Europe could continue scrambling for gas supply for a number of winters due to low gas flows from Russia, according to the chief executive officer of supermajor Shell.
“It may well be that we will have a number of winters where we have to somehow find solutions,” Shell’s top executive Ben van Beurden said at a conference in Norway on Monday, as carried by Reuters.
Gas and power prices in Europe were setting fresh records every day of the past week, as natural gas supply from Russia continues to be limited ahead of the winter.
Energy prices in Europe have been smashing records after Russia’s Gazprom said on August 19 that it would halt all deliveries via Nord Stream to Germany for three days between August 31 and September 2. This announcement raised renewed concerns that supply via the pipeline could be further cut or halted altogether after the three-day unplanned maintenance at the end of August.
Soaring energy prices are fueling inflation and adding to the burden on households and industries across Europe.
In France, year-ahead power prices surged as much as 13% on Friday alone, to $1,003 (1,000 euro) per megawatt-hour for the first time ever, per Bloomberg’s estimates. French power prices have now soared tenfold over the past year.
Apart from rallying gas and power prices in the rest of Europe, France’s electricity supply is constrained by outages at some of its nuclear power plants.
In Germany, year-ahead electricity prices also hit a record of $843 (840 euro) per MWh on Friday, surging by 50% last week alone.
Last week, Europe’s benchmark gas prices at the Dutch TTF hub surged by 40% amid fears of a winter crunch in supplies.
This week, early on Monday the benchmark gas price slumped by 16% in early trade in Amsterdam, after Germany said its gas storage sites were filling at a faster pace than previously thought. According to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe, the EU gas storage was over 79% full as of August 28, with Germany’s storage at nearly 83% full.
Ukraine Fatigue? British War Support Wanes Amid Energy Hyperinflation
The Sunday Times reported the UK’s financial support for Ukraine could wind down by the end of the year. London has already allocated $2.7 billion in military aid to the wartorn country in Eastern Europe as the conflict just recently marched into the sixth month. Public support is also waning, driven primarily by energy hyperinflation sparked by failed Western sanctions on Russia.
According to a source in the UK Defense Ministry, cited by the newspaper, the UK is running out of weapons and money for Ukraine — this will be a challenge for the next UK Prime Minister, who will face the difficult decision to continue funding Kyiv while domestically, the economic outlook darkens.
Meanwhile, UK citizens are starting to realize Western sanctions on Russia have backfired and led many into fuel poverty:
“I do support arming Ukraine but I’m absolutely bloody terrified by the price of gas.
“I do think we’ve been a little guilty of overly glorifying the Ukrainians.
“I feel we need to think about ending this but I can’t see an end,” said Karine Hyde, 59, a medical practice manager.
Discontent in the UK is growing as energy costs soar. The latest issue to anger Brits is power regulator Ofgem hiked the cap on electricity bills by 80% to a record £3,549 ($4,189) starting on Oct. 1 from £1,971 ($2,330) at present. That cap is expected to rise to £5,439 ($6,427) by January, and £7,272 ($8,594) by spring due to skyrocketing wholesale natural gas prices as Russian supplies to Europe dwindle.
Soaring energy costs are making people rethink their views on the war.
A YouGov poll in March found that 48% of Brits supported increasing sanctions on Russia, even if they had to suffer due to higher inflation. By June, this had fallen to 38%. Also, 49% said in March said they would welcome tax hikes to pay for Ukraine’s military, but that number has dropped to 41%.
Additional questions via YouGov poll show slumping support for Ukraine among Brit adults.
Even in the wealthiest communities, Brits are fed up with the war support:
Tunbridge Wells may be one of Britain’s wealthiest towns but plenty there are scraping by and anxiety runs deep. “We’ve got three young kids, so we are statistically one of the people living paycheque to paycheque,” said Sam Pointer, an insurance account manager. “It is a struggle. If the government could find some way to support Ukraine to come to a peaceful solution, that would be great. But I’m not too hopeful.” — The Sunday Times
Olly Fairhurst, 35, who lives in Groombridge near Tunbridge Wells, houses two Ukrainian refugees and believes Russia must fail in this conflict. He said the UK government must not let the “sacrifices in this country be borne by the poorest.”
So six months into the war, the domestic sacrifices many Brits said they would take to support the war effort are being questioned as fuel poverty wrecks household finances.
Toronto police proudly tweeted an image of a handgun they recently seized. But Twitter users found the tweet both baffling and amusing, since the gun was covered with what appeared to be rust and sediment as if it had been on the bottom of a lake for several years.
Toronto police proudly tweeted an image of a handgun they recently seized. But Twitter users found the tweet both baffling and amusing, since the gun was covered with what appeared to be rust and sediment as if it had been on the bottom of a lake for several years.
Sweden’s leftist Prime Minister has vowed to abolish ethnic ghettos, asserting that she doesn’t want to see the emergence of “Somali-towns” in the Scandinavian country.
Social Democrats leader Magdalena Andersson made the comments during an interview with the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
“We don’t want Chinatowns in Sweden, we don’t want ‘Somali-towns’ or Little Italys,” she said in reference to migrant ghetto areas where one particular ethnic groups becomes concentrated.
Skeptics have suggested that Andersson’s comments are merely a ploy to erode support for anti-mass migration party the Sweden Democrats, which is likely to become the second biggest in parliament after the September 11 elections.
However, she made similar remarks following ethnic riots earlier this year that left more than 100 police officers injured.
Acknowledging that integration had failed, Andersson stated, “Segregation has gone so far that we have parallel societies in Sweden. We live in the same country, but different realities.”
“Integration was poor, and alongside, we have experienced intense immigration. Our society was too weak, while money for the police and social services too little,” she added.
Andersson was part of the government that accepted around 180,000 migrants during the “refugee crisis,” a decision she later said she “regretted.”
Having been one of the safest countries in Europe 20 years ago before mass uncontrolled immigration, Sweden is now the continent’s second most dangerous in terms of gun crime behind only Croatia.
Last year, Germany’s Bild newspaper ran the headline: ‘Sweden is the most dangerous country in Europe.’
Ukrainian refugees also expressed the desire to avoid being sent to Sweden, feeling that it was too unsafe.
Ukrainian women in Sweden were also warned not to dress in a way that could “provoke” Muslim men.
As we highlighted earlier this month, Swedish Migration Minister Anders Ygeman has suggested that Sweden should follow the example of Denmark in seeking to place a limit on the population of non-Nordic migrants living in troubled areas.
The Danish government has enacted a policy which has seen parts of migrant ghettos demolished, with residents moved elsewhere in a bid to put a stop to ‘parallel societies’ that breed crime and social dislocation.
The document describes how a pilot program called the “Secure Docket Card” would give some illegal aliens a card with a photograph, counterfeit-resistant security features, and a quick response (QR) code.
The card would replace “the current ad-hoc system” and could save Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) time and resources by enabling officials to more quickly verify an illegal immigrant’s status and help immigrants make it to court hearings, according to the document.
Biden administration officials already confirmed that such a pilot program was being prepared, but the document sheds more light on details on the program, including its scheduled start date and estimated cost.
Key components of the program were slated to begin on Aug. 1, according to the document, including designing the identification card, developing an online portal with information for the immigrants such as court dates, and identifying personnel who will work on the program.
Those components are slated to be completed by March 1, 2023. After that, the plan calls for temporary cards to start being produced in two ICE field offices and permanent cards to start being produced at an unidentified central location.
The program is slated to run through Sept. 30, 2023.
The following month, a feasibility study is scheduled to take place to evaluate whether the pilot can be expanded. Also planned: looking at whether illegal immigrant cardholders can access basic information on the online portal without assistance; whether the pilot was having an effect on the “Fugitive Rate,” or rate of illegal immigrants who skipped their court hearing; how much the program was increasing the workload for officials; and whether any forged cards were appearing.
The estimated total costs were pegged at $2.5 million.
“It is outrageous and absurd that the Biden administration intends to spend millions of dollars of taxpayer’s money designing and issuing identity cards for the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens they are waving in at the border,” Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that studies immigration, told The Epoch Times after reviewing the document.
“Instead of issuing these documents, they should be sending them back to their home countries,” she added.
No Update
After obtaining the document through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, The Epoch Times asked ICE for updates on the pilot, including whether parts of it began in August as scheduled and whether the estimated costs remained the same.
An ICE spokeswoman sent the exact same statement as she did in July, when the agency confirmed the pilot’s existence.
The program “is still in its infancy,” a spokesperson for the agency said when pressed on whether it had started. “There is nothing further to add at this time.”
“The ICE secure docket card concept is a pilot program that would modernize documentation provided to some noncitizens. While the specifics of the program are under development, it is important to note the secure card will not be an official form of federal identification. The secure card will indicate it is for use by DHS agencies and would be provided only after national security background checks have been performed,” ICE said in its previous statement.
One Of China’s Biggest Commodity Traders Faces Liquidity Crisis
Citing “temporary difficulties in logistics, transportation and product sales due to Covid flareups in China,” one of China’s most influential commodities traders is pushing for a government bailout as a deepening property market collapse and ongoing Zero-COVID policy shutdowns has pressured many commodity companies as credit conditions tighten.
As Bloomberg reports, He Jinbi – founder and chairman of Maike Metals International – has asked the government and financial institutions for help after liquidity issues forced his company to delay some payments for imported copper. Additionally, He admitted that some suppliers have canceled deliveries due to concerns over the company’s ability to pay.
The company “is suffering temporary difficulties in logistics, transportation and product sales due to Covid flareups in China,” company founder and Chairman He Jinbi said in an interview on Friday
Bloomberg reports that, according to people familiar with the matter, BHP Group, the world’s biggest miner, is among suppliers that are diverting shipments away from Maike for now. Additionally, Chile’s Codelco, the biggest global copper producer, has reportedly paused sales to Maike.
For now, Maike’s chairman claims the problems are only affecting 10,000 to 20,000 tons of refined copper, which accounts for a very small portion of the company’s supply, but one wonders why he would be urging government aid if this were a one-off, or a mere hiccup?
The company – which historically has been one of the biggest traders of copper in China – holds a substantial amount of the metal in Shanghai’s bonded zone, which is the center of refined copper trading in China. Copper rpices have been rather more volatile in the last week or so, spiking as Maike’s news made headlines and tumbling after The Fed’s hawkishness…
…but, as Bloomberg notes, this instance of financial stress comes after growing caution around commodities financing in the wake of high-profile losses – especially in the nickel market – and huge price volatility fueled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In China, several alleged scandals this year involving missing aluminum and copper ores have further reduced liquidity to the industry.
The Department of Defense’s (DoD) requirement that all members of the Armed Forces receive COVID-19 vaccinations, even if they’ve already had the virus and developed immunity, has had a severely disruptive effect within military ranks, resulting in the denial of promotions and assignments to those who refused vaccination and in thousands of service members having to leave the military.
The vaccination order has given rise to a spate of lawsuits and is likely to spur more challenges as more people come to see that officials who grant exemptions on other grounds are unwilling to accommodate those who file religious accommodation requests (RARs), service members and military experts have told The Epoch Times.
“I have talked to military members and no one likes this policy; no one thinks it’s a good idea. I agree with them that this policy is going to backfire in a big way. It’s going to force out people who are moral, ethical service members out of the military and will leave a readiness gap. But the other problem is this is a relatively untested vaccine and we’re all just now starting to see what the health effects are,” Susan Katz Keating, a journalist specializing in military affairs and the editor and publisher of Soldier of Fortune magazine, told The Epoch Times.
The vaccine mandate has been enshrined in DoD policy as a consequence of President Joe Biden’s July 29, 2021, order to the department to add COVID-19 to its list of required vaccinations. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s subsequent memorandum on Aug. 24, 2021, required each branch of the military to vaccinate all service members.
The order quickly met with resistance from military personnel seeking exemption on various grounds, from concerns about the safety and unknown long-term side effects of vaccines that they felt had been rushed through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval process, to religious objections on the part of those who take issue with the use of fetal cell lines in the development of the drugs.
A Professional Soldier’s View
Active-duty military personnel who spoke to The Epoch Times acknowledged broad disapproval of the DoD’s stance on vaccinations, and some of them signaled that, no matter how mixed the results so far, legal challenges to the policy are just getting started.
Opposition runs high among military personnel, Rob Green, an active-duty Navy commander (O5) currently serving with Maritime Expeditionary Security Group Two, told The Epoch Times.
“I don’t want to speak for 2.1 million of my friends, but I’ll say that there are many who did not want to get vaccinated. They’re being told that they have to, but common sense told these people that if a pandemic has a 99.99 percent survivability rate, and you’re in the healthiest possible age group in America, ‘Why am I going to take this risk?’” Green said.
Green described Pfizer-BioNTech’s Comirnaty vaccine as an emergency-use product that never went through the twelve-year cycle of approval and review which a vaccine would ordinarily be subject to, but instead was rushed through the process in one year, with important testing left undone.
He noted that Comirnaty-labeled vaccines—the drug that received full Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval—became available for the DoD to order only as of May 20 this year. According to Green, this means that, going back as far as Aug. 24, 2021, the DoD had been illegally pushing the use of a drug that still had the status of an Emergency Use Authorized (EUA) product, and one that service members, therefore, had every legal right to refuse.
“The order to vaccinate is not a lawful order. As a matter of fact, in federal court, the Department of Justice, on behalf of the Department of Defense, admitted on May 20 that basically they had no licensed product before then,” Green said.
No statutory basis exists for denying any American the right to refuse to a EUA drug, Green believes. Under EUA law 21 USC § 306bbb, the government has far-reaching responsibilities when it comes to advising people of their rights concerning the administration of vaccines and other drugs, according to a whistleblower report circulated by Green and obtained by The Epoch Times.
While the military can make use of a presidential waiver process under 10 USC §1107a, this waiver does not mean that service members are legally required to use a EUA product, only that the requirement to inform them of their right to refuse does not apply, the report states.
The vaccines forced on service personnel before May 20, 2022, were not Comirnaty-labeled, and hence did not meet a fundamental legal obligation, Green argued.
“Labeling is a legal requirement in order to have a licensed product. You can’t waive proper labeling. That amounts to fraudulent labeling, which actually has its own statute law. They knew what they did was illegal,” Green said.
The Pentagon has issued a policy (pdf) saying the FDA-approved Comirnaty and EUA Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are interchangeable, but the legality of this directive is contested by service members opposing the mandate.
Green said he knows many service members who have been unfairly, and illegally, penalized for their refusal to take the vaccine, including one young man who he identified for purposes of this article as Owen. In Green’s telling, Owen enlisted under a delayed entry program. The DoD rolled out its vaccine mandate after Owen had signed up, but before he arrived at boot camp. When Owen put in an RAR, he was told that the process required him to confer with a chaplain, but, being in boot camp, he had no access to a chaplain. In the end, the military kicked Owen out after only 39 days of service.
A New Challenge
Military personnel are not lying dormant in the face of what they view as an illegal and selectively enforced mandate.
Last week, 14 Marines residing in the states of Texas, Washington State, Louisiana, Minnesota, and North Carolina filed a class-action lawsuit in a federal court in Texas against Defense Secretary Austin. In their complaint, the plaintiffs, citing “sincerely held religious beliefs,” claim that military officials have been inconsistent in their treatment of service members seeking exemptions. While, in theory, it is possible to seek an exemption on medical, administrative, or religious grounds, the last category does not carry any weight with DoD officials, the plaintiffs allege. “Religious accommodation requests are universally denied unless the requester is already imminently leaving the Marines,” the complaint charges.
Military officials’ refusal to grant exemptions on religious grounds is not only inconsistent with their willingness to exempt service members on other grounds but violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and the Administrative Procedure Act, the plaintiffs claim.
The complaint lists a number of negative consequences for the careers and lives of those service members who refuse vaccinations. The DoD threatened those who refused to comply with court martials, involuntary separation from the services, negative performance evaluations, the loss of leadership positions, removal from consideration for promotions, the inability to retire in good standing, non-deployable status, denial of benefits and special pay, and the loss of leave and travel privileges, among other penalties and punishments.
Its legality aside, the DoD’s vaccination push has been largely successful—with the overwhelming majority of active-duty Marines now vaccinated—and recent developments in related cases do not look promising for the plaintiffs in the Texas class-action suit.
In March, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling that the Navy had the authority to decide whether or not to deploy personnel who refused the vaccine mandate. That case, too, was originally filed in Texas before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals took it up.
Readiness and Morale
As of the end of April, the military had expelled 3,400 troops for refusing vaccine shots, and the numbers continue to rise.
For the military to lose so many personnel so abruptly, and with more involuntary separations likely as the legal challenges play out, is reckless from a security standpoint, Elaine Donnelly, founder and president of the Center for Military Readiness, a Livonia, Michigan-based public policy institute, told The Epoch Times.
“Of course the size of the All-Volunteer Force matters, and anyone claiming otherwise should be held accountable. Short-handed units put heavy work burdens on others, making deployments more difficult and weakening deterrence, morale, and overall readiness. The military services and academies keep pushing an inflexible, unreasonable ‘get vaccinated or get out’ policy, which has become a national security issue,” Donnelly said.
In Donnelly’s view, the traditional criteria that guided military leaders’ decision-making—namely, what is in the best interests of American readiness and security—have been eclipsed by a tendency to assert their own absolute power in a context where service members are expected to obey commands without question.
“Military vaccinations have little to do with the health of the force and everything to do with the power of military officials to implement policy. The military is uniquely vulnerable to power plays such as this because personnel are not truly free to dissent, and federal courts are reluctant to second-guess military judgments and decisions,” she said.
Military Priorities
Donnelly pointed out the irony that DoD officials should take such an inflexible, and coercive, stance toward those who dissent on religious grounds, given the overall orientation of the military today toward accommodating all who say they want to serve, without regard for such traditional standards and requirements as physical strength and endurance.
Miami’s Gun Buyback Program Preys On Residents To Hand Over Firearms To Support Fight Against Russia
The City of Miami has become very creative in an attempt to disarm residents through a voluntary gun buyback program that will supposedly help “provide safety and defense equipment to Ukraine.”
Called “Guns 4 Ukraine,” the flyer on the Miami government website reads:
Your donations will be used to assist the Ukraine support efforts. Receive a gift card starting at $50 for an old, unused, or found weapons, no questions asked. Do your part to make our streets safer. Visa Gift Cards will be exchanged for the weapons in the following amounts: $50 Firearm, $100 Shotgun or Rifle, and $150 High-powered assault rifle (.223 Caliber, AR-15, AK-47).
City officials outlined how no “homemade firearms” will be accepted in exchange for gift cards. It appears they learned a valuable lesson from a Houston, Texas, gun buyback program earlier this month when a man 3D-printed 62 pistols and was able to collect thousands of dollars.
While the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that most Americans support helping Ukraine fight against Russian aggression, Miami is preying on the sentiment of its residents to give up their guns for NATO’s proxy fight against Russia in one of the most corrupt countries in the world, located in Eastern Europe.
Miami’s gun buyback program sounds like a very cunning scheme to disarm residents under the guise of helping Ukraine.
Ukrainians don’t need guns from Miami residents when they have billions of dollars in weapons supplied by the US military-industrial complex, courtesy of the war hawks in the Biden administration.
As vehicle prices rise amid inflationary pressure, Americans buying new cars are taking on higher loans and pushing themselves deeper into debt, according to credit-monitoring company Experian.
Both the average loan amount and monthly payments for new and used cars have risen over the recent quarters, the firm said in an Aug. 25 news release. In second quarter 2022, the average loan amount for a new vehicle rose 13.21 percent year over year, to $40,290. During this period, monthly payments rose from $582 to $667, an increase of 14.6 percent.
For used vehicles, average loans jumped 18.66 percent, to $28,534, while the average monthly payment rose from $440 to $515.
Experian also found that consumers were shifting back to used vehicles, accounting for 61.78 percent of all vehicle financing during second quarter 2022, which is up from 58.48 percent during the year-ago period.
“Between the inventory shortage and rising vehicle costs, consumers are looking to make the most cost-effective decision, which is often a used vehicle,” said Melinda Zabritski, Experian’s senior director of automotive financial solutions.
“The benefit of higher vehicle values is that consumers are able to get more for their trade-ins, which can help offset the increased cost of their next vehicle.”
According to market research firm J.D. Power, the average transaction price for a new vehicle is expected to hit a record high of $46,259 in August, up 11.5 percent from a year back.
The 12-month Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation, registered an 8.5 percent increase in July, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Prices of new vehicles rose by 10.4 percent. while used cars and trucks saw prices jump by 6.6 percent.
The car market is in a very big, ugly bubble. @DiMartinoBooth just did a great episode covering the topic, but the payments people have are unreal. How did it become normal for people to have payments in excess of $1000 a month!? They sound like rents, not car payments. pic.twitter.com/0YoEOL9seJ
The jump in average car loan amounts and monthly payments are happening amid an increase in auto loans. According to an Aug. 2 report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data, household auto loans in Q2 rose by $33 billion to $199 billion, continuing an upward trajectory that has been in place since 2011.
