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Insurance underwriters insert ‘no connection to Israel’ clause for shipping

MEMO | January 25, 2024

Insurance underwriters are requiring some clients to sign contracts guaranteeing that they have no connection to Israel or the US in order to obtain cover for cargo ships passing through the Suez Canal, the New York Times has reported. The demand comes as Houthi attacks in the Red Sea have pushed up insurance premiums for merchant vessels.

According to the NYT, the attacks at this critical choke point handling 12 per cent of global trade have more than doubled the average worldwide shipping costs. Some ships are opting to avoid the Suez Canal and instead take the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, adding weeks to delivery times.

Passing through the Red Sea still necessitates expensive speciality war risk insurance offered by London brokers to cover potential Houthi strikes. Rates have jumped as much as 50 times more than before the Yemen conflict, and now cost up to one per cent of a ship’s value despite relatively minimal damage to ships so far. For a ship carrying goods worth $100 million, that could mean an extra $1m to be insured.

Insurers blame the increased risk on Israel’s military offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza. By forcing clients to guarantee that they have no ties with Israel and its Western allies, underwriters aim to shield themselves from inadvertently covering any vessels associated with the current geopolitical tensions underlying the attacks.

Analysts say that the ripple effects on global trade and consumer prices are still unfolding. They warn that if Red Sea transit remains high-risk, inflation could return.

The demand by underwriters follows previous preventative measures taken by vessels to avoid Houthi attacks. Earlier this month, cargo ships passing into the Red Sea began to declare that they have no links to Israel, according to data from the navigation safety feature known as the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which transmits the identity, location and destination of larger vessels.

Israel’s Western allies appear to be running out of options in their attempt to contain the Houthis. Yesterday, the Financial Times revealed that the US has urged China to help curb Houthi attacks around the crucial Bab Al-Mandab Strait. Chinese ships are not being targeted by the Yemeni group and nor are vessels of countries that are not supporting Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. Nevertheless, China is reported to have expressed “concern” about the attacks, and called for “restraint”.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

German steel production plunges to 15-year low

The home of the largest steel industry in Europe, Germany is facing a continuous crisis over sky-high electricity prices

By John Cody | Remix News | January 24, 2024

Steel production in Germany is cratering, reaching a low point last seen during the 2008 global economic crisis. Steel production dropped to 35.4 million tons in 2022, a decrease of 3.9 percent from 2021.

The hardest hit segment of steelworks was the electrical steel industry, which saw its production sink by almost 9 percent to 9.8 million tons, a figure even lower than the 2009 low. Overall, all segments of the steelworks industry in Germany saw declines.

Since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, there has seen a continuous downward trend in the German steel sector, in large part due to soaring electricity prices.

Kerstin Maria Rippel, managing director of the German Steel Federation, cited “weak demand” and “intentionally uncompetitive” electricity prices as being factors behind the crisis.

“The annual balance of steel production in Germany clearly shows that the situation for the steel industry (…) is very serious,” she added.

In what appears to be a shot at the ruling left-liberal government, Rippel says that her association notes an “urgent need for political action” regarding transmission grid fees, which have doubled since the beginning of 2023.

She is calling for state subsidies from the “Climate Transformation Fund” to help the sector finance a turnaround.

“We need a clear political concept on how the path to climate neutrality is to be sustainably financed,” said Rippel.

Soaring energy and material costs have hit German industry particularly hard, and the role of the Christian Democrats (CDU) in pushing for the phasing out of nuclear power — a move also supported by the Greens — has also played a role.

The Alternative for Germany party has pointed to the current left-liberal government, along with the previous CDU-led government, as being behind the long-term decline in Germany’s industrial sectors. However, the situation has grown especially dire under Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

“Only on Monday, the pharmaceutical and chemical giant Bayer announced a ‘significant workforce reduction’ by the end of 2025. The tire manufacturer Continental is terminating the 40-hour contracts of thousands of employees, and the gear factory Friedrichshafen (ZF) apparently wants to cut 12,000 jobs. However, the traffic light government doesn’t care about any of this,” wrote the AfD in a statement.

The AfD says it will reverse the green “energy transition” and repair the Nord Stream pipelines in order to return cheap Russian energy to German industry. The party also promises to reduce the tax burden and bureaucracy to jumpstart the German economy.

January 24, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Germany Can’t Afford Rearmament, Let Alone a ‘War’ With Russia

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 23.01.2024

Germany must take into account the possibility of a military conflict with Russia and prepare for it over the next three-five years, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told ZDF on January 22.

He insisted that the German Bundeswehr armed forces should become “a credible deterrent,” and that a German combat brigade would be deployed in the Baltics to become “fully combat-ready” by 2027.

In December, Pistorius signed an agreement for the permanent deployment of a Bundeswehr brigade to Lithuania and announced that the reintroduction of compulsory military service in Germany is now on the table.

Does Russia really present an imminent threat to German national security?

“If you ask me, and if you ask most people in my party, the answer is unequivocally no,” Gunnar Beck, Member of the European Parliament for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party who is currently Vice-President of the Identity & Democracy Group in the Parliament, told Sputnik. “Ever since 1990, at the end of the Soviet Union, the Russian government has gone out of its way to intensify economic relations between Russia and Germany. We had extremely favorable energy contracts with Russia. And Russia was a growing export market for our agricultural and industrial goods. It’s due to our government’s policy, vis-a-vis Ukraine conflict that relations with Russia are now almost at an all time low. So, on the one hand, I think, German policy and EU policy has been a provocation. Nonetheless, I think that the Russian reaction to the sanctions in particular has been tough, but at the same time measured. So in my view, Russia is no immediate security threat to Germany. Categorically not.”

Germany Cannot Afford Rearmament

Not only is Germany’s justification for rearmament in question but also the nation’s ability to afford it, according to Beck. German industry is in a dire state as a result of the government’s policies, he stressed.

“Germany currently finds itself in what is probably the most serious economic crisis since the Second World War,” Beck said. “The government’s policies (…) are affecting all leading branches of German industry, which is suffering from high inflation, lack of qualified labor, bureaucracy and high tax levels. As a result, our exports have declined significantly. So we are in crisis, and German industry, which has always been the backbone of German prosperity, in particular, is in crisis.”

He listed three major reasons for the new talk of militarization:

  • First, the German government’s energy and climate change policy;
  • Second, unprecedented migration into Germany from outside Europe of unskilled workers and the astronomical cost to German public finances;
  • Third, Germany’s policies on Ukraine and sanctions imposed on the Russian economy.

Berlin’s decision to follow Washington’s lead and slap sweeping sanctions on Russia has backfired on Germans on a much greater scale than on any of their Russian counterparts, according to the politician.

“In my view, Germany is in no fit state economically and financially to embark upon a massive rearmament program,” Beck said. “If the German government seriously did so, the consequence would be a further significant worsening of the economic crisis. The only way to finance such rearmament would be through a complete reversal of all the other policies and massive remigration of migrants from Germany. The government has given no indication that it is prepared to do so. In other words, I think these declarations are probably largely symbolic. Germany simply cannot afford it.”

Europeans Don’t Want to Fight Against Russia

The majority of Germans are not worried about a military threat from Russia, according to Beck, raising doubts as to whether Pistorius’ militarization plan would gain any popular traction in Germany and other European states.

“Diplomacy should be the West’s weapons of choice in its relations with Russia, not more armaments,” Geoffrey Roberts, emeritus professor of history at University College Cork, Ireland and a leading British scholar on Soviet diplomatic and military history, told Sputnik, stressing that Europeans have zero appetite for a major war with Russia.

“This bellicose rhetoric is part of a campaign by Western hardliners to further militarize Western states and societies, their aim being to prolong the Ukraine war for as long as possible and to create a permanent confrontation with Russia. Predictions of future war with Russia heighten existing tensions and solidify a mindset in which military power is seen as the solution to political problems,” Roberts continued.

Confrontation between Russia and NATO is fraught with serious risks and is “far more dangerous than anything that happened during the Cold war,” according to the professor.
“During the Soviet-Western Cold war there were many proxy wars and conflicts but nothing comparable in scope, scale and intensity to what is happening in Ukraine,” Roberts noted, referring to the West’s ongoing proxy conflict in Eastern Europe which involves NATO’s Special Forces, weapons, intelligence, military training and sabotage techniques.
“Western hardliners have whipped up an atmosphere of hysteria that could spread violence to other sections of the front-line between NATO and Russia. There is an urgent need for Western governments to heed popular calls for peace and a security settlement with Russia that will avert this new cold war – a conflict that could lead to catastrophe,” the professor concluded.

Moscow is closely observing the tone of European political discourse, warning against provocative rhetoric. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted on Tuesday that many other European countries than Germany have made statements about a “threat” posed by Russia. Earlier in January, Pistorius claimed that Russia could attack a NATO country “one day.”

“Now all European capitals are racing to declare an ephemeral danger that allegedly comes from Russia,” Peskov told reporters. He added that Europe has already invested heavily in the Ukraine conflict, but now see that their plan “failed” and the economic situation was “getting difficult.”

January 24, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Four of Britain’s top institutions have made erroneous estimates of the cost of Net Zero

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | January 24, 2024

Four national institutions have failed to model the 2050 energy system correctly, and all of them in ways that lead to understatement of the costs of Net Zero.

Over the weekend, the Sunday Telegraph reported that the Climate Change Committee has got its energy system modelling wrong. The revelation was made by Sir Christopher Llewellyn Smith, the lead author of the recent Royal Society report on electricity storage, in remarks made at a seminar at Oxford.

According to Sir Christopher, the Climate Change Committee’s estimates of the costs of Net Zero are fundamentally flawed because they have only modelled isolated years. As he pointed out in the seminar, low-wind years can happen back to back, which means that the Climate Change Committee need twice as much storage capacity as they thought. As a result, they have underestimated the costs.

However, the Sunday Telegraph didn’t mention that it’s not just the Climate Change Committee that has made this mistake. In the same seminar, Sir Christopher pointed out that the National Infrastructure Commission has done the same thing, despite being warned of the problem of clusters of low-wind years. So they too will have underestimated the costs.

The National Infrastructure Assessment… is also based on one year…they were told by the Met Office ‘you can get extreme events’…it’s not enough to look at one. They looked at one, so they got the answer wrong. The Met Office are really angry, because they told them ‘don’t do it’, but they did it.

I can also reveal that National Grid ESO, in its Future Energy Scenarios, has done the same thing. I wrote to the NGESO team to ask how they did things, and was told that their models are prepared using weather conditions in 2013, which they describe as an “average year”. They are starting to run tests against low-wind conditions (so-called ‘dunkelflautes’), but back-to-back wind droughts don’t seem to be on their radar yet:

The generation provided from renewables, as well as the demand profile, is typically based on an average weather year (2013).

For FES23, we also conducted an initial piece of analysis looking at abnormal weather conditions (resulting in abnormal supply and demand patterns), the results of which can be found in our FES23 publication under the title Dunkelflaute Period. We took a period of extreme weather, in this case between Jan-Feb 1985, and applied it to our Consumer Transformation scenario in 2050, to look at how the system would respond to a sustained period low renewable output…

We are planning on looking at abnormal supply and exceptional demand in more detail going forward as well as the effects of more extreme weather.

That means that they too will have underestimated the cost of Net Zero.

The Royal Society is to be congratulated for clarifying the problem. However, it turns out that their own modelling is fundamentally flawed too. That’s because, while they model 37 years of different wind speeds, they assume that electricity demand is always the same. Sir Christopher has admitted that this is not correct, in a podcast broadcast last year. As he put it then:

And now I confess something that is a bit of a weakness in our report. We’ve got this model of one year of demand… based in the weather in 2018…We simply repeat that 37 times.

This is clearly wrong, because in 2050 it is imagined that we will all heat our homes with electric heat pumps. Electricity demand will therefore be much higher in cold years than in mild ones, and if we have back to back cold years, we are going to need much more storage.

So, four well funded national institutions have failed to model the 2050 correctly, and all of them in ways that low-balls the cost of Net Zero. That’s a remarkable coincidence, and one that should probably raise alarm bells about the extent of the rot in the British establishment.

January 24, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | | Leave a comment

Revelation That U.K. Climate Target is Based on One Windy Year’s Data Threatens to Unravel Net Zero Credibility

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JANUARY 24, 2024

In October the Daily Sceptic reported on a paper written for the Royal Society led by Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith of Oxford University that concluded batteries were not the answer to the huge storage requirements of intermittent ‘green’ electricity power. Despite the prestigious academic fire power on parade, the paper died a death in the popular prints, presumably because of its unwelcome message about the much-touted battery solution. But recent revelations suggest the report could act as a loose thread that helps unravel the collectivist Net Zero agenda in the U.K. The Royal Society analysed decades of local wind speeds and found the electricity system needed the equivalent of at least a third of green energy to be stored as backup. Such a cost would be astronomical. Now it appears that the Government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) fudged the issue by using just one year of high wind data in persuading Members of Parliament in 2019 to donkey-nod through Theresa May’s insane legislative rush to Net Zero by 2050.

Sir Chris’s report showed that wind could fall away for days at a time during periods of intense cold dominated by high atmospheric pressure. It also found wind speeds varied between years, all of which is in fact known and has been studied widely by other scientists. The Telegraph has reported on remarks made by Sir Chris after the paper was published in which he noted that the CCC has “conceded privately” that reliance on one year’s data was a “mistake”. It appears that the information given to MPs committing to 2050 Net Zero assumed there would be just seven days when wind turbines would produce less than 10% of their potential electricity output. According to Net Zero Watch that compares with 30 such days in 2020, 33 in 2019 and 56 in 2018.

In reporting that the CCC has conceded the “mistake”, the Telegraph noted that Sir Chris said the committee was still saying it doesn’t differ much from Sir Chris’s calculations. “Well that’s not quite true,” observed the Oxford Emeritus Professor. Asked by the newspaper if it disputed the account of Sir Chris, a CCC spokesman said it had “nothing further to add”.

Of course the ‘Noble Lie’ that Net Zero must be foisted on an unwilling population whatever the economic and societal cost will need to be preserved. Nothing to see here, move along please, is likely to guide most mainstream media in covering these latest revelations. The investigative science and Net Zero writer Paul Homewood is less inclined to ignore the serious matter. “It is now clear that Parliament authorised Net Zero without any proper assessment, whether financial or energy, and the whole Net Zero legislation must now be suspended until a full independent assessment is carried out.” He goes further and states that current and past members of the CCC must be held to account, and “excluded from any further influence over the country’s energy policy, or indeed on any issue of public policy”.

In general, nobody wants to talk about the lack of wind and solar backup, so there is a widespread pretence that the problem will somehow be solved in the future. But having dismissed any role for batteries, the Royal Society suggested hydrogen as a solution, an idea, alas, only slightly less dumb than batteries. Highly explosive, low kinetic energy compared with hydrocarbons, expensive to produce, difficult to store and move around – the disadvantages are all too obvious. Francis Menton of the Manhattan Contrarian saw the report as an “enormous improvement” on every other effort on the subject of large scale energy storage systems. But in the end, the authors still have a “quasi-religious commitment” to a fossil-free future, and this means that the report, despite containing much valuable information, “is actually useless for any public policy purpose”.

What is becoming clear is the level of statistical deception that is practised across climate science and the promotion of Net Zero. Surface temperature measurements are frequently adjusted upwards on a retrospective basis despite ignoring growing urban heat corruptions, activists use computer models to run up garbage-in, garbage-out scares on an almost daily basis, and bad weather is deliberately confused with long-term climate to suggest the latter is changing due to human caused carbon dioxide. All lapped up without a critical word between them by members of the mainstream media increasingly funded by elite billionaires.

The donkey-nodding politicians and the poodle media often hide behind the notion that they are just following the ‘science’. There is no such thing as the ‘science’, settled or otherwise, just the ongoing scientific process. The distinguished scientist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman captured the integrity of the process when he wrote: “If you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid – not only what you think is right about it. … Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them.”

Renewable energy is not a low-cost substitute for fossil fuels, notes a forward in Rupert Darwall’s recently published report on Net Zero and Britain’s “disastrous” energy policies. High and rising energy costs have locked Britain into economic decline, a suggestion given weight by last week’s savage destruction of the steel economy of Port Talbot. Renewables are not cheap, nor can they provide the reliability that modern societies expect and on which they depend. His report is said to convincingly demonstrate “how Britain was conned into Net Zero by deceptive and illusory promises of cheap wind power”.

The CCC is a dedicated green activist group that sits at the heart of U.K. Government. It is a pernicious, untrustworthy force in British politics giving cover to policies that will lead to de-industrialisation and massive changes in future lifestyle including restriction on diet, transport and personal freedoms.

Here’s hoping the wind scandal blows the damn thing away.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

January 24, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Understanding China’s Navigation of the Gaza War

By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – 23.01.2024 

China has once again called for a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, including a globally agreed timeline for the creation of a separate state for the people of Palestine. China’s position, which many in the West see as singularly pro-Arab, has been consistent ever since the beginning of the present phase of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has already killed more than 23,000 civilians, including more than 10,000 Children. China has been trying to navigate the crisis in a way that guards its main interests, i.e., its multi-billion dollar investment across the region. A wider war in the region could hurt China’s interests more than it could hurt any other extra-regional power. China has a deep economic presence in most of the Arab world. Although it has sound economic ties with Israel too, those with the Muslim world in the Middle East, including Iran, clearly outweigh its ties with Israel. China’s collective investment in the Middle East and North Africa is above US$239 billion. This is on top of their bilateral trade, which crossed US$330 billion in 2021.

By contrast, the China-Israel bilateral trade is less than US$25 billion. Until 2018, China was a major investor in Israel, especially in the tech sector. However, due to the mounting US pressure over Chinese investments coming with potential “security risks”, China’s investments have cooled down. These investment and trade trends are shaping China’s options to navigate the present crisis. On the one hand, these trends explain a) why China has taken a pro-Arab position, and b) why China fears a wider war in the region. Not only, a wider war could impact billions of dollars but also put almost a million Chinese nationals based in the region working on numerous projects in serious jeopardy. Evacuating these many people will be a nightmare.

Beijing learnt a crucial lesson when NATO invaded Libya in 2011. When NATO invaded Libya in 2011, it cost China a lot. According to figures released by the Chinese government itself, 75 Chinese companies, including 13 state-owned companies, were involved in Libya in about 50 joint projects. More than 35,000 Chinese workers were there. The China State Construction Engineering Corporation said that its residential construction project worth US$2.68 billion was under threat. The China Railway Construction Corporation reported that it had to leave US$4.24 billion worth of unfinished projects in the country. The State-run Metallurgical Corporation of China said that it had suspended two projects in Libya that have a remaining value of 5.13 billion yuan.

China cannot afford a similar scenario, which will have a much bigger impact than Libya – not only because investments worth hundreds of billions of dollars will be adversely affected but also because this war will most certainly create a global energy crisis that would affect China’s economy that relies quite heavily on oil imports from this region. China, therefore, not only detests the already ongoing war but also fears its expansion. Therefore, Beijing, alongside Russia and its allies in the region, is pushing to block any possibilities of a wider conflagration.

Besides the economic logic, a more social-cum-security logic is also at play for Beijing. Taking anti-Palestine and pro-Israel/pro-US positions can also put Beijing in the line of the fire of religious extremism. China has a sensitive “Muslim problem” in its Xinjiang region. Beijing believes that taking a pro-Palestine position will help it a) reinforce its pro-Muslim credentials, reform its image in the wider Muslim world and help against Western propaganda that accuses China of running “concentration camps”, and b) help prevent radicalisation from spreading within its borders. A pro-Israel position, on the contrary, could make Beijing a target of jihadi forces not only within its borders but also outside, i.e., in Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc.

This position also has a geostrategic calculus. This strategy is tied to what came to be known as China’s “new security architecture for the Middle East” that Foreign Minister Wany Yi unveiled in September 2022. The minister highlighted this vision, saying that the “new security concept” is based on common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security. More importantly, it seeks to establish the Middle Eastern countries’ dominant position (as opposed to as extraterritorial players), who not only abide by the purposes and principles of the UN charter but also directly boost regional security.

Boosting the Middle Eastern states as dominant players is a key element of China’s push for a multipolar world order. Therefore, by taking a pro-Arab position, Beijing is basically reinforcing the Arab world’s position vis-à-vis not only Israel but also the collective West so that the latter behaves in a way that takes these states’ interests into account while pushing for a just solution to what China considers the “core” issue affecting the region since the end of the Second World War.

Multiple interests are at stake that Beijing wants to protect by taking this pro-Arab position. Thinking otherwise, were Beijing to take a pro-Israel position, it would not serve any of these objectives. For instance, a pro-Israel position will directly boost Israel’s position vis-à-vis the Arab world. It might even encourage Israel to expand the war to implement its version of the “final solution” on the Palestinians. The war, in this context, is more likely to expand than in a situation where China (and Russia) stand with the Arab world and their anti-US/anti-Israel position might boost the Arab world’s national power potential that might deter Israel’s brutal pursuit of the so-called “Greater Israel” at the expense of millions of lives.

Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.

January 23, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Belgium to Allocate $663Mln to Ukraine From Profits Made From Russia Frozen Assets – Reports

Sputnik – 23.01.2024

BRUSSELS – Belgium will allocate 611 million euros ($663 million) to help Ukraine in 2024 from the profits received from the frozen assets of Russia, La Libre newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing Defense Minister Ludivine Dedonder.

The funding will be provided from the interests on the accounts of Russia’s frozen assets in the country, the newspaper reported.

Last year the US proposed G7 working groups to look at possible ways to seize $300 billion in frozen Russian assets. The EU, and the UK have stressed that the money received via the confiscation would not be easily accessible and would also be insufficient to cover Ukraine’s reconstruction needs. Besides, the countries have noted that the confiscation of Russian assets should not occur to the detriment of providing financial support to Kiev in 2024.

Moscow has maintained that any attempt to confiscate its frozen assets would violate international law. The Russian Foreign Ministry has dismissed the freezing of Russian assets as theft.

“Those who are trying to initiate this, and those who will implement it, must understand that Russia will never leave those who did this alone. And it will constantly exercise its right to a legal battle, internationally, nationally or otherwise. And this, of course, will have — both Europeans and Americans understand this very well — it will have legal consequences for those who initiated and implemented it,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said commenting on the issue.

Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin dubbed the West’s asset seizure an “unseemly business,” and stressed that “stealing other people’s assets has never brought anyone good”.

January 23, 2024 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

The Climate Change Committee Must Pay The Penalty For False Advice

By George Lawson | Not A Lot Of People Know That | January 23, 2024

It seems to me that the falsification of data on the weather, perpetrated by Mr Stark and the Climate Change Committee, has far wider implications than the crime itself. It was due to the Climate Change Committee’s false information to parliament that the Net Zero fiasco was brought into law by the Teresa May government with wide government support before she was forced out of office. Net Zero, as we all know, has been a very expensive failure, and will be seen as the most costly and useless law that has ever been passed by our legislators.

The law has indirectly been responsible for increasing fuel prices to the public and pushed up business costs and prices, making products uncompetitive. It is responsible for increasing the cost of living for everyone across the nation, and has drained many billions of pounds from our overstretched government finances. The effects of these avoidable negative factors on our nation are simply incalculable, but what we do know is that Stark’s blatant lies have been responsible for trashing the country’s economy.

Mr Sunak now has good cause to do two things to affect a recovery of our lost economy. He should immediately close down the wasteful and lying Climate Change Committee, as this is the most expensive lie, by far, than the many lies they have included in their reports over the years, and bring in legislation to overturn the ridiculous economy – sapping Net Zero law. If he does this he will be supported by 99 per cent of the population, it will also increase his reputation massively for when the next election happens.

Finally, Stark, together with the Chairman of the Climate Change Committee, should be brought before a full committee of enquiry to answer for his lies, and if found guilty of intentionally misleading Parliament, he should be sent to prison. Such terrible lies to enhance his reputation at such a cost to the nation, should not go unpunished.

January 23, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

A ‘pro-Russian monster’ or a force for common sense? A new party is reshaping the German political landscape

By Tarik Cyril | RT | January 20, 2024

Germany is in severe crisis. Between a tanking economy and an increasingly unpopular government, the country has begun to show just how much stress it is under. Half a year ago, the head of German carmaker Volkswagen warned that “the roof is on fire,” while The Economist concluded that “disaster,” meaning not just the decline but collapse of the German car industry, is “no longer inconceivable.”

At this moment, the wintry beginning of 2024, German farmers are staging large-scale and escalating protests and forcing the ruling coalition into concessions, the trains are not running on time due to a strike, the country’s wholesale sector has dropped to pandemic-level pessimism, “dampening hopes of a rapid rebound in Europe’s largest economy,” as reported by Bloomberg, residential property prices are in record decline, and the office real estate market “has collapsed,” according to leading German news magazine Der Spiegel.

The Economist finds Germany to be “down” politically as well – in fact, self-relegated – from its status as leader of Europe (or, at least, the EU) to less than second fiddle (that would be France, perhaps): while “Angela Merkel was the continent’s undoubted leader, Olaf Scholz, has not taken on her mantle.”

That is a very British understatement. In reality, in the toxic yet key relationship with the US, Germany, with its hapless attempt to transfer the management concept of “servant leadership” to geopolitics, has now subordinated itself so thoroughly to American neocon-type interests that it has no leverage left at all. Because once you make your loyalty unconditional, you will be taken for granted: Selling oneself may be inevitable for any but the greatest powers. Selling oneself for free takes a special lack of foresight.

We could go on heaping up examples of malaise. But the gist is simple: Germans may love to lay it on thick when it comes to venting their misery and “angst” (I should know, being German), but, clearly, something has to – and will – give. The question is what.

One political force that stands to gain from the crisis has just been established. (Another fairly new party that is profiting is the AfD.) Long rumored and in the making, 8 January saw the official founding of a new party, the Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht – Vernunft und Gerechtigkeit (Alliance Sarah Wagenknecht – Reason and Justice), or BSW for short. Its leader Sarah Wagenknecht used to be the most popular top politician of the hard-Left party Die Linke, which she left with a bang.

As the name BSW suggests, the new party is, in part, a vehicle for Wagenknecht’s considerable personal political acumen and charisma. Opponents of “Red Sarah,” as the popular, generally right-leaning newspaper Bild still calls her, like to stereotype her as an “icon.” Yet, wiser from the failure of an earlier attempt to strike out on her own (under the label “Aufstehen,” roughly: “Stand Up”), this time, Wagenknecht has gone out of her way and made sure to do her homework, preparing a well-crafted organization, a set of junior leaders around her, and, last but not least, a solid program. This is politically significant: Unlike “Aufstehen,” the BSW will not fold quickly under the weight of its own problems.

On the contrary, the party’s chances of making a strong impact from the get-go are very good, as polls consistently indicate. The most recent one – commissioned by Bild and carried out just days after the party’s founding by a top pollster – shows that 14% of Germans would vote for the BSW in a federal election.

For comparison: the SPD, traditionally one of the core parties of Germany and the political home of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, reaches 14% as well. For the BSW this is an impressive figure, but for the SPD it is catastrophic. Meanwhile the Greens, the second partner in Berlin’s governing “Ampel” coalition, are at 12%. The FDP, the third “Ampel” component, would fail to get any seats at all (due to not crossing Germany’s electoral threshold of 5%). Sarah Wagenknecht’s own former party, Die Linke, would suffer the same fate. The only two parties that would do better than the BSW are the traditional center-right CDU (27%) and the populist-right/far-right AfD (18%).

In sum, with BSW, we are witnessing not the making of a fringe but a core movement in what seems to be emerging as Germany’s re-shaped party system, consisting of three traditional parties (SPD, CDU, and the Greens) and two new forces. The latter are coming from the right and left periphery but are likely to re-define the center, directly and by their pressure on the traditional players.

Representatives of the threatened traditional parties and their expert and mainstream media surrogates often denounce the challengers from the wings as extremists or, at least, irresponsible populists (just another way of saying “demagogue”). But they only have themselves to blame: The true cause of this tectonic movement is the failure of the traditionals. The challengers’ rise marks a reaction to it. Wagenknecht is right about this: Germany’s “democracy is imperiled most of all” by government policies that make ever more citizens feel left alone or alienated.

Against that background, the BSW promises more generous social policies, such as on education, wages, and pensions (and higher taxes for the wealthy). As Germany is doing badly economically, this will resonate. And Wagenknecht, a political “natural,” knows how to signal: She has just taken the side of the protesting farmers – as do the majority (68%) of Germans, according to polls.

Mainstream media are making desperate attempts to frame the rebellious farmers as serving extremists and somehow playing into the hands of – guess which country! – Russia. The ever more besieged minister of the economy Robert Habeck has even detected financing by – guess who! – “Putin!” (without, of course, providing any evidence). This time, these tired scare tactics are failing to catch on. Wagenknecht’s public call for chancellor Olaf Scholz to apologize to the farmers will fare better.

Crucially, Wagenknecht and the BSW have combined socially left approaches with a set of traditionally conservative stances, challenging, for instance, the hypertrophic development of new gender categories or, in general, “symbolical struggles” over hyper-sensitive terminology, so fashionable with what Wagenknecht dismisses as the “lifestyle Left.”

While this push-back against political correctness is a largely symbolic, though effective, operation, migration is a more substantial field. There as well, Wagenknecht has adopted positions closer to the right and center than the liberal left, stressing the need for control and limits. The fact that she herself had a Persian father and that prominent BSW heads are also non-ethnic Germans gives her a strong starting position for this kind of debate, shielding her points from dismissal as racist or xenophobic.

Given how many Germans feel, left alone in an economic crisis and also alienated by especially Green attempts at re-education in the spirit of urban upper class multiculturalism and gender obsessions, it will be hard to counter the BSW’s brand of socially left but otherwise centrist and even conservative policies. No wonder then that opponents are trying to portray Wagenknecht as a monster, along with the new party. Their playbook is predictable and boring: namely to smear them as being pro-Russian or even working in the service of Russia.

In reality, Wagenknecht has positioned her new party to resist the push for ever more confrontation with Moscow, especially with regard to Ukraine. At this moment, for instance, she is speaking up against the delivery of German Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, which is the latest fad among the insatiable “miracle weapon” addicts. More generally, she is demanding to shift from a policy of military confrontation by proxy to one of negotiation and compromise, which makes, of course, perfect sense.

For her enemies, there is an irony waiting to catch them: They may hope that accusing Wagenknecht of being too friendly toward Russia will weaken her appeal. Yet that ship has sailed. The days of making hay with unbridled neo-McCarthyism are ending. It is more likely, fortunately, that the BSW’s reasonable approach to foreign policy will only get it more sympathy and voters. As it should. Because remember: At this point, Germany is so dependent on the US that it is treated not only like a vassal, but like a vassal whose wishes and interests do not count. Even Germans who distrust Russia will come to understand that this is fundamentally unsound. In its own national interest, Germany must re-establish some balance by rebuilding its relationship with Russia.

Tarik Cyril Amar is an historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul.

January 20, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Miliband will bring wholesale deindustrialisation

Net Zero Watch | January 19, 2024

Net Zero Watch has said that Labour’s green dogmatism will be a disaster for the working classes, bringing industrial closure on an unprecedented scale. The campaign group, which has warned about the existential threat to British steel industry for more than a decade, says that the Port Talbot closure was inevitable, given the determination of all parties to push up the costs of energy.

The policy of taxing fossil fuels made the closure of Port Talbot inevitable, while the drive for renewables is pushing up electricity prices so far that the plan to replace the blast furnace with an electric-powered arc furnace will almost certainly prove to be a dead duck.

Electricity prices have doubled from 2002—2020, even rising during long periods of falling gas prices, as a result of increasing grid system inefficiency caused by renewables.

Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford warns that things may get even worse under a Labour government.

Ed Miliband’s delusions over renewables are going to be a disaster for the UK working classes. He is going to produce deindustrialisation on a scale that is going make the closure of the coalmines under Margaret Thatcher look like a walk in the park.

Mr Montford says that while the finger of blame for Port Talbot should be pointed at the Conservatives, there is an all-party consensus around the policies that produced the disaster:

The Westminster village is so far divorced from the interests of general public that they will shrug off the Port Talbot disaster with barely a look back.

January 20, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Status Report From Another Would Be “Climate Leader,” The UK

By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | January 15, 2024

At any given moment in the course of human events, not everyone can be the leader. And thus can the world only have a small number of “climate leaders” to light us the way to the Great Green Energy Nirvana of the future.

Among that select group of “climate leaders,” New York is definitely one. We know that because New York enacted its Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act in 2018, announcing its “climate leadership” to the world for all to envy.

But there are a handful of jurisdictions out there that are not to be outdone in the competition for the title of “climate leader.” One of those is the UK. Ten years before New York even entered the competition, the UK had enacted its Climate Change Act of 2008, setting an initial round of legally-binding emissions reduction targets (80% below 1990 levels by 2050). Then, in 2019 the UK upped the ante, committing by statute to “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions for its entire economy by 2050.

We know from my last post how things are going with this “climate leadership” thing in New York: five years into the competition, New York’s greenhouse gas emissions have actually increased substantially, as two large new natural gas power plants have replaced electricity generation from two prematurely-closed emissions-free nuclear facilities, while generation of electricity from wind and solar has barely budged.

Has the UK been any more successful? Rupert Darwall, writing under the auspices of the Real Clear Foundation, has produced a comprehensive update, with a date of December 2023. The title tells you all you need to know: “The Folly of Climate Leadership: Net zero and Britain’s Disastrous Energy Policies.”

The short summary of Darwall’s Report is that there is nothing but bad news for Britain. By contrast to New York, the UK has actually moved forward with massive construction of “renewable” facilities to generate electricity, mostly in the form of wind turbines. What it has gotten for its efforts is far more nameplate capacity of facilities for generation, but far less electricity actually generated. Costs that were predicted by advocates to decrease substantially have instead increased steadily. The percent of electricity generated from the “renewables” has gotten to around 35%, but has stalled out at that level, and the latest round of offers of acreage for offshore wind development attracted no bidders even at prices a multiple of what additional natural gas facilities would cost. In short, the UK appears stuck, with its consumers paying higher costs for power indefinitely, but with no path forward from here to the promised net zero utopia.

Darwall compares trends in electricity prices charged to commercial and industrial business in the UK and U.S. over the period from 2004 to 2022. The UK prices have steadily pulled away as the percent of electricity generation from “renewables” has increased. Here is Darwall’s chart from page 51 of his Report:

Darwall attributes the growing divergence in prices mostly to divergence in fossil fuel production. In the UK, fracking for natural gas has been completely blocked by environmental regulations. Meanwhile, in the U.S., Darwall writes:

By 2009, natural gas output had increased by 14.3 percent from its trough, reaching its highest level since 1974. In the next 10 years, US natural gas output surged a staggering 64.4 percent, to 33,899 billion cubic feet (bcf), 56.0 percent higher than its previous peak of 21,731 bcf in 1973.

In return for greatly increased electricity generation from wind and solar, the UK has dug itself into the perverse situation of ever-increasing nameplate generation capacity, but simultaneously falling output of electricity. Darwall:

Between 2009 and 2020, . . . a 15.5 percent increase in nameplate generating capacity produced 21.6 percent less electricity. In 2009, 1 MW of capacity produced 4,312 MWh of electricity. In 2020, 1 MW of capacity generated 3,094 MWh, a decline of 28.3 percent.

Has the UK at least made some progress in “saving the planet”? Here is my favorite chart from the Report, found on page 28:

The UK has gone a long way toward destroying its industrial base, but its emissions reductions are so small as to be barely noticeable in the overall world picture, and totally swamped by increases elsewhere, mostly from China. The rest of the world is getting a good laugh at Britain’s expense. As Darwall states, “The metric of leadership success is followship.” By that metric, as well as every other, Britain’s “climate leadership” is a total disaster.

January 18, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

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