Windfall tax: RIL's refining margins to be hit by upto $8/bbl, say analysts

Windfall tax: RIL’s refining margins to be hit by upto $8/bbl, say analysts

With the government making it clear that the new windfall tax will also be imposed on special economic zones, Reliance Industries’ gross refining margins (GRMs) will be negatively impacted by $6-8 a barrel, said analysts with Morgan Stanley and Jefferies. “No sunset date has been specified, though we believe this is an extraordinary measure given the inflated profit environment in refining…

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thinks about how earth bet never bothered to learn anything about sustainable development because they just assumed the endbringers would finish everyone off first and now they’ve exported their shitty mindset over to another earth where they’re polluting the air and the water and destroying old growth forests and all the irreplaceable ecosystems within them at an unfathomable pace just to build more of their god awful gas guzzling concrete jungle and the native people of gimel have been mentioned once as assurance that they’re getting treated very well don’t worry about it but have never actually appeared to speak for themselves even though every part of the world would be affected by an industrial project on such a scale and the city prioritizes cranking out individual cars for good American families over having a fucking government that makes sense and the other settlements are vaguely gestured at but never seem to matter on the level of cross-earth politics and they’re making earths that never produced gasoline before make it just to sell it to them and we’re supposed to think this is an endeavor worth fighting to protect and not the nightmare of all nightmares

“Salad cops, motherfucker! You have the right to… Romaine silent!” bellowed the heavily-armed shock trooper standing in my freshly-exploded doorway.

It wasn’t entirely my fault. The energy crisis made it happen. A couple decades ago, when gasoline suddenly got kind of expensive, the bigwigs decided it was time to make gasoline more sustainable. This is, of course, code for massive farm subsidies. They'd pay farmers to produce a shedload of corn. And I don't mean like a small shed. No, they would make so much corn that the country could not consume all of it, and then turn it into mediocre gasoline, rather than do something silly like export it to a country where people might want to eat the corn.

Corn's really easy to grow, apparently, and the people who make corn often vote for the kind of politicians who promise corn subsidies. Thing is, it doesn't have to be corn. You can make ethanol-rich gasoline out of basically any vegetable or plant matter, plus a bunch of gasoline. And while it's not so great for your lawn implements or motorcycles or to sniff, ethanol gasoline has a fantastic resistance to knocking. Which means you can plug it into your car, and then run an incredible amount of turbocharger boost pressure. Which means horsepower. Which means that you will be able to make up for the lack of respect that literally every authority figure in your life has given you since the very day you were born.

So: I simply went around to the local restaurants, and scooped leftover salad out of their dumpsters. Then I mixed it with R/C car nitromethane that I pulled out of the hobby store dumpster, and: boom. Cheap gasoline. For a little while. You see, people only throw away so much salad per day. A lot less than I can burn in that same day, especially with a 255 litre-per-hour racing fuel pump and injectors the size of a Eurasian red squirrel. Which means that soon i was out of gas to run my ridiculous car, and had to instead putter around at normal boost pressures, like some sort of rube.

This is where the salad police come in. You see, only the government is allowed to decide which vegetables are massively subsidized. And if you commit a daring midnight raid on that government's Tactical Turnip Reserve, for instance, they're gonna figure out real fast who suddenly is driving around town smelling like brassica farts and burning 10W40.

"A Chicken in Every Pot" political ad and rebuttal article in New York Times

Collection HH-HOOVH: Herbert Hoover PapersSeries: Herbert Hoover Papers: Clippings File

This is the advertisement that caused Herbert Hoover's opponents to state that he had promised voters a chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage during the campaign of 1928. During the campaign of 1932, Democrats sought to embarrass the President by recalling his alleged statement. According to an article in the New York Times (10/30/32), Hoover did not make such a statement. The report was based on this ad placed by a local committee -- which only mentions one car!

A Chicken for Every Pot [handwritten] World[?] 30 October 1928 [/handwritten] The Republican Party isn't a [italics] "Poor Man's Party:" [/italics] Republican prosperity has erased that degrading phrase from our political vocabulary. The Republican Party is [italics] equality's [/italics] party -- [italics] opportunity's [/italics] party -- [italics] democracy's [/italics] party, the party of [italics] national [/italics] development, not [italics] sectional [/italics] interests-- the [italics] impartial [/italics] servant of every State and condition in the Union. Under higher tariff and lower taxation, America has stabilized output, employment and dividend rates. Republican efficiency has filled the workingman's dinner pail -- and his gasoline tank [italics] besides [/italics] -- made telephone, radio and sanitary plumbing [italics] standard [/italics] household equipment. And placed the whole nation in the [italics] silk stocking class. [/italics] During eight years of Republican management, we have built more and better homes, erected more skyscrapers, passed more benefactory laws, and more laws to regulate and purify immigration, inaugurated more conservation measures, more measures to standardize and increase production, expand export markets, and reduce industrial and human junk piles, than in any previous quarter century. Republican prosperity is written on [italics] fuller [/italics] wage envelops, written in factory chimney smoke, written on the walls of new construction, written in savings bank books, written in mercantile balances, and written in the peak value of stocks and bonds. Republican prosperity has [italics] reduced [/italics] hours and [italics] increased [/italics] earning capacity, silenced [italics] discontent, [/italics] put the proverbial "chicken in every pot." And a car in every backyard, to boot. It has[italics] raised [/italics] living standards and [italics] lowered [/italics] living costs. It has restored financial confidence and enthusiasm, changed [italics] credit [/italics] from a [italics] rich [/italics] man's privilege to a [italics] common [/italics] utility, [italics] generalized[/italics] the use of time-saving devices and released women from the thrall of [italics] domestic drudgery. [/italics] It has provided every county in the country with its concrete road and knitted the highways of the nation into a [italics] unified [/italics] traffic system. Thanks to Republican administration, farmer, dairyman and merchant can make deliveries in [italics] less [/italics] time and at [italics] less [/italics] expense, can borrow [italics] cheap [/italics] money to refund exorbitant mortgages, and stock their pastures, ranges and shelves. Democratic management [italics] impoverished [/italics] and [italics] demoralized [/italics] the [italics] railroads,[/italics] led packing plants and tire factories into [italics] receivership, [/italics] squandered billions on [italics] impractical [/italics] programs. Democratic maladministration issued [italics] further [/italics] billions of mere "scraps of paper," then encouraged foreign debtors to believe that their loans would never be called, and bequeathed to the Republican Party the job of [italics] mopping up the mess. [/italics] Republican administration has [italics] restored [/italics] to the railroads solvency, efficiency and par securities. It has brought rubber trades through panic and chaos, brought down the prices of crude rubber by smashing [italics] monopolistic rings,[/italics] put the tanner's books in the [italics] black [/italics] and secured from the European powers formal acknowledgment of their obligations. The Republican Party rests its case on a record of stewardship and performance. [full transcription at link]

A series of Russian drone and missile attacks beginning March 22 has destroyed much of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The damage, which will cost billions of dollars and many months to repair, has crippled Ukraine’s ability to light and heat itself for the medium term and marks a major escalation in Russia’s ongoing invasion.

The latest wave of Russian airstrikes has been notable for its breadth. Virtually every one of Ukraine’s thermal power plants has been hit along with a series of substations. DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private power company, reports that two of its thermal power plants (TPP) are no longer operational, with repairs expected to take several years. A separate plant in Kharkiv has also been seriously damaged and will take years to repair, according to regional authorities.

The specific condition of additional Ukrainian power plants remains classified, but reports of recent blackouts in multiple major cities have underlined the extent of the threat to Ukraine’s power grid. In a move indicating the scale of the damage caused by recent Russian bombing, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ordered an early end to the country’s heating season.

Russian targets in recent days have included the Dnipro Hydroelectric Dam, sparking fears of a possible ecological disaster. The dam itself has not collapsed, but the power plant was partially destroyed and pollutants are now reportedly leaking into the reservoir. Even more worryingly, the nearby Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant lost grid connectivity due to the attack, putting its cooling systems at risk of stopping. Energoatom called the situation “extremely dangerous.”

In a further escalation, Russia has also expanded its air offensive with attacks on Ukraine’s natural gas storage facilities. These facilities, which house large quantities of gas for European customers, had not previously been targeted in earlier Russian bombing campaigns. Although the storage facilities themselves are underground, the pumping stations that allow for the insertion and extraction of gas are not.

On March 24, Russia launched approximately 20 missiles and drones at the Bilche-Volitsko-Ugerskoye storage facility, which represents around half of Ukraine’s total storage capacity. Ukrainian state-owned gas company Naftogaz downplayed the extent of the damage but did acknowledge that repairs would be necessary. Naftogaz officials also sought to reassure European storage customers that all obligations would be met by Ukraine, regardless of the Russian airstrikes.

The recent wave of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy system comes amid reports that the White House has been pressuring Kyiv to stop attacking Russian oil refineries due to concerns about the possible impact on oil prices ahead of the November 2024 US presidential election. Starting in January, Ukraine began a series of long-range drone strikes on refining facilities inside Russia. These attacks have succeeded in hurting Russia’s energy-dependent economy, with disruption reported to oil and oil product exports, gasoline and other fuel supplies in Russia, military fuel supplies, and Russian income from energy exports.

Global prices for crude oil and diesel, as well as other oil products, have risen in the wake of the Ukrainian attacks. This appears to be making US politicians nervous about the potential impact on their country’s forthcoming elections. Unsurprisingly, many in Kyiv have been outraged by the reported US efforts to effectively protect the Russian energy industry at a time when Moscow is bombing Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure and plunging entire cities into darkness. Ukrainian officials have responded by insisting Russian refineries are legitimate targets.

So far, there have been no reports of European leaders seeking to deter Ukraine from attacking Russia’s oil and gas industry, but that could change as the continent faces a range of looming geopolitical and energy market problems. Russia’s gas transit contract with Ukraine is set to expire in December 2024, with the Ukrainian authorities stating they will not seek an extension. With the vulnerability of Ukraine’s gas storage facilities now an issue thanks to recent Russian airstrikes, and with instability in the Middle East making Arabian Gulf LNG both less assured and much more expensive, Europe may soon begin to pressure Ukraine, too.

Each wave of Russian airstrikes makes Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction more challenging while narrowing the options available to the country. Without crucial US military aid that remains held up in Congress, and faced with hypocritical but likely mounting pressure from Western capitals to play nice with Russia on energy infrastructure while Russia decimates Ukraine’s power grid, the path forward is unclear.

Instead of artificial restrictions on their own ability to strike back, Kyiv desperately needs adequate air defense systems so Ukraine can protect its power plants from Russian assaults. In the meantime, the many Ukrainians who are working tirelessly to maintain their country’s battered energy systems have a long road ahead of them.

You should expect much greater peaks in energy price variability as economies move away from fossil fuels, with less capacity to reduce peak price spikes.

With most major governments pledging to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, there will be less investment in fossil fuel exploration, extraction, and refinement. Would you start building on oil refinery right now, know that your government has pledged to put you out of business? Even if gas prices spike, no one is going to make large investments in building or re-opening oil refineries. You do not make large, long-term investments chasing a declining market.

Which is to say, when energy prices spike because a refinery has a problem or one country stops exporting oil, there is less system capacity to fill in the gaps. That is kind of definitionally what happens in a shift away from fossil fuels. The politicians can make speeches about how oil companies are doing X, Y, and Z, but the major problem for gas price shocks is that oil companies are shifting away from being oil companies.

This will be a shifting target over time as the bottleneck of the year shifts. In the USA, that has recently been refinery capacity and the ability to create gasoline blends that meet states' requirements. In Europe, that has been threats to and/or the loss of Russian exports.

The more the fossil fuel sector of the economy declines, the more there will be large price shocks to other parts of the economy that rely on fossil fuels. If you pass a law saying that there will be no cars with internal combustion engines in Year X, you cannot expect enthusiastic support of internal combustion engines in Years X through X-minus-ten or -twenty.

I mean, you can. People complain about things they intentionally caused all the time. But reducing fossil fuel capacity is both the point and an already ongoing cause of short-term pain points.

[Eurasianet receives funding from the NED, OSF, the FCDO, & others]

Turkmenistan’s parliament does not do anything.

The only function it serves is to enable the dictatorship in charge to claim that it is presiding over a representative democracy. International partners do their bit in bolstering this fiction by engaging with the ersatz legislators as though they were the real thing.

None of this stops the Turkmen regime from constantly – and puzzlingly – fiddling with their only theoretically representative body.

On January 11, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, the head of the upper house of parliament, the ex-president and de facto current co-president, suggested reverting from a bicameral setup back to a single-chamber parliament. This will bring a swift end to the experiment with bicameralism started two years ago.

This looks at first blush like a watering-down of the parliament, such as it was. If Turkmenistan was on a hypothetical trajectory towards something genuinely (if only very partially) representative, this development takes it in another direction. That direction being what Turkmenistan had prior to 2008.

It was in 2008, one year after Berdymukhamedov came to power following the death of his erratic and mercurial predecessor Saparmurat Niyazov, that a decision was adopted to scrap the Halk Maslahaty, or People’s Council, in the form in which it then existed. This 2,507-member body was comprised of the political elite, some supposedly elected members and the fulsomely bearded community elders that added much-needed color to the council assemblies that took place around once a year. The scale and diversity of the Halk Maslahaty was intended to convey the illusory impression that it was an accurate reflection of the population’s wishes. [...]

When Turkmenistan in 2020 switched to a bicameral system, which Berdymukhamedov argued would enable legislators to somehow better reflect the interests of local communities, the Halk Maslahaty label was lent to the new senatorial upper house. Prior to stepping down as president and handing the reins to his son, Serdar, in early 2022, Berdymukhamedov assumed the chairmanship of this newly formed Senate.

Now it turns out this will not do. Speaking at a joint session of parliament, Berdymukhamedov senior said members of the new-look Halk Maslahaty will include the president (his son), the Mejlis speaker, the chair of the Supreme Court, members of the cabinet and a whole array of other local government, national and parastatal apparatchiks. This body will have the authority to tinker with the constitution and decide major issues of domestic and foreign policy.[...]

In a parallel ongoing development, an election for the 125-member Mejlis has been scheduled for March 26. Local representative bodies, all the way through from regional- to village-level [!], will hold elections on the same day. None of it will mean much in practice.[...]

Abdrahmanov also announced that the Turkmenbashi refinery complex had begun producing what he termed B-92-grade aviation gasoline. [...] the state website described the development of this brand of fuel as a triumph for import-substitution [...]

17 Jan 23

The Trap Closes

A Mitsuhide Akechi fanfiction. This scene is set well after the events of the romantic epilogue and features Mitsuhide and MC in a modern setting extended story. Approx. 2400 words.

First: Mitsuhide and the Maiden

Previous: Serendipity

Mitsuhide leaned back in his chair, eyes gleaming. His little one sat beside him, her mind clearly churning as she tried to digest the plans his team divulged. He smiled at her intent expression. She was so cute when she was trying to focus. “Relax, little mouse.” Mitsuhide settled his hand on her leg. 

“Yeah, relax. You should still be in bed,” Miyake scolded her with a good natured smile. 

Sasuke nodded. “He’s right. You don’t need to be here. You should go to your parents’ home.”

She drew her chin up, showing that steel soul she hid behind her kind eyes and gentle smile. “These people tried to hurt me. They tried to hurt my friends. I’m not going to go hide in my bedroom and wait for you to take care of it for me.” It was only spoiled a little by her dry cough after.

Itsuko and Daiki watched her cautiously. The chatelaine was an unknown to them, their boss’ girlfriend. Souta seemed more sure. He grinned at her and nodded. “The lady knows what she wants.”

Mitsuhide chuckled. “That she does. I think there is a role for her to play in this.” 

Sasuke looked like he might argue but after a look from the chatelaine, he only clenched his jaw. 

“Fine. So let’s get started.” Miyake frowned but didn’t argue further. 

A few hours later, Mitsuhide found himself packed tight into the confines of a cleaning products box. The metal cart beneath him rattled and shook as Itsuko pushed in up the ramp of the back entrance to Tanaka’s office building. The door guard barely paused when scanning his ID. 

Thankfully, Souta’s employee database hack held and they were waived through. 

Itsuko hummed softly to himself as he pushed the cleaning cart down the hall to the service elevator. Another badge scan and the door clicked open. He was on his way to the top floor with little more than a cursory check. 

Mitsuhide felt the elevator rise, the smooth, rapid motion made his stomach flip. It was a sensation he didn’t think he would ever adjust to. It was worse in the confines of the cardboard box, in the dark. He swallowed and tried to focus on the plan. 

Miles away in another part of town, Daiki was walking into a warehouse with a grin on his face and a can of gasoline in hand. This was where Tanaka’s criminals stored their contraband. Shelves of banned and restricted chemicals, stolen merchandise, forgeries . . . this was where the money was made. Smuggled items for sale and export. 

“Hey! Stop! Who the fu-” 

Daiki slammed the gas can into the side of the mafioso’s head and dropped him. Then he smiled and waved up at the security cam. Souta was probably watching, might as well say hello. Then he set to work, dousing the goods in his petrol mixture. When everything flammable was soaked, he stepped back and lit it.

The flames leapt up before his spark of his lighter even touched the oil. He singed his fingers, almost dropping it. “Damn. You wanted to burn, didn’t you?” Daiki pressed his fingertips to his lips for a moment and then remembered Souta was watching and this wasn’t the kind of thing a tough guy did. He changed the motion to blowing a kiss and hoped his friend didn’t catch the pause. 

He dragged the unconscious man out by his arms and set him far enough away from the warehouse to be safe. Ish. 

At another location in one of the city’s suburbs, Sasuke watched several low-tier thugs accept an unexpected shipment of free beer. Kegs they took with grins and laughter, never suspecting each one was dosed with a compound that would knock them out after only a cup or two. 

And in this very building, his little mouse was making a special delivery to the front desk. A cake for Ana, but under the frosted cover was an EMP device. Something Souta and Sasuke built together that would take out communications in the building. All she needed to do was get past the door guards and into the lobby. 

Mitsuhide didn’t worry about any of that. It was all part of the plan they’d crafted together. One he knew would succeed even if an individual part failed. He found, to his surprise, that he trusted each member of his team to manage their part even if something went wrong. 

He felt the cart come to a stop. “You can’t be here right now. The boss is having a meeting. Real serious,” someone said. A guard - they sounded bored rather than hostile.

Itsuko jiggled the cart. “Yeah? You know what else is serious? Sewage leaks. If I don’t get in there a slap a patch on that pipe, boss is going to be swimming in his own -”

“You know what? I’ll buzz his assistant. Let her decide.” The guard chuckled. 

Mitsuhide knew what happened next, though he could only hear it. Itsuko slipped up behind the guard as soon as his back was turned and in one quick motion, tried to knock him out. Tried. Itsuko hadn’t had the kind of training Mitsuhide did. He only had a few short weeks of practice. His elbow caught the guard by surprise, but it wasn’t enough to take him out.

The two men struggled in the hall, grunts and gasps accompanying the short, brutal fight. 

Mitsuhide didn’t wait to find out who would win. He tore out the lightly sealed box top. His neck felt sore and his legs were buzzing with pins and needles. It took a moment for him to orient himself and begin to move. His usually grateful gait was an awkward stumble as he stepped down from the cart to intervene. 

It took only a moment to find the opening he needed. A swift blow to the side of the guard’s head and the man crumpled to the floor. Injured, but alive, which was the intent. Then Mitsuhide flashed Itsuko his sharp smile. “I thought I taught you better than that.”

“Sorry boss,” Itsuko shrugged. Then he knelt down and rifled through the guard’s pockets, coming away with a security fob. He added it to his keychain beside the one Mitsuhide stole on his night’s stay in the building, and the one Souta set up for him as cleaning staff. 

“You know what to do next. Make sure to clear the building.” 

Itsuko nodded. “Sure. You really think he’s got people locked up in rooms here?”

Mitsuhide nodded. “I was kept in one. I imagine there are others, willing and unwilling. Get them all out.” 

After Itsuko hustled off, Mitsuhide looked at the door to Tanaka’s office. This was it. Not revenge, nor ambition drove him here although, perhaps both played a part.What he felt was more the satisfaction of being so near the end of a job - one that needed doing, however unpleasant the task. Men like Tanaka could not be allowed to destroy the peace of this place for their petty greed. 

Mitsuhide opened the door and stepped inside. As expected, Tanaka was there, sitting behind his desk. There were four men standing in front of him, all looking unsettled. These must be his warlords. Bandits, all. 

The five men all stared at the unexpected interruption. One of the warlords reached for something inside his jacket but before he could take action, Tanaka spoke.

“What are you doing here? I didn’t call you back.”

“No, you didn’t.” Mitsuhide’s thin smile widened.

Tanaka raised an eyebrow. He was a man clearly used to obedience and deference. He wasn’t sure what to make of Mitsuhide’s behavior. 

The man with his hand inside his jacket smirked. “I’ll take him out and teach him some manners, boss. If you’ll excuse me?”

Mitsuhide didn’t give him time to make good on his threat. He grabbed the man by his arm and pulled him close and slammed an elbow into his nose. The sound of crunching cartilage and the sudden smell of blood hit first, followed by the thud of the man’s body falling to the floor. 

The others began to spring into motion, three men familiar with violence. They expected to overwhelm Mitsuhide. To bring him down by force, quickly and brutally. And had he been anyone else, they might have succeeded. But Mitsuhide fought against the odds his whole life. Alone in most battles, outnumbered, but never outwitted. He knew how to handle men like these.

He brought the second one down with a kick to the groin and an elbow to the back of his head. The third man he simply side-stepped and then helped him continue his momentum straight into the wall. The last opponent was more wary, having seen how easily Mitsuhide felled his companions. 

Mitsuhide read caution in the last warlord’s movements. It did the man little good. Mitsuhide went on the attack, striking rapidly with his fists and elbows until he found an opening. It was an inelegant strategy, but effective. The last man went down with a fist to the side of his head. That left only Tanaka.

The boss sat behind his desk with a smug expression. In his hands, one of the small modern rifles - a pistol, Mitsuhide thought - trained on him. “I thought you had some promise,” Tanaka sighed. “But you couldn’t be patient and wait to prove yourself. Instead, you do this? I am not impressed.”

Mitsuhide chuckled. “Then it is good that I am not trying to impress you.” 

“Then what?” Tanaka blinked, unable to hide his surprise. He thought he understood people - their greed, their lust for power. He thought Mitsuhide was just like the other men he’d surrounded himself with. Led by those desires alone. 

“I won’t waste breath explaining it. Men like you are the reason men like me exist.” Mitsuhide walked around the office, looking at the gathered antiques. “Do you imagine you are like the lords of the past? Uesugi. Takeda. Oda.” He lifted a decorative sword from the wall. “You are nothing like them. Even the worst of them wanted something better for the world. But you - you only tear down what others build up.”

Tanaka stood, shoving his chair behind him. “Tear down? Boy, I built one of the greatest crime families in this country. I built an empire. How dare you speak on things you don’t know?” 

Mitsuhide shook his head, tsking. “You destroy the peace of this place and call it an empire? Stealing from those that cannot defend themselves? Letting your warriors hunt innocents for petty revenge? I can’t decide if you’re merely a fool or foolishly evil.” He swung the sword experimentally. The balance on it was terrible. Some sort of cheap material made to display only. But it would do.

“Enough. I won’t be scolded by you.” Tanaka’s finger tightened on the trigger. 

Just then, the lights went down and all the screens in the room went dark. The gun went off, muzzle flashing. The blade reflected the burst of light as it arced through the air. 

Mitsuhide felt something warm trickle down his neck, then a sharp, hot pain. He ignored it, trying to wrestle the sword free of Tanaka’s neck. The mafioso was slumped over the desk, head nearly severed. The cheap weapon could not cut through the bone and was now lodged there. After a moment, Mitushide just let go, leaving the sword where it was. 

He put a hand to his neck. The wound felt small, the blood loss acceptable. All things considered, he’d expected to come away with more injuries. Of course, he wasn’t done yet.There would be more resistance in the building. More fights. Miyake was on his way or perhaps already here to help. Sasuke and Daiki as well. Yet he already felt like they’d won. 

Despite that, he was uneasy. There was so much to this crime syndicate that he didn’t quite fathom. A breadth to it made possible by modern day communications that meant even a victory like this one would leave a remnant of these bandits in power. Mitsuhide knew it would take years to root out all of the corruption. And more than that to see that no other similar bandit-lord took over where Tanaka left off. 

The job was only half done and he could not stay to see it to completion. That was the root of his anxiety. 

“Mitsuhide!” His little mouse burst in, a flashlight in hand. “Are you alright?” Her light shone in his eyes, and he blinked.

“Lower your torch, little one.”

“Oh my god! Mitsuhide, you’re bleeding. From your neck!” The light lowered as she rushed forward. 

He laughed softly. “I’m fine. It’s a scratch.” He pulled her into a hug. “What about you? Did everything go as planned downstairs?”

She nodded as her fingers pushed his head up and to the side, inspecting his wound. “Ana opened the cake box and everything shut down. She and the other two at the front desk went to some back room to try to call for help but their phones wouldn’t work. Then Miyake came. I didn’t wait to see what he would do. I came straight here.”

One of the men on the floor groaned. Mitsuhide nudged the fallen warlord with his foot. “These men will need to be corralled and dealt with.”

“Dealt with?” She glanced at Tanaka’s body and shivered. 

“I won’t waste their lives if there is another way,” he promised. It would be so much easier to kill them, but his little one was right to abhor such a solution. He pulled the zip-ties from his pocket and set about restraining them. It was so much easier to use these plastic bands than it was to use rope. It was really too bad he didn’t have a few at home.

The chatelaine helped him tie the warlords. Mitsuhide couldn’t help but notice her cough, but he said nothing about it. If she wanted to help, he would not interfere. Though he did keep a close eye on the men in case any were only pretending to be unconscious. 

“You know,” she said as she lowered the last man’s feet to the floor. “I never imagined I’d be tying men up alongside you.”

“Oh? Is that a desire I wasn’t fulfilling?” Mitsuhide lowered his gaze seductively. “I will allow it. But once I’m tied, I hope you know what to do next.”

Her cheeks heated and she looked away. “Th-that’s not what I meant! I just - you know! These guys. Helping you with a plan.”

Mitsuhide took her hands, smiling. “You help me far more than you know.” He looked back toward the door. “Now let’s go find Itsuko and see if Miyake is here yet.”

Next: Useful Tasks

Steve Brodner, Full Court Press

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 12, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

DEC 13, 2023

Last night, Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to decide Trump’s claim that he is immune from any and all criminal prosecution for anything he did while in office. That claim is central to Trump’s defense; he has requested the charges against him be dismissed because of that immunity. 

When Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the case in which Trump is charged with trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, dismissed this claim, Trump’s lawyers appealed and asked for the case to be frozen while the appeal worked its way up through the courts. By going straight to the Supreme Court, Smith appears to be trying to stop Trump from delaying the trial until after the 2024 election.  

The Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether it will hear the case. So far, Justice Clarence Thomas refuses to recuse himself, even though his wife Ginni was deeply involved in the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. His refusal suggests that the Supreme Court’s new ethics rules are as toothless as their opponents charged.

In another filing last night, Smith revealed that the government expects to introduce the testimony of three experts who will speak to the use of cell phones by Trump and one other person after the 2020 election, including on January 6, a revelation that Los Angeles Times legal analyst Harry Litman suggested must “have the Trump camp totally freaked out.”

Inflation slowed again in November, dropping to 0.1% as gasoline prices fell, so that the annual inflation over the past year has dropped to 3.1%. 

Fallout continues from the Texas Supreme Court’s decision that a woman carrying a fetus with a fatal condition cannot abort that fetus even though it threatens her own health and future fertility. President Joe Biden promised today to continue to fight to protect access to reproductive health care, saying: “No woman should be forced to go to court or flee her home state just to receive the health care she needs. But that is exactly what happened in Texas thanks to Republican elected officials, and it is simply outrageous. This should never happen in America, period.”

But for all the importance of these major stories, the outstanding story of the day is that the Republican Party appears to have decided to undermine financial support for Ukraine’s war against Russia’s invasion. 

This is simply an astonishing decision. Majorities in both the House and the Senate want to pass supplemental aid to Ukraine, which both protects North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries and provides jobs in the United States, but an extremist minority in Congress is stopping passage of a measure that would provide more weapons to Ukraine.

There is no doubt previous funding has been effective. A newly declassified intelligence memo shows that Russia had an army of 360,000 before the war and that thanks to the Ukraine resistance it has lost 315,000 troops—87% of its army—forcing it to squeeze more recruits out of its civilian population. It has also lost 2,200 out of 3,500 tanks, forcing it to turn to Soviet-era equipment. 

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, who was in Washington, D.C., today to try to convince Republicans to pass such a measure, noted that Ukraine has regained half the land Russia seized in the February 2022 invasion, forced Russian warships out of Ukrainian territorial waters, and opened export corridors to get Ukrainian grain to countries that desperately need it. At the same time, he said, Ukraine’s economy is growing at a 5% rate, suggesting it will be less dependent on foreign aid going forward. 

In The Atlantic, David Frum, who has criticized Democrats on immigration policy, pointed out that Biden and the Democrats have made a real effort to negotiate with extremist Republicans but the Republicans are simply refusing to engage. Frum concluded that Republicans do not want to make a deal. Either they want to perform a ritual in which Republicans demand and Democrats comply, or they want to keep the border as a campaign issue, or they actually oppose aid to Ukraine. And yet, Frum reiterates, majorities in both the House and the Senate want the supplemental aid package to pass.  

Republicans appear to want to keep the issue of immigration front and center in 2024, hoping that people will focus on it rather than on abortion, especially in states like Texas.

Poland’s newly elected prime minister Donald Tusk today vowed that he would “loudly and decisively demand the full mobilization of the free world, the Western world, to help Ukraine in this war,” but Russia expert Fiona Hill told Politico’s Maura Reynolds that U.S. funding will be key to determining whether Ukraine wins back control of its territory. That decision, she says, is really about our own future.

Permitting Putin to win in Ukraine, she says, would create a world in which the standing of the U.S. in the world would be diminished, Iran and North Korea would be strengthened, China would dominate the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East would be more unstable, and nuclear weapons would proliferate. 

“Ukraine has become a battlefield now for America and America’s own future—whether we see it or not—for our own defensive posture and preparedness, for our reputation and our leadership,” Hill told Reynolds. “For Putin, Ukraine is a proxy war against the United States, to remove the United States from the world stage.”

“The problem is that many members of Congress don’t want to see President Biden win on any front,” Hill said. “People are incapable now of separating off ‘giving Biden a win’ from actually allowing Ukraine to win. They are thinking less about U.S. national security, European security, international security and foreign policy, and much more about how they can humiliate Biden. In that regard,” she said, “whether they like it or not, members of Congress are doing exactly the same thing as Vladimir Putin. They hate that. They want to refute that. But Vladimir Putin wants Biden to lose, and they want Biden to be seen to lose as well.”

Today, Biden noted that Russian media outlets have been cheering on the Republicans. "If you're being celebrated by Russian propagandists, it might be time to rethink what you're doing,” he said. “History will judge harshly those who turned their back on freedom's cause."

Congress is set to leave for the holiday break on Thursday, returning in the second week of January. Biden urged Congress “to pass the supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess—before they give Putin the greatest Christmas gift they could possibly give him.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Ford Exits Brazil as China's Largest EV Maker Buys Factory for EV Production

Ford Exits Brazil as China's Largest EV Maker Buys Factory for EV Production

P.S. This is not a surprise. The development strategy of China's auto industry was already published in 2017 and 2018, but everyone in the West pretended that this information did not apply to them! The big three American legacy automakers, who are passionate about big gasoline guzzlers, do not know how to correctly and efficiently produce reliable subcompact and compact cars, compact SUVs and small or medium-sized pickups at affordable price. Ford is actually having serious problems in Europe as well...

Secondly, legacy OEMs are absolutely unprepared for the competitive battle in the electric car market. They couldn't even imagine that such a global market for electric cars would emerge at all. They all hoped that Tesla would go bankrupt and that Chinese EV manufacturers would not be able to develop cheap LFP batteries for light passenger car and light utility vehicle industry for export outside of China.

Thirdly, US customs barriers, high taxes and anti-EV propaganda will not save the three obsolete American ICE vehicle manufacturers from losing global car market share and profits, because almost NOBODY buys and never will buy the huge American ICE pickup trucks and SUVs outside the US borders. There is practically no demand for such inefficient and huge ICE vehicles...

[source]

We've never had a time when we've exported more crude oil than we've imported, but there are times that we've exported more petroleum products than we've imported. Petroleum products includes crude oil, gasoline, diesel fuels, jet fuel, plastics, and much more. Anything that can be made from what comes out of oil wells.

That negative net imports era began in 2020 under Trump, and he touted it as 'energy independence.' Exporting more plastics than we import doesn't really relate to energy independence, though. Real energy independence starts with exporting more crude oil than we import.

But the net exports of petroleum products that Trump celebrated as an accomplishment are greater now than they ever were then.

Exclusive: Russia seeks gasoline from Kazakhstan in case of shortages, sources say

MOSCOW, April 8 (Reuters) - Russia has asked Kazakhstan to stand ready to supply it with 100,000 tons of gasoline in case of shortages exacerbated by Ukrainian drone attacks and outages, three industry sources told Reuters.

One of the sources said a deal on using reserves for Russia has already been agreed.

Shyngys Ilyasov, an advisor to Kazakhstan's energy minister, said the energy ministry has not received such a request from its Russian counterpart.

Russian energy ministry did not reply to a request for comment.

Neighbouring Belarus has already agreed to help Russia with gasoline supply.

Drone attacks had knocked out some 14% of Russian primary oil refining capacity as of end-March. So far authorities have said the situation on domestic fuel markets is stable and stockpiles large enough.

Russia is usually a net exporter of fuel and a supplier to international markets but the refinery disruptions have forced its oil companies to import.

The sources said Moscow asked Kazakhstan to set up an emergency reserve of 100,000 metric tons of gasoline ready to supply to Russia.

Moscow imposed a gasoline export ban for six months from March 1 to prevent acute fuel shortages, although it does not apply to the Moscow-led Eurasian economic union, including Kazakhstan, as well as some countries, such as Mongolia, with which it has inter-government deals on fuel supplies.

However, traders said the ban could be widened if the situation in Russia worsens.

Last week, the Orsk oil refinery in the Urals halted production due to widespread floods, which also affected Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan, the world's largest land-locked country, has also restricted fuel exports until the end of the year, apart from for humanitarian purposes.

According to the sources, Kazakhstan's reserves of Ai-92 gasoline stood at 307,700 tons as of April 5 and Ai-95 gasoline stockpiles at 58,000 tons. Diesel reserves were 435,300 tons and jet fuel inventories totalled 101,000 tons.

Petrobras processing more oil in domestic refineries, as export volumes drop 22%

Brazil's giant oil and gas corporation Petrobras this week presented its second-quarter report, which showed a drop in oil exports in a scenario of increased processing at domestic refineries.

The greater use of refineries, happened amid three drops in the price charged by the company for gasoline and a significant increase in sales of the derivative in the country.

Petrobras exported, in the second quarter of this year, 411 thousand barrels per day of oil, which represented a decrease of 22.6% in comparison with the same period last year.

The total utilization factor of the state-owned refineries in the second quarter was 93%, up four percentage points compared to the same period in 2022. The document also shows that the oil company sold 1.7 million barrels per day of derivatives, an advance of 0.3% compared to the same period in 2022.

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