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German Farmers Set To Lose Up to 3 Million Tonnes of Harvest Due to EU Ukraine-Related Sanctions

Samizdat – 29.05.2022

The European Union is currently working on a new wave of sanctions that might further limit fertiliser imports from Russia and Belarus despite the looming agricultural crisis that may affect millions.

German farmers are sounding the alarm over a potential contraction in their output and further price increases this year caused by the EU’s sanctions against Russia and Belarus, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten has reported.

EU sanctions imposed in the context of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine limit fertiliser imports, namely potassium chloride and potash fertilisers, which many European farmers rely upon.

German farmers expect that this year’s output may be 3 million tonnes less than previous years as a result of current measures. The fertiliser shortage will hit grain crops particularly heavily as countries already fear shortages in their global supplies due to the conflict in Ukraine and difficulties in maritime trading routes.

Another aftermath of the EU’s Ukraine-related sanctions targeting fertilisers may be the growth of consumer food prices, the German news outlet warned. In 2021, Europe imported 4.6 million tonnes of a total 13 million of fertilisers from Belarus and Russia. With shipments from these countries limited by April’s sanctions package, the supply shortage is set to raise already high fertiliser prices – and as such consumer prices – even more, farmers warned.

Boosting local fertiliser production in the EU and elsewhere in hopes of reducing prices is also scheduled to confront challenges posed by western sanctions, as manufacturing requires large power consumption and cheap energy sources, both areas which have been impacted by the Ukraine-related measures.

Despite these difficulties, EU countries continue to seek to do away with Russian gas even amid prospects of surging energy prices and unemployment. For his part, Germany’s Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Hubertus Heil has gone on the record as stating that an immediate ban on Russian gas will lead to a notable reduction of jobs in Germany. Heil has called to avoid such an outcome.

EU countries are currently discussing their sixth package of sanctions against Russia and Belarus. With many member-states already experiencing negative economic results from earlier packages, the EU is struggling to negotiate conditions on banning or limiting oil imports from Russia due to the opposition of several countries within the bloc. The new sanctions package also reportedly includes proposals on further limiting fertiliser imports from Russian and Belarusian chemical companies, even as the threat of global hunger and the lack of grain and crops looms.

May 29, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | , | 5 Comments

What Really Happened in the Pandemic

By Justin Hart | Rational Ground | May 26, 2022

Every year humans endures a “flu season” – a period denoting the high-water mark of that year’s wave of respiratory viral pathogens. Believe it or not we still have strains of the 1889 Russian flu, the 1918 Spanish flu, the 1957 Asian flu, the 1968 Hong Kong Flu, the 2009 H1N1 virus – all these various strains of nasty bugs rear their head every single year.

In late 2019, a new “novel” pathogen appeared on the scene – a bug from the “Coronavirus” family (“corona” describing the spike-like structure of the particles.) The official title was SARS-CoV-2. SARS = “severe acute respiratory syndrome”; CoV-2 = “Coronavirus 2.” This particular virus can cause a disease called COVID-19 (“Coronavirus Disease 2019”). The disease is thought to have originated in China and found significant human-to-human transmission. It is thought to be “novel” because prior infections of other pathogens do not seem to create anti-bodies to tackle this newfound disease within the human body.

Officials raised alarms about the potential mortality witnessed from COVID-19. Governments across the world scrambled to address and protect their populations from what quickly became a pandemic. Efforts ranged from stringent to downright authoritarian. Results were mixed to say the least. In early 2022, it was thought that SARS-Cov-2 and COVID-19 would join the panoply of viruses and diseases we experience during the annual ebb and flow of life.

That’s the short sterile version of what transpired.

Here’s what actually happened:

  • Global elites had ramped up significant efforts to reshape the world to address a host of inequalities and imagined boogeymen like climate change.
  • These global elites were bolstered by a host of corrupt institutions which included the WHO (“World Health Organization”), big pharmaceutical companies, and world wealth and health players like Bill Gates.
  • With the emergence of a new virus these groups pounced at the vulnerable moment to put their plans into action and retool the world with a host of proposals – this was known as The Great Reset. The Coronavirus response was just the first sortie in this plan.
  • Governments across the world, under the threat of serious mortality (real or imagined), caved to the plan of action which utilized never-before imagined cram downs on individual rights, massive financial expenses, and enhanced authority overhauls to set the stage for a shift of power.
  • Free speech, right to assembly, right to bodily autonomy, representative government all fell within months of the first COVID-19 cases announced in almost every country.
  • This newfound power and framework allowed this movement to latch on the decaying carcass of fragile democracies, societal empathies, and eggshell-walking politicos anxious about upcoming elections.
  • Unprecedented global lockdowns of populations disrupted the entire flow of commerce and relationships.
  • Trillions of tax dollars flowed into the coffers of every connected and corrupt institution under the guise of “protecting” the global populace from this apocalyptic pathogen.
  • Disrupted businesses were “bought” off with zero-cost loans and grants to keep employees onboard and keep the money flowing so as not to destroy the economies all at once.
  • A massive global testing regime was set up to catch the widest number of COVID-19 infections possible. The chosen test array (the PCR test) could pick up remnants of a virus at 5 days after infection or even 75 days.
  • Hospitals were designated as the first point of care ensuring a massive wave of anxiety and alarming centralization of power still felt today.
  • Deaths were counted with the widest-possible latitude ensuring a prominent psychological impact at every turn prompting policies mirroring population concerns.
  • Governments bought and paid off new entities to ensure compliance. Threats of fines and operational shutdowns were made if new agencies failed to meet expectations.
  • A global deterrence was crafted to ward off any pre-hospitalization treatments. The endgame was focused on the ultimate prize: a “revolutionary” vaccination framework thought to be the next generation in global medicine and health.
  • An unprecedented wave of funding and government collusion was established to roll out a vaccine across the world.
  • Government mandates ranged from coercive inconvenience to full-on house arrest. You could lose your job, your bank account, and your freedom in one fell swoop.
  • Simplistic mechanisms of mask wearing were instituted as an outward sign of faith in the “new normal.” Politicians could then wipe their hands of outcomes by pointing to lack-of-use of such procedures.
  • Children were targeted for ripe propagandist approaches ensuring that most vulnerable parts of our society were utilized as a bludgeon against anyone going against the grain.
  • Wave after wave of virus variants proved a great excuse when vaccines didn’t perform as expected.
  • Strategic gaslighting was employed by health officials to distract from their massive failures.
  • War followed to cover up the disaster.

All of this was designed to latch onto a virus that many assert has unnatural origins. The ramifications of a man-made virus set loose upon the world by accident or on purpose should frighten us more than the virus itself. Someone was playing god and it appears they are just getting started.

My book, Gone Viral: How Covid Drove the World Insane comes out in September.

May 29, 2022 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Corruption, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | 3 Comments

Swiss Daily: Wind Park Destruction Of 1000-Year Old Untouched German Forest Exposes “Absurdity Of Green Energies”

Unsustainability in the name of “sustainability”

By P Gosselin – No Tricks Zone – 28. May 2022

Lately we’ve been reporting on what many people are calling one of the greatest environmental felonies in Europe: the deforestation of the 1000-year old Reinhardswald, known as the “fairy tale forest”, in order to make way for largescale industrial wind parks to produce “green” energy. Proponents claim  the wind parks will save our environment and climate. Clearing the forests has already commenced.

We reported on this environmental crime here, here and here.

Only wind parks count

At the Swiss NZZ daily, Christian Saehrendt writes on the “absurdity” of clearing one of Europe’s last remaining intact forests to make way for monster wind parks.

In the Reinhardswald, which covers an area of around 200 square kilometers, there are centuries-old oak trees, a highly developed natural biodiversity that is home for example to rare wild cats and populations of white red deer – a balance which has taken 1000 years to establish. But now it’s all being industrially raped, gangbang-style, by crony, greedy bastards under the guise of environmental virtue. It’s a grand swindle that in normal times would have everyone enraged.

But these are not normal sane times. The NZZ reports: ” Yesterday, trees were planted as climate savers; today, only plastic rotor blades count.”

“To free Germany from Russian energy imports”

The Swiss daily adds:  “This spring, the authorities in northern Hesse approved the construction of a wind farm with at least eighteen 240-meter-high wind turbines in the middle of this forest area, causing widespread consternation.”

The densely wooded and rural region around Kassel, where the Documenta world art exhibition is being held again this year, has actually traditionally relied on tourist marketing as “fairy tale country” and is served by the “German Fairy Tale Route,” In the past, this has also gone down well with overseas tourists, especially Asians,” writes the NZZ. ”

Wind park proponents defend the deforestation of one of Europe’s remaining virgin forests by claiming that only sick areas of the forest are being cleared away and that the turbines will “free Germany from the clinging grip of Russian energy imports”….and save our climate for generations to come.

“The Federal German Ministry of the Environment recently permitted the construction of wind turbines in natural reserve areas. In addition, species protection is to be weakened,” the NZZ accurately reports. “The initiative ‘Windpark-Reinhardswald-dagegen’ declared: ‘The so-called treasure house of European forests – is ruined for decades. We are horrified.’”

Not to worry… let them go to fake forests

“While the real, historically grown fairytale forest outside the city is being cut down, artificial substitutes are being created within the city. For example, Kassel’s civic society has been fighting for months over the redesign of the Brothers Grimm Square, which is conceived in the form of a “fairy tale forest” of pine trees and shrubbery – whereby at best a light miniature forest on a traffic island can emerge.”

The NZZ adds: “In Kassel’s Grimm Museum – the ‘Grimmwelt’ – which will again be a Documenta site in the summer, an artificial forest has already been built in, its thorn hedge atmosphere created by those green and vertically arranged brushes familiar from car washes. Even in these local events, a mega-trend of our time becomes visible: the desensualization and media filtering of our experience. Nature is increasingly staged and unreal. City groves instead of primeval forests, artificial worlds instead of nature, while the landscape outside becomes more and more inhospitable and loses its face.”

May 28, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | | 2 Comments

Climate madness: British startup releases masks for cows

British startup ZELP has developed a mask for cows that filters methane. They received a climate protection award for this – Prince Charles is thrilled about the project.

Free West Media | May 28, 2022

It sounds like a belated April Fool’s joke: On May 24, 2022, the online portal Agrarheute reported that the British startup ZELP (Zero Emissions Livestock Project) had developed masks for cows. In this case, however, not to protect them from Corona, but to filter methane.

ZELP is currently testing various prototypes of the cattle masks, according to Agrarheute. These are already able to filter around 30 percent of the methane emitted by ruminants. In the future, this value should be increased to around 60 percent.

The highlight: ZELP was awarded the climate protection prize “Climate Design Award” for the “revolutionary” idea, which was created by WEF figurehead Prince Charles and designer Sir Jony Ive. The cattle mask was one of four winners and received a cash prize of the equivalent of 58 000 euros. Prince Charles supports face masks for cows to fight climate change.

The British monarch is one of the architects of the Great Reset, the name of the 50th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), held in June 2020. It brought together high-profile business and political leaders, convened by Prince Charles. At the launch event for the Great Reset, he listed key areas for action, similar to those listed in his Sustainable Markets Initiative. These included draconian measures for net zero emissions globally as well as the introduction of carbon pricing.

To prove that this report was not a joke, the portal linked a video in its article that showed the enthusiastic heir to the throne presenting the project.

The 100-gram rubber masks with solar-powered fans are designed to direct the animals’ exhalations into a small chamber and then use chemical processes to convert methane into carbon dioxide, Agrarheute explained. But first farmers have to be convinced to actually use the masks.

One obstacle could be the rather high price: The use costs 45 dollars per cow and year, the equivalent of 41 euros. In addition, the masks would not bring any advantage for the farmer from an economic point of view.

In the comments below the article, readers legitimately wondered whether this message was some kind of joke. Agrarheute immediately confirmed that this was unfortunately not the case.

The claims about methane have been debunked

One reader commented: “Madness or stupidity? Every thinking person understands what nonsense the story about cow’s methane is. A cow is not a perpetual motion machine and it does not create energy out of thin air. The cow lives in the earth’s natural carbon cycle and is not ‘climate-damaging’ (if such a thing exists). Even the climate heroes at Climate Facts know that, although some people don’t like it. They are just producing a lot of garbage, trying to get more money out of the farmers’ pockets, end of the story.”

The three main greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, all impact the environment differently. Methane is known as a “flow gas”, removed from the atmosphere at a rapid pace. Methane’s lifespan in the atmosphere is approximately 10 years, but flow gases will stay stagnant as they are destroyed at the same rate of emission.

Thus the initial method for calculating greenhouse emissions misrepresents the impact of short-lived flow gases, like methane, on future warming.

The hypocrisy of the global elite

The global elite pushing the Great Reset this week emitted thousands of units of carbon dioxide with an estimated lifespan in the atmosphere of 1000 years, meaning carbon dioxide emitted from the year 2022 will still be in the atmosphere in 3022. Meeting via Zoom for example, would have been a much better choice, given their “concerns” about climate change.

Traveling in private jets to the Davos Summit in Switzerland to foist their climate agenda on the rest of the world to “limit global temperature rise and stave off disaster” as stated on its website, “10 private one-way flights departed various European cities on Wednesday evening and landed in St. Gallen-Altenrhein Airport, the closest airstrip to Davos, emitting approximately 43 440 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere”.

For the WEF annual meeting in 2019 in Davos, according to an analysis from Air Charter Service, The Guardian reported at the time that around 1 500 private jets flew to and from airports near the Swiss town.

May 28, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | 1 Comment

The Globalists’ Race Against Time

By Eamon McKinney | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 26, 2022

The green economy, de-industrialisation, digital health passports, Central Bank digital currencies, these are all core components of the Globalists’ plan for the Great reset. The WEF has painted a picture of their proposed future via Klaus Schwab and his acolytes. “We will have nothing, own nothing and be happy”. The main obstacle to this grand vision is that not surprisingly very few countries wish to go along with it. The Globalists know their game is coming to an end and the Great Reset is their way of ensuring that the same financial cabal that has brought the world to its current lamentable state will continue to rule over all in the next world order. The most prominent objectors to this insidious plan are of course Russia and China. Unlike their western counterparts both have strong leaders who enjoy popular support, have strong economies and are optimistic about future prospects for growth. Neither intends to sacrifice their countries so that Western elites can maintain their control over the Global economic system and impose their self-serving will on weaker nations. Which in its simplest terms is why both countries need to be destroyed, at least economically before the Great Reset can be imposed on the world. Time, however, is not on the Globalists’ side, recent events have demonstrated that they are aware of this and are accelerating their timelines.

The Great Reset and its stated objectives have been in the planning for several years, those plans however are now seriously behind schedule. The election of Trump in 2016 wasn’t supposed to happen. He was to Washington the ultimate “Black Swan” event. An outsider without the backing of a political party and with seemingly the entire mainstream media against him, his victory was considered all but impossible. Yet win he did, and it seemed he spent the entire four years of his presidency battling against the Globalist faction, both internationally and within America. Washington felt cheated, not only was Trump an “outsider” he was also a disrupter. Opinions on the divisive Trump aside, he was indisputably an “America First Nationalist”, he was anti-NATO. and a vocal anti-Globalist. There would be no Great Reset under Trump, he was an obstacle to the agenda and had to be removed. Which in 2020 in a blatantly fraudulent election he was. Should Trump run again in 2024 and all indications are that he will, he would likely win an honest election in a landslide. The return of Trump would provide another major obstacle to the Globalist agenda. Expect that all efforts will be expended to prevent another Trump presidency. With an angry populace and increased electoral scrutiny next time around, they may have to turn to other measures to foil a Trump return. Should Trump re-enter the White House in 2024, the notoriously vindictive Trump is expected to seek accountability against those who he believes robbed him of his rightful election. Nerves are frayed in Washington and they know the clock is ticking.

Trump set the agenda back four years and they are now playing against the clock to make up for lost time, all evidence suggests that they are getting increasingly desperate. The recent invitations issued to Sweden and Finland to “fast track” NATO membership is yet another provocation to Russia. Putin wants to end the Ukraine conflict on his own terms and withdraw, not get bogged down in a quagmire that would drag on for years. NATO wants exactly that. Wooing Sweden and Finland is their attempt to ensure years of conflict and tension. Putin understands this all too well. As they lurch from one bad idea to another, attention should be paid to the indecent haste in which they are moving. It appears they are making things up as they go along, all without any obvious sense of consequence.

The prospect of Trump 2.0 is not the only time sensitive issue facing the Globalists. The global economy is on the brink of implosion. Sri Lanka has recently defaulted on its international debts. This will immediately create at least a $500 billion hole in the global economy. Alarmingly, according to the World Bank more than 70 other countries are in a similarly perilous economic condition. For most their debts are un-payable, and the IMF solution of structural adjustment (austerity) privatisations, and cuts to government services, would consign these countries to generations of deprivation and social unrest. Or, they could repudiate the debt completely and abandon the Western banking model. Both China and Russia have alternatives to SWIFT and welcome countries who want to escape the neo-liberal financial plantation. Both offer investment for development, non-interference and respect for countries’ sovereignty. All things valued by every country, but unachievable under Western domination. Decisions will very soon be made by countries throughout the Global south about who they want to align their futures with.

A new proposal being put before the UN on May 22nd essentially requires all nations to surrender their sovereignty to the WHO in the event of another pandemic. That they would even think that post-Covid the WHO enjoys that level of confidence, is delusional. This transparent power grab is easily recognised for what it is, in the unlikely event that it gains enough traction, expect another pandemic to follow shortly after. The cabal still has the tools to cajole, bribe and threaten countries to submit, and doubtless it will try, but outside of the captured western countries, such a desperate move will garner scant support. Covid failed to usher in the Great Reset but it unleashed a wave of destruction on the global economy that may take generations to repair. Many questions on the criminal mismanagement of Covid remain unanswered. There are few nations that don’t harbour deep resentment towards the notoriously corrupt and inept WHO and its genocidal Sugar Daddy Bill Gates. The sheer audacity of the proposal stinks of desperation. The upcoming vote is likely to give the Globalists another stark reminder of its waning power and influence.

A Great Reset will happen, just not the one intended by the Globalists. They may have to settle for the Great Decoupling instead. As Western influence continues to diminish at a rapid pace the trend of countries flocking to the China/Russia orbit is bound to increase. The NWO that they have been lusting after for generations is likely to be restricted to Western Europe and North America, or about 15% of the World’s population. The effects of the disastrous Ukraine provocation and the failed sanctions will soon become undeniable. Food and energy shortages together with uncontrollable inflation, will make even this smaller NWO harder to control. The Emperor has no clothes, as all can now see, their game is old, tired and predictable, and they have no new ideas. The Globalists may not have to worry about a Trump return in 2024. It is highly likely that the clock will have run out on them by then. It could happen any day.

May 27, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , , , | 1 Comment

China, Russia Veto US-Sponsored UNSC Resolution on North Korea

Samizdat | May 26, 2022

The UN Security Council failed to reach common ground on new sanctions against Pyongyang on Thursday. Washington proposed the sanctions in the wake of North Korea’s latest missile test this week, on the heels of US President Joe Biden’s Asia tour.

The vote came just a day after North Korea was accused of test-launching its largest intercontinental ballistic missile and two others. Ahead of the vote, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield called for unity in the face of “a threat to the entire international community.”

However, China and Russia vetoed new sanctions on humanitarian grounds, pointing to their futility and even “inhumanity,” as North Korea struggled to contain a massive Covid-19 outbreak.

The UNSC imposed sanctions on North Korea back in 2006, following its first nuclear test, and has tightened them over the years. Since the latest round of restrictions in 2017, Moscow and Beijing have increasingly been arguing that further pressure is a road to nowhere and unlikely to force Pyongyang to disarm unilaterally.

“We do not think additional sanctions will be helpful in responding to the current situation. It can only make the situation even worse,” China’s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun said on Thursday.

“We have repeatedly said that the introduction of new sanctions against the DPRK is a dead end,” said Russia’s representative Vasily Nebenzya. “We emphasized the fallacy, inefficiency and inhumanity of sanctions pressure on Pyongyang.”

The new resolution sought to cut North Korea’s already limited imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products by another 25 percent, impose additional maritime sanctions, and ban the country from exporting mineral fuels, oils and waxes. Washington also proposed a global asset freeze on the state corporation that supervises North Korean laborers overseas, as well as the Lazarus hacking group, accused of “cyberespionage, data theft, monetary heists” on behalf of the Pyongyang government.

Pyongyang has for years accused Washington and Seoul of “hostile policy” towards the North, and vowed to maintain a sufficient level of deterrence. Regional tensions somewhat improved during the presidency of Donald Trump, with Pyongyang temporarily halting its missile tests. However, the two much-hyped summits between the US and DPRK leaders in 2018 and 2019 reached no lasting agreement on the subject of sanctions or denuclearization.

Biden has returned to the more hostile posture of his predecessors, while North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un has responded in kind, by firing off over a dozen of ballistic missiles this year alone and warning that the DPRK not only has a “firm will” to continue with its “nuclear deterrent” program but will use such weapons “preemptively,” if forced to.

New South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol similarly ran on a more hawkish platform than his predecessor Moon Jae-in.

May 27, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine threatens “something could happen” to oil pipeline serving EU member Hungary

Samizdat | May 26, 2022

Ukraine has “a wonderful lever of pressure” on Hungary via the Druzhba – which translates to ‘Friendship’ – oil pipeline, Ukrainian energy minister adviser Lana Zerkal claimed on Thursday.

Speaking during an online discussion at the Kiev Security Forum, Zerkal criticized the policy of the Hungarian government, which is blocking a sixth round of EU sanctions, one which would ban Russian oil. The Western countries have been imposing harsh restrictions since late February, when Moscow launched its military attack on Ukraine.

In Zerkal’s opinion, Hungary is using the Russian military offensive as an instrument to achieve its own goals and thinks that now it “can demand anything” from the EU.

“Ukraine has a wonderful lever of pressure in its hands – it’s the Druzhba oil pipeline,” Zerkal said, adding that “something could happen” with Hungary’s separate line of Druzhba.

“And, in my opinion, it would be very appropriate if something happened to it. But, again, it is in the hands of the government and the president to make decisions on political issues, to decide if we really want to talk to [Hungarian President Viktor] Orban in a language that he understands and that he imposes on the EU, or if we are not ready for that yet,” Zerkal stressed.

Zerkal later took to Facebook to clarify “her humble opinion” that “caused a diplomatic scandal,” saying “facts are a stubborn thing.”

“But, to calm the situation, it is worth specifying that the official position of the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine on this matter is unchanged. Ukraine is a reliable transporter of energy carriers to Europe,” she stressed.

While Zerkal’s words have already started to spread through Hungarian media, Budapest is yet to comment on the issue.

In a letter to European Council President Charles Michel, seen by the Financial Times, Orban reportedly told the EU that a bloc-wide ban on Russian oil would cause serious problems for his country’s economy and thus “urgent investments” from Brussels were needed.

Hungary is almost entirely dependent on Russia for its gas imports and relies on Moscow for more than half of its imported oil. The country gets 65% of its oil through the Druzhba pipeline from Russia. Addressing possible sanctions against Russia’s oil, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto previously said that Budapest would back a ban on maritime shipments, but not on deliveries through pipelines.

Despite the lack of consensus within the EU, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Monday that the bloc’s 27 member states “will reach a breakthrough within days” on an embargo. Any decision on EU sanctions must be made unanimously.

Ukraine has been consistently calling on the European countries to stop buying Russian energy resources, claiming that by doing so they are financing Moscow’s military offensive.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused European leaders of committing economic “suicide” by attempting to give up Russian energy.

May 26, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

The World Bank’s Impractical Electric Car Clap-Trap

Net Zero Watch | May 26, 2022

At a World Bank event in April, former chief economist Lord Nicholas Stern called for a global ban on the manufacture and sale of combustion engine vehicles. At COP26, a coalition of multilateral development banks signed a joint statement announcing their intentions to ‘increase the level of private capital mobilised’ to fight climate change. Activists were infuriated that it omitted divestments from funding fossil fuels. Both the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank have faced industry pressure to stop investing in internal combustion engine vehicles by 2025. Sixty-eight percent of transport investment by the World Bank involves combustion engines. But perhaps the World Bank has not floored the accelerator on EVs yet because they recognise roadblocks keep the wheel out of reach for working families.

The UK Government insists that combustion engine vehicles will be banned from production, importing, and sale by 2030. But a global semiconductor shortage has produced a projected nine percent slump in electric vehicle sales in the UK. Motorists are modelled to save £700 on fuel for making the switch to EVs. However, road pricing and tolls have been proposed to replace Treasury revenue once fuel duty becomes obsolete. Therefore, the gap between petrol and electric car running costs may close. Electricity costs could even eclipse fuel prices, should the renewables generating electricity fail.

There are also infrastructure impediments to overcome. The ban would require 400,000 charging points to be installed across the UK by 2030, up from the only 35,000 that were in place as of last year. Many rural areas remain ‘charging blackspots’, inaccessible for EVs on long journeys. Annual installation must increase ten-fold to meet the Department for Transport’s promise that ‘drivers will never be further than thirty miles from a rapid charging station’.

Even if charger targets are met, streets could be lined with cars charging for up to twelve hours at a time. This issue will be exacerbated in cities. ‘Generation Rent’ faces housing price rises of 14.3 percent; the fastest for seventeen years. Their reliance on being packed and stacked into high-rise apartments means a third and rising of the population have no access to private off-street parking. 24.6 percent of vehicles are parked on streets overnight. A report published by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) modelled electric car ownership will increase traffic congestion eleven percent by 2050.  Combined with charging station scarcity, congestion could become chronic — with motorists jousting for parking and charging spaces, and charging stoppages slowing delivery times for various courier services. This constitutes quite the regression from the convenient five-minute-stop at your local petrol garage.

All of this is presuming that the cars themselves can be manufactured to meet demand. Making electric cars requires six times the minerals as combustion engine vehicles: needing thirty times as the lithium, nickel, and other metals currently in circulation. The UK must expand battery production capacity by ninety times the present amount to keep pace. But absent abundant domestic resources, Britain remains heavily dependent on our geostrategic rivals for the raw materials used in EV and battery manufacture.

Britain imports over 2200 tonnes of lithium every year. Recent sanctions on Russia affected Britain’s top import: $12 billion of annual metal imports. Nickel prices saw a short-squeeze, with prices increasing 250 percent to over $100,000 a tonne. Both metals are instrumental in EV battery manufacturing.

Meanwhile, China controls eighty percent of global annual battery production capacity, sixty percent of global graphite production, sixty five percent of nickel refining, and eighty percent of cobalt refining. This is because China’s Belt & Road Initiative has annexed more than a third of global precious metals deposits: including forty rare ore deposits in Zimbabwe, the ‘white goldrush’ of lithium under Argentinian salt-flats, and $1 trillion in lithium reserves in Afghanistan.

There is mounting evidence that the only way out of our rare metals shortage is to mine asteroids in outer space. Elon Musk’s rocket-measuring contest against Jeff Bezos and Richard Branston may be an interstellar gold rush to become Earth’s first trillionaire. But until these mad scientists invent safe passage to the stars, the rest of us will keep driving petrol cars.

But instead of abandoning infeasible commitments to the abolition of transport emissions within the next eight years eco-authoritarians use these shortages as an excuse to restrict energy consumption and abolish car ownership.

In addition to the usual anti-motorist platitudes by the cycling lobby, some have taken to advocating ride-share apps as a reason to ‘give up owning a vehicle’. These rent-only alternatives have the downside of making your means of mobility contingent on the kindness of strangers. Ride-sharing is a convenient addition to the transport economy. However, if car ownership were displaced wholesale by public transport and hire-cars, there are dire concerns for civil liberties. Say the wrong thing about the environment, and governments, or the increasing number of companies adopting environmental credit scores, can deplatform from anything except walking. Consumer choice must be a core principle of free societies — and that includes your right to buy and drive a petrol car.

EVs also render homeowners vulnerable to arbitrary power outages. Green Party Baroness Natalie Bennett has suggested that electric cars can be used as driveway backup generators, should renewables fail to meet consumer demand. The National Grid and Octopus Energy are piloting a policy which drains EV batteries of energy during generation droughts. Even if all of Britain’s cars became electric overnight, and full storage capacity could be returned to the grid without losses, it would still fall short of the deepest energy deficit by eighty-seven percent. This precedent is not only impractical: it means that the state can drain your EV’s battery flat, and enforce a travel lockdown anytime it pleases. If they can’t confiscate your car, the government can remotely deactivate your home charging point anytime they like.

Electric cars are, incontrovertibly, a great idea in theory. But those wanting everyone to drive electric won’t get anywhere fast by banning the combustion engine — all they will achieve is pricing all but a privileged few out of car ownership entirely. That would be politically suicidal; my apolitical plumber recently told me, ‘I’ve never been to a protest, but if they try to take my car, you’ll see me in the streets.’ If the World Bank and British government follow through on their plan to ban the combustion engine, they may well have riots on their hands. They must abandon the planned petrol car ban, or risk terrible consequences.

May 26, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | 1 Comment

‘Grid Failure’ May Cause ‘Forced’ Blackouts For Half of U.S. This Summer, Experts Warn

By Jamie White | InfoWars | May 25, 2022

Widespread blackouts may come to the Midwest, Texas, and Western U.S. this summer due to “insufficient” power generation to meet demand, a top grid regulator warned in an unprecedented report.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a non-profit regulator for U.S. grid operators, issued a first of its kind Summer Reliability Assessment warning that the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which operates the power grid across 15 states, is at “high” risk of failing to meet energy demand, which may lead to “forced outages.”

“In the event of wide-area extreme heat event, all U.S. assessment areas in the Western Interconnection are at risk of energy emergencies,” the report says.

The report warns the situation is worse for the Midwest because MISO, which serves 42 million people’s energy needs, is preparing to have 2.3% less generation capacity this summer than it had the year before, while peak demand projections have increased by 1.7%.

The report goes on to say that Texas’ energy grid may need to use “emergency procedures” to cope with “a combination of extreme peak demand, low wind, and high outage rates from thermal generators.”

The report claims the risks of power grid failure are also attributed to “supply chain issues”, low coal stockpiles, “cyber security threats from Russia”, and “unexpected tripping of solar photovoltaic (PV) resources during grid disturbances.”

But Bloomberg News takes it a step further, blaming the coming outages on “climate change.”

“Blame the heat. Summer in much of the Northern Hemisphere is a typical peak for electricity use. This year, it’s going to be sweltering as climate change tightens its grip,” Bloomberg reported.

“In California, the most populous state, gas supplies are clipped even further because of a pipeline rupture last year that has limited imports. Plus, climate change is fueling drought, severely curbing hydropower supplies. The California Independent System Operator said this month that the state may be at risk of blackouts for the next few summers amid extreme weather.”

Overall, the 46-page report mentions “forced outages” 29 times and calls for consumers to reduce their energy consumption during the summer.

Experts say that in addition to these problems, the majority of the U.S. power grid itself is deteriorating.

“The US is experiencing more outages globally than any other industrialized nation,” said Teri Viswanath, lead economist for power, energy and water at CoBank ACB. “About 70% of our grid is nearing end of life.”

But rather than bankroll much-needed maintenance to the U.S. energy infrastructure, the Biden administration and Congress thought it more politically glamorous to send $40 billion of taxpayer dollars last week to the failed government of Ukraine as aid in NATO’s proxy war with Russia.

Additionally, the Biden administration has continued shutting down pipelines and oil and gas leases despite energy prices skyrocketing from inflation and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Forced outages in half the country may sound like an unmitigated failure by the U.S. government, but in reality they’re a key feature of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset agenda.

After all, Joe Biden said Tuesday that exploding energy prices were part of an “incredible transition” away from fossil fuels.

May 26, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | 1 Comment

The green agenda’s role in global inflation

By Ben Pile | TCW Defending Freedom | May 24, 2022

AS inflation rises and the prospects for our return to normality following the pandemic fade ever more into the distant future, criticism is rightly focusing on financial institutions and regulators. They claim that printing money, which has inevitably caused prices to rise, was necessary to mitigate the economic chaos of lockdowns. But now they appear to be behind a third act of immense self-harm to help to steer the world to inflation and deliberately prevent economic recovery. The rise in energy prices the world has seen were not the result of an unforeseeable supply crisis, but engineered by those charged with managing the economy.

In a recent interview, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey admitted to Sky News his discomfort at the UK rate of inflation heading towards 10 per cent. ‘We are being struck by historically large shocks,’ explained Bailey, removing himself and his organisation from the spotlight. ‘Who of us thought there would be a war in Europe of the sort that we’re seeing?’ he asked rhetorically.

As it happens, many people have been predicting such a conflict. Analysts, be they critics of Nato or Moscow, have long and for different reasons warned that Ukraine risks becoming the point of renewed east-west tension, and many Ukrainians themselves have spoken about the grim inevitability of war, at least since 2014. But this article is about energy and climate policy, not war. I raise the issue here because, like me, you might have expected the Governor of the Bank of England to have kept a watching brief on geopolitics.

We would be wrong, then. It turns out that the chief regulator of the UK economy (the sixth largest in the world) and his predecessor were far more concerned with the putative risks from climate change than with developments in geopolitics. The Bank of England’s webpages could have been written by an XR activist. ‘Climate change creates financial risks and economic consequences,’ it claims. ‘These risks and consequences matter for our mission to maintain monetary and financial stability.’ Endless volumes of reports and links to pages after pages make the case, citing equally endless scientific reports that I have always considered to be suspect.

Put simply, I do not believe that society’s sensitivity to climate is in any way equivalent to climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide. The planet may well be slightly warmer, but there exists very little evidence that this is creating economic risks. On the contrary, people everywhere are becoming much wealthier. (Or were, before the pandemic.) I shall spare the word count here, but I have written about it at length in many other places if you remain unconvinced. Suffice it to say that it is logically impossible for ‘risks’ to be growing as the BoE claim while an economy is growing, which it was, even in the world’s most seemingly climate-ravaged places.

But green ideology is a fetter on public institutions’ grasp of reality. And so we should look to the origins of green ideology to try to understand what is behind the BoE’s climate activism.

It is a common misconception that the climate agenda is driven by science. But it is a matter of historical fact that green ideology sprang from the very top of global society. In the 1960s, it was the Club of Rome, a think tank formed by wealthy industrialists and their pet academics that turned their fears about overpopulation and resource-depletion into a computer simulation that forecast civilisation’s imminent collapse. And so it is today with climate change, every earlier environmental scare story issued by that simulation now having been debunked by reality.

The heart of the contemporary green ‘movement’ is known by its ugly moniker, the ‘green blob’. The entirety of it, including those parts of it that dwell on streets, owes its existence completely to the grants given by about a dozen or so billionaires’ philanthropic foundations to organisations of various kinds. From Extinction Rebellion to academic research departments, none of it would exist but for the vast torrents of cash from the likes of Jeremy Grantham, Sir Christopher Hohn and Michael Bloomberg. And it is from here that the notion that ‘climate change creates financial risks and economic consequences’ springs from, and the belief that ‘financial stability’ is functionally dependent on ‘stable weather’ is forced into the machinery of the state.

Bailey’s predecessor at the Bank of England (2013-2020), Mark Carney, previously Governor of the Bank of Canada (2008-2013), had been so impressed by multibillionaire Michael Bloomberg’s selfless philanthropy (giving away a total of $11 billion of his $82 billion fortune, significantly to green causes), he fashioned a role for the tycoon in policymaking. As Governor of both BoE and BoC, Carney was also chair of the little-known intergovernmental agency, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), where he oversaw its greening, bringing the notion of financial stability being predicated on ‘stable weather’ to financial institutions the world over. Green ideology is an infectious rot. Under the FSB, a Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) was established, and an array of corporate and financial bigwigs appointed to steer it, including Bloomberg as its chair.

Put simply, TCFD aimed to support the ‘E’ in ‘ESG’ with a system of
‘recommendations’ for voluntary disclosures that companies should make to investors, much as companies are required to make statutory disclosures about the state of their operations. ESG, short for Environmental, Social, and corporate Governance, is the fashionable green-woke successor to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), driving shareholders to change boardroom and culture using metrics that score companies’ commitments progressive values. TCFD’s recommendations build on the notion that, since financial stability is predicated on climatic stability, companies risk profiles are also dependent on weather. The logic here being that if a company does not have a business plan that is compatible with a changing climate, and moreover, compatible with a changing regulatory environment, investors deserve to be made aware of these risks.

This was good business. Ethical business, even. And other green billionaire philanthropists were eager to give their money away to this good cause, too. British hedge fund manager, Sir Christopher Hohn, used much of the $800 million pushed through his philanthropic outfit, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), to support organisations that campaign and lobby for these voluntary disclosures. CIFF founded the ‘Say on Climate’ campaign, which aimed to mobilise investors to press the companies in which they had an interest to adopt ‘climate transition action plans’, building on Hohn’s trademark shareholder activism. Between 2014 and 2020, CIFF made grants of over $23million to the Carbon Disclosure Project, and backed other shareholder and financial sector campaigning organisations partnered with the ‘We Mean Business Coalition’.

But as sure as push comes to shove, voluntary becomes compulsory. At the COP26 meeting in Glasgow last year, Mark Carney stood in front of a screen that declared the intention to make TCFD disclosures mandatory, and for policy frameworks to ‘wind down stranded assets’ – the green movement’s term for fossil fuel investments that will become obsolete when climate policy prohibits them. He was followed by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who declared that investment funds with assets under management worth $130 trillion were aligned to the UK’s new policies.

Sunak was an employee of Hohn’s investment fund, TCI, between 2006 and 2009. And as an alumnus of such a notable activist outfit as TCI, and as Chancellor, it is inconceivable that he was unaware of the effects on the economy that ESG was already having by last autumn. ESG had driven investors away from stock in companies that make useful stuff, such as coal, oil and gas, towards high-tech, social media and companies that produce mere vapour, such as Netflix. As Bloomberg reported at the time, in the era of ESG investing, capital investment in fossil fuels had halved since the Paris Agreement, and the cost of capital to fossil fuel companies had doubled.

Amid other factors, this capital strangulation of the energy sector was the direct effect of ESG investing, green campaigning organisations, and governments and central banks actively working together to destroy the fossil fuel sector without making the policy explicit. This is indubitably the main factor behind the energy supply crisis that seemed to come out of nowhere last year to add to inflation woes by pushing energy prices up.

A few days ago, Bailey told MPs that ‘there isn’t a lot we can do’ to stop inflation rising. But there was a lot that the BoE could have done to stop it happening, but failed to do, and instead helped in no small way to engineer this global crisis. In late 2020, the BoE published an Interim Report and Roadmap for implementing the recommendations of the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, which boasted of the BoE’s and UK government’s leading roles in creating ESG policy, and which ‘advocates a move towards mandatory TCFD-aligned disclosures across non-financial and financial sectors of the UK economy’.

Here’s a clue, Andrew, if you’re reading, about how you might start to address the problem of rising prices. Remove from the Bank of England all traces of environmental ideology and sever all links with the green billionaires who have pushed the notion that climate change is a ‘risk’ to the economy. It isn’t. The much greater risk than weather to the economic wellbeing of millions of British people – and billions of people throughout the world in poorer economies – is green ideology. While the likes of Hohn and Bloomberg have made billions of dollars through creating an ESG bubble via their undemocratic and undue influence in public institutions, billions of people are suffering from the effects of starving the energy sector of investment, pushing up the price of energy, transport, and food.

Here is a short film I have made about the problem.

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Biden Says Record-High Gas Prices Part of ‘Incredible Transition’ US Going Through

Samizdat | May 24, 2022

Following the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine on 24 February, the US and several of its allies cut off all imports of Russian oil and gas, which added greatly to soaring gas prices for Americans.

President Joe Biden has argued that the current record-high gas prices in his country are part of America’s major transition from fossil fuels.

“Here’s the situation. And when it comes to gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it’s over, we’ll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over,” he said during a joint press conference with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday.

POTUS then insisted that his administration’s actions helped “keep it [the gas prices] from getting worse — and it’s bad”.

“The price of gas at the pump is something that I told you — you heard me say before — it would be a matter of great discussion at my kitchen table when I was a kid growing up,” Biden said before admitting, “It’s affecting a lot of families.”

House Republican Steve Scalise was quick to respond by telling reporters that Biden is “saying the quiet part out loud now.” In an apparent nod to the Biden administration, Scalise added that “they’re causing you pain at the pump because it’s all part of their radical agenda.”

He spoke as the national average for a gallon of regular gas in the US stood at $4.56 as of Monday, which is more than $0.40 higher than it was just a month ago.

In some US states such as California, the average price for a gallon of regular gas has meanwhile already reached $6.06.

While Biden previously tried to cast the price increases as the fault of Russian President Vladimir Putin, labelling high gas prices “Putin’s price hike”, the recent polls show that Americans aren’t buying it.

A survey conducted by conservative pollster Rasmussen found that beliefs about the importance of rising gas prices were essentially unchanged since November 2021, but that a majority (51%) of American voters surveyed held POTUS responsible for higher fuel prices. Another 26% blamed oil companies for the price hike, while just 15% blamed Putin.

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | 1 Comment

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