Norway’s Top Energy Exec Warns EU’s Supply Crunch Won’t Be Solved With Price Caps
EU energy commissioner Kadri Simson said Wednesday that natural gas price caps could limit excessive price spikes but only if countries give Brussels the power to impose such a measure. Norway’s top energy firm responded to the proposal in an interview with Bloomberg on Friday, saying price caps won’t solve Europe’s supply crunch.
Earlier this week, Simson, the bloc’s energy chief, said a NatGas price cap would limit price spikes this winter. The official said the measure would be a “last resort measure” if prices uncontrollably soared.
“This Dutch TTF gas benchmark cap, we can introduce this winter already if we get the mandate,” Simson told a committee of EU lawmakers.
Responding to the EU mulling over the idea of a price cap on wholesale NatGas, Equinor Chief Executive Officer Anders Opedal told Bloomberg:
“Any price cap is not really solving the fundamental problems.
“In fact, it can be counterproductive increasing demand while supply is not increasing.”
Since the war in Ukraine and dwindling Russian NatGas supplies to Europe, Norway has displaced Russia as the top NatGas supplier. Rejiggering energy supply chains away from Russia will mean the EU must increase investments in the grid — though price caps deter such investments by energy firms.
And it’s not just investments. Price caps can also cause demand for NatGas to artificially rise or leave some countries struggling to attract supply from global markets. These measures, if implemented, could cause undesirable disruptions to global energy markets.
For Europe, there is good news (for now). Temperatures are expected to be warmer than normal through at least mid-November. Also, NatGas storage in the EU is 91% full despite reduced NatGas flows.
However, the EU is just one cold snap away from drawing on inventories.
Which would mean EU NatGas prices could reverse after falling more than 63% since August.
If energy prices do erupt again because of cold weather and supply woes, then EU leaders might feel compelled to do something to appease voters as discontent is growing amid a cost-of-living crisis. If price caps on NatGas are implemented, it could send shockwaves across energy markets.
Locked-Down Foxconn Employees In “iPhone City” Scuffle Over Food Rations After Covid Outbreak
To say the working conditions at Apple’s largest iPhone plant probably aren’t incredible to begin with would likely be an understatement. But then when you lock down most of your 200,000 workers because of a Covid outbreak, those conditions likely get much worse.
This is what seemed to be the case this week, with Bloomberg reporting today that Covid cases at Foxconn Technology Group’s main factory in the central city of Zhengzhou have resulted in the facility going into a “closed loop” lockdown.
The lockdown means that employees can’t leave the campus and are tested regularly for Covid, the report says. But after the lockdown, “food has become a source of unrest”, according to the report. “Scuffles” have even broke out amongst employees over food.
As a result of the lockdowns, cafeterias at the manufacturing site were shut down and workers on assembly lines were given “meal boxes”. Some employees who have remained locked down in their dormitories were given items like bread and instant noodles.
The origins of Covid on the compound are unknown, but workers in numbers up to a dozen can share “cramped living quarters”, the report says. Bloomberg said that conflicting reports indicated that isolated workers may have been deprived of proper meals.
Recall, just days ago we wrote about Foxconn implementing health restrictions after a flare up of Covid.
Foxconn’s Zhengzhou campus has about 300,000 workers — all have been banned from eating in public and must take meals back to their dorms for consumption, the South China Morning Post reported days ago, citing a notice on the factory’s official WeChat account.
“Foxconn’s Zhengzhou workers are only permitted to commute along certain routes within the campus, with many entrances closed in a de facto lockdown,” SCMP said. In another notice, workers living off campus were advised to move into on-site dormitories.
At least for now, production of iPhones at the Zhengzhou campus remains normal despite the newly enacted Covid restrictions, according to a Foxconn spokesman.
“Production in the Zhengzhou campus remains normal, without a notable impact [from the Covid-19] situation,” the spokesman said.
China has yet to capitulate on its long-standing Zero-Covid policy (despite being a convenient scapegoat for Xi to deflect anger at the slowing economy during this month’s 20th party Congress). More than one million people were ordered to stay at home earlier this month in the metro area surrounding the iPhone campus.
Officials in Washington say the United States has not abandoned its effort to find a country to lead a United Nations rapid response force to quell unrest in Haiti. The White House has proposed a multilateral security deployment to the Caribbean nation, with the State Department saying it expects to have a country prepared to lead the mission by early November.
On October 18, the US and Mexico announced an upcoming UN resolution to authorize a military deployment to Haiti, where chaotic protests have blocked major ports and disrupted the flow of goods and sorely needed humanitarian aid. According to a report in the Miami Herald earlier this week, the initiative was likely to fail as no country wanted to lead the force.
On Wednesday, however, Assistant Secretary of State Brian Nichols said Washington is still seeking a country willing to take the reins, and suggested Canada was a top candidate. “I’ve talked to dozens of partner nations around the world about the situation in Haiti, and there is strong support for a multinational force. The desire to contribute in whatever ways that nations feel that they can be helpful I think is very widespread in our hemisphere and beyond,” he told reporters, noting that Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to discuss the issue with Canadian officials later this week.
“Canada is an incredibly capable partner across a whole host of areas. Canada has incredible development skills, and has a very capable armed forces as well as a national police force. Those are important skills in the international community, and more broadly, it is a respected nation and leader on the full range of issues,” Nichols added.
Washington and Mexico City proposed the security mission following a request for foreign intervention by Haitian Prime Minister and President Ariel Henry. The leader previously called upon other nations to help restore order amid wide-scale protests and gang violence, sparked by a recent cut to government fuel subsidies – a decision urged by the IMF.
.@USCG Cutter Northland patrolled Port-au-Prince Bay #Haiti, yesterday.
🇺🇸 🇭🇹
Regular #USCG presence was requested by the Gov’t of Haiti thru @USEmbassyHaiti & @StateDept as a sign of continued U.S. resolve w/ the #Haitian people amid instability caused by cholera & civil unrest. pic.twitter.com/eBGFgofVqF
Armed groups have sized control of several key trade and distribution hubs in Haiti, creating dire shortages in basic necessities, such as water, and even forcing a significant number of hospitals, businesses and other institutions to close their doors.
Haiti’s descent into chaos accelerated in July 2021 after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. In the weeks following his death, then-acting PM Claude Joseph briefly took over as president, but was soon forced from power under international pressure after a bloc of countries led by the United States declared their support for Henry. The new leader reportedly has close ties to a suspect in Moise’s assassination, and even continued contact with him after the murder.
Should the White House find a suitable nation to lead a UN security mission, Beijing and Moscow could ultimately stifle the effort. Both countries are permanent members of the UN Security Council – meaning they hold veto power over any resolution that might authorize action in Haiti – and have each questioned the wisdom of such a deployment.
Exclusive: No let-up in the unrest in Haiti as the US pressures the UN to intervene. The latest protests outside the UN’s HQ on the island are a clear rejection of Western interference.#Haiti#US#UN#NATOpic.twitter.com/bZp2XhEyJR
Some Haitians have also voiced objections to any Western military presence in their country, likely given a long and often violent history of foreign intervention there – including a US invasion and military occupation between 1915 and 1934 following a previous presidential assassination.
Eurasia is about to get a whole lot larger as countries line up to join the Chinese and Russian-led BRICS and SCO, to the detriment of the west…
Let’s start with what is in fact a tale of Global South trade between two members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). At its heart is the already notorious Shahed-136 drone – or Geranium-2, in its Russian denomination: the AK-47 of postmodern aerial warfare.
The US, in yet another trademark hysteria fit rife with irony, accused Tehran of weaponizing the Russian Armed Forces. For both Tehran and Moscow, the superstar, value-for-money, and terribly efficient drone let loose in the Ukrainian battlefield is a state secret: its deployment prompted a flurry of denials from both sides. Whether these are made in Iran drones, or the design was bought and manufacturing takes place in Russia (the realistic option), is immaterial.
The record shows that the US weaponizes Ukraine to the hilt against Russia.
The Empire is a de facto war combatant via an array of “consultants,” advisers, trainers, mercenaries, heavy weapons, munitions, satellite intel, and electronic warfare. And yet imperial functionaries swear they are not part of the war. They are, once again, lying.
Welcome to yet another graphic instance of the “rules-based international order” at work. The Hegemon always decides which rules apply, and when. Anyone opposing it is an enemy of “freedom,” “democracy,” or whatever platitude du jour, and should be – what else – punished by arbitrary sanctions.
In the case of sanctioned-to-oblivion Iran, for decades now, the result has been predictably another round of sanctions. That’s irrelevant. What matters is that, according to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), no less than 22 nations – and counting – are joining the queue because they also want to get into the Shahed groove.
Even Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gleefully joined the fray, commenting on how the Shahed-136 is no photoshop.
The race towards BRICS+
What the new sanctions package against Iran really “accomplished” is to deliver an additional blow to the increasingly problematic signing of the revived nuclear deal in Vienna. More Iranian oil on the market would actually relieve Washington’s predicament after the recent epic snub by OPEC+.
A categorical imperative though remains. Iranophobia – just like Russophobia – always prevails for the Straussians/neo-con war advocates in charge of US foreign policy and their European vassals.
So here we have yet another hostile escalation in both Iran-US and Iran-EU relations, as the unelected junta in Brussels also sanctioned manufacturer Shahed Aviation Industries and three Iranian generals.
Now compare this with the fate of the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone – which unlike the “flowers in the sky” (Russia’s Geraniums) has performed miserably in the battlefield.
Kiev tried to convince the Turks to use a Motor Sich weapons factory in Ukraine or come up with a new company in Transcarpathia/Lviv to build Bayraktars. Motor Sich’s oligarch President Vyacheslav Boguslayev, aged 84, has been charged with treason because of his links to Russia, and may be exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners of war.
In the end, the deal fizzled out because of Ankara’s exceptional enthusiasm in working to establish a new gas hub in Turkey – a personal suggestion from Russian President Vladimir Putin to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
And that bring us to the advancing interconnection between BRICS and the 9-member SCO – to which this Russia-Iran instance of military trade is inextricably linked.
The SCO, led by China and Russia, is a pan-Eurasian institution originally focused on counter-terrorism but now increasingly geared towards geoeconomic – and geopolitical – cooperation. BRICS, led by the triad of Russia, India, and China overlaps with the SCO agenda geoeconomically and geopoliticallly, expanding it to Africa, Latin America and beyond: that’s the concept of BRICS+, analyzed in detail in a recent Valdai Club report, and fully embraced by the Russia-China strategic partnership.
The report weighs the pros and cons of three scenarios involving possible, upcoming BRICS+ candidates:
First, nations that were invited by Beijing to be part of the 2017 BRICS summit (Egypt, Kenya, Mexico, Thailand, Tajikistan).
Second, nations that were part of the BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting in May this year (Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Thailand).
Third, key G20 economies (Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye).
And then there’s Iran, which has already already shown interest in joining BRICS.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has recently confirmed that “several countries” are absolutely dying to join BRICS. Among them, a crucial West Asia player: Saudi Arabia.
What makes it even more astonishing is that only three years ago, under former US President Donald Trump’s administration, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MbS) – the kingdom’s de fact ruler – was dead set on joining a sort of Arab NATO as a privileged imperial ally.
Diplomatic sources confirm that the day after the US pulled out of Afghanistan, MbS’s envoys started seriously negotiating with both Moscow and Beijing.
Assuming BRICS approves Riyadh’s candidacy in 2023 by the necessary consensus, one can barely imagine its earth-shattering consequences for the petrodollar. At the same time, it is important not to underestimate the capacity of US foreign policy controllers to wreak havoc.
The only reason Washington tolerates Riyadh’s regime is the petrodollar. The Saudis cannot be allowed to pursue an independent, truly sovereign foreign policy. If that happens, the geopolitical realignment will concern not only Saudi Arabia but the entire Persian Gulf.
Yet that’s increasingly likely after OPEC+ de facto chose the BRICS/SCO path led by Russia-China – in what can be interpreted as a “soft” preamble for the end of the petrodollar.
The Riyadh-Tehran-Ankara triad
Iran made known its interest to join BRICS even before Saudi Arabia. According to Persian Gulf diplomatic sources, they are already engaged in a somewhat secret channel via Iraq trying to get their act together. Turkey will soon follow – certainly on BRICS and possibly the SCO, where Ankara currently carries the status of extremely interested observer.
Now imagine this triad – Riyadh, Tehran, Ankara – closely joined with Russia, India, China (the actual core of the BRICS), and eventually in the SCO, where Iran is as yet the only West Asian nation to be inducted as a full member.
The strategic blow to the Empire will go off the charts. The discussions leading to BRICS+ are focusing on the challenging path towards a commodity-backed global currency capable of bypassing US dollar primacy.
Several interconnected steps point towards increasing symbiosis between BRICS+ and SCO. The latter’s members states have already agreed on a road map for gradually increasing trade in national currencies in mutual settlements.
The State Bank of India – the nation’s top lender – is opening special rupee accounts for Russia-related trade.
Russian natural gas to Turkey will be paid 25 percent in rubles and Turkish lira, complete with a 25 percent discount Erdogan personally asked of Putin.
Russian bank VTB has launched money transfers to China in yuan, bypassing SWIFT, while Sberbank has started lending out money in yuan. Russian energy behemoth Gazprom agreed with China that gas supply payments should shift to rubles and yuan, split evenly.
Iran and Russia are unifying their banking systems for trade in rubles/rial.
Egypt’s Central Bank is moving to establish an index for the pound – through a group of currencies plus gold – to move the national currency away from the US dollar.
And then there’s the TurkStream saga.
That gas hub gift
Ankara for years has been trying to position itself as a privileged East-West gas hub. After the sabotage of the Nord Streams, Putin has handed it on a plate by offering Turkey the possibility to increase Russian gas supplies to the EU via such a hub. The Turkish Energy Ministry stated that Ankara and Moscow have already reached an agreement in principle.
This will mean in practice Turkey controlling the gas flow to Europe not only from Russia but also Azerbaijan and a great deal of West Asia, perhaps even including Iran, as well as Libya in northeast Africa. LNG terminals in Egypt, Greece and Turkiye itself may complete the network.
Russian gas travels via the TurkStream and Blue Stream pipelines. The total capacity of Russian pipelines is 39 billion cubic meters a year.
Map of Russian gas route via Turkey
TurkStream was initially projected as a four-strand pipeline, with a nominal capacity of 63 million cubic meters a year. As it stands, only two strands – with a total capacity of 31,5 billion cubic meters – have been built.
So an extension in theory is more than feasible – with all the equipment made in Russia. The problem, once again, is laying the pipes. The necessary vessels belong to the Swiss Allseas Group – and Switzerland is part of the sanctions craze. In the Baltic Sea, Russian vessels were used to finish building Nord Stream 2. But for a TurkStream extension, they would need to operate much deeper in the ocean.
TurkStream would not be able to completely replace Nord Stream; it carries much smaller volumes. The upside for Russia is not being canceled from the EU market. Evidently Gazprom would only tackle the substantial investment on an extension if there are ironclad guarantees about its security. And there’s the additional drawback that the extension would also carry gas from Russia’s competitors.
Whatever happens, the fact remains that the US-UK combo still exerts a lot of influence in Turkey – and BP, Exxon Mobil, and Shell, for instance, are actors in virtually every oil extraction project across West Asia. So they would certainly interfere on the way the Turkish gas hub functions, as well on determining the gas price. Moscow has to weigh all these variables before committing to such a project.
NATO, of course, will be livid. But never underestimate hedging bet specialist Sultan Erdogan. His love story with both the BRICS and the SCO is just beginning.
Watch: Chinese Tech Firm Mounts Drone On Car And Flies It
We’re noticing some electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft designs are beginning to look more like cars — where they could one day fly across town and then maneuver around city streets. The first view of this revolutionary design was revealed earlier this week by California-based Alef Aeronautics. However, another company based in China actually flew one.
Chinese tech company XPeng mounted a drone onto the roof of a vehicle and called it a flying car. While the eVTOL isn’t as sleek as Alef’s, it actually flew.
The company shared footage of the first flight on YouTube.
“Unlike most other “flying car” concepts that we’ve seen before, this one actually does look a bit like a normal car. But, unlike most normal cars, this one appears to have a drone strapped to its roof,” said auto blog Jalopnik.
Regardless of how viable this flying car is, XPeng wins the award for actually flying one.
One would assume there would be an easy, quick release to separate the car from the drone so it can maneuver around city streets.
So the trend now is to put wheels on eVTOLs so they can also drive around streets. Just imagine if the Pentagon got their hands on something like this — an eVTOL hummer — now that would be wild and useful for special forces operations on the modern battlefield (we’re sure DARPA already has a design).
America is in the throes of a cultural and political war over gender ideology, featuring high-profile conflicts over everything from school curricula to athletics to pronouns.
But among the most explosive battles unfolding within the broader war is that over transgender children. In an inhospitable election year for the left, Democrats, far from being on the back foot, have pushed ahead on this front, including this fall in California, New York, and Virginia with moves to curb parental rights.
Days from the election, President Biden made clear the party’s broader position, telling a transgender activist that no state should be able to bar “gender-affirming healthcare” for kids.
That can include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to remove or replace breasts and genitalia. Promoting such treatment for the growing number of kids identifying as transgender are, on one side, the Biden administration; blue state governments; much, though not all, of the medical establishment; educators; and activists. Opposing them are red state governments acting on behalf of outraged or concerned parents and other constituents, and buoyed by dissenting doctors.
Divisions have deepened despite, as Reuters recently reported, a lack of “strong evidence of the efficacy” of the treatments at issue and despite their possible long-term consequences. Here is a timeline of major developments this year:
February 2022
Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas issued an opinion concluding that “performing certain ‘sex-change’ procedures on children, and prescribing puberty-blockers to them, is ‘child abuse’ under Texas law.”
March
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law that forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, a measure that opponents dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division issued a letter to all state attorneys general emphasizing its position that restrictions on transgender medical treatment could violate federal constitutional protections.
After Idaho’s House passed a bill prohibiting gender reassignment surgeries, puberty blockers, and hormone therapy in connection with transitioning, the Senate killed the bill claiming it undermined parental rights.
Republican Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona signed into law a bill prohibiting sex reassignment surgery for those under 18 years old.
April
The Justice Department challenged Alabama’s Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act (VCAP), which prohibited doctors from performing surgeries on children in connection with transitioning, or providing children with puberty blockers and hormones. Days after the law went into effect, a federal judge in May temporarily halted the provisions pending an appeal by Alabama supported by 15 other states.
May
Legislators in 19 states committed to introducing so-called “trans refuge state” bills to protect transgender children and families facing restrictive legislation from other states.
June
President Biden issued his Executive Order on Advancing Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Individuals, calling on the Department of Health and Human Services to work with the states to expand access to transgender treatment, while combating – alongside the Federal Trade Commission – so-called “conversion therapy.” This includes simple talk therapy aimed at alleviating gender dysphoria-driven distress, treatment championed by opponents of the transitioning of minors.
Republicans in the Senate and House introduced companion pieces of legislation that would “allow individuals who suffered from an irreversible and potentially sterilizing gender-transition procedure as a minor to seek justice in court.”
August
A leaked State Department memo reveals the administration could classify countries permitting conversion therapy as human rights abusers, City Journal reported.
The Department of Justice issued a sweeping subpoena to Eagle Forum of Alabama, a nonprofit advocate for Alabama’s contested VCAP law – a move seen by some as chilling since the subpoena required the organization to produce extensive information regarding its promotion of the legislation. Eagle Forum took the Justice Department to court to quash the subpoena, and the Justice Department backed down, dramatically scaling its subpoena to “1%” of its original demands, in the words of the judge presiding over the case.
Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced legislation that would make providing transgender medical treatment to minors a felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison.
September
Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom of California signed into law a bill making the Golden State the nation’s first “sanctuary state” for children seeking transgender treatment without the knowledge or consent of their parents. The governor also signed into law a bill co-sponsored by Planned Parenthood that, according to the California Family Council, “prohibits insurance companies from revealing to the policyholder  the ‘sensitive services’ of anyone on their policy, including minor children … ” – such services including transgender treatment.
October
New York State state Senator Sen. Brad Holyman, a Democrat, introduced a bill that would similarly make New York a sanctuary state for transgender children.
Virginia state delegate Elizabeth Guzman, a Democrat, announced she would introduce legislation under which parents could be criminally prosecuted for child abuse should they refuse to affirm their kids’ transgenderism. Amid national blowback over the bill, Guzman quickly recanted.
Republican Governor Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma signed legislation conditioning $108.5 million in federal stimulus funds for the University of Oklahoma’s Children’s Hospital on its ceasing “gender reassignment medical treatment” for minors. The governor also called on Oklahoma to bar “irreversible gender transition surgeries and hormone therapies on minors” during the 2023 legislative session. Gov. Stitt finds himself in an unusually close race with Joy Hofmeister – the state superintendent of education – who switched parties from Republican to Democrat in 2021 to challenge him.
Michigan Republican state Rep. Ryan Berman introduced a bill under which doctors, as well as parents or guardians, could face child abuse charges if they “knowingly or intentionally consent to, obtain, or assist with a gender transition procedure for a child” – with a maximum penalty of life in prison.
The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and Children’s Hospital Association called on the Department of Justice to police purported social-media threats to doctors and medical facilities by opponents of transgender treatment.
13 state attorneys general, led by Republican Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, responded to the AMA’s letter to the Justice Department with a letter of their own to Attorney General Merrick Garland, calling for the department to “stand down and allow the national conversation to continue,” citing medical data calling into question the efficacy of transgender treatment.
Four states — Alabama, Arkansas, Alaska, and Tennessee — restrict such care for minors.
24 states and Washington D.C. prohibit transgender exclusions from health insurance coverage, whether involving a minor or an adult.
26 states and Washington D.C. have Medicaid policies covering such transgender treatment, while 15 states have no explicit policy regarding such coverage and care—but do not prohibit it.
Nine states have Medicaid policies explicitly excluding transgender treatment.
Are Polarized Politics Pushing More People Independent?
The number of people that define themselves as unaffiliated to a party or as “politically independent” is growing in the United States, raising the question of whether the highly polarizing two-party system is still working.
According to a series of Gallup surveys taken throughout 2022, on average, 42 percent of respondents said they would define themselves as politically independent this year, versus 27 percent as Republicans and 28 percent as Democrats.
When Gallup conducts their surveys, they initially ask via telephone whether U.S. adults are a Republican, a Democrat or independent. The next question is whether as an independent, they are politically Republican or Democrat leaning. This naturally divides the population into two camps rather than reflecting a broader spectrum of opinions.
While some analysts argue that independents are really Republicans or Democrats in disguise, the issue perhaps shouldn’t be totally discounted, as Rhona Colvin of the Washington Post writes: “if they choose to vote, numbers suggest nonpartisan voters could swing close races.”
The documents (pdf), released on Oct. 27, stated that the United States will “retire the B83-1 gravity bomb,” and will “cancel the nuclear-armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N) program.”
During a news conference, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin faced questions about retiring the two programs, arguing that “our inventory of nuclear weapons is significant.”
“I do not believe this sends a message to Putin,” Austin told a reporter. “He understands what our capability is.”
The Biden administration released three documents on Oct. 27: the National Defense Strategy, Nuclear Posture Review, and Missile Defense Review. Together, they lay out the military’s priorities for the coming years and underscore that Washington plans to maintain “a very high bar for nuclear employment.”
During the Trump administration, the Pentagon made a decision in 2018 to develop a new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile, with a focus on the threat from Russia.
But the Biden administration said in its review that the sea-launched cruise missile program was unnecessary and would be canceled because the United States already had the “means to deter limited nuclear use.”
One program from the Trump era that Biden is keeping is the W76-2 low-yield submarine-launched ballistic missile, which the Pentagon fielded in 2020 to address Russia’s potential employment of similar-scale tactical nuclear weapons, the kind that Moscow has threatened to use in Ukraine to salvage its war there.
‘Very High Bar’
The document also said that U.S. nuclear policy will maintain “a very high bar for nuclear employment,” but it would “only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its Allies and partners.”
“By the 2030s, the United States will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries. This will create new stresses on stability and new challenges for deterrence, assurance, arms control, and risk reduction,” the document says.
Another 5 million or so have voted early and in person, research from the U.S. Elections Project shows as of Oct. 27. This week, a number of states opened early in-person voting, including Texas.
The project, which is managed by University of Florida professor Michael McDonald, tracks early voting activity among states that have reported data. Texas, California, Florida, and Georgia have reported more than 1.5 million in-person and mail-in votes as of Oct. 27, the project numbers show.
“It does seem very robust, early voting … I think we’re looking at more like a 2018 election, definitely,” McDonald told ABC News on Oct. 24, referring to the high turnout.
More than three dozen states have already opened early voting. For the 2022 midterms, early voting phases range from 46 days to three days before Election Day, the National Conference of State Legislatures says.
“Congratulations, Georgia voters! We’ve reached 1 MILLION cast votes. Election officials deserve our thanks for rising to the challenge & working hard to serve our communities,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, wrote on Twitter on Oct. 25.
Georgia has two key races, including for the U.S. Senate and governor’s office. Incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) is facing Republican Herschel Walker, a former NFL and college football star, while Gov. Brian Kemp is facing a rematch with Democrat activist Stacey Abrams.
Early polling places across Maryland were slated to open on Oct. 27, according to its governor.
Republicans are favored by analysts and betting oddsmakers to win the House in the Nov. 8 elections, buoyed by frustration over the lackadaisical economy and decades-high inflation. Democrats are attempting to hold their ground and are relying heavily on campaign messaging around abortion.
If Republicans take just five seats, they can win back a majority in the House. In recent decades, the party that has held the White House has lost congressional seats during midterm elections.
One of the most consistent efforts made by “experts” during the early stages of the pandemic was to attempt to impress on the public that COVID was an extremely deadly disease.
While it’s clear that for the extremely elderly and severely immunocompromised, COVID does present significant and serious health concerns, the “experts” did their best to convince people of all age groups that they were in danger.
Initially the World Health Organization (WHO), in their infinite incompetence, made a substantial contribution to this perception by claiming that the mortality rate from COVID was shockingly high.
In March 2020, with precious little data, the WHO made the alarming claim that 3.4 percent of people who got COVID had died.
CNBC reported that an early press conference by WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus compared that expected mortality of COVID-19 to the flu:
“‘Globally, about 3.4 percent of reported COVID-19 cases have died,’ WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. In comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1 percent of those infected, he said.”
This stood in contrast to previous estimates, which were also above 2 percent:
“Early in the outbreak, scientists had concluded the death rate was around 2.3 percent.”
While “experts” could be forgiven for being unsure about the death rate of a brand new illness with very little data available, the fear-mongering and world-altering policy enacted based on these estimates has caused incalculable damage.
It’s now widely known and accepted that these estimates were wildly incorrect, off by orders of magnitude.
But a new paper out from one of the world’s leading experts confirms that they were off even more than we previously realized.
John Ioannidis is one of the nation’s leading public health experts, employed at Stanford University as Professor of Medicine in Stanford Prevention Research, of Epidemiology and Population Health,” as well as “of Statistics and Biomedical Data Science.”
You’d think that those impeccable qualifications and a track record of being one of the most published and cited scientists in the modern world would insulate him from criticism, but unfortunately that’s no longer how The Science™ works.
Ioannidis first drew the ire of The Keepers of The Science™ early in the outbreak, when he cautioned that society might be making tremendous decisions based on limited data that was of poor quality.
He also took part in the infamous seroprevalence study conducted in Santa Clara County, led by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.
That examination, which looked at antibody prevalence in the San Jose area, came to the conclusion that COVID was already significantly more widespread by March and April 2020 than most people realized.
This had wide-ranging implications, but the most important revelation was that the estimates of COVID’s mortality rate used by “scientists” and the WHO were almost certainly much too high.
Those estimates were created under the assumption that COVID cases were overwhelmingly detectable; that cases were captured by testing and thus tracking deaths could be achieved with a “case fatality rate,” instead of “infection fatality rate.”
That was the mistake Tedros and the WHO made two and a half years ago.
Of course, for providing substantial evidence and data that COVID was less deadly than initially feared, Ioannidis (and Bhattacharya) was attacked from within the “expert community.”
In what has now become a familiar insult, those behind the study were vilified as COVID minimizers and dangerous conspiracy theorists who would get people killed by not taking the virus seriously enough.
But Ioannidis remained undeterred, and with several authors, he recently released another review of the infection fatality rate of COVID. Importantly, the paper looks at the pre-vaccination time period and covers the non-elderly age groups; those who were most affected by COVID restrictions and endless mandates.
The Numbers
The review begins with a statement of fact that was almost entirely ignored by lockdown “experts” throughout the pandemic, but especially when restrictions, lockdowns and mandates were at their peak early on.
“The infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID-19 among non-elderly people in the absence of vaccination or prior infection is important to estimate accurately, since 94 percent of the global population is younger than 70 years and 86 percent is younger than 60 years.” [Emphasis added.]
94 percent of the global population is younger than 70 years old.
6 percent of is older than 70 years old.
86 percent is younger than 60 years old.
This is relevant because restrictions overwhelmingly impacted the 86–94 percent of people who are younger than 60 or 70 years old.
Ioannidis and his co-writers reviewed 40 national seroprevalence studies that covered 38 countries to come to determine their estimates of infection fatality rate for the overwhelming majority of people.
Importantly, those seroprevalence studies were conducted before the vaccines were released, meaning the IFR’s were calculated before whatever impact vaccines had on younger age groups.
So what did they find?
The median infection fatality rate for those aged 0–59 was 0.035 percent.
This represents 86 percent of the global population and the survival rate for those who were infected with COVID pre-vaccination was 99.965 percent.
For those aged 0–69, which covers 94 percent of the global population, the fatality rate was 0.095 percent, meaning the survival rate for nearly 7.3 billion people was 99.905 percent.
Those survival rates are obviously staggeringly high, which already creates frustration that restrictions were imposed on all age groups, when focused protection for those over 70 or at significantly elevated risk would have been a much more preferable course of action.
But it gets worse.
The researchers broke down the demographics into smaller buckets, showing the increase in risk amongst older populations, and conversely, how infinitesimal the risk was amongst younger age groups.
They added that “Including data from another 9 countries with imputed age distribution of COVID-19 deaths yielded median IFR of 0.025-0.032 percent for 0-59 years and 0.063-0.082 percent for 0-69 years.”
These numbers are astounding and reassuringly low, across the board.
But they’re almost nonexistent for children.
Yet as late as fall 2021, Fauci was still fear-mongering about the risks of COVID to children in order to increase vaccination uptake, saying in an interview that it was not a “benign situation”:
“We certainly want to get as many children vaccinated within this age group as we possibly can because as you heard and reported, that this is not, you know, a benign situation.”
It’s nearly impossible for any illness to be less of a risk, or more “benign” than a 0.0003 percent risk of death.
Even in October 2021, during that same interview with NPR, Fauci said that masks should continue on children as an “extra step” to protect them, even after vaccination:
“And when you have that type of viral dynamic, even when you have kids vaccinated, you certainly—when you are in an indoor setting, you want to make sure you go the extra step to protect them. So I can’t give you an exact number of what that would be in the dynamics of virus in the community, but hopefully we will get there within a reasonable period of time. You know, masks often now—as we say, they’re not forever. And hopefully we’ll get to a point where we can remove the masks in schools and in other places. But I don’t believe that that time is right now.”
Nothing better highlights the incompetence and misinformation from Dr. Fauci than ignoring that pre-vaccination, children were at vanishingly small risks from COVID, that vaccination uptake amongst kids was entirely irrelevant since they do not prevent infection or transmission, and that mask usage is completely ineffective at protecting anyone. Especially for those who didn’t need protection in the first place.
The CDC, “expert” community, World Health Organization, media figures—all endlessly spread terror that the virus was a mass killer while conflating detected case fatality rates with infection fatality rates.
Yet now we have another piece of evidence suggesting that the initial WHO estimates were off by 99 percent for 94 percent of the world’s population.
Just for some perspective, here’s the difference visually portrayed between what the WHO claimed and what Ioannidis found:
Even if the lockdowns, mask mandates, capacity limits, and shuttered playgrounds worked, the dangers of the virus were so minuscule that the collateral damage instantly and immediately outweighed any potential benefit.
Economic destruction, increased suicide attempts due to seemingly indefinite isolation, horrifying levels of learning loss, increasing obesity amongst kids, plummeting test scores, increased poverty and hunger, supply chain problems, rampant inflation; all of it is a direct result of policies imposed by terrified, incompetent “experts.”
Their estimates were hopelessly, catastrophically wrong, yet they maintained their unchallenged sense of authority for multiple years, and still receive awards, praise, increased funding and a sense of infallibility amongst politicians and decision-makers.
If sanity and intellectual honesty still existed, these estimates would be front page news for every major media outlet in the world.
Instead, because the media and their allies in the tech, corporate, and political classes promoted and encouraged lockdowns and restrictions while censoring dissent, it’s ignored.
