Uncle Volodya says, “He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.”
Take me back won’t ya
Take me back won’t ya;
I’ll change my ways
Take me back won’t ya
Take me back won’t ya;
I’m not the same…
Bryan Adams, from “Take Me Back”
Paul Robinson sent me a link yesterday that made me laugh out loud. You remember that scene in “Back to the Future”, when a carload of bullies is chasing Michael J. Fox on an improvised skateboard, and they run into the back of a truck which dumps about three-quarters of a ton of warm cow shit through the convertible top? Yeah, that was funny. Or the scene in “A Christmas Story” where Ralphie Parker, grunting angry profanity, falls upon school bully Scut Farkus like a wildcat on peyote and reduces him to blubbering sobs? Poetic justice, how sweet it is.
The bully getting his ass handed to him is a perennially popular concept. That’s why I laughed when I read that the Russian economy has quietly returned to growth, (thanks, Paul) and added $10 Billion to its reserves since it had to spend a ton of money to keep things on the rails through Washington’s determined attempts – aided and abetted by its schoolyard quislings The United Kingdom, Canada and Australia – to wreck the Russian economy and cause so much human suffering in Russia that the people would revolt and overthrow their leader. Another humanitarian regime-change effort, brought to you by Shining City On A Hill Incorporated; it is no wonder Kiev continues to try to smash the east of its own country into submission. It knows full well that democracy is just the fig leaf the west uses to screen its loins so nobody will notice that violence gives it a boner.
The Russian economy has begun to swing positive again, the MICEX is up 17.97% on the year to date (the NYSE is up 2.48% over the same period). The ruble gained 22.3% between February and April of this year, and is currently the world’s best-performing currency. That might not be a long-term trend, and the World Bank moans in agony that Russia risks a two-year recession; but Vladimir Putin, the Russian Federation’s president and Time Magazine’s pick for Most Influential Person of 2015 has good reason to look back in satisfaction over the past year or so. Under his leadership, Russia has outmaneuvered the clumsy west at every turn – showing it up as having not only feet of clay, but a head of cheese. And the best part, I’m sure – from Putin’s viewpoint – is that the west has brought it all upon itself, stubbornly insisting on taking the most damaging course every time over the protests of many who could see what was going to happen, but could only close their eyes and brace for the crash. The Lord of the Flies writ large – a triumph of idiots.
Severstal Steel of Cherepovets, we learn, has posted its best profits in six years this quarter, on record output; Severstal plans to hire 2000 new workers this year to add to its 52,000 workforce. How’s U.S. Steel doing? Oh, dear – not so well, I’m afraid; U.S. steel plants are on a layoff spree, which they blame on China flooding the world with artificially cheap steel. If true, it seems not to have hurt the Russian industry, which is right next door. It strikes me that failure to get China into some sort of partnership before making a grab for Ukraine was a singularly bad example of planning on the west’s part, not to mention its subsequent antagonism of China so as to inspire and nurture a Sino-Russian partnership. Just to put the icing on the cake, the article complains about the surging dollar and low energy prices, both of which the U.S. government eagerly sought as part of its latest master plan and cheered, early on, as examples of its strategic brilliance and global clout. As U.S. steel exports languish, BRICS partners China and Brazil saw surging exports. Ever heard the expression, “Success has a thousand fathers, but failure is a bastard child”? Who will respond with “It was my idea” to the question,”Who thought it was a good plan to start a trade war with a raw-materials giant”?
Why do so many cheer Washington’s stepping on its own dick and doing an embarrassing faceplant? Because it has transformed since the 1950’s from a Force For Good to a Force For Its Own Good, somewhere along the way turning into a bully that forces its values on others where it can and introducing regime change and false-flag manipulations where it cannot. Let me go on record here that it is unfortunate Americans – who, by and large, are decent people who normally wish nobody harm and like to mind their own business – must suffer the consequences of their grotesquely unpopular government. But nobody can pretend any longer not to know what is really going on; not with the plenitude of alternative news sites which cover what the mainstream media won’t touch, not with the admission at various times of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and – more recently – French Intelligence that Kiev is not fighting the Russian Army in Ukraine. The myth of “Russian Aggression” is just another hateful buzzword, like “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, formulated to pressure a gullible public’s go-along, simply because nobody wants to be seen as for it. There are some Russians in Ukraine, yes, and it would hardly be surprising to learn they were ex-soldiers considering they come from a country with a conscript military. But I would like to think that not a few Americans, upon learning the government of the country next door was butchering civilians by indiscriminately firing heavy weapons directly into populated areas, would show up with the modern equivalent of the squirrel gun to even the playing field. Such Russians as are in Eastern Ukraine are not there in an official capacity and have demonstrated no interest whatsoever in overthrowing the Ukrainian government. There is no excuse for not knowing these things – and, knowing them, how could anyone support their continuation?
Something like 78% of Russian companies on the MICEX outstripped their foreign rivals for growth; Severstal’s achievement is not a one-off. Meanwhile, import substitution and a search for new markets continues apace. Gazprom announces a blacklist of over 400 western companies from whom it will no longer purchase metal or engineering products unless it absolutely cannot find a domestic or non-western producer. Belarusian and Mordovian companies were eager to cooperate, contributing to a potential $2.5 Billion in lost orders for western companies.
On the agricultural front, U.S. food exports to Russia slumped, threatening a $1 Billion loss over the year’s ban, while Canadian pork producers squealed in dismay at a potential half-billion in losses, right on the heels of Canadian pork executives’ visit to their third-largest market to attempt to boost sales. The ban is only for a year, but kiss those markets gone, baby, gone, because by the time the ban lapses – if it is not renewed – countries like Argentina will have consolidated the former western share of the market provided they can keep up with business demand that saw beef exports alone from Argentina more than quadruple year over year, up 543%.
The auto market in Russia was a slaughterhouse, but American brands suffered a particularly gory bloodbath; nearly all vendors experienced losses – although Mercedes, BMW and Lexus all saw gains – but sales of Chevrolet fell 74% and Ford 78%, while sales of the GM-owned Opel brand plummeted a staggering 86% just in February alone, year over year. Nine of the ten top-selling models are locally produced.
But the Russian auto market is forecast to return to 2012 levels between this year and 2017. Careful marketing will net some companies, probably Asian, a powerful and dominant market share of the modest-income midsize market…but I doubt very much they will be American or British.
Despite the low oil prices and the sanctions and the provocations and the constant vilification in the western press, Russia just puts its head down, and keeps on keeping on, undeterred by the playground antics and clamoring for attention from its declared enemies. But when the dust of this settles, it is likely to remember who went out of their way to stitch it up – the United States, the UK, Canada and Australia. Probably, thanks to the disgraceful betrayals of Merkel, Germany as well to some degree. Others might be forgiven on the grounds that they were just dragged along by the pace of events and the demands of their allies.
I saw Bryan Adams perform the little tune that kicked off this post, in the new Metro Centre Arena in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He wasn’t a really big name then, the way he is now – he had one album out, “Cuts Like a Knife“, which is still one of his best – and he was the opening act for the headliners, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts; it was the first concert in the Metro Center. Halfway through the song, he let the band kind of percolate behind him as he injected a little story – probably made up – about the cheating girlfriend who had treated him like dirt and now wanted a second chance. He paused for a moment, and roared, “…and I said, FUCK…YOU!!!!” as the crowd screamed its approval.
I wonder who will be singing “take me back, won’t ya?” in a year or two on the geopolitical stage? I know who it won’t be. And the likely response.
The Kremlin Stooge 
Interesting article from Alexander Mercouris on the Gazprom/EU stand-off. Alexander believes – and I suspect he’s right – the EU are determined to kaibosh any attempt to involve Greece in the proposed Turkish pipeline that’s replacing South Stream.
” ”Going far beyond that, however, is the deep resentment of the EU and of the West as a whole at the refusal of the Russians to let Western oil and gas extraction companies operate inside Russia in the way they do in some other oil and gas producing countries.
Back in the 1990s, when the USSR broke up, the West saw in Russia an El Dorado of natural resources. The so-called “dash to gas” that took place then assumed limitless supplies of natural gas flowing to Europe from Russia, extracted there by Western companies.
That didn’t happen because of the determination of the Russian government to keep control for Russia of the country’s natural resources.
It is impossible to understand the furious Western response to the Khodorkovsky case without taking this factor into account. At the time of his arrest Khodorkovsky was cutting deals with Western investors that some in the West saw as offering hope of a large scale entry of Western companies into the Russian energy industry……
The EU Commission wrecked the preceding South Stream pipeline project by insisting that the EU’s Third Energy Package, which requires separation of ownership of production and distribution infrastructure, must retroactively apply to it. It did so in the expectation that South Stream was so important to Russia that Gazprom would submit to the Third Energy Package and agree to share ownership of South Stream with Western companies. The EU Commission undoubtedly saw this as a first step towards getting Western companies involved in the gas industry in Russia itself.
To the EU Commission’s astonishment and to the dismay of central and eastern Europe, where countries had been relying on South Stream to fill their energy needs, Russia instead responded by cancelling South Stream and contracting to build a pipeline to Turkey. In doing so, however, Russia left it open to the Europeans to decide whether or not they wanted to join up with this pipeline at some future date.
Several central and eastern European countries have said they want to do so and there have been reports circulating that Greece was looking to sign a pipeline deal with Gazprom in return for a $5 billion prepayment with which it could meet its current obligations to the IMF. There were even some reports that Greece might even sign such a deal today (22nd April 2015).
The rushed announcement today (22nd April 2015) of the anti-trust action against Gazprom seems to have been intended in part to avert that possibility. Not only would such a deal have represented a revolt by Greece against the EU’s anti-Gazprom energy policy. More alarming still, it would mean that Greece, with which the EU is engaged in difficult negotiations over its bailout, would obtain a source of funding from outside the EU, which would strengthen its position in the bailout negotiations. That is a nightmare the EU leadership wants to prevent at all costs.
http://russia-insider.com/en/eu-versus-gazprom-battle-intensifies-gazprom-looks-set-cut-deal-greece/5968
thanks fern. i agree – good insights either way..
“But turning off the gas taps, to punish the EU, seems unlikely. Russia is losing market share in Europe already, and cannot afford to annoy its customers or endanger its $40 billion export revenues.”
Brussels must be San Francisco Giants fans – they sure are slow learners. This smug, self-aggrandizing line of provocation is just the way they talked right up to the cancellation of South Stream, which was something else they figured Putin would never do. Now they are putting all their money on Margrethe, the “steely Dane”, and her ability to force Russia to its knees. She has assumed the mantle of spoiler formerly worn by Bulgaria, who will be delighted to see it pass to someone else, since it made them walk around feeling like their buttocks were three rimes their normal size and had “kick me” emblazoned on them.
Of course, this is The Economist, a title so dishonest they would have been as well off to call it The Gumdrop, since it knows as much about candymaking as it does about economics. Its Russia coverage is uniformly the most smirking, self-congratulatory crap available. Here’s the summary of the EU’s bold new post-South-Stream strategy – more interconnectors (so they can more easily move around the supply of cheap gas that will materialize from the mouth of a mermaid or the arse of a unicorn, nobody quite knows) and the same old wistful glances at Azerbaijan. The Economist acknowledges that Croatia’s Krk Island LNG terminal, if it actually completes in 2019, will only bring in 4 – 6bcm…but showing the Russkies that Europe is not dependent on them is more important than having gas. Jesus wept.
Brussels cannot do simple math. A graphic included in the just-as-obtuse coverage from Quartz illustrates the terrible risk for some EU states of daring Russia to shut off the gas; coincidentally, some are among the most loudly Russophobic. Finland, Bulgaria and the yappy Baltic States all rely on Russia for 100% of their gas imports, with the exception of Lithuania, which is almost out from under Gazprom’s crushing jackboot at a paltry 97.63%. If Russia did the plainly unexpected, and said, very well; if you don’t want our gas, we’ll take our business elsewhere, what would Brussels do? Its grasshopper-and-ant mentality is embarrassingly evident in the statement “Worries about dependence on Russian gas have in any case diminished. Not only is the winter over but Europe is generally in better shape to withstand a Russian tantrum. It has improved storage, and built north-south gas links, so that a cut in shipments across, say, Ukraine, can be made up with other supplies.”
Winter is over. It will probably not even come next year. If it does, we have lots of gas in storage – so much that we will be able to supply the aforementioned 100% dependent nations with 100% of their gas supplies, and by the time we run down our storage, America will have begun LNG exports. By sea, under conditions whereby it will have to have not less than 18 fully-loaded LNG tankers at sea round the clock in order to supply Europe. A bit less than that if it only wants to replace Russia’s supplies – say, 7 tankers. At sea, round the clock, to ensure as soon as one discharges its load, the next one comes alongside to start pumping, because Europe could empty a fully-loaded LNG tanker – meaning consumed, not pumped into storage – in less than a day. So 7 tankers on their way from the USA’s only functioning LNG terminal, bobbing across the sea on their 18-day passage at 9 knots headway. So you’re going to want another line of empty tankers on their way home. These can travel a little faster because they are lighter, so assuming good weather let’s say 5 tankers. That’s 12 at sea non-stop, and one LNG terminal. LNG terminals are expensive to build and the approval is hard to get past the environmentalists. So my response to the assertion that “This year America will start LNG exports, creating yet more supply options” will be brief – ha, ha.
It is just not credible that the EU states allow such dolts to lead them. Is this crowd really the brightest the EU has to offer? Really? What the hell is going on over there, that you have to raid the Psych Ward for leadership? If the EU manages to insult Gazprom enough to provoke a gas shutdown, there is nothing short of a spontaneous fusion of prayer and a miracle that would provide Europe with gas next winter. Where in hell would they get it? From Norway, whose production has already passed its peak? From the USA, whose shale gas production has nosedived, with operating rig numbers sinking steadily, owing to the gas glut and low prices as Washington tries futilely to strangle Russia’s economy? From Azerbaijan in 20-gallon canisters, by camel? There’s no pipeline, and might as well wish that you could burn dandelions for heat as wish a pipeline could be completed in that time. It is not possible, spelt n o t p o s s i b l e.
Europeans should be worried that their leaders and spokesmen are getting a reputation for talking out of their arseholes in argy-bargy fashion while it is possible for them to delude themselves that things are going their way, and then squealing to be rescued like lost girl scouts when the reality everyone else has already grasped sinks in. Sack these people, before they ruin you. I’m not even kidding here.
great post and response mark! you could sell this as a short article to an open minded magazine (online or otherwise), but it won’t be the economist!
Thanks, James!! You’re very kind. I can’t sell anything, though; it would be unethical.
Well I re-read the earlier article and it is clearly true maths is NOT your strongest point.
“…… So 7 tankers on their way from the USA’s only functioning LNG terminal, bobbing across the sea on their 18-day passage at 9 knots headway. So you’re going to want another line of empty tankers on their way home. These can travel a little faster because they are lighter, so assuming good weather let’s say 5 tankers. That’s 12 at sea non-stop, and one LNG terminal…..,?
Ahem… if you send 7 tankers but only 5 go back how will you send 7 next time?????
You need at least one tanker arriving every second day. Tanker leaves on Day One, arrives Day 18, unloads, returns Day 19 but takes say just 14 days is Day 33 to arrive home and Day 34 to be filled up.. You need enough other tankers to cover that period ; every second day is 34/2 is 17 tankers.
You’d use the quieter (summer) months to fill up storage, so they could take out and use more in winter. Storage. Storage. Do they have any? The 135,000 cm ship capacity comes to about 80,000 tonnes and your average road tanker fits 20, so that’s 4000 road tanker loads per shipload. You’re delivering every 2 days so this has to all go out before the next load arrives. If you are really lucky with distances you can get away with owning just 2000 road tankers.
This gas does not go to your house. It goes to very many further storage terminals at the points where your domestic retail gas pipes start. Oooops, how many such terminals do they have in Europe? all they have now are switching stations for the nice Russki stuff.
Or you can just put a bulk pipe from the shipping terminal, and feed that into your bulk and retail gas piping system. So why not just build the damn bulk pipe and put nice clean cheap NATURAL GAS into it?
I mean they just can’t get out of having to build PIPES. The only gas that can be delivered without tankers or pipes is AIR. Maybe they could just work out some way of burning that?
I figured that the returning 5 would be able to travel sufficiently faster that they would be back in the USA in something quicker than 18 days, load up and rejoin the parade on the slower leg. But I certainly have no problem agreeing math is not my strong suit and I’ve always hated it. The underlying point is that the USA has neither the tankers to do it nor the LNG facilities to provide it. You would need a tanker unloading every day, but only if it was supplying everything Europe used – in those circumstances, Europe would empty a tanker in less than a day. And the situation – without Russian gas – would start to trend that way; Norway is past peak already, and North Sea oil and gas are in decline. The stupid Southern Gas Corridor will not supply anything close to Europe’s needs. I take some comfort from knowing Europe’s leaders are stupider than I am.
The EU is making an example out of Greece because Greece could create a precedent which other small EU members like Austria and Hungary which also stood to benefit from South Stream as transit and end-points would follow to obtain funding to cover their debts. The trickle that these countries would start would become a deluge that threatens the EU’s continued existence and expose it as a de facto empire.
‘Lenin’s body improves with age’: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lenin-s-body-improves-with-age1/
I wish mine did as well, sigh …
(Sorry, couldn’t resist!)
I reckon most of what is displayed as Lenin’s mummified body does not consist of the original tissue.
Every year a debate crops up about what to do with Vovochka’s remains. I say bury him and have done with it. It’s what he wanted, anyway: he wanted to be buried next to his mum.
Leave the mausoleum though: it’s of architectural merit, I think.
There was a businessman here a few years ago who was proposing moving Lenin to his mother’s grave and putting Michael Jackson’s embalmed body where Lenin’s was. This businessman reckoned that Whacko Jacko’s stiff would pack them in and be a great magnet for the Moscow tourist industry.
They could put in a few others in there with Jackson, as there’s quite a few popular entertainers now who are ready for curling up their toes: Mick Jagger, for example, who already looks like he died several years ago, and Paul McCartney, Madonna and Bob Dylan to name but a few.
Mick Jagger would be a fitting entry since he’s already doing such a good job of self-mummification / self-preservation / self-justification that he makes Keith Richards look young. Ditto for Madonna and Paul McCartney. In Dylan’s place I’d nominate Gene Simmons and Kiss.
As long as we are picking people who are technically alive, I pick Lady Ashton, Carl Bildt and Edward Lucas. But I’m OK with dead, too.
Ukraine truce: Shelling ‘an everyday occurrence’ near Mariupol
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32432566
i detect unease in Burridge’s report, notice how he keeps referring to the armed men and women he is with as “Ukrainian army”, even though you can see clearly from their badges on their inconsistent camouflage that they are members of volunteer battalions such as Donbas and Pravy Sektor.
Both ‘Donbass’ and Right Sector’s Ukrainian Volunteer Corps are part of the army now. It’s a good thing – the Ukrainian army can’t duck responsibility for what they do anymore.
I beg to differ – recent reports say they are still being paid out of civilian donations. That makes them still a private militia until they are formally incorporated into the army, under military command and paid by the state. This is just a fig leaf and they are still the same old Nazi outfit with their own officers and foreign mercenaries.
It’s not that I expect the army will reign them in, God knows Ukraine’s ‘professional’ soldiers have enough to answer for themselves. But even that legal fig leaf makes them the army’s responsibility – they won’t be able to run any variant of the ‘clean wehrmacht’ myth once this is over by blaming any abuses upon troops not part of the regular forces.
No, that much is true. But they are still operating outside the national constitution.
Just like the rest of the government.
Does he not notice the building they are hiding in is a Primary School? Where’s all the howling about the army using infrastructure as staging points and thereby inviting enemy fire upon it, like the blubbering the western press does when they’re blaming the rebels for destroying their own homes by “firing artillery from next to an apartment building”? These guys are hiding out in a kiddie school – see the large, colourful alphabet painted on the wall?
very true mark, but aside from not discussing that, he gets to sing the constant mantra of every western reporter on the scene, passed on 2nd hand of course “Ukraine accuses Russia of arming the rebels and sending Russian troops over the border – a claim Moscow denies”… geez, where would the bbc readers be without hearing that for the zillionth time?? is there attention span so short bbc fears they might lose the plot line??? are they that thick? i am reminded of jethro tulls album from the 70s – ”thick as a brick”..the ordinary people might not be but the reporter and the bbc surely are..
That was a great concept album; I loved Jethro Tull. I was surprised to realize just how big they were in those days, their following was huge.
yes – very popular at the time and this particular album might have been their high mark in terms of popularity..
“Aqualung” was the high point for me, but “Thick as a Brick” was an intriguing concept at the time in that there is only one song on the album, and it garnered a lot of attention because of that. I found the two to be equals musically, although I preferred “Aqualung”.
Christian values, European identity, Christian peace ….blah, blah,blah …freedom, democratic country …blah, blah, blah…
Hang the bastard if he likes the idea of sacrifice so much!
Hang him on the Maidan so that he can enjoy being a sacrificial lamb as was his doctrinal mentor, Christ the man and at the same time god.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis pecata mundi, miserere nobis!
Russian aggression, Russian aggression, Russian misinformation….
All this Holy Joe’s waffle implies that the values that he speaks of do not apply to those Eastern subhumans, those godless Moskali.
A typical charlatan in a priest’s garb!
All this aggression he talks about… Does he mean that the Eastern provinces attacked Banderastan, that marauding gunmen came from Donetsk and starting toting their guns in Lvov and Kiev when a referendum was being held, that the Russian army has bombarded West Ukraine cities – constantly?
“The Holy Father himself is our friend, is with us, he understand [sic] that we are victims and in that situation, of course, god is always with those who suffer and when god is with us obviously the Holy Father feel [sic] himself being with us as well.”
Victims?
I see no victims!
I only see Moskali.
Sovoks, Katsaps and Moskalis are neither Christian or human according to Uniate doctrine.
The dastardly Moskalis ransacked Kiev in 1169!
The new President of the Ukraine, Petr Alekseevich Poroshenko, has announced that he will rebuild the country’s economy, which had been destroyed by Yanukovich, whose Minister of Economic Development was Petr Alekseevich Poroshenko
https://twitter.com/RussiaInsider/status/591391836721127425
Here is an interesting piece about the banking relationship between 2 world pariahs, Southern Ossetia and Donetsk Peoples Republic (DPR).
Alexander Zakharchenko has announced that DPR will build its own banking system, with help from South Ossetia. This is necessary because Ukraine is attempting to starve Donetsk of banking and credit services.
However, due to the innate cunning of Russians, the Ukrainian plan has been thwarted.
Here is how it works:
South Ossetia has officially “recognized” DPR.
Russian Federation has officially recognized South Ossetia as an independent nation (after 2008).
Due to this transitive property of recognition, Russia will be able to recognize as legal, electronic banking transactions from DPR, provided these transactions pass through the National Bank of South Ossetia. South Ossetia will become the financial hub for all electronic transactions between Russia and Donetsk.
The DPR Ministry of Finances has only to open a bank account in the Ossetian National Bank, and can use this account to pay for purchases necessary to the state budget.
Up until now, DPR has relied on “humanitarian aid” and charity from Russia.
But this bank will allow them to set up a more formal method of payment. The needs of Donetsk are immense: they need not only food, but also construction materials, electricity, etc., everything needed to restore, once the war is over. And there is an immediate need at this very moment, for fertilizer and other agricultural equipment.
Article goes on to say, that the Donetsk banking system was never destroyed, has remained intact; was only cut off from Ukraine. All the staff are still in place: the specialists, the computer programmers, etc. All they have to do is switch over to the Ossetian bank.
The plan in fact goes beyond just the needs of Donbass. The plan is to turn South Ossetia into a banking hub regardless. This will assist Russia to get around Western sanctions. It will legalize transactions with DPR to, say, buy their coal for cash.
In turn, South Ossetia will benefit from becoming a banking center; up until now they haven’t really had that much going for them. In conclusion, Donetsk will help them, as much as they help Donetsk. It’s a win-win type of scheme.
thanks yalensis.. that is indeed very interesting.. i suspect kiev under the usa/cia/nato’s guidance, are hoping for some form of slavery to ensue with the constant war on eastern ukraine,combined with cutting them off financially.. funny how the usa was supposed to be opposed to slavery at one time, but are helping kiev to reenact a modern version by supporting the military and financial onslaught.. i know i am not the only one who views it this way..
I can’t find the details right now but… DPR said a few months ago they are organising a world conference of unrecgnised nations. Sort of setting up their own United Non-nations.
These guys think big. They’re going to be ok.