Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

During a Congressional hearing on ‘anti-LGBTQ violence,’ a Democratic Representative parroted the same claim as several LGBTQ activists that the terms ‘groomer’ and ‘pedophile’ are discriminatory against sexual preferences and gender identity.

During the hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, California Rep. Katie Porter asserted that the phrase “groomer” is a “lie” used to maliciously discriminate against LGBTQ+ people and make them appear to be a “threat.”

“You know, this allegation of ‘groomer’ and ‘pedophile,’ it is alleging that a person is criminal somehow and engaged in criminal acts merely because of their gender identity, their sexual orientation, their gender identity,” Porter claimed.

The Democrat then complained, with the aid of Human Rights Campaign (HRC) president Kelley Robinson, that Twitter allows the “dangerous” terms to be used.

“This is not just about what happens online. What happens online translates into real harms in people’s lives,” Porter proclaimed.

Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) says that the terms “groomer and pedophile allege that a person is criminal somehow merely because of their sexual orientation and gender identity” and laments that Twitter allowed groomer “to reach 72 million users.” pic.twitter.com/hi6tuAPm4F

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 14, 2022

The same argument was made throughout the hearing by a parade of cartoon character activists:

Despite there being zero evidence anti-LGBT hate motivated the Club Q killings, congressional Democrats are nonetheless exploiting the tragedy & using it to call for new restrictions on speech. #TodayInWashington https://t.co/CnY7rmYI14

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 14, 2022

The House is currently holding a hearing on “Anti-LGBTQ” violence where a person named Olivia Hunt says “there is a straight line that can be drawn” between laws banning boys from girl’s sports and sex changes for kids “to the acts of violence that have taken far too many lives.” pic.twitter.com/mbb2uhmFFN

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 14, 2022

Club Q survivor James Slaugh: “Hate rhetoric from politicians, religious leaders & media outlets is at the root of attacks, like at Club Q, & it needs to stop now … Hate starts with speech.” pic.twitter.com/Qeaf5BzJ5o

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 14, 2022

The claims that the term ‘groomer’ is hateful were also platformed on CNN:

CNN only does fake news https://t.co/XIV98Tkxg4

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 15, 2022

The same claim was amplified by trans activist Alejandra Caraballo, who earlier this week was exposed as a hypocrite at the hearing by GOP Rep. Nancy Mace for having her own history of tweeting violent rhetoric.

Wrong! People are calling you groomers and pedophiles because you won’t stop sexualizing, indoctrinating and mutilating children.

We’re gay and no one ever calls any of us those things. Stop gaslighting everyone.

We’re done letting predators use our community as a shield. pic.twitter.com/8ziW4QP3OX

— Gays Against Groomers (@againstgrmrs) December 14, 2022

If you’re gonna be a hypocrite who advocates for violence online, you probably shouldn’t do it testifying in my committee… https://t.co/2vQq2Q2qu1

— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) December 13, 2022

Elsewhere during the hearing, another witness opined that parents shouldn’t have any right to know if their children as young as 12 are being put through gender transitions:

They nuked their entire account lmfao pic.twitter.com/56oNJPIyxi

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 14, 2022

When asked about the many cases of de-transitioners who have spoken out about feeling they were forced into sex changes as children, another activist claimed those people don’t even exist:

A witness in the House hearing on “anti-LGBT violence” is asked about de-transitioners:

“I’ve never heard of a case of anyone de-transitioning so I honestly don’t think it’s a real thing.” pic.twitter.com/G2ujamy9AF

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 14, 2022

We have previously covered the disturbing movement on the left to tolerate pedophilia and categorise it as some sort of sexual identity along with the likes of ‘queer,’ ‘pansexual’ and ‘intersex’.

When Elon Musk recently announced that he wanted to implement improvements on Twitter to better protect children against predators, he was attacked and labelled a ‘far right’ extremist.

In the UK, this level of nonce sense has reached the point where the police are spending time defending convicted pedophiles against ‘hate’ and enforcing the ‘correct’ use of pronouns. In Ireland, a teacher who refused to use the pronouns ‘they/them’ a the behest of one student has been thrown in PRISON.

As we have repeatedly highlighted, parents of children as young as Kindergarten age in schools throughout the U.S. have found themselves in battles against officials over books and subject matter, including transgenderism, pedophilia, and open gay pornography.

The children’s books in question contain graphic depictions of oral sex between gay men, as well as a host of other material that is objectively unsuitable for children.

Parents nation-wide have found themselves under attack by leftists, government entities, law enforcement and even the military over recent months after taking on school officials.

Video: Woke Military Threatens Mother Who Questioned LGBTQ School Indoctrination

Where the material has been removed, LGBTQ+ activists and the media have described it as ‘book banning‘.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden is heading up the gaslighting:

Biden Suggests Opponents of Child Sex Changes Are Racist, Anti-Semitic And Homophobic: “They’re All Connected”

Earlier this week, GOP Senator Rand Paul raised the issue of doctors carrying out transgender surgeries on children, and the propaganda that has prompted a massive increase in young Americans feeling they do not have the ‘right’ body.

“Who is responsible for telling a four-year-old that we need to talk about their gender and whether they’re in the appropriate body?” Paul asked.

“Who’s talking about giving picture books to six-year-olds with illustrations of surgery to remove their genitalia?” the Senator continued.

“It’s Democrat politicians and woke left-wing people,” Paul asserted, further urging “Republicans are not perfect. But Republicans are not pushing your child to have surgery to remove their genitalia as early as elementary school.

*  *  *

Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

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Thousands of tech workers laid off every single week as the Silicon Valley ponzi crumbles under the weight of the Fed’s rate hikes? Not according to the Department of Labor, which moments ago reported that in the latest week, initial claims unexpectedly tumbled by 20K to 211K from 231K, the lowest since September 23 and far below the consensus estimate of an increase to 233K; at the same time unadjusted claims dropped from 288K – the highest since January – to 248.9K.

Meanwhile, continuing claims continued their ascent, and in the latest week rose from 1.670MM to 1.671MM…

… which while also missing the exp 1.674MM was the highest print since February.

On a 4-week average basis, initial claims are almost back to unchanged on a Y/Y basis, although it is safe to say that there was a pronounced seasonal component to today’s unexpectedly strong print.

On a state by state basis, there was a big reversal of last week’s surge in claims, with New York seeing a solid 6.9K decline in claims while not a single state posted a more than 418K increase in claims in the latest week.

So just as sliding JOLTS job openings data series and the Household survey both scream labor market slowdown, the Dept of Labor decides to throw in yet another stick in the spokes of the Fed’s induction machinery, and hits pause – if only for another week – on expectations that the job market is heading for a recession. That this is not good news for stocks is obvious: only look at futures sliding since the print to fresh lows is all you need to know.

With Sam Bankman-Fried now officially in custody for allegedly swindling his investors out of “at least $1.8 billion”, questions have begun to swirl about whether or not campaign donations made by the former FTX CEO would be returned to the company, which is now trying to manage a bankruptcy.

In focus over the last few days has been campaign contributions that SBF made for President Biden’s 2020 campaign.

When asked about whether or not the Biden campaign would return 2020 contributions from Bankman-Fried, “White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wouldn’t say Tuesday whether President Biden” would ask aides to return the cash, the NY Post reported. 

Associated Press reporter Zeke Miller asked her: “The president received campaign donations [from Bankman-Fried]. Will the president return that donation? Does he call on all politicians … to return those funds?” 

“So look, I’m covered here by the Hatch Act — [I’m] limited on what I can say and anything that’s connected to political contributions from here, I would have to refer you to the DNC,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre answered.

Miller followed up, stating: “I’m asking the president’s opinion, though.”

But the press secretary continued to dodge the question, stating: “You asked me two questions: You asked me about will he return donations and then you asked me about his opinion. I’m answering the first part, which is I’m covered by the Hatch Act from here. I’m limited on what I can say. And I just can’t talk to political contributions or anything related to that — I cannot speak to that from here.”

“I just cannot speak to this from here, even his thoughts,” she continued. “Even his opinion, even his thoughts about the contributions, donations, I cannot speak about that from here.”

Bankman-Fried is now well known to be one of the Democratic party’s largest donors, and the Post reports that he even had the chance to meet with Biden’s White House advisers prior to the collapse of his firm. 

As Fox News notes, SBF sent $262,200 to Republicans throughout the 2021-2022 election cycle – a figure that pales compared to the $40 million he contributed to Democratic campaigns. 

US Retail sales notably disappointed in November, just as BofA expected…

Against expectations of a 0.2% MoM drop, US retail sales tumbled 0.6% MoM – the weakest since last December…

Source: Bloomberg

On a YoY basis, this is the weakest since Dec 2020.

Core retail sales dropped 0.2% MoM (notably worse than the +0.2% MoM expected).

Finally, the control group – which flows through to GDP -saw retail sales decline 0.2% MoM (against expectations of a 0.1% rise).

Nine of 13 retail categories fell last month, according to the report, including electronics, furniture and building materials stores. Vehicle sales also declined, due in part to a drop in the prices of used cars and trucks. The value of sales at gasoline stations were down 0.1% as pump prices fell.

Sales at restaurants and bars – the only service-sector category in the report – rose 0.9% in November, the fourth-straight increase.

What’s behind the retail sales miss?

The unwind of California’s one-time “anti-inflation” stimmy check

Credit card spending in October was boosted by the additional round of Prime Day and related promotions, as well as one-off stimulus payments in California (CA).

The disproportionate weakness in total online retail spending and total card spending in CA suggests that there was negative payback in November for the October distortions.

To the surprise of no one… given the now years-long crackdown on all media including internet and social apps by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party, a main political rival of Erdogan has just been issued a stiff prison sentence by a Turkish court for mere political speech.

On Wednesday Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was sentenced to 2 years 7 months and 15 days in prison by a Turkish court for “insulting the election authority,” according to national media.

Specifically Imamoglu was accused of unlawful speech directed against Turkey’s Supreme Electoral Council, which the mayor has denied, instead saying it’s part of a political purge backed by Erdogan loyalists.

“They have stopped fighting honestly and bravely. They are resorting to all kinds of tricks to protect their order,” he told protesters who gathered in the capital in support of his innocence. “This decision is proof that the rulers of this country have no aim to bring justice and democracy to the country,” he also said.

According to the government allegation cited in the Associated Press:

The mayor denied insulting members of the electoral council, insisting his words were a response to Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu calling him “a fool” and accusing Imamoglu of criticizing Turkey during a visit to the European Parliament.

“The will of 16 million Istanbulites is on trial,” the mayor’s office said in a firm statement just before Imamoglu’s sentencing. “They are seeking to deprive the mayor of Istanbul of his political rights.”

The supposed initial “insult” that Imamoglu is “guilty” of came after Erdogan’s AK Party successfully achieved a new election after Imamoglu won a March 2019 upset for Istanbul mayor (he won the ‘do-over’ election too). It was considered a huge, historic defeat of the AK Party. And then, as AP recounts: 

Imamoglu was charged with insulting senior public officials after he described canceling legitimate elections as an act of “foolishness” on Nov. 4, 2019.

Erdogan has become a political superstar when he was slapped with 6 months jail sentence and a political ban two decades ago.

İmamoğlu has already faced one election cancellation which made him a hero. Now a possible political ban?

Not very smart for whoever is behind it

— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) December 14, 2022

For this reason the obvious heavy-handed politically motivated prosecution is expected to result in fierce backlash from Imamoglu’s supporters and other opposition groups, possibly resulting in large-scale protests and unrest. Erdogan and his political network have have spent years stacking the judiciary with loyalists, who have in turned worked to stamp out dissent, even in the areas of political speech – as has been made clear with Imamoglu’s nearly 3-year prison sentence. 

What’s more is that the court “imposed a political ban that could lead to his removal from office,” according to the AP, ahead of the upcoming June 2023 presidential election.

In the meantime countless journalists as well as Kurdish and Armenian activists have also languished in Turkish prisons, given over the past decade mere speech-related “crimes” have been relentlessly clamped down on.

Authored by Will Porter Via The Libertarian Institute, 

The British Royal Marines have carried out high-risk special operations on the ground in Ukraine, according to the former head of the elite unit, who said UK commandos have been deployed to the country on more than one occasion this year.

Writing in the Royal Navy’s official magazine, the Globe and Laurel, Lieutenant General Robert Magowan said some 350 Marines were sent to Ukraine for two missions since January, starting with an operation to help relocate UK diplomatic staff to Poland just ahead of Russia’s invasion.

The second occurred in April, soon after Moscow’s withdrawal from the region surrounding the Ukrainian capital, according to Magowan, who was once the commandant general of the Royal Marines and now serves as a senior official under the Chief of the Defense Staff. 

“In April, they returned into the country to re-establish the diplomatic mission, providing protection to critical personnel,” the general said. “During both phases, the commandos supported other discreet operations in a hugely sensitive environment and with a high level of political and military risk.”

Though Magowan did not elaborate on what those “other” missions entailed, he is the first British official to publicly confirm special operations in the country since Russia’s attack began in February. The UK Defense Ministry previously acknowledged that soldiers were sent to protect embassy staff, but has never discussed missions on the scale described by Magowan and rarely comments on covert ops.

Asked about the general’s claims, a Royal Navy spokesman would only say that Marines were “deployed to Ukraine to support the UK’s diplomatic presence,” but stressed that “they served no combat function.”

The Marine unit sent for both deployments, known as 45 Commando, now reportedly specializes in “Arctic warfare,” according to the Times, but previously took part in the Falklands conflict, as well as the US-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Troops from 45 Commando were stationed in Norway for winter exercises when they were called to assist evacuation efforts from Ukraine to Poland earlier this year. The neighboring state has served as a staging area for Western military aid to Kiev and foreign volunteers looking to join the fight. 

For the first time, UK military official publicly admits conducting covert operations in Ukraine. After ten months, what everyone had rightfully assumed all along is finally put on the record: NATO forces aren’t just passive observers of the war pic.twitter.com/GZia2N3yuF

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 14, 2022

Magowan also hailed the Marines for their help in training Ukrainian forces on foreign territory, saying they have been “heavily involved” in the process and are now planning to train up “Ukraine marines.”

British military trainers were ostensibly withdrawn early this year to avoid potential clashes after Russian troops entered the country, but special operators have continued the training efforts since, local commanders previously told the Times. Ukrainian officers said UK soldiers returned to the Kiev area in April to instruct recruits on how to use British-supplied weapons, such as the NLAW anti-tank weapon. Though that training would have coincided with one of the deployments reported by Magowan, it’s unclear whether those soldiers were Royal Marines.

Just last week it was widely believed that scandal-plagued South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s days were numbered as leader of the country amid intensified calls for him to step down over the ‘Farmgate’ scandal which centered on the alleged theft of $580,000. The over half million in foreign currency was found stuffed in a sofa at a game farm that Ramaphosa owns in South Africa’s northeast.

The mysterious cash payment has sparked outrage particularly among the opponents of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which swiftly left to a move in parliament to impeach. But on Tuesday at a special session of parliament, MP’s voted to reject impeachment proceedings against embattled Ramaphosa. 

When the scandal first emerged at the end of last month, crucially coming at a sensitive moment for the country given that Ramaphosa-backed long awaited economic reforms had only just begun to take shape and improve the country’s outlook, resignation and impeachment were quickly raised by rivals while Ramaphosa stuck by his vehement denials of any wrong-doing.

Key to his political survival has been the ANC telling its MP’s to block the impeachment push, and yet a few still broke ranks, but the 70-year old Ramaphosa who vowed to tackle corruption, now having emerged unscathed, is likely to win re-election at his party’s conference this month, which will lead to his becoming the party’s presidential candidate at the 2024 election. 

The vote was 214 lawmakers against establishing an impeachment committee and 148 in favor, with two abstentions, in a vote which required a simple majority. The allegations have dominated South African media for the past weeks. According to a brief summary of the scandal’s origins in CNBC: 

In what has become known as the “Farmgate” scandal, Ramaphosa is alleged to have covered up a $4 million theft from his Phala Phala farm in the north east of the country in 2020. Some $580,000 of this was found beneath sofa cushions, and allegations also include working with Namibian authorities to apprehend, torture and bribe the suspects.

Ramaphosa staunchly denies the allegations and has not been charged with any crimes. He maintains that the cash was the proceeds from the sale of buffalo. He has confirmed that the robbery took place, but insists that the amount stolen was smaller than alleged and denies participating in a cover-up.

This week leading into the impeachment proceedings vote, opposition leaders used the opportunity to paint of picture of a cover-up in progress by a leader hiding behind his ‘reform’ rhetoric and reputation.

On the other side of the alleged cash payment under suspicious circumstances is a Sudanese businessman…

“I have nothing to hide,” says a Sudanese businessman who has been implicated in the Phala Phala farmgate scandal. https://t.co/HY5o6SGud0

— Daily Dispatch (@Dispatch_DD) December 13, 2022

Julius Malema of the Economic Freedom Fighters party told parliament while addressing Ramaphosa directly, “You are so desperate to avoid any type of investigation into the crimes that have occurred in and in relation to the Phala Phala farm that you have decided to spit in the face of the freedoms and institutions so many people fought and died for.”

And John Steenhuisen, the leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance said, “As long as you have the numbers in parliament, you can make any scandal go away and if that is how you intend to vote today, in one unified shield against accountability and oversight, just like you did in the Zuma days then shame on you.”

While the crisis likely to die down in national media after the failed drive to impeach, there could be multiple investigations into the affair outside parliament, and thus more potential damning evidence or testimony might emerge.

Authored by Jennifer Margulis and Joe Wang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Medical pathologists from Heidelberg University Hospital in Heidelberg, Germany have published direct evidence showing how people found dead after mRNA vaccination died. As this team of six scientists explore in their study, these mRNA-vaccinated patients suffered from heart damage because their hearts were attacked by their own immune cells. This autoimmune attack on their own heart cells then leads to their damaged hearts beating so many times per second that, once the tachycardia unexpectedly started, they died in minutes.

The article, “Autopsy-based histopathological characterization of myocarditis after anti-SARS-CoV-2-vaccination,” was published on Nov. 27, 2022, in the journal Clinical Research in Cardiology, the official journal of the German Cardiac Society. The research team autopsied 25 victims of different ages who were found dead at home within 28 days of vaccination. They looked at their heart tissue under the microscope to find out why these people died of cardiac rhythmic disruption when they had no apparent underlying heart disease.

In the authors’ own words: “Our findings establish the histological phenotype of lethal vaccination-associated myocarditis.” 

Histological phenotype means direct observation of microscopic tissue. 

In a video analyzing the results, nurse educator Dr. John Campbell, who is based in the United Kingdom, told his audience: “This is peer-reviewed. This is proper science, and a definitive pathological diagnosis by a group of leading German pathologists.” Campbell’s video has been viewed 918,000 times. He has 2.58 million subscribers on his channel.

Died of Ventricular Tachycardia or Fibrillation

Ventricular tachycardia is when the heart begins beating so fast that it doesn’t have time to refill with blood between beats, so it is not adequately pumping blood. The problem originates from the ventricles: the chambers that push the blood out of the heart to the rest of the body.

Fibrillation is when, instead of the heart actually beating, it starts to just quiver. This problem can originate from the ventricles or the atria. The atria are the upper chambers that basically suck blood into the heart by expanding and contracting. Though more people are familiar with A-Fib (atrial fibrillation), ventricular fibrillation is much more dangerous, and usually lethal within minutes.

The deceased whose hearts were autopsied in this study were found dead at home, each having died of ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation within 28 days of mRNA vaccination. 

Visibly Damaged Hearts

Macrophages are large cells that are part of our immune system. When the immune system is functioning properly, our bodies use macrophages to attack infectious agents and other foreign matter. Macrophages are a key part of the innate immune system, helping with normal tissue development as well as with repairing damaged tissue, according to researchers from Northwestern University.

But in the case of the people who died suddenly within a month of being vaccinated, the body’s own macrophages permeated their heart muscle, chewing up the muscle and causing spots that disrupted the heart rhythm. This macrophage invasion appeared to have literally short-circuited the heart’s conduction of the electrical impulses, causing the heart to beat irregularly. 

The irregular heartbeats led to a negative feedback loop, making the heart race faster and faster as it tries to right itself. When that happens, the heart is effectively pumping no blood, and the victim dies within seconds or minutes unless there is a defibrillator nearby—to deliver an electrical shock to the heart to help it get back into rhythm—and someone knows to use it immediately. 

The peer-reviewed study from German researchers included microscope images showing the damage to the victims’ heart cells, the presence of lymphocytes (another kind of smaller immune cell) in the heart muscle, and invasive macrophages in the heart muscle. Both macrophages and lymphocytes called T-helper cells were found in the heart tissue. The immune cells were concentrated in spots, each of which is called a focus. Spots of damaged heart tissue like this can generate offbeat signals that disrupt the heart’s smooth rhythm. 

There are thousands of cardiac cells in the heart. These cells aren’t passive, like the cells in your biceps that need separate nerves to make them move. Instead, cardiac cells generate their own electrical impulses.

The cells of cardiac muscle act like nerves as well, conducting signals to and from adjacent muscle cells. This synchronizes their contractions, as well as perpetuates the regular continuity of the heartbeat. 

Once a heart is beating, it takes a lot to stop it. A focus that breaks up this rhythm is like a bad drummer in a middle-school band. It can cause a cascade of chaos that prevents the heart from pumping blood productively.

Myocarditis: A Recognized Vaccine Adverse Event

The WHO and the CDC do recognize myocarditis post-mRNA vaccination. Both regulatory agencies consider it a “recognized but rare complication.” Most doctors also dismiss myocarditis cases as “mild.”

But the deceased subjects of the German study, as Campbell points out, also had supposedly “mild” myocarditis. The myocarditis appeared only in microscopic spots here and there. However, the electrical disruption of these spots caused rapid and dramatic deaths. In other words, there is no mild myocarditis, as one parent of an mRNA-vaccine-injured teen named Aiden Ekanayake, said.

Campbell recommended that clinicians have a “high index of suspicion” that mRNA-vaccinated people might be subject to this autoimmune myocarditis so that they can diagnose and treat it while the people are still alive. Clinicians pretending that this vaccine injury is “rare and mild,” has led to countless potentially avoidable tragedies.

Your Body Attacking Your Own Heart Cells

To be clear, this is not the mRNA vaccine directly damaging the heart—it is worse. The mRNA is injected into your muscle cells, turning the cell into a factory producing COVID-19 spike proteins. 

As a result of the mRNA immunization, your body generates an immune response against COVID-19 spike proteins.

Since your own muscle cells were used to make the COVID-19 spike proteins and may have them on the cell surface, your newly-weaponized immune cells targeting the spike protein may start attacking your own healthy muscle cells. 

This new German study shows photographic evidence that this happens and has killed people.

Correlation or Causation?

An original investigation published earlier this year in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that there were many cases of myocarditis in unexpected populations, especially in boys and young men, following mRNA vaccination.

Sir Austin Bradford Hill was an English medical statistician who established a set of epidemiological guidelines in 1965, now called the Bradford Hill criteria, which help prove cause and effect. If we apply the Bradford Hill criteria to this new research, it shows that the lethal myocarditis of these patients was indeed caused by mRNA vaccines. The German research demonstrated Bradford Hill’s criteria of strength (the more two things happen at the same time, the more likely one causes the other, even for rare events); consistency (the finding of sudden death from mRNA-vaccine-induced myocarditis has been happening consistently in different places and populations); specificity (for Bradford Hill, this is when a single cause produces a single effect. In this case the cause is the mRNA vaccine and the effect is myocarditis); and several more.

Read more here…

Weather officials warn that a rare triple-dip La Nina has sent parts of Northeast Asia into a deep freeze that will increase heating demand and push up fuel prices.

Across the Northern Hemisphere, the US, Europe, and parts of Northeast Asia are experiencing below-freezing temperatures.

The US National Centers for Environmental Prediction focused on China, Japan, and South Korea and reported below-average temperatures for those countries. This chill is similar to what Europe and parts of the US are currently feeling. 

Readers have been more than informed about the weather phenomenon known as La Nina wreaking havoc on the world. Last month, the World Meteorological Organization wrote that La Nina would result in lower-than-normal temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere. 

Bloomberg provided weather outlooks for China, Japan, and South Korea, the epicenter of global manufacturing, as these countries are plagued with cold weather in the weeks ahead:

China

China will see two cold snaps, according to forecasts from the China Meteorological Administration. The first — which will run from Tuesday through Thursday — is expected to bring temperatures as low as minus 36 Celsius in the Inner Mongolian city of Hulunbuir, while also pushing down the mercury in Beijing.

Another snap is predicted to sweep across most parts of central, east and northwest China from Thursday through Sunday. Southern parts of the country could see record-low temperatures for mid-December on Sunday, while dry and frigid weather will reduce rainfall, the administration said Monday. That will have an impact on agriculture, particularly livestock and greenhouse farming, as it increases heating costs. Fruits, vegetable crops and even aquaculture in some areas are vulnerable to frost damage, the National Meteorological Center said.

A sudden drop in temperatures caused electricity demand to surge in Guizhou province in southern China, forcing grid officials there to order some aluminum smelters to cut power use this week. On top of the freezing weather, nine Chinese provinces have also been whipped by sandstorms so far this week, which can hamper solar power generation. Elevated demand for heating fuels may not ease until around the Lunar New Year holidays in late January when factories power down for the holiday, Chinese consultant Fengkuang Logistics said in a note. Still, activity in many of China’s mega-cities has ground to a halt amid severe virus outbreaks.

Japan

It’s getting colder in northern Japan — with Asahikawa in Hokkaido possibly experiencing temperatures as low as minus 10 degrees Celsius next week, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. Meanwhile, there’s a 40% chance eastern and western Japan will get below-normal temperatures from December through February, the JMA said.

Japan has been stocking up on LNG supply to prepare for the winter months, with inventories held by electricity producers well-above the five-year average. The government is also asking citizens to save power to the best of their abilities, and the governor of Tokyo has even advised people to wear turtleneck sweaters to stay warm.

South Korea

Cold-wave alerts have been issued for most parts of South Korea, including Seoul and Incheon, with heavy snow expected in the northern Chungcheong province this week, according to Korea Meteorological Administration.

Temperatures are dropping significantly, but the country has a 50% chance of seeing normal temperatures in January and February, the weather agency said. South Korea will use nuclear power and will optimize its maintenance schedule, while also making additional purchases of coal and LNG on spot markets, the energy ministry said in a statement.

Month ahead temperature forecasts via Bloomberg for China. 

Japan

South Korea

Cold weather on the other side of the world will mean Russia will have a buyer for its energy products while European Union bans imports of Russian crude and crude products and reduces natural gas intake. 

The crude shunned by Europe has been diverted to Asia via a flotilla of tankers. Bloomberg data shows a large majority of all crude shipped from Russian ports is headed to Asia. 

Despite all the Western sanctions to paralyze Moscow, Russian energy products still flow worldwide but have shifted mainly to Asia. 

And while climate alarmists blame every change in the Earth’s weather on man-made greenhouse gases … we must point out that even the  UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says, “El Nino and La Nina are naturally occurring climate patterns and humans have no direct ability to influence their onset, intensity or duration.” 

So perhaps all this extreme weather worldwide is the work of La Nina rather than man. This is an uncomfortable truth for all those who just attended COP27 in Egypt. 

Authored by Ugo Bardi via SenecaEffect.com,

The failure of the European Union may have started with the choice of the flag. Not that state flags are supposed to be works of art, but at least they can be inspiring. But this flag is completely flat, unoriginal, and depressing. It looks mostly like a blue cheese pizza gone bad. And that’s just one of the many things gone bad with the European Union. (attempts to make it more appealing failed utterly). It is the conclusion of a thousand-year cycle that’s coming to an end. It was probably unavoidable, but that doesn’t make it less painful.

Europe has a long history that goes back to when the ice sheets retreated at the end of the last ice age, some 10,000 years ago. At that time, our remote ancestors moved into a pristine land, cultivated it, built villages, roads, and cities. They traveled, migrated, fought each other, created cultures, built temples, fortresses, and palaces. On the Southern coast of Europe, a lively network of commercial exchanges emerged, made possible by maritime transportation over the Mediterranean Sea. Out of this network, the Roman Empire was born around the end of the first millennium BCE. It included most of Western Europe. (image from ESA)

As all empires do, the Roman Empire went through its cycle of glory and decline. In the 5th century AD, as Europe entered the Middle Ages, the Empire had disappeared except as a memory of past greatness. In the following centuries, the population of Western Europe declined to a historical minimum, maybe less than 20 million people. Europe became a land of thick forests, portentous ruins, small villages, and petty warlords fighting each other. No one could have imagined that, centuries later, Europeans would become the dominators of the world.

Sometimes, collapses bring with them the seed of recovery. It is what I called the “Seneca Rebound.” For some reason, we moderns disparage the Middle Ages, calling the era the “Dark Ages.” But there was nothing dark during the European Middle Ages. Europe was poor in material terms, but Europeans managed to create a culture of refined literature, splendid cathedrals, sophisticated music, advanced technologies, and much more. One reason for the prospering of the European culture was the presence of tools that other regions of the world lacked. One was the Latin language, used to keep alive the ancient Classical Culture and its achievements. It also helped trade and created strong cultural bonds all over the continent. Europeans also inherited the bulk of Roman law and culture, and Roman technologies in fields such as metallurgy and weapon making. 

With Europe recovering from the 5th-century collapse, new precious metal mines in Eastern Europe started pumping wealth into the continent. The result was explosive. Already in 800 AD, Charlemagne, King of the Franks, could assemble an army powerful enough to create a new Europe-wide Empire, the “Sacred Roman Empire.” With the turn of the millennium, the European population was rapidly growing, and it needed space to expand. Europe was a coiled spring, ready to snap. In 1095, a burst of armies emerged out of Europe, crashing into the Near East. It was the time of the Crusades. 

Initially, the invasion of the Middle East was a spectacular success: the Christian armies defeated the local rulers, established new kingdoms, and recreated a direct commercial connection with East Asia, along the Silk Road. But the task was too huge for a still young Europe. After two centuries of struggle, the European armies were forced to abandon the Holy Land, defeated and in disarray. At this point, Europe faced again the problem it had tried to solve with the Crusades: overpopulation. The problem solved itself by means of a quick population collapse, first with the great famine (1315–1317), then the black plague. The Europe of the 13th century was so weakened that it seriously risked being overcome by the Mongol armies coming from Asia. Fortunately for the Europeans, the Mongols couldn’t sustain a full-scale attack so far from the center of their Empire.   

A schematic view of the European population during about one millennium. Note the two collapses: both have the typical “Seneca-Shape,” that is, decline is faster than growth. The first collapse was caused by famine and by the black plague, the second by the 30-year war, and the associated plagues and famines. 

Despite the ravages of the Black Plague, Europe emerged out of it with its culture, social structure, and technological knowledge still intact. Europe didn’t just recover, but it rebounded in a spectacular way. Shipbuilding technologies were improved, allowing Europeans to sail across the oceans. During their internecine quarrels, the Europeans had also turned firearms into terribly effective weapons. During the 16th and 17th centuries, they rebuffed the attempts of the Ottoman Empire to expand into Europe. The Ottomans were dealt a crushing blow on the sea at Lepanto, in 1571. Then, they were decisively defeated on land at the siege of Vienna, in 1683. With their Eastern Borders now safe, Europeans had a free hand to expand overseas. 

The 16th century saw the birth of a pattern that would persist for several centuries. European armies would invade foreign kingdoms, crush all military resistance, and replace the native leaders with European ones. Sometimes they used the local inhabitants as slaves, sometimes they wiped them out and replaced them with European colonists. The new lands were an incredible source of wealth. Europe imported precious metals, timber, spice, and even food in the form of sugar produced from sugarcane. The inflow of gold and silver from overseas stimulated the European economy, and timber allowed Europeans to build more ships. And the imports of food allowed the European population to grow and to field new armies that could conquer new lands that produced even more food.  

Nevertheless, Europe’s expansion started to slow down in the 17th century. The 30 years war, 1618 to 1648, was a terrible disaster that may have exterminated 10% of the European population. Then, as usual with wars, another outburst of plague followed. Europe seemed to have reached a new limit to its expansion. Sugar was not enough, by itself, to sustain the need for materials to keep and further expand the European empire. Wood was needed to produce ships and, at the same time, to be turned into the charcoal needed to smelt metals. But trees were depleted in Europe and importing timber from overseas was expensive. Most of the Southern European countries saw their forests decline and their growth stall.

(image from Foquet and Bradberry). (France is not shown in the figure, but it shows a pattern similar to that of England). 

Despite the troubles, the Northern European economies, (especially England) rapidly restarted to grow after the 17th-century crisis. The trick was a new technological development: coal. Coal had already been used as a fuel in Roman times, but nobody in history had used it on such a large scale. With coal, Europeans didn’t need anymore to destroy their forests to make iron. That was the start of a new, successful rebound. By the early 20th century, Europe dominated the whole world, directly or indirectly. 

Europe’s population according to Zinkina et al. (2017). The two drops of the 14th and the 17th century are clearly visible, although less dramatic on this scale than in the earlier work of Langer

As typical of empires, with the conquests completed, there came a time of consolidation. No more risky adventures of individual states, but a central government to manage the empire and keep it together. For the ancient Romans, it had been the task of Julius Caesar to create a strong, centralized state. For modern Europe, it was a much more difficult story: how to tame a group of quarrelsome states that seemed to spend most of their time fighting each other? 

The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles 5th (1500-1558), was among the first to try, without success. His successor, Philip 2nd of Spain (1527- 1598), tried to subdue Britain with his “invincible armada” in 1588, but he failed, too. The decline of Spain left space for other European powers to try again. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 -1821) almost succeeded, but his imperial dreams sank at Trafalgar and then froze to death in the Russian plains. Then, it was the turn of Germany. The attempt started in 1914, and again in 1939. In both cases, it was a tragic failure. Even the weak Italy had imperial dreams. In the 1940s, Benito Mussolini attempted to recreate a new version of the ancient Roman Empire in the Mediterranean Sea. Utter failure, again. 

Over and over, the would-be European Imperial powers found themselves facing an impossible challenge. In the West, Britain had no interest in seeing a European Empire arising just on the other side of the Channel. The same was true for the East, with Russia not keen to see a major power near its borders. The result was that the European armies found themselves fighting on two sides at the same time. Then, the Mediterranean Sea was in the iron grip of the British Navy — no way for continental powers to expand South. With the end of WW2, Europe emerged out of the struggle destroyed, impoverished, and humiliated. 

The latest (and perhaps the last) attempt to unify Europe was the European Union. The creators of the Union understood that it was impossible to unify Europe by military means, so they tried to do it in the form of an economic free zone and an elected parliament. It was a bold attempt, but it didn’t work. It could not have worked. The Union faced enormous hostile forces, both internal and external. Britain and France were supposed to be balancing the German power, but when Britain left, in 2020, the Union suffered an economic defeat equivalent to the military one suffered by Germany in the Battle of Britain, in 1940. In both cases, they had tried to absorb Britain into continental Europe, and they had failed.

The defection of Britain left the European Union with Germany dominating it. Just like during WW2, the German government never understood that throwing its weight around was not the way to endear itself with the neighboring states. The result was the growth of anti-European forces all over the continent — the movement called “sovereignty” that aimed to restore the power of nation-states and get rid of the EU bureaucrats. So far, this movement has played only a marginal role in politics, but it has succeeded in making the EU deeply hated by everyone who is not getting their salaries from Brussels. 

Just as it had happened in 1941, Europe is now engaged in a desperate battle on two different fronts, but the struggle is now mainly economic and cultural, not military: it is a “full spectrum dominance” war. The struggle is still ongoing, but it seems already clear that Europe is being defeated. Just like Germany had destroyed itself with a military attack on Russia in 1941, the European Union is destroying itself with its economic sanctions against Russia. Effectively, Europe is committing a slow and painful suicide. But that’s how full spectrum dominance works: it destroys enemies from the inside. 

And now? It was unavoidable that Europe would cease to be an Empire. The human and material resources that had made European dominance possible are not there any longer. But it was not unavoidable that Europe would destroy itself. Europe could have survived and maintained its independence by remaining on good terms with the other Eurasiatic powers, China, Russia, and India, But, choosing to break the commercial, cultural, and human relations with the rest of Eurasia was not just an economic suicide. It was a cultural and moral suicide. 

So, what’s going to happen to poor Europe? History, as usual, rhymes: do not forget that in 1945 the official US plan was to destroy the German economy and exterminate most of the German population. Fortunately, the plan was shelved, but could that idea become fashionable again? We cannot exclude this possibility. In any case, an impoverished Europe could go back to something not unlike what it was during the early Middle Ages: depopulated, poor, primitive, a mere appendage of the great Eurasian Continent. 

And, yet, Europe has rebounded more than once from terrible disasters. It may happen again. Not soon, though.

As inspiring as a blue cheese pizza gone bad