The countries that South Stream would have served, do not have a back-up supplier to meet their growing gas needs. So by following Washington’s lead, they’ve basically shot themselves in the foot. Analysts figure that any replacement for Russian gas will probably be 30 percent more expensive then they would have paid Gazprom.
Hurrah for the US! Hurrah for stupidity!
Deputy Head of the Left Party’s faction Sahra Wagenknecht sharply criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy toward Russia
US neo-cons are also sharpening their spears. As soon as early 2015 there may be a Ukrainian Freedom Act approved by the US Congress. Translation: Ukraine as a “major US non-NATO ally” which means, in practice, a NATO annexation. Next step; more turbo-charged neo-con provocation of Russia.
Shock waves from last Thursday’s decision by the Saudi-led oil cartel, OPEC, not to cut production in the face of an oversupply on world markets have reverberated throughout the global economy, hitting energy and mining companies as well as financial markets, and threatening whole economies with bankruptcy.
through the deals it has made this year with China, Turkey and Iran, Russia has dealt a devastating blow to the energy future of the EU. A few years down the line Europeans will start to discover that moralising and bluff comes with a price. Regardless, by cancelling South Stream, Russia has imposed upon Europe the most effective of the sanctions we have seen this year.
The end product has been lawlessness and Somali-style civil war. The state has basically been “failed” by the US and its allies. Post-Jamahiriya governmental authority is only exercised by those in power inside of their offices and a few spaces. Violent crime has proliferated. Tripoli and other major cities are being fought for by different factions and Libyan weapons are being smuggled into different countries. Even US officials, which helped midwife the groups running rampant in Libya, have not been safe from the turmoil they helped create; the murder of US Ambassador John Christopher Stevens in Benghazi on 12 September 2012 is testimony to this.
As Beijing dreams, Noam Chomsky has been very vocal about a 1914-style chain reaction of catastrophic blunders – by the West – that could fast spin out of control; and the stakes, once again, are nuclear.
“Training” foreign troops seems to be some magic solution for various foreign policy problems. “Training” a new Iraqi army against the Islamic State is the latest of such a hoped for miracles. But all recent “western training” has been more problematic than successful.
The various foreign troops trained at the infamous U.S. Army School of the Americas, turned out to be capable, but only as torturers and death squads.
Islamic State leader Caliph Ibrahim – aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – never ceases to amaze us – and most of all his powerful petrodollar-stuffed backers. The Caliph is for all practical purposes now an oil major worth of membership of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). His takfiri/mercenary goons – in theory – have for some time been extracting, refining, shipping and/or smuggling and clinching juicy deals involving vast quantities of oil, reaping profits of roughly US$2 million a day.
The details are emerging of a new secret and quite stupid Saudi-US deal on Syria and the so-called IS. It involves oil and gas control of the entire region and the weakening of Russia and Iran by Saudi Arabian flooding the world market with cheap oil. Details were concluded in the September meeting by US Secretary of State John Kerry and the Saudi King.
There’s an historic level of animosity right now towards Labour in Scotland. Many are simply seething. Many will never forgive them for siding with the ConDems and taking a leading part in the establishment’s Project Fear. Jones acknowledges much of this, but fails to concede his own negative part in that outcome.
The House of Saud believes it can dump a tsunami of oil in the market and back it up with a tsunami of spin – creating the illusion the Saudis control oil prices. They don’t. As much as this strategy will fail, Beijing is showing the way out; trading in other currencies stabilizes prices. The only losers, in the end, will be those who stick to trade in US dollars.
