the moment the focus is on the Jordan Valley and Bedouin villages anywhere). They are put in "camps" where they are subject to daily harassment and destruction of living amenities (including water). The desired effect is ethnic cleansing (a la Serbia). Gaza is a humanitarian disaster - under-developed children suffer stunting - and as well the IDF concentrate on children as it is easy to make them submit.Where could they go? . Jordan - doesn't want them, as they would make up the majority, and put in peril the stability of the country.
Egypt - doesn't want them either.
"Gulf" countries - you must be joking, many are already minorities in their own countries. (Abu Dhabi,)
Leaves the neighbours, Lebanon, Syria and the EU (via Turkey?).
EU - Soros is taking care of that and destroying national unity at the same time.
Lebanon. Over-populated by refugees already.
Syria - Too many displaced persons, plus Palestinian refugee camps.Maybe Israel imagines the solution is to force them on the latter two countries by means of military action as they won't take them voluntarily.
@50, @60Jen | Nov 14, 2017 4:43:56 PM | 70Sorry for using dh. Didn't realize that it was already taken.
I think that the real war, right now, is between the Globalists and Trump/MBS. Trump and MBS are both fighting for their survival. I can't see how attacking Iran would help them, quite the opposite.
@66 The Globalists want Hegemony over the ME. I'm not sure that Trump does. However, the Globalists first priority is to regain control over the U.S. (i.e. impeach Trump), and then continue their war with Russia. I can't see how driving Turkey and Iran into Russia's hands will help them either to tame Russia or to reassert Hegemony over the ME.
I think people here - and the KSA for that matter too - need to know that attacking and invading Iran won't be at the same (lower) scale as attacking and invading Lebanon, Qatar, Syria and even Iraq. These countries are flat and a major part of their territories is desert. Their populations are not that great either - the largest is Iraq with about 35 million.nottheonly1 | Nov 14, 2017 4:44:40 PM | 71Iran on the other hand is mostly mountainous (especially in its west and south) and its population reached 81 million some time in October 2017. An attack on Iran from the west is going to need foot soldiers to be effective. Where will Israel, the US or the KSA stump up the armies needed to invade Iran? Using ISIS and al Qaida / Jabhat al Nusra failed.
If an invasion comes from the east, how will Afghanistan (chaotic?) and Pakistan be brought on board to allow their use of airspace for air attacks?
A third option would be to stage air and naval attacks from India. That might be plausible if India under Narendra Modi and the BJP is friendly towards Israel and the US.
A number of thoughts comes to mind.Temporarily Sane | Nov 14, 2017 4:49:04 PM | 72
1) Divide and conquer
2) The Enemy of my enemy is my friend
3) Do as I say, not as I do
4) You are either with us or with the terrorists
5) Birds of a Fascist feather flock togetherAs to the "not in my name" shirt and withdrawal from the machine, it won't happen.
Remember the analogy about the frog in the water that will start to boil? No frog would ever do that. It is humans who threw the frog into the pot and watched.
Karma can be a nasty bitch. It has transformed humanity into a frog and the masses will be boiled.
To implement change, people would have to turn off the propaganda hammering down on them from all sides. But that won't happen. People are programmed to believe the lies they are dished out. No de-programming - no change.
Americans and their Fascist alies will have to go through their own collapsing 4th Reich.
And of course: Support your troops. Sell everything and donate the money to the MIC. Because they will come for it anyways. Only in a Fascist country, warriors are elevated over any civil person. This morning at court: people congratulating a father because his son just joined the troops.Reject anything the parasites in the legislative tell you. Like George Carlin said: "I never believe what the government tells me."
End of story.
Spend as much time as you can with your loved ones. The Motherearthfuckers are about to turn the heat on. And it is already way too hot here.@44 Peaceful ProsperityJoe | Nov 14, 2017 4:55:50 PM | 73From the Sputink piece you linked to:
US President Donald Trump has said that heavy sanctions imposed on Russia should not become a barrier to future friendly cooperation between the two nations, adding that cordial international relations would be likely to help resolve the North Korean threat and many other global issues.How noble and considerate of Trump. "Vlad, my friend, I know we are waging economic warfare on your people, surrounding your borders with nukes and want to take over and "regime change" your country. But, hey, never mind all that stuff and let us be friends! Then you can help us do to other sovereign nations what we are doing to you."
Touching, very touching It raises the question: What "many other global issues" is Trump trying to solve? Climate change, perhaps? Ending the war in Yemen? Rapprochement with Iran? Curbing corporate and Israeli influence in American elections and foreign policy?
Peaceful Prosperity...you are not still holding a candle for this duplicitous shitbag, are you?
Trumpets are the new Obots.
Just my 2 cents but it seems to me the real target has always been Russia, more specifically Gazprom, why not just take control of Qatar and their gas field which is also Irans gas field as well, which correct me if I'm wrong could be completely controlled/exploited from Qatar without anyone having to step foot into Iran, couple this with limited strikes on Irans gas infrastructure in the name of removing their ability to be "evildoers" and before you know it Aramaco, which now controls a third plus of the world's nat gas is listed on the NY exchange and it still only accepts dollars. Wonder what countries that pipeline would pass through...Seby | Nov 14, 2017 5:00:52 PM | 74Pleazzzzzz!!!!Mina | Nov 14, 2017 5:10:50 PM | 75What have the british installed wahabist medieval hole in the sand copulators ever really done for Palestine?
TsTacitus | Nov 14, 2017 6:22:47 PM | 76
Trump has been busy planning a huge karaoke with his new buddy Duterte. Guns are on option, courtesy of the NRAI am a new poster to this board. I've tried twice to post something and the message said it was posted successfully, but it is not visible in the comments section. Is there some mediator process that it has to go through first, or is there something else that I need to do? (I left the email and url boxes empty; could that be the issue?)Yeah, Right | Nov 14, 2017 6:30:55 PM | 77The way in which this plays out is almost pre-ordained.james | Nov 14, 2017 6:31:02 PM | 78There is no way that a formal, signed document will exist that states that when-you-shaft-Palestine then we-will-attack-Iran.
What will happen instead is that Trump will broker that "understanding" between Israel and Saudi Arabia. A nod and a wink, and maybe even a handshake.
But the Israelis will insist that the Saudis have to do that Palestine-shafting first, and in The Most Public Way Possible so that the House of Saud can't take it back. Trump will say that this is reasonable, and the dumb-ass Saudis will mull over it then say "OK, sure, if the Yanks vouch for you then so will we".
The Saudis will then dump on Abbas.
The USA will then heap congratulations on the Saudis.
The Israelis will shout Yipeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Palestinians will descend into a deep despair.And then...... [sound of crickets chirping].
Saudi: Hey, when are you going to attack Iran?
Israel: We're working on it. Give us time.
USA: Hey, I thought we had an understanding!
Israel: We do, this takes a lot of planning.
[crickets]
[crickets]
[crickets]
Saudi: What gives, guys?
USA: When are you were going to attack Iran?
Israel: We changed our mind. Bite me.Let's get real here: the Israelis have a track-record of "agreeing" to a quid-pro-quo, then immediately pocketing the "quid" while somehow, some way, never actually getting around to delivering on the "quo"
The Saudis will shaft the Palestinians.
The Israelis will then shaft the Saudis.
The Americans will fume (in private) but ultimately do nothing and say nothing.And years later there will be an off-mike recording of Netanyahu boasting about how he f**ked over the Saudis, and gleefully explain that the reason why he could do that is because the Americans are at least as dumb-ass stoooooopid as, well, a Saudi Clown Prince.
I mean, haven't we seen this movie before?
tactus - it should go thru, unless you linked to the odd url that doesn't go thru - southfront is one of them going on memory..BraveNewWorld | Nov 14, 2017 6:34:38 PM | 79Sorry if some one has mentioned this already, but Jerusalem belongs neither to the Palestinains or the Israelis. It belongs to Jordan and Jordan is it's designated protector just as the freaks in KSA are the protectors of Mecca and Medena. The NATO countries on orders of Israel have burred the Palestinian cause. But if the children running the US and KSA tried giving the third holiest site in Islam (and likely the most important heritage site in the world) to the Jews so they could blow it up to build a Jewsih temple on top of it ,the back lash among the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world would be immense. Not to mention basically righting off international law in it's entirety. China, Russia and the EU would never allow it.seriousJust Sayin' | Nov 14, 2017 6:48:08 PM | 80It has been obvious for years that Bibi and the KSA have have been cooking this up but it wasn't till last year they had any one stupid enough in the White House to try and take a run at it. If you want total war in the Middle East this is how you acheave it. The outcome will be a Palestinian state. Whether there will be a Jewish one if this is tried is up for debate.
Wonder what countries that pipeline would pass through...Debsisdead | Nov 14, 2017 7:06:41 PM | 81Posted by: Joe | Nov 14, 2017 4:55:50 PM | 73
It's a source of not only bewilderment, but also amusement, that there are people so dumb/dishonest (delete as applicable) that after all we have seen in the last few years, even just what we have seen in the last few weeks, that still pretend/think/pretend-to-think that this has something to do with pipelines?
Seriously, would all you "It's the pipelines, stoopid!" gobshites kindly just stfu.
A dumber more gullible bunch of eejits would be hard to find
Posted by: Tacitus | Nov 14, 2017 6:22:47 PMCurtis | Nov 14, 2017 7:26:18 PM | 82Typepad insists on a viable email address - not your real one just a viable one whose mail server will respond to a call. mailinatorDOTcom (remove the DOT & replace with . to visit) is one of many spam dodging sites which will enable a poster to post here, plus let you use it to sign up to all sorts of BBs forums etc. They have a rotating list of email server suggestions. otherwise joblo(or whatever) at gmail will do the trick most times.
Another plan to get the US to fight another war that benefits zionists, this time against Iran. I wonder who is in the role of Lord Balfour.Joe | Nov 14, 2017 7:38:35 PM | 83
I like the idea of an independent religious Jerusalem city, I doubt either party will go for it. The same goes for an Israeli agreement for nuke parity with Saudis or a single open state for Palestinians. While many Palestinians want their own state and even some in Israel want this (including some Shin Bet officials) there are others who say it is too late due to the proliferation of settlements in West Bank. These others (like Miko Peled) say a single state as the only option left. It seems to be a very convoluted (Rube Goldberg?) solution to getting a united front to attack Iran and "solve" the Palestinian issue.@Just sayin, perhaps you could spell it out for me then, but if all you got is name calling maybe you should stfu, kindly that isGhostship | Nov 14, 2017 7:45:48 PM | 84>>>> CarlD | Nov 14, 2017 1:36:09 PM | 56Daniel | Nov 14, 2017 7:46:39 PM | 85Video evidence of tactical weapons used in Yemen and other conflicts:I doubt it, they all look like large conventional explosions to me.
The ones in Ukraine are from a detonation of a large weapons dump while the Saudis managed to hit a rocket manufacturing plant in Yemen that resulted in a very large explosion.
Thanks for the link, CarlD. I think it entirely possible that 'tactical nukes" have been used. I would expect that at some point, a credible, government-tied group will report that these weapons have been used. This will serve to normalize their use in the future. People will feel that since they'd been used already, and we all survived, that using them again will not be so horrifying/dangerous.Daniel | Nov 14, 2017 7:57:51 PM | 86More and more I'm thinking that humanity has reached the end of our rope, and we will have deserved it when the trapdoor finally springs.
Mina @64. BBC is running that same "video game" story. In fact, on their Middle East News page earlier, they had both this and their "expose" of the US helping ISIL escape arrangement.anonimo | Nov 14, 2017 8:11:53 PM | 87and the big plan goes on:Grieved | Nov 14, 2017 8:42:04 PM | 88get Jerusalem for the Vatican !!!
@73 JoePerimetr | Nov 14, 2017 9:36:42 PM | 89I hadn't even considered the aspect of that gas trading in dollars. Now there's a resource grab the US could really like.
I'm not actually at the point of thinking anything will happen, anywhere. There are simply no geopolitical advantages in any of the plays being mooted.
But there actually does seem at first glance to be some potentially cost-effective gain in plundering Qatar. Kind of wish no one had thought of it - I'd much rather see a cooperation develop between Iran and Qatar, the way it recently started to look like it might go.
As to your getting trolled, I will say that with what I've seen in the last few years, even with what I've seen in just the last few weeks, there's nothing I've ever encountered anywhere that says it's NOT the pipelines.
RE: Daniel | Nov 14, 2017 7:46:39 PM | 85, CarlD | Nov 14, 2017 1:36:09 PM | 56Peter AU 1 | Nov 14, 2017 10:15:21 PM | 90I agree with Ghostship, no nukes have been used. The thermal signature from a nuclear detonation is unmistakable, it is many, many orders of magnitude greater than produced by a conventional explosive. Not to mention the by-products of fission, which are always produced by a nuke and are always detectable.
You will know when a nuke is used, believe me.Joe / GrievedDaniel | Nov 14, 2017 10:27:25 PM | 91
Best to discount nothing. Qatar gas the target? Quite possible. Pipelines for Qatar or in Joes theory, Saudi gas. Again possible.
Most depends on what Trump is behind the facade. The facade is the simple minded buffoon that makes a decision on what he has last seen on Fox news. What he has just pulled off with MBS...
My thoughts on Trump at the moment, what is real and not facade. He wants to return the US to the power is was post WWII and through the cold war era. Manufacturing power ect. The big thing, prevent China from overtaking US economicaly which would also mean overtaking the US in science tech and military. Hence the many meetings with Kissinger earlier, Kissinger meeting Putin ect.
Trump needs to seperate Russia and China. Russia is no threat to the US whereas economicaly China is the only threat the US faces (apart from itself).Back to making America great again and gas. Saudi Arabia has oil (supposedly) and US has shale gas. Oil and gas are complementary to each oither rather than competitors. Gas prices are basicaly set by oil prices. The main competitors to US shale is Russian gas and Pars, both of which can be piped to where the gas is in demand. In my reading of Trump, which may not be right, Pars would have to be either US controlled/owned or unable to pipe gas.
The option there I guess is joint US Saudi control of pars.All depends on what Trump is behind the facade.
Thoughts ??
Perimetr @89heath | Nov 14, 2017 10:31:40 PM | 92I would agree that it would be impossible to mistake a powerful hydrogen bomb for any sort of conventional bomb. That's not what is being proposed here, though.
Do you know about the "Davy Crocket" mini-nuke from the 1950s?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiM-RzPHyGs
Those were even carried in backpacks by the 1950s version of Special Ops soldiers. Since then, fission-fusion hybrid, mini-hydrogen and neutron bombs have been made. As I'm sure you'd agree, military technology is always far beyond what the public is allowed to know.
Like today's B61-12, the Davy Crockets could be dialed to produce explosions of greatly varying power.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/b61.htm
The Soviet Union actually developed nuclear bullets!
https://southfront.org/nuclear-bullets-dangerous-soviet-project/
So, the range of even publicly known nuclear weapons is pretty great. Some of the explosions recorded in the past few years can be clearly seen as INCREASING in power as the explosion progresses. Though not impossible in some sort of thermobaric bomb, that is a signature of many nuclear bombs.
Point 1 why would Israel give up its nukes?Alaric | Nov 14, 2017 10:36:12 PM | 93
I don't buy this at face value. I suspect MBS used the threat of war on Lebanon as a distraction from his counter coup. The possibility of battle with Iran is a fear factor he exploits to stop a revolt against him.LNG man | Nov 14, 2017 10:41:32 PM | 94The leaked plan and leaked Israeli wire to its embassies are both quite suspicious. Its possible the Israelis are helping MBS. It's just as possible that MBS' foes in Saudi, or the CIA, are leaking these things to embarrass MBS. All are in fact embarrassing to MBS. I don't know but everything about this is surreal. For all we know MBS' moves are just an aid to finish the counter coup and to drive up oil prices. Saudi needs cash. We should expect the very wealthy Saudi opposition to strike back in the media, and it's possible the intelligence community and state department support different sides here.
To enable LNG, Kushner's army [US_I:SA] has been designed to colonize the Syria:Russian: Yemen:Qatar:Iran:Libya (SRYQIL) oil, gas competition, so that LNG can be port to port marketed. All eyes on LNG.Yeah, Right | Nov 14, 2017 10:47:39 PM | 95Posted by: LNG man |
@92 "Point 1 why would Israel give up its nukes?"Peter AU 1 | Nov 14, 2017 11:11:29 PM | 96They wouldn't.
The Israelis might be willing to discuss this - maybe - but only if those discussions are "decoupled" from the issue of the Saudis altering the 2003 Saudi Peace Initiative so that Israel gets everything it wants, while the only thing the Palestinians get is their marching orders.
The Israelis will then pocket that neutered Saudi Peace Initiative (in essence, it would become the Netanyahu Land Grab Initiative, with the Saudis in the role of stenographer) and then proceed to endlessly delay, deflect and derail any negotiations towards a Middle East Nuclear Free Zone.
Something for nothing, which MbS ending up holding that Big Ol' Bag Of Nothin'.
LNG man | Nov 14, 2017 10:41:32 PM | 94Stumpy | Nov 14, 2017 11:31:52 PM | 97LNG port to port is not competitive with Russian piped gas. From what I can see, US needs to either ensure they have control of alternative piped gas, or try and shut down pipes so they can flog shale LNG.
b's post here is articulate and cogent as ever and I cast no aspersion at him or fellow commenters. However, as far as I'm concerned the KSA-Israel drawing up these "accords" is all a pile of sabre-rattling and poseurism crap.Debsisdead | Nov 15, 2017 12:40:03 AM | 98Anything touched by the KSA is a pile of B.S. e.g. the Qatar ultimatum. Anything said by Israel fits the purpose at the time if it varies with their expansionist/farengi code of conduct.
The only way I see any of this playing out is an interlocking web of extortion that compels the two weaker parties to conform to the will of the stronger, in my opinion Israel.
Who knows if Lebanon will cower under the threat but if the Iranian alliance bares its teeth, let's remember that their reach is likely global and likely already in place at key targets. The stupidity of launching a shooting war in the ME with Iran and Israel involved does not mean that someone will not dance the situation right up to the brink.
It's the Asian thrust we should consider, from China to Turkey via Russia. I would guess, and only guess, that Russia and China would most likely wait it out and pick up the pieces during ending credits, or become minimally involved only to prevent a breakout. Can't assume anything here.
Wouldn't it be interesting if the US/KSA/IZ trio throws everything into beating Iran only to have another player open a play to seize the Pacific? Pretty wild.
Posted by: Stumpy | Nov 14, 2017 11:31:52 PM |Hmpf | Nov 15, 2017 2:01:08 AM | 99I reckon you're correct Stumpy. Over the years there have been many "amerika will attack Iran" scares - all have passed by without major incident despite the concerns of MoA-ites that "anything could happen in the next two hours"
It is highly likely that eventually some greedy opportunist with a hat size about 4 times larger than his dick measurement will eventually have a crack at taking down Iran, but I don't reckon we're anywhere near that point yet.As far as 'world peace' & justice for suffering indigenous people goes, today I'm much more concerned about events in Zimbabwe.
Hopefully the military is acting out in order to protect the socialist revolution from greedies & nepotists, and not using the occasion of President Mugabe's age disorders to subvert the revolution by aiding africacom and the world bank oecd mob to boost the amerikan empire's consumption of one of the few remaining independent sovereign entities still surviving on this old rock.Whatever does happen in Zimbabwe over the next week, few will be paying much interest whilst corporate media distracts so many with tall tales of the dissolute instincts of poor people everywhere.
@57somebody | Nov 15, 2017 2:06:02 AM | 100Utter nonsense! Large scale conventional; exploding tightly stacked munitions in a large ammo dump by means of sympathetic detonation. Large quantities of explosives going off must create a mushroom cloud - this is gas dynamics. Afterburning in the rising cloud results from hot oxygen-deficient stythe mixing with air which in return helps sustaining the upward momentum of the plume.
Posted by: Debsisdead | Nov 15, 2017 12:40:03 AM | 98Look, Mugabe is 93. Have you ever been around anyone that age? It is very likely that he is not in any power, but the people who wake him up.
According to German media, Mugabe's wife made him dismiss the vice chancellor who probably had been doing the real work.
So all the army might be doing is to prevent the family from taking over.
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Nov 11, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
This pivotal agreement allowed KSA to secretly recycle its surplus petrodollars back into US Treasuries while receiving US military protection in exchange. The secret was kept for 41 years, only recently revealed in 2016 due to a Bloomberg FOIA request:
The basic framework was strikingly simple. The U.S. would buy oil from Saudi Arabia and provide the kingdom military aid and equipment. In return, the Saudis would plow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance America's spending.
It took several discreet follow-up meetings to iron out all the details, Parsky said. But at the end of months of negotiations, there remained one small, yet crucial, catch: King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud demanded the country's Treasury purchases stay "strictly secret," according to a diplomatic cable obtained by Bloomberg from the National Archives database.
"Buying bonds and all that was a strategy to recycle petrodollars back into the U.S.," said David Ottaway, a Middle East fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington. But politically, "it's always been an ambiguous, constrained relationship."
( Source )
The essence of this deal is pretty simple. KSA wanted to be able to sell its oil to its then largest buyer, the USA, while also having a safe place to park the funds, plus receive military protection to boot. But it didn't want anybody else, especially its Arab neighbors, to know that it was partnering so intimately with the US who, in turn, would be supporting Israel. That would have been politically incendiary in the Middle East region, coming as it did right on the heels of the Yom Kipper War (1973).
As for the US, it got the oil it wanted and – double bonus time here – got KSA to recycle the very same dollars used to buy that oil back into Treasuries and contracts for US military equipment and training.
Sweet deal.
Note that this is yet another secret world-shaping deal successfully kept out of the media for over four decades. Yes Virginia, conspiracies do happen. Secrets can be (and are routinely) kept by hundreds, even thousands, of people over long stretches of time.
Since that key deal was struck back in the early 1970s, the KSA has remained a steadfast supporter of the US and vice versa. In return, the US has never said anything substantive about KSA's alleged involvement in 9/11 or its grotesque human and women's rights violations. Not a peep.
Until recently.
Then Things Started To Break DownIn 2015, King Salman came to power. Things began to change pretty quickly, especially once he elevated his son Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) to a position of greater power.
Among MBS's first acts was to directly involve KSA into the Yemen civil war, with both troops on the ground and aerial bombings. That war has killed thousands of civilians while creating a humanitarian crisis that includes the largest modern-day outbreak of cholera, which is decimating highly populated areas. The conflct, which is considered a 'proxy war' because Iran is backing the Houthi rebels while KSA is backing the Yemeni government, continues to this day.
Then in 2016, KSA threatened to dump its $750 billion in (stated) US assets in response to a bill in Congress that would have released sensitive information implicating Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9/11. Then-president Obama had to fly over there to smooth things out. It seems the job he did was insufficient; because KSA-US relations unraveled at an accelerating pace afterwards. Mission NOT accomplished, it would seem.
In 2017, KSA accused Qatar of nefarious acts and made such extraordinary demands that an outbreak of war nearly broke out over the dispute. The Qatari leadership later accused KSA of fomenting 'regime change', souring the situation further. Again, Iran backed the Qatar government, which turned this conflict into another proxy battle between the two main regional Arab superpowers.
In parallel with all this, KSA was also supporting the mercenaries (aka "rebels" in western press) who were seeking to overthrow Assad in Syria -- yet another proxy war between KSA and Iran. It's been an open secret that, during this conflict, KSA has been providing support to some seriously bad terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda, ISIS and other supposed enemies of the US/NATO. (Again, the US has never said 'boo' about that, proving that US rhetoric against "terrorists" is a fickle construct of political convenience, not a moral matter.)
Once Russia entered the war on the side of Syria's legitimate government, the US and KSA (and Israel) lost their momentum. Their dreams of toppling Assad and turning Syria into another failed petro-state like they did with Iraq and Libya are not likely to pan out as hoped.
But rather than retreat to lick their wounds, KSA's King Salman and his son are proving to be a lot nimbler than their predecessors.
Rather than continue a losing battle in Syria, they've instead turned their energies and attention to dramatically reshaping KSA's internal power structures:
Saudi Arabia's Saturday Night Massacre
For nearly a century, Saudi Arabia has been ruled by the elders of a royal family that now finds itself effectively controlled by a 32-year-old crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman. He helms the Defense Ministry, he has extravagant plans for economic development, and last week arranged for the arrest of some of the most powerful ministers and princes in the country.
A day before the arrests were announced, Houthi tribesmen in Yemen but allied with Iran, Saudi Arabia's regional rival, fired a ballistic missile at Riyadh.
The Saudis claim the missile came from Iran and that its firing might be considered "an act of war."
Saudi Arabia was created between the two world wars under British guidance. In the 1920s, a tribe known as the Sauds defeated the Hashemites, effectively annexing the exterior parts of Saudi Arabia they did not yet control. The United Kingdom recognized the Sauds' claim shortly thereafter. But since then, the Saudi tribe has been torn by ambition, resentment and intrigue. The Saudi royal family has more in common with the Corleones than with a Norman Rockwell painting.
The direct attack was undoubtedly met with threats of a coup. Whether one was actually planned didn't matter. Mohammed Bin Salman had to assume these threats were credible since so many interests were under attack. So he struck first, arresting princes and ex-minsters who constituted the Saudi elite. It was a dangerous gamble. A powerful opposition still exists, but he had no choice but to act. He could either strike as he did last Saturday night, or allow his enemies to choose the time and place of that attack. Nothing is secure yet, but with this strike, there is a chance he might have bought time. Any Saudi who would take on princes and clerics is obviously desperate, but he may well break the hold of the financial and religious elite.
( Source )
This 32 year-old prince, Mohammed bin Salman has struck first and deep, completely upending the internal power dynamics of Saudi Arabia.
He's taken on the political, financial and religious elites head on. For example, pushing through the decision to allow women to drive; a provocative move designed to send a clear message to the clerics who might oppose him. That message is: "I'm not fooling around here."
This is a classic example of how one goes about purging the opposition when either taking over a government after a coup, or implementing a big new strategy at a major corporation. You have to remove any possible opponents and then install your own loyalists. According the Rules for Rulers , you do this by diverting a portion of the flow of funds to your new backers while diminishing, imprisoning or killing all potential enemies.
So far, Mohammed bin Salman's action plan is par for the course. No surprises.
The above article from Stratfor (well worth reading in its entirety) continues with these interesting insights:
The Iranians have been doing well since the nuclear deal was signed in 2015. They have become the dominant political force in Iraq . Their support for the Bashar Assad regime in Syria may not have been enough to save him, but Iran was on what appears to be the winning side in the Syrian civil war. Hezbollah has been hurt by its participation in the war but is reviving, carrying Iranian influence in Lebanon at a time when Lebanon is in crisis after the resignation of its prime minister last week.
The Saudis, on the other hand, aren't doing as well. The Saudi-built anti-Houthi coalition in Yemen has failed to break the Houthi-led opposition. And Iran has openly entered into an alliance with Qatar against the wishes of the Saudis and their ally, the United Arab Emirates.
Iran seems to sense the possibility of achieving a dream: destabilizing Saudi Arabia , ending its ability to support anti-Iranian forces, and breaking the power of the Sunni Wahhabis. Iran must look at the arrests in Saudi Arabia as a very bad move. And they may be. Mohammad bin Salman has backed the fundamentalists and the financial elite against the wall.
They are desperate, and now it is their turn to roll the dice. If they fall short, it could result in a civil war in Saudi Arabia. If Iran can hit Riyadh with missiles, the crown prince's opponents could argue that the young prince is so busy with his plans that he isn't paying attention to the real threat. For the Iranians, the best outcome is to have no one come out on top.
This would reconfigure the geopolitics of the Middle East, and since the U.S. is deeply involved there, it has decisions to make.
So given Yemen, Syria, and its recent domestic purges, Saudi Arabia is in turmoil. It's in a far weaker position than it was a short while ago.
This leaves the US in a far weaker regional position, too, at precisely the time when China and Russia are increasing their own presence (which we'll get to next).
But first we have to discuss what might happen if a civil war were to engulf Saudi Arabia. The price of oil would undoubtedly spike. In turn, that would cripple the weaker countries, companies and households around the world that simply cannot afford a higher oil price. And there's a lot of them.
Financial markets would destabilize as long-suppressed volatility would explode higher, creating horrific losses across the board. That very few investors are mentally or financially prepared for such carnage is a massive understatement.
So..if you were Saudi Arabia, in need of helpful allies after being bogged down in an unwinnable war in Yemen, just defeated in a proxy war in Syria, and your longtime 'ally', the US, is busy pumping as much of its own oil as it can, what would you do?
Pivot To ChinaGiven its situation, is it really any surprise that King Salman and his son have decided to pivot to China? In need of a new partner that would align better with their current and future interests, China is the obvious first choice.
So in March 2017, only a very short while after Obama's failed visit, a large and well-prepared KSA entourage accompanied King Salman to Beijing and inked tens of billions in new business deals:
China, Saudi Arabia eye $65 billion in deals as king visits
Mar 16, 2017
BEIJING (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's King Salman oversaw the signing of deals worth as much as $65 billion on the first day of a visit to Beijing on Thursday, as the world's largest oil exporter looks to cement ties with the world's second-largest economy.
The deals included a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between giant state oil firm Saudi Aramco and China North Industries Group Corp (Norinco), to look into building refining and chemical plants in China.
Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC) and Sinopec, which already jointly run a chemical complex in Tinajin, also agreed to develop petrochemical projects in both China and Saudi Arabia.
Salman told Xi he hoped China could play an even greater role in Middle East affairs, the ministry added.
Deputy Chinese Foreign Minister Zhang Ming said the memorandums of understanding and letters of intent were potentially worth about $65 billion, involving everything from energy to space.
( Source )
This was a very big deal in terms of Middle East geopolitics. It shook up many decades of established power, resulting in a shift away from dependence on America.
The Saudis arrived in China with such a huge crowd in tow that a reported 150 cooks had been brought along to just to feed everyone in the Saudi visitation party.
The resulting deals struck involved everything from energy to infrastructure to information technology to space. And this was just on the first visit. Quite often a brand new trade delegation event involves posturing and bluffing and feeling each other out; not deals being struck. So it's clear that before the visit, well before, lots and lots of deals were being negotiated and terms agreed to so that the thick MOU files were ready to sign during the actual visit.
The scope and size of these business deals are eye catching, but the real clincher is King Salman's public statement expressing hope China will play " an even greater role in Middle East affairs."
That, right there, is the sound of the geopolitical axis-tilting. That public statement tells us everything we need to know about the sort of change the Salman dynasty intends to pursue.
So it should have surprised no one to hear that, in August this year, another $70 billion of new deals were announced between China and KSA . The fanfare extolled that Saudi-Sino relations had entered a new era, with "the agreements covering investment, trade, energy, postal service, communications, and media."
This is a very rapid pace for such large deals. If KSA and China were dating, they'd be talking about moving in together already. They're clearly at the selecting furniture and carpet samples stage.
As for the US? It seems KSA isn't even returning its calls or texts at this point.
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet...All of the above merely describes how we arrived at where things stand today.
But as mentioned, the power grab underway in KSA by Mohammed bin Salman is unfolding in real-time. Developments are happening hourly -- while writing this, the very high-profile Prince Bandar bin Sultan (recent head of Saudi Intelligence and former longtime ambassador to the US) has been arrested .
The trajectory of events is headed in a direction that may well end the arrangement that has served as the axis around which geopolitics has spun for the past 40 years. The Saudis want new partners, and are courting China hard.
China, for reasons we discuss in Part 2 of this report, has an existential need to supplant America as Saudi Arabia's most vital oil customer.
And both Saudi Arabia and China are inking an increasing number of strategic oil deals with Russia. Why? We get into that in Part 2, too -- but suffice it to say, in the fast-shifting world of KSA foreign policy, it's China and Russia 'in', US 'out'.
Maybe not all the way out, but the US clearly has lost a lot of ground with KSA over the past few years. My analysis is that by funding an insane amount of shale oil development, at a loss, and at any cost (such as to our biggest Mideast ally) the US has time and again displayed that our 'friendship' does not run very deep. In a world where loyalty counts, the US has proved a disloyal partner. Can China position itself to be perceived of as a better mate? When it comes to business, I believe the answer is 'yes.'
In Part 2: The Oil Threat we couple these developments with China and Russia's recent efforts to drop the dollar from trade, especially when purchasing oil, and clearly see the unfolding of the biggest new driver of the world's financial, monetary and geopolitical arrangements in 50 years.
We also explain why, unless something very dramatically changes in either the supply or demand equation for oil, and soon, we can now put a timeline in place for when the great unraveling begins. Somewhere between the second half of 2018 and the end of 2019 oil will dramatically increase in price and that will shake the foundations of the global mountain of debt and its related underfunded liabilities. Think 9.0 on the financial Richter scale.
Let me be blunt - you have to have your preparations done before this happens. You really, really want to be a year early on this (at least). When it starts happening, the breakdown will progress faster than you can react.
Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)
Escrava Isaura -> bobcatz , Nov 11, 2017 1:59 PM
TeethVillage88s -> Escrava Isaura , Nov 11, 2017 2:31 PMThe reason that the world is moving towards China this fast, it's because of Trump.
Trump is too radical, and that's why these nations are running for the exit.
"Trump's policies are taking a whole bunch of countries that were already worried about America's commitment to lead and America's commitment to its alliances. China also wants to be seen now as promoting globalization, promoting free trade, particularly for countries in Asia that don't want to count on the U.S." -- Ian Bremmer
Stuck on Zero -> williambanzai7 , Nov 11, 2017 1:09 PMWot about Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, Don Rumsfeld, G.W.B., Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, Colin Powell, John Bolton, Condaleza Rice, Samantha Powers, Kagan, Susan Rice, Hilary Clinton, Clinton Foundation, noecons, McCain, Lindsey Graham, Phil Gramm, TBTF
Grimaldus -> Stuck on Zero , Nov 11, 2017 2:08 PMGrab your popcorn and watch to see whether the New Ottoman or New Persian Empire emerges the victor.
Escrava Isaura -> Grimaldus , Nov 11, 2017 2:32 PMYou seem to know the difference, a very basic one at that but the author does not.
"In 2017, KSA accused Qatar of nefarious acts and made such extraordinary demands that an outbreak of war nearly broke out over the dispute. The Qatari leadership later accused KSA of fomenting 'regime change', souring the situation further. Again, Iran backed the Qatar government, which turned this conflict into another proxy battle between the two main regional Arab superpowers."
Iran is Arab? I don't think so.
I tend to be skeptical when I see "breathless enthusiasm" touting the sky is falling geopolitically (which it always is ) and then the "Iran is Arabs" thing just killed it for me.
Oh well. I apologize for nit-picking and will get some popcorn.
apoplectic query , Nov 11, 2017 11:54 AMThat aside, the article still pretty good.
The core issues for the American living standards are:
The price of oil
And the Petrodollar
Lose control of these two and American living standard is over.
The only alternative left is force -- war.
2banana -> apoplectic query , Nov 11, 2017 12:05 PMLook on the bright side. Many of those rounded up were funding corrupt polititians in DC. And ISIS. And terrorist acts in the US, like Vegas and 911.
fearnot -> DelusionalGrandeur , Nov 11, 2017 12:18 PM"the kingdom also provides with full enthusiasm 20 percent of the cost of Hillary Clinton's campaign,"
-- Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 2016
The Clinton Foundation, which is chaired by both Hillary and her husband Bill Clinton, disclosed in 2008 that it had accepted up to US$25 million from the Saudi Kingdom in the same year.
Other foreign governments who have donated money to the Clintons include Norway, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei, Oman, Italy and Jamaica, which together donated around US$20 million.
SoDamnMad -> otschelnik , Nov 11, 2017 2:11 PMNow I see the big picture. The fuse to the mother of all "Truth bombs" as Bill Holter coined has just been lit and the fuse is short. Until now I personally never really saw the Rockefeller- Langley clan and its comrades all getting cleaned out with the fall of Petro Dollar. But it is the only way. And with that the NY Fed as Dudley knows will lose its narco money and means to support the dollar and its terror on mankind. The fall of Petro Dollar is the only means to the end of the evil and the evil doers of the last 40 years perpetrated by the psychopaths using the petro dollar as its fuel to the weapon of mass destruction. Alice in Wonderland America is about to go Mad Max.
The 1 hour Perpetual Asset interview "The Saudi Straw That Broke the Petro Dollar's Back" with Jim Willie on October 10 is well worth listening. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yY9j6vvCFE0 The conclusion laid out in interview is simple and brilliant, Langley (Bush-Clinton- Narco-CIA-Banker-Neo-Psycopaths) and the clear headed leaders in the Pentagon are having it. Peacock MBS caught in the middle trying to save his own neck and Kingdom is collateral damage.
After listening to interview, I ran across two zero hedge links below. The first article makes some very poignant and interesting points that reinforce the dollars end game that we are approaching. The markets have not caught on yet but will with a vengeance.
In the second article taking Bandar out must worry the Bush-Clinton- Narco-CIA-Banker-Neo-Psycopaths more than we can imagine. The last two paragraphs of article sum it up nicely. Time to pay the piper & the devil wants souls. All the gold, wealth, and power won't save them. From the looks of Trump/Putin in Vietnam not to mention Trump's warm welcome from Xi in China the heads of state seem jubilant in what is quickly spinning out of control for the psychopaths of debt, destruction, conquer, divide and slavery. Trump "strangely" pointed out that China and US need to jointly oversee security in Afghanistan which of course will be necessary to police while eliminating 1300 tons of opium production.
The PPT NYFed's actions in paper gold market this week seemed desperate. GS has to be feeling the heat.
1- Fischer and now Dudley resign. Hopeful to hear the latter is leaving BIS as well.
2- Powell a Carlye Group flunky was a brilliant FED appointment to appear to be status quo to ignorant market but is more likely a double agent than Bush butt buddy.
3- expect Cohn to give his resignation soon.
4- Expect NY Attorney General Eric Tradd Schneiderman to resign or do a 180
5- expect David A. Markowitz hired by Goldman in 2010 from the New York Attorney General's office to resign. He defended GS in their NYFed collusion/corruption case
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-10/end-end-history-us-mid-east-pol...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-10/saudi-deep-state-prince-bandar-...
silverer -> Cluster_Frak , Nov 11, 2017 1:16 PMI have heard for almost a decade that KSA has been pumping some of their fields too fast requiring huge amounts of seawater to be pumped in to get the flow rates to stay high. Some oil professionals who know this also scoffed at the huge Aramco IPO value saying the oil isn't all there. Not sure what will happen with the teams set to rumble but I will bet Israel will make the first strike to use the element of surprise. I hope the fleet is ready and gets the carriers out of the Persion Gulf.
Herdee , Nov 11, 2017 12:26 PMActually, the Saudi group is just climbing onto another life boat. They're the ones that made the US Ponzi possible by nodding to the US dollar as the reserve currency many years ago. They will force the US to face the music holding a 20 trillion debt. Now China gets a 20 to 30 year fiat ride like the US had. If they're careful, it could last much longer. In the US, there's nothing left floating to hang onto. Maybe some fracked oil for awhile, but it will have to go at a bargain price. The Saudis and Russia can cover a huge amount of the world's consumption. Big bank loans are piled all over the entire US economy. In order for the banks to save themselves, they've weighted down even the grunts at the bottom with eight year car loans which should have never been issued. With everything underwater, and the inability to export inflation by holding the reserve currency exclusively, the US is in for a major ass whooping. Better learn some basic camping skills.
Alasdair Macleod shines light on the current situation:
https://www.silverdoctors.com/gold/gold-news/london-analyst-first-the-cr...
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Nov 10, 2017 | oilprice.com
It is difficult to predict where all this will lead. Some, like Dennis Gartman, warn that although the immediate impact of the latest Saudi events is positive for prices, it will turn negative in the longer run as this sort of instability is unsustainable. Others, such as Morgan Stanley's commodity analysts, are revising upwards their oil price forecasts, encouraged by these same events. OPEC's Vienna meeting, where the cartel will discuss the extension of the oil production cut it agreed almost a year ago, is less than a month away. There are voices suggesting that Saudi Arabia could make a U-turn on its support for the deal in light of the now higher prices resulting from its internal tumult and the spike in tensions with Iran.
In the meantime, the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh is fully booked until February, as per the hotel's website, and all guests were asked to leave or had their reservations cancelled.
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Nov 10, 2017 | oilprice.com
The short-term outlook was bullish: MBS is seen as a key supporter for the OPEC policy of measured production cuts, and his consolidation of power means the cuts are likely to be maintained and extended through the rest of next year.
Conversely, rising prices may also signal increase instability in Saudi Arabia: there are signs that the crackdown may have been meant to stave off a more substantive challenge to MBS from upper-echelon figures in the Saudi hierarchy. The uncertainty in future Saudi oil policy has created a bull market. While MBS is known to favor an extension of production cuts, the turmoil within the Saudi ruling elite could signal a shift in policy in advance of the November 30 OPEC meeting in Vienna, where an extension to production cuts is expected to dominate the agenda
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Nov 10, 2017 | www.rt.com
A preliminary gas deal worth over $43 billion sealed between China and the US State of Alaska is far from guaranteed, according to experts. On Thursday, China's biggest state-run energy corporation Sinopec, along with one of the country's top banks and a sovereign wealth fund agreed to go ahead with an export terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Alaska as well as a 1,290-kilometer pipeline to deliver fuel to China. The project is aimed at developing facilities so gas can be piped to the Alaska coast, where it can be liquefied and shipped to China and other Asian countries.
The announcement, which lacked any details about binding agreements or financing, was made during US President Trump's visit to China. However, some analysts are saying the project is not likely to go ahead.
"This is a typical announcement that comes out of these big summits. You really can't build, or get financing for a big project, unless all those pieces are in place," said Jason Feer of energy consultancy Poten & Partners, as quoted by Reuters.
Alaska LNG, backed by the state-run Alaska Gasline Development Corp, anticipates a long pipeline carrying the fuel from the North Slope, which has proven gas reserves of over 35 trillion cubic feet. The state governor Bill Walker plans to sign final agreements by the end of next year, with groundbreaking in 2019.
The lengthy pipeline could cost a billion dollars, according to Larry Persily, former US coordinator for Alaska natural gas projects. Persily added that multinationals such as BP, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips had been working on the pipeline enterprise, but stepped away.
"If companies don't think this is a good time to put their money into it, why should the state? As the governor has explained, the state has an overriding interest in getting this done -- companies have other places they can invest their money," he said as quoted by AP.
China is trying to fight pollution and get rid of its reliance on coal and is chasing more supplies of natural gas, according to Mark Barteau, director of the University of Michigan's Energy Institute, as quoted by the agency.
"They have exhibited a long-term interest in having a large and secure gas supply, and I think this is just perhaps the largest -- but by no means the first -- step they've taken to achieve that," he said.
See also
- Trump in China: Will Xi pressure US leader to accept his vision of global future? https://t.co/j8QBlty4D4 -- RT (@RT_com) November 8, 2017
- US sells Russian LNG to Europe while trying to drive Moscow out of energy market – expert https://t.co/LVPlGPNKrA pic.twitter.com/M1dUmx16FM -- RT (@RT_com) November 7, 2017
- 'Trump's trade war with China would hurt America more than anybody else' – Jim Rogers (Op-Edge) https://t.co/v81ProQpVb -- RT (@RT_com) September 17, 2017
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Nov 10, 2017 | oilprice.com
For the oil markets, the implications are pretty significant. Venezuela has already lost an estimated 20,000 bpd each month for the past year, according to Reuters estimates. And in September, Venezuela's output plunged by more than 50,000 bpd compared to a month earlier. Production could fall by an additional 240,000 bpd in 2018, a decline made worse by U.S. sanctions.
But that isn't even the worst-case scenario. A default could set off a scramble to seize Venezuela's overseas assets. That could lead to much steeper production declines. One OPEC source told Reuters that they see a potential for production declines on the order of 300,000 to 600,000 bpd next year.
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Nov 10, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Will Backlash Against Prince Purge Begin Within Military? Firing popular Saudi guard leader may have been a critical miscalculation. November 10, 2017 Saudi security forces on parade, 2009. Credit: AlJazeera/Omar Chatriwala/Creative Commons Muhammad bin Salman, the 32-year-old crown prince of Saudi Arabia, has been called bold, brash, and even an anti-corruption crusader in the press this week. But his arrest of hundreds of potential rivals, including 11 royal princes and many influential Saudi businessmen, can only be described as a pre-emptive coup.
If this was his aim, however, his firing of one prince -- the head of the Saudi Arabian National Guard -- may have been his fatal mistake.
The son of the eighty-one year old King Salman, Muhammad bin Salman, known as MbS, has amassed more power in the last two years than any member of the House of Saud, including its kings. The young prince, who before his father came to power held no position of significance, is now the heir to the throne, minister of defense, chairman of the newly launched "anti-corruption" committee, and, by royal decree, the man in charge of Saudi Arabia's primary source of wealth, Saudi Aramco.
... ... ...
Muhammad bin Salman's betrayal of decades of rule by consensus and consultation in favor of determined autocracy has undoubtedly made enemies of hundreds, if not thousands, of wealthy and influential princes and businessmen. These princes and businessmen are unlikely to wait for their invitation to the Ritz Carlton.
Michael Horton is a senior analyst for Arabian affairs at the Jamestown Foundation. He is a frequent contributor to J ane's Intelligence Review and has written for numerous other publications including: The National Interest The Economist , and West Point's CTC Sentinel.
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Nov 08, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Craighead) Rosie Bsheer warns Westerners not to fall for Mohammed bin Salman's reformer act:
Even as Western governments and media outlets sing his praises, the young crown prince is viewed domestically as an incompetent and corrupt ruler who hides behind liberalism, tolerance and anti-corruption rhetoric [bold mine-DL]. This view is shared by ruling members of the monarchy, economic elites and the population at large, who see bin Salman as someone who has disturbed the status quo for the sake of massive personal enrichment and political aggrandizement.
Many Westerners are often eager to promote individual foreign leaders in as "reformers" or "moderates" so that it makes it easier to justify a close U.S. relationship with these leaders. Few would openly argue that the U.S.-Saudi relationship should remain the same or become even closer if the next king is a reckless incompetent who is actively destabilizing the surrounding region. For that reason, there is great reluctance on the part of supporters of the relationship to judge MBS on what he has actually done rather than what he says he wants to do in the future.
Bsheer comments on MBS' recent power grab and how it benefits him and his father:
These arrests, cloaked in populist rhetoric trumpeting a purported campaign to end corruption, actually aim to silence and disempower, if not to completely purge, bureaucrats and members of the ruling family who hold economic and political power and are still not on board with Salman's rise to power.
The arrests benefit Salman in two ways. Politically, they upend the balance of power in the Saudi regime, leaving Salman with few rivals. Financially, they make it easier to claim his rivals' assets as his own, part of a two-year effort to consolidate economic power.
When stripped of their official justifications, we can see that these actions are not those of a reformer at all. They are the actions of a despot engaging in a massive abuse of power. If an adversarial authoritarian regime conducted such a purge and justified it in the same way, the near-unanimous response from the West would be criticism and ridicule, and that response would be appropriate. When MBS and his father do it, they are embraced by the president and their justification is taken at face value by far too many news outlets.
At the very least, MBS and his father should be subject to the same skepticism and criticism as any other authoritarian government. We should be wary of accepting the "reformer" credentials of a person who has so far distinguished himself for his hubris and incompetence while compiling a record of failure and repeated violations of international law. Perhaps we could refrain from labeling the man who is helping to starve millions of people to death as a "moderate." Ideally, the U.S. should take the opportunity provided by MBS' rise to recognize that the relationship with the Saudis has become a liability and put as much distance between us and Riyadh as possible.
The Terror , says: November 8, 2017 at 12:10 pm
The world has plenty of experience – all too much – with "reformers" who arrest and kill their rivals, and who commit mass atrocities against civilian populations, as MBS is doing in Yemen.Our "friendships" in the Middle East have damaged and soiled us more than any foreign relationships in our history that I can think of.
At least when we "opened" to China we did it fairly clear-eyed, and one could credibly argue that it was necessary and served our national interest. But our sick, codependent relationships with Saudi Arabia and Israel have only entangled us in pointless messes, put America itself at risk, fouled us morally, and made us simultaneously a frightening, destabilizing force on the world stage, and an international laughingstock.
When and where will it end? I had some hope that Trump might do it, but so far he seems to be doubling down on the Bush the Younger / Obama stupidity.
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Nov 07, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al , November 6, 2017 at 7:51 am
Neuters via Euractiv: EU plans big rule change to snag Nord Stream 2
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/eu-plans-big-rule-change-to-snag-nord-stream-2/The EU executive sees Russia's plan to double the gas it could pump under the Baltic Sea to Germany, bypassing traditional routes via Ukraine, as undercutting EU efforts to reduce dependence on Moscow and its support for Kyiv.
The move dovetails with the Commission's proposal for a mandate from member states to negotiate with Russia over objections to the pipeline.
Even with the changes, EU regulators say they may need to seek talks with Russia as it cannot impose its law on the stretch of the pipeline that is outside its territory.
"This proposal does not solve all the problems and some of those need to be negotiated," an EU official said.
Under the proposed changes to the gas directive, seen by Reuters, all import pipelines would have to comply with EU rules requiring pipelines not be owned directly by gas suppliers, non-discriminatory tariffs, transparent operations and at least 10% of capacity be made available to third parties.
"The Gas Directive in its entirety will become applicable to pipelines to and from third countries, including existing and future pipelines, up to the border of EU jurisdiction," the proposals says .
####More stupidity at the link, but this looks like the same rubbish leaked to EUObserver a week or so ago that I posted here. I have a question. If this is actually becomes the case, then will Brussels rule that TAP and 'field pipes' which currently have an exemption from EU law then become illegal ?
I don't see how they could keep them as exceptions. Brussels is just trying itself in knots to make is seem relevant where it is actually powerless to do anything. As for the line above ' may need to seek talks with Russia..', WTF?
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Nov 07, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al , November 6, 2017 at 8:04 am
Moon of Alabama: Saudi Arabia – This 'Night Of The Long Knives' Is A Panic-Fueled Movesaskydisc , November 6, 2017 at 1:56 pm
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/11/saudi-purge.htmlYesterday the ruling Salman clan in Saudi Arabia executed a Night of the Long Knives cleansing the state of all potential competition. The Saudi King Salman and his son Clown Prince Mohammad bin Salman initiated a large arrest wave and purge of high ranking princes and officials. Part of this internal coup was the confiscation of huge financial estates to the advantage of the Salman clan.
The earlier forced resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri is probably related to the last night's events. The Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahoo endorsed the resignation. This guarantees that Hariri will never again be accepted in a leading role in Lebanon .
####Plenty more at the link and don't forget to check the comments, of which PaveWay IV & guidoamm are enlightening, the latter: I know from someone that, till last month, managed a fleet of personal jets for the great and the good in Saudi Arabia, that there is an exodus under way. The great and the good are literally taking the cuckoo clocks onboard their 380s and relocating to their foreign residences. Owners of the fleets have not been paying their bills for months neither to the crews, nor to the management nor, indeed, to the facilities.
####Just what Europe needs, a bunch of Saudi princes permanently flaunting themselves away from home in various capitals.
Saudi declares war on Lebanon, by claiming that Lebanon declares war on Saudi Arabia . Given that the Saudis have made their alliance with Israel open, this is a threat to the Lebanese government and society, and a dare to the Russian government regarding its anti-ISIS and anti-Al Qaeda policy.marknesop , November 7, 2017 at 8:28 amNot to mention the S-400 sale.
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Nov 05, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
Anonymous | Nov 4, 2017 1:33:00 PM | 18
The sale of ARAMCO is a sign of desperation in the Saudi regime, not strength. They know they are running on empty and will have to use whatever resources they have already to stay in power. The forced reduction in oil price was ostensably aimed at Russia, but it has also crippled Saudi too. Qui bono? A forced sale of ARAMCO will lead to them getting below par in a forced sale - to whom? Zionist central bankers?Peter AU 1 | Nov 4, 2017 12:28:08 PM | 10The Zionists have seen rapprochement between Turkey and Russia, now Saudi and Russia so they will be desperate. What better way to stir things up than linking Saudi in as a primary driver for the Lebanese / Hezbollah position, with the hope of splitting the Russian rapprochment. However, the reality is that Hezbollah/Lebanon is not an existential national security threat to Saudi, but it is to Israel. And that is the elephant in the room again.
Israel was so close to seeing all its regional enemies embroiled in terrorism and social/economic disruption - Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi, Turkey, Lebanon - with the prospect of making great gains (for national security purposes natch) in the Golan where Zionist proxy forces have been guarding territory for it. And now it looks to be fading dream. Even Druze living in the Occupied Golan have warned the IDF that they will defend their co-religionists in Syria against ISIS/whatever.
Destruction of Hezbollah/Lebanon only benefits Israel.
b @2pantaraxia | Nov 4, 2017 6:29:40 PM | 61There was talk not long ago of China buying the full 5% of Aramco. Not sure how much was in that, but possibly why US is backing Saudi in their new Lebanon adventure. The US backs Saudi's in Lebanon and Saudi does not sell Aramco to China?
@54 LozionIn Shocking Purge, Saudi King Arrests Billionaire Prince Bin Talal, Others In Cabinet Crackdown
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-04/shocking-purge-saudi-king-arrests-billionaire-prince-bin-talal-others-anti-money-lauIn a shocking development, Saudi press Al Mayadeen reported late on Saturday that prominent billionaire, member of the royal Saudi family, and one of the biggest shareholders of Citi, News Corp. and Twitter - not to mention frequent CNBC guest - Al-Waleed bin Talal, has been arrested for corruption and money laundering charges, along with several other top officials. Among those fired and/or arrested are also the head of National Royal Guards, Miteb Bin Abdullah, the Minister of Economy and Planning, Adel Fakeih, and Admiral Abdullah bin Sultan bin Mohammed Al-Sultan, the Commander of the Saudi Naval Forces
snip
the heads of the main three Saudi owned TV networks were arrested, Alwalid Bin Talal (Rotana), Walid Al Brahim (MBC), Saleh Kamel (ART)
snip
This could be a service to Trump, who hates Al-Walid: the two fought it out on twitter during the campaign although Al-Walid tried to reconcile with Trump after his election but to no avail.
snip
To summarise today's even more bizarre Saudi news day:
-Trump urges Aramco IPO
-Lebanon PM resigns
-Saudis intercept missile
-Major cabinet reshuffle; 3 Saudi princes - who run the anti-graft committee - arrested for money-laundering
-A total of 11 princes, >30 ministers arrested on corruption
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Oct 24, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Saudi Arabia. Trump prostrated himself and his country before the Saudis and the leaders of the Islamic World. The Saudis expect that this was more than a symbolic and empty gesture. Saudi Arabia is a weak state in actual capabilities in the world It is a state that the US will not need much longer as a source of petroleum. The feebleness of the Saudi government is demonstrated by the ineffectual nature of its war in Yemen, This genocide is being aided and abetted by the US government as part of its cartoon-like conception of basic social and political structures in Islamdom. The Saudi government grows ever weaker as a result of this war and decline in its monetized assets because of a growing surplus of petroleum in the world. The Saudi princelings are not worth the effort being put into keeping them happy.
Qatar . US military operations in the ME are centered around the command and control facility at Al-Obeid in Qatar as well as the air base itself. The air base is useful but is only one of many used by the US in the ME. By siding with the Saudis DJT has de-stabilized the US relationsip with Qatar and is driving the Qataris in the direction of an pro-Iranian stance. Would the US fight to keep al-Obeid? The Saudis won't do it for the US.
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Oct 24, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
marknesop , October 23, 2017 at 4:26 pm
You have to give the European Commission credit for grit and persistence; they never give up . So what should be named the Stop Nord Stream II Commission now announces it is contemplating a 'legal tweak' which will allow it to declare the Nord Stream II pipeline subject to the Third Energy Package rules, while the first pipeline was not. That would be quite a feat, and I'm betting it will never happen because too many European states oppose it. But it is significant that only the complainers get to be heard – Poland, the Baltics and Brussels. And ukraine, of course, which always has a voice because I guess it is an honorary member of the EU or something.kirill , October 23, 2017 at 4:58 pmKeep that term in mind – 'legal tweak', because it basically means changing the law to allow you to do something it previously would not, without any requirement to show why such a change was broadly necessary. You might want to think about 'legal tweaks' of your own to announce you are arbitrarily raising the speed limit on your route home, because it will allow you to get home faster.
Airheads like Maros Sefcovic seem to have the idea that they can force Russia to continue transiting gas through Ukraine by putting ever more stumbling blocks in its way. But they should be careful. Even in the very unlikely event they achieved success, Russia could simply announce the new delivery point is the Russia/Ukraine border , and that the EU and its new bestest buddy are responsible for transit beyond that point. It could cover itself by insisting on official EU signature at the transit point that x amount had been delivered to the border, so that there could be no accusations that Russia was withholding gas. Then the EU would end up paying to fix Ukraine's rusty-teakettle pipeline network, as well as having to tolerate all its staged outages and extortion tactics to squeeze more money for itself.
Russia should sign a deal with Germany for the latter to build a stub gas pipeline to international waters to connect to the Nord Stream II pipe. The EU has zero jurisdiction over international waters. Germany controls its own EEZ and the EU can't hijack it by definition. Germany would then buy Russian gas and resell it to the other EU members. Let's see these EU legal eagles counteract this.
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Oct 13, 2017 | www.theguardian.com
Urban2 -> Ponderbelle , 13 Oct 2017 02:21
fredgladys, 12 Oct 2017 23:32Saudis bought 15 billion dollars antirocket system. Its one deal only. Just to get Trump to stop messing around and crash the Persians they also bought Russian system.
ShoeFascist -> ghstwrtrx7 , 12 Oct 2017 22:51"A peculiar pattern of Trumpian behavior is emerging. First, his fragile ego forbids him to ever take responsibility for anything. Ever. Second, because he craves the adulation of his base, he will to shift blame or throw any and all supporters and allies under the bus."
He also has a tendency to want to take revenge for any imagined or real slight that bruise his fragile ego. Not a statesman or leader by any strength of the imagination.
ShoeFascist -> Fred Fawcett , 12 Oct 2017 22:46The good news is that ALL empires, throughout history, have fallen. Looking forward to the fall of the American Empire.
Yes laughable and tragic all at the same time. Even the guy whose nickname actually is "Mad Dog" (James Mattis) has gone on record with some intelligent comments on why the Iran nuclear deal should be kept in place.
I'm not surprised you got so much hate on that comment board. The Neo-Nazis seem to loiter where they know they can get away with crap that isn't monitored properly.
Epivore , 12 Oct 2017 20:45US citizens who believe they're 'victims' of a 'deep state' have no idea how their war-mongering nation is viewed abroad...
capelover -> lefttheleft , 12 Oct 2017 18:25lefttheleft -> Rigobertus , 12 Oct 2017 17:25He's the best shot that the USA becomes truly 3rd world.
Mike Baker -> Abigailgem , 12 Oct 2017 17:20Trump is the antidote. You may not like it but he's the best shot at pulling the USA from the brink of ruin.
HeadInSand2013 -> GatesOfRome , 12 Oct 2017 16:08America's been piling on the bad karma since Vietnam. It could well cause the world egregious trauma, but no one will shed a tear when the beast is brought low by its episodic-tho-predictable bouts of cluster-fuck. Methinks they've hit the Big One.
And aren't its politicians infinitely grateful for a citizenry so simply and quickly distracted by Hollywood shenanigans (as awful as they are in this instance) whilst a) 3 million of its own have been blown into third world living standards; b) 528 took a bullet from a shooter in the span of less than 10 minutes; and c) Californians are being roasted alive in the latest indication that something's gone screwy in our biosphere? The Oaf and Chief considers Weinstein as nothing more than relief.
Riddle: What's the difference between a President and a leader?
A: There shouldn't be difference, but now there is.
HeadInSand2013 , 12 Oct 2017 14:53Iran is a danger to the region and the world.
I know enough of Iran to respectfully disagree. In many respects, Iran is similar to China, 30 years ago. Under the right leadership, it has the potential of becoming an economic engine for the South-West Asia, helping economic growth of itself and many of its neighboring countries.
Iran has a well-educated population that does not like the US, mainly because of the past US behaviour both in their country and in the surrounding region. The people there revolted against a US-installed government and used religion as a unifying ideology. Now they should be left alone to sort out the problems that religion has brought to them.
In case of China, Napoleon Bonaparte is quoted to say:
Let China Sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world
As the journal Economist once suggested, it is also better to leave the Persian Lion alone. Indeed, the Bonaparte's quote can be restated to apply to Iran; it could read:
Let the Persian Lion Sleep, for when it wakes, it will never live like a sheep
For those interested in military mind-set, it is worth mentioning here that Afghans and Iranians are in fact the same people and approach war and fighting in the same manner. The difference between the two is the cunning and sophistication of the latter.
Jiri -> Durangotang , 12 Oct 2017 11:43Mr. McLean's analysis is largely on the mark. Indeed much of it is supported by Mr. Trump's behavioral pattern, which has been witnessed by the world public during the past 11 months. There is, however, an area where - like many others - Mr. McLean tries to play safe. When he says::
But he promised his loyal base, Fox News and Steve Bannon, he would dump the accord
he is apparently leaving out an important - and probably the most critical - constituency of Mr. Trump. When Mr. McLean says:
He has Bannon and Breitbart howling on his heels, along with most of the rabid rightwing noise machine.
he is getting close; but, then then he shies away from identifying who are the people behind that "rabid rightwing noise machine.".
Many believe that Mr. Trump decisions are influenced by this "rabid rightwing machine" more than anything or anyone else. He has been reported to call many of the machine's "operators" after hours, from the WH as well as his Mar-a-Lago palace, in every opportunity he gets. As examples of the power of this machine, they refer to its ability:
1. To undo the harm of Pope Francis condemnation of candidate Trump, clling him "not being Christian", after his pledge to deport undocumented immigrants and build a wall between US and Mexico. The machine undermined Vatican's moral authority by overnight flooding of the world media with the old story of Pope John Paul II having a close relationship with a Polish women;
2. To pump out billions of dollars into the US futures market on the night of Mr. Trump's election victory to reverse its steep drop of almost 1000 points .
Now the "rabid rightwing machine" wants US decertification of the nuclear treaty with Iran. Mr. Trump is a businessman and no doubt understands how transactional relationships work. He is indebted to this machine, and has to reciprocate its favours in order to receive more of the same in future. Note that he has already registered as a canadidate, to be re-elected the US president for his second term!
And the US did not attack North Korea?
ghstwrtrx7 -> GatesOfRome , 12 Oct 2017 05:23ghstwrtrx7 -> Daniel Berg , 12 Oct 2017 05:15Iran is a danger to the region and the world.
The facts don't support this assumption. Clearly and without a doubt by far the most dangerous, the most destructive, the most deadly player in the region has been the United States. This fact is indisputable to the sincere.
ghstwrtrx7 , 12 Oct 2017 05:02Better refresh. The United States is by definition, an empire. Has been since December 10, 1898. Not all empires have or have had emperors. At least, as an official title. We even still possess a few de facto colonies, Puerto Rico being the most populous. The Philippines were part of the American empire from December 10, 1898 to July 4, 1946.
The Philippines' colonial history has been described by one historian as "500 years in a convent, followed by 50 years at Disneyland."
ghstwrtrx7 -> GatesOfRome , 12 Oct 2017 04:50Trump makes a big medicine show of cancelling "the worst deal ever" (Man! Trump can go from 0 - Hyperbole in no time flat, eh?) but that's easier said than done. The United States simply cannot arbitrarily walk away from the deal. Not legally. Aside from that Trump no longer enjoys the support of the GOP to cancel the agreement.
Oh! Make no mistake. These very same Republicans were all for walking away from the deal when Obama made it and they didn't control all three branches of government (although I'm not sure who or what controls the executive at the moment). Now that they do, having nothing but years of obstructionism to bring to the table, the GOP, lacking any governing skills whatsoever, is as impotent as ever and tearing itself apart from the inside besides.
I tell ya'. The GOP, already severely weakened by the Koch Brothers'-funded grassroots Tea Party movement, may very well just not survive the cancer of Trump.
Again, not the topic. The question is asked: Is Iran in compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action? The answer, of course, is yes. Trump's entire domestic and foreign policy decisions appear to be based entirely on if Obama had anything to do with it, then it has to go. Bad or good. Right or wrong . This is not a viable method of sound government. It is petty, however. Childish and puerile, to say the least.
At any rate, if Trump renegades on this deal as he has on so many since he's been in office, then it will be the United States which will be in noncompliance with the treaty and it will be the reputation of the United States which will suffer yet another blow delivered by none other than our Buffoon-in-Chief.
Besides, Iran is not the only other nation muckraking about in the region. There are other players in the game. I hear rumors of another, more powerful, more destructive, far more deadlier entity stomping about the place, making a mess of just about everything. Been doing it for decades now. Just keeps making matters worse.
zolotoy -> Fred Fawcett , 11 Oct 2017 22:37I know it's sexy to blame Rethugs for everything, but American wars against weak countries didn't begin with Reagan. From the halls of Montezuma...
Fred Fawcett -> phubar , 11 Oct 2017 21:38Fred Fawcett -> ID4752094 , 11 Oct 2017 21:32North Korea might just decide that it's own best interests would be served by selling Iran a working bomb. With Trump's sanctions interfering with North Korea obtaining oil, Iran might just pay the tab that way. The world could very quickly become a much more dangerous place because of Trump's antics.
Fred Fawcett -> zolotoy , 11 Oct 2017 21:25Israel is probably mentioned because Netanyahu is an active partner in Trump's war on the Iran Deal.
Fred Fawcett -> Stranger1548 , 11 Oct 2017 21:09This is the result of our long string of wars since Reagan took on Grenada. Then Bush in Panama. And on and on until today. We've chosen to do battle with small weak countries that don't have a hope in hell of winning or even inflicting major harm.
With each new painless war the American people have been conditioned to believe that because it hasn't caused personal suffering that war is somehow painless. Now we've worked our way up to North Korea and Iran. Both of them a whole different ball game. War with either or both would likely result in a return of the draft.
Trump's scumbag supporters would quickly be singing a different tune as soon as they found themselves being forced to participate.
Well said.
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Oct 13, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Fran Macadam , says: October 13, 2017 at 12:48 am
Making war in other people's countries is what an American government captured by globalist financial elites is all about. For elites, such wars, paid for by the deplorable ordinary Americans they loathe, have no downside and carry no risk to them. Lose-lose for the American public is win-win for them, they cannot lose, especially since wars that can't be won will never end, perfect profit streams.80 Percent Polyester , says: October 13, 2017 at 5:39 amEarly To Rise , says: October 13, 2017 at 5:58 am"Cotton was among the fiercest and loudest opponents of the agreement before it was made, and he has continued to look for ways to sabotage it."Cotton is one of the biggest Israel money guys in the Senate, if not the biggest. Really whopping contributions – "the Swamp" personified. In return for Israel money he has tirelessly pushed the core Israeli policy of hostility to Iran, so much so that it hardly makes sense to think of him as an American senator anymore.
He's more like a member of the Netanyahu government who somehow ended up in one of Arkansas's US Senate seats.
Does anyone here know any real Americans who are pushing for this policy against Iran? My family and friends are nearly all real Americans, and not one of them has any interest in ending the deal with Iran. Most of them wish we would get out of the Middle East altogether.Christian Chuba , says: October 13, 2017 at 7:16 amSo the question is, who are these people all excited about Iran? Other than politicians who may be working for foreign lobbies?
This is pure lawlessness. We are breaking an agreement and by advocating regime change against a govt that has not attacked us or even threatened us in a serious manner are breaking the U.N. charter.Everything Must Go , says: October 13, 2017 at 8:01 amWe are doing this while condemning other countries for not following a 'liberal, rules based world order' (whatever that is, oh, wait, it is following Caesar's decrees). Our Hubris will catch up to us, whether it will be by the Almighty that the Haley's and Cotton's claim to serve or just the law of reciprocity, I don't know. No one is more blind than those corrupted by power.
John Quincy Adams, "But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force . She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit."
He was able to see this because we were not yet intoxicated by power.
Screw Trump. I mean really, screw him. He got my vote because I thought he was going to first crush ISIS and then get us out of the Middle East. Instead he's intensifying nearly every aspect of our Middle East entanglements.Frederick Martin , says: October 13, 2017 at 9:38 amNow he's creating a new mess of his own. And this crap he's pulling with Iran is for Saudi Arabia and Israel. America First really?
Of all of the Obama-era foreign policy decisions Trump could pull back, he's hell-bent on crushing one of the only good ones. I'd be shocked if he has even an elementary understanding of the agreement. "Moron", as Tillerson would say.Fred Bowman , says: October 13, 2017 at 10:14 amWhat seem to be missing here is anybody talking about Israel nuclear capability. That's the "dirty little secret" that nobody talks about. Imho, as long as Iran is in compliance the deal should. Of course Trump and the Hawks in Congress are going to do everything to scuttle it and bring about a war with Iran which will end up being a World War and will necessitate the US returning to a military draft to fight this war. It will be a sad way to "wake up" America to what is being done militarily in their name. But perhaps when they see their little "Johnny and Jill" marched off to war, they'll see what has been done in these endless, unwinnable wars in the Middle East.AR complaint , says: October 13, 2017 at 10:31 am[Tom Cotton gets] "Really whopping contributions – "the Swamp" personified."SDS , says: October 13, 2017 at 11:53 amHe got a $700,000 check from a single Israel donor in 2014. You think anybody in Arkansas not named "Walton" can match that? No sir. Tom Cotton does what Israel tells him to do. Scuttle the Iran deal? No problem.
It's time that my fellow Arkansans did for Tom Cotton what those upstanding Virginians did for Eric Cantor back in 2014, and for the same reason: we want our government back from corrupt politicians working for foreign interests.
I second EVERYTHING said above by all –Steve Waclo , says: October 13, 2017 at 11:53 amStephen J. , says: October 13, 2017 at 11:58 am" the president made clear over the summer, he didn't "believe" Iran was in compliance and would not certify again."Wait, what?! What does Trump know that the IAEA has been unable to learn and at the risk of compromising intelligence sources, why has he not shared that knowledge? As with many of the man's "beliefs", such attitudes do not make issues remotely true. We don't need to stir the Iran pot, for goodness sake. Has not this man kicked enough hornets nests around the world?
I believe the "War Hawks"are leading Trump into another war. Therefore, I asked on: February 4, 2017 Will There Be War With Iran?Steve in Ohio , says: October 13, 2017 at 12:35 pm
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/02/will-there-be-war-with-iran.htmlthe times they are a'changing , says: October 13, 2017 at 1:23 pm"Cotton is one of the biggest Israel money guys in the Senate, if not the biggest. Really whopping contributions – "the Swamp" personified. In return for Israel money he has tirelessly pushed the core Israeli policy of hostility to Iran, so much so that it hardly makes sense to think of him as an American senator anymore."Cotton is wrong on this issue, but he's hardly a Swamp politico. He understands the dangers of mass immigration and looks likely to replace Jeff Sessions as the leading immigration hawk in the Senate. Unfortunately, I suspect he has presidential ambitions and being pro Israel is a must in GOP primaries.
Rand Paul, on the other hand, like his dad, is good on foreign policy, but doesn't get the immigration issue. People like me who want a non interventionist FP and low immigration seldom have candidates that believe in both to support. I had high hopes for Trump, but he seems to have too many generals around him telling him the wrong things.
jk , says: October 13, 2017 at 2:04 pm"Cotton is wrong on this issue, but he's hardly a Swamp politico. He understands the dangers of mass immigration and looks likely to replace Jeff Sessions as the leading immigration hawk in the Senate. Unfortunately, I suspect he has presidential ambitions and being pro Israel is a must in GOP primaries. "No it's not. It was a litmus test for the old neocon Establishment GOP, and it's gone the way of Eric Cantor. You have to go to New York, DC, or some left coastal city to find anyone who gives a goddamn about it, and those places don't vote Republican anyway.
Politicians who take the Israel dollar care about it a lot, naturally. And Cotton's near the top of the list.
Don the Neocon.. We can keep the military in the end-stateless, goal-less, sinkhole known as Afghanistan for decades, STILL subsidize the defense of rich EU and Asian countries, fight the latest "Al qaeda offshoot" everywhere on the African continent but we can't afford universal healthcare like US welfare baby Israel or about every other developed country, or restore power or drinking water in a US territory.Kent , says: October 13, 2017 at 3:09 pm"NO KIN IN THE GAME": STUDY FINDS MEMBERS OF CONGRESS WITHOUT DRAFT-AGE SONS WERE MORE HAWKISH"
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/11/congress-war-hawkish-policies-study/
That explains "lifetime bachelor" Graham's behavior!
To our neocon friends:Robert Charron , says: October 13, 2017 at 3:34 pm1. Even though Iran and Iraq are 4 letter words and share the first 3, they are very, very different animals. Iran is an industrial state of 85 million capable of designing and building effective rockets. It is highly unlikely the US can defeat Iran in a conventional war on its own turf.
2. Even if we did defeat them, there is nobody there yearning for American style pseudo-democracy. While they are not perfectly happy with their own government, they'll be dammed if they're going to accept one from us. So you'd have to put millions of American troops in harms way against the civilian population essentially forever.
And a note on the President. I don't believe he knows or cares a thing about Iran or their capabilities. What he does know, after watching Fox News for the last 8 years is: Obama bad. So the only reason, I'm certain, that Trump cares about this is because it was an Obama initiative.
It appears that Trump's strategy is to insult and ruin Ran's economy to the point where he can get Iran to do something that will allow him to declare war against Iran because they attacked us.simon94022 , says: October 13, 2017 at 3:54 pmAnd how many countries has Iran invaded in the last 200 years? And how many countries has Israel invaded in the last 80 years?
As I recall we made a regime change in the Iranian government when we had the CIA along with the English intelligence by replacing the elected Prime Minister of Iran with the despotic, tyrannical Shah.
As an American, Trump has desecrated our flag with his flat out lies, not the NFL athletes who simps knelt during the National Anthem.
We will really find out who the Swamp creatures are now. Any congressman or Senator who votes for new sanctions against Iran – a country that poses virtually no threat to the United States – exposes himself as a bought-and-paid-for tool of Saudi Arabia and the jihadist fanatics the Saudis support.Ollie , says: October 13, 2017 at 4:26 pmLet them be counted!
No president in history has been more feckless and reckless than Trump. The danger demands that the 25th amendment be asserted.Why Does The Heathen Rage? , says: October 13, 2017 at 4:49 pmJoe F , says: October 13, 2017 at 5:05 pm"So the only reason, I'm certain, that Trump cares about this is because it was an Obama initiative."I've heard this before, but if it were true than why is Trump helping the Saudis wreck and starve Yemen? That was an Obama initiative too. That's why I now think that it's not really the Obama connection so much as the Netanyahu connection that drives Trump. In other words, it's less that Trump wants to undo what Obama did and more that he wants to do what Netanyahu wants.
Any notion of American excellence has now been erased. Our country will not soon recover all that Trump has tossed away and as citizens, we cannot absolve ourselves from blame. We have elected the most odious leader in our history and have allowed (mostly) a Republican Party to participate in government without having made a single contribution to the welfare of the American republic.Joe F , says: October 13, 2017 at 5:07 pmCotton is not alone in his folly that dismisses all real national interest. Like others, there have been many times I have despaired at the state of affairs in our Country, but this is different. Trump and his vandal allies I believe have inflicted permanent and irreversible damage to our country.
One follow up to earlier post: with this action, Trump has proven beyond doubt that the Mullah regime in Iran is a far more trustworthy nation than the United States. Well done DonaldLiam , says: October 13, 2017 at 5:21 pmRegarding the 25th amendment option: how far down the line of succession must one go to find someone who has solid, bona fide cred to stop this inanity?picture window , says: October 13, 2017 at 5:45 pmThe Economist today opines that Xi Jinping has more clout than Donald Trump.And I read on TAC that Trump is p***ing away our wealth and power doing favors for Israel and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, like scuttling the Iran deal and picking fights with the Iranian government. And I conclude that the reason that the Economist may be right about Xi Jinping is because Trump is doing what I read about in TAC, wasting our time, blood, money, and focus on appeasing a bunch of goddamn foreigners in the form of the Israel and Saudi lobbies.
Pretty damn grim.
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Oct 16, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
karlof1 | Oct 15, 2017 5:22:59 PM | 12
In the final days of the Iran Deal negotiations, August 2015, I completely missed the interview Kerry did with Reuters, https://2009-2017.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2015/08/245935.htm that Mercouris parses for his detailed article proving the Outlaw US Empire's Imperial Policy is now "irrational"--utterly I'd say since for me it's been irrational for decades when weighing the actual interests of the United States's populous. The key excerpt:"But if everybody thinks, 'Oh, no, we're just tough; the United States of America, we have our secondary sanctions; we can force people to do what we want.' I actually heard that argument on television this morning. I've heard it from a number of the organisations that are working that are opposed to this agreement. They're spreading the word, 'America is strong enough, our banks are tough enough; we can just bring the hammer down and force our friends to do what we want them to.'
"Well, look – a lot of business people in this room. Are you kidding me? The United States is going to start sanctioning our allies and their banks and their businesses because we walked away from a deal and we're going to force them to do what we want them to do even though they agreed to the deal we came to? Are you kidding ?
"That is a recipe quickly, my friends, for them to walk away from Ukraine, where they are already very dicey and ready to say, 'Well, we've done our bit.' They were ready in many cases to say, 'Well, we're the ones paying the price for your sanctions.' We – it was Obama who went out and actually put together a sanctions regime that had an impact. By – I went to China. We persuaded China, 'Don't buy more oil.' We persuaded India and other countries to step back.
"Can you imagine trying to sanction them after persuading them to put in phased sanctions to bring Iran to the negotiating table, and when they have not only come to the table but they made a deal, we turn around and nix the deal and then tell them you're going to have to obey our rules on the sanctions anyway?
"That is a recipe very quickly, my friends, businesspeople here, for the American dollar to cease to be the reserve currency of the world – which is already bubbling out there .." (Bold italics in original.)
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Oct 13, 2017 | news.antiwar.com
President Trump started his long-anticipated anti-Iran speech by complaining about the 1979 hostage situation. What followed was an increasingly fantastical and absurd accounting of Iran's history, before finally announcing he is decertifying the nuclear deal for "violations," and announcing new sanctions.
The allegations against Iran went from things that happened a generation ago to treating things like the specious "Iranian plot" to attack a DC restaurant as not only the government's fault, but absolute established fact. Beyond that, he blamed Iran for the ISIS wars in Iraq and Syria, repeatedly accused them of supporting al-Qaeda, and claimed Iran was supporting the 9/11 attackers.
The allegations were so far-fetched by the end, that even President Trump appeared cognizant that many won't be taken seriously. Later in his speech, he insisted that the claims were "factual."
When addressing "violations" of the P5+1 nuclear deal, Trump similarly played fast and loose with the facts, citing heavy water claims that are really more the international community's violation than Iran's (Iran was guaranteed an international market for the water, but after Congress got mad the US has refused to buy any more, meaning Iran's totally non-dangerous stock grew), and accusing them of "intimidating" inspectors, insinuating that was the reason there aren't investigations at Iranian military sites.
In reality, Iranian military sites are only subject to investigation in the case of a substantiated suspicion of nuclear activities, and there simply are none. The IAEA has in recent days clarified multiple times that they don't need or want to visit any military sites right now. The only allegations about the sites are from the Mujahedin-e Khalq, which has been the source of repeated false accusations in the past.
And while this was supposed to be a speech about the nuclear deal, Trump closed it off with comments that very much sound like his goal is regime change, saying Iran's people want to be able to interact with their neighbors (despite Iran being on very good terms with most of its neighbors already), and suggesting that whatever he's going to do will lead to "peace and stability" across the Middle East.
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Oct 17, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
With backing from the Iraqi parliament, public opinion and international support the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Abadi had for months demanded a return of the 2003 borders for the Kurdish region. It condemned the illegal independence bid. The Kurds had pushed far beyond their original borders and occupied areas with critical oil reserves. The ruling Barzani family mafia sold the oil and pocketed the money that by law was owned to Iraq's federal government. The Barzani militia mafia occupied the federal border stations to neighboring countries and kept all custom income to themselves. Meanwhile teachers and other public workers in the Kurdish region went unpaid.
The Barzani family clan is only one of the powers in the Kurdish region of Iraq. Historically its main competitor is the Talabani clan. Both clans control their own political parties (KDP and PUK) and militia. Both had been fighting against each other during a civil war in the 1990s. Then the Barzanis called in help from Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to defeat their local enemies.
Over the last decade the Talabanis were handicapped by their ailing patriarch Jalal Talabani. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq he eschewed a major role in the Kurdish region in exchange for the ceremonial position of a president of Iraq. When Jalal Talbani died on October 2 his family immediately asserted its position. It negotiated a deal with the central Iraqi government to reign in the Barzanis' quasi dictatorial powers. The Iranian general Qassam Suleiman helped to arrange the agreement.
When the Iraqi government forces, as previously announced, moved to retake Kirkuk from the Kurds the Kurdish militia forces (peshmerga) under PUK/Talibani command immediately retreated. The militia under KDP/Barzani command were left in an indefensible position and had to flee.
Yesterday and today Iraqi national forces retook control of various large oil fields the Kurds had occupied. They are also back in control of border stations with Syria and Turkey. Without them the Kurdish region lacks the assets and income to finance any regional independence. While his project collapsed in front of everyone's eyes not a word was heard from Masoud Barzani.
The Iraqi government will not only retake full control of the areas the Kurds under Brazani had illegally usurped. It will also demand new regional elections. It is doubtful that Masoud Barzani, or any of his sons, can win such local elections after the mismanagement and disasters they caused
Virgile | Oct 17, 2017 10:07:12 AM | 1
Trump should quickly declare victory over ISIS and resist the neo-cons and Israel calls to linger in Syria as the US military may become the target of attacks from everyone who want them out, and this is the large majority in Syria.Peter AU 1 | Oct 17, 2017 10:13:53 AM | 2
After they saw the lack of the US support for the KRG independence, the lack of US condemnation of Turkey's actions against the YPG, the Syrian Kurds have realized that their strongest and most reliable allies are ... Bashar al Assad and the Syrian army.
As mentioned in the article, there will be a discreet dialog between the Syrians Kurds and the Syrian government to the detriment of the USA.
Trump, get your guys out asap!The pieces are starting to drop into to place. US sure got a kick in the butt after going for the Syrian oilfields and killing Russian officers. Well thought out asymetrical warfare by Russia, Syria, Iraq, Iran.
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Oct 16, 2017 | www.theguardian.com
World oil prices jumped on Monday amid reports of the clashes.
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Oct 16, 2017 | www.rt.com
Is it about the oil?
While the oil contained in the ground in Kirkuk is important to both sides in the long run, tactically the impact of losing the fields is likely to be more painful for the Kurdistan Region. The 250,000 barrels per day produced in the governorate represent more than a third of the oil output of the entire Kurdish autonomy, while Iraq pumps out more than 4 million barrels daily from its other oil fields.
Still, Baghdad regards the Kurds' unwillingness to share the proceeds from the export of hydrocarbons in the past half-decade as unfair.
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Oct 16, 2017 | finance.yahoo.com
BAGHDAD (AP) -- The latest on Iraqi government's move to take control of disputed territories held by Iraqi Kurds outside their autonomous region (all times local):
2:50 a.m.
Iraqi state media say federal troops have entered disputed territories occupied by the nation's Kurds.
The move comes three years after Kurdish militias seized the areas outside their autonomous region to defend against an advance by the Islamic State extremist group.
Al-Iraqiya TV says the military, anti-terrorist units and federal police have taken control of some areas around the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. It says they advanced without firing a shot.
The maneuver comes three weeks after Kurds voted for independence in a controversial but symbolic referendum that Baghdad has so far refused to acknowledge. It says the vote organized by the country's autonomous Kurdish authority was unconstitutional.
A commander of the local Kurdish police force says Kurds remain in control of Kirkuk province's oil wells.
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Oct 15, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
The FT notes that talks about a private sale to foreign governments - including China - and other investors have gathered pace in recent weeks, according to five people familiar with the IPO preparations, amid growing concerns about the feasibility of an international listing.
The Saudi state oil company has struggled to select a suitable international venue for its shares, as New York and London have vied for what has been billed as the largest ever flotation.
The company would still aim to list shares on the kingdom's Tadawul exchange next year if they pursue the private sale, the people said.
The latest proposal by the company's financial advisers was described by one of the people as a "face-saving" option for Saudi Aramco, which has worked on plans to list its shares internationally for more than a year.
Desk chatter included comments that the Saudis were anxious about the level of due diligence and transparency involved in a public offering.
A Saudi Aramco spokesperson said:
"A range of options, for the public listing of Saudi Aramco, continue to be held under active review. No decision has been made and the IPO process remains on track."
The planned listing of a 5 per cent stake in Saudi Aramco is the centrepiece of an economic reform programme led by Saudi Arabia's powerful crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is keen for a 2018 IPO. He has said the company could be worth $2tn although a Financial Times analysis put the valuation figure at around $1tn.
An economic recession in the kingdom is piling pressure on the prince, the king's son and next in line for the throne, amid calls for the government to increase investment and ease austerity. As we noted previously, there could be more at play here...
Some analysts view the possible IPO delay as a sign of the problems Aramco and the Saudi government currently face. A lack of transparency, issues with its oil and gas reserves, and the role of the Saudi government as the main stakeholder have all been suggested as the reason for this possible delay. Most of these suggestions, however, are based purely on issues surrounding the IPO itself. The true reason for this delay, however, likely hides among the intricate societal and economic problems in the Kingdom.
One obvious reason for a delay is the still-fledgling global oil price. A higher price setting -- above $60 per barrel -- would surely drive up the overall interest in the IPO. As long as OPEC and non-OPEC members, such as Russia, are still struggling to get a grip on the oil market, the potential for disaster looms. Needless to say, an oil price slump would have a detrimental effect on the expected revenues of the IPO.
The analysts, it seems, feel no need to look any further than this simple oil price explanation, but several other key factors should be addressed
The impact of an influx of $1-2 trillion into the current Saudi economy is bound to have a significant impact. The implementation of Saudi Vision 2030 is broad and ambitiously planned. A full diversification of the economy is needed to guarantee work and salaries for future young Saudis, with the end of government subsidies or handouts.
A multitrillion investment scheme in a rather small local economy will likely result in total disorder, inflation and possibly ineffective investment schemes. The attractiveness of investing the total amount could lead to staggering inflation, higher costs and superfluous projects being realized.
A delay of such an influx of cash seems to be more and more attractive, giving the Saudi government and local industries more time to adjust and put in place the right steps for a sustainable and commercially attractive economic future.
We previously indicated that China could step in as a financial savior. With around 8.5 million bpd of crude oil imports, which is 2.5 million bdp more than in 2014, the attractiveness of having a stake in Saudi Aramco is huge. Even though an energy diversification program is in place, China's imports from Saudi Arabia are going to increase. For Beijing, a stake in one of its main suppliers is a very attractive proposition. It will not only lock in Saudi crude oil and petroleum product exports to China but it will also provide some additional political and strategic clout in the heart of the Middle East.
There will, of course, be a few big bankers who will be upset as their billion dollar fee/commission just went up in smoke, but this may give MBS some breathing room - without the undue attention of an IPO - as he deals with the nation's economic slowdown. However, coming just a few days after the Saudi king's trip to Moscow, the timing of this leaked information seems interesting at the least.
Tugg McFancy •Oct 13, 2017 5:41 PM
Given most of the largest sovereign wealth funds were created from their own oil revenue, I don't see them getting into someone else's oil.
Freddie -> Government needs you to pay taxes •Oct 13, 2017 3:00 PM
They would have to release information on their in the ground oil reserves. Their biggest oil field Ghawar is 60 years old and almost dead. They shelved it to hide this.
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Oct 14, 2017 | fpif.org
For Trump's critics, including virtually all Iran policy experts at the moment, this attempt at scuttling the world's most sophisticated arms control agreement sends absolutely the wrong signal to Iran. Trump is essentially saying, "It doesn't really matter whether you have adhered to the letter of the agreement, we're still going to break our commitment because, honestly, we just don't like you. And by the way, you can't count on the United States to keep its word in the future."
Trump is sending an even more damaging message to the rest of the world: "We as a country suffer from mood swings so severe and delusions so enduring that we can no longer be a responsible member of the international community."
After deep-sixing the Trans-Pacific Partnership and pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, the Trump administration is making good on this one campaign promise even as all the others stall in Congress or the courts. Trump will make America First even if it means going against obvious American national interests, even those defined by the Chamber of Commerce.
This is not the first time that other countries have witnessed the political instability of the United States. But in the past, some underlying continuity provided a measure of reassurance to other countries. Voters might choose vanilla or chocolate, but the world still expects in the end to get some variety of ice cream.
What makes the Trump era different is the lack of that underlying continuity.
... ... ...
It's not just the North Koreans. The democratic world, for instance, found the transition to the George W. Bush years particularly bewildering. Even before the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration announced that it wouldn't implement the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. After the attacks, the administration broke with international law by embarking on a "preventive" war, violating the Geneva Conventions on treatment of captured combatants, and engaging in torture. The administration also backed away from the Rome statute establishing the International Criminal Court in May 2002 and withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Russia in June 2002. All of these actions profoundly troubled America's allies.
... ... ...
In other words, even with its sharp turn toward unilateralism, the Bush administration held to a bipartisan consensus in favor of multilateral initiatives that benefit the United States. In some ways Bush offered only a variation on the Clinton theme of "a la carte multilateralism" in which the United States picks and chooses the international structures with which it wants to cooperate.
This kind of Bush-style unilateralism wrapped in a-la-carte multilateralism has returned to the White House. It's represented by most of the top administration officials involved in foreign affairs: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Pentagon chief James Mattis, and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster. These are the so-called adults in the room .But Trump is something different. And that's what has thrown Republicans like Bob Corker (R-TN) into a tizzy.
... ... ...
Bob Corker is not a moderate Republican. He has an 80 percent ranking from the American Conservative Union for 2016 (by comparison, Susan Collins of Maine clocks in at 44 percent). He's no softie on Iran, either. Last year, he continued to try to pile on additional sanctions against Iran. Ultimately, he had to content himself with an extension of the Iran Sanctions Act for another 10 years. During the presidential campaign, Corker advised Donald Trump on foreign policy and was even in the running for secretary of state.Corker is cut from the same cloth as Rex Tillerson. They're conservative Republicans who believe in "America First." But they're also committed to preserving a measure of professionalism, if nothing else, when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. They want to preserve U.S. alliances. They want to advance the interests of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
They're not isolationists, and they're not exactly internationalists either. They occupy the right wing of the underlying foreign policy consensus that encompasses the think tanks, lobby shops, and mainstream media in DC. They play ball whether it's a Democrat or a Republican in the White House and whichever party controls Congress. They are part of the continuity in American foreign policy that transcends the elections.
So, when Bob Corker takes aim at Donald Trump, it represents a serious breach not just within the Republican Party but within the foreign policy establishment. Over the weekend, Corker charged that Trump was making threats toward other countries that could send the United States reeling toward "World War III." Later, Corker tweeted in response to Trump, "It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning." Having decided not to run for re-election, Corker is now free to speak truth to power.
... ... ...
So, why pick a fight with Corker just when the president will need him most on the congressional battle over any new Iran sanctions? Writes Adam Taylor in The Washington Post :By handing off any real decision to Congress, [Trump] can avoid having to make a hard decision himself. And by picking a fight with Corker, he has a scapegoat if his supporters grow frustrated with a lack of action in Congress. It seems plausible that Trump's allies are simply being prepared for another legislative failure.
In other words, it's all about the war that Trump and his still-loyal lieutenant Steve Bannon, assisted by UN ambassador Nikki Haley, have declared on the "deep state." They want to dismantle the foreign policy establishment that has presided over America's engagement in the world. A progressive might find much to rejoice in this attack, given that America's engagement with the world has often been through war and corporate penetration. But the establishment is more than that, and Trump/Bannon also want to unravel everything of diplomatic and humanitarian value as well.
John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus and the author of the dystopian novel Splinterlands .
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Oct 13, 2017 | www.theguardian.com
Trump says he will not recertify deal but stops short of pulling out entirely President says US participation 'can be cancelled by me at any time'
... ... ...
For European diplomats seeking to salvage the JCPOA, the days leading up to Trump's long-awaited speech were a roller-coaster. Initially fearful that Trump could immediately trigger a possible collapse of the deal, the Europeans were buoyed when they were briefed that Trump would not call for the reimposition of sanctions by Congress .
However, in the wake of the president's speech on Friday, the JCPOA's survival looked tenuous.
In the speech, Trump declared: "I am directing my administration to work closely with Congress and our allies to address the deal's many serious flaws so the Iranian regime can never threaten the world with nuclear weapons."
He noted that congressional leaders were already drafting amendments to legislation that would include restrictions on ballistic missiles and make the curbs on Iran's nuclear programme under the 2015 deal permanent, and to reimpose sanctions instantly if those restrictions were breached.
However, any such changes would need 60 votes in the US Senate to pass, and Democrats are high unlikely to give them their backing. Even if they did pass into law, the restrictions would represent a unilateral effort to change the accord that would not be acceptable to the other national signatories.
Hours earlier, the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson had acknowledged that it was very unlikely that the JCPOA agreement could be change, but suggested that the issue of Iran's ballistic missile programme and the time limits on some of the nuclear constraints in the deal, could be dealt with in a separate agreement that could exist alongside the JCPOA.
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Oct 12, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org
The deal may certainly be seen as a purely strategic/economic measure to stabilize the oil market – with no geopolitical overtones. And yet OPEC is geared to become a brand new animal – with Russia and Saudi Arabia de facto deciding where the global oil markets go, and then telling the other OPEC players. It's open to question what Iran, Algeria, Nigeria, Venezuela, among others, will have to say about this. The barely disguised aim is to bring oil prices up to a band of $60-75 a barrel by the middle of next year. Certainly a good deal for the Aramco IPO.
There were a rash of other deals clinched in Moscow – such as Aramco and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) $1 billion fund for oil-services projects in Russia, plus another $1 billion for a technology fund.
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Oct 11, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
Jeff says: 10/09/2017 at 1:44 pm
Saudis to Make Deepest Cut to Crude Supply Despite Demand, -0.560mbd for November supply.Guym says: 10/09/2017 at 3:23 pm
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-09/saudis-to-make-deepest-cut-to-oil-supply-despite-strong-demandThe market is "balancing", stocks are drawing down, demand is healthy, US rig count/LTO does not increase, Nigeria and Libya have a very small upside in the short term, Venezuela is a pretty big downside risk, offshore is not too healthy. And the Saudis cut _voluntarily_ because ?
Because, frankly they know more about the oil market than most of the "anal ists". Rather than fighting them, and claiming no more need for "cuts", they are playing along with the crowd. When the shortage hits, they can claim surprise and blame the EIA for over reporting. Better price for the IPO.clueless says: 10/09/2017 at 3:45 pmIf true, it seems likely to me that the Saudi's [and Russia?] are going to push the oil price issue and the best interests of the West be damned. Looks to me like SS might get back in the money next year.Guym says: 10/09/2017 at 4:06 pmI wonder if Trump will realize that now is not the time to have Exxon's ex-CEO as Secretary of State. I think that Trump really wanted better relations with Russia [and Russia wanted better US relations], but politics has totally destroyed that idea – and I think that Russia now knows it.
I don't think the Saudis or Russians would be concerned too much about what happens in the west. The upcoming supply shortage will happen, anyway. There is a lot of talk by the Saudis of making sure prices don't rise too much, but I am sure that is fake concern. They make it look like they are concerned shale production will gear up, which goes along with what the pundits are saying. They are playing us like a violin. Much like their purported "cuts". Jack production up several months, take it back to where it was before, and call it a cut. We bought it, hook line and sinker.shallow sand says: 10/09/2017 at 8:24 pmI am sure this post does not apply to shale, because shale is a Wall Street phenomenon. However, for us, a price spike will not immediately lead to drilling wells. First, after what we have been going through the last three years, I would want to make sure the price is going to hold. Yes, no way to know that really, but I can guarantee we would not be rushing out to get permits.Watcher says: 10/10/2017 at 12:53 amSecond, after this crash, we would want to heal some. Get cash balances higher, then maybe actually take some decent draws. After all, we are in this for the income, not to see how much we can produce. That is what always blows me away about Wall Street. They analyze every metric imaginable when it comes to E & P's except the bottom line. I'd rather own 50 BOPD and make $50K per month than own 500 BOPD and lose $50K per month.
Third, there are some much cheaper things we can do to boost production than drilling new wells. Workovers may not yield as much, but they cost 1/5 or less that of a new well.
I wonder, outside of shale, if we would see this type of attitude if there is a supply crunch? Will all those high cost projects suddenly come back on line.
Finally, everyone and their dog is proclaiming the end of oil anyway. Everything is going to electric in terms of transportation. Countries abolishing ICE vehicle production. Never mind that is in 2040 mostly.
Now, why would I want to drill more wells knowing oil is nearing the end? Might as well just try to make what I can off this existing ones. No reason to spend a bunch of CAPEX. Is it possible that all of the end of oil talk actually helps cause a supply crunch? Believe me, it is going through our minds now that maybe we need to be worried about decreasing demand in our lifetimes due to EV's.
Best to ignore the EV wackos and watch Chinese and India oil consumption data.
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www.bloomberg.com
Saudi Aramco plans to make "the deepest customer allocation cuts in its history" in oil supplies in November to help reduce global inventories and balance the market.State-run Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Aramco, will make an "unprecedented" cut of 560,000 barrels a day in its allocations to customers next month, the Saudi energy ministry said in a statement. Aramco plans to supply 7.15 million barrels a day "despite very strong demand" that exceeds 7.7 million barrels a day, it said.
"Saudi Arabia is once again demonstrating extraordinary leadership in its commitment to re-balancing the market, as we approach the upcoming key meeting of November 30 in Vienna, by restraining not only the top-line of production volume, but even more importantly the bottom line of exports, which are what ultimately shape global inventories and market balances," the ministry said. "The kingdom expects all other participants in the effort to follow suit and to maintain the high levels of overall conformity achieved in August going forward."
Saudi Arabia, the world's top crude exporter, is leading the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producers including Russia in paring output under a deal that helped propel oil into a bull market in September. Lower compliance with the curbs promised by some nations combined with rising production in OPEC members Libya and Nigeria -- both exempt from reducing output due to their internal strife -- have added pressure on Saudi Arabia to make deeper cuts of its own.
Brent, the global benchmark, erased earlier declines to trade marginally higher at $55.62 a barrel at 3:47 pm in London after the news of the Saudi oil allocations cuts.
The decrease in allocations for November "constitutes a full 290,000 barrels a day reduction over and above the 486,000 barrels a day" that Saudi Arabia pledged to cut as part of its commitment to the global output accord, the ministry said. This adds up "to a massive total of almost 800,000 barrels a day" in cuts, it said.
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Oct 11, 2017 | www.bloomberg.com
Saudi Aramco plans to make "the deepest customer allocation cuts in its history" in oil supplies in November to help reduce global inventories and balance the market.
"Saudi Arabia is once again demonstrating extraordinary leadership in its commitment to re-balancing the market, as we approach the upcoming key meeting of November 30 in Vienna, by restraining not only the top-line of production volume, but even more importantly the bottom line of exports, which are what ultimately shape global inventories and market balances," the ministry said. "The kingdom expects all other participants in the effort to follow suit and to maintain the high levels of overall conformity achieved in August going forward."
Saudi Arabia, the world's top crude exporter, is leading the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producers including Russia in paring output under a deal that helped propel oil into a bull market in September. Lower compliance with the curbs promised by some nations combined with rising production in OPEC members Libya and Nigeria -- both exempt from reducing output due to their internal strife -- have added pressure on Saudi Arabia to make deeper cuts of its own.
Brent, the global benchmark, erased earlier declines to trade marginally higher at $55.62 a barrel at 3:47 pm in London after the news of the Saudi oil allocations cuts.
The decrease in allocations for November "constitutes a full 290,000 barrels a day reduction over and above the 486,000 barrels a day" that Saudi Arabia pledged to cut as part of its commitment to the global output accord, the ministry said. This adds up "to a massive total of almost 800,000 barrels a day" in cuts, it said.
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Oct 10, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al , September 30, 2017 at 7:24 am
Euractiv: Central-Eastern European pipeline gets go-aheadPatient Observer , September 30, 2017 at 8:36 am
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/central-eastern-european-pipeline-gets-go-ahead/An ambitious gas pipeline project connecting Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria received a shot in the arm on Thursday (28 September), when all of the involved parties signed a memorandum of understanding for the project, a vital part of Europe's efforts to wean itself off Russian gas
"We are at a very advanced stage with the BRUA project. We issued the building permit, we are conducting procedures for assigning the construction works, and contracts have already been signed for the design part and for the part concerning equipment for stations," Romanian Energy Minister Toma Petcu revealed.
"In December, the contracts for the execution part are going to be signed and pipe procurement is going to be finalised," Petcu added
####Plenty more at the link.
BRUA will be able to transport gas from the Black Sea and, when supply comes online at the end of the decade, from the Caspian too.Patient Observer , September 30, 2017 at 10:21 amIt is intended to cut Eastern and Central Europe's dependence on Russian gas, an important part of the European Commission's third energy package and the CESEC group's objectives.
Black Sea gas? Where again? Crimea does apparently have significant off-shore deposits of undeveloped gas. It is difficult to find an article via Google on the subject that does not have an anti-Russian slant (you know, something like just facts) but here is something on the topic:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-20/putins-crimea-bonus-vast-oil-and-gas-fields
I don't know if there are other sources of Black Sea gas directly accessible to the EU.
Caspian sea gas seems a looong way off, if ever it were to happen.
Thinking more about the BRUA pipe line, It could be a make work project for the region with PC overtones (e.g. Crimea's little escapade will soon end bringing Black Sea gas back to Europe). The usual graft and corruption will also keep Brussels bureaucrats and local counterparts fat and happy.et Al , September 30, 2017 at 2:00 pmIt fits in to the Energy Union progapanda that Brussels is spreading. There at least it makes some sense that where ever you are in the EU, member states will have access to energy resources from wherever else in the EU. Of course, the real question is of price and is something completely different. Does anyone else think it is insane to ship LNG to Krk off Croatia to be pipelined to the rest of the Balkans? Is this a bribe to Qatar or something? Or American LNG to say Antwerp or through the Med?marknesop , September 30, 2017 at 3:55 pmStill, the EU pipeline projects are small change compared to the amount spend on the Common Agricultural Policy and other stuff. I guess its just another 'Do Something' schtick to make Brussels seem relevant to EU citizens like me. Speaking of which, I enjoyed data and telecoms free roaming this summer when I went to the g/f's folk's place this summer. It was.. surreal. And normal. The fact that national EU telecomms operators have been shafting their own customers so hard and for so long and it took f($*ing Brussels to force it through shows which side their own states are on. A sorry state indeed!
It must be said again – Russia does not intend to sit idle in the LNG business either. And if the planned Kaliningrad terminal comes online by the end of this year as planned , it will not only position Russia attractively in the LNG market (does it cost more to bring European gas cargoes from Kaliningrad, or across the Atlantic?), it will bring increased energy independence to Kaliningrad itself. A cruise terminal is planned as well.kirill , September 30, 2017 at 11:38 amThese clowns are a combination of corrupt and delusional. The only non-Russian gas coming via the Black Sea would be hypothetical sources via Turkey from Qatar/Iran and the Caspian basin. There is no source of natural gas in the Black Sea that, for example, Bulgaria could develop to feed this pipe.marknesop , September 30, 2017 at 12:54 pmEurope is forever bragging about weaning itself off of Russian gas, when what it is mostly doing is taking Russian gas and moving it around through connectors, and then reselling it to each other. A prime example – although not European – is Ukraine, which claims to have taken no Russian gas throughout 2015 and 2016 during which time it sourced most of its gas from Slovakia, supplied at 90% and above levels by Russia.Ukraine claims to be getting gas from Yurrup at cheaper prices than Gazprom offered for direct supplies. If that's true, Slovakia is selling gas to Ukraine for less than it paid for it. And there's a word for people like that.
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Oct 04, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org
No wonder, considering that the ousted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef – highly regarded in the Beltway, especially Langley – is under house arrest. His massive web of agents at the Interior Ministry has largely been "relieved of their authority". The new Interior Minister is Abdulaziz bin Saud bin Nayef, 34, the eldest son of the governor of the country's largely Shi'ite Eastern Province, where all the oil is. Curiously, the father is now reporting to his son. MBS is surrounded by inexperienced thirty-something princes, and alienating just about everyone else.
Former King Abdulaziz set up his Saudi succession based on the seniority of his sons; in theory, if each one lived to the same age all would have a shot at the throne, thus avoiding the bloodletting historically common in Arabian clans over lines of succession.
Now, says the source, "a bloodbath is predicted to be imminent." Especially because "the CIA is outraged that the compromise worked out in April, 2014 has been abrogated wherein the greatest anti-terrorist factor in the Middle East, Mohammed bin Nayef, was arrested." That may prompt "vigorous action taken against MBS possibly in early October." And it might even coincide with the Salman-Trump get together.
ISIS playing by the (Saudi) book
Asia Times' Gulf business source stresses how "the Saudi economy is under extreme strain based on their oil price war against Russia, and they are behind their bills in paying just about all their contractors. That could lead to the bankruptcy of some of the major enterprises in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabia of MBS features the Crown Prince buying a US$600 million yacht and his father spending US$100 million on his summer vacation, highlighted on the front pages of the New York Times while the Kingdom strangles under their leadership."
MBS's pet project, the spun-to-death Vision 2030, in theory aims to diversify from mere oil profits and dependency on the US to a more modern economy (and a more independent foreign policy). That's completely misguided, according to the source, because "the problem in Saudi Arabia is that their companies cannot function with their local population and [are] reliant on expatriates for about 70% or more of their staff. Aramco cannot run without expatriates. Therefore, selling 5% of Aramco to diversify does not solve the problem. If he wants a more productive society, and less handouts and meaningless government jobs, he has to first train and employ his own people."
The similarly lauded Aramco IPO, arguably the largest share sale in history and originally scheduled for next year, has once again been postponed – "possibly" to the second half of 2019, according to officials in Riyadh. And still no one knows where shares will be sold; the NYSE is far from a done deal.
I n parallel, MBS's war on Yemen, and the Saudi drive for regime change in Syria and to reshape the Greater Middle East, have turned out to be spectacular disasters. Egypt and Pakistan have refused to send troops to Yemen, where relentless Saudi air bombing – with US and UK weapons – has accelerated malnutrition, famine and cholera, and configured a massive humanitarian crisis.
The Islamic State project was conceived as the ideal tool to force Iraq to implode. It's now public domain that the organization's funding came mostly from Saudi Arabia. Even the former imam of Mecca has publicly admitted ISIS' leadership "draw their ideas from what is written in our own books, our own principles."
Which brings us to the ultimate Saudi contradiction. Salafi-jihadism is more than alive inside the Kingdom even as MBS tries to spin a (fake) liberal trend (the "baby you can drive my car" stunt). The problem is Riyadh congenitally cannot deliver on any liberal promise; the only legitimacy for the House of Saud lies in those religious "books" and "principles."
In Syria, besides the fact that an absolute majority of the country's population does not wish to live in a Takfiristan , Saudi Arabia supported ISIS while Qatar supported al-Qaeda (Jabhat al-Nusra). That ended up in a crossfire bloodbath, with all those non-existent US-supported "moderate rebels" reduced to road kill.
And then there's the economic blockade against Qatar – another brilliant MBS plot. That has only served to improve Doha's relations with both Ankara and Tehran. Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani was not regime-changed, whether or not Trump really dissuaded Riyadh and Abu Dhabi from taking "military action." There was no economic strangulation: Total, for instance, is about to invest US$2 billion to expand production of Qatari natural gas. And Qatar, via its sovereign fund, counterpunched with the ultimate soft power move – it bought global footballing brand Neymar for PSG , and the "blockade" sank without a trace.
"Robbing their people blind"
In Enemy of the State, the latest Mitch Rapp thriller written by Kyle Mills, President Alexander, sitting at the White House, blurts, "the Middle East is imploding because those Saudi sons of bitches have been pumping up religious fundamentalism to hide the fact that they're robbing their people blind." That's a fair assessment.
No dissent whatsoever is allowed in Saudi Arabia. Even the economic analyst Isam Az-Zamil, very close to the top, has been arrested during the current repression campaign. So opposition to MBS does not come only from the royal family or some top clerics – although the official spin rules that only those supporting Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey, Iran and Qatari "terrorism" are being targeted.
In terms of what Washington wants, the CIA is not fond of MBS, to say the least. They want "their" man Nayef back. As for the Trump administration, rumors swirl it is " desperate for Saudi money , especially infrastructure investments in the Rust Belt."
It will be immensely enlightening to compare what Trump gets from Salman with what Putin gets from Salman: the ailing King will visit Moscow in late October. Rosneft is interested in buying shares of Aramco when the IPO takes place. Riyadh and Moscow are considering an OPEC deal extension as well as an OPEC-non-OPEC cooperation platform incorporating the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF).
Riyadh has read the writing on the new wall: Moscow's rising political / strategic capital all across the board, from Iran, Syria and Qatar to Turkey and Yemen. That does not sit well with the US deep state. Even if Trump gets some Rust Belt deals, the burning question is whether the CIA and its friends can live with MBS on the House of Saud throne.
This piece first appeared in Asia Times .
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). His latest book is Empire of Chaos . He may be reached at [email protected] .
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Jul 29, 2013 | www.counterpunch.org
There are numerous legal and ethical arguments that can and have been made in opposition to U.S. foreign policy of raw aggression. For an example of the illegalities of U.S. Empire, examine the Geneva Conventions, all four of which directly proscribe what they each call outrages to human dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment (I, 1, 3). The outrages are named specifically as torture, mutilation, cruel treatment, taking hostages, murder, biological experimentation, and passing sentences on prisoners without benefit of a regularly constituted court.
Additionally, the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 both underscore the Geneva Conventions and expand the traditional ethical concerns to rights and duties of neutral states by banning the use of poison gases or arms, destroying or seizing enemy private property, attacking towns and cities that are undefended, pillaging, collective punishment, servility of enemy citizens, and bullets made to wreak havoc once inside the human body. Prescriptions to limit the conduct of war include the requirements to warn towns of impending attacks, to protect cultural, religious, and health institutions, and to insure public order and safety.
For an example of the ethical problems of empire, think about the completely unjustifiable attacks on civilians done by the U.S. in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and most prominently in Pakistan and Yemen, especially done by drones. Or consider U.S. use of torture, from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay. As everyone knows by now, ethical and humanitarian appeals have been completely and categorically rejected by U.S. leaders, not beginning with 9-11, certainly rejected with greater vigor since then.
But there is another, often overlooked, analysis of U.S. actions, that is the logical result of engaging in the actions of Empire, and that concerns the logical consequence of using massive amounts of resources to attempt to control the resources being used (the second use of the term resources here includes citizens; the people of a city or nation). As the economic, logistic, and humanitarian costs all rise in direct proportion to Empire's actions, the sustaining of the Empire becomes impossible, on the basis of its own internal logic.
In whatever historical epoch you choose, if you take your compass and draw a circle around any given tribe, you can see the desired extent of their territorial claims for resource control. One thus can see that particular group's
- resource consumption; and
- circle of desired resource control. But when two further historical developments are added, such as
- technologically-driven consumption (e.g. fossil-fuel guzzling appliances and cars, etc.); and
- now necessary desires for global resources needed to feed that group's consumption habits "then the situation expands sufficiently to become one of using extensive amounts of the very resources one is attempting to control (in the U.S. case, oil and money) for the sake of controlling the resources over which one needs to exert control! This circular logic cannot be maintained when it meets
- a scarcity of resources; and
- the natural-institutional-logical antinomy of using resources in massive amounts to control the resources you are using for control. In other words, the empire based on this pattern must end when it runs headlong into resource scarcity, and/or natural-logical contradictions involving its own internal (economic and resource) limitations.
This argument against U.S. Empire is not based on ethical or legal grounds (although those remain the best arguments in favor of voluntarily ending empire and regaining our citizenship [civil rights] and humanness) "since those arguments have been put asunder by the U.S. administrators of empire. Rather, the institutional-logical analysis argues that an empire such as the U.S. has constructed exhausts itself by being unable to expand fast enough to control everything it seeks in order to continue its dominance.
When the issue of blowback is added "i.e. that other nations and peoples are unlikely to cooperate willingly in having their resources, humanity, and very lives removed from them "the end result, Empire's fall, could be hastened, and is certainly assured. We can now predict not only how it will happen, but also its imminent coming. Here's how.
First, the heaviest resource consumers of fossil fuels, in order, are the U.S. military, U.S. citizens, China, and India. The Department of Defense per capita energy consumption is 10 times more than per capita energy consumption in China, or 30 times more than that of Africa.
Oil accounts for more than three-fourths of DoD’s total energy consumption. The Post Carbon Institute estimates that abroad alone, the U.S. military consumes about 150,000 barrels per day. In 2006, for example, the Air Force consumed 2.6 billion gallons of jet-fuel, which is the same amount of fuel U.S. airplanes consumed during all of WWII (between December 1941 and August 1945) (from The Resilience Group of the Post Carbon Institute, www.resilience.org ).
Second, concerning the global dimension of resource control, one needs only to understand the preferred method that U.S. Empire acolytes use to justify their actions abroad: the state of emergency that was declared after 9/11 has continued unabated since then, due to the ongoing threat of terrorism (see Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield , for the latest detailed instances of this process.). The domestic equivalent to his war has been well underway since 9-11. (For detail on the domestic front, see also Trevor Aaronson, Terror Factory , regarding FBI domestic use of the ongoing threat of terrorism to deny basic civil rights to citizens).
This allows U.S. government administrators to maintain a state of exception to the rule of law. Georgio Agamben, in his book States of Exception , defines this phrase as extraordinary governmental actions resulting from distinctively political crises. As such, the actions of such administrators are in-between normal political operations and legal ones. This no man's land of government policy is not only difficult to define, but brings in its wake a suspension of the entire existing juridical order. Thus, states of exception are those in which a government in fact suspends the rule of law for itself, while attempting to maintain some semblance of legal order, for the purpose of consolidating its power and control (see Georgio Agamben, States of Exception , Chapter Two).
Regarding the scarcity of resources issue, none other than the World Bank produced a detailed study of demand and supply projections for the immediate future. The study projects that, on the basis of current consumption and immediately precedent rises in it, the demand for food will rise by 50% by 2030, for meat by 85%, for oil by 20 million barrels a day, and for water by 32%, all by the same year.
This is met by alarming statistics and predictions from the supply side. In their report, they state that global food growth rates fell by 1.1% over the past decade, and are continuing to fall, while global food consumption outstripped production in seven of the eight years between 2000 and 2008. Further, the Food and Agricultural Organization and the UN Environment Program estimate that 16% of the arable land used now is degraded. Intensifying competition between different land uses is likely to emerge in future, including food crops, livestock, etc., and the world's expanding cities. Current rates of water extraction from rivers, groundwater and other sources are already unsustainable in many parts of the world.
Over one billion people live in water basins in which the physical scarcity of water is absolute; by 2025, the figure is projected to rise two billion, with up to two thirds of the world's population living in water-stressed conditions (mainly in non-OECD countries).
On oil , the International Energy Agency has warned consistently that there is a significant risk of a new supply crunch as the global economy recovers. Additionally, the IEA's chief economist argues that peak production could take place by 2020 (from the World Development Report 2011, Background Paper: Resource Scarcity, Climate Change and the Risk of Violent Conflict, www.worldbank.org ).
The conclusion from all of these points is nearly obvious: if resources are even relatively scarce, and the habits of and desires for consumption continue to rise among nations, and especially among the citizens of Empire (as has been documented in part above), and if control over those resources is the goal of Empire, but if the Empire consumes more resources than it can logistically or economically control due to natural limitations of those resources themselves, and/or to the consumption of more resources than is either available to it or that it needs to survive, then the power of the Empire will naturally-logically end in a sharp decline, and soon (For applicable details on this, see Richard Heinberg, The Brief, Tragic Reign of Consumerism "and the Birth of a Happy Alternative, www.postcarbon.org ).
With all indicators predicting that the contradictions of Empire's resource consumption, circle of desired resource control, scarcity of resources, and contradiction in resource use and control, are all about to collide in a few years, not decades, it is time to start planning for a post-Empire future. To that end, any psychologist reading this analysis will recognize themes of realistic conflict theory, which is a theory which explains how intergroup hostility can arise as a result of conflicting goals and competition over limited resources
The key point in bringing this psychological theory into the discussion is that in this theory, it is concluded that friction between groups can be reduced only in the presence of superordinate goals that promote united, cooperative action (see Wikipedia on Realistic Conflict Theory for a good overview, summarized here. https://en.wikipedia.org ). Note the agreement of the ethical, legal, and psychological analyses of Empire's oppression: the most effective resolution to oppression, (empire) dominance, and conflict is united, cooperative action, not the attempt to control or destroy people and nations who stand in the way of our control.
We have seen that progressives have had available to them a standard two-pronged argument against empire "American or any other". Progressives have for good reason appealed consistently to the ethical and the legal arguments available to help stem the desires for world and resource domination.
This essays suggests that these two solid arguments should now be combined with an institutional-logical analysis to demonstrate not only the intrinsic, natural limits to empire, but to show reasons how and why empire must and will ultimately disintegrate due to the hubris of ignoring natural limitations of unbridled consumption coupled with attempts at singular control over others' resources and peoples.
Dr. Robert P. Abele holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Marquette University He is the author of three books: A User’s Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act (2005); The Anatomy of a Deception: A Logical and Ethical Analysis of the Decision to Invade Iraq (2009); Democracy Gone: A Chronicle of the Last Chapters of the Great American Democratic Experiment (2009). He contributed eleven chapters to the Encyclopedia of Global Justice, from The Hague: Springer Press (October, 2011). Dr. Abele is a professor of philosophy at Diablo Valley College, located in Pleasant Hill, California in the San Francisco Bay area.
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Oct 02, 2017 | nationalinterest.org
Perhaps the prince is purposefully driving us to distraction...
Intensified brutality has not been limited to Saudi soil. As defense minister, Mohammed bin Salman was the architect of a more interventionist posture for Saudi Arabia -- motivated far less by quashing terrorism than its regional and sectarian rivalries. In particular, he shaped a policy that flagrantly violated humanitarian norms against Yemen's civilian population. Even the most jaundiced skeptic about the United Nations would regard Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as a highly credible voice on humanitarian situations given that he is the former high commissioner for refugees and former prime minister of Portugal. His special representative for children abused in wartime, Virginia Gamba, has documented hundreds of cases of Yemeni children killed and maimed by the Saudi's indiscriminate use of force.
... ... ...
enoch arden , September 30, 2017 7:20 AM
KlingOn2K , September 30, 2017 3:56 AMThere will never be any science in Saudi Arabia. It isn't a part of their civilisation. It has never been in history. The great Islamic science of the Middle Ages existed in entirely different places: Iran, Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt. The territory to the south has always been a scientific desert. No "human rights" or feminism can change this fundamental historic tradition.
virgile , October 1, 2017 9:14 AMIt has to be said that this near-existential crisis sneaked up on OPEC nations rather swiftly. I can't see how a pampered and indulged populace can get around to educating itself and working for a living in short order. There is a lot of tumultuous years ahead for these nations.
Petar Petrovic , October 1, 2017 10:10 AMSaudi Arabia has no chance to emerge from the middle age unless it leaders admit that their religion Wahhabism is obsolete and need to be revisited.
The trouble is that Wahhabismm and strict Sunnism, contrary to Shiism, forbids any attempt to revisit the teaching of the Sunna ( Koran + Hadith). Wahhabism can't evolve.Therefore Saudi Arabia is trapped in that scheme and can never get out of it. The only way out is the total collapse of the kingdom as a whole. Maybe that is the real Vision!
Petar Petrovic , October 1, 2017 10:07 AMSaudis should look at Syria as a model of democracy and pluralism in Arabic Islamic world, yet with their USA friends they tried to destroy it.
Jeff Edward Easterling , October 1, 2017 1:00 AMAnd these are the sort of people Trump visited first and they are USA allies in fratricidal war in Syria...there are actually lots of similarity between USA and Saudi Arabia;they are both sadistic governments.
Schlesinger's Zenith ElPrimero , September 30, 2017 7:09 AMThanks! :D
Since the actual military/defense/intelligence related spending is 1 trillion dollars a year, including about 100 billion in interest we pay on it, if we cut the spending a little and rely on national guard more since I've read it is cheaper to fund and if necessary nationalize our oil and gas industry like a lot of other countries we could start paying off our debt. :D
The whole world must prepare for the post-petroleum order. But it's not, so there will be chaos and war. A country like Australia could fare better than most - if it could defend itself.
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Sep 25, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Originally from: The West is as Thick as the Earth's Mantle
First, I ran across an hilarious post on Interfax Ukraine, which I was just going to offer for everyone's amusement. It featured the 17-year-old CEO of Naftogaz, Andriy (it's very important to Ukrainians that they spell their names differently from the Russian spelling, because they are not ignorant Slavs like the Russians, but the descendants of billion-year-old-carbon extraterrestrials) Kobolev, blubbering about how Siemens had caved in to pressure from the Russians, and stopped the sale of compressors to Naftogaz that it needed to modernize its Gas Transit System (GTS). He's not really 17, of course; he just has that Richie Cunningham kind of face that makes him look perennially pubescent, complete with red hair. That's part of what makes the article funny. There's more, but we'll get to that, in a bit.Then it occurred to me that I've seen a loose series of pieces lately which mention Ukraine and gas transit, such as Ken Rapoza's piece for Forbes (which I mentioned already, in the comments to the previous post), where he unaccountably suggests that Russia has discovered it still needs Ukraine. As I argued on that occasion, Ukraine's soulful big-eyed caricature of trustworthiness is unlikely to fool anyone in Russia, and merely underscores how important it is for Russia's continuing progress and uncoupling from the west that it circumvent Ukraine, and not rely on it for anything.
But then I ran across this . The EU is again taking the position, or at least it appears so from the gobbling of the human turkey Maros Sefcovic, that transit of Russian gas through Ukraine after 2020 is a priority. And I thought, holy shit. Are we really going to go through all this all over again? And then I thought, what's a word for people who are incapable of learning? It's plain that western bureaucrats see themselves – and I know it's an analogy I have used before – as Lucy in the Peanuts comic strips , holding the football for Charlie Brown (Russia), only to snatch it away at the last second so that Charlie Brown/Russia falls ignominiously on his ass, to great amusement. What's a word for people who are so stupid that they believe everyone else is too stupid to see through their self-interested mendacity?
So I searched "What do you call people who are incapable of learning?" This site – somewhat unkindly – suggested "thick". Fair enough, I thought.
... ... ...
But that wasn't the part that made me laugh. No, what I found funny was Kobolev's pouty insistence that Nord Stream II be opposed as a 'politically-motivated project'. Just as if leaning on the jellyfish President of the European Commission to force Russia to continue transiting Europe's gas through the slow-motion collapse that is Ukraine had nothing whatsoever to do with politics. Nope, that just stands out as a solid business decision in every way, doesn't it?
Let's get something up-front and on deck right now, so that there is no ambiguity to confuse the issue. Washington was behind the Maidan turning into a violent insurrection, and the USA remains behind the scenes pulling the strings at the SBU . A very frank phone conversation between State Department neoconservative cookie-distributor Victoria Nuland and United States Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, in which the eventual composition of the coup government was planned in unambiguous detail should be all the evidence anyone needs that the entire process was manipulated and micromanaged. Lest anyone forget, Nuland's choice, 'Yats' – Arseniy Yatsenyuk – was such a political dung-magnet that he lasted only 26 months in the job. To be fair to him, he was tasked with implementing the IMF's favourite reform (because it's the only one the IMF really knows); austerity, in the poorest country in Europe. And it is the United States of America which continues to have its arm up the back of Kiev's shirt, making its mouth move. Washington is the big brother Poroshenko turns to when he wants help to stymie Russia's efforts to build circumferential commercial links around Ukraine, and instead for Ukraine to have an important linking role in Russia's energy business with Europe – in short, for Russia to continue using Ukraine to transit its gas to Europe.
Why is that, do you suppose? What's in it for Washington?
Dragging Ukraine into the west's orbit has long been a goal for Washington, dating back to the late and mostly-unlamented Zbigniew Brzezinski's 'grand chessboard' strategy – a geostrategic imperative, he said, to ensure American primacy in the world. Russia without Ukraine, quoth the pushing-up-daisies Pole, would never attain great-power status. And America has sort of gotten to like the feeling of being the only great power in the world.
The strategic value of Ukraine, then, is manifold. It can be stirred at any time to whip up global ire against Russia. NATO military exercises in Ukraine can be used to parade western might across Russia's doorstep. But its real value lies in continued gas transit by Russia between the source and Russia.
For one thing, it's the money – more than $ 2 Billion a year out of Russia's pocket and into Ukraine's, in transit fees. Once Russia is committed to continuing to use Ukraine as a transit country, transit fees can always be used as leverage to negotiate sweet energy deals for Ukraine, against the threat of interrupting Europe's gas supply. Europe would play its part by acting hysterically terrified and victimized. But that's still pretty small potatoes.
In Ukraine's current condition, it is at serious risk of collapse. And a country that sends its gas across Ukraine is a country that cannot afford to let Ukraine turn into a failed state, at any cost. Just to put a cherry on top of this splendiferous vision, complications actually can be introduced, at a whim, into Europe's energy supply, should they get uppity.
There is no room in this sugarplum daydream for an independent Germany which is a gas hub for Europe, perhaps not even with Mutti Merkel at the helm.
Perhaps some sort of medal could be struck for Sefcovic, for his relentless determination to herd Russia into a horrible bargain which would see it constantly bargaining and negotiating with greedy and lawless Ukraine for the expensive privilege of transiting its gas through Ukraine's whistling, creaking pipelines. In other circumstances, such dedication might be admirable. But I'm pretty confident that nobody in Russia is buying it. Europe has made an increasingly half-hearted attempt to stop Nord Stream II, and has learned instead that if it wanted to make a sensible legal argument, it should never have allowed the first pipeline; that's what, in the legal business, is known as 'precedent'.
All of which leads us to suspect that the real remaining antagonist to the Nord Stream II pipeline is somebody whom it should not by rights concern at all, since that entity is neither part of the supply chain nor the end user of the product – Uncle Sam.
This is no time for Russia to weaken in its resolve. But it is also no time for Germany to allow itself to be rolled. Somebody is going to be a major gas hub for Europe, and in the current climate it is going to be Germany or Ukraine. Germany should ask itself what Ukraine has done for it which would merit such sacrifice.
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Jul 13, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al , July 12, 2017 at 11:23 am
Euractiv: Nord Stream 2 doesn't matter
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/opinion/nord-stream-2-doesnt-matter/By Nikos Tsafos | enalytica
Nord Stream 2 continues to divide Europe. That's a pity. For all the noise, Nord Stream 2 is just a distraction – it doesn't really matter. Here's why, writes Nikos Tsafos.
Nikos Tsafos is president of enalytica, an energy consulting firm, and an adjunct lecturer at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
The critics allege that Nord Stream 2 is a political project. So what? When the Obama Administration authorised liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from the United States, did it have politics in mind? Sure. When the Lithuanians turned to LNG to lessen their reliance on Russia, were they pursuing a political project? Well, the importing vessel is called "Independence." Saying that Nord Stream 2 is a political project does not get you very far
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I can't believe it has taken this long for Euractiv to post a normal article on NordStream II. Sure, it is not the Russophobic shitrag that EUObserver carrying bs opinions from self-acclaimed 'apolitical' energy expert Srijben de Jong, but absence of common sense articles on the issue are few and far between. I'll give this a '1 Hurrah!'. Let see if if it spreads.
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Aug 26, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al , August 24, 2017 at 4:05 pm
Al Beeb s'Allah GONAD (God's Own News Agency Direct): First tanker crosses northern sea route without ice breakerkarl1haushofer , August 25, 2017 at 1:07 am
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-41037071The specially-built ship completed the crossing in just six-and-a-half days setting a new record, according to tanker's Russian owners.
The 300-metre-long Sovcomflot ship, the Christophe de Margerie, was carrying gas from Norway to South Korea .
The Christophe de Margerie is the world's first and, at present, only ice-breaking LNG carrier.
The ship, which features a lightweight steel reinforced hull, is the largest commercial ship to receive Arc7 certification, which means it is capable of travelling through ice up to 2.1m thick. ..
####Another misleading headline, which is a pity because I wanted to say that the downside would be that it makes for shit Gin & Tonics if there is no ice!
Just as a reminder of FAKE news by the previous President that was met with raptured adulation by the professional media:
Neuters 3 August 2014: Obama: 'Russia Doesn't Make Anything'
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-russia-doesnt-make-anything-2014-8?IR=TAre you sure that tanker was built in Russia?Moscow Exile , August 25, 2017 at 1:19 amLNG TANKER CHRISTOPHE DE MARGERIE sails under the Cypriot flag and is registered in Limassol, Cyprus.marknesop , August 25, 2017 at 12:03 pmThe vessel was built by Daewoo Shipbuilding Marine Engineering.
As we all know, Russians cannot make anything.
Was the ASIA VISION built in the USA ?davidt , August 25, 2017 at 1:24 amFor information only, I think the boat was built by the South Korean firm DSME.
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Aug 26, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
karl1haushofer , August 25, 2017 at 12:23 am
I would not call Julia Tymoshenko "pro-Russian". She was part of the Orange revolution leaders in 2004.Moscow Exile , August 25, 2017 at 1:07 amYou are absolutely correct about her not being "pro-Russian", albeit she is an "ethnic" Russian: she is pro-Yulia Tymoshenko, nothing else..Moscow Exile , August 25, 2017 at 2:07 amTymoshenko started off as a businesswoman in Dnepropetrovsk (now Dnipro), her home town, and with the help of the former governor of her home province, the unbelievably corrupt former Ukrainian prime minister, "Mr. 50%" Lazarenko, became immensely wealthy in an amazingly short time, not least because, for an appropriate fee, Prime Minister Lazarenko gave her control of the Ukrainian gas industry.
Tymoshenko was a brunette when she started of her business career and at that time only spoke Russian, which is both her mother tongue and the first (and probably only) language of her Russian mother. Her first foray into business was running a video-hire firm in Dnepropetrovsk, where she flogged off bootleg soft-porn imported from Poland.
The "Gas Princess" then saw that there was much more wealth to be further garnered by her entering what is laughably called in the Ukraine "politics". She changed her image to one of, I suspect, a latter-day Lesya Ukrainka, and the rest is history.
She also seriously studied the Ukrainian language, which on her own admission, she did not speak until she was in her 30s: she speaks nothing else now, in public at any rate.
The "Orange Revolution" for dear Yulia was just another opportunity for her to make even more lolly.
marknesop , August 25, 2017 at 12:06 pm
Ukrainians remember that in the 1990s, before the braids, Tymoshenko was a shrewd businesswoman with dark hair and a dark side: tough, unrelenting, unforgiving, and in a league with then-Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko. She amassed an enormous fortune in the natural gas business. People started calling her "The Gas Princess." And there she was helped by the sweetheart deals Lazarenko allegedly sent her way.
Given all the talk that later charges against Tymoshenko were trumped up or falsified in the Ukraine, it's probably important to know that her ally Lazarenko was prosecuted in the United States, where he was convicted and imprisoned for money laundering and other crimes. Tymoshenko was not charged in that case and she has denied wrongdoing, but she was named explicitly as part of the conspiracy detailed in the indictment.
"Lazarenko received money from companies owned or controlled by Ukrianian [sic] business woman Yulia Tymoshenko in exchange for which Lazarenko exercised his official authority in favor of Tymoshenko's companies, and Lazarenko failed to disclose to the people and government of Ukraine that he was receiving significant amounts of money from these companies."
Tymoshenko moved from business to politics when she entered parliament in 1996. Three years later, when Lazarenko fled the country (claiming people were out to kill him), Tymoshenko helped found the Fatherland Party on an anti-Lazarenko anti-corruption platform.
That prosecution is important, because the USA knows full well many of the details of Tymoshenko's business relationship with Lazarenko. Consequently, it could probably make or break her – exactly the position Uncle Same likes to be in with his relentless spying and snooping on everyone and everything.Moscow Exile , August 25, 2017 at 12:28 pmThat's why Washington has Merkel by the balls -- metaphorically speaking, of course.
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Aug 26, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
marknesop , August 24, 2017 at 1:12 pm
Well, well; look at that – Naftogaz made a profit of 22.6 Billion hryvnia in 2016 , most of it from transit fees.et Al , August 24, 2017 at 3:49 pmThe same Naftogaz which plans to tack on an extra $5 Billion to its demands from Gazprom – already $12.3 Billion – for what it says was underpayment of transit fees between 2009 and 2016. The same Naftogaz that squeals what a reliable partner it is whenever there is mention of building a pipeline around Ukraine so Russia will not have to transit gas through it.
Certainly doing a lot to help themselves, aren't they?
For 2016, its an odd 25 hryvnia to the dollar so their gained transit fees were a little below $1 billion.
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Aug 26, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
moscowexile , August 21, 2017 at 9:17 am
The beginning of the end?marknesop , August 21, 2017 at 11:10 amЛитва помогает Америке покорить Европу
Литва приняла первую партию сжиженного природного газа из СШАLithuania helps America conquer Europe
Lithuania has accepted the first batch of liquefied natural gas from the USA.... ... ...
The first consignment of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States has arrived at the port of Klaipeda. The Lithuanian authorities hope that the country will become a regional distribution centre (hub) for US gas. They also believe that supplies of overseas raw materials will help reduce gas prices in neighbouring countries and Lithuania itself.
Analysts do not consider Lithuania's gas policy rational and effective, noting that Russian pipeline gas is now much cheaper than LNG.
There is nothing you can do to stop an ideologue who turns up his/her nose at cheaper local supply of a particular commodity because he/she dislikes the supplier, and elects to purchase more expensive goods from an alternate source. The fact is, Lithuania could become a hub for US LNG, and bring down gas prices for its customers so that they were eager to purchase it. Lithuania could accomplish this through the simple expedient of buying American gas at a high price – compared with Russian pipeline gas – and selling it at a lower price than Russia was willing to do. Of course, somebody would have to absorb the cost of the price difference, and that would be Lithuania. If Lithuania is willing to do that, as I said, she cannot be stopped from doing it by anything short of the poverty which will eventually result.Knock yourself out, Grybauskaitė. If you were ordered to describe her policies in one word, 'irrational' would probably do quite well. Americans will be comforted to know there is more than one irrational president in the world.
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Aug 11, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
RenoDino | Aug 7, 2017 10:50:25 AM | 88
fast freddy | Aug 7, 2017 11:36:47 AM | 89
Sanctions, but US still buying billions of dollars worth (including baksheesh) of rocket engines and screwing around with international space station boondoggle (million dollar toilet seats, hammers and widgets). And more baksheesh.Just Sayin' | Aug 7, 2017 11:39:59 AM | 90Try to google search a fixed price on one Russian rocket engine.
This 'Pipelineistan' [Bullshit?]dh | Aug 7, 2017 11:41:03 AM | 91conspiracy:The war in Syria has never been about gas
Paul Cochrane
Wednesday 10 May 2017 10:57 UTCThe pipeline hypotheses do not stand up to the realities of how energy is transported through the Middle East in the 21st century
3. No Qatari offer to DamascusThe pipeline narrative, from 2013 onwards, also makes much mention of Damascus rebuffing an alleged Qatari offer in 2009 to build a pipeline. This part of the story hinges around statements by unnamed diplomats in a 2013 Agence France-Presse article about a meeting between Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia's Bandar bin Sultan.
Qatar's then-Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani (R) and First Lady Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al-Misned (L) welcome Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma at Doha airport in January 2010 (AFP)
The report says: "In 2009, Assad refused to sign an agreement with Qatar for an overland pipeline running from the Gulf to Europe via Syria to protect the interests of its Russian ally, which is Europe's top supplier of natural gas."
But Dargin says: "There are no credible sources that show that Qatar even approached Syria in 2009 and was rebuffed in the process. I am not saying it definitely did not occur, rather there is no evidence supporting this claim."
Syrian experts also support Dargin's rebuttal, highlighting the burgeoning economic and political ties between Doha and Damascus.
'An important aspect that we don't talk about is the Syrian government never said the Qataris were fighting for a pipeline' - Jihad Yazigi, Syria Report
Yassin-Kassab says: "The absurdity is that relations between the Assad regime and the Qataris were excellent until summer 2011. Assad and his wife and the Qatari royal couple were also being portrayed as personal friends."
Although Assad may have repeatedly criticized Qatar since late 2011 onwards for supporting "terrorists," he has never publicly stated that Qatari support for the rebels was over a future pipeline.
Jihad Yazigi, editor of economy website Syria Report, says: "An important aspect that we don't talk about is the Syrian government never said the Qataris were fighting for a pipeline; that is telling in itself, that Assad never mentioned it."
4. The Moscow-Tehran connectionThen there's the other part of the Pipelineistan puzzle – the Iran-Syria pipeline, also known as the Islamic Pipeline.
Yazigi explains: "The Islamic pipeline has been talked about for years. There were pre-contract memorandums of understanding, but until July 2011, there was no formal signing [between Syria and Iran]. You can't argue this is a serious reason to destroy the whole country. "
While the project was politically expedient, it ignored economic and energy realities. First, the project was estimated to cost $10 billion, but it was unclear who would foot the bill, particularly as Tehran was – and still is – under US and international sanctions, as is Syria, since 2011.
Second, Iran lacks the capabilities to export significant amounts of gas. Sanctions mean it cannot access the advanced US technology that would allow it to exploit gas from the South Pars field that borders Qatar.
@71 James, there are many small contractors involved in Nordstream in several countries. The sanctions are designed to squeeze them out and make Nordstream impossible.Skip | Aug 7, 2017 12:04:55 PM | 93It's not unlike the strategy being used against NK. They are designed to make life even more difficult for ordinary people....perhaps drive them into China and cause China to attack NK.
@15karlof1 | Aug 7, 2017 12:16:45 PM | 94"Not me! Term limits mean nothing more than the elimination of the ability of the voters to assess candidates based on legislative track records. The result is that every two years the voters will have to choose representatives with no past history of legislation. Disaster."
Gag me with a spoon. This argument is so old and so worn thin. Statistically 95+% of these fools are reelected because the highly cerebral voters you refer to have elevators that almost never go to the top of the building.
Money, money money. That's what drives the engine of elections. Incumbents have it working for them in so many ways: PACs, corporate centers of influence; radio and teevee.
All of the alternatives you propose are red herrings. They are only workable in heaven, not here on Terra Firma.
Remember, all of that institutional memory brought about by all of the 'experienced' members of congress got us where we are today. And, it's gotten them a 10% approval rating.
Grieved @66 & 67--Arioch | Aug 7, 2017 1:30:51 PM | 97Thanks for your reply and endorsement.
Something to consider when dealing with the Revolutionary time period is what part of the populous is considered "The People," as in "We The People"? And just how equal in reality were those people in 1776 when the phrase "All men are created equal" appeared?
This is of great importance when we look at the proportion of the populous that was allowed to have a stake in the process and compare that with the amount of time it took until a majority was finally deemed to have equal rights under the law--1920 within USA
Although it can be argued that full equality under the law is still lacking as Glenn Greenwald did to great affect in With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality . Two works providing info on this issue are The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States and People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization , although there are many others.
Is the United States federal government reformable? IMO, as currently constituted, no. A new document and associated institutions needs to be written and built, although some current institutions will have a place within the new construct.
Yes, I did write a Constitution 3.0 using Madisonian principles not long after the fiasco of the 2000 election to use as a classroom discussion tool. But to have any chance at making that reality, the Rule of Law must be reinstated within the Outlaw US Empire in order to bring the Deep State to Justice and thus its destruction.
One jewish journalist (link was posted here few days ago) nicely pointed out these sanctions are the stupidest thing US could have possibly done. Not only it forges even closer Russia-China-Iran alliance, it also alienates the closest and strongest ally US have - the EU.Just Sayin' | Aug 7, 2017 2:56:49 PM | 99@18 - or the opposite. If Trump really is isolationists and if he wants USA isolate itself on the two Americas, then he has two options: make America turn its back on the world, or make the world turn its back on America. The first option he failed, DC regime is stronger than POUTS. Then - the second option.
Not only it forges even closer Russia-China-Iran alliance, it also alienates the closest and strongest ally US have - the EU.Posted by: Arioch | Aug 7, 2017 1:30:51 PM | 96
What's wrong about that statement is that the EU nations are not US Allied states - they are US vassal states. A bit of a difference between those two: "allied state" and "vassal state"
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marknesop.wordpress.com
New U.S. sanctions will make it harder for Russia to build two gas export pipelines to Europe but the projects are unlikely to be stopped.
U.S. President Donald Trump has reluctantly signed into law further sanctions on Russia but some of the measures are discretionary and most White House watchers believe he will not take action against Russia's energy infrastructure.
This would allow Gazprom's two big pipeline projects to go ahead, although at a higher price and with some delays.
... ... ...
Gazprom warned investors last month that the sanctions "may result in delays, or otherwise impair or prevent the completion of the projects by the group."
With all that in mind, the Russian gas giant is taking steps to reduce the impact of sanctions.
It has accelerated pipe-laying by Swiss contractor Allseas Group under the Black Sea for TurkStream - even though there is no final agreement on where the pipeline will make landfall in Turkey. It is also hurriedly building a second TurkStream line to export gas to Europe.
"The construction of the second line is underway just in case the sanctions hit," a senior Gazprom source told Reuters.
A spokesman for Allseas said 100 km of the 900-km first line have been built since June 23 and preparatory work is underway for the second line.
THE UKRAINIAN CONNECTION
The biggest cost of any delays to the new lines could come from increased transit fees paid to Ukraine, the route by which Russian gas has traditionally reached Europe. Nord Stream 2 and TurkStream bypass Ukraine, but if they are brought into use late, Gazprom will have to continue using the Ukrainian route and may have to pay more for the privilege.
The European Union, fearing sanctions will hurt oil and gas projects on which it depends, said it was ready to retaliate unless it obtained U.S. guarantees that European firms would not be targeted.
Five Western firms that have invested in Nord Stream 2 - Wintershall (BASFn.DE) and Uniper (UN01.DE) of Germany, Austria's OMV (OMVV.VI), Anglo-Dutch Shell (RDSa.L), and France's Engie (ENGIE.PA) - say it is too early to judge the impact of sanctions.
For now, they are standing by their pledge of up to 950 million euros ($1.13 billion) each to finance the 1,225 km (760 mile) Nord Stream 2.
... ... ...
RISK PREMIUM
The sanctions law is however expected to hamper Gazprom's efforts to raise money. "The price of any project automatically increases," said Tatiana Mitrova, director of the Skolkovo Energy Center.
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Aug 09, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
Posted by: Yul | Aug 4, 2017 7:58:45 PM | 41
Dr Brenner,
Don't know whether you've have seen this article and the navettes of various Iraqi Shi'a authorities to Riyadh, in particular Muqtada's visit this week:
When Sadr arrived in Jeddah, an anonymous Twitter user known as Mujtahid -- noted for his regular leaking of alleged developments within the secretive House of Saud -- tweeted that the warm welcoming of Sadr "and prior to him al-Araji, offering thousands of [hajj] visas to PMU [Popular Mobilization Units], celebrating the [liberation] of Mosul, are all attempts to get closer to Iran so that they can convince the Houthis to have mercy on bin Salman." Thamer al-Sabhan in a July 31 tweet attacked "[Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini's version of Shiism" and praised what Sabhan called "genuine Shiism." Less than 24 hours later, however, that tweet was removed. It is still unclear whether Sadr is really attempting to mediate between Tehran and Riyadh. However, a senior Iranian official who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity expressed doubt that such an endeavor would succeed in ending the rivalry between the two regional powers.
Dr Brenner,Don't know whether you've have seen this article and the navettes of various Iraqi Shi'a authorities to Riyadh, in particular Muqtada's visit this week:
When Sadr arrived in Jeddah, an anonymous Twitter user known as Mujtahid -- noted for his regular leaking of alleged developments within the secretive House of Saud -- tweeted that the warm welcoming of Sadr "and prior to him al-Araji, offering thousands of [hajj] visas to PMU [Popular Mobilization Units], celebrating the [liberation] of Mosul, are all attempts to get closer to Iran so that they can convince the Houthis to have mercy on bin Salman." Thamer al-Sabhan in a July 31 tweet attacked "[Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini's version of Shiism" and praised what Sabhan called "genuine Shiism." Less than 24 hours later, however, that tweet was removed. It is still unclear whether Sadr is really attempting to mediate between Tehran and Riyadh. However, a senior Iranian official who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity expressed doubt that such an endeavor would succeed in ending the rivalry between the two regional powers.
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Aug 09, 2017 | www.counterpunch.org
But U.S. policy now, under the Trump administration, is to promote U.S. energy exports to Europe to replace Russian ones. It is both old-fashioned Cold War Russophobia and old-fashioned inter-capitalist, inter-imperialist contention.
The sanctions bill has been promoted as one that appropriately penalizes Russia for its international misbehavior. The always-cited examples being the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the (alleged) invasion of Ukraine in 2014. (As though these in any way rival in their impact and ramifications of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, based on lies, in 2003, or the U.S./NATO-led assault on Libya sold in the UN Security Council as a "humanitarian" intervention supported by Russia, that turned out to be a grotesque regime change operation culminating with Hillary Clinton's public orgasm following Muammar Gadaffi's sodomy-murder. "We came, we saw, he died!")
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fgcd1ghag5Y?feature=oembed
Hillary Clinton on Gaddafi: We came, we saw, he died
Russia is always depicted in the corporate media as an "adversary." It acts, we are told ad nauseam, against U.S. "interests" around the world. Its involvement in Syria is (to support the survival of the secular modern Syrian state against the most savage opponents imaginable) is somehow objectionable (whereas U.S. bombing of Syria, condemned by Damascus as a violation of Syrian sovereignty and clearly in violation of international law, is treated as a matter of course). Its role in the bombing of Aleppo, resulting in the reconquest of the city from al-Nusra and its allies, was depicted by the U.S. media as a bad thing. Meanwhile U.S. bombing of Mosul, to retake that city from ISIL, is treated as heroic, however many thousands perish in "collateral damage." Anyway CNN won't cover it and has fewer reporters on the ground there than RT does.
Russia is depicted as "provocative" when it mobilizes military forces within its own territory (and Belarus), in response to massive NATO exercises involving 31,000 troops in Poland last June that the German foreign minister criticized as "warmongering."
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev matter-of-factly tweeted: "The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way." But where will this power lead?
The concept, as articulated by Sen. John McCain and Sen. John Hoeven in a 2014 Wall Street Journal op-ed, is to "liberate our allies from Russia's stranglehold on the European natural-gas market." But as the Washington Post has observed, "The problem is that Europeans don't necessarily want to be liberated. Russian gas is much cheaper than American LNG, and could become even cheaper to undercut the United States if it entered the European market. American LNG suppliers prioritize their own profits over America's strategic advantage anyway, and are likely to want to target more lucrative markets than Europe, such as Japan. Finally, the Russian gas supply is likely to be more reliable than the United States', since it involves predictable long-term contracts, whereas U.S. production capacity rises and falls, as it becomes cheaper and more expensive to extract American unconventional hydrocarbons."
The McCain-Hoeven piece was of course written before there was any talk about Russian "election meddling." But that issue was used to justify the sanctions bill. That, plus miscellaneous Russian actions, basically in response to U.S. actions (as in Ukraine, where!as everyone should know!Hillary Clinton's crony Victoria Newland helped organize a putsch in February 2014, designed to pull Ukraine into NATO, although that effort has failed and anyway lacks German support).
The U.S. at this point (under Trump) is taking actions towards Russia that recall those of the Truman administration. The warm, fuzzy (and miserable, abjectly weak) Russia of the 1990s under Yeltsin is now a reviving world power within an emerging Eurasian trade system. The relationship between Russia and China will stay strong even if the U.S. takes measures to sabotage trade relations between Russia and Europe.
Meanwhile, the sanctions law has produced general European outrage. This is not the anti-Trump outrage that accompanied his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. It is outrage at the U.S. legislature for its arrogance in demanding Europe shoot itself in the foot, to show Washington deference. In other words, the entirety of the divided, troubled U.S. polity is seen as a problem. This is as a new Pew Research Center report showing that only 49% of the world's people now hold a positive view of the U.S.
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern have publicly condemned the law, which could prevent them from benefiting from the planned Nord Stream 2 pipeline, declaring: "we cannot agree with threats of illegal extraterritorial sanctions against European companies which take part in the development of European energy supply." Brigitte Zypries, head of Germany's Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, says the new sanctions are "against international law, plain and simple Americans cannot punish German companies because they [do business] in another country." The foreign ministers of Germany, France, Austria, Italy and Spain have protested. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said the bill could have "unintended unilateral effects" on the EU's energy security, adding, "America first cannot mean that Europe's interests come last."
This is not just a provocation of Russia, but of the whole world. It's leveled by a bipartisan effort, and general (although insane) consensus that Russia is trying to revive the Soviet empire, is constantly interfering in foreign countries' elections, and represents an "existential" threat to the U.S. and its freedoms, etc. (Because!reputable media talking heads opine routinely!Putin hates freedom and wants to oppose it, by electoral interference in Germany, France, Italy, etc.)
U.S. politicians!many of whom who do not believe in global warming or evolution, and cannot find Syria or Ukraine on the map!have boldly gone where no one has gone before: to risk a trade war with traditional allies, to force them to more firmly embrace the principle of U.S. hegemony. This when the U.S. GDP has dropped below that of the EU, and U.S. clout and credibility in the world!in large part due to global revulsion at the results of U.S. regime-change wars!is at low ebb.
Medvedev predicts that "relations between Russia and the United States are going to be extremely tense regardless of Congress' makeup and regardless of who is president. Lengthy arguments in international bodies and courts are ahead, as well as rising international tensions and refusal to settle major international issues." No bromance here.
Meanwhile Sen. Lindsey Graham!an extreme reactionary and warmonger now lionized my the mainstream media as some sort of "moderate" and adult in the room!informs NBC's Today Show that reports that "there is no military option" on North Korea are "just false."
"There is a military option: to destroy North Korea's nuclear program and North Korea itself. He's not going to allow -- President Trump -- the ability of this madman [Kim Jong Un] to have a missile that could hit America. If there's going to be a war to stop him, it will be over there. If thousands die, they're going to die over there. They're not going to die over here -- and he's told me that to my face."
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Jul 26, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Anti Schmoo , July 26, 2017 at 5:17 am
Anti Schmoo , July 26, 2017 at 5:30 amAre the Latest Russia Sanctions Really About Forcing US LNG on Europe?
Of course they are; and it's so bloody transparent that nobody is fooled. Please check the link below: http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/eu-ready-retaliate-if-us-imposes-new-russia-sanctions/ri20467
Anti Schmoo , July 26, 2017 at 5:34 amThe U.S. is waging full scale war against Russia; economic sanctions are war and Japan attacked Pearl Harbour for almost identical sanctions on oil and energy imports. Vladimir Putin is the Cool Hand Luke of Russia; let hope the outcome is not like the movie. The E.U. seems to have had a recent spinal transplant; let's just see how it plays out
Foppe , July 26, 2017 at 6:31 amI dare say, Russia is more self sufficient than the U.S. and almost every other country on the planet. Do the research; it's very enlightening.
The U.S. is a very jealous hegemon and can't bear this realityAnti Schmoo , July 26, 2017 at 8:43 amIt's also got half the population, and a far less diversified economy (fwtw), so it's not exactly a apples to apples comparison.
NotTimothyGeithner , July 26, 2017 at 9:14 amHave you ever thought to question your comparitive references? Most views of Russia are western-centric in the extreme. Russia is not western or European in any sense of that reality; Russia is a very different culture/s and sees things drastically different than the western-centric POV. Just sayin
Foppe , July 26, 2017 at 10:38 amThe Western, eastern stuff is irrelevant. Russia isn't the aggressor in the situation. Putin will enjoy a population much more willing to stand against U.S. aggression which is largely dependent on an ignorant U.S. population.
Merkel will be under pressure as these sanctions are simply a tax on EU citizens and corporations to support American corporate profits without providing better products. Given the EU political structure and the lack of a "cool" President, I suspect the next Congressional delegation will be shocked to find they aren't well received.
Mel , July 26, 2017 at 10:08 amI'm confused. Who was it who brought up "Russia is more self-sufficient than the US and almost every other country on the planet? That implies that you feel self-sufficiency (with respect to certain metrics) is something that one should value. Let's say other people do not share that meta value: does that then mean they are wrong?
I personally doubt that the Blob/US financial interests are 'jealous' of them -- they just think that Russia, like other countries, should kowtow to them, and allow them to buy whatever part of the Russian society and economy and land they like.
Damson , July 27, 2017 at 1:13 amI had thought of it the other way around: that the insistence on unprofitable fracking was to support America as a world power. Got to have some way to bribe Europe away from the Russians. Is there actually enough gas to do that? I know there's quite a bit.
timbers , July 26, 2017 at 6:38 amYes indeed.
It's looking like quite the little diplomatic spat between the EU and Capitol Hill.
Here's the Russian envoy to the EU on talks to ban funding by EU banks for US business, if the US law is declared invalid in the EU :
http://tass.com/politics/957927Note the bill bans not just business with Russians in Europe, but also Eurasia.
OBOR is clearly a target too.
So are the Chinese going to pipe up?
For this is nothing less than gloves – off imperialism .
Ignacio , July 26, 2017 at 7:52 amAnyone know if it's possible the German's will act w/o the EU? In other words, unilaterally?
I'm asking because the article says EU may not be the "required" unanimous in responding to the U.S. sanctions & LNG so there may not be an official EU retaliation (though it seems there was much stronger opposition to the EU imposing Russian sanctions in 2014 in the first place but supposedly that was a "unanimous" decision).
Will Germany be a total puppet to the U.S.? Or might it start to move towards Russia which seems to be in Germany's business interest?
No spine no pain , July 26, 2017 at 9:05 amGermany wants to ensure stable gas supply for as long as possible. A pipeline thas goes through the sea and does not depend on third countries that migth disconnect the pipeline (like Ukrania) allows for a durable contract. So the US is not only intefering with russian interests but with german ones. I don't think Germany considers US shale LNG supply a robust enough alternative competitive in price and duration with russian gas. My guess is that in this case, Germany won't be a total puppet.
Mel , July 26, 2017 at 11:30 amAnti Schmoo put it very well "The E.U. seems to have had a recent spinal transplant"
EU has been following every global US initiative enthusiastically even though it only hurts Europeans: wars and invasions, TTIP, TiSA, CETA etc.
On top of being emasculated and spineless with regards to national and continental interests the current leaders of EU are neoliberals so they don't care about a new 'market solution' for gas. Will subsidize the higher prices for companies while the citizens pay the price.
Harry , July 26, 2017 at 7:28 pm:) q.v. Frank Herbert's very old novel The Dragon in the Sea (aka Under Pressure .) Being by Frank Herbert, it's about psychology, but it's also about petroleum pirating by submarine. Yeah, I guess the price per barrel must have been pretty high.
ZeWorldIsMine , July 26, 2017 at 6:52 amThe pipelines that go under the sea have lower capacities. They work to reduce the impact of ukrainians et al blackmailing gas supplies. They do not eliminate the need to route gas overland.
Clive , July 26, 2017 at 7:25 amSadly, Sigmar Gabriel's word means nothing.
He's an opportunitist and may advocate something one day and oppose it the next day.
He is absolutely not trustworthy. A total pushover.
And I wouldn't expect much from the rest of the german government, too.The german media could pick it up and put pressure on politicians.
But due to the pathetic state the germain mainstream media are in (with exceptions),
I expect they'll just stop bringing up this issue and let people forget about it.Maybe other european countries will be more resistant, maybe
rjs , July 26, 2017 at 8:24 amPlus Japan -- a big LNG importer historically as it has no conventional energy sources of its own -- is going to lessen its LNG demand as the nuclear restart gathers pace. Whatever you might think of the safety aspects, Japan has 50+gW of embedded nuclear generating capacity with a residual economic life of 20+ years on average. It is simply inconceivable that this plant, much of which, unlike Fukushima which was end-of-life, is mid-life and has decades of viable reactor runtimes available, will be mothballed and decommissioned without generating another kW of power ever again.
The LNG glut will only continue and probably get noticeably worse once all, or at least the vast majority, of Japanese reactors are brought back on line, which will be 5 years from now at the outer limit. Cutting off Russian gas into Europe (and the rest of the world) will be a big plus for the US. LNG liquefaction plant is a massive capital outlay, has big fixed costs and is highly operationally geared, so even small reductions below peak output have a big hit on plant profitability. It is those "wheels" the US plant operators will want to keep turning. Conversely, the regasification plants (based in EU countries) don't need to operate flat out, they're designed to have peaks and troughs as LNG consignments come in and get processed, then sit around for a bit waiting for the next one. Which, again, is why the US is bothered about restricting Russian supply, the EU not so much.
ambrit , July 26, 2017 at 8:39 amthere is no surplus US LNG to be forced on Europe, it's a myth we are still importing more natural gas from Canada than we are exporting to Mexico and liquifying for export moreover, our own natural gas production has been falling year over year for 15 months straight i wrote about exactly this situation two weeks ago:
http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/great-us-natural-gas-exports-myth-6112
all the data is included. you can repost it if you want.
we are contracting to sell US natural gas at below the cost of US production, and it's gonna come back and bite US natgas users big time when a shortage develops here..rjs , July 26, 2017 at 10:10 amIS natgas users would be anyone who uses American electricity, right? Another 'regressive' tax on the way. Really, this is not New Cold War oriented, but Class War materiel.
Time for work.Yves Smith Post author , July 26, 2017 at 5:43 pmthere's been a gradual shift back to coal for generating over the past half year or so whether that's because of price or because the utilities see what's coming i couldn't tell you..
rjs , July 26, 2017 at 6:24 pmSee the comments above, the US is flaring a ton of gas now due to supposedly to lack of delivery mechanisms.
Carolinian , July 26, 2017 at 8:36 ammaybe i'm projecting too much, but i see us heading down the same path that Australia took
How energy-rich Australia exported its way into an energy crisis - Australia exported 62% of its gas production last year, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Yet its policy makers didn't ensure enough gas would remain at home. As exports increased from new LNG facilities in eastern Australia, some state governments let aging coal plants close and accelerated a push toward renewable energy for environmental concerns. That left the regions more reliant on gas for power, especially when intermittent sources such as wind and solar weren't sufficient. Shortages drove domestic gas prices earlier this year in some markets in eastern Australia to as high as $17 per million British thermal units for smaller gas users such as manufacturers. On the spot market, gas prices have gone from below $1 in 2014 to roughly $7 today .. In March, Australia's largest aluminum smelter cut production and laid off workers because it said it couldn't secure enough cheap energy.the problem is that we are are contracting to export natural gas at today's low prices, which wont pay for tomorrow's production..
NotTimothyGeithner , July 26, 2017 at 9:35 amPerhaps the most interesting and depressing thing is that 419 to 3 vote. Who were these heroes who dared to defy the Blob?
Clearly defeating Hillary was not enough. TPTB will have their war with Russia–cold or hot–or bust.
Vatch , July 26, 2017 at 10:00 amThe U.S. much like Team Blue hid behind our "cool" President and 9/11 for so long, no one knows how to act. This is a trade war where we picked a fight with our most loyal vassals on behalf of one industry which needs to be replaced anyway. Do you remember Hollande? He joined with Obama against "OMG Russia." Macron's honey moon is over.
Carolinian , July 26, 2017 at 11:20 amhttp://clerk.house.gov/evs/2017/roll413.xml
The 3 no voters were Justin Amash of Michigan, John Duncan of Tennessee, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky. All are Republicans.
p7b , July 26, 2017 at 9:27 amThanks.
JohnnyGL , July 26, 2017 at 10:28 amOne aspect of the US natgas pipeline situation !
Due to resignations early in the Trump administration, and refusal of the Senate to approve new FERC nominees, the FERC, whose approval is needed for building interstate energy transport infrastructure, now lacks a quorum (having only 1 of the minimum 3 members out of 5 total). A number of pipeline projects originating in marcellus were approved around end of 2016 prior to the resignations, and are due to come on line in 2018, but many dozens more are now awaiting permitting -- both for domestic use and to transport to LNG export, as the piece above states.
The other interesting thing is that in the past, the explicit strategy of the US was to use domestic natgas domestically, but no longer, it seems.
Pipelines would raise prices at the wellhead and lower prices elsewhere in the country. If the lack of approval goes on for a few more years, it may have an impact on: the battle between natgas and wind for the medium-term dominance of newly added utility scale electric generation in the US, and the timing of how fast we can retire coal electric.
Lastly, besides Russia, Qatar is also a major natgas exporter to Europe, so they'll get their gas either way, they'll just pay more. A points of reference there -- I belive Germany is currently using coal as its main domestic baseload electric fuel – as prices were relatively high until recently, they're using NG for home heating only. Now everyone needs to retire coal for obvious reasons.
oh , July 26, 2017 at 10:15 amJamming up FERC shouldn't be underestimated. They've got a huge amount of discretionary authority to blast through state and local laws and regulations at will. It's amazing how the oil/gas industry gets 1-stop shopping for all it's regulatory requirements.
TheCatSaid , July 26, 2017 at 10:19 amIt's sickening to see how much power the Petroleum companies have over Congress. Bribes work well in our country. We need a wholesale re-haul of CON gress.
yan , July 26, 2017 at 11:14 amRegarding possible EU development of a spine, a recent George Webb video from just about 3 days ago said he's been told by some of his IC sources that Germany has been printing DMs on the quiet. I take this with a pinch of salt but it's intriguing nonetheless. If true, Germany must also be looking at the IT issue as well.
vidimi , July 26, 2017 at 11:25 amEU is still threatening to cancel Poland voting rights for 1 year, even after the President vetoed the legislation regarding judiciary reform (which was to my understanding the main bone, albeit the country is keen on going full Adolph). Maybe it has something to do with this?
vidimi , July 26, 2017 at 11:23 ami thought the president signed the bill despite saying he would veto it?
dcblogger , July 26, 2017 at 2:46 pmthanks for this article, it's really a remarkable powerplay. the stakes are so high that it's unfathomable that it doesn't backfire spectacularly. this looks like an exercise in hubris that future historians will be long discussing.
more than forcing the EU to use american LNG, it is an attempt to force the EU to back american efforts to replace assad in syria. remember, syria is what stands in the way between bahraini/saudi gas and oil pipelines to europe.
the US is already at war against russia, they just haven't yet started shooting at each other. but also, any chinese silk road to europe will have to use russian assets and infrastructure, so this, potentially, affects them, too.
Rosario , July 26, 2017 at 3:54 pmTrump Is Being Moved Aside So That Conflict with Russia Can Proceed
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/07/26/trump-moved-aside-conflict-russia-can-proceed/Synapsid , July 26, 2017 at 6:43 pmAll stupidity with the Russia hysteria aside this may be all the faster at forcing a move to renewables in the US. NG is the bounciest of all carbon based fuels WRT price. Once they start pumping US NG into more foreign markets the price will climb, which will squeeze utilities that have moved en mass into NG based generation and prove that renewables are even more cost effective. Petty politics may end up having a silver lining 5 years down the road, and at this point I am open to any route to renewables, even the sloppiest, unintentional ones.
Rosario , July 26, 2017 at 7:43 pmRosario,
If exporting US NG causes its price to rise domestically, utilities that had been using coal can shift back to it. That happened recently.
Olaf Lukk , July 26, 2017 at 4:02 pmSure, but the ball is in another (higher) cup as the cost graphs go. I suspect it is going to get increasingly difficult to transition back and forth with the lowering costs of renewables. Also, coal is not getting any cheaper to extract and it definitely hasn't reduced its externalities. We'll see, big utilities move in herds and it takes years to make a full transition. They may flood back to coal, and build new plants (I doubt it), but they will eventually get burnt and have to swing back again. In the absence of purposeful national level policy (what I prefer) this is the only way the market based approach will turn away from fossil fuels.
Yves Smith Post author , July 26, 2017 at 5:51 pm"Instruments of political sanctions should not be connected with economic interests"?
This echoes the rationalizations of Wall Street when they crashed the economy in '08. Let's not let politics interfere with the right to make money?
The sanctions against Russia were put in place in response to its annexation of Crimea and its support of insurrection in Eastern Ukraine. They have been extended, and expanded, in response to Russian meddling in the recent presidential election. To what extent their cyber warfare had an effect is debatable, but Trump's stonewalling on the issue practically guaranteed the lopsided vote on the latest sanctions.
The LNG issue has some valid points, but it ignores an issue which I have not seen addressed on Naked Capitalism: Just how much is Trump- and those in his administration (infested with alumni of the vampire squid)- beholden to Putin and his fellow oligarchs?
Trump appears to be the Pied Piper of Putin Patsies. I can't help but wonder why.
GeorgW , July 26, 2017 at 8:26 pmCrimea was not "annexed". The US destabilized Ukraine. The government in Kiev came in as a result of a coup even thought elections were scheduled for a mere six weeks later and Yanukovich would clearly have been voted out. The new government tore up the current constitution and went through no legal process whatsoever to do that. That is not the behavior of a legitimate government.
Even though neo-Nazis are a very small percentage of the voters, they got 15% of government positions. The head of the defense department gave a speech in which he encouraged ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians of Russian origin, saying that any soldiers who removed them could keep their property.
Crimea petitioned to join Russia after a referendum that approved of that move by a large margin. The US used precisely the same mechanism with Kosovo. Are you about to call that an annexation?
We have repeatedly discussed how the idea that Russia has influence over Trump is nonsense.
Better trolls, please.
Yves Smith Post author , July 27, 2017 at 12:33 amhttp://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-what-does-russiagate-look-like-to-russians-w493462# -Amazed, that you never linked this
Lambert Strether , July 27, 2017 at 12:47 amI'm not omniscient and I've been unable to read for more than a week due to an eye injury, as Lambert told readers.
TheCatSaid , July 26, 2017 at 9:48 pmDid you suggest it at the time? The newsflow is a gusher right now. It's simply not possible to give notice to everything. So do feel free to stifle your amazement.
Adding, it is a very good story (although I'm not a Russia hand). So readers may enjoy it even at this late date which was, I take it, the real point of your comment.
jo6pac , July 26, 2017 at 10:11 pmPlus the assertion of Russian "meddling" in the 2016 election was never proven–it was only asserted and repeated ad nauseum. Recent investigations have shown that in fact the DNC and Podesta emails were insider leaks, they were not outsider hacks. The technical analysis showed evidence that Russian "footprints" had been specifically inserted to cause Russia to be blamed.
In contrast the US has a well-established track record of meddling in other countries elections and setting up regime change in various ways. Ukraine is one example, as Yves described. There are many others, think of the US-sponsored coups in Latin America. They seem to be trying to pull off another coup in Venezuela since their 2002 attempt didn't work out. And Obama didn't hesitate to publicly endorse Macron just a couple days before the French election.
Lambert Strether , July 27, 2017 at 12:52 amThank You, Thank You
clarky90 , July 26, 2017 at 9:16 pm> the Pied Piper
Highly unfortunate, then, that the Clinton campaign maneuvered to have Trump as their opponent, using just that phrase ("Pied Piper") .
Olaf Lukk , July 29, 2017 at 4:03 am"the latest US sanctions against Russia, which passed the House today by a 419-3 margin ".
and
"Republicans and Democrats agreed almost unanimously, by 97 votes to 2 , to impose new sanctions on Russia in the Senate on Wednesday"
I have been a member of many organizations, and do not recall seeing this kind of "unanimity" when voting on significant and controversial resolutions. Clearly, a majority of US Americans want peace, particularly with Russia (a Christian democracy). How and why did the People's Representatives/Senators find the "courage" to vote against the People's wishes??? Hmmmmmmmm?
To put the vote into a context, 77 years ago; on
" ..July 14–15, 1940 – Rigged elections held in Latvia and the other Baltic states. Only one pre-approved list of candidates was allowed for elections for the "People's Parliament". The ballots held following instructions: "Only the list of the Latvian Working People's Bloc must be deposited in the ballot box. The ballot must be deposited without any changes." The alleged voter activity index was 97.6% . Most notably, the complete election results were published in Moscow 12 hours before the election closed. Soviet electoral documents found later substantiated that the results were completely fabricated. Tribunals were set up to punish "traitors to the people." those who had fallen short of the "political duty" of voting Latvia into the USSR. Those who failed to have their passports stamped for so voting were allowed to be shot in the back of the head.
July 21, 1940 – The fraudulently installed Saeima meets for the first time. It has only one piece of business!a petition to join the Soviet Union. (The consideration of such an action was denied throughout the election.) The petition carried unanimously. .."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_occupation_of_Latvia_in_1940
Is the Neo-NKVD whipping the Senate and USA House members into voting in the "correct" way?
It is the nearly 100% vote that bothers me- Not what I would expect in a free and open minded democracy.
Mark W. , July 27, 2017 at 1:10 amSo the US congress voted almost unanimously to impose sanctions because they were worried that otherwise, they would be shot in the back of the head?
Makes perfect sense to me!
Yves Smith Post author , July 27, 2017 at 3:09 amRead Petrodollar Warfare and The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony for a start and a lot of this will become more clear. The Iraq war, the U.S. instigated coup in Ukraine, U.S. backed attempt at regime change in Syria and the demonization of Russia all concern oil supplies and who will be allowed to supply what to whom, and more importantly in what currency such sales will be denominated. All of this stuff is about trying to maintain the dollar's reserve currency status. Isn't this becoming clear by now. Americans are still trying to understand why they invaded Iraq. Was it WMDs, Al Qaeda, to bring freedom and democracy to the towel heads? Hussein decided in 2000 that Iraqi oil sales would be denominated in Euros, three years later he was conveniently dead.
mark , July 27, 2017 at 3:19 amWhile I agree that the US has hegemonic aspirations, the petrodollar thesis is all wet.
Since the 1600s at least, countries have pursued mercantilist policies. That means first of all that they like running trade surpluses. That allows them to have more jobs than their own economies would support, keeping their citizens happy. They can also be net savers without having a drag on the domestic economy.
But who will be the chump that exports jobs and has crappy growth to accommodate the mercantlists? The US has signed up for that role, in large measure because the US cares more about the 1%, the 0.1%, and the interest of US multinationals than its citizens.
As long as everyone else wants to run trade surpluses and we are the only big player willing to run sustained trade deficits, the dollar will remain the reserve currency. China has absolutely zero interest in running trade deficits despite pining after the cachet of having the reserve currency. The Eurozone maybe could have been a contender, but not with Germany being fiercely mercantlist and Germany's insistence on not rebalancing within the Eurozone creating perceived breakup risk.
Yves Smith Post author , July 27, 2017 at 5:51 am@Yves
In order to answer your question to German language readers in the article.
There are several differences this time compared to previous instances of perhaps controversial US-policy in Europe.
First of all the official positions of the German and Austrian government as well as the EU-Commission are in harsh opposition to the bill while previously only opposition politicians or fringe business interests voiced negative opinions.
Secondly the issue has been spread around in the relevant German business press a great deal, yesterday alone about a dozen news agency reports were published, all with pretty much the same tone and content. It has also been picked up by the op-ed pages in the papers today. This is in stark contrast to previous instances like a leader from Die Linke blaming the refugee crisis on US wars in 2015, Nato expansion to the east and troop build up in the Baltic or the planned upgrade of US nuclear weapons stationed in Germany. All three topics are out of mainstream discussion and anyone bringing up a negative opinion, like the mentioned politician from Die Linke, is ridiculed.
Thirdly while the EU needs the approval of all members to establish sanctions it could do a great deal to prosecute a trade war via executive decisions by the EU-Commission alone. While there has been no official indication how the threatened retaliation is going to look like several simple measures come to mind. For instance the EU could suspend the EU-US privacy shield agreement thereby increasing the cost of doing business in the EU for US companies by a significant amount, it would also be likely that cartell/market dominance investigations might result in harsher fines for US companies and more restricted mergers, something which has been brought up by EU officials sometime ago is to require all foreign or only US banking and maybe other financial institutions to be seperate concerns with full capitalisation and no dependencies on the US-holdings.To summarise: it looks like a significant amount of the German "business community" is not amused and views the bill as a direct attack on its interests and tries to use their influence with the goverment against it. This raises the likelihood of something more than mere talk to above 0%. In any case the image of the US has taken another hit, this time with a group of people with mostly very positive opinions about close US-German relations.
Damson , July 27, 2017 at 5:04 pmThis is VERY helpful. Thanks so much!
vidimi , July 26, 2017 at 11:23 amOf course, the gas suppliers won't necessarily be in US – others plan to benefit from the Russian sanctions :
http://m.dw.com/en/eu-to-cut-gas-dependency-on-russia-with-israel-pipeline/a-38269274
What do people think the Syria carve – up is really about?
dcblogger , July 26, 2017 at 2:46 pmthanks for this article, it's really a remarkable powerplay. the stakes are so high that it's unfathomable that it doesn't backfire spectacularly. this looks like an exercise in hubris that future historians will be long discussing.
more than forcing the EU to use american LNG, it is an attempt to force the EU to back american efforts to replace assad in syria. remember, syria is what stands in the way between bahraini/saudi gas and oil pipelines to europe.
the US is already at war against russia, they just haven't yet started shooting at each other. but also, any chinese silk road to europe will have to use russian assets and infrastructure, so this, potentially, affects them, too.
Trump Is Being Moved Aside So That Conflict with Russia Can Proceed
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/07/26/trump-moved-aside-conflict-russia-can-proceed/Rosario , July 26, 2017 at 3:54 pm
Synapsid , July 26, 2017 at 6:43 pmAll stupidity with the Russia hysteria aside this may be all the faster at forcing a move to renewables in the US. NG is the bounciest of all carbon based fuels WRT price. Once they start pumping US NG into more foreign markets the price will climb, which will squeeze utilities that have moved en mass into NG based generation and prove that renewables are even more cost effective. Petty politics may end up having a silver lining 5 years down the road, and at this point I am open to any route to renewables, even the sloppiest, unintentional ones.
Rosario , July 26, 2017 at 7:43 pmRosario,
If exporting US NG causes its price to rise domestically, utilities that had been using coal can shift back to it. That happened recently.
Sure, but the ball is in another (higher) cup as the cost graphs go. I suspect it is going to get increasingly difficult to transition back and forth with the lowering costs of renewables. Also, coal is not getting any cheaper to extract and it definitely hasn't reduced its externalities. We'll see, big utilities move in herds and it takes years to make a full transition. They may flood back to coal, and build new plants (I doubt it), but they will eventually get burnt and have to swing back again. In the absence of purposeful national level policy (what I prefer) this is the only way the market based approach will turn away from fossil fuels.
Olaf Lukk , July 26, 2017 at 4:02 pm
Yves Smith Post author , July 26, 2017 at 5:51 pm"Instruments of political sanctions should not be connected with economic interests"?
This echoes the rationalizations of Wall Street when they crashed the economy in '08. Let's not let politics interfere with the right to make money?
The sanctions against Russia were put in place in response to its annexation of Crimea and its support of insurrection in Eastern Ukraine. They have been extended, and expanded, in response to Russian meddling in the recent presidential election. To what extent their cyber warfare had an effect is debatable, but Trump's stonewalling on the issue practically guaranteed the lopsided vote on the latest sanctions.
The LNG issue has some valid points, but it ignores an issue which I have not seen addressed on Naked Capitalism: Just how much is Trump- and those in his administration (infested with alumni of the vampire squid)- beholden to Putin and his fellow oligarchs?
Trump appears to be the Pied Piper of Putin Patsies. I can't help but wonder why.
Crimea was not "annexed". The US destabilized Ukraine. The government in Kiev came in as a result of a coup even thought elections were scheduled for a mere six weeks later and Yanukovich would clearly have been voted out. The new government tore up the current constitution and went through no legal process whatsoever to do that. That is not the behavior of a legitimate government.
Even though neo-Nazis are a very small percentage of the voters, they got 15% of government positions. The head of the defense department gave a speech in which he encouraged ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians of Russian origin, saying that any soldiers who removed them could keep their property.
Crimea petitioned to join Russia after a referendum that approved of that move by a large margin. The US used precisely the same mechanism with Kosovo. Are you about to call that an annexation?
We have repeatedly discussed how the idea that Russia has influence over Trump is nonsense.
Better trolls, please.
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Jul 29, 2017 | www.unz.com
Do they know what they are doing? When the U.S. Congress adopts draconian sanctions aimed mainly at disempowering President Trump and ruling out any move to improve relations with Russia, do they realize that the measures amount to a declaration of economic war against their dear European "friends"?
Whether they know or not, they obviously don't care. U.S. politicians view the rest of the world as America's hinterland, to be exploited, abused and ignored with impunity.
The Bill H.R. 3364 "Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act" was adopted on July 25 by all but three members of the House of Representatives. An earlier version was adopted by all but two Senators. Final passage at veto-overturning proportions is a certainty.
This congressional temper tantrum flails in all directions. The main casualties are likely to be America's dear beloved European allies, notably Germany and France. Who also sometimes happen to be competitors, but such crass considerations don't matter in the sacred halls of the U.S. Congress, totally devoted to upholding universal morality.
Economic "Soft Power" Hits Hard
Under U.S. sanctions, any EU nation doing business with Russia may find itself in deep trouble. In particular, the latest bill targets companies involved in financing Nord Stream 2, a pipeline designed to provide Germany with much needed natural gas from Russia.
By the way, just to help out, American companies will gladly sell their own fracked natural gas to their German friends, at much higher prices.
That is only one way in which the bill would subject European banks and enterprises to crippling restrictions, lawsuits and gigantic fines.
While the U.S. preaches "free competition", it constantly takes measures to prevent free competition at the international level.
Following the July 2015 deal ensuring that Iran could not develop nuclear weapons, international sanctions were lifted, but the United States retained its own previous ones. Since then, any foreign bank or enterprise contemplating trade with Iran is apt to receive a letter from a New York group calling itself "United Against Nuclear Iran" which warns that "there remain serious legal, political, financial and reputational risks associated with doing business in Iran, particularly in sectors of the Iranian economy such as oil and gas". The risks cited include billions of dollars of (U.S.) fines, surveillance by "a myriad of regulatory agencies", personal danger, deficiency of insurance coverage, cyber insecurity, loss of more lucrative business, harm to corporate reputation and a drop in shareholder value.
The United States gets away with this gangster behavior because over the years it has developed a vast, obscure legalistic maze, able to impose its will on the "free world" economy thanks to the omnipresence of the dollar, unrivaled intelligence gathering and just plain intimidation.
European leaders reacted indignantly to the latest sanctions. The German foreign ministry said it was "unacceptable for the United States to use possible sanctions as an instrument to serve the interest of U.S. industry". The French foreign ministry denounced the "extraterritoriality" of the U.S. legislation as unlawful, and announced that "To protect ourselves against the extraterritorial effects of US legislation, we will have to work on adjusting our French and European laws".
In fact, bitter resentment of arrogant U.S. imposition of its own laws on others has been growing in France, and was the object of a serious parliamentary report delivered to the French National Assembly foreign affairs and finance committees last October 5, on the subject of "the extraterritoriality of American legislation".
Extraterritoriality
The chairman of the commission of enquiry, long-time Paris representative Pierre Lellouche, summed up the situation as follows:
"The facts are very simple. We are confronted with an extremely dense wall of American legislation whose precise intention is to use the law to serve the purposes of the economic and political imperium with the idea of gaining economic and strategic advantages. As always in the United States, that imperium, that normative bulldozer operates in the name of the best intentions in the world since the United States considers itself a 'benevolent power', that is a country that can only do good."
Always in the name of "the fight against corruption" or "the fight against terrorism", the United States righteously pursues anything legally called a "U.S. person", which under strange American law can refer to any entity doing business in the land of the free, whether by having an American subsidiary, or being listed on the New York stock exchange, or using a U.S.-based server, or even by simply trading in dollars, which is something that no large international enterprise can avoid.
In 2014, France's leading bank, BNP-Paribas, agreed to pay a whopping fine of nearly nine billion dollars, basically for having used dollar transfers in deals with countries under U.S. sanctions. The transactions were perfectly legal under French law. But because they dealt in dollars, payments transited by way of the United States, where diligent computer experts could find the needle in the haystack. European banks are faced with the choice between prosecution, which entails all sorts of restrictions and punishments before a verdict is reached, or else, counseled by expensive U.S. corporate lawyers, and entering into the obscure "plea bargain" culture of the U.S. judicial system, unfamiliar to Europeans. Just like the poor wretch accused of robbing a convenience store, the lawyers urge the huge European enterprises to plea guilty in order to escape much worse consequences.
Alstom, a major multinational corporation whose railroad section produces France's high speed trains, is a jewel of French industry. In 2014, under pressure from U.S. accusations of corruption (probably bribes to officials in a few developing countries), Alstom sold off its electricity branch to General Electric.
The underlying accusation is that such alleged "corruption" by foreign firms causes U.S. firms to lose markets. That is possible, but there is no practical reciprocity here. A whole range of U.S. intelligence agencies, able to spy on everyone's private communications, are engaged in commercial espionage around the world. As an example, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, devoted to this task, operates with 200 employees on an annual budget of over $30 million. The comparable office in Paris employs five people.
This was the situation as of last October. The latest round of sanctions can only expose European banks and enterprises to even more severe consequences, especially concerning investments in the vital Nord Stream natural gas pipeline.
This bill is just the latest in a series of U.S. legislative measures tending to break down national legal sovereignty and create a globalized jurisdiction in which anyone can sue anyone else for anything, with ultimate investigative capacity and enforcement power held by the United States.
Wrecking the European Economy
Over a dozen European Banks (British, German, French, Dutch, Swiss) have run afoul of U.S. judicial moralizing, compared to only one U.S. bank: JP Morgan Chase.
The U.S. targets the European core countries, while its overwhelming influence in the northern rim – Poland, the Baltic States and Sweden – prevents the European Union from taking any measures (necessarily unanimous) contrary to U.S. interests.
By far the biggest catch in Uncle Sam's financial fishing expedition is Deutsche Bank. As Pierre Lellouche warned during the final hearing of the extraterritorial hearings last October, U.S. pursuits against Deutsche Bank risk bringing down the whole European banking system. Although it had already paid hundreds of millions of dollars to the State of New York, Deutsche Bank was faced with a "fine of 14 billion dollars whereas it is worth only five and a half. In other words, if this is carried out, we risk a domino effect, a major financial crisis in Europe."
In short, U.S. sanctions amount to a sword of Damocles threatening the economies of the country's main trading partners. This could be a Pyrrhic victory, or more simply, the blow that kills the goose that lays the golden eggs. But hurrah, America would be the winner in a field of ruins.
Former justice minister Elisabeth Guigou called the situation shocking, and noted that France had told the U.S. Embassy that the situation is " insupportable " and insisted that "we must be firm".
Jacques Myard said that "American law is being used to gain markets and eliminate competitors. We should not be naïve and wake up to what is happening."
This enquiry marked a step ahead in French awareness and resistance to a new form of "taxation without representation" exercised by the United States against its European satellites. They committee members all agreed that something must be done.
That was last October. In June, France held parliamentary elections. The commission chairman, Pierre Lellouche (Republican), the rapporteur Karine Berger (Socialist), Elisabeth Guigou (a leading Socialist) and Jacques Myard (Republican) all lost their seats to inexperienced newcomers recruited into President Emmanuel Macron's République en marche party. The newcomers are having a hard time finding their way in parliamentary life and have no political memory, for instance of the Rapport on Extraterritoriality.
As for Macron, as minister of economics, in 2014 he went against earlier government rulings by approving the GE purchase of Alstom. He does not appear eager to do anything to anger the United States.
However, there are some things that are so blatantly unfair that they cannot go on forever.
exiled off mainstreet > , July 29, 2017 at 4:40 am GMT
Randal > , July 29, 2017 at 9:01 am GMTIt looks like the rest of the world is going to have to bring down the economic yankee imperium or be destroyed themselves.
El Dato > , July 29, 2017 at 9:24 am GMTthere are some things that are so blatantly unfair that they cannot go on forever.
LOL! Naïve, I think. As long as European countries (and the UK) are prepared to carry on acting as Washington's bitches, Washington will go on treating them as such.
The political, media and business elites need to be thoroughly cleansed of US apologists. That won't be easy, especially when Europe and the UK are in the grip of an ideologically anti-nationalist culture that is essentially treasonous and utterly lacking in national self-respect.
Ending NATO and suppressing the US-backed anti-Russian propaganda that keeps Europe and the UK subordinate would be the bare minimum first steps, along with cooperating with China and Russia to promote and use financial systems independent of the dollar.
or even by simply trading in dollars, which is something that no large international enterprise can avoid
The countries that are regularly targeted for US bullying are building structures that avoid vulnerability. European countries and the UK need to join with them in doing so (though it's unlikely they will be trusted very far given their track records of collaboration with Washington).
Also companies that decline to deal in the US market should be protected and supported, on national security grounds. It should be straightforwardly illegal in all sovereign countries for the US to try to impose its laws on any company merely for dealing in dollars, and the US should be held directly responsible when its courts seek to do so. US extraterritoriality has always been a gross intrusion into and threat to national sovereignty.
In 2014, France's leading bank, BNP-Paribas, agreed to pay a whopping fine of nearly nine billion dollars, basically for having used dollar transfers in deals with countries under U.S. sanctions.
Ideally this kind of extortion will be to some extent counterbalanced by retaliatory extractions from US business assets such as Google and Facebook.
entering into the obscure "plea bargain" culture of the U.S. judicial system, unfamiliar to Europeans. Just like the poor wretch accused of robbing a convenience store, the lawyers urge the huge European enterprises to plea guilty in order to escape much worse consequences
The US plea bargain system is a disgrace to any kind of concept of justice and basically means that no US confessions or guilty pleas can be regarded as meaningful, and nor should any sovereign country agree to extradition of its own citizens to the US. It is basically a system of organised blackmail, coerced confessions and corruption of witnesses.
Well, Europe could consider all of these payouts to the US as "reparations for Nazi atrocities". This will make it go down easier, after all who wouldn't want to enslave himself to Yankees to repair Nazi atrocities?
Meanwhile, self-flaggelation goes on
Anonymous, July 29, 2017 at 1:11 pm GMT
Western European allies?
Nice choice of words, but fiction-supporting. Under-surerainty would be a better fit.
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Jul 28, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Northern Star , July 26, 2017 at 9:32 am
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/26/pers-j26.htmlNorthern Star , July 26, 2017 at 9:53 am"The new sanctions expose the essential issues behind the "election hacking" campaign of the US media and political establishment, spearheaded by the intelligence agencies that are opposed to any shift away from the anti-Russia policy developed under the Obama administration.
**** The near-unanimous vote in both houses of Congress (all "no" votes in the House were from Republicans) testifies to the degree to which the CIA, NSA and other spy agencies directly control the institutions of the state and the personnel that compose them."***
http://www.newsweek.com/how-do-sanctions-work-new-us-bill-targets-russia-and-europe-nervous-642136marknesop , July 26, 2017 at 6:31 pm"One key question now is how Europe will react," Sir Lyne says. "Over Ukraine, the US and EU marched in step. That is not the case now; and the new bill has the potential to make Europe pay a much higher price than the US."
The EU has never been more dependent on Russian gas, according to Bloomberg, as Russia's state-run gas monopoly Gazprom now pumps over a third (34 percent) of Russia's gas. At present, Gazprom has put the kibosh on one pipeline to the EU, known as South Stream but agreed one that will bring gas on the EU's borders, to Turkey.
By far the new U.S. bill place the most distressing question mark on the pipeline to northern Europe known as Nord Stream II. Five of Europe's biggest energy companies are all signed on to partner Gazprom in pumping gas westwards.
Anglo-Dutch group Royal Dutch Shell, Austria's OMV, France's Engie and Germany's Uniper and Wintershall have agreed to work with Gazprom on the pipeline, collectively covering around half of the nearly $11 billion cost.
The European Commission President Jean Claude-Juncker warned Wednesday that Brussels needs to act "within days" if the U.S. does provide Europe with reassurance that the sanctions will not jeopardize EU interests. A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity told European news site EUobserver, that the European companies would likely not be punished by the U.S. as part of the sanctions but called the situation a "risk" regardless.
"The Europeans intensely dislike U.S. extraterritoriality, and this will widen the breach between the EU and U.S.," Sir Lyne says. "For the Russians, that is a silver lining."
All the europeans need do is tell Uncle Sam to go fuck himself with his sanctions That will pull the rug out from under the American psychos behind the rabid sanction lunacy
All the Europeans need do is tell Uncle Sam to go fuck himself with his sanctions That will pull the rug out from under the American psychos behind the rabid sanction lunacykirill , July 26, 2017 at 7:01 pmOf course that is not going to happen, at least not publicly – there will be no outward sign of European rebellion, because that would be 'playing into Putin's hands', and the European elite still loathes Putin enough to not want to be seen doing that. At the same time, Uncle Sam does not want to back down, and an arrangement – even secret – that America would not apply the sanctions to European companies would completely nullify their effect. European companies would simply ignore them and carry on with their plans. So the possibility they might be invoked has to stay, with all the attendant fury that is likely to cause. Juicy as a mango, I think. Official America has been a bully for so long that it's the only problem-solving approach it remembers.
The question that keeps nagging at the corner of my mind, though, is "What if the USA were successful at stopping the construction of Nord Stream II and Russia ceased transit through Ukraine anyway?" After all, this whole effort is focused on forcing Russia to continue transiting a big part of Europe's gas supplies through Ukraine, both to keep Ukraine viable by forcing Russia to engage with it despite its objectionable ideological government, and to keep Ukraine as a bargaining chip to make Russia appear to be an unreliable supplier.
Washington's assumption is that Russia will continue to transit gas through Ukraine if its alternatives are removed – after all, it's just a big gas station, and it can't live without its gas sales to Europe. But what if, once again, Washington guessed wrong? If I were running Russia – let's pretend, because I'm not – I would orchestrate a series of 'rebel' sabotage attacks on Naftogaz's pipeline network, blowing up substantial parts of it, and then use that as a reason to cease transit of gas through the line: it's just not safe. I would then maximize transit through existing pipelines except Ukraine, perhaps accelerating the completion of Turkish Stream, and publicly and loudly blame any shortfall on American meddling – if Nord Stream had been twinned, you wouldn't have this problem. If it were managed correctly and everything went according to plan, I think it would resonate.
Also, Russia has reduced its dependence on energy exports. It might be worth it to allow a scenario in which Washington got the opportunity to make up for Russian shortfalls, because it would be a complete failure – the export capability is just not there, and if they redoubled their efforts they would lose money like crazy because they could not do it for Russia's prices. Either they would flop at the delivery end, or the Europeans would squeal like pigs because their gas rates went out of sight, or Uncle Sam would take a bath on American exports. Those are the only possible scenarios, it should be emphasized.
We have clear evidence that the politicians in the USA do not have a grip on Russia's economy and exports dependence. By 2019 Russia will have a massive gas pipeline to China. Gas for this pipeline has to come from somewhere and filling it up with Banderastan transit gas would be a good start to put the USA and its EU colony in its place. According to the most recent Awara Group report, the fraction of oil and gas industry in Russia is down to 8% of GDP. Not only is Russia not dependent on oil and gas for its GDP, it will lose nothing by shifting supply away from the EU.Northern Star , July 27, 2017 at 11:20 amAmerican politicians are also under the bizarre delusion that they can replace Russia's piped gas with LNG exports. This delusion is something else. America imports natural gas! It would have to take a major consumption hit, thereby driving up prices since demand will remain, to supply the EU with 150+ billion cubic meters of gas per year that currently comes from Russia. The USA consumed about 780 bcm of gas in 2016. It does not have a spare 150 bcm to sell.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/27/euro-j27.htmlmarknesop , July 27, 2017 at 5:37 pm"The European powers reacted sharply yesterday to the US House of Representatives' passage of a bill imposing sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea, indicating that it was unacceptable to European interests and that the European Union (EU) was preparing retaliatory measures."
"Angry commentary over the sanctions bill in the German press underscore that influential forces in the German ruling class see the sanctions bill as yet further evidence of hostile US intent towards Germany and Europe.
"What is particularly dangerous is that supporters of Russia sanctions in Washington are not only trying to put Putin and Trump in the same bag, but also helping the US economy against foreign competition," wrote the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Under the bill, the daily added, "Europeans would be forced to burn less Russian natural gas and more American liquefied natural gas. This is an unfriendly act, especially against Germany."
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote that, "with all due respect for the Senate and its ambition to tie President Donald Trump's hands on Russia policy, the draft law is unacceptable from a European perspective. First, it breaks the diplomatic alliance between Europe and the United States in deciding on sanctions against Russia. The argument that America is promoting Europe's energy security is also quite insolent. That is Europe's responsibility. This is how you lose friends."The question that is emerging is whether the US-EU military rivalry and bitter trade conflicts will now coalesce and escalate into a catastrophic breakdown in US-EU relations!in the form of a trade war that would bring the world economy to its knees, or of outright military conflict."
Hmmm .So the RWETA is born.. Russia &Western EuropeTrade Allliance
Why make it more complicated than it is? The French are in the lead for once – such sanctions are a violation of international law. Consequently no other nations are obligated to abide by them. If America levied a massive fine against BASF Wintershall, and that company simply ignored it, what would America do? Start booting out German companies in the USA? Melt BMW's and pour them down the drains in the street?As I alluded yesterday, the USA has staked out a position from which it cannot back away, one which is of surpassing stupidity, because it has accustomed itself to being obeyed and fancies itself such a clever manipulator that it will always get its way. It is critical now that Europe actually stand together and speak with one voice; otherwise, America will begin probing for lack of resolve and unlimbering its divide-and-conquer game.
The really funny part in this, from my viewpoint, is the way the Europeans blame Trump and his presidency. Granted, he did frame the 'America first' policy, but that's just a convenient handle for the angry Europeans to grab. Trump entered office with the declared intention of mending the damaged relationship with Russia, and it was the Democrats who created an hysterical firestorm of accusation that Russia had greased Trump's way into office. It has been ideologues outside Trump's circle who crafted the sanctions legislation with a view to preventing him from lifting the sanctions under his own recognizance.
It will also be pretty funny if Russia struggled and pleaded and accepted all manner of small-minded insults just to get into the World Trade Organization, only to see it collapse only a few years later. Because I'm pretty sure what America is trying to pull off here is in gross violation of WTO rules as well.
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Jul 23, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
Glenn E Stehle says: 07/18/2017 at 7:05 pm
Stavros H says: 07/22/2017 at 3:34 pmVes,
So you think Putin is happy about this?
Russia lost $26 billion on oil and gas exports
http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/russia-lost-26-billion-on-oil-and-gas-exports/Russia is making less money on oil and gas exports, according to the data published today by the Federal Customs Service. In 2016, the revenues from oil and gas exports declined by 17.7% (compared to 2015) and amounted to $73.676 billion. Gazprom's revenues from gas exports declined by 25% and amounted to $31.28 billion.
Or this?
Saudis, Russia say oil supply cut being extended to next March
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/saudis-russia-say-oil-supply-cut-being-extended-to-next-march-1.3083423While output curbs introduced at the start of the year are working, global inventories aren't yet at the level targeted by Opec and its allies, Saudi energy minister Khalid Al-Falih said Monday in Beijing alongside his Russian counterpart, Alexander Novak. The ministers agreed the deal should be extended through the first quarter of 2018 at the same volume of reductions, they said .
An increase in Libyan output, together with a surge in US production and signs of recovery in Nigeria, may undercut Opec's strategy to re-balance the market and boost prices.
Or this?
Oil Prices Ease on Signs of Steady Output from Some Producers
http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/151042/Oil_Prices_Ease_on_Signs_of_Steady_Output_from_Some_Producers?utm_source=DailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2017-07-18&utm_content=&utm_campaign=industry_headlines_1Oil prices were about 1 percent lower on Monday as investors continued to await strong indications that an OPEC-led effort to drain a glut was proving effective .
U.S. shale oil production was forecast to rise for the eighth consecutive month, climbing 112,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 5.585 million bpd in August .
Oil prices are less than half their mid-2014 level because of a persistent glut, even after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries with Russia and other non-OPEC producers cut supplies since January.
Or this?
US Shale Oil Output Seen Up for Eighth Month at 5.6 Mln bpd -EIA
http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/151045/US_Shale_Oil_Output_Seen_Up_for_Eighth_Month_at_56_Mln_bpd_EIA?utm_source=DailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2017-07-18&utm_content=&utm_campaign=Production_1U.S. shale oil production is forecast to rise for the eighth consecutive month, climbing 112,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 5.585 million bpd in August, the U.S. Energy Department said in a report on Monday.
The increase comes amid market concerns that rising shale output will dampen the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' efforts to curb a global supply glut.
The U.S. shale production level would be the highest since record-keeping began in 2007, according to the EIA's monthly drilling productivity report.
The US frackers (along with all other high-cost producers around the globe) will go bust before the end of the decade.Glenn E Stehle says: 07/18/2017 at 7:40 pmVes says: 07/18/2017 at 10:46 pm
Glenn,Glenn E Stehle says: 07/19/2017 at 6:35 amIt is garbage articles. Only trading oil shares on stock market is zero sum game so when Mr Buffet makes $1 million many others lost a little bit each to the tune of $1 million. But country producing oil and exporting is not stock market. It is life and life is not zero-sum game. If oil companies in one oil producing country lost 10-20-30 billion it does not mean that oil companies in other oil producing country gained 10-20-30 billion. Glenn, this is so basic.
Look this way, very simple way, if you and your neighbour are earning oil royalties on your Texas land in US$ with exactly same interest and he has to live in Texas (and has to pay living expense in $US) and you live in Mexico (paying expenses in pesos) it is not the same. For you "It's morning in Mexico" but for your Texas neighbour is so so.
Ves,Eulenspiegel says: 07/19/2017 at 8:30 amRevenue = number of units sold x price per unit
A lease that produces 12,000 BO per year at $100/BO generates $1.2 million in revenue.
A lease that produces 120,000 BO per year at $50/BO generates $6 million in revenue.
Most people consider $6 million in revenue to be better than $1.2 million.
It depends on your costs whats the best – If you have 49$ costs, the first least will still generate 612.000$ profit, the second only 120.000$ despite pumping the 10 fold amount.Glenn E Stehle says: 07/19/2017 at 8:51 amIf you have only 1 piece of land and can wait(it's your land, and you have the money), the first option is the best – if you are a shale company with 1 zillion in debt, the second option is the best to dish out all your assets to hit your payment rates.
Someone here described at a rule of a thumb you should earn the 3 fold price of drilling costs to make a good fortune since you have additional costs – so waiting a bit before calling for the fracking pump can pay out here.
Let the Saudis, the Russians and the cheap money wallstreet companies shoot out their battle – when the first topples (perhaps SA running out of money first, Venezuala soon goes bottom-up) prices will be north of 70$ again.
Northsea-oil is another candidate for going bottom-up, the same with old giant fields like chinese super fields where they stopped injecting at 60$. Together with a healthy 1.4 mb demand growth there will be times when even a wide deveoloped Permian can't sustain all demands at 40-50$.
Eulenspiegel said:Eulenspiegel says: 07/20/2017 at 3:50 amTogether with a healthy 1.4 mb demand growth there will be times when even a wide developed Permian can't sustain all demands at 40-50$.
I sure hope you're right, and that the competitors "go bottom-up," or at least blink, sooner than later.
This is from Pioneer Resources' June investor presentation.
Why only 2.31$ productions cost for permian horizontals, I think the pipelines are the same as for the verticals direct in the spot beneath?Boomer II says: 07/19/2017 at 9:09 amAll other shales have higher production costs, too – which doesn't make the thing better at the momentary depressed oil prices.
Looks like they have big red numbers in Eagle Ford even at top locations.
But if the total BO from the lease is the same whether it comes out slowly or quickly, then getting the oil out quickly at a low price is not as good as getting the oil out slowly at a higher price.Glenn E Stehle says: 07/19/2017 at 9:28 amYour lifetime return on your lease would be the most important number.
BoomerII,Boomer II says: 07/19/2017 at 10:17 amWell that certainly is the conclusion that the Pure and the Humble (aka John D. Rockefeller) came to in the 1930s after the discovery of the East Texas Field.
But just exactly how do you propose that those "higher prices" be achieved in a competitive, free market economy?
Or do you advocate for the re-cartelization of the market place for oil, the way it was between 1936 and the 1970?
Financing in the oil industry will take care of it. If loans and investments dry up as lenders and investors find better deals to make, there will be less drilling. It's the oil industry itself to blame for low prices.Glenn E Stehle says: 07/19/2017 at 11:03 amBoomer II,Boomer II says: 07/19/2017 at 11:29 amThat's how the business cycle works in a competitive, free-market economy. The down-cycle is unkind to many, but some make it through and go on to fight another day.
Do you prefer a system where the government picks the winners and losers?
Between depletion and increased production costs and a temporary glut of oil, the market is making oil and gas investments less attractive.Glenn E Stehle says: 07/19/2017 at 12:07 pmThe government IS stepping in, to the industry's detriment, by selling more leases right now and encouraging what might be overproduction at the moment.
If market conditions hasten the decline of gas and oil, I won't be sorry because I think we need alternatives anyway.
Boomer II,texas tea says: 07/19/2017 at 12:16 pmWhy do you believe the "alternatives" will necessarily make it through the down-cycle?
They may be some of the first to "go bottom-up," especially as the subsidies for wind and solar begin to be phased out in the next few years.
we could always make Mike president That should be good for a couple of hundred $$$ increase per barrelBoomer II says: 07/19/2017 at 12:59 pmCountries that don't want to be dependent on fossil fuel imports have an incentive to find alternatives. Even if they pay a bit more for them (which doesn't appear will be the case), renewables offer them more energy independence. If that is America's goal, it is likely to be other countries' goal as well.Ves says: 07/19/2017 at 11:23 amAlternative energy sources also provide an economic advantage for some countries because they can become energy players even without their own fossil fuels.
Think of alternative energy the way you do military preparativeness. There is value to countries which taxpayers and governments will support even if there is no direct financial benefit. However money spent for alternative energy WILL have more economic benefit than military spending.
"A lease that produces 12,000 BO per year at $100/BO generates $1.2 million in revenue.A lease that produces 120,000 BO per year at $50/BO generates $6 million in revenue."
Glenn,
The only problem is that FEW 120.000 BO cannot pay MANY 12,000 BO. So, picking 120.000 BO wells is losing game in long term. It is like a stock picking vs indexing in investing. Indexing always wins. Shale carpet drilling is like trying to find that one 120.000 BO well that will pay for all losers that are 12,000 BO. Losing game in the long term...
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Jul 20, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
Someone wanted the public to know that the new Saudi clown prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MbS) took up his new position by unceremoniously disposing his predecessor Mohammed bin Nayef (MbN) by force. The juicy details, true or not, were briefed to Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times on the same day:
As next in line to be king of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Nayef was unaccustomed to being told what to do. Then, one night in June, he was summoned to a palace in Mecca, held against his will and pressured for hours to give up his claim to the throne .By dawn, he had given in, and Saudi Arabia woke to the news that it had a new crown prince: the king's 31-year-old son, Mohammed bin Salman.
Bin Nayef was a darling of the CIA and his disposal was not welcome. It may well be that the author of the tale of his ouster has his office in Langley, Virginia.
We had correctly called the MbN removal a coup and predicted that "the old al-Saud family king [..] will be offed soon." From the current Reuters piece:
Quoting a witness at the palace, one Saudi source said King Salman this month pre-recorded a statement in which he announces the transfer of the throne to his son. The announcement could be broadcast at any time, perhaps as soon as SeptemberWe also wrote that "[m]any Arab peninsula citizens will want to see [the new clown prince's] head on a pike."
The details of how MbS deposed the previous crown prince MbN will enrage further parts of the Saudi citizens. Additional leaks about extensive MbS contacts with Israel will increase the bad feelings against him. This especially as Israeli is further encroaching on the al-Haram a-Sharif and the Al-Aqsa mosque on the (likely falsely) claimed Jewish temple mount.
MbS' attempt to push Qatar around has, as predicted , failed. The four countries that had joined against Qatar could not agree to increase the pressure. The demands made to Qatar have now been retracted . This is a huge loss of face for MbS and his Emirati mentor Mohammad bin Zayed. The Saudi war against Yemen kills many civilians and costs lots of money but is militarily lost. The announced big economic reforms have made no progress. The Gulf Cooperation Council is defunct and may fall further apart.
Everything MbS has touched failed. His actions violate traditions and religious commandments. His coup has set an example that can now be used against himself. It would not be astonishing to see a revolt against Mohammed Bin Salman even before he is able to make himself king.
james | Jul 20, 2017 3:32:42 PM | 1
thanks b.. i really resent the war on yemen by this asshole in power.. i hope he is gone soon and for that matter - saudi arabia - israel - and all the rest of the rot contributing to de-stability in the mid east all go the way of the dodo bird..karlof1 | Jul 20, 2017 3:40:40 PM | 2Pepe and b probably used similar sources since their articles are quite alike! http://www.atimes.com/article/coup-house-saud/karlof1 | Jul 20, 2017 3:59:08 PM | 3Relatedly, MBS may not be the primary instigator of the Qatar crisis according to this item, https://southfront.org/finally-know-really-behind-qatar-crisis/
Recently, several articles, including the one above, at Southfront were republications of items originating at a new--to me--site, other barflies may want to explore, http://theantimedia.org/
The Angry Arab alerts us to "Ben Hubbard's propaganda work for MBS," http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2017/07/nyts-ben-hubbards-propaganda-work-for.htmlb | Jul 20, 2017 4:01:21 PM | 4As'ad also goes off today at blatant propaganda published by The Economist regarding Hezbollah and its alleged involvement with drug trade--something Nasrallah condemns very mightily, http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2017/07/how-did-economist-documents-its.html
MbS smells the anger, tries to coup-proof his regime:karlof1 | Jul 20, 2017 4:16:03 PM | 5
Saudi Arabia establishes new apparatus for state securityJEDDAH: Saudi Arabia created a new apparatus for state security in Royal Decrees issued Thursday.The (just newly installed) interior minister is said to be a friend of MbS but he is from the family of MbN and thereby a danger. Must be disarmed ...
The new body, State Security Presidency, will be cornered all matters related to state security and be overseen by the king....
all matters related to combating terrorism and financial investigations to be separated from the Ministry of Interior and added to the State Security Presidency.
Everything related to the Security Affairs Agency and other functions related to the Ministry of Interior tasks including employees (civil and military), budgets, documents and information are to be added to the State Security Presidency.
Sorry to monopolize the beginnings of this thread. At the end of his essay about events in Mosul, Craig Murray has this to say about Saudi:Clueless Joe | Jul 20, 2017 4:31:55 PM | 6"The other interesting silence is from Saudi Arabia, which poses as the defender of Sunni Islam throughout the world, but actually has no interest at all in it, except as a tool for promoting the much more worldly interests of the Saudi elite....
"For the Saudi elite, the money they pumped into ISIS in Iraq was a trifle; Mosul ISIL were pawns to be sacrificed and the Sunni civilian population of Mosul is no more important to them. By the combination of funding the spread of Wahhabi ideology and providing unlimited arms and organisational financing, the Saudis can pop up another Al Qaida, Al Nusra or ISIL more or less anywhere, any time it seems useful. Meantime they are focused on cementing their burgeoning axis of Saudi Arabia/Israel/USA to continue the violent promotion of Saudi regional ambition." https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/07/mosul-worse-srebrenica/
It now appears the Unipolarists are reduced to just 4 nations: Outlaw US Empire, UK, Zionist Occupied Palestine, and Saudi Arabia. If Corbyn can become UK's PM, then that number might get reduced to 3.
B: I think your last sentence is key. Some grown-ups, in the US and in the Gulf, leaked this because they want to prevent current crown prince of becoming King, and hope to see him replaced as future king before Salman bites the bullet.ProPeace | Jul 20, 2017 4:40:24 PM | 7
I mean, Mohammed BS has shown how bad he is at managing slightly complex crises, be it Yemen, current jihadi setbacks in Syria, or Qatar - the latter being the biggest indictment I suppose, considering the long-term consequences. So, some smarter people want to push him out before he can become king and weaken the Saudi kingdom to the breaking point.
Not sure what was meant by that, though: "on the (likely falsely) claimed Jewish temple mount"CV Locations should be watched closely: CVN-77 George H.W. Bush 05Jul-18Jul2017, Med/div> divAlso, I believe this 2015 article is worth reminding: The secret projects of Israël and Saudi Arabia
...According to our information, for the last 17 months (in other words, since the announcement of the negotiations between Washington and Teheran, which have in fact been proceeding for the last 27 months), Tel-Aviv has been engaged in secret negotiations with Saudi Arabia. Extremely high-level delegations have met five times – in India, Italy and the Czech Republic.The cooperation between Tel-Aviv and Riyadh is part of the US plan to create a " Common Arab Defence Force ", under the auspices of the Arab League, but under Israeli command. This " Force " is already effective in Yemen, where Israeli pilots fly Saudi bombers within the framework of an Arab Coalition whose headquarters have been installed by the Israelis in Somaliland, a non-recognised state situated on the other side of the the Bab el-Mandeb straits [1].
However, Riyadh does not intend to officialise this cooperation as long as Tel-Aviv refuses the Arab Peace Initiative, presented to the Arab League in 2002 by Prince Abdullah before he became king [2].
Israël and Saudi Arabia have reached agreement on several objectives.
On the political level :
- To " democratise " the Gulf States, in other words, to associate the people in the management of their countries, while affirming the intangibility of the the monarchy and the Wahhabite way of life ; To change the political system in Iran (and no longer wage war on Iran) ;
- To create an independent Kurdistan in such a way as to weaken Iran, Turkey (despite the fact that it is a long-standing ally of Israël), and Iraq (but not Syria, which is already seriously weakened).
On the economic level :
- To exploit the Rub'al-Khali oil-fields and organise a federation between Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and perhaps Oman and the United Arab Emirates ;
- To exploit the Ogaden oil-fields, under Ethiopian control, secure the Yemeni port of Aden, and build a bridge linking Djibouti and Yemen.
In other words, while Tel-Aviv and Riyadh are making the best of a bad deal, and accepting that two thirds of Iraq, Syria, and half of Lebanon will be controlled by Iran, they intend :
- To ensure that Iran gives up on the exportation of its revolution ;
- To control the rest of the region by excluding Turkey, which took over from Saudi Arabia in the supervision of international terrorism, and has just lost in Syria...
divstonebird | Jul 20, 2017 4:53:03 PM | 8Do not underestimate the power of the religious autorities. When I was there (admittedly many, many years ago), the monarchy was very careful to always have their agreement for any policy change. Even now with the strict laws governing behaviour (ie. Women, TV and prayers) their impact on ordinary Saudi society apparently hasn't changed much. It may have even got worse.Anonymous | Jul 20, 2017 6:12:01 PM | 9So the Clown prince's closer ties with Israel - are going to be under close scrutiny. Particularly if Netanyhu continues with the "isolation" and alienation of the Al-Aqsa mosque. Note that the numbers of people hurt in IDF actions against demonstrators has been totally under-reported, if at all. (reported 70 the first day and 35 another. Those wounded include an Imam.)
This is going to pose an ethical problem for ALL the Gulf states. They will have to be seen doing something to retain credibility.On a jovial note; The traditional way, if the reigning Leader did not hand down part of the money to the other tribesmen according to tradition - was to slit his throat. (The King gets it all, then hands down part of it to Princes, who then hand down part of what they recieved to tribesmen and so on right to the bottom. (widows in the Souk with no family). When there is a lot this works fine. I do not know if this will work when there is less to go round.)
Israel is upping the ante in Syria."Israel is going to build a new field hospital in the Israeli-occupied part of the Golan Heights in Syria. According to the Lieutenant Colonel Tomer Koler, the hospital will be located on the Syrian side of the fence build by Israel in the Golan Heights and may become operational next month."
https://southfront.org/israel-build-new-field-hospital-treat-syrian-militants/
Up to now the IDF has treated its terrorists in Israel proper. Now it seems that even Israel is invading Syria. The extra land grab has started.
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Jul 18, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
Can Washington Prevent The Death Of The Gulf States?U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson is angry that Saudi Arabia and the UAE rejected his efforts to calm down their spat with Qatar. His revenge, and a threat of more serious measures, comes in the form of a WaPo "leak" - UAE orchestrated hacking of Qatari government sites, sparking regional upheaval, according to U.S. intelligence officials :
The United Arab Emirates orchestrated the hacking of Qatari government news and social media sites in order to post incendiary false quotes attributed to Qatar's emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani, in late May that sparked the ongoing upheaval between Qatar and its neighbors, according to U.S. intelligence officials.Officials became aware last week that newly analyzed information gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed that on May 23, senior members of the UAE government discussed the plan and its implementation . The officials said it remains unclear whether the UAE carried out the hacks itself or contracted to have them done.
That the UAE and/or the Saudis were involved in the hack was pretty clear from the get go. They were the only ones who had a clear motive. Qatar already had specific evidence for the source of the hacking. Congressional anti-Russian sources ignored that and accused , as usual , Russia and Putin.
Tillerson's real message is not the hacking accusation. The hacks themselves are not relevant to the spat and to Tillerson's efforts to defuse it. The "leak" sets the UAE and Saudi leadership on notice that the U.S. has sources and methods to learn of their government's innermost discussions. The real threat to them is that other dirt could be released from the same source.
It is doubtful that this threat will change the minds of these rulers. They believe in their own invincibility. Ian Welsh describes the mindset in his prediction of The Death of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states:
This is fairly standard: all dynasties go bad eventually because the kings-to-be grow up in wealth and power and think it's the natural state of things: that they are brilliant and deserve it all, when it was handed them on a platter . Perhaps they are good at palace intrigue and think that extends beyond the palace.It doesn't.
Welsh comes to the same conclusion as I did when the recent GCC infighting broke out:
No matter how the spat with Qatar ends, the GCC unity has (again) been exposed as a sham. It can not be repaired. Saudi "leadership" is shown to be just brutal bullying and will be resisted. U.S. plans for a united GCC under Saudi leadership and U.S. control are in shambles.
...
The Saudi under their new leadership overestimate their capabilities. So did Trump when he raised their role. The Saudi "apes with Macbooks" do not have the capabilities needed for a serious political actor in this world. Their money can paper over that for only so long.The step Tillerson and some "intelligence officials" now took may be a sign panic. The "leak" revealed "sources and methods". Like every other government the UAE senior officials suspect that the U.S. is trying to listen to their internal deliberations. But they now know for sure. The specific date given in the "leak" will help them to take some countermeasures. Leaking "sources and methods" is not done lightly. That it has to resort to such measures shows that the U.S. administration is not in control of the situation.
During the fall of the Ottoman empire Britain created today's Saudi Arabia. Two world wars exhausted Britain's power. The U.S. took over the management of the empire including the Gulf states. It needs Saudi Arabia for its fossil energy and the related reserve currency status of the U.S. dollar. Unrest in Saudi Arabia is not in the U.S. interest but such is now in sight. The "leak" is just a tactical measure of an inexperienced administration. It is not enough to defuse or mitigate the conflict and its consequences.
What strategies will Washington develop to counter the foreseeable instability in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states?
Peter AU | Jul 17, 2017 3:04:50 PM | 1
The petro dollar has been around some time now and has given US control of the world trade currency. As far rich kids being handed everything on a platter, the US government is no different to the Saudi's. This will be interesting.Don Wiscacho | Jul 17, 2017 3:29:16 PM | 2What can Washington do to save the khalijis?Peter AU | Jul 17, 2017 3:39:08 PM | 5Nothing beyond sell them weapons and eavesdropping technology. But this only buys some time, and time unfortunately for the GCC countries, isn't on their side.
With increasing swiftness, across the world technologies are being improved on and invented which will eventually wean everyone off fossil fuels. This won't happen overnight, and even when it does, petroleum will still have value as it is used in innumerable applications. But the price will fall, making the latest crash look like a road bump. When that happens, the show's over folks. The GCC countries will become ungovernable, then uninhabitable. There simply are too many people, too few resources.
The only hope the GCC states have is to diversify their economies. Not MBS's 'Prosperity through Austerity' but a multi-pronged tract to develop all critical sectors. The UAE and Qatar are trying, but betting the house on finance and real estate to the detriment of everything else. Petro dollars are still propping up those houses of cards. Oman is the only one seemingly doing things right: good relations with neighbors, trade, and developing domestic industry. If the rest of the GCC doesn't follow Oman's lead, they are simply finished.
ab initio | Jul 17, 2017 3:30:38 PM | 3 "In any case reserve currency status is not all beneficial to the US."karlof1 | Jul 17, 2017 3:57:40 PM | 6This is what gives the US the power to sanction countries and make it stick world wide. It is a huge part of US power.
Peter AU @5--ruralito | Jul 17, 2017 4:12:50 PM | 7Thanks for calling the trolling. Its comment was almost 100% disinformation.
In answer to b's query, the Outlaw US Empire cannot save itself let alone any of its vassals. They will be used until they are no longer of use. And that time is rapidly approaching. Although, the Qataris seem best positioned to avoid extinction.
Now that I know of them, I get to purchase Mark Curtis's line of books documenting British Imperialism and its association with terrorism. Thanks b!
shrinkage?Mike Maloney | Jul 17, 2017 4:18:06 PM | 8https://southfront.org/trump-hints-abandoning-key-qatar-military-base-talks-saudi-king/
The United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are ontologically inseparable. You can't have one without the other. The penetration of the U.S. deep state by al-Saud -- whether it's D.C. think tanks or Fortune 500 executive boards -- is complete.stumpy | Jul 17, 2017 4:58:59 PM | 9Tillerson knows this, that's why his "woe is me" shuttle diplomacy is nothing more than Kabuki.
This doesn't mean that al-Thani is without wires into the U.S. deep state; it has plenty. That's what makes this GCC throw-down so delightful. The U.S. is at a point where it can no longer sublate all the contradictions produced by its hegemony.
anon @ 4karlof1 | Jul 17, 2017 6:21:58 PM | 10Re: hack:
Perhaps we shouldnt accept claims about UAE just like that. Lets be honest.I agree. Consider the source at WAPO. Some credibility gap there. I would guess that Tillerson is not the sole source for whatever might have been leaked (if not invented).
Also, as far as sources and methods, it's one thing to burn an inside informer type of asset, but leaking SIGINT in the form of general pronouncements without physical evidence doesn't burn the source, only indicates a potential weakness in the cyber defenses of the target. For all we know there was no hack, per se, given that a lot of US and allied contractors were probably in on the installation and operation of UAE computer systems.
My impression, not to contradict b's analysis but to propose a direction of thought, is that the WAPO is promulgating a brag, that the US can look up anyone's skirt anytime and tell whatever they want. Thus, reminding the players that they'd better stay in line, as b states.
Considering Saudi Arabia's creation, its falling to pieces would be considered Nature's reaction to an artificial construct. Soon, instead of Saudis buying Outlaw US Empire weaponry, it will be asking for handouts as it did during its formative years when the UK held its reins. Given its role in the violent histories of the British and Outlaw US Empires, the remaining nations of the planet will be quite pleased to see its demise--even more so given that the three constitute the nest for Global Terrorism. Dan Glazebrook's series detailing the history of "British collusion with sectarian violence" at RT, one of which b linked to, are well worth the time; this links to the first installment, https://www.rt.com/op-edge/338247-uk-extremists-syria-isis-violence/fast freddy | Jul 17, 2017 6:27:34 PM | 11It seems that it is not the US, but Israel which owns the most advanced spying hacking technology. The US sublet fiber optic data interception to Israeli companies NARUS and Verint. These companies have since been folded (hidden) into other multinational holding companies, but still (Boeing, Carlisle Group).fast freddy | Jul 17, 2017 6:27:35 PM | 12When is this a good idea for "National Security" (which is the constant refrain when withholding information from the public)?
It seems that it is not the US, but Israel which owns the most advanced spying hacking technology. The US sublet fiber optic data interception to Israeli companies NARUS and Verint. These companies have since been folded (hidden) into other multinational holding companies, but still (Boeing, Carlisle Group).Jay | Jul 17, 2017 8:39:20 PM | 13When is this a good idea for "National Security" (which is the constant refrain when withholding information from the public)?
"It [the USA] needs Saudi Arabia for its fossil energy and the related reserve currency status of the U.S. dollar."nobody | Jul 17, 2017 8:52:28 PM | 14Well Saudi oil is mostly going to Europe, but the Saudi policy does obviously effect the price of oil futures around the world.
A lot more than oil backs the US dollar, the "oil based reserve status" only goes so far.
The step Tillerson and some "intelligence officials" now took may be a sign >[of]< panic.ProPeace | Jul 17, 2017 8:58:09 PM | 15Posted by b on July 17, 2017 at 02:33 PM | Permalink
The last monarch to get "mixed messages" from USA was the late Shah of Iran. Qatar and "Saudi" Arabia, take note.
Voltaire network is pushing an interesting deep analysis that we are witnessing ex-Empire strikes back, with the Occulted British ex-Empire putin' [haha] the finishing touches on their expulsion of the ex-Colonial Empire from "their" sphere of influence (aptly named by the slimy blood sucking limeys as "their" "Middle East").
The dismantling of the "Hyperpower" is nearly complete. Bankster power remains untouched.
As you were.
This is interesting Pentagon study declares American empire is 'collapsing'james | Jul 17, 2017 9:28:16 PM | 16
thanks b.. i have been yammering on about 2020 as a critical turning point in world events and that saudi arabia is very central to all this.. in my astro comments on nov 2, 2013 i stated "below is a chart for the next conjunction of saturn/pluto set to riyadh. this exact conjunction happens only once in early 2020, but i suspect given how close it is to the astro positions in the 1902 chart for saudi arabia, that if this chart has legs, this conjunction is going to bring about a transformation of present day saudi arabia and it will probably not be a pretty or easy transition given the issue of terrorism associated with these religious groups i have also mentioned.. saturn and pluto have a connection to terrorism as i understand it and were in the long opposition at the time of 9-11 as well... on the other hand, perhaps it indicates a further clamp down on freedoms and a type of totalitarianism. i suspect it will fluctuate between the two.. and, it is probably already in the process of developing here in 2013.. " from this thread..dh | Jul 17, 2017 9:33:07 PM | 17@8 mike maloney... i fully concur to your words here: "The U.S. is at a point where it can no longer sublate all the contradictions produced by its hegemony."
saudi arabia and the world by extension are going to look very differently come 2020... lol - how is that for a lousy astro prediction? that is like saying, tomorrow things will look differently.. of course i have mentioned this about saudi arabia in the past at moa...
i enjoyed the article "The Death of Saudi Arabia".. it was fun reading the comments to that post too.. i recognized a few regulars in the comment section from sst and moa..
@15 Looks like a big scare piece followed by plea for more weapons. Thank you Pentagon.virgile | Jul 17, 2017 9:53:51 PM | 18The US continues the strategy they have started less than decade ago: Weaken Saudi Arabia to the point it will accept a peace deal with Israel.Sloopyjoe | Jul 17, 2017 10:55:16 PM | 19
The US threw the Saudis into the Syrian quagmire, the Egyptian quagmire, then in the Yemen quagmire, now in the Qatar quagmire.
When the Saudi kingdom will come out of these, it will be exhausted and in a state of terror in front of the Iranian steadily growing political and economical strength. The threat of the collapse to their family ruled system is looming.
The USA seems to have accepted that the Iran Islamic republic's semi-democratic system is here to stay and evolve while the GCC autocratic monarchies are threatened of extinction.
Buying billions of weapons from the USA seems to give these dying entities the illusion that the USA is on their side. In fact the USA has been backstabbing them continuously thus weakening them by the day and preparation for their collapse.
The emirates will have make reforms of a democratic nature if they want to survive.
Saudi Arabia is doomed.First post here.I have seen a lot of confusion/deception as to the nature/history of the Arabia. In order to understand history properly, one must be willingly open-minded and examine as much evidence as possible. Especially, evidence that is contrary to your understanding. This takes intellectual honesty, critical thinking, and courage. History is written by the winners/manipulators. You rarely hear from the other side. Meaning, you never get the complete picture. Therefore, you cannot get historical accuracy unless you do a bit a honest digging. Ex., Anybody with a working brain stem understands that the official story of 9-11 is a big pile of Donkey Doughnuts.
I am not a biblical scholar nor am I very religiously inclined. I prefer historical accuracy over warm and fuzzy beliefs.
I realize there are many readers who are religious and may be ingrained in their beliefs. What I am presenting below will challenge your root understandings. Please try to have an open mind and use logic, reason, evidence(both pro and con), and patterns of behavior to better your knowledge base. Below are links pertaining to the Arabia/Israel:
https://ashraf62.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/the-jewish-roots-of-takfiri-culture/
http://themillenniumreport.com/2015/12/the-house-of-saud-its-jewish-origin-and-installation-by-the-british-crown/
http://www.voltairenet.org/article192024.html
http://en.abna24.com/service/iran/archive/2016/06/18/760877/story.html
https://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/jews-and-history-lies-galore/
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/The%20Zionist%20Plan%20for%20the%20Middle%20East.pdf
https://ashraf62.wordpress.com/2015/04/17/the-real-exodus-end-of-israel-3/
http://wikivisually.com/wiki/Ze%27ev_HerzogSecond external link from above article. You need to use Google translate for this article. The Israeli Govt loves to scrub inconvenient facts about their history.
http://www.hayadan.org.il/bible-no-evidence-291099/To find a cure, one must address the root causes of the illness - Sloopyjoe
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Jul 18, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Revisiting Saudi Arabia Capitalist Exploits Jul 17, 2017 7:46 PM 0 SHARES www.CapitalistExploits.atIn May of last year I was attempting to figure out if there was an asymmetric play to be had in the land of sand and black gloop. There were a lot of moving pieces to deal with. I think it's worth revisiting but first it's worth reviewing what I thought just over a year ago. Much has subsequently happened so we can piece a little bit more together now.
Only Two Options For The Saudi Sheikhs A few years ago, when living in Phuket, Thailand, a group of Saudis stayed for a week's holiday in a neighboring villa. Outside of the religious and social confines of the land of black gold and endless sand, this group made a bunch of spoiled 5-year olds left to run amok in a candy shop without adult supervision look positively angelic. They were very visible, with an entourage of young Thai "ladies" and a fleet of Land Cruisers to haul them about. On one occasion, after my son witnessed one of the guys buying a beer and throwing a US$100 bill at the waiter, telling him to keep the change, he asked me how come they had so much money to waste. I explained that Saudi Arabia has two things in abundance: sand and oil. And though the world doesn't need sand as much as it does oil, they have grown very wealthy selling the oil to the rest of the world. Depending on whose numbers you take, somewhere between 75% and 85% of Saudi Arabia's revenues come from oil exports, and fully 90% of revenues come from oil and gas. Clearly the Kingdom is dependent on oil revenues in the same way that an infant is dependent on its mother's milk. And unless you've been living under a rock for the last few years, you'll have noticed that the price of oil has collapsed. Now, in a "normal" market the reduced revenues would manifest in a weaker local currency as demand for Riyals declines. But governments and central bankers don't believe in "normal" markets and so the Saudi riyal has been pegged at 3.75 to the US dollar since 1986. It's not hard to see a situation where Saudi Arabia may very well be forced to de-peg the currency to curb the fall in the country's FX reserves should low oil prices persist. Let's look at some of the potential catalysts for this. Could Yellen Kill The Peg? While the Sheiks contemplate how to deal with their predicament from diamond encrusted cars and golden toilets, across the pond we find that monetary policy in the US has been tightening albeit modestly. What's important to understand is that in order for Saudi Arabia to maintain its currency peg it needs to follow FED monetary policy. By following Yellen the Saudis land up sacrificing growth, and by diverging they sacrifice FX reserves in order to maintain the peg. Clearly neither are attractive propositions. According to the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), for every 100 basis point increase in the Saudi Interbank Offered Rate (SIBOR) this leads to a 90 basis point decline in GDP in the subsequent quarter, and a further 95 basis points in the following quarter. Falling GDP in a country where over 60% of the population are under 30 brings about its own set of problems. Political instability in the Kingdom has been rising and the royal family is increasingly fighting for survival. After all, they had the experience of watching the Arab Spring unfold on their flat screens. If, on the other hand, they opt not to follow the stumpy lady, the gap between interest rates in the US and Saudi Arabia will be quickly exploited by people like me as arbitrage opportunities open up. So this is what we're all looking at right now: SAMA will have to buy riyals in the open market by selling from its hoard of dollar reserves. Any rise in interest rates in the US will mean SAMA will have to further deplete reserves. As I have mentioned before, all pegs eventually break. The question is one of timing. How long do the Sheiks have under current oil prices? The falling oil price since mid-2014, has significantly reduced Saudi Arabian revenues. So much so that the scorecard for 2015 showed a deficit of $98bn, and SAMA is estimating a further $87bn deficit this year. The Saudi government have been funding this deficit by drawing down on forex reserves, spending $132bn in the year to January of this year. With current prices and current reserves they can easily last another 4 years. Some things I'm thinking about:
- Iran will bring additional supply to a market in surplus. Saudi Arabia will be forced to keep the pedal to the metal on production, not wanting to lose any market share. And so I'm not convinced we'll see oil rising in the next 12 to 24 months.
- Internal domestic political pressures can be "addressed" with creating an external pressure or conflict. It wouldn't be the first time.
- We're in a US dollar bull market as I've stated here, here, and here and many other times. Dollar strength will put pressure on the price of oil and thus revenues to the Kingdom.
- This could certainly get interesting and traders have begun speculating on a de-pegging from the dollar. Should low oil prices persist for the next 3 to 4 years, Saudi Arabia will be forced to decide whether it prefers to either cut the production or loosen the currency peg. I could be wrong but I feel like it's too early to play this trade and the costs of entry are not astoundingly cheap. Saudi Arabia has almost no debt and can easily access the credit markets. With debt to GDP of just 2% they have a lot of room to move. Coupled with the upcoming partial listing of Aramco their ability to tap international markets for capital is certainly a factor I'm not sure all currency speculators are considering. What is worth watching are neighbour states. While Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE all have dollar pegs, they too have vast central bank reserves and sovereign wealth funds. But what looks pretty precarious to me are Oman and Bahrain who could run out of reserves in less than three years. Both these countries have resorted to issuing debt to extend the longevity of their reserves but issuing dollar denominated debt which is essentially asset underwritten by the price of oil in an environment of persistently low oil prices certainly looks like a precarious bet to be making. Investors looking for asymmetry in markets will do well paying attention to the currency markets, and existing dollar pegged currencies in particular. As I mentioned before all pegs break, and the returns that can be made in such situations are of the life changing variety. – Chris "If Saudi Arabia was without the cloak of American protection, I don't think it would be around." – Donald Trump
Ok, so that was over 12 months ago. Fast forward to today and we have some of the answers... and we're a little further down the road.
OilStill looks like isht. The supply and demand setup hasn't gotten any better, and this is not what the house of Saud wants. Nothing shocking to what we expected anyway.
RatesThe tubby lady at the FED has gone ahead with a divergent policy (raising rates). As you can see, I discussed in that article what effect the raising of rates could (or would have) on the finances in Saudi Arabia. Again, nothing we never expected.
ConflictI penned an article on Qatar here. I do think the spat with Qatar has less to do with them than it has to do with Iran and with the Saudi's domestic problems - both financial and political. In the article above, I mentioned some stupid conflict but wouldn't have put it up there as a probability over 50%. And yet now it's happening in real time. Does it subside, does it blow up, or something else?
The question I think we need to ask ourselves today is this: now that the conditions have been met that do nothing to assist the Saudis with their finances (and at the same time they've chosen a path of "external" enemy) where does that leave us with original idea of looking for an asymmetric payoff on the riyal having to de-peg their currency?
I'm watching the dollar index very, very closely. If we break higher, then the Saudis will have a very, very serious problem on their hands as their balance sheet blows out. This could get interesting... and profitable.
- Chris
"Rockefeller once explained the secret of success. Get up early, work late - and strike oil." -- Joey Adams
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Jul 07, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al , July 7, 2017 at 8:30 amOh, looky here! De Bong didn't feel the need to do any current research:July 6
Financial Crimes: Gazprom confident of $400bn Chinese gas supply
https://www.ft.com/content/623c7396-60cc-11e7-91a7-502f7ee26895State-owned gas monopoly ahead of schedule on politically important Siberian pipeline
The Power of Siberia gas pipeline, the first to connect Russia and China, will start pumping in December 2019, Gazprom said on Tuesday, paving the way for a 30-year supply agreement of more than 1.15tn cubic metres of gas for the Kremlin-controlled export monopoly
Mr Miller's affirmation is important. The project, which will cost Gazprom more than $55bn just to build the necessary infrastructure to get the gas flowing, is one of the most critical investments for Russia's energy sector, which has targeted a long-term strategic supply link with China to match its market penetration in Europe. ..
Power of Siberia is expected to run significantly below capacity in its first few years of operation, as China instead runs down its domestic gas reserves. The 30-year supply agreement is set to kick in around 2025 .
####Plenty more at the link.
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Jul 07, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
karlof1 | Jul 5, 2017 10:04:01 PM | 37
Here's last year's NatGas industrial review, so you can determine just how sane Qatar's move is. The link is to a modestly sized pdf file, http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwit-fbqxPPUAhVSxmMKHRY1CyAQFggiMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.igu.org%2Fdownload%2Ffile%2Ffid%2F2123&usg=AFQjCNHNu-nmLpatVthD04g0UWtOuREDMwThe report's loaded with info. Production can certainly be increased, but it's all the other infrastructure that's required for the market to expand, particularly regasification terminals.
somebody | Jul 5, 2017 5:33:36 PM | 18
By the way, there is a LNG price war between Qatar and the United States .Anonymous | Jul 5, 2017 6:14:36 PM | 22The Saudis tried to make a public IPO of Aramco a while back. This has fizzled, probably in recognition of the fact that Saudi is almost running on empty. One reason behind the Qatar lunacy might be a wish to take over Qatar's resources to keep Saudi solvent for a while at least.mauisurfer | Jul 5, 2017 7:33:04 PM | 30interview with Chas Freeman last week: Qatar Crisis Could Lead to War: Veteran US DiplomatGrieved | Jul 5, 2017 9:26:42 PM | 35if you don't know who Chas is, please wiki was ambassador to Saudi, was Nixon's interpreter in China, that's right, he speaks mandarin and arabic not just knowledgeable, also very funny remember when AIPAC vetoed his appointment by Obama?
https://lobelog.com/qatar-crisis-could-lead-to-war-veteran-us-diplomat/
more Chas here: http://chasfreeman.net/category/speeches/
@18 somebodyNoirette | Jul 6, 2017 1:48:27 PM | 50Yes, that's exactly how that Reuters story reads to me too. The prime target is the US. Extraordinarily powerful move by Qatar, using a weapon that it knows and owns completely and in massive scale, and with an understanding of the damage it can do to its enemies. Asymmetrical warfare indeed. Priceless.
~~
I'm really hoping that over the years, as Qatar rubs shoulders with the multi-polar world, it will reform itself to renounce and atone for its former support of terrorism. As I watch its moves in this situation I'm struck with a certain admiration. It would be nice to be able to root for it someday as one of the good guys.
Unless the Saudis can reconfigure their economy and train their populous to do actual work, their kingdom will sink ..
karlof1 at 1This is impossible. Laguerre at 10. > see also response from karlof1 at 20.
The curse of black gold + a rentier economy coupled with an authoritarian repressive State that enslaves the 'people.' The two are often soldered: dominating class capts the profits and co-opts slave labor, and pays off citizens with 'stipends.' Escaping or changing such a template is imho incredibly difficult or impossible in the case of KSA.
The rentier class, aka Royals and hangers-on is several tens of thousands of ppl, not detailed on wiki. (Comp. with US not the 1%, but the 20%..) In fact it is one of the problems of such arrangements, some gang of 'hangers on' has to be appeased and maintained, they have quite some power. Because the 'authoritarian' schema deploys in a clear top-down, to down further, a fixed ladder - way, and once some lower layer is stiffed, objections and obstructions may fly and richochet to the top. For the system to endure, these HAVE to be appeased.
A power sharing scheme like this also mandates that women are kept from acting in any way. The easiest and cheapest way to control half the population, plus all children, ask the MB, the Taliban, KSA.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39683592 (reverses pay cuts)
The crazed moves of the new Prince are vain attempts to escape the self-constructed trap. Floundering, flailing, about, considering that killing others, war, (e.g. Yemen), engaging in aggro (Qatar) might help - as that might please the USA, who encourages all aggro and sells arms, etc. Won't end well for KSA for sure all Internationals are wondering who will grab what when collapse it is.
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fpif.org
Try to put aside, for the moment, the insufferable arrogance of American meddling in Europe's energy market, with a view to restricting its choice while – laughably – pretending it is broadening European energy options.
The readers and commenters of this blog will be well aware, since it has been a topic of discussion for years here, that a critical underpinning of the western plan to seize Ukraine and wrest it into the western orbit was the premise that Russia would be forced by simple momentum to go along with it. As long as events continued to unfold too quickly to get ahead of, Russia would have to help supply the sinews of its own destruction. And a big part of that was the assumption that Russia would help to finance Ukraine's transition to a powerful western fulcrum upon which to apply leverage against it, through continued trade with Ukraine and continued transit of Europe's energy supply through Ukraine's pipeline system.
But Russia slapped a trade embargo on most Ukrainian goods, and rescinded its tariff-free status as it became clear Brussels planned to use it to stovepipe European trade goods into the Russian market, through Ukraine – thus crushing domestic industries which would not be able to compete on economically-favorable terms. The armchair strategists nearly shit a brick when construction of the South Stream pipeline commenced, bypassing Ukraine and depriving it of about $2 billion annually in transit fees. But pressure ultimately forced Bulgaria to throw a wrench into the works, and the pipeline plans were shelved, to much victory dancing in the west. There was not quite as much happy-dancing in Bulgaria , but they were only ever a pawn anyway.
Sidebar for a moment, here; while the $2 Billion annually in transit fees is extremely important, Ukraine's pre-crisis GDP was $163 Billion. The funds realized for transit fees are important because (a) Russia has to pay them and (b) the west will have to come up with the equivalent in aid if Ukraine loses out on them. But the real value intrinsic to Ukraine as a transit country is its physical reality as an interface for Russian gas transit to Europe – what is a bridge can be easily turned into a wall. Any time Washington thinks Russia needs some more shit on its face, Ukraine can be prodded to announce a doubling of its transit fees, or to kick off some other dispute which the popular press will adroitly spin to make Russia appear to be an unreliable supplier. Therefore, it is essential to western strategy that significant amounts of Russian gas continue to transit Ukraine. Sufficiently so that Europe continues to evolve ever-more-desperate contingency plans in order to keep receiving gas through the country which was known to have provoked the previous shutoff of European supplies by siphoning Europe-bound gas for its own use. That's despite the assurances of Germany and western partners of Gazprom in the Nord Stream line that it will mean cheaper gas prices for Europe.
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Jul 03, 2017 | www.voltairenet.org
King Salmane ben Abdelaziz Al Saoud (81 years old) has removed from office 57 year old Emir Mohammed ben Nayef Al Saoud. The latter was the Crown Prince, Vice-Prime Minister and the Minister of Home Affairs, all at the same time.
De facto, the King's son, Prince Mohammed ben Salmane Al Saoud (31 years), will become the new Crown Prince.
Mohammed ben Nayef Al Saoud was considered as the US's man. He has been trained first in Oregon, then later by the FBI and Scotland Yard. He obtained results in struggles against Al-Qaeda dissidents. With his removal, the hopes of the Nayef branch coming to the throne have come to an end.
Mohammed ben Salmane does not have an academic training. At the very most, he is the holder of a baccalaureate awarded by a local school, and we do not know if you actually need to study to obtain this qualification. He made his political debut as the assistant to his father, first the Governor of Riyadh and then the Minister of Defense. When Salmane becomes king in 2015, Mohammed succeeded his father as the Minister of Defense and engaged his country's troops in the disastrous conflict in Yemen. Having royal power at his disposition, he launched a vast project for economic reform (Vision 2030), which ushered in the privatization of Aramco (the country's only source of revenue) and his country's development beyond the oil sector. He is particularly well known for his jet-set life-style and for buying a yacht, Serene, for half a billion euro.
It seems that King Salmane should shortly abdicate, leaving his son in charge. Thus the difficult question of succession is provisionally settled, in a country where up until now was governed by a rule requiring the oldest son of the dynasty's founder to accede to power. Thus the current king, King Salmane, is the 25th of Abdelaziz ben Abderrahmane Al Saoud's 53 sons.
At King Abdallah's death (January 2015), his half brother, Prince Moukrine ben Abdelaziz Al Saoud, had been appointed Crown Prince. But three months later (April 2015), he had been rudely cut out of the order of succession, something quite unprecedented. He was replaced by Prince Mohammed ben Nayef, who in turn has just been removed from the picture.
As a consolation prize, the Nayefs secured that a son-in-law of Prince Mohammed ben Nayef replaces him at the Ministry of Home Affairs. It would be a son-in-law and not a son, because Prince Mohammed ben Nayef did not have male progeny.
The next king, Mohammed, could rule for about fifty years. But were he to die, then his eldest son, also a minor, would succeed him.
Washington had approved the chosen solution to the issue of succession. This solution had been adopted by 31 of 34 members of the allegiance council (the Family Council). It skips two generations. Henceforth, Mohammad ben Salmane is placing young people at the head of different administrations of the country, a country where the average age of the population is 27 years.
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Jun 27, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Northern Star , June 23, 2017 at 11:55 amhttps://www.yahoo.com/news/putin-launches-deep-water-phase-turkstream-gas-pipeline-143410466.htmlOne of the best comment people on Yahoo:
"oldgeekMA 2 hours ago
Truth is Russia has been looking for an excuse to get out of the business of Shipping Natural Gas to the West and the South, altogether and these US Sanctions and EU Complaints about Gazprom Pipeline Construction, may just be the out they have been looking for. In Jan 2016, Russia completed 7 Massive High-Pressure Gas Pipelines, 2 to India and 5 to China. The ones to India make 4 total Gas Lines to India, but the 5 to China are the first time China, has had access to Russian Natural Gas. The contracts India and China signed with Gazprom are 50 years, and the price of NG starts at more than double the highest rate Gazprom charges in Europe, the icing on the cake however is that the currency is not US Paper Promissory Notes(Petro Dollars), but Gold Bullion. At full capacity those pipelines can use every single NG resource Gazprom, has at the present time, and all future NG resources. So, Gazprom would be foolish not to want to cut all off its Western and Southern pipelines off, and divert Maximum Flow East. In addition to these NG Pipelines, there are Crude Oil and Diesel pipelines under construction, going to China and India – Completion date scheduled for between November 2017 and January 2018. Chinese and Indian Construction Crews completed their internal distribution pipeline networks in 2016, and have 7 Oil Refineries in various stages of completion. -– All American III Percenter and Combat Disabled US Veteran"
Now..remind me what was this stuff about 'Murica shipping LNG to europe???
LOL!!!!https://ads.pubmatic.com/AdServer/js/showad.js#PIX&kdntuid=1&p=156204
marknesop , June 24, 2017 at 5:27 pmThat would indeed be delightful if there were even the whiff of truth about it; but, unfortunately, there is not. Europe is still Russia's most important gas market by far. Numbers on the Russia-China gas deal are hard to come by and reporters who quote the price China will pay are just guessing because nobody has officially disclosed that figure and will not; it is strictly confidential.However, the China-vs-EU figures are not even close; starting next year, Russia will export 30-38 BcM annually to China, and that might go as high as double as the agreement evolves. So, say 65 BcM annually, in a couple of years. That's still far less than half what Gazprom exports annually to Europe – 178.3 BcM in 2016, a significant jump over the previous year's 158.6 BcM.
Moreover, nearly all the increases in the past decade have been to imports by western Europe. Despite all the preaching in the media, the only countries which seem to be seriously trying to wean themselves off of Russian gas – with little to limited success, it must be said – are eastern European countries. One of the biggest yappers in the west is the UK but the UK went from zero imports of Russian gas in 2003 to the fourth-biggest European importer in 2013 .
That little quick-reference pocket guide is actually chock-full of useful facts which you can whip out and quote whenever some pea-brained bucket-mouthed know-nothing is trying to blizzard you with blue-sky bullshit. Here's a few:
1. All the blather and angst about reducing Europe's dependency on Russian gas imports conveniently ignores one buzzing fly in the ointment – long-term contracts. Of 178.6 BcM imported by Europe in 2013, 166 BcM of it was under 30-year contracts. By far the most of it. And you know what would happen if the EU broke a contract in order to reduce its imports, even if it could practically do so under conditions in which domestic sources of supply are rapidly drying up, which it can't. Also, contract supplies are by definition sanctions-exempt.
2. Home-grown Shale gas is not going to ride to the rescue. Even if Europe could tap supplies which are not sour with so much nitrogen that you can't even burn it, in order to reach shale gas supplies of only 28 BcM annually Europe would have to drill 800-1000 new wells every year for 10 years. Let's see that spun as fiscally viable, or sensible in any way, shape or form.
3. Blabber about the Southern Gas Corridor was always nothing more than that – supplies from Azerbaijan to Europe were never expected to total more than 30 BcM, about what Russia expects to export to China starting in 2018, and it would have taken until 2030 to reach that capacity.
4. LNG actually holds the best promise of undercutting Russian supply, and Europe's regassification terminals actually could handle more than the combined total of Russian imports now; 200 BcM. But LNG supplies to Europe depend entirely on whether they can be profitable, and all current objective studies find that Russia can keep LNG away as long as it likes, simply by consistently pricing its pipeline supplies lower than LNG. Given what it would cost Uncle Sam to get his supplies to market, Gazprom can still easily do that and turn a handsome profit.
https://ads.pubmatic.com/AdServer/js/showad.js#PIX&kdntuid=1&p=156204
Cortes , June 23, 2017 at 1:41 pmJapanese need to diversify energy imports to benefit RF?et Al , June 24, 2017 at 11:25 amhttp://journal-neo.org/2017/06/22/japan-regards-russia-as-a-reliable-hydrocarbons-exporter/
I thought there was a plan to pipeline NG from Nakhoda to Japan? What happened to that, or was it simply to be an LNG terminal but got shifted?marknesop , June 24, 2017 at 5:43 pmI'm glad you brought that up; quite apart from the very interesting information contained in the article itself, it is a springboard to a larger discussion – is Russia equally committed to reducing its dependency on European pipelines as the Europeans are? Some say yes: Russia's $27 Billion icebreaking LNG Carrier project is an eye-opener which has been more or less entirely left out of energy discussions. And its target market is Asia .et Al , June 25, 2017 at 8:04 amYamal is projected to double Russia's share of the growing global LNG market by the time it reaches full capacity of 16.5m tonnes a year - equivalent to more than 80 per cent of China's annual demand - by 2021. Construction is three-quarters complete and production from the first phase of the project is due to commence by the end of this year.
More than 95 per cent of Yamal's expected output has already been sold through 15 to 20 year contracts, with customers mostly in Asia and Europe.
That's hardcore! Thanks Mark. So the Chinese stepped in to take up the slack created by US sanctions against Timchenko's Novatek part of the project. Another US epic fail.It's curious that the West's interpretation of 'globalization' hasn't turned out as expected. They saw it as western globo-corporations buying in around the world, but globalization has naturally progressed as 'multi-polarization' of global power, away from the US & the West's dominance. The Chinese stepping in is a perfect example. It shows that Russia has real options which it is building and if needs be, at some point in the future, tell the 'No thanks!'.
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marknesop.wordpress.com
The United States' decades-long "special relationship" with Saudi Arabia has always carried major downsides. Yes, the Saudis are a pillar in maintaining the American petrodollar system to prevent the collapse of the US economy; and, yes, the Saudi rulers are lavish spenders on US weapons, which props up the Pentagon military-industrial complex – another lifeline for American capitalism.However, the Saudi rulers are also longtime sponsors of Wahhabi fundamentalism which has injected deadly sectarian poison into the Middle East region and beyond. Washington is complicit in fomenting sectarianism through its relationship with Saudi Arabia, and the price for that Faustian pact is a world in turmoil from terrorism.
Donald Trump's presidency is an unfortunate marriage of interests with Saudi Arabia. Trump is capricious, ignorant and impetuous. His understanding of international relations and history seems woefully inadequate. He also appears to be unscrupulous and reckless. It's all about making money that matters to him.
From the earliest opportunity, the Saudi prince wheedled his way into Trump's court. He was greeted in the White House back in March, one of the first foreign leaders to do so. Then two months later, Trump ventured on his maiden foreign trip as president in which he made Saudi Arabia his first stop. Trump was royally received by the House of Saud with sword-waving ceremony . And then the Saudis signed record arms deal with the US worth up to $350 billion – the biggest ever in history.
It was during Trump's Saudi visit that the policy of increased hostility towards Iran and isolation of erstwhile Saudi and American ally Qatar was hatched. This reckless, clueless embrace of Saudi Arabia by Trump has led to a dangerous escalation in tensions across the Middle East, which are seen playing out in Syria and towards Iran and Russia.
Trump the tycoon and the Saudi upstart-prince are a duo who are plunging the world into danger of all-out war. The pair are a match made in hell, both being rash and irresponsible in their behavior.
Nobody outside Saudi Arabia had heard of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman until his father become king in January 2015 on the death of King Abdullah. In the space of two years, the young prince has been made defense minister and de facto chief of Saudi's oil economy. Now, this week he has been shunted into becoming heir to the throne, sidelining his elder cousin and nephew to the king.
The precocious prince has only enjoyed this meteoric rise in the House of Saud because of his father's favoritism. Other more senior royals feel ousted and see the new Crown Prince as undeserving of his assigned authority. In short, he is out of his depth.
In the Saudi succession rules, the royal line is supposed to pass from brother to brother. There are still surviving brothers of the Saudi founding king, Ibn Saud, who have been removed from the succession. The present King Salman first broke the rules when he made his nephew Mohammed bin Nayef the Crown Prince back in April 2015. Now he has broken the rules again by making his own son the heir and unceremoniously pushing bin Nayef to the side. Such are the hijinks of despots.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the architect behind the disastrous war in Yemen, which is turning into a Vietnam-style quagmire for Saudi Arabia, costing the kingdom billions of dollars every month. He is also reportedly the architect behind the policy of renewed hostility towards Iran. In an interview before Trump's Saudi trip, Mohammed bin Salman said he would never talk to Iran and even threatened to unleash violence on Iranian territory. That threat was followed by the deadly terror attack in Tehran on June 7 in which up to 17 people were killed by Daesh suicide squads.
The hiked-up hostile policy towards Iran has, in turn, led to Saudi Arabia blockading Qatar and causing a bitter rift in the Persian Gulf because Qatar is perceived as being too soft on Iran.
The power-struggle antics among the absolute rulers of the House of Saud have promoted a prince who has a reckless outsized ego and lust for dominance. President Donald Trump seems cut from the same cloth. Courting the young Saudi heir may be lucrative for American weapons-dealing and no doubt the Trump business brand in the oil-rich region. But the consequences of such capricious and clueless "leadership" are throwing the region and the world into increasing conflict.
This week the US State Department flatly contradicted Trump's policy of supporting the Saudi-led blockade on Qatar . It said it was mystified that the Saudis had not presented any evidence to justify the blockade. This is just one example where Trump is being made to look a total fool by following stupid Saudi policy – policy that is made by a prince who has gathered a record for disaster in several other spheres.
What a double act. Saudi despotism marries Trump cluelessness. And the world is reaping the calamity of clowns.
This article was first published by SputnikGustavo Caldas · 5 days ago
An attack from Saudi Arabia to Iran will mean the demise of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia . And the intervention of the USA in support of Saudi Arabia would mean a war of the USA against the SCO (Shangai Cooperation Organization). Those are BAD odds.
guest01 · 5 days ago
Quote from article: "America's deepening and reckless military involvement in Syria is a result of Trump cozying up with the Saudi despots."America's deepening and reckless military involvement in Syria is a result of Trump obeying Israel's orders. America's military was recklessly involved in Syria long before Trump became president. The chaos in Syria was instigated by USA. US military trained, armed and supported terrorists, bombed Syrian military and civilians and established military base in Syria during Obama presidency.
Trump is "cozying up with the Saudi despots" because he got his orders from Netanyahu and Israelis. Before he began "cozying up with the Saudi despots", Trump ordered shooting missiles into Syrian military airport because his Zionist Jewish daughter and son-in-law told him to do so. If Netanyahu and/or his Zionist Jew son-in-law Jared Kushner were to order Trump to bomb Saudi Arabia, Trump would bomb Saudi Arabia.
All along, Trump was blaming Saudis for 9/11 inside job attacks and was threatening Saudis that they should be coming up with more money to USA just as he expected NATO members to pay for US wars costs. He was badmouthing Saudis until he got his orders from Netanyahu and Israel.
Saudis are puppets of USA; Saudis do exactly what USA wants them to do and USA does exactly what Israel wants it to do. Note that the Saudi demands against Qatar are to distance itself from all who resist Israel, namely, Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran and Syria. Also, Israel was very pleased that Trump signed billions of dollars worth of weapons agreement with Saudi Arabia because these weapons will be used against Israel's perceived enemies and some will be given to terrorists Israel supports in that region.
Israel rules and Trump wants to make Israel great.
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Jun 25, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
likklemore | Jun 25, 2017 4:57:18 PM | 48somebody | Jun 25, 2017 5:21:44 PM | 49It's All About Oil and Gas and here is Trump a -twittering:
Bloomberg: Trump to Call for U.S. 'Dominance' in Global Energy Production
Trump is set to deliver a speech at the Energy Department on Thursday focused almost entirely on energy exports -- describing how the foreign sale of U.S. natural gas, oil and coal helps strengthen the country's influence globally, bolster international alliances, and help stabilize global markets. Energy Secretary Rick Perry may touch on similar themes when he speaks Tuesday with analysts and executives at the U.S. Energy Information Administration conference in Washington.[..]Ironically, some of Trump's policies could exacerbate the market challenges facing oil, gas and coal, by spurring more domestic production at a time when a supply glut is already suppressing prices.
The U.S. is on track to produce 10 million barrels of oil per day on average next year, according to a forecast from the Energy Information Administration -- a milestone that would shatter a record set in 1970.
'Dominance' Sought
Trump's theme of "energy dominance" marks an evolution. For years, the catch phrase of choice has been "energy independence," as politicians and industry officials sought to highlight how a new era of abundance was helping the U.S. wean itself from foreign sources of oil and natural gas.
That was in turn a dramatic change from the 1970s, when former President Jimmy Carter turned down the White House thermostats and used a televised address in February 1977 to urge consumers to conserve energy amid a permanent "shortage." After that, federal energy policy became rooted in the view that oil and gas were in short supply.[.]
"Trump is reorienting our national rhetoric toward 'dominance,'" said Kevin Book, analyst with ClearView Energy Partners LLC. "Captives crave independence; competitors strive to dominate. It's a shift from getting by to getting ahead."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Reminds of the old song – "Dream, dream, dream"Forecast is 10 million bbls per day 2018 and we are proposing dominance in global energy production!! What a twit.
Are the bf Saudis not afraid? Iran, Russia?
48) Yep, it is funny. According to above quoted US Energy Information administration the US consumed 19.68 million barrels of petroleum products per day in 2016.Berry Friesen | Jun 25, 2017 6:27:06 PM | 5148 & 49:
Mainly the reference to "dominance" applies to liquefied natural gas. Comparing LNG exports during the first 3 months of 2015 with the first 3 months of 2017 shows an increase by a factor of 30.
Although "dominance" may be hyperbole in that context as well -- given totals that exporters such as Qatar are achieving -- capturing world markets for US LNG exporters is a major driver of US policy. Ukraine, the nonsense about Russian interference in US elections, and the new Senate sanctions against European companies working with Russia on the Baltic Sea pipeline are three cases in point.
likklemore | Jun 25, 2017 7:06:09 PM | 53
Thank you somebody @ 49 for the added input.
@ 51 Berry Friesen
Mainly the reference to "dominance" applies to liquified natural gas. Comparing LNG exports during the first 3 months of 2015 with the first 3 months of 2017 shows an increase by a factor of 30.
.[capturing] world markets for US LNG exporters is a major driver of US policy.
My comment was it's on someone's wish list and dreaming on.
Do you have any idea the cost to set up LNG terminals and cost to transport from US to global - for starters, to compete with Russia, Iran, Qatar and others in the EU and Asian markets?
Pricing a factor: It's gone cold. The oil price crash has eliminated the discount U.S. LNG has to world prices
jfl | Jun 25, 2017 8:03:55 PM | 54
@53 lm
from your bloomberg link ...
Now spot LNG in Asia has fallen to just $5.95, while Pertamina would pay $6.86 for its U.S. LNG even before shipping it halfway across the world.geostrategy ... if ya gotta ask how much it costs, you can't afford it.Brad | Jun 25, 2017 8:33:14 PM | 55
somebody | Jun 25, 2017 9:47:57 PM | 58
53 add Germany and Austria
Austrian Federal Chancellor Christian Kern (SPÖ) and German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) commented as follows today (15 June) on the approval by the United States Senate of legislation regarding sanctions against Russia:...
It is in the common interest of the EU and the US to take resolute and unified action with a view to resolving the conflict in Ukraine.
We cannot, however, accept the threat of illegal extraterritorial sanctions being imposed on European companies that are participating in efforts to expand Europe's energy supply network!
The draft bill of the US is surprisingly candid about what is actually at stake, namely selling American liquefied natural gas and ending the supply of Russian natural gas to the European market. The bill aims to protect US jobs in the natural gas and petroleum industries.
Political sanctions should not in any way be tied to economic interests. Threatening to impose penalties on companies in Germany, Austria and other European countries with regard to their business in the United States if they participate in, or fund, natural gas projects involving Russia, such as Nord Stream 2, impacts European-American relations in a new and very negative way. This is about the competitiveness of our energy-intensive industries, and about thousands of jobs. We therefore strongly support the efforts of the US Department of State to amend this draft bill.
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atVec | Jun 23, 2017 10:14:39 PM 52
|Jen@31 writes about the legendary Qatari pipeline. That story made its appearance early in the conflict, and if anybody knows its origin, I would be keen to be let know.
That story goes that Assad would not let Qatar have its pipeline because, presumably, Russians wanted to retain their stranglehold on European gas supplies.The subtext is that those Russians must be very hard task masters and Assad, the lowliest of low lives, a terrified thug. And when the troubles started, Assad did not go back to the Qataris to discuss the matter over.
Sorry, I cannot square that.
A pipeline through Syria would have been a great boost to national economy for a number of years & could raise a port of the country to one of global importance, just at a time that Turkey started turning the spigot of Euphrates off (this is a sense I have, do not know if it is right) & a protracted drought and economic hardship all hit the country at the same time.
Consider that Qatar would have been a captive ally for Syria, a commodity rather in short supply for that country. The best part of it is, perhaps, that Syria presumably had a natural aversion to the transit fees.
There is another interesting story in this regard, which is to do with (at least) three rounds of exploration for gas in Saudi Arabia, all failed, and the special need for gas to service its petrochemical industry. If memory serves, the reason is they want to upgrade the heavy crude portion of their production, which has steadily been growing, and which the Saudis might have to sell as bunker oil at great discount, if they fail to find gas.
The story was run in the English papers of the Gulf circa 2012, whereby the Qataris were told in no uncertain terms that their gas 'had to remain in the peninsula' (Arabian subcontinent) for consumption, to serve the oil sector.
Once I chanced on an article on the educational proclivities of the thousands of the Saudi princes. Any guess? Yes, a good portion of them goes in for religious studies! Somehow I do not think they aspire to be lowly priests; but if not, where might they wish to have their sees? What if the other principalities of the Gulf have nobilities with similar outlooks & hopes?
If this is right (honestly, I do not know), it might explain quite a bit about the rivalries of the extremist Moslem clergy, and their activities both within the Moslem world and abroad, why not, even developments in Europe & the States.
Regards, Vec.
Lozion | Jun 23, 2017 10:24:34 PM | 53
@36 & @31 I think you are both right. The Pipelinistan angle is a major part of this feud.A probable change of heart from Qatar who has seen the light that no regime change will happen in Syria therefore making a Fars --> Iraq --> Syria -> Lebanon LNG pipeline a realistic endeavor is causing panic in KSA/US/IS who are trying to pressure Qatar to back-off from any deals with Iran..
If Turkey is firm on protecting Qatar then the ultimatum will come to pass and be null and void..
Don Bass | Jun 24, 2017 1:34:34 AM | 57
@ Vic
Y'know, when I read a comment such as yours: "~ I don't reckon its got anything to do with a pipeline ~" I immediately think of that old trope: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open ones mouth and remove all doubts"
Vic: instead of visiting here to blatantly display your ignorance, how about more usefully spending that typing time to research the topic, hmmm?
The Imperial drive to crush Syria has been in play since the early 1980s, when Assad senior was in power.
Here's a link: http://www.globalresearch.ca/1983-cia-document-reveals-plan-to-destroy-syria-foreshadows-current-crisis/5577785
And another http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/the-redirection
And here's your bonus link, cause I'm feeling the karma burst of sharing http://humansarefree.com/2014/09/exposing-covert-origins-of-isis.html
Now, go and do your homework: you may be able to raise your F to a C, for a pass grade, once you've done some actual reading on the topic.
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Jun 23, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
Pft | Jun 23, 2017 8:43:28 PM | 45William Engdahls views. "In my view this is a deep power struggle between Qatar and Saudi Arabia that has little to do with stated reasons regarding Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. The action to isolate Qatar was clearly instigated during US President Trump's recent visit in Riyadh where he pushed the unfortunate idea of a Saudi-led "Arab NATO" to oppose Iranian influence in the region.lysander | Jun 23, 2017 7:43:17 PM | 42The Saudi move, clearly instigated by Prince Bin Salman, Minister of Defense, was not about going against terrorism. If it were about terrorism, bin Salman would have to arrest himself and most of his Saudi cabinet as one of the largest financiers of terrorism in the world, and shut all Saudi-financed madrasses around the world, from Pakistan to Bosnia-Herzgovina to Kosovo. Another factor according to informed sources in Holland is that Washington wanted to punish Qatar for seeking natural gas sales with China priced not in US dollars but in Renminbi. That apparently alarmed Washington, as Qatar is the world's largest LNG exporter and most to Asia.
Moreover, Qatar was acting increasingly independent of the heavy Wahhabite hand of Saudi Arabia and threatening Saudi domination over the Gulf States. Kuwait, Oman, as well as non-Gulf Turkey were coming closer to Qatar and even Pakistan now may think twice about joining a Saudi-led "Arab NATO". Bin Salman has proven a disaster as a defense strategist, as proven in the Yemen debacle.
As to the future, it appears that Qatar is not about to rollover and surrender in face of Saudi actions. Already Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani is moving to establish closer ties with Iran, with Turkey that might include Turkish military support, and most recently with Russia.
Kuwait and Oman are urgently trying to get Saudi to backdown on this, but that is unlikely as behind Saudi Arabia stands the US and promises of tens of billions of dollars in US arms.
This foolish US move to use their proxy, in this case Riyadh, to discipline those not "behaving" according to Washington wishes, could well be the turning point, the point of collapse of US remaining influence in the entire Middle East in the next several years."
KSA could not have taken this course of action all by itself. Someone somewhere must be egging them on. But who? The US seems to have no interest in a Saudi-Qatari conflict. Israel might, but only if said conflict is resolved in Saudi favor.I am therefore coming to the conclusion that there is no longer clear leadership of US policy and there are different factions within the US government. The white house and CIA are supporting the Saudis while the Pentagon supports Qatar. This is just a hunch, but it seems like it could make sense. Perhaps this is what happens when a government is in a state of decompensation.
R Winner | Jun 23, 2017 1:41:04 PM | 4
It is mind boggling that a fundamental reshaping of the Middle East was most likely put in motion by Trump completely oblivious of what he was doing shooting from the hip on his Saudi trip.Outside of an outright invasion of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, it is hard to see this as a once in a life time geopolitical gift to Russia, Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Iran.
Juggs | Jun 23, 2017 2:24:33 PM | 9Now when July 3 comes and goes, Saudi Arabia will look completely impotent in the eyes of the countries in the region.harrylaw | Jun 23, 2017 2:36:39 PM | 10I wonder if there is some sort of interest between Russia, Turkey, Qatar, and Iran on a coup in Saudi Arabia. I can't imagine it would be that difficult. I know it is not Putin's policy to play these types of games like the US Regime, but one has to assume that people are just fucking done with the clowns running Saudi Arabia.
Gaddafi's speech to the Arab League in Syria 2008 was so prescient..okie farmer | Jun 23, 2017 2:37:39 PM | 11"We [the Arabs] are the enemies of one another I'm sad to say, we deceive one another, we gloat at the misfortune of one another, and we conspire against one another, and an Arab's enemy is another Arab's friend.
Along comes a foreign power, occupies an Arab country [Iraq] and hangs its President,and we all sit on the sidelines laughing. Any one of you might be next, yes.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/23/close-al-jazeera-saudi-arabia-issues-qatar-with-13-demands-to-end-blockadeJuggs | Jun 23, 2017 2:41:55 PM | 13
Qatar given 10 days to meet 13 sweeping demands by Saudi Arabia
Gulf dispute deepens as allies issue ultimatum for ending blockade that includes closing al-Jazeera and cutting back ties with IranPeter AU "Is Qatar, like Turkey, already heading for a multi-polar world? For 25 years, the US was the only game in town, but with Russia's move into Syria there are now options."karlof1 | Jun 23, 2017 3:06:36 PM | 16Hard to see the world heading in that direction:
- Russia and China will no longer allow the US Regime to use the same tactics to start wars against Iraq and Libya anymore.
- China is methodically closing off the South China Sea to the US Regime
- The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is starting to increase their shared defense
- Europe is openly talking about creating its own independent defense force
I wonder if Qatar is already in talks with China about joining the Silk Road Initiative now that it is openly moving into the Russia and Iran sphere.
Juggs 13--dh | Jun 23, 2017 3:20:35 PM | 19"I wonder if Qatar is already in talks with China about joining the Silk Road Initiative..."
You'll find the answer's yes as Pepe explains, https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201706161054701807-west-cannot-smell-what-eurasia-cooking/ and http://www.atimes.com/article/blood-tracks-new-silk-roads/
@17 The best is yet to come. There's a chance Netanyahu will fly into Riyadh to tell everybody what to do. I'm sure he wants what's best for the region.L'Akratique | Jun 23, 2017 3:29:54 PM | 20I quite like the WWI parallel. Trump as Kaiser Wilhelm? There certainly are some striking similarities in character.cankles | Jun 23, 2017 4:05:49 PM | 25Quote from Thomas Nipperdey:
"...gifted, with a quick understanding, sometimes brilliant, with a taste for the modern,-technology, industry, science -- but at the same time superficial, hasty, restless, unable to relax, without any deeper level of seriousness, without any desire for hard work or drive to see things through to the end, without any sense of sobriety, for balance and boundaries, or even for reality and real problems, uncontrollable and scarcely capable of learning from experience, desperate for applause and success, -- as Bismarck said early on in his life, he wanted every day to be his birthday-romantic, sentimental and theatrical, unsure and arrogant, with an immeasurably exaggerated self-confidence and desire to show off, a juvenile cadet, who never took the tone of the officers' mess out of his voice, and brashly wanted to play the part of the supreme warlord, full of panicky fear of a monotonous life without any diversions, and yet aimless, pathological in his hatred against his English mother."
@Laguerre #23Laguerre | Jun 23, 2017 4:42:05 PM | 27I have difficulty in seeing a relationship with the Silk Road Initiative, other than that Qatar exports a lot of LNG to China.China Eyes Qatar in its Quest to Build a New Silk Road
Last month at the China-Arab Cooperation Forum in Doha, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi postulated that Qatar should take part in the realization of China's Silk Road Initiatives.@cankles | Jun 23, 2017 4:05:49 PM | 25AtaBrit | Jun 23, 2017 4:51:40 PM | 28Yeah, you're right. I hadn't looked into the question sufficiently. Of course the Chinese are looking for more external finance for the project. They don't want to be the only ones who pay. Fat chance, though. The Qataris have been in austerity since the decline in the oil price. Someone I know who works in the Qatar Museum has seen all her colleagues let go. And now the crisis with Saudi.
The Qataris may even have signed contracts with China. But if you know anything about the Gulf, there's a wide gap between signing a contract, and actually getting paid. It depends upon how the prince concerned feels about the project when the question of payment comes up. A company I worked for in the 80s took two years to get payment, even though they were experts in Gulfi relations.
Great piece.Mina | Jun 23, 2017 5:09:45 PM | 29The issue of the threat regarding the Turkish base didn't surprise me much, though. I think it's clear that if MB is the target, then of course Turkey has to become a target, and Qatar - Turkey ties have to be broken. It stands to reason.
It also stands to reason if you simply consider Saudi's importance regionally: A lot is made of Iran's threat to Saudi influence, but Turkey - thanks in part to considerable investment by Qatar currently while investment from elsewhere has reduced massively -- is also very threatening to Saudi's influence, especially on the religious front.
Iran representing Shia interests in the region and Turkey representing Sunni interests is not a difficult future to imagine. It would of course grate with Saudi Arabia given that it had poured vast amounts of money into the Turkish economy and the diyanet.
On a slightly different note there's a scandal going on in western Turkey, in Duzce, at the moment because the local authority has unveiled a statue of Rabia - the four fingered Muslim Brotherhood salute! :-)
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/271450/World/Region/UN-blames-warring-sides-for-Yemens-cholera-catastr.aspxkarlof1 | Jun 23, 2017 5:16:47 PM | 30
let's blame underfed guys in skirts for funHassan Nasrallah has given his annual International Al-Quds Day speech with plenty of fire aimed at the usual suspects. The Daily Star reports: 'Nasrallah accused Saudi Arabia of "paving way for Israel" in the region.Piotr Berman | Jun 23, 2017 6:42:14 PM | 36'"It's unfortunate that Saudi Arabia is the head of terrorism and today it's holding its neighbors accountable for supporting terrorism," Nasrallah said, hinting to the recent economic sanctions against Qatar.' https://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2017/Jun-23/410688-nasrallah-says-regional-conflicts-seek-to-serve-israel-interest.ashx
Al-Manar provides this report, http://english.almanar.com.lb/292250
Unfortunately, I cannot locate an English language transcript, although one might become available eventually as is usually the case.
Piotr Bermanlikklemore | Jun 23, 2017 6:49:14 PM | 37Aljazeera evil? Are you joking? ....
@Anon | Jun 23, 2017 3:47:56 PM | 24
You did not address the argument I made, namely, that Aljazeera editors apparently belong to "Muslims, who immediately set out to support it [Darwinian theory of evolution] unaware of the blasphemy and error in it." These guys pretend to be nice Wahhabis, dressing in dishdashas, their womenfolks in abayas, but in fact they spread heretical and blasphemous doctrines. However, I am more of a Khazar than a Wahhabi and I do not treat this argument seriously.
It is the fact that compared to other government supported TV/online venues, say RT or PressTV, Aljazeera is well written and edited, has plenty of valuable material, etc. It is a worthwhile place to check when you want to get a composite picture on some issues. And it irritates KSA potentates in a myriad of ways, precisely because it targets "politically engaged Muslim".
It is a good example that pluralism has inherent positive aspects, devils that quarrel are better than "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."
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Actually, I hope for many more benefits will show up from this quarrel than improved profits for Iranian produce growers. It is worthwhile to observe that Dubai, a component emirate of UAE, has gigantic economic links with Iran, which must be tolerated by overlords from Abu Dhabi: they had to bail out their cousins after real estate collapse, so they have big money stake in Dubai being prosperous. Potentially, Dubai and especially the hapless vegetable and dairy producers in KSA can lose a bundle (the latter had to invest a lot in farms for Qatari market, it is not like letting cows graze on abundant grasslands plus planting cucumbers and waiting for the rain to water them). Aljazeera and Muslim Brotherhood are more irritating to KSA and UAE than an occasional polite missive to Iran.
One pattern in Syrian civil war were persistent and bloody feuds between jihadists that formed roughly four groups:
- "salafi", presumably funded by KSA,
- "brothers", presumably funded by Qatar and Turkey,
- al-Qaeda/al-Nusra/something new that was forcing the first two groups to surrender some weapons (and money?),
- and ISIS that had more complex sources (or more hidden).
Medium term strategy of Syrian government and allies for the near future is to "de-escalate" in the western part of the country and finish off ISIS, partitioning hitherto ISIS territories in some satisfactory way, while maintaining some type of truce with the Kurds. Then finish off the jihadists, except those most directly protected by Turkey. Finally, take care of the Kurds. Some sufficiently safe federalism can be part of the solution, but nothing that would lead to enclaves with their own military forces and their own foreign policy, like Iraqi Kurdistan.
That requires the opposing parties to exhibit somewhat suicidal behavior. A big time official feud between "brothers" and "salafi + Kurds" (a pair that shares some funding but with scant mutual affection" can help a lot. Most of all, a big time feud between Turkey and KSA can stabilize the situation in which jihadists from Idlib and northern Hama observe a truce/de-escalation, while their colleagues from south Syria get clobbered, and definitely will induce them to refrain from attacking Syrian government while it is busy against ISIS. After Erdogan was prevented from marching onto Raqqa, he has two options: "Sunnistan" in eastern Syria under domination of YPG or a much smaller YPG dominated territory that can be subsequently digested. Option one is a true nightmare for Erdogan, more than a mere paranoia. However, Erdogan is also "pan-Sunni" Islamist, so he could be tempted to backstab infidels from Damascus, as he was doing before. An open feud with Sunnistan sponsors should help him to choose.
Cankles @ 25 Is that really you? If so, you should know -rawdawgbugfalo | Jun 23, 2017 6:54:19 PM | 38Look behind the curtain. This has to do with maintaining the price of oil in US$.
Qatar launches first Chinese yuan clearing hub in Middle East .
Qatar opened the Middle East's first centre for clearing transactions in the Chinese yuan on Tuesday, saying it would boost trade and investment between China and Gulf Arab economies."The launch of the region's first renminbi clearing center in Doha creates the necessary platform to realise the full potential of Qatar and the region's trade relationship with China," Qatar's central bank governor Sheikh Abdullah bin Saud al-Thani said at a ceremony.
"It will facilitate greater cross-border renminbi investment and financing business, and promote greater trade and economic links between China and the region, paving the way for better financial cooperation and enhancing the pre-eminence of Qatar as a financial hub in MENA (Middle East and North Africa)."
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's (ICBC) Doha branch is the clearing bank for the centre, which intends to serve companies from around the Middle East.A clearing bank can handle all parts of a currency transaction from when a commitment is made until it is settled, reducing costs and time taken for trading.
The centre "will improve the ease of transactions between companies in the region and China by allowing them to settle their trade directly in renminbi, drawing increased trade through Qatar and boosting bilateral and economic collaboration between Qatar and China," said ICBC chairman Jiang Jianqing.
At present, Qatar and the Gulf's other wealthy oil and gas exporters use the U.S. dollar much more than the yuan. Most of their currencies are pegged to the dollar, and most of their huge foreign currency reserves are denominated in dollars.
Laguerre @27
Date of article April 24, 2017
In April 2015, Qatar opened Qatar Renminbi Centre (QRC), the region's first clearing centre for the Chinese currency. This allows for trades priced in RMB to be cleared locally in Qatar rather than in other centres such as Shanghai or Hong Kong.ICBC has since become the designated clearance bank servicing the QRC, which has handled more than 350bn yuan ($52.6bn) since its inception.
http://emerge85.io/blog/the-middle-kingdoms-big-four-and-the-gulf~ ~ ~ ~
Trending and not very far to seeing what is now held under the table. Oil will also be priced in RMB because KSA, to maintain their share of exports to China, will need to get on board. For now, it's been reaffirmed, SA does the whipping and USA protects the Royals.Well said, I still think this is all dreamlike. Having natural gas and sharing it with Iran is a mf.Piotr Berman | Jun 23, 2017 7:34:43 PM | 40Qatar: Is it about Trump, Israel or Nascent Influence? http://wsenmw.blogspot.com/2017/06/qatar-is-it-about-trump-israel-or.html
About Sunni-Shia split. My impression is that this is mostly KSA + UAE obsession. For example, there is a substantial Shia minority in Pakistan, but the dominant thinking among the Sunnis seems to be "Muslim solidarity". There is a minority that is virulently anti-Shia, but they are politically isolated and despised exactly on the account of breaking that solidarity. After all, Pakistan forms the boundary of the Umma with non-Muslim India. I base that opinion on comments in online Pakistani newspapers, and what I have heard from an acquaintance who was a religiously conservative Sunni Pakistani. To him, the attack on Yemen by KSA was wrong "because they are Muslim". So even if Pakistan is to a certain extend in Saudi pocket, and its deep state has an extremist Sunni component, overt siding against "fellow Muslim" is out of the question.Dusty | Jun 23, 2017 7:38:26 PM | 41Egypt is another case. One can find rather isolated anti-Shia outbursts, like writings of some fossils in Al-Azhar (who are responsible for the state religion), but the government steers away from that, and in spite of hefty subsidies, it joined Yemen war only symbolically and for a very short time (unlike Sudan that really needs the cash for its mercenaries). As you move further away from the Persian Gulf, the indifference to the "split" increases. As far as Qatar and Aljazeera are concerned, probably no one detests them more than Egyptian elite, as they were valiantly fighting Muslim Brotherhood for the sake of progress with some occasional large massacres (killing several hundreds of protesters, issuing hundreds of death penalties to participants in a single protest, in absentia! incredible idiocy+cruelty). That explains why al-Sisi joined KSA against Qatar.
However, the civil war in Libya that embroils Egypt is a classic case of unexpected alliances. Egypt with a help from Russia, KSA and UAE supports the "eastern government" that bases legitimacy on democratic parliament re-assembled in Tobruq on Egyptian border, and dominated by military strongman Haftar. The latter has the best chance of all people to become a military strongman of all Libya, but apparently has meager popularity and thus, too few troops. He patched that problem by an alliance with a Salafi group that had a numerous militia, currently partitioned into smaller units and incorporated into Haftar's brigades. Even with that, his progress on the ground is very, very gradual. Against him is the government in Tripolis, legitimized by a more fresh parliament and UN/EU, plus a military force that includes several militias. Part of the parliamentary support stems from Muslim Brotherhood, and some part of military support comes from Salafi militias. There are also aspects of a "war of all against all", seems that Saharan tribes collected a lot of fresh blood feuds.
Thus Qatari+Turkish support for Tripoli government is aligned with EU, and Egyptian support for Tobruq government is aligned with Russia and KSA.
I thought I might just throw this out there and see what sticks. US policy is based on power and control. Saudi Arabia has been a good ally but it does not serve use policy or strategic goals any longer. Not really. I think the grand prize for destabilizing the middle east is Saudi Arabia. It would be the only way to truly control the development of other nations or more specifically, to control their rivalries and save the the US from complete economic breakdown. The Saudi's are being plumbed by the best of them, telling them they are you friends, we have your back and so long as Saudi Arabia loses more money and keeps lossing money in needless wars etc.The only hope for Saudi Arabia is to re-denominate oil sales in multiple currencies such as the WTO drawing rights, of course based on another formula, perhaps based on the countries that purchase the most oil. This would be the only way for the royalty to gain longevity as rulers of the country. Any other scenario spells disaster. Of course, it would be a rough go for them for a while, but in the end, a slight change in outlook and the unfair advantage given to the US would go a long way, economically to stabilizing large blocks of countries. They also could of course change their outlook on the world, but that is certainly a difficult challenge. If the Muslim world came together based on their similarities, they could be a very powerful block.
The US no longer has the financial velocity it once maintained and this is much more due to insane ideas about being a hegemon. I never thought revolution would be possible in the US, but it is coming and it won't take much. The country does not appear to have intelligence peddle back a number of policies, drunk on its own poison, it makes capitalism look disgusting. A new business model is needed, one that developes mutual trade based on respect from within the exchange itself. Saudi Arabia needs to cultivate multi-channel support for its biggest resource so that when the returns are no longer there, they will have also developed multiple avenues to prosperity. Just a thought.
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Jun 20, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al , June 16, 2017 at 1:30 amThe US's intervention is even more pathetic than it seems.This is not a stand alone anti-Russia bill which would signal strength from the US, but an adjunct to the anti-I-ran sanctions bill that continues to seek to punish I-ran in the vague hope that it will pull the plug on the cast-iron nuclear deal it has signed with international partners. The irony there is that I-ran Air is recapitalizing with both Airbus & Boeing (also ATR), 100 odd a piece, not to mention other significant investment opportunities for western firms.
They're quite the Gordian Tits!
Not only is there the potential of the Levianthan gas field off Cyprus/Israel/whatever, brutal dictator Azeri gas will also be arriving in (larger, but not gigantic) quantities. Not to mention that significant buyers of LNG, like the UK, have it come straight from Qatar. Is the US prepared to sell LNG at a discount compared to Qatar that has strategic agreements and its own fundamental interests to be protected by the Western (European) states as well?
So if this plan seems to damage not only the USA's allies but the USA itself, then what is its purpose? Stick it to Trump. Mire any plans to re-balance relations with Russia almost at any cost . It's a no brainer for Democrats as they neither hold a majority in the House or the Senate, and there seem to be enough dog whistle Republicans willing to go along with it, including those with mental problems like John 'Insane' McCaine. Ukraine is almost peripheral except as a convenient tool. It think the US accepts they've screwed the pooch on the Ukraine so its only value is to be used as a festering sore on Russia's frontier. Kiev mops up the completely free public political support whilst it is being kicked in the bollox by the same people.
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Jun 17, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
james | Jun 16, 2017 2:47:41 AM | 36
daily us press briefing thursday june 15th..
some interesting info on the sale of jets to qatar worth 12 billion and stuff like that..
and this
"QUESTION: Switching gears, Germany and Austria sharp – have sharply criticized the U.S. Senate today for moves aimed at advancing a new legislation packaging new sanctions against Russia, which tangentially deal with European countries as well. Austrian federal chancellor and German foreign ministry released a joint statement, and I wanted to read one line from it to get your response to this particular line: "The draft bill of the U.S. is surprisingly candid about what is actually at stake, namely selling American liquefied natural gas and ending the supply of Russian natural gas to the European markets."
MS NAUERT: Sorry, back up for a second? What did you say about the liquefied natural gas?
QUESTION: That the bill is trying to basically peddle U.S. LNG to the – to the European markets – markets instead of the Russian natural gas. The bill aims to protect U.S. jobs and the natural gas and petroleum industries. So what's your response to that?
MS NAUERT: Well, first, I'm not going to comment on anything that those nations said and their criticism of anything going on on Capitol Hill. We would see it – and we talked about this last week – we welcome the shipment of liquefied natural gas to Poland, to countries in that region, if that were to come – become available to them, because it helps give them another option, another option to get natural gas from other countries that are perhaps more stable or other countries that can perhaps provide a regular flow of natural gas.
Much of the natural gas in Poland, as I understand it, comes from Russia, and that can be inconsistent. Russia has the ability, as you well know, to turn off that natural gas, and that puts the Polish people in a very difficult situation. So the U.S. provided another option. A regular source of natural gas, especially in the winter months, we see as important for the United States and for our allies."
our allies... lol...
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Jun 17, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
frances | Jun 17, 2017 7:44:31 PM
virgile | Jun 17, 2017 11:04:12 AM | 32Although unlikely, it would be amusing if support for Qatar led to an improvement in the Iran/Turkey relationship.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jun 17, 2017 3:00:24 PM | 34I agree Turkey is having its problems, but the Russian pipeline is moving along and managed by Russia; Syria, Iraq and Iranian gas could all become clients of the pipeline, generating significant revenue and jobs for Turkey as its hub. Far better that Turkey looks to Russia with its sane international policies than to the the US's EU puppet.
Turkey has fallen in yet another trap set by the USA to weaken Erdogan. Turkey has no more 'neighbors' friends, no more European friends, little american sympathy, and now it is about to loose his rich Gulf friends.Erdogan's foreign policy is close to total disaster. The AKP success came from the economical reforms stimulated by the EU promises of adhesion and to the smart and peaceful influence of Gulen in Turkey's institutions and foreign policy.
Now Gulen and his allies are enemies. Turkey has gradually become a rogue state controlled exclusively by a megalomaniac man blinded by religion and money.
After the Syria quagmire, the Qatar-Saudi conflict and its impact on Turkey's economy, may turn to be fatal to Erdogan ruling.
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Jun 16, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Any Darwin Awards fans out there? For those few who have never heard of them, the Darwin Awards celebrate those individuals who have rendered a significant service to mankind by taking themselves out of the global gene pool. In preparing to discuss today's subject, I am reminded of unfortunate 1999 award-winner 'James' from Missouri, who became so fixated upon his love interest that he tried to lop off his own head with a chainsaw to demonstrate his commitment to an outcome on his terms. Although he was ultimately unsuccessful on both counts, he did fatally injure himself, and died in hospital. Ashes to ashes; dust to dust.
My intent today is to demonstrate clear destructive similarities between the above emotional decision and the equally simpleminded decision of the US Senate to impose further economic sanctions on Russia, this time explicitly tying them to penalizing of European companies which do business with Russia – moreover, in a clear attempt to stop the latter from proceeding with the Nord Stream II gas pipeline project. This, in turn, is clearly an attempt by the USA to make Europe a captive market for its own energy products, in the form of shipborne LNG. Significantly, that goal is also finally becoming clear to Europe; or at least to the parts of it that matter, such as Germany (thanks for the tip, James!) Try to put aside, for the moment, the insufferable arrogance of American meddling in Europe's energy market, with a view to restricting its choice while – laughably – pretending it is broadening European energy options.
The readers and commenters of this blog will be well aware, since it has been a topic of discussion for years here, that a critical underpinning of the western plan to seize Ukraine and wrest it into the western orbit was the premise that Russia would be forced by simple momentum to go along with it. As long as events continued to unfold too quickly to get ahead of, Russia would have to help supply the sinews of its own destruction. And a big part of that was the assumption that Russia would help to finance Ukraine's transition to a powerful western fulcrum upon which to apply leverage against it, through continued trade with Ukraine and continued transit of Europe's energy supply through Ukraine's pipeline system. But Russia slapped a trade embargo on most Ukrainian goods, and rescinded its tariff-free status as it became clear Brussels planned to use it to stovepipe European trade goods into the Russian market, through Ukraine – thus crushing domestic industries which would not be able to compete on economically-favourable terms. The armchair strategists nearly shit a brick when construction of the South Stream pipeline commenced, bypassing Ukraine and depriving it of about $2 billion annually in transit fees. But pressure ultimately forced Bulgaria to throw a wrench into the works, and the pipeline plans were shelved, to much victory dancing in the west. There was not quite as much happy-dancing in Bulgaria , but they were only ever a pawn anyway.
Sidebar for a moment, here; while the $2 Billion annually in transit fees is extremely important, Ukraine's pre-crisis GDP was $163 Billion. The funds realized for transit fees are important because (a) Russia has to pay them and (b) the west will have to come up with the equivalent in aid if Ukraine loses out on them. But the real value intrinsic to Ukraine as a transit country is its physical reality as an interface for Russian gas transit to Europe – what is a bridge can be easily turned into a wall.
Any time Washington thinks Russia needs some more shit on its face, Ukraine can be prodded to announce a doubling of its transit fees, or to kick off some other dispute which the popular press will adroitly spin to make Russia appear to be an unreliable supplier. Therefore, it is essential to western strategy that significant amounts of Russian gas continue to transit Ukraine. Sufficiently so that Europe continues to evolve ever-more-desperate contingency plans in order to keep receiving gas through the country which was known to have provoked the previous shutoff of European supplies by siphoning Europe-bound gas for its own use. That's despite the assurances of Germany and western partners of Gazprom in the Nord Stream line that it will mean cheaper gas prices for Europe.
But we knew this was coming, didn't we? Yes, we did, because as recently as last month, Democratic senator Jean Shaheen, who sits on the Senate Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on European Affairs, announced that the United States was considering involving itself in the Nord Stream II pipeline project , with a view to killing it stone dead. The purpose, as already mentioned, is to make way for LNG cargoes to Europe, cutting Russia out of the business, on the assumption that without energy sales the Russian economy will crumble and the country will collapse. Destroying Russia remains Washington's overriding strategic objective.
So the stakes are high; high enough to provide context for Washington's bizarre and aggressive behavior, and for its continued ridiculous insistence that Russia tampered with the 2016 US presidential election. What are the chances Washington will succeed with its latest adventure in global bullying?
Not good, according to multiple sources. Let's take a look at how Platts views the prospects; Platts, a division of S&P Global , is headquartered in London and employs over 1,000 people in more than 15 offices worldwide. These include global business centers such as New York, Shanghai and Sao Paulo, and major energy centers such as Houston, Singapore and London, where Platts is based. Having hopefully established the firm's credentials as someone who knows what they are talking about in the energy business, let's see what Platts has to say about the potential American LNG market in Europe . Mmmm .the review is mixed. At the outset, Platts is admiring of Cheniere Energy's go-to-hell expansion. But a couple of things about that are cause to curb enthusiasm. One, only 8 American LNG cargoes had gone to Europe so far; that was as of April this year, when the report was released. Of those, 4 went to Spain, 3 to Portugal and 1 to Italy. Two, the Iberian Peninsula is acknowledged by Platts as not particularly significant in terms of gauging Europe's welcome of American LNG.
"Indeed, the fact that Portugal and Spain were the first European countries to import LNG from the US is telling The Iberian Peninsula is considered an "island market" with poor interconnection to the rest of Europe, so the delivery of US LNG into the region is not likely to be seen as a sign that it will take hold in the wider European market."
The same passage points out that Russia does not supply the Iberian Peninsula with pipeline gas, and so is unlikely to be very concerned about the impact of US LNG on that market.
Three, Cheniere's rapid expansion has come at a terrifying cost, and the company is currently – as of fall 2016 – overleveraged with approximately $20 Billion in long-term debt . It is unprofitable, with interest payments representing 60% of revenues, the living embodiment of 'bicycle economics'; the second you stop pedaling, you crash.
For what it's worth, few great business breakthroughs have occurred without risk, and while Cheniere is plunging ahead with what seems like recklessness, it could just as easily pay off with complete domination of the North American export market. That's a hell of a debt load, though; not much margin for bad news. That does expose a flaw in the American strategy, as well – wrestling control of the European supply market from Russia would be frighteningly expensive.
a little better than 3 Billion Cubic Feet (BcF) of natural gas, which is mostly methane. That equates to about .85 Billion Cubic Meters (BcM). But Europe uses about 400 BcM per year , assuming LNG could supply the whole European market, which is of course unrealistic. Especially considering the entire global LNG shipping fleet consists of about 410 vessels .No LNG carriers are currently registered under the US flag, and if the USA plans to be a serious exporter it is going to need about 100 new LNG carriers over the next 30 years , something which is frankly not practically achievable considering it takes about 2 years to build one, at a cost of about $200 Million apiece . Of course, miracles can be made to happen if you pour enough money into them. But we've already somewhat nervously mentioned how much all this is costing – how does the likely return on investment shape up?
Well, what the fuck? Platts comes right out and says that Russia has the option of cutting its prices to ensure it undercuts LNG costs in order to keep its share of the European market!
"Russia clearly does have the option to undercut the US LNG price to ensure it keeps its share of its key European markets and could flood the market with cheap gas, maximizing revenues and cash flow at a time when producers worldwide are suffering from the impact of such low prices."
So, let me get this straight. All the attempts by the west, led as usual by Washington, to force energy prices down and keep them low actually benefit Russia by putting the USA in an unacceptable profit/loss loop so that it cannot afford to sell its LNG to Europe and still make money? That appears to be pretty much how it shakes out.
"Russia, thanks to the bearish oil price environment and an enhanced export strategy from Gazprom, increased its exports to Europe by 15% (through the Nord Stream, Yamal, and Brotherhood pipelines) to 118 Bcm, taking back its place as Europe's largest gas supplier in the process."
Wait! I think I see a solution. All the USA needs to do is apply its global leverage to make energy costs rise!"But US LNG could face problems of its own – the current low prices are forcing ever growing numbers of US producers into bankruptcy. According to a recent report by Haynes and Boone, 90 gas and oil producers in the US and Canada have filed for bankruptcy between January 2015 and the start of August 2016."
Oh, hey; I just realized – if forcing energy prices back up were an option, how is that going to hamstring an opponent who was already able to undercut you at the lower price, and still turn a profit?
Platts closes out this dismal synopsis with the consolation prize that, while US LNG is less competitive with pipeline gas given narrow Henry Hub-NBP spreads, it is coming to Europe regardless. More of that old American can-do. It will have to be, though, on what is described as a short-run marginal cost basis. Would you feel comfortable with that forecast if you were carrying, say, $20 Billion in debt?
And it's not just Platts who sounds a warning; Forbes has a similar, if slightly more mocking outlook of the situation .
"Most of this is just political posturing and noise. The U.S. is not now and nor will it be in the near future a key resource for Europe's energy needs According to EIAs Annual Energy Outlook, published in April, the United States remains a net importer of fuels through 2040 in a low oil price scenario. In a high oil and gas price scenario, the United States becomes a net exporter of liquid fuels due to increased production by 2021. A lot can happen in seven years. By then, Exxon will likely be back to its deal with Rosneft in Russia's Arctic Circle."As well, Forbes adds the interesting perspective that foreign sales of American gas will be a tough sell domestically if the pressure remains on the American leadership to achieve greater energy self-sufficiency and reduced dependence on foreign sources. This situation can only be exacerbated by a rise in anti-American sentiment around the world, and is likely to spike if energy prices rise. But if they stay low, American LNG exports won't make any money. If they go up, pipeline gas will undercut LNG prices and make it noncompetitive. Jeez, we just seem to be going around in circles. Say, did you notice that little item in there, in which the author mentions the only possible way the USA could compete with Russia in the natural gas market in Europe would be if it had national rights to substantial supplies of gas abroad? Did that give your memory a little tickle, and make you think of Burisma Holdings, and Hunter Biden ?
The Brookings Institute, for God's sake, warned that US LNG could not compete price-wise before the first LNG cargo ever left the USA. Given its sympathies, it seems probable it was intended as a sobering restraint meant to keep the United States from doing something stupid that might expose it to failure and even ruin; it is much less likely to have been an endorsement of Russia's global business practices.
As so often happens, an unhealthy fixation on taking down a largely imagined enemy results in increased risk-taking and a totally unrealistic appraisal of the likelihood of success – it becomes worth doing simply to be doing something. The costs in this instance have included the alienation and infuriating of Germany, the European Union's anchor economy, and angry murmurs from the Gulf States that Washington negotiated production cuts simply to make its own product more competitive. All for nothing, as it happens, because a nation with surplus swing production can always undercut your price, and the nation with the world's lowest production costs should be last on your list of "People I Want To Start A Price War With".
If you were opposed to official Washington's swaggering, bullying modus operandi , this whole unfolding of events probably seems pretty delicious to you. But I've saved the most delicious for last – Trump dares not make any effort to overrule the Senate vote, or get it reframed, because of the successful media campaign to portray him as Putin's secret agent. Any effort to mollify Germany's fury will be seized upon by the reality-challenged Democrats as an opportunity to further discredit the Trump government, by making it appear to be negotiating in Russia's behalf.
You couldn't make it up. PaulR , June 15, 2017 at 5:29 pm
One should never underestimate peoples` willingness to spend vast sums of money on worthless projects. Witness the Canadian government's recent announcement of its plans to increase defense spending by 70%.marknesop , June 15, 2017 at 5:47 pmWhen the dust finally settles, the Chinese will end up on top.
I think you're probably right about that. And if it turns out to be the case, British Columbia will turn out to be the most progressive province in Canada, with its large numbers of Chinese citizens and its Chines-language television stations. At bottom I am mostly a peaceful guy and I don't really care very much who rules the world so long as it doesn't impact my lifestyle.PaulR , June 15, 2017 at 5:38 pmOnce I would have argued strongly for American global leadership, based on a perception that it offered the best chance for prosperity and enlightenment for everyone, but events since have changed my view. Now I think other countries should be left alone in terms of interference, helped where you can lend a hand, and global leadership is an unrealistic aspiration for any country led by humans, since human nature tends to favour self-interest.
I don't know what the Liberals think they are doing, pushing what is essentially an unachievable Conservative platform where defense is concerned. To what end? So we can interfere more effectively on the USA's behalf? We have a good military. There's nothing wrong with keeping it up to date and well-supplied and trained. But a 70% increase is impractical and is only likely to incur the wrath of the non-military portion of the electorate, since the money has to come from somewhere.
I hadn't been aware of the connection between the sanctions and LNG, so thanks for pointing that out.marknesop , June 15, 2017 at 5:58 pmMeanwhile, I read this:
'Germany and Austria on Thursday sharply criticized the U.S. Senate's plan to add sanctions on Russia, describing it as an illegal attempt to boost U.S. gas exports and interfere in Europe's energy market. [ ]
"We cannot accept a threat of extraterritorial sanctions, illegal under international law, against European companies that participate in developing European energy supplies," [German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said in a joint statement]. "Europe's energy supply is Europe's business, not that of the United States of America."'
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/06/15/the-us-is-exposing-europes-divide-on-nord-stream-2/
PaulR , June 15, 2017 at 7:12 pmAfter all, many other European leaders have publicly clamored for U.S. LNG imports as a way to ease their dependence on Gazprom.Who? The Baltics? Thanks for that. It's mostly a rehash of the other article, but it does include some interesting insights, and it has a little more credibility than ZeroHedge, although there's little in that with which I can find fault and its breaking news is usually accurate.
That the EU's energy policies are completely outside the USA's remit is correct, but it's a surprise to hear someone of Gabriel's stature actually say it. It seems the USA has decided that forcing Germany to abandon its support for the project is worth trying. That will turn out to be a disastrous mistake, because the business community in Germany contains some of America's staunchest supporters, while anti-Americanism among the German population – especially its youth – is a growing problem. This will do nothing to help it, and it most certainly is not going to persuade Germany to order American LNG.
I urge you to digest the Platts Report in detail, at your leisure – it's illuminating, and I'm sure you will note that Russia's LNG export capability is already far, far ahead of the USA's. So even if pipeline gas proved only competitive with LNG, why would anyone depend on supplies which have to cross the ocean rather than supplies that can come from Kaliningrad?
As if on cue, Evgeniia Chirikova denounces North Stream II in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/14/gas-pipeline-nord-stream-2-funnel-billions-putin-bypass-sanctionsucgsblog , June 15, 2017 at 7:23 pmShe's funny: "How can you shout about the transition to renewable, environmentally safe energy and at the same time make plans to increase gas flows into Europe?"marknesop , June 15, 2017 at 10:23 pmUhh, Zhenichka, Russia is part of Europe, you can shout about it if you are increasing your energy dependence on both, and if one pipeline is simply replacing another. That's how. That was easy.
"Five European companies are involved but for some mysterious reason, 100% of the shares belong to Gazprom."
Because GazProm is paying $$$ for it. Zhenichka, in a Capitalist Society, those who pay for the shares, get the shares. Did I solve that mystery for you?
yalensis , June 16, 2017 at 3:37 am"Five European companies are involved but for some mysterious reason, 100% of the shares belong to Gazprom."There is nothing mysterious about it; in fact, it is typical Guardian dishonesty. The Nord Stream II Project originally included minority shareholders as shown here . Then Poland introduced its anti-monopoly action and announced the pipeline could not be built. The partners dropped out, and left Gazprom to take the heat alone. When Poland failed in its bid to stop the project and it became clear the EU was all out of arrows – having never had a defensible legal basis – the partners hopped back on, but as investors only. I daresay they stand to make a good return on their investment even without being shareholders. Meanwhile, American meddling is only likely to make Europeans grateful attempts to stop the pipeline failed. I would not like to see their reaction if it ever became clear their governments had committed them to paying higher gas prices just to spite Russia, particularly in view of the USA's limited ability to provide reliable and constant supply.
The Guardian is just being a good American footsoldier, and trying to throw mud in the works for Uncle Sam.
Chirikova works for the Estonian government now.ucgsblog , June 15, 2017 at 7:16 pmBeautiful article, and great timing Mark! I love it. This was one of the dumbest bills ever passed. It aimed at Russia, but it's just a take down of Germany. Reminds me of a recent Russian joke:Jen , June 15, 2017 at 8:39 pmObama: "America is mighty! Because of us, Russia's Economy is in ruins!"
Poroshenko: "not Russia's, sir. Ukraine's."
Obama: "Who gives a shit! It's in ruins!"Also, here's what I'm wondering – can't Russia deliver it by truck or train? Won't that still be less expensive than delivering it by ship?
Nordstream 2 is primarily a gas pipeline project under the Baltic Sea.
The main attraction of Nordstream 2 is it avoids transit through countries where tolls and transit fees would have to be paid, whether through land-based pipes, truck or train, and all these expenses added to the eventual cost that would be paid by the end consumer (ie the general public). Plus trucks and trains can be held up or subjected to attacks and gas in land-based pipelines can be siphoned off and diverted as was being done when the gas was passing through Ukraine originally. No such problems if the gas were being delivered through underwater pipelines though we can be sure that Swedish naval submarines (how many of those are there – one?) will be watching them very closely for phantom Russian subs.
marknesop , June 15, 2017 at 10:28 pm
I thought you were talking about LNG, from Kaliningrad. And if so, yes; it certainly could be transported by train, and probably would be.Jen , June 16, 2017 at 5:46 amAh, I thought UCGS' original comment referred to your original post, not the one you sent at 5:58 pm yesterday.marknesop , June 16, 2017 at 8:56 amWouldn't transporting LNG by underground pipeline under its own pressure be a less risky and cheaper option than sending it by train? Trains carrying LNG can only carry so much and have to be specially adapted to transporting it. Plus they share rail networks with other trains so there are issues like how saturated the rail networks supporting LNG rail traffic, other cargo traffic and passenger traffic become, and the pressure this puts on drivers and maintenance of railway tracks, and building more rail lines in and through areas where pipelines could be laid down instead.
It's possible; I'm afraid I don't know enough about it. It seems that when they speak of an LNG 'train', it refers to the liquefaction and purification facility , not a transport vehicle. In order to transport LNG it must be liquefied, which implies freezing it to below -161C. Naturally it must be maintained at a temperature which guarantees its stability as a liquid, until it is appropriate to return it to its gaseous form for use in that form. That's the purpose of the huge container vessels on an LNG tanker – you have to get it cold and then keep it cold.Jen , June 16, 2017 at 2:30 pmI just don't know how you would do that in a pipeline. And obviously it would be wildly impractical for a train, I don't know what the hell I thought I was talking about. It could be done, but why? You'd need a hundred miles of teeny little flatcar-sized container vessels to equal what you can transport in an LNG carrier.
Your pipeline would have to originate at an LNG 'train' and terminate at another, somewhere else, so that the liquefaction/gasification process could be practically carried out, much as current NG pipelines use pumping stations. But you would also have to keep the LNG below -160C all the time it was in the pipeline. That's probably physically possible, too, if expense is no consideration, but it seems terribly impractical when NG already goes by pipeline safely at a fraction of what it would cost to transport LNG the same way.
Ah, I see now of course you wouldn't need to transport NG in liquid form under 160C through pipelines. To transport it by ship or train though, it must be in liquefied form, presumably because as a liquid NG can be measured and quantified, and then exporters can work out how much they can charge for producing and transporting LNG. Not to mention of course that transporting commodities in gaseous form by train and ship is harder and riskier than transporting them as liquids.marknesop , June 16, 2017 at 3:38 pmAs well, it needs to be liquefied in order to be compressed, to get the volumes you are looking for . One of those container vessels full of uncompressed NG wouldn't be much more than a good-sized European town would need for its barbecues.et Al , June 16, 2017 at 1:30 amLNG achieves a higher reduction in volume than compressed natural gas (CNG) so that the (volumetric) energy density of LNG is 2.4 times greater than that of CNG or 60 percent that of diesel fuel. This makes LNG cost efficient to transport over long distances where pipelines do not exist. Specially designed cryogenic sea vessels (LNG carriers) or cryogenic road tankers are used for its transport. LNG is principally used for transporting natural gas to markets, where it is regasified and distributed as pipeline natural gas.
That does highlight, as well, that if you can use road tankers there really is no reason you could not use trains. But anywhere it is practical to use trains or road transport, you would be asking yourself, "why can't I use a pipeline here?"
The US's intervention is even more pathetic than it seems.Lyttenburgh , June 16, 2017 at 9:03 amThis is not a stand alone anti-Russia bill which would signal strength from the US, but an adjunct to the anti-I-ran sanctions bill that continues to seek to punish I-ran in the vague hope that it will pull the plug on the cast-iron nuclear deal it has signed with international partners. The irony there is that I-ran Air is recapitalizing with both Airbus & Boeing (also ATR), 100 odd a piece, not to mention other significant investment opportunities for western firms.
They're quite the Gordian Tits!
Not only is there the potential of the Levianthan gas field off Cyprus/Israel/whatever, brutal dictator Azeri gas will also be arriving in (larger, but not gigantic) quantities. Not to mention that significant buyers of LNG, like the UK, have it come straight from Qatar. Is the US prepared to sell LNG at a discount compared to Qatar that has strategic agreements and its own fundamental interests to be protected by the Western (European) states as well?
So if this plan seems to damage not only the USA's allies but the USA itself, then what is its purpose? Stick it to Trump. Mire any plans to re-balance relations with Russia almost at any cost . It's a no brainer for Democrats as they neither hold a majority in the House or the Senate, and there seem to be enough dog whistle Republicans willing to go along with it, including those with mental problems like John 'Insane' McCaine. Ukraine is almost peripheral except as a convenient tool. It think the US accepts they've screwed the pooch on the Ukraine so its only value is to be used as a festering sore on Russia's frontier. Kiev mops up the completely free public political support whilst it is being kicked in the bollox by the same people.
Whoop-whoop! A new article so soon!marknesop , June 16, 2017 at 1:19 pm"Try to put aside, for the moment, the insufferable arrogance of American meddling in Europe's energy market, with a view to restricting its choice while – laughably – pretending it is broadening European energy options."
"Invisible Hand of the Market" [nod, nod].
"And a big part of that was the assumption that Russia would help to finance Ukraine's transition to a powerful western fulcrum "
At first I read it as "western furuncle". That's what it became in the end.
First Rule of the Ukraine: "Every Peremoga turns into Zrada".Want to hear about yet another zrada ? Russia (okay – Mikhail Friedman) bought a German firm Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk (RWE) for $5.72 blns in 2015 . Why it's important? Well, because this firm carries out the reverse gas transition to the Ukraine, thus ensuring its [ha-ha, sorry, sorry!] "Energy Independence" which was officially proclaimed in the same 2015 A.D.
"No LNG carriers are currently registered under the US flag, and if the USA plans to be a serious exporter it is going to need about 100 new LNG carriers over the next 30 years, something which is frankly not practically achievable considering it takes about 2 years to build one, at a cost of about $200 Million apiece". Of course, miracles can be made to happen if you pour enough money into them.
Something-something-something Elon Musk something-something Super-technologies something-something-something Innovations! Progress!
And usual stuff, said by the people who believe that the Free Market will "Get the Things Straight" without governmental meddling. Like, Musk will invent cheap multi-use drone-rackets which will deliver gas to the clients across the Ocean. Why not?! They believe in all kinds of stupid stuff already!
The article is fresh breeze of actual facts and hard data – not your usual hurr-durring opinion pieces, passed as "analytics" by the esteemed think-tankers.
P.S. Mark, do you have the same e-mail address?
Thanks very much, NS!! I read a book some time ago which used newspaper and wire reports of the various times to thoroughly debunk most of the incidents of ships and aircraft 'disappearing without a trace' in the Bermuda Triangle. In incidents which resulted in total losses of the crew, the author also offered reasonable explanations for what likely happened. I have sailed through it many times myself and observed nothing untoward, although that does not mean much considering the amount of marine traffic which routinely does the same without incident.Northern Star , June 16, 2017 at 12:31 pmOwners of LNG Carriers likewise play up how safe they are, and to the best of my knowledge there has never been a serious accident. However, on the scale of supply the USA is suggesting it wishes to achieve for itself, there could be no days taken off for bad weather, and carriers would have to transit the North Atlantic in winter – which is not generally a fun place to be. Most of my concern with the shipped method is its inherent unreliability compared with pipeline gas.
"But Gazprom could block a lot of those cargoes by stepping up export volumes and selling them at prices below what can be achieved by U.S. LNG. Gazprom can export pipeline gas to Europe for $3.50 per million Btu (MMBtu) while American LNG would need prices of $4 to $5/MMbtu. Currently, Gazprom sells gas to Europe at a price of about $5.80/MMBtu on average, but could lower the price to beat U.S. LNG"marknesop , June 16, 2017 at 1:51 pmI do not see how the USA could begin to economically prevail over the Russians in a
"gas' war..given the above numbers."Of course, viewed another way, the growing U.S. export capacity – the mere existence of a competing source of supply – should push down the price that Gazprom is able to charge, a victory for Europe and a blow to Gazprom. Without U.S. LNG, its proponents argue, Russia would not be forced to accept lower prices. "It's the start of the price war between U.S. LNG and pipeline gas," said Thierry Bros, an analyst at Société Générale, according to the WSJ."
Moreover doesn't keeping a lid (cap) on what the Russians can charge for Gazprom gas ipso facto prevent the Americans from competitively pricing their LNG product..particularly in view of the first quote????
Either I'm a little dense today,or the American strategy here makes no sense whasoever.!!!!http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-To-Undermine-Russias-Gas-Monopoly-In-Europe.html
The latter – the American strategy makes no sense, and its proponents are so high on can-do that you might have to shoot them to get them down. The USA cannot supply either the volume or the consistency of supply to snatch the gas market from Russia, and that must be evident to all but the crazy. As usual, Washington just hopes to get itself into the mix so it will have a seat at the table, because it cannot bear being left out of things and has long been of the opinion that America makes its own reality. Once again, if America owned or controlled substantial gas reserves on the continent and it were practical for the USA to run its own pipeline to Europe, it might be in with a chance if it had sufficient supply, and it is attempts to do that that we should be watching out for. There was speculation much earlier that control of substantial gas holdings was exactly what Burisma Holdings and Hunter Biden were up to in Ukraine, but gas extraction is not practical there right now and id assay results had been positive you can bet there would be a lot more American pressure to bring the war to a close.Northern Star , June 16, 2017 at 12:49 pmOn that note, I noticed over at Sputnik yesterday that Turchynov was pressuring Poroshenko to bag the ATO and turn it into a full-press military operation, which is just what recent reports said they did not dare to do in case the Ukrainian Army loses. The same report said Poroshenko is about to sign legislation which orders by decree that Donbas resume its place as part of Ukraine. If they say "Pound sand up your ass" as we know they will, Poroshenko may have little alternative to throwing everything he has at them. Of course, I can't find it now; I knew I should have drawn attention to it when I saw it.
I'm sure Russia is watching carefully.
I assume the (shipped) American LNG would have to be regasified at a european import terminal. Consulting page six at the link, is it not problematic to then transport the regasified lng product to its (receiving) nation destination. The whole scheme smacks of going around the well to get an expensive cup of water!!!!!marknesop , June 16, 2017 at 1:53 pm
http://documents.jdsupra.com/c6c4403f-ad9f-4740-b184-9fc1f88550ab.pdfThe liquid LNG can only be unloaded at an LNG terminal, and so far as I am aware a feature of them is that they are connected to a gas hub, so that they can regasify the product directly into the system.likbez says: June 16, 2017 at 9:05 pmWhat I do not understand is why Russians can't increase natural gas consumption dramatically and need to export that much: is it so difficult to build several large chemical plants, increase usage in city transport as less polluting fuel to 100%, promote dual fuel private cars, etc.In this case they can export saved oil instead using regular tankers which is much simpler then LNG.
I think the current suppression of oil prices by Wall Street (and the new US method of production using along with production of shale oil a parallel production stream of junk bonds which will never be repaid) can't last forever. "Break even" oil price for most shale wells is probably over $60 per barrel. If not $80.
Also without capital investment the annual decline of conventional fields is around 5% a year (most of those fields are really old). Which means approximately 5 million barrels per day are taken off the market automatically each year (no OPEC action is needed), if zero capital investment are done.
Of course Sechin is IMHO a corrupt player here, who cares mostly about his own pocketbook (and stupidly increased investment just before the crash, which later required bailout of the company by the government), but still Russian government has the means to enforce its will even on rogue players.
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May 30, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
Eulenspiegel says: 05/24/2017 at 3:20 amSaudi Arabia and independend from oil? Good joke.George Kaplan says: 05/24/2017 at 10:00 amThey are that wasteful, they never had to look for costs, they need foreign workers for anything they do – that won't work out.
At the moment they have zero income without energy sector, if you don't count the Hadsch around Mekka as income.
And they are too big to copy the Dubai model, just to build real estate as an industry to live from.They could go solar – but then they should start to invest billions in infrastructure to sell the stuff to Europe and China now.
I'll bet some money is going into upgrading their escape pod fleet of jets.Caelan MacIntyre says: 05/24/2017 at 6:31 pmMy chips in for that bet too. Leave the peasantry behind to sort things out.
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May 29, 2017 | www.breitbart.com
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei launched his latest rhetorical broadside at Iran's arch-rivals in Saudi Arabia from a ceremony commemorating the Muslim holiday of Ramadan on Saturday. Khamenei said the Saudi rulers are "worthless, inept, and villainous."Khamenei also insulted the Saudis as "idiots" for thinking they could purchase the friendship of "pagans and enemies" with their oil money, describing them as "milk cows for the Americans."
Khamenei said the Muslim world is in "grave danger" because of leaders like the Saudis and their "refusal to follow the Koran and lack of belief in the truth." The Saudi monarchy is a major force in the world of Sunni Islam, while Iran's theocracy leads the Shiites, putting them on the opposite side of a religious schism that reaches back to the 7th Century.
That ancient conflict is mixed with contemporary geopolitical concerns, such as the civil war in Yemen, which has become a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The Supreme Leader of Iran, which supports the Shiite Houthi insurgents against the internationally recognized government of Yemen, blamed the Saudis for the continuing bloodshed in that war-torn country, as well as the oppression of Shiites by the Sunni government of Saudi Arabia's allies in Bahrain. Iran's Foreign Minister recently added another link to that chain of blame by accusing U.S. President Donald Trump of emboldening the government of Bahrain to crack down on Shiite demonstrators.
"They act cordially towards the enemies of Islam while having the opposite behavior towards the Muslim people of Bahrain and Yemen. They will face certain downfall," Khamenei predicted.
He blasted the Saudis for signing a multibillion-dollar arms deal with the "infidel" Americans, saying that the money should have been used to "improve the lives of their own people."
Fox News notes that recently re-elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose more moderate approach is frequently at odds with the "hardline" ayatollahs, has been calling for improved relations with Sunni nations.
"We want the rule of moderation and rationality in the relations between countries and we believe that a political solution should be a priority. The countries of the region need more cooperation and consultations to resolve the crisis in the region and we are ready to cooperate in this field," Rouhani said during a telephone conversation with the Emir of Qatar.
Rouhani's outreach to Qatar might be a little on the opportunistic side, since the emirate is currently experiencing a bit of turbulence in its relationships with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other major Saudi states. In fact, on Monday a minister from the United Arab Emirates described the rift as a "severe" crisis that could pose a "grave danger" to the future of the Gulf Cooperation Council.
[May 25, 2017] EconoSpeak Some Saudi-US History
May 25, 2017 | econospeak.blogspot.com
Given Donald Trump's new commitment to support military adventurism by Saudi Arabia in Yemen and more generally against Iran, it might be worth reconsidering how this alliance developed.The beginning for Saudi Arabia was in 1744 when a wandering radical cleric, Mohammed bin Abdel-Wahhab met up with a local chieftain, Mohammed bin Saud in the village of Diriyah, whose ruins are now located in the suburbs of the current Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh. Wahhab converted Saud to his cause of spreading the strictest of the four Sunni shari'as, the Hanbali code, throughout the world, and this remains to this day the ideology of the House of Saud, the ruling family of Saudi Arabia, with this ideology widely known as Wahhabism. The territory ruled by the early Saudis expanded to cover a fair amount of the Nejd, the central portion of the Arabian peninsula, but when they threatened control of Mecca in 1818, ruled by Egyptians under the Ottomans who collected the moneys gained from pilgrims visiting there, the Egyptian leader, Muhammed Ali, invaded the Nejd and destroyed Diriyah. The Saud family moved to the next village over, Riyadh, and reconstructed their small state, which expanded again in the mid-1800s, although near the end of the century they were defeated and exiled to Kuwait by the rival Rashid family from Hail to the north of Riyadh.
In 1902 the 27 year old family leader, Abdulaziz bin al-Rahman bin Faisal al Saud, reconquered Riyadh and would eventually establish the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) through marital and martial conquests, with its modern boundaries established in 1932, and Abdulaziz (known in the West as "Ibn Saud") bearing the title of King and Protector of the Two Holy Places (Mecca and Medina), which he had conqurered in 1924. He would have 43 sons, and today's king, 81-year old Salman, is one of the last of them, and Abdulaziz would die in 1953. It should be noted that Saudi Arabia was independent of the Ottoman Empire, and was one of the few parts of the Muslim world that did not fall under the rule of a European power, along with Turkey, Persia/Iran, and Afghanistan.
In the early years, especially in the 1920s, he sought outside advice and support from the British, especially St-John Philby, the rival at Whitehall of T.E. Lawrence, and the first European to cross the Empty Quarter of the Arabian peninsula. Philby was especially helpful during the revolt by the combined forces of the Rashidi and the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) whom Abdulaziz managed to defeat in 1929, with the rebels pushing an ultra-fundamentalist line against Abdulaziz (an replay of this revolt occurred 50 years later in 1979, with the Ikhwan seizing control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca for a time). Philby would convert to Islam and take several wives. He was also the father of later Soviet spy, Kim Philby.
The first interest by anybody in the US came out of two agreements in 1928 and 1929, the Red Line Agreement that gave the territories of the former Ottoman Empire to a set of British and French companies, and then the As Is agreement of 1929 between Sir Henri Deterding of Royal Dutch Shell, Baron John Cadman of Anglo-Persian (now BP), and Walter Teagle of New Jersey Standard (now Exxon Mobil) at Deterding's Achnacarry Castle in Scotland. These agreements amounted to an early effort to divide up the oil producing world in a cartel. Out of this, Jersey Standard got Saudi Arabia, although at the time oil had not been discovered there. It would be in 1938 by geologists from Jersey Standard, and agreements for production with cash payments for Abdulaziz in gold bars were made. In 1948, Abdulaziz would become the first leader of an oil-producing nation to succeed in getting a 50-50 profit sharing agreement, and as oil production surged there in the 1950s and after, the money would begin to flow into Saudi Arabia providing the basis for its modernization, even as it retained its highly traditional and strict version of Wahhabist Islam and Hanbali shari'a law code.
While Saudi Arabia initially favored Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War II, much like Iran then, it gradually shifted to the Allied side, with FDR declaring the protection of Saudi oil reserves a US national interest in 1943, and the Saudis officially declaring war on Germany in early 1945. It is widely viewed in KSA that the alliance was sealed in 1945 when FDR was returning from Yalta shortly before his death and met briefly on a boat in the Suez Canal with King Abdulaziz, producing a famous photograph of the two of them smiling and shaking hands, shortly before FDR's death. And indeed, despite some ups and downs, the alliance has held since, with oil at its center.
Given that, the nature of the relationship has changed substantially over time. One major change, signaled initiallly by that 50-50 profit sharing agreement in 1948, was an increase in Saudi control over the oil aspect of it, with OPEC founded in 1960, which would impose a quadrupling of oil prices in 1973 in the wake of the Saudi oil export embargo against the US for the US supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur war of that year. Prior to that embargo, KSA had managed to nationalize ARAMCO, the Arabian-American Oil Company, which produced the oil in Saudi Arabia, the original owners of ARAMCO being Jersey Standard, New York Standard (Mobil, now merged with Exxon), Texaco, and California Standard (now Chevron). These companies, especially Exxon Mobil, continue to have an active relationship with ARAMCO, but the Saudis have been in control of their oil and their oil industry since the beginning of the 1970s. This shifted the relationship to being one more of the US becoming the protector of KSA, providing it with arms as the petrodollars poured in, and this aspect of the relationship has reached a new height with this latest visit and arms deal, arranged by former Exxon Mobil CEO and now SecState, Tillerson.
It is worth noting also that for most of the postwar period probably the major irritant in the Saudi-US relationship has been Israel, which even now KSA does not recognize, and Trump's flight from Riyadh to Tel Aviv was the first such direct flight on that route ever. Israel supporters for many years complained about "Arabists" in the US State Department who were more oriented to worrying US oil interests in the Middle East and especially in Saudi Arabia. But today there is now an alliance of convenience between KSA and Israel in their mutual dislike of Iran.
Which brings us to the current situation. I personally think that the current Saudi leadership has gone off the rails in their anti-Iran attitudes. The differences are both sectarian and ethnic, Sunni versus Shi'i Islam and Semitic Arabs versus Indo-European Iranians, with this manifesting itself in a regional power struggle. But this is a relatively recent conflict, only getting going since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, and only getting really hot with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by the US under George W. Bush. It was the Saudis who convinced Bush's dad not to go to Baghdad to overthrow Saddam in the 1991 Gulf War, arguing that he kept a balance of power as a Sunni Arab leader against Iran. And they argued with Bush, Jr. not to go in for the same reason, although they would support the US effort modestly once it happened, even though it aggravated Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda against the Saudi monarchy for supporting the US so openly (even though the US had supported the decision by then Saudi intel chief, Turki bin Faisal, to send bin Laden to Pakistan to aid in the anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan). But the replacement of a Sunni-led regime in Iraq by a Shi'i led one supported by Iran has upset the Saudis greatly. They also do not like Iranian support of Assad in Syria, who appears to have won his war against largely Sunni rebels, many of them supported by KSA, and now the Saudis are bogged down in a war in Yemen against local Zaydi Shi'a, whom they claim (not with full credibility) are being supported by Iran. So they, and the Israelis, want the US to join them in an anti-Iran crusade.
I think we are at a dangerous moment here. The nuclear deal with Iran is the most importantdeal that Obama made, and even the Saudis and Israelis know it. What they do not like about it is that it meant that the economic sanctions on Iran were relaxed. But most of those sanctions were only put on to get Iran to the nuclear negotiating table. There is no way they can be reimposed without Iran returning to having a nuclear program. The most influential person in KSA now appears to be the son of King Salman, 31-year old Mohammed bin Salman, Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister, who gets lots of good press in the US. But for all the talk of reform, he has not moved to let women drive or to desegregate workplaces by gender. He seems to be a warmongering hothead who has pushed this so far fruitless and destructive war in Yemen, which has led to incipient famine in that nation as well as its likely falling apart into pieces. He has even talked about "taking the war to Iran," which we can only hope that he will not be tempted to do with all those fancy arms that he is buying from the US. Trump, or whoever is in charge of US foreign policy in the near term, will really have to both defend the nuclear deal with Iran and resist this warmongering push by our longtime erstwhile ally. Let us hope that this is done.
Barkley Rosser Posted by [email protected] at 12:55 AM Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest 6 comments:
Peter T said...
- I'm not sure what the drivers of the US hate on Iran are, beyond beltway irritation at a smallish country that refuses to acknowledge US supremacy. War is, I think, unlikely - Iraq nearly broke the US army, and Iran would be much worse; Iran has an open backer in Russia, and a silent one in China, and reasonable relations with all its neighbours (so nowhere to base an invading force). It's also quite careful diplomatically - it does what it feels to be in its interests, but does not go out of its way to provoke.
KSA could panic as the Shi'a consolidate power in Iraq and Syria and their prestige rises across the Islamic world but, again, they lack the access, forces and local allies to do much - and can they afford a defeat?
btw, Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program, and is unlikely to start one even if the US reneges on the deal. Aside from religious objections, Russia and China would not approve, and it would deprive Iran of a chance to split the EU from the US.
All that said, Bush II was staffed by some of the dumbest fucking guys on the planet, and they were geniuses compared to Trump's picks.
- May 24, 2017 at 6:14 AM
bbk said...- Good stuff. But while Ikhwan means "Brethren" or "Brotherhod" and the Muslim Brotherhood's name in Arabic contains the word "Ikhwan", I don't think the Saudi Ikhwan is related to the modern Muslim Brotherhood in any way other than both using the word in their name.
The Ikhwan was the part of the Al-Saud military forces in the early 20th century who eventually revolted against the Saudi regime when the Ikhwan felt the Saudi's had gone too "soft" in their religion and refused to spread the Wahhabi creed via Jihad to the Trans-Jordan, Kuwait, and other areas controlled by the British. When the Ikhwan raided British areas the Brits retaliated and the Saudis didn't want trouble with the British so they fought the Ikhwan with the help of the British. The Ikhwan were defeated with the help of British airplanes and military vehicles.
According to wikipedia the remnants of the Ikhwan formed what is today the Saudi Arabian National Guard which is apparently tasked with protecting the royal family and crushing internal dissent.
- May 24, 2017 at 11:25 AM
[email protected] said...- Actually they had a nuclear weapons program that dated to the time of the Shah and that was initially supported by, well, the US. It was shut down after the Islamic Revolution. Then it was started up again under Rafsanjani in the late 1990s, only to be shut down about the time the US invaded Iraq, arguably one of the few positive things to come out of that invasion. Official US National Intelligence Estimates (NIE)s after then agreed that there was no active Iranian nuclear weapons program. In effect what the Iran nuclear deal did was to scale back their capability to have one, although they still have such a capability, and, of course, they have a civilian nuclear power program that is very popular in Iran.
- May 24, 2017 at 11:27 AM
Peter T said...
No argument - although I think the program under Rafsanjani was more exploration than active development. Iranians are touchy about the civil nuclear program because for them it's a touchstone for respect for their rights as an independent nation. In their view, they joined the IAEA, signed up to the NPT, abided by all the rules and got sanctions, theft of frozen money and threats.If the US priority were fighting terrorism, then Iran (and even Syria) would be better allies than Saudi (or Pakistan). But history has its own inertia...
- May 24, 2017 at 9:37 PM
Unknown said...- Total agreement with Peter T that if fighting terrorism is a priority, hostility to Iran makes little sense. All the major terror groups are Shia with the exception of Hezbollah, but it not a threat to the US or Europe.
- May 25, 2017 at 8:22 AM
Elwailly said...- Unknown said...
... All the major terror groups are Shia with the exception of Hezbollah, but it not a threat to the US or Europe.He means they are all Sunni with the exception of Hezbollah, which is Shia.
(In reality Hezbollah was never a terrorist group in the traditional sense of fostering attacks against civilians. Their sin was fighting the Israelis.)
- May 25, 2017 at 6:07 PM
[Apr 22, 2017] The 'Russification' of Oil Exploration - The New York Times
Apr 22, 2017 | www.nytimes.com
MOSCOW - The American and European sanctions against the Russian oil industry have dashed, at least for now, the Western oil majors' ambitions to drill in the Arctic Ocean.
But drilling will continue all the same, Russian government and state oil company officials have been taking pains to point out, ever since the sanctions took effect over the summer.
"We will do it on our own," Igor I. Sechin, the president of Russia's state-controlled oil company, Rosneft, told journalists in October. "We'll continue drilling here next year and the years after that."
Rather than throw in the towel in the face of Western sanctions intended to halt Russia's Arctic oil ambitions by stopping technology transfers, the Russians have responded with plans to "Russify" the technology to be deployed in the world's largest effort to date to extract oil from the thawing Arctic Ocean.
Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main storyThe solution to tapping the Arctic, Yevgeny Primakov, a former prime minister, told a group of high officials in October, "is found first of all in our own industrial base."
Advertisement Continue reading the main storyA major hurdle is already cleared: An Exxon-led joint venture discovered oil in the Russian sector of the Arctic Ocean in September, proving the region holds commercially viable volumes of oil.
Rosneft is already laying plans to drill without Western oil major cooperation. Along with Exxon, Eni of Italy and Statoil of Norway had joint ventures to work with Rosneft in the Kara, Laptev, and Chukchi seas above Russia.
After the September sanctions suspended those deals , Rosneft negotiated to rent from Gazprom four Russian ice-class drilling rigs for next season's exploration work, should Exxon still be sanction-barred from doing the work next summer.
Rosneft has also booked six rigs from North Atlantic Drilling, a unit of Seadrill of Norway, under contracts signed in July and grandfathered in under the sanctions.
The Russians are in early talks with the Chinese over sailing rigs from the South China Sea to the Arctic Ocean, industry executives say.
This spring as the threat of sanctions loomed, Rosneft bought the Russian and Venezuelan well-drilling business of Weatherford, adding to its in-house capabilities.
A further "Russification" of the industry seems inevitable. In October, President Vladimir V. Putin approved the creation of a state-owned oil services company, RBC, a Russian business newspaper reported. The intention is to duplicate, as well as possible, the services purveyed now by Halliburton, Baker Hughes and Schlumberger.
Certainly, some in the oil industry see the Russian official response as bluff, asserting Rosneft has neither the skills nor the capital to drill for oil in its 42 offshore licenses blocks. Under the joint ventures, the Western companies financed and managed the exploration work.
Advertisement Continue reading the main storyThe three companies, Exxon, Eni and Statoil, were to invest $20 billion in exploration, and the company has been mute on how it will replace that. Just this summer, Exxon paid $700 million to drill the Universitetskaya-1 well in the Kara Sea.
Russia, meanwhile, does not even manufacture subsea hardware like well heads. Rosneft's finances are restricted to 30-day loans under sanctions.
Yet the company and the Russian industry are already tooling up for just such an effort.
The sheer uncertainty of sanctions is pushing the Russian industry to turn inward. Russian companies, even those who prefer to work with U.S. oilfield equipment or services providers because the cost or quality is better, can never know when new sanctions might scuttle a deal.
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"The client looks at you and says 'I like you, I like your product, but you are not dependable,' " Alexis Rodzianko, the director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia said in an interview.
Russia now has a "hierarchy of procurement" placing domestic and Asian companies first, U.S. companies last.
"The consensus in Russia is this is not a one-off, short-term problem," Ildar Davletshin, an oil analyst at Renaissance Capital in Moscow, said in an interview, of the Russian effort to pivot to domestic and Asian suppliers.
"Nobody will just sit and wait" for sanctions to be lifted, he said.
Whether Russian technology can fill the gap left by Western oil majors as the country prepares for the extraordinary engineering challenge of oil drilling under the Arctic ice remains an unsettled question within the industry.
Russia brings Soviet legacy technologies, including the world's only fleet of nuclear icebreakers, awesome machines of immense power, with names like 50 Years of Victory and Yamal, which sail year-round in the Arctic Ocean.
"Let's not underestimate them," said one oil company executive who visited Exxon's West Alpha rig this summer, but could not speak publicly because of company policy. Russians are no strangers to the north, and the cold. "They are determined to do it. They might do it on their own."
Advertisement Continue reading the main storyThe Russian intention to do just that became clear out on the Arctic Ocean at the end of the short drilling window this summer.
Ice floes were already creeping down from the polar ice cap in tongues when the U.S. government announced Sept. 12 that Exxon was to halt all assistance to Rosneft by Sept. 26, in response to Russian military assistance to a rebel counteroffensive against the Ukrainian Army in late August.
The Exxon crew stopped drilling, though the well was only about 75 percent complete.
In an early indication of the Russians' intentions to go it alone after sanctions, Rosneft executives told Exxon they would not allow the West Alpha rig to leave Russian waters without finishing the well, according to the oil company executive familiar with events on the platform in September.
If Exxon withdrew American engineers, Rosneft would fly out a Russian replacement crew, putting the localization plan into immediate action, the executive said. Rosneft's press service contested this characterization of the company's position, calling it a "fiction."
In the end, Exxon obtained an extension on its waiver to the sanction from the U.S. Treasury Department, stretching the window for work with Rosneft in the Arctic until Oct. 10.
The Arctic Ocean, Mr. Sechin said later that month in the interview with Bloomberg News at the drilling site in the Kara Sea, is Russia's "Saudi Arabia" of oil, vast and pivotal to Russia's national interests.
Rosneft's website estimates the Kara Sea's reservoirs hold about 87 billion barrels of oil and the equivalent in natural gas , calling this more than the deposits of the Gulf of Mexico, the Brazilian shelf or the offshore potential north of Alaska and Canada.
After a daylong pause on Sept. 12 to Sept. 13, the Russian brinkmanship worked: The American crew continued drilling and about a week later, in mid-September, discovered a vast oil deposit, holding about 750 million barrels of oil. Mr. Sechin thanked Western partners for the find, and named the field Pobeda, or Victory.
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Apr 21, 2017 | www.nytimes.com
MOSCOW - The Russian government announced Wednesday that it will sell nearly 20 percent of its state oil company, Rosneft , to the Swiss commodity trading firm Glencore and the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar.
The deal defies expectations that no investor would dare buy a share in the Russian asset, given Western sanctions against the government of President Vladimir V. Putin.
But the emergence of foreign money suggests that investors are reassessing the sanctions after the election of Donald J. Trump, who has advocated warming ties with authorities in Moscow and is considering the chairman of Exxon Mobil, Rex W. Tillerson, as a candidate for secretary of state.
Mr. Tillerson criticized the sanctions as harmful for business after they halted an Exxon joint venture with Rosneft to drill for oil in the Kara Sea, in Russia 's sector of the Arctic Ocean.
The deal will bring Moscow $11.3 billion to help plug a widening budget deficit as Russia fights two wars, in Syria and Ukraine, and has struggled to meet pension payments and public-sector payrolls.
The agreement came as a surprise twist in the privatization of Rosneft. With an end-of-the-year deadline looming, no buyers had come forward for the 19.5 percent share in the world's largest publicly traded oil company, as measured by production and reserves. The apparent lack of bidders was a pessimistic sign for investor interest in Russia.
The Russian government had for most of the year planned to sell shares back to the majority state-owned company itself, which would hardly have qualified as a genuine privatization.
The United States decided in 2014 to impose sanctions on Rosneft and other Russian companies in response to Russia's intervention in the war in eastern Ukraine..
The sanctions limit long-term lending and transfer of American technology for drilling offshore and shale oil deposits.
The deal carries other risks as well. Both Glencore and the Qatari fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, have extensive investments in emerging markets. The Qatar fund is also an investor in Glencore.
The announced price valued Rosneft at $58 billion, slightly less than the company's stock market value at the close of trading in Moscow on Wednesday, of just under $59 billion.
Both the market price of shares and the sale price for the 19.5 percent stake announced Wednesday are a relative bargain, indicating the Russian government's eagerness to cut a deal to shore up its finances.
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Apr 18, 2017 | www.presstv.ir
Saudi Arabia has reportedly canceled or restructured economic and infrastructure projects worth billions of dollars.Reuters in a report quoted government sources as saying that the Saudi government had ordered ministries and organizations to review the projects to either scrap or make them more efficient.
The report added that most of the projects that had been targeted were those that had been devised during lavish government spending buoyed by crude oil prices above $100 per barrel.
However, they would no longer be cost-efficient with oil at below $55 per barrel.
Riyadh's Bureau of Capital and Operational Spending Rationalization is now assessing the projects that are under 25 percent complete, the sources told Reuters.
"Some projects could be retendered so they can be executed in partnership with the private sector, possibly through build-operate-transfer (BOT) contracts," one source familiar with the plan told the agency.
"Other projects could be suspended if they do not meet the current economic objectives," the source said.
The finances of Saudi Arabia, the world's second largest crude producer after Russia and largest oil exporter, have been hit by a downturn in oil prices that were above $100 a barrel in 2014, but start to plunge to well below $40 in 2016.
The plunge in global oil prices prompted Riyadh to rein in public spending in a bid to save money. The kingdom's economic measures are being led by Salman's son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud.
Earlier last year, the Riyadh regime cancelled financial perks for public sector employees and slashed salaries of ministers and members of the Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia, also known as the Shura Council.
It further froze major building projects and made unprecedented cuts to fuel and utilities subsidies. Ren Lugay 18 hours ago Hmmm, no money to complete social infrastructure projects but always spare cash to buy cluster munitions from the Great Satan and Israel to bomb innocent civilians in Yemen.
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Apr 18, 2017 | www.presstv.ir
Saudi Arabia has launched a massive multi-billion-dollar plan which is expected to increase the kingdom's production of electricity from renewable sources by 10 percent within the next few years.Reuters said in a report that the plan envisaged the construction of 30 solar and wind projects by 2023.
The projects – that would be meant to boost the kingdom's electricity generation and reduce crude oil burning – could generate 9.5 gigawatt of renewable energy.
The initiative involves investment estimated between $30 billion and $50 billion, Reuters reported.
On a related front, the news service said the Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih on Monday announced the beginning of the bidding for a project to produce 300 megawatt of solar power.
The project is expected to come online by 2018-2019.
"The energy mix to produce electricity will change, today the kingdom uses large quantities of oil liquids, including crude, fuel oil and diesel," Falih was quoted as saying.
"So the percentage of renewable energy by 2023 (will be) 10 percent of total installed capacity in the kingdom."
Based on an ambitious economic reform program launched last year, known as Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia is seeking to use non-oil means to generate much of its additional future energy needs to avoid running down oil resources and diversify its economy.
The kingdom is restructuring its energy sector as part of Vision 2030 and a focus on renewable projects is a pillar of this transformation as it would help develop the private sector and create thousands of jobs, Reuters added.
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Apr 17, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
Energy News says: 04/15/2017 at 10:35 amChina crude oil imports increased to a record 9.21mb/day in March 2017 versus 8.32mb/day in February 2017 (7.33 barrels per ton conversion) – Chinese customs data. I guess China is still filling it's SPR.Before I had read this I had been wondering why news articles were saying that world oil inventories had decreased a little. Inventories often build into April. Also news agencies estimates are still saying that OPEC oil exports are holding steady and have not decreased in line with their production cuts, I guess that they have been exporting from their inventories.
inventory declines, news clips
Reuters Apr 11, 2017 – Nordic bank SEB said global oil inventories in weekly data have dropped by 42 million barrels in the last four weeks.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-oil-opec-storage-idUKKBN17D1NHBloomberg 2017-04-04 – Since mid-February, between 10 million and 20 million barrels have left the Caribbean
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-03/oil-traders-said-to-drain-caribbean-hoards-as-opec-impact-hitsClipper Data Apr 6, 2017 – This week we have seen Iranian barrels drop to 5 million barrels, while barrels offshore of United Arab Emirates have halved in the last week, dropping to just under 10 million barrels.
http://blog.clipperdata.com/floating-storage-holding-up-despite-iran-drop
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Apr 12, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al , April 10, 2017 at 5:00 am
Euractiv with Neuters: Denmark seeks to change law on pipelines amid Nord Stream 2 divisions
http://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/denmark-seeks-to-change-law-on-pipelines-amid-nord-stream-2-divisions/Denmark's government is proposing amending legislation to allow it to ban pipeline projects on the grounds of foreign and security policy, due to concerns raised by Russian efforts to build a disputed gas pipeline through Danish waters.
"We want to have the possibility to say yes or no from a perspective of security and foreign policy," the minister of energy and climate, Lars Christian Lilleholt, told Reuters, adding that it was currently only possible to veto such projects on the grounds of environmental concerns .
Denmark and Sweden earlier this year requested that the European Commission intervene in Nord Stream 2 before the two states agree on permits for the pipeline to pass through their waters. EU diplomats said there was little scope for either nation to block the plan.
The current regulatory framework does not allow Denmark to say "no" to the construction of transit pipelines in territorial waters on the basis of foreign policy considerations, the ministry said in a statement .
EU sources have said the Commission, sensing that there may ultimately be no legal basis to block approval of Nord Stream 2, is delaying it as long as possible .
Denmark's right-wing minority government would now negotiate with other parties to win support for the proposal.
####' sensing that there may ultimately be no legal basis to block approval..' – Well that's quite a polishing of the EU turd when we know that the EU has no legal way to block the pipeline, sic the opinion of the EU's own Legal Service. How delicate the EU stuffed suits are that they cannot just admit it outright. Oh, but that would be a propaganda victory for Russia. They should be grateful because if they had blocked it, it would have been a very clear message that the EU's Rule of Law which it proudly pronounces around the world is barely a fig leaf that is dropped as the slightest political pressure. It's a joke already, but with a project as big as . as it has done with much political decisions
marknesop , April 10, 2017 at 5:56 amWhile they're creating magic out of whole cloth, why not a law that anyone who discovers significant gas deposits anywhere must immediately hand them over to the EU for their exclusive use and disbursement? Or a law that orders massive new gas deposits be discovered in Denmark?et Al , April 10, 2017 at 6:43 amI suspect that the government is having a slow news day and as there is absolutely no consequence to Russophobia as it is essentially a free gift that keeps on giving when and wherever is needed, i.e. to distract from domestic politics.The Whole G7 'How can we f/k up Russia further' conveniently segues with the improvement of Russia's economy and the continued failure of G7 sanctions against Russia. I'm not really sure what else they can do without shooting themselves in the foot.
There's already been some whinging that the West's actions have only further driven it in to China's arms, so WTF? I guess they have to come up with something that looks tough, but isn't. After all, they will need to put out a key statement signed by them all. IN short, 'This spade is far too small. Let's go and get another one!'.
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Apr 06, 2017 | www.rt.com
Moscow is fully complying with the deal to cap oil production, while accurately evaluating longer-term structural developments in the market, according to Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak. In March, the country's producers reduced output by 200,000 barrels per day as the decrease in January and February was ahead of the original plans, according to the minister. 'Largest discovery' of oil off Scottish coast could raise chances of independence"Russia is reducing its oil production in stages, in accordance with the plans we worked out voluntarily with our production companies," Novak said in an interview with CNBC at the International Artic Forum in Arkhangelsk on Thursday.
"We anticipate complying with the figure outlined in the agreement by the end of April," he said, stressing that the reduction target was 300,000 barrels per day.
According to Novak, overall supply and demand trends will be a major reason for Russia to support renewing the agreement at the end of May.
"Undoubtedly, and this could be an even more important factor, is the situation on the market linked with the balance between supply and demand and the situation with regards to the development of the situation with oil reserves and oil product reserves in the OECD countries and the countries in the world as a whole," said the energy minister.
"And we will be following this closely; it will be important for us to know what's going to happen in April, the forecasts for May and June and the second half of next year," he stressed.
The minister has also pointed to the importance of the Arctic region for Russia's energy strategy.
"Currently, we are producing about 17 percent of our total oil production in the Arctic. In 20 years, in accordance with our strategic plans, this share will increase to as much as 26 percent. But the figures for gas will be even more interesting to you. We currently produce 80 percent of our gas in the Arctic," he said, adding that new production was ongoing on the Arctic shelf.The minister's comments followed the recent changes in US policy to increase the country's energy independence. There has been a resurgence in the activity of US shale producers that could lead to increased supply to the global market given a rebound in the oil price.
"As far as energy independence is concerned I don't think this is anything new for the United States. It's unlikely that at any time it was ever US policy to increase its dependence on imported energy resources," he said.At the same time, the boost in shale oil production may reach up to 400,000 barrels a day this year, according to Novak.
"It's clear that we are all assessing the situation in a sober fashion, we understand that there will be a rise in the production of shale oil. Again I want to say that we need to look at the situation as a whole throughout the world," the energy minister concluded.
[Mar 05, 2017] Cooking The Books? Saudi Aramco Could Be Overvalued By 500 pecent
Mar 05, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
Boomer II says: 03/04/2017 at 5:53 pmThis article came out on February 28. I don't think it's been posted here.clueless says: 03/04/2017 at 6:08 pmCooking The Books? Saudi Aramco Could Be Overvalued By 500% | OilPrice.com : "WoodMac puts Aramco's true value closer to $400 billion, eighty percent less than the Saudi estimate, and it arrived at the figure by considering future demand and the anticipated average price of oil (on which profits will depend), as well as Saudi Aramco's status as a state-run company.
WoodMac doesn't dispute the figure of 261 billion barrels lying under Saudi Arabia and just offshore; that figure has been confirmed by independent sources. Where things get complicated, though, is in the management and taxation of Saudi Aramco, which does not release financial statements."
Seems right to me. As I posted a short while back, in my opinion, no rational investor, today, would pay anything for production that might occur more than 20 years in the future. Therefore, only about 88 million bbl of reserves is in play. And those produced 20 years out [risked] have neglible net present value.Survivalist says: 03/04/2017 at 9:32 pmDoes anybody know which independant sources confirmed the 261 billion barrels lying under Saudi Arabia? I was under the impression we were just taking their word for it. Who signed off on confirming it?Watcher says: 03/04/2017 at 11:02 pmBingo. And VERY OMINOUS that a firm like WoodM would fall for the "independent audit" story.Caelan MacIntyre says: 03/05/2017 at 12:12 amThose auditors did not do core drilling. They did no exploration drilling. They took Aramco data, added it up (accountants add things up) and declared 261 billion barrels of reserves.
This is such silliness.
There is also the issue of who paid for the audit.
"There is also the issue of who paid for the audit." ~ Watcher
The Man With The Magic Wand?
We are in a model, Watcher.
[Feb 21, 2017] Chinese oil demand growth
Feb 21, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
Reuters calculated Chinese oil demand growth of 2.5% in 2016, based on official data-a three-year low-down from 3.1% in 2015."
> > > > > > > >
[Feb 09, 2017] Why the USA target Russia for regime change? Is it because of an impending Seneca cliff in Saudi Arabia?
Feb 09, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
VK says: 02/06/2017 at 7:20 amWhy target Russia? Is it because of an impending Seneca cliff in Saudi Arabia? They were supposed to peak 10 years ago but water and nitrogen injections kept them afloat. Now?George Kaplan says: 02/06/2017 at 2:50 pmhttps://www.lewrockwell.com/author/jack-perry/?ptype=article
"I've gotten a couple emails from people who have asked me what I think the "end game" is in regards to Russia. And, indeed, the government is going into extra innings with this whole Russia vilification project. This is worse than someone who has held on to a grudge for years. The government does that, too, but they haven't done it over ideology (as with Cuba) for quite some time now. What, then, is the motive?
The motive is perfectly clear: Oil. You see, Russia has already eclipsed Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest oil producer. This means the big Saudi oil fields are drying up. And the government knows that, but they can't tell us this because it'll create a panic. One would think this would motivate the United States to get cozier with Russia. However, what the United States government fears is that if we do that, Russia will twig to the motive for it, and realize it has the United States over a barrel. An oil barrel. At which point the price goes up. Not to mention extracting concessions in the global sphere of influence.
Thus, what the United States is playing at here is trying to install a different "regime" in Russia. That being, one that Vladimir Putin does not control or have any influence over. This is easier said than done and the United States knows this. But the stakes are quite a bit higher than controlling the dwindling oil supply in the Middle East. Russia is obviously in control of most of the world's remaining oil reserves. The United States needs a puppet regime in Russia to have access to that oil without paying the correct market price for it.
At some point, this gambit will fail. Russia is not the Middle East. A war with Russia cannot be won or cease-fired out of. Nor can a United States-backed "regime change" succeed over there. This is not the 1990s Russia of Boris Yeltsin. The United States, however, cannot come clean with the truth to the American people. The reason is because if the American people knew the truth, they'd never sleep nights anymore. The truth is this: Our entire economic system is based on petroleum and low-cost petroleum at that. But the actual nightmare is that our entire agricultural system is based on cheap oil."
Saudi has had water injection for much longer than ten years on pretty well all it's fields and I don't think they are using nitrogen injection anywhere, there may be some small CO2 EOR projects though. Their production has been maintained by developing three old, heavy oil fields that were mostly dormant (Manifa, Khurais and Shaybah), by using a lot of in-fill drilling and intelligent wells (where water breakthrough can be controlled) on maturing fields and by extensively redeveloping offshore fields with new wellhead platforms and adding artificial lift.I don't think their fields are anywhere near drying up; they may be hitting some limits in surface facilities – probably to do with water injection or treatment of produced water which means they have to continually choke back so as not to damage the reservoirs.
[Feb 06, 2017] Crazy propaganda from Fedbook, sorry Facebook about Russia oil transportation and discovery
Notable quotes:
"... US and EU sanctions only affect Russian offshore projects in the Arctic and development of Russia's tight oil. If sanctions are lifted, projects with foreign participation in these two areas will be able to produce meaningful quantities of oil not before 2025. But these volumes will not be sufficient to flood the market. ..."
"... Russia is participating in OPEC-non-OPEC supply cuts and certainly is not interested in flooding the market and exerting a downward pressure on prices. ..."
"... The only Russia's offshore Arctic project is Prirazlomnoye field developed by Gazpromneft without foreign participation (already producing oil). ..."
"... In general, even if there were no sanctions, Arctic projects would be developed relatively slowly, due to high costs and environmental issues. Russia's long-term energy program anticipates more or less meaningful volumes of oil production in the Arctic offshore only in the 2030s. ..."
"... Everything in that stuff you wrote is baloney. Russia's Black Sea exports go through Novorossysk and Tuapse. There isn't an oil pipeline going to Crimea. Furthermore, putting an oil loading port in Crimea is nutty (because the oil comes from the East and it makes much more sense to load as far to the East as possible). There used to be some oil loaded in Odessa, but that was never a big deal. ..."
"... Regarding the Exxon deal, that's also baloney. But I don't feel like trying to explain the basics to somebody who picks up information from Facebook. ..."
"... From all that I've read, I would conclude that a "flood of oil" out of Russia is about as likely as a "flood of new fracked oil from shales in the United States, not yet drilled." That is, it's rather low on the probability meter. ..."
"... Why target Russia? Is it because of an impending Seneca cliff in Saudi Arabia? They were supposed to peak 10 years ago but water and nitrogen injections kept them afloat. Now? ..."
"... Thus, what the United States is playing at here is trying to install a different "regime" in Russia. That being, one that Vladimir Putin does not control or have any influence over. This is easier said than done and the United States knows this. But the stakes are quite a bit higher than controlling the dwindling oil supply in the Middle East. Russia is obviously in control of most of the world's remaining oil reserves. The United States needs a puppet regime in Russia to have access to that oil without paying the correct market price for it. ..."
"... At some point, this gambit will fail. Russia is not the Middle East. A war with Russia cannot be won or cease-fired out of. Nor can a United States-backed "regime change" succeed over there. This is not the 1990s Russia of Boris Yeltsin. The United States, however, cannot come clean with the truth to the American people. The reason is because if the American people knew the truth, they'd never sleep nights anymore. The truth is this: Our entire economic system is based on petroleum and low-cost petroleum at that. But the actual nightmare is that our entire agricultural system is based on cheap oil." ..."
Feb 06, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
Boomer II says: 02/05/2017 at 3:59 pmI saw this on Facebook. Can anyone respond?clueless says: 02/05/2017 at 4:53 pm"Exxon Mobil, under Rex Tillerson, brokered a deal with Russia in 2013 to lease over 60 million acres of Russian land to pump oil out of (which is five times as much land as they lease in the United States), but all that Russian oil would go through pipelines in the Ukraine, who heavily tax the proceeds, and Ukraine was applying for admission into NATO at the time.
Putin subsequently invaded Ukraine in 2014, secured the routes to export the oil tax-free by sea, and took control of the port where their Black Sea Naval Fleet is based, by taking the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine by force. This was Hitler style imperialism that broke every international law in the free world.
After Obama sanctioned Russia for the invasion, Exxon Mobil could only pump oil from approximately 3 of those 60+ million acres. But now Rex Tillerson is soon to be our Secretary of State, and as of today, there's information circulating that Donald Trump will likely unilaterally remove all sanctions against Russia in the coming days or weeks.The Russian government's oil company, Rosneft, will make half a trillion (500 Billion) dollars from that much untapped oil, all pumped tax-free through Crimea, stolen from Ukraine, now owned by Russia. Putin may have subverted our government just for this deal to go through."
______Now, a flood of oil on the market from Russia would likely keep US oil prices down, thus hurting US drillers right?
If one is conspiracy-minded, could that be part of the deal, too? Russia uses low oil prices to take down US oil production, and then tries assert itself as one of the countries left standing.
In about 1780, Catherine the Great and the Ottoman Empire agreed that the Crimea was a part of Russia. [Yes, there was conflict for years prior (as with any other piece of land in the world).] In 1954, in honor of the 300th Anniversary of the Republic of Ukraine being a part of Russia, Nikita Krushchev "gave" the governance of the Crimea to the Republic of Ukraine. It was not constitutional under the Russian constitution. The UN said nothing about it, nor any other international law body. Krushchev later trumped up an approval without even a quorum.AlexS says: 02/05/2017 at 6:12 pmSo the Republic of Ukraine seceded from Russia and took the Crimea with it. In the US, when states (republics) seceded [having been states for much less than 100 years, let alone over 300 years] the rest of the states killed as many people as they could until they "agreed to rejoin the union." People might not like it, but the vast majority of people living in the Crimea had ties to mother Russia, and they voted to go back to being governed by Russia. So, Putin accepted. And please, let's not get into an argument about the fairness of elections, unless your candidate wins.
So, what would we do if Obama gave South Carolina to Florida, and then Florida seceded. I guess that the rest of the states would just say "shucks, we lost South Carolina too." Especially if South Carolina had the only warm water port in the US [the Crimea has the only warm water port in Russia]. The rest of the ports are in the North Sea, etc. And, yes, that is a critical military point.
"This was Hitler style imperialism that broke every international law in the free world." That is a pathetic joke! Okay – let's let the US South secede again, since the Cival War broke every international law in the free world and was exactly the same as Hitler's imperialism.
clueless, thanks for the answer.clueless says: 02/06/2017 at 1:59 amJust one clarification: the ports in Crimea are not the only warm water ports in Russia.
Russia has several other ports in the Black Sea and Azov Sea.
Other ports are in the Baltic Sea, Arctic seas and the Pacific; not in the North SeaPerhaps I am wrong, but are those other ports large enough and deep enough for military use [which I failed to state clearly]? I beleive that Russia still operated their huge military port in the Crimea even after the Ukraine seceded and prior to Russia taking back the Crimea.AlexS says: 02/06/2017 at 6:17 amSevastopol, the largest port in Crimea, was founded by Catherine the Great as Russia's main military port in the Black Sea.Duncan Idaho says: 02/06/2017 at 9:18 amIt had special status when Crimea was part of the Soviet Ukraine, and also when Ukraine became independent. Russia had a long-term arrangement with Ukraine for using Sevastopol.
Russia also has a large military port in Novorossiisk (Russian part of Caucasus); but you are right, Sevastopol is deeper, bigger and more convenient.
Also, the Russian State originated in the Ukraine.AlexS says: 02/05/2017 at 5:38 pm
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rurik_dynastyRurik set up rule in Novgorod, giving more provincial towns to his brothers. There is some ambiguity even in the Primary Chronicle about the specifics of the story, "hence their paradoxical statement 'the people of Novgorod are of Varangian stock, for formerly they were Slovenes.'" However, archaeological evidence such as "Frankish swords, a sword chape and a tortoiseshell brooch" in the area suggest that there was, in fact, a Scandinavian population during the tenth century at the latest.[3] The "Rurikid Dynasty DNA Project" of FamilyTreeDNA commercial genetic genealogy company reports that Y-DNA testing of the descendants of Rurikids suggests their non-Slavic origin.
Kiev was the Capital of Russia when Moscow was still a hunting camp
Boomer II,Boomer II says: 02/05/2017 at 5:59 pmIt's your choice to use Facebook as the main source of information on the oil and gas industry, but please don't repost this BS on the oil-dedicated thread.
Exxon Mobil didn't lease any land in Russia. It is the operator of the Sakhalin-1 project in Russia' Far East (very far from Ukraine); and oil produced from this project is exported by sea (Pacific ocean).
Exxon's JV with Rosneft has also found an oil field in Kara Sea (Russian Arctic), but this project was suspended due to the sanctions.
In the past Russia was exporting a small part of its oil by the "Druzhba" ("Friendship") pipeline through Ukraine and was paying normal transporation fee, not taxes.
Now all Russian oil is exported via Russian oil terminals near Novorossiisk (Black Sea) and Ust-Luga and Primorsk (on the Baltic Sea). New transporation routes include East-Siberia – Pacific Ocean (ESPO) oil pipeline linking Russian oil fields in Siberia with the ports on Pacific Ocean and with China's Daking; as well as oil terminals in the Arctic (Varandey).
If US sanctions on Russia are lifted, Rosneft and Exxon will be able to develop their joint project in the Artcic, but oil found there certainly is not worth "half a trillion (500 Billion) dollars', and cannot seriously change the global supply-demand balance.
clueless gave you a good answer on Crimea
BTW, 1) there is no oil terminal in Crimea;
2) Russian oil is taxed in Russia"It's your choice to use Facebook as the main source of information on the oil and gas industry, but please don't repost this BS on the oil-dedicated thread."AlexS says: 02/05/2017 at 6:31 pmI never use Facebook as a source of information on the oil and gas industry. The topic never comes up among my Facebook friends or my news sources on Facebook. When I want gas and oil info, I use Google to look at legitimate news sources from industry observers.
I just wanted some people's thoughts on that. Your reaction actually tells me a lot about how you think about it.
We've had quite a few discussions here about how politics, both domestic and international, shapes oil production, so I was just inquiring about any insight. I'm rather surprised that you are telling me not to even post a question on the subject. Touchy, maybe?
The relationship between Trump and Russia has triggered some questions, not just among Democrats, but also the GOP. And some people are wondering if there is some tie in about oil.
I just asked, that's all.
"some people are wondering if there is some tie in about oil."Boomer II says: 02/05/2017 at 6:08 pmThe only "tie in" is Exxon's frozen investments in the Pobeda (Victory) field in the Kara Sea. But that's no secret; you can find information on this project on Exxon's and Rosneft's websites and in international business media.
The Sakhalin-1 project is not covered by the sanctions and is being successfully developed.
And basically what I was asking is this? Will a flood of Russian oil affect US oil prices?AlexS says: 02/05/2017 at 6:23 pmIf you are playing US politics, do you want to put more foreign oil on the market?
"Will a flood of Russian oil affect US oil prices?"Boomer II says: 02/05/2017 at 8:56 pmUS and EU sanctions only affect Russian offshore projects in the Arctic and development of Russia's tight oil. If sanctions are lifted, projects with foreign participation in these two areas will be able to produce meaningful quantities of oil not before 2025. But these volumes will not be sufficient to flood the market.
Russia is participating in OPEC-non-OPEC supply cuts and certainly is not interested in flooding the market and exerting a downward pressure on prices.
So is it possible that the time frame is so far in the future that it's dead to Exxon even if the sanctions are lifted?AlexS says: 02/06/2017 at 6:05 amI think Exxon could re-enter the project if the sanctions are lifted. If sanctions are not lifted for several years, Rosneft will likely develop this field independently, but it would take more time as Rosneft lacks experience in offshore projects.Watcher says: 02/05/2017 at 5:53 pmThe only Russia's offshore Arctic project is Prirazlomnoye field developed by Gazpromneft without foreign participation (already producing oil).
In general, even if there were no sanctions, Arctic projects would be developed relatively slowly, due to high costs and environmental issues. Russia's long-term energy program anticipates more or less meaningful volumes of oil production in the Arctic offshore only in the 2030s.
Politics aside, it's just factually inaccurate.Boomer II says: 02/05/2017 at 6:10 pm"Exxon Mobil, under Rex Tillerson, brokered a deal with Russia in 2013 to lease over 60 million acres of Russian land to pump oil out of (which is five times as much land as they lease in the United States), but all that Russian oil would go through pipelines in the Ukraine"
Almost all pipelines through Ukraine are nat gas. Not oil. There is some minor oil flow. "All" is just profoundly absurd.
Russia's oil output is going to Asia and northern Europe via Transneft lines to Poland and Belarus. Not through Ukraine. Haven't looked for where those Exxon leases are, but I'm pretty sure that's the Rosneft joint venture up around the Arctic.
Nowhere near Ukraine. This is all just completely wrong.
Ok. This response is much more helpful.Duncan Idaho says: 02/05/2017 at 6:45 pmNow back to my question about prices. What happens when the sanctions are lifted?
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.Survivalist says: 02/06/2017 at 12:56 am
– Alice in WonderlandFedBook, er I mean Facebook, is a ghetto of sentimentality. I suggest deleting from it. I joined Facebook once for a very short time and the only thing I learnt from it was that most of my friends are idiots.Fred Magyar says: 02/06/2017 at 2:01 pm+10Duncan Idaho says: 02/06/2017 at 3:06 pmAlso +10Fernando Leanme says: 02/06/2017 at 9:36 am
One has to be an idiot to be on FacebookEverything in that stuff you wrote is baloney. Russia's Black Sea exports go through Novorossysk and Tuapse. There isn't an oil pipeline going to Crimea. Furthermore, putting an oil loading port in Crimea is nutty (because the oil comes from the East and it makes much more sense to load as far to the East as possible). There used to be some oil loaded in Odessa, but that was never a big deal.GreenPeople's Media says: 02/06/2017 at 1:14 amRegarding the Exxon deal, that's also baloney. But I don't feel like trying to explain the basics to somebody who picks up information from Facebook.
From all that I've read, I would conclude that a "flood of oil" out of Russia is about as likely as a "flood of new fracked oil from shales in the United States, not yet drilled." That is, it's rather low on the probability meter.VK says: 02/06/2017 at 7:20 amAgain from what I've read (numerous sources) the Russian oil fields are being extracted just about as heavily as they can be at this time, as are the Saudi fields, again relying on a number of different sources.
Without getting too "tinfoil-hatty" I'd say most of the stories about the global oil markets which promise big bursts of production from (heretofore undisclosed) big new oil fields are in the category of "fake news." These stories serve to boost U.S. consumer confidence and U.S. automobile and light truck sales, but contradict what people in the industry (such as Art Berman, Tadeusz Patzek et al.) are saying about future supply.
Why target Russia? Is it because of an impending Seneca cliff in Saudi Arabia? They were supposed to peak 10 years ago but water and nitrogen injections kept them afloat. Now?George Kaplan says: 02/06/2017 at 2:50 pmhttps://www.lewrockwell.com/author/jack-perry/?ptype=article
"I've gotten a couple emails from people who have asked me what I think the "end game" is in regards to Russia. And, indeed, the government is going into extra innings with this whole Russia vilification project. This is worse than someone who has held on to a grudge for years. The government does that, too, but they haven't done it over ideology (as with Cuba) for quite some time now. What, then, is the motive?
The motive is perfectly clear: Oil. You see, Russia has already eclipsed Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest oil producer. This means the big Saudi oil fields are drying up. And the government knows that, but they can't tell us this because it'll create a panic. One would think this would motivate the United States to get cozier with Russia. However, what the United States government fears is that if we do that, Russia will twig to the motive for it, and realize it has the United States over a barrel. An oil barrel. At which point the price goes up. Not to mention extracting concessions in the global sphere of influence.
Thus, what the United States is playing at here is trying to install a different "regime" in Russia. That being, one that Vladimir Putin does not control or have any influence over. This is easier said than done and the United States knows this. But the stakes are quite a bit higher than controlling the dwindling oil supply in the Middle East. Russia is obviously in control of most of the world's remaining oil reserves. The United States needs a puppet regime in Russia to have access to that oil without paying the correct market price for it.
At some point, this gambit will fail. Russia is not the Middle East. A war with Russia cannot be won or cease-fired out of. Nor can a United States-backed "regime change" succeed over there. This is not the 1990s Russia of Boris Yeltsin. The United States, however, cannot come clean with the truth to the American people. The reason is because if the American people knew the truth, they'd never sleep nights anymore. The truth is this: Our entire economic system is based on petroleum and low-cost petroleum at that. But the actual nightmare is that our entire agricultural system is based on cheap oil."
Saudi has had water injection for much longer than ten years on pretty well all it's fields and I don't think they are using nitrogen injection anywhere, there may be some small CO2 EOR projects though. Their production has been maintained by developing three old, heavy oil fields that were mostly dormant (Manifa, Khurais and Shaybah), by using a lot of in-fill drilling and intelligent wells (where water breakthrough can be controlled) on maturing fields and by extensively redeveloping offshore fields with new wellhead platforms and adding artificial lift. I don't think their fields are anywhere near drying up; they may be hitting some limits in surface facilities – probably to do with water injection or treatment of produced water which means they have to continually choke back so as not to damage the reservoirs.
[Jan 08, 2017] Russia oil output in 2016 increased more the two percents
Jan 08, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
AlexS says: 01/02/2017 at 8:31 pmAccording to preliminary estimate by CDU TEK, statistical unit of Russia's Energy Ministry, the country's C+C production in December was 11.21 mb/d, flat month-on-month and close to post-Soviet record of 11.23 mb/d reached in October. Monthly-average output was more than 400 kb/d (3.7%) higher than in December 2015.Watcher says: 01/03/2017 at 3:13 amIn 2016 in total, output reached 10.96 mb/d, up from 10.71 million in 2015 (+2.3%) and significantly higher that the energy ministry's initial guidance in the beginning of the year (10.75 mb/d).
Russia has pledged to cut output by 300 kb/d from October reference levels, but the energy ministry has said that the reduction would be gradual as production cannot be cut abruptly due to weather and technological conditions.
According to the ministry's guidance, output will be reduced by 50-100 kb/d in January. By the end of March it will be 200 kb/d less the October level; and the target of 10.947 mb/d will not be reached until April or May.It is interesting that actual monthly-average output in October was 11.230 mb/d (using 7.33 barrels/ton conversion factor) rather than 11.247 mb/d stated by the Ministry as the reference level.
On my estimate based on ministry's guidance, production in 1st half of 2017 should average around 11.06 mb/d, 100 kb/d higher than the average 2016 level, although lower than in the last four months of the year.
OPEC and 11 non-OPEC countries agreed to cut output for a six-months period starting January 1st 2017, and nothing was said if and how this deal will be prolonged for the second half of the year. For 2017 as a whole, the Russian energy ministry is sticking to its oil production forecast of 548-551 million tons, or 11.01-11.07 mb/d, which implies higher output than the target of 10.947 mb/d in 2H2017. According to independent Russian experts, C+C production in 2017 may average 555 million tons, or 11.15 mb/d. According to a quote in Reuters, the IEA also expects Russian oil production to rise in the second half of the year: "While little information on the duration of production cuts has been made public, provisionally we assume that output will rise gradually again during the second half of 2017."
[ http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-oil-output-idUSKBN14M0AZ ].Important to note, the energy ministry said that Russia's crude oil exports (that had increased by 4.8% in 2016), will rise again in 2017 despite output cuts.
Russian oil production: actual (2013-2016) and energy ministry's guidance for 1st half of 2017 (mb/d)
So, 300K bpd "cut".AlexS says: 01/03/2017 at 10:23 amWhose order isn't going to be filled?
Presumably the guy who was buying it with no customer because he has tanks to put it in and that's where it was to go. Maybe he's a collector of liquids and never intends to sell. He just has to do without.
Based on the energy ministry's guidance, the actual reduction in Russia'a output will be less than 300 kb/d, but it will still be a real cut, especially given that Russia was expected to increase oil production by 200-300 kb/d in 2017.Nathanael says: 01/05/2017 at 9:53 pmTwo other non-OPEC countries where the cuts should be real are Oman and Kazakhstan, as they were also expected to increase output.
In most other non-OPEC countries, including Mexico and Azerbaijan, output reduction will simply match natural declines.
The table below is from the IEA OMR; the numbers include NGLs
"Presumably the guy who was buying it with no customer because he has tanks to put it in and that's where it was to go. Maybe he's a collector of liquids and never intends to sell. He just has to do without."This is the most awesomely entertaining image of the week, thank you Watcher!
[Jan 03, 2017] On December 30, a Russian government outlet announced that American service companies are scheduled to work on the Arctic offshore platform Prirazlomnaja for three months
Jan 03, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
im1dc :
Will he or won't he?"On December 30, a Russian government outlet announced that American service companies are scheduled to work on the Arctic offshore platform Prirazlomnaja for three months this summer – an activity which could potentially violate U.S. sanctions"
http://maritime-executive.com/article/does-gazprom-expect-post-sanctions-era-for-oil
"Gazprom's Plans May Anticipate End of Sanctions"
By MarEx...2017-01-02...20:33:13
"On December 30, a Russian government outlet announced that American service companies are scheduled to work on the Arctic offshore platform Prirazlomnaja for three months this summer – an activity which could potentially violate U.S. sanctions.
The maintenance period itself is unremarkable: parts of Prirazlomnaja's topsides date to 1984, and the offshore environment above the Arctic Circle is extraordinarily hard on equipment. However, it is not clear that an American firm could perform the work without a waiver from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The platform is owned by Gazprom Neft, and to penalize Russia for the annexation of Crimea, the Treasury prohibits American firms from providing this firm (and others) with goods, services or technology for "exploration or production for deepwater, Arctic offshore, or shale projects that have the potential to produce oil."
If these sanctions are still in place this summer, the unnamed American service companies could be liable for civil penalties. Recent enforcement actions have led to multimillion-dollar fines for the most egregious sanctions cases.
There is a possibility, however, that the sanctions might be lifted by the incoming Trump administration, which will enter office January 20. President-elect Trump's team says that he remains undecided on whether to lift the Ukraine sanctions program, and his appointee for Secretary of State, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, has a close relationship with the Russian government due to projects that sanctions now prohibit: he received the Russian Order of Friendship in 2013 for collaboration with Rosneft on a major Arctic drilling program. Tillerson is a critic of sanctions in general, and his firm still has billions at stake in Russian joint ventures. Last year, the head of ExxonMobil's Russian operations said that the company stands ready to return once sanctions are lifted.
Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, recently told Politico that he considers Tillerson's nomination "as a clear sign of intent that Trump is going to remove sanctions." Procedurally, this would only require an executive order from the president – and American service companies could proceed to Prirazlomnaja as scheduled."
Reply Tuesday, January 03, 2017 at 11:00 AMContinued
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