Month: August 2022

The Royal Air Force’s head of recruitment has quit her post in protest over an alleged “pause” in the RAF’s acceptance of white male recruits, as the once-glorious fighting force myopically chases far-fetched diversity goals.   

As Sky News was first to report: 

The senior female officer apparently handed in her notice in recent days amid concerns that any such restrictions on hiring…could undermine the fighting strength of the Royal Air Force (RAF), [defense] sources said.

In putting diversity and inclusion ahead of the need to fill open slots, RAF Air Chief Marshall Sir Mike Wigston is compromising UK national security, the defense sources said. 

The Ministry of Defence has set a goal for 30% of all military recruits to be women by 2030, up from 12% today. However, the RAF is shooting for 40% women and 20% ethnic minorities. Women and minorities, however, don’t gravitate toward more combat-intensive roles, such as guarding airfields.

“The levels of ambition for ethnic targets…are absolutely crazy,” said one source. Another labelled them “impossible.” Sky News didn’t name the female recruiting officer who turned in her notice, but did say she is a “group captain,” equivalent to a colonel in the US Air Force. 

One source noted with dismay that the warped priorities come soon after UK army commander General Sir Patrick Sanders warned that current world circumstances present a “1937 moment” for the country. 

“Then you look at the head of the RAF and he’s prepared to break the operational requirement of the air force just to meet diversity [targets]. I think he needs to be hauled up by the Ministry of Defence and told: This is the defence agenda, get on it,” the source said. 

The defense sources also decried what they characterized as RAF commander Tigtson’s overly-woke agenda, which includes an emphasis on gender-neutral pronouns, eschewing the term “airman,” and permitting beards. In 2016 , Wigston authorized and personally conducted a gay marriage ceremony on Cyprus for an RAF enlisted man and his boyfriend.  

Reacting to news of the alleged anti-white-male recruiting move, a spokesperson for aspiring prime minister Rishi Sunak told Sky News, “The only thing that should matter in recruitment is the content of your character, not your sex or the colour of your skin. That the Ministry of Defence would allow Britain’s security to potentially be put at risk by a drive for so-called ‘diversity’ is not only disgraceful, it is dangerous.”

An RAF spokesperson denied the claims made by Sky News and its multiple defense sources: “There is no pause in Royal Air Force recruitment and no new policy with regards to meeting in-year recruitment requirements,” the spokesperson said, while also adding that “we are doing everything we can to encourage recruiting from under-represented groups and ensure we have a diverse workforce.” 

You know you’re in trouble when an official spokesperson refers to the RAF as a “workforce.” 

 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

A top German official has trashed people who may be planning to protest against energy blackouts as “enemies of the state” and “extremists” who want to overthrow the government.

The interior minister of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Herbert Reul (CDU), says that anti-mandatory vaxx and anti-lockdown demonstrators have found a new cause – the energy crisis.

In an interview with German news outlet NT, Reul revealed that German security services were keeping an eye on “extremists” who plan to infiltrate the protests and stage violence, with the unrest being planned via the Telegram messenger app, which German authorities have previously tried to ban.

“You can already tell from those who are out there,” said Reul. “The protesters no longer talk about coronavirus or vaccination. But they are now misusing people’s worries and fears in other fields. (…) It’s almost something like new enemies of the state that are establishing themselves.”

Despite the very real threat of potential blackouts, power grid failures and gas shortages, Reul claimed such issues were feeding “conspiracy theory narratives.”

However, it’s no “conspiracy theory” that Germans across the country have been panic buying stoves, firewood and electric heaters as the government tells them thermostats will be limited to 19C in public buildings and that sports arenas and exhibition halls will be used as ‘warm up spaces’ this winter to help freezing citizens who are unable to afford skyrocketing energy bills.

As Remix News reports, blaming right-wing conspiracy theorists for a crisis caused by Germany’s sanctions on Russia and is suicidal dependence on green energy is pretty rich.

“Reul, like the country’s federal interior minister, Nancy Faeser, is attempting to tie right-wing ideology and protests against Covid-19 policies to any potential protests in the winter.”

“While some on the right, such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD), have stressed that the government’s sanctions against Russia are the primary factor driving the current energy crisis, they have not advocated an “overthrow” of the government. Instead, they have stressed the need to restart the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, end energy sanctions against Russia, and push for a peaceful solution to end the war.”

Indeed, energy shortages and the cost of living crisis are issues that are of major concern to everyone, no matter where they are on the political spectrum.

To claim that people worried about heating their homes and putting food on the table this winter are all “enemies of the state” is an utter outrage.

As we highlighted last week, the president of the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Stephan Kramer, said energy crisis riots would make anti-lockdown unrest look like a “children’s birthday party.”

“Mass protests and riots are just as conceivable as concrete acts of violence against things and people, as well as classic terrorism to overthrow it,” Kramer told ZDF.

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Tensions are at a boiling point between Russia and Britain after the UK Defense Ministry declared it plans to send a reconnaissance plane on a route that partly passes into Russian airspace and over its territory.

It seems Russia’s air force may have been given shoot-down orders, or is at least ready to confront any possible foreign aircraft, if the UK attempts such a military breach of Russian airspace. “Russia’s Defense Ministry warned Britain Tuesday against a planned spy plane flight over Russian territory, saying the country’s air force has been given orders to prevent an intrusion,” The Associated Press writes over the emerging standoff between the two countries. 

This after the UK issued an official notice to the Kremlin forewarning about the planned flight of an RC-135 spy plane. “We regard this action as a deliberate provocation,” the ministry said, issuing its own counter-warning saying that the air force has been “given the task to prevent the violation of the Russian border.”

“All possible consequences of this deliberate provocation will lie entirely with the British side,” it continued, but without specifying the location and time for the potential UK flight.

It seems in the recent past, prior to the Ukraine war and corresponding Western sanctions on Russia, such “notifications” of recon flights near Russia from the West may have been seen as more routine – akin to similar ‘Open Skies’ treaty flights – but the Ukraine conflict and crisis appears to have definitively ended such forewarnings and permission. 

Certainly the prior post-Cold War era ‘Open Skies’ agreement between the US and Russia has already collapsed, after on May 21, 2020 then President Trump announced the US would withdraw from it based on alleged Russian violations of the treaty.

The Russian Defence Ministry has said that the UK requested permission for its RC-135 spy plane to fly over Russia. pic.twitter.com/iKIp7F3Z68

— Lexi (@missylexilou) August 16, 2022

The Kremlin’s resounding niyet given to the UK comes the day after an intercept incident in Russia’s far north, detailed in the Daily Mail as follows: 

A Russian MiG-31 fighter jet made an ‘unsafe close pass’ of an RAF spy plane yesterday, Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said, after Moscow claimed the plane had infringed on its airspace. 

The RAF spyplane was flying over the Norwegian and Barents seas on Monday on a flight path which took it close to Russian territory, but at no point did the British aircraft enter Russian sovereign airspace. 

The MoD said the RC-135 spy plane’s crew maintained radio communications with Russian civilian air traffic control throughout its flight.

As for this latest firm Russian rejection of any possible future RC-135 flyovers near its territory, the UK defense ministry did not immediately respond. It’s also unclear whether the Tuesday Kremlin statement may have actually been describing or inspired of the Monday encounter of the “unsafe close pass”. Certainly the Kremlin is now warning that such future intrusions won’t be tolerated. 

By Alex Kimani of OilPrice.com

Last week, oil prices finished the week in the green, gaining 3.5% after tumbling nearly 10% a week earlier thanks to a weakening dollar after better-than-expected inflation data altered interest rate expectations from the Fed. Unfortunately, the oil price rally has been snuffed out in a dramatic fashion. WTI and Brent crude have both declined more than 5% in Monday’s morning session to trade at $87.31/bbl and 93.16/bbl on demand fears as disappointing Chinese economic data renewed global recession concerns. China’s central bank cut key lending rates in a bid to revive demand as the latest data showed the economy unexpectedly slowing in July–and the market wasn’t expecting it. 

China’s industrial output grew 3.8% in July from a year earlier, well below the 4.6% consensus on Wall Street. The grim set of figures is an indication that the world’s largest importer of crude is struggling to shake off the effects of Beijing’s Covid restrictions months earlier.

Coupled with high oil price volatility, this is taking a heavy toll on oil prices, with Brent crude open interest this month down 20% compared to a year ago levels.

“Open interest is still falling, with some (market players) not interested in touching it because of volatility. That is, in my view, the reason resulting in higher volumes to the downside,” UBS oil analyst Giovanni Staunovo has said, adding that the trigger for Monday’s drop was weak Chinese data.

But a slowing Chinese economy might be just one of a host of bearish catalysts that might conspire to keep oil prices grounded if Europe’s natural gas stockpiles are any indication.

Gas to Oil Switching

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, dozens of Eurozone countries pledged to heavily cut Russian natural gas imports or halt them completely as soon as they can afford to. These countries took several aggressive measures to replenish their natural gas stockpiles ahead of the winter season, including  reaching a political agreement to cut gas use by 15% through next winter.

And now there’s a growing sense that Europe might not only meet its gas targets but also exceed them. European governments had been worried that Russia’s cut in supplies through its main gas pipeline to Germany would leave many of them with less than sufficient supplies for the winter season. However, many European nations have managed to build up ample gas storage by switching from gas to coal for some power plants, steadily curbing gas demand, and increasing imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

According to a report by the Observer Research Foundation, energy supply disruptions triggered by Russia’s war on Ukraine took LNG prices even higher leaving coal as the only option for dispatchable and affordable power in much of Europe, including the tough markets of Western Europe and North America that have explicit policies to phase out coal.

Coal mines and power plants that closed shop 10 years ago have begun to be repaired in Germany. Now, Germany looks set to burn at least 100,000 tons of coal per month by winter. That’s a big U-turn considering that Germany’s goal had been to phase out all coal-generated electricity by 2038.

Nor is Germany alone: Austria, Poland, the Netherlands and Greece are also gearing up for coal plant restarts, while China’s coal imports have been surging, increasing 24% month-to-month in July as power generators increased purchases to provide for peak summer electricity demand. China has the largest number of operational coal power plants with 3,037 while Germany, the largest economy in the EU has 63.

As a result, thermal coal, which is the variety used to generate power, has seen a 170% rise in price since the end of 2021–most of those gains made following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Ramped-up LNG imports have also helped, with the EU importing 21.36 million tonnes of LNG in the first half of 2022, up from just 8.21 million tonnes during last year’s comparable period. In a historical precedent, Europe is now taking in more American LNG than piped Russian gas.

The result: injections to Europe’s gas storage are running about nine weeks ahead of last year, an impressive feat even after flows from Russia have been severely curtailed. European gas storage levels are above 70%, and have even surpassed the 5-year average, according to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE). 

By November 1st, the EU will likely hit 80% natural gas storage capacity–just in time for peak winter demand. Germany is even aiming for 95% capacity, and is already at 75%. 

This is set to curb oil demand since some operators have begun switching from gas to oil generation due to high natural gas prices.  “The EU already surpassed its September 1 interim filling target in early July and is still on pace to reach the November 1 target,” Jacob Mandel, senior associate for commodities at Aurora Energy Research, has told Reuters.

Indeed, analysts at Standard Chartered Plc are saying that President Vladimir Putin’s gas weapon will be effectively blunted by the inventory build, with Europe set to go through winter “comfortably” without Russian gas.

More than enough natural gas available will, unfortunately, lower oil demand as an alternative. That said, Europe will have to pay a heavy price: the cost of replenishing natural gas stocks is estimated at over 50 billion euros ($51 billion), 10 times more than the historical average for filling up tanks ahead of winter.

Via The Cradle,

On Wednesday, Israel and Turkey announced their official normalization of ties and full restoration of diplomatic relations, returning their ambassadors to Tel Aviv and Ankara. This comes after several years of tension and a gradual reconciliation over the past several months.

“It was decided to once again upgrade the level of the relations between the two countries to that of full diplomatic ties and to return ambassadors and consuls general from the two countries,” a statement from the office of interim Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said.

“Upgrading relations will contribute to deepening ties between the two peoples, expanding economic trade, and cultural ties, and strengthening regional stability,” the statement added. The move to normalize ties was also praised by Israeli President Isaac Herzog as “an important development” that will “encourage greater economic relations” between Israel and Turkey.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu confirmed the decision and stated: “Appointment of ambassadors was one of the steps for the normalization of ties. Such a positive step came from Israel as a result of these efforts, and as Turkey, we also decided to appoint an ambassador to Israel, to Tel Aviv.”

The Turkish Foreign Minister clarified, however, that the restoration of ties does not mean that his country will abandon what he referred to as its “support” for the Palestinian people.

“We are not giving up on the Palestinian cause… It is important for our messages to be conveyed directly through the ambassador (on the Palestinian issue),” Cavusoglu asserted.

The strain in relations initially began in 2010, when a Turkish-sponsored fleet of humanitarian ships bound for Gaza was attacked in the Mediterranean by the Israeli navy, resulting in the deaths of six Turkish activists.

In 2018, both governments expelled each other’s ambassadors, with Turkey criticizing Tel Aviv for its abuse of Palestinian human rights. A year later, the two states scaled back their economic cooperation. By 2021, however, economic relations had rekindled, as bilateral trade between Israel and Turkey reached around $7.7 billion.

Since then, Tel Aviv and Ankara have been involved in efforts to reach a full normalization of ties. On  July 7, the two states signed their first aviation agreement since 1951. On March 9, Herzog visited Turkey, marking the first visit by an Israeli leader to the country since 2008.

During his visit to Tel Aviv on 25 May, Cavusoglu said that a normalization of ties between Turkey and Israel would have a “positive impact” that would result in a “peaceful” solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite Turkey’s purported support for the Palestinians, however, Ankara has been deporting members of the Hamas resistance group from the country at Tel Aviv’s request.

In the nearly 20 years since the supersonic Concorde was retired, a new aeronautics company has developed a “sustainable” new airplane, that will shuttle between 60 and 80 passengers up to nearly 5,000 miles at a time, flying at Mach 1.7.

Denver-based Boom Supersonic has developed the “Overture,” which will run on “100% sustainable aviation fuel” (SAF), powering four smaller wing-mounted engines to keep weight and temperature balanced. It will also incorporate carbon composite materials for a lightweight, yet robust air frame.

The company has already scored contracts from the US Air Force and two airlines – with United Airlines committing to 15 aircraft once safety requirements are met, as well as an option to purchase 35 more. Japan Airlines has also pre-ordered 20 of them, while the company is creating custom applications for the government.

SAF uses different types of waste products, such as used cooking oil to animal fat, to deliver the same performance as conventional jet fuel – just with a (claimed) reduced carbon footprint.

“Environmental performance is being considered in all aspects of Overture, from design and production to flight and end-of-life recycling,” reads Boom’s website. “The engineering team prioritizes circularity by repurposing used tooling, recycling components on the shop floor and leveraging additive manufacturing techniques that result in less manufacturing waste and lighter, more fuel-efficient products.”

As the NY Post notes, the plane will reach various destinations much faster than conventional airliners.

New York City to London:

• Current travel time: Approximately 7 hours
• Overture travel time: 3 hours 30 minutes

Los Angeles to Sydney:

• Current travel time: Approximately 15 hours
• Overture travel time: 8 hours

Tokyo to Seattle:

• Current travel time: Approximately 9 hours
• Overture travel time: 4 hours 30 minutes

“With no afterburners and buzz-free engines, Overture’s takeoffs will blend in with existing long-haul fleets, resulting in a quieter experience for both passengers and airport communities,” reads Boom’s site, which notes that the signature sonic boom created when an aircraft exceeds the speed of sound will happen over the ocean so as not to disturb people on the ground.