Day: May 6, 2022

EU Has Plan

This post is for all my friends in Europe that their countries depend on Russian oil and gas.

By now most Europeans have heard the ban of Russian oil and gas….and I would imagine the question on their minds is …..how will we cope with this loss of resource?

Well the EU has a plan to help out with this situation……

Some 25% of all oil imports to the EU came from Russia last year. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is ready to take that figure down to zero. Von der Leyen on Wednesday proposed a total ban on Russian imports to the EU as part of a sixth package of sanctions, under which crude oil would be banned within six months and refined products by year’s end. What you need to know:

  • Context: Most of the oil the EU gets from Russia is used for gasoline and diesel for vehicles (14% of the EU’s diesel comes from Russia), reports the AP. That could make trucking even more expensive. This proposal doesn’t touch natural gas, which is used to heat homes and generate electricity. The EU gets about 40% of its natural gas from Russia, and alternatives are tougher to find.
  • Von der Leyen’s standout lines: “Let us be clear: it will not be easy. Some member states are strongly dependent on Russian oil. But we simply have to work on it. We now propose a ban on Russian oil. This will be a complete import ban on all Russian oil, seaborne and pipeline, crude and refined,” she said, per the Guardian.

Next steps: The Wall Street Journal reports all 27 member states will need to give the proposal the OK. A decision is being sought within the week.

The asterisk: Under the proposal, Slovakia and Hungary would get an extra year to wean themselves fully off of Russian oil due to their current dependence on it. But the BBC reports Slovakia’s economy minister is seeking a three-year period to do so, and the New York Times quotes Hungary’s foreign minister as saying, “It is physically impossible to operate Hungary and the Hungarian economy without crude oil from Russia.”

Oil prices: Predictably, they jumped. Prices were up more than 3% on the news. The Journal notes it’s unlikely that every barrel the EU were to refuse would find a home elsewhere, meaning the global supply could shrink.

Yellen’s concern: The Journal points out that US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in early April pointed out the likelihood that a full ban could cause prices to soar; that could soften the blow of the lost EU revenue and lessen the impact of the sanctions on Russia.

That EU revenue. The Guardian cites calculations by NGO Europe Beyond Coal, which estimates the EU has paid roughly $22 billion to Russia for oil since the start of the invasion.

My question for my European visitors….does this plan solve anything?  Is it a sound plan?  Or is it a band-aid?

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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Ukraine–Historical Background

I am one of those beleagued bloggers that try to help my readers make sense of what went wrong in Ukraine that would lead up to Vlad the Invader attempting to invade Ukraine…..I will admit that most do not want to think about it they will settle for the propaganda spread by their favorite news source.

But I try and will probably fail…..but I can sleep nights knowing I did what I thought was right.

This conflict has been raging for over 2 months….and there has been very little info in the media to try and explain just what went wrong that a war had to be used to solve the situation.

This is my small attempt to help in some form of clarification…..

There are points in Ukraine history that could be part of the problem….like the Clinton NATO thing…..the election of Zelensky……but did you know that Bush I made a promise to the USSR?

The US government today likes to pretend that it is the perennial champion of political independence for countries that were once behind the Iron Curtain. What is often forgotten, however, is that in the days following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Washington opposed independence for Soviet republics like Ukraine and the Baltic states.

In fact, the Bush administration openly supported Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to hold the Soviet Union together rather than allow the USSR to decentralize into smaller states. The US regime and its supporters in the press took the position that nationalism—not Soviet despotism—was the real problem for the people of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.

Indeed, in the case of Ukraine, President George H.W. Bush even traveled to Kyiv in 1990 to lecture the Ukrainians about the dangers of seeking independence from Moscow, while decrying the supposed nationalist threat.

Today, nationalism is still a favorite bogeyman among Washington establishment mouthpieces. These outlets routinely opine on the dangers of French nationalism, Hungarian nationalism, and Russian nationalism. One often sees the term nationalism applied in ways designed to make the term distasteful, as in “white nationalism.”

When nationalism is convenient for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its European freeloaders, on the other hand, we are told that nationalism is a force for good. Thus, the US regime and mainstream media generally pretend that Ukrainian nationalism—and even Ukrainian white nationalism—either don’t exist or are to be praised.

In 1991, however, the US had not yet decided that it paid to actively promote nationalism—so long as it is anti-Russian nationalism. Thus, in those days, we find the US regime siding with Moscow in efforts to stifle or discourage local nationalist efforts to break with the old Soviet state. The way it played out is an interesting case study in both Bush administration bumbling and in the US’s foreign policy before the advent of unipolar American liberal hegemony. 

https://mises.org/wire/1991-when-america-tried-keep-ukraine-ussr

As I always state…there is more to a story than the one-sided crap the media would have you believe.

The more you learn…the more you know….

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”