CNN – “A complete shutdown would be ‘catastrophic'”

The US are busy trying to steal the Ukraine from the Russian sphere of influence, so they can place missiles in Ukraine, 500 km from Moscow with the ultimate goal to organize a regime change in Russia. Russia, obviously, doesn’t fancy this too much and threatens to invade Ukraine to prevent this scenario. The greatest US groupie in Germany is the woke London-“educated”, intellectual lightweight, serial plagiarist, CV-faker and insufferable dilettante Annalena Baerbock, de facto heading the war party in Germany. This idiot thinks it is a good idea to “threaten” Russia with closing down North Stream 2, on orders of her principals in the US…

Baerbock is a Soros drone and water carrier for the US global empire annex envisioned world state, run from the Washington-New York-London axis by billionaire oligarchs, One World Without Borders, with everything mixed and all identities wiped-out, and the holocaust as the new world religion, with Russia next on the target list and China after that, a dangerous pipe-dream. Communism via the American backdoor.

This would amount to starting a hunger strike against an adversary, who would say: “die already”.

Now even the lads at CNN begin to fathom the enormous implications and stupidity of their geopolitical designs, namely that without Russian fossil fuel, everything will come to a shrieking halt in Europe and especially Germany. What these US Beltway Clouseau’s overlook is that reality is even worse than that, namely that president Putin merely has to pick up the phone and have a chat with his pals in Tehran, who can direct their Houthi chums in Yemen, overlooking the entrance to the Red Sea and Suez Canal, that the moment is there to fire 1-2 missiles against oil tankers, depriving Europe from ALL fossil fuel. Indefinitely. This could very well create revolutionary conditions in Germany. No, the Berlin Wall can’t be brought down a second time, but the der Spiegel tower in Hamburg can, the most visible icon of US imperial power in Germany.

Fortunately, the government senior party SPD has much more maturity and there is a decades-old pro-Russian undercurrent in that party. Remember the three post-war SPD chancellors, like Brandt and his Ostpolitik, Schmidt and his Erdgasroehrengeschaeft and most of all Gerhard Schroeder, who frustrated the US (and his Green Khmer foreign minister Joshka Fisher) by refusing to participate in the slaughter in Iraq, together with Putin and Chirac, and who is now a Gazprom executive. But there are many more saner heads in the SPD:

[focus.de] – “The US are not a friend of Europe”, Hamburg’s former mayor, Klaus von Dohnanyi, is calling for Europeans to adopt a more independent policy towards Russia
[spiegel.de] – Klingbeil warnt vor Krieg »mitten in Europa«

So much so that the US imperial bullhorn der Spiegel is alarmed:

[spiegel.de] – “The SPD has a Russia -Problem”

The SPD doesn’t have a Russia problem, Germany has a der Spiegel problem.

[cnn.com] – Europe could live with less Russian gas. A complete shutdown would be ‘catastrophic’
[focus.de] – Geht es an den Geldbeutel der Bürger, wird Deutschland bei Putin ganz schnell weich
[focus.de] – Putin drosselt: Wenn es kalt wird, bekommen wir ohne russisches Gas ein Problem
[spiegel.de] – Gerhard Schröder wirft Ukraine »Säbelrasseln« vor
[amazon.de] – Das Ende des amerikanischen Zeitalters: Deutschland und die neue Weltordnung

Despite all this, Ukraine is merely a side-show in a global drama, that will eventually be decided in the South China Sea. The global change of the guard is coming and China will replace the US as the next #1:

And that moment could come much faster than many anticipate, like shortly after the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, when China could indirectly come to the aid of beleaguered Russia and finally makes its move against Taiwan, forcing the US to divide its attention on two fronts.

[Amazon]

New German Government Renewable Energy Targets

[source]

The next German coalition government intends to increase its offshore wind targets:

2030 – 30 GW (up from 20 GW)
2035 – 40 GW (new target)
2045 – 70 GW (new target)

The old 2040 target was 30 GW.

Other energy-related measures:

– Exit coal in 2030
– 200 GW solar on roofs and solar parks (about 20 GW continuously)
– 2% German lands reserved for wind energy
– Renewable energy transition gets priority over nature conservation

The formation of the new government succeeded in a remarkable short time, without leaking information or power game-playing. Bodes well for the future. Geopolitically correct, designated chancellor Scholz announced he will first visit Paris (as in: not Washington).

[offshorewind.biz] – Germany’s ‘Traffic Light’ Coalition Raises Offshore Wind Targets, Looks Beyond 2040
[tagesspiegel.de] – Complete coalition treaty (178p)
[tagesschau.de] – Wie die Ampel die Wirtschaft umkrempelt

P.S.: the only negative point (for me) is Annalena Baerbock as foreign minister, which could lead to trouble with Nord Stream 2 and relations with Russia. Let’s hope that the SPD and FDP reign her in a little in this respect. In order to get rid of fossil fuel, we paradoxically will need lots of fossil fuel for 2-3 more decades to come. And most will come from Russia. The fear is that the US and UK could use the German Greens to provoke conflict with Russia and sabotage Nord Stream 2. Although the German Greens are generally associated with tree hugging and pacifism, they are de facto the German war party in that they support the globalist aims of the Anglos (one world without borders, with everything mixed, in the pockets of a few US oligarchs), whatever the cost. They already did that during the Iraq war, where another Green foreign minister, that nice mr. Joshka Fisher, was all too willing to let Germany participate in the slaughter in Iraq. It was chancellor Schroeder who prevented that from happening, and instead he organized resistance against US aims and together with French president Chirac and Russian president Putin gave the finger to the Americans and their lies and let the US walk into that wasp nest all by itself, with known outcome. America will never recover from its failed warmongering in the Middle East (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon), and the world will be a better place for it. Relations between Schroeder and the morbid obese warmonger and American lackey Fisher never recovered from that event. Gerhard Schroeder continues to plead for better relations with Russia and Armin Laschet would have continued that line. Unfortunately, he didn’t become chancellor. Let’s hope Europe survives Baerbock until the moment arrives where China will finally kick the US out of East-Asia and terminate the American Era once and for all, so the EU can team up with Russia and balance China within Eurasia.

Siemens Awarded 2.6 GW US Offshore Wind Contract

More fine European industrial imperialism underway, as if 1776 [*] never happened. The Virginia OWF will harbor up to 180 Siemens Gamesa’s SG 14-222 offshore wind turbines. Other European parties involved: Orsted and Jan de Nul. This news comes as earlier this month, the Europeans began to wet their appetite with the first serious 806 MW US OWF.

It’s the least Europeans can do after having been serviced for decades with Anglo-American oil and gas.

/snicker

[offshorewind.biz] – Siemens Energy Gear for Largest US Offshore Wind Farm
[wikipedia.org] – Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind

[source] First Dutch Esso petrol station from 1953. It once stood along the most i important Dutch highway A2, but has been carefully moved to Toyota-importer Louwman & Parqui in Raamsdonkveer as industrial heritage.

[*]

The US founding father Jefferson has been cancelled by a woke NYC mob. Jefferson’s crime: employing and housing black people. It is the insanity of applying 21st century moral norms to a situation 250 years ago. It is as if The Netherlands would cancel William the Silent, France Napoleon, Germany Bismarck, Russia Peter the Great or England (stripped of Scotland and Ulster) King Arthur. In the US, a neo-bolshevik revolution is brewing. The potential for major geopolitical upward mobility for Europe, Russia, China and England, at the cost of a balkanizing North-America/Anglosphere, are immense. And Brexit is a great help too. What happened to the USSR in 1991, falling apart in 15 pieces, will likely happen to North-America. At some point, the Yanks will have enough and hit back. Now guess who Europe and Russia are going to support? We Europeans should never forget that we colonized North-America much longer (1492-1783) than they colonized us (1945-202x). Won’t be long until Europe, Russia and China will withdraw from NYC as the former diplomatic capital of the world and set up shop in the middle of Eurasia, equidistant from Brussels, Beijing, Tokyo, New Delhi, Istanbul. Astana/Kazakhstan comes to mind.

[parisberlinmoscow] – What Comes After the Three Anglo Empires?

Energy is the defining industrial category, strongly linked to geopolitical prominence. The Dutch empire of the 17th century is unthinkable without its iconic windmills (saw mills leading to 3 times as many ships as the rest of the world combined). The British Empire of the 19th century was based on coal & steam (engines, trains, steam ships). The American Empire of the 20th century, that is oil & gas (cars, trucks, ships, planes, tanks, missiles). Now renewable energy is next. The one who is dominant in that field, will dominate geopolitically. Our bet is on Europe, that has the most advanced and far-reaching renewable energy strategy, with China behind, because the latter can’t resist the temptation to quickly expand with legacy energy sources.

Real Threat of European Gas Shortages

“…those feelgood Vattenfall Swedish-feminized adds about “fossil free within one generation”, with high IKEA/Greta Thunberg/Pippi Långstrump-calibre”

[cnn.com] – Europe was already facing a winter gas crisis. The risks just got even bigger

The German Bundesnetzagentur has decided to suspend the certification process of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline on a bureaucratic technicality, thereby seriously risking gas shortages in Europe, later this winter. They still can’t accept that Russia holds the energy cards, not the self-styled ‘morally superior’ West, that is about to lose the geopolitical wrestling with Eurasia, leaving a trail of wrecked countries after sneaky western organized regime changes succeeded/failed (Germany-1939, Vietnam-1955, Russia-1991, Afghanistan-2001, Iraq-2003, Libya-2011, Syria-2011, Ukraine-2013, Belarus-2020), all motivated by a US deep state (since 1933) and their European vassals (since 1945) desire to conquer the entire world and park it into a single borderless power structure (Open Society Program), run by Anglo oligarchs, with triple capitals Washington-New York-London and all its globalists institutions UN-SC-WHO-WTO-IMF-WB-UNICEF-WEF-Wallstreet-FED-$-Pentagon-CIA-Hollywood-CNN-NYT-WP-Time-BBC.

However, two Anglo centuries (British Empire 1815-1945, US Empire 1945-202x) are about to come to an end. All the signs are that Anglosphere/Five Eyes is losing the geopolitical competition and will be forced to step down from planetary hegemony. The fact that the US is deeply polarized will only hasten its demise, with the distinct possibility that the US will fall apart in a Yugoslav-style process of dismemberment and secession.

Good riddance to the US empire and its British water carrier. Tighten the energy thumbscrews, Vlad! All it takes is a good trade war EU-UK over the Northern Ireland Protocol and a Chinese/North-Korean attack in East-Asia to humiliate AUKUS, and we in continental Europe can dump the Anglos for good. Europe, that ruled the world between 1492-1939, as a set of competing mid-sized nations, is too good to be anybody’s colony. As a united political entity Paris-Berlin-Moscow (EU + Russia/Ukraine/Belarus) we can organize a comeback and still be the first address on this planet.

[source] Orwell’s world vision from his dystopian novel “1984”, published in 1948. Samuel Huntington and his “Clash of Cvilizations” would have approved, more or less. Euro-Siberia or “Christian State” (orange), China or “Confucian State” (green), Anglosphere or “Judaic State” (pink) and finally the Disputed Territories or “Islamic State” (yellow). Orwell only had Turkey wrong. Rather than being a Kemalite European appendix, Turkey is the most prominent candidate to lead global Islam. Erdogan at least is willing.

Never waste a good crisis. A few weeks of the entire European population sitting in the cold, courtesy the Bundesnetzagentur, would achieve more than all those feelgood Vattenfall Swedish-feminized adds about “fossil free within one generation”, with high IKEA/Greta Thunberg/Pippi Långstrump-calibre. A good space heating crisis could cause moving the public attention away from abstract, difficult-to-verify, long-term climate deliberations, towards a far more pressing, direct in-your-face fossil fuel SHORTAGES problem. Why worry about emissions, if there is nothing left to burn?

Europe should be prepared to take it on the chin. Covid-19 and gas shortages could become a blessing in disguise, because they could create the conditions for Europe to “tunnel” to the other side of the energy divide fast and first, to borrow an idea from quantum-mechanics. Energy shortages could break the back of the NIMBYs, all those alleged renewable energy proponents, who refuse a wind-turbine and high-voltage lines in their backyard, because it is supposedly bad for the net worth of their real estate. The rule should be that small regions are largely responsible for their own energy needs. No wind energy on your turf? Fine, sit in the dark and cold then.

Proposed measures for a fast transition:

• The renewable energy transition is inevitable, hence make a global competition out of it, with Europe very well-placed to actually win that competition. Because of all great powers, the EU is the most serious about its renewable energy strategy.
• Cancel long-distance mass tourism for energy and virological reasons. Don’t waste your money on that trip to Bali, finally buy those solar panels or heat pump instead.
• Tell Airbus to start the transition towards hydrogen fuel now.
• Compensate every business air-mile for 100% with atmospheric CO2-extraction (vegetation), regardless of the cost.
• Make the home office the new normal, or rather work from a multi-tenant building at walking distance from your home. All you need is a bureau, computer, monitor, internet connection and a coffee machine.
• Allow direct exploitation of autonomous driving: no driver on highways or remote virtual driver in the city, all aimed at encouraging dumping private car ownership.
• Make it illegal as soon as realistically possible to sell or buy an ICE car.
• Accept the China-proposed New Silk Road as the new economic backbone of the planet.
• No local renewable energy generation means no energy.
• Regional financial compensation for people living near renewable energy generation facilities.

The intent of this exercise is not (just) tree-hugging, but also a well-considered European hard-power geopolitical-industrial power-grab, aiming at industrial domination of core industries: renewable energy generation and storage, e-transport (cars, trains, ships, planes), space-heating, energy conservation, heat pumps, hydrogen, thermal isolation, etc., etc.

[source] The Grasshopper building in Amsterdam, with the maxim (in old-Dutch spelling): “De cost gaet voor de baet uyt”, meaning: “you need to invest before you can expect returns”. That’s a message Europeans should take to heart regarding the renewable energy transition that will ensure them a return to lost geopolitical prominence.

Peak Oil 2020?

[ourworldindata.org] – Oil production by region

Based on this graph, we see that global oil production peaked in 2020, in the wake of the pandemic, where global lockdowns decreased demand for oil, due to home office and reduced flying. Or did it peak even before January 1, 2020, difficult to tell from this graph.

It remains to be seen if the world oil production can top that 2020 peak ever again, after the pandemic is over, IF the pandemic will finally evaporate. For the moment that is clearly not the case, far from it.

Oil production will likely remain on a plateau for some time to come, until China (and probably in sync, North-Korea) makes its inevitable move against Taiwan, and we all will be living in a different world from then on, with a strong possibility of collapsing oil supply lines world-wide, due to hostilities, (“WW3”), that could take out much of the Middle East supply, due to US blockade of the Gulf, halting shipments to China.

Sky News Australia is in panic mode for quite some time now about the immanent Chinese threat, that could very well mean the end of Anglo-Australia, with Mao’s “lonely continent” absorbed in a new Chinese Empire in East Asia. Australia could become to an overpopulated China what North-America historically was for Europe: a convenient huge, empty land mass to dump your under classes upon.

The real historic peak oil will not come from Covid-19, the Paris Accords or depleting oil sources, but from a major disruption of oil supply lines at the immanent End of the American Era and a change in geopolitical order, where China will replace America as the next #1.

[source] Peak oil production predictably had a dampening effect on global emissions, not everything is bad about the pandemic. However, a (temporary) rebound of production + emissions is in sight.

17th Century Dutch Wind Power

You can’t be a great power if you have no functioning efficient energy base. In the 20th century that #1 power was the United States and its oil-based economy. In the 19th century that #1 power was Britain and its coal and steam-engine. In the 17th century the #1 power was the Netherlands and its windmill-based economy. Thousands of windmills were used to pump water away to claim new land and sawmills produced the planks with which the Dutch could build a fleet of 30,000 ships, three times more than the rest of the world combined, used to set up a global empire and en passant to keep the English away.

The lesson for the 21st century is that again that political unit will be the geopolitical “top dog” who embraces a new energy base first. That energy base can only be a renewable energy base, born out of the necessity to combat fossil fuel depletion and climate damage. A united Europe is well-placed to be that political unit and the only one with a coherent renewable energy policy (“completely fossil free by 2050”), but China is taking renewable energy serious as well. And although Washington has no real renewable energy policy worth mentioning, on a state level, like Texas and California, successful initiatives do exist. It is too early for anyone to claim victory.

[wikipedia.org] – Energy policy of the European Union

The #1 reserve currency is a good indicator of geopolitical preeminence.

America: Australia’s Dangerous Ally

Map from 1818 of ‘New Holland‘ as it was known at the time, even to the British, until at least 1824. Nobody was really that much interested in this vast empty continent, witnessed by the fact that the British deemed it just good enough to make a penal colony out of it. Australia (7.7 m km2) is comparable in size to China (9.5 m km2), but inhabited by merely 23 million people (China 1300 million), facts that likely did not escape the attention of Chinese geostrategists.

John Malcolm Fraser (84) is one of the most senior people Australia can come up with. This distinguished gentleman has just published a long ground-breaking article, in which he advises Australia to distance itself from the United States.

Wikipedia:

Malcolm Fraser (born 21 May 1930) is a former Australian Liberal Party politician who was the 22nd Prime Minister of Australia. He came to power in 1975 through the dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government, in which he played a key role. After three election victories, he was defeated by Bob Hawke in the 1983 election and ended his career alienated from his own party.

John Malcolm Fraser (1956)

Wikipedia: “Fraser… was educated at Glamorgan and Melbourne Grammar School, before completing a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1952. At Oxford, Fraser was a classmate and friend of future Canadian cabinet minister and Prime Minister John Turner.” Editor: Fraser (and Turner) were the Australian resp. Canadian servants of the British empire, before Australia and Canada morphed into staunch satellites of the US empire, Anglosphere, the embryonic NWO, the Judaic State or whatever you want to call it.

A few quotes from Fraser’s article:

IT IS time for Australia to end its strategic dependence on the United States. The relationship with America, which has long been regarded as beneficial, has now become dangerous to Australia’s future. We have effectively ceded to America the ability to decide when Australia goes to war…

The idea of American exceptionalism is contrary to Australia’s sense of egalitarianism…

… at the moment, because of U.S. military installations in Australia, if America goes to war in the Pacific, it will take us to war as well—without an independent decision by Australia. Finally, under current circumstances, in any major contest in the Pacific, our relationship with America would make us a strategic target for America’s enemies…

The idea of American exceptionalism, which has always been present in the United States, has gone far beyond all comprehension in the years of America’s absolute supremacy…

Our task is not to embrace America, but to preserve ourselves from its reckless overreach…

Wow, what a candid admission, typical made by very senior politicians, with one leg in the grave. The sort of admission secret service expert and former Italian president Francesco Cossiga made when he said in 2007 in the largest Italian newspaper that 9/11 had been carried out by the Mossad and CIA, when he was 79 and was suffering from terminal cancer. Or US congressman Paul Findley, who in 2007 at the age of 86, claimed that the US was basically an Israeli colony. Courageous people are few, but do exist.

The article is a long read. But the essence is that Fraser accuses the US to be not interested in world peace and as such is a threat to all others. Fraser hints that the West is at least as guilty for the Ukrainian mess as is Russia and blames NATO of breaking its promise to Russia not to expand eastwards. Fraser says that basically Russia had no choice but to merge with Crimea, because of the Russian military facilities there. But Fraser is a little naive if he thinks that the current mess in Ukraine is the result of ‘failure of US diplomacy’, instead of what it really is: a naked, raw US power grab.

Fraser does not believe in a western defeat of the Islamic State nor that the West has any chance of long term success in Afghanistan. Furthermore, Fraser is afraid that an assertive nationalist and militarist Japan, possibly armed with long-range nuclear weapons in the near future, could become a catalyst for war between the US and China, now that the US has sided with Japan in the Chinese-Japanese dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.

Fraser concludes that since the US could not win the conflict with Vietnam, it almost certainly can’t win a military conflict with China. And since Australia is allied to the US, Australia would become the defeated ally of a defeated superpower, without any friends in the region. In 1991, Australia was not as tightly integrated with the US as it is now, a development that Fraser deplores and was supported by both major Australian political parties.

Malcolm Fraser today, sadder and wiser, does not believe in a second American Century and fears for a Chinese future of Australia.

Editor: as always, you need to read between the lines of what this Australian old political fox is saying. Fraser is clearly afraid of China. He does not believe in a second American Century. He fears that the United States will likely loose a military confrontation with China, if push comes to shove. And that by implication, the Australian Lebensraum automatically would become a tasty prey for the victorious Chinese superpower. And that Euro-Siberia, if that were to happen, won’t lift a finger to protect Australia (he is correct, they won’t).

Australia’s cards are very weak. Fraser admits that Australia has no friends, apart from the United States and yet pleads for Australia to distance itself from the only friend Australia has. And Euro-Siberia will be relieved to see Australia as a safety valve for Chinese expansionism, if any. Better Australia than Siberia, you hear them think.

[nationalinterest.org] – America: Australia’s Dangerous Ally

Moscow Confirms “Turkish Stream”

[source]

Yesterday we expressed our fear that Europe could have missed the boat with South Stream and indeed, Gazprom Deputy Chief Executive Officer Alexander Medvedev confirmed that South Stream is history and that instead “the Turkish Stream” is going to be build, even if the EU showed signs of being prepared to make a U-turn. And we believe Russia is credible. The European loss of face is enormous.

Putin-Russia has been courting Europe for full fourteen years, but under the current circumstances had no other choice than to quit. The nagging of the Euro-dwarfs Juncker, Hollande and Merkel simply became too much. As late as June Putin openly advocated a confederation with Europe, but was snubbed. We cannot begin to describe the depth of our rage.

China, Turkey and the US can’t believe their luck.

Satanic Washington got what it wanted, hook, line and sinker: destroy European-Russian relations, that got too cosy to the taste of the US. The neocons organized a Pinochet style CIA coup in Kiev, handpicked a satrap government and forced Putin to exercise damage limitation, by preventing NATO from taking Sevastopol, as well as wannabee operetta Nazi’s genociding Russians in Donbass (nota bene under Kolomoysky Zionist control, you really have to despair at the quality of what passes as Nazi’s these days). And they likely had a hand in co-organizing the downing of the MH17, the flying Lusitania. And from then on they could demonize Putin to their hearts content, dragging the Euro fools with them, completely against their own interest. Washington must be roaring with laughter, f*ck the EU!

China, because Russia has been successfully driven into their arms for a long time to come. Huge Russian infrastructure projects, like high-speed railway lines, will go to Chinese firms, not European ones. Additionally China is jubilant that with this move, Turkey is likely bought into the SCO-alliance, next to existing SCO-member Iran. And since Turkey and Iran will take over the entire Middle East in the coming decade, at the cost of Saudi-Arabia and the West, this means that the entire Middle East, with all its fossil fuel resources will then be under control of the Beijing-Moscow axis.

German Bundeswehr strategic assessment: more than 70% of fossil fuel reserves are situated in the “strategic ellipse” and Europe is now completely left out, because these Euro-idiots let themselves being maneuvered into black hole Ukraine on orders of the satanic Washington neocohns, destroying the relationship with Russia in the process, carefully build up over decades.

Turkey is jubilant as well. Out of the blue and completely unnecessary, Turkey got control over a large chunk of future fossil fuel supply from the Middle East and Russia to Europe and acquired corresponding leverage over Europe, illustrating once again the total incompetence of the European political class, that has outsourced the management of its interests to Washington, an extremely stupid idea. And when Egypt (including Suez canal) will sooner or later fall to the Caliphate, this would mean that Europe will be completely shut off from any source of fossil fuel.

The losers are Russia and Europe and the pathetic spineless Juncker, Hollande and Merkel and their convenient rock solid but fatal and masochistic Atlanticist faith are entirely to blame for this disaster. They will go into the history books as the Honecker’s and Ceausescu’s of western Europe, unable to say no to their overlords at the right time. They sit with their lazy *sses on the most advanced and greatest economy on the planet and yet don’t know what to do with it, other than waiting for orders from Washington.

Russia has to acknowledge that its plan A (Europe of the Fatherlands, including Russia) failed and are now reluctantly executing plan B, to find themselves driven into the welcoming arms of the Chinese.

Europe did not merely shot itself in the foot; it shot itself in both feet, hands, chest, head and genitals (if any). Nobody expects the EU to declare war on America. It would have been sufficient to say no to the sanctions, no to the take-over of Ukraine, yes to South Stream. Europe should have acted just like Schroeder/Fisher and Chirac/Villepin acted in 2003 over Iraq. Just say no, that was all, which would have come at the price of being called a “cheese eating surrender monkey” once again; who cares what the Americans say anyway. They will be history soon, like the USSR in 1991. Ukraine should have been a European-Russian affair and the US neo-bolsheviks should have been kept out.

Few people realize how dramatic for Europe this turn of events really is.

[upi.com] – Moscow confirms status of South Stream

Oil Price Off The Cliff

[source]
Oilprice development over the last 2 year

What is happening here? Two hypotheses:

• Saudi-Arabia deliberately flooding the oil market to wipe the competition out (Iran, Russia, US fracking business)
• Demand destruction; world adapting to the high oil prices over the recent years

William Engdahl and others assume that Saudi-Arabia has increased oil production on request of global embarrassment USA in order to attack Russia, lower Russian income and hope for regime change in Moscow so they can loot the joint again, like during the Jeltsin & oligarch years.

Our educated guess is that it is mainly the first factor. Consumer behavior doesn’t change that fast. But we tend to think that this price dip will be short-lived, because likely victim #1 will be the US and its fracking business, wiping out production there in no-time, although Russia also will be severely hit. The winners of course are the consumers, to begin with in Europe:

[spiegel.de] – Ifo-Ökonomen heben Wachstumsprognose kräftig an

Very upbeat expectations for Germany. 1.5% growth in 2015 expected and record low unemployment of 6.6%.

[telegraaf.nl] – CPB: export én consumptie trekken aan

Netherlands, same story. 1.5% growth, reduced unemployment

Meanwhile, Iran is not amused:

[myfoxny.com] – Iran: Fall in oil prices is ‘treachery’

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday that the sharp fall in global oil prices is the result of “treachery,” in an apparent reference to regional rival Saudi Arabia, which opposed production cuts.

[telegraph.co.uk] – Saudi Prince says Riyadh won’t cut oil unless others follow

Saudi-Arabia admits that it could decrease production to give a boost to oil prices, but that it won’t:

“The kingdom is not going to give up market share at this time to anybody and allow – whether it is Russia, Nigeria, or Iran or other places – to sell oil to Saudi customer,” said Prince Turki, who has also held Saudi Arabia top overseas diplomatic post as the kingdom’s ambassador to the US.

Pepe Escobar on Turk Stream

Tough guys who know what they want, unlike the Euro pussies

Russia cancelled South Stream, catching the EU by surprise. The EU bluffed and failed. Germany can praise itself lucky is has at least North Stream in place, the Balkans are not so lucky.

The pipeline gambit began with the South Stream – Nabucco competition in 2009. 2009, that was before the 2014-prospect of Turkish SCO membership became a distinct possibility. 2009 was the year the West thought that Turkey was a western ally. The idiots.

2009 picture: Nabucco versus South Stream. Now South Stream and Nabucco have merged into a single pipeline, originating in Russia, but ending up in Turkey. The Turks can use this new situation to blackmail Europe, if necessary.

Nabucco turned out to be an empty promise: no pipeline, because no supply. Escobar says that South Stream could be revived, but he would not bet the farm on it. However, Juncker almost immediately backpedaled, but after Escobar finished his article.

But for the moment, South Stream is history. The pipeline is going to be built, but now to Turkey, not Bulgaria. Russian gas will probably end up in Europe anyway, but via Turkey, who can close down the future pipeline if it wants to. Europe wanted to reduce dependency on Russia (on orders of its US overlord), now the Euro-fools increased their dependency on both Russia and Turkey. Turkey won’t stall the process with nitpicking ‘third energy packages’ and glad it can control energy flows to Europe after all.

Escobar points out that the new destination of the pipeline makes perfect business sense for Russia, since Turkey is the 2nd biggest customer of Russian gas, after Germany, much bigger than Bulgaria, Hungary and Austria combined. But perhaps Turkey will be kind enough and leave something left for the Euro’s after all. Perhaps not.

Turkey is the big winner. They not only get the new pipeline, they also will receive a total new nuclear infrastructure, to be built by Russia. Turkey increasingly will become a hub for gas and oil. They already transport fuel from Azerbaijan, via the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Poor Saudi-Arabia; Russia will provide Turkey with all the energy it will need.

Furthermore, this is almost certainly an overture towards Turkish SCO-membership, completely sidelining the EU. Russia courted Europe from the very moment Putin came to power and Europe initially reciprocated the avances, culminating in the refusal of the triumvirate Putin-Schroeder-Chirac to join the US in the rape of Iraq.

This is what Putin really wants, cooperating with Germany and France, but unfortunately, Hollande and Merkel are of a lesser caliber than Schroeder and Chirac and completely subservient to Washington demands.

But everything went catastrophically downwards for Europe, when it cooperated with neocon run Washington, the only serious enemy Europe has, in its successful attempt to steel Ukraine from the 1000 year old Russian sphere of influence, early 2014. It was an act of pure western aggression and now Russia has hit back where it really hurts and this damage will be extremely difficult to mend and it will be probably necessary to kick the entire Atlanticist nomenclatura out, ranging from Merkel, Hollande to Juncker.

[russia-insider.com] – “Turk Stream”: Huge Win for Turkey – Big Win For Russia – Historic Loss for EU