Month: May 2021

Brazil’s federal government is projecting total coffee output in the world’s top-producing country will slump for the 2021 growing season, according to Reuters. 

Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento (Conab), the government’s food supply and statistics agency, said total coffee output would plunge 22.6% in 2021, to an expected 48.8 million 60-kilo bag. 

Conab forecasts an output of 33.36 million bags of Arabica this season and 15.44 million of Robusta.

There are two main species of coffee: Arabica and Robusta. Starbucks purchases only Arabica beans cultivated at high altitudes. About 70% of the world’s Arabica beans are grown in Brazil. Starbucks, and many other coffee chains, could soon feel the burn as wholesale price increases will likely be passed onto consumers. 

We’ve already mentioned coffee shortages are brewing as global supplies are shifting into a deficit as drought in Brazil slashes output. This has resulted in surging wholesale prices and US supplies slumping to a six-year low. Savor today’s cheap cup of joe because retail prices will rise. 

More on the drought and how crop and food prices are skyrocketing to multi-year highs, and the culprit is likely due to La Nina, a weather pattern characterized by the cooling of the equatorial Pacific that triggers atmospheric shifts and causes droughts in some regions of the world and wetter conditions in others. 

Brazil has been devastated by drought during its traditional rainy season. 

ICE Coffee futures for Arabica coffee have soared to multi-year highs on output declines in South America. 

Meanwhile, La Nina has disrupted weather patterns worldwide, leading to terrible droughts in South and North America. Consequently, food prices have soared to the highest levels in a decade. 

As much as the Federal Reserve expects “transitory” inflation – La Nina altering weather patterns could exacerbate food inflation and create years of elevated crop and food prices.

Authored by Pat Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

When the U.S. created NATO, a primary purpose of the alliance was to serve as a western wall to defend Germany against the 400,000 Russian troops on the eastern side of the Elbe River.

Seventy years later, Germany has decided to double its dependence on Vladimir Putin’s Russia for the natural gas needed to run the German economy, despite the opposition of her great protector, the USA.

The Biden administration decided to waive sanctions on Matthias Warnig, the ally of Putin whose company, Nord Stream 2 AG, is laying the pipeline beneath the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany that is now 95% complete.

When done, Nord Stream 2 will make Moscow Germany’s principal supplier of natural gas, and cut Kyiv out of hundreds of millions in transit fees it annually receives for letting Russian gas pass through Ukraine to Germany.

Previously, Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had seemed resolute in opposition. Said Blinken:

“We think the (Nord Stream 2) pipeline is a bad idea. It advances Russia’s interests and undermines Europe’s interests and our own. It actually goes against the very principles that the EU has set out in terms of energy security and not being too dependent on any one country, notably, in this case, Russia.”

As late as March, the Biden administration had made clear its commitment to complying with sanctions legislation put in place with bipartisan support in Congress, and had called on companies involved in Nord Stream 2 to “immediately abandon work on the pipeline.”

Ukraine is stunned and outraged.

Its parliament, the Rada, has passed a resolution urging Congress to “use all available tools provided by US law to completely and irreversibly stop the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline by applying blocking sanctions against all participants in this Russian geopolitical project.”

Why did Biden and Blinken fold? Was it to set the table for the Biden’s June summit with Putin?

The decisive factor was probably that Nord Stream 2 is just about complete and America’s principal continental ally, Germany, is wholly committed to the project. Prime Minister Angela Merkel, who is leaving office this year, approved the deal with Putin’s Russia and her legacy is now tied to its completion.

Germany’s dependence on Russian gas is certain to grow as Berlin, as it plans to do, phases out its coal and nuclear power plants.

This raises a question about NATO, and the commitment of its 30 members to treat an attack against one as an attack against all.

Would a Germany that is doubling its dependency on Russia for the natural gas that fuels its economy be willing to go to war against that same Russia, and send German troops to fight alongside NATO?

Would Berlin be willing to declare war on its own gas station?

Biden’s climbdown on opposition to Nord Stream 2 is startling from another standpoint. He and his team have shown themselves to be true climate change zealots who want to see gas and oil rapidly phased out.

On his first day in office, Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, enraging the Canadians and killing off 11,000 American jobs. Biden then outlawed any new drilling permits for oil or gas on federal lands.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer just told a Canadian energy company, Enbridge, it must shut down a controversial oil and gas pipeline that passes under the Straits of Mackinac, amid rising fears that a spill would be catastrophic to the region.

For 67 years, Enbridge has moved oil and gas from western Canada through Michigan and the Great Lakes to refineries in Ontario.

But Michigan now says that this one section of the pipeline is too risky to continue operating.

Earlier in May, America got a wake-up call about the vulnerability of its energy supply. Colonial Pipeline, which carries refined gasoline and jet fuel from Texas up the East Coast to New York, was forced to shut down after being hit by ransomware.

The attack was apparently the act of a criminal group, not a nation-state. But the damage done was considerable.

Half the gas stations in several states on the Eastern seaboard had to close when their gasoline pumps were exhausted by long lines of panicked motorists. To get their pipeline fully operating again, Colonial had to pay millions.

This demonstrated the vulnerability of the U.S. energy system and its new technology to the kind of cyberattacks that enemies far more serious than the criminal gang who launched the attack on the Colonial Pipeline could launch.

Fifty years ago, we confronted a grave threat to U.S. energy security and independence: an oil embargo imposed by the Saudis and other Arab OPEC countries in retaliation for Richard Nixon’s military aid that enabled Israel to survive and prevail in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Are we still prepared for something of that magnitude?

Vaccines have become such a lucrative revenue stream for Big Pharma since the start of the pandemic that drugmakers are already preparing the technology to develop jabs for the next global health crisis. Meanwhile, the jockeying among competing COVID jabmakers has gotten so intense that shadowy social media ad agencies are reportedly offering money to influencers to make posts trashing the Pfizer vaccine.

Apparently, a mysterious social media agency has been going around offering French social-media “influencers” thousands of dollars to publish posts claiming that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is “dangerous”.

According to RT, the French minister of health has spoken out against a campaign reportedly offering French influencers €2,000 to criticize the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine as dangerous or “lousy.” The ministry says it’s “following the events closely.”

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Health Minister Olivier Veran said he and his ministry hadn’t identified the origins of the campaign which sought to damage Pfizer’s reputation. However, “I do not know if it comes from France or from abroad,” he noted.

“It’s lousy, it’s dangerous, it’s irresponsible and it doesn’t work,” he stated, adding that he was confident the French people are unlikely to be “diverted” by some negative adds. He claimed that the majority of French people want the vaccine as soon as possible. Veran’s comments come after several influencers said on Monday that they had been contacted by a mysterious agency called ‘Fazze’ which describes itself as an ‘influencer marketing platform’.

Veran spoke after several influencers came forward in the press to complain that they had been contacted by the agency in question, which called itself “Fazze”, and which described itself as an “influencer marketing platform.”

All this is happening as Europe is finally opening its doors to vaccinated tourists. And many analysts see Europe’s reopening as critical to the global growth narrative. And many French adults remain skeptical about the efficacy of various COVID-19 vaccines, according to public opinion polls.

An influencer known as “Docteur JFK” on TikTok, told FranceInfo: “I was supposed to say the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine had caused three times more deaths than AstraZeneca.” He added that the person contacting him wanted to remain anonymous and that he turned down the offer.

Leo Grasset, a YouTuber known as ‘DirtyBiology’, said he had also been contacted on May 24. He tweeted: “This is strange. I got offered a partnership that consists of destroying the Pfizer vaccine in a video. Huge budget, and a client that wants to stay anonymous.”

Authored by Alex Wu via The Epoch Times,

In mid-May, China invested $35 million in Kenya to build a new foreign ministry building. It’s the latest in a series of investments and grants given by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to African countries, which allows the regime to expand its political and economic influence in the continent.

China’s investment offers, mainly through its Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI), have been widely criticized for setting up debt traps for recipient countries, along with accusations of espionage and infiltration.

The facade of the headquarters of the African Union (AU) is pictured in Addis Ababa on March 13, 2019. (Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)

The West has now started to take counter measures.

Southern China Morning Post noted on May 23 that the CCP has been focusing on funding and building government buildings for African countries, which has aroused suspicion from the international community.

Currently, the $80 million new headquarters for the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is funded by China, is under construction in the south of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Despite the U.S. government’s warning in February 2020 that a China-funded and constructed CDC will be used by the regime to steal “African genetic data,” construction started in December 2020.

According to The Heritage Foundation, China was involved in the building of more than 186 government buildings across 40 of 54 African countries. Even the African Union (AU) headquarters, located in Ethiopia, was fully financed and built by China.

In 2018, French newspaper Le Monde first revealed that AU technicians discovered that between 2012 and 2017, the Chinese-built African Union headquarters had been transmitting AU’s confidential data to Shanghai daily through the building’s IT network using servers provided by Chinese company Huawei.

Despite that, in 2019, AU signed deals with Huawei to expand the use of its technology and equipment in building 5G networks, artificial intelligence and cloud computing, and others.

China has developed 70 percent of Africa’s 4G networks, and even built sensitive intra-governmental communications networks for 14 African countries.

In recent years, China’s communist regime has lent billions of dollars to African states while building roads, railways, ports, power stations, internet networks, government buildings in an effort to bring the continent under its influence, according to UK media reports. The regime has also been building military bases in Africa, such as in Djibouti.

Chinese People’s Liberation Army personnel attend the opening ceremony of China’s new military base in Djibouti on Aug. 1, 2017. (STR/AFP via Getty Image)

The Chinese loans are mostly offered through BRI, which is Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s grand foreign policy project that he launched in 2013. It aims to extend the CCP’s economic and political influence to countries in Asia, Europe, and Africa by recreating ancient China’s silk road and maritime silk road for trading in the 21st century. The BRI invests Chinese capital in the construction of various high-cost infrastructure projects in more than 60 participating countries.

At least 28 African countries have signed a BRI agreement with China, according to Chinese state-run media Xinhua.

Recently, the United States and its allies have started to take measures to counter China’s expansion in Africa.

In a Group of Seven (G7) meeting of foreign ministers in early May, Western countries highlighted the CCP’s ambitions and security threats for the nations of Africa and Latin America, and suggested that the West extend partnerships to the countries with “concrete offers of cooperation.”

On May 22, a group of telecommunications companies funded by a U.S. foreign-aid agency and led by the U.K.’s Vodafone Group won the contract to build 5G network for Ethiopia, beating Chinese state-owned companies Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp.

The world is moving away from fossil fuels, towards large-scale adoption of clean energy technologies.

Building these technologies is a mineral-intensive process. From aluminum and chromium to rare earths and cobalt, as Visual Capitalist details below, the energy transition is creating massive demand for a range of minerals.

Copper is one such mineral, which stands out due to its critical role in building both the technologies as well as the infrastructure that allows us to harness their power.

The above infographic from Trilogy Metals highlights the role of copper in renewable energy, and how the adoption of wind and solar energy will affect its demand going forward.

Copper’s Role in Renewable Energy

Copper has one of the highest thermal and electrical conductivity of all metals. As a result, it’s the most widely-used mineral among energy technologies and is essential for all electricity-related infrastructure.

According to Navigant Research, here’s how much copper wind and solar farms use per megawatt:

Solar photovoltaics (PV) primarily rely on copper for cabling, wiring, and heat exchange due to its efficiency in conducting heat and electricity. Wind energy technologies make use of the red metal in their turbines, cables, and transformers. Offshore wind farms typically use larger amounts because they are connected to land via long undersea cables that are made of copper.

In addition, copper is also a key part of the grid networks that transmit electricity from power plants to our homes. With the increasing adoption of renewable energy, the demand for copper will only grow.

Copper Intensity of the Energy Transition

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), solar and wind energy installations need to scale up significantly under their REmap scenario, in which efforts are made to limit global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees by 2050.

Based on the copper content figures from Navigant Research and IRENA’s required capacity projections, here are the copper requirements for annual solar and wind installations in 2020 and 2050:

Copper content figures were calculated by multiplying copper content per MW in tonnes with annual installed capacities in 2020 and 2050.

Relative to 2020 levels, annual copper demand from solar PV installations could more than double by 2030, and almost triple by 2050. The largest percentage increase in copper requirements comes from offshore wind farms. IRENA’s REmap scenario requires 45,000 MW of annual offshore wind installations in 2050, which translates into 432,000 tonnes of copper—a 648% increase from 2020 levels.

By 2050, annual copper demand from wind and solar technologies could exceed 3 million tonnes or around 15% of 2020 copper production. However, it isn’t clear whether we will have enough supply of copper to meet this growing demand.

Will Supply Meet Demand?

According to Citigroup, the global copper market is expected to be in a 521,000 tonne deficit in 2021—and the transition to renewables is still in its early stages.

While the demand for copper comes from a range of industries, the majority of its supply comes from a few regions, making the supply chain susceptible to disruptions. Mine shutdowns in 2020 exemplified this, as copper production fell by around 500,000 tonnes.

Additionally, average ore grades in Chile, the largest producer of copper, have fallen by 30% over the last 15 years, making it more difficult to mine copper.

Although copper is available in abundance, declining ore grades and concentrated production are a cause for concern, especially as demand rises. Therefore, new sources of copper will be valuable in meeting the growing material needs of the clean energy transition.

Via South Front,

On May 23, a plane of RyanAir airlines flying from the Athens to Vilnius carried out an emergency landing at the Minsk airport, following a bomb alert. This is widely claimed to be a special operation ordered by President Alexandr Lukashenko aimed at arrest of one of opposition figures Roman Pratasevich, who was on board. However, a closer look at the incident and the newly-released data prove that other forces could be behind this ‘special operation’.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (R) and his Belarus’ counterpart Alexander Lukashenko walk in as they attend a session of the Supreme State Council of the Union State at the Kremlin in Moscow on March 3, 2015. AFP PHOTO / POOL / SERGEI KARPUKHIN (Photo credit should read SERGEI KARPUKHIN/AFP/Getty Images)

Reports about the explosive device on board were not confirmed. Passengers took another flight. Everyone except Protasevich, his girlfriend to whom he handed his personal belongings, including a laptop and a phone, and four Russian citizens, “who were GRU officers for sure “.

Roman Protasevich is one of the main figures of Belarus opposition, a co-founder of the Telegram channel Nexta that was used for coordination of mass protests since August 2020.

One of the main proofs that the incident was a planned operation of Belarus special forces is the publication on his Telegram channel of his private message, where cautious Protasevich described a suspicious Russian man, who tried to take a photo of his documents before landing. The authors of the channel consider this as proof that Roman Protasevich began to be followed back in Athens.

“I was silent, and he turned to me in Russian with some stupid question,” – Protasevich wrote to his friends.

“Such a middle-aged, fit, with a bald head. In one T-shirt, in light-colored pants and a leather case.”

A closer look at the chronology of events casts doubts on the claims of a “special operation” of special forces.

The crew commander of the aircraft of the RyanAir company informed Minsk about the mining on May 23, at 12:50 local time. At that moment the plane was already near the Lituanian border, but the pilots decided to act in accordance with the international security instructions and requested a landing in Minsk.

A recording of the pilots’ call with the dispatcher has been recently published online. It confirmed that it was pilots’ decision to land in Minsk. At this moment, Minsk airport received an e-mail about the bomb on board. The crew’s decision to land in Minsk was also confirmed by reports from the communications department of the Lithuanian International Airport.

Immediately after the call, the information was reported to President Lukashenko, who gave the command to take measures and secure the landing. The air forces of Belarus reacted to the emergency in according with international standards. The MIG-29 was following the aircraft in order to provide assistance if necessary.

As soon as the plane landed, passengers were evacuated, after which sappers and rescue services were deployed. At the same time, passengers were screened in accordance with safety standards.

Exactly at that moment, a photo of Protasevich appeared online with reports about his arrest. It was published by the assistant of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya on his Twitter account. According to reports, the photo was allegedly sent to the “opposition team” by Protasevich’s girlfriend, who was flying with him, for internal use, but they rushed to post it on the Internet even before official reports of his arrest.

BREAKING! The regime landed @Ryanair plane, which was flying from Athens to Vilnius,in order to arrest the famous Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich. In Belarus, he faces the death penalty. Belarus has seized a plane,put passengers in danger, in order to repress an opponent pic.twitter.com/TEv22to5XM

— Franak Viačorka (@franakviacorka) May 23, 2021

Meanwhile, the so-called ‘special operation’ was carried out right on the eve of the first offline European Summit, where the European diplomats are going to have a strategic debate on Russia. What a coincidence!

The head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, following the results of the EU summit on May 24, will have to prepare a report on relations with Russia.

Hype in global media platforms based on accusations of Lukashenko in neglecting international norms and in ‘international terrorism’, is aimed to have an impact on the results of the summit. European countries were going to discuss new restrictions against Minsk before the incident, but after an international scandal, this topic may become the main one on the forum’s agenda.

The European Union is considering the closure of not only air, but also ground communication with Belarus in response to the actions of President Lukashenko, Bloomberg reported, citing a senior European official close to negotiations on new EU sanctions against Belarus…

Read the rest of the ‘alternative version’ here.