India to make Russia its number 1 oil supplier in move that could scupper impact of price cap

Russia is on its way to becoming India’s top oil supplier this month, with Moscow making huge inroads into the Asian giant’s energy sector in a move that will likely undermine the impact of a price cap imposed by G7 countries and their Western allies.

India’s imports of Russian crude oil climbed to the highest level ever in November as refiners purchased more than 1.03 million barrels per day (bpd), according to data provided to The Independent by commodities tracking firm Kpler.

The Narendra Modi-led government has been snapping up crude at discounted rates from Russia since the Ukraine invasion, as Western nations looked to pivot away from their reliance on Moscow for energy supplies.

From almost nothing in January and February this year, Russia’s oil exports climbed to 902,000 bpd by October and rose to a record high of a little more than 1 million bpd in November, according to preliminary data.

“This will likely result in Russia being India’s number 1 supplier in December,” Matt Smith, lead oil analyst at Kpler, told The Independent, overtaking its traditional Middle Eastern partners – Saudi Arabia and current top supplier Iraq – for the first time.

Delhi has not committed to the $60 per barrel price cap on Russian oil set by the G7 countries, including the European Union and Australia, in a bid to squeeze the Kremlin’s earnings from oil exports and stymie the money flowing to Vladimir Putin’s war chest.

It also comes as the European Union’s own partial embargo on Russian seaborne crude oil announced in May came into force on Monday, the same day the G7 enforced its price cap. The EU ban covers more than two-thirds of Russian oil imports coming into European countries.

India and China have become the two largest growing economies to buy Russian oil as Western democracies devised ways to squeeze the Russian economy and deepen its isolation. Delhi has repeatedly defended its imports from Russia, saying it has a responsibility to Indian citizens to get the best deal and that it will not be “pressured” by the West.

Rajeev Jain, additional director-general at India’s petroleum ministry, told The Independent that India’s ranking in Russia’s energy trade is “not a matter for our calculations” as Delhi’s only interest is in buying the cheapest oil.

“We will buy from wherever we get the cheapest oil. We are not concerned about becoming the number one or number two country [as] our interest lies in buying [wherever] we get the cheapest oil,” Mr Jain said.

He added that the G7 price cap will not affect Indian imports as the refiners buy through the best route and what is best available to them.

“We don’t negotiate on the route aspect. They buy as per their requirements and they negotiate as per the best rate available,” he said, referring to the entities involved in the trade.

https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/russian-oil-prices-ukraine-war-india-b2240471.html

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Brittney Griner release shows what real privilege is

Americans for LimitedGovernment President Rick Manning today issued the following statement inresponse to the Russian release of Brittney Griner:

“The Biden administration showed theworld what privilege really looks like when they agreed to exchange a WNBAbasketball player for a Russian arms dealer known as the Merchant of Death.

“Every American knows that if you,your son or daughter were caught carrying drugs in Russia, tried, convicted andsentenced, you would be doing everything you could to survive the next decadein a Russian gulag. LeBron James would not be advocating for you,sportswriters like theinsufferable Bill Plaschke would not be writing columns on your behalf,various interest groups wouldn't mobilize on your behalf, and needless to say,the president would have no idea who you were.

“But Brittney Griner is aprofessional athlete. An athlete who a vast majority of Americans had noidea who she was until she decided to go through Russian security with a vapingpen and hashish oil, which is a serious crime in Russia. Griner was notkidnapped, she was arrested, caught dead to rights. No allegations have beenmade that she was not guilty, or that her confession was coerced. Yet, she,unlike you, is worth the release of someone who was responsible for thousands,if not tens of thousands of black deaths in Africa due to his trade.

“As you are fed the celebration ofGriner's release today, just remember the cost of that release. The message hasbeen sent about what the Biden administration values. As for me, I am glad thatI am not a high-profile US athlete travelling the world, after all, if you can getthe Merchant of Death for Griner imagine what any run of the mill kidnapper canget out of the US government for a celebrity someone the American publicactually knows.”

https://getliberty.org/2022/12/brittney-griner-release-shows-what-real-privilege-is/

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The Pleasures — and Pitfalls — of Paranoia

A couple in New Zealand have demanded that surgeons use only non-vaccinated blood to perform a life-saving heart operation on their baby.

Since the New Zealand blood transfusion service does not categorize blood into vaccinated and unvaccinated groups, and it would be futile even to try, this amounts to the parents refusing to allow the surgeons to operate.

Not surprisingly, the hospital has gone to court to have the parents replaced, at least temporarily, as legal guardians of the child.

Man is supposed to be the rational animal, and so he is — in part. After all, only the prolonged exercise of rationality could have resulted in even the possibility of a life-saving operation on the heart of a baby.

On the other hand, there is a strong strain of irrationality in humanity as well. Humankind, said T.S. Eliot, cannot bear very much reality: to which he might have added, or long remain entirely rational.

The parents of the baby are more concerned with a completely conjectural and notional danger, that has probably emerged from a paranoid mindset fed or even created by too assiduous a frequentation of certain websites on the internet, than with an immediate and serious hazard to the life of the child.

This is interesting from the psychological point of view. It is an extreme example of something that affects us all, namely a failure to understand, assess, and fear risks according to their objective likelihood of eventuating.

I am sure that more people experience a frisson of fear when the plane takes off than when they get into their car, though the likelihood of being involved in a fatal accident in the latter is many times as great.

It stands to a certain kind of reason that sitting in a metal tube that leaves the ground at high speed must be more dangerous than going at a relatively low speed on four terrestrial wheels, but such reason is wrong by orders of magnitude.

In the early days of railways, passengers were terrified of accidents, and it is true that by the standards of later railways they were frequent. But the passengers of the time were not to know this. By contrast, they could have known that traveling by horse-drawn carriage was many times more dangerous than traveling by train, yet it was the latter of which they were deeply afraid.

People vary in their ability to assess the statistical likelihood of dangers and their ability to conform their behavior to that likelihood, and the parents of the baby are obviously at one extreme of the spectrum.

Then there is the paranoid aspect of the parents’ mentality. I hesitate to refer to the pleasures of paranoia: perhaps the rewards of paranoia would be a better way of putting it.

The paranoid person is assured that he is at least worth persecuting: it lends him an importance of a kind that he would not otherwise have. I remember a patient who lived in the most terrible squalor, having been separated by madness from his family for several years.

He believed himself to have been followed, tracked, traced, and sometimes even poisoned by the KGB, though to all outward appearances he was of the utmost insignificance. Being the object of the KGB’s attention, however, lent meaning to his life, and purpose, too, since he spent his time thinking about how to evade the murderous attentions of that omnipresent organisation.

It would have been cruel to deprive him of his delusions, for then he would have had to face up to the reality of his madness and the irreparable wreckage of his life that it had wrought.

Paranoia lends meaning and importance to a life that is otherwise without one, but also to the world of events that seem so various, trivial, arbitrary, and incomprehensible that they have no overall meaning. Paranoia is like giving a shake to the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in a box and tipping them out so that they form a perfect picture.

There is another psychological advantage of paranoia, too: the paranoid think that they have an insight into the workings of the world that is not given to others. It gives them a certain sense of superiority, therefore. The refusal of others to accept their delusions only reinforces them and goes to show how right they are.

The paranoia of the couple who would rather see their baby dead than given the blood of those who have been vaccinated is of a milder kind, probably more a mood of mistrust than a fully-fledged delusion, and therefore (paradoxically) all the harder to treat.

They probably have sheaves of evidence, or pseudo-evidence, at their disposal. It is also entirely possible that they are, in their own way, quite learned, like those who maintain that Shakespeare (the author of the plays, that is, not the ignorant hick from Stratford) was really the Earl of Oxford.

This mentality, I suspect, is more and more common, as trust declines and mistrust grows, and egoism combines with the explosion of undigested information that is available to all.

https://www.nysun.com/article/the-pleasures-and-pitfalls-of-paranoia

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True Diversity Is Viewpoint Diversity, and It Allows All of Us to Show Up

Patrice Onwuka

Diversity emphases are popping up everywhere from business to academia. One of the top business schools in the country, Wharton, is going to offer a diversity major for students. The Wall Street Journal is reporting more companies are trying new tactics to add greater diversity to their supply chains. As a black woman who immigrated to America, while I celebrate the vast array of backgrounds that can add to our culture and economy, I wonder if we are really focusing on true diversity.

On paper, I might fit a gender and race diversity goal that some are seeking to emphasize, but in reality, I don’t fit neatly into anyone’s boxes.

I’m a former subject of the British monarchy and have been a proud naturalized U.S. citizen since I was a teenager. I am also a wife of six years, a mother of three boys, and a Christian who attends a nondenominational church each week. I was elected the Republican committeewoman for my ward in Boston several years ago. I am now a dot of red in my very blue Maryland county. Those identities hardly scratch the surface of who I am.

Each person brings a kaleidoscope of experiences and characteristics that inform who they are, what they believe and value, and how they live their life. We are all unique individuals, and there is so much more to us than what can be seen on the outside or defined by the demographic boxes of gender and race that we so often fill out on forms for work, school, or government agencies.

One would expect that any effort to promote diversity would take this complexity into consideration.

Yet, so many diversity, equity, and inclusion—also known as DEI—efforts in corporate, nonprofit, and government settings today tend to prioritize gender and race in a way that leaves no room for the other facets individuals bring to the table.

While the intent of these efforts is to give an advantage to someone who looks like me, I reject the assumption that I am too weak to compete on merit alone, I oppose being reduced to my immutable characteristics, and I don’t desire to be a victim of tokenism. In addition, some diversity efforts can unintentionally spur racial animosity that undermines the goal of workplace or societal unity.

Like many, I have been frustrated by efforts focused on reducing racial disparities in America that minimize the role of the individual and dismiss the impact of personal choices on an individual’s outcomes.

Remedies meant to correct disparities may be well-intended but are ineffective at best. The real solution comes from an evolution away from box-checking, quotas, and assumptions based on physical traits to a celebration of the wide range of identities and characteristics that make each person special.

For example, some of my friends told me I was the first black female conservative they had ever met. Yet when I describe my views on the importance of charity, a strong family, and educational choices for kids, we quickly find areas of agreement. Optimism for the future and a strong sense of personal agency and responsibility are common values I share not only with these friends but with others I know from poor, white communities and immigrant families alike.

Current DEI efforts are based upon the unfounded belief that demographic diversity is equivalent to diversity of viewpoint—and that demographic diversity is what leads to better outcomes. But what a person believes, how she thinks, and more specifically, how she approaches challenging issues is not dependent on her skin color or sex, but on life experiences.

On a larger scale, one effort to increase diversity that has not had the expected impact is that of increasing female representation on boards of directors. Many rigorous peer-reviewed studies of companies in the U.S. and abroad find no causal link between board gender diversity and corporate performance.

Even if headcounts are the measure of success, the needle has not moved much even after decades of attempts to increase racial diversity in corporations and management. Corporate DEI trainings have, at best, no impact and, at worst, negative impacts if the training is compulsory.

Some propose taking data-driven approaches to combat the lack of minority representation in the workplace. Others would overhaul DEI training to refocus on outcomes rather than focusing on checking boxes when it comes to hiring. Philanthropy Roundtable’s True Diversity initiative is encouraging the charitable sector—donors and nonprofits alike—to move beyond fulfilling quotas as the end goal and instead pursuing a holistic, equality-based approach to diversity as a means of more effectively serving communities and those in need.

True Diversity values each individual for the experiences that shape him or her rather than categorizing a person by physical traits. It challenges organizations to build cultures that embrace viewpoint diversity: Consider a person’s religion, worldview, values, knowledge, and socioeconomic background rather than just membership in a particular demographic group.

True Diversity can also enrich the decision-making process even as it forces tough conversations. It creates space for individuals to bring their varied knowledge and lived experiences to bear. It is the antidote to quotas. Instead of forcing an ideal of diversity based on physical traits, it values differences, whether physical, experiential, or cultural.

In the charitable sector, this is particularly key as local issues need local solutions. When we allow organizations to harness the power of all the facets that make each of us human, they can identify what types of diversity in leadership and staffing will best support their missions and strengthen their communities. Freeing donors and nonprofits from arbitrary standards and expectations to allow them to focus their attention on getting the job done the best way possible helps uplift those being served.

Whatever the approach, the time is now to shift away from those who treat demographic diversity as the Holy Grail. Our lived experiences and values are the true diversity this moment calls for.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/11/28/true-diversity-is-viewpoint-diversity-and-it-allows-all-of-us-to-show-up

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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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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