Germany May Stave Off Worst Of Energy Crisis As Mild Temps Forecast Through Mid-November
Germany’s national weather service, the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), released a new report Friday showing temperatures across the country will be well above average through mid-November. This promising forecast could stave off a worsening energy crisis (for now).
DWD’s month-ahead forecast expects warmer-than-normal temperatures in Germany through at least mid-November. A weather model via Bloomberg shows above-average weather.
A two-week forecast shows heating demand across the EU’s largest economy will be below a 30-year trend line. This means less natural gas will be drawn out of storage.
Regarding NatGas storage, the EU is about 91% full despite reduced NatGas shipments from Russia. Shipments via Ukraine are one of the last remaining Russian supply lines to western Europe after the bombing of Nord Stream pipelines.
Warmer weather plus EU storage is above a 10-year average for this time of year is good news (for now).
Dutch front-month gas futures, a European benchmark, has been halved and hit lows not seen since June of around 113 euros per megawatt-hour.
As for now, a worsening energy crisis has been delayed. But as explained recently by Russian energy giant Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller, all of that can change in the event of a cold snap and send “entire towns freezing” this winter.
(Complexity – Energy) x (Arrogance + Ignorance) = A Great Disaster
This is a critical episode that explores a concept that can change how you see the whole world. It did for me when I first learned it, and now I am passing that on.
Today we explore what complex systemsare and how they have features that we simply have to appreciate and respect. However, unfortunately, none of the World Economic Forum or western leaders seem to have any awareness of the fact that they live in a world composed of complex systems and governed by this pesky thing we call ‘reality.’
One reason we suspect this is their insistence on the idea that we can readily transition to ‘clean energy.’ However, even the most basic of straightforward (linear) arithmetic reveals it cannot be done. All that’s required to come to this conclusion is to simply divide current rates of mineral and metal production into the minimum requirements for a first-generation clean energy build-out.
When we do, we discover that it would take anywhere from hundreds to thousands of years to mine the resources needed to build the desired renewable energy world. At best we’ve got a decade or two left before a permanent energy decline bites and renders all such dreams to the dustbin of what could have been. If only…
If we can’t even properly manage simple math (add, subtract, multiply and divide) for our most dominant narratives, what hope is there that the subtleties of complex systems command a proper seat at the table?
Complex systems are what govern our world and define our reality. They share a couple of important features. (1) They are inherently unpredictable. (2) They owe their order and complexity to energy flows.
Our economy is a complex system. Take its energy away, and it will extremely rapidly “simplify” and become a lot less dynamic, complex, and interesting.
Your body is a complex system. Starve it for food, and you too will quite rapidly become a lot less interesting and dynamic, and eventually dead.
What the WEF is trying to do, along with a host of colluding world leaders and other true believers sprinkled throughout the elite centers of power and intellectual exploration, is to force a Reset so they can Build Back Better.
Their words and their deeds align and reinforce that this is exactly what they are doing. But without any apparent appreciation for the fact that they are attempting to control the uncontrollable and to pull off the impossible. They want to force multiple, nested, and feedback-looped complex systems to do their bidding.
The chance of them pulling this off, without accidentally breaking the whole system, is about as close to zero as you can get without actually being zero. Never say never, but to succeed, they’d have to somehow rewrite the laws of nature that govern complex systems and the laws of physics to defeat thermodynamics. Ain’t going to happen. Not on purpose; maybe accidentally, but you might as well hope to hit the Powerball lottery after buying a single ticket because those are better odds.
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UK Grid Operator Offers Households Money To Stop Using Appliances Amid Energy Crisis
The National Grid warned Britons of winter power blackouts earlier this month if it can’t import enough natural gas and electricity from other parts of Europe. According to Daily Mail, the grid operator developed a new scheme to prevent the worst-case scenario of power outages by offering households equipped with smart meters to turn off appliances during peak demand times.
National Grid’s scheme pays households up to £20 per day if they don’t use energy-intensive appliances, such as electric ovens and stoves, washing machines, tumble dryers, televisions, microwaves, and even video game consoles, between 4 pm and 7 pm or 2 pm until 9 pm over the next five months.
They will be advised to use washing machines, tumble dryers, ovens, dishwashers and other appliances outside those periods so boffins can measure how much energy is saved on the grid when it is at its busiest. If the entire proposed £3 per kwh rebate if passed on to Britons by their supplier, over five months this could mean around £240 off their bills in total. –Daily Mail
The grid operator hopes the ‘demand flexibility service’ will save 2GW of electricity — equivalent to powering 1 million homes — during peak demand hours to thwart supply and demand imbalances that could result in power rationing.
“But the scheme relies on users having a controversial smart meter, a device which automatically transmits your energy usage to your provider,” Daily Mail said.
Remember in the US, over the summer, when households in Colorado could not control their own smart thermostats after the local power company digitally seized them to prevent people from increasing cooling demand during a heatwave. There are risks when using anything smart.
This winter could be reminiscent of power outages experienced in the 1970s across the UK if power generators cannot get enough NatGas to operate.
Ahead of the cold season, we’ve pointed out that European households have returned to burning wood, coal, and even trash to heat their homes. Western sanctions against Moscow are backfiring and risk sending tens of millions of Europeans not just into energy poverty but back a couple of centuries in progress. Thank you, NATO.
Countries around the world are tightening restrictions on their citizens’ bank accounts. Bitcoin is the best way for people to protect their money…
You may have seen or heard about people in Lebanon robbing banks for their own money. They’re no Butch Cassidy, but are just trying to get their own money out of the bank.
Lebanon is facing an economic crisis and banks responded by locking depositors out of their own accounts. As a result, multiple banks have been held up by their customers, who are only looking to withdraw their own money.
A woman staged a bank robbery in Beirut, Lebanon to access her own money. She said she needed the money to pay for her sister’s cancer treatment.
Lebanon is facing a financial crisis that has left many citizens locked out of their own bank accounts. pic.twitter.com/exJYJwoRxi
In late June 2022, G7 countries famously froze around $300 billion of Russian central bank funds, including $30 billion of Russian oligarchs’ assets. Ethiopia’s central bank is banning foreign currency from being used in local commerce and is lowering the threshold for the amount of time that residents who are returning to the country can hold foreign currency. Taiwan is facing significant capital outflows and is floating the idea of foreign-exchange controls if the trend continues to worsen. Mongolia’s local banks are restricting the amount of dollars their customers can buy to $300 per day due to their foreign currency reserves being down 40%. Russian citizens are flocking to banks to withdraw their funds and the waiting time is two to three days.
the hellscape of financial censorship and surveillance we live in gets progressively worse every single day pic.twitter.com/EsXL223a15
Similarly, financial surveillance and censorship continue to advance. Even transferring money within the United States has its risks. PayPal has expanded its “Acceptable Use Policy” to threaten users with fines of $2,500 per violation. The company is no stranger to freezing client funds. In January 2022, three users filed a federal lawsuit for locking them out of their accounts without cause. More recently, the payments company shut down accounts of the U.K.-based Free Speech Union. (Authors’ note PayPal quickly reversed course when it became clear that many users were shutting down their accounts in response to this new policy.)
I think you can see the trend.
CAPITAL CONTROLS AND CAPITAL FLIGHT
People will always find ways to protect their wealth.
It is well known that there are certain countries that have more favorable privacy and tax customs when it comes to banking. With the release of the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers, finances of current and former world leaders and more than 100 other politicians were released to the public, proving that the wealthy elite have ways to store their money in offshore accounts and shell corporations, while everyday people are locked out of their bank accounts.
The reality of capital controls is becoming more and more apparent as global tensions heat up. When Russia first invaded Ukraine, there was a story about the wife of a wealthy politician getting caught fleeing the country with suitcases full of dollars and euros. I already listed plenty of examples of countries tightening their citizens’ monetary leashes. It is only a matter of time before people recognize that bitcoin is the solution to monetary restrictions and outright control.
BITCOIN KNOWS NO BORDERS
According to Western Union, it can take anywhere from 24 hours to five days to send money internationally. From SWIFT’s website:
“There are a number of reasons why cross-border payments may be delayed or held up. Firstly, not all account balances can be updated outside the operating hours of local settlement systems. Delays can also arise if compliance checks need to be carried out, especially when a payment passes through different countries and jurisdictions.”
Let’s unpack SWIFT’s statement and compare it to Bitcoin:
“Firstly, not all account balances can be updated outside the operating hours of local settlement systems.” Bitcoin runs 24/7, 365 days per year. It has been running almost nonstop for over 5,000 days. It is possible and common for users to send money outside of typical business hours, on weekends and holidays. Bitcoin settles transactions with finality in blocks nearly every 10 minutes.
“Delays can also arise if compliance checks need to be carried out, especially when a payment passes through different countries and jurisdictions.” Bitcoin needs no compliance checks. Nodes verify whether the transaction follows the rules of bitcoin, by ensuring the bitcoin is coming from a valid unspent transaction output, and that it is not being double-spent. There are no governments, authorities, people with guns, banks or central third parties that are required to complete the payment. Just miners, who are rewarded in bitcoin by expending energy and for including valid transactions in blocks.
There is nothing stopping me from sending bitcoin to anyone else anywhere in the world, regardless of their country, nationality, race, religion, age or whether or not they are on a sanctions list. Bitcoin knows nothing about its users and it knows no borders.
Bitcoin lives everywhere and nowhere; the ledger of all transactions is stored in a distributed manner on computers called nodes that are running the bitcoin software. If someone is trying to escape capital controls or oppression of any kind, they can leave the country with the clothes on their back and still access all of their bitcoin by remembering their seed phrase and recovering their funds when they get to a safe place.
Leaving one’s country due to capital controls, oppression or war is an extreme example and a majorly useful albeit drastic use-case, but even the ability to travel with a significant amount of funds is an impressive use-case. One anonymous Reddit user claims to have exited a country with $1 million of bitcoin by keeping their seed phrase with them on the flight.
Without getting further into the implications of being able to escape from a country with one’s entire net worth in their pocket (or mind), there are other major problems that bitcoin has solved, namely, the ability to pay someone quickly in another part of the world.
Just sent a wire to India. It won’t settle until October 7th…
It is not yet possible to fully understand the impact of Bitcoin having solved cross-border payments.
You could buy some saffron from Afghanistan with a weeklong wire transfer or you could just order some from the merchant and pay them directly with bitcoin.
Looking for Fresh #Afghan#Saffron to make its Tea or add it to your meals? You can buy our Saffron with #Bitcoin straight from Afghanistan and ship it to wherever you want. #Bitcoin enables you to do this trade in P2P without any intermediary. pic.twitter.com/edroLfdMSk
Need some design work done for your business? You can hire a graphic designer from halfway around the world and they can receive the money for their work in approximately 10 minutes.
The #Bitcoin community is so amazing. I was fortunate enough to be put in touch with graphic designer and Bitcoiner @Bitcoineca to do the graphic translations# for the Spanish version of Bitcoin Evangelism!
How did I pay her when she’s hallway across the world? #BTC of course!
I was able to send a tiny amount of bitcoin to a stranger in Africa and they got the money in their wallet almost instantly.
Bitcoin is so cool. I just sent a stranger in Africa 1,000 sats (~$0.23) using a screenshot that I took over a week ago and they received the funds instantly with zero fees. pic.twitter.com/dL8Vdxapqg
These types of peer-to-peer transactions are exactly what Bitcon was designed to facilitate. The fact that anyone can opt into direct trade with anyone else, anywhere in the world is a major breakthrough that will have far-reaching ramifications that we are nowhere close to comprehending. As Lyn Alden stated in “A Look At The Lightning Network,”:
“Back when the iPhone was introduced in 2007, few people thought, ‘Wow this could really disrupt the taxi industry a decade from now.’”
Bitcoin’s ability for its users to send value easily, quickly and trustlessly while retaining property rights in the face of tyranny will have implications few people can grasp.
People will always find a way to protect their wealth. It is inevitable that people will come to the conclusion that bitcoin is the best option for them to do so.
45 Days As PM Qualifies Truss For $129,000 A Year For Life
Despite serving as prime minister of the United Kingdom for a mere 45 days before resigning in humiliation, Liz Truss can now tap a lifetime allowance of up to $129,000 a year.
The “Public Duty Costs Allowance,” which is available to all former prime ministers, isn’t a pension. Rather, it’s described by the British government as “reimbursement of incurred expenses for necessary office costs and secretarial costs arising from their special position in public life.”
While people are struggling to pay the bills and keep the lights on, Liz Truss will receive a cushy £115,000 yearly allowance— for the rest of her life, and funded by the taxpayer— for 6 weeks of disaster as PM. Turns out she did have an economic plan after all.
While Theresa May has taken about half the allowance, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron have all tapped nearly the entire maximum. Figures for Boris Johnson aren’t available yet. The allowance was introduced in 1991, following Margaret Thatcher’s resignation. Blair has received about $1.12 million so far.
As you might expect, many British feathers are ruffled by the prospect of such a stream of income for the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. Opposition figures are naturally among the most vocal…such as Liberal Democrats spokeswoman Christine Jardine:
“‘Liz Truss will forever be known as the 50-day prime minister. There is no way that she should be permitted to access the same £115,000 a year for life fund as her recent predecessors — all of whom served for well over two years,” said Jardine.
“For Truss to walk off into the sunset with a potential six figure dividend, while leaving the British public to suffer, would be unconscionable.”
Not that this seems likely anytime soon — if ever — but Truss wouldn’t be eligible to tap the allowance while serving as Leader of the Opposition.
Truss’s resignation came after a risky plan to cut taxes and boost spending caused turmoil on financial markets, forcing her to backtrack and her political authority to disintegrate. The Tory Party is scrambling to choose a successor, with an accelerated process that’s expected to finish by Friday, Oct. 28 at the latest.
The EU gas storage units are nearly full giving some relief to fears of shortages
Challenges remain for the continent’s energy security as winter arrives
The challenges will persist into the winter of 2023-24.
The worst energy security fears of spring and summer as regards the coming winter in the European Union-EU, have been somewhat allayed. Earlier this year when war broke out in Ukraine and it became clear that the conflict would drag on for months, if not years, the EU appeared perilously in danger of a winter “Polar-Geddon,” as cold air gripped the continent. Largely forgotten and retired gas storage caverns, that hadn’t been filled in the expectation of a steady supply from Russia via the Nordstream I and II pipelines, suddenly were thrust front and center into the public eye. Troubles often come in twos. The next shoe to drop was the deflation of expectations of much of the EU electric grid base load being met by wind and solar farms, when the elements refused to cooperate. Beginning in the middle of last year, it was noted that the wind wasn’t blowing and the output of solar farms was less than predicted. These two events appeared ready to converge upon the EU and presenting it with a stark, and chilly future for the winter of 2022-23.
As is often the case, the fullness of time alleviated the worst fears as energy leaders in the countries that make up the EU, sprang into action. They turned to Norway for an additional 90 bn cubic meters of gas to begin filling the storage caverns. The infrastructure was in place, it was just a matter of price. The also U.S. responded with a massive sealift of billions of cubic feet of LNG, mostly from the Gulf Coast Cryo plants, and little by little the starkest fears of early spring were put to rest.
Now the WSJ reports that EU gas caverns are largely filled, thanks to U.S. LNG exports. Europe’s population is now in Nature’s hands as winter approaches.
“Storage facilities of gas for heating and power generation are almost full, consumption is down and liquefied natural gas tankers are steaming in. Europe is in a stronger position than feared in recent months, after Moscow slashed gas deliveries in retaliation for Western sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.
However, much could go wrong. One long cold spell or a busted pipeline could upset the region’s preparations, threatening emergency rationing, blackouts and a deeper economic recession. Officials and analysts say the willingness of consumers to cut back on gas use will be key for getting through the winter.”
The focus of the rest of this article will be on what indeed could go wrong, and put the citizens of the EU in jeopardy.
Asian demand, energy cutback compliance, and the weather in the U.S. could make the difference
While seemingly out of the woods for the early part of this season, with full storage caverns, several challenges lie ahead for this energy beleaguered continent.
The first is that Asian demand, and in particular Chinese demand is expected to resurge in the coming months. The focus on the Eastern Hemisphere is understandable as its growing economies are the product of this regions ascendancy as manufacturing and distribution hubs for nearly everything. This relentless demand, should it occur will challenge the import hubs of the EU, as they begin discharging stored gas this winter and begin looking for new supplies to address the winter of 2023-24.
Bloomberg noted in an article recently, that China which had been reselling cargoes of U.S. LNG to the EU for a profit, was no longer doing so.
“China told its state-owned gas importers to stop reselling LNG to energy-starved buyers in Europe and Asia in order to ensure its own supply for the winter heating season.”
If this action signals a turn in China’s outlook, then EU buyers will face increased competition for U.S. supplies, of which over the summer they received the Lion’s Share. Loaded LNG cargoes are very fungible and it is common for the final destination of an LNG carrier to change after it departs port.
The second is making it through this winter without the draconian cutbacks discussed in the WSJ article. Compliance with the urgent conservation directives will determine if EU energy security is at the mercy of the weather this winter.
“Europe is probably as well prepared as it could be. The infrastructure is pretty much maxed out,” says Michael Bradshaw, professor of global energy at Warwick Business School. “We are up against the hard reality that there are physical limitations to the ability to replace Russian gas in the short term. That means that doubling down on the demand-reduction side of the equation is vital.”
“A lot could go wrong. If freezing weather jacks up demand, stockpiles could drain and prices could shoot to levels that hammer companies and government finances. Low temperatures could also spark a contest between North America and Europe for LNG supplies.”
And that leads us to our third point in this macro thesis. It is only pure serendipity that things aren’t much worse in the U.S. than they are. Sky-high prices for coal have kept U.S. utilities burning gas this summer for electricity generation. That should have kept prices higher than they were. What happened?
You perhaps remember that fire in the Freeport LNG plant near Galveston in June? It had the effect of putting 2-BCFD back on the market, and available for injection vs export. Hence we are only ~4% under 5-year averages in our storage. This week.
It will be interesting to see what sort of draws are seen in next week’s report as a big chunk of the nation feels winter’s first blast. Nor am I optimistic, absent a big surge in gas drilling, that we will be able to do anything to materially impact this tight supply scenario.
The trend isn’t encouraging for mid to long term new supplies as noted in the chart above. This is compiled from data put out by the EIA and only measures a running average between production noted in various reports and the number of rigs turning to the right. A simplistic measure as I have noted in past reports, but trends are instructive of their own accord. And the trend suggests, for whatever reason, well productivity is declining.
Your takeaway
The challenges for the EU will remain through to the heating season of 2023-24, depending as we have noted in this article on the weather on both the European and North American continents. This will drive prices for gas which have fallen sharply over the third quarter.
One way I am looking to arbitrage this price action is selecting producers that stand to benefit. One I am looking at in particular is a Canadian player, ARC Resources, (TSX-ARX). It is Canada’s third largest gas driller, with high margins and access to U.S. southern LNG hubs and east to the big population centers of Toronto and Montreal. ARX is generating free cash at a rate of $2.0 bn CAD, and has growth plans that are covered by Free Funds Flow. ARX pays a modest dividend, currently yielding 2.7%, and trades current at 6X EPS. There are others worth considering as well. Tourmaline Oil Corp, (TSX: TOU) is one of the country’s biggest gas drillers with 80% of its daily production comprised of 2.2 BCFD. It is trading at 9X EPS, which is why my interest has run more to ARC Resources.
I like the Canadian gas drillers as opposed to the big American gas drillers due market access. EQT, (NYSE:EQT) and CNX Resources, (NYSE:CNX) among others draw on the Marcellus super-basin for their reserves. The Marcellus is locked behind the Appalachian Mountains with no pipeline access to the big consumer markets in New York City, and Boston. In spite of years of work by pipeline builders to obtain permits to build the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and Atlantic Coast Pipeline, both are still incomplete with no clear pathway to completion.
Whichever way you go, I think the gas drillers are a safe bet if a cold winter here and in the EU challenges supplies as we have discussed.
Xi Jinping just offered the Global South a stark alternative to decades of western diktats, war, and economic duress. ‘Peaceful modernization’ will establish sovereignty, economy, and independence for the world’s struggling states
President Xi Jinping’s work report at the start of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) this past Sunday in Beijing contained not only a blueprint for the development of the civilization-state, but for the whole Global South.
Xi’s 1h45min speech actually delivered a shorter version of the full work report – see attached PDF – which gets into way more detail on an array of socio-political themes.
This was the culmination of a complex collective effort that went on for months. When he received the final text, Xi commented, revised and edited it.
In a nutshell, the CPC master plan is twofold: finalize “socialist modernization” from 2020 to 2035; and build China – via peaceful modernization – as a modern socialist country that is “prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, and harmonious” all the way to 2049, signaling the centenary of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
The central concept in the work report is peaceful modernization – and how to accomplish it. As Xi summarized, “It contains elements that are common to the modernization processes of all countries, but it is more characterized by features that are unique to the Chinese context.”
Very much in tune with Confucian Chinese culture, “peaceful modernization” encapsulates a complete theoretical system. Of course there are multiple geoeconomic paths leading to modernization – according to the national conditions of any particular country. But for the Global South as a whole, what really matters is that the Chinese example completely breaks with the western TINA (“there is no alternative”) monopoly on modernization practice and theory.
Not to mention it breaks with the ideological straitjacket imposed on the Global South by the self-defined “golden billion” (of which the really “golden” barely reach 10 million). What the Chinese leadership is saying is that the Iranian model, the Ugandan model or the Bolivian model are all as valid as the Chinese experiment: what matters is pursuing an independent path towards development.
How to develop tech independence
The recent historical record shows how every nation trying to develop outside the Washington Consensus is terrorized at myriad hybrid war levels. This nation becomes a target of color revolutions, regime change, illegal sanctions, economic blockade, NATO sabotage or outright bombing and/invasion.
What China proposes echoes across the Global South because Beijing is the largest trade partner of no less than 140 nations, who can easily grasp concepts such as high-quality economic development and self-reliance in science and technology.
The report stressed the categorical imperative for China from now on: to speed up technology self-reliance as the Hegemon is going no holds barred to derail China tech, especially in the manufacturing of semiconductors.
In what amount to a sanctions package from Hell, the Hegemon is betting on crippling China’s drive to accelerate its tech independence in semiconductors and the equipment to produce them.
So China will need to engage in a national effort on semiconductor production. That necessity will be at the core of what the work report describes as a new development strategy, spurred by the tremendous challenge of achieving tech self-sufficiency. Essentially China will go for strengthening the public sector of the economy, with state companies forming the nucleus for a national system of tech innovation development.
‘Small fortresses with high walls’
On foreign policy, the work report is very clear: China is against any form of unilateralism as well as blocs and exclusive groups targeted against particular countries. Beijing refers to these blocs, such as NATO and AUKUS, as “small fortresses with high walls.”
This outlook is inscribed in the CPC’s emphasis on another categorical imperative: reforming the existing system of global governance, extremely unfair to the Global South. It’s always crucial to remember that China, as a civilization-state, considers itself simultaneously as a socialist country and the world’s leading developing nation.
The problem once again is Beijing’s belief in “safeguarding the international system with the UN at its core.” Most Global South players know how the Hegemon subjects the UN – and its voting mechanism – to all sorts of relentless pressure.
It’s enlightening to pay attention to the very few westerners that really know one or two things about China.
Martin Jacques, until recently a senior fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University, and author of arguably the best book in English on China’s development, is impressed by how China’s modernization happened in a context dominated by the west: “This was the key role of the CPC. It had to be planned. We can see how extraordinarily successful it has been.”
The implication is that by breaking the west-centric TINA model, Beijing has accumulated the tools to be able to assist Global South nations with their own models.
Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, is even more upbeat: “China will become a leader of innovation. I very much hope and count on China becoming a leader for innovation in sustainability.” That will contrast with a ‘dysfunctional’ American model turning protectionist even in business and investment.
Mikhail Delyagin, deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on Economic Policy, makes a crucial point, certainly noted by key Global South players: the CPC “was able to creatively adapt the Marxism of the 19th century and its experience of the 20th century to new requirements and implement eternal values with new methods. This is a very important and useful lesson for us.”
And that’s the added value of a model geared towards the national interest and not the exclusivist policies of Global Capital.
BRI or bust
Implied throughout the work report is the importance of the overarching concept of Chinese foreign policy: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and its trade/connectivity corridors across Eurasia and Africa.
It was up to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin to clarify where BRI is heading:
“BRI transcends the outdated mentality of geopolitical games, and created a new model of international cooperation. It is not an exclusive group that excludes other participants but an open and inclusive cooperation platform. It is not just China’s solo effort, but a symphony performed by all participating countries.”
BRI is inbuilt in the Chinese concept of “opening up.” It is also important to remember that BRI was launched by Xi nine years ago – in Central Asia (Astana) and then Southeast Asia (Jakarta). Beijing has earned from its mistakes, and keeps fine-tuning BRI in consultation with partners – from Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Malaysia to several African nations.
It is no wonder, that by August this year, China’s trade with countries participating in BRI had reached a whopping $12 trillion, and non-financial direct investment in those countries surpassed $140 billion.
Wang correctly points out that following BRI infrastructure investments, “East Africa and Cambodia have highways, Kazakhstan has [dry] ports for exports, the Maldives has its first cross-sea bridge and Laos has become a connected country from a landlocked one.”
Even under serious challenges, from zero-Covid to assorted sanctions and the breakdown of supply chains, the number of China-EU express cargo trains keeps going up; the China-Laos Railway and the Peljesac Bridge in Croatia are open for business; and work on the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway and the China-Thailand Railway is in progress.
Mackinder on crack
All over the extremely incandescent global chessboard, international relations are being completely reframed.
China – and key Eurasian players at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), BRICS+, and Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) – are all proposing peaceful development.
In contrast, the Hegemon imposes an avalanche of sanctions – not by accident the top three recipients are Eurasian powers Russia, Iran and China; lethal proxy wars (Ukraine); and every possible strand of hybrid war to prevent the end of its supremacy, which lasted barely seven and a half decades, a blip in historical terms.
The current dysfunction – physical, political, financial, cognitive – is reaching a climax. As Europe plunges into the abyss of largely self-inflicted devastation and darkness – a neo-medievalism in woke register – an internally ravaged Empire resorts to plundering even its wealthy “allies”.
It’s as if we are all witnessing a Mackinder-on-crack scenario.
Halford Mackinder, of course, was the British geographer who developed the ‘Heartland Theory’ of geopolitics, heavily influencing US foreign policy during the Cold War: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World.”
Russia spans 11 time zones and sits atop as much as one third of the world’s natural resources. A natural symbiosis between Europe and Russia is like a fact of life. But the EU oligarchy blew it.
It’s no wonder the Chinese leadership views the process with horror, because one of BRI’s essential planks is to facilitate seamless trade between China and Europe. As Russia’s connectivity corridor has been blocked by sanctions, China will be privileging corridors via West Asia.
Meanwhile, Russia is completing its pivot to the east. Russia’s enormous resources, combined with the manufacturing capability of China and East Asia as a whole, project a trade/connectivity sphere that goes even beyond BRI. That’s at the heart of the Russian concept of Greater Eurasia Partnership.
In another one of History’s unpredictable twists, Mackinder a century ago may have been essentially right about those controlling the Heartland/world island controlling the world. It doesn’t look like the controller will be the Hegemon, and much less its European vassals/slaves.
When the Chinese say they are against blocs, Eurasia and The West are the facto two blocs. Though not yet formally at war with each other, in reality they already are knee deep into Hybrid War territory.
Russia and Iran are on the frontline – militarily and in terms of absorbing non-stop pressure. Other important Global South players, quietly, try to either keep a low profile or, even more quietly, assist China and the others to make the multipolar world prevail economically.
As China proposes peaceful modernization, the hidden message of the work report is even starker. The Global South is facing a serious choice: choose either sovereignty – embodied in a multipolar world, peacefully modernizing – or outright vassalage.
Belief in aliens is growing in the United States, according to surveys by YouGov America.
As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, where just 20 percent of Americans thought that UFOs are probably either an alien ship or alien life form in 1996, the figure has crept up to 34 percent in 2022.
UFOs aside, nearly two thirds of respondents said that it is likely that aliens exist at all.
But what are they like – if they are out there?
According to the poll, most U.S. adults think it’s pretty unlikely that they would resemble the green monsters of sci-fi stories (49 percent). The majority would say, however, that they are likely to be far more technologically advanced than humans, with more than a third of respondents saying they thought aliens would even be hostile towards our species.
The survey also found that of the U.S. adults who said they had seen a UFO, a third of them believe it was an alien.
The developer of a social media monitoring algorithm explains how his internet sting operation “J6 DELETED” exposed how Twitter manipulated the narrative “in real time” on Jan. 6, 2021.
In 2018, Jason Sullivan—a social media and Twitter specialist—was subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating the now-debunked theory that Trump was colluding with Russia. Sullivan is now the lead investigative consultant to former President Donald Trump’s legal team, via Peter Ticktin. In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Sullivan explains how he discovered evidence of a coordinated operation by influencers and Twitter to set the narrative on Jan. 6, 2021, as events unfolded.
“We’ve created an algorithm that enables us to determine which tweets are on a trajectory of becoming a viral event,” Sullivan explained. “We are watching social media intelligence in real-time, all day, every day, based on specific search terms, key phrases, and hashtags. Our algorithm can tell us exactly how much traction a particular tweet is receiving and how often people are reciprocating, such as liking and retweeting. When it meets a certain threshold, we are automatically alerted.”
Jan. 6, 2021
“Leading up to January 6, we were listening to the social media discourse,” Sullivan recalled, “and we set up the program to capture every viral event that took place on January 6 that pertained to the name ‘Trump.’ Think about that. ‘Trump’ is the most tweeted word on the planet, and whether they liked Trump or hated Trump, if their post included the word ‘Trump,’ we flagged it. We were listening to people who were trending. We were listening to people who were leaking things. We were listening to people who were seeding disinformation. What we discovered is that there were trends that clearly indicated there was going to be some type of false flag operation on January 6.”
As Sullivan noted, “the one who drives the narrative, drives the outcome.”
“What we discovered is that many of these captured tweets, which had exculpatory evidence, had been conveniently and systematically removed from Twitter and some of the pages have even been scrubbed from the internet,” Sullivan recalled. So too had the communications feeds and comments within the viral threads, which contained additional exculpatory evidence.
“I want to make it perfectly clear that we conducted this sting operation,” Sullivan asserted. “We have it all. We have all of the tweets and all of the exculpatory evidence Twitter thinks it scrubbed from the internet. We have them all.”
The collection of all viral tweets captured by his algorithm—J6 DELETED—is now available to the public.
The Social Media Influencers
According to Nashville Film Institute, “Social media influencers” are “digital creators with a large social media following,” who “spark dialogues, set trends, and generate interest among their fan communities.” Among the dozens of influences who were active on Jan. 6, several stood out as leaders in pushing what Sullivan calls “the false flag narrative.”
Aaron Rupar, an associate editor at VOX, initiated no less than 18 viral Twitter posts on Jan. 6.
Investigative journalist Lara Logan has worked closely with Sullivan and has seen his trove of tweets captured by his algorithm. She knew immediately that Rupar was spreading misinformation. In particular, she knew Rupar’s claim that Trump attacked “four black people within 30 seconds” when speaking about Stacy Abrams and Oprah Winfrey “had absolutely nothing to do with race.”
During Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, he mentioned Abrams twice near the halfway point and twice near the end. All references were related to her failed campaign to become governor of Georgia. Trump also mentioned Winfrey, twice, once saying Oprah “used to be” a friend of his and then how he “didn’t notice there were too many calls coming in from Oprah” after he became president.
Social media influencer MeidasTouch had 14 tweets go viral on Jan. 6. According to Open Secrets, MeidasTouch, a “Democratic/Liberal” Super PAC based in Macomb, Michigan. According to the Federal Election Commission, the largest disbursements appear to primarily benefit Prestige WW Inc., “founded in 2020 to help progressive candidates and organizations stick it to Trump and his enablers online” and the PACs founding brothers, Jordan and Bret Meiselas.
In the meantime, attorney and Harvard ProfessorLaurence Tribe was responsible for eight viral Twitter posts on Jan. 6, primarily to insult and berate Trump.
According to Logan, Tribe is also “one of the biggest architects of the whole insurrection narrative, both publicly and behind the scenes.”
Along with helping push the “false flag narrative” as an influencer on Jan. 6, Tribe has been a key influencer in pushing the narrative that Trump should be indicted. Tribe also used social media on Oct. 13 to advise Attorney General Merrick Garland that “it won’t be enough … to approve indictments of Trump related to Mar-a-Lago & obstruction. [Garland] will have to approve indictments for trying to overthrow the election, seditious conspiracy & insurrection.”
A day earlier, Tribe appeared on MSNBC, suggesting how many crimes Garland could indict Trump with.
While Sullivan noted that “every person listed in J6DELETED is an influencer because every single one of those 1,058 tweets were considered viral events,” he also pointed out that the only posts that were deleted by Twitter were those on the conservative side. Along with the influencers, he said there were also “coordinators,” people “using similar language in their tweets to perpetuate the chosen narrative.” Words like “seditionist,” “fascist,” “insurrectionists,” and phrases like “clashed with police,” “stormed the Capitol,” “terrorist coup,” and “domestic terrorists” were promoted.
Asked if he believes the influences and coordinators will be nervous when they learn that their activities are being monitored and exposed, Sullivan said, “I think they better.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Rupar and Tribe for comment.
The Silenced Conservatives
While liberal influencers pushed the narrative that Trump instigated a deadly insurrection and his supporters were violently storming the United States Capitol, anyone who posted anything that conflicted with that narrative had their posts deleted and their accounts shut down.
Elijah Schafer posted that “Trump supporters have breached the Capitol building …” In response, Tracy Beanz said, “I don’t know that these are necessarily Trump supporters … But holy hell.” In a similar post by BNO News, Beanz said “These don’t look like Trump supporters to me.” As liberals began posting that Trump supporters were clashing with and pepper spraying police around 10:45 a.m. (PST), Beanz noted 10:53 a.m. (PST) that “The Trump crowd HAS NOT reached the capitol yet.” All of her posts were subsequently deleted and her account was suspended.
The Election Wizard said he “would not be surprised if a number of Trump Supporters clashing with police are Antifa in disguise.” His post was deleted and his account “doesn’t exist” anymore. For asking “who wears all black and attacks law enforcement,” the account of J Homes was also suspended.
Melissa Tate posted a video showing Trump supporters stopping suspected ANTIFA members from breaking Capitol windows. “Dems set us up & GOP just threw us under the bus over a trap,” she said. Her post was deleted and her account was shut down.
Twitter started by deleting Trump’s tweets. When he posted a video message calling for peace, Twitter disabled the ability of anyone to like or share his message.
Then they removed the video completely. Twitter then locked his account for 12 hours, saying, “If the Tweets are not removed, the account will remain locked.”
“Future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrumpaccount,” Twitter Safety added.
Then Facebook banned Trump for 24 hours. Then Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, announced he was “locking” Trump’s “Instagram account for 24 hours as well.”
In the meantime, people like Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and even President-elect Joe Biden were demanding that Trump tell his supporters to stop and go home.
Sullivan also said the Jan. 6 Committee has had this information for months.
“The January 6 Committee contacted my attorney and asked for all of my email communications regarding January 6,” Sullivan explained, adding it included the posts deleted by Twitter. “We gave it to them, and now they voted to subpoena Trump, demanding that he provide evidence to defend himself against their allegations. I hope exposing this will encourage them to be more forthcoming with the evidence they received from me five months ago.”
According to Trump attorney Peter Ticktin, the truth is in the silence.
1984
“If you want to know what truth is, just look at what you’re not allowed to say,” Ticktin, founder and Senior Managing Partner at The Ticktin Law Group told The Epoch Times. “In a free world, where we are allowed to have a voice, it doesn’t matter if someone makes up a lie because the truth will out. But if you need to hide truth then you have to censor everything and you have to erase people and eliminate their ability to say things.”
Ticktin, who also attended New York Military Academy with Trump, said the coordinated effort by liberal news media, social media influencers, Big Tech, and politicians to silence conservative voices reminds him of George Orwell’s “1984,” which warned of a world governed through propaganda, surveillance, and censorship.
“It seems like that’s the example they want to live by in terms of how to run society,” Ticktin explained. “If you look at the January 6 unselect committee and you believe that the election was fair and that Donald Trump was pushing ‘the big lie,’ everyone but The Epoch Times is required to put that news out, including FOX and Newsmax. But if you show evidence like in 2,000 Mules, and how Twitter censored voices and deleted exculpatory evidence, there’s no doubt that the election was stolen.”
For the most part, Ticktin believes the majority of Trump’s base knows the election was stolen.
“We have eyes,” he said. “We aren’t willfully blind. That’s the biggest difference between the left and the right, willful blindness.”
It’s ‘Classic Fascist Behavior’
According to Kirk Wiebe, “the Twitter experience that we’re seeing is not new.”
Wiebe and William Binney became National Security Agency whistleblowers in September 2002 when they exposed how the government was using a program called Trailblazer to illegally monitor all Americans.
“Twitter has removed tweets before. It has censored people before,” Weibe told The Epoch Times. “This is a censorship operation by the government working with Big Tech in classic fascist behavior. Whenever government colludes with big business to control people, which is what this is all about, it’s fascism, and I’m not sure the average reader understands that.”
“Would’ve Gotten Us Killed”: US Army Soldiers Head Sick After Using Microsoft’s AR Goggles
Microsoft Corp’s augmented reality headsets are making US Army soldiers sick, according to a Defense Department report, obtained by Bloomberg and Business Insider.
The 79-page DoD report on the Army’s testing of Microsoft HoloLens mixed reality headsets has yet to be officially released to the public but a summary via Nickolas Guertin, director of the Defense Department’s Operation Test and Evaluation, concluded that 80% of soldiers who used the goggles experienced “mission-affecting physical impairments,” such as headaches, eyestrain, and nausea.
One of the testers told Insider, “the devices would have gotten us killed” on the modern battlefield.
Last year, the Army awarded a $22 billion contract for 120,000 HoloLens even though the military appears to be aware of the issues.
Army assistant acquisition secretary Doug Bush allowed the first batch of 5,000 HoloLens in August for soldiers. Microsoft told Bloomberg the goggles are still a “transformational platform” and was moving ahead with further deliveries.
In a statement to Insider, Brigadier General Christopher Schneider said the goggle testing was successful in “most” criteria, but in some areas, it “fell short,” and improvements would be corrected.
There’s also concern the goggles emit a glow from hundreds of meters away that can reveal the soldier’s position on the battlefield. The report said the heads-up display, similar to those used by fighter pilots, was also limiting soldier’s field of view and too bulky for transport.
Microsoft has yet to review the DoD report. It said in a statement to Bloomberg that “our close collaboration with the Army has enabled us to quickly build” and adjust the device “to develop a transformational platform that will deliver enhanced soldier safety and effectiveness. We are moving forward with the production and delivery of the initial set” of devices.
There are no known long-term eye development effects of users using AR and/or VR goggles, but the symptoms the soldiers experienced point to some short-term adverse effects. Many consumers report headaches, eye strain, dizziness, and nausea after using Meta’s Oculus Pro headset.
