Vindictiveness, Profiteering and Theft: Julian Assange, Energy Policies, Provocations and Wars
Julian Assange, Energy Policies, Provocations and Wars
[Image: a crop of a map (see below for the full image) showing the overlapping claims in the South China Sea.]
Published: 2022-11-30
Update 2022-12-01: Video embedding has been fixed, and a new piece of “bonus material” has been added.
Update 2022-12-03: Added the latest video from The Duran. Bakhmut is falling, advances on the sources of Ukrainian missile fire on Donetsky City, and other topics. Also the Dec 01 Scott Horton Show with Anzalone and Gosztola.
Update 2022-12-04: Added the first show of the return of Going Underground in which Afshin Rattansi interviews Alastair Crooke.
A reading of this article is available.
Introduction
This essay examines a collection of news topics which are loosely connected through the concepts of vindictiveness, profiteering and theft. We begin with a brief update on the Assange persecution. Then an analysis of movements in the global energy trade are considered with a focus on sanctions on Russia and how she continues to respond to them. We then examine various provocations which the USA is directing against the "great powers" which she believes she should be threatening. We conclude with a summary of the state of affairs in Ukraine and a more civilizational consideration of this conflict.
Assange
The editors and publishers of 5 major international news organisations which partnered with Wikileaks have issued an open letter calling for the USA's Biden administration (aka regime) to drop all charges related to publishing applied to Julian Assange.
Previously comments of this nature have been issued by editors. The change is that this time it is both the editors and publishers of The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, El País and Der Speigel. Of course, if they actually wanted to place pressure on the USA government they would authorize opinion writers and senior journalists to produce a constant stream of articles showing how Assange and Wikileaks have been abused over the years. There are multiple books worth of material from which to draw upon. This seems extremely unlikely. They are, in effect, doing a "cover my arse".
Caitlin Johnstone offers another solution for The Guardian. They could retract all of the lies they have published about Assange.
[Image: a screenshot of the footer to the “open letter” published at the Guardian.]
Craig Murray is currently on a tour of Europe to join with others calling for an end to this political witch hunt which threatens journalism. Stella Assange has been delivering speeches to re-raise awareness of her husband's continued and continuing abuse by the USA and UK.
Recall that the "star witness" for the "hacking" charges is a convicted criminal who has refuted his own testimony. All other charges amount to possessing and then publishing classified information which is what journalists do every day of the week. Knowing that this testimony is destroyed and that the remaining charges are an attack on the first amendement, the USA regime continues with its vindictiveness.
The difference between Wikileaks and all the rest is that it actually published these vast troves of material. A comparison could be made to the Omidyar funded First Look Media (i.e The Intercept) and the Soros funded International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. They possess very interesting datasets. The difference is the availability and particularly the searchability of these datasets. Wikileaks has excelled in both whereas these "Foundation Funded" groups have not.
Energy Policies
The 9th, I repeat 9th, set of sanctions to be applied against Russia by the EU is set to come into force on December 5th. It will include new measures targeting Russian oil which is delivered by ship. Exemptions were included to satisfy nations like Hungary which are land locked and have no practical alternatives to the purchase of Russian energy. The "shipping" sanctions are targeted at the insurers of ships transporting Russian oil.
To this measure was to be added a "price cap". The EU was seeking a cap of 60 to 70 USD per barrel. The general understanding is that Russian energy companies make a profit at anything above 45 USD per barrel. Urals crude peaked just under 100 USD/barrel in May and is currently trading at 64. The price cap could not be agreed because Poland wanted it set at 30. This seems nonsensical until one considers the wider picture.
[Image: a history of the price of Urals crude in USD. The lowpoint marked follows the global shutdown caused by the policies enacted in response to the COVID pandemic.]
Russia has said it will refuse to trade in oil with countries which join a group implementing a price cap. They have left themselves a little "wiggle room" in that if the price is good enough, they'll sell anyway. In the end its all about price. If the price cap is set at say 50 USD Russia would probably refuse to sell. Because Russia supplies about 12% of the global oil trade this would cause a price rise. However, its more complex still. A crude is separated out into the useful fuels which can be extracted from it. Light crudes like those from Saudi or many USA wells are fractionated into light fuels like kerosene or petrol. Heavier crudes produce heavier fuels like heating oil. Russia's Urals crude is of the heavier type.
[Image: a history of total global oil production in barrels per day. Russia produces around 10 million, thus representing around 12% of current global production.]
A reason for the crazy Polish demand of 30 USD/barrel is probably that they believe no price cap will be either agreed or effective. Thus, they make this demand as an appeal to domestic politics.
Venezuelan and Russian Oil
The USA attempted another coup in Venezuela when they stormed the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington D.C., declared their puppet Guaido as the "interim President" when he'd never stood for this office, impounded huge amounts of assets of the Venezuelan national energy company PDVSA located in the USA, approved an idiotic mercenary attack by a bunch of ex-USA military persons and even tried to invade Venezuela from Colombia with "aid trucks". Since then, the Venezuelan heavy crude which use to be processed in Texas and supplied heating oil and other products has been replaced by Urals crude imported from Russia. This makes up around 8% of the USA’s oil imports.
When the latest EU sanctions package comes into effect the USA is going to look pretty treacherous and hypocritical if it continues to import Russian oil. For this reason a deal has been made between the USA and Venezuela with the UN acting as an intermediary. 3 billion USD in funds "frozen" by the USA and Europe will be given to a UN managed fund. The agreement stipulates that these funds will be spent on humanitarian projects in Venezuela including health care, education and food. The deal was signed in Mexico City between representatives of the Venezuelan government and opposition parties. This is the USA returning what they stole through a mechanism which they control to achieve their own political ends.
This is the sweetener to allow Chevron to re-enter the Venezuelan oil market and deliver the heavy crude to Texas, thus relieving the USA's current reliance on Russian Urals crude. (See Video Sources for Gilbert Doctorow). Venezuela has close ties to both Russia and Iran, and as they are also major oil producers, one can imagine that there was consultation between these three governments on this deal. One would also expect that information was supplied to OPEC+ by Russia.
On a different front, the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov announced recently that Russia is in talks with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to form a "gas union". Exactly what this means remains unclear. It seems to be about stabilizing the gas market, and particularly transit across central Asia. To this can be added recent discussions between Russia and Türkiye to have Türkiye act as a "gas hub". Thus, gas from Russia and central Asian states could be piped to Turkiye from where the energy can be on-sold to Europe. This will essentially bypass the idiotic "shoot yourself in the foot to make the USA happy" sanctions on Russian gas which the EU has adopted. These insane sanctions are largely now moot.
The attacks against 3 of the 4 Nord Stream pipelines reduced Europe's ability to receive Russian gas. That the investigation into the incident is being guarded behind Swedish and German "national security" screens informs us that Russia had nothing to do with it, whatever media pundits may claim. See Video Sources for the hillarious video compilation by Matt Orfalea.
“Countering” Inflation
The recent act to supposedly counter inflation in the USA also includes government handouts (subsidies) for various industries. Some EU officials recently expressed their outrage at this and the increased cost of LNG from the USA compared to other suppliers (Russia). Of course they knew of the impending price increase. Any energy analyst could have informed them of this. Actually, anyone with a high school level understanding of physics could have told them this.
The outrage is based on the subsidies. The end result is that various European manufacturing industries are leaving Europe because the energy supplies are too expensive and are relocating to the USA. Essentially, the USA is stealing European industries under the cover of the energy sanctions demanded of Europe after the war in Ukraine began. This conflict was created by the USA and Ukraine refusing to embrace the Minsk II Accords and then threatening a massacre or genocide in the Donbas. It seems some EU "officials" are starting to wake up to the steal.
They accuse the USA of profiteering.
Provocations
The USA has just joined Israel in running a military exercise which simulates a bombing attack on Iran. The expense of tens of millions of dollars to run the exercise allows the militaries to have lots of fun at the expense of the tax payer. The geopolitical effect is purely to provoke Iran and serve some domestic political agenda in the two nations. This exercise followed the USA's CENTCOM announcing that it will deploy over 100 maritime drones to the Persian Gulf by 2023. This is obviously a threat to Iran's Navy of fast, small boats.
Following in the footsteps of Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan and meeting with its local political leadership, USA's Vice President Kamala Harris recently visited the Philippines. Her first salvo while visiting the Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (note the name) was to declare that any Chinese aggression against Philippine military or civilian vessels or aircraft would invoke a response from the USA based on the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty between the US and the Philippines. Her second salvo, while standing aboard a Philippine Coast Guard ship was to say that the US would lead a campaign against “irresponsible behavior” in the region.
The USS Chancellorsville, a US Navy guided-missile cruiser, sailed near the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea on November 29th in a completely not “irresponsible” manner. Unsurprisingly, this involved communications between the Chinese and USA Navies. The USS Chancellorsville left the area as requested by the Chinese Navy. The Chinese military claimed that “the actions of the US military seriously violated China’s sovereignty and security”. The USA's Navy essentially said hogwash!
The South China Sea is an area of overlapping claims by many nations. The complexity of the claims are depicted below. It, and Taiwan, serve as means for the USA to create tensions between regional neighbours or even provoke a war.
[Image: from Antiwar].
Ukraine
Ukraine has failed to even apologize for its recent accidental attack on Poland which killed two farm workers. Ukraine's provocative claim that the missile's were Russian had to be quickly downplayed before the war drumming media took things beyond control. Although it was the journalist, not the editors, who was the fall guy for this overly excessive beating of the drums of war by Associated Press, we can learn that the media have been told to calm down. Think about what this implies.
Since then, the "free media" of the west have been denied access to Kherson City by Ukraine where reprisals against "Russian collaborators" have been occurring. Pictures of people bound to lamp posts have been published. Other reports include a mother and son being murdered. More gruesome claims include people being physically abused and then thrown alive into grinding machines used to lay new roadworks.
[Image: two persons tied to posts. Source is RT.]
Russia's recent campaign to significantly damage Ukraine's electricity grid has continued. A loss of power has a widespread effect on an economy and society. Businesses fail, schools and hospitals cannot run effectively, and of course the rail transport system, which is dominantly electric in Ukraine, is heavily effected.
Dima, from the Military Summary channel, highlighted recent missile strikes in Kherson and surrounding areas which are designed to disable the rail transport in the area. (See Video sources). Ukraine has positioned many mechanized units in the area. Russia and her allies are now even more focused on the Donetsk front, especially around Bakhmut. Ukraine may wish to re-position many of the forces in Kherson but the attacks against the transport infrastructure are making this more difficult, effectively costing Ukraine in fuel which they lack and lengthening travel times and thus exposing units to attack while slowly relocating.
[Image: Bakhmut is highlighted center. One can see its import as a transport hub. To the east (right) is the Lugansk oblast. Most of the map is Donetsk oblast. The capital Donetsk City is a few tens of kilometers out of map to the south.]
Recent reports suggest that Bakhmut is close to being surrounded. It is a critical transport hub in this area of the Donetsk oblast. Its capture would leave the last line of Ukrainian defence to that between Sloviansk and Kramatorsk to the west.
The ratio of "killed in combat" between Russia and her allies and Ukraine seem still to be in the 1 to 7 or 1 to 10 range. Thus, Ukraine is suffering far higher casualties. She is also woefully short of equipment and ammunition. To highlight the problem President Zelenskiy recently called for NATO to step up weapons production. Perhaps he is neither aware of just how short of excess stocks NATO is nor how long it takes to produce NATO standard weapons systems.
Many western publications spouted comments made by the British Ministry of Defence in which old cruise missiles had their warheads replaced with ballast. The MoD inference was that this implies that Russia is running out of missiles. We have all heard this impending "no more X" for Russia since February. It is a tired trope. What is actually happening is that Russia is firing some of its old missile stock as decoys to either divert or locate Ukrainian air defense systems. This is a standard tactic. The MoD either knows this or are idiots. They are not idiots, they are playing the information warfare game. The idiots are at the media outlets who published this rubbish. They are also playing the information warfare game.
Col. Douglas Macgregor recently stated, based upon intelligence data, that Russia has 540 000 troops near the borders of Ukraine including tanks, armored fighting vehicles, missiles and logistical equipment in the thousands. (See Video Sources for the full interview below). This implies that Russia is capable of launching a colossal offensive into Ukraine. The only people who know what the Russian and allied militaries will do are the Russian General Staff, specifically General Surovikin. He has already show his "the gloves are off" approach with the attacks on Ukraine's energy grid, and his understanding of timing and logistics by his withdrawal of civilians and Russian forces from right bank in Kherson City and surrounds. Macgregor remarks that there is a required pause before such a massive offensive can be launched. The ground must freeze. This will require temperatures to remain below zero for several weeks, placing the earliest time for such an offensive in the later half of December.
Another recent commentator observed that USA and NATO member states' experience of war is expeditionary. Russia's is dominantly fighting on her own soil. She understands the economic and manufacturing components of war. She has convened a "coordinating council", not seen since WWII, to streamline logistics from supply to where the materiel are needed. At the recent 15th anniversary of Rostec, a Russian military production conglomerate, President Putin congratulated the group for their efforts. Factories are working in multiple shifts to operate around the clock. Leave has been delayed. Some may view this as a measure of desperation. I suggest this is an error.
While there are voices in Russia to end this war, they are generally being suppressed. The vast majority of the population see this war for what it is, a battle between NATO and Russia. Their grandparents sacrificed much for Russia's survival in WWII. The challenge has passed to them. Just as the USA awoke its manufacturing might during WWII, so did Russia. She is very capable when awoken.
This time around she is not being assisted by the USA against the Wehrmacht. She is being assisted by her Asian allies in her latest conflict in Europe, provoked on this occasion by the USA.
Civilizational Battles or the "End of History"
A wonderful article by Professor Paul Robsinson was published in Canadian Dimension on the recent 200th anniversary of a Russian philosopher. Robinson places the person in a historical context, and their ideas in current times. I highly recommend reading it to gain an understanding of how Russia sees herself and how she thinks about this current conflict.
A review of three books on the origins of the current conflict and potential ways out of it is provided by James Carden of ACURA.
Conclusion
These threads of vindictiveness, profiteering and theft can also be seen in the USA’s oligarchy. It controls their political process, continues to oppress the USA’s coloured and poor populations and uses the taxes that they pay and the oligarchs do not to direct USA foreign and domestic policies to their advantage.
Sources
An open letter from editors and publishers: Publishing is not a Crime, Editorial, The Guardian, 2022-11-28
The Guardian Could Help Assange By Retracting All The Lies It Published About Him, Caitlin Johnstone, her newsletter, 2022-11-30
EU Fails to Reach Agreement on Russia Oil Price Cap, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2022-11-28
Furious With Biden, Europe Says US Is Profiting Off Ukraine War, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2022-11-27
US Grants Chevron License to Pump Oil Again in Venezuela, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2022-11-27
Failed Coup: Is the U.S. Ready to Abandon Guaidó and Reintegrate Venezuela into the Global Community?, Ted Snider, Antiwar, 2022-11-29
Russia discussing possible ‘gas union’ with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan: Deputy PM, Al Arabiya News, 2022-11-29
Report: US, Israel to Hold Drills Simulating Bombing Iran, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2022-11-29
US to Deploy Over 100 Unmanned Vessels to the Persian Gulf, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2022-11-20
Kamala Harris Warns an Attack on the Philippines in South China Sea Would Trigger US Response, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2022-11-22
Kamala Harris Hits Out at China in Speech on Philippine Coast Guard Ship, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2022-11-22
US Warship Sails Near Disputed Spratly Islands in South China Sea, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2022-11-29
Ukraine Says NATO Must Step Up Weapons Production or It Won’t Win War, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2022-11-29
What can Nikolai Danilevsky teach us about today’s struggle between East and West?, Paul Robinson, Canadian Dimension, 2022-11-28
Writing the Ukraine War history, as it happens, James Carden, Responsible Statecraft, 2022-11-30
12/1/22 Kyle Anzalone and Kevin Gosztola on the NDAA, Ukraine, North Korea and Julian Assange, Horton interviews Anzalone and Gosztola, Scott Horton Show, 2022-12-01
Topics include Ukraine and the Assange persecution
Direct MP3 download
Videos
For some obscure reason, Substack is refusing to embed video. I’ll fix this when I determine the cause of the problem. Sorry about this. Fixed.
Venezuela's government, opposition ask UN to manage billions of dollars held in foreign banks, Gilbert Doctorow on PressTV, VOV News Extra, 2022-11-27
Who Blew Up Nord Stream Pipelines? | A Mystery!, Matt Orfalea, his youtube channel, 2022-10-23
November 29th - This major offensive is obliterating Ukraine, Judge Napolitano interviews Douglas Macgregor, Macgregor's youtube channel, 2022-11-29
The Roundtable #36: About The Western Leadership Class, with Alexander Mercouris., Gonzalo Lira in discussion with Alexander Mercouris, Gonzalo's youtube channel, 2022-11-30
Ukraine. Military Summary And Analysis 29.11.2022, Dima, Military Summary channel, 2022-11-29
Russia, massive missile strike. Macron meets Biden. Putin scolds Scholz, The Duran, 2022-12-02
GU RETURNS: Alastair Crooke: Europe a VASSAL of the US, Destroying Itself Over Ukraine-Russia War!, Afshin Rattansi interviews Alastair Crooke, Going Underground, 2022-12-02
Bonus material
It only relates to the article obliquely. During the interview Ritter and Waters begin to tell stories of experiences in their very interesting lives. One my heroes, Smedley Butler, gets a mention which pleased me to no end.
Roger Waters & Scott Ritter, Cedico interviews Scott Ritter and Roger Waters, Live on the Fly with Randy Credico, 2022-11-11
Culture
Les Misérables - Do You Hear The People Sing (Extended Edit), Artemis Logic, a youtube channel, uploaded 2013-05-24
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