#Russia approach to energy security

[amereid1960]

الأمن الطاقوي الروسي بين الفرص والقيود

الأمن الطاقوي الروسي بين الفرص والقيود الأمن الطاقوي الروسي بين الفرص والقيود الكاتب : محفوظ رسول الملخص: يهدف هذا المقال إلى فهم وتحليل وا��ع الأمن الطاقوي الروسي على ضوء التحديات الطاقوية الراهنة التي تواجه روسيا؛ والتي تضم توليفة واسعة من التحديات الطاقوية ذات البعد الداخلي؛ المتمثلة في صعوبة الاستخراج الكافي لمصادر الطاقة، وكذا نقص التقنيات الروسية اللازمة لاستخراج تلك المصادر. فضلا عن تلك…

[alewaanewspaper1960]

الأمن الطاقوي الروسي بين الفرص والقيود

الأمن الطاقوي الروسي بين الفرص والقيود الأمن الطاقوي الروسي بين الفرص والقيود الكاتب : محفوظ رسول الملخص: يهدف هذا المقال إلى فهم وتحليل واقع الأمن الطاقوي الروسي على ضوء التحديات الطاقوية الراهنة التي تواجه روسيا؛ والتي تضم توليفة واسعة من التحديات الطاقوية ذات البعد الداخلي؛ المتمثلة في صعوبة الاستخراج الكافي لمصادر الطاقة، وكذا نقص التقنيات الروسية اللازمة لاستخراج تلك المصادر. فضلا عن تلك…

[attheexactlyrighttimeandplace]

It has been more than 24 hours since the last massacre of Palestinian civilians organized by the Americans and jewish zionists in Gaza, and Algeria has still not officially reacted to the crimes committed.

No declarations from the usual communication channels which are our Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and the Algerian Press Agency which exclusively represents the voice of our President since last April (he "appropriated" it by decree because the war approaches our borders).

I wonder if this silence is a turning point. The final nail in the coffin on what has been a very turbulent journey to try to change our relationship with the United States.

The journey began with the war in Ukraine in 2022: like all Arab countries, we really angered the United States by refusing to side with the EU against Russia. And we reached the point of open conflict with the United States (they sent their deputy secretary of state in March 2022) when we terminated our energy contract with Spain (we are their main supplier of gas) after the Spanish Prime Minister began supporting Morocco's claims on Western Sahara's land.

But Algeria surprisingly backed down on many points and began to rapidly improve its relations with the United States - Blinken, the US Secretary of State came to Algeria several times, our Foreign Ministry was invited to Washington - to the point that our country, which has been a faithful ally of Russia for 60 years seemed on the verge of joining NATO last April (I think Algeria might become a Major Non Nato Ally but is hidding its true intention for various reasons linked to the international context in North Africa, more precisely in the Sahel where 3 countries have expelled, under the influence of Russia, the American and French military bases from their lands and are openly eyeing the Algerian borders to destabilize us, in addition to the conflict with Morocco).

A few decades ago, the genocide of the Palestinians would have stopped these efforts very quickly, probably leading to a further breakdown in diplomatic relations with the United States.

Not this time: Algeria was still signing massive contracts in fossil fuels and unconventional energy (shale gas) with major American companies like Exxon Mobile and Chevron (although at a slower pace than expected) in May 2024, and our president was invited to the G7 summit which will take place next week in Italy, an invitation designed as a reward for Algeria's support for Europe's energy security and for its fight against illegal immigration which largely benefits Europeans.

This is why the decision of the Algerian mission to the UN to oppose the very important vote scheduled for Friday, June 7 to transform Biden's plan for Gaza into a resolution at the UN Security Council, was the most stupid move ever taken.

Blinken, the US Secretary of State, made a very special call to our Department of Foreign Affairs to obtain our consent to the plan proposed by Biden. This call was heavily promoted as a turning point by the entire US diplomatic network on all social media platforms, including on X: from the US Embassy in Algiers to the US State Department account, and their X account in Arabic for the MENA region.

Algeria obviously adhered to this plan, there is no other way to explain our pure and simple abandonment of the resolution we wrote to implement the latest decision of the ICJ which ordered the end of all operations in Rafah.

It is therefore easy to measure the extent to which Algeria has been incoherent, senseless and dangerous for itself and for Palestine in this context where the United States show no mercy, approve of genocide and have repeatedly rejected our demands during the previous negotiations in the UN Security Council to save more lives - when through the voice of our ambassador to the UN, Algeria gave the feeling of thinking that it could once again stop the vote, and try to negotiate new demands regarding Palestinian prisoners.

This is not surprising when you consider who our ambassador to the UN is: an overly old diplomat who has been unable to include the American point of view in his analysis. His conviction of being right against the rest of the world, his romantic views on resistance and his desire to play the savior of Palestine lead him to demonstrate a lack of humility and a lack of relevance in his analysis (like in his speech on terrorism at the UN where he asked for compassion for terrorists as if we hadn't lost 100,000 people in a civil war because of terrorism (!).

However, I do not believe that it was supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or by our President. We have experienced a lot of management problems in the last 15 days at the highest level of the state, due to keeping the wrong people in important positions for the wrong reasons, to the point that it has had disastrous consequences, with deadly human consequences. Last week, some civil servants were fired and others were forcibly transferred, but explaining that doesn't cover the extent of the problem.

But back to the UN, after a revised version of Biden's plan was presented, we were given a 48-hour period of silence to object. In the end, the vote was to take place on Friday June 7, 2024, but due to Algeria's intervention in the Security Council, it was postponed until next Monday. There is no doubt that Algeria is responsible for the breakdown of consensus on the plan, because China seems to have forgotten the issue and only reacted and opposed it after us, and Russia only followed China!

The next day, the massacre took place in the Nuseirat camp: the latest reports say that there were 274 deads, 814 injured.

I really wonder, given the timing, how it would be possible that Algeria's decision, which comes after a long period of tense disagreements with the United States in the UN Security Council, not only on Palestine but also Africa and the Arab world, might not have triggered the so-called rescue? The United States had known for weeks where the hostages were because English planes had been flying over the area to gather information for weeks as well, so the plan was set and ready to be executed in case it was needed.

Which to me is the decisive proof that this was an American operation from conception to execution, Netanyahu would not have waited a second to take the opportunity to increase his popularity, and could never have carried it out without American support (his genocidal zionist soldiers only know to drop bombs on civilians). On the same day of the Nuseirat massacre, Gantz, a member of Netanyahu's war cabinet and government, was expected to resign. A few weeks ago, at the request of the United States, he issued an ultimatum to Netanyahu to find a solution for Rafah, or to accept his (Gantz) resignation which would have led to new elections that Netanyahu was certain to lose. Yesterday, not knowing what to do after the rescue, Gantz asked the United States what they wanted and the United States' response was that they do not interfere with Israel's internal politics! Algeria probably also ruined this plan indirectly.

My impression is that the United States did not betray Algeria: it did not intend to carry out its rescue mission because it was more concerned about the potential support Algeria could provide in the war against Russia (the Algerian army has been training with live ammunition for weeks, and my theory is that a large Algerian contingent is going to be sent to Ukraine), than they cared about the zionist settlers and zionist soldiers being held hostage by Hamas.

But Algeria's inability to keep its word after Biden's plan was officially accepted by our officials made us truly unreliable, even to be sent to Russia, and even though Algeria is the best card the West has, given the Ukraine's lack of soldiers (Algeria has been Russia's main customer for all types of military contracts for decades and is very familiar with Russian aircraft and equipment, and has conducted joint military exercises with Russia even deep within Russian territory).

If our president decides to save Algeria's commitments to the West: he should really fire our ambassador to the UN, and completely review and change our internal process of opposition to resolutions at the UN (we have a status of non-permanent membership until the end of 2025, which the United States helped us gain).

If he doesn't save it, and doesn't go to the G7 summit, I don't know how we will survive future wars to come: Morocco has expansionist views, and its military capacity is currently being improved by the genocidal Israeli. who are building a drone factory on our borders and launching two satellites for Morocco; Russia, which threw us under the bus because we refused to help Putin in his plan to destroy the EU's energy security, entered Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Libya militarily, made them its vassals and now claims a percentage of our oil and gas resources!

I don't know what the future holds for us….

[vibratingskull]

"hi! if fic requests are still open, could i get a fic with thrawn and a gn reader who struggles with chronic illness? need me some fluff and comfort atm :'] no worries if not of course, have a great day/night!" - anon

ThrawnxGN!reader

You sigh, bored.

You look up to the white ceiling of the medbay, your datapad on your lap. You didn’t take any risk and got to the medbay at the first symptoms but this is so frustrating. This illness really angers you, not only it forces you to stay in bed for several days but it gave you the reputation of a wimp among your crewmates. A chance you can work from the medbay with your datapad or the Navy would have made you exit through the small door for a long time. 

You take back your datapad and look at the unending lists of numbers before you. Your brain is too fried to understand anything right now. All around you the meddroids check your vitals, monitor infinitely precise parameters of your health and more broadly bips all around. 

“A visitor.” Announce one of the droids.

You look up your eyes from the screen to see Thrawn appearing in his pristine white uniform, he raises one hand at the intention of the droids.

“Leave us.” He orders.

The droids obey and swiftly leave the room, leaving you two alone. He approaches with a grave face, grazing the edge of your body under the cover with the tip of his fingers.

“I was made aware your illness started to act up again.”

Of course he knows, he gots ears and eyes everywhere on the Chimaera. You who thought you could play him and be in and out of the infirmary in one or two days without him noticing… You haven't been here for two hours and he’s already at your bedside.

“Yes, I preferred to play it secured and come here as soon as I felt the first symptoms. I would rather not pass out in front of my colleagues…”

“It would indeed create a mess.” He takes your hand and sits beside you. “How are you feeling, ch’acah?”

“Good. I’m good.” You reassure him “I took my meds, I’m laying down, I conserve my energy. With some chance I could leave the medbay tomorrow.”

“Do not force too much.” He warns. “I would rather you stayed longer and be sure you're healthy.”

“And leave you unmonitored?’ You chuckle and it degrades into a cough.

He looks at you with sympathy in his eyes, he caresses your hand with his thumb.

“You will have to trust me while at the medbay, I am afraid.”

You nod and squeeze his hand.

“You only came here to see how I am? No orders? No instructions?” You ask after a moment of silence.

“Am I not allowed to worry?” He asks with a thin smile. “Or do you only see me through the lens of the hierarchy?” 

“When we are on the Chimaera? Yes, pretty much.” You admit.

He chuckles lowly, leans forward and kisses your forehead while delicately grazing your cheek.

“Then rest and sleep here for two days, that is an order from your Grand Admiral.” He decides.

“Yes, sir.” You pout. You’d rather leave tomorow. “But I’ll feel incredibly lonely during that time and it’s well known that loneliness is bad for health. What will you do about that?” You taunt.

He looks into your eyes, your faces centimeters away.

“I will come see you.” He says softly. And he kisses you tenderly on the lips. “Now rest ch’acah. For your health and to ease my worries remain in the infirmary for now.”

You bury yourself under the covers with a smile.

“Yes, love.”

@bluechiss @thrawnalani @justanothersadperson93 @al-astakbar@thrawnspetgoose @readinglistfics @elise2174 @debonaire-princess @twilekchiss @pencil-urchin @ineedazeezee @mssbridgerton @dance-like-russia-isnt-watching @Cortisolcosplay

[mariacallous]

With the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion approaching in February and the European continent in the grip of deep winter, the Kremlin is redoubling its attacks against Ukraine on land and from the skies. While Russia appears to have regained the initiative along the ground front, its recent territorial gains remain minimal and have come at a terrible price in troops and materiel. Russia’s air campaign, however, has ramped up across Ukraine at levels not seen since last spring’s bombing offensive. Moscow is deploying massive, serial waves of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles — an increasing number of which are supplied by Iran and North Korea.

However, unlike last year’s winter, when Russia was mostly assaulting Ukraine’s energy and heating infrastructure, it is now pursuing a double strategy of sowing terror by striking civilian housing and destroying high-value defense industrial targets. Ukraine’s air defenses used to reliably intercept most of Russia’s bombs, but they are now struggling in winter weather against much more sophisticated attacks designed to wear them out.

Having put the Russian economy on a war footing, increased its military budget and domestic weapons production, evaded sanctions, and cultivated talks with Pyongyang and Tehran to keep supplies of drones and missiles flowing, the Kremlin is clearly expecting to make its onslaught last past the U.S. elections in November. Hardly a day goes by without a senior Russian official or state media threatening the obliteration of Ukraine as a nation.

Meanwhile, Congress is holding up Biden’s $60 billion pledge of aid to Ukraine, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is blocking a €50 billion (approximately $55 billion) support package promised by the European Union. NATO partners have struggled to fulfill their commitments to increase the production of ammunition so desperately needed by Ukraine; the EU has failed since the summer to agree on stocking up the European Peace Facility, a fund created to facilitate joint weapons acquisitions. Ukraine’s Western supporters also continue to fight over the legality of using Russia’s frozen central bank reserves to help Kyiv finance a battle for survival, which according to Berkeley economist Yuriy Gorodnichenko is costing it an estimated $1 billion to 1.5 billion per day.

Yet the news is by no means all bad. In December, the EU’s heads of government decided to open membership accession discussions with Kyiv. Germany and the United Kingdom have announced they will increase their funding, respectively, to $8.5 billion (doubling current funding by more than $4 billion) and $3 billion (an increase of $216 million over last year). The European External Action Service (the EU’s foreign ministry) will audit weapons deliveries by the bloc’s member states. Ahead of the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion and a European Council meeting on February 1, European leaders are readying new sanctions against Russia; EU officials are also hopeful that, to get an additional €50 billion in aid to Kyiv, they can either strike a deal with Orbán or deploy an off-budget plan to bypass his opposition.

The national security advisors of 83 countries attended a recent meeting that was hosted by neutral Switzerland in cooperation with Kyiv on a Ukrainian peace plan — including a significant number from the Global South, where numerous countries have been inclined to sympathize with Russia At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy received a warm reception from world leaders. U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, promised that the United States and its partners would continue to stand by Zelenskyy.

[darkmaga-retard]

By Nabi Sonboli

The West, led by the US, has been the main global rule-maker for decades. However, the “Rest” have not been satisfied with the global rules made by the West. In order to address how we must develop an alternative world order, we need to understand the shortcomings of the one which currently exists. The main problems with the present international order are not with its values or institutions, but with how they are practiced and managed. What the US calls a rules-based international order, in practice, has mostly been an order based on US rules and interests, not based on the UN or global rules.

From a strategic point of view, the US+ (by plus I mean the West in general and G7 in particular) have divided Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. After the Cold War, the US and its partners tried to engage Russia economically and in the energy sector in order to stabilise global energy markets; however, they excluded Moscow from European security mechanisms. Russian exclusion and the undermining of its security led to the Ukraine conflict. In the Middle East, they excluded Iran for more than four decades from any mechanism and targeted Tehran using economic, political, and, indirectly, military means. US allies in the Middle East also tried to impose their security costs on the US by engaging Washington in regional and domestic conflicts; consequently, they destabilised the whole region.

In East Asia, they are doing the same with China. The US benefits from the Chinese market and engages with China economically; however, in order to benefit from China’s rising military power, they need to compete with Beijing. That’s why, when it comes to security, China is defined as a “threat”. Emphasising this Chinese threat helps the US limit Beijing’s economic power and influence. There are others who benefit from this approach, too.

[zvaigzdelasas]

The breakaway region of Somaliland has formally announced the discovery of oil deposits, the [most] ever in the history of the secessionist state, adding that exploration will be done soon by a United Kingdom-based firm which is critical in the latest development.[...] The discovery comes two weeks after the Somali federal government warned Genel Energy against oil exploration in Somaliland without authorization from Mogadishu, saying the firm was undermining its sovereignty. Somalia insisted that all mineral resources belong to the federal government. [...] The federal government of Somalia has been warning states against running affairs without following the laid down protocol. The sharing of resources has been a thorn in the flesh, with Puntland becoming the latest state to dissociate itself from the federal government until the new constitution is crafted and passed through a plebiscite.

10 Jan 23

The US Africa Command is set to rigorous training in Somalia's breakaway region of Somaliland, which will also incorporate various military teams from across Africa as part of security preparedness on matters of counter-terrorism in the continent. [...] The US has been spirited in maintaining close security and development cooperation with African states amid pressure from China and Russia whose military presence in Africa is increasing. Previously, the US has expressed concerns over the new approach by Beijing and Moscow in Africa. [...] Somaliland, which claimed its own independence from Somalia in 1991 and has since been fighting for international recognition, is also facing local political unrest with the opposition accusing outgoing President Muse Bihi Abdi of failing to organize presidential polls which were scheduled for in November 2022. [Somaliland is not officially recognized as an independent state by the US.] The US military has been active in Somalia for the last six months after their reinstatement moments following their unprecedented withdrawal in 2021. The soldiers have been helping the Somali National Army and the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia [ATMIS] with aerial surveillance in the Al-Shabaab war.

14 Jan 23

[ukrainenews]

Daily Wrap Up May 4, 2023

Under the cut:

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) concluded that “a large number” of Ukrainian minors have been “displaced” to Russia and Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine, and Moscow "manifestly violated" the interests of these children, according to its report released Thursday. The report looked into the alleged Russian deportation of Ukrainian children since the start of the war in February 2022.

Ukrainian air defense forces shot down a drone over Kyiv late on May 4, Kyiv City Military Administration reported. According to the administration, the drone remains fell in the Solomianskyi district on Kyiv’s right bank, causing a fire in a non-residential building.

Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces have launched up to 24 Shahed-136/131 attack drones from Bryansk region and the eastern coast of the Azov Sea in the early hours of May 4. Eighteen drones were downed by Ukraine's air defense in the northern, central, and southern parts of Ukraine. Anti-aircraft weapons, aircraft, and mobile fire groups were involved, according to the Air Force.

The casualty numbers in the May 3 Russian attack on Kherson Oblast have risen to 23 people killed and 46 injured, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin reported on May 4.

Russian troops have placed military equipment, weapons, and explosives in the turbine department of the unit four of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, according to the information from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Russia accused the United States on Thursday of being behind what it says was a drone attack on Moscow's Kremlin citadel intended to kill President Vladimir Putin. A day after blaming Ukraine for what it called a terrorist attack, the Kremlin administration shifted the focus onto the United States, but without providing evidence. The White House was quick to reject the charge. Ukraine has also denied involvement in the incident in the early hours of Wednesday, when video footage showed two flying objects approaching the Senate Palace inside the Kremlin walls and one exploding with a bright flash.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) concluded that “a large number” of Ukrainian minors have been “displaced” to Russia and Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine, and Moscow "manifestly violated" the interests of these children, according to its report released Thursday.

The report looked into the alleged Russian deportation of Ukrainian children since the start of the war in February 2022.

Though the team of experts were not able to determine the exact number of children Russian forces deported, “the fact of a large-scale displacement of Ukrainian children does not seem disputed by either Ukraine or Russia,” the report said.

Ukrainian officials told OSCE experts they estimated the number of “kidnapped” children to be between 200,000 and 300,000.

“Numerous and overlapping violations of the rights of the children deported to the Russian Federation have taken place. Not only has the Russian Federation manifestly violated the best interests of these children repeatedly, it has also denied their right to identity, their right to family, their right to unite with their family as well as violated their rights to education, access to information, right to rest, leisure, play, recreation and participation in cultural life and arts as well as right to thought, conscience and religion, right to health, and the right to liberty and security,” the OSCE Moscow Mechanism mission of experts wrote to the OSCE Permanent Council in their report. The report also found that the three most common reasons for the organized displacement of children are, "the evacuation for security reasons, the transfer for the purpose of adoption or foster care, and temporary stays in the so-called recreation camps,”

The team of experts led by Professor Veronika Bílková, Dr. Cecilie Hellestveit and Dr. Elīna Šteinerte found that Ukrainian children taken by Russian forces “are exposed to pro-Russian information campaigns often amounting to targeted re-education.”

“The Russian Federation does not take any steps to actively promote the return of Ukrainian children. Rather, it creates various obstacles for families seeking to get their children back,” the experts added.

The report “further exposed the abhorrent actions carried out at the behest of the Russian leadership, said Deirdre Brown, UK Acting Ambassador to the OSCE. “The report indicates figures in the several thousands, with the true figure likely to be far higher."

“Russia’s intention is clear. It is attempting to forcibly and permanently alter the demographic makeup of Ukraine,” Brown added. In late March 2023, the United States and 44 other countries in the OSCE invoked a special mechanism to investigate alleged human rights violations by Russia during its war in Ukraine, “particularly with regard to the forced transfer and deportation of children by the Russian Federation.”

According to the US and several European governments, Russian President Vladimir Putin's administration has carried out a scheme to forcibly deport thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, often to a network of dozens of camps, where the minors undergo political reeducation.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) earlier in March issued arrest warrants for Putin and another Russian officials related to this reported forced deportation.

The OSCE does not have the authority to legally punish Russia if it finds evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but their facts can be given to other bodies that do have that authority. Both Russia and Ukraine are members of the 57 nation OSCE.

Russia has previously denied it is doing anything illegal, claiming it is bringing Ukrainian children to safety.

-via CNN

~

Ukrainian air defense forces shot down a drone over Kyiv late on May 4, Kyiv City Military Administration reported.

According to the administration, the drone remains fell in the Solomianskyi district on Kyiv’s right bank, causing a fire in a non-residential building.

Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko later said that the first responders had extinguished the fire on the first floor of a four-story shopping center that covered an area of 50 square meters. There were no casualties, he added.

Earlier, during an air raid alert, explosions were reported in the Ukrainian capital.

-via Kyiv Independent

Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces have launched up to 24 Shahed-136/131 attack drones from Bryansk region and the eastern coast of the Azov Sea in the early hours of May 4.

Eighteen drones were downed by Ukraine's air defense in the northern, central, and southern parts of Ukraine. Anti-aircraft weapons, aircraft, and mobile fire groups were involved, according to the Air Force.

The air raid alert had been on in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava, Kirovohrad, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia regions, and the city of Kyiv for a few hours.

Kyiv was under attack for the third time in the last four days, Kyiv City Military Administarion reported.

The Russian forces attacked Kyiv using Shahed drones and missiles, probably of the ballistic type. According to preliminary information, all aerial targets were destroyed in Kyiv airspace, according to the city administation.

Some drone debris was found in the streets and also in a residential building in Kyiv's Shevchenkivskyi district. No casualties and no significant damage were reported.

-via Kyiv Independent

~

The casualty numbers in the May 3 Russian attack on Kherson Oblast have risen to 23 people killed and 46 injured, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin reported on May 4.

According to Prokudin, Russian forces shelled Kherson Oblast 98 times over the past 24 hours, firing off 539 shells from heavy artillery, Grads, tanks, drones, and aviation.

The city of Kherson was shelled 16 times over the past 24 hours.

It was reported on May 3 that 21 people had been killed and 48 injured, indicating that the latest casualty numbers include two people who succumbed to their injuries.

The city of Kherson and surrounding settlements have been under consistent Russian artillery fire since they were liberated in November, with Russian forces retreating to the east bank of the Dnipro River.

Kherson authorities are preparing to evacuate residents if the region comes under even more intense shelling.

-via Kyiv Independent

~

Russian troops have placed military equipment, weapons, and explosives in the turbine department of the unit four of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, according to the information from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Ukraine's State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate reported that IAEA has also received unofficial reports that Russian forces are storing similar materials in other areas of the plant. These actions pose a serious threat to the safety of both plant personnel and nearby residents.

The Inspectorate emphasizes that any potential release of radioactive substances could have cross-border consequences.

Zaporizhzhia is located in southern Ukraine and serves as Europe's largest nuclear power plant. The plant has a gross power production capacity of 6,000 megawatts.

Since it was seized by Russian military forces a year ago, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has lost external power six times. Following the latest outage, the director general of the IAEA Rafael Mariano Grossi, issued an emotional statement calling for a protection zone around the plant and saying he was "astonished by the complacency" around the issue.

-via Kyiv Independent

~

Russia accused the United States on Thursday of being behind what it says was a drone attack on Moscow's Kremlin citadel intended to kill President Vladimir Putin.

A day after blaming Ukraine for what it called a terrorist attack, the Kremlin administration shifted the focus onto the United States, but without providing evidence. The White House was quick to reject the charge.

Ukraine has also denied involvement in the incident in the early hours of Wednesday, when video footage showed two flying objects approaching the Senate Palace inside the Kremlin walls and one exploding with a bright flash.

"Attempts to disown this, both in Kyiv and in Washington, are, of course, absolutely ridiculous. We know very well that decisions about such actions, about such terrorist attacks, are made not in Kyiv but in Washington," said Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

He said the United States was "undoubtedly" behind the incident and added - again without stating evidence - that Washington often selected both the targets for Ukraine to attack, and the means to attack them.

"This is also often dictated from across the ocean … In Washington they must clearly understand that we know this," Peskov said.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby told MSNBC television the Russian claims were false, and that Washington does not encourage or enable Ukraine to strike outside its borders.

Russia has said with increasing frequency that it sees the United States as a direct participant in the war, intent on inflicting a "strategic defeat" on Moscow. The United States denies that, saying it is arming Ukraine to defend itself and retake territory that Moscow has seized illegally in more than 14 months of war.

However, Peskov's allegation went further than previous Kremlin accusations against Washington.

Putin was not in the Kremlin at the time, and security analysts have poured scorn on the idea that the incident was a serious assassination attempt.

But Russia has said it reserves the right to retaliate, and hardliners including former president Dmitry Medvedev have said it should now "physically eliminate" Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Peskov declined to say whether Moscow saw Zelenskiy as a legitimate target.

He said Russia had an array of options and the response would be carefully considered and balanced. He said an urgent investigation was under way.

Putin was in the Kremlin on Thursday and staff were working normally, he said.

The incident took place less than a week before Russia's May 9 Victory Day celebrations marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War Two - an important public holiday and an opportunity for Putin to rally Russians behind what he calls Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine.

Peskov said air defences would be tightened, and this was happening anyway for the military parade on Red Square, the centrepiece of the holiday, just over the Kremlin wall from the site of the alleged attack.

He said the parade would go ahead as normal, and include a speech from Putin.

-via Reuters

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[The Daily Don]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 27, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 28, 2023

Catie Edmondson and Carl Hulse in the New York Times yesterday noted that House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) cannot bring his conference together behind a budget plan. He wanted to pass a bill demanding major concessions from President Biden before the Republicans would agree to raise the debt ceiling, both to prove that he could get his colleagues behind a bill and to put pressure on the Biden administration to restore the old Republican idea that the only way to make the economy work is to slash taxes, business regulation, and government spending.

McCarthy was pleased to have passed his measure with not a single vote to spare, but it appears he got the vote because everyone knew it was dead on arrival at the Senate. According to Edmonson and Hulse, McCarthy got the bill through only by begging his colleagues to ignore the provisions of the measure because it would never become law. He urged them to focus on the symbolic victory of showing Biden they could unite behind cuts.

But today at the Brookings Institution, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan outlined a very different vision of the global economy and American economic leadership. First of all, just the fact this happened is significant: Sullivan is a national security advisor, and he was talking about economics. He outlined how Biden’s “core commitment,” “his daily direction” is “to integrate domestic policy and foreign policy.”

Sullivan argued for a new economic approach to the challenges of the twenty-first century. The Biden administration is trying to establish “a fairer, more durable global economic order, for the benefit of ourselves and for people everywhere.”

The U.S. faces economic challenges, he noted, many of which have been created by the economic ideology that has shaped U.S. policy for the past 40 years. The idea that markets would spread capital to where it was most needed to create an efficient and effective economy has been proven wrong, Sullivan said. The U.S. cut taxes and slashed business regulations, privatized public projects, and pushed free trade on principle with the understanding that all growth was good growth and that if we lost infrastructure and manufacturing, we could make up those losses in finance, for example.

As countries lowered their economic barriers and became more closely integrated with each other, they would also become more open and peaceful.

But that’s not how it played out. Privileging finance over fundamental economic growth was a mistake. The U.S. lost supply chains and entire industries as jobs moved overseas, while countries like China discarded markets in favor of artificially subsidizing their economies. Rather than ushering in world peace, the market-based system saw an aggressive China and Russia both expanding their international power. At the same time, climate change accelerated without countries making much effort to address it. And, most of all, the unequal growth of the older system has undermined democracy.

Biden has attempted to counter the weaknesses of the previous economic system by focusing on building capacity to produce and innovate, resilience to withstand natural disasters and geopolitical shocks, and inclusiveness to rebuild the American middle class and greater opportunity for working people around the world.

After two years, the results have been “remarkable.”

Large-scale investment in semiconductor and clean energy production has jumped 20-fold since 2019, with private money following government seed money to mean about $3.5 trillion in public and private investment will flow into the economy in the next decade. Building domestic capacity will bring supply chains home and create jobs.

But this vision is not about isolating the United States from other countries. Indeed, much of the speech reinforced U.S. support for the positions of the European Union.

Instead, the U.S. is encouraging our allies—including developing nations—to build similarly to increase our united economic strengths and to enable the world to address climate change together, a field that offers huge potential for economic growth. The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework with 13 Indo-Pacific nations is designed to create international economic cooperation in that region, and the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, which includes Barbados, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay, is designed to do the same here in the Americas. The U.S.-E.U. Trade and Technology Council and our trilateral coordination with Japan and Korea are part of the same economic program.

With this economic approach, the U.S. does not seek to cut ties to China, but rather aims to cut the risks associated with supply chains based in China by investing in our own capacities, and to push for a level playing field for our workers and companies. The U.S. has “a very substantial trade and investment relationship” with China that set a new record last year, and the U.S. is looking not to create conflict but to “manage competition responsibly” and “work together on global challenges like climate, like macroeconomic stability, health security, and food security.” “But,” he said, “China has to be willing to play its part.”

In today’s world, Sullivan said, trade policy is not just about the tariff deals that business leaders have criticized the administration for neglecting. It is about a larger economic strategy both at home and abroad to build economies that offer rising standards of living for working people.

The administration is now focusing on labor rights, climate change, and banking security in this larger picture. Through organizations like the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment the administration hopes to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars in financing in the next seven years to build infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries and to relieve debt there.

“The world needs an international economic system that works for our wage-earners, works for our industries, works for our climate, works for our national security, and works for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries,” Sullivan said. That means replacing the idea of free markets alone with “targeted and necessary investments in places that private markets are ill-suited to address on their own.” Rather than simply adjusting tariff rates, it means international cooperation.

And, Sullivan said, “it means returning to the core belief we first championed 80 years ago: that America should be at the heart of a vibrant, international financial system that enables partners around the world to reduce poverty and enhance shared prosperity. And that a functioning social safety net for the world’s most vulnerable countries is essential to our own core interests.”

This strategy, he said, “is the surest path to restoring the middle class, to producing a just and effective clean-energy transition, to securing critical supply chains, and, through all of this, to repairing faith in democracy itself.” He called for bipartisan support for this approach to the global economy.

Sullivan noted that the phrase “a rising tide lifts all boats” came from President John F. Kennedy, not from later supply-side ideologues who used it to defend their tax cuts and business deregulation. “President Kennedy wasn’t saying what’s good for the wealthy is good for the working class,” Sullivan said, “He was saying we’re all in this together.”

Sullivan quoted Kennedy further: “If one section of the country is standing still, then sooner or later a dropping tide drops all the boats. That’s true for our country. That’s true for our world. [And] economically, over time, we’re going to rise—or fall—together.”

“And that goes for the strength of our democracies as well as for the strength of our economies.”

Foreign policy journalist Laura Rozen noted that David Wessel of Brookings asked Sullivan for a quick summary of this new economic vision. Sullivan answered: “We’re at a moment now where we need to build capacity to build the goods & invent the technologies of [the] future & we’re going to make the investments to do that—us, +everyone who wants to be in on [the] deal. & then we’re going to build the resilience we need…so that no natural disaster or geopolitical shock can stop us from getting things we need when we need them….”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[usafphantom2]

Russia is trying to protect its bombers with car tires

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 03/09/2023 - 17:22 in Military, War Zones

New satellite images suggest that Russia is trying to protect its Tu-95 bombers from Engels Air Base in Saratov Oblast with car tires.

The images, taken on the first day of September, show that Russian forces covered the wing and the central part of the aircraft with tires, according to military blogger Tatarigami_UA.

These tires are strategically positioned along the entire length of both wings and a small segment of the upper part of the fuselage, providing a supposed defense mechanism against potential drone attacks.

"Get ready, because the Russians have once again demonstrated an incomparable innovation. What you are seeing is a satellite image of a TU-95 strategic bomber covered with car tires. According to them, this should protect strategic bombers from drones."

"This doesn't seem to be just a single occurrence. In the satellite images, it seems that the Russians are still in the process of installing tires in the bomber - a new and economical version of the ERA replacement for the Russian air force?" said the blogger.

The idea is that the tires absorb the impact of a drone, preventing it from causing significant damage to the aircraft. The tires are made of rubber, a highly elastic material. When a drone collides with the tires, the rubber will absorb the energy of the impact and deform, reducing the force that is transferred to the aircraft. This can help prevent damage to the wings and other critical components of the plane.

However, it is important to note that this is not an infallible defense against drone attacks. The effectiveness of the tires will depend on several factors, including the size and speed of the drone, as well as the angle and location of the impact. In addition, there is a risk of the tires catching fire or exploding with the impact, which may pose a danger to the aircraft and the crew.

Satellite image of Engels Air Base, with Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers. (Photo: Maxar Technologies)

Engels Air Base, located about 400 km southeast of Moscow and about 700 km from the border with Ukraine, operates the strategic bombers Tu-160M Blackjack and Tu-95M Bear of the Russian Aerospace Forces. The airfield was used to launch many of the Moscow air strikes with Kh-101 cruise missiles in the past: at certain times, up to 8 Tu-95 and 4 Tu-160M were stationed side by side on Engel-2.

Previously, a Ukrainian attack on a Russian airfield in the Pskov region destroyed two and damaged up to seven IL-76 planes. The attack was probably conducted on Russian territory with drones made of cardboard, hardly visible to radar.

Overall, although the use of car tires in a bomber may seem like an unconventional approach to defense, it is proof of the ongoing efforts to find new and innovative ways of protection against emerging threats. It remains to be seen to what extent this strategy will be effective in practice, but it is an interesting development in the field of aviation security.

Tags: Military AviationDronesRFSAF - Russian Federation Aerospace Force/Russian Aerospace ForceTu-95 BearWar Zones - Russia/Ukraine

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Daytona Airshow and FIDAE. He has work published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. Uses Canon equipment during his photographic work throughout the world of aviation.

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[spacefinch]

Octonauts Star Trek AU (part 2)

(Author’s note: this takes place some time after part one)

“Kwazii, Peso, and I are going on an expedition,” Captain Barnacles announced. “We’ll be back in time for dinner. Shellington, you’re in charge until I return.”

“Me? In charge?” the otter asked. “I’m not exactly the right person to be acting captain!”

“You’re the second officer of the Octonauts. You’re more than suited to take my place for a few hours,” Barnacles assured him.

“Aye, but I’ve never had to do that before!”

“Don’t ye worry, lad.” Scotty put a paw on Shellington’s shoulder. “I’ll help you out. I know a thing or two about bein’ actin’ captain.”

“Well, I’ll be on my way then.” And with that, Barnacles headed down to the launch bay to meet Kwazii (first officer) and Peso (chief medical officer).

…

Being acting captain wasn’t very exciting. It mostly just consisted of standing in HQ, scanning the surrounding area, and asking the other crew members to check in every few minutes.

Still, it had its perks. As soon as the actual captain had left, Shellington had assigned Dashi to be his first officer and Tweak to be second officer. Tunip would be assistant medical officer. (Shellington trusted the Vegimal, but Tunip was too young to be chief medical officer— or CMO—in Peso’s stead.)

“Let me get this straight,” said Dashi. “You’re acting captain, acting CMO, and chief scientist? All at once?”

“Yes.” Shellington answered. “It shouldn’t be too hard.”

Scotty seemed to disagree. “Well, what if you get hurt? Or if there’s some emergency your basic first aid skills can’t take care of?” He asked.

“Not to worry, I’ll be fine!”

The gray-and-brown tomcat still wasn’t convinced. As far as he was concerned, the Octopod needed a proper physician.

A few minutes later, a third visitor beamed aboard the ship.

“Name’s Dr. Leonard McCoy,” the river otter said. “But call me Bones.”

“My name’s Shellington. I’m acting captain of this vessel.”

“Something happen to Barnacles?”

“No, he’s just on an away mission— wait, how do you know the captain’s name?”

“Well, we have a mutual friend.” Bones gestures toward Tweak.

“Yep!” the green bunny said, as she bit into a carrot. “Dr. McCoy’s an old family friend. My pa used to take me to visit him in Georgia when I was a kit.”

“Anyway— sorry for calling you here,” Shellington said. “Our medic is also on an away mission, and Scotty insisted on having another one aboard the ship.”

“And a good thing, too,” said Bones. “You’re a biologist, not a doctor.”

…

Three crewmen of the Enterprise aboard the Octopod! Three!

First there was Scotty, a gray-striped Scottish wildcat with a knack for engineering. Right now, he was having a drink with Shellington and Professor Inkling. He’d given them an old recipe for a drink he’d found on a faraway moon. Nobody knew what the drink was called, or whether it was meant to be served warm or cold. The only thing Scotty knew for sure was that it was green.

Then there was Chekov, the young navigator of the Enterprise. He was a pine marten— long, lanky body like an otter, but with pointed, catlike ears that were always pricked up. And boy, did he have a lot of energy. Most of it was spent talking about Russia’s greatest inventions or about the many adventures he had aboard the Enterprise. Once you got him talking, you had better be prepared to listen for a while.

And lastly, there was Bones. He was rather snarky for an otter, but he meant well. At this moment, he was in sick bay. There weren’t any medical emergencies— thank the sea gods— but he figured he might as well get used to this place.

…

“Attention, everyone,” Dashi said over the intercom. “This is your first officer speaking. There is a giant storm rapidly approaching. Please secure all loose items and find a sheltered place.”

Well, so much for a quiet afternoon, Scotty thought as he downed the last of the green stuff.

“I’ll head up to HQ,” said Shellington. “Want to come?”

Scotty nodded, and followed the sea otter through the hallway and up to HQ.

Outside the dome, it was very stormy outside. Pieces of seaweed and underwater debris pelted the glass. All of the creatures outside had taken shelter in their burrows or other hidey-holes.

Suddenly, there was a lot of shaking. Dashi, Shellington, Scotty, and Chekov were thrown from one end of the bridge to the other. They landed in a heap next to the hot cocoa machine.

“You okay?” Shellington asked the other two.

“I’m good,” said Dashi.

“Never better!” said Scotty.

“Same,” said Chekov. “Reminds me of—“

Please for the love of the sea gods do not say “Russia.” Shellington thought.

“— being on the Enterprise,” the pine marten finished.

“McCoy to bridge, come in,” the doctor’s voice spoke over the intercom. “What in tarnation is going on up there?”

“Bridge here, Doctor,” Shellington answered. “We are trying to figure that out right now.”

“Well, please figure it out quickly. There is entirely too much shaking and jostling about for my liking!”

A few minutes later, they figured it out.

“Keptin, look at this!” Chekov said.

“What is it?” Shellington got up and headed over to the navigation console. Then he saw.

The Octopod should have been securely parked on the seabed next to a kelp forest. Instead, it was drifting out to sea.

“Oh no. The storm must have knocked it loose! Dashi, set a course for the kelp forest!” Shellington said in his best “giving an official order” voice.

“The currents are too strong there. I recommend we move the Octopod to calmer waters,” said Dashi.

“Very well. Set course for calmer waters.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that either.”

“Why not?”

Dashi pointed at the storm tracker. “We are caught in one of the currents.”

Hmmmm… what would Captain Barnacles do? Shellington thought.

He knew the answer, of course. But he didn’t know if he could pilot the Octopod half as well as the captain.

Fortunately, he did know someone who could pilot the Octopod.

“Dashi, do you think you can pilot the ship yourself?” he asked.

“Already on it!” said the dachshund. “Mr. Chekov, activate manual steering!”

“Aye-aye. Activating manual…” Chekov looked at all the flashing buttons. “What do I press?”

Shellington showed him the correct buttons.

With that, the ship’s steering wheel was activated.

[female-malice]

Manifesto for an Ecosocial Energy Transition from the Peoples of the South

An appeal to leaders, institutions, and our brothers and sisters

More than two years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic—and now alongside the catastrophic consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a “new normal” has emerged. This new global status quo reflects a worsening of various crises: social, economic, political, ecological, bio-medical, and geopolitical.

Environmental collapse approaches. Everyday life has become ever more militarized. Access to good food, clean water, and affordable health care has become even more restricted. More governments have turned autocratic. The wealthy have become wealthier, the powerful more powerful, and unregulated technology has only accelerated these trends.

The engines of this unjust status quo—capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, and various fundamentalisms—are making a bad situation worse. Therefore, we must urgently debate and implement new visions of ecosocial transition and transformation that are gender-just, regenerative, and popular, that are at once local and international.

In this Manifesto for an Ecosocial Energy Transition from the Peoples of the South, we hold that the problems of the Global – geopolitical – South are different from those of the Global North and rising powers such as China. An imbalance of power between these two realms not only persists because of a colonial legacy but has deepened because of a neocolonial energy model. In the context of climate change, ever rising energy needs, and biodiversity loss, the capitalist centers have stepped up the pressure to extract natural wealth and rely on cheap labor from the countries on the periphery. Not only is the well-known extractive paradigm still in place but the North’s ecological debt to the South is rising.

What’s new about this current moment are the “clean energy transitions” of the North that have put even more pressure on the Global South to yield up cobalt and lithium for the production of high-tech batteries, balsa wood for wind turbines, land for large solar arrays, and new infrastructure for hydrogen megaprojects. This decarbonization of the rich, which is market-based and export-oriented, depends on a new phase of environmental despoliation of the Global South, which affects the lives of millions of women, men, and children, not to mention non-human life. Women, especially from agrarian societies, are amongst the most impacted. In this way, the Global South has once again become a zone of sacrifice, a basket of purportedly inexhaustible resources for the countries of the North.

A priority for the Global North has been to secure global supply chains, especially of critical raw materials, and prevent certain countries, like China, from monopolizing access. The G7 trade ministers, for instance, recently championed a responsible, sustainable, and transparent supply chain for critical minerals via international cooperation‚ policy, and finance, including the facilitation of trade in environmental goods and services through the WTO. The Global North has pushed for more trade and investment agreements with the Global South to satisfy its need for resources, particularly those integral to “clean energy transitions.” These agreements, designed to reduce barriers to trade and investment, protect and enhance corporate power and rights by subjecting states to potential legal suits according to investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms. The Global North is using these agreements to control the “clean energy transition” and create a new colonialism.

Governments of the South, meanwhile, have fallen into a debt trap, borrowing money to build up industries and large-scale agriculture to supply the North. To repay these debts, governments have felt compelled to extract more resources from the ground, creating a vicious circle of inequality. Today, the imperative to move beyond fossil fuels without any significant reduction in consumption in the North has only increased the pressure to exploit these natural resources. Moreover, as it moves ahead with its own energy transitions, the North has paid only lip service to its responsibility to address its historical and rising ecological debt to the South.

Minor changes in the energy matrix are not enough. The entire energy system must be transformed, from production and distribution to consumption and waste. Substituting electric vehicles for internal-combustion cars is insufficient, for the entire transportation model needs changing, with a reduction of energy consumption and the promotion of sustainable options.

In this way, relations must become more equitable not only between the center and periphery countries but also within countries between the elite and the public. Corrupt elites in the Global South have also collaborated in this unjust system by profiting from extraction, repressing human rights and environmental defenders, and perpetuating economic inequality.

Rather than solely technological, the solutions to these interlocked crises are above all political.

As activists, intellectuals, and organizations from different countries of the South, we call on change agents from different parts of the world to commit to a radical, democratic, gender-just, regenerative, and popular ecosocial transition that transforms both the energy sector and the industrial and agricultural spheres that depend on large-scale energy inputs. According to the different movements for climate justice, “transition is inevitable, but justice is not.”

We still have time to start a just and democratic transition. We can transition away from the neoliberal economic system in a direction that sustains life, combines social justice with environmental justice, brings together egalitarian and democratic values with a resilient, holistic social policy, and restores an ecological balance necessary for a healthy planet. But for that we need more political imagination and more utopian visions of another society that is socially just and respects our planetary common house.

The energy transition should be part of a comprehensive vision that addresses radical inequality in the distribution of energy resources and advances energy democracy. It should de-emphasize large-scale institutions—corporate agriculture, huge energy companies—as well as market-based solutions. Instead, it must strengthen the resilience of civil society and social organizations. Therefore, we make the following 8 demands:

We warn that an energy transition led by corporate megaprojects, coming from the Global North and accepted by numerous governments in the South, entails the enlargement of the zones of sacrifice throughout the Global South, the persistence of the colonial legacy, patriarchy, and the debt trap. Energy is an elemental and inalienable human right, and energy democracy should be our goal.

We call on the peoples of the South to reject false solutions that come with new forms of energy colonialism, now in the name of a Green transition. We make an explicit call to continue political coordination among the peoples of the south while also pursuing strategic alliances with critical sectors in the North.

To mitigate the havoc of the climate crisis and advance a just and popular ecosocial transition, we demand the payment of the ecological debt. This means, in the face of the disproportionate Global North responsibility for the climate crisis and ecological collapse, the real implementation of a system of compensation to the global South. This system should include a considerable transfer of funds and appropriate technology, and should consider sovereign debt cancellation for the countries of the South. We support reparations for loss and damage experienced by Indigenous peoples, vulnerable groups and local communities due to mining, big dams, and dirty energy projects.

We reject the expansion of the hydrocarbon border in our countries—through fracking and offshore projects—and repudiate the hypocritical discourse of the European Union, which recently declared natural gas and nuclear energy to be “clean energies.” As already proposed in the Yasuni Initiative in Ecuador in 2007 and today supported by many social sectors and organizations, we endorse leaving fossil fuels underground and generating the social and labor conditions necessary to abandon extractivism and move toward a post-fossil-fuel future.

We similarly reject “green colonialism” in the form of land grabs for solar and wind farms, the indiscriminate mining of critical minerals, and the promotion of technological “fixes” such as blue or grey hydrogen. Enclosure, exclusion, violence, encroachment, and entrenchment have characterized past and current North-South energy relations and are not acceptable in an era of ecosocial transitions.

We demand the genuine protection of environment and human rights defenders, particularly indigenous peoples and women at the forefront of resisting extractivism.

The elimination of energy poverty in the countries of the South should be among our fundamental objectives—as well as the energy poverty of parts of the Global North—through alternative, decentralized, equitably distributed projects of renewable energy that are owned and operated by communities themselves.

We denounce international trade agreements that penalize countries that want to curb fossil fuel extraction. We must stop the use of trade and investment agreements controlled by multinational corporations that ultimately promote more extraction and reinforce a new colonialism.

Our ecosocial alternative is based on countless struggles, strategies, proposals, and community-based initiatives. Our Manifesto connects with the lived experience and critical perspectives of Indigenous peoples and other local communities, women, and youth throughout the Global South. It is inspired by the work done on the rights of nature, buen vivir, vivir sabroso, sumac kawsay, ubuntu, swaraj, the commons, the care economy, agroecology, food sovereignty, post-extractivism, the pluriverse, autonomy, and energy sovereignty. Above all, we call for a radical, democratic, popular, gender-just, regenerative, and comprehensive ecosocial transition.

Following the steps of the Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South, this Manifesto proposes a dynamic platform that invites you to join our shared struggle for transformation by helping to create collective visions and collective solutions.

We invite you to endorse this manifesto with your signature.

[xtruss]

Global Times Editorial: North Atlantic Terrorist Organization’s (NATO’s) Hidden Agenda Against China Exposed In Advance By “Braindead Puppet Lithuania 🇱🇹!”

— Global Times | July 07, 2023

Illustration: Liu Rui/Global Times

North Atlantic Terrorist Organization (NATO) is set to hold a summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, next week. As the host country, Lithuania appears both excited and impatient. A significant part of this sentiment is reflected in its provocation of China. At the same time, several other NATO members also appear to have coordinated in their approach to Taiwan Island. These have all exposed the coming NATO Summit's Malicious Intentions Toward China. This cannot be ignored by the Chinese people, who must remain vigilant.

About a week before the summit, Lithuania, mimicking the US, announced its so-called Indo-Pacific Strategy. The most eye-catching part of this 16-page "strategy" is its statement on the Taiwan question, emphasizing "the development of economic relations with Taiwan is one of Lithuania's strategic priorities." It even shamelessly drew a "red line," claiming that the status quo in the Taiwan Straits "cannot be changed via the use of force or coercion."

This is another display of Lithuania's "tough talk" and arrogance, after the country and Taiwan island mutually established representative offices, which led to a sharp deterioration in Lithuania's relations with China. If there had been no one to back it up, Lithuania would not have been able to provoke China for this long, nor would it have been so brazen in doing so.

It is bizarre that a Baltic country with a population of less than 3 million, located in the direct radiation zone of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, has come up with an Indo-Pacific Strategy. Many of its wordings for the strategy are familiar, as if they have been directly taken from the US rhetoric toward China, only this time they are being voiced from Lithuania. What is even more jaw-dropping is that Lithuanian foreign minister claimed that "with the Strategy having been approved, Lithuania now finds itself among global leaders 😂😂😂." Only someone completely lacking self-awareness could make such a statement. Lithuania is by no means a "global leader," but the incident has become one of the biggest international laughing stocks of the year.

Amid the era of great changes, Lithuania's radical foreign policy is somewhat representative. This Lithuanian government seems to have been gripped by an excessive fear toward Russia, lacking a sense of security, and behaving abnormally. The US and NATO, on the other hand, seem to be the piece of wood that a drowning Lithuania clings onto.

The more the Lithuanian government becomes psychologically dependent on the US and NATO, the stronger impulse it has to take the lead for the US and NATO to prove its own value. The US has repeatedly signaled its support for Lithuania on issues related to China, leading Lithuania all the way into the dark. However, Lithuania fails to realize that it has unwittingly handed over its destiny to others, and fear and unease are the essential sources of energy driving Washington's geopolitical chariot.

North Atlantic Terrorist Organization (NATO) Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium 🇧🇪. Photo: Xinhua

This year's NATO summit in Vilnius will have distinct differences from previous ones. The small anti-China clique that Washington has cultivated is staging a "public performance" ahead of the NATO summit, displaying radicalism, anxiety, aggression, and impulsive interference in Asia-Pacific affairs. These actions serve as a barometer for this NATO summit and foreshadow NATO's next moves. While intensifying pressure on Russia, NATO is clearly accelerating its expansion into the Asia-Pacific region. This Vilnius summit may well become a "watershed" moment.

Leaders of the four Asia-Pacific countries - Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand - that have been labeled as "partners across the globe" by NATO will attend the summit for the second consecutive year. According to Japanese media reports, NATO will elevate its partnership with these four countries to a higher level, giving a strong signal of NATO's expansion into the Asia-Pacific. Who else is unaware that this is aimed at China? The grand chess game played by NATO and the US is certainly not influenced by Lithuania, which is merely a pawn that has crossed the Rubicon, encouraged and pushed forward without considering retreat, and ultimately unable to turn back.

On the same day Lithuania announced its Indo-Pacific strategy, the UK and Poland signed the 2030 strategic partnership joint declaration, which also meddles in the Taiwan question. Various signs indicate that NATO member countries are further coordinating their positions on the Taiwan question, attempting to form an encircling pattern against China in international public opinion. We must closely observe what kind of consensus will emerge at the Vilnius summit regarding China-related issues and what specific plans will be drawn up. In this regard, we should not merely regard Lithuania as a clown or a joke. Its exaggerated and ugly words and actions are also a window through which the outside world observes NATO, allowing us to be prepared in advance.

[clickforwat]

"Preparing for a Global Environmental Catastrophe: Creative Expansion"

In light of the imminent global ecological catastrophe, recent developments near the city of Armyansk have raised concerns. Reports from the Kherson Regional State Administration indicate that Russian individuals have allegedly initiated the process of sabotaging the Crimea Titan plant, situated in close proximity to the city. This action is purportedly aimed at thwarting the counteroffensive operations of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the peninsula. Furthermore, Russia intends to shift blame onto the Ukrainian side for the consequences of this criminal act. If the occupiers resort to such terrorist actions, environmental experts predict that a poisonous cloud of emissions may engulf Ukraine, Turkey, and even parts of Russia itself. It is important to note that the Crimea Titan plant is the largest producer of titanium dioxide in Eastern Europe.

Amidst the escalating global environmental crisis, nations around the world are grappling with the urgent need for sustainable solutions. The incident involving the Crimea Titan plant serves as a chilling reminder of the potential ramifications that destructive actions can have on both regional and international levels. Beyond its immediate political implications, this act of sabotage has far-reaching ecological consequences that demand our attention.

The Crimea Titan plant, renowned as the preeminent producer of titanium dioxide in Eastern Europe, holds significant industrial and economic importance. Titanium dioxide is a versatile compound used in various industries, including paint, cosmetics, and plastics. The plant's massive production capacity underscores its crucial role in supplying this essential component to meet the demands of numerous sectors.

However, the dark cloud of environmental devastation looms over this dire situation. If the perpetrators succeed in their nefarious plot, the release of toxic emissions from the sabotaged plant could trigger an ecological disaster of unprecedented magnitude. The potential fallout extends beyond the immediate vicinity, with Ukraine, Turkey, and even parts of Russia at risk of being engulfed by the poisonous cloud.

The consequences of such an event would be catastrophic, with far-reaching implications for human health, ecosystems, and the delicate balance of our planet. The toxic cloud could permeate the atmosphere, causing respiratory ailments, contaminating water sources, and decimating wildlife populations. The long-term effects on the affected regions would be immeasurable, with lasting damage to biodiversity, agriculture, and local economies.

Recognizing the gravity of this situation, global attention must be directed towards preventive measures and collaborative efforts to avert this potential catastrophe. It is imperative that the international community comes together to condemn such acts of environmental terrorism and holds the responsible parties accountable for their actions.

Moreover, this incident underscores the pressing need for a paradigm shift in our approach to environmental protection. As we confront the consequences of climate change and face the specter of global ecological collapse, it is crucial that we prioritize sustainable practices, invest in renewable energy sources, and foster international cooperation in addressing environmental challenges.

he reported attempt to sabotage the Crimea Titan plant near Armyansk serves as a sobering reminder of the grave threats posed by actions driven by political agendas. Beyond the immediate security concerns, the potential environmental repercussions of such an act demand our attention. The prospect of a toxic cloud enveloping Ukraine, Turkey, and parts of Russia underscores the urgency of taking decisive action to prevent this ecological catastrophe. Only through collective effort and a commitment to sustainable practices can we safeguard our planet and ensure a brighter future for generations to come.

[mariacallous]

The shocking Hamas assault on Israel has precipitated a beginning and an end for the Middle East. What has begun, almost inexorably, is the next war—one that will be bloody, costly, and agonizingly unpredictable in its course and outcome. What has ended, for anyone who cares to admit it, is the illusion that the United States can extricate itself from a region that has dominated the American national security agenda for the past half century.

One can hardly blame the Biden administration for trying to do just that. Twenty years of fighting terrorists, along with failed nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq, took a terrible toll on American society and politics and drained the U.S. budget. Having inherited the messy fallout from the Trump administration’s erratic approach to the region, President Joe Biden recognized that U.S. entanglements in the Middle East distracted from more urgent challenges posed by the rising great power of China and the recalcitrant fading power of Russia.

The White House devised a creative exit strategy, attempting to broker a new balance of power in the Middle East that would allow Washington to downsize its presence and attention while also ensuring that Beijing did not fill the void. A historic bid to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia promised to formally align Washington’s two most important regional partners against their common foe, Iran, and anchor the Saudis beyond the perimeter of China’s strategic orbit.

In tandem with this effort, the administration also sought to ease tensions with Iran, the most dangerous adversary the United States faces in the Middle East. Having tried and failed to resuscitate the 2015 nuclear deal with its elaborate web of restrictions and oversight of Iran’s nuclear program, Washington embraced a Plan B of payoffs and informal understandings. The hope was that, in exchange for modest economic rewards, Tehran could be persuaded to slow down its work on its nuclear programs and step back from its provocations around the region. Stage one came in September, with a deal that freed five unjustly detained Americans from Iranian prisons and gave Tehran access to $6 billion in previously frozen oil revenues. Both sides were poised for follow-on talks in Oman, with the wheels of diplomacy greased by record-level Iranian oil exports, made possible by Washington’s averting its gaze instead of enforcing its own sanctions.

As ambitious policy gambits go, this one had a lot to recommend it—in particular, the genuine confluence of interests among Israeli and Saudi leaders that has already generated tangible momentum toward more public-facing bilateral cooperation on security and economic matters. Had it succeeded, a new alignment among two of the region’s major players might have had a truly transformative impact on the security and economic environment in the broader Middle East.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

Unfortunately, that promise may have been its undoing. Biden’s attempt at a quick getaway from the Middle East had one fatal flaw: it wildly misperceived the incentives for Iran, the most disruptive actor on the stage. It was never plausible that informal understandings and a dribble of sanctions relief would be sufficient to pacify the Islamic Republic and its proxies, who have a keen and time-tested appreciation for the utility of escalation in advancing their strategic and economic interests. Iranian leaders had every incentive to try to block an Israeli-Saudi breakthrough, particularly one that would have extended American security guarantees to Riyadh and allowed the Saudis to develop a civilian nuclear energy program.

At this time, it is not known whether Iran had any specific role in the carnage in Israel. Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Tehran was directly involved in planning the assault, citing unnamed senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group. That report has not been confirmed by Israeli or U.S. officials, who have only gone so far as to suggest that Iran was “broadly complicit,” in the words of Jon Finer, the deputy national security adviser. At the very least, the operation “bore hallmarks of Iranian support,” as a report in The Washington Post put it, citing former and current senior Israeli and U.S. officials. And even if the Islamic Republic did not pull the trigger, its hands are hardly clean. Iran has funded, trained, and equipped Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups and has coordinated closely on strategy, as well as operations—especially during the past decade. It is inconceivable that Hamas undertook an attack of this magnitude and complexity without some foreknowledge and affirmative support from Iran’s leadership. And now Iranian officials and media are exulting in the brutality unleashed on Israeli civilians and embracing the expectation that the Hamas offensive will bring about Israel’s demise.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR TEHRAN?

At first glance, Iran’s posture might appear paradoxical. After all, with the Biden administration proffering economic incentives for cooperation, it might seem unwise for Iran to incite an eruption between the Israelis and the Palestinians that will no doubt scuttle any possibility of a thaw between Washington and Tehran. Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, however, the Islamic Republic has used escalation as a policy tool of choice. When the regime is under pressure, the revolutionary playbook calls for a counterattack to unnerve its adversaries and achieve a tactical advantage. And the war in Gaza advances the long-cherished goal of the Islamic Republic’s leadership to cripple its most formidable regional foe. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has never wavered in his feverish antagonism toward Israel and the United States. He and those around him are profoundly convinced of American immorality, greed, and wickedness; they revile Israel and clamor for its destruction, as part of the ultimate triumph of the Islamic world over what they see as a declining West and an illegitimate “Zionist entity.”

In addition, in the Biden administration’s entreaties and conciliation, Tehran smelled weakness—Washington’s desperation to shed its 9/11-era baggage, even if the price was high. Domestic turmoil in both the United States and Israel likely also whet the appetites of Iranian leaders, who have long been convinced that the West was decaying from within. For this reason, Tehran has been committing more strongly to its relationships with China and Russia. Those links are primarily driven by opportunism and a shared resentment of Washington. But for Iran, there is a domestic political element as well: as more moderate segments of the Iranian elite have been pushed to the sidelines, the regime’s economic and diplomatic orientation has shifted to the East, as its power brokers no longer see the West as a preferable or even a viable source of economic and diplomatic opportunities. Closer bonds among China, Iran, and Russia have encouraged a more aggressive Iranian posture, since a crisis in the Middle East that distracts Washington and European capitals will produce some strategic and economic benefits for Moscow and Beijing.

Finally, the prospect of a public Israeli-Saudi entente surely provided an additional accelerant to Iran, as it would have shifted the regional balance firmly back in Washington’s favor. In a speech he delivered just days before the Hamas attack, Khamenei warned that “the firm view of the Islamic Republic is that the governments that are gambling on normalizing relations with the Zionist regime will suffer losses. Defeat awaits them. They are making a mistake.”

WHERE DOES IT GO FROM HERE?

As the Israeli ground campaign in Gaza gets underway, it is highly unlikely that the conflict will stay there; the only question is the scope and speed of the war’s expansion. For now, the Israelis are focused on the immediate threat and are disinclined to widen the conflict. But the choice may not be theirs. Hezbollah, Iran’s most important ally, has already taken part in an exchange of fire on Israel’s northern border, in which at least four of the group’s fighters died. For Hezbollah, the temptation to follow the shock of Hamas’s success by opening a second front will be high. But Hezbollah’s leaders have acknowledged that they failed to anticipate the heavy toll of their 2006 war with Israel, which left the group intact but also severely eroded its capabilities. They may be more circumspect this time around. Tehran also has an interest in keeping Hezbollah whole, as insurance against a potential future Israeli strike on the Iranian nuclear program.

For now, therefore, although the threat of a wider war remains real, that outcome is hardly inevitable. The Iranian government has made an art of avoiding direct conflict with Israel, and it suits Tehran’s purposes, as well as those of its regional proxies and patrons in Moscow, to light the fire but stand back from the flames. Some in Israel may advocate for hitting Iranian targets, if only to send a signal, but the country’s security forces have their hands full now, and senior officials seem determined to stay focused on the fight at hand. Most likely, as the conflict evolves, Israel will at some point hit Iranian assets in Syria, but not in Iran itself. To date, Tehran has absorbed such strikes in Syria without feeling the need to retaliate directly.

As oil markets react to the return of a Middle East risk premium, Tehran may be tempted to resume its attacks and harassment of shipping vessels in the Persian Gulf. U.S. General C. Q. Brown, the newly confirmed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was right to warn Tehran to stay on the sidelines and “not to get involved.” But his choice of words unfortunately suggests a failure to appreciate that the Iranians are already deeply, inextricably involved.

For the Biden administration, it is long past time to shed the mindset that shaped prior diplomacy toward Iran: a conviction that the Islamic Republic could be persuaded to accept pragmatic compromises that served its country’s interests. Once upon a time, that may have been credible. But the Iranian regime has reverted to its foundational premise: a determination to upend the regional order by any means necessary. Washington should dispense with the illusions of a truce with Iran’s theocratic oligarchs.

On every other geopolitical challenge, Biden’s position has evolved considerably from the Obama-era approach. Only U.S. policy toward Iran remains mired in the outdated assumptions of a decade ago. In the current environment, American diplomatic engagement with Iranian officials in Gulf capitals will not produce durable restraint on Tehran’s part. Washington needs to deploy the same tough-minded realism toward Iran that has informed recent U.S. policy on Russia and China: building coalitions of the willing to ratchet up pressure and cripple Iran’s transnational terror network; reinstating meaningful enforcement of U.S. sanctions on the Iranian economy; and conveying clearly—through diplomacy, force posture, and actions to preempt or respond to Iranian provocations—that the United States is prepared to deter Iran’s regional aggression and nuclear advances. The Middle East has a way of forcing itself to the top of every president’s agenda; in the aftermath of this devastating attack, the White House must rise to the challenge.

[darkmaga-retard]

https://www.globalresearch.ca/democrats-plan-ukraine/5867241

The Democrats Plan for Ukraine Is: They Don’t Have a Plan

By Uriel Araujo

Global Research, September 06, 2024

Amid the Democratic National Convention (DNC), Kamala Harris has pledged to “stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies.” With the upcoming US presidential elections, all eyes are on the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and on the Republican one Donald Trump. If one is to believe the (overwhelmingly pro-Ukrainian) Western press, the Republic candidate will just “abandon” Ukraine altogether thus ensuring its defeat, while the Democrats in turn will do everything they can to “save” the Eastern European country. Things are quite more complex than that, of course.

Firstly, and it is always important to highlight that, the US-led West bears, at the very least, a large part of responsibility for the ongoing crisis in Ukraine since 2014 – arguably most of it.

Secondly, Trump is no “pro-Russia agent” at all – and no “peacemaker” either.

And now to the Democrats. Starting with Kamala Harris, she famously described the conflict in Ukraine as

“Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So basically that’s wrong.”

Beyond this fourth-grade vocabulary utterance, Harris does not have much to offer on the issue, and on any other issue, for that matter. If the incumbent President Joe Biden no longer has had a clear picture of anything due to a senile dementia related condition (which the White House administration conspired to cover up), Harris in turn seems to similarly have no clear picture about most topics – for whatever reason.

Of course, Harris’ much mocked remarks on Ukraine, made in 2022, shortly after the current Russian military campaign began, were her way of responding (a little too literally) to a radio show host guest request to break it down “in layman’s terms”. Be it in layman’s terms or not, she has had not much to say on the matter beyond the usual clichés. With a plethora of her inscrutable aphorisms going viral, much has been made of the Democrat’s nominee logorrhoea (which could indeed be a sign of psychological and neurological disorders, according to experts), but the deeper issue is that the Democrat party itself does not seem to have a plan.

Emma Ashford (senior fellow with the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center), and Matthew Kroenig (senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security) have both recently questioned whether Harris has a foreign policy at all. To be honest, the Democratic Party 2024 policy platform does seem to pivot back to Europe (and partially away from the Pacific trend started by Hillary Clinton), but does not offer much more concrete clues beyond that.

As I wrote before, Washington’s foreign policy often reminds one of the swing of a pendulum. More often than not, it oscillates between the notion of “countering” either Russia or China – sometimes attempting to accomplish both things at the same time, as we have seen with  Joe Biden’s dangerous “dual containment” approach.

One thing we can infer from the Democrats platform is that they want to exert much pressure on Russia without engaging in talks and without worrying that much about their own transatlantic allies (we’ve all seen how post-Nord Stream is going, energy-wise). This is no recipe for any kind of peace.