On Wednesday, an “industry-led and UN-convened” alliance of private banking and financial institutions announced plans at the COP26 conference to overhaul the role of global and regional financial institutions, including the World Bank and IMF, as part of a broader plan to “transform” the global financial system. The officially stated purpose of this proposed overhaul, per alliance members, is to promote the transition to a “Net-Zero” economy. However, the group’s proposed “reimagining” of international financial institutions (IFIs), according to their recently published “progress report”, would also move to merge these institutions with the private banking interests that compose the alliance; create a new system of “global financial governance”; and erode national sovereignty among developing countries by forcing them to establish business environments deemed “friendly” to the interests of alliance members. In other words, the powerful banking interests that compose this group are pushing to recreate the entire global financial system for their benefit under the guise of promoting sustainability.
This alliance, called the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), was launched in April by John Kerry, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Change; Janet Yellen, US Secretary of the Treasury and former chair of the Federal Reserve; and Mark Carney, the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance and former chair of the Bank of England and Bank of Canada. Carney, who is also the UK Prime Minister’s Finance Advisor for the COP26 conference, currently co-chairs the alliance with US billionaire and former Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg.
Upon its creation, GFANZ stated that it would “provide a forum for strategic coordination among the leadership of finance institutions from across the finance sector to accelerate the transition to a net zero economy” and “mobilize the trillions of dollars necessary” to accomplish the group’s zero emissions goals. At the time of the alliance’s launch, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson described GFANZ as “uniting the world’s banks and financial institutions behind the global transition to net zero” while John Kerry noted that “the largest financial players in the world recognize energy transition represents a vast commercial opportunity.” In analyzing those two statements together, it seems clear that GFANZ has united the world’s most powerful private banks and financial institutions behind what they see as, first and foremost, “a vast commercial opportunity”, their exploitation of which they are marketing as a “planetary imperative.”
GFANZ is composed of several “subsector alliances”, including the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative (NZAM), the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance (NZAOA), and the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). Together, they command a formidable part of global private banking and finance interests, with the NZBA alone currently representing 43% of all global banking assets. However, the “largest financial players” who dominate GFANZ include the CEOs of BlackRock, Citi, Bank of America, Banco Santander and HSBC, as well as David Schwimmer, CEO of the London Stock Exchange Group and Nili Gilbert, Chair of the Investment Committee of the David Rockefeller Fund.
Notably, another Rockefeller-connected entity, the Rockefeller Foundation, recently played a pivotal role in the creation of Natural Asset Corporations (NACs) in September. These NACs seek to create a new asset class that would put the natural world, as well as the ecological processes that underpin all life, up for sale under the guise of “protecting” them. Principals of GFANZ, including BlackRock’s Larry Fink, have long been enthusiastic about the prospects of NACs and other related efforts to financialize the natural world and he has also played a key role in marketing said financialization as necessary to combat climate change.
As part of COP26, GFANZ – a key group at that conference – is publishing a plan aimed at scaling “private capital flows to emerging and developing economies.” Per the alliance’s press release, this plan focuses on “the development of country platforms to connect the now enormous private capital committed to net zero with country projects, scaling blended finance through MDBs [multilateral development banks] and developing high integrity, credible global carbon markets.” The press release notes that this “enormous private capital” is money that alliance members seek to invest in emerging and developing countries, estimated at over $130 trillion, and that – in order to deploy these trillions in invest – “the global financial system is being transformed” by this very alliance in coordination with the group that convened them, the United Nations.
Proposing a Takeover
Details of GFANZ’s plan to deploy trillions of member investments into emerging markets and developing countries was published in the alliance’s inaugural “Progress Report”, the release of which was timed to coincide with the COP26 conference. The report details the alliance’s “near-term work plan and ambitions,” which the alliance succinctly summarizes as a “program of work to transform the financial system.”
The report notes that the alliance has moved from the “commitment” stage to the “engagement” stage, with the main focus of the engagement stage being the “mobilization of private capital into emerging markets and developing countries through private-sector leadership and public-private collaboration.” In doing so, per the report, GFANZ seeks to create “an international financial architecture” that will increase levels of private investment from alliance members in those economies. Their main objectives in this regard revolve around the creation of “ambitious country platforms” and increased collaboration between MDBs and the private financial sector.
GFANZ Progress Report (Download)
Per GFANZ, a “country platform” is defined as a mechanism that convenes and aligns “stakeholders”, i.e. a mechanism for public-private partnership/stakeholder capitalism, “around a specific issue or geography”. Examples offered include Mike Bloomberg’s Climate Finance Leadership Initiative (CFLI), which is partnered with Goldman Sachs and HSBC, among other private-sector institutions. While framed as being driven by “stakeholders,” existing examples of “country platforms” offered by the GFANZ are either private-sector led initiatives, like the CFLI, or public-private partnerships that are dominated by powerful multinational corporations and billionaires. As recently explained by journalist and researcher Iain Davis, these “stakeholder capitalism” mechanism models – despite being presented as offering a “more responsible” form of capitalism – instead allow corporations and private entities to participate in forming the regulations that govern their own markets and giving them a greatly increased role in political decision-making by placing them on equal footing with national governments. It is essentially a creative way of marketing “corporatism,” the definition of fascism infamously supplied by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
In addition to the creation of “corporatist” “country platforms” that focus on specific areas and/or issues in the developing world, GFANZ aims to also further “corporatize” multilateral development banks (MDBs) and development finance institutions (DFIs) in order to better fulfill the investment goals of alliance members. Per the alliance, this is described as increasing “MBD-private sector collaboration.” The GFANZ report notes that “MDBs play a critical role in helping to grow investment flows” in the developing world. MDBs, like the World Bank, have long been criticized for accomplishing this task by trapping developing nations in debt and then using that debt to force those nations to deregulate markets (specifically financial markets), privatize state assets and implement unpopular austerity policies. The GFANZ report makes it clear that the alliance now seeks to use these same, controversial tactics of MDBs by forcing even greater deregulation on developing countries to facilitate “green” investments from alliance members.
The report explicitly states that MDBs should be used to prompt developing nations “to create the right high-level, cross-cutting enabling environments” for alliance members’ investments in those nations. The significantly greater levels of private capital investment, which are needed to reach Net-Zero per GFANZ, require that MDBs are used to prompt developing nations to “establish investment-friendly business environments; a replicable framework for deploying private capital investments; and pipelines of bankable investment opportunities.” GFANZ then notes that “private capital and investment will flow to these projects if governments and policymakers create the appropriate conditions”, i.e. enabling environments for private-sector investments.
In other words, through the proposed increase in private-sector involvement in MDBs, like the World Bank and regional development banks, alliance members seek to use MDBs to globally impose massive and extensive deregulation on developing countries by using the decarbonization push as justification. No longer must MDBs entrap developing nations in debt to force policies that benefit foreign and multinational private-sector entities, as climate change-related justifications can now be used for the same ends.
BlackRock CEO and GFANZ Principal Larry Fink talks to CNBC during COP26; Source: CNBC
This new modality for MDBs, along with their fusion with the private sector, is ultimately what GFANZ proposes in terms of “reimagining” these institutions. GFANZ principal and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, during a COP26 panel that took place on November 2nd, explicitly referred to the plan to overhaul these institutions when he said that: “If we’re going to be serious about climate change in the emerging world, we’re going to have to really focus on the reimagination of the World Bank and the IMF.”
Fink continued:
“They are the senior lender, and not enough private capital’s coming into the emerging world today because of the risks associated with the political risk, investing in brownfield investments — if we are serious about elevating investment capital in the emerging world … I’m urging the owners of those institutions, the equity owners, to focus on how we reimagine these institutions and rethink their charter.”
GFANZ’s proposed plans to reimagine MDBs are particularly alarming given how leaked US military documents openly admit that such banks are essentially “financial weapons” that have been used as “Financial Instruments and Diplomatic Instruments of US National Power” as well as Instruments of what those same documents refer to as the “current global governance system” that are used to force developing countries to adopt policies they otherwise would not.
In addition, given Fink’s statements, it should not be surprising that the GFANZ report notes that their effort to establish “country platforms” and alter the functioning and charters of MDBs is a key component of implementing pre-planned recommendations aimed at “seizing the New Bretton Woods moment” and remaking the “global financial governance” system so that is “promote[s] economic stability and sustainable growth.”
As noted in other GFANZ documents and on their website, the goal of the alliance is the transformation of the global financial system and it is quite obvious from member statements and alliance documents that the goal of that transformation is to facilitate the investment goals of alliance members beyond what is currently possible by using climate change-related dictates, as opposed to debt, as the means to that end.
The UN and the “Quiet Revolution”
In light of GFANZ’s membership and their ambitions, some may wonder why the United Nations would back such a predatory initiative. Doesn’t the United Nations, after all, chiefly work with national governments as opposed to private-sector interests?
Though that is certainly the prevailing public perception of the UN, the organization has – for decades – been following a “stakeholder capitalist” model that privileges the private sector and billionaire “philanthropists” over national governments, with the latter merely being tasked with creating “enabling environments” for the policies created by and for the benefit of the former.
Speaking to the World Economic Forum in 1998, then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan made this shift explicit:
“The United Nations has been transformed since we last met here in Davos. The Organization has undergone a complete overhaul that I have described as a ‘quiet revolution’… A fundamental shift has occurred. The United Nations once dealt only with governments. By now we know that peace and prosperity cannot be achieved without partnerships involving governments, international organizations, the business community and civil society…The business of the United Nations involves the businesses of the world.”
With the UN now essentially a vehicle for the promotion of stakeholder capitalism, it is only fitting that it would “convene” and support the efforts of a group like GFANZ to extend that stakeholder capitalist model to other institutions involved in global governance, specifically global financial governance. Allowing GFANZ members, i.e. many of the largest private banks and financial institutions in the world, to fuse with MDBs, remake the “global financial governance system” and gain increased control over political decisions in the emerging world is a banker’s dream come true. To get this far, all they have needed is to convince enough of the world’s population that such shifts are necessary due to the perceived urgency of climate change and the need to rapidly decarbonize the economy. Yet, if put into practice, what will result is hardly a “greener” world, but a world dominated by a small financial and technocratic elite who are free to profit and pillage from both “natural capital” and “human capital” as they see fit.
Today, MDBs are used as “instruments of power” that utilize debt to force developing nations to implement policies that benefit foreign interests, not their national interests. If GFANZ gets their way, the MDBs of tomorrow will be used to essentially eliminate national sovereignty, privatize the “natural assets” (e.g. ecosystems, ecological processes) of the developing world and force increasingly technocratic policies designed by global governance institutions and think tanks on ever more disenfranchised populations.
Though GFANZ has cloaked itself in lofty rhetoric of “saving the planet,” their plans ultimately amount to a corporate-led coup that will make the global financial system even more corrupt and predatory and further reduce the sovereignty of national governments in the developing world.
November 6, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Economics, Environmentalism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | United Nations |
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The White House has just released new policies requiring all companies – big and small – to coerce their workers into accepting the vaccine, or face termination, as the Biden Administration continues to up the pressure on all working Americans to get vaccinated before Jan. 4.
According to Axios, President Biden is planning to announce Thursday that employers with more than 100 workers on their payroll must guarantee that their workers are fully vaccinated, or tested weekly, by Jan. 4, 2022. If not, they could face federal fines starting at tens of thousands of dollars per offense.
What’s more, health-care workers will face even tougher restrictions which will effectively require every health-care worker in the country to be vaccinated, or lose their job, despite the fact that millions of health-care workers have already been infected with the virus by natural means.
To be sure, managing weekly testing programs for a minority of corporate employees will be extremely costly, and the ramifications of this new policy will essentially force employees for the biggest companies in the US to accept the vaccine.
Per Axios, the new rules – formally known as the COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard – will be enforced by OSHA. They will affect roughly two-thirds of America’s workforce, or roughly 80MM people. Many businesses and hospitals have already started to enforce vaccine mandates, and while Axios reports that they have seen “minimal” noncompliance, that doesn’t exactly square with the fact that less than 60% of the American population is fully vaccinated.
While corporations might be able to absorb some of these costs, small businesses will likely be left with some difficult decisions to make. However, there’s one important catch: OSHA will mostly rely on “complaints” to enforce the rule, meaning it will be up to American workers whether or not they want to hold their fellow workers accountable for defying the policy. This incentive to snitch out co-workers and neighbors has already elicited criticism from some, including Conservative Radio host Dan Bongino, who has pushed back against vaccine mandates in favor of bodily autonomy.
The strict mandate for health-care workers is already creating some problems because, while 40% of health-care businesses have purportedly already enforced the policy, the supposedly “minimal” level of noncompliance is reportedly exacerbating worker shortages at hospitals and other critical service providers.
In another indication of how companies are struggling with the mandate, some federal contractors had been expected to enforce the Biden Admin’s vaccine mandate by Dec. 8, but those expectations have now been pushed back to Jan. 4. When asked whether the pushback was due to worker shortages, or the timing of the holiday season, they refused to comment, saying only that the delay is meant to “align” with health-care facilities and US employers.
Perhaps President Biden (and VP/President-in-waiting Kamala Harris) have already forgotten the lessons of Tuesday’s “off-year” election?
November 4, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, Joe Biden, United States |
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President Joe Biden has called out Russia and OPEC countries for causing US energy prices to rise, even as he implements policies to curtail domestic oil and natural gas production.
“If you take a look at, you know, gas prices and you take a look at oil prices, that is a consequence of, thus far, the refusal of Russia or the OPEC nations to pump more oil,” Biden told reporters on Tuesday at the COP26 climate summit in Scotland. “We’ll see what happens on that score sooner than later,” he added.
Prices for the leading US crude benchmark, West Texas Intermediate (WTI), have surged to around $84 per barrel from $48 per barrel since the beginning of 2021, contributing to the nation’s highest inflation rate in 13 years. Gasoline prices are at a seven-year high. The key natural gas benchmark, Henry Hub, is nearing $6/mmBtu in Nymex futures trading after starting the year below $2.50/mmBtu.
While the president pointed the finger at Russia and OPEC for failing to help bring down oil prices, he said that inflation more broadly is being spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on supply chains. US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Sunday that the supply-chain woes will continue until the pandemic ends.
The Biden administration called on OPEC in August to help bring oil prices down, raising the ire of major US producers, who argued that he should be encouraging higher domestic supplies.
The day he took office in January, Biden revoked a federal permit for a new pipeline needed to bring more Canadian oil to US refiners. A week later, he suspended the leasing of new oil and gas properties on federal lands and waters as part of his plan to slash reliance on fossil fuels.
The US surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest crude producer in 2018 and became the third-biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas in 2019. That same year, the country achieved net energy independence for the first time since the 1950s – reaching a goal that many observers thought impossible.
But US oil and gas output stumbled last year amid the Covid-19 pandemic, and domestic volumes are projected to decline again in 2021.
November 3, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | Joe Biden, United States |
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I have a simple question for every ‘expert’ who thinks they understand the root causes of the shipping crisis:
Why is there only one crane for every 50–100 trucks at every port in America?
No ‘expert’ will answer this question.
I’m a Class A truck driver with experience in nearly every aspect of freight. My experience in the trucking industry of 20 years tells me that nothing is going to change in the shipping industry.
Let’s start with understanding some things about ports. Outside of dedicated port trucking companies, most trucking companies won’t touch shipping containers. There is a reason for that.
Think of going to the port as going to WalMart on Black Friday, but imagine only ONE cashier for thousands of customers. Think about the lines. Except at a port, there are at least THREE lines to get a container in or out. The first line is the ‘in’ gate, where hundreds of trucks daily have to pass through 5–10 available gates. The second line is waiting to pick up your container. The third line is for waiting to get out. For each of these lines the wait time is a minimum of an hour, and I’ve waited up to 8 hours in the first line just to get into the port. Some ports are worse than others, but excessive wait times are not uncommon. It’s a rare day when a driver gets in and out in under two hours. By ‘rare day’, I mean maybe a handful of times a year. Ports don’t even begin to have enough workers to keep the ports fluid, and it doesn’t matter where you are, coastal or inland port, union or non-union port, it’s the same everywhere.
Furthermore, I’m fortunate enough to be a Teamster — a union driver — an employee paid by the hour. Most port drivers are ‘independent contractors’, leased onto a carrier who is paying them by the load. Whether their load takes two hours, fourteen hours, or three days to complete, they get paid the same, and they have to pay 90% of their truck operating expenses (the carrier might pay the other 10%, but usually less.) The rates paid to non-union drivers for shipping container transport are usually extremely low. In a majority of cases, these drivers don’t come close to my union wages. They pay for all their own repairs and fuel, and all truck related expenses. I honestly don’t understand how many of them can even afford to show up for work. There’s no guarantee of ANY wage (not even minimum wage), and in many cases, these drivers make far below minimum wage. In some cases they work 70 hour weeks and still end up owing money to their carrier.
So when the coastal ports started getting clogged up last spring due to the impacts of COVID on business everywhere, drivers started refusing to show up. Congestion got so bad that instead of being able to do three loads a day, they could only do one. They took a 2/3 pay cut and most of these drivers were working 12 hours a day or more. While carriers were charging increased pandemic shipping rates, none of those rate increases went to the driver wages. Many drivers simply quit. However, while the pickup rate for containers severely decreased, they were still being offloaded from the boats. And it’s only gotten worse.
Earlier this summer, both BNSF and Union Pacific Railways shut down their container yards in the Chicago area for a week for inbound containers. These are some of the busiest ports in the country. They had miles upon miles of stack (container) trains waiting to get in to be unloaded. According to BNSF, containers were sitting in the port 1/3 longer than usual, and they simply ran out of space to put them until some of the ones already on the ground had been picked up. Though they did reopen the area ports, they are still over capacity. Stack trains are still sitting loaded, all over the country, waiting to get into a port to unload. And they have to be unloaded, there is a finite number of railcars. Equipment shortages are a large part of this problem.
One of these critical shortages is the container chassis.
A container chassis is the trailer the container sits on. Cranes will load these in port. Chassis are typically container company provided, as trucking companies generally don’t have their own chassis units. They are essential for container trucking. While there are some privately owned chassis, there aren’t enough of those to begin to address the backlog of containers today, and now drivers are sitting around for hours, sometimes days, waiting for chassis.
The impact of the container crisis is now hitting residences in proximity to trucking companies. Containers are being pulled out of the port and dropped anywhere the drivers can find because the trucking company lots are full. Ports are desperate to get containers out so they can unload the new containers coming in by boat. When this happens there is no plan to deliver this freight yet, they are literally just making room for the next ship at the port. This won’t last long, as this just compounds the shortage of chassis. Ports will eventually find themselves unable to move containers out of the port until sitting containers are delivered, emptied, returned, or taken to a storage lot (either loaded or empty) and taken off the chassis there so the chassis can be put back into use. The priority is not delivery, the priority is just to clear the port enough to unload the next boat.
What happens when a container does get to a warehouse?
A large portion of international containers must be hand unloaded because the products are not on pallets. It takes a working crew a considerable amount of time to do this, and warehouse work is usually low wage. A lot of it is actually only temp staffed. Many full time warehouse workers got laid off when the pandemic started, and didn’t come back. So warehouses, like everybody else, are chronically short staffed.
When the port trucker gets to the warehouse, they have to wait for a door (you’ve probably seen warehouse buildings with a bank of roll-up doors for trucks on one side of the building.) The warehouses are behind schedule, sometimes by weeks. After maybe a 2 hour wait, the driver gets a door and drops the container — but now often has to pick up an empty, and goes back to the port to wait in line all over again to drop off the empty.
At the warehouse, the delivered freight is unloaded, and it is usually separated and bound to pallets, then shipped out in much smaller quantities to final destination. A container that had a couple dozen pallets of goods on it will go out on multiple trailers to multiple different destinations a few pallets at a time.
From personal experience, what used to take me 20–30 minutes to pick up at a warehouse can now take three to four hours. This slowdown is warehouse management related: very few warehouses are open 24 hours, and even if they are, many are so short staffed it doesn’t make much difference, they are so far behind schedule. It means that as a freight driver, I cannot pick up as much freight in a day as I used to, and since I can’t get as much freight on my truck, the whole supply chain is backed up. Freight simply isn’t moving.
It’s important to understand what the cost implications are for consumers with this lack of supply in the supply chain. It’s pure supply and demand economics. Consider volume shipping customers who primarily use ‘general freight’, which is the lowest cost shipping and typically travels in a ‘space available’ fashion. They have usually been able to get their freight moved from origination to delivery within two weeks. Think about how you get your packages from Amazon. Even without paying for Prime, you usually get your stuff in a week. The majority of freight travels at this low cost, ‘no guarantee of delivery date’ way, and for the most part it’s been fine for both shippers and consumers. Those days are coming to an end.
People who want their deliveries in a reasonable time are going to have to start paying premium rates. There will be levels of priority, and each increase in rate premium essentially jumps that freight ahead of all the freight with lower or no premium rates. Unless the lack of shipping infrastructure is resolved, things will back up in a cascading effect to the point where if your products are going general freight, you might wait a month or two for delivery. It’s already starting. If you use truck shipping in any way, you’ve no doubt started to see the delays. Think about what’s going to happen to holiday season shipping.
What is going to compel the shippers and carriers to invest in the needed infrastructure? The owners of these companies can theoretically not change anything and their business will still be at full capacity because of the backlog of containers. The backlog of containers doesn’t hurt them. It hurts anyone paying shipping costs — that is, manufacturers selling products and consumers buying products. But it doesn’t hurt the owners of the transportation business — in fact the laws of supply and demand mean that they are actually going to make more money through higher rates, without changing a thing. They don’t have to improve or add infrastructure (because it’s costly), and they don’t have to pay their workers more (warehouse workers, crane operators, truckers).
The ‘experts’ want to say we can do things like open the ports 24/7, and this problem will be over in a couple weeks. They are blowing smoke, and they know it. Getting a container out of the port, as slow and aggravating as it is, is really the easy part, if you can find a truck and chassis to haul it. But every truck driver in America can’t operate 24/7, even if the government suspends Hours Of Service Regulations (federal regulations determining how many hours a week we can work/drive), we still need to sleep sometime. There are also restrictions on which trucks can go into a port. They have to be approved, have RFID tags, port registered, and the drivers have to have at least a TWIC card (Transportation Worker Identification Credential from the federal Transportation Security Administration). Some ports have additional requirements. As I have already said, most trucking companies won’t touch shipping containers with a 100 foot pole. What we have is a system with a limited amount of trucks and qualified drivers, many of whom are already working 14 hours a day (legally, the maximum they can), and now the supposed fix is to have them work 24 hours a day, every day, and not stop until the backlog is cleared. It’s not going to happen. It is not physically possible. There is no “cavalry” coming. No trucking companies are going to pay to register their trucks to haul containers for something that is supposedly so “short term,” because these same companies can get higher rate loads outside the ports. There is no extra capacity to be had, and it makes NO difference anyway, because If you can’t get a container unloaded at a warehouse, having drivers work 24/7/365 solves nothing.
What it will truly take to fix this problem is to run EVERYTHING 24/7: ports (both coastal and domestic),trucks, and warehouses. We need tens of thousands more chassis, and a much greater capacity in trucking.
Before the pandemic, through the pandemic, and really for the whole history of the freight industry at all levels, owners make their money by having low labor costs — that is, low wages and bare minimum staffing. Many supply chain workers are paid minimum wages, no benefits, and there’s a high rate of turnover because the physical conditions can be brutal (there aren’t even bathrooms for truckers waiting hours at ports because the port owners won’t pay for them. The truckers aren’t port employees and port owners are only legally required to pay for bathroom facilities for their employees. This is a nationwide problem). For the whole supply chain to function efficiently every point has to be working at an equal capacity. Any point that fails bottlenecks the whole system. Right now, it’s ALL failing spectacularly TOGETHER, but fixing one piece won’t do anything. It ALL needs to be fixed, and at the same time.
How do you convince truckers to work when their pay isn’t guaranteed, even to the point where they lose money?
Nobody is compelling the transportation industries to make the needed changes to their infrastructure. There are no laws compelling them to hire the needed workers, or pay them a living wage, or improve working conditions. And nobody is compelling them to buy more container chassis units, more cranes, or more storage space. This is for an industry that literally every business in the world is reliant on in some way or another.
My prediction is that nothing is going to change and the shipping crisis is only going to get worse. Nobody in the supply chain wants to pay to solve the problem. They literally just won’t pay to solve the problem. At the point we are at now, things are so backed up that the backups THEMSELVES are causing container companies, ports, warehouses, and trucking companies to charge massive rate increases for doing literally NOTHING. Container companies have already decreased the maximum allowable times before containers have to be back to the port, and if the congestion is so bad that you can’t get the container back into the port when it is due, the container company can charge massive late fees. The ports themselves will start charging massive storage fees for not getting containers out on time — storage charges alone can run into thousands of dollars a day. Warehouses can charge massive premiums for their services, and so can trucking companies. Chronic understaffing has led to this problem, but it is allowing these same companies to charge ten times more for regular services. Since they’re not paying the workers any more than they did last year or five years ago, the whole industry sits back and cashes in on the mess it created. In fact, the more things are backed up, the more every point of the supply chain cashes in. There is literally NO incentive to change, even if it means consumers have to do holiday shopping in July and pay triple for shipping.
This is the new normal. All brought to you by the ‘experts’ running our supply chains.
November 1, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Economics | United States |
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The Biden administration is now suggesting federal employers and government contractors offer “flexibility” when enforcing COVID vaccine mandates against unvaccinated employees. This announcement is an about-face from the far-reaching rules President Biden laid out in a September speech where he lashed out at those who are hesitant to get the vaccine.
“Deadlines are not cliffs,” Jeff Zients, White House coronavirus response coordinator, told reporters at a briefing Wednesday. “The federal worker deadline is the 22nd of November, and the federal contractor deadline is not until December 8th,” he said.
Zients added:
“But even once we hit those deadlines, we expect federal agencies and contractors will follow their standard HR processes and that, for any of the probably relatively small percent of employees that are not in compliance, they’ll go through education, counseling, accommodations and then enforcement.”
This announcement followed a meeting earlier this week between business groups and the White House Office of Management and Budget during which business leaders asked the Biden administration to postpone its vaccine mandate until after the holiday season.
The National Retail Federation, American Trucking Association and Retail Industry Leaders Association asked the White House to give businesses 90 days to comply, which would pause the implementation of the mandate until no earlier than late January.
In an interview with CNBC, Retail Industry Leaders Association President Evan Armstrong warned the coming mandate could trigger resignations at places already facing severe staffing issues.
While business leaders are holding discussions with policymakers and airing their grievances regarding how mandates will affect their bottom line, thousands of workers are protesting the policy, with some walking off the job.
A recent survey by Kaiser Family Foundation, found 72% of unvaccinated workers say they will quit their job if their employer mandates the vaccine.
Earlier this week, in Elma, New York, hundreds of workers at Moog Facilities walked off the job to protest the federal vaccine mandate.
“We just want to work,” said Matt Schieber, a Moog employee. “We don’t want to be forced to take a medical procedure if we don’t want it.”
New York City is requiring all city workers to be vaccinated before the Nov. 1 deadline. According to CBS-NY, employees from all city departments are protesting the mandate, some by “not providing city services and others by organizing rallies.”
On Thursday, thousands of firefighters and fire union officials protested the vaccine mandate in front of Gracie Mansion, the main residence of New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio.
“There is going to be a catastrophic manpower shortage if 3,500 firefighters that are currently unvaccinated are told not to go to work,” Uniformed Firefighters Association President Andrew Ansbro told ABC7.
The New York Post reported the New York City Fire Department is “preparing to shutter as many as 20% of all city fire companies and take an equal portion of its ambulances off the streets ahead of the impending deadline.”
Firefighters aren’t the only workers protesting the mandate in The Big Apple. Thirty-five percent of the workforce at the Department of Sanitation are unvaccinated and some have stopped showing up to work.
Residents of the Westerleigh neighborhood in Staten Island and the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn are beginning to see the result of a city missing large swaths of its sanitation workforce.
One Bay Ridge resident told CBS, “It’s starting to smell. They’ve got tuna fish bags down the block.”
New York healthcare workers are currently in court over the state’s vaccine mandate, which did not make exemptions for those with religious objections to the COVID jab.
Also, scores of healthcare workers took to the streets of Rochester, New York, Monday to express their opposition to Mayo Clinic’s vaccine mandate.
As of Oct. 14, about 8,000 workers — or 12% of Mayo Clinic’s entire workforce — were unvaccinated. The clinic said employees not in compliance with the mandate by Jan 3 will be terminated.
One Mayo Clinic administrative assistant who recently resigned over the coming mandates estimated at least 700 employees are “ready to quit or be fired.”
In New Jersey, one of the largest hospital systems, RWJBarnabas Health, fired more than 100 of its employees this week who refused to comply with its vaccination policy.
Another behemoth hospital chain, Ballad Health, decided to forgo its vaccine mandate for healthcare workers after computer modeling suggested 15% of their nurses would quit.
Police in several states have resisted and protested the new mandate requirements. As reported by the DailySignal, “major cities across the United States risk losing one-third or more of their police forces” due to COVID vaccine mandates.
Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara said, “It’s safe to say that the city of Chicago will have a police force at 50% or less for this weekend coming up.”
NPR reported at least 150 Massachusetts State Police officers resigned ahead of the state vaccine mandate.
The Washington State Police force has also faced problems regarding COVID vaccine mandates, with 74 commissioned officers, 67 troopers, six sergeants and one captain resigning in protest to new vaccine policies.
The city of Seattle lost more than 300 officers over the past year. Earlier this month, Seattle’s police department had to send detectives and non-patrol officers to respond to emergency calls because of a shortage of patrol officers.
At the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, 185 employees quit as a result of the lab’s COVID vaccine mandate, which they opposed in court. Their legal action failed. Newsweek reported, “more than 100 scientists, nuclear engineers, research technicians, designers, project managers, and other employees joined the attempt to block the mandate.”
City workers in Los Angeles have until Dec. 18 to get fully vaccinated. Those who refuse to get vaccinated should “prepare to lose their job,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said earlier this week.
The workers originally had until Oct. 20 to get fully vaccinated. During the extended period, unvaccinated workers will have $65 deducted from their paychecks twice a week to cover the cost of weekly testing.
In Lafayette, Indiana, workers at GE Aviation are protesting the company’s vaccine mandate for a second time. Employees have until Dec. 8 to be vaccinated or they could lose their jobs.
Protesters say many of them have already had COVID so they feel their natural immunity will protect them. They say they feel they should have the choice to get it or not.
Jeremy Loffredo is a freelance reporter for The Defender. His investigative reporting has been featured in The Grayzone and Unlimited Hangout. Jeremy formerly produced news programs at RT America.
© 2021 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
October 30, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, Joe Biden, United States |
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Today, Governor Kristi Noem signed Executive Order 2021-14, protecting state employees from President Biden’s federal vaccine mandates. She also released this video announcing her decision.
“South Dakota is fighting back against President Biden’s illegal vaccine mandates,” said Governor Kristi Noem. “Our state has many contracts with the federal government, and President Biden is attempting to use those contracts to force state employees to be vaccinated against their will. My executive order will protect their rights to medical and religious exemptions under any federal vaccine mandates. I am already talking with legislators about extending these protections to private employees through legislation as well.”
For the medical exemption, employees need a written statement from a physician stating that the COVID-19 vaccination is contraindicated for medical reasons.
For the religious exemption, a form will be made available by the Bureau of Human Resources that shall read in full, “I, [insert person’s full name], dissent and object to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds, which includes moral, ethical, and philosophical beliefs or principles.”
Due to established precedent, this Executive Order does not apply to service members with the South Dakota National Guard who must meet federal readiness responsibilities for deployment.
During the 2022 legislative session, Governor Noem will work with the legislature to make these protections for state employees permanent, and to extend similar health and religious liberty protections to employees of private businesses who adopted mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policies.
Today, following Governor Noem’s promise to “see [President Biden] in court,” the State of South Dakota joined a lawsuit against the Biden Administration’s COVID vaccine mandate for federal contractors.
“South Dakota is standing up with other states to protect our people from the Biden Administration’s illegal mandates,” said Governor Kristi Noem. “Though they are delaying their announcement of other mandates because they know those would be unconstitutional, we will not wait to fight this federal contractor mandate. We set up our defense with an executive order earlier this week. Now it’s time to go on offense.”
Earlier this month, the Biden Administration sent notices to federal contractors, including state entities, indicating that they will be enforcing the federal contractor mandate. This lawsuit is in response to those enforcement steps.
This action follows Governor Noem’s executive order earlier this week to protect South Dakota state employees from the Biden Administration’s illegal mandate for federal contractors. Governor Noem’s order guaranteed medical and religious exemptions for these employees, and Governor Noem also announced her intention to bring legislation to extend similar protections to private workers.
South Dakota is joined in the lawsuit by the states of Missouri, Nebraska, Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Wyoming. You can find the court filing here.
October 30, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is calling for employers to be held liable if their employees suffer injuries from mandated vaccines — even if the mandates were a result of federal edicts.
“We need to take action to protect Florida jobs and we have a situation now, unfortunately, in our country where we have a federal government that is very much trying to use the heavy hand of government to force a lot of these injections,” DeSantis said.
Saying he and his constituents believe in “basic medical freedom and individual choice,” and that “your right to earn a living should not be contingent upon COVID shots,” DeSantis said
If OSHA ends up coming out with the mandate dictated by President Biden, he plans to contest it, DeSantis added. He also plans to contest federal mandates on contractors that work with the federal government, but also work on the state level.
He also plans to contest the mandate that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are talking about handing down on hospitals and health care providers that accept Medicare and Medicaid.
“So what we’re going to be doing in addition to mounting aggressive legal challenges to federal mandates [is to] be taking legislative action to add protections for people.”
October 30, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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Kiev may soon increase firewood exports to the EU to help the bloc deal with energy shortages brought about by soaring gas prices, the head of Ukraine’s Analysis and Strategy Center, Igor Chalenko, says.
“Firewood is, undoubtedly, an interesting commodity for exports, especially for the European Union’s market. In this heating season, they fall short by 70 billion cubic meters to cover their needs until the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline gets up and running,” Igor Chalenko told a press conference this week.
While Ukraine is among the continent’s top 10 forest-rich states, “the EU is considering firewood as an energy product,” Chalenko said, adding that the current situation with forest felling in western Ukraine is dire, but that Kiev may nevertheless soon lift the ban on massive timber exports to Europe for additional profits.
“The moratorium’s removal is a condition for Ukraine to receive a 600-million-euro tranche from the European Commission. Accordingly, our export of timber in all positions can only increase,” Chalenko said. He added that the step could badly affect the country’s timber processing industry, which has shown significant growth in recent years.
Authorities in Kiev signaled that they intend to lift the current moratorium on timber exports to the EU earlier in October, calling it a “trade irritant.” However, in order to do so, Ukraine intends to create a transparent timber trade system, introducing fines for illegal forest felling and the purchase of illegal timber from Ukraine by European companies.
Ukraine has experienced a shortage of firewood due to energy price hikes. Firewood prices in the country have jumped recently from 50% to 200%, Chalenko said.
Combined with the shortage of coal and gas, Ukraine itself might face serious problems in the current heating season, including sweeping blackouts and an increase in tariffs for both households and industry.
According to Mikhail Volynets, the head of the country’s miners’ union, there are 565,000 tons of coal in the warehouses of thermal power plants, which is 88,000 less than the country needs. Natural gas reserves in Ukraine’s storage facilities stand at 18.8 billion cubic meters, 9.4 billion cubic meters less than last year. And with Russia’s decision to stop deliveries of thermal coal to Ukraine from November 1, Volynets says the prospect is far from optimistic.
October 30, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | European Union, Ukraine |
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In the question and answer session that followed President Putin’s speech to the annual Valdai Discussion Club meeting in Sochi last week, Vladimir Vladimirovich said he was thankful to the European Union for imposing sanctions on Russia in 2014, because Russia’s counter-sanctions, banning food imports from the EU, resulted in an enormous boost to its agricultural industry. Russian farming coped magnificently with the challenge. Putin mentioned the $25 billion in agricultural exports that Russia booked in the last year and he went on to thank Russia’s workers in the sector who made this possible.
These remarks would suggest to both laymen and experts in the West the emergence of Russia as the world’s number one exporter of wheat and its leading position as global exporter of other grains. As we know, investments in industrialized farming by Russia’s oligarchs and agricultural industry giants have paid off in higher crop yields and insured their production volumes against weather imposed damage through farming in multiple regions. Moving beyond the traditional production centers in the ‘black soil’ belt of the south, Russian grain farmers have made excellent use of previously under or ill-used acreage in Western Siberia and elsewhere. Thus, when Canada or the United States have stumbled in wheat production from one season to another, Russia has carried on to new heights. Investments in grain storage and port facilities have made it possible to use the new surpluses to best advantage on world markets.
However, what Western readers know little or nothing about is how Russia’s agricultural sector has expanded into all food niches of the home consumer market during these years, so that supermarket shelves are now filled with a great variety of domestically grown fresh foodstuffs that rival the best and most sophisticated products Western Europe has to offer . This is something you will not find detailed in official statistics, and it is certainly not carried by mainstream Western media, whose only interest is denigration of Russia, serving propagandistic and not informational purposes. Nor is it covered by the Western ‘alternative media,’ who do not send journalists to visit Russia and least of all to report on what they see in the food stores.
I will discuss the changes in food supply below based on my latest, ongoing visit to St Petersburg. However, my eye has been focused on the subject now from the very start of the Western sanctions and Russian counter-measures in 2014. I was surely the first Western observer to write about what the Russian farmers’ markets and supermarkets had on offer then and I have refreshed my information during periodic visits to Russia ever since.
The collapse of international travel since the onset of the Covid pandemic has meant that the numbers of foreign visitors who can do what I have been doing have been cut to nearly nil. Even at present tourist visas are not being issued and apart from family members of Russian citizens, the visa category I enjoy, only a relatively small number of businessmen and other professionals arrive on narrowly defined missions.
* * * *
In keeping with the title above, let us begin with ‘greens,’ by which I mean salads and vegetables more broadly.
In the bad old days of the Soviet Union, this category of produce was almost non-existent. Traditional Russian cuisine featured ‘salads’ among the first course appetizers. But what was meant was potato salad of one variety or another, including the highly esteemed ‘salad Olivier’ named after a French chef in Moscow at the turn of the last century; this has chicken or meat chunks added to diced cooked potato and mayonnaise. Lettuce and other greens simply had no place in the Russian diet. This is not to say that there were no officials-dieticians preparing to change that reality. In 1979, at the invitation of the Ministry of Agriculture of the USSR, I accompanied executives from Castle & Cooke, the Hawaii based company that was then the world’s largest grower of iceburg lettuce, on a mission to set up such production in Russia’s south. That mission failed in the faltering days of détente.
Iceburg lettuce as well as other greens appeared on sale in Russia only in the mid-1990s when millions of citizens of the now free Russian Federation traveled the world and picked up new dietary habits including a high appreciation of green salads. At the time, all of these new delicacies for the arbiters of taste in the country and those with deep pockets were imported from Western Europe and sold at European prices.
Over time, early in the new millennium, the assortment of vegetables and fruits imported into Russia expanded quickly, in keeping with rising living standards and differentiated tastes of various demographic groups. After the ban on European imports was imposed, a geometric progression in the variety and quality of Russian grown greens set in. Now when you visit even ‘economy category’ supermarket chains in the cities or in their branches in the countryside, you find on offer leaf lettuce in transparent wrap sitting atop the little plastic pots in which they were raised in greenhouses; or cut lettuce packed in plastic bags and given long shelf life by their protective atmosphere. In higher category supermarkets for the middle and upper classes, there are mixed young shoots of beets and other highly fashionable salad components in protective atmosphere; or stalk green celery, a product until recently imported from Israel. Then there are extraordinary quality small cucumbers and tomatoes from various seed varieties produced in greenhouses year round.
The traditional Russian accompaniments to soups and main courses such as dill and green scallions are also now farmed locally year round and portion-packed in plastic.
By its nature, much of the new perishable produce is grown in greenhouse complexes on the outskirts of urban areas. Other items, like the aforementioned celery, are grown in one location, Kursk in the given example, to provide for the entire nationwide market.
All of the above assumes enormous investments in greenhouse capacity these past few years, as well as the import of seeds and know-how. Presumably, The Netherlands, which is Europe’s leader in many categories of greenhouse produce, has been Russia’s partner in these developments. Russia’s own inputs are essential to the economic success of the new produce: it has very cheap natural gas to heat the greenhouses and cheap electricity for lighting. It is no wonder then that the supermarket price for the produce I have described is several times below what you see in Western Europe.
Of course, not everything on the green grocer’s shelves is presently grown in Russia and there are imports to fill out the assortment: items like avocados and kiwis. However, considering Russia’s vast territory that cuts across several climatic belts, one may expect over time to see many such items also filled by local producers.
Beef and Pork
In the ‘bad old days’ of the USSR, there were chronic meat shortages due to a variety of failures in the food chain, including disastrous grain harvests. I knew the situation and its causes from the inside having in the late 1970s assisted a couple of U.S soy producers promote their meat extenders to the Meat and Dairy Industry. Lest anyone raise a critical objection about soy, I note that soy isolates or concentrates would have been far preferable to the potato or pea starch and similar that was then going into Russian sausages. As for fresh beef, it was not highly appreciated by consumers and for good reason. When available, it was tough and sinewy. Moreover, the butchers did not do their work with much professionalism, and what you got over the counter for the single official price per kilogram could just as easily be the worst cuts as it could be choice cuts. Pork was by nature more edible, commanded greater consumer demand and was more expensive than beef, an unnatural inversion of pricing.
In the 1990s Russian meat production collapsed, and what meat there was imported. This even extended to the least demanding meat sector in terms of return on capital, poultry.
Domestic beef and pork returned to life early in the new millennium though quality was generally poor and visits to the butchers’ stalls in farmer’s markets could turn anyone into a vegetarian, conditions were so medieval. However, in the last several years the situation has changed beyond recognition. First, at about 2018 premium restaurants began offering on their menus “marbleized” beef from grain fed cattle coming from the center of the country, in Kaluga and a few other production sites. Prize bulls were brought in from Japan and other countries to create admirable herds of beef cattle.
The beef industry moved on from its modest debut in luxury restaurants to enjoy in the past couple of years a major presence on supermarket shelves. Big corporations took the lead. One, in particular, Miratorg, achieved full vertical integration, from production of cattle feed through raising beef herds to slaughter, packaging and distribution. Its high quality ‘pepper steaks,’ ‘minute steaks’ and premium cuts, as well as ground meat and other meat culinary products sealed in special atmosphere plastic packaging have long shelf life and an appealing appearance. Consumer demand is generated by active television advertising.
A similar development has taken place in pork, where there are numerous competing producers. Their packs of pork chops and other cuts clearly state energy value, fat and protein content. This transparency is surely attributable to the producers’ confidence in their quality and pricing. By contrast, the vast array of sausage products on the Russian market have made it very difficult to read nutritional values which, if not disguised, would put the consumer off, given the 30 or 40% fat content of so many.
Whereas in Belgium and elsewhere in W. Europe the accent is on grass fed beef, which summons up images of calm meadows but yields rather tough meat on the plate, the Russians have chosen the American way: grain fed beef (250 days) and pork, placing a premium on tenderness.
Poultry
Chickens were no friends of Soviet agriculture. They had a hard life and were not treated well after their demise, so that the black and blue marks on their carcasses in shops did not raise optimistic expectations about the cooked product. In the years immediately after the crash of the Soviet Union, local production ended and what poultry you found in shops was nearly entirely imported from America, the popularly dubbed “Bush legs,” named for the American president under whom the imports began.
Domestically raised chickens returned to Russian stores in the new millennium, but the poultry industry only became wholly modern in the last few years. Now you find exactly the same product assortments as in Western Europe: eviscerated, whole chilled chickens or, chicken parts, meaning breast meat, legs, quarters weight portioned in plastic packaging.
Ducks, quails and similar are to be found in farmers’ market and in specialty premium level food stores. Some items are strictly seasonal, like turkey.
What is missing, strangely, from the offering is game. Here alone one can speak of a step in reverse from what prevailed in Soviet days. In the 1970’s even common food stores offered frozen partridges (feathers and all) coming from Siberia. Today there is nothing of the sort in the retail trade, although premium restaurants in major cities may have wild fowl and ‘exotic’ native game like bear or venison on their menus.
Fish
Going back to 2014, I commented on the fast growing trade in fresh fish that was reaching out from the capitals to the Russian countryside. I mentioned the new aquaculture industry in Karelia, producing wonderful salmon trout and fish farms in the Lower Volga producing starlet sturgeon that was being sold across the country. Then there were the choice flounder being shipped fresh to European Russia from the Murmansk region in the Far North. Now, very recently I note the expanding variety of luxury frutti di mare coming from Vladivostok and Sakhalin. My neighborhood Perekryostok supermarket is selling small whole calamari from the Russian Far East. More exclusive supermarkets offer mussels from the Far East and oysters grown in the Crimea. All of these delicacies are priced two to three times lower than in Western Europe.
Interestingly a similar price differential applies to several farmed Mediterranean fish that Russia is buying from Cyprus, which is not on Russia’s prohibited list, while Western Europe sources them in Greece. I have in mind sea bass and sea bream (daurade). By contrast, fresh farmed salmon bought in by Russia from Iceland is sold at only a modest discount to the banned Norwegian alternative. However, wild Baltic salmon, a seasonal Russia-sourced delicacy that is now in the markets is priced at a fraction of its cost in Western Europe, if you can find any there.
Though I have focused in the foregoing on fresh fish, the strong trend to resuscitation of long forgotten Russian smoked and cured fishes from the country’s interior has developed at a gallop in the last few years. These high priced delicacies are mostly sold through farmers’ markets or specialty stores. I think in particular of omul’ coming from the Baikal region, though there are many others. We may expect to see a lot more of this in future, replacing in part the now almost defunct trade in wild Caspian sturgeon that in Western Europe was synonymous with Russian extravagance during Soviet days.
Much lower in price though still much beloved in Russia, smoked Baltic sprats are one more example of Russia rising from its knees in food production since 2014 and the sanctions. The product was in the past produced and sold to Russia only by Riga fisheries-canners. When those sales were prohibited by the counter-sanctions, Russian producers stepped in. Their first offerings were pitiful, and it was puzzling why the know-how seemed to be beyond the reach of Russian factories. However, with time has come success. I opened a premium quality glass jar of these little fish a couple of days ago and was pleased to note their conformity to the best Latvian traditions. The label of this “Captain of Tastes” product showed proudly the medallion recording its award as a winner of “import substitution.”
Wines
Russia is a hard spirits country, as we all know. That was certainly true in the late 1990s when I was working in Moscow and promoting Absolut vodka and Smirnoff on behalf of my employers.
But even such givens are subject to change and have been changing since Russia came of age in the new millennium. Wines moved on from being a women’s drink to the status of a sophisticated beverage for all adults. Early in the new millennium, sweet wines were gradually replaced on store shelves by dry wines coming not only from France, Spain and Italy, the Continent’s biggest producers, but also from California, Argentina, South Africa, Australia. These wines continue to be sold in Russia, but are being squeezed by much larger assortments of Russia’s own burgeoning wine industry.
Until several years ago, Russian wines were an expression of patriotic wishes and not much more. The few market entries of wannabe quality Russian wine about five years ago started out well. These were from the Taman Peninsula along the Black Sea Coast of Krasnodar Region, just across the Straits from Crimea. But supply could not keep up with demand and the product was falsified, becoming inferior and in sharp discrepancy with its high pricing.
That initial failure has been corrected. Now when you visit premium wine stores or even the wine shelves of the better supermarket chains you find dry red and white wines from Taman and from Crimea which are serious and command respect. The only caveat is that the price/quality ratio compared to French wines, for example, does not favor the Russian bottle. That is not uncommon in countries that do not have a long existing tradition as wine producers. The consumer is buying pride and not just the beverage.
Meanwhile in the past couple of years the Russian industrial association of wine producers, led by Dmitri Kiselyov, has been very active working with the federal government and Duma to enact strict regulations on wine production and imports so as to ensure quality and reassure consumers. Kiselyov happens to be not only the owner of vineyards in Crimea but also the country’s director of state television news reporting. That this defender of Russia’s reputation and national interests is leading the prestigious end of the food industry is fitting.
In conclusion, I invite all skeptics about having a good meal in Russia based on local ingredients to make the trip here when the borders open and to see for themselves how and why I am for the moment enjoying every trip to my neighborhood supermarket.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2021
October 30, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Economics | Russia |
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The people who none of us elect, who ultimately control international finance, all corporate & business activity, government policy and international relations have constructed a system that will enable them to seize the “global commons.”
They are the Global Public Private Partnership (GPPP) and while elected representatives are within their ranks, they don’t set either the agenda or policy. We need to both recognise who the GPPP are and understand the implications of their gambit. How are this group of global stakeholders going to seize the global commons and why should we resist them?
Over the next couple of articles we are going to explore these questions. By recognising what the globalist think tanks and other policy makers mean by the global commons we can begin to appreciate the jaw dropping magnitude of their ambitions.
They consistently use deceptive language to conceal their intentions. Words like ‘inclusive,’ ‘sustainable,’ ‘equity’ and ‘resilience’ are often employed to portray some vague but ultimately duplicitous concept of caring environmentalism. We must unpick their language to fully comprehend their intentions, in the hope that we can resist and deny them.
While we have been distracted and transitioned by the alleged global pandemic, or pseudopandemic, the Global Public Private Partnership (GPPP), who orchestrated the chaos, have been very busy. They have created the asset rating system that will afford them total, global economic control. This is based upon Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and utilises Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics (SCM).
This new global economic system is what the politicians mean by “build back better.” It is the essence of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset.
laying the foundations for a new International Monetary and Financial System (IMFS) was a key to the pseudopandemic. The new IMFS will emerge from the deliberate economic destruction wrought by government policy responses to COVID 19. This was planned.
The phrase “build back better” was first widely popularised by US President Clinton following the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. During the pseudopandemic it has been adopted by politicians globally to signal that the project to seize the “global commons” is underway.
We will need to consider UN Agenda 21 and 2030 in more detail, as these are key to the theft of all resources, but for now we can reference it to understand what “build back better” actually means. This will explain why politicians around the world have used it.
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 (b) of Agenda 2030 states:
By 2020, substantially increase the number of cities and human settlements adopting and implementing integrated policies and plans towards… adaptation to climate change, resilience to disasters, and develop and implement, in line with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, holistic disaster risk management at all levels.”
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR), written in 2015, states:
The recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction phase, which needs to be prepared ahead of a disaster, is a critical opportunity to Build Back Better; recognition of stakeholders and their roles; mobilization of risk-sensitive investment to avoid the creation of new risk;
[…] strengthening of international cooperation and global partnership […] it is necessary to continue strengthening good governance in disaster risk reduction strategies at the national, regional and global levels […] and to use post-disaster recovery and reconstruction to ‘Build Back Better’, supported by strengthened modalities of international cooperation…
Clear vision, plans, competence, guidance and coordination within and across sectors, as well as participation of relevant stakeholders, are needed.. and fosters collaboration and partnership across mechanisms and institutions for the implementation of instruments relevant to disaster risk reduction and sustainable development.
“Build back better” policy was prepared ahead of the arrival of COVID-19. It is part of the planned risk management and preparedness framework for post “disaster” reconstruction. It means the global participation of relevant stakeholders to strengthen international cooperation and global partnerships in order to implement instruments to achieve sustainable development.
SDG 11 (b) was a plan to substantially increase the global number of human settlements adopting “build back better” polices by 2020. This SDG has now been achieved thanks to the COVID-19 pseudopandemic. In particular, the planned “mobilization of risk-sensitive investment,” outlined in the SFDRR, has surged ahead.
Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics – SCM – were devised by the World Economic Forum, who describe themselves as the international organisation for public-private cooperation. When combined with the SDGs outlined in the UN Agenda 21 and 2030 frameworks, SCM enable the GPPP to seize the entire Earth, all its resources and everything on it, including us.
In order to control us we are being transitioned into a technocracy with the biosecurity state acting as the central control mechanism. Public health is the new focus for global security and centralised control of the entire system has been established during, and as a result of, the pseudopandemic.
The news IMFS is designed to tie our biosecurity commitments to Universal Basic Income (UBI or similar state payments) which will be paid with Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC.)
This will ensure our compliance, as Central Banks will use AI algorithms, combined with population monitoring (track and trace, vaccine passports or some other form of social credit surveillance system), to monitor and control all of our transactions, behaviour and movements.
The dreaded authoritarian knock on the door will be replaced with the dreaded authoritarian beep of a refused card payment. If you can’t buy food with your money it doesn’t really matter how much of it you have. Comply or starve is a distinct possibility.
Over the next couple of articles we are going to explore this “new abnormal.” How it encapsulates the seizure of everything by favoured stakeholder capitalists, as the chosen winning corporations divide up the Earths resources amongst themselves. This is the zenith of the planned “build back better” response to the pseudopandemic.
Throughout the pseudopandemic the World Economic Forum (WEF) have taken the public relations lead on the planned recovery. Their Great Reset is just the repackaging of an idea hundreds, if not thousands of years old.
It is the self-serving belief that some special people are destined, and therefore have the right, to lead the rest of us. They don’t require any kind of legitimate “democratic” mandate or even popular support. Their claimed right to rule is an imperious assumption.
The WEF have claimed the supposed right to direct three key areas of global policy. They intend to do this by assisting world leaders to manage “disruptive change.”
They have put themselves forward as the GPPP front organisation for managing the fourth industrial revolution, addressing global security issues and solving the problems of the global commons. It is important to note that the WEF are not alone in their ambitions, but rather the leading proponents for the wider GPPP policy platform. We will focus on the third sphere of their self-proclaimed authority: control of a global commons.
The United Nations (UN) acts as a policy hub for the GPPP. It allows stakeholders to introduce the policies, formulated by the think tanks, into the nascent global governance structure. The desired policy agendas can be moulded and eventually filtered down to national and then local government administrations across the planet.
In the September 2011 issue of Our Planet the UN offered a description of the global commons as “the shared resources that no one owns but all life relies upon.” In 2013 the UN Systems Task Team expanded on this and published “Global governance and governance of the global commons in the global partnership for development beyond 2015.“
They wrote:
International law identifies four global commons, namely the High Seas, the Atmosphere, the Antarctica and the Outer Space… Resources of interest or value to the welfare of the community of nations – such as tropical rain forests and biodiversity – have lately been included among the traditional set of global commons… while some define the global commons even more broadly, including science, education, information and peace… Stewardship of the global commons cannot be carried out without global governance.”
This habit of expanding the definition of the global commons has continued. In April 2020 The Rothschild backed bank the Global Environment Facility offered a more extensive list of the shared resources all life relies upon:
In order to protect our global commons… humanity must develop new ways of doing business to deliver transformational change in food, energy, urban, and production and consumption systems. It will take coalitions that bring together governments, businesses, finance, and citizens to realize this goal.”
That coalition is the GPPP and citizens are involved, via civil society, only if they agree to promote the agreed policy agenda.
In December 2020 the Secretary General of the UN Antonio Gutteres really fleshed out the global commons concept.
Speaking to an audience gathered at Columbia University, the pivotal academic institution in the development of Technocracy, he said:
To put it simply, the state of the planet is broken… human activities are at the root of our descent towards chaos… the recovery from the pandemic is an opportunity… It is time to flick the ‘green switch’. We have a chance to not simply reset the world economy but to transform it… We must turn this momentum into a movement…
Everything is interlinked – the global commons and global well-being…This means: More and bigger effectively managed conservation areas… Biodiversity-positive agriculture and fisheries… More and more people are understanding the need for their own daily choices to reduce their carbon footprint and respect planetary boundaries… From protests in the streets to advocacy on-line…From classroom education to community engagement…From voting booths to places of work…
We cannot go back to the old normal…We have a blueprint: the 2030 Agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change… Now is the time to transform humankind’s relationship with the natural world – and with each other.
Again we see the recurrent themes of the GPPP. The planet must be saved from us, we are a pestilence that must be controlled; Covid-19 is, as ever, an opportunity to transform the global economy; our survival and GPPP stewardship of the global commons are one and the same and everything must be transformed.
Not only are the oceans (everything in them and beneath them), the atmosphere (the air we breath), Antarctica (the only continent with a universally respected international treaty protecting it) and the universe up for grabs, GPPP avarice doesn’t end there.
Energy (all natural resources), all productivity and our livelihoods (the workplace), biodiversity (ecosystems and life on Earth), all land (managed conservation areas), agriculture and fisheries (all food), our consumption and behaviour (carbon footprints), where we are allowed to exist (planetary boundaries), our political opinions and system, education, the communities we live in and even our relationships, are all to be controlled and transformed by the GPPP.
The “global commons” is GPPP shorthand for everything. All life, all resources, all land, all water, the air, the stars and all of us. It is their intention to have dominion over all.
The global commons are not fixed. Other aspects of our existence are being added all the time. In June 2021 the WEF wrote the Case for a Digital Commons. Whenever they want to include something else in the list they use the language of sustainable development. It doesn’t matter that this makes no rational sense, the point is to sell the notion with the right buzz-words:
COVID-19 highlighted and accelerated the centrality of digital technology in our lives. Yet the digital ecosystem is one of the most unequal and dysfunctional aspects of our collective lives. How can we build a digital ecosystem that ensures broadly shared participation and prosperity? We argue that shifting our view to see technology infrastructure as a digital commons could point the way forward for an inclusive and sustainable ecosystem with shared social benefit.”
Now they claim the authority to rule the Internet and all digital communication technology. We see once more that the pseudopandemic is the catalyst for this transformation and that government is merely the implementation partner for the GPPP agenda. We are just the tax paying cash cows that will fund the construction of the empire:
In this post-pandemic time of broad economic and social re-envisioning and re-alignment, an emphasis on the digital commons can point the way forward for collective recovery, solidarity and progress… Governments will have to push forward on real regulation of privately controlled systems.. as well as providing funding to allow a sustainable ecosystem of innovation that is not beholden to venture capitalists or large companies.”
It is truly remarkable that a low mortality respiratory disease has provided such an immense opportunity for global transformation.
The leading figures within the GPPP knew that COVID-19 didn’t present much of a threat. In their June 2020 book COVID-19: The Great Reset, the authors Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret wrote that the pseudopandemic was:
One of the least deadly pandemics the world has experienced over the last 2000 years… the consequences of COVID-19 in terms of health and mortality will be mild… It does not constitute an existential threat, or a shock that will leave its imprint on the world’s population for decades.”
At the heart of this seizure of everything lies stakeholder capitalism. In December 2019 Schwab wrote What Kind of Capitalism Do We Want.
The “we” referenced in that title was not “us” but rather the GPPP, though the article assumed we all agree on the GPPP’s definition of global problems. Schwab wrote:
Stakeholder capitalism, a model I first proposed a half-century ago, positions private corporations as trustees of society, and is clearly the best response to today’s social and environmental challenges.”
Schwab’s use of the term “trustee” is notable. It has a specific legal definition:
The person appointed, or required by law, to execute a trust; one in whom an estate, interest, or power is vested, under an express or implied agreement to administer or exercise it for the benefit or to the use of another.”
It is not at all evident that global corporations should be entrusted with our society. Many of us would disagree which is one of the main reasons we haven’t been asked. There is no justification for Schwab’s claim.
I speak for no one but myself, but I would wager that most people consider global corporations to be a significant contributor to the social and environmental challenges we face. Why would anyone believe they should determine the alleged solutions?
Schwab’s is a ludicrous assertion. Yet this is the insistence of the stakeholder capitalists. It is also the basis for the UN Sustainable Development Goals and their Agenda 21 and 2030 policy platforms.
Despite their claims of omniscience, the GPPP and their leading proponents, like the WEF and the IMF, are not infallible. They are just people, no different in most regards to anyone else on Earth.
They are collaborating in a huge, though not unprecedented, global effort. Many people have come to think an operation on this scale is impossible. Why they imagine this is hard to say.
We have already had two world wars requiring similar degrees of international cooperation. Arguably more if we consider that whole populations were engaged in these collective efforts.
There are many global corporations that operate tortuously complex international operations. These incorporate global logistics, international finance and cross border regulatory alignment. These world-wide endeavours overwhelmingly rely upon a hierarchical, authoritarian management structure. Only a few, senior board level figures have oversight of the whole system. The GPPP relies upon exactly the same.
However, because ordinary people are leading this organisation, mistakes happen. In September 2020 the WEF produced a promotional video making the point, from their perspective, that “you will own nothing and you will be happy.” This backfired terribly and was a PR disaster. The Video was hastily pulled down, too late to hide the real intention of the GPPP.
However, the original article, upon which the video was based, can still be read. The article was written by the former Danish Environment Minister, climate activist and WEF “young global leader,” Ida Auken. Unlike most of us, she isn’t a disenfranchised constituent. Ida is a carefully selected GPPP spokeswoman.
Ida Auken
The title was changed and an explanatory note added. Ida said that her article was not intended to describe her “utopia” and that the intention was to explore the “pros and cons” of a possible near term future:
Everything you considered a product, has now become a service… When AI and robots took over so much of our work, we suddenly had time to eat well, sleep well and spend time with other people… Once in a while I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me… We had all these terrible things happening: lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest and unemployment. We lost way too many people before we realized that we could do things differently.”
The offer from the GPPP is clear. In exchange for submitting to their will and allowing them sole possession of everything (the global commons) they will take care of us.
Why, is the obvious question. If they control all of the Earths resources, everything is free and AI and robots do most of the work, why do they need us? What is in it for them? We would no longer be required in such a system. Certainly loosing “way too many people” would suggest at least acknowledgment of a much smaller global population.
We should also note why Ida’s envisaged future becomes necessary. It is, just as we have seen with the COVID 19 opportunity, a response to a set of crises which gives rise to doing “things differently.”
We are already seeing the knock-on effects of the COVID-19 lockdowns and economic destruction. An approaching set of crises over the next few years is a reasonable prediction.
As Schwab noted, there was no existential threat. The consequent disasters we are likely to face will be the result of policy promoted by GPPP representatives, like the World Health Organisation, not a respiratory disease.
It would be easy to dismiss Ida’s musings as simply the wishful thinking of an ideologue. In part, it probably is. However, when we look at Agenda 21 and 2030 an uncomfortable realisation dawns.
While the sustainable development agenda is couched in terms of environmental concerns and apparent humanitarian principles, the detail of the proposed policies presents an entirely different prospect.
The true horror of Ida’s vision is not that she is among the tiny clique GPPP representatives who are committed to constructing this dystopian prison planet, it is that, in Agenda 21 and 2030, the policy framework to make her futurescape a reality already exists.
Make no mistake, the GPPP intend to control every aspect of the Earth and our lives. That is the transformation they are working towards and they have used the pseudopandemic to set that transition in motion. There is no political opposition to the GPPP. They are realpolitik entire. All they need, for their “solutions” to close the trap, is our compliance.
Combined with SDGs, while we have been preoccupied with a low mortality respiratory illness, the GPPP have not only started building, they have partly completed the new global monetary and financial system.
Once installed this will finalise their coup d’état and enable them to seize everything, all under the guise of stewardship of the global commons.
We will explore how this has been done, and the remaining elements needed to accomplish the theft, in Part Two.
You can read more of Iain’s work at his blog In This Together or on UK Column. His new book Pseudopandemic, is now available, in both in kindle and paperback, from Amazon and other sellers. Or you can claim a free copy by subscribing to his newsletter.
October 29, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular | Agenda 21, Covid-19, United Nations |
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The proposals would not only be an attack on civil liberties, it would cause further disruption to supply chains.
The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) has warned of substantial “supply chain disruptions” if the US enforces vaccine passports at the border.
A few weeks ago, the US Department of Homeland Security announced a vaccine mandate for all international travel including truck drivers that will take effect in January. The announcement has been heavily criticized by cross-border truckers. According to Transportation Network, one executive in the Canadian trucking industry warned that the mandate would lead to a “disaster.”
This week, the CTA warned that the mandate would increase supply chain disruptions. Trucks facilitate about 70% of the $650 billion trade between Canada and the US. About 40,000 US drivers and 120,000 Canadian drivers operate in the cross-border trade between the two countries.
The CTA said that about 20% of drivers will stop cross-border operations once the vaccine mandate is enforced.
“CTA conservatively estimates that 20 percent of Canadian truck drivers crossing the border (22,000), and 40 percent of U.S. truck drivers (16,000), would almost immediately exit the Canada-US trade system should the vaccination mandate take effect in January 2022,” the organization said.
It called on both the US and Canadian governments to “reexamine appropriate mandate timelines for cross-border truck drivers.”
The group also argued that more time is needed to create a “seamless mutual system of identification for drivers” to avoid delays when drivers are showing proof of vaccination.
However, the Biden administration appears to be disregarding the warnings of “dire consequences” from leading truck organizations by proceeding with the vaccine passport plans.
October 28, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | Canada, COVID-19 Vaccine, Joe Biden, United States |
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Against the background of a European gas crisis, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to give Russia extra transit capacity at a discounted rate is the correct choice, but Kiev took far too long to make the offer.
That’s according to Viktor Medvedchuk, chairman of the Political Council of Opposition Platform – For Life, the country’s largest opposition party. He is currently under house arrest, after being accused by the authorities of high treason and “aiding terrorism.” The politician says the criminal charges against him are trumped-up.
In an interview posted on his faction’s website, Medvedchuk agreed that Zelensky’s belated offer to increase the amount of gas running through the country’s pipes is the right thing to do. The president’s offer was extended not only to Russia but all countries wishing to use Ukraine’s infrastructure.
“It is very good, I think, that finally President Zelensky and his entourage have understood that our pipelines have enormous opportunities,” Medvedchuk said. “The proposal to increase the pumping through our pipelines by 50% is absolutely correct.”
On Sunday, the state-run Ukrainian gas company Naftogaz revealed that the company is ready to provide additional transit of up to 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year at a 50% discount, which would significantly reduce the cost for Russia. Moscow currently pays billions of dollars in fees to Kiev for transiting natural gas through Ukraine.
The lower offer comes as Naftogaz seeks to compete with the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The controversial project was completed last month but is not yet operational. It directly connects Germany to Russia via the Baltic Sea, allowing Moscow to send gas without transiting other countries.
As Nord Stream 2 is already complete, Zelensky’s proposal is now long overdue, Medvedchuk believes.
“Today, Russia seems to be interested in launching Nord Stream 2 and not in increasing the amount of gas pumping through Ukraine’s transportation system,” the opposition leader said. “But we must come to an agreement, and we must make an offer. We must look for common opportunities for the development of trade and economic relations.”
October 25, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | European Union, Russia, Ukraine |
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