Authored by Craig B. Smith & William D. Fletcher via RealClearEnergy,

THE PROPOSAL

Carbon capture and storage — the concept of sucking carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and storing it underground — is being considered as a way to reduce greenhouse gases. It’s been suggested that such technology is a way to buy time while the world transitions away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. It’s discussed as a possible way to stall global warming.

There is theory, and then there is reality.

OUR OPINION

Sucking CO2 from the atmosphere is not a magical solution, as some have made it out to be. Operating carbon capture technology at a scale that would have a meaningful impact on the climate crisis, which is trending toward catastrophic impacts, would be a trillion-dollar endeavor annually — even in a best case scenario in which projects stay on budget, on schedule and the technology can both effectively work to capture and store emissions for the long term. In a worst case scenario, a lot of time and money can be wasted on an ineffective process that does little to nothing to reduce emissions, while polluters continue producing fossil fuels under the guise that their emissions are accounted for elsewhere.

The reality is that a serious approach to carbon capture with serious emission reductions in mind would involve huge capital outlays, huge electrical power consumption, and it would take decades to have any measurable effect on the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, if it worked at all. Not to mention the very real reason for concern if Big Oil is running the show. The fossil fuel industry — the sector most responsible for human-driven climate change — has sought to lead the charge of the budding carbon capture and storage industry in an effort to simultaneously rectify a polluting image and create a way to continue production of fossil fuels.

This path is not viable. It’s not reasonable or responsible to distract from other emissions reduction strategies by entertaining the far-off potential of large-scale carbon capture to save the climate. Here’s why:

THE COMPLEXITIES

Direct air capture is technically challenging. First, selectively capturing carbon dioxide molecules among the billions of other, more abundant, molecules found in air (including oxygen, O2, ozone, O3, nitrogen, N2, sulfur and others) is difficult to begin with. Then there is the magnitude of the problem. At present, the atmosphere contains over 3,300 billion metric tons of CO2, plus smaller quantities of other greenhouse gases — removing them would require an operation on a massive scale to have a meaningful impact and require power at an immense scale as well. Finally, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is about 0.04%. If the removal process was 100% efficient — an optimistic assumption — it would be necessary to process 2,500 tons of air to capture one ton of CO2. Air movement would require considerable energy. Three physical processes might be deployed to capture CO2. They are adsorption, absorption and membranes. Power will be required for pumping and compressing air or gas containing CO2, and for extracting concentrated CO2, and finally, it must be stored  in some manner forever, such as in depleted oil fields or other underground strata, and this takes even more energy to accomplish.

Carbon capture will require large amounts of electricity — estimated as 2,500 kWh per metric ton of CO2 or more. The end product is to obtain a concentrated stream of CO2. Then, by various methods, the concentrate can be converted to a carbonate or methanol or used for enhanced oil recovery. Depending on the final process, additional energy and expense is required for pumping, storage, injection wells and other plant operations. Moving and eventually storing vast quantities of a dilute gas or liquid will require giant fans, huge pumps, and other equipment. The success of the concept depends on having large supplies of renewable energy for operation, rather than fossil fuels.

At a smaller scale, there may be some value in strategically sited carbon capture projects (if they were part of a more comprehensive emissions reduction strategy working to eventually end fossil fuel production): A variation on air capture can be used to extract CO2 from existing power plant exhausts. Capturing carbon in this way would be easier to achieve because the exhaust from a modern gas-fired power plant is about 4 to 5% CO2, which is 100 times greater than the atmosphere. Coal-fired power plant exhaust contain about 15% CO2. Several pilot plants are using this approach.

PILOT PLANTS

The first plant, known as Orca, was developed by a company called Climeworks and opened in Iceland in 2021. This plant has the added advantage that it is powered by geothermal energy, so it does not release greenhouse gases during operation. It has capacity for capturing 4,000 metric tons of CO2 per year at a recovery cost of $600-$800 per metric ton. At this plant, captured gas is bubbled into water and injected underground, where it hardens into stone. Climeworks recently announced the construction of a second plant in southern Iceland with capacity to capture 36,000 metric tons of CO2 per year when completed. After collecting and sequestering the CO2, Climeworks sells “offsets based on that captured carbon,” to those looking to make up for a significant carbon foot print.

Currently a larger plant with capacity of 500,000 metric tons of CO2/year and a construction cost of $1.1 billion is being constructed by Occidental Petroleum — yes, an oil company — in the Permian basin area of Texas and is tentatively named Stratos. Occidental will be using $1.2 billion from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act for “direct air capture projects.” Occidental’s estimate is that it currently costs $500 to $1,000 to capture one metric ton of carbon dioxide. Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub described the proposed plant: Captured CO2 would be injected deep into underground reservoirs (former oil fields), where, in theory, it would be trapped and could potentially form new carbonate minerals. The carbon dioxide also could be sold to companies manufacturing plastics or synthetic fuels, or alternatively, it could be injected to produce more oil and gas from old wells. Hollub defended the idea of using captured CO2 to produce more fossil fuels, claiming that there would be no net increase in CO2 emissions, since the greenhouse gases released by the new fossil fuels production would be offset by the amount being removed from the atmosphere.

At 2,500 kWh/mtCO2, the Stratos plant would require 2 650-MW solar farms, at an approximate cost $2.5 billion each, just to capture CO2, not including storing it underground. Occidental says it plans to build 130 plants by 2035. Occidental is not alone: Chevron, Exxon and BP are all investing in carbon capture.

A more important question is: How effective would direct air capture plants be in reducing the burden of greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere? One part per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere equals 7.8 billion metric tons of CO2. To reduce atmospheric CO2 by just 1 ppm would take 15,800 of Occidental’s Stratos plants, an investment of $17 trillion. For context, this sum is greater than the net worth of all the major oil companies. Last year, global emissions of carbon dioxide exceeded 40 billion metric tons. Using the most optimistic estimate of capture cost — $500 per metric ton — it would cost an estimated $20 trillion in operating expense to remove one year’s emissions.

A BETTER ALTERNATIVE

Why spend so much money to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, when we could just not put it there in the first place? Why not charge a fee to polluters for putting it there, rather than allowing polluting to be free and removing emissions to be cost-prohibitive at scale? About 50 countries have instituted some form of a carbon tax, which is a fee charged to entities that emit carbon dioxide in the course of their operations. Carbon taxes in existence today range from $1 per metric ton to $100 per metric ton. One might reasonably ask, wouldn’t it make more sense to spend $100 dollars to prevent carbon from going into the atmosphere, as opposed to spending $5,000 to take it back out again? You can guess the answer: This measure has historically been bitterly opposed by oil companies.

PAYDAY

Shell and other oil companies are embarking on similar projects, planning to rebrand themselves as “carbon capture” companies, although they will actually continue to produce and profit from fossil fuels. Critics claim that this is a move to sidetrack efforts to reduce fossil fuel use. Occidental says, “selling CO2 and carbon credits could become a billion-dollar business” and “could save our industry.” Yet, Professor Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford University describes proposals for carbon capture as a dangerous distraction, likely to do “more harm than good.”

Given that globally scalable, reliable carbon capture technology is not a reality, attention paid to carbon capture promises from fossil fuel companies could not only worsen emissions but cost us valuable time in the race to slow the worsening impacts of  climate change. We should know better than to trust fossil fuel polluters with saving the planet.

Despite the average energy consumption per person trending downward since 2000, energy cost still represents a significant part of American household budgets.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, compares the total monthly energy bills in each of the 50 states.

WalletHub calculated each state’s average monthly energy bill by multiplying the average consumption of electricity, natural gas, home heating oil, and motor fuel by their respective prices and adding these amounts together as of June 3, 2024.

Wyoming Leads the Ranking

Wyoming has the highest energy costs in 2024.

The state has the highest gas and residential oil consumption per capita, and residents’ average monthly energy bill is $1,591. Among many factors, the state also has extremely cold winters, and many residents live in remote areas with limited heating options.

North Dakota, another state with harsh winters, has the second-most expensive average monthly energy bill, at $840. Interestingly, aside from heating oil, energy is relatively inexpensive in the state. It’s just high usage that drives up monthly bills.

Iowa is the third-most energy-expensive state, with residents’ average monthly energy bill costing $798, about half of the cost in Wyoming.

Meanwhile, New Mexico is the state with the lowest energy costs, at $376.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the highest energy consumption of the year is recorded during summer in July, followed by August.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

The argument that mass migration is needed to support GDP levels and pay for pensions took another blow when it was revealed 47.3% of welfare recipients in Germany are foreign migrants.

According to newly released government statistics, nearly half of the 5.49 million people in Germany on benefits are foreign migrants, four percentage points higher than in 2022.

€42.6 billion euros is now being paid out in welfare compared to to €36.6 billion in 2022.

“In addition, there was another record €6.3 billion worth of administration costs for the citizen’s benefit program, which is €300 million more than 2022, according to government data obtained by AfD MP Rene Springer after a parliamentary request,” reports Remix News.

“If this administrative money is added, then total welfare costs equaled €48.9 billion. Bild notes this figure is 14.8 percent higher than in 2023, 18.4 percent higher compared to 2020, and 23 percent higher compared to 2015.”

2.6 million foreign migrants are now citizen’s allowance recipients, a rise of 368,000 on the previous year, which equates to 16.5 per cent.

Right-wing party AfD points out that the 47.3% figure also doesn’t include German citizens from a migration background, since once they obtain citizenship they are considered as German as someone who was born in the country.

“Which country in the world allows itself to be exploited in this manner?” asked the party in statement.

“The percentage of people receiving benefits has more than doubled compared to 2010 (19.6 percent).”

DHK, the largest business association in Germany, accuse the government of worsening the country’s economic position and exacerbating unemployment.

“The data pokes a major hole in the claims that newcomers will help pay for German pensions and help fill demand from German industry, which is desperately searching for skilled workers,” writes John Cody.

“In fact, the data shows that the German state spent €48.2 billion on migrants, including social housing, medical costs, education, integration courses, and other expenses.”

As we previously highlighted, statistics also show that around 6 out of 10 violent crimes in Germany are committed by foreign migrants.

But apparently, diversity continues to be their greatest strength.

*  *  *

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In 2019, the US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which prohibited land-based missile systems with a range of 310 to 3,400 miles. Already Washington has briefly deployed such systems to southeast Asia (Typhon launchers in the Philippines for temporary exercises), which has riled China, but now for the first time nuke-capable missiles will be deployed to Germany.

The US announced Wednesday in relation to the ongoing NATO summit in Washington: “The United States will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026, as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future.”

“When fully developed, these conventional long-range fires units will include SM-6, Tomahawk, and developmental hypersonic weapons, which have significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe,” the statement posted to the White House website adds.

There’s a widespread belief that the US dropped the INF treaty in the first place so that it could deploy intermediate-range missiles near China. But in 2022, the Russia-Ukraine war kicked off, and much of the West’s national security focus since then has been to rebuild Europe’s defenses.

As expected, Russia has reacted with fury to the new missile plan for Germany, with Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov stating on Telegram Thursday that the move is a “serious mistake” as “such extremely destabilizing steps are a direct threat to international security and strategic stability.”

The envoy further said this only “increases the risks of a missile arms race,” given that it could unleash “uncontrolled escalation amid dangerously soaring Russia-NATO tensions.”

Antonov said that Russia has desired to keep safeguards in place, but “Instead of the desire for peace that Russia has demonstrated many times, the Americans have embarked on the dangerous path of militarism.”

He further warned that this brings European states like Germany in the crosshairs and that Moscow’s patience is limited. The ambassador posed: “Doesn’t Germany understand that the emergence of American missile assets on German soil will lead to these facilities ending up in Russian crosshairs? This is not saber-rattling, it is the simple logic of a normal person.”

The end of Cold War era treaty was negotiated precisely to avoid and reduce weapons build-up in Europe…

If Donald Trump takes the White House after November, it will be interesting to see whether he sticks by these provocative missile expansion plans, or if he halts it while desiring to deescalate tensions over arms placement with an aim of of finding Ukraine peace.

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

For the first time in its nearly three-decade history, Norway’s oil fund, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, has just exceeded the market value of 18 trillion Norwegian crowns, which equals $1.691 trillion as of Wednesday.

Government Pension Fund Global, as the Norwegian fund is officially known, was created in the 1990s and the government started transferring revenues from Norway’s oil and gas industry into the fund in 1996.

Since then, the fund has invested in equities and fixed income globally, raising its value with the returns.  

In October 2019, the value of the fund exceeded 10 trillion Norwegian crowns and in May 2023, the fund’s market value topped the threshold of 15 trillion Norwegian crowns.  

The weak Norwegian crown against the U.S. dollar has contributed somewhat to the new height of the fund’s value, but it is the equity investments in the U.S. stock market, in which the fund is heavily weighted, that have driven the record value, Nils Kristian Knudsen, an analyst at Handelsbanken, told Norwegian outlet FinansWatch.

For the first quarter of 2024, the fund returned 1.21 trillion crowns ($113 billion), which was the highest quarterly return in absolute terms since the fund was set up in 1996.

“Our equity investments had a very strong return in the first quarter, particularly driven by the tech sector,” Trond Grande, Deputy CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, said in April, commenting on the fund’s performance in Q1.

The Norwegian fund owns on average 1.5% of all listed companies globally. The equity investments – which account for 72.1% of the fund’s total investments – consist of ownership shares in about 9,000 companies worldwide. A total of 26% of the fund’s assets are invested in fixed income, 1.8% in unlisted real estate, and 0.1% in renewable energy infrastructure.

The fund, which is commonly referred to as ‘Norway’s oil fund’ because it was created with oil and gas revenues, is a shareholder in many large companies in the world, including Big Oil, and has the power to influence other investors with its investment decisions.

As of the end of 2023, they held stakes in 220 energy firms in 35 countries, representing 2.6% of all investments. The fund held 3.4% in BP, 2.88% in Shell, 2.42% in TotalEnergies, 1.35% in ExxonMobil, and 1% in Chevron.

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“The biggest mistake I see is people waiting for A Big Sign that’ll tell them that things have gone too far. One Big Thing that police or lawmakers or the president/leaders will do that will cross the line. It’ll never come because they won’t cross it. They’ll move the line. That line you think you stand behind is shifting everyday with little actions, bills, legislations… That line will stop moving one day, & it’ll be too late… Every day, your sensitivity is being eroded by these willful atrocities. The envelope for what you’ll accept is being pushed. One day, all of these things will be your new normal.”

– Nigerian writer Suyi Davies Okungbowa

The U.S. government is working to re-shape the country in the image of a totalitarian state.

This has remained true over the past 50-plus years no matter which political party held office.

This will remain true no matter who wins the 2024 presidential election.

In the midst of the partisan furor over Project 2025, a 920-page roadmap for how to re-fashion the government to favor so-called conservative causes, both the Right and the Left have proven themselves woefully naive about the dangers posed by the power-hungry Deep State.

Yet we must never lose sight of the fact that both the Right and the Left and their various operatives are extensions of the Deep State, which continues to wage psychological warfare on the American people.

Psychological warfare, according to the Rand Corporation, “involves the planned use of propaganda and other psychological operations to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of opposition groups.”

For years now, the government has been bombarding the citizenry with propaganda campaigns and psychological operations aimed at keeping us compliant, easily controlled and supportive of the government’s various efforts abroad and domestically.

The government is so confident in its Orwellian powers of manipulation that it’s taken to bragging about them. For example, in 2022, the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group, the branch of the military responsible for psychological warfare, released a recruiting video that touts its efforts to pull the strings, turn everything they touch into a weapon, be everywhere, deceive, persuade, change, influence, and inspire.

“Have you ever wondered who’s pulling the strings?” the psyops video posits. “Anything we touch is a weapon. We can deceive, persuade, change, influence, inspire. We come in many forms. We are everywhere.”

This is the danger that lurks in plain sight.

Of the many weapons in the government’s vast arsenal, psychological warfare may be the most devastating in terms of the long-term consequences.

As the military journal Task and Purpose explains, “Psychological warfare is all about influencing governments, people of power, and everyday citizens.”

Mind you, these psyops (psychological operations) campaigns aren’t only aimed at foreign enemies. The government has made clear in word and deed that “we the people” are domestic enemies to be targeted, tracked, manipulated, micromanaged, surveilled, viewed as suspects, and treated as if our fundamental rights are mere privileges that can be easily discarded.

This is what is referred to as “apple-pie propaganda.”

Aided and abetted by technological advances and scientific experimentation, the government has been subjecting the American people to “apple-pie propaganda” for the better part of the last century.

Consider some of the ways in which the government continues to wage psychological warfare on a largely unsuspecting citizenry in order to acclimate us to the Deep State’s totalitarian agenda.

Weaponizing violence in order to institute martial law. With alarming regularity, the nation continues to be subjected to spates of violence that terrorizes the public, destabilizes the country’s ecosystem, and gives the government greater justifications to crack down, lock down, and institute even more authoritarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.

Weaponizing surveillance, pre-crime and pre-thought campaigns. Surveillance, digital stalking and the data mining of the American people add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence. When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies. Add pre-crime programs into the mix with government agencies and corporations working in tandem to determine who is a potential danger and spin a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies, and you having the makings for a perfect dystopian nightmare. The government’s war on crime has now veered into the realm of social media and technological entrapment, with government agents adopting fake social media identities and AI-created profile pictures in order to surveil, target and capture potential suspects.

Weaponizing digital currencies, social media scores and censorship. Tech giants, working with the government, have been meting out their own version of social justice by way of digital tyranny and corporate censorship, muzzling whomever they want, whenever they want, on whatever pretext they want in the absence of any real due process, review or appeal. Unfortunately, digital censorship is just the beginning. Digital currencies (which can be used as “a tool for government surveillance of citizens and control over their financial transactions”), combined with social media scores and surveillance capitalism create a litmus test to determine who is worthy enough to be part of society and punish individuals for moral lapses and social transgressions (and reward them for adhering to government-sanctioned behavior). In China, millions of individuals and businesses, blacklisted as “unworthy” based on social media credit scores that grade them based on whether they are “good” citizens, have been banned from accessing financial markets, buying real estate or travelling by air or train.

Weaponizing compliance. Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation. The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on COVID-19, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

Weaponizing entertainment. For the past century, the Department of Defense’s Entertainment Media Office has provided Hollywood with equipment, personnel and technical expertise at taxpayer expense. In exchange, the military industrial complex has gotten a starring role in such blockbusters as Top Gun and its rebooted sequel Top Gun: Maverick, which translates to free advertising for the war hawks, recruitment of foot soldiers for the military empire, patriotic fervor by the taxpayers who have to foot the bill for the nation’s endless wars, and Hollywood visionaries working to churn out dystopian thrillers that make the war machine appear relevant, heroic and necessary. As Elmer Davis, a CBS broadcaster who was appointed the head of the Office of War Information, observed, “The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized.”

Weaponizing behavioral science and nudging. Apart from the overt dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, there’s also the covert dangers associated with a government empowered to use these same technologies to influence behaviors en masse and control the populace. In fact, it was President Obama who issued an executive order directing federal agencies to use “behavioral science” methods to minimize bureaucracy and influence the way people respond to government programs. It’s a short hop, skip and a jump from a behavioral program that tries to influence how people respond to paperwork to a government program that tries to shape the public’s views about other, more consequential matters. Thus, increasingly, governments around the world—including in the United States—are relying on “nudge units” to steer citizens in the direction the powers-that-be want them to go, while preserving the appearance of free will.

Weaponizing desensitization campaigns aimed at lulling us into a false sense of security. The events of recent years—the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the lockdowns, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers—have conspired to acclimate the populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

Weaponizing politics. The language of fear is spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure. Fear, as history shows, is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government and control a populace, dividing the people into factions, and persuading them to see each other as the enemy. This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology and endless wars, hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes. All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward, and “we the suckers” get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance.

Weaponizing genetics. Not only does fear grease the wheels of the transition to fascism by cultivating fearful, controlled, pacified, cowed citizens, but it also embeds itself in our very DNA so that we pass on our fear and compliance to our offspring. It’s called epigenetic inheritance, the transmission through DNA of traumatic experiences. For example, neuroscientists observed that fear can travel through generations of mice DNA. As The Washington Post reports, “Studies on humans suggest that children and grandchildren may have felt the epigenetic impact of such traumatic events such as famine, the Holocaust and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”

Weaponizing the dystopian future. With greater frequency, the government has been issuing warnings about the dire need to prepare for the dystopian future that awaits us. For instance, the Pentagon training video, “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” predicts that by 2030 (coincidentally, the same year that society begins to achieve singularity with the metaverse) the military would be called on to use armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems. What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security. The chilling five-minute training video paints an ominous picture of the future bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots. “We the people” are the have-nots.

The end goal of these mind control campaigns—packaged in the guise of the greater good—is to see how far the American people will allow the government to go in undermining our freedoms.

The facts speak for themselves.

Whatever else it may be—a danger, a menace, a threat—the U.S. government is certainly not looking out for our best interests, nor is it in any way a friend to freedom.

When the government views itself as superior to the citizenry, when it no longer operates for the benefit of the people, when the people are no longer able to peacefully reform their government, when government officials cease to act like public servants, when elected officials no longer represent the will of the people, when the government routinely violates the rights of the people and perpetrates more violence against the citizenry than the criminal class, when government spending is unaccountable and unaccounted for, when the judiciary act as courts of order rather than justice, and when the government is no longer bound by the laws of the Constitution, then you no longer have a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

What we have, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, is a government of wolves.

It may be soon that the expression “you can’t take your money with you when you die” doesn’t ring as true as it used to.

That’s because the wealthy are now employing estate attorneys who are helping them set up trusts they can tap into “hundreds of years” later for people who are considering attempting to cryogenically preserve themselves, a new Bloomberg article revealed this week. 

Mark House, an estate lawyer, told Bloomberg: “The idea of cryopreservation has gone from crackpot to merely eccentric. Now that it’s eccentric, it’s kind of in vogue to be interested in it.”

An estimated 5,500 people plan for cryogenic preservation, with House having worked with about 100 of them.

Steve LeBel, a 76-year-old retired hospital executive from Michigan, sees joining the roughly 500 already preserved as a dream. An avid hobbyist and writer of young-adult fantasy novels, LeBel cherishes life and doesn’t want financial barriers to impede a second chance.

Bloomberg writes that LeBel plans to place $100,000 in his revival trust, with the remainder going to his daughter, her husband, and his foundation.

LeBel said: “I really want to figure out a solution, otherwise I’ll be in there with my fingers crossed, hoping there’s money left over, 200 years from now, to pay for the resurrection process.”

Which leads to our question: when the hell is anyone going to teach Le Bel about the miracles of what inflation will do to that $100,000 over the course of hundreds of years? He’ll be lucky to buy a Snickers bar with it in 200 years. 

The revival trust is a variation of the dynasty trust, typically used by the ultra-wealthy to pass wealth down generations. Both can help avoid the 40% federal estate tax on estates over $13.6 million, though investment gains are taxed and trustees charge fees. House requires a minimum of $500,000 in the trust to cover these fees.

The key difference lies in the beneficiaries. House sees the revived person as legally distinct since a person cannot be their own trust beneficiary. He appoints a trust protector to determine revival, avoiding legal complications.

Bloomberg writes that revival trusts challenge laws against perpetual trusts, which limit a trust’s lifespan to 90-100 years in many states. However, some states like Arizona and Florida allow trusts to last for centuries. This flexibility prompts people to consider long-term preservation.

The uncertain future of trust structures is a concern. Changing laws and businesses pose risks. Estate planners emphasize the need for flexible, succession-oriented trust management.

LeBel concluded: “I believe the aging process is going to be cured. It’s a disease. The technology isn’t there yet, but I can bridge that time gap with cryonics.”

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis issued an emergency disaster declaration in his state over an outbreak of highly pathogenic bird flu in northeastern Weld County as officials recently reported that 1.8 million chickens were impacted by the virus.

The governor “verbally” declared a disaster after “an avian flu outbreak in a commercial poultry facility in Weld County,” according to a statement from his office issued on July 8. Mr. Polis’s office did not name the facility that was impacted by the outbreak.

The declaration means that Colorado can use its emergency powers to “take all necessary and appropriate state actions to assist with response, recovery, and mitigation efforts.”

In an update issued on July 8, the Colorado Department of Agriculture confirmed that 1.78 million chickens were impacted by highly pathogenic avian influenza.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said in a statement on July 3 that a dairy farm worker in northeastern Colorado was infected with the H5N1 bird flu and had direct exposure to cattle infected with the virus. His only symptom was conjunctivitis, colloquially known as pink eye, which was described by the agency as mild.

“He has recovered. This case is an employee at a dairy farm in northeast Colorado who had direct exposure to dairy cattle infected with avian flu. To protect patient privacy, additional details are not being provided,” the agency said last week in a statement.

It’s not clear if the infected farm worker had any connection to the infected chickens in Weld County. Officials in the state said that the bird flu risk to Colorado residents remains low, noting that the virus is spreading among animals.

The virus is “not adapted to spread from person to person,” Rachel Herlihy, state epidemiologist, said in a statement.

“Right now, the most important thing to know is that people who have regular exposure to infected animals are at increased risk of infection and should take precautions when they have contact with sick animals,” she said.

People were advised not to touch sick or dead animals. If necessary, people should wear protective gear such as eye protection, gloves, and an N95 respirator mask.

The H5N1 virus associated with the cases also impacted about two dozen commercial dairy herds in Colorado over the past month or so, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Colorado had no avian influenza cases throughout 2023, but in 2022, eight commercial poultry flocks were impacted by the virus, according to federal data.

In 2022, a human H5N1 case in Colorado was detected in someone who was exposed to infected birds, according to officials.

So far in 2024, three other dairy workers have been infected with the virus, with one case occurring in Texas in April and two in Michigan in May. Two reported conjunctivitis, while one reported having a cough and eye discomfort with a watery discharge, according to federal health officials.

Michigan Confirms More Cases

Meanwhile, on July 9, the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development confirmed that avian influenza has been detected in another dairy herd in Gratiot County, located in the center part of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. So far, 26 herds have been affected, according to officials.

Tests conducted at the Michigan State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory detected the case and will send the samples to the USDA for confirmation, according to the agency.

The state agency recommended that farms not share equipment with other farms so as to mitigate the risk of spreading the virus, among other steps being taken.

In a statement issued late last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that a new study confirmed that “pasteurization is effective at inactivating” the H5N1 bird flu virus that sometimes can be found in milk or other dairy products.

The FDA said that its study “found that the most commonly used pasteurization time and temperature requirements were effective at inactivating [the virus].”

“In each of the total of nine repeated experiments, the virus was completely inactivated,” the agency stated.

Authored by Huey Freeman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Cancer treatments that aim to destroy deadly cells often cause damage and pain as they wreak havoc on neighboring cells and tissues. However, scientists have discovered a new method of targeting harmful cells using light for precise destruction, according to a recent study.

“Usually treatments for cancer use pharmacological induction to kill the cells, but those chemicals tend to diffuse throughout the tissues and it’s hard to contain to a precise location,” said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign biochemistry professor and study leader Kai Zhang in a press release. “You get a lot of unwanted effects.”

The researchers deploy optogenetics, an approach that uses optical systems to control cell functions, to focus a light beam on a target smaller than one cell.

“That is how we can use light to very precisely target a cell and turn on its death pathway,” Mr. Zhang said in the press release.

In addition to killing the cancer cell, another intended outcome is to trigger the immune system to respond to the light. Mr. Zhang said that the ruptured cells release cytokines, a type of small protein, attracting white blood cells that help the immune system fight infection. By killing cancer cells, the researchers hope to train T-cell white blood cells to recognize and attack the cancer, Mr. Zhang said.

The researchers made the cells respond to light by borrowing a light-activated gene from plants and inserting it into intestine cell cultures. They then attached those genes to the genes for a protein, RIPK3, that regulates necroptosis, a form of cell death caused by various stimuli.

Teak-Jung Oh, a graduate student and the paper’s first author, said the light activation process causes the RIPK3 proteins to cluster together, mimicking the natural death pathway.

“Understanding the cell signaling pathway for necroptosis is especially important because it has been known to be involved with diseases like neurodegenerative disease and inflammatory bowel disease,” said Mr. Oh. “Knowing how necroptosis affects progression in these diseases is important. And if you don’t know the molecular mechanisms, you don’t really know what to target to slow the progression.”

The study was published in the July issue of the Journal of Molecular Biology.

Authored by Mike Maharrey via Money Metals,

Is now a good time to get bullish on platinum?

I’ve written a lot about the fact that silver appears to be underpriced given both technical factors and the supply and demand dynamics.

Platinum may be even more undervalued.

The current platinum price is hovering around $1,000 an ounce. To put that into perspective, platinum hit an all-time high of $2,213 an ounce in March 2008. This was higher than the record price gold hit in 2011. 

One of the factors driving that 2008 record was a severe supply shortage due to a power crisis and labor strikes in South Africa, the world’s leading platinum producer.

Before 2011, platinum was generally more expensive than gold. In 2015, this historical trend reversed with the spread between gold and platinum growing wider.

But over the last two years, platinum has shown signs of life. In 2023, the platinum price was up a healthy 12.5 percent. So far this year, the metal has charted modest gains of about 3.8 percent.

Platinum has a long way to go to regain its historic parity with gold, but supply and demand dynamics indicate there is plenty of room for platinum to push higher.

Like silver, we’re seeing significant supply deficits in the platinum market. In 2023, there was a market deficit of over 100 million ounces, according to the World Platinum Investment Council. This was due to a combination of increasing demand and lagging mine output.

The supply shortfall continued into the first quarter of 2024. 

According to the WPIC, total platinum supply in Q1 was the second lowest since the organization started tracking data.

As a result, the market deficit in Q1 came in at 369,000 ounces.

Platinum is an important component in automobile catalytic converters. Auto demand for the metal hit a 7-year high in Q1 and that pace is expected to continue through the rest of the year.

A rotation from electric vehicles to hybrids is boosting demand for platinum in the auto sector, according to the WPIC.

“Platinum demand is bolstered by stricter emissions legislation, increased hybrid vehicles that contain an internal combustion engine, and growth in the substitution of platinum for palladium. It is important to note that once platinum is substituted for palladium in specific vehicle platforms, this demand for platinum is likely to remain constant throughout the platform’s seven-year lifecycle, even if platinum prices rise to, or exceed, those of palladium for an extended period.”

Platinum jewelry demand also saw a healthy increase in the first quarter, rising by 5 percent year-on-year, driven by a 53 percent increase in Indian jewelry buying.

Overall industrial demand fell slightly from a record in 2023 but remained 17 percent above the pre-COVID average.

Investment demand is also on a positive track upward this year, supported by coin and bar purchases in China.

According to the WPIC, China’s retail investment in platinum is forecast to exhibit double-digit growth this year, driven by perceptions of the metal being undervalued relative to gold.

There is also a growing demand for platinum in the fast-growing hydrogen power sector.

“We are now seeing signs that platinum’s role in the hydrogen economy is gaining momentum, with our forecast for 2024 indicating a significant increase in demand to meaningful levels. This year will also witness the allocation and deployment of over US$300 billion in tax incentives and subsidies from various governments around the world, potentially further accelerating hydrogen’s demand for platinum,” WPIC CEO Trevor Raymond said. 

Looking ahead, the WPIC projects supply will remain flat even with the weak levels seen last year. Mine supply is expected to fall by about 3 percent offset somewhat by a rebound in recycling. But with demand expected to come in at a “robust” 7.6 million ounces, the WPIC projects a 476,000-ounce market deficit.

“For the second consecutive year, the platinum market will post a meaningful deficit underscored by platinum’s sustained demand and supply vulnerability amidst global economic challenges. While we currently forecast a deficit of 476 koz, it is worth mentioning that a revision to the bar and coin investment series, based on new field research and information, could mean this deficit is potentially deeper,” Raymond said.

Above-ground stocks are forecast to decline for the second straight year, falling another 12 percent. This would mark a 4-year low in above-ground platinum supply.

Meanwhile, China is set to launch its first platinum futures contracts.

According to the South China Morning Post, the Guangzhou Futures Exchange (GFEX) “will be the first exchange to allow delivery against its contracts of platinum and palladium in a form used by the main consumers, including carmakers and other industrial sectors, and the contracts may also support platinum investment demand in China.” 

According to the report, investors will be able to take delivery of platinum in both ingots and “sponge” – pure metal in powder form. 

“The ability to take delivery of sponge could be transformative for industrial users of PGMs, as well as carmakers, as this is the main form typically used for their manufacturing purposes,” the WPIC said.

According to a WPIC statement, the GFEX futures will allow platinum jewelry and investment product fabricators to hedge price risk. This could reduce premiums and reduce the discount on platinum buyback, making platinum a more attractive investment.

It remains to be seen whether platinum will regain the price parity with gold we saw before the mid-2010s, but given the supply and demand dynamics, it is reasonable to be bullish on platinum in the near to mid-term. Given the price disparity with gold, this may signal a buying opportunity.