[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
OPEC members failed to agree an oil production ceiling on Friday at a meeting that ended in acrimony, after Iran said it would not consider any production curbs until it restores output scaled back for years under Western sanctions.
Friday’s developments set up the fractious cartel for more price wars in an already heavily oversupplied market.
Oil prices have more than halved over the past 18 months to a fraction of what most OPEC members need to balance their budgets. Brent oil futures fell by 1 percent on Friday to trade around $43, only a few dollars off a six year low.
Banks such as Goldman Sachs predict they could fall further to as low as $20 per barrel as the world produces more oil than it consumes and runs out of capacity to store the excess.
A final OPEC statement was issued with no mention of a new production ceiling. The last time OPEC failed to reach a deal was in 2011 when Saudi Arabia was pushing the group to increase output to avoid a price spike amid a Libyan uprising.
“We have no decision, no number,” Iranian oil minister Bijan Zangeneh told reporters after the meeting.
OPEC’s secretary general Abdullah al-Badri said OPEC could not agree on any figures because it could not predict how much oil Iran would add to the market next year, as sanctions are withdrawn under a deal reached six months ago with world powers over its nuclear program.
Most ministers left the meeting without making comments.
Badri tried to lessen the embarrassment by saying OPEC was as strong as ever, only to hear an outburst of laughter from reporters and analysts in the conference room.
This is of course an absolutely fantastic development which is part of the reason why securing the Iran nuclear deal was so incredibly important.
Some quick bullet point observations on what this means for the world:
The OPEC countries will have to keep pumping oil in order to maintain their market share in a vain attempt to prevent Iran from taking it.
In such a scenario, oil prices fall significantly because of the glut of oil on the market.
State budgets of oil-producing countries who have not significantly diversified their economies are damaged significantly, sending them possibly into recession and curtailing their geopolitical influence. These include countries like Russia, as well as Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf countries that we can enjoy laughing at.
The price floor could end up being as low as USD $10 a barrel (WTI) if this keeps up.
The price ceiling would also be constricted to around USD $50 a barrel (WTI) as the shale producers who are pummelled by the fall in price (at lower prices shale production is non-viable) either optimise their processes or merge with other enterprises that enable them to have the kind of alternate revenue streams that allow them to ‘park’ their shale operations when the price is low and reactivate them when it reaches $50. By this mechanism, a price ceiling is created.
All oil-purchasing economies benefit from these developments. The European Union benefits, and also most East Asian economies benefit enormously.
In the case of the poorest East Asian states, the fall in oil prices allows those states the ability to carry out internal adjustments that will enable them to expand welfare provisions, optimise food production, and upgrade hospitals and schools in ways that have needed to be done for a long time.
The European Union will be able to diversify its energy supply, thus preventing it from being so easily held hostage to Russian geopolitical demands.
If you’re thinking that this sounds like fun, it’s because it is definitely fun.
‘Access to Europe is too easy,’ Tusk said. (Photo: Consillium)
The current influx of migrants is “too big not to stop them,” European Council president Donald Tusk has said. He proposed that irregular migrants are detained for up to 18 months to check their identity.
In an interview with six European newspapers, Tusk said there is “no majority” in Europe for plans to relocate asylum seekers and that the priority should be the protection of Schengen’s external borders.
The scheme to relocate 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece has been pushed by Tusk’s EU Commission counterpart, Jean-Claude Juncker, and by Germany’s Angela Merkel. So far, just a few dozen people have been relocated.
“I am convinced there is no majority in the EU for such a system,” Tusk said, adding that “this time, central Europe is not the only problem.”
“Let’s avoid hypocrisy: it is not a question of international solidarity anymore, but a problem of European capacities. Europeans would be less reluctant if the EU’s external border was really under control,” he said.
“Today access to Europe is, simply speaking, too easy,” he added.
Tusk, who chairs the summits of EU leaders, asked them to “change [their] mindset” and covertly took on Merkel.
“Some [leaders] say the wave of migrants is too big to stop them. That is dangerous,” he said.
“This wave of migrants is too big not to stop them,” he said, adding that nobody is ready “to absorb these high numbers, Germany included.”
Effective controls
He noted that debate on migration has slipped out of the hands of “politicians or intellectuals or commentators” and has gone “really public because the fear and uncertainty is so genuine.”
He also reiterated that the key is border control.
“Every country must respect and apply the Schengen Borders Code, including the rule that asylum requests be filed in the country of arrival, for example Greece, and not somewhere else,” Tusk said.
“It is often said that we must be open to Syrian refugees. But these are only 30 percent of the inflow. Seventy percent are economic migrants. Also for this reason we need more effective controls,” Tusk noted.
Controls are not only a matter of stemming the flow, but also a question of security, he said, floating the idea that the EU should be ready to detain illegal migrants as long as it can to check them.
“If you want to screen migrants and refugees, you need more time than only one minute to fingerprint,” he noted, adding that international and European law allow up to 18 months “for the screening we need.”
Will Donald Tusk’s voice be heeded though, I wonder?
Posted by DanielS on Friday, 04 December 2015 04:20.
Trump to Jewish group:
“I’m a negotiator” (goes into fast chatter)
....“like you folks, we’re negotiators…do you want to re-negotiate deals, we, some of us here we negotiate deals, I would say about 99 point 9 ..is there anybody that doesn’t re-negotiate deals in this room? ...this room negotiates uh, .. I want to renega, this room (fades, points around) ....perhaps more than any room I’ve ever spoken to ...maybe more (expression of oy! sympathy) ...it’s ok! I’ve been called on that a couple times too.
You’re not going to support me even though you know that I am the best thing that could happen to Israel…and I’ll be that.
And the rea.. I know why you won’t support me…and you know, you’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money. ..you don’t want to give me money, ok, (begins waving arms comically) but that’s ok ...you want to control your own politician that’s foyne (fine)...good (puts wrist downward dismissively….pause), think about that folks (winces in oy vay expression), don’t worry about it…oy understeeand, hey, foyve months ago I was with you.. who was betta than me..who was betta than me? I gave $350,000 to the Republican Governor’s Association and never even got a letter of thank you!
... not only does he express sympathy with their middleman practices, but even in his gestures, chattering speech mannerisms and style, he acts like one of theirs while pandering to the Republican Jewish Convention.
Fourteen people were killed and at least 17 wounded
“Three lions made us proud. They are still alive,” one ISIS adherent tweeted in Arabic after the shootings at Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. “California streets are full with soldiers with heavy weapons. The Unites States is burning #America_Burning #Takbir”
Translation:
“Three lions made us proud. They are still alive,” tweeted after the shootings in San Bernardino
After the Paris attacks, confirmed ISIS accounts praised “Lions” as well.
Around 11 a.m. on Wednesday, two assailants opened fire in San Bernardino at a party in the Inland Regional Center, police said.
Fourteen people were killed and 21 wounded. The names of all those injured have not yet been released, but The Times is collecting their names and stories.
After a Wednesday afternoon car chase, the two armed suspects were killed by police: Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik.
The attackers’ motive is unknown. President Obama, in a statement from the Oval Office Thursday morning, said the shooting was possibly related to terrorism, but might also be workplace related.
Police said there was “some degree of planning.” The suspects were heavily armed, wearing tactical attire, and had an arsenal of ammunition and pipe bombs in their Redlands home.
A silver lining to terrorism is that it moves us in the direction of having to classify people - e.g., non-White middle-easterners, as a whole - as we are less able to distinguish “the good ones from the bad ones.” That is a necessary step in racial, systemic maintenance.
EU may take up to 500,000 refugees from Turkey, Orban says
German government official denies that secret deal was made
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a staunch opponent of accepting refugees into the European Union, said Germany struck a “secret pact” with Turkey to take in as many as half a million people.
The initiative, which wasn’t part of a weekend agreement between Turkey and the EU on curbing the flow of refugees, may be announced by Germany within days, Orban told a forum of ethnic Hungarian leaders in Budapest on Wednesday. European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans dismissed reports of a covert deal as “nonsense.”
“Beyond what we agreed with Turkey in Brussels there’s something that doesn’t figure in the agreement,” Orban said. “We’ll wake up one day—and I think this will be announced in Berlin as soon as this week—that we have to take in 400,000 to 500,000 refugees directly from Turkey.”
Facing the biggest influx of refugees since World War II and reeling from the terrorist attacks in Paris last month, the EU over the weekend agreed to relaunch Turkey’s bid for membership in the bloc and offered a package of 3 billion euros ($3.2 billion) to help finance refugee camps.
French Reaction
“France and Germany are working together to manage the flow of migrants, which is a challenge to everyone,” French government spokesman Stephane Le Foll told reporters in Paris on Wednesday. “Last weekend the union reached an agreement with Turkey,” and Orban should be aware of the details since he was there, Le Foll said.
A German government official, requesting anonymity because EU-Turkey talks are ongoing, said Orban’s claim that Germany made a secret deal is false.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker met with the leaders of eight member states on the sidelines of the EU-Turkey summit in Brussels, spokeswoman Mina Andreeva told reporters on Nov. 30 without disclosing details of the meeting. The EU commission agreed to prepare a framework for a “voluntary scheme” by Dec. 15, she said.
While some leaders, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have insisted Europe must honor its asylum commitments and want EU members to accept refugees according to binding quotas, others such as Orban reject immigration by Muslims and sealed off their borders with fences. Merkel also confirmed after the Brussels summit that she had met with seven other EU leaders to discuss a plan to settle refugees from Turkey.
The plan to take in refugees from Turkey directly was also raised at a summit of EU leaders in Malta last month and was shelved after it became clear that some countries including Hungary were prepared to use their veto power to block it, Orban said.
“There’ll be tremendous pressure on us” and on other central European countries “that if somebody already agreed to this—and to avoid causing a diplomatic tussle by naming the country I’m not going to say where Berlin is—that we shouldn’t just take them in but distribute them according to binding quotas,” Orban said. “This nasty surprise is still waiting for Europeans.”
People have underestimated the Hungarians, but it seems that they are truly acting as Europe’s demographic gendarme at this stage in the game.
Hopefully whatever the people in Berlin are cooking up this time, will be stopped through the valiant efforts of the people on the streets, through mass protests and mass demonstrations.
Today’s shadow cabinet agreed to back Jeremy Corbyn’s recommendation of a free vote on the government’s proposal to authorise UK bombing in Syria.
The shadow cabinet decided to support the call for David Cameron to step back from the rush to war and hold a full two day [public] debate in the House of Commons on such a crucial national decision.
Shadow Cabinet members agreed to call David Cameron to account on the unanswered questions raised by his case for bombing: including how it would accelerate a negotiated settlement of the Syrian civil war; what ground troops would take territory evacuated by ISIS; military co-ordination and strategy; the refugee crisis and the imperative to cut-off of supplies to ISIS.
It’s almost as though the Labour party is staffed by actual retards.
Kumiko Oumae works in the defence and security sector in the UK. Her opinions here are entirely her own.
More than 14,000 foreign nationals told to leave Sweden have instead gone underground, with police saying there is little they can do to enforce deportation orders.
A total of 21,748 people had been given deportation orders by the Migration Agency at the end of October – the largest number in history, the Aftonbladet tabloid reported on Friday.
Of those, 14,140 are registered by police as ‘departed’ or ‘wanted’. Some are believed to still be at unknown locations in Sweden while others are thought to have left the country.
“We simply don’t know where they are,” Patrik Engström, head of the national border police, told the newspaper.
The rest of the individuals either remain in refugee centres, are in custody, or are living in separate accommodation which they have arranged themselves, awaiting deportation.
The government has previously announced it wants to step up efforts to ensure people without legal right to stay in Sweden exit the country. But police say most of its resources are currently devoted to carrying out ID checks after Sweden stepped up border controls.
“It’s a huge task and it is completely dependent on the police being allocated resources,” said Engström.
The Local reported in May that an increasing proportion of refugees due to be deported from Sweden were instead disappearing.
Last year the proportion of those leaving the country voluntarily after an expulsion order was 41 percent. Some of the remaining numbers were forcibly deported, but in most cases the refugees went underground.
The Migration Agency said at the time that the vast majority of the “disappeared” were Dublin Regulation cases.
Under the Dublin Regulation, refugees should be deported back to the first EU country they entered, often Italy or Greece, which have the worst welfare provision. But if refugees can delay their re-applications by 18 months, they may be able to stay in Sweden, hence the motivation to go underground.
It is often difficult to deport refugees directly to their home countries, which in many cases refuse to accept them.
There’s a lesson to be learned here, but I wonder if anyone will be learning it? Did anyone really entertain the fantasy that you could invite thousands of illegal migrants to flood into your country out of some misguided notion of hospitality, and that you could then change your mind and say, “Okay, please go away now”, and that the migrants would be all like, “Oh, okay, we are voluntarily self-deporting now”.
Also, would anyone like to take bets as to how many of those 14,000 people might actually be terrorists?
Black Lives Matter protesters hit the streets in Chicago, Seattle, and Portland, Ore., disrupting shopping on Black Friday.
Chicago police blocked off roads to accommodate the march down Michigan Avenue, and officers in some areas formed a barrier of sorts between protesters and stores and helped shoppers get through the doors. But protesters succeeded in blocking main entrances on both sides of the street for more than three blocks.
When one person tried to get through the front door of Saks Fifth Avenue, protesters screamed at him, shouting, “Shut it down! Shut it down.” Entrances were also blocked at the Disney Store, the Apple Store, [removed], Tiffany & Co., and Neiman Marcus, among others.
With “Black Lives Matter” protesters shouting “shut-it-down” (block freedom of association and movement), the Soros backed movement is becoming increasingly volatile and dangerous ...devolving toward black mob action and shaking—down (i.e., extorting) Chicago.
....lets hope it instigates more and more racial separatism.
