Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

In effect, authorities created two rat farms, both unintended: the sewers, and the private-sector rat-farms.

The history of Rat Farms offers a valuable lesson in how markets and bureaucracies work.

The story of how the colonial authorities in Hanoi came to establish two kinds of rat farms is highly instructive.

The first rat farm was unintentional. French colonial authorities decided to modernize the French Quarter of Hanoi (where Westerners lived) by constructing a modern sewer system, the overall goal being to establish “a little Paris in the East.”

Their understanding of sewers was limited to the first-order effects: sewers safely collected and disposed of human waste.

They did not anticipate the second-order effect: the sewer was Rat Paradise, as “the pipes offered rats a new ecological niche, free of predators and full of food.”

Second-order effects generate unintended consequences. (First-order effects: actions have consequences. Second-order effects: consequences have their own consequences.)

Rats proliferated in the sewers and began roaming the streets of Hanoi–not exactly the results intended by the authorities.

Matters became worse when in 1902 a first case of bubonic plague was detected. Modernity had created a potential health crisis.

To combat the exploding rat population, authorities hired crews to enter the sewers and kill the rats– unpleasant and hazardous work.

Despite killing thousands of rats per day, the rats’ tremendous fertility was more than a match for the extermination crews.

In an effort to recruit the local populace as rat-catchers / killers, the authorities offered the public a bounty for every dead rat, and later on for every rat-tail when the pile of rats waiting to be incinerated became too high.

Authorities then noticed tail-less rats around Hanoi: residents caught the rats, cut off their tails, and then freed them to continue breeding to insure a steady supply of profitable rat-tails.

Once again, authorities had failed to consider second-order effects.

The authorities soon discovered the ultimate manifestation of the perverse incentives the bounty had created: rat-farms had been established around Hanoi by private-sector entrepreneurs to maximize the harvesting of profitable rat-tails.

In effect, authorities created two rat farms, both unintended: the sewers, and the private-sector rat-farms.

Perverse incentives and unintended consequences are, like rats, ever-present.

In 1998, the Vietnamese authorities closed restaurants selling cat meat, which was marketed as “little tiger meat”, because they thought that if the cat population decreased, rats would invade the rice fields, showcasing a similar mentality to the French almost a century earlier.

The modern iterations of perverse incentives and unintended consequences generally follow this line of development:

1. Massive new funding is made available to address a pressing problem: higher education, healthcare, homelessness, intelligence-gathering, national defense, etc.

2. This massive influx of new funding creates a new ecological niche free of predators and full of food, enabling the explosive growth of administrators, support staff, consultants and con-artists, all of whom have zero incentive to actually solve the problem and every incentive to expand the problem so their protected Paradise gets more funding.

This is higher education, healthcare, homelessness, intelligence gathering and national defense in a nutshell.

Sources:

Great Hanoi Rat Massacre (wikipedia)

*  *  *

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Now much of Western Ukraine, which lies far away from the front lines of fighting with Russia in the east, is without power due to fresh weekend airstrikes across the country. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a Saturday night address said new “massive” strikes targeted Dnipropetrovsk, Khmelnytsky, Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv, Odessa, Rivne, Volyn and Zaporizhia regions.

“We continue eliminating the aftermath of today’s terrorist attacks on our infrastructure,” Zelensky said. “The geography of this new massive strike is very wide.”

The past days have already seen power outages in Kyiv, with energy grid authorities warning of rolling blackouts, and urging residents to take power-saving measures such as the avoidance of running large appliances. 

On Saturday the national power utility operator Ukrenergo said that damage from the latest round of Russian strikes set a new record. The Saturday air offensive by Russia was bigger than an initial major wave of strikes from earlier this month:

Over 1.4 million Ukrainian households have lost electricity after a morning of repeated Russian air raids, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office says.

The Ukrainian General Staff reported that 40 cruise missiles and 16 allegedly Iranian-made drones hit Ukraine throughout the day.

Oleksandr Kharchenko, a Ukrainian energy official, said in an interview with US media that national infrastructure vital for the people is facing “really huge trouble”.

“When you don’t have electricity in a city, it means you have no water, you have no supply of gas, you have nothing,” Kharchenko said. Days prior to the stepped-up Saturday assault the government said one-third of all power stations had been hit or damaged in Russian strikes. 

The right bank of Kyiv covered in darkness this evening as the Ukrainian authorities began to implement planned power outages to save energy, due to continued Russian strikes targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/QeR6AEvYwG

— Status-6 (@Archer83Able) October 20, 2022

Most new damage to energy has been recorded in the country’s west, south and center, with some hospitals since reporting they are running on backup generators. Reserves of oxygen and fresh water are also being tapped by hospitals. 

Ukrenegro has on Sunday introduced phased blackouts to “avoid accidents”, per The Guardian: 

The blackouts began at 11.13am local time (09.30am BST), with households in Kyiv divided into three groups that will be “disconnected for a certain period of time”, DTEK said.

It added that the blackouts should last “no more than four hours” but may be longer “due to the scale of damage to the power supply system”.

According to the latest estimate of the damage reported in Reuters, “Russia has hit at least half of Ukraine’s thermal generation capacity and caused billions of dollars of damage in attacks since Oct. 10, but not all stricken power units have stopped working completely, Ukraine’s energy minister said on Friday.”

⚠️ Confirmed: Live network data show internet outages in south #Ukraine corresponding to new Russian missile attacks this morning targeting critical infrastructure; the bombardment of civilian energy utilities has intensified since 10 Oct.

📰 Background: https://t.co/S0qJQ7CJD3 pic.twitter.com/M832lukdy5

— NetBlocks (@netblocks) October 22, 2022

Further, “Herman Halushchenko told Reuters in an interview that 30-40% of overall national power infrastructure had been hit in attacks that he depicted as intended to destroy Ukraine’s energy system — a goal that he said had not been achieved.”

Authored by Darlene  McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times,

Some 2,000 people turned out for the “Rally to End Child Mutilation” held in downtown Nashville Friday as a host of conservative speakers vowed to make gender transition for children illegal.

The mainly conservative crowd gathered at the War Memorial Plaza near the state capital in support of stopping surgery and chemical castration of minors.

A group of protesters favoring transgender “rights” for children tried to shout down the speakers by chanting, screaming profanities, and using sirens.

Protestors with megaphones yell at supporters of Matt Walsh and The Daily Wire’s “Rally to End Child Mutilation” Oct. 21, 2022 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times)

Matt Walsh, a conservative commentator for The Daily Wire, was greeted like a rockstar as he took the stage to give the keynote speech.

He called the group of protestors cowards because they didn’t want anyone to hear the truth about the “cult of gender ideology.” Walsh said attempting to shut down those speaking up for children wouldn’t work.

“We’re still here,” he shouted. “We are fighting for truth.”

He said that if parents don’t take a stand, America’s children will be subjected to hormones and genital mutilation.

“We’re not going to rest until every child is protected from this madness,” he added.

Walsh said the woke culture preys upon children and tries to cover their actions with lies, adding that this battle is one of “good versus evil.”

Matt Walsh speaks at War Memorial Plaza during the “Rally to End Child Mutilation” Oct. 21, 2022 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times)

Walsh first drew attention to a doctor at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville touting the profitability of transgender procedures for minors with gender dysphoria.

The expose caused an uproar among conservatives nationwide.

On Oct. 7, Vanderbilt announced it would temporarily pause gender surgeries on patients under 18 after Tenn. Republican Gov. Bill Lee called for an investigation into the clinic.

Walsh’s appearance was followed by 11 speakers, including detransitioners and GOP lawmakers. Detransitioners are people who came to regret going on the irreversible path of chemically and surgically altering their bodies.

Tennessee House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland) and state Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) said they planned to introduce legislation to ban gender surgeries on minor children.

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said she would work to stop the practice on the federal level. Blackburn said she asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration to launch an investigation into the long-term effects of hormone replacement therapy.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee business meeting to vote on Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Capitol Hill in Washington, on April 4, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images).

“We are going to carry this movement. We are going to take it to every state in the country,” she said.

Scott Newgent, a woman who transitioned to appear like a man, told the crowd that gender surgery for children has nothing to do with human rights but everything to do with money.

Newgent said surgery could not change people from one sex to another.

“The truth is I’m a woman and will never be a man,” Newgent said.

Photo provided by Scott Newgent, man who told his story in “What is a Woman” movie by Matt Walsh in 2022 (Photo Courtesy of Scott Newgent)

Newgent said the medical establishment was putting children on puberty blockers and “butchering” them for money. Once they start transitioning, they become patients for life, he added.

He said that the transgender industry is expected to hit $5 billion by the end of the decade.

California “detransitioner” Chloe Cole captivated the audience with her cautionary tale. Cole said she loved being a girl until she got older and began associating more with boys.

By the time she was 11, she was bombarded by transgender content on the internet and began transitioning at 13, she said.

She remembers her parents taking her to a therapist for help. Instead, the therapist told her parents if they didn’t go along with her desire to become a boy, she was in danger of suicide. It effectively silenced the people who cared most about her.

“These doctors and therapists were just butchers and liars,” she said.

Chloe Cole, center, poses with supporters after Matt Walsh’s rally Oct. 21, 2022 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times)

Christians and patriots carrying flags were on one side, while protesters with brightly colored hair and signs gathered on the opposite side.

Most people stood quietly, waiting for the speakers.

Luke Teague, 19, came from Dallas because he’s a fan of Walsh and wanted to support him. He said something needed to be done to protect children from transitioning.

A 34-year-old “nonbinary” man who declined to give his name said he grew up in Nashville and remembers feeling alienated growing up with gender dysphoria. So he decided to come out to support children who may feel alone.

Protesters at a Matt Walsh’s “Rally to End Child Mutilation” hold signs for transgender rights Oct. 21, 2022 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times)

Amy Dickinson Campbell of Bruceton, Tenn., sees things from both sides. She is against children transitioning and has told teens to wait and see how they feel when they are adults.

On the other hand, her 21-year-old daughter is “nonbinary” and wants to be called they or them. Campbell said worse things could happen and loves her daughter regardless.

“I’m 51. I couldn’t imagine being a kid in today’s society,” she said.

Read more here…

For Republicans to take control of the U.S. Senate, they’ll need to flip at least one seat currently held by Democrats. That’s looking increasingly likely, as the Republican challenger in Nevada is pulling ahead of the incumbent Democrat in the latest polls. 

The race pits one-term incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto against Republican Adam Laxalt; both are former Nevada attorneys general. According to a Rasmussen poll released on Friday, Laxalt leads Cortez Masto 48% to 43%. Unaffiliated voters back the Republican by an 18-point margin — 48% to 30%.

A CBS News/YouGov poll published on Thursday put Laxalt up 1%, and found Cortez Masto is backed by 57% of women while Laxalt is the choice of 56% of men.

Latino support of the Democratic Party is fading across the nation, and Nevada is no exception: While Cortez Masto won the Latino vote by 29 points in 2016, she’s only up 18 this year, according to CBS News/YouGov. 

Sticking to the Republicans’ 2022 playbook, the Laxalt campaign has centered on the economy, inflation, crime and immigration. In Nevada as elsewhere, those are the top issues of concern to voters. When asked which is the best party to address them, more voters say Republicans are. 

Pocketbook issues carry more weight in Nevada, a state with a higher proportion of working-class voters — many of whom were laid off in the wake of pandemic shutdowns favored by Democrats. Today, Nevada gas prices are among the highest of any state, averaging $5.11 a gallon, which is nearly 34% above the nationwide average.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, Democrats hoped the abortion issue would give Cortez Masto the edge she needed as one of their most vulnerable Senate incumbents. The problem is abortion is far from being a top concern of voters.

Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville — who coined the expression “it’s the economy, stupid” during the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign — takes a dim view of the party’s emphasis on the issue. 

“A lot of these consultants think if all we do is run abortion spots that will win for us. I don’t think so,” he told Associated Press. “It’s a good issue. But if you just sit there and they’re pummeling you on crime and pummeling you on the cost of living, you’ve got to be more aggressive than just yelling abortion every other word.” 

Laxalt has taken a light-handed approach to the abortion issue, calling legal abortion “settled law” in Nevada, while supporting a state referendum to impose restrictions after 13 weeks instead of the current 24 weeks. About 70% of Nevadans say abortion should be “mostly legal.” 

Yusette Solomon, who canvasses for Nevada’s pro-Democrat Culinary Workers union, tells AP that voters he interacts with don’t talk much about abortion. Rather, it’s tough economic conditions: “It’s hard for everybody. It’s the supermarket. It’s gas. Inflation is something we need to deal with. Everyone’s feeling it.”

Via OilPrice.com,

The axing of the energy price guarantee from April next year could lead to almost 11m UK households falling into fuel poverty, campaigners have warned, which is about 26m people.

It means more than one in three British households face the grim prospect of hardship: there are an estimated 28.1m households in the UK. The average household in Britain has 2.36 people.

The End Fuel Poverty Coalition described the outlook as “frankly terrifying” and urged the Government to focus on a new package of support and energy market reforms, alongside investment in home insulation and renewables.

The predicted increase from the current seven million households in fuel poverty to 10.7 million after the Government lifts its guarantee limiting the average household energy bill to £2,500 from April will then fall slightly – but will still leave 10.1 million households in fuel poverty in the winter of 2023/24, the group said.

Protest in London

The figures come as protesters gather in London to ask MPs to back plans for a universal basic energy allowance to meet heating, cooking and lighting needs, part of the ‘Energy For All’ petition which will be handed to Downing Street on Wednesday with more than 600,000 signatures.

The Warm This Winter campaign called for the immediate suspension of all forced transfers of households onto more expensive pre-payment meters, whether by court warrant or remotely via smart meters.

Ruth London, from Fuel Poverty Action, said: “The outlook is frankly terrifying. It is now all the more essential – and more possible – to win a totally new pricing framework like Energy For All. Finally there is now support for this inside Parliament.”

Simon Francis, co-ordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said:

“The Government may have brought some stability to the markets, but it has come at the cost of huge instability in households’ finances.

“The new Chancellor must work quickly, and with consumer groups and charities, to design a new package of support and energy market reforms that will help those in fuel poverty now and post-April.

“But while the political focus on energy bills may now have shifted to next April, millions of the most vulnerable will be living in cold and damp homes this winter and will need further financial and non-financial support.”

Firms urged to prepay customers

Meanwhile, consumer site MoneySavingExpert (MSE) urged some of the biggest energy firms to allow prepay customers with smart meters to use their £400 Government support payment on both electricity and gas, to ensure they can maintain heating this winter.

Prepayment customers with traditional meters can decide where best to use the payments, which come in six monthly instalments between now and March 2023, as they are sent as a voucher they can use to top up their electricity or gas meter. However for those with smart meters, the payment is usually applied to their electricity meter by default, so they have less choice.

Gary Caffell, head of energy at MSE, said: “We appreciate that suppliers have acted fast to deliver the first of these crucial support payments.

“But combined with the wider cost of living crisis – affecting all other areas of people’s finances – not allowing customers flexibility to transfer some or all of these payments to gas meters puts these people, many of whom are vulnerable, at a much higher risk of reaching a crisis point in the coming months.

“Some may simply not be able to afford to heat their homes.”

If Elon Musk is any type of financial prognosticator, the market and economy could be in trouble for more than a year to come.

When prompted in a Twitter thread early on Friday morning, the Tesla CEO said that he thought the current recession would last “probably until spring of ’24”. 

Just guessing, but probably until spring of ‘24

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 21, 2022

“It sure would be nice to have one year without a horrible global event,” Musk said earlier in the thread. 

He was then asked how much worse he thought the recession would get. 

Musk answered: “Varies a lot. Tesla & SpaceX are in good positions, but many other companies are not.” Channeling his inner Milton Friedman, he continued: “Recessions do have a silver lining in that companies that shouldn’t exist stop existing.”

Its a timeline that Musk didn’t bring up during the most recent Tesla earnings call. Recall, on the call earlier this week, Musk said the company is pushing forward with its production plans despite the current state of the global economy. 

Musk said: “To be frank, we’re very pedal to the metal come rain or shine. We are not reducing our production in any meaningful way, recession or not recession.”

Musk continued: “The U.S. actually is in – North America’s in pretty good health. A little bit of that is raising interest rates more than they should, but I think they’ll eventually realize that and bring back down, I think.”

He continued: “The public at large realizes that world’s moving towards electric vehicles, and it’s foolish to buy a new gasoline car at this point because the residual value of that gasoline car is going to be very low. So, we’re in a very good spot.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s recession-proof but it’s recession-resilient, because basically the people of Earth have made the decision in large part to move away from gasoline cars,” he added.

Musk, like his biggest fan Cathie Wood, was also critical of the Federal Reserve. He stated: “The Fed’s decisions make sense if you’re looking in the rear-view mirror not if you’re looking out the windshield.”

Via EurasiaNet,

Iran’s military is conducting large-scale military drills on its border with Azerbaijan, including practicing crossings of the Aras River, which defines a large part of the border between the two states.

The exercises, called “Mighty Iran,” began on October 17. The exact location has not been specified, but Iranian media placed them in between Iran’s provinces of Ardabil and East Azerbaijan, the part of Iran across the Aras from Azerbaijan’s Fuzuli region. One expert on open-source intelligence, however, analyzed photos of the pontoon crossing and placed it across from Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhchivan.

Recently Iran started unprecedented drills aimed against Azerbaijan’s policy of getting a land corridor to Nakhcivan as a part of peace treaty with Armenia.

Drills involved setting up pontoon bridges over directly the border line through Aras river. https://t.co/Ft6htKxxIx https://t.co/fOvjYxfZV6 pic.twitter.com/EDk3OQkoNb

— Hamid (@khalfaguliyev) October 20, 2022

The drills come as Iran has been stepping up its diplomatic warnings to Baku about Azerbaijan’s intentions for a new transport link connecting Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhchivan with the Azerbaijani mainland, a route that Baku calls the “Zangezur corridor.” The route would pass along Armenia’s border with Iran, with uncertain consequences for Armenia-Iran commerce.

“Iran will not permit the blockage of its connection route with Armenia, and in order to secure that objective the Islamic Republic of Iran also launched a wargame in that region,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in an October 19 interview with the IRNA news agency.

Amir-Abdollahian was planning to visit Armenia on October 20 to officially open Iran’s new consulate in Kapan, in the flashpoint province of Syunik, which borders Azerbaijan and Iran, Armenia’s foreign ministry reported. 

Iranian media have described the exercises as “massive.”

Photos have depicted lengthy rows of tanks and multiple-launch rocket systems. Military officials say the forces in the drills have practiced simulations of airborne landings, as well as the use of suicide drones of the type that Russia recently debuted in Ukraine. 

The most noteworthy element of the exercise so far has been the practice of crossing the Aras River using pontoon bridges, which Iranian media said was the first time the forces have drilled on that technique. The Aras River forms a large part of the Iran-Azerbaijan border, though presumably they chose a rare section in which the northern bank is Iranian, not Azerbaijani, territory. October 19 video from the exercise showed tanks and supply trucks driving over a pontoon bridge.

The exercise indicates that “the armed forces’ determination to confront any regime that wants to cut Iran’s land connection with Armenia is serious,” tweeted Iranian military analyst Hossein Daliran. 

It comes as tensions in the region are growing on several fronts. In August, apparently in response to Iran’s regular warnings about the Zangezur corridor, Azerbaijani pro-government media began attacking Iran on a deeply sensitive issue, encouraging the large ethnic Azerbaijani minority in the country to secede. 

In September, Azerbaijan launched an attack against a broad section of the Armenian border, raising fears of a larger invasion. Tension has continued to fester, with a recent increase in ceasefire violations. Iran, meanwhile, has been beset by countrywide anti-government protests while strengthening its alliance with Russia through the drone supplies. 

After its infowar threats stoking separatism two months earlier, Baku has been noticeably quieter in the days since this exercise began. There has been no official comment, and pro-government media have been downplaying the story. Some outlets presented the exercises as taking place on the Armenian border, others speculated that the real target was likely Armenia because of the disastrous consequences an attack on Azerbaijan would entail. (One piece, in the pro-government Musavat, was an exception and did not minimize the issue, calling it “a very serious provocation and threat. With this, the Iranian side is demonstrating that it is ready to encroach on the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan.”)

But Azerbaijan could be merely biding its time: the last time Iran held massive military drills on its border with Azerbaijan, last year, Baku responded in a similarly low-key manner for several days before President Ilham Aliyev fired back, if only rhetorically. 

Iran’s embassy in Baku has been giving mixed messages about the exercises. It issued a statement insisting that the drills were pre-planned and that Azerbaijan was notified in advance, “taking into consideration the friendly and brotherly relations” between the two countries. 

The ambassador himself, though, gave a more pointed statement, tweeting a video of the exercises set to martial music and writing that they were a demonstration of Iran’s “readiness to defend the security of the country’s borders and a decisive response to any threats and interventions by countries and regimes in the region.”

🇮🇷 پیام روشن #رزمایش_اقتدار سپاه پاسداران انقلاب اسلامی #ایران برای کشورهای همسایه صلح، دوستی و تحکیم امنیت پایدار و برای دشمنان، اعلام آمادگی برای دفاع از امنیت مرزهای کشور و پاسخ قاطعانه به هرگونه تهدید و مداخلات کشورها و رژیم های فرامنطقه ای است.#ایران_قوی pic.twitter.com/PSFOsz4tk5

— Seyed Abbas Mousavi (@SAMOUSAVI9) October 17, 2022

While Tehran has for some time been warning Azerbaijan about its threats to Armenia, in recent days its talking points have incorporated a new perceived threat in the Caucasus: the “European military presence.”

Iran President Ibrahim Raisi met with Aliyev in Astana on October 13 and a senior Raisi adviser wrote after the meeting that the Iranian leader “rejected any change in the historical borders, the geopolitics of the region, and the Iran-Armenia transit route” and that that would “elicit a decisive response from Iran.” But he added that Raisi “also rejected European military presence in the region under any cover. He said internal issues won’t distract us from the Iranian nation’s strategic interests.”

The “European military presence” would seem to be a reference to a new European Union monitoring mission that began deploying to Armenia this week. That mission will be modest – 40 members, with a two-month mandate – but it seems to have spooked Iran. More Europeans could be coming: the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe announced that it would be sending an “assessment mission” to Armenia between October 21 and 27. 

The goal of the European mission(s) appears to be the same as that of the Iranian military exercises: reduce fears of an Azerbaijani attack on Armenia.

(One Azerbaijani analyst, improbably, suggested the two sides may be in cahoots.) 

How the European presence in Armenia may change Iran’s strategic calculations remains to be seen. But Armenia continues to count on support from Tehran. A delegation of members of Armenia’s parliament visited Tehran on October 13 and met with several senior Iranian government officials, including Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian. 

“Iran’s principled position regarding the inevitable need to protect Armenia’s internationally recognized borders and territorial integrity and to condemn the recent military aggression undertaken by Azerbaijan was emphasized,” wrote the leader of the group, MP Gevorg Papoyan.

Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The war between states and banks over environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and similar practices has reached the doorstep of the U.N. A total of 19 state attorneys general have launched investigations of major financial institutions’ commitment to the U.N.-convened Net-Zero Banking Alliance.

The alliance’s website states that its members control roughly 40 percent of the world’s banking assets and are “committed to aligning their lending and investment portfolios with net-zero emissions by 2050.”

“The Net-Zero Banking Alliance is a massive worldwide agreement by major banking institutions, overseen by the U.N., to starve companies engaged in fossil fuel-related activities of credit on national and international markets,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said in a statement regarding the investigations.

A May statement from the alliance states that it “does not support the financing of fossil fuel expansion” but notes that it “believes that immediate divestment from existing fossil fuel positions will not necessarily bring about the required real economy decarbonization that the world needs.”

“We are leading a coalition investigating banks for ceding authority to the U.N., which will only result in the killing of American companies that don’t subscribe to the woke climate agenda. These banks are accountable to American laws–we don’t let international bodies set the standards for our businesses,” Schmitt said.

Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia are among the states now investigating the banks through a powerful tool known as a civil investigative demand.

One demand encompasses the following requests: “Describe Your involvement in each Global Climate Initiative in which You participate, including the date You first began participating; any promises, pledges, or other commitments You made to the Global Climate Initiative; or any actions You made or took pursuant to, or consistent with, such commitments, or Your initial or on-going participation, and the employee(s) responsible for managing Your relationship with each Global Climate Initiative.”

Schmitt’s announcement is the latest salvo in a long-running conflict between major financial institutions and individual U.S. states regarding ESG.

State treasurers, such as West Virginia’s Riley Moore, have sought to move their state’s money from financial institutions that follow ESG principles.

Read more here…

Authored by Daniel Teng via The Epoch Times,

Beijing’s highly secretive Ministry of State Security (MSS) leveraged and manipulated leading Western political and business elites to deepen the Chinese Communist Party’s influence around the world, according to a new book by Alex Joske, an expert on Chinese foreign interference.

The early pages of “Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World” detail how billionaire George Soros, inspired by his work establishing the Open Society Foundation in post-communist Hungary, carried out similar work for China during Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform era.

The vehicle devised by Soros, and partner Liang Heng, was to establish the Fund for the Reform and Opening of China (the China Fund) to support cultural, business, and scientific research to assist with the country’s opening up, according to Joske, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Yet amid political manoeuvring between factions in the 1980s, the China Fund was forced to partner with the China International Culture Exchange Center (CICEC), an organisation claiming to be under the control of the Ministry of Culture.

George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations, arrives for a meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on April 27, 2017. (Olivier Hoslet/AFP/Getty Images)

Joske alleges that Soros and Liang soon discovered, however, that CICEC had its own motives for the China Fund, and that was to support political initiatives rather than activities associated with liberalising China.

Soros later closed the China Fund with CICEC co-chair Yu Enguang, revealed to be a “high-ranking official in the external police” or the MSS.

“The MSS seizure of the China Fund was an impressive display of the agency’s confidence in engaging with one of America’s best-connected and wealthiest men. What it learnt could be applied to future operations as the agency grew more aggressive and internationally focused over the following decade,” Joske wrote.

CICEC itself would continue to be a “custom-made organ” for meeting and secretly influencing recruits from around the world.

“Politically sensitive missions like engaging directly with George Soros or posing as liberals with the Party in order to gain the trust of foreigners are home turf for these officers,” he said.

Exploiting Ambition

Joske also notes that the MSS was very adept at exploiting the ambition of Western elites and cites the example of the former co-president of Goldman Sachs, John Thornton.

After quitting the banking giant, Thornton held several prominent positions with major Chinese institutions, including a directorship at the well-known Tsinghua University.

Journalist Josh Rogin alleged Thornton developed one of the “most reliable and high-level networks with the families that run the CCP,” which shaped Thornton’s views on how to manage China relations.

John L. Thornton, guest professor and director of Global Leadership Program at Tsinghua SEM and chairman of the board of the Brookings Institution, speaks during the 2011 Tsinghua Management Global Forum at Tsinghua SEM Auditorium in Beijing on Oct. 25, 2011. (VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

“Thornton’s beliefs about China’s future have been characterised by the same false narratives the MSS Social Investigation Bureau pushed on foreign scholars, diplomats, and elites. In 2008, he argued in an essay for Foreign Affairs magazine that the Party was actively considering moving towards democracy,” Joske wrote.

“Thornton’s writings reflect the same optimism about China that Party leaders and the MSS learnt to capitalise on decades earlier.”

The former Goldman Sachs executive went on to encourage the Trump administration to befriend Chinese leader Xi Jinping directly. Yet these efforts at diplomatic engagement with the Chinese leadership would eventually give way to tough sanctions on China to correct years of intellectual property theft and unbalanced trade.

Thornton, along with several major Wall Street figures, also allegedly attempted to sway the Biden administration on its China policy, but these efforts have also fallen to the wayside as scrutiny of the Chinese Communist Party becomes more widespread.

Exploiting a Love of China

Joske also draws attention to the Chinese regime’s use of people’s love for China outlining the example involving former Australian Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke.

Hawke was distraught in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 and famously responded by granting 42,000 Chinese nationals’ asylum.

Joske says four years after the massacre, Hawke received a message from the Chinese consul in Sydney inviting him to visit China.

Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke in Brisbane, Australia, on Aug. 16, 2010. (William West/AFP/Getty Images)

Hawke felt it was important that Australia-China relations grew, so agreed to do so. There he was received and welcomed by then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin and then-Premier Li Peng.

“The special bromance between Chinese and Australian leaders was back on track. Hawke thought the fate of [former Premier] Zhao Ziyang, who eventually died in house arrest, was ‘extremely sad,’ but the importance of building ties to the Party leadership came first,” Joske wrote.

He further added that the issue of Tiananmen was eventually “swept under the rug,” and Hawke would go on to play a valuable role in selling China to the rest of the world.

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