Nord Stream - US/German consultations

[Tomasz + 1,608]

Well if you dont like Gazprom in the freezy winter suddenly you should change your mind

Quote

 

In January, Gazprom exported 19.4 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe and Turkey, which turned out to be a record value for this month. This was reported by S&P Global Platts with reference to the company's report published yesterday.

In general, gas sales to non-CIS countries (excluding China) in January exceeded the same indicator of the previous year by 6.1 billion cubic meters (+ 45.4% yoy). Gas exports to Germany increased in January by 32.4% y / y, to Italy - by 221.5% y / y, to Turkey - by 20.8% y / y, to France - by 77.3% y / y. y, to Holland - by 21.2% y / y, and to Poland - by 89.9% y / y.

The increased demand for blue fuel in Europe was due to cold weather, which covered the entire continent. The sales of pipeline gas in January could have been even higher if not for the decrease in the volume of supplies through the territory of Ukraine. However, Gazprom more than compensated for this with supplies from its European storage.

By contrast, last January was unsuccessful for Gazprom due to warm weather, slow growth in supplies through Ukraine after the signing of a new transit agreement in December 2019, and high reserves.

Gas supplies to China in January exceeded the contracted volumes by 2.5%. Compared to January 2020, they grew 2.9 times.

In December 2019, Gazprom began exporting blue fuel to China via the Power of Siberia pipeline with a capacity of 38 billion cubic meters per year. Deliveries started at 10 million cubic meters per day.

The latest data show that today this figure is close to 30 million cubic meters per day. Based on this, it can be assumed that in 2021 the volume of gas supplies through the Power of Siberia may amount to about 10 billion cubic meters. These figures are in line with Gazprom's own plans, which envisage the export of 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas this year and the pipeline reaching full capacity in the mid-2020s.

 

The second issue is the vaccine. The Russians said today that South Korea could produce 100 million doses of Sputnik-V for Europe in Q2.

Third issue is the record colds in Europe this winter.

The CEO of Gazprom once said that Russia should only negotiate with Europe in a cold winter.

Now comes also the issue of a vaccine and Europe needs more doses, even if it is to be the Sputnik or Chinese vaccine.

So for the first time in 6 years, Russia is in a little more favorable situation and in Warsaw it is forecasted frosts of something like minus 10 to 20 February at night.

As you know, Poland is moving away from Russian gas - in January gas imports plus 89.9% year to year and a record import of Russian coal.

No LNG producer will ever guarantee such a instant production free capacity, so it is high time to negotiate concessions on the Nord Stream II issue of Ukraine and Belarus.

Lest it be, I am for the supply of Sputnik-V to Europe, for the supply of as much gas and coal to Europe as will be needed, and even for the transport of gas through Ukraine and a sensible agreement on Ukraine and Belarus as a buffer states between Russia and NATO.

I will only state the objective fact that in my opinion Russia's negotiating position towards the European Union has improved somewhat recently.

Edited February 5, 2021 by Tomasz

[surrept33 + 609]

On 2/4/2021 at 6:04 AM, Jan van Eck said:

For anyone who wants a Russian first-hand recollection of the way the Russian army soldiers treated the German women in the lands they over-ran, I invite you to review the linked YouTube video, it is about 6 minutes.  If you are not vomiting by the end of that then you are no longer human. And you want to buy gas from these guys?

 

(unfortunately), you'll see this "pattern" after every war as retribution. women tend to suffer it worst. every culture, every community. it's why some linguists discourage using "war" words with infectious diseases like covid. wars seem to change us emotionally and make our more primitive brains take over, which probably was useful historically when we were frontier people.   

as flawed as it might be, this is why I think this (which was setup after WW2) was a very good idea (even better now that we have devices in our pockets called smartphones that have optical cameras what are better than medical grade cameras that performed lasik a decade ago):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court

(but sometimes we forget the horrors of war or violence and regress. the chronology of the "history of humanity" is complex and nonlinear but tends to get better over what we feel as time)

Keep in mind that even the recent coup d'etat in Myanmar might have occured to prevent a general from being prosecuted there for similar horrors like mass-rapes (at least this time, much of the "evidence" gets digitized, and stored in memory with significantly higher memory capacity and less error loss by platforms like facebook or youtube so we can teach the next generation(s) (which in practice can be thought of as a "wisdom of the crowds" sense in wikipedia). our collective memory gets "clearer" with every generation: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55892489

[frankfurter + 562]

For the record, WW2 was fought in the East by the Soviets, not Russians. The Soviet Union was not led by Russians: it was led by Bolsheviks.

You murcans and supporters are so utterly vile and self-righteous. For the record, murcan solders have raped thousands of women in war and peace times.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-03-07-mn-44168-story.html

https://www.veteranstodayarchives.com/2015/08/03/american-soldiers-brutally-raped-japanese-women-during-world-war-ii/

 

[Tomasz + 1,608]

31 minutes ago, frankfurter said:

For the record, WW2 was fought in the East by the Soviets, not Russians. The Soviet Union was not led by Russians: it was led by Bolsheviks.

You murcans and supporters are so utterly vile and self-righteous. For the record, murcan solders have raped thousands of women in war and peace times.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-03-07-mn-44168-story.html

https://www.veteranstodayarchives.com/2015/08/03/american-soldiers-brutally-raped-japanese-women-during-world-war-ii/

 

In the peak of the crisis after 2014, the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs even said that the Ukrainians had liberated Auschtwitz

And he decided so only  because Auschwitz was liberated by the 1st Ukrainian Front - a tactical unit of Red Army - it was just a name of unit because previously it fought in central Ukraine than in Poland and finally in Berlin.

 He is an educated history graduate.

Last month I read that new GOP US senator from Alaska said Western Allies liberated Western Europe from socialism. From socialism or national socialism also called nazism - whats the difference.

I would not expect too much of ordinary people.

Edited February 6, 2021 by Tomasz

[surrept33 + 609]

50 minutes ago, frankfurter said:

For the record, WW2 was fought in the East by the Soviets, not Russians. The Soviet Union was not led by Russians: it was led by Bolsheviks.

You murcans and supporters are so utterly vile and self-righteous. For the record, murcan solders have raped thousands of women in war and peace times.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-03-07-mn-44168-story.html

https://www.veteranstodayarchives.com/2015/08/03/american-soldiers-brutally-raped-japanese-women-during-world-war-ii/

 

It's also happening in western china:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071

keep in mind that (ironically), mao's standardization of mandarin allows for easy transliteration of such criminal activity and storage pretty much forever, across multiple borders, and translation into tonal AND atonal languages, like simplified mandarin (and turkish/mongol variants), and storage back in Chinese domained servers (across multiple "calendars"), as well as friendly neighbors:

https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2020/12/18/kazakhstan-root-2020/

Thanks to Mao's removal of various "black barbarian" ideographs and the Han unification of the "free radicals" - traditional Mandarin actually has a lot of xenophobic ideograms from what I've heard (and also, you could suppose that computers have just differentiated a lot of text between various texts translated by humans in both the mainland and non-mainland variants of any Han-like text. there are gigantic corpus of them if you do not believe me. just "search" for it). Keep in mind most languages do before "modernity" allowed us to develop things like microscopes and look at germs and look at things a bit more rationally (traditionally, people did not believe germ theory existed): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanism (this is one of the very slowly moving "points" of unicode to over time debias FYI. humans have historically used a lot of heuristics before we invented stuff to make us less blind). the proper question to ask, is, how does the human visual system perceive a eigenmemo (or for example, the colors that the retina could "perceive" if one were to reflect on it), if hypothetically, one existed (you could of course, figure out how the combination of web accessibility standards on a quantum dot LED monitors also "worked", these are just cLUTs)?

Edited February 6, 2021 by surrept33

[frankfurter + 562]

For the record, reports in the BBC have been disproven more than a few times. If the alleged rapes did in fact occur, they should be uncovered and the rapists tried: the penalty is death. How the Chinese language connects to rapes is a mystery. What your point has to do with the widespread rapes during WW2, by all combatants, about 80 years ago, is even more of a mystery. Unless, of course, you are trying to use whatever you can to smear the Chinese, which does seem to be your intent.  You will note my reference to rape by US soldiers during WW2 is per topic and is provided by US Veterans: proving US soldiers are as evil and vile as the enemy.

[surrept33 + 609]

34 minutes ago, frankfurter said:

For the record, reports in the BBC have been disproven more than a few times. If the alleged rapes did in fact occur, they should be uncovered and the rapists tried: the penalty is death. How the Chinese language connects to rapes is a mystery. What your point has to do with the widespread rapes during WW2, by all combatants, about 80 years ago, is even more of a mystery. Unless, of course, you are trying to use whatever you can to smear the Chinese, which does seem to be your intent.  You will note my reference to rape by US soldiers during WW2 is per topic and is provided by US Veterans: proving US soldiers are as evil and vile as the enemy.

protip: it's not disproven "more than a few times" (this is a counterfactual argument that doesn't really have much statistical power) because you can hear similar stories (even if you don't know chinese, you can just "paddlepaddle away from the panda" it from different borders (or pick any river-like system you'd like. the pearl river delta? the ganges-bhamaputra-tsangpo? you can "count" it on many 1-5 "year old" childrens games found scanned in china, from china, which are usually considered "stars" or "likes" and are something kids can usually figure out. you'll probably have to use another site or a distributed control system to "hear it". in practice, you don't even need vpns these days to "discretly" see anything in china:

https://www.baidu.com/s?ie=utf-8&f=8&rsv_bp=1&rsv_idx=1&tn=baidu&wd=coexter dynkin diagram&fenlei=256&rsv_pq=a49b165c0005ae19&rsv_t=17159wjgDk79beeSv%2Bwok2MGBQHctbPc%2BQpdXcAsfxMwXnlDXGS2KmFNpTo&rqlang=cn&rsv_dl=tb&rsv_sug3=26&rsv_enter=1&rsv_sug2=0&rsv_btype=i&inputT=6894&rsv_sug4=6894

(practiced in practice, and not really censorable, over any git-like thingy in "eastern china". the government in china has lost control of information, but how does one stabilize society in a more democratic way with less autocracy? well, there is plenty of theories on how to do that, and a lot of evidence, like voting for what you want. pick a way of counting. in practice you can just your favorite hum songs, or "alphabetically" type stuff out in whatever CJK-compliant keyboard you possess. digitize moar humanities. see also https://www.doi.org/RA_Coverage.html).

Edited February 6, 2021 by surrept33

[Tomasz + 1,608]

I will tell you a secret - rape is really a highly anti-anxiety activity. Short-term quenching of soldier's fear.

You will read about it probably in a great deal of books devoted to lets say, the psychology of war.

So as long as there are wars, the soldiers raped, they are raping now in Africa, and I suppose they will.

I myself was very surprised that this has a simple but sad psychological explanation.

It can be soothed that sex also has an high anti-anxiety effect in many people and fortunately not all sex has to be rape, although unfortunately a soldier in a war has rather limited possibilities here.

Not that I support rape, but there is a psychological justification for this so this is  why it has been so widespread in wars for a centuries.

Edited February 6, 2021 by Tomasz

[Tomasz + 1,608]

https://1prime.ru/energy/20210206/832983779.htm

Quote

The Fortuna vessel has successfully completed preparatory work to resume construction of Nord Stream 2 and has begun laying pipes in Danish waters, the project operator Nord Stream 2 AG said

"The pipe-laying vessel Fortuna, which began work on the resumption of the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline on January 24, has successfully carried out sea trials and today started pipe-laying in Danish waters," the statement said.

The operator notes that the work is being carried out in accordance with all permits. "We will provide more detailed information about the construction and our further plans additionally," adds Nord Stream 2 AG.

Nord Stream 2 envisages the construction of two strings of a gas pipeline with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year from the Russian coast through the Baltic Sea to Germany. The project is actively opposed by the United States, which is promoting its liquefied natural gas to the EU, as well as Ukraine and a number of European countries. The states imposed sanctions against the gas pipeline in December 2019, as a result of which the Swiss Allseas was forced to stop laying.

It continued a year later - in December 2020, the Fortuna pipelayer laid 2.6 kilometers of pipes in German waters. As a result, according to Nord Stream 2 AG (operator of the project), approximately 148 kilometers of the gas pipeline remained unfinished out of the total length of its two lines of 2,460 kilometers - 120 kilometers remained in Danish waters and about 28 kilometers in German waters. The Danish authorities have agreed on the possibility of stowage with the help of "Fortuna" from 15 January, the German permit for this vessel is valid until the end of May.

 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

On 2/4/2021 at 3:58 PM, Tomasz said:

So once more - german historian memories from 1996-2016  cited before on german-russian trade organisation site. 

if this is really the attitude of the people of the former soviet union to Second World War- I personally do not know, but this historian lectured in the former soviet union several times for 20 years, so he probably knows the subject much better than me.

Personally, being an ordinary German, I would be rather glad, like this historian, that this is the approach to the subject in the former Soviet Union. In any case, I would be glad that nobody seems to hold a grudge against today's Germans. and this state of affairs would satisfy me enough to consider the topic closed and focus not on brooding on World War II, but on the fact that there would be no World War III.

I will say even more, there is a joke among my friends that contemporary Poland should declare war on Germany and immediately announce capitulation, and then the most developed country of the European Union would take care of all the problems of Poles.

Considering that the Germans murdered 3 million Poles, if I were the Germans, I would really take this joke as a good sign of the attitude of Poles to Germans.

In my opinion, Nord Stream II calms down rather than exacerbates the situation in Europe because it creates further economic ties between Russia and Europe

 Ukraine should remain a buffer state between Russia and the West. So much for this - I do not wish Ukraine bad, but that the buffer must exist and it should be Ukraine and Belarus. However, it cannot be denied that gas transport through Ukraine costs 2-3 times more than via Nord Stream - you cannot demand Russia to finance an anti-Russian regime in Ukraine that persecutes ethnic Russians.

If anything, let the West give money after the Maidan if it really wants Ukraine in the Western sphere of influence.

 

There is no need for a buffer state since everyone knows that Russia has no threat from Europe. Their only threat is from China. Russia has repeatedly shown that they will invade any country that they can get away with invading. Ukraine has had millions starved by Stalin and his followers. They have very good reason to want to be reimbursed by Russia which has recently stolen Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. You are quite up on your history but have a blank spot regarding Ukraine. 

[Wombat + 1,028]

On 2/6/2021 at 6:37 AM, footeab@yahoo.com said:

In other news:

Water is wet...

Nordstream 2 will flow gas especially fulfilling requirements in pursuit of eliminating coal as wind/solar cannot possibly cope anytime in the next half century at the earliest and nuclear power is a dirty word in the EU... So, what will they do for all those products made from coal... hrmm...  Get them from CHINA  of course!

The Russians/Germans got everything they deserved in WWII. 

Don't worry, when the USA falls into barbarity as they lose all moral foundation as Russia/Germany/China/Japan etc did previously in history, we can but hope someone will come save us as my ancestors saved them.  What goes around, comes around. 

In order to defeat China when WW3 erupts (not if, but when), the US will need as many allies as possible. The most important will be India, followed by Japan and Australia. The UK will likely play a key role, and even Canada can add very valuable support. The wildcard is Indonesia, who are keeping their cards close to their chest at the moment. Unfortunately, they have not received sufficient FDI from the West to compensate for the loss of market share for their commodities exports should they take a side. Same thing for India, up until now. India is already manufacturing their own arms, with some support from the West, in order to reduce their reliance on Russian systems. It is not in the interests of either the EU or Russia to get involved, because that will compel them to attack each other on home soil. Neither side can afford that, but China would love it. If Russia backs China, you can be sure that France would retaliate and all hell would break loose all across the globe, not just in the Indo-Pacific. If I were Putin, I would be very wary of getting too involved with China. He only needs to look at Australia to see why. Mr Xi views Russia as a bigger version of Australia. ie: a mere source of commodities to be raided at the lowest price. The more Russia sells them, the more the Chinese will infiltrate Russia with the aim of eventual control. As a matter of fact, with Covid, the CCP has put the whole world on notice. They have made it clear they want the whole planet and they intend to cook us slowly. They truly believe that they are unstoppable now, and can divide and conquer us at their will. To some extent, this is true. But when you have Jeff Bezos visit India and tell them that this will be the Indian Century, it is time to take note. Also, Tesla is building a giga-factory in India. No other country has the potential to balance China in the not-too-distant future.

[El Gato + 251]

You left South Korea as a needed ally also. They probably exceed Australia on arms and definitely have a better arms building capability. In addition to UK and Canada, France also has an interest in the region also. India is still the prime mover and shaker in the region , as you said though, to counter China. Singapore is not to be counted out either. They have little love for the communists, and a top notch defense force

Edited February 7, 2021 by El Gato
spelling

[ronwagn + 6,290]

8 minutes ago, El Gato said:

You left South Korea as a needed ally also. They probably exceed Australia on arms and definitely have a better arms building capability. In addiction to UK and Canada, France also has an interest in the region also. India is still the prime mover and shaker in the region , as you said though, to counter China. Singapore is not to be counted out either. They have little love for the communists, and a top notch defense force

I wonder if North Korea would be called upon, by China, to keep South Korea tied up somehow. I don't know. 

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

33 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

I wonder if North Korea would be called upon, by China, to keep South Korea tied up somehow. I don't know. 

Of course they could.  Just start massing troops and machinery at the border and see what the South Korean's do.  Panic?

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

47 minutes ago, El Gato said:

You left South Korea as a needed ally also. They probably exceed Australia on arms and definitely have a better arms building capability. In addition to UK and Canada, France also has an interest in the region also. India is still the prime mover and shaker in the region , as you said though, to counter China. Singapore is not to be counted out either. They have little love for the communists, and a top notch defense force

South Korea also has a better chance of being overrun.  Guns or no guns.  You have to have a standing Navy to confront a standing navy.  How big are the combined fleets of the UK, Canada, France and India?  Singapore takes its defense seriously.  Nobody takes Singapore's war fighting capabilities seriously.

[Wombat + 1,028]

15 hours ago, El Gato said:

You left South Korea as a needed ally also. They probably exceed Australia on arms and definitely have a better arms building capability. In addition to UK and Canada, France also has an interest in the region also. India is still the prime mover and shaker in the region , as you said though, to counter China. Singapore is not to be counted out either. They have little love for the communists, and a top notch defense force

The Singapore Air Force trains in Northern Australia, and were firmly with us until recently, but now appear to have chickened out under pressure from China. Same with South Korea. They are both sh*t scared of China, which is understandable given the vacillation shown by the USA. Australian defense manufacturing has just surpassed that of SK, both our stealthy "loyal wingman" AI fighter jet drones and our new submarines (about to start work) are more advanced than their technology. Our 100 JSF's are ready for combat right now. Did I mention that we have 2 large amphibious assault ships (easily converted into aircraft carriers like the Japanese are doing with theirs), 3 new Air Warfare Destroyers, and a program to build 9 new frigates? Oh, and we invented the littoral combat ship that the US Navy has turned into something of a beast to beholden.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

On 2/6/2021 at 1:34 AM, Tomasz said:

I will tell you a secret - rape is really a highly anti-anxiety activity. Short-term quenching of soldier's fear.

In the Russian Army, the "anti-anxiety activity" of choice is drinking.  Vodka provides that "short-term quenching" quite nicely. 

The problem is that Russian soldiers, when they go out and get drunk, proceed to scour the locality for women to rape. 

Then, when those drunken Russian soldiers get through doing their gang-raping, 35 men to the girl, and have ripped her reproductive organs apart, they kill the victim with a bullet through the mouth, then throw the corpse into the hog-pen.  Editor's Note: in Europe, the "Hog" is the marginally domesticated cousin of the Wild Boar, a ferocious animal that can weigh in at 1,200 lbs and will tear flesh from bone with very sharp teeth.  They are known to attack live persons, kill them and rip them up. The boar is the Northern European equivalent to the Nile River crocodile:  a mean killer.  Lovely people, those Russians. 

[NickW + 2,714]

On 2/7/2021 at 1:17 AM, Wombat said:

In order to defeat China when WW3 erupts (not if, but when), the US will need as many allies as possible. The most important will be India, followed by Japan and Australia. The UK will likely play a key role, and even Canada can add very valuable support. The wildcard is Indonesia, who are keeping their cards close to their chest at the moment. Unfortunately, they have not received sufficient FDI from the West to compensate for the loss of market share for their commodities exports should they take a side. Same thing for India, up until now. India is already manufacturing their own arms, with some support from the West, in order to reduce their reliance on Russian systems. It is not in the interests of either the EU or Russia to get involved, because that will compel them to attack each other on home soil. Neither side can afford that, but China would love it. If Russia backs China, you can be sure that France would retaliate and all hell would break loose all across the globe, not just in the Indo-Pacific. If I were Putin, I would be very wary of getting too involved with China. He only needs to look at Australia to see why. Mr Xi views Russia as a bigger version of Australia. ie: a mere source of commodities to be raided at the lowest price. The more Russia sells them, the more the Chinese will infiltrate Russia with the aim of eventual control. As a matter of fact, with Covid, the CCP has put the whole world on notice. They have made it clear they want the whole planet and they intend to cook us slowly. They truly believe that they are unstoppable now, and can divide and conquer us at their will. To some extent, this is true. But when you have Jeff Bezos visit India and tell them that this will be the Indian Century, it is time to take note. Also, Tesla is building a giga-factory in India. No other country has the potential to balance China in the not-too-distant future.

Whats Oz planning to do - buy a French Nuclear sub refitted with diesels🤡

[NickW + 2,714]

22 hours ago, El Gato said:

You left South Korea as a needed ally also. They probably exceed Australia on arms and definitely have a better arms building capability. In addition to UK and Canada, France also has an interest in the region also. India is still the prime mover and shaker in the region , as you said though, to counter China. Singapore is not to be counted out either. They have little love for the communists, and a top notch defense force

Also Vietnam with the biggest standing army in SE Asia. Although commie they have no love of China who is claiming most of their offshore waters with their 9 dash line BS. 

[Tomasz + 1,608]

Well some secret german proposals to USA that you can find today on web  

Edited February 10, 2021 by Tomasz

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

8 minutes ago, Tomasz said:

Well some secret german proposals to USA that you can find today on web  

Obviously not that "secret" if you are finding that stuff already published on the internet! 🤣

[Tomasz + 1,608]

Quote

 

The administration of US President Joe Biden has decided not to impose sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 operator Nord Stream 2 AG and its head Matthias Warnig, Axios sources said . The publication claims that the State Department plans to impose sanctions against several Russian ships.

According to Axios interlocutors, the White House has come to the conclusion that the only way to stop the implementation of Nord Stream 2 is to impose sanctions against gas recipients in Germany. However, as the newspaper writes, the administration of Mr. Biden is not ready to break off relations with Germany because of the gas pipeline.

The State Department will soon send its report to Congress, which will list the organizations that are involved in the project and "deserve sanctions." The agency can admit that the activities of Nord Stream 2 AG and its leader, "a close friend of Putin", are subject to sanctions. However, according to Axios, the State Department will refuse to apply sanctions, citing the national interests of the United States.

We will remind, about plans to impose sanctions against Nord Stream 2 AG and its leader in April, reported Politico. The publication claimed that the US Department of Justice proposed to introduce these restrictions.

Russia plans to complete the construction of Nord Stream 2 by the end of September, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said earlier. In his opinion, the construction will be completed despite opposition, because this is a "purely commercial project".

 

https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4816974?from=hotnews

[specinho + 440]

On 2/7/2021 at 9:17 AM, Wombat said:

In order to defeat China when WW3 erupts (not if, but when), the US will need as many allies as possible. The most important will be India, followed by Japan and Australia. The UK will likely play a key role, and even Canada can add very valuable support. The wildcard is Indonesia, who are keeping their cards close to their chest at the moment. Unfortunately, they have not received sufficient FDI from the West to compensate for the loss of market share for their commodities exports should they take a side. Same thing for India, up until now. India is already manufacturing their own arms, with some support from the West, in order to reduce their reliance on Russian systems. It is not in the interests of either the EU or Russia to get involved, because that will compel them to attack each other on home soil. Neither side can afford that, but China would love it. If Russia backs China, you can be sure that France would retaliate and all hell would break loose all across the globe, not just in the Indo-Pacific. If I were Putin, I would be very wary of getting too involved with China. He only needs to look at Australia to see why. Mr Xi views Russia as a bigger version of Australia. ie: a mere source of commodities to be raided at the lowest price. The more Russia sells them, the more the Chinese will infiltrate Russia with the aim of eventual control. As a matter of fact, with Covid, the CCP has put the whole world on notice. They have made it clear they want the whole planet and they intend to cook us slowly. They truly believe that they are unstoppable now, and can divide and conquer us at their will. To some extent, this is true. But when you have Jeff Bezos visit India and tell them that this will be the Indian Century, it is time to take note. Also, Tesla is building a giga-factory in India. No other country has the potential to balance China in the not-too-distant future.

there might be a need to reconsider the real aim of this distraction.

China is big like US, Russia, European continent, South America, etc. They might have more internal problems that they need to take care of to worry about conquering the world. The one belt one road project is astronomically funded. This would probably repeat the mistake of US, somehow...... i.e. overturning prosperity into deficits prone.

India, although deserves to rise with their mastery in, predominantly, IT and medicine, with the few popular techies mentioned, there is a note of cautious.

first of all, the top billionaire medical expert in India who might be one of the few pioneers in telemedicine, could only manage a plan to suggest the poor in India will be able to pay for the premium of medical insurance that they largely could not afford, with every dime they earn each time, via mobile banking. By sheer number of population in poverty, the profit is massive.

secondly, top millionaire indian professor at harvard is asking a question:

Would you be comfortable taking money from Wall Street if that allowed you to scale this incomparably faster and make care available to the poorest of the poor? ................... Stated differently, are you uncomfortable making money off the backs of the poor

From the quote above taken from the script are we correct in assuming that the dilemma is: if we should take money from wall street and donations or shall we take money from the poor to make our profits??

thirdly, an indian minister of a small red dot island proclaiming his status is an effort of his own and he needed no one to succeed. He would down those (who helped him before, unacknowledged) so that indians will own that land.

Judging from these few comments of the highly successful, one general deduction is made.......... Shall there is no basic moral conduct in businesses or  on humanity, if the attitude is not right, what kind of people are we producing to rise to the top?? Would there be likely more troubles, foreseeable? Or more solutions?

There is no wrong in foreseeing the huge market potential that tesla and Bezos are eyeing India. However, we need to be reminded of their low purchasing power in general.

A fail or problematic development model copied will only produce failure twice. There is an urgent need to rethink the growth model of each country and

We need to observe more. Besides some of them are good in english language and majority in vegan diet that turns them less energetic with no opinion attitude (which make good followers), what kind of people are we producing and expecting to lead in the future......?

 

[Tomasz + 1,608]

Russia in March delivered a record volume of oil to the United States in March

ussia in March delivered to the United States a record volume of oil and petroleum products since July 2009, according to data from the Energy Information Administration of the US Department of Energy (EIA).

 

In the reporting month, the Russian Federation increased the volume of exports of oil and oil products by 1.8 times compared to February, to 22.938 million barrels, which is the maximum since July 2009. Then the Russian Federation supplied 23.484 million barrels to the United States. Thus, in March Russia took the second line of the rating.

Canada retained the first place, supplying 139.869 million barrels of oil and oil products to the United States. Mexico dropped to third place from second, supplying 17.616 million barrels to the United States. Saudi Arabia delivered 10.868 million barrels, ranking fourth.

As for oil alone, then Russia took fourth place, having supplied 6.1 million barrels to the United States (197 thousand barrels per day), which is 3.5 times more than in February. The first three lines were taken by Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia, which supplied 9.583 million barrels (309 thousand barrels per day) of oil.

In general, imports of oil and petroleum products in the United States in March increased by 20%, to 8.288 million barrels per day, and exports - by 0.2%, to 7.679 million per day. At the same time, imports of oil alone in the United States in the reporting month increased by 3.5%, to 5.787 million barrels per day, and exports decreased by 0.7%, to 2.685 million barrels per day.

 

[notsonice + 1,067]

 Nord Stream 2 was always going to happen as the US never considered taking action against the main partner Royal Dutch Shell. If the US was serious the US could have sanctioned Royal Dutch Shell and blocked   their production and those working with Royal Dutch Shell from doing any business in the US.