Anwar conveys interest to Brazilian president and ‘will go through the process’
BUKIT MERTAJAM: Malaysia will seek to join the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) intergovernmental organisation, says Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
The Prime Minister said he had conveyed Malaysia’s wishes to Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
“We (Malaysia) will go through the process to enable the country to join the organisation. For the past two months, the Foreign Ministry has conducted a study on our policy before deciding to join BRICS.
“I have spoken to the President of Brazil about our wish,” he said after attending a gathering for local residents in Mengkuang Semarah here yesterday.
Anwar was earlier quoted as saying that Malaysia would begin the formal procedures to join BRICS.
In an interview with Shanghai-based news site Guancha, Anwar said Malaysia was now awaiting the final decision and feedback from the South African government.
On the ground: Anwar getting friendly with the children who attended the qurban ceremony with the Prime Minister at Masjid Jamek Cerok Tokun Bawah in Bukit Mertajam, Penang. — Bernama
BRICS was originally founded as BRIC, with the four original members being Brazil, Russia, India and China. It held its first summit in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in 2009.It was renamed BRICS when South Africa joined in 2010.
The group now comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Together, they make up about 30% of the world’s land surface and 45% of the global population.
The grouping, originally set up to highlight investment opportunities, has evolved into a geopolitical bloc where members meet annually at formal summits.
In July 2014, BRICS created a US$100bil (RM471bil) New Development Bank with a currency pool worth over another US$100bil.
Since 2012, it has been planning an optical fibre submarine communications cable system, known as the BRICS Cable.
During the summit in 2023, BRICS members committed to studying the feasibility of a new common currency.
To date, 15 summits have been held with Russia scheduled to hold the next one in Kazan, Russia, in October.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States believes there have been potentially multiple attacks on locations in Iraq, including the al Asad airbase that hosts U.S. forces, a U.S. official told Reuters on Tuesday, without providing additional information.
It was unclear what other sites may have been attacked. Tensions have mounted with Iran following a U.S. drone strike on Friday that killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani.
Another U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, had confirmed to Reuters earlier that a rocket attack had taken place against al Asad airbase, but did not confirm other sites.
U.S. President Donald Trump visited the base in his December 2018 trip to Iraq.
The Iranian parliament approved bill on Tuesday that designates United States military forces as terrorists, days after American airstrikes killed top Iranian military leader General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq. The bill is similar to the action the U.S. took last year when the Trump administration designated Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization.
Members of parliament passed the bill declaring the U.S. military and the Pentagon terrorist entities, according to Iranian state media. Under the bill, the Iranian government will also provide $220 million to the IRGC to "reinforce its defense power in vengeance for General Soleimani's assassination," the news agency reported, as tensions between the U.S. and Iran rise.
Iranian parliament voted to designated the U.S. military and the Pentagon terrorist organizations
This handout picture shows Iranian lawmakers raising their hands to vote during a parliamentary session in Tehran. Iran's parliament passed a bill designating all U.S. forces "terrorists" over the killing of a top Iranian military commander in an airstrike last week. Icana News Agency
A senior U.S. official told CBS News national security correspondent David Martin that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered a direct attack on American interests in retaliation for the airstrike that killed Soleimani, his top military commander and friend. The official said the U.S. military was "extremely concerned" that the retaliation could come quickly.
When asked by CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer on Tuesday when the Iranian response would come, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif would only say that his country would retaliate at the time of its choosing. While a senior Iranian commander threatened at Soleimani's funeral to "set ablaze" America's supporters in the region, Zarif told CBS News the response would be "proportionate" and "against legitimate targets."
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continued leading the Trump administration's defense of the targeted missile strike that killed Soleimani. He insisted that
President Trump was right to order the killing and dismissed Iran's claim that Soleimani was in Iraq for diplomatic purposes.
In April, the U.S. declared the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, which makes it illegal for anyone to provide material support to the
group. The U.S. Defense Department used the Guard's designation to support the strike last week that killed Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds military force and one of the most powerful figures in the Islamic Republic
Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) on Wednesday
targeted U.S. bases in Iraq including al-Asad and Harir Camp to the
north of Erbil with a second wave of surface-to-surface missiles,
semi-official Fars news agency reported
What is happening to Iran is another version of the
“America First” policy. But this is a globalized world. How can the US
not be affected when the Middle East is in a bad condition?
Will it be good for the US if a large-scale Iran war breaks out? If
Washington does not want that, why create uncertainty? Is it responsible
to take the bet?
Global financial markets are facing a stark wake-up call that they need to unite to stand against acts of what can only be described as economic terrorism by a country which unilaterally imposes its will on others and pursues its own goals at the cost of the interests of others.
More than a year after US President Donald Trump fired the first tariff salvo at China, he is extending the battlefield around the world. On Friday, his administration announced that it will end special trade treatment for India, removing a status that exempts billions of dollars of the South Asian country's products from US tariffs. Trump is seriously mulling slapping tariffs on Mexican imports as he believes the country has taken advantage of the US for decades.
Even close allies cannot trust they will be exempt from Trump's tariff addiction. It was reported that the administration considered imposing tariffs on imports from Australia, but eventually decided against the move amid opposition from his aides, "at least temporarily."
Obviously, Trump, a businessman-turned president, is aiming his trigger finger regardless of the targets, be they US competitors or allies. Trump grumbles about his country subsidizing the world and weakening US industry and pledges to make America great again. But he doesn't realize that a great superpower is supposed to provide public goods rather than resorting to coercion for selfish gains. His tactics are nothing short of economic terrorism.
The International Air Transport Association has estimated that the US-China trade war and high fuel prices will wipe $7.5 billion off expected airline profits in 2019. This is just the figure from the airline industry, which is enough to show the disastrous impact the US-initiated economic terrorism has on the globe. Trump may disrupt the global supply chain with the US' economic clout, but how can a disrupted global supply chain serve the US' strategic objectives of being a great country?
What is worse, before the US becomes great again as the president wishes, he is actually employing the strategy of blocking other countries to take the lead, as we see in his actions in quashing Huawei's 5G advancement.
Later this month, leaders from the world's top economies will meet at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan to discuss key economic issues that plague the world. The conventional views of globalization and its benefits are still shared by most countries, and many countries and regions are continuing to open their economies. They should unite to face the chaos created by the Trump administration and find a way forward, so the process of globalization will not be held hostage by the US' economic terrorism. - By Zhang Yi
As a civilization that is thousands of years old, China has
always been integrating into the current international system and
taking responsibility to defend the international order after the world
wars and the international rule of law coming into force. At the same
time, China is dedicated to promoting democratization and legalization
of international relations.
Mr
Ren Zhengfei survived Mao Zedong's great famine and went on to build a
telecom giant with US$92 billion in revenue that strikes fear among some
policymakers in the West.PHOTO: EPA-EFE
HONG KONG (BLOOMBERG) - At the sprawling Huawei Technologies campus in Shenzhen, the foodcourt's walls are emblazoned with quotes from the company's billionaire founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei.
Then there's the research lab that resembles the White House in Washington. Perhaps the most curious thing, though, are three black swans paddling around a lake.
For Mr Ren, a former People's Liberation Army soldier turned telecom tycoon, the elegant birds are meant as a reminder to avoid complacency and prepare for unexpected crisis. That pretty much sums up the state of affairs at Huawei, whose chief financial officer, Ms Meng Wanzhou, who's also Mr Ren's daughter, is in custody in Canada and faces extradition to the United States on charges of conspiracy to defraud banks and violate sanctions on Iran.
The arrest places Huawei in the cross-hairs of an escalating technology rivalry between China and the US, which views the company, a critical global supplier of mobile network equipment, as a potential national security risk.
Hardliners in President Donald Trump's administration are especially keen to prevent Huawei from supplying wireless carriers as they upgrade to 5G, a next-generation technology expected to accelerate the shift to Internet-connected devices and self-driving cars.
Mr Ren is a legendary figure in the Chinese business world. He survived Mao Zedong's great famine and went on to build a telecom giant with US$92 billion (S$126 billion) in revenue that strikes fear among some policymakers in the West. Huawei is the No. 1 smartphone maker in China, and this year eclipsed Apple to become second maker globally, according to research firm IDC.
Though it has a low profile compared with China's Internet giants, Huawei's revenue last year was more than Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings and and Baidu Inc combined. About half of its revenue now comes from abroad, led by Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The company's high-speed global expansion has come under fire for years, starting with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US' derailing of an acquisition in 2008. More recently, Australia, New Zealand and the US have blocked or limited the use of Huawei gear.
The arrest and prosecution of Ms Meng in US courts comes amid a far bigger US-China struggle for technology dominance in the decades ahead - and could have huge, and potentially severe, consequences for Huawei. Mr Ren declined an interview request from Bloomberg News.
"It gives Trump a bargaining chip," said Mr George Magnus, an economist at Oxford University's China Centre. "She's the daughter of the CEO, Ren Zhengfei, himself a former PLA officer, and Huawei's alleged dealings with Iran are just the latest in a string of concerns."
An outright ban on buying American technology and components, should it come to that, would deal Huawei a crushing blow. Earlier this year, the Trump administration imposed just such a penalty on ZTE Corp, also a Chinese telecom, and threatened its very survival before backing down.
Both Huawei and ZTE are banned from most US government procurement work.
A full-blown, commercial ban in the US would not only apply to hardware components, but also cut off access to the software and patents of US companies, Mr Edison Lee and Mr Timothy Chau, analysts with Jefferies Securities, wrote in a report.
"If Huawei cannot license Android from Google, or Qualcomm's patents in 4G and 5G radio access technology, it will not be able to build smartphones or 4G/5G base stations," they note.
The company's legal troubles in the US may also spill into other markets.
"Government telecommunication infrastructure requirements are essentially locking out the Chinese supplier in critical growth markets," noted Morningstar Research equity analyst Mark Cash in an e-mail. "Additionally, telecom providers without government imposed restrictions may start limiting their usage of Huawei equipment for their 5G network build-outs."
If there's a Darth Vader in the minds of Chinese national security hawks in Washington worried about China's rising tech power, it's Mr Ren. In China, though, he's feted as a national hero, who rose from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of wealth and status in Chinese society.
His grandfather was a master of curing ham in his village in Zhejiang province, which afforded Mr Ren's father the chance to become the village's first university student, according to a 2001 essay by Mr Ren about his upbringing, which was published on a website linked to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
His father, Mr Ren Moxun, was a Communist Youth League member, who later worked as a teacher and an accountant at a military factory, but who kept up his rebel fervour under the Kuomintang by selling revolutionary books.
After moving to rural Guizhou province, he met his wife Cheng Yuanzhao and gave birth to Mr Ren Zhengfei, the oldest of two sons and five daughters.
The family lived on modest teaching salaries. In one of Mr Ren's speeches, he remembered how his mother read him the story of Hercules, but withheld the ending until he came home with a good report card.
Famine Years
During the Great Leap Forward campaign that started in the late 1950s, a famine came to his home town after Communist Party industrialisation and collectivisation policies went off the rails. Mr Ren recalled in his essay how his mother stuffed into his hand each morning a piece of corn pancake while asking about his homework. His good grades gained him entry to the Chongqing Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture.
After graduation, he worked in the civil engineering industry until 1974, when he joined the PLA's Engineering Corps as a soldier, and worked on a chemical fibre base in Liaoyang. Huawei says he rose to become deputy director, but did not hold military rank. He does, however, often pepper his speeches with military references.
"Our managers and experts need to act like generals, carefully examining maps and meticulously studying problems," Mr Ren said in a speech posted on a website for Huawei employees.
Mr Ren's Communist Party credentials aren't as deep as his father's. He attended the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party in 1982, and once cited the party's dogma of "a struggle that never ends" when defending the company's tough work hours.
But Mr Ren was a bookworm as a child and was denied acceptance into the Communist Youth League, according to the book Huawei: Leadership, Culture And Connectivity, a book co-authored by David De Cremer, Tian Tao and Wu Chunbo.
He didn't become a Communist Party member in the PLA until late in his military career. However, a 2012 House permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report on Huawei asked why a private company had a Communist Party Committee, which has become common among China's Internet giants.
Mr Ren retired from the army in 1983, and joined his first wife to work at a Shenzhen company involved in the city's special economic zone. It was around then that he had to sell off everything to pay a debt related to a business partner, and lost his job at Shenzhen Nanyou Group, as well as his first marriage, according to Ren Zhengfei And Huawei by author Li Hongwen.
Comeback Play
After a period of sleepless nights while living with family members, Mr Ren saw an opportunity. When China began its economic opening under Deng Xiaoping, the telephone penetration rate was lower than the average rate in Africa, or 120th in the world. He founded Huawei with four partners in 1987 with 21,000 yuan in initial working capital, just above the minimum threshold required under Shenzhen rules.
Huawei started out as a trader of telecom equipment, but the company's technicians studied up on switchboards and were soon making their own. Workers put in long hours in Shenzhen's swampy heat with only ceiling fans. Mr Ren kept up morale with subtle gestures, like offering pigtail soup to workers putting in overtime.
The company became known for its "mattress culture" in which workers would pass out on office mattresses from exhaustion. In 2006, a 25-year-old worker Hu Xinyu, who had made a habit of working into the wee hours and then sleeping at the office, died of viral encephalitis. Some Huawei employees subsequently committed suicide.
The deaths triggered a revision of the company policy on overtime, and the creation of a chief health and safety officer role.
It wasn't the only move Mr Ren made to stabilise morale. He used to pay his workers only half their salaries on payday, but eventually decided to convert the other half of employee salaries and bonuses into shares. The company's 2017 report shows that he has a 1.4 per cent stake, giving him a net worth of US$2 billion.
Wolf Culture
Huawei struggled for market share, with foreign companies using so-called "wolf culture" of aggressive salesmanship, which sometimes materialised in the form of Huawei employees flooding sales events with several times more salespeople than competitors.
The company ventured into international markets in the 2000s, with telecom equipment that was more affordable than products of competitors such as Cisco Systems. Huawei later admitted to copying a small portion of router code from Cisco and agreed to remove the tainted code in a settlement.
Mr Ren since stepped up the company's research and development. Of its 180,000 employees, about 80,000 are now involved in R&D, according to the company's 2017 report, and the company has been known to recruit some of China's top talent out of universities.
The company recently refocused on existing markets after the US government called Huawei a national security threat, and cited concerns over its possible control of 5G technologies. Mr Trump signed a Bill banning government use of Chinese tech including Huawei's, and has even contacted allies to get them to avoid using Huawei equipment.
Collectively owned by its employees, the company is known for a culture of discipline, in which no one, Mr Ren included, has their own driver or flies first class on the company dime. Lately, Mr Ren has been warning employees against using fake numbers or profit to enhance performance. The company set up a data verification team in 2014 within the finance department, which was overseen by Mr Ren's daughter.
In a recent speech posted on the Huawei employee network, however, he called for patience with critics, but rejected foreign intervention. "We will never give in or yield to pressure from outside," he said.
That maxim is going to be soon put to the test by the US Department of Justice.
Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese tech
giant Huawei, who was granted a $7.5 million bail, is unlikely to be
extradited to the US because she is charged for political reasons,
analysts said.
Professor Dr. Wang
Former Executive of Halliburton
DID HUAWEI VIOLATE IRAN SANCTIONS?
No, they didn’t.
CFO Meng was arrested supposedly for “violating Iran sanction”. This has to be the most grotesque distortion of justice since the US was the country who unilaterally pulled out IN VIOLATION of an agreement they had signed with multiple nations earlier !!! In other words, the guy who broke a solemn promise made, violated the agreement, then made sanction an American domestic law is now force feeding this law arbitrarily on the rest of the world by arresting someone who refuses to violate the agreement ! Is this making any sense to anybody?
Huawei created a subsidiary to do business with Iran, and the CFO is being charged with lying about the relationship between Huawei and the subsidiary.
This seems totally ridiculous to me since when I worked at Halliburton, we did EXACTLY the same thing ! Not only was our CEO never arrested, he was invited to join the government & became Vice President Dick Cheney !!!!!!!
The moral of this story is for normal businesses to be extremely vigilant & recognise the true faces of America & Saudi! One tosses you in jail for breaking twisted laws they make up as they go along & the other goes after you with a bone saw. Both are gangsters, far worse than the Mafia, because the Mafia at least have the decency to commit crimes secretively, while the thugs in American & Saudi governments commit their crimes blatantly in the open, with complete disregard to the laws & sovereignty of another country, bullying their way through, trying to justify their actions by smearing the victims... then run publicity campaigns to sway public opinions while accusing others of crimes against human rights.. ??!!
I am sure there are nice people in USA & in Saudi & i don’t want to generalise, but i have seen time & again in the States that if ever their oversized egos feel threatened, they can turn into totally evil, nefarious subhumans capable of the most despicable deeds.
The arrest of Meng is a case in point.
I went to the States starry eyed with high hopes & expectations, ready to learn a democratic system far superior than ours. Well, after my Ph.D and a few working years, I stand corrected.
Life in the States has taught me to be proud of my people and my country. Grass is definitely NOT greener on the other side. America is very strong in “hypes”, they talk big but deliver little. China does the opposite. American government spends on military, lives in “now”, supports the rich, & works for re-election. The Chinese government spends on infrastructure, works for the people, eradicated poverty & follows 5-30 year plans. These are facts, not propaganda, not campaign promises.
I can’t tell you how happy I am to be home again. Not only is the food much better, more importantly, I can finally stop worrying myself sick... about my elderly mom getting mucked, my attractive wife getting raped...my children getting bullied, drugged or shot in schools...Having to live in constant fear everyday is the ultimate violation of my human rights.
Huawei clash shows deeper US-China battle for global influence as power coming from high-tech sector
Bail hearings proceeded this week after Meng
Wanzhou(pic), the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co, was
arrested in Canada on Dec 1 because of alleged violations of US
sanctions against Iran. The case threatens to derail a trade truce
struck the same day between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
HONG KONG: The Trump administration has insisted the arrest of a top Huawei executive has nothing to do with trade talks. In Beijing, it’s just the latest US move to contain China’s rise as a global power.
Bail hearings proceeded this week after Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co, was arrested in Canada on Dec 1 because of alleged violations of US sanctions against Iran. The case threatens to derail a trade truce struck the same day between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
Even if the two leaders manage to strike a broader deal, the arrest shows that the US-China conflict goes far beyond trade. The world’s biggest economies are now engaged in a battle for global influence that will ultimately determine whether the US remains the globe’s predominant superpower, or China rises as a viable counterweight.
“The sentiment in Washington now is not just a Trumpian mercantilism – the desire to bring back factory jobs to Wisconsin or wherever,” said Nick Bisley, a professor of international relations at La Trobe University in Melbourne who has written books on great-power politics. “It is a desire to significantly cut ties with China because of that larger perception it presents a strategic risk.”
A bipartisan consensus has emerged in Washington that China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation hollowed out US manufacturing and allowed it to grow rich. That increased economic power is now at a point where it risks eroding key American military advantages around the globe.
China insists it plays by the rules, and doesn’t challenge US dominance. Even so, three areas in particular worry American strategic planners: Technology, the dollar and the ability to project military power overseas.
A year ago, the White House identified China’s growing technological prowess as a threat to US economic and military might. American companies have long argued that China forces them to transfer intellectual property and sometimes steals trade secrets – all of which Beijing denies.
In justifying tariffs, Trump’s team has cited Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” strategy to become a global leader in state-of-the-art technologies from aerospace to robotics. So far, China has resisted those demands, arguing that doing so would crush its economic potential.
Huawei in particular epitomises the threat. Earlier this year, Trump blocked Broadcom Inc’s US$117bil hostile takeover bid for Qualcomm Inc over concerns that Huawei would end up dominating the market for computer chips and wireless technologies.
The fear is that wireless carriers may be forced to turn to Huawei or other Chinese companies for 5G technology, potentially giving Beijing access to critical communications. Those concerns have prompted the US to ban Huawei’s products for government procurement, and Australia, Japan and New Zealand have reportedly followed.
China has fought back, with foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang saying this week that Huawei didn’t “force any enterprise to install forced backdoors.”
“The competition is really focused in the areas where future strategic and economic dominance come from,” said Michael Shoebridge, director of the defense and strategy programme at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
“The Huawei arrest is right in the middle of this because both America and China see their future global power as coming from the high-tech sector.”
The dominance of the dollar has allowed the US to effectively control the world’s financial system, underpinning its superpower status. Yet Trump’s increased use of sanctions to assert its foreign-policy goals has prompted a wide range of nations – from China to Russia to the European Union – to look for an alternative.
The Trump administration added nearly 1,000 entities and individuals to its sanctions list in its first year, almost 30% more than the Obama administration’s last year in office, according to law firm Gibson Dunn. The complete list now runs to more than 1,200 pages.
Sanctions are a key tool for the US to subdue potential adversaries like North Korea, but they also can affect friends and allies. The EU, which objected to reimposing sanctions on Iran, this month unveiled plans to mitigate the so-called “exorbitant privilege” of the dollar.
During a visit to China last month, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the two nations were looking at ways to boost the use of their currencies through allowing the use of China’s UnionPay credit card in Russia and Russia’s Mir card in China. “No one currency should dominate the market,” he said.
“We are potentially at the beginning of a systemic shift that may take some time to play out,” said Gregory Chin, associate professor at York University in Toronto, and a political economy specialist. “The political will is building and coalescing.” — Bloomberg
Some think it will be years before oil returns to $90 or $100 a barrel, a price that was pretty much the norm over the last decade. Credit Michael Stravato for The New York Times
The oil industry, with its history of booms and busts, is in its deepest downturn since the 1990s, if not earlier.
Earnings are down for companies that made record profits in recent years, leading them to decommission more than two-thirds of their rigs and sharply cut investment in exploration and production. Scores of companies have gone bankrupt and an estimated 250,000 oil workers have lost their jobs.
The cause is the plunging price of a barrel of oil, which has fallen more than 70 percent since June 2014.
Prices recovered a few times over the last year, but the cost of a barrel of oil has already sunk this year to levels not seen since 2003 as an oil glut has taken hold.
Also contributing to the glut was Iran’s return to the international oil market after sanctions were lifted against the country under an international agreement with major world powers to restrict its nuclear work that took effect in January.
Executives think it will be years before oil returns to $90 or $100 a barrel, a price that was pretty much the norm over the last decade.
What is the current price of oil?
Brent crude, the main international benchmark, was trading at around $38 a barrel on Wednesday.
The American benchmark was at around $37 a barrel.
Why has the price of oil been dropping? Why now?
This a complicated question, but it boils down to the simple economics of supply and demand.
United States domestic production has nearly doubled over the last several years, pushing out oil imports that need to find another home. Saudi, Nigerian and Algerian oil that once was sold in the United States is suddenly competing for Asian markets, and the producers are forced to drop prices. Canadian and Iraqi oil production and exports are rising year after year. Even the Russians, with all their economic problems, manage to keep pumping.
There are signs, however, that production is falling because of the drop in exploration investments. RBC Capital Markets has calculated projects capable of producing more than a half million barrels a day of oil were cancelled, delayed or shelved by OPEC countries alone last year, and this year promises more of the same.
But the drop in production is not happening fast enough, especially with output from deep waters off the Gulf of Mexico and Canada continuing to build as new projects come online.
On the demand side, the economies of Europe and developing countries are weak and vehicles are becoming more energy-efficient. So demand for fuel is lagging a bit.
Who benefits from the price drop?
Any motorist can tell you that gasoline prices have dropped. Diesel, heating oil and natural gas prices have also fallen sharply.ny motorist can tell you that gasoline prices have dropped. Diesel, heating oil and natural gas prices have also fallen sharply.
The latest drop in energy prices — regular gas nationally now averages just above $2 a gallon, roughly down about 40 cents from the same time a year ago — is also disproportionately helping lower-income groups, because fuel costs eat up a larger share of their more limited earnings.
Households that use heating oil to warm their homes are also seeing savings.
For starters, oil-producing countries and states. Venezuela, Nigeria, Ecuador, Brazil and Russia are just a few petrostates that are suffering economic and perhaps even political turbulence.
Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and BP have all announced cuts to their payrolls to save cash, and they are in far better shape than many smaller independent oil and gas producers.
Iran, Venezuela, Ecuador and Algeria have all pressed OPEC, a cartel of oil producers, to cut production to firm up prices. At the same time, Iraq is actually pumping more, and Iran is expected to become a major exporter again.
Major producing countries will meet on April 17 in Qatar, and some analysts think a cut may be possible, especially if oil prices approach $30 a barrel again.
King Salman, who assumed power in Saudi Arabia in January 2015,
may find it difficult to persuade other OPEC members to keep steady
against the financial strains, even if Iran continues to increase
production. The International Monetary Fund estimates that the revenues
of Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf allies will slip by $300 billion
this year.
Is there a conspiracy to bring the price of oil down?
There are a number of conspiracy theories floating around. Even some oil executives are quietly noting that the Saudis want to hurt Russia and Iran, and so does the United States — motivation enough for the two oil-producing nations to force down prices. Dropping oil prices in the 1980s did help bring down the Soviet Union, after all.
But there is no evidence to support the conspiracy theories, and Saudi Arabia and the United States rarely coordinate smoothly. And the Obama administration is hardly in a position to coordinate the drilling of hundreds of oil companies seeking profits and answering to their shareholders.
When are oil prices likely to recover?
Not anytime soon. Oil production is not declining fast enough in the
United States and other countries, though that could begin to change
this year. But there are signs that supply and demand — and price — could recover some balance by the end of 2016.
Oil markets have bounced back more than 40 percent since hitting a low of $26.21 a barrel in New York in early February.
Some
analysts, however, question how long the recovery can be sustained
because the global oil market remains substantially oversupplied. In the
United States, domestic stockpiles are at their highest level in more
than 80 years, and are still growing.
But over the long term,
demand for fuels is recovering in some countries, and that could help
crude prices recover in the next year or two. - The New York Times
Saudi Arabia can survive low prices because, when oil was $100 a barrel, it saved more of the ... What are the economic risks of falling crude oil prices for India?
Double standards
are on display as Western leaders attack Russia regarding Ukraine, while
they themselves commit or endorse worse aggression on other countries.
WORLD attention has focused on Ukraine recently. With President
Victor Yanukovych making his exit and a new government formed, events
shifted to Crimea, with accusations that the Russian military took over
the region.
Yanukovych, resurfacing in a Russian town, said he left as his life
was at risk, the new regime is illegitimate, and he is still the
president.
Sizeable crowds in Crimea (many of whose population are ethnic
Russian) are showing anti-Kiev and pro-Russian feelings and the Crimean
Parliament had decided to hold a referendum on whether to remain in
Ukraine or break away and be part of Russia.
Western leaders have attacked Russian President Vladimir Putin for his alleged invasion of Crimea.
The Russian argument is that it has not invaded, that in any case it
has a legitimate interest in Crimea due to historical links and the
ethnic Russians who live there have asked for protection against the new
and illegitimate Kiev regime.
Whatever the merits or otherwise of Russia’s position and actions,
it is clear that there has been a long historical Russian-Crimea-Ukraine
relationship. The complex condition requires a correspondingly complex
solution.
The rhetoric of some Western leaders is aggressive. They accused
Russia of violating sovereignty and international law, among other
things.
The United States plans to ban visas for selected Russian officials,
followed by sanctions on Russian banks, freezing assets of its
companies, and possibly trade measures.
US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have
accused Putin of making use of false claims for its invasion, that
Crimea is in danger.
“This is the 21st century and we should not see nations step
backwards to behave in a 19th or 20th century fashion,” said Kerry. “It
is not appropriate to invade a country and at the end of a barrel of a
gun dictate what you are trying to achieve.”
Obama said “Russia cannot with impunity put its soldiers on the
ground and violate basic principles that are recognised around the
world”, adding that Russia is “on the wrong side of history”.
Listening to the American leaders lecturing Russia in their
self-righteous tone, one is struck by the double standards and hypocrisy
involved.
They don’t seem to realise how they have violated the same principles and behaviour they demand of Russia.
It was after all the United States that invaded Iraq in 2003,
massively bombing its territory and killing hundreds of thousands, on
the grounds that Saddam Hussein had amassed weapons of mass destruction.
The UN Security Council would not give the green light. No weapons
of mass destruction were found. Many experts considered the war against
Iraq a violation of international law, a view also expressed in a media
interview by the then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal in 2011 found former US
president George W. Bush and former British prime minister Tony Blair
guilty of crimes against humanity and genocide as a result of their
roles in the Iraq war.
The United States also waged war in Afghanistan, changing the
regime, resulting in thousands of deaths. In Libya, the US and its
allies carried out massive bombing, which aided opposition forces and
led to the killing of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Even now there are sanctions and the threat of military action
against Iran on the suspicion it wants to develop nuclear weapons, which
Iran has denied.
In contrast, the US turns a blind eye on Israel’s ownership of
nuclear weapons. And when Israel conducted the blanket bombing of
Lebanon and Gaza in recent years, with thousands of deaths, there was no
condemnation at all from the US, which has also blocked UN Security
Council resolutions and actions on its ally.
The US has also come under attack from human rights groups for its
use of drones against suspected terrorists but which has also killed
many civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.
Last week, the UN Human Rights Council published a Special
Rapporteur’s report which detailed the deaths of civilians caused by US
drone attacks, and raised many questions of possible violations of
international human rights law.
All these actions were done in the 21st century, which adds to many other actions in the 20th century.
It’s thus remarkable that Obama and Kerry could with a straight face
accuse Russia of not acting in a 21st century manner, and being on the
wrong side of history.
There appears to be still one law for the most powerful, and another
for others. The former can invade and kill, while lecturing
self-righteously to others.
Whatever one thinks of Russia’s action in Crimea, it should be noted
that no one has been killed because of it, at least not yet. Compare
that to the hundreds of thousands or millions, who have died and
suffered from past and present wars of the US and other Western
countries.
Though much of the mainstream media also takes the establishment
view, some Western journalists have also pointed out their leaders’
hypocrisy.
In an article, “America’s Staggering Hypocrisy in Ukraine,” the
well-known American journalist Robert Parry remarked: “Since World War
II, the United States has invaded or otherwise intervened in so many
countries that it would be challenging to compile a complete list …
“So, what is one to make of Secretary of State John Kerry’s
pronouncement that Russia’s military intervention in the Crimea section
of Ukraine – at the behest of the country’s deposed president – is a
violation of international law that the United States would never
countenance?
“Are Kerry and pretty much everyone else in Official Washington so
lacking in self-awareness that they don’t realise that they are
condemning actions by Russian President Vladimir Putin that are far less
egregious than what they themselves have done?”
Parry concludes that the overriding hypocrisy of the media, Kerry
and nearly all of Official Washington is their insistence that the
United States actually promotes the principle of democracy or, for that
matter, the rule of international law.
Global Trends - By Martin Khor
> The views expressed are entirely the writer’s own.
America is tragically becoming a “Nation of Hypocrites”. How is this so? ... Is it any wonder then that some people look down upon us rather than respect us?
On the ground: Anwar getting friendly with the children who attended the qurban ceremony with the Prime Minister at Masjid Jamek Cerok Tokun Bawah in Bukit Mertajam, Penang. — Bernama
