Authored by ‘El Gato Malo’ via The Brownstone Institute,

Forest fires are big, mediagenic events. The pictures are dramatic. The smoke they produce can spread for hundreds, even thousands of miles and can make life downwind unpleasant, even deadly for weeks on end.

They are also widely misunderstood and being used to make outlandish claims in favor of “climate policy” that has nothing whatsoever to do with the matter at hand. As ever, data may be used to illuminate or to obfuscate, and complete pictures and even modicums of perspective are conspicuously absent.

The politicization of this issue has become intense, and as we shall see, there are, in fact, politics at play, but they are not the politics being so widely and recklessly espoused.

Let’s look:

Our friends at Bloomberg are telling us this story, which is a wonderful piece of claims embedding (a common and highly effective propagandistic practice), whereby an article ostensibly about one thing embeds claims about another thing as though they were fact and uses them as a predicate for the other argument.

In this case, we have an article ostensibly about insurers fleeing California that blames this upon an “inability to react to and price in climate change,” which embeds the presumption that 1. climate change is happening and that 2. this change is the driver of more forest fires. It then goes on to presume that this rise in fires is somehow related to “increased instances of extreme weather.”

Bloomberg has been going on and on about this as insurers stop writing policies in California because risks and claims are way up, and the local regulators are refusing to allow rates to rise to reflect this. This seems like typical California economic denial but with a side order of physics denial as well because the idea that this is somehow climate change-driven (also a tentpole of California policy justification) looks unsupportable as a claim.

Basically, none of this stands up to scrutiny.

This is the chart that gets trotted out over and over to claim that “forest fires are on the rise.”

It’s certainly dramatic. It looks like around 3 million acres jumped to 7 million, but there is a great deal more to the story. Firstly, this does not look like the shape one would see if the issue were “climate.” It’s basically a step function jump in 2000. That would seem more consistent with some more proximate cause.

Secondly, this chart lacks perspective based on its timeframe (sources).

When one zooms out, the picture looks quite different.

We do still see some uptick, but it’s pretty minor in the face of long-term trends. One might also then start to ask some probing questions about the cause of this uptick because there is certainly a case to be made that if it is to be attributed to “global warming,” we’d need to see some warming in the regions purported to be affected, and that appears a very tenuous claim, especially in the timeframes described.

As described here in detail, the US climate network is a mess of data adulteration and even worse data collection. The rural temperature stations have been nearly eliminated, and those that remain have become so urban that the heat island effects of siting are adding several degrees of upward bias in readings in a manner the NOAA is making no effort to control for. 

They have not even done their own site surveys, but as can be seen in the link above, a large-scale and high-quality citizen project (surfacestations.org) did so, and less than 8 percent of USCRN stations meet NOAA siting guidelines. The error bars are biased upward and constitute multiples of the century-scale signal purported to be measured. The data is garbage.

Fortunately, we have the CRN reference network, a set of well-sited, continuous duration stations. This is the best, clearest, cleanest signal we have in US data using actual thermometers.

It’s somewhat limited by the fact that it has only been tracked since 2005, but the outcomes are quite provocative.

We’re coming up on 20 years of zero warming trend.

I shall leave the reader to draw their own conclusions about why this dataset is never discussed by the NOAA or climate activists and why they choose instead to frantically foreground the bad data from the larger legacy networks, despite the fact that it is so conspicuously contradicted by higher quality measurements. But I’m just seeing little to no way to look at the best data we have and claim the US has been warming over the last couple of decades.

The whole move from “global warming” to “climate change” seems a cynical ploy to try to sidestep the real “inconvenient truth”: that the data is stubbornly refusing to conform to the anthropogenic climate change narrative.

Not that it stops them from telling it…

Now, clearly, Canada fires are all the rage right now as they happen to be sending smoke to New York, who (unlike the Mountain West, who has been downwind of California cum Mordor in recent years and is getting positively used to having to deal with this every summer) find such outcomes unusual. Let’s add the Great White North to the mix:

There is really not much discernible trend here (graphically, it gets skewed by the one tall bar in 2021, but consider 2020 before it, and the average to something like 3 million acres).

These fires have been going on for thousands of years and are a healthy, natural, and even vital part of these forest ecosystems. They are literal burn ecologies. Fire is part of their life cycle.

But don’t take my word for it, let’s ask noted climate change deniers The Canadian Forestry Department.

Because this is where we start to get to the crux of the issue and where the blame, especially in California, shifts away from “climate” and back onto “Groovy Gavin’s eco-topia” and its mélange of misbegotten eco-fables (not that he started this trend, he just seems inclined to extend and accelerate it). It’s also worth noting that other states have been considering and adopting policies akin to California, so this policy pratfall is contagious.

The unavoidable baseline fact is this: it is not climate change driving the rise in fires and especially megafires, it’s policy change.

This is an own goal and an avoidable and fixable one.

The key fact here is a simple one: an ounce of prevention is worth a million flambéd acres of cure.

Everyone used to know this. The huge drop in fires in the US came from figuring this out. It’s not an exotic technology nor some obscure practice; it’s what used to be the literal core and basis of sound forestry management.

California and many other forest regions like it are burn ecologies, and poorly conceived policy is turning them into tinderboxes.

The basic ecological process is based, even dependent on fire. Forests overgrow, dry out, burn, and replenish. The trees themselves have adapted to it.

“Giant sequoia cones are serotinous, which means that fire on the forest floor causes them to dry out, open, and release their seeds. This adaptation ensures that the tree times the release of most of its seeds to coincide with fire, which creates ideal conditions for regeneration success.”

And it’s not going to stop by itself. If you want to safely live near these ecosystems, you need to take some action.

What works is thinning forests through logging and small, controlled burns. You need to cut down some of the trees and clear the brush. Doing this leaves more water for the trees that remain, keeps them alive and healthy instead of dead and dried out, and clearing the brush removes the kindling that lets the big fires get going.

This is not some wild, untried idea; it had generations of serious, demonstrable success but was largely terminated and/or banned by changes in budget priorities and eco laws to “save the habitats” of the fluffy-butted warbler or whatever other forest critter seemed in peril by, well, turning their habitat into refined fuel for hellscape-sized megafires.

Perhaps not the greatest trade-off for them…

The Independent Institute has studied this in detail:

Lest one be inclined to assume this is some fringe view, let’s check in with The Nature Conservancy, a group dedicated to protecting natural forests, who has a compelling plan here:

And the plan involves going back to tried and tested forestry policy. California keeps trying to blame these fires on climate and power lines or lightning strikes, but the real issue is simple: tree density is WAY too high for safety, and they are surrounded by piles of forest floor tinder.

So we get dead forests instead of live ones and massive fires instead of little ones.

The results are not exactly subtle, are they?

Aerial view shows the differences in tree mortality after the Bootleg Fire resulting from different types of forest restoration.

The “cause” of the rise in fire is not the proximate one. It’s that the forests are not being managed, and therefore, they are incredibly susceptible to fire. A “cause” will always emerge, but this is a false framing. It’s like pumping a patient full of immune suppressants for no reason and then blaming “flu” for their sudden sickness.

Even all these accusations of arson (some of which are likely true) are only made possible by mismanaged forests. Were they cared for as they were in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, this sort of malicious activity would not be possible in any serious scope or scale. It’s bad forestry policy that has opened them up to attack.

The LA Times knows it.

Even Mother Jones knows it.

Because this is glaringly, ostentatiously obvious and utterly, easily fixable.

There is nothing tricky or controversial here apart from a media and governmental talking point complex that refuses to acknowledge baseline reality.

So yes, this is 100 percent a political issue, but it’s not the one it’s being represented as. This is a policy fail. That which worked was abandoned for that which sounded good to a few eco-rubes, and now we are all paying the price.

Reality is not optional, and ecology denial is a very expensive foible.

It’s time we stopped pretending that there are no trade-offs here and begin (once more) doing the sensible thing.

Consider the alternative:

Reposted from the author’s Substack

After dumping overnight on the latest negative development in what has been a relentless onslaught of bad news for crypto – when South Korean bitcoin lending platforms Delio and Haru announced the temporary suspension of customer withdrawals “in order to safely protect the assets of customers currently in custody” – this morning the crypto space finally got some welcome news when CoinDesk reported that BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, is close to filing an application for a Bitcoin ETF.

According to the report, BlackRock will be using Coinbase Custody for the ETF and the crypto exchange’s spot market data for pricing.

BlackRock began working with Coinbase to make crypto directly available to institutional investors midway through last year.

It wasn’t clear if the ETF will be spot or futures; to date, the Securities and Exchange Commission, led by political activist Gary Gensler whose primary objective is to follow Democrat demand that the US crypto industry be crippled, which oversees ETFs in the U.S., has rejected every application for a spot bitcoin ETF, though it has approved several bitcoin futures ETFs for trading.

The fact that the world’s largest asset manager is again stepping up in the crypto space is a welcome development at a time when the politicized SEC has been weaponized to execute Democrat marching orders to crush the crypto industry in the US (thereby making the future of bitcoin a key issue in the 2024 elections), and comes just one day after the FT reported that in a surprising twist, China appears to also be warming up to crypto after years of crackdowns, and that Hong Kong’s banking regulator is pressuring lenders including HSBC and Standard Chartered to take on crypto exchanges as clients, at a time of unprecedented crackdowns by US regulators on the industry.

After finding a floor of around 22 euros a megawatt-hour at the start of June, European natural gas prices have jumped more than 100%. We have detailed the latest price surge in two pieces, titled “EU NatGas Soars Most In Year As Traders On Edge About ‘Possibility Of Tightening Supplies'” and “EU NatGas Jumps Again, Up 15% As Supply Fears Driven By Extended Outages In Norway.”

On Thursday morning, the month-ahead benchmark contracts skyrocketed as much as 30% to 49 euros. The multi-week rip-your-face-off rally has led to 112% gains. 

The squeeze higher is due to the prospect of tightening supplies with maintenance work continuing at major Norwegian facilities through July. There are also fears that a hot summer could drive up cooling demand, which would increase fuel use. 

James Waddell, head of European gas and global LNG at consultant Energy Aspects Ltd., told Bloomberg that concerns about European LNG supplies and Norwegian outages “have been the physical triggers.” He added:

“But we have to remember that a lot of the market was short going into this month and price rises will have triggered stop- outs, thereby driving the price even higher.”

Bloomberg drove more supply fears for the continent in a note that explained the Dutch government’s plans to “permanently shut down” the Groningen gas field, Europe’s largest, in October, ahead of the winter heating season.

Even though Europe has adequate levels of NatGas storage, the price surge illustrates how fragile the market is to any threat of disruption. 

In Asia, NatGas prices spiked 19% to $11.58 per million British thermal units (MMBtu), the most in six months, according to data from S&P Global Commodity. 

“Asian gas prices have surged amid hot weather and supply outages in Europe, including disruptions in Norway that are expected to last through the middle of next month. That’s pushed up European prices and intensified global competition for cargoes,” Bloomberg said. 

And in the US, despite high production weighing on US benchmark Henry Hub prices for months, forming a floor between the $2 – $3 MMBtu range since February, prices are moving higher to the midpoint of the range as fuel prices in Europe and Asia rise. 

It’s still uncertain whether NatGas has reached a bottom. Though price action in recent weeks certainly looks like it. 

Authored by Charles Lipson via RealClear Wire,

Democracies cannot thrive – and may not survive – when citizens lose confidence in their basic institutions. That is exactly what is happening in America today. This loss of confidence and a bitter ideological divide are our country’s most profound challenges. Those challenges form the essential backdrop for understanding the controversy surrounding Donald Trump’s indictment.

Before turning to the charges facing Trump, consider their larger political setting, which begins with any democratic government’s most fundamental responsibilities: preserving public order, ensuring its citizens’ safety, and applying the law fairly. The institutions charged with those responsibilities are crumbling at the local, state, and federal levels, and millions of voters on both sides of our gaping ideological spectrum know it. Each blames the other and accepts no blame for themselves.

This collapse of public order is painfully obvious in many major cities, where violent crime, massive organized shoplifting, and homeless encampments have become dangerous facts of ordinary life. Law-abiding citizens, the backbone of those cities, have found the quality of their lives declining.

They bear much of the blame themselves. They elected the district attorneys who refuse to prosecute serious crimes and so encourage even more. They elected the mayors and legislators who justify such rampant disorder under the heart-warming name of “social justice.” How do armed robberies, looting, and gang violence qualify as social justice? The same citizens stood silent as police forces were decimated by “defund the police” movements and a torrent of criticism from senior elected officials and political activists.

The results were predictable. The cops hired to “serve and protect” began to retire, without adequate replacements. Who wants that dangerous and thankless job? Many of those who remained on the force concluded that it was smarter and safer to sit in their cars than to pursue criminals. When they know the mayor and city council won’t offer support, why not remain in the squad car, await their pension, and retire early?

There is a national analog to this local disorder: the Biden administration’s stubborn failure to enforce the law on our southern border. Joe Biden and his top aides made a series of deliberate policy choices that opened the border to illegal crossings. Migrants from around the world have taken notice, and taken advantage. Even a determined president would find it difficult to stop this surge, but Biden did something worse. He systematically dismantled virtually all the Trump administration policies designed to stop it and then lied about the consequences. While Kamala Harris fumbles her fruitless search for the “root causes” of migration, her administration has erected a big flashing sign essentially reading, “Welcome, Neighbor. Come on in. We’re not really trying to keep you out.” They mouth the words “don’t come,” but inaction speaks louder than words.

And come they have, individuals from poor countries looking to move up to the First World. Yet the welcome sign is equally attractive to organized criminal gangs looking to tap the market for fentanyl and heroin, child labor, and sex workers. When these illegal immigrants arrive, millions have been released, willy-nilly, into America and told to return in a few years for a court date. Their claims for political asylum will be heard at that distant date and almost always rejected. But why bother to return for the court date at all? You aren’t likely to be caught and, even if you are, you can simply cross the border again. Many illegal migrants have been deported multiple times, a fact we learn only after a few are charged with serious felonies. Besides those who have been “tagged and released” by the border patrol, there are several hundred thousand “gotaways” who were never apprehended at all. They are likely to be the most dangerous kind of migrant – the ones engaged in human trafficking and drug smuggling.

What is the administration’s response to this manifest failure? They deny the obvious, just as “Baghdad Bob” once did for Saddam Hussein, claiming all was well as the bombs fell around him. The Biden team claims, falsely but constantly, that the border is “closed” and “secure.” This is ludicrous.

The administration’s failure and deceit have become obvious as the influx of illegal immigrants spreads out across the country, taxing social services everywhere. Pasadena may not be suffering as much as El Paso, but the entire nation has gradually become a “border county.” Just ask the mayors of deep blue cities like New York and Chicago, which once proudly proclaimed themselves “sanctuary cities.” They made those proclamations only when they thought it was costless. Now that the costs are mounting, the same leaders are squealing and shipping as many migrants as they can to other jurisdictions.

This breakdown of law enforcement at the local and federal levels has been compounded by the politicization and partisan bias of the chief agencies charged with enforcing our national laws: the FBI and the Department of Justice. Their bias, secrecy, and fecklessness have earned the public’s mistrust.

That mistrust, plus the nation’s ideological chasm, form the essential backdrop for Donald Trump’s federal indictment. His supporters say it is unfair. We have a two-tier system of justice, they say, one for Democrats, one for Republicans. His opponents counter that the former president has been credibly charged with a cluster of serious crimes. The tragedy is that both sides are absolutely correct. Very few Americans seem to acknowledge this grim, two-sided truth. It’s far easier to point the finger at the other side and say they are solely responsible.

The charges against Trump suggests the special counsel has ample first-person evidence. And though Trump is presumed innocent until those charges are proved, the indictment makes at least six interrelated charges, some about the retention of classified documents, some about the obstruction of justice. According to the indictment:

• Trump retained documents from his presidency that he had no right to keep.
• Some of those documents remained highly classified; there is no evidence he declassified them as president.
• Trump himself was aware he possessed these still-classified documents.
• He stored these very sensitive documents, mixed with unclassified documents, in unsecured locations, despite detailed federal laws requiring the careful storage of classified materials.
• Although Trump returned some documents after prolonged negotiations with the National Archives, he falsely declared he had returned all the requested documents.
• He ordered an aide, Walt Nauta (who has now been indicted for false statements), to move documents to hide them from Trump’s own attorney so the attorney would sign a document stating that he had searched the remaining documents and that none of those requested remained in Trump’s possession.

How have Trump’s supporters responded? They have spent little time denying the specific charges and more time arguing that the entire justice system is biased. They note, quite accurately, that similar serious charges were waved away when they involved top Democrats. They note that Hillary Clinton illegally stored thousands of documents on a home-brew computer, which may have been accessed by foreign powers, and was never charged. James Comey, who was then-director of the FBI, wrote Hillary’s exoneration before she was even interviewed. They note that Joe Biden’s entire family has been grifting for years, leveraging his public position, and that the investigation has been underway, without result, since shortly after Magna Carta was signed. The IRS officials investigating the family’s potential financial crimes were all fired by order of the DOJ. That, critics say, is exactly what biased law enforcement looks like. And they are right.

The stench covers both sides. The country hungers for leadership that is honest, competent, and determined to enforce the law evenly. That means cleaning the Augean stables at the FBI and Justice Department, and gaining control over the engorged, biased, and largely unaccountable bureaucracies that now rule our daily lives. A candidate who can do that could win the general election and begin restoring social stability to a country that desperately needs it. The question is whether a candidate like that could get past the primaries. After all, those primaries are filled with hordes of party activists whose first order of business is not even-handed justice. It is punishing the other side.

Odey Asset Management (OAM) appears to be swiftly winding down operations after the Financial Times, one week ago, published a #MeToo style hit-piece against its founder Crispin Odey. The allegations led several major banks to cut prime brokerage services. And it even led to the ousting of the billionaire fund manager from his own fund. 

On Thursday, multiple media outlets obtained a letter from OAM partners to clients, informing them OAM is in “advanced discussions” to transfer funds and employees to other asset managers. The partners said the move was subjected to regulator approvals and due diligence. 

“Acting in the best interest of our investors and our staff has continued to be our primary concern over the past few days. We will continue to update you,” the letter, which was obtained by Reuters. 

The letter continued: “We have been, and remain in constructive dialogue with our service providers and key counterparties … It has however become clear that some investment management activities of the partnership are affected by recent events.” 

The London-based investment firm, which up until this month managed $4.3 billion, had its banking relationships with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and JPMorgan Chase & Co. severed days after the FT piece. Then OAM gated the Brook Developed Markets Fund after it faced “redemption requests in excess of ten percent of the net asset value” on Monday.

By Wednesday, UK lawmakers requested answers from Financial Conduct Authority into the fund. 

OAM, like many hedge funds, relies on leverage from prime brokerage service providers to make risky bets. Cutting access to those services and soaring redemptions likely led to its quick demise. 

Even though OAM booted Odey on Saturday, explaining “he will no longer have any economic or personal involvement in the partnership” that appears not to be enough as the letter to clients likely signals the firm’s end.

Last week, Odey told Reuters the FT report was a “rehash of an old article and none of the allegations have been stood up in a courtroom or an investigation.” 

By Irina Slav of Oilprice

Traders are not buying the oil deficit story.

That’s the conclusion that forces itself based on the latest oil and fuel buying and selling developments ahead of the latest OPEC+ meeting.

The price movements that followed that meeting were proof that this attitude was correct.

The initial price jump that every production cut announcement from OPEC+ causes fizzled out less than a day after the announcement.

Over the past six weeks, institutional traders have reduced their positions in crude oil and fuels by 238 million barrels, Reuters’ John Kemp reported earlier this week, which was one of the lowest weekly positions in those contracts since 2013.

These six weeks were marked by some strongly bearish developments reinforcing the sentiment, such as weaker than expected Chinese economic index readings and the U.S. debt ceiling negotiations.

It appears that traders have focused entirely on those economic index readings instead of the fact that Chinese crude oil demand hit a record in April despite refineries shutting down for seasonal maintenance.

They also did not really acknowledge U.S. legislators’ success in passing the debt ceiling bill that averted a federal debt default, even though the uncertainty surrounding the issue was a major driver for bullish behavior on the oil market.

Perhaps this has something to do with news about a recession in the U.S. manufacturing and freight transport sectors, which has hurt oil consumption in these industries. It seems that institutional oil traders have been focusing almost exclusively on consumption lately.

If analysts, who almost invariably predict much higher oil prices for the second half of the year, are right, this could boomerang. But if traders’ fears of a recession materialize, oil prices will be going nowhere near $100. In fact, prices might even fall further.

This would be good news for the White House: it has set a range of $67 to $72 per barrel to refill the strategic petroleum reserve.

The twist is that the moment the Department of Energy starts buying oil for the SPR, prices will jump.

It will not be good news for OPEC, however. The cartel cannot keep cutting deeper and deeper – at some point, this will start playing to the advantage of U.S. shale. In fact, according to some, it already is, with analysts predicting higher U.S. exports as Saudi Arabia trims production by another 1 million bpd.

Meanwhile, Germany has officially fallen into recession, which has likely reinforced expectations of a faster slowdown elsewhere as well, which has dampened appetite for oil, inelastic or not. And since the non-news of the German recession broke after months of upbeat messaging that the worst was over and the EU’s largest economy was in fact, recovering, hedge funds and other institutional traders have every reason to play it safe.

The U.S. is not out of the woods yet, either.

Per Reuters’ Kemp, “Only the residual strength of service sector spending has so far prevented the “industrial recession” becoming a whole-economy recession.”

That wouldn’t be a good sign for oil demand in the world’s largest consumer, and oil traders appear to be acting in anticipation of that recession.

Importantly, they are acting in this way regardless of OPEC+ actions aimed at curbing supply in a way that should return the market to balance.

Authored by Andrea Togni via The Mises Institute,

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which became effective in 2016, is one of the most detailed legislative schemes in the field of data protection. This article discusses two libertarian-minded objections to its approach. First, I argue that the notion of “right” adopted in the GDPR is flawed. Second, it shows that the GDPR doesn’t protect individuals from data-hungry governments and corporations. In the end, data protection legislation makes people strong in theory but weak in practice, while making powerful private and public entities weak in theory but strong in practice.

A Flawed Notion of “Right”

The GDPR seeks to protect fundamental individual rights relating to the collection and processing of personal data. These include the right to access, the right to rectification, the right to erasure, the right to be forgotten, the right to restriction of processing, the right to data portability, the right to object, and the right to not be subjected to automated decisions.

Libertarian reductionism holds that human rights are natural rights and that natural rights are property rights. The nonaggression principle states that any initiation of violence, that is, any aggression against property, is illegitimate. However, some of the fundamental rights protected by the GDPR violate the nonaggression principle. For example, the right to be forgotten can be invoked by an individual to force tech companies like search engine providers to obscure results about her. The GDPR seems to adopt the view that data subjects own their personal data, but this is debatable.

For example, a user that interacts with Google’s hardware and software, thus producing personal data, is not the only owner of this data because she generated it using Google’s infrastructure. The same goes for any personal data that is produced by interacting with other people, both online and in person. Moreover, when Google shows publicly available information in its search results, it is hardly violating anyone’s property rights.

From a libertarian perspective, it is a big stretch to state that the law should give users the “right” to force companies to delete data about them because this implies that these companies are not free to use their property (their hardware and software) and public information as they wish. Similar objections can be levied against other “rights” as well. The fact that at least some of the “fundamental rights” protected by the GDPR cannot be reduced to property rights is highly problematic: in the absence of well-defined property rights, the GDPR can be used to legalize aggression against persons and entities.

The Practical Ineffectiveness of the GDPR

The GDPR aims at protecting individuals from the exploitation of personal data, but as is often the case with state regulation, it puts individuals at danger and favors big companies and governments.

First, the GDPR understands privacy as a fundamental right, but in most cases, it has to be invoked by individuals in order to be enforced. For example, in the case of the automated processing of data, users are granted the right to ask for human intervention before a decision is taken. Given that the vast majority of people do not have the time, the resources, and the ability to actively engage with the tens or hundreds of private and public entities that handle their data, this amounts to giving controllers and processors carte blanche with regard to data processing in general and automated processing in particular.

Second, the GDPR does little to nothing against the abuse of power that may come from the state. Users’ privacy rights can be suspended or restricted every time there is some kind of public security issue or some kind of legitimate interest. For example, recital nineteen of the GDPR states,

This Regulation should provide for the possibility for Member States under specific conditions to restrict by law certain obligations and rights when such a restriction constitutes a necessary and proportionate measure in a democratic society to safeguard specific important interests including public security and the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offenses or the execution of criminal penalties, including the safeguarding against and the prevention of threats to public security. This is relevant for instance in the framework of anti–money laundering or the activities of forensic laboratories.

These kinds of clauses sound appealing, but they are full of empty words (“democracy,” “important interests,” “public security,” and the like) that are found multiple times in the GDPR. On the one hand, public institutions are supposed to protect individuals’ privacy rights; on the other hand, public institutions can exempt themselves from the obligations laid down in the GDPR because of “national security.” It is a bit ironic that individuals are attributed to so many “rights” that governments and companies are legally authorized to override them in a lot of different ways. Regulators are not protecting data when they make room for exceptions and give themselves and private companies the green light to ignore individuals’ privacy: they’re just making these “exceptions” legal.

Third, the GDPR is very clear in stating that the most important duty of controllers, processors, data protection officers, the European Data Protection Board, and the like is to ensure compliance with the GDPR. However, to comply with the GDPR is one thing, and to protect data effectively is another.

For example, Daniel Solove points out that GDPR consent requirements are fiction because the scale of data processing is so overwhelming that individuals cannot possibly deal with hundreds of privacy notices. Also, individuals are required to take active action in order to invoke their rights, which is something that most people will not and cannot do. Moreover, the GDPR lays down many legal grounds to process personal data that do not require individual consent, like legitimate interest or public safety. In the end, as long as private and public entities comply with the GDPR formally, they do not need to care too much about actual individual preferences and about actual data protection.

The GDPR Paradox

The GDPR both overshoots and undershoots. On the one hand, it overshoots because individuals are granted “rights” that may be used to violate other entities’ property; the main issue is that property rights of personal data are not well-defined. On the other hand, the GDPR undershoots because individual “privacy rights” as defined by European Union regulators are a fiction that can be legally overridden by corporations and by public institutions for a variety of reasons.

The GDPR paradox is that it gives individuals rights that they do not have while undermining their practical ability to protect personal data from powerful third parties. Conversely, private and public processors are denied legitimate property rights but are protected by law in their daily mission to take advantage of personal data. Without a clear definition of property rights and privacy in the domain of personal data, regulations can only generate confusion and paradoxes.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov has told Foreign Policy magazine in a newly published interview that he was told by Kiev’s NATO backers to “kill as many Russians” as possible even if Ukraine doesn’t get all the weapons it wants. This was early in the conflict, before Western allies had committed large quantities of things like anti-tank and anti-air missiles, as well as main battle tanks.

The interview, titled by FP “Ukraine’s Winnable War,” presents a case for the West helping Ukraine to retake all of its territory. Reznikov at one point tells FP the following:

“We asked, ‘can we have stingers?’: he said in the interview published on Tuesday. “We were told, ‘No, dig trenches and kill as many Russians as you can before it’s over.’ People thought our victory was impossible.”

Now, Reznikov boasted, Ukraine has been given “Bradleys, Strykers, Abrams, Leopards, and more,” and will soon be equipped with American-made F-16 fighter jets.

FP narrates that eventually Ukraine’s West-supplied armor will be supported from the air by F-16 fighter jets provided by Europe, after Ukrainian pilots get fully trained on them.

As ‘proof’ for its optimism over Kiev’s chances of winning, the FP offers the following while quoting Reznikov: 

The Stingers came, and the HIMARS, and the Patriots, which I watched shoot down Russia’s supposedly unstoppable hypersonic Kinzhal missiles. Now, Reznikov said, Ukraine has “Bradleys, Strykers, Abrams, Leopards, and more.” And, eventually, the armor will be supported by F-16s.

The fresh, well-equipped, highly motivated Ukrainian brigades taking part in the offensive, meanwhile, are facing tired Russian forces with low spirits, little personal investment, and mediocre leadership. Like the Arab countries that fought Israel half a century ago, Russia has more manpower and materiel than its opponent but isn’t putting them to good use. 

The Kremlin has maintained its rejection of the narrative out of the West that its ‘unstoppable’ Kinzhal missiles were actually shot down.

And more from the FP:

Officials in Kyiv do not believe this campaign alone can end the war. “Our goal is the full expulsion of Russia from Ukrainian territory,” said Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. “If the offensive achieves that, it will be the last. If not, there will be more. If our weapons supplies get cut off, Ukraine will just shift to lower intensity war. We won’t give up; we won’t accept territorial losses.” Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv and a former world heavyweight champion boxer, echoed the point. “The goal is the 1991 borders, including Crimea. Maybe this year, maybe not. We can hope, but just have to keep going. It’s only a matter of time before Russia breaks.” Like the Russians, the Ukrainians see the war as not just a test of arms but a test of wills and are convinced they have the advantage in both.

The “kill as many Russians” as possible line quoted in the interview sounds very consistent with what Sen. Lindsay Graham controversially boasted about last month in Kiev…

“The Russians are dying. It is the best money we’ve ever spent.”

~ Lindsey Graham, United States Senator laughs while Ukraine President Zelenskyy nods.

pic.twitter.com/U4XrDmoWF3

— The Poll Lady (@ThePollLady) May 28, 2023

Meanwhile, counterterrorism expert and geopolitical analyst Max Abrahms has pointed out that all of this portents that a very long war will result…

“The Ukraine war won’t end for a very, very long time. We never before added a NATO country already at war in perpetuity,” Abrahms said Wednesday. “That’s not containment. It’s broadening the war at the expense of citizens from countries who have been lied to about the origins and risks of the conflict.”

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Germany has massive deindustrialization problems on which it is in denial. Add a political doom loop to the mix…

Alternative for Germany

Lead chart adapted from Wikipedia German Federal Election Polls.

Support for Alternative for Germany, AfD, a right-wing political party is on the rise, primarily at the expense of the Green Party. 

In September 2012, Alexander Gauland, Bernd Lucke, and journalist Konrad Adam founded the political group Electoral Alternative 2013 in Bad Nauheim, to oppose German federal policies concerning the eurozone crisis, and to confront German-supported bailouts for poorer southern European countries.

Their manifesto was endorsed by several economists, journalists, and business leaders, and stated that the eurozone had proven to be “unsuitable” as a currency area and that southern European states were “sinking into poverty under the competitive pressure of the euro”.

Since 2015, AfD’s ideology has been characterized by Islamophobia, anti-immigration, German nationalism, national-conservative, and Euroscepticism. The AfD is the only party represented in the German Bundestag whose environmental and climate policy is based on the denial of human-caused climate change.

All the traditional parties want nothing to do with AfD in any government coalition. But above the 20 percent mark, avoidance of AfD becomes more than a bit difficult. 

Political Reality of AfD at 20

Eurointelligence comments on the political realities of AfD at 20, emphasis mine.

The first German opinion poll ratings have the AfD at 20%, an important threshold. This is from YouGov, a rank outsider in the German polling landscape. Insa, which has a tendency to over-register voter movements, has them at a statistically indistinguishable 19.5%. The AfD is on a roll right now.

We totally agree with the analysis of Jasper von Altenbockum in FAZ. By huddling in the political centre and forming grand coalitions, the traditional parties have lost their political profile, and opened a huge gap in the ideological landscape. A doom loop is at work. As the AfD strengthens, it will get increasingly difficult for the CDU or the SPD to form governments, except for grand coalitions. Unless the CDU/CSU changes its position to allow coalitions with the AfD, Germany is headed towards another long period of grand coalitions.

A story that caused an uproar in Germany yesterday was the results of a regional election. Germany has a four-tiered federal system: federal, states, regional and local. This vote took place at the third level of those tiers. An AfD candidate almost got elected in the first round of an election for the leadership of a regional council in the east German state of Thuringia, an AfD stronghold. They scored just under 50% in the first round. For the second round, all the other parties have now agreed what Altenbockum has called a people’s front against the AfD. They support the CDU candidate, who came second.

It will be interesting to see whether this super-grand-coalition idea works. We don’t think this is a sane strategy. What we expect to see is that the AfD is en route to becoming a firmament of the German political scene just as Maga Republicans are in the US. There is simply a sizeable minority of people who are not sold on green policies, or on support for Ukraine.

Olaf Scholz and SPD have now clearly positioned themselves on Ukraine’s side. That is a change in policy. But the issue continues to divide people. The AfD is also capitalizing on the fact that around one third of Germans do not agree with these policies. There is significant potential for the AfD, and in proportional representation-based systems, you don’t need to win outright majorities to govern. The AfD is now starting to breach important thresholds. 

Current Polls 

• Union (CDU/CSU) Angela Merkel’s party: 29%

• AfD: 19%

• SPD: 18%

• Greens: 14%

• FDP: 7%

In an election, any totals below a 5% threshold do not participate in Parliament. FDP is on the cusp.

Traffic Light Coalition

The current coalition is a super-grand coalition of SPD, the Greens, and FDP. This is dubbed the Ampelkoalition, “Traffic Light Coalition”, based off colors of the party flags.

Project Syndicate notes Mixed Signals from Germany’s Traffic-Light Coalition

The urgent need for reforms, combined with the imperative to respond quickly to new geopolitical realities, has overloaded an already fragile coalition in which three quasi-chancellors – Habeck, Lindner, and Baerbock – operate alongside Scholz. Collectively, they give the impression of an unmoored government with too many veto players catering to their constituencies.

Ministers are going in different directions and increasingly facing off, heightening the likelihood of policy failures. Plans to establish a German National Security Council were dropped, for example, because of political deadlock: the chancellery and the foreign ministry could not agree on where the Council would be located and who would be responsible for its governance.

The next German federal election is only two years away, and a resurgent Christian Democratic Union, the largest opposition party, is polling at 30%, whereas the SPD – the leading partner in the coalition government – is at 18%, down significantly from the 26% of the vote it received in the 2021 election. Based on current polling, the Ampelkoalition would not win a majority.

Super-Grand Coalition Math

It’s difficult to build a two-way grand coalition 50+% majority if you rule out AfD. And if support for AfD rises to 30% it would become impossible. 

In a new super-grand coalition, AfD would become the largest opposition party with special parliamentary privileges. No one wants that. 

Given that Greens have little in common with CDU, the Greens might prefer to be the opposition party. But in many scenarios, that would only be possible if AfD was directly part of a grand, or super grand coalition.

This is the political doom loop that Eurointelligence discusses. But what about the real economy?

The Deindustrialization of Germany Will Cripple the EU for a Long Time

Yesterday, I noted The Deindustrialization of Germany Will Cripple the EU for a Long Time

The EU lags the US in AI, and in technology in general. The EU is fearful of AI and wants to rein it in.

What does Germany have other than an aging population, aging infrastructure, SAP software, and diesel technology it is desperate to protect.

The EU defines recession differently than the US. The EU goes by the adage of two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. By that measure the EU is in recession now.

Radical parties do well in these environments and AfD has a lot to moan about with the Greens forcing the abandonment of nucleal power only to replace it with more coal.

A political and economic doom loop is in play for Germany. And Germany will drag the rest of the EU along, not that the rest of the EU needs any help.