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Germany bans Hamas flag, citing rise in anti-Semitism

MEMO | June 21, 2021

Germany has agreed to ban the flag of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, citing a sharp rise in anti-Semitic incidents following Israel’s recent assault on the Gaza Strip.

According to a report by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, the plan to ban the flag of the group which was voted into government in free elections in 2006, was initially proposed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democratic Union party (CDU).

After first opposing the ban due to constitutional concerns, its coalition partner – the centre-left Social Democratic Party – finally gave its backing to the decision.

Thorsten Frei, the deputy parliamentary spokesman for the CDU, is reported to have stated: “We do not want the flags of terrorist organizations to be waved on German soil.” He called the ban a “clear signal to our Jewish citizens.”

The move comes after Germany’s Central Council of Jews called for increased protection of the country’s Jewish community and the cracking down on pro-Palestinian protestors last month, particularly following pro-Palestinian protests across Europe which many said were anti-Semitic.

The ban on Hamas’ flag comes over a year after Berlin banned the political wing of the Lebanon-based Hezbollah and its activities. Months after that ban, it was revealed that the United States pressured the German government into enacting it.

June 21, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Denmark helped NSA spy on Merkel & other European leaders, new reports reveal, as Snowden says Biden was ‘deeply involved’

RT | May 30, 2021

The US National Intelligence Agency received support from Denmark in spying on European politicians, according to a new joint media report, something President Joe Biden is well-informed to answer for, says Edward Snowden.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank Walter-Steinmeier are among those who were spied on by the NSA with the cooperation and help of the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (FE), according to the European media investigation.

The US spying on not only its own citizens, but also leaders in foreign countries is an accusation that came to light in 2013, mostly thanks to documents leaked by former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower – though he remains a fugitive in the US – Edward Snowden. Snowden’s leaks specifically revealed Merkel’s private cell phone had been monitored by US authorities.

The new revelations come as a result of multiple European news outlets – including Danish state broadcaster DR, German NDR, Swedish SVT, Norwegian NRK and French Le Monde among others – obtaining access to internal reports and information from Danish Secret Service sources.

According to the investigation, politicians in Germany, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, France and even Danish finance industries were also targeted by the NSA with the help of Danish spies. The Danish government has reportedly known about the cooperation for years and forced FE leadership to step down in 2020 after discovering the full extent of the relationship following an internal investigation. They did not, however, report the findings to any European Union allies.

The spying was primarily done through hijacking Danish electronic communications systems as the country has landing stations for subsea internet cables between numerous countries, such as Germany and Sweden. By using politicians’ and officials’ phone numbers, authorities were able to pull texts and phone calls, while those being spied on were none the wiser.

Snowden, who made his revelations about the NSA while Biden was vice president, says the current president is “well-prepared” to answer the accusations and that there should be a requirement of “full disclosure” from both Denmark and the US.

“Biden is well-prepared to answer for this when he soon visits Europe since, of course, he was deeply involved in this scandal the first time around,” he tweeted. “There should be an explicit requirement for full public disclosure not only from Denmark, but their senior partner as well.”

In response to explosive reports, Norway’s Defence Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen said they were “taking the allegations seriously,” while Sweden’s Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist said he “demanded full information on these things.” Neither the NSA nor the Danish Defence Intelligence Service have issued a comment yet.

Former German opposition leader and Merkel rival, Peer Steinbrück, who also reportedly had his communications monitored, told German broadcaster ARD that he considers the situation to be a “scandal.”

“It is grotesque that friendly intelligence services are indeed intercepting and spying on top representatives of other countries,” he said.

May 30, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Partners Don’t Use Blackmail: Top German Lawmaker Slams US Attempts to Block Nord Stream 2

By Tim Korso – Sputnik – 13.05.2021

Washington has been strongly opposed to the Nord Stream 2, a joint project by Russia’s Gazprom and European energy giants, trying to stop its construction with sanctions. The European beneficiaries of the project have condemned the US meddling in the bloc’s economic and energy affairs.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline is an economic project beneficial to German interests and thus must be completed in the shortest term possible, parliamentary co-leader of the German party The Left, Dietmar Bartsch has stated. The lawmaker, who is expected to fight for the chancellor’s seat in this year’s election, added that the US must not create obstacles for the project’s completion.

“Washington must not make decisions for Germany and Europe regarding their energy security. Partners do not resort to blackmail and threats in their relations”, Bartsch stressed.

The US has repeatedly objected to the plans of European countries to complete and certify the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was designed to deliver up to 55 million cubic metres of Russian natural gas per year. Washington claims the pipeline undermines European energy security, making it dependent upon Moscow, and suggests buying American or Israeli LNG instead. The White House also expressed concern that Nord Stream 2 will deprive Ukraine of lucrative contracts on the transit of Russian gas through its territory. The latter has been disrupted by Kiev multiple times in the past.

EU powers, especially Germany, have defended the project, insisting that the continent’s energy supplies are sufficiently diversified. German politicians and lawmakers regularly denounce the sanctions Washington has put in place in order to force European countries to abandon the pipeline. Russia, for its part, has assured the West that gas transit through Ukraine will continue as long as it remains economically viable.

The Nord Stream 2 is now in the final stages of construction despite the US countermeasures. Around 5% of the pipe remains to be built according to statements by the operating company. The question, however, remains whether any European entity will agree to certify the pipeline once it’s complete to allow it to turn on the taps, as they would risk falling under American sanctions by doing so.

May 13, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Search & Seizure at Home of Judge Who Rendered the Sensational Weimar Mask-Judgment

2020News | April 26, 2021

As 2020News has just learned, the judge at the Weimar District Court, Christian Dettmar, had his house searched today. His office, private premises and car were searched. The judge’s cell phone was confiscated by the police. The judge had made a sensational decision on April 8, 2021, which was very inconvenient for the government’s anti Coronavirus measures policy.

At the suggestion of a mother, the judge had ruled in a child welfare proceeding pursuant to Section 1666 of the German Civil Code (BGB), Ref.: 9 F 148/21, that two Weimar schools were prohibited with immediate effect from requiring students to wear mouth-nose coverings of any kind (especially qualified masks such as FFP2 masks), to comply with AHA minimum distances, and/or to participate in SARS-CoV-2 rapid tests. At the same time, it had determined that classroom instruction should be maintained (full text of the ruling in German including three expert opinions – English translation will be available soon).

This was the first time that evidence was presented before a German court regarding the scientific reasonableness and necessity of the prescribed anti-Corona measures. The expert witnesses were the hygienist Prof. Dr. med Ines Kappstein, the psychologist Prof. Dr. Christof Kuhbandner and the biologist Prof. Dr. rer. biol. hum. Ulrike Kämmerer.

After examining the factual and legal situation and evaluating the expert opinions, the judge came to the conclusion that the measures he had forbidden posed a present danger to the mental, physical or psychological well-being of the child to such an extent that significant harm could be foreseen with a high degree of certainty in the event of further development without intervention.

He wrote: “… the children are not only endangered in their mental, physical and spiritual well-being by the obligation to wear face masks during school hours and to keep their distance from each other and from other persons, but, in addition, they are already being harmed. At the same time, this violates numerous rights of the children and their parents under the law, the constitution and international conventions. This applies in particular to the right to free development of the personality and to physical integrity from Article 2 of the Basic Law as well as to the right from Article 6 of the Basic Law to upbringing and care by the parents (also with regard to measures for preventive health care and ‘objects’ to be carried by children)…”

The judge agreed with the experts’ assessment that the masks were not useful for viral protection, that the PCR test could not detect a disease-causing infection with the necessary certainty, and that asymptomatic transmission played no detectable role epidemiologically with respect to SARS-CoV-2. On the contrary, the masks would have a negative impact on children’s health due to handling-related contamination. Testing in school classes would be unnecessary, harmful and also extremely problematic in terms of data protection.

The judge’s ruling confirms the mother’s assessment: “The children are harmed physically, psychologically and pedagogically and their rights are violated, without this being offset by any benefit for the children themselves or third parties.”

In conclusion, the judge stated, “100,000 elementary school students would have to put up with all the side effects of wearing masks for a week in order to prevent just one infection per week. To call this result merely disproportionate would be a wholly inadequate description. Rather, it shows that the state legislature regulating this area has fallen into a factual disconnect that has reached historic proportions.”

The decision, which 2020News analyzed – in English – in more detail here, had caused quite a stir. It had been downloaded about two million times from the 2020News website alone.

In a side note on the sidelines of proceedings with other parties, the decision in question had been described as unlawful by the Weimar Administrative Court without any comprehensible justification.

April 27, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

The “Unvaccinated” Question

By CJ Hopkins | Consent Factory | March 29, 2021

So, the New Normals are discussing the Unvaccinated Question. What is to be done with us? No, not those who haven’t been “vaccinated” yet. Us. The “Covidiots.” The “Covid deniers.” The “science deniers.” The “reality deniers.” Those who refuse to get “vaccinated,” ever.

There is no place for us in New Normal society. The New Normals know this and so do we. To them, we are a suspicious, alien tribe of people. We do not share their ideological beliefs. We do not perform their loyalty rituals, or we do so only grudgingly, because they force us to do so. We traffic in arcane “conspiracy theories,” like “pre-March-2020 science,” “natural herd immunity,” “population-adjusted death rates,” “Sweden,” “Florida,” and other heresies.

They do not trust us. We are strangers among them. They suspect we feel superior to them. They believe we are conspiring against them, that we want to deceive them, confuse them, cheat them, pervert their culture, abuse their children, contaminate their precious bodily fluids, and perpetrate God knows what other horrors.

So they are discussing the need to segregate us, how to segregate us, when to segregate us, in order to protect society from us. In their eyes, we are no more than criminals, or, worse, a plague, an infestation. In the words of someone (I can’t quite recall who), “getting rid of the Unvaccinated is not a question of ideology. It is a question of cleanliness,” or something like that. (I’ll have to hunt down and fact-check that quote. I might have taken it out of context.)

In Israel, Estonia, Denmark, Germany, the USA, and other New Normal countries, they have already begun the segregation process. In the UK, it’s just a matter of time. The WEF, WHO, EU, and other transnational entities are helping to streamline the new segregation system, which, according to the WEF, “will need to be harmonized by a normative body, such as the WHO, to ensure that is ethical.”

Here in Germany, the government is considering banning us from working outside our homes. We are already banned from flying on commercial airlines. (We can still use the trains, if we dress up like New Normals.) In the village of Potsdam, just down the road from Wannsee (which name you might recall from your 20th-Century history lessons), we are banned from entering shops and restaurants. (I’m not sure whether we can still use the sidewalks, or whether we have to walk in the gutters.) In Saxony, we are forbidden from attending schools. At the Berliner Ensemble (the theater founded by Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel, lifelong opponents of totalitarianism and fascism), we are banned from attending New Normal performances.

In the USA, we are being banned by universities. Our children are being banned from public schools. In New York, the new “Excelsior Pass” will allow New Normals to attend cultural and sports events (and patronize bars and restaurants, eventually) secure in the knowledge that the Unvaccinated have been prevented from entering or segregated in an “Unvaccinated Only” section. The pass system, designed by IBM, which, if history is any guide, is pretty good at designing such systems (OK, technically, it was Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft, IBM’s Nazi-Germany subsidiary), was launched this past weekend to considerable fanfare.

And this is only the very beginning.

Israel’s “Green Pass” is the model for the future, which makes sense, in a sick, fascistic kind of way. When you’re already an apartheid state, what’s a little more apartheid? Here’s a peek at what that looks like …

OK, I know what the New Normals are thinking. They’re thinking I’m “misleading” people again. That I’m exaggerating. That this isn’t really segregation, and certainly nothing like “medical apartheid.”

After all (as the New Normals will sternly remind me), no one is forcing us to get “vaccinated.” If we choose not to, or can’t for medical reasons, all we have to do is submit to a “test” — you know, the one where they ram that 9-inch swab up into your sinus cavities — within 24 hours before we want to go out to dinner, or attend the theater or a sports event, or visit a museum, or attend a university, or take our children to school or a playground, and our test results will serve as our “vaccine passports!” We just present them to the appropriate Covid Compliance Officer, and (assuming the results are negative, of course) we will be allowed to take part in New Normal society just as if we’d been “vaccinated.”

Either way, “vaccine” or “test,” the New Normal officials will be satisfied, because the tests and passes are really just stage props. The point is the display of mindless obedience. Even if you take the New Normals at their word, if you are under 65 and in relatively good health, getting “vaccinated” is more or less pointless, except as a public display of compliance and belief in the official Covid-19 narrative (the foundation stone of the New Normal ideology). Even the high priests of their “Science” confess that it doesn’t prevent you spreading the “plague.” And the PCR tests are virtually meaningless, as even the WHO finally admitted. (You can positive-PCR-test a pawpaw fruit … but you might want to be careful who you tell if you do that.)

In contrast to the “vaccine” and the “test” themselves, the forced choice between them is not at all meaningless. It is no accident that both alternatives involve the violation of our bodies, literally the penetration of our bodies. It doesn’t really matter what is in the “vaccines” or what “results” the “tests” produce. The ritual is a demonstration of power, the power of the New Normals (i.e., global capitalism’s new face) to control our bodies, to dominate them, to violate them, psychologically and physically.

Now, don’t get all excited, my “conspiracy theorist” friends. I haven’t gone full QAnon just yet. Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab are not sitting around together, sipping adrenochrome on George Soros’ yacht, dreaming up ways to rape people’s noses. This stuff is built into the structure of the system. It is a standard feature of totalitarian societies, cults, churches, self-help groups, and … well, human society, generally.

Being forced to repeat a physical action which only makes sense within a specific ideology reifies that ideology within us. There is nothing inherently diabolical about this. It is a basic socialization technology. It is how we socialize our children. It is why we conduct weddings, baptisms, and bar mitzvahs. It is how we turn young men and women into soldiers. It is how actors learn their blocking and their lines. It is why the Nazis held all those rallies. It is why our “democracies” hold elections. It is also basic ceremonial magic … but that’s a topic for a different column.

The issue, at the moment, is the Unvaccinated Question, and the public rituals that are being performed to make the New Normal ideology “reality,” and what to do about those of us who refuse to participate in those rituals, who refuse to forswear “old normal” reality and convert to New Normalism so that we can function in society without being segregated, criminalized, or “diagnosed” as “sociopathic” or otherwise psychiatrically disordered.

For us “conspiracy-theorizing reality deniers,” there is no getting around this dilemma. This isn’t Europe in the 1930s. There isn’t anywhere to emigrate to … OK, there is, temporarily, in some of the US states that have been staging rebellions, and other such “old normal” oases, but how long do you think that will last? They’re already rolling out the “mutant variants,” and God only knows what will happen when the long-term effects of the “vaccines” kick in.

No, for most of us denizens of the global capitalist empire, it looks like the New Normal is here to stay. So, unless we are prepared to become New Normals, we are going to have to stand and fight. It is going to get rather ugly, and personal, but there isn’t any way to avoid that. Given that many New Normals are our friends and colleagues, or even members of our families, it is tempting to believe that they will “come to their senses,” that “this is all just a hysterical overreaction,” and that “everything will go back to normal soon.”

This would be a monumental error on our parts … very possibly a fatal error.

Totalitarian movements, when they reach this stage, do not simply stop on their own. They continue to advance toward their full expressions, ultimately transforming entire societies into monstrous mirror-images of themselves, unless they are opposed by serious resistance. There is a window at the beginning when such resistance has a chance. That window is still open, but it is closing, fast. I can’t tell you how best to resist, but I can tell you it starts with seeing things clearly, and calling things, and people, exactly what they are.

Let’s not make the same mistake that other minorities have made throughout history when confronted with a new totalitarian ideology. See the New Normals for what they are, maybe not deep down in their hearts, but what they have collectively become a part of, because it is the movement that is in control now, not the rational individuals they used to be. Above all, recognize where this is headed, where totalitarian movements are always headed. (See. e.g., Milton Mayer’s They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45.)

No, the Unvaccinated are not the Jews and the New Normals are not flying big Swastika flags, but totalitarianism is totalitarianism, regardless of which Goebbelsian Big Lies, and ideology, and official enemies it is selling. The historical context and costumes change, but its ruthless trajectory remains the same.

Today, the New Normals are presenting us with a “choice,” (a) conform to their New Normal ideology or (b) social segregation. What do you imagine they have planned for us tomorrow?

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March 29, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

RT’s German-language service prepares lawsuit after notorious tabloid ‘Bild’ falsely accuses its journalists of SPYING

RT | March 9, 2021

RT in Germany is planning to take legal action against the tabloid Bild, after the Berlin newspaper ran a sensationalist tale that relied on leaked Telegram chats from a former employee, who claimed he had to spy for the channel.

In the article published on Tuesday, reporter Julian Roepcke, who has previously been aligned with the ‘Disinformation Portal’ of NATO’s Atlantic Council adjunct, claims that, according to Bild’s information, President Vladimir Putin ordered a spy op on his “public enemy number one.” It allegedly targeted opposition figure Alexey Navalny and two of his close aides. The supposed snooping is said to have happened during the activist’s treatment for alleged Novichok poisoning last year at Berlin’s Charité clinic.

On top of that, writes Roepcke, “Russia’s leadership used the Russian foreign broadcaster RT DE, which in turn relied on two German employees.” To back up the claims, Bild also ran an interview with Daniel Lange, then an employee of RT DE, who claimed he had a feeling of having been used as a spy in the case. Lange also leaked to Bild what he says were internal chats with his bosses.

Calling out Roepcke’s article, the head of RT in Germany Dinara Toktosunova said Lange had leaked Telegram chats in which he was merely being asked to do his job, after he’d failed to get any exclusive and newsworthy material about Navalny’s stay in Germany.

“We remind our colleagues of the German legislation that (for now) protects the press by allowing it to collect information about matters of public interest,” Toktosunova added.

The Bild article comes just days after Commerzbank told the parent company of RT DE and Ruptly that it would be ending their business relationship and closing their accounts at the end of May. Since Commerzbank changed its terms of service last November, RT DE had been trying to find an alternative bank, but 20 other financial institutions have either ignored its enquiries or flatly refused to open accounts on its behalf.

Toktosunova believes this to be part of a wider campaign to obstruct RT’s work in Germany. “We have every reason to believe that RT in Germany has been targeted by what is essentially a financial embargo,” she said on March 4, after the Commerzbank announcement.

Navalny was flown to Germany in August 2020, with his staff claiming he had been poisoned with Novichok, frequently described as the world’s deadliest nerve agent. He was treated at Berlin’s Charité clinic. Moscow said that Germany had refused Russia’s requests for detailed information about his condition.

Bild itself followed Navalny’s every move in Germany; not only did it gain access to the clinic, but it also published photos taken right at the entrance to Navalny’s treatment room.

The blogger and self-styled anti-corruption activist, regarded as the Russian “opposition leader” in the Western press, despite polling in the low single digits, returned to Moscow in January, where he was arrested for violating parole conditions in a case he regards as politically motivated.

March 9, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Russia will take ‘tough measures’ against German media if Berlin impedes work of Russian journalists

RT | March 4, 2021

Moscow sees the closure of RT-affiliated companies’ accounts by a German bank as “political pressure” on Russia and will react in kind if the work of the Russian media in Germany is impeded, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

“We consider such an openly hostile attitude … toward media, including the Russian ones, unacceptable,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a news briefing on Thursday. She referred to the decision of the German Commerzbank to close the accounts of RT’s video agency Ruptly and RT DE Productions GmbH which runs the German-language website by May 31.

Such actions are an “element of political pressure” on journalists and they constitute a “violation of Germany’s commitment to protect the freedom of speech,” Zakharova said.

The Commerzbank decision came just about a month after RT announced its plans to launch a German-language TV channel later this year.

Zakharova said that it is such plans that apparently sparked an angry reaction among the “anti-Russian” forces within the German media and establishment and have led to what she described as a “persecution” campaign.

“All actions of the Russian broadcaster were legally valid. Therefore, such a primitive approach apparently was chosen to obstruct its work.”

RT has been trying to find a replacement for Commerzbank, but several financial institutions have either ignored RT’s inquiries or refused to open accounts on its behalf.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has called on Berlin to stop obstructing the work of Russian journalists in Germany and lift all restrictions imposed against the Russian media. “Otherwise, we will have to take tough reciprocal measures against German media working in Russia,” Zakharova warned.

Russia has its own concerns about the work of the German media and German journalists on its territory, Zakharova noted. She added, though, that all such issues are resolved in accordance with the law and on the basis of “mutual respect” and dialogue.

“We would very much like to see Germany doing the same,” the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman added.

March 4, 2021 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Texas Power Freeze-Down Demonstrates Political Climate Craziness

By Larry Bell | PA Pundits – International | February 22, 2021

Texas just sent a very chilling message to the rest of the nation about what to expect your life to be like with President Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan AKA, “Green New Deal,” in order to save the planet from overheating.

It seems he’s already overachieving that goal.

An unusual Arctic blast that spread across the state from the tip of the Panhandle all the way to the Rio Grande Valley has left millions of homes and businesses here without electricity.

A series of forced rolling blackouts were required to prevent power grid collapse as single-digit temperatures froze wind turbines and hobbled dozens of power plant operations.

How could this possibly happen here in Texas?

This isn’t supposed to be California, after all, where over-dependence on wind and solar power destabilized the grid during a record 2020 heat wave.

California already leads the nation with the least reliable power system and greatest number of annual outages … 4,297 were recorded between 2008 and 2017. And conditions will only become far worse as the state now requires that all new homes be nearly entirely electric.

More than 30 cities, including San Francisco, have already enacted bans on new gas appliance hookups. California plans to eventually outlaw gasoline and diesel cars.

Hey y’all… this is Texas, a land of far more savvy dudes in a state rightly famous for being awash in huge petroleum and natural gas resources.

Texas isn’t a place where we who live here ordinarily worry about freezing to death due to a lack of reliable fossil and nuclear power to heat our homes… unlike northern latitudes that routinely get really cold with iced-up failing power lines.

So, in addition to record low temperatures, what happened to change that?

I guess we got a little bit too woke.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) which oversees the state’s wholesale power market has shifted grid reliance away from reliable coal, nuclear, and natural gas toward heavily taxpayer-subsidized (no free lunch here) wind energy.

That wind generation now constitutes the second-largest electricity power source in Texas. According to ERCOT, it accounted for 23% of the state supply last year, behind natural gas which represented 45%.

Over the past decade, strict CO2 emission regulations have caused coal’s share of Texas’s electricity to plunge by more than half, to supply 18%.

A power crunch ensued, as bitter cold damp conditions caused wind turbines in West Texas to freeze at the same time it was causing residents to crank up their thermostats. Regulators did what they could to protect public safety by rationing gas for commercial and industrial uses to ensure fuel for power plants and household heating.

Some natural gas wellheads also froze, along with refining facilities in some locations, in turn bleeding natural gas needed for turbines that provide essential back-up “spinning reserve” power for – at best intermittent – wind and solar outputs.

And who could have possibly imagined what happened next?

The spot price of wholesale electricity on the Texas power grid spiked more than 10,000%, surging past $9,000 per MegaWatt-hour. Even during high demand summer months, $100 per MW-hr would be considered high.

On second thought, maybe Texas and every other state might have anticipated much of this occurring based upon Germany’s “Energiewende” (energy transition) experience, a policy established in 2000 to decarbonize its primary energy supply.

When the program was first launched, 6.6% of Germany’s electricity came from renewable sources, primarily solar and wind. By 2019, nearly two decades later, that share had reached 41%.

By 2019, average German household electricity costs during that same period have doubled to 34 U.S. cents per Kilowatt-hour. (Compare this with 22 cents per kWh in France, and 13 cents in the United States.)

Meager renewable energy supply conditions worsened dramatically this winter as the coldest western Europe weather in a decade have blanked millions of Germany’s solar panels with snow and ice and rendered 30,000 of its wind turbines idle. This left the greatest share of vital power coming from coal.

In January, the German RBB (Berlin-Brandenburg) public broadcasting network aired a report that sums up the consequences of continually shutting the country’s coal and nuclear energy capacities in favor of adding those “green renewable alternatives.”

Harald Schwarz, a professor of power distribution at the University of Cottbus, went straight to the point, saying: “die gesicherte leistung von wind + sonne = 0,” which means:

“The guaranteed output of wind + sun = 0.”

To be more charitable to those renewables, the actual benefit reportedly ranges between zero and two or three percent.

The RBB broadcast went on to warn that Germany’s futile attempt to replace reliable nuclear and coal-fired energy with wind and solar will extend the supply and demand gap dangerously wide.

The current trend leaves Germany with no real future alternative but to rely more on natural gas from Russia, coal power from Poland, and nuclear power from France.

And what about America, where wind and solar combined provide, at most, about four percent of our grid electricity (not total energy), versus about 80% from hydrocarbons?

The $2 trillion Biden “Equitable Clean Energy Future” agenda pledges to eliminate those hydrocarbon emissions from electricity by 2035, and then achieve “net-zero carbon” by 2050.

To prove he’s serious, on his very first day in the Oval Office, President Biden capped off the Keystone XL pipeline at the Canadian border along with about 11,000 jobs and 830,000 barrels of oil per day it would have delivered, which must now be transported by CO2-emitting rail and trucks.

On top of decimating our current energy supply infrastructure, the plan is for taxpayers to finance a half-million electric car chargers across the nation and add a humongous number of electricity-thirsty electric vehicles to further stress already precarious capacities.

Before buying into this political man-made climate crisis of lunacy, demand to know where sufficient energy will come from, and at what economic and social cost, to air condition fully-electrified Texas summer and New England winter homes – plus recharge millions of plug-in vehicles – on windless cloudy days and nights – especially during inevitable extreme weather demand periods.

Larry Bell contributes posts at the CFACT site. He heads the graduate program in space architecture at the University of Houston. He founded and directs the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture. He is also the author of “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax.”

February 22, 2021 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Assigning Blame for the Blackouts in Texas

By Planning Engineer | Climate Etc. | February 18, 2021 

The story from some media sources is that frozen wind turbines are responsible for the power shortfalls in Texas. Other media sources emphasize that fossil fuel resources should shoulder the blame because they have large cold induced outages as well and also some natural gas plants could not obtain fuel.

Extreme cold should be expected to cause significant outages of both renewable and fossil fuel based resources. Why would anyone expect that sufficient amounts of natural gas would be available and deliverable to supply much needed generation? Considering the extreme cold, nothing particularly surprising is happening within any resource class in Texas. The technologies and their performance were well within the expected bounds of what could have been foreseen for such weather conditions. While some degradation should be expected, what is happening in Texas is a departure from what they should be experiencing. Who or what then is responsible for the shocking consequences produced by Texas’s run in with this recent bout of extreme cold?

TRADITIONAL PLANNING

Traditionally, responsibility for ensuring adequate capacity during extreme conditions has fallen upon individual utility providers. A couple decades ago I was responsible for the load forecasting, transmission planning and generation planning efforts of an electric cooperative in the southeastern US. My group’s projections, studies and analysis supported our plans to meet customer demand under forecasted peak load conditions. We had seen considerable growth in residential and commercial heat pumps. At colder temperature these units stop producing heat efficiently and switch to resistance heating which causes a spike in demand. Our forecasts showed that we would need to plan for extra capacity to meet this potential demand under extreme conditions in upcoming winters.

I was raked over the coals and this forecast was strongly challenged. Providing extra generation capacity, ensuring committed (firm) deliveries of gas during the winter, upgrading transmission facilities are all expensive endeavors. Premiums are paid to ensure gas delivery and backup power and there is no refund if it’s not used. Such actions increased the annual budget and impact rates significantly for something that is not likely to occur most years, even if the extreme weather projections are appropriate. You certainly don’t want to over-estimate peak demand due to the increasing costs associated with meeting that demand. But back then we were obligated to provide for such “expected” loads. Our CEO, accountants and rate makers would ideally have liked a lower extreme demand projection as that would in most cases have kept our cost down. It was challenging to hold firm and stand by the studies and force the extra costs on our Members.

Fortuitously for us, we were hit with extreme winter conditions just when the plan went in place. Demand soared and the planned capacity we had provided was needed. A neighboring entity was hit with the same conditions. Like us they had significant growth in heat pumps – but they had not forecasted their extreme weather peak to climb as we had. They had to go to the overburdened markets to find energy and make some curtailments. The cost of replacement power turned out to be significantly greater proportionately than we incurred by planning for the high demand. They suffered real consequences due to the shortcomings of their planning efforts.

However, if extreme winter had not occurred, our neighbor’s costs would have been lower than ours that year and that may have continued many years into the future as long as we didn’t see extreme winter conditions. Instead of the praise we eventually received, there would have at least been some annoyance directed at my groups for contributing to “un-needed expenditures”. That’s the way of the world. You can often do things a little cheaper, save some money and most of the time you can get away with it. But sometimes/eventually you cut it too close and the consequences can be extreme.

The Approach in Texas

Who is responsible for providing adequate capacity in Texas during extreme conditions? The short answer is no one. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) looks at potential forecasted peak conditions and expected available generation and if there is sufficient margin they assume everything will be all right. But unlike utilities under traditional models, they don’t ensure that the resources can deliver power under adverse conditions, they don’t require that generators have secured firm fuel supplies, and they don’t make sure the resources will be ready and available to operate. They count on enough resources being there because they assume that is in their owner’s best interests. Unlike all other US energy markets, Texas does not even have a capacity market. By design they rely solely upon the energy market. This means that entities profit only from the actual energy they sell into the system. They do not see any profit from having stand by capacity ready to help out in emergencies. The energy only market works well under normal conditions to keep prices down. While generally markets are often great things, providing needed energy during extreme conditions evidently is not their forte. Unlike the traditional approach where specific entities have responsibilities to meet peak levels, in Texas the responsibility is diffuse and unassigned. There is no significant long term motivation for entities to ensure extra capacity just in case it may be needed during extreme conditions. Entities that might make that gamble theoretically can profit when markets skyrocket, but such approaches require tremendous patience and the ability to weather many years of potential negative returns.

This article from GreenTech media praises energy only markets as do many green interests. Capacity markets are characterized as wasteful. Andrew Barlow, Head of the PUC in Texas is quoted as follows, “Legislators have shown strong support for the energy-only market that has fueled the diversification of the state’s electricity generation fleet and yielded significant benefits for customers while making Texas the national leader in installed wind generation. ”

Why has Capacity been devalued?

Traditional fossil fuel generation has (as does most hydro and nuclear) inherent capacity value. That means such resources generally can be operated with a high degree of reliability and dependability. With incentives they can be operated so that they will likely be there when needed. Wind and solar are intermittent resources, working only under good conditions for wind and sun, and as such do not have capacity value unless they are paired with costly battery systems.

If you want to achieve a higher level of penetration from renewables, dollars will have to be funneled away from traditional resources towards renewables. For high levels of renewable penetration, you need a system where the consumers’ dollars applied to renewable generators are maximized. Rewarding resources for offering capacity advantages effectively penalizes renewables. As noted by the head of the PUC in Texas, an energy only market can fuel diversification towards intermittent resources. It does this because it rewards only energy that is fed into the grid, not backup power. (Side note-it’s typical to provide “renewable” resources preference for feeding into the grid as well. Sometimes wind is compensated for feeding into the grid even during periods of excess generation when fossil fuel resources are penalized. But that’s another article.)

Traditional planning studies might recognize that wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel (more so under extreme conditions) such that if you have these backup generators its much cheaper to use and fuel them, than to add wind farms with the accompanying significant investment for concrete, rare earth metals, vast swaths of land … . Traditional planning approaches often have to go to get around this “bias” of favoring capacity providing resources over intermittent resources.

When capacity value is rewarded, this makes the economics of renewables much less competitive. Texas has stacked the deck to make wind and solar more competitive than they could be in a system that better recognizes the value of dependable resources which can supply capacity benefits. An energy only market helps accomplish the goal of making wind and solar more competitive. Except capacity value is a real value. Ignoring that, as Texas did, comes with real perils.

In Texas now we are seeing the extreme shortages and market price spikes that can result from devaluing capacity. The impacts are increased by both having more intermittent resources which do not provide capacity and also because owners and potential owners of resources which could provide capacity are not incentivized to have those units ready for backup with firm energy supplies.

Personal Observations

Wind and solar have value and can be added to power systems effectively in many instances. But seeking to attain excessive levels of wind and solar quickly becomes counterproductive. It is difficult to impossible to justify the significant amounts of wind and solar penetration desired by many policy makers today using principals of good cost allocation. Various rate schemes and market proposals have been developed to help wind and solar become more competitive. But they come with costs, often hidden. As I’ve written before, it may be because transmission providers have to assume the costs and build a more expensive system to accommodate them. It may be that rates and markets unfairly punish other alternatives to give wind and solar an advantage. It may be that they expose the system to greater risks than before. It may be that they eat away at established reliability levels and weaken system performance during adverse conditions. In a fair system with good price signals today’s wind and solar cannot achieve high penetration levels in a fair competition.

Having a strong technical knowledge of the power system along with some expertise in finance, rates and costs can help one see the folly of a variety of policies adopted to support many of today’s wind and solar projects. Very few policy makers possess anything close to the skill sets needed for such an evaluation. Furthermore, while policy makers could listen to experts, their voices are drowned out by those with vested interests in wind and solar technology who garner considerable support from those ideologically inclined to support renewables regardless of impacts.

A simpler approach to understanding the ineffectiveness of unbridled advocacy for wind and solar is to look at those areas which have heavily invested in these intermittent resources and achieved higher penetration levels of such resources. Typically electric users see significant overall increases in the cost of energy delivered to consumers. Emissions of CO2 do not uniformly decrease along with employment of renewables, but may instead increase due to how back up resources are operated. Additionally reliability problems tend to emerge in these systems. Texas, a leader in wind, once again is added to the experience gained in California, Germany and the UK showing that reliability concerns and outages increase along with greater employment of intermittent resources.

Anyone can look at Texas and observe that fossil fuel resources could have performed better in the cold. If those who owned the plants had secured guaranteed fuel, Texas would have been better off. More emergency peaking units would be a great thing to have on hand. Why would generators be inclined to do such a thing? Consider, what would be happening if the owners of gas generation had built sufficient generation to get through this emergency with some excess power? Instead of collecting $9,000 per MWH from existing functioning units, they would be receiving less than $100 per MWH for the output of those plants and their new plants. Why would anyone make tremendous infrastructure that would sit idle in normal years and serve to slash your revenue by orders of magnitudes in extreme conditions?

The incentive for gas generation to do the right thing was taken away by Texas’s deliberate energy only market strategy. The purpose of which was to aid the profitability of intermittent wind and solar resources and increase their penetration levels. I don’t believe anyone has ever advanced the notion that fossil fuel plants might operate based on altruism. Incentives and responsibility need to be paired. Doing a post-mortem on the Texas situation ignoring incentives and responsibility is inappropriate and incomplete.

February 19, 2021 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

No decision on any NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan: Stoltenberg

Press TV – February 18, 2021

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says defense ministers from the Western military alliance made no decision at a recent meeting in Brussels on whether or when to pull out of war-torn Afghanistan.

“At this stage, we have made no final decision on the future of our presence,” Stoltenberg said after a video conference with allied defense ministers on Thursday.

The defense ministers met to discuss the possibility of staying in Afghanistan beyond the May withdrawal deadline agreed between the Taliban militant group and the United States under the administration of former US President Donald Trump.

Key on the agenda at the two-day virtual conference in Brussels was the future of the US-led forces in the war-torn country.

The NATO chief said US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin promised to consult with partners on the way forward.

“As the May 1 deadline is approaching, NATO allies will continue to closely consult and coordinate in the coming weeks. We are faced with many dilemmas, and there are no easy options,” Stoltenberg said.

“If we stay beyond the first of May, we risk more violence, more attacks against our own troops … But if we leave, then we will also risk that the gains that we have made are lost.”

The administration of President Joe Biden is reviewing whether to stick to the looming deadline to withdraw or risk a bloody backlash from the Taliban.

Other NATO members have signaled a desire within the alliance to stay in Afghanistan beyond the deadline. They are willing to remain in Afghanistan if Washington does so.

German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said on Wednesday that the Taliban must do more to meet the terms of a 2020 agreement with Washington on the withdrawal of US.forces to allow a pullout of the foreign troops.

“We can already say that we are not yet in a position to talk about the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan,” the German minister said as she arrived for the meeting.

“This also means a changed security situation, an increased threat for the international forces, also for our own forces. We have to prepare for this, and we will certainly discuss this.”

Nearly two decades after the US-led invasion, Trump struck a deal with the Taliban in the Qatari capital of Doha early last year.

The former White House tenant reached the accord in February 2020, under which the US and its NATO allies are expected to withdraw all troops in 14 months in exchange for the Taliban to halt attacks on foreign forces.

President Biden, however, has said his administration would not commit to a full withdrawal by May.

The United Nations says more than 100,000 civilians have been killed or injured over the past decade across Afghanistan.

February 19, 2021 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Involuntarily masked drivers BANNED from wearing sunglasses or hats: Germany’s Saxony state

RT | February 17, 2021

Drivers must still be identifiable by traffic cameras, even when they follow existing health protocols and wear masks, a new rule in Germany’s eastern region says.

According to the Bild newspaper, Saxony became the first region in Germany to ban hats and sunglasses on masked drivers.

“Wearing a hat and sunglasses in addition to a mask that covers the face and mouth makes [the driver] unrecognizable. So that’s not allowed,” Saxony’s Interior Minister Roland Woller said.

Woller explained that “general facial features” of the driver must still be visible to the road safety cameras. He added that officials responsible for handing out fines to drivers were advised to handle the new rule on a case-by-case basis.

Starting from Monday, people are required to wear masks in vehicles in Saxony if members of more than two households are traveling together.

Last month, Germans were mandated to wear medical-grade respirator-type masks on public transport and when going to supermarkets. Simple cloth or homemade masks are not allowed in such cases.

February 17, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

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