The World Blog by humble servant.

Even as the Bundestag voted to send heavy weapons to Ukraine, a majority of Germans fear that continuing to supply Kiev may cause the conflict to expand to other countries. Germans are also coming up with creative ways to cope with the spike in energy prices caused by the EU sanctions against Russia, according to interviews with a Telegram channel. On Thursday, the German parliament voted 586-100 to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons, even though Chancellor Olaf Scholz cautioned last week that the Bundeswehr stockpiles have just about run out. A recent poll showed 56% of Germans are worried this could result in the conflict expanding to other countries, while only 26% believe there is a military resolution to the Ukraine crisis. A Telegram channel called ‘Kanzlerdaddy’ interviewed some Germans on the street to see if the Bundestag’s decision reflected the will of the people. “I think it’s terrible. It’s a crime. German weapons have no place there,” said one elderly lady, shaking her...

Moscow has warned London that by “pumping” Ukraine with weapons, Britain is undermining European security. The remark came after the British foreign secretary urged allies to provide Ukraine with “heavy weapons, tanks, aeroplanes,” while also bolstering the defense capabilities of Moldova and Georgia. Speaking to journalists by phone on Thursday, Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the “tendency itself to pump weapons, including heavy weapons, into Ukraine and other countries is something that threatens the continent’s security and provokes instability.” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss delivered her keynote speech on Wednesday. She argued against the view that “we shouldn’t provide heavy weapons for fear of provoking something worse,” insisting that “inaction would be the greatest provocation” in the current circumstances. Truss claimed that the “architecture that was designed to guarantee peace and prosperity has failed Ukraine,” with the “economic and security structures...

India has asked state-run energy companies to evaluate the possibility of acquiring oil major BP’s stake in sanctions-hit Russian firm Rosneft, sources told Reuters on Thursday. BP had earlier announced it was abandoning its 19.75% stake in the Russian company. Sources familiar with the matter said that the Indian oil ministry last week conveyed its intent to ONGC Videsh (OVL), Indian Oil, Bharat Petro Resources, Hindustan Petroleum’s subsidiary Prize Petroleum, Oil India and GAIL (India). The ministry also asked OVL, the overseas investment arm of Oil and Natural Gas, to consider buying a 30% stake held by US supermajor ExxonMobil in the Sakhalin 1 project in Russia’s Far East. OVL already holds a 20% stake in the project. One of the sources said Indian companies hope to get stakes in Russian assets at discounted rates, given the risk involved. “Our effort has been to see how we can stabilize economic transactions, economic engagements with Russia in the current context ... There...

The US economy unexpectedly declined by an annualized rate of 1.4% during the first three months of 2022, the Department of Commerce said on Thursday, while noting that consumers and businesses kept spending despite the slowdown. According to the report, the first quarter was hampered by a slower restocking of goods in stores and warehouses as well as a plunge in exports. “The report isn’t as worrisome as it looks,” lead US economist at Oxford Economics Lydia Boussour was quoted as saying by AFP. “The details point to an economy with solid underlying strength that demonstrated resilience in the face of Omicron, lingering supply constraints and high inflation,” she added. Data shows that prices increased sharply during the quarter. Nevertheless, consumer spending rose 2.7%, signaling that the economy will likely keep expanding this year despite the Federal Reserve Earlier this month Goldman Sachs predicted a 35% chance of a recession in the United States within the next two years. D...

Dmitry Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 until 2012 and who is currently the deputy chairman of the country’s security council, has alluded to how the Second World War ended for Germany, after that country’s parliament supported the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine. In a post published on Thursday on his Telegram channel, Medvedev suggested that sitting German lawmakers are envious of the “laurels of their predecessors who sat in the German parliament under a different name in the last century.” The Russian official warned that a situation like that “ends sadly” for the German parliament. The remarks came shortly after the German Bundestag passed a motion demanding that the federal government in Berlin deliver heavier and more complex weaponry to Kiev, so that Ukraine is better equipped to defend itself in the face of the Russian offensive. Titled “Defend peace and freedom in Europe – comprehensive support for Ukraine,” the document was backed by 586 lawmakers...

The so-called Independent State of Croatia was less than three weeks old when it carried out its first mass execution of Serbs, the group its founders designated for persecution and extermination long before their ally Nazi Germany formalized its “final solution” for European Jews. Villages in the Slavonian plain generally stretch alongside roads, to maximize the arable land surrounding them. Gudovac is just one such village, on the western approach to Bjelovar, some 80 kilometers from the Croatian capital, Zagreb. Towards the eastern end of the village are the fairgrounds, where locals would bring their cattle and produce for trade. In the afternoon of April 28, 1941, they would become a killing field. The Gudovac massacre of almost 200 Serbs, rounded up from 10 nearby villages, would kick off a campaign of mass murder by the Ustasha. Soon they would move from bullets to more intimate implements: hammers, axes, knives and other blades, butchering their victims like cattle. Extermin...

Billionaire entrepreneur and the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk is unlikely to bring the “free speech” he had promised to the platform, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, expressing doubts whether a “full palette” of opinions could be presented on any Western social media. “Russia’s attitude towards this company is based on the actions of this company, on censorship, selective repressive actions against the company’s clients, on the distortion and manipulation of information,” Peskov stated on Thursday. There’s a question about whether a full free palette of different points of view is possible on Western social networks. We doubt this. “Let’s see what happens under the new owner. Now, given that this is a global company, we have already heard official voices from Europe that they will not allow absolute freedom there,” Peskov added, apparently referring to a warning made by EU Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton to Musk. The senior EU official cautioned the...

According to recent Western media, Russian forces have buried up to 9,000 Mariupol civilians in “mass graves” in a town just west of the Ukrainian city. These reports use satellite imagery as supposed evidence and repeat the claims of officials loyal to Kiev that “the bodies may have been buried in layers” and “the Russians dug trenches and filled them with corpses every day throughout April.” I went to the site in question and found no mass graves. On April 23, I joined RT journalist Roman Kosarev on a visit to the location, in the town of Mangush. What I saw were new, orderly grave plots including some still empty ones – an extension of a cemetery that already exists at the spot. No mass pit. Many of the graves have placards with the names and dates of birth of the deceased when available, and the remaining plots were numbered according to burial. Since the media is essentially copy-pasting from the same source – the former mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boichenko (who seems to be far...

Bulgarian businesses want Sofia “to make it possible to resume talks with Gazprom” after the Russian energy giant cut off gas supplies to the country, according to Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Kornelia Ninova. “We propose that, by then, gas prices should be frozen or capped at their level in the contract with Gazprom and the difference with the higher prices of alternative supplies be paid for by the State,” she said at a press conference after meeting with the Bulgaria Professional Employer Organization (PEO). The calls come a day after Gazprom ceased delivering gas to Bulgaria after the country refused to pay for energy supplies in rubles. Bulgaria relies on Russia for nearly 90% of its gas, with the remainder coming from Azerbaijan. Earlier in the day, Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said that Bulgaria has enough gas supplies to last more than one month should nothing change, stressing that Sofia would not accept Russia’s terms on exports of gas. R...

Poland continues to buy Russian natural gas from Germany via reverse flows, after its direct supplies were suspended due to non-payment in rubles, Russia’s energy giant Gazprom said on Thursday. “This week Poland refused to pay for the Russian gas with the new terms, in rubles. It was grandly announced that they no longer needed Russian gas and would not buy it any more. But in fact Poland keeps buying Russian gas after the direct supply was halted. It now buys the gas from Germany, and it comes back to Poland with the reverse flow via the Yamal-Europe pipeline,” Gazprom's official representative Sergey Kupriyanov said. On Wednesday, Gazprom announced a complete halt of gas exports to Poland as Warsaw had failed to pay for its fuel in rubles in line with a new payment mechanism launched earlier this month. According to Gazprom, supplies will not resume until Warsaw complies with the new terms. Deliveries to Bulgaria were also halted, for the same reason. Poland raised its bid f...

Intelligence obtained by Russia suggests that Poland and the US are working on a plan for Warsaw to regain control of Ukrainian areas that Warsaw considers as “historically belonging” to it, Moscow's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) chief Sergey Naryshkin has said. According to the alleged plan, the first stage of this “reunification” will see Polish “peacekeepers” deployed in western Ukraine under the pretext of “protection from Russian aggression,” Naryshkin outlined in a statement on Thursday. The details of the operation are now being discussed between Warsaw and the US government, he claimed, adding that the operation is designed to be carried out without a NATO mandate, and only volunteer states taking part. Warsaw has so far been unable to find any other nations to join its cause, he added. But the Polish authorities aren’t bothered because they’re themselves interested in having fewer “unnecessary witnesses” to their actions, Naryshkin elaborated. Polish general ‘ca...

US President Joe Biden will officially ask Congress later on Thursday to grant him the authority to seize the assets of wealthy individuals believed to have links to the Kremlin and use them to help Ukraine, the White House has revealed in a statement. Biden is expected to propose a “comprehensive legislative package that will enhance the United States Government’s authority to hold the Russian government and Russian oligarchs accountable for President Putin’s war against Ukraine.” The measures would result in the “forfeiture of property linked to Russian kleptocracy,” allowing the US government to “use the proceeds to support Ukraine.” Under the proposal, authorities would be able to impound property in the US “owned by sanctioned Russian oligarchs and that has a connection to specified unlawful conduct.” Moreover, Biden wants to make it a crime “for any person to knowingly or intentionally possess proceeds directly obtained from corrupt dealings with the Russian government.” The st...

Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms has reported a 21% drop in profits for the first quarter of this year, the company’s slowest revenue growth since going public a decade ago. According to the First Quarter 2022 Results released on Wednesday, the company’s profit was $7.5 billion as opposed to $9.5 billion during the same period last year. Income from operations plummeted by 28%. Total revenue however rose 7% to $27.9 billion. The results follow Meta’s bleak financial report for the Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 released in February, when the company also posted an 8% drop in profits and slowing user growth. The figures led to Meta’s stock plummeting more than 20% and its market value plunging more than $230 billion in the company’s biggest-ever one-day crash. The losses in the two quarters are the company’s first back-to-back profit declines in over a decade, with a growth rate now below levels seen since it went public in 2012. Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg rema...

Supposedly this won’t apply to Russian civilians – though wishing death upon President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus are reportedly also OK now – and the special rule will only be in effect in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine. So unlike a principle, which would apply to anyone, anywhere, these new carve-outs apply only against specific groups and in specific territories. Would Meta create this exception for, say, Syria, Iran, Iraq, or Libya to allow calls for violence against Americans? Of course not. How about in Yemen, against the Saudis or Emiratis mercilessly bombing and occupying parts of the country since 2015? Not a chance. But hating Russians? That’s not just allowed, it’s encouraged – one might even say expected – in the West that has already banned Russian music, literature, and even cats. Facebook and Instagram to allow calls for violence against Russians Kreml...

World Blog by humble servant. And Obama Godenemy legacy. It will never been ENOUGH until they shove there Abominating sin down everyone throat. By The humble servant. December 18, 2018 HomeWorld News Germany introduces 3rd gender… but LGBT groups say it’s not enough ‘Boys can have periods too’: Brighton schools updated curriculum sparks outrage.

Poland’s Deputy Minister of the Interior and Administration Paweł Szefernaker said on Thursday that several dozen municipalities, were left without liquefied gas because of sanctions imposed by Warsaw on Russian energy giant Novatek. “At the moment, we are trying to find ways to solve this problem and resume gas supplies to areas where blue fuel was supplied by a Russian company that fell under sanctions,” Szefernaker said as quoted by media. He explained that after the introduction of sanctions, Novatek’s subsidiary Novatek Green Energy suspended gas supplies to several dozen Polish municipalities. The ministry could not inform the regional authorities about the sanctions in advance, since “decisions to include firms on the list of enterprises covered by sanctions were made behind closed doors,” Szefernaker reportedly said. To restore the gas supply, authorities intend to seize the infrastructure owned by the Russian firm. According to Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Wonsik, a g...

Some of Europe’s largest energy firms are planning to use a new payment system for Russian gas supplies demanded by the Kremlin, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. Sources told the newspaper that gas distributors in Germany, Austria, Hungary and Slovakia aim to open ruble accounts at Gazprombank in Switzerland. They said that negotiations between European buyers and Russian gas supplier Gazprom have intensified as payment deadlines approach. Under the new mechanism, European companies would continue to pay Gazprombank for their imports in euro in order not to breach the sanctions regime. The Russian bank, which is not under EU sanctions, would then, at their request, convert euro-denominated deposits into rubles in a second account opened in their name, for onward payment to the Russian gas provider. “We consider that the amendment of the payment process complies with the sanctions law and so the payments are possible,” said chief financial officer of Germany’s Uniper Tiina ...

Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed on Thursday that Ukrainian forces fired more than a dozen missiles overnight at the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine, which was seized by Russian troops in early March. The ministry said in a statement that Russian air defenses intercepted the rockets. According to Moscow, late on Wednesday the Ukrainian military launched at least two ‘Tochka-U’ ballistic missiles as well as 12 missiles from a high-powered multiple rocket launcher, apparently targeting residential areas of Kherson. The incoming rockets were, however, shot down by the Russian forces deployed in the city. A video released by the Russian Defense Ministry appears to show the aftermath of the shelling, with what looks like missile debris seen in the footage. The ministry branded the attack a war crime, saying the “criminal, indiscriminate strike by the nationalists targeted residential areas along Ushakov Avenue, as well as nurseries, schools and other social infrastructure.” The atta...

Moldova's President Maia Sandu has acknowledged that her country has no way to substitute Russian gas, expressing hope that deliveries by Gazprom will continue despite an unsettled debt. “We find ourselves in a very difficult situation,” Sandu said in an interview with broadcaster Jurnal TV on Wednesday. Moldova’s contract with Russia’s gas Gazprom expires on May 1. In order for it to be prolonged, the country has to complete an audit of its huge debt for earlier gas deliveries before the Russian side. But Chisinau is unlikely to meet the deadline, having claimed earlier that the conflict in Ukraine has prevented it from hiring a foreign auditor to do the job. According to Gazprom, its Moldovan counterpart Moldovagas owes it some $709 million. “We can’t give up on gas when we have no other alternative. Electricity supply also depends on gas, so there's no alternative here, too,” the president pointed out. Sandu, who came to power in 2020 on a promise of European integratio...

The US House of Representatives passed a non-binding bill on Wednesday, calling on President Joe Biden to impound the assets of wealthy Russian individuals believed to have ties to the Kremlin. Under the plan, confiscated capital would go toward supporting Ukraine. Named the Asset Seizure for Ukraine Reconstruction Act, the bill was backed by 417 lawmakers, with eight voting against it. The document urges the US president to “confiscate any property or accounts subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, valued over $2,000,000, and belonging to Russian energy companies or to foreign persons whose wealth is derived in part through corruption linked to or political support for the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin.” Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), one of the lawmakers behind the bill, explained that under the legislation US authorities could seize luxury villas, yachts and airplanes belonging to wealthy Russian individuals and companies that have been sanctioned by the U.S. ...

Australia’s home affairs minister has accused China of attempting to interfere in an election set for next month, saying a recent security deal with a nearby Pacific nation suggested nefarious motives. In comments to a Brisbane radio station on Wednesday, Karen Andrews warned that Australians ought to be “taking notice of and paying some attention to” China’s pact with the Solomon Islands, announced last week. “Beijing is clearly very aware that we're in a federal election campaign here at the moment. Why now? Why, right in the middle of a federal election campaign is all this coming to light?” she asked, adding “We talk about political interference and that has many forms.” While it’s unclear exactly what impact the China-Solomons deal would have on the May 21 federal election, the ruling Liberal Party has argued that Beijing is hoping to see victory for the opposition Labor Party, as the center-left faction takes up an increasingly hawkish line toward Beijing. Australia may...