Europe is “returning to petrol”, according to a new article from Yahoo Finance which highlighted Volkswagen’s EV sales as the canary in the coalmine. 

Sales of Volkswagen’s electric vehicles have declined by nearly 25% in Europe, with a noticeable shift back to gasoline-powered cars amid waning interest in battery-operated models, the report says.

It notes that the downturn, observed in the initial quarter of the year, is attributed to heightened inflation and escalating energy costs, which have cooled consumer enthusiasm for electric cars. Worldwide, Volkswagen, which also owns brands like Audi, Skoda, and Porsche, saw a 3% decrease in electric vehicle sales, totaling 136,400 units. In contrast, sales of traditional combustion engine vehicles rose by 4%, approaching two million units.

The report notes that demand for electric vehicles has dipped as governments in Europe reduce subsidies and soften ambitious goals to phase out petrol and diesel cars.

In the UK, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak delayed the prohibition of new petrol and diesel sales from 2030 to 2035 and removed incentives for new EV purchases last year. Despite Volkswagen’s strong presence in the UK market with models like the Audi e-Tron and Volkswagen ID, petrol car demand is growing faster than electric.

In the EU, discussions are ongoing to modify bans on fossil fuel cars to permit synthetic fuels. The end of EV subsidies in Germany, coupled with the EU pausing emissions targets, has notably impacted Volkswagen’s sales. Additionally, competition is intensifying with cheaper, subsidy-backed Chinese EVs entering the market.

Despite a significant drop in European EV sales, Volkswagen reported a 91% increase in China. Other manufacturers like BMW and Stellantis are also adjusting their electric vehicle strategies amid fluctuating consumer interest.

“Our diversified product portfolio gives us the necessary flexibility to compensate for fluctuations in demand in certain segments – as is currently the case with all-electric vehicles – in others,” said Hildegard Wortmann, a member of Volkswagen’s executive board.

Recall we have been writing about the influx of competition in EVs coming from China. Earlier this month, Mercedes-Benz boss Ola Källenius urged the EU to lower tariffs on EVs that are being imported from China. The call comes at the same time the European Commission is mulling whether to raise import duties as Europe continues to grapple with Chinese subsidies.

Källenius said that the increased competition would “help Europe’s carmakers produce better cars in the long run” and that government protectionism is “going the wrong way.

Källenius’ comment is a free market slap in the face to the EU, which has claimed China is “distorting” the EV market. Recall back in September 2023 we wrote that the EU was opening an investigation into Chinese EV subsidies. 

At the time, we noted that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was taking exception with the fact that “the global market is flooded with cheap Chinese cars”. 

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

A Conservative MP in the UK has called for a thorough review of government higher education funding after it was revealed that taxpayer money is being spent on ridiculous university courses, including a PhD researcher who has chose to explore “Transphobic Invocations of Archaeology.”

The Telegraph reports that the student at the University of York is being given more than £18,000 a year by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to do detailed research and present papers, including one titled Bones Don’t Care About Your Feelings: Challenging Transphobic Invocations of Archaeology in (Social) Media.

🔴 Ridicule over university’s ‘trans archeology’ course https://t.co/GSKNBuEKKu

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) April 14, 2024

The student in question also gave a presentation that noted “What if I told you that when an archaeologist finds human remains, it is a fact that there [sic] only two choices for gender identification.”

The ‘research’ was also partially funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a non-departmental government body that distributes funds for research, which claims that “research projects we support are made via a rigorous peer review process.”

Maybe make it a bit more rigorous then?

Commenting on the finding, biologist Dr Emma Hilton, co-founder of Sex Matters, noted “Human remains cannot tell us anything about the unembodied ‘gender identity’ of a person.”

Providing an example, Hilton urged that “A female Viking warrior buried with male-typical war possessions tells us only that some women successfully broke through early glass ceilings.”

As we previously highlighted, there is a push among gender activists within the field of archaeology to have anthropologists to be prevented from identifying human remains as male or female because it is not known how ancients would have self-identified.

In other words, far-left activists are now insisting that it is ‘transphobic’ for archaeologists and anthropologists to identify bones as male or female, because they don’t know if ancient people identified as a specific gender or not.

Pretty sure they had more pressing things to consider.

The same people have also insisted that archaeologists no longer categorise the race of remains as this “contributes to white supremacy.”

Don’t give skeletons a gender or categorise race, woke warriors demand https://t.co/thUUnV6ue6

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) July 24, 2022

Other equally stupid research projects have been uncovered, including one at Cambridge University, which will involve a PhD student investigating its collection of animals and plants to root out imperial connections, in an attempt to “decolonise the dodo”.

The project falls under the university’s efforts to address “legacies of enslavement and empire.”

University of Cambridge looking for students to ‘decolonise dodos and tigers’https://t.co/Agh6joNXTU

— GB News (@GBNEWS) April 2, 2024

Another course currently advertising for research positions lasting three years at full pay of £33,000 per year, is titled “The Europe That Gay Porn Built, 1945-2000.”

A further course at the University of Exeter offers a degree in ‘Magic and Occult Science,’ with the course leader claiming “Decolonisation, the exploration of alternative epistemologies, feminism and anti-racism are at the core of this programme.”

Degree in magic at University of Exeter https://t.co/eE0E4Lgk6S

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) October 3, 2023

This ridiculousness appears to be in part down to lobbyist groups attempting to inject their ideological nonsense into education:

‘This is pure Marxist theory designed to break down totally our entire societal structure.’ @Nigel_Farage reacts to universities being told to ‘go woke’ and ‘decolonise’ courses from computing to classics by the degrees watchdog.#FarageOnGBNews pic.twitter.com/JwhMO2XZPd

— GB News (@GBNEWS) November 16, 2022

Conservative MP Nick Fletcher said: “We need to call a scam a scam when we see it. This is taxpayers’ money, at a time when households are struggling – and the tax burden is at an all-time high.”

SCAM COURSES – YOUR TAXES WASTED

I will call it out whenever I see taxes being wasted. Your hard earned Taxes should be lower and spent wisely.

I have spoken earlier about how students are being sold duff degrees. It’s not only a waste of taxes but it puts them in debt too.… pic.twitter.com/m0U0iustE1

— Nick Fletcher MP (@NickFletcherMP) April 15, 2024

“We should consider establishing a ‘Taxpayers’ Review Process’ to enable ordinary people to review and challenge UKRI and AHRC spending – similar to the process available for residents to review and challenge local authority accounts,” Fletcher added.

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

New statements from the Pentagon issued Monday have said the Houthis fired over 90 ballistic missiles and drones – most of which were intercepted by US and allied forces over the past 48 hours, once the Iranian attack kicked off in the overnight hours of Saturday.

US Central Command described that at one point during the attack the Houthis fired an anti-ship ballistic missile directly against US Navy and commercial ships in the Gulf of Aden. “There were no injuries or damage reported by US, coalition, or commercial ships,” CENTCOM said.

Of the 90 total projectiles fired, the CENTCOM says its forces intercepted over 80 drones and at least six ballistic missiles total.

“Iran’s continued unprecedented, malign, and reckless behavior endangers regional stability and the safety of US and coalition forces,” CENTCOM said the the statement.

“CENTCOM remains postured to support Israel’s defense against these dangerous actions by Iran. We will continue to work with all our regional partners to increase regional security,” it added.

The Houthis are expected to launch another phase of intense attacks in the scenario that Israel hits back at Iran. On Monday Israel’s leadership in the war cabinet appears to have greenlighted such a retaliation attack.

On Monday it has also been coming to light to huge degree to which the US and Western allies were key in helping Israel repel the Iranian attack. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Saturday’s Iranian strike on Israel was huge by any standard. Tehran launched more than 170 explosive-laden drones, around 120 ballistic missiles and about 30 cruise missiles, according to Israel. The damage could have been catastrophic. As it turned out, almost all were intercepted.

That success was due to a combination of Israel’s sophisticated air-defense system and critical assistance provided by the U.S. and other Western and Arab partners. American, British and Jordanian warplanes played an especially important role in downing drones. Most of the Iranian drones and missiles were destroyed before they even reached Israeli airspace.

At this point the Middle East is bracing for a potential bigger Israel-Iran war which would likely spread to include Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen.

This is why the US and European leaders are busy urging restraint for Israel. A bigger war would also send the price of oil soaring, worsening Biden’s reelection chances.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via ReMix News,

An offshoot terror cell affiliated with Islamic State has published propaganda encouraging jihadists to target German football stadiums during this summer’s European Championships.

In the latest issue of the “Voice of Khorasan” magazine, a publication run by ISKP, or Islamic State — Khorasan Province, the terror organization called for jihad at Europe’s flagship football tournament, which runs for a month in Germany from June 14 until July 14.

Against a backdrop of an explosive drone flying across a football stadium, the publication used the headline, “If they restrict and oppress you on the ground, then attack them from the sky.”

“Run over the infidels with your car, hit them with a knife, with poison, or blow out their brains with bullets and set fire to their houses,” it further wrote.

German security services are understood to be treating the message as a credible threat. They are ramping up surveillance and implementing measures to combat any attempts to use drone strikes against stadiums hosting the event, which is expected to be attended by hundreds of thousands of football fans from across Europe.

The threat is the latest in a long line of menacing imagery published by terror cells to inflict fear across the continent.

Earlier this month, images circulated online of jihadists vowing to target the UEFA Champions League quarter-final games, prompting the authorities to bolster defenses at stadiums across Western Europe.

“The main question is whether these are free riders or a serious threat,” a high-ranking state security officer told Focus.

Authorities, however, are unwilling to take a risk on security and will treat the threat as credible.

“It is to be feared that other terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda will also use their PR channels to agitate for an attack offensive in Europe and Germany,” the source added.

The Afghan splinter group of Islamic State has grown in stature in recent months to become the primary organization of concern for security officials across Europe.

A major counter-terror operation took place in the German city of Cologne before Christmas after security services in Austria, Germany, and Spain received intelligence of jihadists affiliated with the group planning to carry out several attacks at Christian landmarks including Cologne Cathedral.

Last month, two Afghan nationals with ties to the U.N.-proscribed terror cell were arrested in Germany on suspicion of planning a terror attack near the Swedish parliament to avenge the permittance of Koran-burning demonstrations in the country.

Several individuals are understood to have exploited the migratory route from Ukraine to enter the European Union to plan attacks, with Tajikistan and Turkmenistan nationals arrested in Germany in July last year having entered Western Europe from the war-torn country.

Authorities in neighboring France are also concerned about the threat of terror attacks during Paris’ hosting of the summer Olympic Games this year, and its organizers have devised a “Plan B” in case terror threats jeopardize the event’s opening ceremony.

“There is no terrorist threat to the Olympics and Paralympics today, but we will continue to monitor the situation,” Oudéa-Castéra told France 2 earlier this month.

“Just because we don’t talk about it, just because we don’t mention Plan B, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.”

The terror alert level in France remains at the highest possible due to concerns over Islamic radicals and fears of retaliation against the West because of the war in Israel.

Read more here…

Authored by Bert Olivier via The Brownstone Institute,

Several articles on the proposed amendments to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) international health regulations have appeared here on Brownstone, such as this excellent introduction. Consequently, there is no need to repeat this information in a similar format. What I would like to do instead is to pursue the question, what the implications would be for people worldwide if this organisation were to be successful in getting the representatives of member countries to accept the proposed amendments. More specifically, what are the likely consequences in terms of the concept and practice of totalitarianism?

To understand this, one has to get to grips with the mode of rule called totalitarian government, of course, but I doubt whether most people have an adequate grasp of full-fledged totalitarian rule, despite recently experiencing it to a certain degree under “pandemic” conditions. Should the amendments proposed by the WHO be accepted in May, the citizens of the world would be subjected to unadulterated totalitarianism, however, so it is worthwhile exploring the full implications of this “anonymous” mode of governance here.

This is done in the hope that, if representatives of the people—which is what they are supposed to be—in legislative bodies around the world were to read this article, as well as others related to the same topic, they would think twice before supporting a motion or bill which would, in effect, grant the WHO the right to usurp the sovereignty of member nations. The recent developments in the state of Louisiana in the United States, which amount to the rejection of the WHO’s authority, should be an inspiration to other states and countries to follow its example. This is the way to beat the WHO’s mendacious “pandemic treaty.”

On her website, called Freedom Research, Dr. Meryl Nass has described the WHO’s notion of “pandemic preparedness” as a “scam/boondoggle/Trojan horse,” which aims (among other things) to transfer billions of taxpayer dollars to the WHO as well as other industries, in order to vindicate censorship in the name of “public health,” and perhaps most importantly, to transfer sovereignty regarding decision-making for “public health” globally to the Director-General of the WHO (which means that legally, member countries would lose their sovereignty).

In addition, she highlights the fact that the WHO intends to use the idea of “One Health” to subsume all living beings, ecosystems, as well as climate change under its own “authority”; further, to acquire more pathogens for wide distribution, in this way exacerbating the possibility of pandemics while obscuring their origin, and in the event of such pandemics occurring, justifying the development of more (mandatory) “vaccines” and the mandating of vaccine passports (and of lockdowns) globally, thus increasing control (the key term here) over populations. Should its attempt at a global power grab succeed, the WHO would have the authority to impose any “medical” programme it deems necessary for “world health,” regardless of their efficacy and side-effects (including death).

In the preceding paragraph I italicised the word “control” as a key term. What should be added to it is the term “total”—that is, “total control.” This is the gist of totalitarian rule, and it should therefore be easy to see that what the WHO (together with the WEF and the U.N.) strives for is total or complete control of all people’s lives.

No one has analysed and elaborated on totalitarianism from this perspective more thoroughly than the German-born, American philosopher, Hannah Arendt, and her monumental study of this phenomenon—“The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1951 and in enlarged format, 1958) still stands as the authoritative source for the understanding of its historical manifestations. The latter, focused on by Arendt, are 20th-century Nazism and Stalinism, but it is not difficult to perceive its lineaments in what we have been living through since 2020—although a strong case could be made that 2001 marked its identifiable beginning, when (in the wake of 9/11) the Patriot Act was passed, arguably laying the authoritarian groundwork for totalitarian rule as clearly perceived by Henry Giroux.

Arendt (p. 274 of the Harvest, Harcourt edition of “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” 1976) singles out “total terror” as the essence of totalitarian government, and elaborates as follows:

“By pressing men against each other, total terror destroys the space between them; compared to the condition within its iron band, even the desert of tyranny [which she distinguishes from totalitarianism; B.O.], insofar as it is still some kind of space, appears like a guarantee of freedom. Totalitarian government does not just curtail liberties or abolish essential freedoms; nor does it, at least to our limited knowledge, succeed in eradicating the love for freedom from the hearts of man. It destroys the one essential prerequisite of all freedom which is simply the capacity of motion which cannot exist without space.”

Reading this evocative characterisation of totalitarianism in terms of “total terror” makes one realise anew, with a start, how fiendishly clever the perpetrators of the so-called “pandemic” emergency were—which was no real pandemic, of course, as the German government recently admitted. It was the thin edge of the wedge, as it were, to insinuate “total terror” into our lives by means of curtailing our access to free movement in space. “Lockdowns” are the signature tool for implementing restrictions of free movements in space.

It may not, on the face of it, appear to be the same as, or similar to, the incarceration of prisoners in the concentration camps under Nazi rule, but arguably the psychological effects of lockdowns approximate those experienced by inmates of these notorious camps in the 1940s. After all, if you are not allowed to leave your house, except to go to the shop to buy food and other essentials before you hurry back home—where you dutifully sanitise all the items you bought (a concrete reminder that venturing out in space is “potentially lethal”)—the imperative is the same: “You are not allowed out of this enclosure, except under specified conditions.” It is understandable that the imposition of such strict spatial boundaries engenders a pervasive sense of fear, which eventually morphs into terror.

Small wonder the pseudo-authorities promoted—if not “commanded”—“working (and studying) from home,” leaving millions of people cloistered in their houses in front of their computer screens (Plato’s cave wall). And banning meetings in public, except for a few concessions as far as the numbers of attendees at certain gatherings were concerned, was just as effective regarding the intensification of terror. Most people would not dare transgress these spatial restrictions, given the effectiveness of the campaign, to instil a dread of the supposedly lethal “novel coronavirus” in populations, exacerbating “total terror” in the process. The images of patients in hospitals, attached to ventilators, and sometimes looking appealingly, desperately at the camera, only served to exacerbate this feeling of dread.

With the advent of the much-hyped COVID pseudo-“vaccines,” another aspect of generating terror among the populace manifested itself in the guise of relentless censorship of all dissenting views and opinions on the “efficacy and safety” of these, as well as on the comparable effectiveness of early treatment of COVID by means of proven remedies such as Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. The clear aim of this was to discredit contrarians who raised doubts over the official valorisation of these supposedly miraculous cures for the disease, and to isolate them from the mainstream as “conspiracy theorists.”

Arendt’s insight into the indispensable function of space for human movement also casts the WEF’s plans to create “15-minute cities” worldwide in a disturbing new light. These have been described as “open-air concentration camps,” which would eventually become a reality by prohibiting movement outside of these demarcated areas, after an initial period of selling the idea as a way of combating climate change by walking and cycling instead of using carbon-emitting motor cars. The WEF and WHO’s “concern” with climate change as a putative threat to global health offers further justification for these planned variations on prisons for the thinly disguised incarceration of millions of people.

The pertinence of Arendt’s thinking on totalitarianism for the present does not end here, though. Just as relevant as the manner in which it cultivates terror is her identification of loneliness and isolation as prerequisites for total domination. She describes isolation—in the political sphere—as “pre-totalitarian.” It is typical of the tyrannical governments of dictators (which are pre-totalitarian), where it functions to prevent citizens from wielding some power by acting together.

Loneliness is the counterpart of isolation in the social sphere; the two are not identical, and the one can be the case without the other. One can be isolated or kept apart from others without being lonely; the latter only sets in when one feels abandoned by all other human beings. Terror, Arendt sagely observes, can “rule absolutely” only over people who have been “isolated against each other” (Arendt 1975, pp. 289–290). It therefore stands to reason that, to achieve the triumph of totalitarian rule, those promoting its inception would create the circumstances where individuals feel increasingly isolated as well as lonely.

It is superfluous to remind anyone of the systematic inculcation of both of these conditions in the course of the “pandemic” through what has been discussed above, particularly lockdowns, the restriction of social contact at all levels, and through censorship, which—as remarked above—was clearly intended to isolate dissenting individuals. And those who were isolated in this way, were often—if not usually—abandoned by their family and friends, with the consequence that loneliness could, and sometimes did, follow. In other words, the tyrannical imposition of COVID regulations served the (probably intended) purpose of preparing the ground for totalitarian rule by creating the conditions for isolation and loneliness to become pervasive.

How does totalitarian government differ from tyranny and authoritarianism, where one may still discern the figures of the despot, and the sway of some abstract ideal, respectively? Arendt writes that (p. 271–272):

“If lawfulness is the essence of non-tyrannical government and lawlessness is the essence of tyranny, then terror is the essence of totalitarian domination.

“Terror is the realization of the law of movement; its chief aim is to make it possible for the force of nature or of history to race freely through mankind, unhindered by any spontaneous human action. As such, terror seeks to ‘stabilize’ men in order to liberate the forces of nature or history. It is this movement which singles out the foes of mankind against whom terror is let loose, and no free action of either opposition or sympathy can be permitted to interfere with the elimination of the ‘objective enemy’ of History or Nature, of the class or the race. Guilt and innocence become senseless notions; ‘guilty’ is he who stands in the way of the natural or historical process which has passed judgement over ‘inferior races,’ over individuals ‘unfit to live,’ over ‘dying classes and decadent peoples.’ Terror executes these judgements, and before its court, all concerned are subjectively innocent: the murdered because they did nothing against the system, and the murderers because they do not really murder but execute a death sentence pronounced by some higher tribunal. The rulers themselves do not claim to be just or wise, but only to execute historical or natural laws; they do not apply [positive] laws, but execute a movement in accordance with its inherent law. Terror is lawfulness, if law is the law of the movement of some suprahuman force, Nature or History.”

The reference to nature and history as suprahuman forces pertains to what Arendt (p. 269) claims to have been the undergirding beliefs of National Socialism and Communism, respectively, in the laws of nature and of history as being independent, virtually primordial powers in themselves. Hence the justification of terror being inflicted on those who seem to stand in the way of the unfolding of these impersonal forces. When read carefully, the excerpt, above, paints a picture of totalitarian rule as something predicated on the neutralisation of people, as human beings, in society as potential agents or participants in its organisation or the direction in which it develops. The “rulers” are not rulers in the traditional sense; they are merely there to ensure that the suprahuman force in question is left unhindered to unfold as it “should.”

It takes no genius to perceive in Arendt’s perspicacious characterisation of totalitarian domination—which she relates to Nazism and Stalinism as its historical embodiments—a kind of template which applies to the emerging totalitarian character of what first manifested itself in 2020 as iatrocracy, under the subterfuge of a global health emergency—something well known to all of us today. Since then other features of this totalitarian movement have emerged, all of which cohere into what may be described, in ideological terms, as “transhumanism.”

This, too, fits into Arendt’s account of totalitarianism—not the transhumanist character, as such, of this latest incarnation of the attempt to harness humanity as a whole to a suprahuman power, but its ideological status. Just as the Nazi regime justified its operations by appealing to nature (in the guise of the vaunted superiority of the “Aryan race,” for example), so the group of technocratic globalists driving the (not so) “Great Reset” appeals to the idea of going “beyond humanity” to a supposed superior (non-natural) “species” instantiating a fusion between humans and machines—also anticipated, it seems, by the “singularity” artist called Stelarc. I emphasised “idea” because, as Arendt observes (p. 279–280),

“An ideology is quite literally what its name indicates: it is the logic of an idea. Its subject matter is history, to which the ‘idea’ is applied; the result of this application is not a body of statements about something that is, but the unfolding of a process which is in constant change. The ideology treats the course of events as though it followed the same ‘law’ as the logical exposition of its ‘idea.’”

Given the nature of an ideology, explicated above, it should be evident how this applies to the transhumanist ideology of the neo-fascist cabal: the idea underpinning the historical process has supposedly always been a kind of transhumanist teleology—allegedly the (previously hidden) telos or goal of all of history has constantly been the attainment of a state of surpassing mere Homo and Gyna sapiens sapiens (the doubly wise human man and woman) and actualising the “transhuman.” Is it at all surprising that they have claimed to have acquired god-like powers?

This further explains the unscrupulousness with which the transhumanist globalists can countenance the functioning and debilitating effects of “total terror” as identified by Arendt. “Total terror” here means the pervasive or totalising effects of, for example, installing encompassing systems of impersonal, largely AI-controlled surveillance, and communicating to people—at least initially—that it is for their own safety and security. The psychological consequences, however, amount to a subliminal awareness of the closure of “free space,” which is replaced by a sense of spatial confinement, and of there being “no way out.”

Against this backdrop, reflecting on the looming possibility that the WHO may succeed in getting compliant nations to accept the proposed amendments to their health regulations, yields greater insight into the concrete effects this would have. And these aren’t pretty, to say the least. In a nutshell, it means that this unelected organisation would have the authority to proclaim lockdowns and “medical (or health) emergencies,” as well as mandatory “vaccinations” at the whim of the WHO’s Director-General, reducing the freedom to traverse space freely to ironclad spatial confinement in one fell swoop. This is what “total terror” would mean. It is my fervent hope that something can still be done to avert this imminent nightmare.

The end of the 21st century will see the first plateauing (and eventually shrinking) of world population since the Industrial Revolution.

As birth rates fall across the globe, what does this mean for the world’s most populous countries?

To find out, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualized forecasts for the world’s six largest countries using data from the latest revised version of the UN World Population Prospects 2022.

Projections are based on a “medium fertility scenario”, which assumes countries will converge at a birth rate of 1.85 children per woman, by 2045-2050.

China’s Projected Population Decline

China’s population boom has officially come to an end, with the country reporting two consecutive years of decreases (down 850,000 in 2022, and 2.1 million in 2023).

Note: Figures are rounded.

The country’s population in 2050 is forecasted to be 1.32 billion, which is roughly the same as it was in 2007. The UN believes this demographic downtrend will accelerate as we enter the second half of the century.

What does this mean for the Chinese economy? Many worry that a smaller workforce, coupled with an aging population, will increase healthcare expenditures and hamper economic growth.

India’s Population Boom Continues

Meanwhile, the UN believes that India’s population will peak somewhere in the mid 2060s, just shy of the 1.7 billion mark.

India’s population will not age as quickly as its neighbor. Those over the age of 65 will represent less than one-fifth of the population until 2060, and their share of India’s total number of people and will not approach 30% until 2100.

Note: Figures are rounded.

Finally, whether these predictions come true or not will depend on how quickly birth rates fall as the country develops. For example, India’s fertility rate fell from 6.2 in 1950, to 2.0 in 2021 (births per woman).

Authored by Suzanne Gasparatto via The Epoch Times,

Humans cannot live without water, yet many of us take for granted that water is readily available. As more people move to cities, adding to already crowded populations, the availability of potable water isn’t a given any longer.

While this planet has plenty of water, its distribution does not always coincide with areas where lots of people choose to live.

For decades, Texans, like citizens of other states, have been struggling with regional water issues. Heavily populated but still growing Central Texas has long been known as an area of perpetual drought occasionally interrupted by flash floods. The booming metropolis of Austin, Texas, literally sits on top of water problems. Underneath Austin is the Edwards Aquifer, which experiences rapid changes in water levels due to high demand. Other Texas cities have similar problems.

Cities as small as San Angelo and as large as San Antonio have purchased water rights in rural areas, diverting the supply of water used by farmers and ranchers over long distances for urban use. Rural Texas, which already had serious water deficits, is in trouble. Farmers and ranchers must have reliable supplies of water to produce the food that we eat.

The Highland Lakes northwest of Austin were originally built to control downstream flooding and deliver water to farmers and ranchers. The population shift from rural to urban has placed huge demands on this water supply. Lack of rain plus additional urban population has caused water levels in lakes to be so low that boat docks are far from the shoreline.

The recent large influx of people to Texas has spurred groups of investors to buy rural land and develop it into subdivisions. These investors are often from other states and are unaware of our water woes. They don’t realize that most rural Texas properties, including my location north of fast-growing Austin, depend upon individual water wells drilled by each property owner. Municipal water systems are nonexistent. Drilling deeper wells is not an option. Good-quality water isn’t available below relatively shallow levels.

Existing wells are drying up as demand for more wells arises with the building of new subdivisions. Many people, including those in existing subdivisions, are having to purchase water in bulk and have it delivered to meet their basic needs.

County officials in Texas do not have sufficient authority to manage growth while protecting our water resources. This authority needs to come from the Texas Legislature soon. Requiring larger acreage to qualify to drill a well is critical. Today, permission to drill a well can be obtained if you own as little as two acres.

Adjacent to my ranch, developers are selling four-acre to six-acre tracts that will result in 205 additional water wells. Folks who spend $250,000 to $350,000 for these tracts will expect that there is plentiful water to fill their swimming pools and water their landscaped lawns. This isn’t accurate.

These new wells will decimate our agricultural wells that are already low from years of drought. My County Commissioners Court doesn’t have authority to control this growth in a reasonable and fair manner for all residents.

A short-term solution involves increasing the acreage required to drill a well from two acres to at least ten acres and requiring rainwater collection systems in conjunction with all new wells. When I bought this land, a professional engineer designed a rainwater collection system off the metal roof of my barns, from which I water all my livestock. That allowed me to reserve well water for personal use only, and I monitor usage daily.

Requiring new wells to have pumps that limit pumping gallonage is necessary.

The regional underground water conservation district recently added some new regulations, which, for new wells on small acreage, will limit pumping output.

This is only a start in trying to manage over-consumption of available groundwater.

A medium-term solution is to build desalination plants to clean up the brackish water that exists below current potable water well levels.

A longer-term solution is building desalination plants along the Gulf Coast and creating a network of water pipelines throughout Texas to transport desalinated water to areas needing it. Existing easements for oil and gas pipelines can be made accessible for these water pipelines.

U.S. taxpayers contributed vastly to the development of desalination plants around the world. It is time to take care of our own citizens’ water needs.

In many populated areas, we have a shortage of adequate distribution of water. Vast parts of the western United States, on the other hand, have little water at all, and what they have is often being bought by cities and piped away from the source. Solutions are available. We only have to have the will to implement them.

Read more here…

China’s economic growth beat expectations in Q1, rising +5.3% YoY – considerably stronger than the +4.8% consensus, and inching ahead of Q4’s +5.2% YoY growth.

Source: Bloomberg

Notably, that this is the first time the market compares two periods of economic growth without China’z Zero-COVID policy’s impact, and overall, as we detail below, economic activity data in March overall missed expectations.

• Industrial production rose 4.5% in March from a year earlier (below economists’ forecast of 6%).

• Industrial output rose 6.1% for the first quarter (below the 7.0% in February).

• Retail sales climbed 3.1%, also disappointing (versus an expected 4.8% gain) – domestic consumption is still weak amid deflation pressure and after imports shrank during the month.

• Investment flows were mixed with Property investment continuing to slide (down 9.5%, worst since December, and considerably worse than the 9.2% expected)…

• …but broad-based fixed-asset investment expanded 4.5% in the first three months (better than the 4% increase projected by economists).

• Finally, the surveyed jobless rate in March declined to 5.2% from 5.3% in February.

Source: Bloomberg

Simply put, China’s economic recovery has been unbalanced. 

As Bloomberg reports, manufacturing is holding up, thanks to resilient overseas demand and Beijing’s efforts to cushion the blow from US trade restrictions by developing advanced technologies at home.

But Chinese consumers have been slow to recover their appetite for spending, amid a prolonged real estate downturn that’s weighing on household and business confidence.

Factory prices have been in deflation for more than a year, reflecting anemic domestic demand.

The central bank on Monday kept the rate of its one-year medium-term lending facility unchanged, and drained cash on net from the banking system via the tool for a second straight month. The PBOC cut its reserve requirement ratio for banks by 50 basis points in February – a move that allows extra lending – and said there’s room for more cuts.

But China has reasons to be cautious in any monetary easing, since widening the yield gap with the US risks adding to downward pressure on the yuan, which is weakening after the data…

Source: Bloomberg

Notably, China unexpectedly weakened its yuan defense as pressure from a resurgent dollar and poor sentiment pressured it toward a policy red line. Specifically, the PBOC set a weaker daily reference rate for the managed currency, implying some flexibility for it to depreciate alongside regional peers amid broad strength in the dollar.

“The PBOC is bowing to reality, with dollar broadly higher and onshore dollar demand surging,” said Richard Franulovich, head of foreign-exchange strategy at Westpac Banking Corp.

“They obviously want to control and contain the move though, so they are guiding yuan lower in a moderate and steady fashion.”

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, investors are closely watching one major government effort to boost domestic demand this year: a trade-in program that will encourage businesses to upgrade their machinery and households to buy new cars, refrigerators or washing machines. Shares of Chinese home-appliance makers jumped last week after officials vowed “strong” fiscal support for the plan.

The degree of government support for households and businesses to spend at home will likely depend on how Chinese firms fare on international markets, Goldman Sachs economists led by Hui Shan wrote in a note last week.

“If external demand is strong, then less domestic stimulus is needed,” they wrote.

“If the property market continues to deteriorate, then more easing measures will be introduced.”

The Goldman team raised their growth forecast, predicting the 5% target will be met, and said the government doesn’t seem keen to significantly exceed it.

Authored by Edward Archer via RealClearScience,

There is a politically expedient but problematic fiction that ‘consensus’ matters in science. Since a million matching opinions do not constitute a fact, a consensus — either real or apparent — is not a statement about evidence but an exercise in groupthink in which the status quo is made explicit.

Thus, scientific progress requires conservative and heretical thinkers — conservatives protect the authority and continuity of science, whereas heretics put forth creative dissent in an attempt to push the limits of what we know. Nevertheless, few people are willing and able to challenge the status quo — and those who have were often reviled, incarcerated, or executed (e.g., Galileo, Semmelweis, and Vavilov). 

Consequently, when facts conflict with theory, academic researchers often ignore the facts rather than confront the consensus. As a result, the ‘marketplace of ideas’ — and research funding — are predestined to conformity, sycophancy, and stasis. In other words, the more pervasive the consensus, the more servile the research, the less probable the progress.  

Although this unfortunate reality is evident across many fields, it has been extremely detrimental to nutrition science. For more than 50 years, ‘Diet-centrism’ — the theory that foods and beverages cause ill-health, obesity, and cardiometabolic diseases — has been accepted by physicians, researchers, and the public almost without question. Yet despite the unity and ubiquity of the consensus, there are centuries of evidence refuting diet-centric beliefs. Thus, because a million matching but ill-informed opinions do not constitute a fact, the consensus linking calories, ‘carbs’, meat, milk, sugar, salt, fat, cholesterol, and ‘ultra-processing’ to death and disease is not a statement about scientific evidence but the obsequious — and sterile — status-quo made explicit.

Accordingly, herein I present the heretical idea that the naïve determinism of ‘Diet-centrism’ — ‘you are what you eat’ and ‘what you eat is killing you’ — is not only simplistic and unscientific but specious because it ignores the fact that individual differences in metabolism (how the body ‘handles’ foods and beverages) is what matters most in diet-related health and disease. 

Historical Evidence: It’s not the Food

Before the 20th century, obesity and cardiometabolic diseases such as type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) were uncommon. Yet over the past 50 years, the prevalence of these maladies in horses, humans, dogs, cats, lab, and zoo animals increased to epidemic proportions. Given that these herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores have always consumed different diets, the claim that foods and beverages have suddenly caused parallel epidemics in different species is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. Yet there is no valid evidence supporting this belief.

To begin, humans have consumed highly palatable, ‘ultra-processed’ foods and beverages for thousands of years. Refined sugar, salt, butter, and cheeses date from 4000-8000 BC, and pasta, pizza, and pretzels were consumed in the 1st century AD. Although the consumption of ‘french-fries’ (‘chips’ in the UK) only began in the 17th century, potatoes fried in salt and animal fat quickly became the main source of nutrition in Ireland. By the 19th century, the Irish consumed ~4-5 lbs. of potatoes per person per day, with men consuming ~8-12 lbs./day. This is the equivalent of ~40 supersized servings of ‘french-fries’ every day for a lifetime. Yet despite consuming massive amounts of ‘carbs’, saturated fats, and salt, the Irish had little obesity or cardiometabolic diseases. 

Similarly, the Amish — an ethno-religious group in the US — consume a high-calorie, highly-palatable diet that includes meat, potatoes, gravy, eggs, breads, pies, and cakes, and “is quite high in fat and refined sugar”. Yet the Amish have a greater life expectancy and substantially lower obesity, T2DM, heart disease, and cancer than other Americans. 

Importantly, all humans start life consuming ~40% of their daily calories as dietary sugars and 25% as saturated fat — either in breast milk or infant formula (an ‘ultra-processed’, sugar-sweetened beverage with ‘added’ sugars, salts, and fats). Thus, recommendations to restrict ‘added’ sugars and ‘processed’ foods would prevent the feeding of most infants in industrialized nations. And contrary to current rhetoric, nations with the highest rates of sugar-sweetened beverage (formula) consumption by infants have the lowest rates of obesity and cardiometabolic diseases (Japan and Norway). Moreover, sugars added to foods and beverages enter the same metabolic pathways as intrinsic sugars. Thus, the glucose molecules in breast milk and the fructose molecules in fruit are exactly the same glucose and fructose molecules as in soda, sports drinks, and your favorite candy. This basic fact of biochemistry shows that the term ‘added sugar’ has no place in scientific discourse. 

Furthermore, the medicinal use of sucrose (table sugar) for malnutrition and diarrheal diseases saves the lives of over 600,000 children each year. Thus, so-called ‘added’ sugars save more lives than any pharmaceutical agent. So if ‘food is medicine’, then table sugar is the greatest medicine of all. [Note: the phrase “let thy food be thy medicine” was fabricated by a journalist and attributed to Hippocrates to sell a diet book in the 1920s.] 

Additionally, the most comprehensive report on dietary sugars —  published before the current anti-sugar hysteria — concluded that “feeding normal human volunteers at levels of fructose approximating the 90th percentile intake levels of the U.S. population failed to demonstrate adverse effects on insulin sensitivity or glucose tolerance [cardiometabolic health].” And contrary to current rhetoric, over the last two decades the use of sugars & sweeteners in the US declined ~16% as obesity and T2DM increased almost 40% and severe obesity increased 96%. Thus, less sugar is linked to more obesity and diabetes — and this so-called ‘sugar paradox’ is ubiquitous (see Australia and the UK).

In sum, by ignoring contrary evidence, academic researchers and their ‘diet-centric’ consensus created a “fictional discourse on diet-disease relations”.

The Logic of Causality 

The search for universal criteria by which to infer causality has eluded philosophers of science for centuries. Yet, at its simplest, the search for causes is the search for ‘differences that make a difference’ — mere associations are meaningless. For example, water (and other liquids) are associated with 100% of drowning deaths. Therefore, in the absence of water no one drowns. Yet despite the perfect correlation and counterfactual evidence, no educated person argues that water causes drowning because not everyone who drinks, bathes, or swims, drowns. In other words, water is not causal because it is not the ‘difference that makes a difference’. 

To be precise, water is a sine qua non for drowning (an indispensable part or essential element) — not a cause. Thus, given the same environment (the presence of water), individual differences such as the inability to swim, intoxication, or insentience cause a person to drown. 

The Illogicity of Blaming Food 

Foods and beverages are a sine qua non for life — everyone must eat and drink. Yet just as water does not cause drowning because not everyone who drinks, bathes, or swims, drowns — diet does not cause poor metabolic health because not everyone who eats and drinks becomes obese or diabetic. Yet in contrast to the perfect correlation between water and drowning, there is no clear correlation between diet and obesity. 

For example, muscular, male athletes consume more calories, ‘carbs’, sugars, salt, fat, cholesterol, and ‘ultra-processed’ foods than obese, sedentary women, yet have lower levels of adiposity and T2DM. Thus, more foods, beverages, and physical activity are linked with better health and less disease. Clearly, athletes’ bodies ‘handle’ their diets differently than those of sedentary people. Therefore, metabolism — not diet — is the ‘difference that makes a difference’ in health.

Similarly, in a 2013 study, my colleagues and I found that the people performing the least amount of physical activity gained the most fat mass — despite consuming less calories, less fat, and less sugar than those who ate more, performed more activity, and maintained their weight. Conversely, reducing physical activity causes an immediate decline in insulin sensitivity and metabolic health. Therefore, physical activity-induced differences in metabolism — not diet — cause differences in caloric intake, fat mass, and health. 

Moreover, metabolism is the ‘difference that makes a difference’ in the ‘Oral Glucose Tolerance Test’ (OGTT) — a widely used test for diabetes and insulin resistance. In the OGTT, blood sugar is measured after patients consume a standard dose of dietary sugar. Over time, patients with weaker metabolisms have higher blood sugar than those with stronger metabolisms. Thus, given identical amounts of dietary sugar, differences in metabolism cause differences in blood sugar. It is nonsensical to argue that the dietary sugar caused the differences in blood sugar when each patient consumed the same amount. 

What confuses most people — and [too] many researchers — is that different foods and beverages cause different metabolic responses. For example, consuming sugar or starch causes greater increases in blood sugar than consuming fat or protein. However, as the OGTT shows, it is not the increase in blood sugar after a meal that matters to cardiometabolic health but the decrease over time. 

Stated simply, consuming dietary sugar increases everyone’s blood sugar — but not everyone’s blood sugar returns to ‘normal’ after a meal (e.g., diabetics). Thus, the diet-induced increase in blood sugar is irrelevant to cardiometabolic health because it is not the ‘difference that makes a difference’. What matters are the metabolic differences that cause blood sugar to decrease — or not — after a meal.

Yet most importantly, as a recent “intensive food-as-medicine program” showed, altering your diet has little effect on cardiometabolic health over time, whereas adequate physical activity “obliterates the deleterious effects of a high-caloric intake”. This explains why muscular athletes can consume massive amounts of calories, ‘carbs’, and ‘ultra-processed’ foods yet remain lean and healthy.  

In sum, differences in metabolism — not diet — cause differences in cardiometabolic health.

‘Differences that Make a Difference’ in Obesity and Metabolic Strength

If people perform hard physical labor, they will consume more food, water, and oxygen than if they sat quietly in an office. Therefore, increased physical activity causes increases in metabolism that — in turn — cause increases in consumption (eating, drinking, and breathing). Therefore, if you ‘burn’ more calories through physical activity, you increase your metabolic strength, consume more calories, and maintain your weight. This fact explains why exercise rarely leads to weight-loss but is essential in health and preventing weight gain. 

Conversely, when people reduce their physical activity ‘too much’ (below their ‘metabolic tipping point’), they weaken their metabolism. This causes them to consume more calories than they burn. In time, this leads to ‘acquired’ obesity and cardiometabolic diseases — independent of diet. In other words, a minimum amount of physical activity is needed for health, and individuals with extremely low levels will, over time, become obese, diabetic, or both — regardless of the foods and beverages they consume.  

Importantly, if a woman’s physical activity is too low, her metabolism will be too weak to ‘handle’ pregnancy and she will consume too many calories. As a result, her children will be born fatter and with weaker metabolisms. In other words, they ‘inherit’ a life-long predisposition to obesity and cardiometabolic diseases. [Note: the non-genetic process of inheritance by which a mother’s prenatal metabolism irreversibly alters her descendants’ metabolism is known as a ‘maternal-effect’]. 

Consequently, the fact that women ’move less’ than they did five decades ago explains the recent rise in ‘inherited’ (childhood) obesity and adolescent T2DM. For example, from 1965 to 2010, the time women spent doing housework decreased by ~2 hours per day while sedentary time increased by 1 hour/day. This reduced the number of calories burned by ~250/day and doubled the amount of time spent sitting. By 2020, women spent more time sitting in front of the TV and using social media than cooking, cleaning, childcare, exercise, and laundry combined. As a result, their metabolisms became weaker — and because metabolic strength is essential for a healthy pregnancy, the decline produced successive generations of obese children with weak metabolisms.  

Moreover, because all mammals share the metabolic pathways of pregnancy, my work suggests that ‘maternal-effects’ caused the parallel epidemics of obesity and cardiometabolic diseases in horses, humans, dogs, cats, lab, and zoo animals.   

Conclusion

Consensus in academic research is rarely a statement about evidence. More often, it is an exercise in groupthink in which the status quo — right or wrong — is made explicit. Thus, progress needs heretics who are willing and able to challenge the consensus. Accordingly, I presented the heretical idea that humans have always consumed highly palatable, processed foods and beverages without increases in obesity or cardiometabolic diseases. Moreover, ‘acquired’ and ‘inherited’ differences in metabolism — not diet — cause obesity and poor metabolic health. Thus, the ‘diet-centric’ consensus linking calories, ‘carbs’, meat, milk, sugar, salt, fat, cholesterol, and ‘ultra-processing’ to death and disease is not only simplistic, but sterile and unscientific.

Nevertheless, given that science progresses ‘funeral by funeral’ and that food-based fears generate profitable marketing campaigns (e.g., low-fat and no ‘added’ sugars) and billions of dollars to fund academic research, ‘Diet-centrism’ will be the dominant paradigm in nutrition ‘science’ for the foreseeable future. Bon appétit.