Month: August 2022

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

Our elites are now viewed with the disdain they have earned on their own merits. And they are none too happy about it…

Elites have always been ambiguous about the muscular classes who replace their tires, paint their homes, and cook their food. And the masses who tend to them likewise have been ambivalent about those who hire them: appreciative of the work and pay, but also either a bit envious of those with seemingly unlimited resources or turned off by perceived superciliousness arising from their status and affluence. 

Yet the divide has grown far wider in the 21st century. Globalization fueled the separation in a number of ways. 

One, outsourcing and offshoring eroded the rust-belt interior, while enriching the two coasts. The former lost good-paying jobs, while the latter found new markets in investment, tech, insurance, law, media, academia, entertainment, sports, and the arts making them billions rather than mere millions. 

So, the problem was one of both geography and class. Half the country looked to Asia and Europe for profits and indeed cultural “diversity,” while the other half stuck with tradition, values, and custom—as they became poorer. 

The elite found in the truly poor—neglecting their old union-member, blue-collar Democratic base—an outlet for their guilt, noblesse oblige, condescension at a safe distance, call it what you will. The poor if kept distant were fetishized, while the middle class was demonized for lacking the taste of the professional classes, and romance of the far distant underclass.

Second, race became increasingly divorced from class—a phenomenon largely birthed by guilty, wealthy, white elites and privileged, diverse professionals. For the white bicoastal elite, it became a mark of their progressive fides to champion woke racialism that empowered the non-white of their own affluent class, while projecting their own discomfort with and fears of the nonwhite poor onto the middle class as supposed “racists,” despite the latter’s more frequently living among, marrying within, and associating with the “other.” 

The net result was more privilege for the elite and wealthy nonwhites, more neglect of the inner-city needy, and more disdain for the supposedly illiberal clingers, dregs, deplorables, chumps, and irredeemables. 

The results of these contortions were surreal. The twentysomething who coded a video game that went viral globally became a master of the universe, while the brilliant carpenter or electrical contractor was seen as hopelessly trapped in a world of muscular stasis. Oprah and LeBron James were victims. So were the likes of Ibram X. Kendi, Ilhan Omar, and the Obamas, while the struggling Ohio truck driver, the sergeant on the frontline in Afghanistan, and Indiana plant worker became their oppressors. Or so the progressive bicoastal elite instructed us. 

Globalization and its geography, along with the end of ecumenical class concerns, certainly widened the ancient mass-elite divide. But there was a third catalyst that explained the mutual animosity in the pre-Trump years. The masses increasingly could not see any reason for elite status other than expertise in navigating the system for lucrative compensation. 

An Incompetent Elite

In short, money and education certification were no longer synonymous with any sense of competency or expertise. Just the opposite often became true. Those who thought up some of the most destructive, crackpot, and dangerous policies in American history were precisely those who were degreed and well-off and careful to ensure they were never subject to the destructive consequences of their own pernicious ideologies. 

The masses of homeless in our streets were a consequence of various therapeutic bromides antithetical to the ancient, sound notions of mental hospitals. The new theories ignored the responsibilities of nuclear families to take care of their own, and the assumption that hard-drug use was not a legitimate personal-choice, but rather a catastrophe for all of society. 

From universities also came critical race theory and critical legal theory, which were enshrined throughout our institutions. The bizarre idea that “good” racism was justified as a get-even-response to “bad” racism, resonated as ahistorical, illogical, and plain, old-fashioned race-based hatred. 

The masses never understood why their children should attend colleges where obsessions with superficial appearances were celebrated as “diversity,” graduation ceremonies matter-of-factly were segregated by race, dorms that were racially exclusive were lauded as “theme houses,” Jim-Crow-style set-aside zones were rebranded “safe spaces,” and racial quotas were merely “affirmative action.” 

Ancient notions such as that punishment deters crime were laughed at by the degreed who gave us the current big-city district attorneys. Their experiments with decriminalizing violent acts, defunding the police, and delegitimizing incarceration led to a Lord of the Flies-style anarchy in our major cities. Note well, those with advanced or professional degrees who dreamed all this up did not often live in defunded police zones, did not have homeless people on their lawns, and found ways for their children to navigate around racial quotes in elite college admissions. 

So, the credentialed lost their marginal reputations for competency. Were we really to believe 50 former intelligence heads and experts who claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation”? Even if they were not simply biased, did any of them have the competence to determine what the laptop was? 

Or were we to take seriously the expertise of “17 Nobel Prize winners” who swore Biden’s “Build Back Better” debacle would not be inflationary as the country went into 9 percent plus inflation? Did we really believe our retired four-stars that Trump was a Nazi, a Mussolini, and someone to be removed from office “the sooner the better”? 

Or were we to trust the 1,200 “health care professionals” who assured us that, medically speaking, while the rest of society was locked down it was injurious for the health of people of color to follow curfews and mask mandates instead of thronging en masse in street protests?

Or were we to believe Kevin Clinesmith’s FISA writ, or Andrew McCabe’s four-time assertion that he did not leak to the media, or that James Comey under oath really did not know the answers to 245 inquiries? Did Robert Mueller really not know what either the Steele dossier or Fusion GPS was? 

Middle Class Competence

On the operational level, the elite proved even more suspect. Militarily, the middle classes in the armed forces proved as lethal as ever, despite being demonized as racists and white supremacists. But their generals, diplomats and politicians proved so often incompetent in translating their tactical victories in the Middle East and elsewhere into strategic success or even mere advantage. 

Nationally, the failure of the elite that transcends politics is even more manifest. The country is $30 trillion in debt. No one has the courage to simply stop printing money. The border is nonexistent, downtown America is a No Man’s Land, and our air travel is a circus—and not an “expert” can be found willing or able to fix things. Is Pete Buttigieg the answer to thousands of canceled flights or backed-up ports? Is Alejandro Mayorkas to be believed when he assures the border is “closed” and “secure” as millions flood across? 

The universities are turning out mediocre graduates without the skills or knowledge of a generation ago, but certainly with both greater debt and arrogance. 

Our bureaucratic fixers can only regulate, stop, retard, slow-down, or destroy freeways, dams, reservoirs, aqueducts, ports, and refineries—and yet never seem to give up their own driving, enjoyment of stored water, or buying of imported goods. 

Is it easier to topple than to sculpt a statue? 

A generation from now, in the emperor has no clothes fashion, someone may innocently conclude that most “research” in the social sciences and humanities of our age is as unreliable as it is unreadable, or that the frequent copy-cat Hollywood remakes of old films were far worse than the originals. 

Does anyone think a Jim Acosta is on par with a John Chancellor? That Mark Milley is equal to a Matthew Ridgway? Is Anthony Fauci like a Jonas Salk or an Albert Sabin? 

Yet this lack of competence and taste among the elite is not shared to the same degree in a decline of middle-class standards. 

Homes are built better than they were in the 1970s. Cars are better assembled than in the 1960s. The electrician, the plumber, and the roofer are as good or better than ever. The soldier stuck in the messy labyrinth of Baghdad or on patrol in the wilds of Afghanistan was every bit as brave and perhaps far more lethal than his Korean War or World War II counterpart. 

How does this translate to the American people? They navigate around the detritus of the elite, avoiding big-city downtown USA. 

They are skipping movies at theaters. They are passing on watching professional sports. They don’t watch the network news. They think the CDC, NIAID, and NIH are incompetent—and fear their incompetence can prove deadly.  

Millions increasingly doubt their children should enroll in either a four-year college or the military, and they assume the FBI, CIA, and Justice Department are as likely to monitor Americans as they are unlikely to find and arrest those engaged in terrorism or espionage. 

When the elite peddles its current civil-war or secession porn—projecting onto the middle classes their own fantasies of a red/blue violent confrontation, or their own desires to see a California or New York detached from Mississippi and Wyoming—they have no idea that America’s recent failures are their own failures. 

The reason why the United States begs Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia to pump more oil is not because of lazy frackers in Texas or incompetent rig hands in North Dakota, but because of utterly incompetent diplomats, green zealots, and ideological “scientists.” 

Had the views of majors and colonels in Afghanistan rather than their superiors in the Pentagon and White House prevailed, there would have been no mass flight or humiliation in Kabul. 

Crime is out of control not because we have either sadistic or incompetent police forces but sinister DAs, and mostly failed, limited academics who fabricated their policies. 

Current universities produce more bad books, bad teaching, bad ideas, and badly educated students, not because the janitors are on strike, the maintenance people can’t fix the toilets, or the landscapers cannot keep the shrubbery alive, but because their academics and administrators have hidden their own incompetence and lack of academic rigor and teaching expertise behind the veil of woke censoriousness. 

The Naked Emperors’ Furious Search for Fig Leaves

The war between blue and red and mass versus elite is really grounded in the reality that those who feel they were the deserved winners of globalization and who are the sole enlightened on matters of social, economic, political, and military policy have no record of recent success, but a long litany of utter failure. 

They have become furious that the rest of the country sees through these naked emperors. Note Merrick Garland’s sanctimonious defense of the supposed professionalism of the Justice Department and FBI hierarchies—while even as he pontificated, they were in the very process of leaking and planting sensational “nuclear secrets” narratives to an obsequious media to justify the indefensible political fishing expedition at a former president’s home and current electoral rival to Merrick Garland’s boss. 

The masses increasingly view the elites’ money, their ZIP codes, their degrees and certificates, and their titles not just with indifference, but with the disdain they now have earned on their own merits. 

And that pushback has made millions of our worst and stupidest quite mad.

An Italian man on a ‘condomless’ sex escapade with men in Spain tested positive for HIV, Covid-19, and monkeypox simultaneously – the first known case to have all three viral diseases, according to a case study in the Journal of Infection.

Researchers stated the 36-year-old male spent five days in Spain between June 16-20 and developed a fever (up to 39°C), accompanied by sore throat, fatigue, headache, and right inguinal lymphadenomegaly about nine days after his trip. He tested positive for Covid on July 2 — and his symptoms worsened that day. 

“On the afternoon of the same day, a rash started to develop on his left arm. The following day small, painful vesicles surrounded by an erythematous halo appeared on the torso, lower limbs, face, and glutes. On July 5, due to a progressive and uninterrupted spread of vesicles that began to evolve into umbilicated pustules, he went to the emergency room” in Catania, Italy, and then was immediately transferred to an Infectious Diseases Unit at the Policlinico G. Rodolico – San Marco University Hospital,” researchers said. 

By July 6, the man was diagnosed with monkeypox and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) while still Covid positive. By this time, he had overlapping symptoms from all three viral diseases. Researchers noted he was double jabbed against Covid with Pfizer’s BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine (last December). 

Researchers said: 

“As this is the only reported case of monkeypox virus, SARS-CoV-2 and HIV co-infection, there is still not enough evidence supporting that this combination may aggravate patient’s condition.

“Given the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the daily increase of monkeypox cases, healthcare systems must be aware of this eventuality, promoting appropriate diagnostic tests in high-risk subjects, which are essential to containment as there is no widely available treatment or prophylaxis.” 

The double jabbed man disclosed to researchers he had “condomless intercourse with men during his stay in Spain.” According to medical records, the man also had syphilis in 2019, though he tested negative last September. 

Images of the man who was not identified were taken and shared in the medical study. 

The fact that this man received two doses of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine and then tested positive for all three viral diseases at once is an eyecatcher. 

Authored by J.B.Shurk via The Gatestone Institute,

• Notice that no nation has managed merely to print money and tax its citizens on the path to prosperity. Real wealth cannot simply be conjured from thin air. There must be recognized value in what a nation and its citizens possess.

• More than any other source for national wealth, however, one towers above the rest: innovation. The ability of the human mind to create something new and valuable provides society with endless wealth creation…. Innovation is the magic sauce for generating wealth.

• Humans struggling merely to survive in the world do not waste time, labor, or resources on projects that offer no prospect for future reward. Humans working as servants to the state under centrally controlled economies have no incentive to innovate. Only when private ownership and personal liberty combine can human innovation flourish. Freedom is the secret ingredient to innovation’s magic sauce for increasing wealth.

• A country whose institutions do not respect property rights or whose customs do not value freedom will remain a barren desert for human innovation. In this way, nations have a great incentive to liberalize over time. Should they not, they quickly become financially and militarily vulnerable to more innovative and wealthier nations. Observing this simple truth, classical liberals have always understood free markets as the gateway to human emancipation. Economic self-interest, in other words, ultimately leads to expansive human rights and liberties across the planet.

• Nothing about Western politicians’ embrace of the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” or “Build Back Better” paradigms protects property rights or liberty in the slightest. The WEF’s agenda promotes radically anti-liberal programs… [that] will smother human innovation by first depriving Westerners of their freedoms.

• Wealthy free nations are a threat to the WEF’s New World Order. If censorship must be embraced to control the “narrative,” then so be it. If citizens must be denied freedom of movement under the guise of a “health emergency,” no big deal. If private bank accounts must be seized to intimidate protesters, then such threats are the price for ensuring compliance. In this way, the WEF’s plans for a controlled economy intentionally reverse centuries of liberal progress. Political leaders today are dragging the West into the past.

• First, individual liberties will continue disappearing. Then, the greatest economic engine of all, innovation, will dry up. Finally, wealth will return solely to the hands of a small “ruling class” minority. This is the future the World Economic Forum hails as “progress.” It is not. It is a recipe for human bondage.

How do nations become wealthy? Many are blessed with abundant natural resources. Others conquer foreign lands. Some specialize in unique trade skills and crafts. Timber, mining, fishing, sugar, rum, narcotics, cotton, silk, agriculture, conquest, human slavery, manufacturing, oil, industry, banking, and so on — depending on the century and the region, nations have attained tremendous wealth in myriad ways. Notice that no nation has managed merely to print money and tax its citizens on the path to prosperity. Real wealth cannot simply be conjured from thin air. There must be recognized value in what a nation and its citizens possess.

More than any other source for national wealth, however, one towers above the rest: innovation. The ability of the human mind to create something new and valuable provides society with endless wealth creation. Unlike central bank quantitative easing and other monetary tools (or tricks?), the brain really is a money-printing machine. Whether an innovator alters existing farming, mining, or manufacturing techniques to make production cheaper and more efficient, or an inventor designs something entirely unique, value that did not exist yesterday materializes the next. Innovation is the magic sauce for generating wealth.

If innovation produces wealth, why aren’t all nations wealthy? Because too many nations fail to value innovators or encourage innovation. Without fundamental property rights, strong social institutions, and a dependable legal system, potential inventors have few incentives to build anything new. Humans struggling merely to survive in the world do not waste time, labor, or resources on projects that offer no prospect for future reward. Humans working as servants to the state under centrally controlled economies have no incentive to innovate. Only when private ownership and personal liberty combine can human innovation flourish. Freedom is the secret ingredient to innovation’s magic sauce for increasing wealth.

When economists crunch gross domestic product numbers to see whether a nation’s economy is rising or sinking, a measure of innovation becomes quantifiable. Embedded within that number is something that encapsulates human ingenuity, personal freedom, and property ownership. In this way, economic innovation directly reflects the human condition at any point in time. It provides a measurement of a nation’s freedom.

Now “liberalism” as it is classically understood — as a political philosophy embracing natural rights, limited government, free markets, political and religious freedoms, and freedom of speech, all promoted and protected by an impartial and just rule of law — has always grasped this fundamental truth. Liberty and property rights spawn creativity. Where both are soundly valued, great writers, artists, and inventors produce novelties that would not otherwise exist. It is why medieval Florence birthed at once both modern-day banking and the European Renaissance. The personal freedom to create, build, invest, and own property generates tremendous innovation and national wealth.

Conversely, when today’s central planners argue for socialized control over markets and the substitution of “collective rights” in place of “individual rights” while calling their agenda “progressive liberalism,” they co-opt and subvert liberalism’s historic meaning.

From this recognition that a nation’s freedom directly affects a nation’s wealth arises an even more remarkable truth: any nation that fails to embrace and protect human liberty will be the poorer for it. A country whose institutions do not respect property rights or whose customs do not value freedom will remain a barren desert for human innovation. In this way, nations have a great incentive to liberalize over time. Should they not, they quickly become financially and militarily vulnerable to more innovative and wealthier nations. Observing this simple truth, classical liberals have always understood free markets as the gateway to human emancipation. Economic self-interest, in other words, ultimately leads to expansive human rights and liberties across the planet.

Now with all that as a bit of rudimentary background, how is it that today we have entities such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) pushing for a radical “Great Reset” of Western society that promises to handcuff free markets with economic regulation while concentrating power into the hands of a small international coalition of central economic planners — most notably their own? How could promising a future where people will “own nothing and be happy” possibly be conducive to a free and productive society — or even a happy one? How can a future in which all energy is controlled by international governing bodies and multinational corporations possibly provide individuals with the institutional building blocks for endless innovation? How can farmers sustain larger and more prosperous populations when Western governments continue to stifle agricultural production through regulation and eminent domain?

The questions answer themselves. The WEF’s agenda promotes radically anti-liberal programs such as the use of artificial intelligence to censor dissent, regulate free speech, and even erase ideas from the Internet. Its repressive efforts to control all hydrocarbon energy and cattle and crop farm production will smother human innovation by first depriving Westerners of their ability to create, invent, and grow food. Its policies betray millennia of Western civilizational advancement by replacing respect for individual choice and free will with top-down management of human activity through the blunt instruments of force and coercion. Its motivations are indisputably anti-human at their core because each individual human life is treated as nothing more than a cog or input that can be manipulated as part of a centrally-controlled social machine. When Westerners are reduced to ones and zeroes that are sorted and shifted by the WEF’s social programming codes for a “better future,” builders obey but no longer create.

Whereas personal liberty has unleashed the human mind and generated tremendous Western prosperity, the World Economic Forum’s push for a centrally controlled economic system will crush rights, stifle creativity, and mass-produce poverty and servitude. Its proponents, in fact, seem mostly committed to using a combination of pandemic, famine, and fear to centralize dominance for themselves.

In order to persuade Westerners to give up more and make do with less, the WEF and its globalist allies promise Westerners a future Utopia. As with every similar lie ever told to justify the extraordinary acquisition of power, though, they will fail to deliver. No society, after all, was ever promised more than in Stalin’s 1936 Constitution of the USSR — or subsequently treated more abysmally. Despite its claims to the contrary, the WEF’s mission directives intentionally reverse Western trends toward greater human freedom, social mobility, and more broadly obtainable wealth — or what, in another era, would have been rightly regarded as true, liberal progress.

Although the WEF and its sister organizations claim to be “saving the planet,” their efforts seem primarily an ignoble design to control the planet. “Clean” energy, after all, is controlled energy; and the more that energy is controlled by centralized governments, the more completely once-free markets become centrally controlled. If every potential entrepreneur must first receive permission to use electricity before producing anything new, then no entrepreneur can thrive without the central authorities’ blessing. If all manufacturing is viewed as a “threat to the planet,” then no independent upstart can innovate or build wealth without first seeking and obtaining government approval. If consumers are forbidden from buying anything unless it is first pre-approved, then free markets are transformed into controlled markets.

Taking this trend to its logical yet communist conclusion, private property becomes antithetical to the state’s goals. We already see the ominous subversion of private ownership today with so-called ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) standards used to strong-arm industry goals and manipulate free markets. Because control over information makes control over markets more manageable, the more economic uncertainty that results from market manipulation, the more censorship we’ll continue to see. Recently, even a senior economist who correctly stated that the American economy had entered into a recession found his research “fact checked” and “corrected” by the U.S. government’s friends at Facebook. Where free markets are under attack, free speech is inevitably under attack, too. The individual blessings of liberalism are not easily dissected from the body politic without inevitably rendering liberalism’s death, as a whole.

The issue today may be “climate change” or COVID-19 or “sustainable food supplies,” but the stated issue never seems anything more than a public relations campaign for fooling the masses. It always appears to be merely a disposable excuse designed to seduce Westerners into handing a small cabal of “elites” power and control over everyone else. Convincing mankind to believe that free markets will inevitably lead to some kind of apocalypse increasingly looks like the only policy goal that matters. It may well be the most diabolical trick those with power have ever played against those with no power at all. Fear is used expertly as a torturer’s tool to convince Westerners to forsake willingly their own freedom. The innocent mantra whispered into their ears is simple: Trust us, humanity, we will save you. The implication, however, is far more sinister: For your own good, you must be made to enjoy your new chains.

Notice that for the World Economic Forum to succeed in its mission to control all human activity, it must first destroy the sovereignty of nation states. Why? Because, as noted above, liberal nations that embrace freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and free market entrepreneurship foster innovation and great wealth. Any nation not encumbered by the WEF’s market proscriptions will most likely continue to prosper, while those shackled to the “Great Reset” will most likely languish. This is why Western politicians have worked so hard together to push their “Build Back Better” proposals irrespective of the wishes of any one nation’s voting citizens.

Wealthy free nations are a threat to the WEF’s New World Order. If censorship must be embraced to control the “narrative,” then so be it. If citizens must be denied freedom of movement under the guise of a “health emergency,” no big deal. If private bank accounts must be seized to intimidate protesters, then such threats are the price for ensuring compliance. In this way, the WEF’s plans for a controlled economy intentionally reverse centuries of liberal progress. Political leaders today are dragging the West into the past.

First, individual liberties will continue disappearing. Then, the greatest economic engine of all, innovation, will dry up. Finally, wealth will return solely to the hands of a small “ruling class” minority. This is the future the World Economic Forum hails as “progress.” It is not. It is a recipe for human bondage.

Central banks around the world are getting involved in digital currencies, but some are further ahead than others.

In this map, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Ku uses data from the Atlantic Council’s Currency Tracker to visualize the state of each central banks’ digital currency effort.

Digital Currency – The Basics

Digital currencies have been around since the 1980s, but didn’t become widely popular until the launch of Bitcoin in 2009. Today, there are thousands of digital currencies in existence, also referred to as “cryptocurrencies”.

A defining feature of cryptocurrencies is that they are based on a blockchain ledger. Blockchains can be either decentralized or centralized, but the most known cryptocurrencies today (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.) tend to be decentralized in nature. This makes transfers and payments very difficult to trace because there is no single entity with full control.

Government-issued digital currencies, on the other hand, will be controlled by a central bank and are likely to be easily trackable. They would have the same value as the local cash currency, but instead issued digitally with no physical form.

Central Bank Digital Currencies Worldwide

105 countries are currently exploring centralized digital currencies. Together, they represent 95% of global GDP.

When aggregated, we can see that the majority of countries are in the research stage.

We’ve also divided the map by region to make viewing easier.

Africa

Asia

Europe

Middle East

South America

North America

What are the Benefits?

A major benefit of government-issued digital currencies is that they can improve access for underbanked people.

This is not a huge issue in developed countries like the U.S., but many people in developing nations have no access to banks and other financial services (hence the term underbanked). As the number of internet users continues to climb, digital currencies represent a sound solution.

To learn more about this topic, visit this article from Global Finance, which lists the world’s most underbanked countries in 2021.

The 9%

Just 9% of countries have launched a digital currency to date.

This includes Nigeria, which became the first African country to do so in October 2021. Half of the country’s 200 million population is believed to have no access to bank accounts.

Adoption of the eNaira (the digital version of the naira) has so far been relatively sluggish. The eNaira app has accumulated 700,000 downloads as of April 2022. That’s equal to 0.35% of the population, though not all of the downloads are users in Nigeria.

Conversely, 33.4 million Nigerians were reported to be trading or owning crypto assets, despite the Central Bank of Nigeria’s attempts to restrict usage.

Status in the U.S.

America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, has not decided on whether it will implement a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

Our key focus is on whether and how a CBDC could improve on an already safe and efficient U.S. domestic payments system.

– FEDERAL RESERVE

To learn more, check out the Federal Reserve’s January 2022 paper on the pros and cons of CBDCs.

By Alex Kimani of Oilprice.com

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 could 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. It’s, therefore, little wonder that Germany–the country’s worst hit by the Russian energy crisis– is currently on a mad dash to secure alternate sources of gas before the onset of winter. But here’s the biggest irony of them all: Germany and Europe are more likely to secure future gas supplies from Mozambique, one of the world’s poorest nations with scant infrastructure, riddled with terrorism and located 8,140km away from Germany, than Canada, one of the biggest producers of the stuff, with more than a dozen potential LNG sites and a ‘mere’ 6,400km away.

Indeed, this might turn out to be one of the biggest missed opportunities in Canadian history considering that at current prices, just one Canadian port exporting superchilled gas could be adding nine figures to the Canadian GDP each day. 

Love-Hate Relationship

Canada is the planet’s fifth largest producer of natural gas and ranks 15th in the world for proven natural gas reserves. The country’s biggest problem simply is lack of infrastructure–and political goodwill.

It’s somewhat shocking to learn that Canada does not own a single LNG export terminal, with virtually all the country’s natural gas exports delivered to the United States via pipeline. It’s not for lack of trying though. In recent years, Natural Resources Canada says it has received proposals for 18 LNG export projects, including five on the East Coast. Currently, just one terminal is under construction, with a second not quite poised to break ground.

In sharp contrast, Mozambique is gearing up for a $100B LNG windfall, with the country poised to ship its first cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG) overseas at a time when prices have soared to record highs with Europe desperately trying to cut energy ties with Russia. 

According to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg, the BP-operated LNG tanker British Mentor was slated to arrive this week at a new floating terminal that Italian energy giant Eni S.p.A. is completing off Mozambique’s northern coastline. Eni has said that commissioning activities at the Coral-Sul FLNG vessel were progressing well, with first exports to be communicated in due course. The Italian company is already planning a second floating export platform in the southern African country that could be completed in less than four years. 

All that progress despite the fact that Mozambique has been plagued by terrorism, civil strife and rampant systemic corruption for decades, to a point where it has been unable to exploit its vast fossil fuel reserves leading to its status as the world’s third poorest nation.

You can blame this state of affairs on Canada’s love-hate relationship with fossil fuels.

Despite the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement in 1988, a sense of ambivalence towards fossil fuels prevails to this day. In the current geopolitical climate, oil and gas are both hated and adored. Hated because of their outsized role as the number one climate change pariah. Adored as an alternative source of natural gas, especially since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the attendant threat that Moscow might cut off gas supplies to Europe.

Back in March, Canadian Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson announced that Canada has the capacity to increase oil & gas exports by up to 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of this year to help improve global energy security. He also added that Canada is looking at ways it may be able to displace Russian gas with liquified natural gas (LNG) after requests for help from Europe. Currently, a Shell-led consortium is building a large LNG facility on the west coast at Kitimat which is due for completion around 2025, but the country exports zero LNG.

But it need not be this way. Canada’s energy regulatory framework is notorious for scaring away oil and gas projects, and in February turned down a $10-billion LNG export facility planned for Saguenay, Quebec largely on the grounds that it would increase greenhouse-gas emissions. All five of the now-languishing East Coast projects were in the planning stages as early as 2015 but have been held back by a hostile and byzantine regulatory climate.

At this stage, it’s not 100% clear whether Canada is ready to relax its attitude towards fossil fuels. 

Recently, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went on record saying that exporting LNG  from Canada’s east coast to Germany could ease Europe’s gas crunch: “It’s doable, we have infrastructure around that,” he said at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz though he failed to offer a timeline when asked for one. 

However, as Politico notes, doable doesn’t necessarily mean realistic, especially given that Europe wants to slash Russian gas purchases by two-thirds by the end of the year. 

In the same vein, Trudeau conceded that weak business cases have kept proposed export facilities from moving forward: “Right now our best capacity is to continue to contribute to the global market to displace gas and energy that then Germany and Europe can locate from other sources,” Trudeau has conceded.

Recent comments by Canadian gas producers are also quite telling. In an interview this week, Enbridge Inc. (NYSE: ENB) CEO Al Monaco hinted at Canada’s infamous industry red tape when he said the country needs to “get out of our own way when it comes to energy and building infrastructure.”

Perhaps not even sky-high natural gas and LNG prices are enough to persuade Trudeau’s administration to change its stance on oil and gas. But as they say, you never really know, considering that the U.S. only began exporting LNG in 2016, and has managed to become the world’s leading LNG exporter in such a short space of time.

By Tom Ozimek of The Epoch Times

The FBI has responded to an explosive claim by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that Facebook algorithmically censored references to Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election after receiving a warning from the agency about “Russian propaganda.”

Zuckerberg said on an Aug. 25 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” that Facebook actively reduced the reach of social media posts discussing Hunter Biden’s laptop in response to an advisory from the FBI to some Facebook staffers to be on guard for Russian disinformation ahead of the presidential election.

“The background here is the FBI I think basically came to some folks on our team [and] were like, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump similar to that, so just be vigilant,’” Zuckerberg told Rogan.

Clips featuring Zuckerberg’s response to Rogan quickly went viral, prompting a flurry of takes critical of the FBI, with some accusing the agency of engaging in election interference.

Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that the FBI reached out to Facebook to put them on notice that the Hunter Biden’s laptop story was similar to the previous Russian Propaganda and to be on high alert #joerogan #MarkZuckerberg #JRE pic.twitter.com/ojZHhK3isa

— Giuseppe Mercadante (@itsmercadante) August 25, 2022

“This isn’t just insane, it’s election interference,” Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) said in a statement, while calling on Zuckerberg to testify before Congress “about the FBI’s attempts to circumvent the First Amendment.”

A similarly scathing take was expressed by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

“The same FBI who lied about Russian ‘collusion’ and raided President Trump’s home asked Facebook to manipulate its feed to bury the Hunter Biden story,” Jordan said in a statement.

FBI Reacts

As the controversy swirled, the FBI issued a statement to media outlets on Friday, saying that its warning to Facebook was of a general nature and did not include a call to action.

The FBI said it “routinely notifies U.S. private sector entities, including social media providers, of potential threat information, so that they can decide how to better defend against threats” and that the agency “has provided companies with foreign threat indicators to help them protect their platforms and customers from abuse by foreign malign influence actors.”

By Tom Ozimek of The Epoch Times

The FBI has responded to an explosive claim by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that Facebook algorithmically censored references to Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election after receiving a warning from the agency about “Russian propaganda.”

Zuckerberg said on an Aug. 25 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” that Facebook actively reduced the reach of social media posts discussing Hunter Biden’s laptop in response to an advisory from the FBI to some Facebook staffers to be on guard for Russian disinformation ahead of the presidential election.

“The background here is the FBI I think basically came to some folks on our team [and] were like, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump similar to that, so just be vigilant,’” Zuckerberg told Rogan.

Clips featuring Zuckerberg’s response to Rogan quickly went viral, prompting a flurry of takes critical of the FBI, with some accusing the agency of engaging in election interference.

Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that the FBI reached out to Facebook to put them on notice that the Hunter Biden’s laptop story was similar to the previous Russian Propaganda and to be on high alert #joerogan #MarkZuckerberg #JRE pic.twitter.com/ojZHhK3isa

— Giuseppe Mercadante (@itsmercadante) August 25, 2022

“This isn’t just insane, it’s election interference,” Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) said in a statement, while calling on Zuckerberg to testify before Congress “about the FBI’s attempts to circumvent the First Amendment.”

A similarly scathing take was expressed by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

“The same FBI who lied about Russian ‘collusion’ and raided President Trump’s home asked Facebook to manipulate its feed to bury the Hunter Biden story,” Jordan said in a statement.

FBI Reacts

As the controversy swirled, the FBI issued a statement to media outlets on Friday, saying that its warning to Facebook was of a general nature and did not include a call to action.

The FBI said it “routinely notifies U.S. private sector entities, including social media providers, of potential threat information, so that they can decide how to better defend against threats” and that the agency “has provided companies with foreign threat indicators to help them protect their platforms and customers from abuse by foreign malign influence actors.”

By Tom Ozimek of The Epoch Times

The FBI has responded to an explosive claim by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that Facebook algorithmically censored references to Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election after receiving a warning from the agency about “Russian propaganda.”

Zuckerberg said on an Aug. 25 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” that Facebook actively reduced the reach of social media posts discussing Hunter Biden’s laptop in response to an advisory from the FBI to some Facebook staffers to be on guard for Russian disinformation ahead of the presidential election.

“The background here is the FBI I think basically came to some folks on our team [and] were like, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump similar to that, so just be vigilant,’” Zuckerberg told Rogan.

Clips featuring Zuckerberg’s response to Rogan quickly went viral, prompting a flurry of takes critical of the FBI, with some accusing the agency of engaging in election interference.

Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that the FBI reached out to Facebook to put them on notice that the Hunter Biden’s laptop story was similar to the previous Russian Propaganda and to be on high alert #joerogan #MarkZuckerberg #JRE pic.twitter.com/ojZHhK3isa

— Giuseppe Mercadante (@itsmercadante) August 25, 2022

“This isn’t just insane, it’s election interference,” Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) said in a statement, while calling on Zuckerberg to testify before Congress “about the FBI’s attempts to circumvent the First Amendment.”

A similarly scathing take was expressed by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

“The same FBI who lied about Russian ‘collusion’ and raided President Trump’s home asked Facebook to manipulate its feed to bury the Hunter Biden story,” Jordan said in a statement.

FBI Reacts

As the controversy swirled, the FBI issued a statement to media outlets on Friday, saying that its warning to Facebook was of a general nature and did not include a call to action.

The FBI said it “routinely notifies U.S. private sector entities, including social media providers, of potential threat information, so that they can decide how to better defend against threats” and that the agency “has provided companies with foreign threat indicators to help them protect their platforms and customers from abuse by foreign malign influence actors.”

While the world still awaits Tehran and Washington’s final verdicts on the finalized text of a restored JCPOA (so far all signs point to it unraveling as things once again appear to stall), Israel has said that its military and intelligence is prepared to act against Iran even if a deal is signed. 

While this isn’t the first time Israeli officials have issued such a threat, it is a rare moment that the head of the Mossad intelligence agency publicly spoke out this bluntly and revealingly: 

Criticizing the United States for rushing into a terrible deal, Mossad Director David Barnea said on Thursday that a new nuclear pact with Iran would not block his agency from acting against the Islamic Republic to protect Israel’s security interests.

The remarks came in a top level government meeting with Prime Minister Yair Lapid and other officials amid fears in Israel that a final restored nuclear deal is imminent. 

 Barnea, who has been the country’s spy chief for a little over a year, stressed that given “Israel has not signed on to the deal” it remains that “Israel is permitted to defend itself in any way possible – and will act this way.”

“We cannot sit quietly and just watch as the danger grows closer,” Barnea said further. His stark assessment and preparatory warnings that Israel is prepared for the ‘day after’ a deal strongly suggests that it’s Mossad’s assessment that a final agreement is just around the corner. 

Further emphasizing Israel’s freedom to act, he said: 

“We deal with Hezbollah, not the US. We deal with Islamic Jihad, not the US; and with militias and the IRGC in Syria. We need to deal with this. Clearly, the US can get up and leave [the region] one day; we cannot leave. We are here. There are also conceptual differences and in our worldviews.”

The top spy continued: “The strategic leaning by both the US and Iran to sign on to a new JCPOA [nuclear deal] does not change Iran’s long-term desire to obtain a nuclear weapon.”

As for his mention of Syria, it remains the place where Israeli airstrikes have picked up in frequency and intensity of late, earning condemnation from Russia. Israel has said it is a security “red line” for Iranians to be operating in Syria, or also Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Stephen Moore, former economic adviser to the Trump White House, told Newsmax in a recent interview that he’s convinced that if former President Donald Trump had been reelected for a second term, America’s economy would not now be in what he described as a “mild recession.”

In the interview that aired on Aug. 25, Moore was asked to comment on the revised gross domestic product (GDP) numbers released earlier in the day, which confirmed that the U.S. economy contracted in the second quarter.

While the number was revised slightly upward to minus 0.6 percent from a prior estimate of minus 0.9 percent, the government data showed that America’s economy experienced negative growth for two consecutive quarters, the common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession.

Even though the two-quarter rule is not the official definition of a recession in the world’s biggest economy, numerous economists—including Moore—have insisted that the United States has, in fact, fallen into a recessionary downturn.

“We are in a mild recession right now, no question about that,” Moore told the outlet.

‘Getting Worse, Not Better’

What’s more concerning, however, is where the economy is headed, he added, pointing to deteriorating economic data in housing, manufacturing, consumer spending, and business confidence.

“I would have to say that things are getting worse, not better,” Moore said, arguing that if Trump had won reelection and his policies were guiding U.S. economic policy, the picture would be reversed.

“I believe that if we had just stuck with the Trump policies, the U.S. economy would be booming right now,” Moore told the outlet.

“There’s no reason why the U.S. economy isn’t in an incredible skyrocketing fashion, except for the fact that Biden has put in place all of these policies in taxing and spending and regulating that hurt economic growth,” he argued.

Moore’s view builds on previous remarks made to EpochTV’s “Fresh Look America” program, in which he said that if Trump were still in power, “we would have the economy flying high right now.”

Key to his thesis that the United States would be in a much better position economically under Trump policies is the fact that the former president sought to unlock domestic energy production, in contrast to Biden’s crackdown on fossil fuels.

Under Trump, the United States had low unemployment and low inflation at the same time, while enjoying energy independence, he said.

“Now we have a president who has to go hat in hand to the Saudis and beg them to produce more oil. It’s humiliating, it’s a threat to America’s national defense, it makes the country look weak,” he said.

Tackling Inflation

Moore’s remarks come as inflation has soared to multi-decade highs, driven in part by spiking energy costs, prompting the Federal Reserve to hike rates to quell price pressures.

Markets are bracing for Friday’s key speech by Fed Chair Jerome Powell at the Kansas City Federal Reserve’s annual monetary policy symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Last year at roughly the same time, Powell insisted that the inflationary jump would likely be “transitory,” a prediction he later acknowledged was wrong.

The Fed has since embarked on an aggressive tightening cycle to ease inflationary pressures, which have shown some signs of abating, along with mounting signals of economic weakness.

Despite a number of weak patches in the U.S. economy, the labor market remains resilient and inflationary pressures remain high, prompting Fed officials to send hawkish signals about the future path of monetary policy.

As the Fed seeks to shape market expectations, a number of Fed officials in recent days have sought to hammer home the point that they will push interest rates up and hold them high until inflation has been squeezed out from the economy.

Read more here…