Neocon Queen Of Darkness Calls For US To Bomb Russian Targets Within Russia
Former top State Department official Victoria Nuland is back, and she’s joining the stepped-up Ukrainian government efforts to convince Western allies, including the United States, to deepen their involvement in the war with Russia.
Nuland said a recent appearance on ABC News that the Biden administration should allow Ukraine forces to mount attacks directly on Russian territory with US-supplied missiles and weapons systems. “They need to be able to stop these Russian attacks that are coming from bases inside Russia,” she said in the Sunday interview. “The United States and our allies ought to give them more help in hitting Russian bases, which heretofore we have not been willing to do.”
Victoria Nuland calls for U.S. to bomb Russian targets within Russia:
“I think that if the attacks are coming from directly over the line in Russia then those targets ought to be fair game.” pic.twitter.com/94rkVzn3at
“Those bases ought to be fair game, whether they are where missiles are being launched from or where they are where troops are being supplied from,” Nuland continued.
The Zelensky government has gotten more desperate of late as Ukrainian front lines are being quickly decimated in the Kharkiv region. Moscow’s new offensive there has an aim to push Ukraine’s border significantly back, in order to create a buffer zone to prevent cross-border shelling on Russian towns and cities, particularly in Belgorod.
Nuland claimed that Russia’s goal in Kharkiv is to “decimate [the city] without ever having to put a boot on the ground” and further that Russian forces “have flattened a third of Kharkov” already.
She then argued in the interview that under such dire conditions, direct attacks on Russian bases with Western weapons systems should not ultimately be seen as an escalation.
But Russia starting weeks ago announced that it would hold nuclear drills involving strategic forces. This week these drills appear to be kicking off, clearly as a loud and clear warning directly signaled to NATO.
As for Nuland’s fresh remarks, independent journalist Michael Tracey has best summarized her stance in saying…
“Queen of Darkness Victoria Nuland is back, demanding that the US openly facilitate strikes by Ukraine on targets inside Russia — something the Biden Administration had previously insisted would never happen. A once-unfathomable escalation, which now barely raises an eyebrow.”
Coal and natural gas plants provide 60% of the U.S.’ affordable, reliable, and baseload power. In a time of increased electricity demand, America needs to double down on harnessing these sources—not abandon them.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s recently finalized Clean Power Plan 2.0 (CPP) rule, however, takes the country in the wrong direction. Under this regulation, one that is arguably illegal, existing coal and new natural gas power plants will be mandated to install emissions control technologies that aren’t yet commercially viable. Plants that don’t comply risk permanent closure. This unrealistic mandate is advanced under the guise of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 90% by 2032.
The Biden administration should nix this rule altogether given its many drawbacks to the American economy, all of which come with no environmental gain and are based on dubious authority. If it doesn’t reverse course, a forthcoming Congressional resolution of disapproval and newly-filed lawsuits could stop overreach here.
The EPA’s limited authority over-regulating greenhouse gas emissions was affirmed in the landmark June 2022 West Virginia vs. EPA decision. That case challenged the original Obama-era Clean Power Plan, and the Supreme Court ruled the EPA lacked the statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. No change has been made to grant the EPA more authority over greenhouse gasses.
Moreover, the Clean Air Act says the EPA must craft achievable emission limitations standards that have been “adequately demonstrated.” Yet, the Carbon Capture technology that would be relied upon under this rule has never been “adequately demonstrated” on the scale that EPA is attempting to require.
The EPA rule would lead to grid instability because operators will be forced to adopt intermittent, unreliable, and costly sources like wind and solar. According to the Department of Energy, wind is only reliable 33.5% of the year while solar is dependable for just 24.9% of the time. Wind energy generation decreased for the first time last year. The federal government reports wind generation hit maturity with slower recorded wind speeds, despite adding 6.2 gigawatts of new wind capacity. Solar energy also had a bad 2023 with over 100 companies going bankrupt and expensive electricity rates. Many planned solar plants, including those receiving Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, are predicted to be canceled this year due to price collapse and waning demand.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) warned in its December 2023 Long-Term Assessment report that rigid policies like CPP 2.0 “have the potential to influence generators” to close down their plants. The risk of massive electric reliability issues across the country is by no means a political talking point. In 2023, FERC Commissioner Danly stated in a hearing to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that “there is a looming reliability crisis in our electricity markets.” In that same hearing, Commissioner Christie said “The United States is heading for a very catastrophic situation in terms of reliability.” These are the experts sounding the alarm that we need more grid capacity from baseload sources, not intermittent ones, or we could face not just loss of commerce but a loss of human life.
CPP 2.0 promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2032 by mandating coal and natural gas plants install carbon capture and storage (CCS) or face closure. But the EPA is downplaying the nascent technology’s shortcomings.
CCS, as it stands, is expensive and will diminish coal and natural gas plant efficiency by at least 14%. Moreover, natural gas and coal plants retrofitted with first-generation carbon capture technology reportedly can expect a 50% and 70 to 80% increase in electricity costs, respectively.
In the U.S., we already have highly effective emissions technology that enables coal plants to run in an incredibly environmental way. For example, just look at how states that rely heavily on coal have almost none of the air quality issues of China or India. That’s because of our emissions control technologies.
Let’s call this rule out for what it really is: It’s a vehicle to punish coal country which has left the president’s party in droves over the last 20 years, in favor of radical environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) donors who are a major constituency of this administration.
The finalized Clean Power Plan 2.0 rule is a bad deal for American energy producers and consumers. Congress should immediately pull the plug on this rule.
Gabriella Hoffman is director of Independent Women’s Forum’s Center for Energy and Conservation (iwf.org/CEC) and host of the District of Conservation podcast.
Christian Palich is Vice President of Government & External Affairs at Eagle Forge Services Company, one of the nation’s largest coal producers and a board advisory member for IWF’s Center for Energy and Conservation.
Biden Drains Entire Northeast Gasoline Reserve In Bid To Lower Gas Prices As He Trails Trump By Double Digits
Back in March, when reading the mammoth, 1050-page bill that was meant to avert government shutdown, but was yet another pork filled free-for-all bonanza authorizing $1.7 trillion in in discretionary spending, we stumbled upon something that was truly shocking: after Biden singlehandedly drained half of the US strategic petroleum reserve to avoid obliteration for Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections, Congress has snuck in a provision that would sell off and shutter the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve, a move that while perhaps keeps gas prices lower for a day or two, would also leave the entire continental northeast defenseless to any true environmental catastrophe or shock. We were so dismayed by the inclusion of this particular text, we wondered if it hadn’t been put there solely for the benefit of America’s enemies…
The entire US 1 million barrel Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve will be required to be sold and closed in fiscal 2024, according to bill text of government funding legislation unveiled Sunday
… because surely nobody in their right mind, not even the illegitimate senile occupant of the White House, would ever pursue such short-term gains at the expense of potentially disastrous long-term consequences to the entire nation.
We were wrong: earlier today, just two months after the bill was signed by Biden into law, the panicking administration announced that it would sell the nearly 1 million barrels of gasoline in the US managed stockpile in northeastern states, the Department of Energy said, effectively closing the reserve.
The department created the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve (NGSR) in 2014 after Superstorm Sandy left motorists scrambling for fuel. But, according to some megabrains hoping to justify the dumping of gas so its price drops for a few weeks ahead of the summer and avoid even more anger aimed at the president, storing refined fuel is costlier than storing crude oil, so closing the reserve was included in U.S funding legislation signed by President Joe Biden in March.
Bids to buy the gasoline located at the two NGSR storage sites in Port Reading, NJ (900,000 bbl) and South Portland, ME (98,824 bbl), are due on May 28 and the Treasury Department’s general funds gets proceeds from the sale. Incidentally, the proceeds from the reserve liquidation – which will amount to roughly $125 million gross (and far less net) – is roughly how much the government spends every 15 minutes!
So is it better to have a gasoline reserve for unexpected events, or to fund a quarter hour of US government’s spending? Don’t answer that. Of course, the answer is neither – the whole point of selling the gasoline is to depress prices at the pump if only for a few days to help Americans forget about the great inflationary nightmare they have been in for the past 3 years.
The volumes will be allocated in quantities of 100,000 barrels with each barrel containing 42 gallons, the department said and said it would require that fuel is transferred or delivered no later than June 30. That will ensure the gasoline can flow into local retailers ahead of the Fourth of July holiday and that it will be sold at competitive prices. Translation: Biden just drained the Northeast strategic gasoline reserve to push gas lower by a few cents on July 4.
For context, gas prices at the pump this Memorial Day will be the second most expensive in a decade – dramatically above the ten-year average of $2.91…
“By strategically releasing this reserve in between Memorial Day and July 4th, we are ensuring sufficient supply flows to the … northeast at a time hardworking Americans need it the most,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a release.
“The Biden-Harris administration is laser-focused on lowering prices at the pump for American families, especially as drivers hit the road for summer driving season,″ Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in the statement. “By strategically releasing this reserve in between Memorial Day and July 4th, we are ensuring sufficient supply flows to the tri-state (area) and Northeast at a time hardworking Americans need it the most.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said release of gas from the Northeast reserve builds on actions by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, “to lower gas and energy costs — including historic releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the largest-ever investment in clean energy.″
Biden significantly drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, dropping the stockpile to its lowest level since the 1980s after selling about 280 million barrels to keep prices low. The election year move helped stabilize gasoline prices that had been rising in the wake of the war in Europe but drew complaints from Republicans, and frankly anyone with half a brain, that the Democratic president was playing politics with a reserve meant for national emergencies.
The Biden administration has since very theatrically begun refilling the oil reserve, which had more than 364 million barrels of crude oil as of last month, by purchasing a couple million barrels every other month or so, setting it on pace for refilling some time in the 2100s.
“While congressional Republicans fight to preserve tax breaks for Big Oil at the expense of hardworking families, President Biden is advancing a more secure, affordable, and clean energy future to lower utility bills while record American energy production helps meet our immediate needs,” Jean-Pierre said.
As for the real reason behind the latest myopic decision by the Biden admin, today we learned that Trump’s lead over Biden has widened to 13pp in the betting market, the largest difference since mid-March. Meanwhile, political event prediction website PredictIt places higher betting odds on Trump than Biden for the first time since March.
Trump is also leading in the latest polls of all swing states.
Trump is leading by 2% in the latest polls in Pennsylvania. If Biden loses Pennsylvania but wins Wisconsin and Michigan, he then at least needs to win one state from Georgia and North Carolina in addition to one state from Arizona and Nevada to secure a second term.
Meanwhile, closing arguments in Trump’s “hush money” case in New York are set to being on May 28. If the jury finds Trump guilty, it is possible for the former president to receive prison time, and judging by how weaponized the “legal system” of the current fascist regime has become, we would not be surprised if Biden goes there.
Imported malaria cases in three southern border jurisdictions more than doubled in 2023 from the year prior, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“During January–December 2023, a total of 68 imported malaria cases were identified from reportable disease surveillance systems in Pima, Arizona (18), San Diego, California (27), and El Paso, Texas (23),” the CDC said in a May 9 report.
This is 143 percent higher than the 28 cases in 2022 when there were three in Pima, 12 in San Diego, and 13 in El Paso.
“Because malaria case counts were higher than expected, enhanced case investigations were initiated,” said the agency.
The CDC found that 15 out of 68 cases occurred among U.S. residents. Two were found in newly arrived refugees and two among travelers with unknown immigration status. The majority, 49 cases, were identified among “other newly arrived migrants,” including asylum seekers.
Imported malaria cases in 2023 increased correspondingly to the entry of asylum seekers and other “migrants” into the United States via the southern land border, the CDC said.
The agency advised healthcare professionals to “obtain a complete travel history, consider malaria among symptomatic patients with recent travel through areas where malaria is endemic, and initiate prompt testing and, if indicated, treatment.”
Before arriving in the United States, the U.S. residents and refugees had traveled through other nations infected with the disease.
“Among the 49 other newly arrived migrants, 46 (94 percent) had traveled through one or more countries with endemic malaria.”
Out of the 68 cases, 63 were hospitalized, with almost a third experiencing severe disease. The agency noted that severe malaria was more common among “other newly arrived migrants” than among American residents. No deaths have been reported.
“Approximately 2,000 malaria cases are imported into the United States annually, mostly among U.S. residents with recent travel to areas with endemic malaria.”
Malaria used to be a leading cause of death in the United States before being eradicated in the 1950s.
Last June, five cases of malaria infection on U.S. soil were reported—four in Florida and one in Texas. This was the first local spread of the infectious disease in two decades.
Dr. Eric Cioe-Pena, emergency medicine physician at Staten Island University Hospital and vice president of Global Health, told The Epoch Times last year that “malaria is a serious disease that can be fatal, and its presence within the U.S. is a cause for concern.”
He attributed the spread in the country to the “importation of the disease by travelers returning from regions where malaria is prevalent.”
According to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), patrol agents encountered 2.47 million illegal immigrants at the southwest land border in fiscal 2023, up from 1.73 million in fiscal 2021.
“While it’s possible for malaria to become endemic again (in America), it’s too early to make definitive predictions,” Dr. Cioe-Pena stated.
“Nevertheless, the situation serves as a reminder of the need for continuous vigilance against infectious diseases, even those considered eradicated, and for ongoing investments in public health infrastructure.”
Tuberculosis Reported
In addition to malaria, illegal aliens have brought other illnesses into the United States. Last year, a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealed that thousands of illegal immigrant children with tuberculosis were released from government custody.
The CDC states that people with tuberculosis are infectious and can transmit it. In the report, Aurora Miranda-Maese, an HHS official, said that if tuberculosis were to become active, it would become “a threat to both the individual’s and the public’s health.”
Last month, officials at Chicago’s Health Department said a few cases of tuberculosis were identified among recently arrived illegal immigrants. The agency insisted there was no cause for concern.
In an April 3 X post, Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez said he had warned the city for months about such a situation but that no action was taken due to “performative politics & hurt feelings.”
“Anyone who demanded action to protect our residents was called racist, xenophobic, and anti-immigrant by fringe politicians,“ he wrote. ”And now here we are: measles, now tuberculosis both ‘confirmed’ in Chicago. Shame on every mouthpiece that worked so hard to keep this secret.
“Everyday Chicagoans MUST demand @ChicagosMayor & his cronies take this seriously, demand American immunization standards for all asylum seekers & their children within @ChiPubSchools , and stop muting the truth.”
Malaria Infection and Symptoms
Malaria is a disease caused by a parasite carried by Anopheles mosquitoes. If the mosquitoes bite a person with malaria, the individual can become infected.
According to CDC, the “risk of malaria in the United States is very low. People do not spread malaria to other people like the common cold or the flu.”
Symptoms range from very mild illness to death. Early symptoms include fever and flu-like illness: chills, headache, muscle aches, and tiredness, plus nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.
If left untreated, the condition can become severe. Severe malaria can cause kidney failure, mental confusion, seizures, and coma.
CDC recommends that people see a healthcare provider “as soon as possible” if they experience any symptoms of malaria or traveled to a region where the illness is known to occur.
Once the disease is confirmed, prescription drugs are given to treat and cure the illness.
The type of drugs and the length of the treatment depend on the type of malaria infecting a person, the geographical location where the person was infected, and how sick the individual was when they started treatment. Age and pregnancy are other key factors when considering treatment.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were an estimated 249 million malaria cases in 2022 globally and 608,000 deaths from the disease.
The WHO African Region accounted for 94 percent of malaria cases and 95 percent of deaths. Children under the age of five years made up roughly 80 percent of all deaths in the region.
Meanwhile, the CDC urges travelers from the United States to exercise caution when visiting nations prone to malaria.
The agency maintains a webpage detailing malaria risk across countries.
Global Bankers Are Suddenly Worried About The Soaring US National Debt
In January of this year JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon argued in an interview with Fortune Magazine that the record US debt ‘Is a cliff…and we’re going 60MPH towards it.” He claimed that the situation was a global market rebellion waiting to happen. His comments preceded reports that the national debt was increasing by approximately $1 trillion every 100 days due to the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes. US debt has climbed over $11 trillion since March of 2020.
It’s a problem that bankers should have been able to predict well in advance: The inevitable Catch-22 scenario in which the Fed must either raise rates to stop inflation but cause debt to skyrocket, or, the Fed must lower rates and return to QE to alleviate debts but also trigger an even greater inflation crisis.
The bottom line? There’s no way out. While Jamie Dimon suggested the economy was headed off a cliff in another ten years, it’s likely the threat is approaching much sooner. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told Fortune in February that:
‘We need to get after’ America’s $34T national debt: ‘You can either admire the problem or do something about it…’
Fed Chair Jerome Powell noted in remarks Tuesday to an audience of bankers in Amsterdam that:
“We’re running big structural deficits, and we’re going to have to deal with this sooner or later, and sooner is a lot more attractive than later…”
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now estimates that debt held by the public compared to GDP will rise to “an amount greater than at any point in the nation’s history,” caused by surging deficits. We witnessed the first sparks of a debt crisis in spring of 2023 with five bank failures, until the Fed stepped in and stalled the avalanche with its backstop program. The assertion by global bankers is that the next crisis will be sparked in markets (rising bond yields spilling over into equities). Jamie Dimon chimed in again on debt and deficits this past week on Sky News:
“America should be quite aware that we have got to focus on our fiscal deficit issues a little bit more, and that is important for the world…At one point it will cause a problem and why should you wait?”
“The problem will be caused by the market and then you will be forced to deal with it and probably in a far more uncomfortable way than if you dealt with it to start.”
However, Dimon glosses over the fact that ALL of America’s “growth” since the covid pandemic can be attributed to the effects of inflation, not sound financial policies. The entire system is built upon a frail foundation of more money chasing less goods and this is causing extreme problems in affordability in necessities, including housing. This is where bankers like Dimon sound far more like malicious propagandists than economic analysts.
The greater problem which most international and central bankers will deny is the threat to the US Dollar and US treasuries. An exponentially expanding debt could lead foreign investors to question if the US will be able to cover its debts, which may lead to more investment in short term treasuries over long term bonds, or a hands off approach to all dollar denominated debt instruments. A dollar crash would be the logical consequence.
Of course, one thing financial elites fail to mention is what the practical solution would be to the debt problems they describe? One might argue that this is a ploy by bankers to convince the public that a return to the printing presses is “necessary” in order to prevent a deflationary spiral. Banks would be the primary beneficiaries should the Federal Reserve bring back QE. But do markets really matter more than a re-energized inflationary freight train crushing consumers?
Maybe prices on everything need to come down? Beyond that, should the people who helped create the crisis be trusted to fix it?
The Wrath Of Khan… Or Why At Some Point The Lack Of Global Rule Of Law Will Matter Mightily
By Michael Every of Rabobank
Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), has announced he is applying for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defence Minister Gallant, the first time leaders of a Western democracy have been accused. Sadly, however, this does not signal a new era of global adherence to the rule of law, but rather the ICC’s likely self-evisceration.
Khan wants to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant, as a start, for “causing extermination, starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, [and] deliberately targeting civilians in conflict” within “the territory of the state of Palestine” (which is not a state), and perhaps even for before October 7. Balancing this, though not his CNN speech or media headlines, Khan is also applying for arrest warrants for Hamas leaders Sinwar, Deif, and Haniyeh –two hiding in Gaza, one lounging in Qatar– for extermination, murder, hostage taking, rape, and sexual assault in detention. Even so, Khan is equating an elected Western leader –albeit one Gallant himself last year implied is demagogic, and last week accused of dragging the war out because he can’t make a political decision on what happens next– to terrorists.
So, some celebrate. Others despair and argue the evidence against Israel is clearly biased while that against Hamas is from its own bodycams; the ‘controversial’ phrase Netanyahu used, “Remember what Amalek did to you,” is written on the wall at Yad Vashem and in The Hague Holocaust memorial; the allegation Israel closed all crossings into Gaza includes Rafah, which it did not control until very recently; Hamas steals most incoming aid and resells it at vastly inflated prices; Hamas just hugely reduced the casualty figures Western media, politicians, and the ICC repeat; Israel’s judiciary hold its leaders to account; and testimony from Western military experts on the exemplary way Israel carries out the (awful) business of urban combat was ignored. As such, Israelis across its political spectrum are calling this a “blood libel”, as from Europe’s past and today’s US campuses; Hamas complains it should be allowed to do anything as “resistance”; and others point out the ICC hasn’t dived in against clear-cut abuses in many other locales. In short, this is all controversial and divisive rather than lining us up behind the rule of law.
Indeed, the ICC decision can be seen as neutering the right to self-defence it professes to support: what Israeli military action would the Court allow vs. tens of thousands of heavily armed terrorists in a crowded urban area if Israel was, as it strongly claims, simply obeying the existing laws of war? (Which, to be clear, are like calorie-free double chocolate fudge cake: more about psychological than physical comfort or health.) If nothing effective, Israel’s and the West’s enemies will take note and heart. “They knew exactly where to hit us,” says Spock in Star Trek II.
Israel is not a signatory to the ICC so can simply ignore any arrest warrants like Russia’s President Putin, though he travels in the BRICS when Israel is part of the West, even if parts of the West no longer seem to want it. Indeed, it’s within the West where rifts will be felt most. Non-signatory US senators had lobbied the Court to back off, but Khan publicly told them to – no repeat of his dropping investigations into war crimes committed by the US in Afghanistan, and secret CIA prisons, “because of the limited financial means of the ICC.” However, that means defunding the ICC is likely back on the US agenda for Republicans: revenge is a dish best served cold in 2025. And while progressive Democrats cheer, President Biden has called the arrest warrant requests “outrageous.”
Even Europe won’t be spared this polarization: Belgium has backed the ICC, Czechia has already called its action “appalling”, Austria “non-comprehensible”, the UK government which appointed Khan, “unhelpful”, and how will Wilders or Meloni react? So, does the West back the Court or not?
More specifically, can the West still send arms to Israel? If so, what does the ICC step really mean? If not, even with a shift to self-reliance and/or non-ICC India, where does this leave Israel vs. Iranian proxies and Iran close to a nuke? And as Hal Brands notes in ‘Ukraine Is Now a World War. And Putin Is Gaining Friends’, where does this leave Western economies vs. the joint threat of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea?
The Court therefore stirs the pot in a troubled Middle East already seeing unrest in Israel, where unpopular PM Netanyahu is if anything strengthened by the ICC move, as Trump has been with his court cases; the current Israel-Hamas war, which can still grow to encompass Hezbollah more fully, and where any ceasefires now look more difficult to achieve; an ongoing Houthi blockade maybe to expand to the Mediterranean; Sudanese starving because of it, when not fleeing a civil war led by Islamists; the Saudi King gravely ill; Kuwait cancelling its experiment with democracy because people vote for parties like Hamas; the sudden death of Iran’s President Raisi in a helicopter crash; and the US still trying to achieve Israel-Saudi normalisation under a US (and Israeli) defence umbrella.
What might the Saudis — not charged by the ICC for the war they carried out vs. the Houthis in Yemen — think of that proposed defence guarantee when it knows US and Israeli hands are tied against the kind of foes it faces? Or maybe the US will just push even harder for the deal to be done now as a result: we shall soon see.
Meanwhile, showing how far we are from a world of justice, or even basic truth, Iran’s Raisi was known as ‘The Butcher of Tehran’ because of his responsibility for many thousands of deaths in the 1980s, and he also helped with multiple human rights abuses since, with no charges leveled by the ICC for either. Instead, while some Iranian youth openly celebrated his death, Raisi got a minute’s silence at the UN Security Council and official condolences from NATO, the EU, and the US State Department, even as Iran arms Russia vs. Ukraine, the Houthis vs. EU shipping, and the proxies which kill US soldiers. It’s as bad a joke as the Israeli social media quip that Raisi was killed by a Mossad agent named Eli Kopter, which some in Hamas thought was real for a while.
To summarise, some may think The Wrath of Khan is the genesis of a new ideal world of the rule of law. Sadly, we can’t be Reliant on such utopianism in a realpolitik world where Western Enterprise is being struck violently, including from within its own team.
As Spock says, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. But which few, or one, will it be?
I suspect the ICC. If so, another pillar of the international liberal order’s architecture joins those already seen as impotent (i.e., the WTO and UN), irrelevant (i.e., the IMF and World Bank), or completely incompetent (i.e., The Ivy League, but also pick your acronym).
That backdrop may not vex overexcited markets much. However, it’s another sign of what The Economist just bewailed, echoing my warning from January 2016: that the international liberal order is at risk of collapse, or at least fragmentation.
At some point the lack of a global rule of law, or clashing global rules of law, matters mightily.
Russia Launches Tactical Nuclear Drills Near Ukraine In Response To ‘Western Threats’
Russia on Tuesday confirmed that its forces have kicked off tactical nuclear weapons drills in its southern military district, which is near the Ukrainian border, in what the Kremlin has described as a response to “threats” by the West.
The defense ministry (MoD) announced that the exercises aim to test the “readiness” of its “non-strategic nuclear weapons … to ensure the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Russian state.”
The MoD specified that this is in “response to provocative statements and threats by certain Western officials.”
“Under the order of the commander-in-chief, a military exercise involving practice of preparation and use of tactical nuclear weapons started in the Southern military district under the supervision of the General Staff,” the ministry said.
First unveiled in early May, the date and location of the exercises at that early preview phase were unknown. The Foreign Ministry had warned at the time that NATO’s own “Steadfast Defender” drills are possible preparations for war with Russia.
And more recently some US and UK officials have been pressing for more Ukrainian attacks directly on Russian soil, with Washington officials now openly debating whether to allow pro-Kiev forces to utilize US-supplied missiles to attack inside Russian territory. Zelensky has meanwhile launched a new aggressive lobbying campaign to push deepened Western involvement:
Western allies are taking too long to make key decisions on military support for Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Reuters in an exclusive interview in Kyiv on Monday.
He also said he was pushing partners to get more directly involved in the war by helping to intercept Russian missiles over Ukraine and allowing Kyiv to use Western weapons against enemy military equipment amassing near the border.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has finally released a video showing the tactical nuke drills it announced a couple of weeks back. And they’ve blurred out the warheads.
Another among the ‘threats’ emanating from the West is the possibility of deploying NATO troops in Ukraine. The idea has gained steam ever since Frances Emmanuel Macron first proposed it months ago a security conference in Paris. Lithuania is the latest to recently back the idea.
According to more details of Tuesday’s non-strategic nuclear forces drills via state media:
“As part of this stage, the personnel of the missile formations of the Southern Military District are completing combat training tasks for obtaining special ammunition for the Iskander operational and tactical missile system, equipping them with launch vehicles and covertly advancing to the designated positional area to prepare for missile launches,” the ministry explained, adding that the Russian aviation is training with the equipment of special combat units of aircraft destruction, including Kinzhal hypersonic missiles.
Russia’s military has issued several videos and images of the drills in progress, which will also be monitored closely from Western capitals and the Pentagon. The situation is ominous to say the least…
During an appearance on Fox News, liberal broadcaster Bill Maher asserted that in some cases, transgenderism is just a “TikTok challenge that got out of hand.”
Maher asserted that the United States was now an “outlier” when compared to other western nations given that European countries are now ditching things like puberty blockers for children.
“Liberalism is not the same thing as woke, woke they would like to think they’re an extension of liberalism, they’re not, I’m an old school liberal, it’s very often the opposite,” said Maher.
“And they think they’re going so far in the right direction and it actually turns out that they’re in the wrong direction and they’ve actually reversed it,” he added.
Bill Maher makes an excellent distinction between the true definition of “liberalism” and the new era of the modern Left, otherwise known as “woke”.
You might not like Maher, but this kind of rhetoric coming from him does significantly more damage than a conservative voice.
Maher noted how America was “doubling down” on woke despite it becoming increasingly unpopular in other developed countries.
“Is there such a thing as trans? Of course, there are sometimes people who are, let’s just say there’s a mix up at the factory and you don’t feel in your head the way you do in your body, but some of this is also jsut a TikTok challenge that got out of hand,” claimed Maher.
Some would question the Real Time host’s assertion that woke progressivism is contradictory to liberalism and argue that it merely represents liberalism taken to its (illogical) end goal.
In 2022, it was revealed that one in five Gen Z adults now identified as LGBTQ, while the number of total Americans doing the same has doubled in a decade.
The Gallup poll illustrated how many young people claiming to be LGBTQ are purely doing so in order to appear unique and trendy.
As a whole, the poll showed Americans identifying as LGBTQ represent 7.1 per cent of the population, compared to 5.6 per cent in 2021.
In 2012, 3.5 per cent of Americans identified as LGBTQ.
If the “born this way” narrative was correct, that number wouldn’t have literally doubled in the space of a decade without the influence of social engineering.
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The miasma of anxiety befogging so many brains in our troubled land begins to lift as every narrative served up by the US fascist intel blob goes annoyingly stale and impotent.
The worst media meme – that a vicious officialdom is “defending our democracy” – gets laughed out of the room now when repeated incessantly by such regime shills as Jen Psaki and Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC.
Everybody understands they want to “defend our democracy” by canceling your freedom of speech, suing you into bankruptcy, and stealing whatever remains of your stuff.
It’s become so obvious by now that you’d have to be blind or a member of the mainstream media not to see it. Maybe both. Classical liberals like Alan Dershowitz — hardly a Trump fan — see it. That’s because they’re honest.
People No Longer Buy the Lies
Likewise, everything else, namely: that our doings in Ukraine are a “fight for freedom,” that “white supremacy” lurks just out of sight getting ready to pounce on the “marginalized” (who are actually running things, and doing it very badly), that “Joe Biden” turned around the economy, that “voting rights” equals non-citizens getting to vote, that election fraud is a “big lie” (and that the J-6 riot over it was an “insurrection”), and that the Covid vaccines were “safe and effective.”
None of these dishonest persuasions work anymore, and all of the persuasion machinery stands in plain sight like so many nauseating carnival rides. One by one, the rides are flying apart, scattering debris and body parts of the poor slobs who were on the rides all over the fairgrounds.
And so, the fear rises in the ones running the carnival. The county sheriff stands by looking to round up the sleazeball carnies with their missing teeth and needle tracks inside their elbows.
Before long, they will find themselves in the courtroom…
The vicious officialdom put up the carnival and all of its rides to distract the public from the crimes they committed during and after the 2016 election. Donald Trump’s idle talk about putting Hillary Clinton in jail struck nerves throughout the federal bureaucracy, the halls of Congress, and the strongholds of the Clintons and the Obamas.
The Clintons had literally bought the Democratic Party apparatus under the DNC, using the money they grifted into the Clinton foundation from such operations as the Uranium One deal, the Skolkovo war-tech transfer deal, and the Haiti earthquake relief effort.
They were sure that ownership of the DNC guaranteed the election for Hillary. It did guarantee that she would overcome Bernie Sanders’ primary election victories and the delegates that came with them, even after Julian Assange’s Wikileaks release informed the world just how the Clintons bought and paid for the DNC and the whole Philadelphia convention.
Call this the birth of the “misinformation” cult, in which everything true was converted into a “big lie.”
It Wasn’t Supposed to Happen
The problem was, Hillary lost that election. What a surprise! Buying the convention was not enough, it turned out. Those “deplorables” did the unthinkable: cast enough of their stinky votes in just the right rust belt precincts to elect the Golden Golem of Greatness, who was as surprised as anybody, and really unprepared to cobble together an actual governing administration — in the process of which, Donald J. Trump was completely buffaloed by the outgoing Obama gang.
They plotted by the lights of the White House Christmas tree to go after the interloper with all they had, starting with the surgical removal of a most dangerous appointee, National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, who knew all the secrets… and from there onto four years of Russia, Russia, Russia…
It’s hardly a mystery anymore how “Joe Biden” got elected. It’s perfectly obvious despite the “big lie” narrative that the 2020 election was stoked with a veritable orgy of ballot fraud and direct election interference by agency rogues, especially the ones leaning hard on Facebook, Twitter, and Google to manipulate what the public actually saw.
Don’t believe your lying eyes they told the nation. What is a mystery is why they chose “Joe Biden” to front for the cabal around Barack Obama actually running the show. Never before in US history was there a president who left such a slime trail of bribery and corruption.
Just as they had spent all their energy the previous four years in undermining Mr. Trump, they had to spend the next four years propping up and defending “Joe Biden,” and then desperately trying to save their own asses from a Trump return.
Meanwhile, they set out on their mission to wreck the country sufficiently to clear the way for establishing a transhuman public-private utopia of crypto-Marxian “equity” (theft of property).
Political Legerdemain
All of this political legerdemain summoned up the miasma of anxiety that beclouded the people of this sore-beset republic, and the nearly final blow to them was the Covid-19 operation, set in motion with the phony PCR test, that has now left a substantial number of citizens, vaccine-injured, disabled, and on-course for an early death — a pretty grotesque affront to our democracy. The victims are beginning to realize it.
The battery of Trump trials and lawsuits meant to put him totally out of business are now all simultaneously collapsing. Special Counsel Jack Smith is left doing Chinese fire drills around his office Keurig coffee machine.
When the prank-fest in Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom concludes, whether the jury sees the show for the farce that it is, or not, the Golden Golem of Greatness will be at large again among the voters.
If he’s clever enough to pick a capable veep that represents something like “assassination insurance” — say, Vivek, Tulsi Gabbard, or JD Vance — then the Obama cabal and the blob that has been protecting it will be swept out of power and into a dragnet of a kind of law actually associated with the word justice.
They’re running out of ways to avoid it. All they’ve got left are the direst resorts: war, crashing the economy, another bio-weapon op against their own people, or an outright coup d’état. And even those probably won’t work.
Mainstream Finally Gets It… The AI Investment Play Isn’t Tech, It’s Energy
Almost two months ago, we highlighted what we called at the time ‘The Next AI Trade‘ – that in fact it is not the tech itself, but the electrical power required to run the tech that is the limiting factor on the growth of AI (and Data Center) expansion.
These pages have been warning for years about an electric-power shortage. And now grid regulators and utilities are ramping up warnings. Projections for U.S. electricity demand growth over the next five years have doubled from a year ago. The major culprits: New artificial-intelligence data centers, federally subsidized manufacturing plants, and the government-driven electric-vehicle transition.
In one charted tweet, we summarized the ‘problem’…
Sure enough, since our post,“focus across the AI stack has shifted from software and AI tools to the hardware angle, where there could be less of a winner takes all dynamic and many of the incumbents in the market have the potential to capitalize on AI advancements. As a result, we expect the hardware and power oriented industries to catch up to the broader AI theme.”
And they have outperformed since…
And now, as Bloomberg’s Simon White details below, the message is hitting the mainstream media that the vast amount of power required by energy-intensive AI models is prompting tech firms to invest in their own energy infrastructure. But it may be too little, too late to prevent another wave of commodity-driven inflation – a backdrop that’s very favorable for the energy and utility sectors, and negative for high-duration tech stocks.
Often the best solution is not the most direct one. In the book Obliquity, British economist John Kay describes how the route taken by the Panama Canal was not the most direct east-west one across Nicaragua, but instead an oblique one in a south-easterly direction through Panama. This was the shortest option and therefore the easiest to build and the quickest for ships to traverse.
Source: Vox; Microsoft; Bloomberg
Likewise, an oblique approach to investing in AI stands to be the more profitable one. Energy-hungry AI models, the risk of power and commodity capacity-constraints and thus a further heightening of inflation risks leave expensively valued, high-duration technology stocks at risk.
Energy stocks, on the other hand, are still cheap, underowned and poised to benefit from rising commodity prices and power demand. They are the oblique route to benefiting from the first stage of the AI progress-explosion.
The rapid advancement made in recent years in AI, especially Large Language Models (LLMs), has led to a burst of investment in the tech industry. The training and operation of such models is energy-intensive. That has led to a rapid rise in expectations for the power needs of dedicated AI data centers. The IEA’s base case is for a little shy of a doubling in global power demand for all types of data centers and cryptocurrency by 2026.
Source: IEA
The need for an enormous amount of “compute” and the inefficiency of current LLMs is the main problem. If Google was to fully incorporate AI into its main search feature, it could see a 10-fold increase in its electricity demand, given a typical Google search request uses an average of 0.3 watt-hours versus 2.9 Wh for a ChatGPT request, according to the IEA.
Western electricity grids have little excess capacity, increasing the risk of bottlenecks. The US grid reached 94% capacity last year, with Europe’s even higher. That’s as the share in demand for AI and traditional data centers, excluding crypto, is projected to rise in these regions. To underscore the point, tech-focused Ireland is expected to see a third of its electricity demand coming from data centers by 2026.
Source: IEA
Capacity will be further constrained by almost a decade of underinvestment in upstream and downstream energy infrastructure. Years of overinvestment during the commodities boom that ended around 2014 led to commodity companies slashing capex and handing back more money to shareholders.
The capex of North American commodity producers only began picking up again in 2021. But at the same time they were massively increasing dividend payouts and buybacks – to the point that they equaled capex spending in 2022 – limiting the amount the firms could spend on new investment and maintenance capital expenditure.
The lags in bringing new energy sources on stream are long, up to four years, and even longer for transmission. There are delays with permissioning and construction both upstream and downstream, as well as waiting lists for key parts in power stations such as transformers. Demand is poised to rise faster than supply is able to meet it, even taking into account recent improvements in efficiency of energy production and power usage.
The stark contrast between energy and tech firms can be seen in the chart below. Tech companies have been ramping up investment – signaling that their demand for power will rise too — while energy’s capex has trended lower over most of the last decade.
Tech firms are not blind to the issues. They are diverting more of their capex to investing in energy infrastructure. Alphabet, Meta and other hyperscalers are directly investing in renewable-energy power plants. Amazon, for instance, has funded a wind farm in the UK and will purchase its entire output. Tech companies are also entering into power purchase agreements (PPAs). These allow the buyers to purchase power directly from renewable energy producers.
Even then, there remain bottleneck risks while tech companies are laser-focused on their green credentials. Apple, Alphabet and Meta were all carbon neutral by 2020, and they and other hyperscalers have committed to being carbon free by 2030, according to McKinsey (whether tech firms will have to backtrack on these commitments is another matter). That puts additional pressure on the prices for the raw materials used in solar panels, wind turbines, etc, such as copper and silver.
On top of that, renewables suffer from intermittency issues — problematic for data centers requiring 100% uptime. More renewables thus means a bigger excess margin is required, and a continued reliance on fossil fuels until the storage problem is fully solved. Also amplifying bottleneck risks is the geographical dislocation of where demand comes from and where supply is, especially in a large country like the US.
The current iteration of generative AIs – with their fundamental limitations (reasoning, planning, understanding) – are unlikely to lead to productivity enhancements as quickly as optimists believe. That means higher inflation is the most likely outcome from the expected rapid rise in tech demand for power.
This comes at a time when we are already in an inflationary regime, where inflation shocks have greater capacity to lead to a persistent rise in price growth. The 1970s were peppered with events – the closing of the gold window, the Arab oil embargo, the Iranian Revolution – that on their own and outside of an inflationary regime may not have led to such persistent price issues.
There lies the rub for tech firms. While they are at the vanguard of AI, their stock prices are most exposed to higher inflation. The tech sector has high duration, with lumpy cash flows expected long in the future, and therefore is the most sensitive to the rising rates that would be likely to accompany another burst of commodity-driven price growth.
Tech was the worst performing US sector versus the S&P in 2022 when inflation was rapidly accelerating and the Fed started to raise rates. On the other hand inflationary environments — especially when they are commodity driven — are a sweet spot for low-duration energy stocks, which was the top outperforming sector in 2022. Utilities did relatively well too, but they stand in better stead this time as a low-duration sector benefiting from rising power demand.
Tech is priced for near perfection with very high valuations, unlike energy and utilities, which are by far the cheapest sectors. Furthermore, energy is also now very underowned. A resurgence in commodity-led inflation would narrow the extreme gap between tech and energy ownership. Energy is now only 4% of the S&P 500 while tech plus Amazon sits at 29%. While we won’t go all the way back there, the gap was close to zero during the GFC.
Tech is likely to be the greatest beneficiary of AI in the long run, but the path there may not be direct. Obliquity provided the most profitable route to the Pacific Ocean. Energy, utility as well as copper stocks stand to do the same for investing in the AI revolution.
