At the end of 1978 there was a “Winter of Discontent” in the United Kingdom driven by striking unions attempting to protect their member’s incomes in the face of high inflation; made worse by exceptionally cold and stormy winter weather. In 1976, Labour had implemented austerity policies as its right-wing neoliberal leadership (Callaghan and Healey) engineered a crisis to be “forced” to accept an IMF bailout with the usual austerity, privatization and deregulation strings attached. A short-term devaluation of the British Pound (GBP) together with exchange controls could have carried the UK through a speculative attack on the GBP, with the knowledge that North Sea oil and gas production and government revenues were already accelerating. As with the US Democratic President Carter in the same period, it was the conservative elements within the “progressive” parties that implemented neoliberalism, creating the economic and social conditions that facilitated the elections of both Thatcher and Reagan. Then later striving to be just as neoliberal as the Conservatives/Republicans under the leadership of Clinton and Blair. After more than four decades of neoliberalism across Europe and the US, which has enriched the already wealthy at the expense of the rest, it is the neoliberals who face a winter of discontent; created by their own dogmatic policies. An inflationary crisis stoked by COVID-driven supply chain issues and a dearth of new fossil fuel investments in the past decade has been turned into a raging inferno by European energy policies, sanctions upon Russia, and the greed of US natural gas producers.
Among the headlines of posts in my mailbox today (27 August '22) was one about a German MP calling for the go-ahead for Nordstream 2... It suggests a scenario...
The German people will have an energy shortage northern winter - and the demands to OK Nordstream 2will increase... Eventually it will be OK'd - and propaganda to "never let the energy crisis happen again" will begin...That propaganda will garner support for taking Russia down "so the crisis cant happen again"...The US and Nato have all Winter to prepare...The war in Ukraine Must be prolonged, and that war of attrition will have degraded Russia militarily...
The sanctions against Russia seem intended to cause the energy troubles in Europe that the US could then exploit to gain support for further aggressions against Russia...?
Excellent read, and I learned a few things. Thank you.
Among the headlines of posts in my mailbox today (27 August '22) was one about a German MP calling for the go-ahead for Nordstream 2... It suggests a scenario...
The German people will have an energy shortage northern winter - and the demands to OK Nordstream 2will increase... Eventually it will be OK'd - and propaganda to "never let the energy crisis happen again" will begin...That propaganda will garner support for taking Russia down "so the crisis cant happen again"...The US and Nato have all Winter to prepare...The war in Ukraine Must be prolonged, and that war of attrition will have degraded Russia militarily...
The sanctions against Russia seem intended to cause the energy troubles in Europe that the US could then exploit to gain support for further aggressions against Russia...?