Month: September 2022

Authored by Jennifer Bradley via RealClear Wire,

The pace of China’s nuclear modernization has been described as breathtaking by Adm. Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command. The increased size and sophistication of the capabilities being developed make them a strategic threat to the U.S. and its allies. Along with that threat comes the uncertainty around how large China plans to grow its force. 

To deal with this threat, it is tempting to reach for the Cold War playbook and enhance deterrence. Arms control negotiations and agreements played a pivotal role in reducing risk, increasing transparency, and promoting stability between the United States and the Soviet Union. But China is not the Soviet Union, and arms control will not address this threat.

For arms control to be effective, at least two parties must be willing to negotiate. Unfortunately, China is not. Beijing has steadfastly refused to even entertain the idea of joining any nuclear arms control negotiations. It remains opaque on its current nuclear capabilities, its intentions for its nuclear modernization program, and any changes in nuclear doctrine its leaders may be contemplating. It is easy to point to the disparity in the size of China’s nuclear arsenal compared to those of the United States and Russia, but to understand China’s resistance to nuclear arms control, it is imperative to examine its strategic culture.

Understanding the context

The late Colin S. Gray wrote, “Policy and strategy will be influenced by the cultural preferences bequeathed by a community’s interpretation of its history as well as by its geopolitical-geostrategic context.” Assessing strategic culture provides a method for understanding the behavior and decision-making of states, while also guarding against one’s own ethnocentric biases. Examining China’s strategic culture offers insight into its consistent and strong resistance to nuclear arms control negotiations that the United States continues to advocate for. 

A preference for secrecy and deception is a key component of Chinese strategic culture that influences its national security policy development. The importance of deception is emphasized in both classical and contemporary Chinese military writings. Sun Tzu, one of the most well-known classical Chinese strategists, stated, “All warfare is based on deception.” But the core components of secrecy and deception as beneficial strategic concepts are peppered throughout modern Chinese strategy documents. They are referred to as methods for enhancing deterrence, or for gaining advantage should deterrence fail. Even Deng Xiaoping’s famous twenty-four-character strategy contained the essential directives to “hide our capacities and bide our time,” relying on secrecy and deception to achieve China’s strategic objectives.

Arms control, in order to be successful, requires a verification regime to ensure that treaty signatories are meeting their obligations. This need for verification is in direct conflict with Chinese cultural preferences for secrecy and deception. Skeptics may counter that China has participated in many other arms control regimes in the past, including the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and the Biological Weapons Convention – and it has signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, although it has not ratified it. Participating in these treaty organizations bolsters China’s image as a responsible international stakeholder, but secrecy and deception have also influenced Beijing’s involvement in these treaty regimes: China’s record on proliferation runs counter to its obligations under Article I of the NPT, the BWC does not have a formal verification regime that China has to adhere to, and though adherence to the CTBT is voluntary, a report published by the U.S. State Department in 2020 suggests that China has repeatedly blocked the flow of data from International Monitoring System stations used to monitor nuclear testing activity calling into question activities at China’s Lop Nur test sites. 

In other words, even as China benefits from the prestige of membership in these arms control regimes, it also subverts its obligations. It is not subject to verification requirements and maintains the ability to hide illicit behavior.

How to maintain real deterrence

If arms control is not a viable solution to address the risk of China’s strategic breakout, then what path should the United States take? Due to the uncertainty and increased risk caused by China’s actions, the United States must hedge against this threat. A hedging strategy is a prudent course of action to reduce risk, strengthen deterrence and assure allies of U.S. commitment to security obligations. 

An effective hedging strategy will ensure that the recapitalization of the U.S. nuclear force remains funded and on track. It will promote flexibility of U.S. nuclear capabilities to guarantee the ability to respond to any level of escalation by our adversaries. This flexibility requires continued commitment to the nuclear-armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N) in order to compete with capabilities that both China and Russia are developing. Finally, a hedging strategy will not reduce the role of nuclear weapons in national security unilaterally, especially as both China and Russia are increasing the prominence of nuclear weapons in their strategies. These measures are not akin to an arms race, but rather they ensure that the U.S. nuclear force is ready and reliable, and that our adversaries believe it poses a credible threat.  

The nuclear threat posed by China is growing – how much so will remain unclear, because of its cultural preferences. This requires the United States take prudent measures to enhance deterrence of China, in ways tailored to this threat and this century, not the last. The uncertainty caused by the growing Chinese threat is uncomfortable – but deterrence has always been an uncomfortable proposition. It relies on convincing adversarial leaders with unique cultures, values, and worldviews that restraint is in their best interests. During the Cold War, leaders in the Soviet Union decided that arms control served their own national security, and the treaty regimes reduced tensions and enhanced deterrence. But until China’s leaders reach that same conclusion, the United States must become comfortable with being uncomfortable. A hedging strategy to ensure our deterrent remains robust and credible will ensure that China remains uncomfortable as well. 

*  *  *

Jennifer Bradley is a Senior Deterrence Analyst at U.S. Strategic Command. The views represented are those of the author and do not represent U.S. Strategic Command, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

The founder of a major microchip producer has reinstated his Taiwanese citizenship and pledged to spend $32 million of his own money to train “civilian warriors” to prepare for a Chinese invasion.

Wearing a bulletproof vest, billionaire Robert Tsao, founder of United Microelectronics Corp, announced at a Thursday press conference that the Chinese Communist Party’s threat to Taiwan was growing. The 75-year-old says he plans to train “three million people in three years,” and will work with the island’s civilian defense organization – the Kuma Academy.

“Given the Chinese Communist Party’s record of atrocities against its own people and its brutal domination of those like the Uyghurs who are not even Chinese, the CCP’s threats have only ignited among the Taiwanese people a bitter hatred against this threatening enemy, and a shared determination to resist,” he said in a prepared statement.

“I am back in Taiwan, and I will die in Taiwan. I will not watch the CCP turn Taiwan into another Hong Kong,” he said during his speech in Taipei.

According to the Guardian, 60% of the funds would go towards the army of “warriors,” while 40% would be to train another 300,000 in how to shoot.

“If we can successfully resist China’s ambitions, we not only will be able to safeguard our homeland but make a big contribution to the world situation and the development of civilization,” he said.

Tsao was formerly an active supporter of unifying Taiwan with China, and had renounced his Taiwanese citizenship in protest against a government investigation of his company. However, he told Radio Free Asia that he had a change of heart after witnessing the crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, particularly the Yuen Long MTR attack. On Thursday he also announced he had renounced his Singaporean citizenship and that his Taiwanese citizenship had been restored and he planned to “die in Taiwan and stand with its people”. -The Guardian

Established in 2021, the Kuma academy is aimed at training Taiwan’s civilian population in guerilla warfare, self-defense, and first-aid skills.

“This goal is ambitious and the challenge is daunting, but Taiwan has no time to hesitate,” the academy said in a statement, citing efforts by the British after the second world war, as well as the Ukrainian response to the ongoing Russian invasion.

The academy – which was approached by Taso after launching a fundraiser – said that the will of Taiwan’s people to resist a CCP invasion would “determine the outcome of the war.”

“War is not a matter for a few people, and defending Taiwan is for every Taiwanese. Everyone has the ability and responsibility to contribute their own strength in the war.”

Authored by Katie Spence via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Colorado River Basin meanders through seven U.S. states and supplies water to Lake Powell in the Upper Basin and Lake Mead in the Lower Basin. In turn, these reservoirs deliver water and power to millions of Americans.

They’re also going dry.

Indeed, on Aug. 16, 2021, the Bureau of Reclamation issued the first Level One Shortage Condition in the Lower Basin when Lake Mead fell below 1075 feet.

Then, in March 2022, the bureau reported that Lake Powell fell below the target elevation of 3,525 feet for the first time since the 1960s.

Pointedly, these drops threaten hydropower generation and municipal water needs for 40 million Americans.

And while Congress has taken steps to address the flagging water supply, a 20-year megadrought and unsustainable allotments are hampering its efforts.

In 1999, Lake Powell averaged a water elevation of almost 3,681 feet, and Lake Mead was almost near capacity at 1,220 feet near the dam.

After more than 20 years of drought, the West has officially entered a megadrought (meaning 20 or more years), and Lake Powell’s water level is down almost 150 feet. Lake Mead’s water level is down nearly 176 feet.

Indeed, the period from 2000 to 2021 was the driest on record for many states in the West.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) designated 63 out of 64 Colorado counties as natural disaster areas due to drought and declared natural disaster areas in several Wyoming counties.

In Mancos Valley, an area considered a Colorado agricultural utopia with cooler weather and “plenty” of water, streams ran at half the average flow, reducing water for hundreds of farmers and ranchers.

Moreover, headwaters for the Colorado River Basin start in Colorado and Wyoming, meaning the lack of water didn’t just affect the two states.

“Water conditions on the river depend largely on snowmelt in the basin’s northern areas [of Colorado and Wyoming],” states a Congressional Research Service report (CRS).

Still, it could probably pull through if the megadrought was the only problem facing the Colorado River Basin. Unfortunately, federal and state mismanagement compound the megadrought, driving the river to the brink of disaster.

Unsustainable Drains

In 1922, the Basin States of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and California established the Colorado River Compact to release water from the lakes based on basin storage conditions.

Specifically, under the compact, each basin is allocated 7.5-million-acre feet (MAF) per year—one-acre foot equals about 326,000 gallons—and a certain percentage goes to the Basin States based on water levels in the dams.

At its peak, Glen Canyon Dam on Lake Powell can store 26.2 MAF, and Hoover Dam on Lake Mead can store 26.1 MAF, according to CRS.

In 1944, the United States entered a treaty with Mexico to provide an additional 1.5 MAF from the basin to Mexico.

Markedly, at the onset of the compacts, federal and state governments assumed that river flows would average 16.4 MAF per year, states CRS. But that turned out to be a deeply flawed assumption.

From 1906 to 2020, the actual river flows averaged 13.9 MAF, but consumption and losses averaged approximately 15 MAF. Demand outpaced supply.

Drought and Hydroelectric Plants

According to the Department of Energy, hydropower is primarily used for ramping energy flexibility and represents less than 6.7 percent of U.S. electricity generation capacity.

In other words, if an area relies on solar and exceeds capacity, or the sun sets, hydropower can “ramp up” energy production quickly—hydropower provides approximately 40 percent of black start resources (restoring a power station to operation without relying on the external electric power transmission network after a total or partial shutdown).

It’s also considered one of the “cleanest” and “cheapest” forms of energy.

However, hydroelectricity generation depends on funneling large amounts of water from elevated heights through power plants typically found inside dams, according to the Water Resources Research Center, making significant river systems a vital resource.

Read more here…

It appears Common Core math has crept its way into the highest echelons of the Biden administration.

On Friday, White House spox Karine Jean-Pierre attempted to actually answer a question – except, while her boss can’t read a teleprompter – Jean-Pierre apparently can’t read a binder when she’s not deflecting.

When asked what she thinks about a variety of terrible metrics since Biden took office, she panicked and attempted to rattle off a list of economic accomplishments, which did not go well.

“Under President Biden, student test scores has gone backwards, inflation has gone the wrong direction, workers’ real wages have come down. We’re seeing spending on programs and promised that at some point in the future, the transition will be over. What, in the last 20 months, where’s the progress?” asked Fox Business correspondent Edward Lawrence.

After rattling off some broad brush strokes, Lawrence reiterates: “But inflation still outpaces wages,” to which Pierre turned to her trusty binder of accomplishments, where she noted that the White House has created “nearly ten-thousand million jobs,” which she bragged was “the fastest job growth in history – so you’re asking me ‘where’s the success?’“

Watch:

Perhaps if you divide the number of jobs people have to hold down to make ends meet…

They finally admitted that 100 million Americans need to hold 100 jobs each to survive in the greatest economy ever https://t.co/1toXbhaXwF

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 2, 2022

Will someone please ask her what jobs they created? People going back to work after a pandemic is not job creation

— TexasV 🇺🇸 (@Texasblue1) September 2, 2022

She uses the same math as her boss

— Our World Is Run By Pedos (@Wattsdj1) September 2, 2022

Why not just say eleventy-billion jobs?

— Rusty 🎙️ (@rustyweiss74) September 2, 2022

Clearly deflection is her strong suit.

 

Authored by Allen Stein via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Chevy pickup truck growled like a wary pitbull as it crept along the narrow dirt road parallel to Arizona’s southern border wall fence with Mexico.

Sam, the owner of a private Arizona security firm, stopped the truck and put the gear in park.

“We’re on the Roosevelt Easement right now,” he says bluntly. “The federal government owns this entire road.”

Something, though, was glaringly out of place on Aug. 24.

Three massive irrigation gates built into the steel border wall fence were open for anyone to walk through.

On the Mexican side of the border wall, fresh water bottles lay on the ground, covered in dew. Someone had also left origami puppets with the words “Peace” and notes in Spanish and English in plastic zip-lock bags.

“Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us,” the note read.

Humanitarians leave water bottles, food for the illegals, and even children’s toys to pick up as they cross into the United States through the open gates, says Sam, the pseudonym he uses to protect his identity.

“There’s another open gate “bigger than this one, down that way,” he says, pointing up the easement. “There are five or six gates like this”—all open.

“And this is the new wall Trump built. What sense does it make? How about closing the gates?”

Sam believes the Roosevelt Easement is key to border security through enforcement from the federal level.

The easement is a 60-foot-wide dirt road owned by the federal government along the U.S.-Mexico border, spanning nearly 2,000 miles across three of the four border states.

In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt established the federal easement with the intention of protecting border states against smugglers operating between the United States and Mexico.

Border wall construction in Arizona stopped soon after President Joe Biden took office in 2021. Its projected construction cost was over $21 billion, requiring nearly four years to complete.

Sam says the Roosevelt Easement is like a constitutional “no man’s land” where federal law enforcement could do the most good at preventing illegal immigration.

In July 2020, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced the transfer of 65.74 acres of federal public lands in Arizona and New Mexico to the U.S. Army to aid the installation of power and utility infrastructure to support border wall security.

On Aug. 24, much of that infrastructure appeared incomplete along the portion of easement between Bisbee and Douglas.

Sam tells The Epoch Times that thousands of illegals pass easily through breaches in the wall each month with little to stop them.

Signs written in Spanish greet the migrants with an emergency phone number to call. “No Trespassing” signs are written in English.

“I tried to push one [gate] shut. It’s pretty hard to shut,” says Kyle, Sam’s security specialist, riding in the truck’s passenger seat. “They would be damned secure if they were [kept] shut.”

“There are people here that are tired of the bull,” Sam adds. “People aid the cartels and the migrants because they’re migrants themselves.”

Further up the road, a lone U.S. Border Patrol officer sat in a pickup truck, watching as we approached.

“Why are the irrigation gates kept open?” an Epoch Times reporter asked.

The officer responded that the gates stay open during monsoon season, allowing water and debris to wash through and prevent flooding.

“But doesn’t that make it easy for migrants to cross into the United States?” the reporter asked.

The officer nodded and said the location has been “somewhat active” with illegal crossings.

As we moved further up the easement, we found more open gates and even strips of camouflage fabric caught in barbed wire, signs of illegal crossings.

“Whoever was hauling backpacks got hung up on here,” Kyle says.

Illegals purchase camouflage backpacks and other necessities at makeshift stores along the human smuggling routes run by the Mexican drug cartels. It’s kind of like a mini-retail chain, Kyle says.

Sam says many illegals would stop coming if law enforcement had the manpower and resources to intercept them and send them home.

Read more here…

Engine trouble led to the postponement of NASA’s Artemis 1 mission earlier in the week, but is now scheduled to launch tomorrow afternoon. The flyby is scheduled to be the start to a new program of U.S. government lunar missions almost exactly fifty years after the Apollo project, which landed the first humans on the moon, ended. Since then, no manned missions have visited Earth’s closest companion in space.

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, Artemis 1 will be the first of three missions that are aiming to put a person back on the moon by 2025.

Not only in the U.S., race for the moon is starting anew as several more countries and private companies have announced lunar missions.

You will find more infographics at Statista

After the successful landings of Chinese probes Chang’e 3 in 2013, Chang’e 4 in January 2019 and Long March 5 in 2020, who will be the next space agency or company succeeding in reaching the moon? Our graphic gives a rundown of the main lunar missions announced to-date. Given the uncertainties of space flight, the dates may be subject to change.

After two failed mission by the Israeli private company SpaceIL in April 2019 and the Indian space agency ISRO in July of that year, the next soft landings on the moon are scheduled by U.S. companies Astrobotic Technology and Intuitive Machines, which are planning to bring landers and rovers to the moon towards the end of this or the beginning of next year as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program that has been giving out contracts to companies to develop capabilities to fly to the moon’s South pole which is interesting for resources utilization. Japanese company iSpace is also planning to launch its Hakuto lander later this year, which will place the Rashid rover developed by the United Arab Emirates Space Agency on the moon in early 2023.

Amidst global upheaval following Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine, the country’s first launch from its resurrected moon program Luna is believed to have been delayed to the coming year at least. The lander mission was originally scheduled to be followed up by a orbiter in 2024 and a manned mission to the moon’s orbit in 2029. The space agencies of Japan and India are also reaching for the moon in 2023 with one lander mission each. Turkey wants to reach the moon as well that year, albeit with an easier impactor mission. A soft landing is scheduled to follow by 2028.

New launches from China and the European Space agency are expected in 2024 and 2025, respectively, and focus on resources utilization concepts, as does NASA’s Viper rover program that will be realized in cooperation with private companies starting in 2024. In addition, NASA and ESA are scheduled to begin work on a space station in lunar orbit the same year.

South Korea already got a head start for its lunar program with the successful launch of a lunar orbiter in early August which is currently on the way to the moon. The country wants to achieve a soft landing on the moon by 2030.

Authored by Debbie Lerman via The Brownstone Institute,

Yesterday, September 1, 2022, The New York Times had a front page story entitled: “The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading.”

The first paragraph states that “National test results released on Thursday showed in stark terms the pandemic’s devastating effects on American schoolchildren, with the performance of 9-year-olds in math and reading dropping to the levels from two decades ago.”

Further down, the article says: “Then came the pandemic, which shuttered schools across the country almost overnight” and “experts say it will take more than the typical school day to make up gaps created by the pandemic.”

The definition of a pandemic, according to the Bulletin of the World Health Organization (ref: Last JM, editor. A dictionary of epidemiology, 4th edition. New York: Oxford University Press; 2001) is “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people.”

According to the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, “an epidemic occurs when an infectious disease spreads rapidly to many people.”

Thus, a pandemic is a disease that spreads rapidly to many people all over the world.

Based on this pretty much universally accepted definition, a pandemic can do exactly one thing: it can spread disease to many people around the world.

What can a pandemic NOT do?

A pandemic cannot impose mandates or lockdowns.

A pandemic cannot block borders or force people to stop traveling.

A pandemic cannot shutter schools – overnight or otherwise.

A pandemic cannot impact math and reading.

A pandemic cannot cause learning gaps.

What can our response to a pandemic do?

If we decide to shut down schools for months and years on end in response to a pandemic, then it is our response that has caused whatever educational deficits and devastation to children ensue. It is not the pandemic.

In case there’s any doubt that the effects of a pandemic are separate and distinct from society’s response to the pandemic, we can take a look at Sweden, where schools were never shut down, and where there was no learning loss (ref) and much less devastation to schoolchildren than in countries that closed schools (ref) during the Covid pandemic. 

Blaming the pandemic for anything other than disease and/or death is misinformation.

The New York Times headline and article contain clear and uncontestable instances of misinformation.

Here is the information from the article, stated in a factually correct way:

US public health leaders and politicians mandated prolonged school shutdowns in response to the Covid pandemic, and these school shutdowns had devastating effects on schoolchildren, creating learning gaps and erasing decades of progress in math and reading.

The head of the UK’s Environment Agency says that people need to be ‘less squeamish’ about drinking “toilet-to-tap” water from treatment plants, as countries and states around the world move towards recycling sewage.

According to a Sunday op-ed in The Times, Sir James Bevan writes that “drinking recycled sewage is the future.”

“The recent rainfall hasn’t changed the underlying position in this country: many parts are likely to stay in drought for months, and if we have a dry winter then next year will be even more challenging,” Bevan writes. “We will need to be less squeamish about where our drinking water comes from. Part of the solution will be to reprocess the water that results from sewage treatment and turn it back into drinking water — perfectly safe and healthy, but not something many people fancy.”

Bevan’s op-ed comes as US water supplies are under strain due to an ongoing, and worsening drought which has resulted in ten areas being given drought status by the Environment Agency.

Because of this, he says that people simply need to “change the way they think about water,” and “treat it as a precious resource, not a free good.”

“If we are going to get there, we are all going to have to think differently. Some of these measures will be unpopular, so future governments will need to show political will,” he said.

Earlier this year, Singapore’s water agency launched a beer made with recycled sewage water in order to raise awareness over the country’s water security issues (and probably to mask the taste of poo).

Last month we reported that Los Angeles County is considering a similar move to recycle wastewater to taps.

“There’s been a public health legacy where sanitary engineering practices and regulators considered sewage a waste, it was something to be avoided, something to be feared,” said Brad Coffey of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. “Now that we have the technology … the public, the regulators, the scientific community has much greater confidence in our ability to safely reuse that water supply.”

The plan hinges on the State Water Resources Control Bord, which legislators have tasked with developing a set of uniform regulations by Dec. 31 which would govern potable reuse.

“This is going to be the future of L.A.’s water, the future of the state’s water supply,” said Gonzalez, who added that the Headworks project could come online within the next five years.

LA’s plans are much bigger than that, however – as the city has set out to recycle 100% of its wastewater by 2035 per a pledge made by Mayor Eric Garcetti several years ago.

In order to achieve this, LA’s Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant – which currently only treats wastewater so it’s clean enough to release into Santa Monica Bay – must be completely converted into an advanced water purification facility which produces water that’s clean enough to consume.

What else are you going to use to wash the bugs down, after all?

Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

Elizabeth Warren must be a fool.  That, or she thinks the rest of us are fools.

The Senator recently took to CNN to publicly fret over the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes.  She’s worried they will tip the economy into recession.

What’s Warren afraid of?  Her fears have already come true.

The U.S. economy already is in a recession.  GDP data alone shows the economy contracted in both the first and second quarter of 2022.

The technical definition for a recession has long been understood to be two consecutive quarters of declining GDP.  So, by definition, the economy is in a recession.  Everyone knows this, save President Biden and Warren.

Recessions may not be agreeable.  But they are necessary.  In fact, the present recession is precisely what’s needed to clean up the consumer price inflation mess that Warren and her colleagues made.  There are consequences for mass money printing.  And they must be reckoned one way or another.

The fundamental fact is today’s consumer price inflation fiasco is a direct result of Washington’s spending policies.  The coronavirus hysteria provided the perfect excuse to spew printing press money into the economy.  Warren was one of the greatest advocates.

The Fed, for its part, merely obliged the wishes of Congress.  It created credit from thin air and loaned it to the Treasury in the form of Treasury note purchases.

The Treasury then obliged the wishes of Congress.  It used the money that was borrowed from the Fed to fund stimmy checks, PPP, and generous federal unemployment payments.  This was all to meet the legislative demands of Warren and the other knaves in Congress.

Money Destruction

There’s never a good time to spew printing press money into the economy.  But the years 2020-21 were particularly bad.  That’s because governments the world over locked down their economies for no good reason at all.

The United States, Europe, and nearly every government across the globe took its cues from Communist China.  The coronavirus curve wasn’t flattened.  But the economy was.

Then politicians like Warren took a bad situation and made it vastly worse by spewing printing press money everywhere.  Maybe they thought they were helping.  Maybe they believed the promise of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) would make all their socialist dreams come true.

Regardless, their actions were highly destructive.  And now we all must live in the discombobulated world they made.

The critical point is that the creation of greater quantities of money by central planners does not magically increase the quantity of goods and services.  The addition of newly created money is not readily greeted with a corresponding increase in production.

Similarly, newly created money does not magically increase people’s claims to goods and services.  It does not increase how much they can consume.  Rather, it dilutes each individual monetary unit, which then appears as rising prices.

The genesis of consumer price inflation can be found in money supply inflation.  Money supply inflation is the direct act of central planners.  The inflation of the money supply comes first.  Consumer prices then follow, especially when the printing press money is injected into the economy via government giveaways.

Broken Supply Chains

The 2020-21 government mandated lockdowns succeeded in disrupting supply chains.  Many links in the chain were broken.  Some supply chains that were incrementally connected over the last 30 years were broken forever.

There’s no going back to the way things were prior to March 2020.  Yet, in addition to the ramifications of government mandated lockdowns and mass money spewing, the world continues to change in important ways.

Geopolitical shifts since the start of the Russian-Ukraine war are momentous.  Sanctions imposed on Russia have put Europe in a position where it can no longer consume cheap, abundant Russian natural gas.

This is an example of a supply chain that’s broken for good.  It will never be repaired.  The implications of this new reality are just setting in as winter appears in the distance.

Germany is particularly vulnerable to disruptions in Russian gas.  Before the war started, more than half of its gas came from Russian imports.  Now Germany is having to quickly develop contingencies.

One option is to restart coal plants that had already been shut down as part of its plan to phase out coal by 2030.  But coal is also in a supply crunch.

In Poland, for example, cars are lining up at the Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka coal mine.  People are waiting day and night to stock up on heating fuel in advance of winter.  Demand for coal has forced Bogdanka and other mines to ration sales.

What’s going on here?  How did everything get so screwed up?  Have we entered the new dark ages?

Have We Entered the New Dark Ages?

Unless there’s a miracle, this winter will be an absolute calamity for Europe.  French President Emmanuel Macron recently clarified the situation for his cabinet.

“What we are currently living through is a kind of major tipping point or a great upheaval … we are living the end of what could have seemed an era of abundance … the end of the abundance of products of technologies that seemed always available … the end of the abundance of land and materials including water.”

Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles also warned of what’s to come, saying, “We [Europeans] are going to have a winter of great suffering.”

Both Macron and Robles fail to mention the source of the great upheaval and winter of suffering.  That it’s elitist policies from the U.S. and Europe that have put everyone in such a pinch.

In reality, there is an abundance of resources and the talent and capability to efficiently deliver them to market.  But government lockdowns, climate change policies, and senseless sanctions are standing in the way.

One example of the absurdity of it all was recently identified by ZeroHedge, who detailed how Europe is paying inflated prices for Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) that’s been laundered through China.  Somehow ‘dirty’ LNG from Russia magically becomes ‘clean’ when it’s brokered from China.

Here in the U.S. these mega disruptions are less pronounced, at least for now.  Yet the U.S. is not exempt.  Not with the current cadre of elitists doing everything they can to inhibit productivity and then paper over it with printing press money via misnomers like the Inflation Reduction Act.

As noted above, the U.S. is already in a recession.  The bear market rally has stalled out and reversed just as the calendar turns to September – the worst month of the year historically for U.S. stocks.  And September is followed by October, a month which has delivered several of the most epic stock market crashes on record.

So as the market slides into the fall, and the economy contracts, high consumer prices will persist.  They must.  Elitist policies assure it.

There is one way out, however.  But it won’t be very pleasant.  As the Fed yanks the cheap money rug out from under the economy the recession could turn into a decade long depression.

And if that doesn’t do it, a new dark ages will.

Soaring food, energy, and shelter inflation have led to what could be a new era of civil unrest worldwide. Pockets of unrest have been observed in Sri Lanka, Peru, Kenya, Ecuador, Iran, and Europe. New research forecasts a broader wave of discontent is just ahead. 

While this topic of developing social unrest is hardly new, we discussed it in late 2020, “Why Albert Edwards Is Starting To Panic About Soaring Food Prices,” and Rabobank’s Michael Every noted in April 2021: “We Are Edging Closer To A Biblical Commodity Price Increase Scenario.” 

Earlier this year, Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv warned that a “massive, immediate food crisis” is nearing. The UN said this summer that the world is “marching towards starvation” with an increased likelihood of civil unrest and political violence. 

Making sense of the impending global turmoil is Verisk Maplecroft, a UK-based risk consulting and intelligence firm. They have just published an updated version of the Civil Unrest Index (CUI), covering seven years of data, showing the last quarter saw the most countries ever since the index was created move higher in civil unrest risks (101 of the 198 countries tracked by the firm saw increased risks of civil unrest, while only 42 experienced reduced risks).

“The impact is evident across the globe, with popular discontent over rising living costs emerging on the streets of developed and emerging markets alike, stretching from the EU, Sri Lanka, Peru to Kenya, Ecuador, and Iran, ” Verisk wrote in the report, adding conditions are worsening as the frequency of protests and labor strikes could accelerate into fall. 

“Although there have been several high-profile and large-scale protests during the first half of 2022, the worst is undoubtedly yet to come,” the firm warned.

Verisk noted Algeria has the highest likelihood of projected civil unrest over the next half year because of rising inflation. Other areas include Europe, mainly due to energy hyperinflation decimating household finances.

“Bosnia and Herzegovina, Switzerland, Netherlands, Germany, and Ukraine are all among the states with the biggest projected increases in risk,” the report said. 

“Only a significant reduction in global food and energy prices can arrest the negative global trend in civil unrest risk. Recession fears are mounting, and inflation is expected to be worse in 2023 than in 2022,” Verisk said.

The question remains if central banks can arrest inflation with the most aggressive interest rate hikes in decades. If not, then Verisk expects: “the next six months are likely to be even more disruptive” than earlier this year.