The Biden disaster

James Allan (Allan is a Canadian lawyer living in Australia)

If you were asked to pick the political decision that has done the most to further Mr Putin’s strategic position, to make it easiest for him to launch an invasion of the Ukraine and put Western interests up against it, I think you’d be hard-pressed to come up with anything better than ‘stopping domestic gas and oil production, especially fracking’. When Donald Trump left office the US was energy self-sufficient. It was exporting oil and gas. This was keeping prices low and affecting for the worse the oil kleptocracies around the world. Joe Biden came in and effectively cancelled the Keystone pipeline by revoking a cross-border presidential permit. He ended various fracking licences. He reversed course on Mr Trump’s widespread permissions to explore for gas and oil on federal land. All up he ensured that the US went from energy self-sufficiency back to big time importer. Why? Woke ideology.

Who was the biggest winner of all that? Maybe the Saudis. But probably even more so the Russians, now the world’s third-biggest oil producing country. In fact the US now imports Russian oil. As strategic decisions go this one by Biden was one of the stupidest of all time; it dealt in form over substance since basically the same amount of oil and gas would be burned in the US, it would just be extracted elsewhere, in unpleasant regimes out of sight. The science writer Matt Ridley warned how stupid it was and how much it would benefit Mr Putin. But Joe and the radical Left of the Democratic party to whom he seems to be in thrall thought it was better not to dirty their own hands with American gas and oil. Presumably they figured it was alright if they extract the stuff somewhere outside the US because, well, someone else did it, not us. If that type of thinking isn’t the most superficial, steeped in virtue-signalling thinking going, what is?

Of course there’s plenty of that sort of ‘form over substance’ thinking here in Australia. Say, mining coal but not burning it here. Or take this other example, the cross-party acceptance that it’s OK to send Australian uranium abroad but not to use it for nuclear power at home. Since arriving here seventeen years ago I’ve been baffled by that one. My bafflement goes up a few orders of magnitude when this ‘not in my patch’ attitude comes from those (unlike me, I hasten to add) who think the planet is on course to fry and dry itself in the next few years. Given their first principles you might be tempted to think nuclear power was a no-brainer for them. Resist that temptation. I grew up in Toronto which back in the late 1960s had a big nuclear power plant just outside the city. It’s still there, still producing masses more electricity than your Don Quixote windmills and Chinese-made solar panels. Indeed, you can see that nuclear power plant as you drive on highway 401 east out of Toronto, a city larger than Sydney. That said, I suppose the idea of nuclear energy might be really, super scary to those who allowed themselves to become terrified out of their wits by a virus with an infection fatality rate of well under 0.3 per cent across the board (and for the fit and young, a chance of death down there with being hit by lightning). How are we going to fight wars involving real risks of death when we’ve made a zero-risk precautionary principle our society’s guiding light? Seriously, we’re screwed if we keep this up. Life involves risks and a well-lived life does not cower in the closet waiting for Big Government to make zero-risk everything the sine qua non of being a citizen. Down that path lies pathetic servitude.

Still, that sort of ‘form over substance’ decision-making seems to be the Joe Biden way. Last week’s poll by Harvard-Harris found that 62 per cent of Americans believed Putin would not have invaded the Ukraine had Donald Trump been President. Even 38 per cent of Democrats believed that. Mr Putin had four years to invade if he thought (and as the totally bogus and every day more illegal-looking Russian collusion allegations, pushed by the Hillary Clinton people and deep state types, tried to suggest) that Trump was a patsy in the Russians’ back pocket. In fact, the last time Putin invaded (Crimea) was when Obama was President.

Let’s be honest. The woke, quota-driven, obsessed-with-race policies of Team Biden have been disastrous. Joe Biden right now is on course to be the worst President anyone can name. Inflation is at 7.5 per cent per annum, the highest in almost half a century. Biden only won the last election because of Covid and his claim he’d handle it better (together with the über-loose voting rules brought in by state courts and governors to cater for those who might not want to go to the voting booth, which was fortuitous you might say for Joe).

Yet Biden’s year in office has a worse death rate from Covid than Trump’s year – and for most of the latter’s time there was no vaccine. Biden implemented the withdrawal from Afghanistan in the most incompetent way ever, leaving billions in military hardware behind and a fair few Americans too. Serious crime is way, way up. Sure, that’s largely a state matter but Biden genuflected at the altar of Black Lives Matter who want to defund the police and eliminate the nuclear family. Defunding the police, as one might suppose, has been a disaster. And I mean for poor blacks more than anyone it’s been disastrous.

Which takes us to the Ukraine. Team Biden said sanctions were a deterrent, then that they weren’t. He looked and was weak. And you know what? Three years of the Democrats’ Russian collusion scam made it near on impossible for former President Trump, and then Biden, to deal with the Russian leader. Putin’s invasion was brutal, stupid and counter-productive. But the Russians have some legitimate gripes in my view. After the Cold War, Americans promised Gorbachev they would not expand Nato if he’d let the Wall come down. They did anyway. President Obama helped bring down a democratically elected pro-Russia government in the Ukraine a decade ago. And from Putin’s point of view it’s hard to see why the Americans, without the sanction of international law, can bomb Serbia relentlessly to let part of the country (Kosovo) break away but Russia can’t act militarily to let part of the Ukraine break away.

None of this comes close to warranting what Putin did. And he may well lose simply because the Ukrainians are being such tenacious fighters. (Would we fight like them?) I’m with the Ukrainians. But hypocrisy matters in the game of international affairs. So does weakness.

And so does a woke, virtue-signalling incompetent. Joe Biden, the man whose first instinct when war broke out was to offer the Ukrainian leader a flight to safety.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/wokeness-in-action

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Leftist pressure on Hungary from the EU

Budapest is racked with tension. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sends a stream of refugees to Hungary’s eastern border, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party has scrambled to respond to the humanitarian crisis while turning his back on his previous pragmatic relationship with Moscow.

Fidesz’s unequivocal condemnation of Vladimir Putin’s actions will have come as a relief to Brussels. But a bitter argument still rages over Hungary’s opposition to the bloc’s new ‘rule of law’ budget mechanism, which allows EU funds to be made dependent on adherence to legal and democratic norms.

When the European Court of Justice rejected a challenge to the mechanism from Hungary and Poland on February 16, Hungary’s struggle with the bloc ratcheted up a notch. The dispute is key to Fidesz’s stance for Hungarian national sovereignty within the EU, and it is almost certain that the government won’t back down with crunch elections approaching on April 3.

When I meet Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga – who has been leading the country’s rule of law struggle – in Budapest, while on a press trip organised by the Hungarian government, she’s quick to stress the significance of the latest ECJ ruling.

‘This was a political judgement, meaning the ECJ has become a political actor,’ she said. ‘We already knew the European Commission is political, and the European parliament is, by definition, a political body, always pressuring for funding to be linked to political requirements. Unfortunately, the Court has now approved these attempts.’

The EU says its rule of law mechanism is intended to prevent the misuse of EU funds by corrupt or undemocratic governments. This is something of an irony considering the warm reception given to Ukraine’s urgent request for EU membership – last year, Transparency International found Ukraine to be only marginally less corrupt than Russia itself.

Varga points out as well the subjectivity the EU has when distinguishing between the rule of law in different member states – a subtlety which Brussels seems happy to ignore.

‘The “rule of law” has no exact definition. Every country is different. As an example: in Hungary, the Justice Minister has no structural influence over the functioning of the judiciary. In other EU states, the Justice Minister stands above the judiciary. In some, like Germany, the Justice Minister can even instruct the public prosecutor. So which state is better for the rule of law: Germany, or Hungary? It’s impossible to say: “you are the good guy, you are the bad guy,” because there are so many elements in which we differ from each other.’

Varga notes that by doing away with the need for unanimity to sanction a member state under Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union, the rule of law mechanism is ‘a tool giving free rein to political pressure.’ But pressure against what? The European Commission insists its problems with Hungary relate to corruption, while Varga is unequivocal in describing the mechanism as a weapon in the culture wars.

She relates how the EU’s attitude on disbursing funds to Hungary changed when the Child Protection Act, a law widely characterised as homophobic, was introduced in June last year.

‘Until that time, we had very good negotiations on the pandemic recovery fund – Ursula von der Leyen was even about to ask for an appointment to come to Budapest to shake hands. Then we adopted the Child Protection Act – and she described it as a shameful act, without even asking me, the Justice Minister, to provide her with the text.’
‘We saw unprecedented outrage from people who had not even read the law, calling us a homophobic government. But there is no discrimination in the law. There is simply a statement that education must be free of any kind of lobbying, for any kind of sexuality. There is a progressive liberal trend to normalise LGBT lobbying in schools, already common in western Europe – we just don’t want this to happen here.’

Couldn’t it be argued that through such interventions Fidesz is equally guilty of trying to regulate Hungary’s culture? ‘Not regulate: preserve. Just preserve,’ says Varga. ‘Unfortunately, the world is so crazy now that you must declare self-evident things at a constitutional level and protect them. Like saying that a marriage is between a man and a woman. This has been our reality for many centuries, and we would like to preserve this. We are not against anyone; we would just like to keep ourselves and our culture as they were before. But this is now a sin in the eyes of the political mainstream in Europe.’

Indeed, Fidesz has been surprised at the readiness of the EU’s traditional conservative forces – notably the European People’s Party, of which Fidesz was a member until last year – to cave in when confronted with the liberal mainstream. ‘This is why we’re sad that the UK left the European Union, as it was a big ally in these sovereignty fights,’ says Varga. ‘The EU’s motto is “United in Diversity”, but it’s pushing only for unity and forgetting all about diversity. If we lose our own cultural identity, we’ll become a mass of unidentified individuals, and only profits and supranational interests will prevail.’

Varga argues the bloc’s true intentions with the rule of law mechanism were revealed when EU Commissioner for Equality Helena Dalli declared in November 2020 that it would be a way to ‘bring a member state in line’ on cultural issues. As such, Varga is sceptical about whether answering EU requests for a stronger anti-corruption framework would really make the problems go away.

‘To think so would be too naïve,’ she says with a rueful smile. ‘As long as we have a national conservative government which puts the Hungarian people first, there will always be a problem with us. This is political blackmail – it’s a witch hunt.’

Behind the scenes, she says, are international NGOs who hate the Orbán regime. ‘Brussels is outsourcing rule of law issues and political debates to international NGOs. In blackmailing a country, it refers to “rule of law reports” with distorted information mostly compiled by NGOs.’

‘But who elected these NGOs? If you want to determine, influence or answer people’s needs, you should form a political party. There are very strict rules to form a party; stricter rules than for forming an NGO. We shouldn’t mix up these two things.’

Budapest’s struggle with Brussels calls into question the institutional modus operandi underpinning the entire European project. Although the Ukraine crisis has resulted in temporary EU unity, could Hungary’s struggle for sovereignty eventually lead to a ‘Huxit’ from the bloc?

‘No. There’s no agenda from the Hungarian government to leave the EU. We are fighting for what we joined. The original concept was to have a cooperation where every member state can keep their own identity but share some competences so that we can be more successful together. Unfortunately, the notion of ever-closer union, which was the problem for Britain, is now interfering in domains which touch upon the very heart of the nation: cultural identify, the family concept, and migration.’

For Varga, it’s the relative weakness of governments in other EU countries – many of them unwieldy coalitions – which stops them standing up to this pernicious encroachment on national sovereignty. ‘For the sake of short-term political gains, they give up on their principles.’ They cannot ‘name things for what they are’ on cultural issues, for fear of angering domestic political partners. ‘They learned how to be politically correct, which is, I think, the biggest mistake of European politics.’

It’s this difference in attitudes which has made the Hungarian elections so significant on the international stage. Varga cites an emotional wave of support from conservatives across the EU for Fidesz’s stance.

‘It’s a patriotic fight. It’s defending your country. It unites us. It’s very misguided for EU institutions to think that such interventions help the Hungarian opposition. But liberals truly believe that what they are doing is good for humanity.’ Does their unshakeable faith mean Hungary and the EU could be engaged in a culture war without end? ‘Yes. These critics just cannot swallow the fact that the views of most Hungarian citizens are not in line with their dreams.’

A protracted ideological struggle and the risk of losing EU funds are risks which Fidesz is willing to take for the sake of traditional family culture and national sovereignty – which for Varga are inseparable concepts.

‘It’s in the interests of those who believe in a federalist union to demolish the nation. How do you demolish the nation? You destroy the bricks making up the nation; and these building bricks are families. If you relativise the concept of family – if you disperse, dissolve, make ridiculous, the traditional family concept – you are attacking the very heart of the nation. Growing up in a family, we know who we are, and where we belong. We will always protect this kind of national identity.’

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/hungarys-patriotic-fight-with-the-eu-an-interview-with-justice-minister-judit-varga

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Controversial Cop NOT GUILTY – Protest Follows

One controversial cop, out of the three who kicked in Breonna Taylor’s door, was declared NOT GUILTY of felony wanton endangerment. It didn’t take long after the jury acquitted Officer Brett Hankison before Black Lives Matter protesters took to the streets in anger.

Cop doing his duty

The jury dared to side with former Louisville Metro Police Department detective Brett Hankison. On Thursday, March 3, they acquitted the veteran cop of the three wanton endangerment felony charges he faced after firing blindly through Ms. Taylor’s apartment.

By nightfall, “dozens of protesters took to the streets. A lot of us, honestly, were feeling certain when they came back so quick that we would have a guilty verdict,” said Cheyenne Osuala, a local protester. They were wrong.

That, local BLM supporters say, “wasn’t the verdict those at Jefferson Square wanted to hear.” Everyone agrees the raid was a botched mess. The cop, cleared by a jury, claimed, all along, that he “acted to defend his fellow officers.” Twelve of his peers agreed.

Nobody disputes he fired rounds “through Taylor’s window and sliding glass door that went into a neighboring apartment where three people were present.” That’s life in the big city.

Defense attorney Stewart Mathews continues to insist he was an ordinary cop doing his thankless job. “Justice was done. The verdict was proper and we are thrilled.”

They bypassed the press on the way out the door. Even the stunned prosecutors “said they respected the verdict.” Not like they have a choice. They lost and weren’t about to say another word about it.

https://patriotunitednews.com/controversial-cop-not-guilty-protest-follows/

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This Russian metals giant might be too big to sanction

From its base at a former Arctic gulag, Russia’s MMC Norilsk Nickel digs up a large portion of two metals that are essential to greener transport and computer chips.

So far the US and its allies haven’t sanctioned the company, or its oligarch chief executive, underscoring the dilemma some analysts say governments face in seeking to punish Russia without hurting their own access to key commodities.

The mining company is responsible for about 5 per cent of the world’s annual production of nickel, a key component of electric-vehicle batteries, and some 40 per cent of its palladium, which goes into catalytic converters and semiconductors. Nornickel, as the company is known, also supplies energy transition metals such as cobalt and copper.

The price of those metals has jumped since Russia invaded Ukraine amid concerns that Western sanctions or logistical difficulties stemming from the conflict could choke supplies. On Friday, nickel traded at its highest level for a decade, and is up 37 per cent so far this year. Palladium is up around 57 per cent year to date.

Despite the rally in metals prices, Nornickel’s share price — like that of other Russian commodity companies — has dropped, and is down 17 per cent so far this year. The fall is likely to be more severe, given trading in Moscow-listed stocks was suspended several days ago as they began to plummet. On Saturday, Fitch Ratings downgraded Nornickel’s debt to junk, reflecting the tougher environment in Russia and weakened financial flexibility of its commodity companies.

Several Western companies say they are looking to diversify their supply away from Nornickel. That mirrors a trend across several commodities, including oil and steel, as Western buyers steer clear of Russian suppliers amid concerns they could be hit by sanctions or simply have problems getting products out of the country.

A spokesman for Nornickel said the miner is committed to fulfilling its obligations to customers, partners and employees. Chie Executive Vladimir Potanin, who also holds a 31 per cent stake in the company, declined to be interviewed.

Western sanctions in response to the current conflict have so far largely avoided companies that provide the West with oil, gas and other key commodities.

Few companies are as pivotal in large commodity markets as Nornickel, particularly for palladium.

“If we have sanctions and we can’t access that palladium, you have to expect disruption globally,” said Gabriele Randlshofer, managing director of the International Platinum Group Metals Association, a trade group whose members include buyers and suppliers of palladium.

“At the moment all companies are looking at [who supplies them], they have to,” she said.

Among the companies looking for alternative supplies of nickel is Outokumpu, one of the world’s largest stainless steel manufacturers. The Finnish company said around 6 per cent to 7 per cent of its nickel comes from Nornickel, with the rest coming from recycled steel. “Given the situation in Ukraine, we are looking for alternatives for Russian supply for nickel,” a spokeswoman said.

Germany’s BASF, meanwhile, said it would fulfil existing contracts with Nornickel but not pursue any new business with the Russian company. The chemicals giant described Nornickel as an important supplier of nickel and cobalt for its production of cathode materials as well as a source of palladium and platinum.

On Friday, British steel executive Peter Davies received an email from a Polish steel mill he is invested in, saying that they were unable to buy nickel amid problems related to the conflict in Ukraine.

“Expect an earthquake in [the] steel industry,” the mill said, according to a copy of that email.

Reverberations are being felt across industries that have typically relied on Russian commodities. Refiners have baulked at buying Russian oil, according to traders and oil executives. Swedish refiner Preem and Finland’s Neste, for instance, say they have halted purchases of Russian oil and plan to replace it with crude from Northern Europe.

Severstal, one of Russia’s largest steel companies, struggled to sell its steel as soon as Moscow’s forces crossed into Ukraine, according to a person familiar with the matter, who said would-be buyers were concerned about possible sanctions. In Severstal’s case they did come, with the European Union sanctioning its majority owner Alexey Mordashov on Monday.

The market prices for metals Nornickel produces reflect similar concerns, analysts say.

“It’s helping to make the markets twitchy, everyone is looking at it and saying if we are taking out (Nornickel’s) nickel from the market that is significant,” said Andrew Mitchell, director of nickel research at energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.

Nornickel’s production is important, analysts say, because demand for nickel is forecast to grow strongly amid the growing popularity of electric vehicles. Nickel had the biggest supply deficit of any base metal last year relative to market size, at about 6 per cent, according to analysts at BMO.

Nornickel is run by CEO Mr Potanin, a former Russian deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin who helped forge the privatisation deals that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union and put much of the country’s vast commodity wealth in the hands of a group of businessmen now dubbed oligarchs. More recently, Mr Potanin was key to bringing the 2014 Winter Olympics to Russia, an idea which followed a ski trip to Austria with Russian President Vladimir Putin, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported.

Nornickel counts two other well-known oligarchs as investors. The company said that Roman Abramovich owns around 2 per cent of its shares. United Co. Rusal International, which is part-owned by Oleg Deripaska, holds a 26.25 per cent stake.

The company mines in one of the world’s most northern cities, Norilsk — a former penal colony.

Norilsk has also gained a reputation as being one of the planet’s dirtiest cities because of pollution related to mining and refineries. In 2020, almost 45 tons of jet fuel leaked into the ground from a pipeline owned by Nornickel. That followed a spill of 20,000 tons of diesel from a holding tank at one of its other installations the same year.

The area also provides the company with some of the world’s best mineral deposits, which are mined up to 5,000 feet below the permafrost.
“It is still probably the greatest ore body in the world,” said Mr. Mitchell.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/this-russian-metals-giant-might-be-too-big-to-sanction/news-story/c93eaf766e904ea05a1ee6c9d35782fb

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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