Posts Tagged ‘United States’
Fidel calls on young people to fight to prevent a nuclear war
Sept 3, 2010
Fidel Castro for the first time in more than four years gave a public speech in the front steps of the University of Havana. This is a series of pronouncements that have come from Fidel.
It has been very unusual that he has done this invocation repeatedly and in so a grave way. He definitively is aware of more information that is available tot he public and is only known to a few selected individuals in some amount of countries.
When you add this to the many prophetic time lines and scriptural knowledge of those reading this letter it can become a very awesome warning that the Apocalypse is at the door and that the Rapture of the Church is also at the door.
I am including the official translation of his speech published in the Cuban government controlled newspaper Granma.
The Spanish editorial is also available at the link and I will try to get the video of the speech in Spanish.
Nando
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/cuba-i/3sept-fidel.html
Fidel calls on young people to fight to prevent a nuclear war
COMANDANTE en Jefe Fidel Castro confirmed today that it is possible to win the great battle to save the world from a nuclear war that would destroy it completely and also to defend the right of all human beings to live.
 PHOTO: Juvenal Balán |
Almost 65 years after his entry into higher education, the Cuban leader returned to the University of Havana where, as he has already said on previous occasions and reaffirmed once again this morning, he became a revolutionary and discovered his true destiny. He then went on to call on governments and peoples to safeguard peace, life and the future.
The time available to humanity to wage this battle is incredibly limited, warned the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, referring to the real and imminent danger of another war in the Middle East, the consequences of which are unforeseeable for the world and could be catastrophic.
Dressed in olive green, standing at the foot of the Alma Mater statue and before an enthusiastic crowd that filled the historic staircase and surrounding areas, Fidel read out his message to Cuba’s university students, which is also a call to fight against those who have imposed on the world a system that is currently threatening the very survival of the planet and the human race.
“We are here to convince, persuade and prevent a war that would bring an end to hope, in order to demonstrate that love for life is the commitment of all of us,” affirmed Maydel Gómez Lago, president of the Cuban Federation of University Students (FEU).
“Right up until the end, we will be demanding the right to life. We do not want to die in this absurd way, we want to fulfill our dreams,” the young woman emphasized. Calling on U.S. President Barack Obama, she insisted that he use the power that he has to prevent war from becoming a tragedy for all of us.
She called on university students all over the world to join this fight and stated: “We have the right to fight for our future, we have a duty to build it. We still have time. We will fight for peace, we could not forgive ourselves for doing anything less.”
Yoerky Sánchez Cuéllar, editor of the Alma Mater magazine – the voice of Cuban university students – also spoke, but in verse, demanding that the current occupant of the White House does not pull the trigger and also insisting on the destruction of all nuclear weapons.
“You must listen to Fidel/who is not being alarmist/or a catastrophist/ but who sees that this world/could be gone in a second/if peace does not conquer,” reflected – in rhyming verse – the young man who is also a National Assembly of People’s Power deputy.
“Here we are, Comandante/here are your youth/who feel grateful/to see you the picture of health/to hear you every moment/to read your Reflections/to understand the reasons/why you are concerned/and to have accompanied you in these new missions,” he concluded.
The following is a translation of the whole speech.
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2010/ing/m030910i.html
MESSAGE TO THE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS OF CUBA
My dear comrades:
I asked that we meet early, before the heat of our sun becomes too intense.
This stairway, to which I never imagined I would be returning, keeps some indelible memories of the years when I began to become aware of our era and our duty. One can acquire knowledge and awareness throughout one’s lifetime but never in any other stage of one’s existence will a person again have the purity and selflessness with which, being young, one faces up to life. At that age, I discovered my true destiny.
Thus it is inevitable that, at these moments, I am accompanied by the memory of so many comrades whom I knew exactly 65 years ago. It was during the first week of September that I entered this University, the only one in the country. It is best that I don’t even try to ask for each one of them, and I just hold on to the memory of when they were all young and full of enthusiasm and, as a rule, selfless and pure.
I am extremely encouraged to have present those who today, as we were in yesteryear, even incomparably more well-educated, freer and more aware.
In those days, the power of the brute force and the brutality of force fell upon this university hill, the lack of conscience and the corruption applied upon our people.
Thanks to the example of those preceding us, to the students massacred at the demand of the hordes called the Spanish volunteers, many of whom were born in this country who took up service for the Spanish tyranny, thanks to the Apostle of our Independence and to the blood spilt by dozens of thousands of patriots in three wars of Independence, we have really been preceded by a history which inspired our struggles. We didn’t deserve to be a colony of an empire that was even more powerful, that took over our Homeland and a good portion of our national conscience, sowing fatalism with the idea that it was impossible to shake off such a hefty yoke.
Worse still, a powerful exploiting sector had arisen which, at the service of the Empire’s interests, was plundering the wealth of our people, keeping them shackled and ignorant by force and, not on a few occasions, using others born in the country to act as the torturers and murderers of their own brothers and sisters.
The Revolution put an end to those horrors and it is because of that that we are able to meet here on this September morning.
How far away we were after the triumph to think that, on an occasion like this, we would be returning to meet in efforts even greater and with higher aims than those which, at a certain time, seemed to us to be the highest goals of peoples, in the name of justice and happiness for human beings.
It would not seem to be possible that a country as small as Cuba would be seen forced to carry the weight of the struggle against those who have globalized and submitted the world to an inconceivable plunder, and have imposed a system which today is threatening the very survival of humankind.
I am not speaking only in favour of the interests of our nation. One might say that such objectives have been left behind, in the measure that existence and the well-being of peoples stopped being our objectives, in the name of world interests, without which the life of nations is impossible. It is also certain that, in our struggles for national and social emancipation, our country, the bastion of Spanish colonialism in this hemisphere, was the first to be occupied and the last to rid itself of the yoke after more than 400 years of domination.
Our struggle for national liberation was mixed together with the tenacious efforts of the workers of our country for their social liberation. It was not an act of will; it was an act of fate. The merit of the Cuban people is that they knew how to understand and strengthen the indissoluble bonds between both. (Applause and cries of “¡Viva Fidel!”)
The time humankind has to fight this battle is incredibly limited. Throughout more than three months of unceasing struggle I modestly made the effort to reveal, to an inattentive world, the terrible dangers that threaten human life on our planet. It is well-known, and I have no other alternative than to remember the fact, that we are not living in an age of chivalry and the steel of the swords accompanied by crossbows that were preceded for centuries by battering rams that demolished walls or tried to do so, or war chariots drawn by horses with knives mounted on the wheels; weapons, in brief, always cruel, but with limited destructive power that humans used to wage war on each other since they invented the mace, up to World Wars I and II, when automatic weapons were used , tanks, combat planes and flying fortresses, submarines, torpedoes, armoured vehicles and aircraft carriers that raised the toll of lives lost to tens of millions of humans, and to hundreds of millions of victims of destruction, the wounded, the sick and the hungry, inevitable consequences of wars.
Two nuclear devices were used at the end of the last war. Mankind had never before conceived such terrible destruction and extermination. More than 60 years ago we speak of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; with that we have indicated that the destructive power of accumulated weapons is equal to more than four hundred and forty times the power of one of those bombs. That’s how it is, that’s what mathematics tells us. I add no more because I would have to use rather tough words about the causes and the people responsible for that extremely sad reality.
But that was not enough. The desire for economic and military domination by the first ones to use those terrifying instruments of destruction and death lead humankind to the real possibility of dying out, which we face today. I don’t need to give you arguments for something you already know very well. The problem of peoples today, shall we say, of more than seven billion human beings, is to prevent that such a tragedy should occur.
I am not happy speaking about the painful truth that constitutes something of shame for everything that is identified as policy or government. This truth was deliberately hidden from the world and the difficult task of warning humankind of the real danger it is facing has fallen upon Cuba. We must not falter in that activity. Faced with sceptics, our unmistakable duty is to continue fighting the battle. It is a fact that a growing number of persons in the world have become aware of the reality.
Commenting on the first part of the interview published on Monday, August 30 by the director of La Jornada in that prestigious Mexican newspaper, a citizen of Our America who read it on the CubaDebate website voiced his opinion with words that were so profound that I decided to include the crux of his thoughts in this message to the university students of Cuba:
“I call out to all the countries that today are involved in military conflicts. Please, always think about achieving true peace, that is what we need most. Our children, our grandchildren and the human beings of this world, all of us will thank you. We need to live in peace and security on a planet that day by day becomes less liveable. It is very easy to understand. Nuclear weapons should disappear, no country should have them, atomic energy should only be used for good. THE ONLY REAL VICTORY IS IN ACHIEVING PEACE.
“Today we face two great challenges: the consolidation of world peace and saving the planet from climatic changes. The first is to achieve a lasting peace on solid bases, the second is to reverse climate change. We have to become aware of these problems that we ourselves have created and that we are the protagonists of the changes we must attain. The panorama of the last century was not the same as the one in this century. Weaponry, at this time, is much more sophisticated and deadly and the planet is weaker and more polluted.
“World Conference on Climate Change in Cancun […] the only opportunity left to us. […] We are getting to a critical point where there is no turning back. At that moment, because we are afraid, we would like to do anything to save our lives, but by now everything is in vain and it is too late. The opportunities in our lives appear before us just once and we must know how to make use of them. Our Mother Nature is like a passive smoker who still has not become addicted, we are making her sick indiscriminately.”
“Nobody has the right to use violence against any human being, country or nation. Nobody can cut down a tree if he hasn’t first planted three. […] We cannot turn our backs on nature. Quite the opposite, we must always embrace her tightly. Because we ourselves are nature, we are part of that fan of many colours, sounds, balance and harmony. Nature is perfect.
“Kyoto signified hope for all human beings …”
“If we do nothing. Nobody will be saved, there will be no safe place on earth, not in the air, not in the cosmos. The great energy that accumulates daily because of the greenhouse effect, since the solar rays are trapped and emit more energy every day onto the surface of the earth. It will cause natural disasters having unpredictable consequences. Would there be anyone on earth with a button that would be able to stop such a disaster?”
“…we cannot lose any time on anachronistic wars that weaken us and use up our energies. Enemies make wars. Let us eliminate all the causes that make men see other men as their enemies. Not even those who face each other in a war are aware that this is the solution to their problems, they react to their emotions and ignore their consciences mistakenly thinking that the road to peace is war. I say, without the least margin for error, that peace is attained with peace and: IF YOU WANT PEACE, GET READY TO CHANGE YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS (Applause).”
Here you have the essence of his words, quite simple and within the reach of any citizen on earth.
On Wednesday, September 1st, as I was writing this message, information appearing on the CubaDebate website brought us the following news: “A new wave of leakage about an attack on Iran’s nuclear targets being prepared by Israel together with the United States might this time have a basis in reality, as expressed in an article printed this Tuesday by George Friedman, the executive director of the prestigious Stratfor Centre, which has some former CIA analysts among its collaborators..” He is a well educated person with prestige.
The information goes on to say:
“There have been numerous occasions on which different versions of the possible attack on the Islamic Republic presumably filtered from secret services have been spread. According to experts, it dealt with an attempt to exert psychological pressure on Teheran to make it seek consensus with the West.”
“…this technique didn’t work and it is highly unlikely that it will be used again with the same objective, states Friedman…”
“‘It is a paradox, but the new slew of rumours about war may this time be directed towards trying to convince Iran precisely that there will be no war, while in reality, war is now being prepared’ …”
“The analyst completely discards the fact that Tel Aviv is daring to embark on a military operation without counting on the support of the Pentagon.”
“At the same time, the expert warns that the most serious consequence of the possible attack against Iran would be that the Islamic Republic would block the Strait of Ormuz, between the Oman and Persian Gulfs, and that would collapse 45% of world oil supplies thus shooting prices sky high and making world economic recovery after the recession difficult.”
Thus concludes the information.
I find it incredible that the fear of an attack is due to consequences that the price of oil may suffer and to the struggle against the recession. I myself do not harbour the least doubt that the capacity for Iran’s conventional answer would provoke a ferocious war, control of which would escape the hands of the warring parties and it would become an irremediable global nuclear conflict. That is what I maintain.
An important AFP dispatch states that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned this Wednesday in a BBC interview when talking about his memoirs being released, that the international community might have no other alternative than the military option if Iran were to develop nuclear weapons.”
It continues:
“Blair concluded that he thought that there was no alternative to this if they continue developing nuclear weapons. They should receive this message loud and clear, he added, echoing a threat that has already been made several times by the US and Israel.
Of course, if they are manufacturing nuclear weapons they have no proof nor can they have any proof because they are using some research centres, doing research; they don’t have, for up to two or three years as they themselves have admitted, any material to begin manufacturing a bomb. This without taking into account that manufacturers of nuclear weapons have 25,000 nuclear weapons, without counting the unimaginable conventional ones. They have no proof of this, it’s a research centre. Is that a reason to attack them? Having a plant producing electrical energy, coming from uranium, that’s nothing constituting a crime and for them it is proof they are manufacturing weapons. They have already done it, they did it in 1981 against an Iraqi research centre, and they did it in 2007 against a Syrian research centre; they didn’t talk about that, it’s somewhat of a mystery why they didn’t speak of it. Because there are terrible things happening that nobody talks about and nobody prints them.
Well, that is the proof, because they are talking about attacking those reactors and those research centres. That’s why one cannot become confused by the little words “if they try” to manufacture nuclear weapons.
A new dispatch from the ITAR-TASS agency reports that sanctions against Iran will not report any desired results, the Iranian problem must not be resolved by any method using force. Today, Sergei Lavrov, head of Russian diplomatic services, stated this in his speech before students –what a coincidence – of the MGIMO International Affairs Institute.”
And the cable goes on:
“We come from the idea that no world problem should be resolved using force, he stated. Lavrov drew attention to the position of US President Barack Obama in regard to Iran, especially involving Iran in the negotiated process. We welcome a normalization in US-Iran relations, he added.
I would think that Russia is not just a member of the Security Council with the right to veto, but also a powerful country whose opinion cannot be ignored. Independently of the fact that in that Resolution of June 9th, all those with the right to veto supported the Resolution. Turkey and Brazil did not support it, and Lebanon abstained. That was a very important moment because the Resolution was approved; it authorized inspection of Iranian merchant vessels and also established a term, they said it was 90 days, and some say it expires on the 9th, other say on the 7th. It also says that on that day they have to inform if they attacked or not.
Now we must sit back and wait to see what they will do in this situation, how they value world opinion, what effect it will have, if they will invent another term or not, if they declare they are not going to do it, or if they ratify that they are going to do it, it might take a bit longer, but it cannot be a lot of time.
I recommend that we are watchful, that we ask our information media to communicate to us, so that we can closely follow the situation.
Thanks to the electronic media there are persons in the world, a growing number of persons who are being informed, because they cannot prevent that, besides even if the news agencies and the great information media in the hands of the powerful capitalist corporations keep silent, the world is finding out about it. I tell you this because of the number of messages that are arriving. I read you one opinion that I selected: it is at 4:52, at 4:54, another at 4:55, the comrades who collect these explain that they are coming from all parts of the world, not just from Latin America. It is impossible to collect and comment on them all, we have an idea about the state of opinions, about their credibility or not, and I can tell you that they are being given great credibility just as you are doing. It is clear, and that is decisive. It is a new stage, never have we seen a situation like this.
Therefore, I suggest to you, and to all our compatriots that are trying to be aware, and to our press media that inform us, because at times the international press keeps strangely silent and then suddenly a series of news items appears. The ones that are going to come out next, each day they will be more interesting.
Nobody can say exactly what is going to happen, because these events are unravelling.
What is going to happen on the 7th, the 9th, the 15th, the 20th? We have to make our plans, work plans, everyone makes their own. As for me, I will be concentrating; I am concentrating on this for a while now, collecting as much information as possible.
But in all this, we all play a part in the job, a part of the responsibility that doesn’t mean that we have to stop whatever we are doing.
Also, another very important country, it is the last one mentioned here, because it was the last cable, yesterday afternoon.
A Reuters dispatch states that the European Union is pressuring China to comply with sanctions against Iran.
Because besides the famous June 9th agreement, number 1929, establishing the sanctions I mentioned, these European satellite powers and those from other parts, imposed additional sanctions to strangle the country and, in this case, they were complaining about China, also about Russia in terms of what they were going to do, but it stated thus:
“The official responsible for the European Union foreign policy, Catherine Ashton, said on Thursday that China had been pressured to ensure that Chinese companies would not fill the void left by other companies that had abandoned Iran because of the sanctions …” It doesn’t say what sanctions, whether the ones by the Council or theirs, they must be referring to all of them, of course. .
Any honest person can understand the complexity of the very serious problem that today threatens the world.
Comrades, university students, as in other times which seem far away and which seem to me to have been just yesterday, I thank you for your presence and for the moral support you are providing for this struggle for peace (Applause). I urge you to not give up fighting for this. In this struggle, as in many others in years past, victory is possible (Applause).
May human life be preserved! May children and youth enjoy life in a world of justice! May parents and grandparents share with them the privilege of living!
The fair distribution of material and spiritual wealth, which mankind is capable of creating through the fabulous development of productive forces, that is the only possible alternative.
Thank you very much.
September 3, 2010
(Ovation.)
Translated by Granma International
Twelve Books - Rapture, Antichrist, False Prophet, End Time Signs, Bible Prophecy, Nando 
Dec 26, 2014 The drop in oil prices as a consequence of the Shemitah
The effects of the drop in oil prices are well enumerated in the article below.
The effects happening because we are on a Shemitah year are explained in other posts in here. Whatever the arguments given on the article below those are the reasons seen in the physical world and the Shemitah is the true spiritual force behind.
Nando
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/world/europe/oils-swift-fall-raises-fortunes-of-us-abroad.html?_r=1
Oil’s Swift Fall Raises Fortunes of U.S. Abroad
By ANDREW HIGGINSDEC. 24, 2014
BRUSSELS — A plunge in oil prices has sent tremors through the global political and economic order, setting off an abrupt shift in fortunes that has bolstered the interests of the United States and pushed several big oil-exporting nations — particularly those hostile to the West, like Russia, Iran and Venezuela — to the brink of financial crisis.
The nearly 50 percent decline in oil prices since June has had the most conspicuous impact on the Russian economy and President Vladimir V. Putin. The former finance minister Aleksei L. Kudrin, a longtime friend of Mr. Putin’s, warned this week of a “full-blown economic crisis” and called for better relations with Europe and the United States.
But the ripple effects are spreading much more broadly than that. The price plunge may also influence Iran’s deliberations over whether to agree to a deal on its nuclear program with the West; force the oil-rich nations of the Middle East to reassess their role in managing global supply; and give a boost to the economies of the biggest oil-consuming nations, notably the United States and China.
It might even have been a late factor in Cuba’s decision to seal a rapprochement with Washington.
After a precipitous drop, to less than $60 a barrel from around $115 a barrel in June, oil prices settled at a low level this week. Their fall, even if partly reversed, was so sharp and so quick as to unsettle plans and assumptions in many governments. That includes Mr. Putin’s apparent hope that Russia could weather Western sanctions over its intervention in Ukraine without serious economic harm, and Venezuela’s aspirations for continuing the free-spending policies of former President Hugo Chávez.
The price drop, said Edward N. Luttwak, a longtime Pentagon adviser and author of several books on geopolitical and economic strategy, “is knocking down America’s principal opponents without us even trying.” For Iran, which is estimated to be losing $1 billion a month because of the fall, it is as if Congress had passed the much tougher sanctions that the White House lobbied against, he said.
Iran has been hit so hard that its government, looking for ways to fill a widening hole in its budget, is offering young men the option of buying their way out of an obligatory two years of military service. “We are on the eve of a major crisis,” an Iranian economist, Hossein Raghfar, told the Etemaad newspaper on Sunday. “The government needs money badly.”
Venezuela, which has the world’s largest estimated oil reserves and has used them to position itself as a foil to American “imperialism,” received 95 percent of its export earnings from petroleum before prices fell. It is now having trouble paying for social projects at home and for a foreign policy rooted in oil-financed largess, including shipments of reduced-price petroleum to Cuba and elsewhere.
Amid worries on bond markets that Venezuela might default on its loans, President Nicolás Maduro, who was elected last year after the death of Mr. Chávez, has said the country will continue to pay its debts. But inflation in Venezuela is over 60 percent, there are shortages of many basic goods, and many experts believe the economy is in recession.
But the biggest casualty so far has probably been Russia, where energy revenue accounts for more than half of the government’s budget. Mr. Putin built up strong support by seeming to banish the economic turmoil that had afflicted the rule of his predecessor, Boris N. Yeltsin. Yet Russia was back on its heels last week, with the ruble going into such a steep dive that panicked Russians thronged shops to spend what they had.
“We’ve seen this movie before,” said Strobe Talbott, who was President Bill Clinton’s senior Russia adviser in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse and is now president of the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Russia’s troubles have rippled around the world, slashing bookings at ski resorts in Austria and spending on London real estate; spreading panic in neighboring Belarus, a close Russian ally; and even threatening to upend Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League, which pays players in rubles.
“It is a big boost for the U.S. when three out of four of our active antagonists are seriously weakened, when their room for maneuver is seriously reduced,” Mr. Luttwak said, referring to Russia, Iran and Venezuela.
The only major United States antagonist not hurt by the drop in oil prices is North Korea, which imports all of its petroleum.
David L. Goldwyn, who was the State Department’s international energy coordinator during President Obama’s first term, warned that an implosion of Venezuela’s economy could hurt the Caribbean and Latin America in ways that the United States would not welcome.
But “on balance, it’s positive for the U.S.,” he said of the low price of oil, because American consumers save money, and “it harms Russia and puts pressure on Iran.”
Even some of the indirect consequences of the price slump, like last week’s break in the half-century diplomatic logjam between Washington and Havana, have generally worked in the United States’ favor. Fearful that Venezuela, its main benefactor, might cut off supplies of cash and cheap oil, Cuba sealed a historic deal that has in turn lifted a shadow over the United States’ standing in much of Latin America.
Another casualty of the price collapse has been Belarus, a former Soviet territory long reviled by American officials as Europe’s last dictatorship. It produces no significant amount of crude oil itself but has nonetheless taken a big hit. This is because its economy depends heavily on the export of petroleum products that Belarus produces using crude oil supplied, at a steep discount, by Russia.
Marwan Muasher, a former foreign minister of Jordan who is now a vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, predicted another domino effect in Syria as Russia and Iran find it difficult to sustain their economic, military and diplomatic support for President Bashar al-Assad.
Others speculate that Persian Gulf oil producers, though still wealthy, might trim their financial support for radical Islamist rebel groups in Syria.
Mr. Muasher said the drop in oil prices could also prod Middle East oil producers toward political and economic change by challenging so-called rentier systems in which governments derive much of their income from rents paid by foreigners for resources. “Whatever the case, it is clear that the effect of the new oil price levels will not be limited to the economic sphere,” he wrote in a Carnegie report.
Hard-hit anti-American oil producers have blamed foreign machinations for their woes, suggesting that Washington, in cahoots with Saudi Arabia, has deliberately driven down prices.
This view is particularly strong in Russia, where former K.G.B. agents close to Mr. Putin have long believed that Washington engineered the collapse of the Soviet Union by getting Saudi Arabia to increase oil output, driving down prices and thus starving Moscow of revenue.
In many ways, the recent price fall really is the United States’ work, flowing to a large extent from a surge in American oil production through the development of alternative sources like shale.
By offsetting declines in conventional oil production, increases in shale oil output have allowed overall American crude oil production to rise to an average of about nine million barrels a day from five million a day in 2008, according to the United States Energy Information Administration. That four-million-barrel increase is more than either Iraq or Iran, the second- and third-largest OPEC producers after Saudi Arabia, produces each day, and it has put strong downward pressure on world prices.
The geopolitical shakeout set off by the oil market has not gone entirely America’s way. Russia’s troubles have so far shown no sign of pushing Mr. Putin toward a more conciliatory position on Ukraine, and some analysts believe they could make Moscow even more pugnacious and prone to lashing out.
The Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee, which monitors possible systemic threats, warned in minutes released this week that “sustained lower oil price also had the potential to reinforce certain geopolitical risks.” It voiced alarm, too, over an increased risk of deflation in the eurozone, the 18-nation area that uses Europe’s common currency.
The price drop could also encourage more freewheeling use of oil products like gasoline, undermining what appears to be a growing consensus among nations that carbon emissions must be reeled in to offset the most dire effects of global warming.
While authoritarian oil producers like Russia are clearly suffering, China is enjoying a huge windfall thanks to the price drop. It imports nearly 60 percent of the oil it needs to power its economy.
China became the world’s largest importer of oil in 2013, surpassing the United States, and so stands to benefit from plummeting prices. Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimated last month that every 10 percent decline in the price of oil could increase China’s economic growth by 0.15 percent.
Strong growth in China would lift demand for oil and help reduce the current agonies of OPEC, which pumps around a third of the world’s oil but, largely as a result of increased American production, has lost much of its ability to dictate prices by controlling output.
In an interview with the Middle East Economic Survey this week, the Saudi energy minister, Ali al-Naimi, indicated a fundamental rethinking by OPEC, saying that it needed to focus on keeping its market share rather than trying to raise prices by slashing production. “We have entered a scary time for the oil market,” he said.
Nando end
Written by twelvebooks
December 26, 2014 at 5:29 pm
Posted in Bible Commentary, ECONOMIC COMMENTARY, eschatology, Iran, Iran-Elam, Iran-Persia-Elam, Jonathan Cahn, political commentary, Religious Commentary, Russia (Gog), Shemitah year 2014-2015, The Harbinger, The Mystery of the Shemitah, United States
Tagged with Biblical Prophecy, Iran, oil prices, President Vladimir V. Putin, Russia, Shemitah year, United States, Venezuela