Boots & Sabers

The blogging will continue until morale improves...

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Category: Foreign Affairs

Greene Pushes for Accounting of Ukraine Aid

by | 1946, 17 Nov 22 | , | 0 Comments

I go back and forth on whether or not we should support Ukraine. I get the geopolitical argument that we should because it saps Russia’s strength and builds support with allies. I get the humanitarian reasons for doing so. I also get the argument that Ukraine is a corrupt kleptocracy teetering on totalitarianism and we shouldn’t support it. I also get the argument that we have very little national interest in the conflict and should stay out.

I get all of it. And I remain somewhat on the fence leaning toward NOT supporting sending more weapons to Ukraine.

BUT… shouldn’t we at least be debating this? Shouldn’t we have a real accounting of where all of the money is going? Especially in light of the FTX debacle, shouldn’t we follow the money? It isn’t asking too much to know what’s happening with our money and why.

In a preview of the intra-party battle ahead, far-right House Republicans, led by MAGA firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, vowed Thursday to fight against Ukraine aid.

 

She said, at a news conference with other members, that she’d introduced an effort to force a vote on a resolution requiring the Biden administration to provide all documents related to the security assistance that has already been appropriated to Ukraine.

Xi Mad About Leaks

by | 1958, 16 Nov 22 | | 0 Comments

Xi is not wrong. It is impossible to conduct good foreign policy if leaders can’t speak frankly to each other behind closed doors.

In the video, Xi can be heard criticizing Trudeau for behaving “inappropriately” by leaking their meeting details to the media.

 

“The Cdn Pool cam captured a tough talk between Chinese President Xi & PM Trudeau at the G20 today. In it, Xi expressed his displeasure that everything discussed yesterday ‘has been leaked to the paper(s), that’s not appropriate… and that’s not the way the conversation was conducted,’” Oliver wrote in her post.

 

“Everything we decided has been leaked to the papers that’s not appropriate… and that’s not the way the conversation was conducted,” Xi said through an interpreter. “If you are sincere, we should communicate with each other in a respectful manner, otherwise it will be hard to say what the result will be like.”

Biden to Threaten Xi

by | 1620, 13 Nov 22 | , | 3 Comments

Could we please not get into WWIII rn, mmmmkay?

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden will warn Chinese President Xi Jinping at a meeting on Monday that North Korea’s continued pursuit of weapons development will lead to an enhanced U.S. military presence in the region, the White House said.

 

The United States is concerned that North Korea plans to resume nuclear bomb testing for the first time since 2017 and believes China and Russia have the leverage to persuade it not to do so.

 

Biden and Xi are set to hold their first face-to-face meeting as national leaders on the sidelines of a summit of the G20 grouping of countries in the Indonesian resort island of Bali.

KFC Apologizes for Kristallnacht Promotion

by | 1803, 10 Nov 22 | , | 0 Comments

SMH. How does this happen?

KFC has apologised after sending a promotional message to customers in Germany, urging them to commemorate Kristallnacht with cheesy chicken.

The Nazi-led series of attacks in the country in 1938 left more than 90 people dead, and destroyed Jewish-owned businesses and places of worship.

 

It is widely seen as the beginning of the Holocaust.

The message, heavily criticised for its insensitivity, was later blamed on “an error in our system”.

 

The fast food chain sent an app alert on Wednesday, saying: “It’s memorial day for Kristallnacht! Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!”

Changing Attitudes on China as Xi Reconsolidates Power

by | 1928, 3 Nov 22 | | 0 Comments

This is a long, but very good, article about China, Xi, and the West’s evolving attitude toward them.

Donald Trump’s anti-China message may have been characteristically erratic – with his allegations of unfair trade practices tempered by his open admiration of Mr Xi’s strongman-style – but he used it to rally a disaffected blue-collar base with great effect.

In short, he claimed that trade and engagement had been a bad bet with little to show for it, other than outsourced jobs and technology.

 

His opponents criticised his counter-productive methods and what they saw as his xenophobic language, but the mould had been broken.

 

President Biden has walked back few, if any, of Mr Trump’s policies on China, including the trade war he launched. The tariffs have stayed.

Washington has come to belatedly realise that, far from speeding up political reform in China, trade and technology transfer has been used instead to bolster Beijing’s authoritarian model.

Bidens’ Ties to Russia and China

by | 1705, 31 Oct 22 | , , | 0 Comments

For all of the finger wagging about people who have ties to Russia or China, it is glaringly clear that the Biden family has been engaging in crooked deals with the two totalitarian regimes for years. It is foolish to not at least consider that our President may have been involved even if he isn’t today. For all of Joe Biden’s faults, he has a long history of loving and supporting his kids. Is it too much of a stretch to think that he might have thrown his influence around on their behalf for foreigners?

Newly unearthed photos show the Biden family’s Chinese business partner meeting with Vladimir Putin.

 

Zang Jianjun was executive director of Chinese oil giant CEFC, which partnered with Joe Biden‘s brother Jim and son Hunter on a deal that earned the First Family millions of dollars.

 

Text messages obtained by DailyMail.com reveal Zang was in close contact with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and that the Chinese leader gave the green light for his partnership with the Bidens.

 

Zang even traveled to Moscow with Xi and met with Putin while brokering a massive $9.1billion deal to buy a share of the Russian state-owned oil firm Rosneft in 2017.

Poland Chooses U.S. To Build Nuclear Power Plant

by | 1318, 30 Oct 22 | , | 0 Comments

Great. Now can we build more in America?

Poland has chosen the U.S. government and Westinghouse to build the central European country’s first nuclear power plant, part of an effort to burn less coal and gain greater energy independence.

 

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said late Friday on Twitter that Poland would use the “reliable, safe technology” of the Westinghouse Electric Company for the plant in Pomerania province near the Baltic Sea coast. The exact location remains to be identified.

 

A strong Poland-U.S. alliance “guarantees the success of our joint initiatives,” Morawiecki said.

Truss Resigns as PM

by | 0806, 20 Oct 22 | | 0 Comments

That’s a shame. The Tory Party is clearly no longer the party of Thatcher.

Liz Truss has dramatically resigned as prime minister after just 45 days in the job.

The PM said her successor will be elected in a Tory leadership contest, to be completed in the next week.

 

Tory MPs urged Ms Truss to go after her government was engulfed by political turmoil, following the ditching of most of her economic policies.

 

Her resignation comes after a key minister quit and Tory MPs rebelled in a chaotic parliamentary vote.

Ms Truss was elected by the Tory membership in September, but she lost authority after a series of U-turns.

Xi Commits to Zero-COVID Policy

by | 2200, 16 Oct 22 | | 0 Comments

Interesting.

China’s President Xi Jinping signalled there would be no immediate loosening of his controversial zero-Covid strategy as a historic Communist Party congress opened in Beijing.

In a break in decades-long tradition, delegates are likely to hand Mr Xi a third term as party chief.

 

Zero-Covid was a “people’s war to stop the spread of the virus”, he said.

 

The policy has saved lives, but also exacted a punishing toll on the Chinese people and economy.

 

There is increasing public fatigue over lockdowns and travel restrictions.

Beijing has come under strict security measures ahead of the congress, sparking frustration in the city with a rare and dramatic public protest on Thursday criticising Mr Xi and zero Covid.

Xi is too smart to think that he can prevent any Covid or that it would be worth the economic cost. What is worth the economic cost, however, is to use Covid as a cover to reorder society, crack down on opponents, and finish his genocide. He’s a pure-bred totalitarian and the economic success of the past couple of decades has created an actual Chinese middle class. That can’t be tolerated.

Biden Invokes Title 42

by | 2124, 16 Oct 22 | , | 0 Comments

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Biden last week invoked a Trump-era rule known as Title 42 — which Biden’s own Justice Department is fighting in court — to deny Venezuelans fleeing their crisis-torn country the chance to request asylum at the border.

 

The rule, first invoked by Trump in 2020, uses emergency public health authority to allow the United States to keep migrants from seeking asylum at the border, based on the need to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

 

Under the new Biden administration policy, Venezuelans who walk or swim across America’s southern border will be expelled and any Venezuelan who illegally enters Mexico or Panama will be ineligible to come to the United States. But as many as 24,000 Venezuelans will be accepted at U.S. airports, similar to how Ukrainians have been admitted since Russia’s invasion in February.

This has all the hallmarks of an election eve fake policy.

Europe Looks to Africa for Natural Gas

by | 0755, 12 Oct 22 | , | 0 Comments

Having robust, diverse access to energy supplies is critical for a modern economy and society. Are we beginning to remember that?

While Africa’s natural gas reserves are vast and North African countries like Algeria have pipelines already linked to Europe, a lack of infrastructure and security challenges have long stymied producers in other parts of the continent from scaling up exports. Established African producers are cutting deals or reducing energy use so they have more to sell to boost their finances, but some leaders warn that hundreds of millions of Africans lack electricity and supplies are needed at home.

 

Nigeria has Africa’s largest natural gas reserves, said Horatius Egua, a spokesman for the petroleum minister, though it accounts for only 14% of the European Union’s imports of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, that comes by ship. Projects face the risk of energy thefts and high costs. Other promising countries like Mozambique have discovered large gas reserves only to see projects delayed by violence from Islamic militants.

 

Europe has been scrambling to secure alternative sources as Moscow has reduced natural gas flows to EU countries, triggering soaring energy prices and growing expectations of a recession. The 27-nation EU, whose energy ministers are meeting this week to discuss a gas price cap, is bracing for the possibility of a complete Russian cutoff but has still managed to fill gas reserves to 90%.

Fighting in the Horn

by | 2023, 9 Oct 22 | | 1 Comment

Another fire is raging.

While the world’s gaze is largely fixed on the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Tigray is also huge, with three major armed forces, including two of Africa’s largest armies, those of Ethiopia and of Eritrea, battling on multiple fronts across a rugged region twice the size of Switzerland.

 

The latest fighting, featuring pitched battles, drone strikes and artillery barrages, has pulled in neighboring countries and involves hundreds of thousands of combatants, by most estimates. At least a hundred civilians have died and as many as 500,000 have fled their homes in recent weeks, a senior U.N. official said.

 

A diplomatic drive to end the war has also been hidden. An official peace process led by the African Union has been hobbled by disputes over mediators and money for most of the past year, officials say, prompting Western officials to try to carry the ball. Since March, the United States has held three secret meetings outside Ethiopia — in Djibouti and in the Seychelles — bringing together warring leaders for the first time since the war erupted in November 2020.

 

Details of the latest meeting on Sept. 9, which was attended by Abiy’s national security adviser, Redwan Hussien, and his justice minister, Gedion Timothewos, were provided by Western and Tigrayan officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss events that the Americans insisted should remain confidential.

 

A U.S. official confirmed that a U.S. Air Force Beechcraft aircraft had operated the flight across Tigray on behalf of the State Department.

Biden Warns of Armageddon and He’s Not Talking About Global Warming

by | 2146, 6 Oct 22 | , | 10 Comments

I think that in his addled mind, he wants a nuclear strike so that he can be a warrior president.

‘He’s not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is — you might say — significantly underperforming.’

 

Don’t be fooled by the idea that smaller, tactical weapons were not a major threat to the world, he continued at the reception for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

 

‘I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,’ he said.

Fish Oil News

by | 2000, 5 Oct 22 | , , | 0 Comments

These stories are related:

OPEC and non-OPEC allies, a group often referred to as OPEC+, decided at their first face-to-face gathering in Vienna since 2020 to reduce production by 2 million barrels per day from November.

And…

Underfishing, which has become common in the U.S., occurs when fish are harvested at a rate lower than would produce maximum sustainable yield.

 

Hilborn said as much as 20 to 30% of potential yield is lost by cautious management.

 

[…]

 

America imports anywhere from 70% to 85% of its seafood, according to NOAA. In 2020, the U.S. imported over 6 billion pounds of seafood worth over $21 billion, making for a national seafood trade deficit of $17 billion.

 

Some supply chains are murky. Many countries don’t have data on trends and stocks because they don’t have management systems in place, according to the FAO.

 

“Everything we do know suggests that, on average, they are fishing too hard,” Hilborn said, adding that those dominant countries include China, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, India.”

 

The U.S. imported $2.4 billion worth of seafood from illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in 2019, accounting for about 11% of total U.S. seafood imports, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission.

In both cases, the United States could choose to fish and drill more to create American jobs, lower prices, and increase GDP. In both cases, the United States has made policy choices to buy more critical resources from corrupt, criminal, totalitarian regimes. In doing so, not only have we chosen to harm ourselves in order to send pallets of cash to these countries that hate us, but we are also encouraging fishing and drilling practices that are more destructive to the environment than if we did it ourselves.

So… enjoy your expensive fish from… wherever… and your $6/gallon gas. These are the result of intentional policy decisions by politicians we elected.

Iran is Rising

by | 1932, 3 Oct 22 | | 0 Comments

Dare we hope that revolution is afoot?

Ayatollah Khamenei’s comments came a day after security forces violently cracked down on a protest by students at Iran’s most prestigious science and engineering university, reportedly arresting dozens.

The BBC’s Kasra Naji says the gunfire heard around the campus of Sharif University of Technology in Tehran on Sunday night spread fear among many Iranians that authorities had decided to make an example of the students.

 

Security forces tried to enter the campus, but the students drove them back and closed all the entrance gates.

But, our correspondent adds, a siege developed and the students who tried to leave through an adjacent car park were picked up one by one and beaten, blindfolded and taken away.

VP Announces Alliance with North Korea

by | 0914, 29 Sep 22 | , | 1 Comment

These are not verbal stumbles or inarticulate expressions. Biden and Harris have fundamental gaps in their knowledge that permits their mouths to say such things. If she knew any better, she would have corrected herself as soon as she said it. The result is that Americans and the rest of the world are just tuning them out.

Kamala Harris continued an embarrassing week for the White House by mistakenly touting the U.S. alliance with ‘the Republic of North Korea’ – just one day after President Joe Biden called out for a dead congresswoman at an event on ending hunger.

 

The vice president concluded her trip through Asia with a visit to the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on Thursday where she made the gaffe confusing the communist North Korea with U.S. ally nation of South Korea.

 

‘The United States shares a very important relationship, which is an alliance with the Republic of North Korea,’ Harris said during a speech at the DMZ Thursday, intending to refer to the Republic of Korea, the official name of South Korea.

Philippines Crack Down on Chinese POGOs

by | 1735, 26 Sep 22 | , | 0 Comments

They wouldn’t kill this moneymaker for them without good reason.

MANILA (Reuters) – The Philippines will stop operations of 175 offshore gambling firms and deport about 40,000 Chinese workers, a justice ministry official said on Monday, part of a crackdown on the notoriously opaque online gaming industry.

 

The sector emerged in the Philippines in 2016 and grew exponentially, as operators capitalised on the country’s liberal gaming laws to target customers in China, where gambling is banned.

 

At their peak, Philippine offshore gambling operators, or POGOs, employed more than 300,000 Chinese workers, but the pandemic and higher taxes have forced many to operate elsewhere.

 

“The crackdown was triggered by reports of murder, kidnapping and other crimes committed by Chinese nationals against fellow Chinese nationals,” justice ministry spokesperson Jose Dominic Clavano said.

 

The POGOs targeted for closure had licenses that either expired or were revoked, for violations like non-payment of government fees, Clavano said, adding the deportation of the Chinese workers would start next month.

 

The government generated 7.2 billion pesos ($122.21 million) in 2020 and 3.9 billion last year in POGO fees alone, according to the finance ministry. Economists estimate considerably larger amounts are being spent on taxes, workers’ spending and office rental.

Putin’s Conscripts

by | 0744, 22 Sep 22 | , | 27 Comments

Tragic. It also indicates how dangerous a time we are in. Putin’s Russia has proven to be a paper tiger, but they still have WMDs – and not just nukes. Desperate people do desperate things.

The first batch of Russian conscripts began shipping out for Ukraine today, as Putin tries to plug holes in his armies after they were mauled at Kyiv’s hands.

 

Men – many of whom appeared middle-aged – were filmed waving goodbye to their families in the far-eastern province of Yakutia as they were loaded on to buses for the long journey west, to the killing fields of Donbas, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

 

Military commissars marshaled them away less than 24 hours after Putin declared the start of Russia’s first mobilisation since the Second World War in a desperate attempt to stop his brutal invasion from collapsing.

 

There were even reports that some of the 1,400 activists arrested last night for protesting the move were being handed conscription papers inside police stations, despite Putin’s promise to only send those with combat experience.

 

Analysts and experts have given the new conscripts little chance of survival, saying they are likely to be given little or no training before being thrown on to the frontline as ‘cannon fodder’.

Australian Central Bank Promises to Print More Money After COVID Losses

by | 0715, 21 Sep 22 | , | 0 Comments

This is not good.

Australia’s central bank has revealed that it has lost A$44.9bn ($30bn; £26.3bn) on the bonds it bought as part of its efforts to support the country’s economy during the pandemic.

The Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) deputy governor says that wiped out the bank’s profit for the 2021-22 year, leaving a net loss of A$36.7bn.

 

The bonds were accumulated under a A$300bn emergency stimulus programme.

 

However, the bank says the loss will not affect its normal operations.

 

“If any commercial entity had negative equity, assets would be insufficient to meet liabilities and therefore the company would not be a going concern,” RBA deputy governor Michele Bullock said.

“Since it has the ability to create money, the Bank can continue to meet its obligations as they become due,” she added.

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