Bureaucracies Utterly Incapable Of Making Reasonable Tradeoffs
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | March 7, 2023
Often I focus on bureaucratic regulation of energy because the ability to restrict use of energy is the ultimate societal control. Once they have obtained the ability to restrict use of energy, bureaucrats could, if they choose, take away most of our freedom to enjoy life and return us to the income levels of the Stone Age. Will they stop before going that far, making reasonable tradeoffs to enable the people to flourish economically? Or will they instead pursue environmental purity without concern for the well-being of the populace?
So far all indications are that bureaucracies — and environmental bureaucracies in particular — are utterly incapable of making reasonable tradeoffs. You don’t go into a career as an environmental bureaucrat if you think that your concern for the environment is something that can or should be compromised.
In the U.S., battle is currently joined on multiple fronts as to whether unaccountable bureaucracies get to declare the non-toxic beneficial gas CO2 a “danger” to human health and welfare and thereby claim the ability to shut down the entire fossil fuel energy economy and force a multi-trillion dollar (and probably impossible and impoverishing) energy transition on the people. (One such front is the litigation where I am one of the lawyers, CHECC v. EPA, pending in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.). Also in the U.S., the Supreme Court, in the recent case of West Virginia v. EPA, has announced what they call the “major questions doctrine,” where bureaucrats, at least in areas of “major” economic impact, are to some degree constrained in their exercise of power by the explicit delegations of authority granted them by Congress. To the extent that restrictions on human activity in the name of the environment must gain approval from the Congress, there is at least a forum for competing interests to be heard, for tradeoffs to be considered, and for big mistakes to get corrected before enormous economic damage can be done.
But consider for a moment how it works in the different governance model of the EU, where bureaucrats answer to no one and are virtually unconstrained. This consideration is relevant to the U.S. situation, because the EU governance model of the unconstrained bureaucratic state, at least as to environmental issues, is the one favored by Democrats in our Congress and by the “liberal” justices on the Supreme Court.
Over in the EU, they have decided that nitrogen — or maybe it is “reactive nitrogen” — is a pollutant. And pollutants are bad, and therefore they should be reduced or, better, eliminated. And the bureaucracies have been empowered toward this goal.
Well, here’s the problem. Nitrogen is an essential building block of life, including human life, without which we all starve to death. Every protein is made up of amino acids, and every amino acid has at least one atom of nitrogen in it. Here is a table of the chemical formulas of the main amino acids:
So no nitrogen, no proteins. And no proteins, no people. So where are we going to get the nitrogen to make up our proteins? The air is about 78% nitrogen — how about just take it from there? But it turns out that neither plants nor animals have the ability to make direct use of the nitrogen in the air. Instead, the nitrogen needs to be “fixed” into the soil in some “reactive” form for plants to be able to use it; and then, animals get the nitrogen for their proteins from the plants. Throughout history, humans depended on the luck of the level of the nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil to grow edible plants to make their proteins. But often the soil quality would be low. One way to up the nitrogen content of soil was animal manure. And then came along the technological advance of figuring out how to combine nitrogen from the air with hydrogen, generally from natural gas, to make ammonia (NH3) for fertilizer that could be spread on the ground. Between widespread use of manure and increase in manufactured ammonia fertilizers, suddenly lack of usable nitrogen in the soil was no longer a limiting factor on ability to grow crops. Over the twentieth century, and particularly the later decades, yields soared.
Here is a stock photo of crops on the same field, with and without nitrogen fertilizer:
But meanwhile over in the EU (and not just there), the battle of the bureaucrats to eliminate nitrogen pollution is in full swing. You probably recall the protests of the Dutch farmers from last summer. From Reuters, June 22, 2022:
Thousands of farmers were gathering in a village near the centre of the Netherlands on Wednesday to protest a government plan to curb nitrogen pollution. . . . The protest in Stroe, 70 kilometres east of Amsterdam, follows the introduction last week of targets for reducing pollution by harmful nitrogen compounds in some areas by up to 70% by 2030. . . . Reductions are necessary in emissions of nitrogen oxides from farm animal manure and use of ammonia for fertilisation, the government says. Nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere help form acid rain, while fertiliser washed into lakes can cause algal blooms that kill marine life.
But how about the need for nitrogen for proteins to keep the human population alive? They seem to have completely lost track of that. This is an area where the absolute goal of “no nitrogen” is completely insane. Sure, too much nitrogen in the wrong form and in the wrong place at the wrong time can be a problem. But nitrogen in sufficient amounts in a form usable in the soil is completely essential to feeding the human population here on earth. Tradeoffs must be made. Yet the bureacuracies, in their zealotry, appear completely incapable of even considering such heritical ideas.
This week the farmer protests have moved on to Belgium, which has joined the war against nitrogen-emitting agriculture. From Reuters, March 3:
Farmers from Belgium’s northern region of Flanders drove thousands of tractors into Brussels on Friday in a protest against a new regional government plan to limit nitrogen emissions. . . . Agricultural organisations said in a joint statement that the nitrogen agreement as it now stands “will cause a socio-economic carnage”.
I’ve got news for the EU bureaucrats: you can put all your farmers out of business, but unless you are planning to starve your own people the food will have to be produced somewhere, and the nitrogen “emissions” will be essentially the same. They’ll just be moved somewhere else. I’m old enough to remember when being self-sufficient in food production and not dependent on food imports was considered a positive good for a country. But that was before environmental zealotry went to the extremes that we see today.
Putting Europe’s Energy Crisis into Perspective
By Noah Carl | The Daily Sceptic | March 6, 2023
Europe has made it through the winter largely without incident: there were no major blackouts or power outages, and fears of large-scale civil unrest did not come to pass. What’s more, the price of natural gas – which in August was more than 18 times higher than its recent historical average – is now a mere 2.5 times higher.
That’s the good news.
Here’s the bad. We didn’t avoid catastrophe thanks to wise and far-sighted choices on the part of our leaders. We basically got lucky. The winter of 2022/23 was one of the warmest in recorded history, dramatically reducing the demand for natural gas. Had the temperature been normal, things could have gotten fairly dicey.
There’s more bad news. Keeping the lights on and the gas burning didn’t come cheap. As of September last year, European countries had earmarked €768 billion for energy subsidies. OECD countries (of which Europe comprises the lion’s share) spent about 18% of GDP on energy in 2022, compared to only 10% the year before.
As an apocryphal quote has it, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” Just how much is €768 billion?
One potential yardstick is the cost of reconstruction for Ukraine, which in December was estimated at €500 billion and may now be as high as €600 or €700 billion. To be clear: this isn’t some estimate of the ‘total cost of the war’ – which would be far, far higher. It’s just the cost of reconstruction.
Nonetheless, it implies that the amount European countries have earmarked for energy subsidies would be enough to repair all the damage to Ukraine’s buildings and infrastructure that’s been sustained since the start of the war – a war that has seen whole towns reduced to rubble.
As the analyst Ralph Schoellhammer notes, European countries imported more LNG last year than Japan, South Korea and China combined. Yet this is set to change as China’s economy comes roaring back after the lockdown hiatus.
While the creeping global recession may temper demand for LNG, rising industrial activity in China will have the opposite effect. Keeping a lid on European gas prices thus requires ongoing ‘demand destruction’ – a fancy way of saying that factories will have to make do with less. (As of December, industrial gas demand is about 25% below the 2013–2019 average.)
Europe’s energy crisis still isn’t over. But we’re admittedly in a better position than I’d thought we’d be – owing mainly to warmer weather.
Berlin’s March 26th Climate Referendum… Unelected Council Could Have Immediate Dictatorial Powers
The road to tyranny begins in Berlin as climate gets framed as a state of emergency
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | March 12, 2023
If Berliners think protesters obstructing traffic by gluing themselves to the streets are a nuisance, just wait until what could be the case after March 26, when Berliners vote on climate referendum.
If the climate referendum is successful, a radical amendment to the current climate protection and energy transition law will be enacted. The online German Pleiteticker.de exclusively has an internal paper and reports of an “empowerment paragraph” in the proposed amended law.
The aim of the referendum is to amend the existing Climate Protection and Energy Transition Act (EWG Bln) in order to force the city of Berlin to achieve climate neutrality by 2030 instead of 2045.
The vote will be binding, which means that if the referendum is successful, the amendment will be enacted into law. The amendment is being pushed by the Green Party and radical groups like Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion.
Targets would become legal obligations
The amendment would be so radical that even Berlin SPD socialists consider it dangerous and speak of an “empowerment paragraph” in the law that would transfer immense power to a small group of unelected people, namely a Climate Protection Council appointed by the Berlin Senate.
Concerning paragraph 6 of the new amendment, “Immediate program in the event of non-fulfillment of obligations”, the SPD explicitly warns that climate targets have been changed to “obligations”, which would mean the Berlin Senate probably would have to implement immediate radical measures to achieve the obligations, even by court order.
Paragraph 14 provides for a “Climate Protection Council” to monitor compliance. It would be appointed by the Berlin Senate and not made up by democratically elected officials.
Good bye to cars in Berlin?
“There is a danger that the possibility of immediate measures – which, according to the SPD, are not democratically legitimized – will be used excessively”, Pleiteticker warns. “If the climate referendum is successfully implemented, it will therefore not only be expensive for Berliners, but there will be many more restrictions on freedom than under the previous the Socialist-Green Senate – Berliners may then have to say goodbye to their cars completely.”
Reducing flights at Berlin’s BER airport?
According to paragraph 3 on “Climate Protection Obligations”, CO2 reduction should be 70 percent by 2025 and 95 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels! “The previous regulation has been changed so that the time periods are dramatically shortened,”
According to Clause 2, even the Berlin airport would be a part of the climate budget. Pleiteticker warns: “So there is a risk that an immediate measure for emissions reduction could be to reduce the number of flights.”
Property owners would be forced to make major renovations
The amendment also calls on the mandatory energy refurbishment of all public buildings by 2030 and the entire state administration would have to be CO2-neutral by 2030.
“Where the money is to come from remains a mystery once again,” Pleiteticker comments.
Paragraph 19, “Use of Renewable Energy”, could also mean the mandatory installation of solar panels for all homeowners. Again, no one knows how all of this would be paid for. Owning a home and property would certainly become unaffordable for many private owners.
Looking at it from a different angle, Berlin could serve as a pilot that would in all likelihood expose the shear folly of rapid climate neutrality once and for all. Maybe a “successful” referendum would be a good lesson for the rest of the world.
Pakistan’s Fascist Post-Modern Coup Regime Risks Replicating The East Pakistan Tragedy
By Andrew Korybko | March 15, 2023
The fascist authorities who were installed in Pakistan following last April’s US-orchestrated but superficially “democratic” post-modern coup against former Prime Minister Imran Khan risk replicating the East Pakistan tragedy if they don’t immediately stop shooting at their own people. The ousted leader’s supporters are rallying around his residence to prevent the local police from serving him an arrest warrant on a trumped-up graft charge that was concocted against him as “lawfare”.
Instead of reconsidering the wisdom of clashing with unarmed and purely peaceful civilians, the fascist authorities ordered their goons to assault them all with tear gas, rubber bullets, and reportedly even live ammunition that was shot into the air according to some accounts. This de facto declaration of war by the fascist post-modern coup regime on its own people could dangerously place the country’s political-security trajectory on the irreversible path towards civil war.
Former Prime Minister Khan warned as much in a tweet on Wednesday that he shared alongside a photo of himself sitting down in front of a pile of tear gas canisters that were shot at his home the other day. He wrote that “My house has been under heavy attack since yesterday afternoon. Latest attack by Rangers, pitting the largest pol party against the army. This is what PDM and the enemies of Pakistan want. No lessons learnt from the East Pakistan tragedy.”
The military-intelligence establishment must urgently rescind their de facto declaration of war on the Pakistani people, do whatever’s required behind the scenes to have the fascist post-modern coup’s leading figures resign as the first step towards national reconciliation, and then hold early elections. It’s only through this three-step process that the worst-case scenario of replicating the East Pakistan tragedy can potentially be avoided since anything less than that makes this more likely by the hour.
One of the most populous countries in the world is being pushed towards civil conflict by those conspirators who illegally usurped power with the US’ help last April and subsequently crashed the economy. This factual framing of Pakistan’s latest political-security dynamics proves that the increasingly violent clashes provoked by the fascist post-modern coup regime against its own people could lead to a global crisis in the event that they soon spiral even further out of control.
If the military-intelligence establishment continues waging war on the Pakistani people, then their victims should consider publicly calling on their iron brothers in China to urgently rein them in as a last resort to avert the worst-case scenario that former Prime Minister Khan just warned about. China’s diplomatic miracle in brokering the Iranian–Saudi rapprochement last week proves that it has the political capabilities to peacefully resolve the Pakistani Crisis if the people request for it to do so.
After all, the People’s Republic also stands to geostrategically lose if that neighboring nation descends into civil war. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is the flagship project of Beijing’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) that’s aimed at creating a Community of Common Destiny for Mankind, would practically become inoperable should that happen. Not only could that block off China’s shortcut to the Indian Ocean, but it would deal an immense blow to its soft power and BRI’s reputation as well.
Without intending to come off as “conspiratorial”, observers can’t preclude the possibility that the fascist post-modern coup regime’s US backers encouraged them to provoke a civil war partially for the purpose of advancing America’s anti-Chinese “containment” strategy via unconventional means. At the very least, its military-intelligence establishment wouldn’t so publicly violate its people’s human rights and possibly even countenance war crimes against them without the US’ advance approval.
This means that the latest escalation of the nearly year-long Pakistani Crisis is connected to the US just like its origin is, thus extending credence to the preceding concerns that the events which Washington set into motion last April are actually part of its larger Hybrid War on China. This South Asian state was knocked out of the geostrategic game at the most sensitive moment in the global systemic transition shortly after this process accelerated following the start of Russia’s special operation.
That outcome hasn’t just proven disastrous for the Pakistani people who’ve suffered as a result of the crippling economic crisis that followed, but it also unexpectedly offset a key pillar of China’s grand strategy related to its reliance on CPEC as a non-US-controlled shortcut to the Indian Ocean. Furthermore, both the political and especially economic dimensions of the US-provoked Pakistani Crisis also raised serious doubts about CPEC’s future as well as that of BRI more broadly.
Nobody can therefore deny that the US’ regime change in Pakistan last year had very serious consequences for China that are becoming worse by the hour as that country’s fascist post-modern regime risks pushing it into civil war after de facto declaring war on its own people. China might already be working behind the scenes to try and de-escalate the latest and thus far most dangerous phase of this nearly year-long crisis on its borders, but it would still help a lot if Pakistanis publicly requested this.
That’s because this could compel China into taking urgent action behind close doors if it hasn’t already done so, not to mention creating the optics of Pakistan’s US-backed fascist post-modern coup regime literally shooting at Chinese-friendly peaceful protesters, which would force China to get involved. No other party apart from the US has the influence to peacefully resolve this crisis, and seeing as how Washington’s interests are perversely advanced by exacerbating it, the onus thus falls on Beijing.
Practically speaking, China has a credible chance of brokering peace and thus averting another Pakistani Civil War, but this best-case scenario can only happen if the fascist post-modern coup regime has the political will to save their country from this US-engineered collapse. If they do, then China can simply propose the previously suggested three-step peace plan related to immediately ceasing fire against unarmed peaceful protesters, creating a caretake government, and holding early elections.
The coup regime might agree to this in exchange for a Chinese bailout that could replace the IMF’s continually delayed one that’s full of strings and has thus far been withheld by that body’s US leader for the purpose of keeping its proxies in check in case they consider “defecting”. That last-mentioned observation is precisely what China would be tempting them to do, basically “defect” from the US in exchange for much-needed aid and thus averting the seemingly impending civil war.
The latest and thus far most dangerous phase of the nearly year-long Pakistani Crisis is rife with unpredictability since everything is moving so rapidly right now so it’s difficult to predict what might come next. In any case, it would greatly help the cause of peace and preventing a replication of the East Pakistani tragedy that former Prime Minister Khan just warned about if his unarmed peaceful protesters publicly called on China to diplomatically intervene and prevent this from becoming a global crisis.
Is France going to be able to maintain its position in Africa?
By Pogos Anastasov – New Eastern Outlook – 15.03.2023
On March 1-5, French President Macron visited a number of African countries, leaving observers with a bitter taste in their mouths. Conceived with great fanfare as a presentation of Paris’ ostensibly new course aimed at “equal cooperation” with the African continent, it was remembered only for scandals, public spats with African presidents, and taunts from them that reflected the obvious disadvantage in bilateral relations.
Overall, the visit did not boost Paris’ credibility or strengthen its ties with Africa. Following the significant losses that France has suffered in Africa in recent years, the Elysée Palace should focus on preserving the African diamonds that remain in its crown rather than expanding its influence. And there aren’t many of them anymore. After Mali and Burkina Faso defected from Paris, Morocco is now gradually but steadily shifting from the French to the American camp, further narrowing the maneuvering field for Paris, which must look around and consider how to save what is left. What does it have in its piggy bank?
The richest “chest” in which the French keep the wealth looted from Africans is … the French treasury itself. The scheme of collecting money through the sub-regional economic cooperation organization of West Africa, ECOWAS (almost all its 15 members are former French colonies) is well established and allows almost half their economic potential to be at the service of the French economy.
ECOWAS itself was founded in 1975 on the basis of the Lagos Treaty and initially included 16 countries, but later the only Arab country in its composition, Mauritania, withdrew from it, remaining an associate member. When the organization was founded, the most noble goals were declared – the economic integration of the region, its self-sufficiency with the subsequent transition to a federation, a single citizenship and a single currency. But somehow it so happened that the most advanced element of integration was the creation of its own single currency – the West African CFA franc, which combines the currencies of the eight countries of this association, members of the West African Economic and Monetary Union, formed in 1994 (a number of other countries also use this currency). And “quite by chance” this currency is pegged to the euro, and 50% of foreign exchange reserves of these countries are stored in the French Central Bank, which completely deprives these countries of economic independence. Moreover, attempts by some of these countries to transfer their gold reserves to other jurisdictions are repeatedly unsuccessful, which naturally causes discontent among member countries.
Paris is forced to respond to this and in 2020 proposed a bill to this effect in the French National Assembly, according to which the CFA franc should be replaced by the “eco” already without being tied to the mandatory deposit in France. The draft was approved and ratified. However, it turned out that the pandemic buried it for a long time. In June 2021, ECOWAS revisited it, and a summit of member countries agreed on a five-year “currency convergence” pact, as well as a road map to launch a new monetary unit, now a region-wide one, by 2027.
More recently, on 24 January 2023, the President of Guinea-Bissau, who as of June 2022 is the current President of ECOWAS, pledged to revive the project, while also strengthening internal trade among ECOWAS countries, which currently represents less than 10% of total trade. To what extent this will work is not yet clear. Many suspect Paris that the reform of the CFA franc will be cosmetic and will not change the essence of economic relations between the member countries of the association and France, which actively uses the West African currency in the interests of French and multinational corporations based in its territory, which hold the markets of these states under their control and pump them for profit, including natural resources. Paris’ “Trojan horse” in ECOWAS is Côte d’Ivoire and the puppet regime put there by Paris, which implements French interests in the organization under the guise of African interests.
Whether or not Paris can pull off another trick with currency “reform” is not yet clear. Again, at the instigation of Paris, the membership of ECOWAS member countries where there have been recent coups, such as Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso, is suspended, and important reforms that affect their core national interests can be carried out by regional organizations without their participation and taking their position into account by allies or, rather, satellites of France, such as Côte d’Ivoire. We can hardly believe that the Elysée Palace will not take advantage of these opportunities.
The other two countries where Paris will try by all means to maintain its influence are Chad and Niger, where strategic reserves of uranium, gold and other minerals are concentrated. In addition, Chad occupies an important strategic position, bordering Libya in the north and Sudan in the east, which makes it an important transit zone involved in both arms and migrant traffic. Chad, too, has a leadership that is questionable in terms of Western democracy — the son of President Idriss Déby, killed two years ago, Mahamat Déby, who heads the Transitional Military Council. But Paris, so sensitive to the issue in Mali and Burkina Faso, pays little attention in this case, because it is “our son of a bitch.”
Even more important for Paris is Niger, where uranium reserves, critical for the French nuclear industry, are being actively exploited. Paris is covered there by Washington, which has a chain of military bases, airfields and reconnaissance centers with UAVs. Of course, Paris will fight for this strategic region of Africa to the end, which, however, does not guarantee success.
In fact, Paris now has only one direction to go in Africa – to further lose its weight and influence. There are more and more reasons for this. France is increasingly uninterested in African states. Its military capabilities are shrinking, the effectiveness of its participation in solving the security problems of the continent is extremely low, which leads more and more states to refuse its assistance. France’s socio-political model is also losing its attractiveness against the background of increasing economic problems of the country, and with them the protests against the internal political and economic line of the Rothschild-appointed Macron. Constant arrogant lectures about the need to comply with democratic norms on the background of the suppression of citizens’ rights and the increasingly police nature of the French state, hits the eyes of Africans, as well as the growing propaganda of LGBT values. In this light, the storage of West African reserves in the Paris treasury looks increasingly anachronistic.
In Africa, they cannot fail to see Paris’s almost complete loss of sovereignty in European affairs, where it has demonstrated its absolute servility and dependence on the course of Washington, in particular with regard to the conflict in Ukraine. In this context, the attempts of Paris to fix the situation by loud slogans about “change of course”, belated repentance for the sins of the times of colonialism, as well as blaming the Wagner PMC for its problems look rather pathetic. The day is not far when France, like other colonialists, will be kicked off the continent as unable to cope with the challenges of the new era. In their place will come other forces that advocate real equal cooperation and its mutually beneficial nature based on the principles of a multipolar world, as well as unambiguously interpreted norms of international law.
Germans’ Support for Kiev May Wane Amid ‘Contrived’ Nord Stream Reports, Ex-US Official Says
Sputnik – 15.03.2023
Chancellor Olaf Scholz may fail to maintain public support in Germany for arming Kiev amid hardly credible reports blaming Ukraine for the Nord Stream attack, former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik.
In early February, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported that US navy divers planted explosives on the Nord Stream pipelines. Just a few days after Scholz held talks with President Joe Biden at the White House on March 3, American and German media reports surfaced placing the blame for the attack on a pro-Ukraine group.
In an interview aired earlier on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the version of the involvement of Ukrainian activists in the explosion at Nord Stream “complete nonsense.” Putin told the Rossiya 1 broadcaster that the explosion was carried out by specialists supported by all the might of a state with certain technologies.
Kwiatkowski suggested Germans opposed to continued war aid could use the stories to blame Ukraine for Germany’s economic challenges, or they could use the “contrived” story as another example of US and NATO lies.
“Overall, the ‘story’ is an insult to the intelligence of the average German, and as such it will both weaken German support for [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, and increasingly show German voters that Scholz himself is a tool of Washington, DC, putting US desires for war on the continent above the needs and the sovereignty of actual Germans,” Kwiatkowski said.
“That support has been declining due to cost, economic turmoil in Germany, and the pressure and stress of hosting and supporting over a million Ukrainians, most of whom intend to stay there.”
The amateur statesmen and spymasters in Washington, Kwiatkowski added, barely conceived of this story in time for Scholz’s visit, she said.
“And it appears they may have needed the German Chancellor’s advice and consent, before providing the unsubstantiated and vague storyline to friendly media,” the former Pentagon analyst said.
If the report itself were more believable, Kwiatkowski explained, or was accompanied by arrests, actual evidence and data, it perhaps would not be as damaging.
Kwiatkowski said it is unlikely that German intelligence has not known the basic facts of the pipeline attacks for many months, but until Hersh’s reporting Scholz and his party could simply remain silent, “as they did.”
The pipeline sabotage was an act of war by the United States, Kwiatkowski argued, as documented by Hersh, but it remains to be seen whether this was an act of war against Russia, against Germany, “or horrifyingly, both.”
“It is most certainly a ploy to shift the focus, because if an act of war were to be committed by the dominant NATO member against the next strongest NATO member, the entire NATO construct would collapse,” she added. “This possibility must not only be denied, it must be suppressed and eliminated.”
Former CIA station chief and analyst Phil Giraldi told Sputnik the new reports do not seem credible versus what Hersh revealed from sources involved in the actual destruction of Nord Stream. He also said the timing of the new narrative is suspicious coming after the “nothing-happened” meeting between Biden and Scholz.
Eurasia Group Vice President Earl Rasmussen said the stories emerging in the wake of Scholz’s visit to Washington are obviously no coincidence and the entire embarrassing affair will diminish Germany’s respect world-wide.
Germany is not a sovereign nation – Moscow
RT | March 14, 2023
Germany is facing an inevitable economic decline after losing its access to Russian energy, but cannot do anything about it because it is not a sovereign nation, the secretary of the Russian National Security Council has claimed.
“Germany tried for many years to build its economy on a combination of cheap Russian energy and advanced German technologies. Like no one else, it realizes that the terrorist attack against the [Nord Stream pipelines] will definitely cause the German economy to decline further,” Nikolay Patrushev said in an interview published in Argumenti i Fakti newspaper on Monday.
The advantages that German businesses enjoyed by getting access to Russian fuel has long irritated the governments of the US and the UK, he continued. But Berlin is not at liberty to continue cooperating with Moscow, “because the German nation is not independent.”
“Washington imposes on Berlin its economic and environmental agenda and keeps a 35,000-strong military force on its soil. For years, the White House controlled [former chancellor] Angela Merkel, and now it forces the German leadership to side with the version of the pipeline sabotage that is advantageous to the US authorities,” Patrushev said, describing America’s treatment of Germany as “humiliating.”
The remarks were part of Patrushev’s comments on the sabotage of the undersea pipelines, which were built to supply Germany with Russian natural gas. The Nord Stream links were ruptured by powerful explosions last September in what Russia has called a blatant terrorist attack.
A series of articles published by Western media this month claimed that Western intelligence services believe that a “pro-Ukrainian group” not associated with any government was behind the attack. Patrushev argued that, considering the training and equipment that such a complicated operation required, this scenario would seem plausible only to people who “cannot think logically.”
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh had previously reported that the operation was ordered by US President Joe Biden and conducted by a US-Norwegian team of saboteurs. Both nations deny this allegation.
Hersh said Washington wanted to prevent Berlin from making a U-turn on its decision to phase out Russian gas supplies in response to the Ukrainian crisis. Liquified natural gas, which is produced by American companies and costs significantly more, took over a large portion of the European energy market previously held by Russian fuel.
Where Is Occupy Silicon Valley?
By Craig Pirrong | Brownstone Institute | March 13, 2023
Bank failures tend to come in waves, and we are experiencing at least a mini-wave now.
Banks fail for three basic reasons: 1. Credit transformation: deterioration in borrower creditworthiness, usually due to an adverse economic shock (e.g., a real estate bust). 2. Maturity transformation: borrowing short, lending long, and then getting hammered when interest rates rise. 3. Liquidity transformation combined with an exogenous liquidity shock, a la Diamond-Dybvig, where idiosyncratic depositor needs for cash lead to withdrawals that exceed liquid assets and therefore trigger fire sales of illiquid assets.
The two most notable failures of late–Silicon Valley Bank and Silvergate–are examples of 2 and 3 respectively.
In some respects, SVB is the most astounding. Not because a bank failed in the old-fashioned way, but because it was funded primarily by the deposits of supposed financial sophisticates–and because of the disgusting policy response of the Treasury and the Fed.
SVB took in oodles of cash, especially in the past couple of years. The cashcade was so immense that SVB could not find enough traditional banking business (loans) to soak it up, so they bought lots of Treasuries. And long duration Treasuries to boot.
And then Powell and the Fed applied the boot, jacking up rates. Bonds have cratered in the last year, and took SVB’s balance sheet with it.
Again, an old story. And hardly a harbinger of systemic risk–unless such reckless maturity mismatches are systemic.
SVB was the Banker to the Silicon Valley Stars, notably VCs and tech firms. These firms are the ones that deposited immense sums in exchange for a pittance of return. Case in point, Roku, put almost $500 million–yes, you read that right, 9 figures led with a 5–into SVB!!!
I mean: what the eff? Was the Treasurer a moron? For who other than a moron would hold that much in cash in a single institution? (Roku claims its devices “make your home a smarter.” Maybe they should have hired a smarter treasurer and CFO, or replaced them with one of its devices). Hell, why is a company holding that much in cash period?
A few of these alleged masters of the universe (like Palantir) saw the writing on the wall and yanked their deposits: deposits fell by a quarter on Friday alone, sealing the bank’s doom. Those who were slow to run howled to the high heavens over the weekend that if there was not a bailout there would be a holocaust in the tech sector.
Even though the systemic risk posed by SVB’s failure is nil (or if not, then every bank is systemically important), the Treasury Department and the Fed responded to these howls and guaranteed all the deposits–even though the FDIC’s formal deposit insurance limit is $250,000. You know, .05 percent of Roku’s deposit.
When evaluating this, one cannot ignore the reality that the Democratic Party is completely beholden to Silicon Valley. This is beyond scandalous.
Occupy Silicon Valley, anyone?
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen insulted our intelligence by assuring us this is not a bailout. Well, it’s not a taxpayer bailout, strictly speaking, because the Treasury is not providing the backstop. Instead, it is being funded by a “special assessment” on solvent banks. Which are owned and funded by people who also pay taxes. And such an “assessment” is a tax in everything but name–because it is a contribution by private entities compelled by the government.
The policy implications of this are disastrous. The whole problem with such bailouts is moral hazard. What is to stop banks from engaging in such reckless behavior as SVB did if they can obtain seemingly unlimited funding from those who know that they will be bailed out if things go pear-shaped?
And the regulatory failure here demonstrates that bank regulation–despite the supposed “reforms” of Frankendodd–can’t even catch or constrain the oldest bet-the-bank strategy in the book. Free banking–no deposit insurance, no bailing out of depositors–couldn’t do worse, and would likely do better.
No, the failure of SVB is not the scandal here. The scandal is the political response to it. This reveals yet again how captured the government is. This time not by Wall Street, but by tech companies and oligarchs that are currently the primary source of Democratic political funding.
A couple of weeks ago the Silvergate story looked juicy, but SVB has put it in the shade. Silvergate also grew dramatically, but on the back of crypto rather than SV tech. It became the main banker for many crypto firms and entrepreneurs. The crypto meltdown did not affect Silvergate directly, but it did crush its depositors, the aforesaid crypto firms and entrepreneurs. They withdrew a lot of funding, and an old-fashioned liquidity mismatch did it in.
In traditional banks, deposit funding is “sticky.” Banks that rely on wholesale funding (“hot money”) are more vulnerable to runs. Silvergate’s funding was not traditional sticky deposit funding, nor was it hot money per se. It was money that was pretty cool as long as crypto was cool, and became hot once crypto melted down.
A run started, but the run was precipitated by a liquidity shock. Simple story, really.
Silvergate’s failure was not a scandal. SVB’s failure per se was not a scandal (except to the extent that our vaunted banking regulators failed to prevent the most prosaic type of failure).
Again–the scandal is the politically tainted response that will have baleful consequences in the future, as the response virtually guarantees that there will be more SVBs in the future.
The Deception Over Climate is Even Worse Than the Deception Over Covid
BY ANDREW MONTFORD | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | MARCH 11, 2023
In the aftermath of the release of the Lockdown Files, the public is slowly coming to terms with some fairly shocking facts: that the Government was willing to lie and mislead, and to scaremonger and manipulate the media, in order to achieve its Covid policy objectives (or even just to garner a few headlines). The news is still sinking in, but a day of reckoning for those involved looks likely.
For those of us bearing the scars of long engagement in the climate and energy wars, however, none of this was a surprise. It has long been clear that the inhabitants of the Westminster village were happy to hype up fears of climate purgatory and to fib about the road to redemption – renewables – and the cost of taking it. Once the public understand the depth and extent of the deception, and the damage done to the economy and the prospects for our children, the trickery over Covid is going to look decidedly peripheral.
The latest report from the Climate Change Committee (CCC) is a case in point. On the surface it’s a roadmap to a decarbonised electricity grid, but in reality it’s merely a sales document, full of tricks, evasions and outright falsehoods that would make even the most cynical used car salesman blush.
For example, in a number of places, it says that decarbonisation of the grid will be ‘cost-effective’, but you will find next to no information on what it will cost. The game that is being played becomes a bit clearer when you read the reference to ‘carbon prices’. In normal usage, the carbon price is the estimate of the damage done by a ton of carbon dioxide, but in the CCC’s parlance it is an estimate of what it will cost to decarbonise. So, while it gives you the impression it has done a cost-benefit analysis and is going to be saving you money, in reality it is only saying that the bill to be paid will be the same as previously advised. It’s a trick.
Another trick is to assume that wind power costs will be only a quarter of what they actually are. For years, the industry has been pushing claims that they have brought about a cost-reduction revolution. The problem is that windfarms’ own financial accounts show that it isn’t true. And with new windfarms now saying they will not come on stream without further subsidies, the deception has been exposed.
I’m picking on the CCC here, simply because it is in the news today. But it’s not just the CCC. None of the bodies whom the public expect to tell the truth about the Net Zero project will do so: the Royal Academy of Engineering is silent. The Royal Society likewise. National Grid pretends the task is a cinch. The National Infrastructure Commission just repeats the Government line verbatim. Parliament asks how soon the job can be done, not whether it can be done or how much it will cost. Everywhere the tricks go unchallenged and the lies are swept under the carpet.
Such deceptions mean that we are storing up catastrophic harms for our economy, and for our children and grandchildren. Energy that was said to be as cheap as gas is actually going to cost three or four times as much. The costs of ensuring supply when the wind doesn’t blow are an order of magnitude larger.
And whether it was delivered on the back of a lie or not, you are going to have to pay for it. A huge pipeline of wind projects is in place already, each eligible for an astonishing array of hidden subsidies – the list is too long to give here. Once built, they will suck wealth from our economy and hope from our society. They will be hard, if not impossible, to close down – they have been made exempt from windfall taxes and the Government cannot simply switch them off without destroying investor confidence in the economy as a whole. If we do not reverse course soon, our children will never know the wealth we have enjoyed until now, just poverty and rationing and hardship. And all because everyone is too scared to challenge the lies. Just like Covid.
Over $250 billion swindled from US pandemic fund – report
RT | March 11, 2023
More than $250 billion in Covid-19 relief funds were lost to “fraud” and “waste,” the directors of three US government agencies testified before the House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee on Thursday.
Compounding what Deputy Inspector General Sheldon Shoemaker of the Small Business Administration (SBA) called “the biggest fraud in a generation,” the officials stressed that the figures they gave represented an extremely conservative estimate of the total amount lost as they did not include the amount defrauded from the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program.
According to a statement submitted by Shoemaker ahead of the hearing, the SBA has already uncovered $190.7 billion in potential fraud across relief programs under its jurisdiction. Specifically, it expects to find upwards of $100 billion within the scandal-plagued Paycheck Protection Program. Acting Treasury Inspector General Richard Delmar admitted to just $2.6 billion in dubious charges confirmed at his agency, pleading that ongoing audits precluded making an estimate of the full cost.
Larry Turner, inspector general of the Department of Labor, blamed the massive losses on a lack of preparation, insufficient oversight, and even the government’s generosity, making a “highly conservative” estimate of $76 billion in fraudulent spending. With no functioning system in place to verify applicants’ qualifying details in a reasonable time frame, the “unprecedented infusion of federal funds” into the program made it irresistible to fraudsters, he told the subcommittee.
Rep. Keith Mfume (D-Maryland) expressed shock that no one had predicted that requiring only “self-certification” to access such a prodigious cash hoard would lead to “a lot of hanky-panky,” while Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Florida) pointed out that the agencies did not even use existing checks and balances to vet applicants, and Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Florida) highlighted that state unemployment systems were hopelessly outdated even before the pandemic placed them under unprecedented stress. Of $45.6 billion in potential fraud lent out in association with one Labor Department program, Turner acknowledged upon questioning that $267 million had gone to dead people.
Asked about the possibility of recovering the money, Turner said that hunting down the perpetrators was financially unrewarding, as “once money goes out the door, it is hard to get it back.” Even in cases where the government has been able to track down Covid-19 benefit fraudsters and claw back some of the funds, the inspectors general were unable to tell subcommittee members what had become of some of the money.
More than $5 trillion in pandemic relief funds have been distributed since 2020. By some estimates, as much as $400 billion was stolen from the unemployment relief program alone.
Will Pakistan defy US sanctions to complete ‘Peace Pipeline’ with Iran?
By F.M. Shakil | The Cradle | March 7, 2023
Islamabad has formed a diplomatic channel to convince Washington to ease sanctions on Iran, which would finally allow for the completion of a crucial pipeline project to bring cheap Iranian natural gas to Pakistan.
Iran has vowed to take the matter to arbitration if Pakistan does not complete its portion of the pipeline by March 2024, as stipulated in an agreement between the two West Asian countries.
Discussions on constructing the massive pipeline project began almost 29 years ago, in 1994 – then called the Iran-India-Pakistan pipeline – which originally envisioned moving Iranian gas to Pakistan, Bangladesh, and China. The focus later shifted to constructing a pipeline between Pakistan and Iran only, but the project has never been completed.
According to the terms of the IP-GSPA (Gas Sales Purchase Agreement) signed between Iran and Pakistan, each country was obligated to construct the portion of the pipeline on its own territory, and the first flow of Iranian gas to Pakistan was to start January 1, 2015. The agreement stipulated Pakistan would pay Iran $1 million per day in exchange for 750 million cubic feet of gas daily, with a contract lasting 25 years.
Iran completed its portion of the pipeline in 2011, however, Pakistan has failed to construct its portion, largely due to difficulties caused by US economic sanctions imposed on Iran for the country’s alleged nuclear weapons program. US sanctions block Pakistan from purchasing Iranian gas, and this geopolitical risk has made Pakistani banks unwilling to finance the project.
Because of US foreign policy pritiorites, therefore, Pakistan continues to rely on more expensive liquified natural gas (LNG) to meet its burgeoning energy needs, which has greatly limited Pakistani economic growth and exposed the country to crises during periods of volatile LNG price spikes.
Due to these difficulties, Pakistan’s Inter-State Gas Systems (ISGS) and the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) signed a revised agreement in 2019 to allow Pakistan more time to complete its segment of the pipeline. The agreement stipulated that neither Iran nor Pakistan will take the other to court for delays or impose fines until 2024.
But US sanctions have continued to make Pakistan’s completion of the project difficult, and Iran is now threatening to sue Islamabad for $18 billion in fines if it breaks the agreement and fails to complete construction by the 2024 cutoff date.
Financial straits or US pressure
As Asif Durrani, a former Pakistan ambassador to Iran, tells The Cradle:
“Pakistan needs roughly $3 billion to lay a pipeline stretching over a radius of 781 kilometers inside the country. The question is who will finance this project, and secondly, the US sanctions on Iran, which took the air out of this project as far as Pakistan is concerned, need a revisit by the US authorities to protect the faltering economies of the region.”
The sanctions, he adds, were primarily focused on the energy sector of Iran and set a cap of $10 million on investments in the Iranian oil and gas sector.
Durrani is not convinced that US sanctions make completion of the pipeline impossible, however.
“These are lousy arguments because, despite these restrictions, Iran supplies Turkiye with almost $10 billion annually in natural gas,” he argues, adding that India and China have also resisted US sanctions.
Durrani contends that Pakistan and Iran are neighboring nations and that neighbors must always conduct business with one another. He urges private sector participation in the IP gas project to accelerate the development phase of this huge project.
Now a senior fellow at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI), the former Pakistani envoy to Tehran had in 2021 criticized the US for sabotaging the Iranian nuclear deal, claiming that Iran, as a Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) member, had the legal right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Dr. Muhammad Abdul Muqtedar Khan, an Indian-American academic and a professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware concurs with Durrani’s logic, telling The Cradle that too many countries in this region tend to yield to US pressure unnecessarily.
India, he says, disregarded US outrage over the Russian oil issue and refused to capitulate, unlike Pakistan which is still in a state of vacillation. In the same way, Pakistan could proceed with the Iran gas pipeline project, citing its energy and resource constraints in the face of pressure from Washington.
“In 1990, India, China, and even Bangladesh showed interest in the peace pipeline – but, in 2008, as a result of the Indian nuclear accord with the US, New Delhi decided to withdraw. As the thing unfolded, Iran has already installed the pipeline on their side of the border, but Pakistan is still dilly-dallying about it because of the US pressure and lack of the financial means to begin construction,” Khan adds.
He says Iran has spent a considerable amount of money constructing its section of the pipeline and would want compensation for the resulting commercial loss. “Iran has granted sufficient time for the pipeline’s development, and if Pakistan begins building its gas infrastructure, it could gain some cushion to reduce its import bill.
Pakistan is hedging its bets
Pakistan’s Secretary of Petroleum, Ali Raza Bhutta, disclosed in a meeting of the country’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that Pakistan has spoken to the US about the gas project, seeking relief in sanctions on Iran to press ahead with the construction of the pipeline.
Islamabad’s top energy official went on to add that since there was a ban on importing gas from Iran, the government has conveyed to the US ambassador to either grant Islamabad permission to go ahead with the project, or compensate Iran for the penalty imposed for opting out of the project.
As Noor Alam Khan, Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, tells The Cradle:
“I did not convene this meeting specifically for the IP gas project, the focus was only on the audit paras of the petroleum ministry, and I suggested during the meeting – not the secretary – that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should approach the US to let them know how serious the situation is.”
When informed that the secretary of petroleum had briefed the committee on the IP gas project and that media had quoted him saying that either the US should pay the damages or permit the country to continue with the IP gas project under the terms of the Iran agreement, Khan, a member of a breakaway faction of former president Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf party, became irritated, said it was nonsense, and hung up the phone.
The Pakistan National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Committee also discussed this matter last week. The committee’s chairman, Mohsin Dawar, raised fears about the fact that several nations in the region have received waivers for importing Iranian oil even though Iran is under sanctions.
Pakistan, however, was unable to secure such a waiver to conduct such lucrative oil and gas business with Iran. He pressed the appropriate ministries to examine opportunities for receiving exemptions for the IP gas pipeline with Iran, much as India and China had done for Iranian oil imports.
IP Gas Pipeline in perspective
The plan for the IP Gas Pipeline, which is also called the “Peace Pipeline,” dates back to 1994, when India was also part of the project.
The 1,700-mile (2,735 km), $7.5 billion project planned to move gas from the South Pars Gas Fields to India through the western part of Pakistan, Balochistan. Since its inception, the project has encountered numerous obstacles that have caused repeated delays in the execution of a natural gas project that was badly needed by energy-starved Pakistan.
In 2008, the three nations were close to reaching an agreement before India opted to pursue an alternative project, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI). The US pressure and sanctions on Iran appear to have impacted India’s decision to withdraw from the IP gas pipeline agreement and pursue an alternative that excluded Iran.
Then, in 2010, a 25-year-long Gas Sale and Purchase Agreement (GSPA) was signed, to construct a pipeline stretching across Pakistani territory from the Iranian border to Nawabshah, a distance of 781 kilometers.
Approximately 665 kilometers will travel through Balochistan while 115 kilometers will run through Pakistan’s Sindh province. The length of the Iranian portion of the pipeline is 1,100 kilometers. It begins in the energy economic zone of Pars and goes to Iranshahr and Bushehr. The route then continues through Fars, Kerman, Hormozghan, and Sistan-Baluchistan.
From the Pakistani border to Nawabshah, the pipeline will stretch around 781 kilometers. After completion, the IP gas pipeline was projected to supply 750 million cubic feet of gas per day to Islamabad from Iran. According to the deal, gas supplies from Iran would start in 2014. But, this assumption turned out to be a pipe dream and has not been realized during the past nine years.
A panacea for Pakistan’s economic woes
“Pakistan’s issue with foreign reserves would progressively get worse if it were unable to achieve a deal with Iran because years were spent in negotiations between Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey to create a close economic relationship for significant infrastructure projects, but the US sanctions and pressure shattered all these dreams,” Muqtedar Khan maintains.
He believes that Pakistan is currently dealing with a protracted foreign exchange problem that cannot be remedied by borrowing money from China, Saudi Arabia, or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) because Pakistan would still have to pay back the initial debt.
“Strangely, Pakistan and Iran have failed to create a mutual understanding despite their common Islamic background. As an alternative to US dollars, they may conduct business in their own currencies. Even though they are neighbors, it would be a diplomatic failure if they did not restore a reciprocal trade relationship,” Muqtedar Khan concludes.
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Book Review
The Voters’ Self-Induced Matrix
By Jeb Smith | The Libertarian Institute | April 20, 2026
In Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, Professor Todd Rose explains that to belong to a group, people “keep twisting [themselves] into pretzels, trying to conform to what we falsely believe everyone else expects of us.” Seeking acceptance from the group, we conform in language, behavior, beliefs, and practices. As a result, we lose our individuality and aggregate into herds. Within our group we create an alternate reality to fit whichever collective mindset we attach ourselves to, and interpret the world through those lenses—our innate desire to belong overrides reality.
Rose says these illusions “have become a defining feature of our modern society.” In other words, the collectivist mindset is a great conduit for spreading illusions; thus, it is the politician’s favored form of governance.
Rose points to studies in psychology and neuroscience showing we delude ourselves into believing what the majority does, even if it is not what we desire or know to be accurate. … continue
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