Events
Globally
TeleSUR: OPEC+ Keeps Output Target Unchanged Amid Uncertainties
Euro News: Price cap on Russian oil comes into force despite Moscow’s threats
The European Union and G7 price cap of $60 a barrel for Russian oil came into effect on Monday, as the West tries to weaken Moscow’s ability to continue funding the war in Ukraine while protecting the global economy from a sudden rise in energy prices.
Europe
Reuters: Euro zone likely heading into mild recession - PMI
Euro zone business activity declined for a fifth month in November, suggesting the economy was sliding into a mild recession as consumers cut spending amid surging inflation, a survey showed.
Nah, you’ll probably be fine.
TeleSUR: Von Der Leyen Advocates Response to U.S. Anti-inflation Law
The European Union (EU) must take measures to balance global competition after the approval of the US Inflation Reduction Act, declared the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
RT: Russian gas production slowing – media
Pipeline deliveries, to Europe, Türkiye, and China dropped by 44.5% to just 95.2 bcm in the reported period compared to last year. Gas demand on the local market has also weakened by 5.7%, the outlet wrote citing Gazprom. Meanwhile, other Russian energy companies Rosneft and Novatek have reportedly boosted their natural gas production.
WSWS: German parliament supports far-right war propaganda with “Holodomor” vote
November 30, 2022 will go down in history as the date on which the German parliament (Bundestag) sacrificed historical truth and the freedom of opinion and scholarship on the altar of militarism. It declared its support for a historical forgery that originated with the Nazis and in right-wing, historical revisionist circles.
Reuters: Germany’s Scholz: We must avoid dividing world into Cold War-style blocs
My brother in christ, you can’t even call out America for blowing up your pipeline.
RT: Germany to miss NATO spending target – study
Berlin has, however, managed to earmark €10 billion ($10.5 billion) to buy American F-35A fighter jets, Bloomberg reports
Reuters: UK economy to shrink in 2023, risks ‘lost decade’: CBI
Britain’s economy is on course to shrink 0.4% next year as inflation remains high and companies put investment on hold, with gloomy implications for longer-term growth, the Confederation of Business Industry forecast on Monday.
WSWS: UK government prepares “emergency powers” to smash strikes
The Conservative government is preparing to deploy the armed forces to smash upcoming strikes this month by hundreds of thousands of workers, including a 48-hour nurses walkout. Plans are also being forwarded to impose new anti-strike legislation aimed at making industrial action largely ineffective.
Al Jazeera: UK’s Labour promises to abolish ‘indefensible’ House of Lords
Britain’s opposition Labour party has promised to scrap the unelected and “indefensible” House of Lords as part of a constitutional revamp to redistribute economic growth after Brexit.
Guardian: UK car sales jumped 23.5% in November despite 2023 recession looming
RT: Tory chairman tells UK nurses to ‘send a message’ to Putin
UK unions should “send a message” to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and stop “chasing inflation” with their demands for pay hikes in the public sector, Nadhim Zahawi, the chairman of the Conservative Party, has said.
Oil Price: Italy Expects To Raise $4.2 Billion From Windfall Tax And Power Price Cap
East Asia and Oceania
FT: Canada to send more warships through Taiwan Strait in signal to China
Canada plans to sail more warships through the Taiwan Strait to affirm the waters claimed by China are international, after Ottawa released an Indo-Pacific strategy that described Beijing as an “increasingly disruptive(opens a new window)” power.
TeleSUR: China: U.S. Is the Origin and an Expert in Coercive Diplomacy
“From the threat of force to political isolation, from economic sanctions to technological blockade, the U.S. will stop at nothing to achieve its goal,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.
Fortune: Tesla reportedly plans to slash production in its Shanghai factory by 20% as China demand stagnates
TeleSUR: Chinese spacecraft Shenzhou-14 returns to Earth
Taikonauts Chen Dong, Cai Xuzhe and Liu Yang, the first Chinese woman to go into space a decade ago, arrived at the orbiting station on June 5, 2022 and spent a total of 183 days in orbit.
WSWS: Health experts warn of impending public health crisis as China quickly adapts itself to herd immunity policy
Vice Premier Sun Chunlan’s comments on Wednesday about the “mildness” of Omicron and the need to move away from the strict public health measures that kept infections and deaths from COVID-19 to an enviable minimum in China amount to the death knell for the Zero-COVID policy.
Inquirer: Yuan jumps past 7 per dollar as China eases some COVID curbs
China’s yuan firmed past the closely watched 7-per-dollar level on Monday, hitting its strongest since mid-September, as Beijing eased some of its strict COVID-19 curbs, potentially attracting fresh foreign inflows.
Reuters: Japan sets price cap on Russian crude oil, excluding Sakhalin-2
FT: Papua New Guinea’s population size puzzles prime minister and experts
Papua New Guinea’s prime minister says he does not know the exact size of his country’s population after a report suggested that the number of people living in the Pacific nation could be almost twice the official figure.
Central Asia and the Middle East
Jakarta Post: MBS seeks Middle East leadership, independence with Xi’s visit
In a show of strength as an aspiring leader of the Arab world, Prince Muhammad will also gather rulers from across the Middle East and North Africa for a Chinese-Arab summit during the visit by President Xi Jinping expected to start on Tuesday.
FT: China steps on Washington’s toes as Xi heads to Saudi Arabia
President Xi Jinping will this week pay his first visit to Saudi Arabia in six years as part of efforts to boost China’s relations with the Gulf region, five months after the US warned Beijing that it would not cede the Middle East to it or anyone else.
WSWS: Britain uses “aid” to Afghanistan as a cover for imperialist domination
According to the government’s own watchdog, much of the UK’s £3.5 billion aid to Afghanistan between 2000 and 2020 was spent not on “humanitarian aid” but on the police and other security agencies’ paramilitary operations. It served to entrench corruption and injustice.
TeleSUR: Iran Begins Construction of New Nuclear Power Plant
Iran begins construction of a new nuclear power plant with a capacity of 300 megawatts of electricity in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, announced the head of the Persian country’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI), Mohammad Eslami.
Inquirer: UAE president visits Qatar in sign of thaw
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) president will visit Qatar on Monday, state news agency WAM reported, in the first such visit since Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies ended a boycott of Doha nearly two years ago.
FT: UAE and Ukraine open trade talks
The war in Ukraine has halved bilateral trade, but officials hoped that sealing this economic partnership would restore this lost trade, especially in food stuffs, and eventually more than double trade beyond prewar levels. … The talks come amid western pressure on the UAE, an ally of both US and Russia, for its neutral stance in the war. Abu Dhabi has abstained on some UN resolutions relating to the war and Dubai has become a haven for Russian money.
They’re playing both sides.
Africa
Africa News: Mali’s junta chief paves way for civilian Choguel Maiga to return as prime minister
The head of Mali’s ruling junta has rescinded a decree appointing a colonel as interim prime minister, paving the way for Choguel Kokalla Maiga to return to the top job, officials said Sunday evening.
Africa News: Sudanese generals, pro-democracy group sign framework deal
Sudan’s ruling generals and the main pro-democracy group on Monday (November 5) signed a framework deal until elections but key dissenters have stayed out of the agreement.
North America
Common Dreams: ‘Intentional Vandalism’ Leaves Thousands Without Power in North Carolina
One right-wing extremist implied that multiple electrical substations were targeted to disrupt a drag show in Moore County. Local law enforcement authorities and the FBI are investigating.
People’s Daily: Mass power outage in North Carolina investigated as “criminal occurrence”
Jacobin: A Record Number of Canadians Are Now Going Hungry
Even before the pandemic, decades of cuts and austerity were already pushing Canada’s social fabric to a breaking point. Now, more Canadians than ever are being forced to turn to food banks to stave off hunger.
Don’t worry, there’s plenty of warships sailing through the Taiwan Strait to be proud of as you go 48 hours without food.
South America
Counterpunch: Latin America’s New Left
It’s paywalled for me, I think.
TeleSUR: Cuban President Begins Tour of Several Caribbean Countries
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel began a tour of Caribbean nations on Saturday, which will include his participation along with several ministers in the VIII Caricom-Cuba Summit to be held in Barbados next week.
TeleSUR: President Maduro Highlights Venezuelan Economic Prospects
TeleSUR: Peru Holds Elections for Governors in Nine Provinces
The Ukraine Proxy Conflict
FT: FT Person of the Year: Volodymyr Zelenskyy. ‘I am more responsible than brave’
I’m sure this won’t age badly at all.
Reuters: Ukraine, Baltics rebuke Macron for suggesting ‘security guarantees’ for Russia
French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion the West should consider Russia’s need for security guarantees if Moscow agrees to talks to end the war in Ukraine unleashed a storm of criticism in Kyiv and its Baltic allies over the weekend.
The chihuahuas are barking furiously again.
Analysis
Inside the Imperial Core
Naked Capitalism: The Jobs Report in Light of what Powell Said: The Fed Cannot Create Supply of Labor, But it Can Slow the Demand for Labor
Monthly Review: NATO exists to solve the problems created by NATO’s existence
It has become fashionable among the mainstream western commentariat to claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had nothing to do with NATO expansion, but as recently explained by Philippe Lemoine for the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, that’s a completely false narrative that requires snipping past comments made by Putin out of the context in which they were made. Many western experts warned for years in advance that NATO expansion would lead to a conflict like the one we’re seeing today, and they were of course correct.
Outside the Imperial Core
Michael Roberts: China’s COVID policy
… So while there are the usual caveats about the quality/reliability of the data, at the moment there’s no indication that, epidemiologically at least, things are out of control. If we start to see infection rates accelerate exponentially (Chinese New Year seems to be an obvious risk) the story might change. But at the moment rates are fairly steady.
Developing Economics: Dependence and ecology in contemporary Latin America, Part 1: The colonization of Paraguayan soy cultivation by Brazilian business
Though its influence may have waned in recent decades, dependency theory remains an indispensable prism through which to regard the bifurcated, or polarized, development of national economies within the capitalist world-system. This framework, in which the persistence of uneven development is attributable to the interrelation between the industrialised core and the underdeveloped periphery, admits both the geographic and historical scope to adequately tackle the hard problems of political economy and to accurately trace the chains of dependency which inhibit peripheral economies. Through two blog posts, I wish to explore how dependency theory can help us understand various ecologies of dependence in Latin America, including Brazilian agribusiness in Paraguayan soy (this blog post) and the role Chinese industrial demand plays in constraining Brazilian subimperial autonomy in soy cultivation (in the second blog post). In this post, the colonization of Paraguayan soy cultivation by Brazilian agribusiness is used to demonstrate that Sub-imperialist powers can achieve relative autonomy within the periphery by making dependent weaker states in their vicinity.