By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com,

The cost of transporting U.S. crude from the Gulf Coast to Europe has been increasingly determining the discount at which the U.S. benchmark WTI trades relative to the North Sea crude benchmark Brent, according to estimates by Argus.

So far in September, the cost of shipping a U.S. crude cargo from the Gulf Coast to Europe has been nearly the same as the Brent-WTI spread.

This month, a cargo of 700,000 barrels of WTI crude has cost $2.33 per barrel on average to transport from the U.S. Gulf Coast to Europe. This has been only a penny away from the average premium at which the second-month Brent futures contract on the ICE has traded over the NYMEX front-month WTI futures contract, Argus has estimated.  

The Brent benchmark has seen downward pressure since WTI crude was included on June 1 in the Brent crude basket that underlies the world’s most traded benchmark contract.

WTI Midland became the first non-European grade included in the basket, highlighting the change that the U.S. shale revolution brought about for the global oil market.

After WTI Midland joined the Brent benchmark, Brent has seen downward pressure because WTI shipments to Europe are much higher than the combined loadings of the other crudes underpinning the North Sea benchmark, according to Argus.

Before WTI Midland was included in the Brent assessment, the underlying crudes in the benchmark were the local North Sea grades Brent, Forties, Oseberg, Ekofisk, and Troll.

Since WTI Midland was included in the Dated Brent assessment, analysts at Vortexa have observed a new trading pattern in U.S. crude exports to Europe.

Vortexa has observed “a significant increase in crude exports, especially to Europe, in the second half of the month compared to the first half of the month,” Rohit Rathod, Senior Oil Market Analyst at Vortexa, wrote in a note earlier this month.

“A potential reason is that the WTI trading window rolls into the next trading window around the 20th of each month, while the expiry of the Brent contract happens towards the end of the month,” Rathod added.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Hundreds of Nigerian midwives working for Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) have been suspected of gaining their medical qualifications by fraudulently having others take their exams for them in their home country, and dozens remain under investigation.

In a press release published on Wednesday, the U.K.’s Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) explained it had received reports back in May this year of “unusual data” relating to computer-based tests at the Yunnik Technologies Test Centre in Ibadan, Nigeria.

It added that, following an investigation, it now believes “there is evidence of widespread fraud at the Yunnik site.”

Foreign nurses who wish to join the NMC register and work in healthcare in Britain are required to undergo several assessments to prove their competency, one of which includes a computer-based test (CBT).

The healthcare regulator initially raised doubts over the legitimacy of test results pertaining to 515 Nigerian nurses and midwives currently practicing in the U.K. and deemed their results invalid.

This list has since been narrowed down to 48 individuals the NMC believes are “likely” to be fraudulent applicants, although all who took the exam at the test center will be required to retake it.

“We suspect some people fraudulently obtained their CBT, probably by use of a proxy tester, where someone takes the test on behalf of someone else. Overall, this means we cannot have confidence in any CBT result from this test center and we’re treating all CBTs obtained at Yunnik as invalid,” the NMC said in a statement.

A further 669 nurses and midwives who have applied to work in Britain but are not yet employed are also understood to have fraudulently passed the exam.

“We’ve paused their applications,” the NMC confirmed. “We’re writing to these applicants to ask them to retake the test, and to request more information that we’ll use to make a final decision about their application.”

However, despite the investigations into the fraudulent applicants, those already employed will still be allowed to work in their current roles during the process, a decision that has been slammed by critics as a potential threat to the safety of patients.

“Nobody wants to see individuals who may be innocent automatically penalized, but the nursing regulator has a duty to protect patients, and the sensibilities of those whose qualifications are in doubt must come second to this duty,” Prof. Len Shackleton, an editorial and research fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs told MailOnline.

“We understand this continues to be a distressing time for people facing uncertainty about their application or place on our register. We’re committed to managing these concerns in the safest and fairest way we can. It’s been essential to look carefully at all the data and other information presented to us before deciding on the right and proportionate approach for everyone,” said Andrea Sutcliffe, NMC Chief Executive and Registrar.

“Internationally educated nurses and midwives make an incredibly important contribution to our health and social care system. Our paramount concern remains to protect the public by maintaining the integrity of the register for nursing and midwifery professionals practicing in the U.K. That’s why we’ve responded to this situation with such painstaking care and consideration,” she added.

Nigerian-trained healthcare professionals comprise the third-largest foreign contingent in NHS staff in Britain, with 10,639 trained nurses and midwives practicing across the country. However, their recruitment is controversial with the African nation declared a “red list” country for healthcare recruitment over fears of a brain-drain of educated individuals.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

The India-Middle East-Europe transportation corridor may be the talk of the town, but it will likely go the way of the last three Asia-to-Europe connectivity projects touted by the west – to the dustbin. Here’s why.

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) is a massive public diplomacy op launched at the recent G20 summit in New Delhi, complete with a memorandum of understanding signed on 9 September. 

Players include the US, India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the EU, with a special role for the latter’s top three powers Germany, France, and Italy. It’s a multimodal railway project, coupled with trans-shipments and with ancillary digital and electricity roads extending to Jordan and Israel. 

If this walks and talks like the collective west’s very late response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched 10 years ago and celebrating a Belt and Road Forum in Beijing next month, that’s because it is. And yes, it is, above all, yet another American project to bypass China, to be claimed for crude electoral purposes as a meager foreign policy “success.”  

No one among the Global Majority remembers that the Americans came up with their own Silk Road plan way back in 2010. The concept came from the State Department’s Kurt Campbell and was sold by then-Secretary Hillary Clinton as her idea. History is implacable, it came down to nought.  

And no one among the Global Majority remembers the New Silk Road plan peddled by Poland, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Georgia in the early 2010s, complete with four troublesome trans-shipments in the Black Sea and the Caspian. History is implacable, this too came down to nought.   

In fact, very few among the Global Majority remember the $40 trillion US-sponsored Build Back Better World (BBBW, or B3W) global plan rolled out with great fanfare just two summers ago, focusing on “climate, health and health security, digital technology, and gender equity and equality.” 

A year later, at a G7 meeting, B3W had already shrunk to a $600 billion infrastructure-and-investment project. Of course, nothing was built. History really is implacable, it came down to nought. 

The same fate awaits IMEC, for a number of very specific reasons.

Map of The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC)

Pivoting to a black void 

The whole IMEC rationale rests on what writer and former Ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar deliciously described as “conjuring up the Abraham Accords by the incantation of a Saudi-Israeli tango.”

This tango is Dead On Arrival; even the ghost of Piazzolla can’t revive it. For starters, one of the principals – Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman – has made it clear that Riyadh’s priorities are a new, energized Chinese-brokered relationship with Iran), with Turkey, and with Syria after its return to the Arab League. 

Moreover, both Riyadh and its Emirati IMEC partner share immense trade, commerce, and energy interests with China, so they’re not going to do anything to upset Beijing.

At face value, IMEC proposes a joint drive by G7 and BRICS 11 nations. That’s the western method of seducing eternally-hedging India under Modi and US-allied Saudi Arabia and the UAE to its agenda. 

Its real intention, however, is not only to undermine BRI, but also the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INTSC), in which India is a major player alongside Russia and Iran.  

The game is quite crude and really quite obvious: a transportation corridor conceived to bypass the top three vectors of real Eurasia integration – and BRICS members China, Russia, and Iran – by dangling an enticing Divide and Rule carrot that promises Things That Cannot Be Delivered. 

The American neoliberal obsession at this stage of the New Great Game is, as always, all about Israel. Their goal is to make Haifa port viable and turn it into a key transportation hub between West Asia and Europe. Everything else is subordinated to this Israeli imperative. 

IMEC, in principle, will transit across West Asia to link India to Eastern and Western Europe – selling the fiction that India is a Global Pivot state and a Convergence of Civilizations. 

Nonsense. While India’s great dream is to become a pivot state, its best shot would be via the already up-and-running INTSC, which could open markets to New Delhi from Central Asia to the Caucasus. Otherwise, as a Global Pivot state, Russia is way ahead of India diplomatically, and China is way ahead in trade and connectivity. 

Comparisons between IMEC and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) are futile.

IMEC is a joke compared to this BRI flagship project: the $57.7 billion plan to build a railway over 3,000 km long linking Kashgar in Xinjiang to Gwadar in the Arabian Sea, which will connect to other overland BRI corridors heading toward Iran and Turkey. 

This is a matter of national security for China. So bets can be made that the leadership in Beijing will have some discreet and serious conversations with the current fifth-columnists in power in Islamabad, before or during the Belt and Road Forum, to remind them of the relevant geostrategic, geoeconomic, and investment Facts.

So, what’s left for Indian trade in all of this? Not much. They already use the Suez Canal, a direct, tested route. There’s no incentive to even start contemplating being stuck in black voids across the vast desert expanses surrounding the Persian Gulf. 

One glaring problem, for example, is that almost 1,100 km of tracks are “missing” from the railway from Fujairah in the UAE to Haifa, 745 km is “missing” from Jebel Ali in Dubai to Haifa, and 630 km is “missing” from the railway from Abu Dhabi to Haifa. 

When all the missing links are added up, there’s over 3,000 km of railway still to be built. The Chinese, of course, can do this for breakfast and on a dime, but they are not part of this game. And there’s no evidence the IMEC gang plans to invite them. 

All eyes on Syunik 

In the War of Transportation Corridors charted in detail for The Cradle in June 2022, it becomes clear that intentions rarely meet reality. These grand projects are all about logistics, logistics, logistics – of course, intertwined with the three other key pillars: energy and energy resources, labor and manufacturing, and market/trade rules. 

Let’s examine a Central Asian example. Russia and three Central Asian “stans” – Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan – are launching a multimodal Southern Transportation Corridor which will bypass Kazakhstan. 

Why? After all, Kazakhstan, alongside Russia, is a key member of both the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). 

The reason is because this new corridor solves two key problems for Russia that arose with the west’s sanctions hysteria. It bypasses the Kazakh border, where everything going to Russia is scrutinized in excruciating detail. And a significant part of the cargo may now be transferred to the Russian port of Astrakhan in the Caspian. 

So Astana, which under western pressure has played a risky hedging game on Russia, may end up losing the status of a full-fledged transport hub in Central Asia and the Caspian Sea region. Kazakhstan is also part of BRI; the Chinese are already very much interested in the potential of this new corridor.    

In the Caucasus, the story is even more complex, and once again, it’s all about Divide and Rule. 

Two months ago, Russia, Iran, and Azerbaijan committed to building a single railway from Iran and its ports in the Persian Gulf through Azerbaijan, to be linked to the Russian-Eastern Europe railway system. 

This is a railway project on the scale of the Trans-Siberian – to connect Eastern Europe with Eastern Africa and South Asia, bypassing the Suez Canal and European ports. The INSTC on steroids, in fact. 

Guess what happened next? A provocation in Nagorno-Karabakh, with the deadly potential of involving not only Armenia and Azerbaijan but also Iran and Turkey. 

Tehran has been crystal clear on its red lines: it will never allow a defeat of Armenia, with direct participation from Turkiye, which fully supports Azerbaijan.

Add to the incendiary mix are joint military exercises with the US in Armenia – which happens to be a member of the Russian-led CSTO – cast, for public consumption, as one of those seemingly innocent “partnership” NATO programs. 

This all spells out an IMEC subplot bound to undermine INTSC. Both Russia and Iran are fully aware of the former’s endemic weaknesses: political trouble between several participants, those “missing links” of track, and all important infrastructure still to be built. 

Turkish Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for his part, will never give up the Zangezur corridor across Syunik, the south Armenian province, which was envisaged by the 2020 armistice, linking Azerbaijan to Turkey via the Azeri enclave of Nakhitchevan – that will run through Armenian territory.

Baku did threaten to attack southern Armenia if the Zangezur corridor was not facilitated by Yerevan. So Syunik is the next big unresolved deal in this riddle. Tehran, it must be noted, will go no holds barred to prevent a Turkish-Israeli-NATO corridor cutting Iran off from Armenia, Georgia, the Black Sea, and Russia. That would be the reality if this NATO-tinted coalition grabs Syunik. 

Today, Erdogan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev meet in the Nakhchivan enclave between Turkiye, Armenia, and Iran to start a gas pipeline and open a military production complex.   

The Sultan knows that Zangezur may finally allow Turkiye to be linked to China via a corridor that will transit the Turkic world, in Azerbaijan and the Caspian. This would also allow the collective west to go even bolder on Divide and Rule against Russia and Iran. 

Is the IMEC another far-fetched western fantasy? The place to watch is Syunik.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

A new group formed to rally GOP support for Ukraine released an ad this weekend that said US spending on the war in Ukraine is good for the US because it “weakens” Russia.

The ad was made by Republicans for Ukraine, a campaign launched by Defending Democracy Together, an organization led by neoconservative Bill Kristol. The effort comes as support for arming Ukraine is waning among GOP voters, with a recent CNN poll finding 71% of Republicans were against Congress authorizing more Ukraine aid.

This ad will air on the Sunday shows tomorrow in DC.@GOP4Ukraine pic.twitter.com/5C3KWBarAg

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) September 23, 2023

“When America arms Ukraine, we get a lot for a little. Putin is an enemy of America. We’ve used 5% of our defense budget to arm Ukraine, and with it, they’ve destroyed 50% of Putin’s Army,” the ad says.

The ad is blunt and does not attempt to frame US support for Ukraine as a fight for democracy as the Biden administration does, and claims hurting Russia will also hurt China.

“The more Ukraine weakens Russia, the more it also weakens Russia’s closest ally China. America needs to stand strong against our enemies, that’s why Republicans in Congress must continue to support Ukraine,” the ad says.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin used similar language in the early days of the war, saying one of the US goals in Ukraine was to “weaken Russia,” leaving no doubt the conflict is a proxy war.

Bill Kristol — arguably the neocon who has lied most pathologically and compulsively over the last 3 decades, and who has the greatest amount of innocent blood on his hand — is now producing propaganda for Biden’s war, a war policy that only US liberals overwhelmingly support: https://t.co/Tipu2afIjq

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 24, 2023

Hawks in Congress have adopted similar talking points to justify more spending on the Ukraine war. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) recently said the US was getting its “money’s worth” in Ukraine because Russia is taking losses and no Americans are dying.

The argument shows a lack of concern for Ukrainian lives.

‘Woke’ toymaker Lego has discontinued its sustainability effort to manufacture bricks made from recycled plastic. This decision came after discovering recycled plastic was actually contributing to higher carbon emissions, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

Niels Christiansen, chief executive of Lego, told FT that utilizing recycled polyethylene terephthalate (RPET) for brickmaking would have led to increased carbon emissions over the product’s lifetime. He said the reason was primarily due to the need for new machines. 

“In the early days, the belief was that it was easier to find this magic material or this new material” that would solve the sustainability issue, Christiansen said, but “that doesn’t seem to be there. We tested hundreds and hundreds of materials. It’s just not been possible to find a material like that.”

In the summer of 2021, Lego first unveiled a sustainable prototype brick made from recycled plastic sourced from US suppliers. 

“We are super excited about this breakthrough. The biggest challenge on our sustainability journey is rethinking and innovating new materials that are as durable, strong and high quality as our existing bricks – and fit with LEGO elements made over the past 60 years. With this prototype we’re able to showcase the progress we’re making,” Vice President of Environmental Responsibility at Lego Tim Brooks said in 2021.

FT pointed out, “Lego has instead decided to try to improve the carbon footprint over time of oil-based ABS, which currently needs about 2kg of petroleum to make 1kg of plastic.” 

Lego’s sustainability goal to eliminate all petroleum-based plastics from its bricks by 2030 has hit a roadblock. It raises questions about whether the toymaker knew that its ESG objectives were unattainable from the start. 

Authored by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Findings in a new study challenge the mainstream narrative that COVID-19 vaccinations prevent long COVID. The study found that while previous infections reduce the risk of long COVID by 86 percent, vaccination status prior to COVID infection is irrelevant to a person’s risk of developing long COVID.

“The notion had been that both previous infection as well as vaccination reduce the chances of subsequent long COVID should you become infected,” Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told The Epoch Times.

These investigators have poured “cool water” on that concept, he continued.

Researchers from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, an over-500-year-old research university in Germany, found that people with the highest risk of long COVID or post-COVID condition, as the authors wrote, were unvaccinated people infected with the Wuhan variant, followed by unvaccinated and vaccinated participants infected with the alpha variant.

While not explicitly discussed in the study, the study’s diagram and supplementary tables showed that with the exception of infection with the Wuhan variant, unvaccinated people tend to have a slightly lower risk of long COVID than their vaccinated counterparts.

Furthermore, unvaccinated people infected with the omicron variant had the lowest risk of long COVID.

Participants self-reported if they tested positive for COVID-19 and the symptoms they experienced afterward.

The study authors asked for symptoms present from the four- to 12-week post-infection window and for symptoms that persisted after the 12th week. Symptoms that did not persist beyond that were not deemed as long COVID.

Depending on the date of infection, the authors categorized the participant as being infected by the dominant variant at the time.

“We categorized infections before January 1, 2021 as caused by the Wildtype (Wuhan) variant, infections between January 1, 2021 and June 30, 2021 as caused by the Alpha variant, infections between July 1, 2021 and December 20, 2021 as caused by the Delta variant, and infections from December 21, 2021 as caused by the Omicron variant,” the authors wrote.

Of all the surveyed people, around 17,000 had at least one COVID-19 infection, with around 2,800 reporting long-COVID symptoms.

None of the participants in the study was physically examined nor did they present lab tests on their health.

Doctors are engaged in a debate over the study’s findings and its methodology.

Many were concerned that the questionnaire was too subjective. Like many large population-based studies, the findings are provocative, “but they’re often not definitive. You have to do other follow-up studies, many of which are much smaller but much more precise, and they eliminate a lot of the uncertainty,” Dr. Schaffner said.

Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine, argued that the study’s participant is “so heterogeneous” and that he is not sure what to conclude from the study.

“There is a post-COVID symptomatology … But I don’t think we understand the biological basis; we can’t define it very clearly. So to make a statement that it was more or less common after certain variants or vaccines is pretty difficult,” Dr. Meissner said.

Retired associate professor of Brown University Dr. Andrew Bostom agreed that the long-COVID condition is poorly defined in the literature, so it is hard to conclude if the symptoms are long COVID or if it is something else entirely.

Apart from the loss of smell and taste, all other symptoms that characterize the long-COVID condition can manifest through psychosomatic triggers, Dr. Bostom said.

The study did not discuss if vaccinations put people at risk of long COVID. Its graph showed that the vaccinated cohort tended to have a slightly higher risk of long COVID than the unvaccinated, when they were infected by the same variant.

Dr. Varon interpreted this to suggest that vaccinations may put people at a greater risk of long COVID, which is what he has been seeing in his clinic.

“What I’m seeing is that the higher the number of boosters that you have, the more chances … you’re going to have long haul syndrome,” he said, adding that the majority of his long-haul patients are those who took four or more doses of the vaccine rather than those who took up to three doses or were unvaccinated.

Dr. Varon also found that the study’s findings on the most prevalent symptoms very accurately mirror what he sees in his clinic, with fatigue and cognitive impairment being the most common symptoms among his patients.

Psychiatrist Dr. Adonis Sfera at Patton State Hospital agreed that the study’s symptoms are mostly representative of what he sees in his clinic, though the primary symptoms are fatigue and shortness of breath.

He also agreed with the notion that more vaccinations may put people at risk of long-haul symptoms since the vaccinations would induce the production of more spike proteins, which can cause organ damage and symptoms.

“[The paper] helps perpetuate the narrative that … it doesn’t make a difference whether or not [someone] got the vaccine; it’s all about whether or not they got infected and which variant they got,” Mr. Marsland said.

Long COVID and vaccine injury can share very similar symptoms, but detailed patient records would show that the symptoms appeared after different exposures.

Mr. Marsland was concerned that the study dismisses the cumulative effects the vaccines may have on patients, which contradicts what he sees in his clinic.

Some of his patients developed mild symptoms after their first or second shot, but they did not link it temporally to the vaccines until “they got the booster or a second booster” and their symptoms became severe, he said.

By Benjamin Picton, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank

Comprehensive, But Not Strategic

Equities finished last week lower again as the ‘higher for longer’ narrative continues to be priced in by markets. This despite the Bank of Japan turning the dial a little back towards the dovish side as they left official rates unchanged and dissembled over Governor Ueda’s comments a week or two ago that there may be sufficient evidence of enduring inflation to start lifting rates before the end of the year. Nevertheless, US 10y yields closed the week 10bps higher at 4.43% after briefly touching 4.50% earlier on Friday (the highest since 2007), and crude oil was (mercifully) a little lower, but not by much.

Shifting to geopolitics, we have seen a number of announcements recently of countries entering into ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’. The United States and Vietnam elevated their relationship to a CSP in early September, as did Australia and the Philippines. Back in July, China raised alarm in the Asia-Pacific by entering into a CSP with the Solomon Islands and they have done so again by entering into a similar agreement with Timor-Leste over the weekend.

Part of the agreement with Timor-Leste involves the latter’s recognition of the One China Principle, which carries with it a declaration by Timor-Leste that Taiwan is an “inalienable part of China’s territory and [we] oppose any forms of ‘Taiwan Independence’”. The quid pro quo here is that Timor-Leste gets to participate in the largesse promised by Xi Xinping’s Belt and Road initiative, and perhaps enjoy the Schadenfreude of watching the foreign affairs and defence establishment in Canberra squirm about as China places itself firmly between US naval bases in Guam, Hawaii and the Marshall Islands and Australia’s northern approaches.

So, while the world is quite understandably fixated on the hot war raging in Eastern Europe, the Cold War in the Asia Pacific is well and truly underway, with the major belligerents jockeying for the best strategic positioning. It is in the Asia Pacific where Thucydides Trap will actually play out, or not. Taiwan is undoubtedly the hair trigger, so overt picking of sides on the Taiwan question is a very big deal in the politics of the region.

The United States has been busy trying to ensure that small countries pick their side, so the G7 belatedly stitched together the B3W initiative back in 2021 as a challenger to Belt and Road. Unfortunately, much has happened since that time and the deficit-wracked budgets of the USA and her (mostly) European allies that make up the G7 have so far not seen fit to provide the promised $600bn of funding to seed infrastructure investments in the developing world.

A further strategic initiative was announced on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last  week. The ‘Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation’ emphasizes better economic integration for countries along the Atlantic coastline, and perhaps provides a firewall of sorts to the series of coups moving through central Africa towards the Atlantic coast. Crucially, the agreement includes Brazil, a BRICS+ nation that, like India, is becoming more important in global affairs and has to-date been happy to walk on both sides of the street on the USA/China rivalry.

India itself has been a focus of diplomatic overtures from the G7, but tensions have flared after the Canadian government accused India of assassinating a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia. This episode undoubtedly creates new headaches for US foreign policy objectives. Former US Defence Department official Michael Rubin pithily described it as “an ant picking a fight with an elephant.”

So, the overall picture is of a US strategic apparatus spread thin and playing whack-a-mole with geopolitical flare-ups that its allies are not much help in solving. While the Russia-Ukraine conflict and tensions in the Atlantic provide a distraction for policymakers, China continues to build relationships in the Asia Pacific and Middle East, where fellow BRICS+ nation Saudi Arabia is playing a similar game to Brazil. Europe’s capacity to assist is severely hamstrung by its own economic stagnation (witness the poor PMIs released last week) and modest hard power means. In such an environment, US foreign policy has by necessity become comprehensive, but not strategic.

Tucker Carlson gave quite the sermon last Thursday as the key note speaker at a gala fundraiser thrown by the Center for Christian Virtue at the Cleveland Marriott.

In it, the former Fox News host whose audience just went vertical on “X” railed against abortion, referring to it as ‘human sacrifice’ – a notion which Tucker said is antithetical to the biological drive to continue the human race, and which therefore must have been planted in people’s heads by ‘outside forces.’

“It’s not a natural human function to want to kill your own children,” said Carlson. “Actually that’s an idea an Impulse that was introduced. Outside forces are acting on people at all times throughout history, in every culture on the planet, to convince people that if they sacrifice their children they will be happy and safe – and that’s exactly what this is,” said Carlson.

One can’t help but conclude that Carlson’s comments – and those from Ron Paul (from a different angle) – are a direct pushback to a notion floated by former President Donald Trump that Republicans should soften their stance on abortion – perhaps agreeing on a certain number of months during which killing an unborn child is acceptable.

Carlson starts out lamenting the current state of political discourse vs. those of past decades.

“For most of that time, the debates that we had in the political sphere were over competing visions for how to improve people’s lives,” he said, using the example of minimum wage – and how both Republicans and Democrats were ” at least pretending to try to improve the lives of the people who voted for them.”

But now, the two top ballot initiatives now encourage actions Carlson sees as fundamentally destructive: advocating for abortion and drug use.

“When you wind up in an election with the two top ballot initiatives are one encouraging people to kill their own kids and two encourage their kids to do drugs, who’s benefiting here?” asked Carlson, who argued that these issues are of no benefit to society – and instead erode its very foundation.

Abortion

Carlson then segues into abortion, arguing that the left is promoting anti-family values, when “the point of life is to have children and to watch them have grandchildren.”

“Anyone telling you don’t have children, kill your children, is not your friend, is your enemy,” he continued, adding that the current debate about abortion transcends politics; it is a spiritual battle. No longer confined to discussions about unwanted pregnancies resulting from unfortunate circumstances, the contemporary narrative, according to Carlson, posits that the left has championed abortion as a pathway to joy in itself.

Carlson also took a shot at the Episcopal Church, which he ‘grew up’ in, but which “crumbled around us and became this very aggressively Pagan institution.”

Watch:

Abortion has gone from being tolerated to celebrated. What kind of sick people would tell you that killing your baby is a pathway to joy? pic.twitter.com/ohaYtnITPr

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) September 25, 2023