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From 'No' to 'Yes': Rejection of Austerity Just Beginning of European Battle

November 21, 2019 | News | No Comments

Even with a historic political victory in his pocket after seeing his nation vote overwhelmingly against the imposition of further austerity in exchange for a new loan package from foreign creditors on Sunday, Yanis Varoufakis, the outspoken finance minister of Greece’s Syriza-led government, announced his resignation on Monday morning.

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In a statement posted to his personal blog, Varoufakis said he “shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride” after it was made clear to him that his “absence” from future talks was urged by negotiating members of the so-called Troika—the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund.

“Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister [Alexis Tsipras] judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today,” he stated. “I consider it my duty to help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday’s referendum.”

Varoufakis described Sunday’s vote as “a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage,” and said he would continue to fully support Tsipras, the next finance minister, and the Greek government overall. “The superhuman effort to honour the brave people of Greece, and the famous OXI (NO) that they granted to democrats the world over, is just beginning,” he declared.

What is now essential for Greece, Varoufakis said, is that “the splendid NO vote be invested immediately into a YES to a proper resolution – to an agreement that involves debt restructuring, less austerity, redistribution in favour of the needy, and real reforms.”

“The Greeks are saying YES to sustainable reconstruction and growth of their economic structures and to reduce military spending. Above all, they are saying YES to mandatory negotiations on debt restructuring, including a haircut. They are saying YES to European integration and YES to European democracy.”
—Gabi Zimmer, GUE/NGL

Gabi Zimmer, president of the European leftist coalition GUE/NGL, mirrored Varoufakis’ sentiments by saying now that Greece has made it clear what they say ‘No’ to, it is now equally important to recognize what they are saying ‘Yes’ to.

“The NO in the referendum means the Greeks are saying YES to a socially just distribution of the burdens for the sustainable reforms necessary in their country to fight corruption and nepotism,” explained Zimmer. “They are saying YES to sustainable reconstruction and growth of their economic structures and to reduce military spending. Above all, they are saying YES to mandatory negotiations on debt restructuring, including a haircut. They are saying YES to European integration and YES to European democracy.”

Offering a mid-day breakdown of the latest developments, the Guardian reports:

The scale of yesterday’s No vote has stunned Europe this morning, as leaders prepare for Tuesday’s emergency summit.

Italy’s Matteo Renzi has just posted on Facebook that Europe must find permanent solution to the Greek crisis and go beyond austerity.

But European Commission vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis has warned that the No vote makes the situation even more complicated.

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Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande are due to meet tonight in Paris to discuss the crisis. UK prime minister David Cameron has already held a meeting in London to discuss the impact on Britain response.

The Greek banking system continues to creak after a week of capital controls; some ATM machines are now only dispensing €50 per day, rather than the €60 limit.

With congratulations to the Greek people being expressed from around the world in the wake of the vote, what comes next for the nation remains anything but clear. As eurozone ministers plan for a meeting slated for Tuesday, it was reported that Tsipras has already been on the phone with ECB president Mario Draghi. Bank officials are said to be convening a teleconference later in the day to discuss their next move.

As Yves Smith writes at Naked Capitalism, “the key party to watch to see whether the lenders are prepared to soften their stance much is the ECB. The central bank is to decide today whether to increase the ELA [an emergency funding program], which is a necessary step for the punishing bank holiday to come to an end. Varoufakis had promised Greek banks would open no matter what on Tuesday. It’s hard to see how they could given that even cash itself is running scarce.”

It was also reported by Reuters that Tsipras will be speaking by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, raising familiar speculation about financial assistance from Moscow should the Troika members remain stubborn to Greek’s demand for debt relief and other new loan conditions.

For many, of course, the critical question is whether the Troika members will now bend to the democratic voice of the Greek people and offer a new deal that could be accepted by the Syriza-led government. And if not, what becomes of Greece—and is an exit from the eurozone the only likely option?

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister who is also president of the Eurogroup, said on Monday that his ongoing desire is to keep Greece within the eurozone.

“That is their goal, and still mine,” he told reporters on his way to The Hague on Monday. “But we will have to see if it happens.”

However, citing the historic examples of Iceland and Argentina—two nations in recent years who have defaulted on unsustainable debt in order to save their economies—Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column on Monday, argued: “Unless Greece receives really major debt relief, and possibly even then, leaving the euro offers the only plausible escape route from its endless economic nightmare.”

And, he adds, “let’s be clear: if Greece ends up leaving the euro, it won’t mean that the Greeks are bad Europeans. Greece’s debt problem reflected irresponsible lending as well as irresponsible borrowing, and in any case the Greeks have paid for their government’s sins many times over. If they can’t make a go of Europe’s common currency, it’s because that common currency offers no respite for countries in trouble. The important thing now is to do whatever it takes to end the bleeding.”

By Tncse

Thrills and spills: F1i’s gallery of crashes in 2017

November 21, 2019 | News | No Comments

The men who line up on the Formula 1 grid are the best drivers in the world, but sometimes things to go according to plans.

We’ve put together a gallery of all the thrills and spills, mishaps and crashes of the 2017 season.

All pictures are from our partners, XPB and WRI2.

'People vs. Shell': High Seas Protest as Greenpeace Boards Arctic-Bound Ship

November 21, 2019 | News | No Comments

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a team of Greenpeace activists has boarded an Arctic-bound drilling vessel owned by the Shell oil company.

“I’m just one voice out here, but I know I’m not alone, and millions if not billions of voices demanding the right to safe and healthy lives will have a huge chance of changing things.” —Johno SmithApproximately 750 miles north-west of Hawaii, the team of six campaigners intercepted the ship—which they’ve been tracking across the Pacific since last month—and scaled the 38,000 ton drilling platform which is being hauled by a larger transportation vessel. According to Greenpeace, its campaigners will set up camp on the underside of the rig’s main deck and are equipped with supplies to last for several days and technology which will allow them to communicate with supporters around the world in real-time, despite being hundreds of miles from land.

#TheCrossing Tweets

Named the Polar Pioneer, the Shell drilling rig is destined for the Chukchi Sea, off the coast of Alaska, where the company—despite the enormous risks posed to the fragile region and the global outcry calling for a ban on Arctic drilling—intends to begin exploratory drilling later this year. According to Greenpeace, its international team of activists—including campaigners from the USA, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Sweden and Austria—landed on the larger ship transporting the Polar Pioneer, the 700-foot long heavy-lift vessel called the Blue Marlin, using inflatable boats launched from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, which has been following the 400 foot vessel for weeks.

Aliyah Field, one of the six, tweeted from the Polar Pioneer: “We made it! We’re on Shell’s platform. And we’re not alone. Everyone can help turn this into a platform for people power! #TheCrossing.”

Johno Smith from New Zealand, another one of the six, said: “We’re here to highlight that in less than 100 days Shell is going to the Arctic to drill for oil. This pristine environment needs protecting for future generations and all life that will call it home. But instead Shell’s actions are exploiting the melting ice to increase a man-made disaster. Climate change is real and already inflicting pain and suffering on my brothers and sisters in the Pacific.”

The group, according to a statement, has plans to hang a banner from the ship that includes millions of names from people around the world who have signed onto petitions objecting to oil or gas drilling in the Arctic.

As Smith continued, “I believe that shining a light on what Shell is doing will encourage more people to take a strong stand against them and other companies who are seeking to destroy this planet for profit. I’m just one voice out here, but I know I’m not alone, and millions if not billions of voices demanding the right to safe and healthy lives will have a huge chance of changing things.”

Shell spokesperson Kelly op de Weegh, in a statement, called the boarding of its ship by Greenpeace “illegal” and said that “these stunts” would not “distract from preparations underway” to begin its drilling operations in the Arctic, which she described as a “safe and responsible exploration program.”

“It is unconscionable that the federal government is willing to risk the health and safety of the people and wildlife that live near and within the Chukchi Sea for Shell’s reckless pursuit of oil,” said Marissa Knodel, a climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth, at the time. “Shell’s dismal record of safety violations and accidents, coupled with the inability to clean up or contain an oil spill in the remote, dangerous Arctic waters, equals a disaster waiting to happen.”

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No People Have an Exclusive on Suffering (or Brutality)

November 21, 2019 | News | No Comments

It’s good and right that we commemorate the mass killing in the Ottoman Empire during World War I of between 500,000 and 1.5 million Armenians.

Many nations now call the slaughter of 1915-1916 as “genocide.” This week the 100^th anniversary of the notorious event was observed. Pope Francis and the European parliament called on Turkey to recognize the killings as genocide.

Turkey, successor to the Ottoman Empire, admits many Armenians were killed in WWI, but rejects the label of “genocide,” saying their deaths occurred in the confusion of war, not by design. The United States, a very close ally of Turkey, avoids the “g” word. Interestingly, Israel does too, perhaps not wanting to detract from the genocide Jews suffered in WWII.

Armenians insist the Ottoman authorities were determined to eradicate the ancient Armenian people. Turks claim that Armenian guerilla bands known as “dashnaks” acted as a fifth column for their bitter foe, Russia, which was attacking the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Large numbers of Armenian civilians were herded from their homes in eastern Turkey, across the mountains, and into the wastes of northern Syria.

The greatest loss of life occurred on these “death marches,” a fact that Turkey accepts. What is rarely stated by either side is that Kurdish tribesmen inflicted a significant number of deaths, pillage and rape on the helpless Armenian deportees.

Modern Turkey is determined to avoid being branded with the shame of genocide because it tends to demote the bearer to a second-rate nation forever begging forgiveness, like eternally cringing Germany.

But what really galls the Turks is being singled out as genocidal mass killers when so many other similar perpetrators are ignored.

Begin with Spain, which wiped out its Muslim population then inflicted mass murder on West Indian native islanders, then in its Latin American colonies. No one even remembers the Arawak Indians, for example, wiped out by the Spaniards, British, and French.

In the United States, the mass killing and ethnic cleansing of its native people is a horrific crime rarely talked about today. Here, the historic record is loud and clear, unlike that of the chaotic Ottoman Empire. White-men’s diseases finished off what bullets and starvation failed to accomplish.

Why don’t we commemorate Stalin’s ghastly solution to independent-minded Ukrainians? During 1932-33, the Soviet secret police murdered by bullets and famine six million or more Ukrainians – the Holdomor.

Not long after, Roosevelt and Churchill allied themselves to the author of this historic crime, Stalin, who killed four times more people than Adolf Hitler. His crimes against Jews and other peoples are widely recognized and commemorated. No one today in the West commemorates Stalin’s murder of many millions of Soviet citizens.

Nor is the plight of East Europe’s ethnic Germans recalled. Between 1945-1948, 12 million were expelled at gunpoint from their ancestral homes, 500,000-600,000 being killed in the process. The majority came from former German territory annexed by Poland, the USSR, and Czechoslovakia.

Largely unknown was the genocide of the Soviet Union’s Muslims. Some four millions were murdered or starved to death under Stalin’s orders. Stalin, a Georgian or Ossetian, hated Muslims with the same ferocity that Hitler hated Jews – but he was a US-British ally.

Next, the “Mfakane.” During the 1820’s, the Zulu moved south into what is today South Africa, slaughtering 1-2 million local tribesmen. It’s worth noting that the Dutch-Flemish Boer inhabitants of the Cape were there long before the Zulu, who dominated today’s South Africa. Belgium’s mass murders in its Congo colony are branded genocide by some historians.

A million or more Cambodians were slaughtered by the demented, Maoist Khmer Rouge. The details of the murder of up to one million communists in Indonesia during a 1965-1966 US-backed coup remain obscure.

History is filled with forgotten genocides – all part of our inhumane tribal culture. So blame the Turks, but don’t forget all the other mass killers.

Eric Margolis is a columnist, author and a veteran of many conflicts in the Middle East. Margolis recently was featured in a special appearance on Britain’s Sky News TV as “the man who got it right” in his predictions about the dangerous risks and entanglements the US would face in Iraq. His latest book is American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World.

By Tncse

The Sunday Times’ Snowden Story is Journalism at its Worst — and Filled with Falsehoods

November 21, 2019 | News | No Comments

Western journalists claim that the big lesson they learned from their key role in selling the Iraq War to the public is that it’s hideous, corrupt and often dangerous journalism to give anonymity to government officials to let them propagandize the public, then uncritically accept those anonymously voiced claims as Truth. But they’ve learned no such lesson. That tactic continues to be the staple of how major US and British media outlets “report,” especially in the national security area. And journalists who read such reports continue to treat self-serving decrees by unnamed, unseen officials – laundered through their media – as gospel, no matter how dubious are the claims or factually false is the reporting.

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We now have one of the purest examples of this dynamic. Last night, the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times published their lead front-page Sunday article, headlined “British Spies Betrayed to Russians and Chinese.” Just as the conventional media narrative was shifting to pro-Snowden sentiment in the wake of a key court ruling and a new surveillance law, the article (behind a paywall: full text here) claims in the first paragraph that these two adversaries “have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services.”

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Read the full column on The Intercept.

Glenn Greenwald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, constitutional lawyer, commentator, author of three New York Times best-selling books on politics and law, and a staff writer and editor at First Look media. His fifth and latest book is, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State, about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. Prior to his collaboration with Pierre Omidyar, Glenn’s column was featured at Guardian US and Salon. His previous books include: With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency, and How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok. He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, a George Polk Award, and was on The Guardian team that won the Pulitzer Prize for public interest journalism in 2014.

By Tncse

Writer Eduardo Galeano, Voice of Latin America's Left, Dead at 74

November 21, 2019 | News | No Comments

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Award-winning Uruguayan writer and thinker Eduardo Galeano, considered a leading voice of Latin America’s left, has died at 74.

The world-renowned author, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer, died in Montevideo on Monday.

The novelist and journalist—whose work transcended genre and who once said “all written work constitutes literature, even graffiti”—was the prolific author of books including Memory of Fire, a three-volume narrative of the history of North and South America; The Book of Embraces, described by Library Journal as a “literary scrapbook, mixing memoir, documentary, essay, and prose poem”; and The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, which analyses five centuries of economic and political exploitation in the region, perpetrated first by Europe and later by the United States.

The last book brought Galeano into the spotlight 36 years after its original publication, when in 2009 the late Hugo Chavez, then president of Venezuela, gave President Barack Obama a paperback copy.

Galeano, a regular contributor to The Progressive and the New Internationalist, was a powerful critic of both capitalism and imperialism in every form.

“This world is not democratic at all,” Galeano told the Guardian in 2013. “The most powerful institutions, the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and the World Bank belong to three or four countries. The others are watching. The world is organized by the war economy and the war culture.”

According to Reuters:

Galeano started out as a journalist in the 1960s, writing ‘Open Veins’ at a time when he said his cattle-producing country “produced more violence than meat or wool.”

Following a coup in 1973 and the banning of the book, he fled to neighboring Argentina. When that country’s military dictatorship began its ‘dirty war’ against leftists in 1976, he went into exile again, this time in Spain.

He returned to Montevideo in 1985.

Galeano’s most recent book, published in 2012, was Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History. Reviewer Ian Sansom wrote that Children of the Days was “the ne plus ultra of the Galeano style and form, a triumph of his mosaic art—365 sad and strange and shiny little fragments, placed adjacent to one another to form a vast and seemingly coherent whole. All of Galeano’s usual obsessions are vividly represented here: U.S. imperialism, the pharmaceutical industry, western governments, the military, the church, advertising, business, Hollywood.”

Describing that book, as well as Galeano’s overall career, Greg Grandin wrote in the New York Times: “Think of Pablo Neruda crossed with Howard Zinn.”

In the wake of Galeano’s passing, progressive writer and editor Tom Engelhardt, who served as American editor for the Memory of Fire trilogy (Pantheon Books) and Upside Down (Metropolitan Books), mused on the author’s legacy:

Eduardo Galeano ended his history of everything, Mirrors, with these lines, “In my childhood, I was convinced that everything that went astray on earth ended up on the moon. But the astronauts found no sign of dangerous dreams or broken promises or hopes betrayed. If not on the moon, where might they be? Perhaps they were never misplaced. Perhaps they are in hiding here on earth. Waiting.”

I hope that, like the betrayed dreams he spent his lifetime recording and the voices of the oppressed and the bold that he retrieved so movingly from the discard pile of mainstream history to inspire the rest of us, Galeano, who just died, is still in hiding somewhere on earth, or even on the moon, waiting.

In this 2009 GritTV interview with Laura Flanders, Galeano reads from and discusses The Open Veins of Latin America:

Others commemorated Galeano’s death on Twitter:

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'Lawsuit Out of Love' as Unprecedented Legal Action Accuses Dutch Government of Failing on Climate

November 21, 2019 | News | No Comments

The district court at The Hague in the Netherlands on Tuesday is hearing oral arguments in an unprecedented legal case brought against the Dutch government by nearly 900 of its citizens who say the failure of elected leaders when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a violation of existing human rights protections and other laws because they are knowingly putting current and future generations of people at risk from the well-established threat of global warming and climate change.

Spearheaded by the The Urgenda Foundation, whose stated mission is to foster a “fast transition towards a sustainable society with a circular economy,” the lawsuit charges the Dutch government with not taking sufficient measures to lower the country’s dependence and overall consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas. Legal experts are regarding the case as a pivotal first—with precedent-setting potential— in which human rights are being used as a legal basis to protect citizens against future harms related to a hotter and less stable planet.

“It’s a lawsuit of out love,” Marjan Minnesma, the executive director of Urgenda, has stated.

Speaking with RTCC last week, Minnesma said she thinks her group has a strong case. “The Dutch government is by far not doing enough, they have a goal for 2020 of 14% clean energy and in 2023 16% – it is not really going quickly enough if you want to avoid a catastrophe in this and the next generations,” she said. “We are standing for what is necessary to do. Ten years ago we would not have tried this but I think things are changing… it’s more clear to a broad group we are heading to a catastrophe.”

As Urgenda explains on its website, the lawsuit demands the following from the Dutch court:

1. To declare that global warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius will lead to a violation of fundamental human rights worldwide.

2. To declare that the Dutch State is acting unlawfully by not contributing its proportional share to preventing a global warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius.

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3. To order the Dutch State to drastically reduce Dutch CO2 emissions even before 2020 to the level that has been determined by scientists to be in line with less than 2 degrees Celsius of global warming, that is, to reduce Dutch emissions by 40% by 2020 below 1990 levels.

Writing at the Huffington Post about the case last week, Kelly Rigg, an environmental campaigner based in the Netherlands, said the lawsuit “comes at a time when an increasing number of legal experts around the world have come to believe that the lack of action represents a gross violation of the rights of those who will suffer the consequences.” The plaintiffs are arguing, she explained, “that the failure of governments to negotiate international agreements does not absolve them of their legal obligation to do their share in preventing dangerous climate change. These arguments are at the core of the Dutch lawsuit and will undoubtedly be put to the test in other countries before too long.”

According to the Guardian, Joos Ockels—whose late husband, Wubbo Ockels, was the first Dutch citizen in space—is among the key individual plaintiffs in the case. Wubbo, the newspaper notes, had dedicated much of his later years to environmental work, founding the renewable energy foundation Happy Energy and declaring that citizens must care for the planet as “astronauts of spaceship Earth.” The Guardian continues:

Urgenda and Ockels were inspired to take action by ideas set out in a book written by Roger Cox, the lawyer now leading the case. Five years in the making, Revolution Justified argues – alongside other legal experts – that the judiciary can play a fundamental role in tackling climate change.

Cox said: “We’re now 23 years down the road of the climate change treaty and it’s obvious that international politics has not brought much good to the world. The power of politics, fossil fuel companies and the banks are so large but there is one other powerful system with a lot of wisdom and that is the law.”

He continued: “There is a parallel here with the situation in the 1950s in the United States. It was the courts that decided that segregation in schools was not constitutional. It wasn’t a big issue in society and it wasn’t political but it was a few people fighting and the courts following up that created a huge change in American society.”

In a related development, a group of global jurists and legal experts on March 30 launched what they call the ‘Oslo Principles on Global Climate Change Obligations’ – which aims to provide a legal framework by which governments can be showed how their inaction on climate-related policies fits into established tort laws, international treaties, or other protocols.

“We simply cannot wait in the pious hope that short-term-minded governments and enterprises will save us; and that when we act it must be on the basis of equity and justice, according to law.” — &

Alongside the legal principles themselves (pdf), those behind the initiative also published supporting commentary (pdf), which reads in part:

World leaders, international institutions and increasingly also business leaders have, clearly and loudly, expressed serious concern [about climate change]. Several pledges have been made to the effect that steps must be taken to secure that the world’s mean temperature does not pass the two degrees threshold. This stance has continuously been taken, despite the reservations of the small number of dissenting climate scientist s and of sceptics. Despite the laudable pledges by leading politicians around the globe and a series of urgent calls made by prestigious international organisations, political actions do not keep pace with these promises and calls; they fall short of doing the minimum necessary to avoid that the two degrees threshold will be passed.

As things stand right now, there is not much reason to believe that politicians will be able to strike compromises to the extent needed in due time. This regrettable state of aff airs serves as an incentive, if not imperative, to explore potentially promising avenues to stem the tide.

What the legal effort contained in the Oslo Principles is trying to assert, explained legal experts and at the Guardian last month, is that “governments are violating their legal duties if they each act in a way that, collectively, is known to lead to grave harms.”

And the key legal argument that is being represented at The Hague on Tuesday as part of the Urgenda lawsuit is also at the core of the Oslo Principles. As Powles and Khan expressed the message: “We simply cannot wait in the pious hope that short-term-minded governments and enterprises will save us; and that when we act it must be on the basis of equity and justice, according to law. Every year that we miss increases the challenge and risk. We’ve squandered decades already, and our window for action is closing. We must act now.”

By Tncse

Ecclestone ‘no longer feels wanted at Grand Prix races’

November 20, 2019 | News | No Comments

Former Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone says that the sport’s new owners don’t want him attending Grand Prix events in 2018.

Ecclestone is officially still ‘chairman emeritus’ of F1. However, he believes that the new management installed since Liberty Media’s takeover would prefer he wasn’t around.

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“I have the feeling that my successors do not want to see me at the track anymore,” he told Auto Motor und Sport this week.

Ecclestone said that he disapproves of Liberty’s approach of investing heavily in marketing the sport.

“It is important that the teams market themselves, and that the promoters promote their event,” he explained. “If FOM competes as a third party, that’s only confusing.”

He’s also no fan of their proposals for engine development after 2020.

Ecclestone: ‘Liberty has achieved nothing’

“I would have scrapped this [hybrid] engine, it was a disaster from the date on which it was introduced,” he admitted. “But two years ago I told the teams they could keep the damn engine if they increase the fuel flow and the fuel load.”

Liberty’s proposals have been strongly rejected by Ferrari. The manufacturer’s president Sergio Marchionne has even threatened the team could pull out of F1 if the plans go ahead. And Ecclestone doesn’t think that’s an empty threat.

“Sergio can live without Formula 1,” he said. “He is only interested in the business. If Marchionne doesn’t like what he sees, he will stop.

“I’m afraid that Ferrari can live without F1, but not vice versa,” he continued. “The Ferrari against Mercedes duel mobilised the fans.

“[In the past] I actually apologised to the promoters,” he added. “They paid for the old Formula 1 and all they got was Mercedes winning. Now, they’re getting value for money again.”

“[Ferrari] were smart enough to look at the other teams and bring on board good people.”

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Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team presents its 2018 charger!

November 20, 2019 | News | No Comments

The Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team has officially unveiled its 2018 C37 charger, the car it hopes will move the Swiss outfit up the grid.

The C37’s livery is almost identical to the scheme presented at the end of last year when the Swiss outfit announced its Alfa Romeo partnership.

The legendary Italian brand obviously figures prominently on the car’s bodywork, while at the rear, Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson and Charles Leclerc will be powered by 2018 y a current-spec Ferrari engine.

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Gallery: The Alfa Romeo Sauber C37 in detail

Looking a little closer at the C37, one’s first impression of a straightforward design changes, as a few interesting engineering aspects are noticed, like the raised front suspension and the car’s shallow nose, similar to Force India’s 2017 design.

Sauber has also opted for a re-profiling of the mandatory Halo as the 2018 technical rules allow. All in all, not a bad looking racing car, with some nice innovation.

“It is great to finally reveal the C37 today,” says Sauber tech boss Jorg Zander.

“The 2018 challenger is the result of the hard work that everyone in the factory has put in over the last few months.

“Speaking about the C37, the car philosophy is much different to that of the C36. The aerodynamic concept has changed significantly, and the C37 has several new features in comparison to its predecessor,” he added.

“We are positive that the new concept offers us more opportunities and will help us to make improvements during the course of the season.

“The 2018 Ferrari engine will also give us a boost in terms of our performance. We hope that we will make progress with the C37 and that we are more competitive compared to 2017.”

Sauber also released a short video blending the team’s image and car with some period footage of Alfa Romeo’s racing history.

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Vandoorne: ‘Williams made the right choice with Sirotkin’

November 20, 2019 | News | No Comments

Stoffel Vandoorne believes Williams’ new recruit Sergey Sirotkin is the real deal and fully deserves his chance to race in Formula 1.

Williams insists its choice of awarding the Russian a seat alongside Lance Stroll was warranted by his performance against Robert Kubica at the Abu Dhabi post-season test.

Sirotkin won seat with ‘flawless’ test, says Williams CEO

Many are still debating Sirotkin’s merits however, believing the 22-year-old owes his graduation to F1 to the generous support package provided by his benefactor SMP Bank.

McLaren’s Vandoorne, who raced against Sirotkin in GP2 in 2015, offered a ringing endorsement of the rookie’s talent.

“Williams made the right choice,” the Belgian told La Derniere Heure.

” I raced against Sergey in the junior categories and I can tell you he is a very good driver. He’s fast and he works hard to improve. Honestly, Sergey is much faster than many people think.”

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