Ceasefire in name only.
The UAE is bypassing the Strait of Hormuz with 1.9 million barrels per day now coming out of Fujairah via its overland pipeline, and Saudi Arabia's overland pipeline west to Yanbu is moving about 4.5 million barrels per day out through the Red Sea, but that's not the 20 million barrels per day lost due to the war, and no LNG is moving at all.
Pakistan and Bangladesh get two thirds of their LNG from the Gulf, Taiwan gets one third of its LNG. Taiwan says its has eleven days' supply remaining. Many others are also severely affected by the cut-off of LNG from Qatar. About 20 LNG tankers are trapped in the Gulf, half the global fleet available for charter.
Meanwhile Iran has increased export of its oil from 1 million barrels per day in February to 2 million in March, 90% of which goes to China, and Iran is now charging tolls to vessels to exit the Gulf along its coast, which occurs only under Iranian escort.
They've lit the world on fire. They're madmen.
WATCH: Iranian gas, oil infrastructure at Iran’s South Pars and Asaluyeh hit in Israeli air strike
Facilities linked to Iran’s gas and oil industry in South Pars and Asaluyeh were targeted in an Israeli airstrike on Wednesday, a source confirmed to The Jerusalem Post.
The South Pars gas field is the world’s largest natural gas reserve and is jointly operated by Iran and Qatar.
An Israeli official told the Post that the attack was coordinated with the United States, adding that the target was Iran’s largest gas facility in Bushehr. ... Those Israeli strikes were coordinated with the United States, Axios reported a senior Israeli official as saying. ...
From the suck-ups at Real Clear Politics this morning:
Israel wipes out the Houthi airport, fuel supplies, and concrete factory and then they finally cry uncle?
Something doesn't add up here.
Trump announces US will stop bombing Houthis
... Trump, ahead of a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, said the halt would start immediately. The Houthis approached the administration on Monday night indicating “they want to stop the fighting,” he said. ...
Israel escalated strikes against the Houthis on Monday night with 20 fighter jets bombing the rebel-held port city of Hodeidah. Israeli forces were responding to a ballistic missile strike against the Jerusalem airport by the group. The Trump administration also labeled the Houthis a terror group in March, changing a Biden-era policy. ... Houthi strikes against the waterway have declined significantly in recent months, and the group hasn’t targeted a commercial vessel since late December. ...
Israel's military says it has fully disabled Yemen's main airport with strikes...
... “We indirectly informed the Americans that the continued escalation will affect the criminal Trump’s visit to the region, and we have not informed them of anything else,” said Mahdi al-Mashat, head of the Houthi’s supreme political council, in a statement carried by the rebel-controlled SABA news agency early Wednesday. Trump is due to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates next week. ...
US holding secret talks with Hamas on release of Gaza hostages, 'Post' confirms
... US special envoy for hostage affairs Adam Boehler ... met with senior Hamas officials in Doha, Qatar, several times. These meetings, first reported by Barak Ravid on Axios, mark the first known direct dialogue between Hamas and the US administration since the US designated Hamas as a terrorist organization in 1997.
Such talks run counter to long-standing US policy against direct contact with groups that Washington lists as foreign terrorist organizations. ...
The White House said Boehler has the authority to negotiate directly with Hamas.
“When it comes to the negotiations that you’re referring to, first of all, the special envoy who’s engaged in those negotiations does have the authority,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters. ...
The perfidy of Joe Biden knows no bounds.
Less than a day before the Biden administration announced its intent to cut off U.S. arms sales to Israel, it issued a sanctions waiver to bypass congressional prohibitions on arms sales to a host of Arab nations that boycott the Jewish state, including Hamas ally Qatar and Iran-controlled Lebanon, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
More.
US Chamber Backs China's WTO Entry
:
Steve Van Andel, the newly elected chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce, said on Monday that he was looking forward to China joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) sometime before the end of this year. He said this will pave the way for permanent normal trade relations between China and the United States.
"For US business, one of the best things that can happen to help confidence in the Chinese market is China becoming part of the WTO," Andel said in an interview with China Daily.
His remarks come at a time that China is hoping to enter the world trade body. The country hopes to join before a WTO ministerial meeting in Qatar between November 9 and 13.
China has concluded separate agreements with the United States and the European Union, the world's two top trading powers, in the last few weeks, promoting its WTO membership.
Although the US Congress last year voted for Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) between China and the United States, it still reviews its trade policy towards China every year until the country actually becomes part of the WTO.
"The chamber is already actively supporting normal trade relations with China again." Andel said.
The chamber, the world's largest commerce association representing 3 million US companies and 3,000 state and local chambers, has been committed to lobbying the US Congress to normalize trade relations with China.
He said he would go back to Congress soon after his visit to China to lobby for normal trade relations with China again.
A normal trade relation between China -- potentially the world's largest market with 1.3 billion consumers -- and the United States is very important to businesses in both countries, he said.
Last year, the trade volume between the two nations amounted to US$74.5 billion.
He said China's WTO entry would certainly benefit "not only better relations, but also more trade between the two markets.''
Andel said he would carry the same message during his talks with the Chinese leaders and government officials, including President Jiang Zemin over the next couple of days.
Andel will lead a US business delegation to China in September to attend a meeting organized by China's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.
"I will also next year travel around the United States again, probably to 50 to 60 different local chambers talking about the importance of trade with China to US and Chinese businesses,'' he said.
Andel, chairman of US-based Amway, the global consumer goods giant, said China's WTO accession and normal trade relations between China and United States were expected to boost his company's business in China.
Amway, which has invested more than US$100 million in China, aims to increase its business in the country to 10 percent of its global turnover in a few years from the current level of 5 percent.
(Chinadaily.com.cn 07/04/2001)
EU strikes gas deal with the U.S. as it seeks to cut its reliance on Russia :
The White House said the EU said would work toward the goal of ensuring, until at least 2030, demand for approximately 50 billion cubic meters per year of extra U.S. LNG. This is “consistent with our shared net-zero goals,” it added.
U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity has grown rapidly since the Lower 48 states first began exporting LNG in February 2016. In 2019, the United States became the world’s third-largest LNG exporter, behind Australia and Qatar. Once the new LNG liquefaction units, called trains, at Sabine Pass and Calcasieu Pass in Louisiana are placed in service by the end of 2022, the United States will have the world’s largest LNG export capacity.
In a huge Qatar study of 907k, Pfizer effectiveness against infection fell to only 20% in months five to seven after the second dose, which is admittedly pretty shocking (but don't get distracted by the shiny object -- boosters!):
The results indicated that vaccine effectiveness against any SARS-CoV-2 infection was 36.8% (95% CI, 33.2-40.2) in the third week after the first dose, peaking at 77.5% (95% CI, 76.4-78.6) in the first month following the second dose. Effectiveness gradually waned thereafter, then dropped after the fourth month to reach about 20% in the fifth through seventh months, according to the researchers.
“These findings suggest that a large proportion of the vaccinated population could lose its protection against infection in the coming months, perhaps increasing the potential for new epidemic waves,” Chemaitelly and colleagues wrote.
More.
But these claims fly in the face of the Provincetown incident of July 4th, where there was mass infection among fully vaccinated individuals, a plurality of whom had received Pfizer. Loss of protection against infection appears to be coterminous with vaccination "protection", not something which occurs after month seven, for example. The median interval from completion of vaccination to symptom onset in that incident was 3 months, which means half of the infected symptomatic cohort had been recently vaccinated (6-86 days!):
Among fully vaccinated symptomatic persons, the median interval from
completion of ≥14 days after the final vaccine dose to symptom onset was
86 days (range = 6–178 days).
The Qatar study people, apparently:
The vaccine's weakening protection may be due to people's behavior, the study authors noted.
"Vaccinated persons presumably have a higher rate of social contact than unvaccinated persons and may also have lower adherence to safety measures," they wrote. "This behavior could reduce real-world effectiveness of the vaccine as compared with its biologic effectiveness, possibly explaining the waning of protection."
The studies were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Kind of hard to have any credibility when your commander in chief has none.
Biden signaled surrender already in early May, much earlier than hitherto reported; that's why the country collapsed like a house of cards.
Defeat in Afghanistan was a CHOICE made by the Democrat president, no different than the Vietnam defeat was a choice, made by the Democrat Congress of the time, of which Biden was also a part, which cut off funding to the government of South Vietnam.
The contractors which were necessary to the mission of the Afghan Army were already pulling out by the time of the May 8 Biden meeting where discussion of evacuating Afghan SIVs was supposedly excluded for fear of destabilizing the Ghani government, much earlier than has been reported until now:
At the time of the May meeting, Taliban forces were engaged in a countrywide offensive and were already capturing key territory in the west and outside Kabul, the nation's capital. U.S.-funded private contractors, meanwhile, were flying out of the country as part of the American troop withdrawal. The Afghan military needed the contractors to keep its air force flying. ... On Aug. 8, McKenzie delivered his findings to Milley, who in turn shared them with Austin. McKenzie warned that Kabul would be encircled in 30-60 days and that the city and the whole country could fall within weeks or a couple of months at most.