From The Grayzone:
Pushback with Aaron Maté
Seymour Hersh joins Aaron Maté to discuss his report on how the Biden administration bombed the Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, which blew up not only a vital Russian-German infrastructure project but a key off-ramp to peace in Ukraine.
I wonder if China’s upcoming rebuild package will include repair of the pipeline?
I’d bet they would just love to throw some money at it given how much influence they would gain by doing so.
But they also have a lot of other things to do both domestically and with existing “Belt and Road” projects. It seems unlikely they’d expend much effort on a hostile environment project that would have the effect of higher energy prices for themselves.
A few thousand feet (or even a mile or two) of pipeline won’t set back the world’s financier that much and after all, prices are more dependent on how much is produced than how it gets to the market. Open it up and prices will go down (around here E88 was $2.69 last week, today it’s $2.89 wtf?; I hope you aren’t doing the $4 nonsense still) just like when we blew it up they went up for awhile.
A return to a somewhat normal market after this current war should bring a drop anyway (plus the impending recession should cause a drop in use anyway which means drop in price ;-)
Besides, a Belt and Road (and Pipeline) project like a pipeline repair would be a great entrée to increase their influence in Europe and especially Germany.
Europe and Germany don’t seem to want increased Chinese influence.
And helping increase demand for European demand Russian energy would put Chinese demand back in competition for the Russian supply, ceteris paribus driving up prices. Of course, ceteris isn’t always paribus, but at the moment China, India, et al. are benefiting from Russian energy being off European markets. Doesn’t seem like a boat they’d go out of their way to rock.
You’d believe they don’t but, I used to work for Ag Relient, the #3 seed corn producer in the US. It was a joint German and French concern but despite China never being mentioned by even the parent German and French companies about China when the money people who financed the operation and were there to see how well their money was doing, it was a bunch of Chinese folks being ked aroun and groveled to in a way that even the French and Germans did not receive. The Chinese used to steal GMO parent seed straight from fields to send home but now it’s licensed to them albeit through cutouts that promise that they won’t do it.
So the idea that the French nor Germans are loath to deal with the Chinese is not exactly true. AGR might be #3 here but they are their respective nation’s #1 which given how large concerns involved are treated and are in bed with governments in the EU, one might say the Chinese are already selling the seeds that the EU plants.
They rocked our seed corn boats but now they are piloting them and are inching their way in to a lot of stuff despite the yelling in DC; too much money is involved perhaps?
Absolutely spot on target article from The Grayzone.
March 2, 2023 Kiev regime flooding black markets with NATO-sourced weapons
As late as December, top Western officials have complained about this, including the Pentagon’s Deputy Inspector General for Investigations James R. Ives, who admitted that the US is aware of the lack of effective mechanisms to track Ukraine-bound NATO weapons. Several major US media have called for the Biden administration to send investigators to audit and oversee the use of more than $110 billion in US military and economic “aid” to the Kiev regime.
http://infobrics.org/post/37850/
Biden bombed the Nord Stream 2 Pipelines to get attention. It’s working in his favor, Russia is blamed for that. Since Cold War I ended, the West has been using Russia as a scapegoat.
I am not really sure this is “working in his favor”. Maybe it looks good in a very small echo-chamber, but certainly not on the World stage. In fact, I would venture that this act could end up being the watershed event that destroys the US and its ability to push NATO around.