Tag: Russia

The End of Beer

It’s hard to imagine that the Germans, Belgians, and English are going to be willing to give up beer for Ukraine.

UK brewers are facing tenfold price increases for the CO2 they use to carbonate and package beers, the Financial Times reported on Friday, also citing supply disruptions that could threaten brewing ahead of the Christmas season.

According to the report, the market disruption follows a warning from US fertilizer group CF Industries last month that it would shut down a major UK ammonia plant that makes CO2 as a byproduct. The company said its decision was due to soaring natural gas prices, which have made production unviable.

The report also pointed out that gas suppliers have been struggling to source CO2 from international markets because of ammonia plant closures in Europe. The energy price spikes and shortages have come as brewers prepare to increase production for Christmas. According to William Lees-Jones, managing director at JW Lees brewery in Middleton, Greater Manchester, the CO2 that had cost £250 a ton ($284) in June was priced last week at £2,800 a ton ($3,187).

Meanwhile, in Italy, the best case scenario involves more than half-a-million people losing their jobs.

Italy is at risk of losing up to 582,000 jobs due to the energy crisis and the resulting economic downturn, national media reported on Sunday, citing a study by the Confindustria Association of Industrialists. According to the findings, if the gas price stays at its current level (the August average was €235 per megawatt-hour), Italy’s economy will shrink 2.2% next year and the country will lose up to 383,000 jobs in 2022-2023. However, if the price hits €298 per megawatt-hour, which is the predicted level based on current gas futures, Italy may suffer a 3.2% decline in GDP and lose hundreds of thousands of jobs.

If Europe isn’t allowed to surrender by the US neocons calling the shots, the price is going to go higher than the predicted €298 per megawatt-hour, which means the economic damage will be even more catastrophic.

UPDATE: Ach du Lieber! It’s getting worse than I thought, faster than I thought.

A German bakery was slapped with a €330,000 gas bill after a new energy company suddenly terminated their contract which guaranteed pricing until the end of 2023, Junge Freiheit reported, citing Bild.

“Are they crazy?” said owner Eckehard Vatter, who says he has 14 days to pay the bill. “A year ago, we paid €5,856 per month in gas costs for our large furnaces and heating,” he added. Vatter said his new energy supplier hasn’t given him a reason for the 1,200% price increase.

This crisis is also demonstrating the inherent falsity of what passes for “contract law”. The contracts are often loaded with one-sided fine print that renders them essentially irrelevant, thereby demonstrating that “consent” and “contract” are fundamentally immoral weapons in the con man’s arsenal.

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Suicide is not Murder

If the Europeans want to starve and freeze themselves, how is that Russia’s problem? How is that Russia’s fault?

President Vladimir Putin on Friday denied Russia had anything to do with Europe’s energy crisis, saying that if the European Union wanted more gas it should lift sanctions preventing the opening of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Speaking to reporters after the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Uzbekistan, Putin blamed what he called “the green agenda” for the energy crisis, and insisted that Russia would fulfil its energy obligations.

“The bottom line is, if you have an urge, if it’s so hard for you, just lift the sanctions on Nord Stream 2, which is 55 billion cubic metres of gas per year, just push the button and everything will get going,” Putin said.

Nord Stream 2, which lays on the bed of the Baltic Sea almost in parallel to Nord Stream 1, was built a year ago, but Germany decided not to proceed with it just days before Russia sent its troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.

European gas prices more than doubled from the start of the year amid a decline in Russian supplies. This year’s price surge has squeezed struggling already consumers and forced some industries to halt production.

If I refuse to drive to the supermarket, I cannot reasonably complain that the supermarket is trying to starve me. No, even that analogy is too generous.

If I refuse to call Dominos and order a pizza, and if I tell them that even if I did order a pizza I will not pay for it with actual cash, but insist on paying with Monopoly money, then I cannot reasonably complain that Dominos is trying to starve me.

It is simply false to blame the NATO-Russian war on Russia. NATO started it and Russia is winning it. The longer the Europeans accept direction from Washington, the worse they are going to suffer. So stop posturing, push the button, and let everything get going.

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Germany Doubles Down

I don’t think seizing Russian energy assets is going to convince Russia to turn on the gas and prevent Germans from freezing this winter.

Berlin is taking control of German subsidiaries of Russian oil major Rosneft, Rosneft Deutschland (RDG) and RN Refining & Marketing, putting them under trust management for six months, the German Ministry of Economics announced on Friday.

According to the ministry, control will be given to the grid regulator Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency of Germany). The ministry explained that the step was taken to ensure the operation of three Rosneft oil refineries in Schwedt, Karlsruhe and Vohburg, which was jeopardized after critical service providers, insurers and banks allegedly refused to work with the Russian company.

“The legal basis for the order was Article 17 of the Energy Security Act. According to it, a company that operates critical infrastructure in the energy sector can be placed under management if there is a specific risk that without management the company will not be able to perform its tasks that ensure the functioning of society in the energy sector, as well as if there is a risk of disruption of security of supply,” the ministry said in a statement.

Rosneft enterprises account for about 20% of oil refinery capacities in Germany, making it one of the largest in the country.

At this point, I’d be surprised if the Russians don’t start hitting targets outside of Ukrainian territory before the end of the year. The neocons wanted this war and I expect they’re going to get it good and hard. It’s not as if Putin and his generals don’t know who has been pushing for this since before 2008.

Which is the reason I just doubled our wood supply. Just, you know, in case. But why would Germany ever do something this obviously stupid? Oh, that’s why.

Last Sunday, the US ambassador to Berlin, Amy Gutmann, told the German broadcaster ZDF that she expects Germany to “take on a greater leadership role.” She acknowledged Berlin’s military assistance to Kiev, but said her expectations are “even higher.”

“So far, Germany has done what we asked for,” a US official told Die Welt on Thursday, adding that Berlin could be moving “faster.” The paper reported that Washington has “doubts” about Germany’s fundamental loyalty to Kiev, questioning whether it wants Ukraine to “win” or just “not to lose.”

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Stupid Think Tanks

A Russian leader points out that the continued escalation of NATO involvement will result in a transition from proxy war to direct war:

Western “half-wits” from “stupid think tanks” are leading their countries down the road of nuclear armageddon with their hybrid war against Moscow, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday. Endlessly funneling weapons and support to Ukraine while pretending not to be directly involved in the conflict will not work, added the deputy chair of the Russian Security Council.

The “security guarantees” proposal unveiled by Kiev on Tuesday was “really a prologue to the Third World War,” said Medvedev, calling it a “hysterical appeal” to Western countries engaged in a proxy war against Russia.

If the West continues its “unrestrained pumping of the Kiev regime with the most dangerous types of weapons,” Russia’s military campaign will move to the next level, where “visible boundaries and potential predictability of actions by the parties to the conflict” will be erased and the conflict will take on a life of its own, as wars always do, Medvedev argued.

“And then the Western nations will not be able to sit in their clean homes, laughing at how they carefully weaken Russia by proxy. Everything will be on fire around them. Their people will harvest their grief in full. The land will be on fire and the concrete will melt,” Medvedev wrote, before citing a Bible verse from Revelations 9:18.

“Yet still the narrow-minded politicians and their stupid think tanks, thoughtfully twirling a glass of wine in their hands, talk about how they can deal with us without entering into a direct war.

Think tanks are, by and large, pretty stupid. My belief is that the neocons driving the war with Russia have always wanted a direct war. They simply utilized war-by-proxy and hybrid war because they couldn’t get the politicians to sign on to a direct war. So unless the people or the politicians bring it to an end, they will get the war they wanted.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the war will end the way they assumed it would….

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Ukraine is the New Hannibal

And apparently the media would like us to believe that the recent Ukrainian offensive is the greatest military maneuver since the double-envelopment at Cannae and Vladimir Putin is now out of options. Checkmate, Putin!

Ukraine has pulled off ‘one of the greatest counter attacks in modern history’: Military expert JUSTIN BRONK says Vladimir Putin has NO good options and Russia’s entire invasion force could COLLAPSE in worst defeat since WW2.

The long awaited Ukrainian counter-offensive to retake the southern city of Kherson finally began late last month.

However, many were dismayed by the relatively cautious pace at which Ukrainian forces were advancing, and pointed out that by making it so obvious that a counter-offensive was being prepared in Kherson, Kyiv had given the Russian Army more than a month to move some of its most elite remaining units and large numbers of supporting reserve units to block it.

The brilliance of this strategy his been revealed as of Wednesday last week, as a second Ukrainian force launched a smaller scale but much more mobile counter-offensive in the Kharkiv region to the north.

After initially breaking through the Russian frontlines at the town of Balakliya, Ukrainian armoured and mechanised brigades did not stop to consolidate their gains, but instead drove rapidly throughout the next two days and nights, deep into Russian-occupied territory.

As the Ukrainian commanders urgently rushed reinforcements in to consolidate and widen the narrow corridor of liberated towns, the spearhead units isolated and then bypassed the limited Russian reserve forces that tried to halt them at the small village of Sevchenkove and reached the southern edge of the crucial junction city of Kup’yansk on Friday morning.

In less than a week, more than 3,000 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory had been liberated, massive stockpiles of ammunition, weapons and armoured vehicles captured for use by Ukrainian forces, and the entire Russian position in North-Eastern Ukraine completely destabilised.

Russian forces have not suffered such a serious and rapid military defeat on the battlefield since the Second World War.

Worse still for Putin is that fact that he has no good options for how to react now.

The majority of his potentially mobile and elite units in Ukraine are still concentrated in Kherson to the south, and are facing a serious and ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensive operation that cannot be ignored.

Furthermore, by signalling for so long that Kherson was target for liberation, Ukraine has baited Russia into accepting an attritional battle in a very militarily disadvantageous position.

If his forces stay put in the south, then the majority of Russia’s usable combat power will be trapped with their backs to the river and steadily ground down by a Ukrainian force that has much better supply lines, more troops and so can sustain an attritional artillery duel for longer.

However, if the Kherson front were to collapse, it would be such a political and military disaster coming soon after the stunning defeat in Kharkiv that Russian military morale might totally disintegrate, or Putin might even find himself threatened by discontented factions within the Russian power structure at home.

The media is reaching a level of detachment from reality that one seldom sees outside the economic news. Remember, most of the manpower being utilized in Ukraine are no more part of the Russian military than the Ukrainian forces are part of the US military. The Russians haven’t even bother to mobilize yet, which should tell you how little they are worried about the operations in Ukraine.

Except for the specialist arms supporting the militias, the Russian military is being reserved for the direct confrontation with NATO forces that is coming. Now, it may be that NATO forces are directly involved in the Kharkiv and Kherson offensives, which they actively boast about planning, or it may be that the Russians have been withdrawing to lure the Ukrainians out of their fortified positions in order to eliminate them more easily. We simply don’t know.

While estimates vary wildly, Zelenskyy said Ukraine had recaptured roughly 6,000 square kilometers – equivalent to the combined area of the West Bank and Gaza – of Ukraine’s overall land mass, around 600,000 square km. Russia had taken control of around a fifth of Ukraine since February 24.

Imagine if the media had covered the Ardennes Offensive this way.

What we know is that Russia still isn’t making use of its energy stranglehold over Europe, nor is it striking at the power plants of Germany, Poland, the UK, and other countries with which it is at war, even though doing so could probably force a complete surrender by the EU and Ukraine alike. Furthermore, Putin’s party, United Russia just won between 65 percent and 86 percent of the vote in the recent regional elections; Russian sentiment is very pro-Putin and to the extent that he is being criticized, it is because he has not prosecuted the war against NATO more aggressively.

So, what we can safely conclude is that this is just more “Ghost of Kiev” war fiction meant to justify the constant flow of money and arms to Ukraine, albeit on a grander scale.

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A Second Front

Although not the one we were anticipating.

ITEM: Azerbaijan officially confirms it is systematically striking targets on the sovereign territory of Armenia.

ITEM: Armenia is triggering CSTO article to request assistance from Russia amid Azerbaijani attack on the Republic of Armenia.

Azerbaijan won the 2020 Nargorno-Karabakh war and is supported by NATO, so it’s pretty obvious that this is an attempt to increase the pressure on Russia in the aftermath of the recent Ukrainian offensive. However, I doubt more war by proxy is going to impress the Russians, especially when they are already directly targeting Germany with their rhetoric.

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The Real Rebel Alliance

China and Russia stand together in an alliance against the evils of imperialist global government and they are confident of their ultimate success, because they understand that all attempts to rule the world are doomed to fail.

Western governments, most notably the US, are trying to impose their neo-colonial order on the world, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service chief Sergey Naryshkin claimed on Thursday during a Russian-Chinese roundtable meeting to discuss historical processes and the structure of the modern world.

In his opening statement, Naryshkin, who also heads up the Russian Historical Society, stated that the international sphere is currently going through a transformation as many countries are embarking on the path of sovereign development and are relying on their own cultural heritage and traditions.

“However, a small group of Western countries is standing in the way. Western liberal-totalitarian regimes which have essentially usurped the right to decide the vector of humanity’s development and have imposed their own neo-colonial world order,” Naryshkin said.

He pointed out that the US, which was “blinded by its quasi-victory in the Cold War,” has been trying to impose its so-called ‘rules-based order’ on the world, noting Washington’s repeated interference in the internal affairs of sovereign governments, ignoring Russia’s concerns about the expansion of NATO towards its borders, and the “blatantly tactless” visits of US politicians to Taiwan.

“What is this if not a manifestation of imperial swagger?” Naryshkin asked, noting that the US has been provoking conflicts all over the world in order to uphold its hegemony, which is being threatened by a global crisis caused by the greed and shortsightedness of the West.

“The Anglo-Saxon desire for world domination spreads to continental Europe as well,” the official stated, noting that nearly all European states today are essentially under the direct rule of Washington. “Unfortunately, most European politicians today are not guided by the needs of their constituents,” the intelligence chief asserted.

He concluded his address by pointing out that this is not the first time that a specific country or political bloc has attempted to rule the world, but stated that human history shows that all such attempts are inevitably doomed to fail.

Naryshkin’s comments were backed by the head of the Chinese Academy of History, Gao Xiang, who noted a “shortage of trust and peace” in the world and accused Western countries of returning to a Cold War mentality and causing major disruptions and turmoil around the globe.

Some of my critics claim that I am blind to the flaws of the two nations leading the war against global subjugation to satanist Promethean rule, particularly China. This is absolutely not true; you may recall that I am an East Asian Studies major and I have appeared on Chinese television, so I have a better idea about what China is like than the average Westerner.

And the point is not if the Chinese are angels, but rather, if they are literal devil-worshippers like far too many of those who presently rule the West? Remember, both the Chinese and the Russians have suffered tremendously at the hands of the great-grandfathers and grandfathers of those who are responsible for the ruin of the USA and Europe, so they have a much better understanding of what is happening, and what is going to happen, than the Americans and Europeans do.

Just as the USA today is not the USA that won WWII, Russia today is not the USSR of the Bolsheviks and China today is not the China of Mao and Li Dunbai. Try to keep this in mind when you are contemplating global geopolitics.

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A Cold, Dark Winter

The numbers are not looking good for Europe.

We got a very shocking sense of the staggering numbers involved in the existential, crippling European crisis earlier today when Norwegian energy giant Equinor echoed what Zoltan Pozsar said in March, warning that “European energy trading risks grinding to a halt unless governments extend liquidity to cover margin calls of at least $1.5 trillion.” As Bloomberg put it, in its best non-Zoltan imitation, “aside from inflating bills and fanning inflation, the biggest energy crisis in decades is sucking up capital to guarantee trades amid wild price swings. That’s putting pressure on European Union officials to intervene to prevent energy markets from stalling.”

“Liquidity support is going to be needed,” Helge Haugane, Equinor’s senior vice president for gas and power, said in an interview. The issue is focused on derivatives trading, while the physical market is functioning, he said, adding that the company’s estimate for $1.5 trillion to prop up so-called paper trading is “conservative.””

In other words, massive amounts of newly-printed funding (because with yields blowing up, Europe’s fiscal stimulus will be over before it started unless central banks step in and backstop the latest energy hyperinflation bailout plans) will be required to avert an energy disaster. Alas, the final number will be even more massive, because overnight Goldman’s research team published a must read note (available to pro subs), in which the bank looked at the scale of the energy bill challenge, potential European government responses and industry implications, and quantified the total damage. The numbers are staggering:

According to Goldman, Italian household energy bills could rise from ~€150 to ~€600 in 2023. Some more details:

“For most families and industrial customers, energy bills are renegotiated every twelve months; on our estimates, energy bills for most consumers will peak this winter. We estimate a c.€500/month cost for power and gas currently, implying a c.200% increase vs. 2021 when average bills were c.€160/month. Energy bills could approach €600/month in a zero flows (from Russia) scenario we believe. “

The trigger for this exponential surge in costs: since January 2020, 1-year forward gas and power prices – usually the reference when signing new energy supply contracts for families or industrial customers – have each increased by more than 13x. The following exhibit shows this evolution, rebased to 100.

For Europe as a whole, this would be equivalent to a near €2 TRILLION increase in gas and power spending (equivalent to c.15% of GDP)… the math is simple: Europe can’t print more nat gas, oil, coal, etc, so one way or another, it will have to offset the surge in costs, first in commodities and then in all downstream chains, which in the very near future will mean governments will soon be subsidizing Europe’s cost of living as the alternative is a violent revolution.

This is not an exaggeration. I’ve heard of forward contracts with increases as much as 16x from very reliable sources, and that’s in Switzerland, which is in better shape, electricity-wise, than the UK, Germany, or France.

But the choice between inflationary subsidies and violent revolution is a false binary. There is a third and much better option.

It’s time for nationalist leaders to come forward, replace the failed globalists in the various European governments, end their retarded and self-destructive alliances with Ukraine, and make a peace with Russia that will inspire it to turn on both Nordstream 1 and Nordstream 2. The Europeans are going to have to surrender to Russia sooner or later, so they might as well do it sooner and minimize the economic consequences to their people and to their economies.

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Better Buckle Up

We’ve been warned, repeatedly. Now even the Russians are warning us.

The world is about to experience major turbulence as a result of illogical moves by Western nations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

“Most likely, a huge global storm is starting,” Peskov warned in an interview with Tass on Monday.

“In many ways, there are objective reasons for that, but there are also subjective reasons for this beginning storm, which are linked to absolutely illogical and often absurd decisions and actions of the authorities in the US, Europe, the EU and individual European countries,” he said.

The sanctions imposed by the US, the EU and some other nations on Russia over its military operation in Ukraine have backfired causing a spike in energy prices and record inflation across the West.

While the rise in electricity prices is still largely speculative, they will be economically catastrophic even if they are only as bad as the politicians are openly discussing in the media. Behind doors, the situation may be considerably worse; whereas price rises of 20 to 40 percent have already been announced, the real range of future contracts is from 10x to 16x.

This is far more than the vast majority of small businesses can afford, which means that many of them are not going to survive the winter. If Britain is any guide, more than a few will not survive the autumn. And the Russians are not about to let the globalist governments of the Were-West off the hook either.

Russia’s gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will not resume in full until the “collective west” lifts sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has said.

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Play Stupid Energy Games

Win the prize of a cold, dark winter and an angry citizenry:

Russia is deliberately sabotaging the Nord Stream 1 natural gas pipeline to spite the EU, European officials have claimed, questioning Moscow’s explanation for an indefinite delay in restoring service.

State-owned energy giant Gazprom informed its European customers on Saturday that it could not safely resume operations until it had fixed “oil leaks” discovered in a major turbine during a maintenance operation.

Nord Stream was set to come back online just after midnight Saturday morning after three days of maintenance. The leaks, reportedly affecting “cables connected to speed meters of a rotor,” were discovered during a technical inspection with the turbine’s German manufacturer Siemens. Moscow had earlier warned that the pipeline’s operation was threatened by sanctions, which had created a shortage of spare parts.

However, Siemens argued the company had alternate turbines at the compressor station where the leak had been discovered and could use one of those in case of a real emergency. “Such leaks do not normally affect the operation of a turbine and can be sealed on site,” they claimed.

European Commission spokesman Charles Michel condemned what he called Russia’s “use of gas as a weapon,” declaring it would not “change the resolve of the EU” as the bloc works toward “energy independence.”

Commission press service chief Eric Mamer slammed the “fallacious pretenses” he claimed Gazprom had used to shut down the pipeline, holding it up as proof of both their “cynicism” and their “unreliability as a supplier” and suggesting Moscow “prefer[red] to flare gas instead of honoring contracts.”

German parliamentary foreign affairs committee chair Michael Roth denounced the shutdown as “part of Russia’s psychological war against us” and accused President Vladimir Putin of “violat[ing] contracts without scruples….even at the expense of his own economic interests.”

Let’s get this straight. Europe has a perfectly operational natural gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2, that it refuses to use. Russia has, quite reasonably, decided that it’s not interested in continuing to provide natural gas to the same countries that are a) sanctioning its people and b) arming and funding the Ukrainian war against Russia on the terms of those enemies.

Can you even imagine how many contracts have been violated by the European sanctions against Russia? This anti-Russian rhetoric is as ineffective as it is retarded. Frankly, I’m astonished that the Russians didn’t shut down the pipeline months ago.

Then again, it is rather amusing to see the Russians slowly dialing up the pain while simultaneously pretending that there is nothing they can do about it. As an award-winning cruelty artist, I have to say that I tend to approve of the sadistic diplomacy they have applied to this situation.

Germany’s initial Energy Saving Ordinance, in effect for the next six months:

  • Retail stores may no longer keep their doors open throughout the day to reduce electricity consumption for air conditioning when it is hot outside — and for heating on cold winter days.
  • Public buildings and monuments have to go dark at 10 p.m.
  • Illuminated advertising must be switched off after 10p.m., with only a few exceptions. If advertisements serve traffic safety, they remain switched on, for example, at railroad underpasses. Street lamps also remain on, and store windows may continue to be illuminated.
  • Monuments and other buildings may no longer be illuminated at night. At least not for purely aesthetic reasons. However, emergency lighting will not be switched off, and illumination is permitted for cultural events and public festivals.
  • In public buildings, halls and corridors will generally no longer be heated, and the temperature in offices will be limited to a maximum of 19 degrees. In places where heavy physical work is performed, temperatures will be even lower in the future. However, the restrictions do not apply to social facilities such as hospitals, daycare centers, and schools, where higher air temperatures are essential for the “health of the people who spend time there,” according to the Economy Ministry.
  • Cutting back on warm water. Likewise, in public buildings, instantaneous water heaters or hot water tanks should be switched off if they are mainly used for washing hands. Exceptions are made for medical facilities, schools, and daycare centers. Some cities go even further. There, the showers in swimming pools and sports halls will remain unheated.
  • Private pools may no longer be heated with gas and electricity, except for rehab centers, recreational facilities, and hotels. The new regulations will initially apply until the end of February.

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