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Venezuela struggles to find buyers for its oil after US sanctions

Tsvetana Paraskova
OilPrice,com
Thu, 21 Feb 2019 14:30 UTC
Oil facilities
© Reuters / Isaac Urrutia
FILE PHOTO: Oil facilities are seen on Lake Maracaibo in Lagunillas, Venezuela
Following the U.S. sanctions, Venezuela's oil inventories have swelled to a five-year high, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing satellite data-a sign that Venezuelan oil buyers are fleeing and the country sitting on top of the world's largest crude resources is struggling to sell its oil.

At the end of January, the U.S. imposed sanctions on PDVSA to "help prevent further diverting of Venezuela's assets by Maduro and preserve these assets for the people of Venezuela. The path to sanctions relief for PdVSA is through the expeditious transfer of control to the Interim President or a subsequent, democratically elected government," Secretary of the Treasury Steven T. Mnuchin said.

The sanctions block all payments to PDVSA accounts, and buyers of Venezuelan crude are directed to deposit payments in a separate account, to which PDVSA doesn't have access.

Comment: With Iran, Russia and now Venezuela, all major energy supplying nations under sanctions the US is putting the world in a bind and it's likely this arrogance will, eventually, backfire - or the US will take its nefarious games up a notch: Also check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: US Regime Change Operation in Venezuela - This Time It's Legit?

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Bad Guys

'Challenging' Russia in the Arctic: Political posturing or a war in the making?


RT
Sat, 23 Feb 2019 09:16 UTC
Russian border
© Reuters / Sergei Karpukhin
A Russian border marker on the Arctic islands of Franz Josef Land
As Russia bolsters its efforts to secure and tap the Arctic, both the UK and the US have been vowing to meet its "challenge" - a premise that could lead to war, experts say, if their naval powers could muster the capabilities.

"It's nobody's lake," said US Admiral James Foggo in a recent interview with US media - the latest in a string of American warnings against Russia's northward push. His concern is primarily for "Arctic Council nations - of which we are a member," and which are not interested in the Northern Sea Route being exploited by adversary powers like Russia and China.

UK Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson recently joined the chorus of warnings, saying Britain would "stay vigilant to new challenges" by "sharpening our skills in sub-zero conditions, learning from longstanding allies like Norway or monitoring submarine threats with our Poseidon aircraft."

Comment: See also:

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Light Saber

Pepe Escobar meets Dugin in Moscow ahead of Putin's State of the Nation address: On Eurasianism, populism and multipolarity

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Sat, 23 Feb 2019 22:44 UTC
Putin address
© AFP / Alexander Nemenov
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his Putin of the nation address in Moscow on Wednesday.
President Putin's state of the nation address to the Federal Assembly in Moscow this week was an extraordinary affair. While heavily focused on domestic social and economic development, Putin noted, predictably, the US decision to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and clearly outlined the red lines in regard to possible consequences of the move.

It would be naïve to believe that there would not be a serious counterpunch to the possibility of the US deploying launchers "suitable for using Tomahawk missiles" in Poland and Romania, only a 12-minute flight away from Russian territory.

Putin cut to the chase: "This is a very serious threat to us. In this case, we will be forced - I want to emphasize this - forced to take tit-for-tat steps."

Later that night, many hours after his address, Putin detailed what was construed in the US, once again, as a threat.
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Arrow Down

Japan's PM Abe plans to ignore result of Okinawan resident's referendum on re-location of US air base

Walter Sim
The Straits Times
Fri, 22 Feb 2019 13:42 UTC
Shinzo Abe, Henoko US base
© AFP
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said his government would ignore a referendum on the re-location of the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in densely populated Ginowan to the coastal district of Henoko.
Okinawa residents will vote in a controversial referendum in the prefecture on Sunday (Feb 24) on the re-location of a key American air base, a non-binding poll whose result Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said his government would ignore.

About 1.16 million people aged 18 and above are eligible to cast their ballots, as a decades-long impasse comes to a head over the plan to move the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in densely populated Ginowan to the coastal district of Henoko.

The central government, which has even resorted to taking the Okinawa government to court to force the move, has gone ahead and restarted long-stalled land reclamation work off Henoko despite massive local opposition and protests.

The base issue has long been an irritant to the US-Japan security alliance.

Voters will have three options: yes, no, or neither. The "neither" option was only added after five of Okinawa's 41 municipalities, led by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), said they would not take part in the referendum if it was merely a binary vote.

Comment: As many so-called democracies are no longer bothering to maintain the pretense of either listening to or acceding to the will of the people, we are witnessing the predictable results: Okinawan residents have been protesting for years against the abuses of the US military to little effect; how much longer will they be willing to put up with their own government's disregard?

70,000 people protest plan to relocate US army base in Okinawa

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Music

Video emerges of a shirtless and drunk Bernie Sanders singing with Communists

Jim Hoft
Gateway Pundit
Fri, 22 Feb 2019 21:28 UTC
topless Bernie Sanders
As reported earlier by Cristina Laila...

Footage of a shirtless, drunk Bernie Sanders in the USSR on his 'honeymoon' singing with presumed Soviets in 1988 surfaced and was posted to Twitter in late January.

The video of Bernie was posted to Twitter by Travis Justin, a Navy veteran and leader of "Draft Beto 2020."

TRAVIS JUSTIN-> NEW: Recently discovered footage from 1988 reveals a shirtless Bernie Sanders with his wife, Jane, on their honeymoon in the USSR, drunkenly singing "This Land Is Your Land" with a group of presumed Soviets.

https://twitter.com/TopRopeTravis/status/1089909214213038081

During the 2016 presidential election, then-candidate Bernie Sanders was heavily criticized for taking his 'honeymoon' to the Soviet Union in May of 1988.

Comment: Socialist? Bernie Sanders has 3 houses, makes millions

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NPC

Planned chaos: The nightmare of the Green New Dealers' scarcity-free fairyland

Richard M. Ebeling
American Institute for Economic Research
Mon, 18 Feb 2019 00:00 UTC
green new deal

Then with beautiful little birds chirping in the air in a clear blue sky, we will all live happily ever after in the Green New Deal paradise. The End.
When a small child runs around waving their arms saying, "I'm a bird, I'm a bird," we often will say what a creative imagination they have. If an adult runs around doing the same, we usually say that that person needs help because they are clearly out of touch with reality. Anyone who takes the time to read the proposed Green New Deal legislation can only conclude that the authors are living in a fairyland that is also deeply out of touch with reality.

Read through the list of desired and, indeed, demanded activities the congressional sponsors say they want the federal government to undertake over the next decade. The sponsors resemble a child running around the toy store saying, "I want that, and that, and that, and that, and..." while all the time completely oblivious to the fact that everything they want costs money that their parents do not have an unlimited quantity of.

The child may very well throw a temper tantrum when they are told that not everything they want can be had, or at least not right now all at the same time. What the child is not yet fully cognizant of is the existence and meaning of scarcity, costs, and trade-offs. Food, clothing, a room in which to sleep, and various other nice things from their parents just seem to be there. So why can't they just have all these other things as well, and just for the asking?

Comment: The Far Left's Green New Deal has more in common with Mao's Cultural Revolution than FDR's New Deal
Just as Mao's Cultural Revolution empowered students over their parents, so this bill sets up identity politics groups as having power over the major sectors of the economy. It even calls for a national "mobilization, "as Mao did.

Referencing historical discrimination, this bill in effect does away with one person one vote, or democracy as we know it, since in this resolution, redress of the past requires that only these designated groups would have a say in running this plan, whose administration would in effect be the domestic policy of the country.
See also:

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Bad Guys

US appropriates ISIS's slogan - 'remaining and expanding' - by deciding to keep occupation forces in Syria after partial withdrawal

Ellijah J. Magnier
ejmagnier.com
Fri, 22 Feb 2019 20:17 UTC
US Troops Syria withdrawal
© AFP
Washington declared it won't fully withdraw its troops from Syria but will leave "400 peace keeping forces", making these soldiers an official occupation force since the last ISIS stronghold is about to be freed. This new situation leaves the US and European allies without any cloak of legality, since the pretext of counterterrorism is no longer plausible. The number of remaining forces is irrelevant because the US has never revealed an accurate count of the number of its troops deployed in Syria and Iraq. Moreover, even if the number of soldiers is small, these remaining US forces can call for air strikes and prevent any forces, including the Syrian army, from crossing the Euphrates - at any moment they can call on US units stationed nearby in Iraq. Moscow and its allies foresaw the US decision not to withdraw from the start. Russia, Iran and Syria never trusted Donald Trump's announcement of full withdrawal from Syria.

Now that the dust has settled over the real US intention to remain in the Levant, Russia and its allies need to reconsider their plans. Negotiations between the Kurds and the government of Damascus will become more complicated and the relationship between Russia, Iran, and Turkey will be recalibrated. Tensions between the US and Turkey and between Russia, Turkey and Iran will impose themselves again in the Syrian arena.

The continuing presence of US troops at al-Tanf on the Syrian-Iraqi borders and in north-eastern Syria makes it likely that the Kurds in al-Hasaka and Qamishli may not reach a clear deal with the Syrian government until the outcome of the US decision becomes clearer.
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Book

Review: The War on Normal People

Uri Harris
Quillette
Sat, 29 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC
Man chops fish
© chuttersnap on Unsplash
A man in a baseball cap chops fish in a processing facility.
"I am writing from inside the tech bubble to let you know that we are coming for your jobs."

So begins Andrew Yang's book, The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income is Our Future. Despite the tagline, this isn't fundamentally a book about Universal Basic Income (UBI). It's about the market, and our attitude towards it.

American society has been reorganising over the past few decades. Some business sectors have faded, while others have surged. Importantly, many of the surging sectors are concentrated in a few key regions. This has led to what Yang refers to as "six paths to six places," meaning that the most qualified college graduates generally choose a career in one of six sectors and in one of six places: finance, consulting, law, technology, medicine, or academia in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, or Washington, DC. All these sectors are highly knowledge-intensive.

The result has been an increasing stratification of American society. The most qualified people leave their hometowns to pursue a career in one of these sectors, while those who remain behind are generally forced into far less attractive sectors such as retail, transportation, and manufacturing. This has led to entirely different climates. People in the right sectors and regions experience a climate of abundance, whole those in the wrong sectors and regions experience a climate of scarcity. Income inequality has risen to historic levels.
Andrew Yang/bookcover
© Andrew Yang
Andrew Yang

Comment: For more perspectives on the future of AI in the workplace and its implications for the human workforce, see also:

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X

DC lawyers move to delay deadline for turning over Lesin autopsy records to RFE/RL

Mike Eckel
RFE/RL
Fri, 22 Feb 2019 19:51 UTC
lesin_rt
City lawyers in Washington, D.C., have moved to delay turning over autopsy documents related to the death of former Russian Press Minister Mikhail Lesin, following a judge's order to release the files.

The motion, which was dated February 19 but has yet to appear in the court docket, has not yet been ruled on by D.C. Superior Court Judge Hiram Puig-Lugo.

Puig-Lugo on February 13 ordered the city's medical examiner to turn over autopsy records and other files to RFE/RL in response to a Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit brought by the news organization 16 months ago.

The motion is the latest development in a long-running fight to gain access to files that could provide a definitive answer on how Lesin, a once-powerful media adviser to President Vladimir Putin, died in a hotel room just blocks from the White House in November 2015.

In their argument, city lawyers said they had not decided whether to appeal the February 13 ruling, but needed the statutory 30-day window to decide -- until March 15.

In the meantime, they said the documents should not be released to RFE/RL.

Comment: RFE/RL most likely assumes it must have been "the Russians" who killed Lesin. But that's not the only option worth considering. See our past coverage of Lesin's death, for instance (particularly the last piece linked below):

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X

The five stages of Russiagate grief: Dems and the media prep for 'life without Mueller'


RT
Thu, 21 Feb 2019 18:59 UTC
protesters
© Reuters/Jeenah Moon
Protesters in New York show their support for Special Counsel Robert Mueller
As Special Counsel Robert Mueller prepares to issue his long-awaited and likely flaccid 'Russiagate' report, Democrats and their supporters in the media have been riding a rollercoaster of emotions, not all of them pretty. Set up in 2017 to investigate rumors of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, Mueller's investigation is set to close in a matter of days, with a final report expected shortly afterwards.

Although a handful of key Trump associates, like former campaign manager Paul Manafort and Republican operative Roger Stone, have been charged with process crimes, nobody has been charged with any offenses relating to collusion.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper - himself no fan of Trump - told CNN on Wednesday that "the investigation, when completed, could turn out to be quite anti-climactic."

An anti-climactic conclusion would spell disaster for Trump's opponents in Washington, who have hammered the president for 'Russian collusion' for the better part of two years, and for the media, who have never missed a chance to add to the narrative, often with false and outlandish theories.

With Mueller's report unlikely to satisfy their appetite for collusion, Democrats and the media have been going through a bizarre grieving process in recent days, as they get ready to bid farewell to their dear old friend Mueller. The process is best explained using a time-tested psychological model. Much like a grieving family adapts to the loss of a loved one, Mueller's fans now have a long and rough road to recovery ahead of them. Here's what they can expect:
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