In 2022, Nord Stream was bombed, forcing Germany to import gas from the US.
In 2023, the govt of Niger—France's largest supplier of uranium—was overthrown in a coup.
Are these events connected? 🧵
Since the Russia-NATO war in Ukraine began in early 2022, Germany’s energy mix has dramatically changed.
The first change involved banning the import of Russian coal into the EU in the summer of 2022, ostensibly as a response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
6 weeks later, in the largest act of industrial sabotage of the modern era, the Nord Stream undersea pipelines connecting Russia and Germany were bombed, irrevocably severing the Germany-Russia energy connection.
This dramatic loss of cheap Russian energy drove Germany to frantically scramble to make up the shortfall, which the US has been happy to oblige.
Beginning in 2022, the US began supplying expensive Liquified Natural Gas to Germany.
In order to import all this new LNG, Germany began constructing massive LNG terminals, far in excess of anticipated demand. Why build so much capacity unless you’re expecting additional demand that hasn’t yet materialized?
Enter Niger
Unlike Germany, France currently gets a huge proportion of its energy from nuclear power— approximately twice as much as it does from gas power stations.
To fuel these nuclear plants, France needs a constant supply of uranium. Despite this insatiable appetite, France has virtually no domestic production of uranium.
Until recently, France instead imports ~99% of its uranium from Niger.
But earlier this month, Niger’s government was overthrown in a military coup. France’s Niger embassy was burned and public statements by the coup leaders indicate that Niger intends to rapidly move toward nationalizing uranium.
On the surface, this is good. France has a many decades long history of brutally exploiting the people of Niger through colonial and imperial theft.
As such, kicking out France is unquestionably a prerequisite for establishing a sovereign Niger.
But this recent military coup—led by individuals with long US ties—has the unmistakable scent of a US-backed operation. To what benefit?
One reason could be to dismantle French energy independence in much the same way that last year’s Nord Stream attack did to Germany.
The parallels are striking.
In a repeat of the US-dominated media effort to confuse the public on responsibility for the Nord Stream bombings, the same transparent ploy is being used to misattribute blame in this recent Niger coup.
As such, it’s very likely that France is being forced into a position where its only choice to meet current energy demand is to build gas turbines to make up for the impending loss of nuclear power. And just like in Germany, expect the US to swoop in with overpriced LNG to “help”
But with temperatures soaring globally and an urgent need for decarbonization, why not renewables?
Because France knows the US plans to foment a war with China—the world’s renewable energy tech supplier—to ensure France heads down the path of fossil fuels instead.
So what should we make of this?
Should we dismiss the recent events in Niger and any future attempts by the global south to exert sovereignty over their resources as hopelessly compromised US-backed ops?
Absolutely not!
However we should remain keenly aware that we’re entering a new era in which, in order to delay collapse, the US is forcing former imperial partners underwater. And in order to do so, the resources of the global south are arguably the most important chess piece.
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There’s a very real chance Ukraine is about to attack the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in an attempt to create a nuclear disaster.
But why? 🧵
The Zaporizhzhia NPP, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, is located on the east bank of the Dnieper river in territory currently controlled by the Russian military.
The plant has been under Russian control since shortly after the conflict began in early 2022. Early this year, Russia transitioned the plant to “safe” mode, with 5/6 reactors in cold shutdown and one remaining in hot shutdown to allow easier restart when winter demand increases.
Poor countries exist at the bottom of the global value chain.
In order to develop, poor countries need access to capital to purchase from other countries the labor saving tools & technologies that’ll allow them to begin building an advanced economy.
Enter IMF loans.
On condition of gaining access to these loans, the US uses its unilateral power over the IMF/World Bank to force countries into relinquishing control of their monetary policy.
Among the loan conditions is the stipulation that the national currency be devalued.
China, despite being a communist country, has not yet progressed beyond wage labor, and thus still has a form of exploitation intrinsic to capitalism, in which the ‘surplus value’ that labor produces is appropriated by capital.
Surplus value is the new value a worker produces in a day *in excess of what they’re paid in wages*.
Yesterday, an open mutiny emerged within Russia’s Wagner forces deployed in Ukraine, followed by immediate media hysteria about a potential coup.
In confusing situations like this, a “cui bono?” line of questioning is usually the best place to start. 🧵
When 3 of 4 Nord Stream pipelines were severed by underwater explosives last year, the goal of the culprit was immediately clear to anyone not thoroughly consumed by the western disinformation bubble: to remove any possibility of economic reintegration between Russia and Germany
Yet when the notoriously erratic and increasingly insubordinate figurehead of Russia’s contract army immediately after it became clear the AFU’s much anticipated Big Spring Offensive™ was a complete bust, suddenly people lose all their bearings of “who benefits?”
Western leftists—some of the biggest beneficiaries of imperial plunder in world history—see class antagonisms as the principle contradiction within the imperial core and assume that this applies everywhere.
When the western left regurgitates that “socialism means workers own the means of production" as a trans-historical truism, they fail to understand the historical context of how this truism emerged within the societies of industrialized colonial powers.
Socialism is better defined as “the stable control of the state by the evolving interests of the working class”.
Post-revolutionary communist countries in the global south do not see class antagonisms as primary while still struggling under centuries of parasitism by the west.
By virtually any metric, the lives of the average person in China and Cuba have been continuously improving for over 70 years.
But to ultras, leftcoms, Maoists, anarchists, or other western idealists, China’s/Cuba’s improvements either haven’t come fast enough for their liking, or are deemed secondary to what they insist is the “real” goal of socialism: an immediate end to all forms of exploitation.