[Bloomberg] What the deal doesn't signify -- not yet, at least -- is a global realignment that puts the U.S. and Europe at a grave disadvantage. The tortuous history of Russia-China relations shows that their long-term interests are not complementary. Putin won't want Russia to depend on China any more than he wants it to depend on Europe. Anyway, the gas exports in the new pact, once onstream in 2018, will be about a quarter of what Russia sells to Europe. A quarter.
Even if the deal is enlarged later, the idea that Russia can now get along fine without the European market is nonsense.
Russia will have every reason to repair relations with Europe once the crisis in Ukraine has passed. In the meantime, Europe should use the leverage it has. So far as Ukraine is concerned, the new deal doesn't change Europe's calculation. For the longer term, Europe already knows it has to diversify its energy supplies. The new agreement only underlines the point.
Yes, it's always cause for concern when two tyrannical governments, presiding over such big and powerful countries, deepen their ties and find new ways of cooperating. In this case, however, the new alliance is unlikely to change the underlying logic of a longstanding rivalry.
#2
Russia will have every reason to repair relations with Europe once the crisis in Ukraine has passed.
Why would anyone think that Putin plans on stopping with the Ukraine? Europe can't just threaten to diversify their energy sources they have to actually do it.
"The answer for Europe is not more windmills and solar panels. The answer is fracking. Indeed, any European policy maker who cares about jobs, growth, and checking Putins territorial ambitions ought to be seizing on the China-Russia deal to push for repeal of wrong-headed bans by France, Bulgaria, Germany and elsewhere on the practice of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing."
--
#4
So what's the rough estimate of $ per thousand cubic foot or $ per ton LNG equivalent? Strikes me as an admission by the Chinese that they are concerned they can't frac now or in the future sufficiently well to meet resource requirements.
Posted by: Sir Lindley ||
05/23/2014 17:35 Comments ||
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#5
Let's see, who came out of the deal with more options available. Europe? No, same position, with less ability to affect Russia's cash flow surplus. China filled a growing need for energy that doesn't turn the sky black. Russia now has a new card to play, less chances for Europe to affect Russia, and meanwhile Europe's buying shiploads of the coal that America doesn't want anymore.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/23/2014 19:09 Comments ||
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Instead of giving credibility or kudos to Vald's = Russia's proposed Eurasian Customs Union + pro-Russia Partner-Stans, Vlad's actions in Ukraine-Crimea Crisis only showed Russia to be a geopol bully uncaring about the sovereignty or interests of its neighbors!???
* VOICE OF AMERICA NEWS > WORRIES GROW ABOUT UKRAINE'S "YUGOSLAVIA SCENARIO" [future].
[Ynet] Imagine what would happen if Israeli ambassadors instructed Scottish or Catalan people how to vote.
Or as the Germans say, "Geh mit Gott, aber geh!"
On September 18, Scotland's residents will vote on the establishment of an independent country and splitting from Britannia. On November 9, the residents of the Catalonia region, whose capital is Barcelona, will vote on gaining independence from Spain. And In March 20-22, 89% of the residents of Venice voted in favor of turning their city into an independence state and splitting from Italia.
Now imagine what would happen if Israel's ambassadors in these different countries intervened in the vote and instructed the Scottish people how to vote, or transferred funds to the Venetians to split or stay in Italia. Imagine what an uproar this insolent behavior would raise in Europe, and rightfully so.
So what right or authority has the ambassador of "the ill giant," the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... , to intervene in Israel's internal affairs? Are we part of their union?
On September 18, Scotland's residents will vote on the establishment of an independent country and splitting from Britannia. On November 9, the residents of the Catalonia region, whose capital is Barcelona, will vote on gaining independence from Spain. And In March 20-22, 89% of the residents of Venice voted in favor of turning their city into an independence state and splitting from Italia.
Now imagine what would happen if Israel's ambassadors in these different countries intervened in the vote and instructed the Scottish people how to vote, or transferred funds to the Venetians to split or stay in Italia. Imagine what an uproar this insolent behavior would raise in Europe, and rightfully so.
So what right or authority has the ambassador of "the ill giant," the European Union, to intervene in Israel's internal affairs? Are we part of their union?
We have gotten so used to this meddling, that we have failed to ask them till this very day: Why does this actually concern you? Would you want us to intervene in the European Union's affairs? Perhaps it would actually be a good idea to start funding the Catalonians, the Walloons in Belgium or the Basques in Spain through subversive associations for "human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... " -- like the Europeans do here.
EU Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen said this week that the EU was "disengaging from the settlements," thereby continuing the blatant intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign country in which he is a guest. It's true that he tried to soften the message with talks about cooperation with Israel -- but we, tired of hearing this frequent European undermining, won't listen to it anymore.
It's important to remember that wherever there are Jewish settlers, security and stability will remain. And vice versa: An area free of settlers is a future Salafi-jihadist area, like what happened with the disengagement from Gazoo.
Does the ambassador expect Israel to commit suicide and turn into Syria or Iraq, with terrorism entering deep into its belly? We are willing to do that only if London becomes semi-jihadist, as well as Berlin, Madrid and Stockholm. The day Gay Paree is divided between the French and al-Qaeda and the Jihad, with an ability to fire missiles at the Élysée Palace, we'll agree to a division in Jerusalem too.
While the ambassador was speaking in Jerusalem, cries of joy were heard in Gazoo from the Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, and Jihad -- how they managed to fool the Europeans, who will perhaps recognize a imaginary technocratic government and funnel money to Hamas too, and at the same time they voiced threats that they would never recognize Israel and that all the lands of the historical Land of Israel belong exclusively to them.
Can't that ambassador see the shocking deceit and the threats of annihilation?
Even worse: How dare a foreign ambassador intervene in our internal affairs, while once again Jews cannot walk around proudly in his continent? Can't he and his boss, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, see the escape of Jews from La Belle France, Belgium and other countries in the European Union, like in the 1930s? Even Jews still have human rights in the old continent, whose heartbeat speeds up when it remembers its anti-Semitic past.
Perhaps we should thank the EU, which has no time to deal with Syria, Iraq, Hungary or Ukraine, and is only obsessed with us. That way, it is forcing us to turn to the east and build the Israeli market with the Chinese, the Indians, the Koreans and the Japanese.
And this is indeed happening: Israel's first trade partner is still the EU, but the second is already Asia. The United States has fallen to the third place. The economic and demographic future in the ill, immigrant-flooded Europe appears gloomy, and we must thank that continent for forcing us to kick it off before it is too late.
After all, we are not in Europe. We are in Asia, and that's a good thing.
#3
So what right or authority has the ambassador of "the ill giant," the European Union, to intervene in Israel's internal affairs? Are we part of their union?
The Kübler-Ross model, or the five stages of grief, ...denial and anger ?
Snip. The moderators at the Burg do not look with favor on WND as a "news source" for much of anything. Even WaPo is better (I'm not sure about the NYT). Do not in the future use a WND source as a post for the Burg, please.
[NYTimes] American health care is remarkably diverse. In terms of how care is paid for and delivered, many of us effectively live in Canada, some live in Switzerland, some live in Britain, and some live in the unregulated market of conservative dreams. One result of this diversity is that we have plenty of home-grown evidence about what works and what doesn't.
What Mr. Romney and everyone else should know is that the V.H.A. is a huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform.
Many people still have an image of veterans' health care based on the terrible state of the system two decades ago. Under the Clinton administration, however, the V.H.A. was overhauled, and achieved a remarkable combination of rising quality and successful cost control. Multiple surveys have found the V.H.A. providing better care than most Americans receive, even as the agency has held cost increases well below those facing Medicare and private insurers. Furthermore, the V.H.A. has led the way in cost-saving innovation, especially the use of electronic medical records.
What's behind this success? Crucially, the V.H.A. is an integrated system, which provides health care as well as paying for it. So it's free from the perverse incentives created when doctors and hospitals profit from expensive tests and procedures, whether or not those procedures actually make medical sense. And because V.H.A. patients are in it for the long term, the agency has a stronger incentive to invest in prevention than private insurers, many of whose customers move on after a few years.
And yes, this is "socialized medicine" -- although some private systems, like Kaiser Permanente, share many of the V.H.A.'s virtues. But it works -- and suggests what it will take to solve the troubles of U.S. health care more broadly.
"A major cost savings will appear when those requiring expensive medical treatment are dead, so let's accelerate that, shall we?"
[The Hill] "I believe people should be suspicious of government power. I am," Mr. Comey said. "I think this country was founded by people who were worried about government power so they divided it among three branches," he added. Buy that man a pint! Hopefully he'll elaborate in follow-on expose or book.
#2
Mr. Comey's bio from Wikipedia (OK, sorry; I knew what I was looking for and Wikipedia was convenient).
"James Brien Comey, Jr. (born December 14, 1960) is the seventh and current director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
He was the United States Deputy Attorney General, serving in President George W. Bush's administration. As Deputy Attorney General, Comey was the second-highest ranking official in the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and ran the day-to-day operations of the Department, serving in that office from December 2003 through August 2005. He was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York prior to becoming Deputy Attorney General.
In December 2003, as Deputy Attorney General, Comey appointed the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, close friend and former colleague Patrick Fitzgerald, as Special Counsel to head the CIA leak grand jury investigation after Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself. In August 2005, Comey left the DOJ and he became General Counsel and Senior Vice President of Lockheed Martin. In 2010, he became General Counsel at Bridgewater Associates. In early 2013, he left Bridgewater to become Senior Research Scholar and Hertog Fellow on National Security Law at Columbia Law School. He also joined the London-based board of directors of HSBC Holdings."
HSBC Holdings plc (HSBC) is a global banking and financial services organizations. As of December 31, 2012, it provided a range of financial services to around 58 million customers through four global businesses: Retail Banking and Wealth Management, Commercial Banking, Global Banking and Markets, and Global Private Banking. In June 2012, the Companys indirect wholly owned subsidiary, HSBC Iris Investments (Mauritius) Ltd, sold its 4.73% interest in Axis Bank Limited and 4.74% interest in Yes Bank Limited. In July 2012, its subsidiary, HSBC Europe (Netherlands B.V.), sold its 100% interest in HSBC Credit Zrt, to CentralFund Kockazati Tokealap. On March 31, 2013, Enstar Group Ltds subsidiary completed the acquisition from Household Insurance Group Holding Company of HSBC Insurance Company of Delaware and Household Life Insurance Company of Delaware, as well as its three subsidiary insurers. More from Rooters.
#5
Y'all do know the HSBC stands for Hong Kong , Shanghai,Bank Corporation.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/23/2014 11:36 Comments ||
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#6
"The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited is a bank established and based in Hong Kong since 1865, when Hong Kong was a colony of the British Empire. It is the founding member of the HSBC Group and, since 1990, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the London-based HSBC Holdings P.L.C,."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Bloomberg] What the deal doesn't signify -- not yet, at least -- is a global realignment that puts the U.S. and Europe at a grave disadvantage. The tortuous history of Russia-China relations shows that their long-term interests are not complementary. Putin won't want Russia to depend on China any more than he wants it to depend on Europe. Anyway, the gas exports in the new pact, once onstream in 2018, will be about a quarter of what Russia sells to Europe. 
