Ghost Dog
Ghost Dog's JournalThe hard environmental and the social science is in.
Many if not most people living in societies dependant on fragile financial and waste-generating just-in-time production, global distribution and frantic consumption processes will be FUCKED, as you put it, but more because of the nature of such societies and all the other environmental damage rather than climate change itself, in my opinion.
Course Change
A change of course now has the tanker, a VLCC (very large crude carrier), previously on course for Suez, now on course to pass North of Cyprus, heading towards Mersin in Turkey, for example.
A US online journal yesterday reported:
Splash understands US military forces have been practicing taking over the VLCC...
https://splash247.com/john-bolton-reiterates-us-stance-towards-controversial-iranian-vlcc/
Iran says it has sold oil from tanker released by Gibraltar
Source: Reuters
GENEVA (Reuters) - Iran has sold the oil from a tanker released by Gibraltar after weeks in the custody of British Royal Marines and the vessel’s owner will decide on its next destination, IRIB news agency quoted an Iranian government spokesman as saying on Monday.
Separately, Tehran - embroiled in a spiralling confrontation with Washington over U.S. sanctions meant to strangle Iranian oil exports - announced that it had deployed a naval destroyer with cruise missiles to help secure Iranian ships.
The Iranian government spokesman did not identify the recipient of the oil carried by the Adrian Darya tanker. After Gibraltar freed the vessel on Aug. 18, the United States said it would take every action it could to prevent it delivering oil to Syria in contravention of U.S. sanctions. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has sold the oil of this ship and now the owner and purchaser of this oil will decide the destination of the cargo,” government spokesman Ali Rabiei said.
Refinitiv Eikon shipping data showed on Monday that the tanker was no longer recorded as bound for Turkey, its indicated destination at the weekend. No new destination was given...
Read more: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-iran-tanker-oil/iran-says-it-has-sold-oil-from-tanker-released-by-gibraltar-idUKKCN1VG0OT
Currently South of Crete, heading into the East Mediterranean.
The flotilla is the 63rd Iranian naval group to be dispatched on overseas operation, he added, saying the group will be escorting Iranian ships in the Sea of Oman and the Persian Gulf. The mission is Sahand’s maiden long-term voyage. The vessel joined the Navy’s southern fleet last December...
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/08/26/604497/Iran-warship-deployed-Gulf-of-Aden-security-mission
"Hey, something bad's coming, hold on."
... U.S. stock futures turned positive Monday afternoon in Asia after Trump said on the sidelines of the Group of 7 meeting that China has asked to re-start trade talks, hours after Beijing’s top negotiator publicly called for calm in response to a weekend of tit-for-tat tariff increases.
Friday’s gyrations were a new chapter for many veterans, proof that no blueprint exists. After watching index futures get felled by China’s $75 billion tariff counter-punch, bulls were relieved to see Powell push them back to green with a needle-threading speech at Jackson Hole. Trump summarily lambasted the Fed for doing “NOTHING!,” compared Powell with Xi Jinping and said he’d get back to everyone with a response. Wall Street had no recourse but to sit there as stocks slid almost 3% in the ensuing vacuum. “If I tell you ‘I’m going to punch you,’ that’s not as bad as me telling you, ‘I’m going to hurt you in a way that I’m not even going to tell you about,”’ Steve Chiavarone, a fund manager with Federated Investors, said in an interview. “Hey, something bad’s coming, hold on.”
These aren’t people who oppose everything Trump is doing. “We did need to resolve outstanding issues with China,” says Gokhman, though a coordinated approach with other countries that focused on intellectual property theft would’ve been preferable to a “sporadic” one that risks stymieing capital investment. To Chiavarone, 35, it’s “absolutely a battle worth fighting.” A technological revolution is going on, “and the country that controls the intellectual capital that’s driving that revolution will very likely be the world’s preeminent power,” he said. Still, tactics matter, “and undoubtedly the ratcheting up of tariffs has a negative impact on earnings, sentiment and financial markets.” ...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-25/stakes-were-higher-in-2008-but-it-s-way-weirder-trading-trump
Something more sinister than just a trade war?
“The fact that many are now seeing the division between Xi and Trump as something more sinister than just a trade war has seen [the case] for a global recession increase …”
... Trump’s calls for US businesses to pull out of China would impact their sales and net interest margins, he said, adding another layer of concern. “We are even hearing, at a worst-case-scenario, that the US could restrict China’s access to the financial markets and that is a genuinely scary proposition.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/26/australian-share-market-us-chinese-trade-tensions
I see he doesn't need to declare an emergency. Several are already in effect, officially.
For instance, the president can, with the flick of his pen:
· freeze Americans’ bank accounts.
· deploy troops inside the country to subdue domestic unrest...
Thirty states of emergency are in effect today—several times more than when the act was passed. Most have been renewed for years on end. And during the 40 years the law has been in place, Congress has not met even once, let alone every six months, to vote on whether to end them.
As a result, the president has access to emergency powers contained in 123 statutory provisions, as recently calculated by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, where I work. These laws address a broad range of matters, from military composition to agricultural exports to public contracts. For the most part, the president is free to use any of them; the National Emergencies Act doesn’t require that the powers invoked relate to the nature of the emergency...
... Next to war powers, economic powers might sound benign, but they are among the president’s most potent legal weapons. All but two of the emergency declarations in effect today were issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or ieepa. Passed in 1977, the law allows the president to declare a national emergency “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat”—to national security, foreign policy, or the economy—that “has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States.” The president can then order a range of economic actions to address the threat, including freezing assets and blocking financial transactions in which any foreign nation or foreign national has an interest...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/presidential-emergency-powers/576418/
The Act doesn't say anything about who provokes the 'emergency', apparently.
It just says he needs to point to a foreign 'threat 'and declare an emergency; then he can regulate commerce, if unchallenged.
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/95/hr7738
(Was duplicate above).
Iranian tanker switches destination, heads to Turkey
Source: Reuters
Read more: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-iran-tanker-greece/iranian-tanker-switches-destination-heads-to-turkey-ship-tracking-data-idUKKCN1VE09H?il=0
A convenient location for her purposes:
The ship is, as I write, in the Strait of Sicily approaching Maltese waters:
XPost Foreign Affairs: https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1133&pid=25504
"If the two parts of the United Kingdom are in agreement
that it is in accord with their constitutional arrangement, written or unwritten, Spain would have nothing to say. We would simply maintain that it does not affect us."
Precisely Spain's position, at the moment. And without prejudice regarding the status of Gibraltar (where the local population voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU) and especially those unilaterally-declared 'territorial waters' unmentioned in Utrecht nor in any other Treaty.
Also, Scotland is an historical nation, which entered into a voluntary
parliamentary union with England. The Crowns of Scotland and England are separate, although held in personal union by one Monarch at the moment. Scotland is not and has never been an English region, never having been conquered even by Rome.
Catalonia is a Spanish region. Before the political union of the kingdoms of Castille (incorporating León, Asturias, ...) and Aragon (which had conquered the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Sicily and Naples, and had been subject under the kingdom of Navarra...) it was a county of the latter, and before that it was a feudal county under the Dukes of Aquitaine and Carolingian France, following al-Andalusi and earlier Visigothic rule, following Rome.
Beware of unlikely parallels and false equivalences.
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Gender: Do not displayHometown: Canary Islands Archipelago
Home country: Spain
Member since: Wed Apr 19, 2006, 01:59 PM
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