It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, March 24, 2022
Explainer-Can companies leaving Russia recoup losses through insurance?
Tom Hals Tue, March 22, 2022,
(Reuters) - Hundreds of companies have said they are withdrawing or suspending operations in Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, from energy producer Shell Plc to carmaker Hyundai Motor Co to PwC, a global professional services firm.
The following is a look at how insurance and international arbitration might soften the blow to those companies, which stand to lose billions of dollars:
DOES STANDARD INSURANCE PROVIDE COVERAGE?
No, but companies can purchase political risk as an add-on to trade credit, property and aviation insurance. It covers government seizures of property and forced abandonment, cancellations of government licenses for operations such as mines and the inability to convert foreign currency. The insurance typically covers long-term energy or infrastructure projects, but can be purchased by other types of businesses. Policies are confidential, insurance experts said, and disputes are resolved in private arbitration.
Berne Union, a trade association representing political risk insurers, estimated that $1 billion in new political risk insurance was written in Russia in 2020, its most recent data.
Much of the insurance is written by non-commercial agencies such as the Overseas Private Investment Corp of the United States and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, part of the World Bank.
WILL COMPANIES LEAVING RUSSIA HAVE CLAIMS?
Companies that leave and abandon their business without any action taken by the Russia government to seize control of their assets will have a tough time collecting insurance, according to legal experts.
"You see companies saying 'we're leaving because we support Ukraine.' The question is then whether the policy covers a voluntary departure," said Micah Skidmore of the law firm Haynes and Boone.
Insurers are most likely to pay claims for revenues earned in Russian roubles that are no longer convertible to foreign currency, said legal experts.
WHAT MIGHT HELP COMPANIES RECOUP THEIR LOSSES?
Russia could take actions that would support claims that assets are being seized. Last week, Russia's President Vladimir Putin signed into law a measure that allows the country to place planes leased from foreign companies on Russia's aircraft register.
Air Lease Corp said earlier this month the Russian law demonstrates Moscow's intent to confiscate planes and the company expected the move to help the company collect on its insurance.
Sanctions give the aircraft leasing industry until March 28 to sever ties with Russian airlines. If more than 400 jets in Russia are not repossessed, the industry stands to lose almost $10 billion.
Russia's ruling United Russia party said in early March it is considering a proposal to nationalize foreign-owned firms that leave the country. If enacted, this measure could also support claims for insurance. ARE THERE OTHER AVENUES FOR COMPENSATION?
A company can look to trade agreements signed by Russia which provide for arbitration when government actions damage foreign investment.
The Steptoe & Johnson law firm said last week in a note to clients that classic international arbitration claims include failure to protect intellectual property rights, refusal to release aircraft and expropriation of assets.
At least nine companies from Ukraine used trade agreements to seek billions through arbitration from Russia after Moscow annexed the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014.
However, the international arbitration process can take years and Russia does not voluntarily pay awards, according to legal experts.
Franz Sedelmayer, whose German security equipment business was expropriated by Russia in 1996, won a $2.3 million arbitration award in 1998 but spent more than a decade fighting in numerous courts trying to collect the money.
A company would not be able to collect on both insurance and arbitration.
(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; additional reporting by Carolyn Cohn in London; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Grant McCool)
Support the Chevron workers in California! For a national strike to overturn the sellout agreement!
Workers at Chevron’s Richmond, California, refinery who walked out on Monday have taken a courageous stand that every rank-and-file oil worker should actively support. By rejecting not one but two local contract proposals, they have dealt a powerful blow against the efforts by the United Steelworkers to impose its pro-company national agreement on oil refinery and petrochemical workers across the country.
The Chevron workers at the San Francisco Bay Area refinery are demanding higher wages, shorter work hours and better health and safety protections after working up to 70 hours a week and risking their lives during the pandemic. But the USW is forcing these 500 workers to battle the giant oil company alone and is keeping nearly 30,000 USW members on the job, including thousands at Chevron’s other operations in California, Utah, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana.
If this struggle is left in the hands of USW President Conway & Co., the USW will isolate and starve out the Chevron workers, just like they did during the 10-month-long lockout of ExxonMobil workers in Beaumont, Texas.
This cannot stand. Behind Chevron are all the oil bosses. It is time that all oil workers stand with the Chevron workers. We must mobilize our full strength in a national strike to shut down the industry and win the demands that all oil workers deserve and need.
Richmond Chevron workers at rally last month (Source: USW Local 5)
The Oil Workers Rank-and-File Committee (OWRFC) was formed last month to give workers a new voice and organization, which is democratically controlled by the ranks and independent of the corrupt company stooges in the USW. We insist that the national agreement is illegitimate. It was sold to workers based on false pretenses, brought to a vote without sufficient time to study and discuss it, and rammed through using thuggish methods of lies and intimidation.
From the very beginning the USW has functioned as the enemy of rank-and-file workers and a tool of the oil bosses and the corporate-controlled Biden administration. Even though we were in the best position in decades to strike—with refinery capacity limited due to equipment failures and other problems, and popular hatred against price-gouging by the energy monopolies—the USW kept us on the job for three weeks after the February 1 contract expiration. Then, after claiming the two sides were miles apart, Conway suddenly announced an agreement on February 25.
The timing was significant. The agreement was announced the day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and three days after Conway held a private discussion with President Biden and top executives from the Energy and Defense Department. There is no doubt that the president instructed Conway to sign a deal to prevent a strike as the US was ramping up for a confrontation with Russia. In the time since, the companies have made even more money profiteering from the war crisis, while Conway boasted he had signed a “responsible” deal that did not “add to inflationary pressures.”
To ram through the contract, USW national, regional and local officials threatened to put individual plants out on long, fruitless strikes, with little or no financial support from the union’s massive strike fund, if they rejected the deals. When workers at the Phillips 66 refinery in Billings, Montana, and Richmond Chevron workers voted them down any way, the USW made them vote again.
View of Pt. Richmond and Chevron Refinery, Richmond CA, from Nicholl Knob in 2016 (Photo by Audiohifi)
But the Chevron workers have called the USW’s bluff. They voted down a virtually identical deal for a second time. Like the rest of us, they know the pitiful raises in the national deal will make us poorer four years from now because of runaway inflation. Gas prices in the San Francisco Bay Area are the highest in the nation at $5.91 a gallon, and Chevron workers have seen health care premiums and other out-of-pocket expenses rise by 28 percent in the last year alone due to previous USW givebacks.
Chevron, which made $15.6 billion in profits last year and is making even more money due to the war crisis in Eastern Europe, has denounced the Richmond workers for being greedy, saying USW Local 5’s meager demand for a 5 percent raise “exceeded what the company believes to be reasonable and moved beyond what was agreed to as part of the national pattern bargaining agreement.”
In other words, the oil bosses are saying: “We had a deal with USW President Conway and the rest of the union executives we bribed, but the workers are getting in the way!”
To deliberately isolate the Chevron workers, the USW is keeping the rest of us in the dark once again. In a perfunctory text Monday, the USW wrote: “Standing in Solidarity w/USW Local 5 & the over 500 oilworkers in Richmond, CA as they began an unfair labor practice strike against Chevron at midnight last night.”
What the text did not say is that the Chevron workers are rebelling against the treachery of the USW itself!
Richmond refinery workers don’t need phony statements of solidarity from USW executives or more photo ops staged for the news media. Chevron workers need real solidarity. All oil workers should prepare for a national strike. We cannot allow our brothers and sisters in Richmond to suffer the same fate as those in Beaumont. United, we can win this fight.
As we have stated before, the OWRFC fights for the demands workers need, not what is “affordable” to the oil bosses. This includes:
A 40 percent raise and the restoration of Cost-of-Living Adjustments (COLA);
Restoration of the eight-hour day;
Expansion of paid time off, including a six-week vacation during the first year of service and one month of paid paternity leave;
Fully paid medical benefits;
The hiring of more full-time workers;
The establishment of worker-run health and safety committees and the abolition of corrupt joint “labor”-management committees;
Workers’ control over production rates and input over capital expenditures;
Fully paid pensions and retiree medical benefits after 25 years of service;
The elevation of contractors to full-time positions with the same pay and benefits.
Our battle is part of a far broader struggle of the working class. A staggering 1 million people have lost their lives in the US from COVID-19 because profits have been prioritized over life. Teachers in Minneapolis and Sacramento, railroad workers in the US and Canada, truckers, supermarket workers and other workers across the world are fighting demands for endless sacrifice from billionaires who profited from the pandemic, the run-up in prices and the drive to war.
Everything depends on what we, the rank and file, do. We must build the leadership to fight for our lives and livelihoods and create a better future for the current, past and next generations of workers.
If you agree with this fight, you should join and build the Oil Workers Rank-and-File Committee in your refinery and petrochemical plant. To join or to get more information, email oilworkersrfc@gmail.com.
Teamsters union sabotages CP Rail workers struggle by agreeing to binding arbitration
Are you a railroader at CP or another company? Contact us at cpworkersrfc@gmail.com to let us know what you think of the Teamsters’ decision to sabotage the CP Rail struggle.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) abruptly announced an agreement with Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) to end the lockout of 3,000 engineers, conductors and yard workers and submit the contract dispute to binding arbitration. Workers had no say in this anti-democratic conspiracy, which will strip them of their legal rights to strike, take other job actions and collectively bargain for years to come. Within a matter of hours, all 3,000 workers were sent back to work.
The arbitrator is a government-appointed official who will review the positions of TCRC and CP representatives before imposing a final agreement on both parties. Statements from the company and Teamsters suggest that only some of the 24 outstanding contract issues will be addressed in the arbitration process. Workers will have no right to vote on the final agreement.
In a letter to its members, the Teamsters sought to provide a pathetic justification for their capitulation to CP management, which has waged a ferocious campaign of vilification against rail workers with the support of leading big business organizations. “In consideration of the hard positions of the parties at bargaining and the near certainty that our dispute would eventually end in a final and binding arbitration as ordered by the government … our bargaining committee made the decision it would be in all of our best interests to take control of the situation and work out an agreement that gives us power over the terms, conditions and eventual arbitrator.”
In other words, the Teamsters knew the big business Liberal government would impose an anti-democratic back-to-work law and a pro-employer settlement, so the bureaucrats decided to spare Trudeau’s ministers their blushes and do their dirty work for them.
Striking CP rail workers at St. Luc yard in Montreal (Source: Teamsters Canada)
In the very next paragraph, the TCRC revealed that all the boasting about retaining “power” and “control” was a smokescreen aimed at concealing its prostration to the company’s demands. The “major issues” to be put to the arbitrator would be “wages, benefits and pensions,” the union wrote. CP’s brutal scheduling and disciplinary regimes, which rail workers have documented in extensive interviews with the WSWS over recent days, will remain untouched.
Concluding the spectacle of complete surrender, the Teamsters’ press release announcing the agreement concluded with the sentence, “There will be no comment from union spokespersons to the media until the arbitration process is complete.”
In a sure sign that the company got everything from the arbitration agreement it wanted, CEO Keith Creel bullishly declared in a condescending letter to CP staff, “I am pleased that Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) leadership has agreed to enter into binding arbitration with Canadian Pacific.”
Creel continued that rail workers could now “support the North American economy and help to get Canadian resources to a world in need.” Struggling to contain his enthusiasm, Creel bragged about the “exciting opportunities” in the year ahead, including the prospect that CP, through its acquisition of Kansas City Southern, would be “creating the first, and likely only ever, transnational railroad connecting three great democracies,” Canada, the US and Mexico. There was no hint of irony in this statement from a man who had just stripped his company’s workers of their democratic rights in order to resume the unrestrained accumulation of profits.
A Canadian Pacific train close to the small town of Pritchard, in British Columbia (Mariano Mantel/Flickr)
Rail workers speaking to the WSWS responded with outrage to the agreement. “They’re taking away the right to protest and strike, and here we are, back to work within a day,” said a CP rail worker in British Columbia. “I highly doubt that the arbitrator is going to decide in favour of the employees. We’re still not going to get what we want, and we’ve been fighting for two contracts. Members won’t even get an opportunity to vote! For the union to just arbitrarily decide for the employees, to me it’s not in the best interests of the collective group.”
The decision for binding arbitration is in keeping with a deepening class war on working people being waged by the ruling elite in every country. In early February, railroaders at BNSF, America’s largest railroad, were banned from taking strike action against the draconian “Hi Viz” attendance policy by a court injunction. Last week, P&O Ferries fired all 800 crew members on its passenger ships in Britain with immediate effect and replaced them with contract workers on a fraction of the regular wage.
Throughout the dispute, CP has acted with extreme belligerence. It filed a 72-hour lockout notice last Wednesday and immediately began implementing its “work stoppage contingency plan,” then sought to demonize rail workers for illegally striking after the lockout began. Company negotiators refused to agree to any adjustment to the pension cap, which has been in place for a decade and prevents workers from retiring on a livable pension. They also offered a meagre 2 percent pay “increase” in the first year and 2.5 percent thereafter under conditions where inflation in Canada is nearing 6 percent per year.
The company was supported by a savage campaign by business lobby groups, which made clear they would not tolerate strike action under conditions where high commodity prices for oil and agricultural goods, including fertilizer, promised to bring bumper profits for shareholders. The Trudeau Liberal government joined in, with Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan declaring threateningly Sunday, “We want a resolution, and we want it now.”
There are two central reasons for the ruling elite’s unprecedented degree of aggressiveness. Firstly, Canadian big business sees an opportunity to cash in big time on the high prices for oil and fertilizer produced by the sweeping sanctions imposed on Russia by the Western imperialist powers after Moscow was goaded into invading Ukraine by US and Canadian provocations. While the inflation produced by these policies, exacerbated by the pandemic’s disruption of supply chains, brings massive windfalls to oil producers and investors, it is having devastating consequences on workers’ living standards across Canada and internationally.
Secondly and even more fundamentally, the ruling elite fears that due to the mounting social and economic crisis, a determined struggle by rail workers could trigger a broader explosion of working class anger against the rampant profiteering and utter disregard for workers’ lives during the pandemic. The union bureaucracy, which has systematically suppressed workers’ struggles for the past four decades, was equally terrified, which explains the Teamsters’ abject surrender to Creel and CP’s shareholders.
This capitulation was the logical outcome of the TCRC’s policy throughout of blocking any collective opposition from rail workers to CP’s bone-crushing working conditions. TCRC negotiators kept workers in the dark about what was happening at the bargaining table and refused to issue a strike notice despite an overwhelming 96.7 percent vote in favour of a work stoppage. The union’s actions allowed CP to take the offensive, announcing the lockout and unleashing its vicious campaign against the workers. To save face, the Teamsters belatedly issued a strike notice 24 hours after the lockout notice was filed.
It is no mere coincidence that the Teamsters’ decision to sabotage the CP struggle came just hours after New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh confirmed his party would enter a formal alliance with the Liberal government to prop it up until 2025. Singh’s decision will give Trudeau a free hand to pivot to “post-pandemic” austerity for workers to pay for a massive increase in military spending as part of Canadian imperialism’s reckless drive to war with Russia. It also means that the trade unions, which are traditionally aligned with the NDP, are effectively part of this pro-austerity, pro-war government. The Teamsters’ actions early Tuesday underscore that the union bureaucracy’s role in this unholy alliance will be to discipline the working class into submission.
This lineup of political forces underscores that CP rail workers do not just confront a particularly ruthless employer but the class war agenda of Canada’s entire ruling elite. If they are to resist CP’s punishing work regime, draconian disciplinary procedures, the robbing of their pensions, and wage stagnation, they must take up a political struggle against the domination of social life by a tiny financial oligarchy and its lackeys in the NDP and trade unions.
The task of forming an independent rank-and-file committee at CP Railway is therefore posed with renewed urgency. This committee should fight for what workers need to guarantee a safe working environment, including a rest period of at least 24 hours between shifts, the linking of wage increases to CP Railway’s annual price hikes for freight cargo, the abolition of the pension cap, and the restitution of the contributions the company has illegitimately withheld from the pension fund since 2012.
Above all, the CP Railway workers rank-and-file committee must fight to broaden the struggle for decent pay and safe working conditions to other sections of the working class, including other transportation workers, energy workers, public sector employees and industrial workers. If you agree and wish to join this struggle, email cpworkersrfc@gmail.com.
ROFLMAO, WHAT BS Canada plan to hike oil exports will not compromise climate goals -government source
An oil pump jack pumps oil in a field near Calgary
Wed, March 23, 2022, By Steve Scherer and Nia Williams
OTTAWA/CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Canada on Thursday will outline plans to increase oil exports to help alleviate the tight global market following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but the hike will not undermine Ottawa's long-term climate commitments, a government source said.
Federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson will detail Canada's plans at the International Energy Agency (IEA) meeting in Paris, the source said.
Wilkinson told Reuters earlier this month the government is working with industry to find ways increase pipeline utilization and boost crude exports, and pipeline company Enbridge Inc said it is prepared to do "what it can."
Canada, holder of the world's third-largest oil reserves, is keen to help shore up long-term energy security as countries that previously relied on Russian oil and gas look for replacements amid sanctions aimed at punishing Russia for its assault on Ukraine. But the government has no plans to compromise its climate goals.
"There's no real desire to shift away from the focus on emissions reductions and the environment. We're not throwing out the climate rulebook," added the source, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the information.
A spokesman for Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage said Canada could ship an extra 200,000 barrels per day (bpd), roughly 5% of current exports to the United States and a fraction of the 3 million bpd of Russian supply expected to be missing from April.
Many producers, particularly in northern Alberta's oil sands where new multibillion-dollar projects take years to build, are reluctant to increase spending to significantly boost output.
Critics say Canada is failing to meet its climate goals.
In 2018, Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government bought the Trans Mountain oil pipeline to help producers struggling to get their crude to market.
Carbon emissions from the oil and gas sector have risen 20% since 2005 and contribute 26% of Canada's total emissions, making it the country's largest emitting industry.
The government has pledged to cut carbon emissions 40%-45% below 2005 levels by 2030, and is expected to outline a detailed emissions reduction plan by the end of March.
"What the Ukraine crisis has done is increase the attention being given to energy security," said George Hoberg, a professor of public policy at the University of British Columbia.
"There'll be lots of pressure from the oil and gas sector (to grow the industry) but to do so would be inconsistent with Canada's climate commitments."
Next month, the government will decide whether to approve Norwegian oil company Equinor's Bay du Nord project off the coast of Atlantic Canada. Bay du Nord has an estimated 300 million barrels of recoverable resources.
Environmental groups like Sierra Club have accused the oil and gas industry of exploiting the Ukraine crisis to drum up more support for the project.
(Reporting by Nia Williams in Calgary and Steve Scherer in Ottawa; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
A DECADE OF PLANNING A DECADE OF IMPLEMENTATION AND THEN.... Russia’s Invasion Is Crushing China’s Belt And Road Ambitions Editor OilPrice.com Tue, March 22, 2022
Sanctions on Russia are sidetracking China’s Silk Road Rail Corridor – disrupting freight traffic and creating losses for China – while forcing Beijing to rethink regional trade, development and security strategies. But the most severe long-term consequences may be felt in Kazakhstan.
Boosting rail traffic running from China to the European Union via a web of routes through Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus is a key element in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a $1 trillion vision unveiled by Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2013 to project Beijing’s economic and political influence around the world. Rail traffic through Russian territory ran on schedule during the first few weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as orders initiated prior to the war completed their transcontinental journeys. But while transit via the sanctioned Russian Railways is still technically possible, a growing number of logistics companies have effectively halted BRI-related operations through Russia.
On March 10, for example, DB Schenker, a prominent German third-party logistics provider announced it was temporarily suspending “land, air and ocean transport” to and from Russia. A day earlier, another logistics giant, Hapag-Lloyd, confirmed it is no longer accepting bookings involving Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Also on March 9, a statement issued by the inland Port of Duisburg in Germany, a key hub for BRI shipments, noted that international insurers are likely to stop offering coverage for shipments transiting Russia and Belarus.
The financial fallout from the Silk Road rail breakdown is affecting China in a variety of ways. Not only is the war starting to cost Beijing lost trade revenue, but it is also turning infrastructure investments into white elephants. One such project is the Great Stone Industrial Park situated about 15 miles outside the Belarusian capital, Minsk. The $2 billion, Chinese-financed complex was billed as a trade and IT hub but was mostly a goodwill gesture to induce BRI cooperation from Belarus. This investment may now prove a total loss for China.
The economic hit is relatively minor when compared to the social, economic and geopolitical headache that Russia’s attack on Ukraine is creating for Xi’s government. China’s “no limits” strategic partnership with Russia has turned into a liability for Beijing. Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s willingness to cause collateral damage to the BRI – which is intimately tied to the Chinese leader’s personal prestige – has inflicted reputational costs on China, costs that may hinder efforts to infuse the BRI with fresh momentum once the fighting in Ukraine stops. There also could be economic penalties for China, if Beijing provides tangible military or financial assistance to Russia.
Internally, the prospect of a prolonged interruption of BRI trade has significant ramifications for Beijing. A major strategic BRI objective is facilitating the pacification of China’s restive Xinjiang Province, the scene of an ongoing crackdown on Muslim minorities. Xi has consistently presented the BRI as an instrument capable of bringing peace through trade and economic development. The specific vision for Xinjiang was laid out in China’s 13th five-year plan, which pledged to “strengthen infrastructure development along major routes and at major ports of entry” and “work to develop Xinjiang as the core region for the Silk Road Economic Belt.” China’s strategy also emphasized greater economic integration with Central Asian states, in particular Kazakhstan, thus promoting a greater level of stability along China’s western border. With many BRI rail routes hamstrung, China will be hard-pressed to come up with strategic alternatives. Beyond the short-term impacts on trade, Russia’s invasion severely undermines the BRI’s “peace through commerce” strategic rationale.
Central Asia’s stability is fast-emerging as a source of concern for China, given that the sanctions imposed on Russia are also punishing Central Asian economies, and are causing labor migration patterns to shift. Remittances sent back to home by Central Asian labor migrants have long been an important source of income for many families in the region. But this crucial income stream now is in danger of rapidly drying up.
For a variety of reasons, including fears of impressment into the Russian army, legions of Central Asian labor migrants are leaving Russia and returning to their homelands, where dismal job prospects await. The combination of rapid inflation, economic stagnation and rising unemployment in Central Asia raises the risk of regional unrest. Already in January, before the start of the war, discontent boiled over into deadly street protests in Kazakhstan. Worse could be looming just over the horizon.
Kazakhstan is the Central Asian nation with the most to lose from BRI disruption. BRI transit trade had been a bright spot in Kazakhstan’s otherwise bleak economic landscape in recent years. Kazakhstan also tailored its development strategy around its role as a trade corridor. Even while the COVID pandemic was raging, trans-Eurasian rail corridors experienced growth; in 2021, the BRI network, of which Kazakhstan is a major hub, handled about 15,000 trains, ferrying almost 1.5 million containers. The massive new inland port of Khorgos, on the Kazakhstani-Chinese border, often portrayed by Kazakhstani officials as the Belt and Road’s “buckle,” generated a nice revenue flow into state coffers, despite rampant smuggling. Now, it seems likely there will be a sustained drop in trains passing through Khorgos.
Kazakhstani officials are clearly worried, especially given that the country has barely recovered from its severe bout of instability in January. The ripple effect of sanctions has already fueled a 20 percent drop in the value of the Kazakhstani currency, the tenge. The inflation rate in February was roughly double the official estimate. The Central Bank has already spent over $800 million of its reserves to reinforce the battered currency. Authorities also have imposed limits on foreign currency and gold exports. It’s uncertain whether the post-invasion spike in global energy prices can help offset the financial turbulence by providing added revenue for energy-rich Kazakhstan.
With BRI routes traversing Russia now seemingly on hold, southern routes via the Caspian Basin, avoiding Russian territory, are receiving more attention. On March 16, Xi moved to shore up diplomatic ties along the southern route, discussing trade and transit with the leaders of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and his son and heir, Serdar. While growth in transit volume along southern BRI routes is possible, alternative routings that avoid Russian territory have their own logistical complications, possibly including Russia’s continuing assertion of a “sphere of influence” in the greater Caspian Basin.
War-induced destabilization is one factor behind Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s offer to serve as a mediator to end the fighting. The offer, however, has fallen on deaf ears. It seems Vladimir Putin is in no mood to listen to anyone from outside his inner circle. Only China appears to possess sufficient heft to break through Putin’s defensive bubble. But so far, its “no limits” relationship with Russia seems to be trumping BRI losses and other economic considerations in prompting China to stay on the sidelines.
By Eurasianet.org
War is no joke, but in Ukraine, humor is resistance | Opinion
Menendez
Ana Menendez Tue, March 22, 2022
Just before the Russian invasion of his country, Ukrainian writer Andrei Kurkov posted a sardonic alert on Twitter: “Kyiv/Kiev weather forecast: +5C, windy, chances of Russian attack 30%, feels like 95%.”
A few days later, he posted a photo of heavily armed soldiers by the side of the road and tagged it “Ukrainian mushroom pickers.” A photo of a bombed building on March 2 was labeled: “A school visit from Putin.”
This kind of ironic, often dark humor defines Ukraine’s culture of resistance, says the Odessa-born poet Ilya Kaminsky.
“In Odessa, it helped people to cope during Soviet times,” Kaminsky wrote in a brief interview I conducted with him over email. “It helped to have a language of its own, with its own jokes and intonations, quotations and echoes not always understood by authorities.”
In a recent interview with Slate, Kaminsky pointed out that the most important holiday in Odessa isn’t Christmas, “It is April 1, April Fool’s Day, which we call Humorina. Thousands of people come to the street and celebrate what they call the day of kind humor. All of Ukraine has a sense of humor — think of the man who offered to tow the Russian tank which had run out of gas back to Russia.
“Humor is part of our resilience,” he said.
War is not funny. Suffering, exile and dispossession are nothing to laugh at. And, yet, humor has always formed part of resistance movements. Why? What role does laughter have to play in times of oppression? Is humor just a safety valve, or can it be the catalyst for real change?
Last year, these questions prompted me to propose a new course at Florida International University. I spent a year developing “Humor as Resistance” as a special topics course in our Writing and Rhetoric track, and this semester, 17 intrepid students enrolled. We were exploring the topic together, when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine making a hero of the country’s comedian-turned-president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“I don’t need a ride,” Zelenskyy reportedly told the Americans who wanted to evacuate him in the early days of the invasion. “I need ammunition.”
As the daughter of Cuban exiles, I well understand how humor makes life bearable. Living with despots, sometimes laughter is the only way to tell the truth. One of the first short stories I wrote, “In Cuba I was a German Shepherd,” revolves around a group of old men who tell jokes around the domino table to process the pain of exile. Later, I bonded with my Slovak husband, over jokes that made light of communist-era deprivations:
Man runs into a store. “I’d like a roll of toilet paper.”
Shopkeeper: “We’re out. We’re getting some next week.”
Man: “I can’t wait that long.”
Satire has a long history in the West, of course, going back to at least Aristophanes. But as a form of resistance, it has a particularly strong tradition in Eastern and Central Europe, pre-dating Soviet times. The Odessa-born Isaac Babel was the master of this style during the earlier Russian empire. And, for the Czechs, the great master of ironic resistance was “The Good Soldier Švejk,” the creation of anarchist Jaroslav Hašek, an inveterate hoaxer whose hero, under a cloak of naivete, pierces every cultural pomposity, particular those emanating from the military.
Many of these forms of humor hark back to the literary carnivalesque (embodied by Rabelais and elucidated by the critic Mikhail Bakhtin). The tradition remains alive in Europe, where the spirit infused a range of humorous resistance stunts from the Poles who resisted state propaganda by taking their TV sets out for a walk during the daily newscast to the Otpor movement in Serbia that organized a “birthday celebration” for Milošević complete with cake, card and gifts that included handcuffs and a one-way ticket to the Hague.
With notable exceptions (including Majken Jul Sorensen, whose work has guided my class) most traditional scholarly approaches to humor take a dim view of the power of laughter. Much of the earlier scholarly literature on humorous resistance is preoccupied with the question: “Is it just a way to blow off steam or can humor really change the rules of oppression?”
The question represents a false choice. Resilience is resistance. Beyond instrumentalist aims of humor, laughter is a philosophy, a lightness of life that was most famously captured, in our times, by the writer Milan Kundera who told Philip Roth in an interview: “I could always recognize a person who was not a Stalinist, a person whom I needn’t fear, by the way he smiled. A sense of humor was a trustworthy sign of recognition. Ever since, I have been terrified by a world that is losing its sense of humor.”
I feel for my students. This generation has lived through a civil war in Syria (which has produced more than 5 million refugees) and two years of global pandemic only to now emerge at the cusp of a war that may yet engulf the world. In a broken world, how do we survive?
Violence is its own total vernacular. And we know that a joke has never stopped a bomb. But against the nihilistic darkness of Putin who has suggested “why do we need a world if Russia is not in it?” we can offer the life-affirming light of laughter. We can reject the dour humorlessness of history’s butchers. And we can go on resisting by embracing all the things that make life worth living: friendship, love, and humor, even in the face of extinction. “Putin died on the 24th of February, 2022 at 5 am Kyiv time,” Kurkov wrote on March 6. “He doesn’t know this yet.” Ana Menéndez is a writer who teaches at Florida International University. Her most recent novel, “The Apartment,” will be published by Counterpoint Press in April 2023.
George Orwell used to say that “jokes are small revolutions”. What self-respecting autocrat does not have his collection of jokes? Franco, Stalin, Hitler… Simple scape valve of fears and hopes, this modest revenge helps to cope with the absurdity that life can become.
Although jokes never overthrew any tyranny, they act as a cathartic tool, perhaps the only impious transgression that citizens can afford as a form of resistance. Although sometimes they entail risks for those who tell and listen to them.
Ana María Vigara Tauste, linguist at the Complutense University in Madrid who died in 2012, wrote in her study ‘Sex, politics and subversion. The popular joke in the Franco era ‘, that the jokes about Franco and his regime were a “form of humorous rejection of the effective pressure of the dictatorship”.
Sociologist Christie Davies, professor at the University of Reading, who passed away in 2017, compiled in ‘Jokes and Targets’ some of the most celebrated amusing stories in communist Europe. Although it minimized their practical effects – “they did not cause the fall of the Soviet Union,” he said – he considered them fundamental to erode the system, because of their sharp criticism of the political establishment; for him, they predicted the future of socialism better than analysts’ reports, because “they explored all the weaknesses of the system”. According to Davies, a joke is a thermometer and not a thermostat: it indicates what happens, without changing it; at best, it helps maintain morale. Censoring humor, more than a symptom of fear of the powerful, “is a way of saying: here I am, I control the situation!”
Philosopher and political scientist Tomás Várnagy, of the University of Buenos Aires, feels more optimistic about the role of humor against dictators. The examples collected in ‘Proletarians of all countries … Forgive us!’ undermined, in his opinion, the legitimacy of the political, economic and social system they embodied, highlighting the enormous gap between words and reality. He also remembers that, in a democracy, political humor, in its oral or graphic expression, has a very different tone: it serves to laugh at politicians who are not very clever, vain or self-centered, but rarely question the system.
Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo was born in Niefang, Equatorial Guinea, in 1950. Writer, journalist and political exile. He was correspondent and delegate of Spanish EFE agency in central Africa (1987-1995). Director of the Center for African Studies at the University of Murcia (2000-2004). Visiting Professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia (United States, 2005-2008). Regular lecturer on American, African and European universities. He is the author of the essays "History and tragedy of Equatorial Guinea" (1977), "Anthology of Guinean literature" (1984) and co-author of "Spain in Guinea" (1998) as well as of three novels translated into several languages. Mr Ndongo is a regular contributor for Spanish media such as El País, ABC, Mundo Negro and The Corner’s print magazine Consejeros, among others.
Finland's people now strongly back joining NATO, poll says, a massive political shift that would enrage Russia Sinéad Baker Wed, March 23, 2022, Finnish troops on the march near Tolga, Norway, in November 2018.Finnish Defence Forces/Ville Multanen
A majority of people in Finland now support the country joining NATO, a new poll found.
The surge followed Ukraine being invaded by Russia, with which Finland also shares a border.
Russia pre-emptively warned of "serious military and political consequences" if Finland joins NATO.
A survey of people in Finland found that a majority wanted the country to join NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine.
The survey by the Finnish Business and Policy Forum (Eva) think tank found that 60% of people supported Finland joining, a massive jump from previous years. Eva polled 2,074 people between March 4 and March 15.
Finland shares a long border with Russia, and was once part of the Russian Empire. After it gained independence it was invaded by the Soviet Union in 1939 but fought back and was not defeated.
The country has for decades maintained a careful balance between Russia and Western countries, which involved avoiding NATO membership.
At the time of the last Eva survey in 2021, most Finns seemed to support that position, with only 34% backing NATO membership.
But Russia's invasion of Ukraine, another non-NATO country, prompted a huge change, almost doubling support for NATO membership.
Ilkka Haavisto, the research manager for Eva, said of the results that "Russia has shown that it does not respect the integrity of its neighbours."
"The war in Ukraine has concretely shown what the horrors of a defensive war on Finland's own territory would be and made it clear that NATO countries cannot use their military forces to help defend a non-aligned country."
Russia has threatened Finland should it decide to pursue membership.
A foreign ministry official warned earlier this month of "serious military and political consequences" if Finland or its neighbor Sweden tried to join.
Russian President Vladimir Putin used the possibility of NATO expanding further eastwards as a reason for his invasion of Ukraine. He framed the invasion as being an act of self defense against the alliance's growth.
Finland's president Sauli Niinisto said on Sunday that applying for Nato membership would come with the "major risk" of escalation in Europe, but he said the country does wants to find ways to improve its security situation.
Sanna Marin, Finland's prime minister, said earlier this month that the country's politicians would have a conversation about NATO membership: "We're moving quickly, although these discussions will be thorough."
Beijing says it has right to develop South China Sea islands
Tue, March 22, 2022,
China on Tuesday said it has the right to develop islands in the South China Sea, responding to criticism from the U.S. on Sunday that Beijing had fully militarized three islands in the region.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin called the islands "necessary national defense facilities" within Chinese territory in line with international law, according to The Associated Press.
Wang then criticized the U.S. of aiming to "stir up trouble and make provocations," which "seriously threatens the sovereignty and security of coastal countries and undermines the order and navigation safety in the South China Sea."
On Sunday, Adm. John C. Aquilino, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said China had fully armed three small islands with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems, lasers, jamming equipment and fighter jets.
Aquilino said Beijing was flexing its military muscles but also contradicted past assurances from Chinese President Xi Jinping, who promised not to militarize the artificial islands.
"I think over the past 20 years we've witnessed the largest military buildup since World War II by the PRC," Aquilino told the AP. "They have advanced all their capabilities and that buildup of weaponization is destabilizing to the region."
The contested nature of the waters was highlighted during the AP's trip aboard a P-8A Poseidon plane flying over the islands, when the pilots ignored radio messages warning it to stay away from the islands.
China has aggressively sought to expand its control of the South China Sea, amid competing claims from other countries including Vietnam and Taiwan. The U.S. has no claims but patrols the area in an effort to promote freedom of navigation.
Vice President Harris last year rebuked Beijing for intimidating other countries in the South China Sea.
"Beijing's actions continue to undermine the rules-based order and threaten the sovereignty of nations," she said at the time. "The United States stands with our allies and partners in the face of these threats."
US Indo-Pacific commander in provocative flight over South China Sea
In a calculated provocation staged for the media, the head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral John Aquilino, on Sunday flew in a Navy reconnaissance plane deliberately close to Chinese-controlled islets in the Spratly group in the South China Sea.
Aquilino used the occasion to denounce China for militarising the islets and ominously warn that his mission was to be prepared to “fight and win” should conflict with China arise.
The unprecedented publicised flight by the Pentagon’s top commander in the region has a wider significance. Even as the US and its NATO allies escalate the conflict with Russia in the Ukraine, the Biden administration is deliberately heightening tensions with China over dangerous flashpoints in Asia—Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Aquilino pointed to the construction of missile sites, aircraft hangers and radar systems on Mischief Reef, Subi Reef and Fiery Cross Reef, saying it appeared to be completed, and speculated as to whether China would construct military infrastructure elsewhere in the South China Sea.
Admiral John C. Aquilino, left, Commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), arrives at Clark Air Base, Pampanga province, northern Philippines on Sunday March 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
“The function of those islands is to expand the offensive capability of the PRC [People’s Republic of China] beyond their continental shores,” Aquilino claimed. “They can fly fighters, bombers plus all those offensive capabilities of missile systems.” The missile systems posed a threat to military and civilian aircraft, he said. “They threaten all nations who operate in the vicinity and all the international sea and airspace.”
According to Associated Press, “As the P-8A Poseidon flew as low as 4,500 meters near the Chinese-occupied reefs, some appeared to be like small cities on screen monitors, with multi-storey buildings, warehouses, hangars, seaports, runways and white round structures Aquilino said were radars. Near Fiery Cross, more than 40 unspecified vessels could be seen apparently anchored.”
The two Associated Press reporters on board breathlessly reported the Chinese radio messages to stay clear of the islets that were ignored by the US aircraft. Neither they nor the media outlets that published their report in any way challenged Aquilino’s remarks or even questioned what they were looking at on the screen monitors.
In fact, Aquilino’s comments stand reality on its head. While accusing China of aggressive intent, the Indo-Pacific commander was flying in a military aircraft within view of Chinese-claimed territory and thousands of kilometres from the nearest American territory. The South China Sea is immediately adjacent to the Chinese mainland and sensitive Chinese military installations, including key submarine bases on Hainan Island.
Over the past decade, the US has deliberately inflamed tensions in the South China Sea as a means of sowing divisions between China and neighbouring countries. In 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a regional forum of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) that the US had a “national interest” in the South China Sea.
Having previously largely ignored the various territorial disputes, Clinton’s remark signalled an aggressive intrusion into the region and the onset of an intensifying US confrontation with China. The following year, Obama formally announced the “pivot to Asia” to challenge China diplomatically, economically and militarily across the region. On the pretext of ensuring freedom of navigation and flight, the US has repeatedly sent warships and warplanes into waters and airspace claimed by China.
US preparations for war with China have proceeded apace. The Pentagon has completed repositioning 60 percent of its air and naval forces to the Indo-Pacific, and restructured and expanded its military bases. US military alliances and strategic partnerships aimed against China have been beefed up throughout the region.
Given the three decades of US wars of aggression in the Middle East and Central Asia, China is bolstering its military position in the strategic South China Sea. American military strategists regard US control of key waters close to the Chinese mainland, such as the South China Sea, as critical in any US war with China.
In congressional testimony last year, Aquilino warned that war with China was “much closer than most think.” His predecessor Admiral Phil Davidson had only days earlier told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the US could face conflict with China, particularly over Taiwan, within six years.
Speaking on last weekend’s flight, Aquilino claimed that Washington’s main objective in the region was “to prevent war” through deterrence. However, the real intent of the US military build-up throughout Asia is precisely the opposite, as was indicated in Aquilino’s threat: “Should deterrence fail, my second mission is to be prepared to fight and win.”
The Indo-Pacific commander accused China’s military expansion of being “destabilising to the region,” saying: “I think over the past 20 years we’ve witnessed the largest military build-up since World War II by the PRC.”
The “threat” posed by China is simply the pretext for the US preparations for war. The US military budget not only dwarfs that of China, but is larger than the military budgets of the nine next largest military powers. The Pentagon has been expanding its anti-ballistic missile systems in the Pacific and, following the US abrogation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, is stationing offensive intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe and preparing to do the same in Asia.
In its historic decline, US imperialism is determined to use every means, including its massive military, to maintain its global hegemony and regards Russia, and particularly China, now the world’s second largest economy, as its chief threats. The provocative flight by Aquilino in the South China Sea once again underscores the sheer recklessness of Washington’s foreign policy.
Having provoked a war in Ukraine aimed at miring Russia in an Afghanistan-type quagmire, the Biden administration is also inflaming tensions with China. Top White House officials, including Biden himself, have warned China of “consequences” if it provides material support to Russia in the Ukraine conflict. While “consequences” have been widely interpreted as punitive economic sanctions, US imperialism has a long track record of resorting to military provocations.
Colorado lays to rest first legally composted human remains
Tim Fitzsimons Mon, March 21, 2022
A funeral home laid to rest Colorado's first legally composted human remains Sunday, less than a year after the state legalized the process as a greener alternative to cremation and traditional burial.
The weekend ceremony was to lay to rest the person who was reported to be the first in the state to use the process of converting human bodies into soil, known as "natural reduction," according to The Natural Funeral, a Colorado funeral services provider.
Dozens of people spread the soil at the newly dedicated Colorado Burial Preserve, about 40 miles south of Colorado Springs. Before Sunday's ceremony, non-embalmed remains were often laid to rest in hand-dug graves set in a natural prairie landscape.
The remains of the first person to be composted were spread out in a ceremony in Fremont County, Colo., on March 20, 2022, after the process was made legal last year. (KUSA)
About six months ago, the remains of the first person in the state to choose natural reduction were placed in an air-filtered chamber with wood chips, alfalfa, straw and “a lot of microbial beings.” That began a natural digestion and conversion process that took six months, said Seth Viddal, the managing partner at The Natural Funeral.
One body makes about a pickup truck bed’s worth of soil, NBC affiliate KUSA of Denver reported.
The law "prohibits the soil of multiple people to be combined without their permission, for the soil to be used to grow food for human consumption or for it to be sold," KUSA reported.
The Natural Funeral said its process has “no appreciable carbon emissions or release of toxic fumes in contrast to flame cremation” and does not “take up any real estate as a conventional burial might.”
“We see Body Composting as the express lane for a body to rejoin the cycle of life,” it wrote.
Viddal said that most interest in the process thus far had come from the Denver and Boulder metro areas but that three of the 15 sets of remains interred at the facility came from out of the state. The vast majority of states have not legalized the process. Washington was the first state to legalize natural reduction.
The first Colorado family to use legal composting in the state chose to have their loved one's composted remains donated to the burial preserve. The ceremony Sunday was on the vernal equinox — a half-year after the remains were placed in the chamber on the autumnal equinox, Viddal said.
The Natural Funeral has since taken 15 more sets of remains for natural reduction and has expanded its capacity to 48 decomposition vessels.
"We are anticipating a lot of growth," Viddal said.
At a cost of $7,900, natural reduction is pricier than a typical Denver cremation, which runs from $3,000 to $5,000, KUSA reported.
“To distinguish this service from something like cremation, which is an instant service — the process in its entirety is just a few hours — whereas with body composting we have a four- to six-month managed biological process, so I'm not anticipating that natural reduction will ever equal the price of a flame cremation," Viddal said. "We hope the price will become a little bit more competitive."
Artifacts seized from U.S. billionaire returned to Israel Dr. Etan Klein, Deputy Director of the Theft Prevention Unit, of Israel's Antiquities Authority, looks over looted antiquities worth $5-million, seized from billionaire hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt, displayed in the offices of the Manhattan District Attorney, in New York, Tuesday, March 22, 2022. The 39 items being returned to Israel include two gold masks dating from about 5000 B.C. that are valued at $500,000, and a set of three death masks that date from 6000 to 7000 B.C. and are worth a total of $650,000
(AP Photo/Richard Drew)
KAREN MATTHEWS and ILAN BEN ZION Tue, March 22, 2022
NEW YORK (AP) — Prosecutors in New York announced the repatriation Tuesday of $5 million worth of looted antiquities seized from billionaire hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt to Israel, where Steinhardt is well known as a patron of cultural institutions.
The 39 items being returned to Israel include two gold masks dating from about 5000 B.C. that are valued at $500,000 and a set of three death masks that date from 6000 to 7000 B.C. and are worth a total of $650,000, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said.
“These rare and beautiful artifacts, which are thousands of years old, have been kept from the public because of illegal looting and trafficking,” Bragg said. “My office is proud to once again return historic antiquities to where they rightfully belong."
The objects that authorities say were illegally acquired in Israel are part of $70 million worth of stolen antiquities that Steinhardt agreed to turn over in December in a deal to avoid prosecution.
Under the agreement, Steinhardt is permanently barred from acquiring antiquities. Items seized from Steinhardt have previously been returned to authorities in Greece and Jordan.
A message seeking comment on Tuesday's announcement was sent to an attorney for Steinhardt. His attorneys have said previously that the dealers from whom Steinhardt bought antiquities represented to him that they held lawful title to the artifacts.
Of the 39 objects that are to be repatriated to Israel, 28 were turned over to Israeli authorities Tuesday. Three were already on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and eight have not yet been located but will be returned as soon as they are found, the district attorney's office said. Several of the artifacts returned to Israel were looted from the occupied West Bank.
Additionally, a 3,000-year-old spoon that was used to ladle incense onto fires is being held for Palestinian authorities, prosecutors said.
Eitan Klein, deputy director of the theft prevention unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said the antiquities “are priceless for the state of Israel and its people. They symbolize our rich and vast cultural heritage. Now, they are being returned to their rightful owners.”
Klein said his office was proud to be part of the investigation into the plundered artifacts along with the district attorney and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Steinhardt, 81, founded the hedge fund Steinhardt Partners in 1967 and closed it in 1995. He came out of retirement in 2004 to head Wisdom Tree Investments.
Steinhardt has been a major donor to Jewish philanthropies and is a co-founder of Birthright, a program that brings North American Jewish youth on a free trip Israel. He is a patron of the Israel Museum, which houses three of the artifacts confiscated by the Manhattan district attorney's office, as well as several other Israeli cultural institutions including a natural history museum at Tel Aviv University that bears his name.
Following the AP’s reporting that Steinhardt’s name still appeared on his looted artifacts at the Israel Museum, the Hebrew-language daily Haaretz published an editorial calling for his name to be removed from the institution’s walls.
The Israel Museum has removed Steinhardt’s name from the labels of two Neolithic masks exhibited in its galleries.
The Israel Antiquities Authority said that upon their return to Israel, the artifacts confiscated from Steinhardt will be housed in a storage facility outside Jerusalem, and that there were no immediate plans to exhibit them to the public.
